by Diana Palmer
“They are,” he said, surprised. “Don’t tell me you have those in Texas,” he teased.
She shook her head. “I bought a book on native plants and trees the day I got here,” she told him. “Everything is so different down here!”
“I like the scenery, too,” he said. “But there’s something more. It’s the sort of place that relaxes you, slows you down.”
“In your line of work, I guess it’s a relief to get away from brawls,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Security work,” she prompted.
He smiled ruefully. He’d actually forgotten the role he was playing. “That’s right,” he said. “I need a place that takes my mind off work.”
He led her inside the beautiful house, through open rooms with stone floors that were cool and eye-catching. She thought about how wonderful that stone would feel under bare feet and had to resist taking off her shoes.
“I don’t see a television,” she remarked when they were in the living room.
“I’ve got one in the den,” he said lazily, “along with all the electronic equipment I have to keep for the sake of security around here. Smith has some of it in his suite. I have the rest.”
“Mr. Smith lives with you?” she asked, surprised.
“Well, not in the same room,” he said at once.
She laughed at his indignation. “Sorry.”
“Damn, woman,” he cursed, and then laughed. “Smith takes care of the house for, uh, the boss,” he added. “So do I, when I’m off duty.”
She knew it was his house, but she didn’t let on. She looked around with warm, approving eyes. “It must be great, living here, with the ocean so close.”
“It gets a little hectic during hurricane season,” he said.
“Which is when?”
He pursed his lips. “From May until late September or early October.”
She gasped. “It’s late August!”
He chuckled at her expression. “Don’t worry. We don’t get that many.”
“Does the house flood?”
“It has, in the past,” he said. “I…the boss, I mean…has rebuilt it once. Otherwise, we just drain it out and have a crew come in and clean out the water damage.”
She nodded, as if she understood.
He knew she didn’t. He turned and looked down at her. “Cleaning up water damage is a specialized job,” he said. “The same people come in after a fire when the hoses have been used on furniture and drapes.”
“Oh!”
He grinned at her. “Don’t ever be ashamed to admit you don’t know something, Delia,” he said gently. “It’s not a crime.”
She smiled ruefully. “Sorry. I just don’t want you to think I’m an utter idiot. I don’t know a lot about the world.”
“Stick with me, kid,” he said in a teasing tone. “I’ll clue you in.”
She laughed with delight. “How exciting.”
He pursed his lips and gave her slender body a mock leer. “You’re the exciting one. Come on. We’ll finish the tour and then we’ll drive over to Blackbeard’s Tower.”
“I can hardly wait!”
He showed her the lavish master bedroom, with heavy Mediterranean furniture and carpet and drapes in earth-tones. There was a huge bathroom with a hot tub, and a vanity. The other two bedrooms were similar, if smaller. There was a laundry room, too.
“I don’t use it,” he told her with a grin. “We have a lady, Lucy, who comes in to cook every day, and two days a week she does laundry for me and Smith. And the boss, of course.”
“I have a laundry room, too, but no Lucy.”
He smiled. “And this is the garage,” he added, opening a door.
She gasped. Inside were five cars. One was the stretch limousine that had taken her back to her hotel the night before. There were four others, none of which she recognized. Well, except for the silver Jaguar. The Ballenger brothers mostly drove Jaguars, so she knew what they looked like. The others were unusual, and she hadn’t seen anything like them.
“We’ll take this one,” he said, guiding her to a small red sports car.
“Wow,” she said as he seated her. “This is cute.”
He could tell that she didn’t know what an Alfa Romeo was, so he didn’t expound on how much it cost. “Yes,” he agreed, starting the engine. “It’s cute.”
“Are we going to see Blackbeard’s place now?” she asked.
He chuckled. “That’s right. Hang on to your seat, honey. This is a car you drive.”
He shifted gears, whipped it out of the garage, and sent it racing down the driveway. All she saw was a blur of green and white on the way to the road.
Once they were across the Paradise Island bridge again and on the paved road that led around the island, she began to relax. The wind in her hair was delightful. She didn’t reach for a scarf or hairpins. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the feel of the wind.
“You’re an elemental, aren’t you?” he called above the roar of the engine.
“Excuse me?”
“You like wind and storms.”
“Yes,” she called back, smiling.
“Me, too,” he murmured.
They passed small houses and public beaches, where local people were playing in the surf. There were houses recessed down past wrought-iron gates and roadside stands where tourists could buy drinks and food. Everything was colorful. A lot of the small houses were painted in pastel colors, pinks and blues and greens. They looked homey and welcoming, and the people seemed always to be smiling.
Marcus drew up at a deserted beach and pulled off into the small dirt track that led toward a grown-up, ruin of a building.
“This is it,” he said, helping her out after he’d parked.
“The tower?” she parroted.
“The very same.” He led her around the growth of vegetation to a stone ruin, a circular building that had relatively new wooden steps. “Most tourists don’t know about this place,” he told her. “They can’t prove that Blackbeard watched out for treasure ships here, but they think he did. Local legends say so, anyway.”
“A real pirate,” she enthused. “That’s exciting.”
“Pirates were all over the Bahamas and the Caribbean,” he remarked, nudging her toward the staircase. “Woodes Rogers, who became governor of the Bahamas, was a pirate himself, like Henry Morgan, who later became governor of Jamaica.”
“Renegades,” she mused under her breath.
“Sometimes a reformed bad man makes a good man,” he said quietly.
She laughed. “So they say.”
She got to the top and looked out over the remaining gray stone blocks to the ocean. “It’s beautiful,” she said to herself, noting the incredible color of the ocean, the blistering sugar whiteness of the beach. Between the tower and the beach were sea grape bushes. One of the cabdrivers had pointed them out and told her that they were once used as plates in the early days of settlement.
“Do you like pirates?” she asked, glancing up at him with a wicked smile.
He shrugged. “They’re my sort of people,” he commented, looking down at her quietly. “I’m an outsider.”
Her fingers itched to touch him, but she was nervous about it. He looked formidable.
“You’d be surprised at the number of tough guys who live in my town. We’ve got everything from ex-black ops to ex-mercenaries. I hear there’s even a reformed gun runner in town somewhere. Our police chief, Cash Grier, was in black ops, we heard.”
His eyebrows arched. “You don’t say?” he mused. He didn’t tell her that he knew Cash Grier quite well, or that he’d heard of Jacobsville. He’d helped Grier keep his wife, Tippy, from being victimized after her kidnapping back in the winter.
“I need to visit this town,” he said, studying her.
“You’d be welcome,” she replied, lowering her eyes shyly. “I could take you around our local points of interest. Not that we’ve got such exciting ones as this, but Jacobsville wa
s once the center of Comanche country, and there was a famous gunfighter who had property there.”
“You like outlaws, don’t you?”
She grinned. “Well, they’re interesting,” she pointed out.
“And dangerous.”
She stared at his chin. It had just a faint cleft and looked stubborn. “Life is boring without a little spice.”
He moved a step closer and touched her hair. He’d been itching to, ever since he picked her up at her hotel. “Your hair fascinates me. I love long hair.”
“I figured that out,” she confessed breathlessly.
He chuckled. “Is that why you wore it down? For me?”
“Yes.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t you know how to lie?”
“It’s a waste of time,” she said simply. “And it complicates things.”
He couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “Yes. It complicates things.” He dropped his hand.
She was going to ask him why he’d become so remote suddenly, but a tour bus drove up next to the Alfa Romeo and parked.
“It seems we’ve been discovered,” he said, smiling at her, but not with the same sensuousness as before. “We’d better go.”
She followed him down the staircase. They got to the bottom just as six tourists followed a heavyset, laughing, tour guide to the tower. One of the women was young, blond, sophisticated and dripping expensive jewelry. She gave Marcus a sultry look from her heavily shadowed blue eyes. He ignored her completely, locking Delia’s fingers into his as he nodded politely at the tour guide and kept walking.
The blonde shrugged and turned away.
Delia was curious about his lack of interest.
He gave her a keen glance and laughed hollowly. “I may not be Mr. America, but the car attracts women,” he hedged. “Even though it’s not mine,” he added quickly. “I don’t like women who find my possessions attractive.”
“I guess it would be demeaning,” she agreed, because she knew what he was saying. A lot of women over the years must have liked him for his money, his power, his position alone.
“Demeaning.” He savored the word. “Yes. That’s a good way to express it.”
He opened the passenger door of the car and helped her in. “You’re perceptive,” he mused.
She leaned her head back against the seat. “Everybody says that, but I’m not, really. I just know how to listen.”
He got in beside her and laid his arm over the back of her seat. He stared at her until her eyes opened and her head turned toward him.
“Listening is a rare gift,” he said. “Most people only want to talk about themselves.”
She smiled warmly. “I’m not that interesting, and I haven’t done anything that would be worth talking about to people. I do alterations and make quilts. What’s exciting about that?”
“As a fellow quilt-maker,” he pointed out dryly, “I find it very exciting.”
She leaned forward and whispered, “I know where to find some floral fabric that dates to 1948, and the lady’s willing to sell it for the right price!”
“Darling!” he exclaimed.
She laughed with pure delight at the twinkle in his dark eyes. “You’re not anything like I used to picture security people,” she told him. “The only bouncer I know is Tiny, who works at Shea’s Roadhouse and Bar, and he’s, well, he’s not much to look at.”
“Neither is Mr. Smith’s pet iguana—who is also named Tiny,” he chuckled ironically. “We should introduce them one day!”
“Funny coincidence.” She lifted her hand daringly and traced his big nose, to the crook in the middle. “Has your nose been broken?” she asked.
He caught her hand and pressed the palm to his mouth. “Only once,” he said. “But it’s so big that I hardly felt it,” he teased.
She smiled, looking hungrily at him.
He felt a sudden painful urge to bend and kiss the breath out of her. But it was a public place and this wasn’t the time. He kissed her palm again and gave it back to her.
“We’d better go before the tourists get back,” he said dryly. “Could you eat?”
“I could.”
“Great. I had Lucy make us a seafood salad and slice some mangos last night. It’ll be cold and sweet.”
“I’ll enjoy that,” she murmured.
Marcus smiled at her radiant delight as the wind tore through her hair once more in the little convertible on the way back to his house. He noted that she didn’t protest that it was messing up her hair, or complain about the wind. She seemed to love it.
It had been years since he’d driven a woman on a date. He usually took the limo and had Smith drive him. When he wanted to impress a woman, which was rarely these days, the limo always did the job.
But he’d suspected that Delia wouldn’t know an expensive sports car from a domestic model, and he was right. She was so honest, so natural, that she made him feel like a total fraud.
He pulled into a paved driveway that led up to white wrought-iron gates. He pressed a button in the car and the gates swung open.
Delia laughed with surprise. “How did you do that?”
“Magic,” he teased. He drove through the gate and it closed automatically behind them.
“It looks different than it did when we left,” she mused as she noted royal palm trees on both sides of the driveway, along with masses of hibiscus and bougainvillea and jasmine, all in glorious bloom. Farther along, tall casaurina pines swayed gracefully beyond the graceful white adobe house, its eaves dripping with flowers of every color and variety.
He laughed amusedly. “I get the message. I’ll slow down so that you can see it this time.”
“Your boss must think a lot of you, to give you such a spectacular place to live.”
“You really like it?” he asked, pleased by her enthusiasm.
“Oh, I like it,” she said in almost a whisper as he stopped and cut off the engine. Her eyes were everywhere, softening as they rested on the flowers. “It’s so beautiful.”
Other women he’d invited here had used different adjectives: dull, boring, rustic. It was too small, or too primitive, or too remote from the city. The bottom line was that they hated it. He was crazy about the place. He spent hours working in the flowers, fertilizing and pruning and landscaping.
“You must be a terrific gardener,” she murmured as they got out and walked across a stone patio to the wide steps and spacious front porch. “I’ve never seen so many flowers! And that tree looks like a…no, it couldn’t be.” She hesitated.
“It’s exactly what it looks like, an umbrella plant,” he confirmed. “And that one over there is a Norfolk Island Pine.”
“But they’re monstrous!”
“Compared to the potted plants back in the States, they certainly are. But here they’re in their natural element, and they grow like crazy.”
“They’re beautiful,” she said solemnly.
He smiled. “I think so, too.”
He parked the car and led the way into the kitchen, sliding his car keys back into his pocket.
He opened the refrigerator and produced a huge covered bowl full of seafood salad and a covered plate with sliced mango. “There’s a lemon meringue pie as well, if you like lemon.”
“Oh, it’s my favorite,” she enthused.
He chuckled. “We’ll have it for dessert. It’s my favorite, too.” He took down plates and glasses and she set the table, arranging the silver he gave her and the napkins as well.
“What do you want to drink?” he asked.
“I like iced tea, but milk is okay.”
He gave her a curious glance. “I usually have coffee…”
“That would be even better, but I didn’t want to impose,” she added. “You went to a lot of trouble for this.”
She was constantly surprising him. Nobody wanted to “rough it” by eating leftovers here, when there were five-star restaurants all over Nassau. Here she was worried about making more work for him. He
was impressed by Delia’s companionable spirit.
He had the light meal together in no time, and they lingered over a second cup of coffee on the veranda, overlooking the casuarinas and, beyond them, the blinding white sand and turquoise waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
Heavy, low clouds were building around them, blackened and towering into the heavens. The sun had been out earlier, but a storm was clearly on its way into the bay.
“Do you like storms?” she asked absently as she leaned back against a palm tree trunk, watching the churning of the waves on the beach.
“Yes. I’d already figured that you did,” he replied.
She smiled. “I should be afraid of them, I expect, because lightning terrifies me. But I love a storm. I love the fury of the wind, and the sound of rain coming down. We have a tin roof on our house. When it rains, it’s like a metallic lullaby, especially at night. I don’t know why, but rain makes me feel safe.”
He was studying her face with intent interest. His dark eyes slid down her trim figure in the gossamer-thin garments she was wearing, and he wondered hungrily what she looked like under her clothes.
As if in response to his mental images, the skies suddenly burst open and rain came down immediately, in torrents.
Delia gasped as the rain soaked her blouse and skirt and drenched her hair.
Laughing, Marcus caught her hand and ran with her to the protection of the roofed patio, where she stood dripping near a wall, trying to shake the water from her skirt.
Marcus’s eyes were suddenly narrow and glittery, and he was looking at her with an expression she couldn’t fathom.
When she looked down at herself, she understood. The fabric was transparent. He could see right through her clothes, right down to her flimsy bra and panties. It was like being naked.
She started to raise her hands. Seconds later, Marcus backed her against the wall and pinned her wrists to the smooth surface with his big hands, while his knee coaxed her legs apart and his eyes went to her breasts.
Instinctively she began to struggle, remembering Fred.
“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered softly, holding her gaze. “I won’t force you. Trust me.”