The corners of his mouth turned up. “You’re really terrific at this, you know. We’re going to be good together.”
Her heart seemed to plummet all the way to the pit of her stomach. She knew she wasn’t capable of pleasing a man who so clearly regarded the sex act as something more than mere mechanics. Oh, she was sure he didn’t want love from her; that was their understanding. But, at the very least, he seemed to expect a good time in bed. This was bad news. Definitely bad news.
No point in letting him see her utter lack of self-assurance. Nor could she afford to let herself become emotionally involved with this man. She turned away, afraid that the expression in her eyes would reveal her painful vulnerability.
Stuart reached out a hand and tipped her face back toward his. “Don’t try to make an enemy out of me, Angel. We are going to be friends, you know. It will be so much better for the child.”
“Why don’t you go back to the house, Stuart?” she said. “I’d really like to be alone.” She looked him directly in the eye, as difficult as that was, and tried to stare him down.
He reached out his hands and touched the front of her blouse, startling her so that she jumped backward as if she’d been stung.
“I was only pulling the two sides of your blouse together. The button’s undone.”
She looked down, and as she watched, he slowly and deliberately pushed the button through its loop.
With that, Stuart wheeled around and walked briskly up the beach, leaving her staring after him. In that moment, she realized that he was wearing a red-and-yellow striped shirt.
Red touching yellow, dangerous fellow. She couldn’t stop herself from thinking it.
What was it he had said? Don’t try to make an enemy out of me.
Angel certainly hadn’t invited Stuart Adams to the island with that purpose in mind. But, given her past history with relationships, she was afraid that was exactly what was most likely to happen.
Chapter Four
Angel woke up early on her wedding day. She lay quietly in bed, thinking of how her life would change after she had her baby.
Her life had almost changed in that way once before, and even though she’d almost stopped thinking about Howard, today he intruded into her thoughts and wouldn’t go away.
But this was the day she was going to be married to someone else, and she counted her blessings. Howard was only a painful part of her past now, but in the life she had shared with him up until three years ago, he had often criticized her in public, and he’d also complained long and loud about her looks in private. “Can’t you do something with your hair? Isn’t there a bra that will minimize your breasts? Can’t you find a pair of higher heels, so your ankles won’t look so fat?” he would say, tearing down her fragile self-esteem without regard to the pain he was causing in her soul.
She hadn’t realized that this qualified as emotional abuse until after they broke up. Now she knew that Howard had controlled her by demeaning her. By making her think that she wasn’t good enough for anyone else, he had made sure that she stayed with him. And his strategy had worked. During the time that they were together, Angel’s opinion of herself had fallen so low that she was terrified of leaving the relationship. Who else would want her?
In the end, Howard hadn’t wanted her, either, and so all her appeasing and all her groveling and all her pain had been for nothing. Howard, who was a professor at the university where Angel had been an associate professor, had left her to live with his research assistant. And, stricken with grief, Angel had lost his baby, the baby he’d furiously told her that he didn’t want.
Angel had healed on Halos Island. Healed to the point where she could think about restructuring her life, this time around a child—a baby who would take the place in her heart of the one she’d lost, and who would love her unconditionally forever. Who would admire her and look up to her. Who would fulfill her longing to be a mother, finally.
And this baby would be Stuart’s baby. Perhaps it would look like him. Considering how she felt about her own looks, she hoped it would look like him. Angel couldn’t wait to be pregnant again, to marvel at the miraculous swelling of her body to accommodate the baby, to feel the joy of knowing that she was really and truly with child. Stuart’s child.
The thought of carrying Stuart’s baby within her excited her and made her feel distinctly erotic. She touched her abdomen, trying to imagine its slight concavity becoming convex. Her hands slid over her breasts, reliving the changes she had felt when she was pregnant before, imagining them swollen with milk. She well remembered how early pregnancy had made her feel highly sexual, how she had, for the first time in her life, really wanted sex. And how Howard had sneered and rejected her advances, telling her she was acting like a common whore.
Her pregnancy had been the only time in her life when she had a climax. Howard had been so intent on his own pleasure that he didn’t even notice.
Why was she thinking about that? What did it matter?
It did matter. It mattered very much. Because she didn’t want to disappoint Stuart Adams, and she was very much afraid that she would.
Well, she thought as she got out of bed, at least somebody wanted her. Not for herself, but for the baby that she could provide. And that was perfectly okay with her. It wasn’t as though she were interested in anything permanent. She’d been soured on permanent relationships for life.
Outside, the sun was shining and the birds were singing, but Angel already suspected that this day would be unbearable. It was her wedding day, a day that should be the most wonderful ever, and she was already wishing it was over. She would have to greet Stuart this morning as if nothing were amiss. Then she would somehow have to make small talk with him until the mail boat came, on which they would sit stiffly, side by side. Finally, they’d have to go through the whole rigmarole of the marriage license and wedding. She couldn’t imagine how she was going to get through it.
She wanted, suddenly, to cry, but instead Angel made herself pad into the kitchen in her nightgown and pour both Caloosa and herself some milk. Stuart wasn’t stirring yet, and she took care not to disturb him. She had no desire to encounter him this morning, had no wish to risk letting him see how she really felt.
Caloosa went outside, and Angel headed for the shower. Hastily she assembled soap, towel and shampoo and hurried outside to the novel arrangement for keeping oneself clean while living on Halos Island.
The shower was located beside the kitchen window and had a rusty nozzle leading from an equally rusty pipe, which connected to the rain cistern on the roof. By pulling a chain, you ensured that an indeterminate amount of water, which was heated by the sun, would be dumped over your person. There was no shower curtain, there never having been a need, and besides, there was no apparatus on which to hang one.
Very simple, very clever. Except for its unpredictability.
You might pull the chain and get no water at all, if it hadn’t rained lately. Or you might pull the chain and be deluged. And sometimes you got a nasty surprise, in various forms of island wildlife, which found the cistern hospitable for a number of activities—including procreation, which could result in a shower of tadpoles.
On this day, Angel found the water to be warm and clean and soothing. She pulled the chain to get herself wet all over and, while she was standing under the running water, she heard a sound. Her eyes flew open to see Stuart standing stock-still beneath one of the banyan trees. He wore a pair of corduroy shorts and nothing else.
Angel froze. For a moment, the birds stopped singing and all she could hear was the blood rushing in her ears. She should have grabbed her towel, but she couldn’t. She should have run, but she didn’t.
He didn’t say a word, only stood there with the sun on his face, his eyes taking in every inch of her. He started toward her. For a moment she thought he was going to walk past her into the house, but he stopped when he reached her. Silently, his eyes never leaving hers, he reached for the soap.
Slowly he picked it up, slowly he moved his lips toward hers. She lifted hers to meet them, keeping her eyes wide open so that she could watch the expression on his face. He kissed her, sliding one hand up the side of her neck to bring her closer, and with the other hand he began to soap her body.
She thought she might swoon. Tenderly he spread a thin film of soap across each of her breasts, slid his fingers across her nipples, soaped her neck and her back. Suds sluiced across her ribs, her stomach, her softly rounded backside. He lifted each arm, sliding the soap along the insides, massaging until ropy skeins of bubbles dripped from her fingertips.
He lifted her legs one at a time and soaped behind her knees, reverently touched her ankles, ran his fingers between her toes. And all the time he spoke not one word. The music of the water trickling down upon the mossy slab, the fragrant soap, Stuart’s cool, slick fingers sliding across her wet skin—all combined to create a rapt state of mind and body that seemed only once removed from pure magic.
When Stuart finally finished, he pulled the chain to drench them both with water; his eyelashes were beaded with misty, jewellike drops in the sunlight. Angel was still stunned by what he had done, and all she could do was look at him. When she finally opened her mouth to speak, he silenced her with a finger over her lips and shook his head. And then he slipped away toward the path, the cool, dark shadows of the banyan tree closing around him, leaving her staring after him in a state of shock.
Numb and trembling, she reached for her towel. What had possessed Stuart to do such a thing, she didn’t know. Nor did she know why she had let him. But it had been one of the most intimate acts she had ever engaged in, and she felt uncommonly sexual and sensual, like a womanly woman. Like someone who had regained her lost sexuality.
Talk about the unpredictability of showering on Halos Island! Never again would she complain about it, even to herself. She wrapped herself in the towel, not daring to look toward the woods, and went inside to dress for her wedding.
* * *
IF ANYONE HAD BEEN AROUND to ask Stuart why he had done what he had, he couldn’t have given a reason that made sense.
All he knew was that he had awakened early and gone for a stroll on the beach for a few silent moments of contemplating what he was about to do. Marriage. Fatherhood. Big steps in anybody’s life, no matter what the reason.
Not that he had come to any earthshaking conclusions, other than that he was ready to go ahead with the plan. And then, when he came out of the thicket into the clearing behind the bungalow, he had seen her.
No one who had ever seen Angel McCabe standing wet and naked in the pale light of morning could avoid realizing that she was beautiful. No one could deny her radiant presence. All Stuart knew was that when he saw her, he had to touch her. Had to feel her soft, silky skin beneath the palms of his hands, had to be close enough to feel her breath on his cheek and to look deep into her eyes.
Maybe it was just sex. Sex was a physical need; everyone needed it, some more than others. All right, so he needed Angel McCabe the way he’d occasionally needed other women since Valerie, to slake a thirst, to curb a desire. He couldn’t recall being so aroused by any other woman, though. Angel had a certain indefinable something, a special quality that pegged her as beddable. A beddable woman. One who looked as if she’d like sex. Thrive on it. Hunger for it.
Maybe it was those eyes, wide and lustrous and glowing with a barely concealed sensuality. Or maybe it was her breasts, large for such a small woman, the nipples firm and pouty. Or maybe it was the way her buttocks tapered delectably into the back curve of her thighs, making him want to shape his hand to that contour and urge her close to him.
And there she had been when he came back from his walk, standing under the shower. If she had objected, he wouldn’t have touched her. He would have gone into the house and put her out of his mind, but only for the moment, because tonight she would be his.
But from the instant she lifted her lips for his kiss, he had known that she craved his touch as much as he wished to give it. And so he had picked up the soap, and he had let his hands slide freely across her body, over every contour, into crevices, along her limbs, moving with a lassitude that was usually foreign to him. Mesmerized, totally under her spell, he had let his hands mold to the shape of her body, anticipating making love—really making love—to her.
He had made love to her so many times in his mind that, in a way, touching her seemed like a recapitulation of all his fantasies since he’d arrived on the island. He thought about taking her to bed in...let’s see...ten or twelve more hours. Would she drop her barriers once she spoke her marriage vows?
He didn’t know. All he could do was hope.
After a time in his life when hope had seemed impossible, when his future had seemed bleak and loveless, he was encouraged. The promised heat of his relationship with Angel McCabe might be exactly what he needed to melt away the coldness of the past two years.
He shucked off his wet shorts and plunged into the ocean, swimming with clean, swift strokes toward the coral reef in the distance.
* * *
ANGEL, still moving as if in shock after her intimate encounter with Stuart, put on a white linen dress that she had been saving for a special occasion. It was a long-sleeved, scoop-necked princess-style sheath that flared at the bottom like the petals of a morning glory, fluttering slightly as she walked. Her shoes were new white high-heeled pumps that she had bought to go with the dress.
With trembling fingers, she French-braided her hair high off her neck; the heat at this time of year could be fierce in Key West, and maybe a cool hairdo would compensate for the dress’s long sleeves, she thought. Soft tendrils escaped, framing her face in gold. All the while, she was thinking how much she dreaded seeing Stuart again. How would he act? How would she act? It would be impossible to act normal around him after this morning.
“I haven’t heard him come back into the house,” she said to Caloosa, who had wandered into her room and was sniffing curiously at her new shoes. Caloosa only favored Angel with a blank look before jumping up on the bed and sitting down to watch these unusual proceedings; Angel in a dress was totally beyond her ken.
Angel nervously checked the time. Toby was due with the mail boat in less than half an hour, and if they weren’t ready to leave, he wouldn’t wait. Stuart had been wearing shorts—wet shorts, at that; he’d have to get ready. What would he wear for the ceremony, anyway? They’d never discussed it.
Angel pulled on a pair of panty hose, then took them off again, deciding that it was too hot to wear them. She pushed the neckline of her dress lower, then hiked it back up. It doesn’t matter how I look, she told herself, knowing that she didn’t mean it. This was her wedding day.
When Stuart still hadn’t appeared, Angel went and peeked into the living room. The couch bed had been folded up and the coffee table set squarely in front of it. There was no sign of her intended bridegroom.
Angel was beginning to be concerned. Stuart knew what time the mail boat came, because he’d arrived on it himself on Tuesday. She peered through the porch screen, past the spreading branches of the royal poinciana tree to see if by any chance he was on the dock. The only thing she saw there was a lone seagull preening its feathers.
At that point, she stopped worrying about what they were going to say to each other when he showed up and started to worry about whether he’d actually show up at all. What if Stuart had taken off for some part of the island where he didn’t know the territory and had met with misfortune? Despite her warnings, a snake could have bitten him, he could have wrenched his ankle in a gopher tortoise’s hole—had she thought to mention the dangers of gopher tortoise holes? He could have even gone swimming and forgotten to look out for the moray eel that lurked in the depths of the coral reef.
After a mere two days, Stuart wasn’t accustomed to living on this island, that was the truth of it, and anything could have happened to him. Anything.
Not knowing what else to d
o, Angel ran down to the dock. She scanned the bright blue-green expanse as she shaded her eyes against the fiery sun with one trembling hand.
He couldn’t get off the island, she told herself. Without prior arrangement with one of the other boatmen who sometimes provided transportation to and from Key West, the mail boat was the only way to leave Halos Island. But maybe Stuart had arranged a way to be picked up before he arrived, in case their arrangement didn’t work out. Maybe he didn’t want to go through with their plans after all. Maybe he had left her.
Just like Howard.
A cold chill swept through her as she remembered.
Stuart wouldn’t do that, she told herself as she slowly climbed the rise back to the house. He wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t.
Would he? Especially after this morning?
Uneasily she climbed the steps to the back porch and made sure that the pet door was operative so that Caloosa could go in and out while she was gone. Then she busied herself setting out enough food to tide Caloosa over during their overnight absence. Caloosa mewed and rubbed against Angel’s ankles, already sensing a separation.
“Where’s Stuart? Where’s he gone?” Angel asked Caloosa, just for something to say.
If Caloosa knew, she wasn’t telling. She was much more interested in her Kitti Bitti-Bits than in the whereabouts of the new human on the island.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, Angel caught a glimpse of Stuart as he emerged from the shadows beneath the banyan tree.
Her first emotion was one of relief. And her second, more unexpected feeling was pure joy. Without thinking what she was doing, Angel dropped the box of cat food and flew down the steps. She rushed to meet him, her heart in her throat. Dappled sunlight filtering through the banyan leaves above them shifted and shimmered over Stuart’s even features, making Angel’s head swim. He was wet, his hair curled into ringlets falling across his forehead. His arms were heaped with flowers from the meadows—pink periwinkles, oleanders in vivid shades of red, and a fragile species of wild white orchid, as delicate as lace.
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