by Diana Palmer
“I don’t sulk.”
“All women do.” He set the cup down.
She picked at her breakfast with all the enthusiasm of eating cardboard. “What time do you want to start work?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t. Having to be shut up in the same room with you all day would drive me out of my mind right now,” he said icily. “Go sit on the beach, and don’t come back until you’re through pouting.”
“I’m not pouting!” she said shortly. She stood up, throwing her napkin down on the table. “And you go to hell, Mr. Cambridge!”
She ran out of the room, out of the house, and kept going on the paved road that led down to the hotel. Long before she reached the beach, she wished she’d worn a sunhat with her beige shorts and top. It was so hot that she felt like a broken egg on asphalt.
Without thinking, she entered the hotel, drinking in the luxury around her and asked the desk clerk if Mr. Lindsey was still in his room. He was, and she asked if a message could be passed along that Kate was waiting for him in the lobby. She sat down on one of the plush round sofas and waited.
She couldn’t begin to understand Garet’s strange behavior. For one mad instant she wondered if he might truly have recognized her, but her mind dismissed that thought as impossible. Still, though, what was the matter with him? And why was he taking it out on her, when she couldn’t remember anything she’d done to antagonize him except that remark about his age. And why should that upset him?
She sighed miserably, fighting down tears. He’d warned her what seemed ages ago that he had a black temper, and she almost wished she was back home in Texas. That is, until she remembered that Texas wouldn’t have Garet Cambridge, and all of a sudden that prospect was as bleak as a desert.
She looked out the front door where the beach was visible from her seat, and she remembered what he’d said about standing at a window overlooking the Caribbean when he proposed to that faceless woman. She couldn’t imagine that hard face softened with emotion, love in those sightless green eyes. Most of all, she couldn’t imagine a woman stupid enough to throw him over because he couldn’t see. He was so very much a man. Lack of sight didn’t change that. But what hurt even more was the fact that he hadn’t gotten over that woman. And Kate was afraid to think too hard about why it should hurt her.
“Well, hello,” came a familiar voice.
She turned in her seat to smile at Bart Lindsey, suavely dressed in a pair of tan slacks and a patterned shirt that emphasized his blond fairness. “I hoped you’d be able to make it.”
“I had to fight my way out, and I hope you’re suitably impressed,” she said.
He lent her a hand to help her up, his eyes lingering on her long, tanned legs. “I’m impressed, believe me. Have you had breakfast?”
She shuddered, remembering the scene at the breakfast table. “Just coffee,” she said truthfully.,
“Come on, then, and I’ll feed you. The cuisine here is magnifique.”
“Je ne parle pas Francais, Monsieur,” she murmured demurely, flashing a glance at him as they walked toward the spacious dining room.
“Moi, aussi,” he seconded, and launched into a monologue of French that left her breathless and protesting.
“I wasn’t kidding,” she laughed, “I really don’t speak French—only enough to tell people that I don’t.”
He grinned at her. “I speak just enough to get myself slapped or arrested. I don’t suppose you brought a swimming suit?”
She shook her head. “I wish I had. I…I left the villa in kind of a hurry,” she admitted. “I didn’t have time to put mine on.”
“Boss in a bad temper?” he probed. “Mr. Cambridge’s reputation is etched in stone here,” he continued, smiling at her puzzled expression. “To hear the hotel manager talk about him, you’d think he was the resident holy man. Formidable, black-tempered, generous to a fault, rich as all hell, and the very devil with the ladies. Does that about cover it?”
“Just about,” she agreed warily.
He seated her at a small table by the window and dropped down across from her. The dining room was almost deserted at this hour of the morning, but it didn’t take long for a waitress to come and ask for their order.
“How about a continental breakfast and a side order of fruit?” Bart asked her, giving the order when she nodded and adding two cups of coffee to it.
She smiled at him over the dainty bougainvillea blossoms in their pretty vase. “How did you know to order coffee for me?”
“Because you look like a caffeine fiend. One can always recognize another,” he added wickedly. He reached in his pocket for cigarettes and offered her one, which she politely refused.
“Pity,” he observed, lighting up. “Caffeine and nicotine go together like ice and tea.”
“So do nicotine and lung cancer,” she said smartly.
“Touché. But I’m going to die of something eventually,” he countered.
“I know, don’t preach. My father says the same thing.” She toyed with her water glass.
“How long have you worked for Mr. Cambridge?” he asked conversationally.
She eyed him with open suspicion. “Are you sure you’re a travel writer?”
He laughed self-consciously. “Sorry. Force of habit. Asking questions is my profession.”
“And ignoring them,” she replied, “is mine. Especially when they concern Mr. Cambridge.”
He eyed her closely. “Afraid of him?”
“He does have a temper,” she said with a smile.
“What a waste,” he sighed. “Burying yourself in an old man’s memoirs….”
“Old man?” she blinked. “Memoirs?”
He toyed with the tablecloth. “Well, Jacques—the hotel manager, you know—said that he was a millionaire several times over. I wouldn’t expect him to be a spring chicken. And you know yourself there aren’t two pictures of him circulating. He breaks cameras, and reporters, if he can get his hands on them.”
She laughed. “You wouldn’t think he was old if you had to keep up with him. I imagine he used to go twenty-four hours a day….” She broke off, catching herself just in time. There was something naggingly suspicious about the questions he was asking.
“Used to?” He caught the slip and followed through.
“Well,” she amended with deadly calm, “he is forty years old, of course.”
“And you’re what, Kate, twenty?” he teased.
She shook her head. “Almost twenty-three.”
“Old enough to be your father, isn’t he?” he laughed.
That had never occurred to her. She couldn’t begin to think of Garet in that light, he was too utterly masculine, too vividly male to consider in any family sense. She could no more picture him as her father or a doting uncle than she could picture him with a cup in one hand begging on the streets.
“What’s wrong?” Bart asked her.
“I was trying to picture Mr. Cambridge as my father,” she said on a sigh. “I think I’d run away from home.”
“Would you, really?” he probed. “I don’t think so. A look comes into your eyes when you talk about him…are his memoirs interesting?”
She leaned her forearms on the table and glared across at him, her pale brown eyes darkening. “If you keep this up, I’m leaving. Mr. Cambridge’s private life is none of your business.”
He had the grace to look uncomfortable, even a little ashamed. He grinned boyishly. “It’s just my nature to be curious. But if it bothers you, I’ll be the soul of discretion and not ask any more leading questions. Okay?”
The waitress came with their order in time to save her an answer.
Kate watched what she told him for the rest of the day—she couldn’t make herself trust him anymore. But she did enjoy herself. Bart had a built in sense of adventure. He could make a mundane walk along the beach something new and exciting. He told her stories he’d picked up about dolphins and sharks and pirates, and pointed out other islands in the Wi
ndward group and rattled off history as if he’d been born there.
“How did you ever get to be a reporter?” she asked him late that afternoon when they wound their way back to the hotel.
“Something to do with full moons, I think,” he grinned. “Acutally, I had a little talent and I’ve used it to the limit, that’s all. How did you get to be a secretary?”
“I could type.”
“Talk about pat answers! But how,” he persisted calculatingly, “did you wind up in St. Martin all the way from Texas?”
And that, she thought, would make a good story, especially if she mentioned her famous former employer and her part in Garet Cambridge’s blindness. Nobody knew yet that he was blind, and what a scoop it would make for an ambitious young reporter. Kate decided right then that she’d never go out with Bart again. It was too dangerous. She might accidentally give Garet away. And she couldn’t stand the thought of causing him any more anguish than she already had.
“It’s getting late,” she said, pausing in front of the hotel as she glanced toward the hill she had to climb to get back to the villa. “I hate to go, but….”
“I understand. The beast waits on the hill,” he said with a grin. “Tomorrow? Same time, same place?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Good night.”
She turned and started up the road, her mind already on the villa and her moody employer.
Dark clouds were already blotting out the sun when she walked into the villa, nervously pushing back a windblown strand of her blond hair as she looked cautiously into the study.
“Is that you, Kate?” Cambridge asked from his easy chair by the window.
Her pale brown eyes were apprehensive, but her voice didn’t show it as she joined him. “Yes, sir.”
“I thought you’d decided to spend the night.”
She linked her slender hands in front of her and clasped them tight. His dark face was as impassive as ever, but there was a storm brewing in the green eyes that stared in front of him while gray smoke curled up from the cigarette in his big hand.
“You did tell me I could spend the day, doing whatever I wished,” she reminded him diplomatically.
“But I didn’t know who you’d be spending it with, did I, Kate?” he asked in the harshest voice she’d ever heard from him.
She felt her face go white, and although there was no reason in the world for her to feel guilty, she did.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“People love to tell me things, Kate,” he replied gruffly, his sightless eyes narrowing, his jaw tightening. “Especially about my private staff. You might remember that in the future. You can’t make a move on this island that I won’t know about.”
She lifted her chin. “I haven’t done a thing that I’m ashamed of.”
“I know that, too.” He took a draw from his ever-present cigarette. “What does he look like?” he asked in a deceptively casual voice.
“He…he’s tall and blond.”
“And young?” he asked harshly.
“And young,” she replied deliberately.
“You’re insolent, Miss.”
“You drive me to it!” She took a deep breath, trying not to notice how broad his shoulders were, how massive his chest, how beautifully masculine his strong, broad fingers. “You don’t own me, Mr. Cambridge.”
“Are you sure about that?” he demanded. “Try to get off the island.”
She felt her blood freeze. “Why would I want to get off the island?” she asked in what she hoped was a calm voice.
“Your boyfriend might ask you to go home with him,” he replied coldly.
She blushed. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she told him. “For heaven’s sake, I only met him…!”
“Time doesn’t have a damned thing to do with emotions, Kate,” he growled, as she could feel the tension in him. “One minute with some people is like ten years with others. And he’s a damned reporter, too, isn’t he? What a story he’s sitting on right now!”
“If you really think I’d tell anybody anything about your private life, especially a reporter…!” she began hotly.
“Wouldn’t you? He could probably persuade you to open up with a few kisses, or some cold cash,” he added in a voice laced with contempt. “You did tell me once that you’d never had money, didn’t you? What a golden opportunity this is.”
Something seemed to die inside of her, like a freezing of buds in an unexpected cold snap. “You really think I could do that to you? That money means more to me than honor or integrity?” She drew a deep, steadying breath. “Is that part of being rich, Mr. Cambridge, thinking that people only do things for profit? Is it a standard that you measure people by? You’re no better than that stuffed-shirt I got myself tangled up with! The only difference is that you’re richer!”
His jaw locked, his eyes burned as they turned in her direction. “That’s enough,” he said icily.
“No, it isn’t,” she replied in a voice shot with tears. “But it’ll have to do!”
“Kate, you aren’t crying?” he asked suddenly, his heavy brows drawn into a scowl as his sharp ears caught the difference in her voice. “Kate, answer me!”
“Why?” she wept, turning toward the door. “Aren’t you through?”
“Where are you going?”
“To sell you out to the press,” she lobbed over her shoulder, “isn’t that what you think?”
“What I think of you would scare you to death. Come back here.”
“Aren’t words enough?” she murmured, leaning her forehead against the door as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Or did you want to beat me before I go upstairs?”
“Don’t be theatrical.” His footsteps echoed behind her as he followed, accurately, the sound of her voice.
She felt the heat radiating from his big body as he stopped just behind her, felt the tentative searching of his hands as they found her shoulders and contracted gently on her bare, cool upper arms.
“You don’t know what’s wrong with me, do you?” he asked in a strange, low voice.
“I think I do,” she corrected miserably, shaken by the feel of his arms, warm and strong and exciting where they touched her. “It’s remembering that girl, the one who hit you on the lake, and you want to take it out on somebody because you can’t get to her.”
“I’ll get to her, Kate. It’s just a matter of when,” he said with chilling certainty. “Is revenge too violent for you, milkmaid, or does it shock you that I feel the need for it? She took my eyes, damn it!”
Her eyes closed against the guilt. “Yes,” she whispered. “I know. But whipping me to death won’t bring them back!”
“No, it won’t,” he said gently. “Kate,” he murmured, his breath warm against the back of her head, “I hurt like hell. I feel as if my head’s about to burst. Don’t leave me alone just yet.”
A quick surge of sympathy and compassion welled up in her and she turned to look up into those unseeing eyes. “I forget sometimes that you aren’t…that you can’t see,” she admitted softly.
“Do you forget my age at the same time?” he asked, very gently, and his hands moved up to cup her face. “That I’m almost a generation older than you? That I’m too rich for my own good, and that I’ve got the disposition of a half-mad jungle cat half the time?”
“Mr. Cambridge…” she whispered, pushing at his massive chest in token protest. Her hands accidentally touched his bronzed flesh where his unbuttoned shirt had fallen away. Involuntarily, her fingers tangled in the growth of curling dark hair.
His chest rose and fell more rapidly, and under her hands she could feel the heavy beat of his pulse.
“Touch me, Kate,” he said in a deep, tight voice.
Lost in the sensation of being close to him like this, drowning in the warmth of him, the tangy male scent of him, the sensuous feel of him, she obeyed him mindlessly. He was all firm muscle, all vibrant male, and there was a delicious intimacy in being allowed to touch him. Followi
ng an instinct as old as time, her face dropped to his broad chest and her lips touched him lightly, tentatively, and she felt him shudder.
His big hands tightened around her head like a vice and he jerked her face up to his blazing dark green eyes, eyes that couldn’t see her.
“Don’t do that,” he whispered huskily. “It sets fires in my blood.”
Her lips trembled as they tried to form words. “I’m sorry,” she managed finally. “I’ve never done that before….”
“My God, don’t apologize,” he replied gently. “I’m trying to protect you, you hopeless little innocent! Do I have to remind you how long I’ve been without a woman?”
She blushed. “I wouldn’t let you….”
“Oh, Kate, you’d let me,” he whispered softly, pressing his firm, chiseled mouth to her forehead with a tenderness that was new and shattering. “You tremble all over when I hold you. If I started touching you, we’d both go up in flames.”
With a start, she realized that he wasn’t kidding. She was trembling from head to toe, and it wasn’t out of fear. She swallowed nervously, enveloped in the comforting warmth of his body, drinking in the nearness like a thirsting runner. And as she started to analyze her tumbled emotions, it was like a puzzle suddenly fitting together. She loved him.
Loved him! A man she’d blinded, even though accidentally, a man who’d hate her if he ever found out. A man so far removed from her world in power and wealth that he might as well have come from another planet. But she loved him!
He felt the tremor that ran like quicksilver through the slender body pressed so closely to his, and his arms went around her to hold, to comfort.
“Don’t ever be afraid of me,” he said quietly. “The longest day I live, I’ll never hurt you.”
Oh, but you will, she thought miserably. You will, because it’s inevitable that you’ll find out who I am. And I wish I could run from you now, while there’s still time.
“Would…would you like me to get you something for your head?” she asked softly.
“I’ve got all I need,” he said at her ear. “You got rid of the last headache I had in a similar manner, remember Kate? Lying in my arms in bed….”