Eyes of Fire

Tasted his lips, the salt, the sea…

Every young girl dreamed about her first time making love. Planned it, perhaps. Yet nothing in Sam’s imagination had been so sweet, so smooth, so perfect. Words had failed her, but actions hadn’t. He was so experienced; she was simply so in love. The crimson-streaked sky was the perfect canopy, the sun-baked sand the perfect bed. God! Even now, she could almost feel his lips against her flesh, tantalizing her, the way he could move his mouth against her, circling, barely touching, making her want to scream to feel his caress just where it wasn’t, scream again when it came against her flesh just where she had yearned for it to be. He seduced, awakened, evoked. By the time he actually entered her, she was half-crazed with wanting him. If there was pain, it was fleeting. It was the wonder that remained with her, the warmth, the feeling of intimacy, the awe….

The silver touch of his eyes….

She shifted, smiling slightly, remembering. He was older, mature, responsible. Magnetic. Experienced, aware, fascinating.

She was…distracted.

The morning light was coming into her bedroom. She blinked against it, groggy as she awoke. Blinked again.

Those eyes. Silver eyes, watching her still.

Sam bolted up in bed, dragging her covers with her as she stared at the man seated in the Victorian rocker at her bedside, a big mug of coffee in his hands as he stared at her. She clenched her teeth, hoping to hell that she had been sleeping soundly and that nothing had escaped her lips while she drifted in her semiwaking state.

“Damn it, what the hell are you doing in my bedroom?”

He shrugged, leaning forward, offering her the coffee. She ignored the mug and continued to stare at him, outraged.

“Don’t bring that too close to me. I’ll dump it over your damned head.”

“Still hostile in the morning, I see. I couldn’t imagine that you’d changed that much. Take the coffee. You’re usually much nicer after a cup.”

“What are you doing in here?”

“Jem suggested I wake you.”

The coffee smelled delicious. And it would be just the way she liked it, black and steaming. She’d learned to like it that way from him.

No, she wasn’t going to give in to temptation.

“If you were supposed to wake me, why were you sitting there staring at me?”

“Take the damned coffee.”

She accepted the mug. It was just coffee. She wouldn’t be making any kind of commitment. She sipped it and it was as good as she’d imagined. She had a feeling he’d made it. Jem couldn’t even boil water properly.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Because you were smiling in your sleep. I didn’t feel like ruining your dream.”

“No, you decided to be a damned voyeur.”

A wicked half-smile curved his lips. “I was waiting to see if you’d whisper my name.”

“After this much time? You, Adam O’Connor, are the dreamer.”

“Well, whoever caused that smile also caused you to oversleep. It’s almost eight.”

“Eight?” Sam glanced at her watch, saw that he was telling the truth and thrust the coffee mug at him. She leaped out of bed—careful to bound up on the side opposite where he had drawn up his chair. She raced to the bathroom—carefully locking the door with an audible click.

She brushed her teeth with a fury, washed her face, then stared at herself in the mirror. God, she was a sorry sight.

Her hair was everywhere, even standing straight up. She looked like Alfalfa from the original “Little Rascals.”

It also might have been nice, she told herself, if he’d caught her in something more appealing. She did own a few silk and satin nightgowns, but she had a tendency to sleep in oversize T-shirts. This was a sad one. Huge and red, with a picture of Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors on it.

She pulled off the shirt and hopped in the shower—nice cold water to wake her up. When she came out she wrapped herself in a large bath towel, realizing that she’d made a mistake coming in here without any clothes. Now she was going to have to go out there in a towel to find her bathing suit and cover-up.

The hell with it. She didn’t give a damn about Adam. He was ancient history. It would just be nice for him to find her so appealing that he would feel like dying for having thrown her over. It was exactly the way most women would feel about an ex-lover, wasn’t it? Especially when that ex-lover had lost none of his own appeal.

She rewrapped the towel, wanting to be appealing but certain she would die if she lost the damned thing in front of him. Just when she was about to open the door, she realized that he was waiting for her just on the other side of it when she heard him speaking, his voice deep, husky and provocative.

“Sam?”

“Are you still there?” she demanded. “Will you please get out of my room?”

“Testy, testy.”

“Damn you, go.”

“And just as I was about to give you more information.”

“About what?”

“You do know who your heartthrob is, don’t you?”

“What?” she demanded, throwing the door open.

Silver eyes swept her up and down. “Santino.”

“What?” she repeated, completely confused.

He sighed. “Jim Santino. The guy with the cover-boy hair.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. It would help keep the towel in place. “Damn you, Adam.”

“Never mind, then. Still want me to leave?”

“Adam, if you walk out of here…”

He smiled slowly. “If I walk out of here, what?”

“You’ll be sorry,” she promised.

His smile deepened as he turned and started walking down the hallway.

“Adam! Will you come back here! Adam, I’m threatening you, damn it!”

He kept walking.

“I’ll throw you off my island with my own damned hands!” she called after him.

He didn’t reply.

Keep this on an adult level, she warned herself. It was no good.

She started running, then slid on her bare feet and crashed into his back, slamming her fists against it. “I mean it. Damn you, Adam!”

She broke off when she realized she was losing her towel. She quit thundering against him just in time to catch it, managing to hold it to her chest. Her rump was exposed, but at least she managed to cover up the valley between her breasts.

Jem was in the kitchen, a coffee cup halfway to his lips. He arched a brow. Adam turned to her at last. “Well, if you really want to talk…”

“You two can both go straight to hell!” she snapped.

She swished the towel around her. Furious, planning every devious revenge known to man, she swirled on one heel and strode toward her bedroom. It was a tremendously dignified exit, or so she told herself.

Except that she could hear them laughing in her wake.

The hell with them both. She spun around and strode to the kitchen.

They both started. Jem spilled his coffee.

“All right, Adam. Who the hell is Jim Santino?”

8

A dam looked at Jem. “I guess she wants to talk.”

“Yeah. Looks like that to me.”

“She keeps trying to throw me out, though.”

“Women,” Jem agreed.

“I’m going to throw you both into the sea in about two minutes,” Sam warned. “Adam O’Connor, we had hours alone together yesterday. You could have spent all that time talking to me, answering questions.”

“You didn’t ask me any questions yesterday.”

She swore beneath her breath. “You knew whatever you’re going to tell me now yesterday. You didn’t tell me then.”

“I’m telling you now.”

“But you should have—”

“Yes, and you should have had the decency to let Jem or me know that you were leaving the main house and coming here so I didn’t have to nearly suffer heart failure racing after you!”

“Oh, really?”

“I’m right, and you know it.”

“Fine. You’re right. Now talk to me.”

He met her determined stare and smiled grudgingly. “Your young friend Jim is the son of Robert Santino.”

Sam shook her head, not recognizing the name. “So?”

Adam continued. “Organized crime boss, reputedly responsible for a good hundred murders—though he customarily keeps his killing in the business. He’s known for murder, theft, racketeering, drugs and prostitution.”

“I don’t mean to belittle the man’s terrible deeds,” Sam said evenly, “but what the hell do any of them have to do with me or this island?”

Adam watched her. “He’s also reputed to have one of the most comprehensive collections of sixteenth-century Spanish jewels and relics.”

“The Beldona was an English ship.”

“Carrying Spanish prisoners. And Spanish treasure. You know that.”

“So is everyone on the island suspected of something in one way or another?”

“Just about,” Adam said.

“Including you?” Sam suggested. “You did say that you were working for a private concern.”

He was silent for a few minutes. “Yeah, I’m a suspect in a way, too.”

“Any more surprises?” she demanded.

He shrugged. “Nothing I know for certain.”

“Anything else you care to share with me?”

Clouds obscured the sharp silver of his eyes. “Not quite yet.”

“Well, then, Adam, you can go right to hell.”

She turned away from him, but he caught her arm, drawing her back. She stared at his hand on her arm, then looked into his eyes. He had to let her go. She didn’t like being so close to him. She didn’t know how it was possible that so much time could pass, and yet she could still feel such a strange, familiar warmth when he touched her.

“As soon as I feel I can say anything else, I will. I swear it.”

Wrench free, she told herself. Instead she stood very still and returned his stare, trying to read his unfathomable eyes, but he was giving nothing away.

“Well, tell me this, at least. You seemed to be on the same wavelength as Avery Smith when you were talking to him the other night. Does he know that you’re aware he isn’t Avery Smith?”

“He must.”

“You’re certain?”

He nodded. “We’ve met before. He remembers me—I could tell when we met the other night.”

“Has he attempted to explain his alias to you?”

“Not yet.”

“Isn’t he afraid of you?”

“Why would he be afraid of me? I was a cop when we met. A good guy.”

“Yes, but if he’s here under an alias…”

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s up to something evil.”

“You’re the one who made a point of the fact that the man is not who he says he is.”

“Yes, because it could be important.”

“Because although he may not necessarily be up to something devious, there’s a chance that he might be.”

“Right.”

“But if he is up to something illegal, shouldn’t he be afraid of you, since you know he isn’t who he says he is?”

Adam shrugged. He still had his hand on her, and she stood very still, not wanting to feel the electric waves of energy that emanated from him and swirled distractedly around her.

“James Jay Astin is a very wealthy man, always being pursued in the world of business. Naturally such a man might want to escape to a private getaway. And Seafire Isle is advertised as a very private getaway.”

She thought that, if nothing else, he was offering her sound logic. Either that, or the feel of his hand on her was making her want to believe anything he said. Anything.

It was time to escape with dignity.

She tugged free from his hold and headed to her bedroom, where she dressed quickly in a sky blue tank-style swim suit, terry shorts and a matching shirt, and her deck shoes. She came to the kitchen to find both men waiting for her.

“Breakfast?” Jem suggested with a hopeful smile.

She stared at him tight-lipped, refusing to reply. She started out of the cottage, and the two men followed behind her. She walked quickly, as if hoping she could shake them.

Silly thought. They were on an island. There really was no escape.

The others were all gathered in the dining room of the main lodge. Except for Mr. James Jay Astin Avery Smith—who was reading a magazine while he sipped his coffee, dressed in Dockers and a denim shirt—everyone appeared to be ready to go diving. Even Jerry North was wearing terry cover-ups over her bathing suit, or so it appeared.

“You’re diving?” Sam asked her, surprised.

“I’m going to bubble watch,” Jerry said, smiling wanly.

She looked tired, Sam thought. “Jem will like the company on the boat.”

Jerry nodded. “I hope so.”

Sam moved to the buffet table, helping herself to coffee and a corn muffin. She heard a commotion, then saw that Brian had apparently escaped Yancy’s care in the kitchen and was crawling out to the breakfast area as fast as his little hands and knees would take him. He paused right by her leg, looking at her with his broad, toothless smile. She stooped down and scooped him up, laughing, giving him a hug.

“You want my muffin, huh, kid?” She laughed, nuzzling his little neck. She loved the clean, baby-powder-sweet smell of him, loved the way his huge blue eyes stared so trustingly into hers. He reached out a hand toward the buffet table. Sam broke off a piece of her muffin, offering it to him just as Yancy made it over to her.

“I set the little rascal down beside his high chair for a whole two seconds before he was gone!” Yancy said.

“He just wants to go diving with us, Yancy!” Brad said.

“Well, he’ll have to wait a few years for that, I’m afraid,” Yancy said. She seemed uneasy, determined to get the baby back speedily. “Here, Sammy, I’ll take him. You eat so you can get your party started.” Yancy lowered her voice. “I need to talk to you.”

Sam arched a brow to her.

“In the pantry, for just a minute, when you get the chance.”

As Sam gave up the baby, she turned slightly. Adam was standing about five feet away from her. Dead still. Had he heard what Yancy had said to her? Did he intend to be in the kitchen, listening to whatever Yancy had to say, as well?

Then she realized that Adam wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at the baby. Hard. As if he was witnessing some kind of unexplained phenomenon. He was very pale. No, he was actually more a soft shade of green.

“Adam?”

He seemed to give himself a shake. Then he turned away from her, pouring himself a cup of coffee. His hands were shaking slightly.

She walked up behind him. “I know, the baby isn’t really a baby. He’s a multimillionaire collector of ancient documents, and he’s here—”

He swung on her. She was startled by the violence in him and started to back away. His fingers settled around her elbow like steel grips. “I’m wondering where the hell you’d be right now if that visitor of yours the other night had managed to snap that cloth over your face a few minutes earlier.”

“Would you let go of me? You’re making a scene!”

“How old is that baby?”

“He’s six months. Jesus, let me go! You’re about to break my arm.”

His mouth worked as if he was about to say something. Then he released her arm as if it had suddenly caught fire and turned away from her, walking across the room to enter into conversation with Jim Santino and Sukee.

Sam hurried into the pantry, where Yancy was waiting for her.

“Someone was in the house last night,” Yancy said.

“What?”

“I heard someone in your father’s office.”

“Adam?”

Yancy shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, God, Yancy, I should have called the police when this first started.”

“No, no, Sam. I was never in danger. No one came near me or the baby. I wouldn’t even have known except that Brian woke up, crying for a bottle. While I was feeding him, I heard someone downstairs. Then I looked out and saw someone leaving the house. Sam, if you’d called the police, it wouldn’t have done anything. Adam is right. Unless you want to just close the island and give up the business, we’ve got to figure out what’s going on ourselves.”

“But if anything happened to the baby…”

“The baby is with me! No one is threatening him in any way. I wasn’t threatened. I don’t know anything at all about the damned Beldona. I’m a barely competent diver. No one is going to give a damn about me. You’re the one in trouble here, Sam, and I’m scared for you. You’ve got to be careful. Really careful.”

“I will be. But I don’t want you and the baby to be alone—”

“Jacques was in the house. If I had really been afraid, I would have called him.”

“He was probably snoring through the whole thing,” Sam said. Jacques was a wonderful chef, but he was also a cheerful man with tunnel vision. He would have been dreaming of the next day’s soufflé while the house caved down around him.

“I’m certain I’ll be okay,” Yancy said.

“We can’t be certain of anything. I don’t want you to be so alone.”

“Matthew will be over for the weekend tomorrow night. He can take the room next to mine.”

“That will be better. For tonight—”

“We can figure out tonight when you get back. This is what’s scaring me—don’t you even think about diving alone anywhere,” she said passionately. “Don’t you be alone under the water—not for a minute, not for a second!”

“She won’t be,” a deep, angry voice suddenly assured them both.

Sam swung around. Adam. He’d followed her. Come up behind her, and heard every word. And he still seemed angry.

She gritted her teeth, folding her arms over her chest. “Imagine! He’s been back a day and already he’s taking charge. I don’t think he can do that, do you, Yancy?”

Yancy glanced over Sam’s shoulder to Adam. “Yes, Sammy, I do. I think you have to listen to him.”

“Really? Well, you know, Yancy, he’s working for some private concern. Why should I trust him more than anyone else?”

“Sam, he was a cop—”

“Not anymore.”

“Sam—”

“Thanks for the warning, Yancy. I have a dive party to take out,” Sam said. She turned and started walking past Adam, but she should have known it wasn’t going to happen. He took a step, which brought him in front of her. His hands bit into her shoulders. “You can be as much of a bitch as you want, but I owe it to your father not to let anything happen to you, and I’m not going to.”

“Really? If you owe my father, it took you one hell of a long time to decide to pay the debt!”

“I explained to you what happened!”

“Well, it wasn’t good enough!” she whispered, furious at realizing that she was close to tears. “It just wasn’t good enough!”

She pushed her way past him, determined to regain control as she returned to the living room. She poured herself another cup of coffee and spoke loudly to everyone in the room.

“I’m heading down to the Sloop Bee. We’ll try to cast off in twenty minutes, for those of you who are coming along.”

She started down the path from the house to the docks, then realized that Adam was following right behind her. She stopped, letting him catch up. “This isn’t going to work.”

“What?”

“You being there every time I try to breathe.”

“Well, just what are you going to do, then?” he demanded.

She opened her mouth to answer him, then realized that she really was in some kind of danger and that she might be jeopardizing her livelihood and her life—not to mention the lives of Jem, Yancy, Jacques, Brian and even others—if she didn’t try to discover what was going on without having to close down the island. She hated it, but he was her best bet.

“You’re a bastard, and I really hate you, you know that?” she said to him.

“So you informed me the day you asked me to leave.”

“I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Well, you know what? You’re still a little brat.”

“Am I? I thought I was a bitch.”

“You’re a woman of many moods, Miss Carlyle.”

She wanted to hit him. Nearly five years since she had seen him! she told herself desperately. She shouldn’t still be so furious. So hurt.

She’d been so damned naive! When she’d first seen him, she’d thought he was wonderful. So tall, so handsome and so at home in the water. A noble type of guy. His dad had been a cop; he’d wanted to be a cop. His skill in the water had allowed him to be a different kind of cop. He’d almost instantly formed a bond of friendship with her father.

And he’d been so determined to keep his distance from her, to be a professional.

It didn’t help any to know now, to admit to herself, that she’d been determined to seduce him. Determined that if she could get him, she could hold him. She’d never wanted anything with such blind, reckless desire. She’d plotted, planned, been bold, argumentative, mocking.

She’d done her best to torment him. She’d fought with him. If he was interested in a sunken ship, she mocked his knowledge of it. He argued that divers were basically safe against shark attack; she recited incidents of sharks attacking divers. He argued back.

She brushed against him every time she passed him.

She wore his patience down. She wore his resistance down, as well.

She challenged him in the water, and he met her every challenge. His smile, his laughter, captured her heart.

But whether they fought or found common ground, he’d talked to her. By the fireside at night, he’d talked to her about his job, about the bad guys who led kids astray, about the kids in the ghettos who somehow had a sense of right and wrong no matter what ugliness they saw in their lives. He’d come undercover, but, like her father, she’d been informed right away who he was. She was a nice adornment for the role he was playing, though. Naturally his nobility had extended to his determination to protect her, but then, his drug smugglers weren’t hardened criminals, just rather stupid ones.

He’d had an aura of danger, of excitement, that had been irresistible to her. And they’d had lots of time together. Time beneath the sun, sailing on the Sloop Bee. By the fire.

In bed.

Talking, laughing, arguing.

Making love.

How many times, she wondered, in that span of a few months? Thirty? Forty? Fifty? Enough to remember so clearly that she couldn’t forget now, even when she prayed to.

The last thing she wanted to do was remember being with him while she was standing there on the pathway being told that she was a brat and a bitch.

“Fine!” she snapped, staring at him, her hands clenched into fists at her side. “Follow me from here to Kingdom Come if that’s what you want, but I warn you, stay the hell out of my way.”

He didn’t reply, so she started walking again. He followed.

She leaped aboard the Sloop Bee. The day seemed exceptionally hot. The sun was already shimmering down, so she stripped off her shirt and shorts and mechanically began to check their supplies, though Jem was so efficient that it was scarcely necessary. The air cylinders had all been filled and stored in their slots; the ice chest had been loaded with sodas and water and a few beers and wine coolers for the drinkers on the way back in. There was absolutely no drinking on the way to the dive sites.

The Sloop Bee was forty-two feet long and carried twenty divers and their supplies comfortably, two cylinders per diver for plenty of air for two dives per trip. She ignored Adam while she continued to check the supplies. She went on ignoring him as she sat down to draw up her dive plan, painfully aware that he was still watching her, tension drawing his face taut.

“My turn,” he said suddenly.

She looked up, almost jumping when she found him hunched down in front of her, a finger sternly planted beneath her nose. He, too, had stripped off his shirt. The muscles of his chest were already glistening from the warmth of the sun. His features were tense, eyes hard and bright, voice harsh as he spoke. “You made up your mind about things, told me what I was thinking and feeling. You had it all decided, and you weren’t willing to listen to a word I said. Say what you want now—you acted like a wretched little brat back then. Maybe I didn’t respond well, but you insisted I get off your island, and I did it. I was probably an idiot to let you act like a queen to begin with, but I won’t make that mistake again, so you get this. We have a situation here. Your father was almost certainly murdered. Hank Jennings, as well. You can ignore those facts if you want to—but I can’t.

“So you get this straight—accept the fact that I’m here for the duration, and don’t you dare get your little butt in my way!”

“Why, you—” She stared.

“And who the hell does that baby belong to?”

“What?”

“Whose baby is it?”

“What business is it—”

“Whose is it?”

He was so insistent that she found herself answering him when she longed to slap him. “Brian is Yancy’s baby, obviously.”

“Obviously? Yancy is black, and that baby is white. And he—”

“He what?”

“Who does that baby belong to?”

“Take another look. Yancy’s heritage is mixed. Brian is her son.”

“Is that what you’re hoping people will believe?”

She eased back, incredulous. “Yancy is the color of café au lait. She—”

“Yancy is beautiful,” he said impatiently. “That isn’t the point.”

“Then what is?”

“Sam, tell me! Who is that baby’s father?”

“Well, let’s see—you’re definitely not. Since you’re insinuating that the child is mine and we haven’t had relations in almost five years. Wow. Long pregnancy.”

She was amazed to see the depths of his anger. But it wasn’t her place to share what had gone on with anyone else.

“Who does that baby belong to?” he demanded again.

She stared hard at him. “Yancy.”

“Let’s try again. Who is that baby’s father?”

“You can try from now until hell freezes over. What you’re asking is none of your concern.” His fingers suddenly closed over her knees. His eyes were hot and level with hers. “Damn you, Sam, you’re going to tell me.”

“Damn you, Adam. I’m not.”

She looked over his shoulder. The others were coming down the path toward the Sloop Bee.

“People are coming, right?” he said.

She felt his hands on her bare knees. Her heart hammered furiously, and blood was rushing to her cheeks.

She wanted so badly to lash out at him. Instead she tried to rise. She bumped against him, felt his breath against her bare thighs, felt something wickedly hot within her begin to burn. Why didn’t arguing with him cool the fever inside her instead of making it worse?

“Excuse me,” she muttered.

He set his hands on her waist. To keep her balance, she was forced to clutch his shoulders.

His eyes met hers, and she couldn’t seem to draw her gaze away from him. She was still furious, yet she suddenly wanted in the worst way to know just what had happened, how the hell they had messed everything.

He shook his head, steadying her as he rose. Aware that the others were nearly upon them, he lowered his lips to her ear. “Damn it, Sam, I swear to God, you are going to give me answers.”

She pulled back, freeing herself from his hold before she replied. “The hell I will!” she promised vehemently, sweeping by him. And then she added for good measure, “The absolute hell I will!”

9

J erry North, exquisite, blond and beautiful, was the first to reach the Sloop Bee, arriving just as Sam escaped Adam.

“Jerry, come on board and give me a hand,” Sam called cheerfully.

“Of course!” Jerry said.

Jerry was wearing dark glasses, and Sam couldn’t see her eyes. The woman was smiling, but it seemed tense, as if she wanted to be just about anywhere rather than where she was.

“You’re not afraid of boats, are you, or of being out on the water?” Sam asked, concerned.

“Bless you, no,” Jerry said. “But thanks for asking. You’re a dear.”

“I just don’t want you to be unhappy.”

“I’m not unhappy. I’m thrilled. Just thrilled.”

But she was unhappy, Sam was certain of it. Liam hopped on board just behind her, and Sam thought that Jerry jumped a mile high when Liam set his arms on her shoulders.

“I can’t wait to see these Steps,” Liam said enthusiastically.

Jim Santino jumped aboard, flinging his head to toss his hair out of his face. “Ah, yes! The mysterious Steps.”

“They’re not so mysterious,” Darlene announced, hopping aboard. “I mean, obviously they were carved by someone a million years ago, and once upon a time, they actually went somewhere.”

Adam laughed outright, and the others chuckled, as well. Except for poor Darlene, who looked offended. “Really, that’s a perfectly logical—”

“Yes, dear, of course it is,” her mother told her. “That’s why they’re all laughing.”

“At ourselves,” Adam assured her, “for not being so quick to point out the obvious!”

In another few minutes everyone had boarded. Jem was at the wheel, and Sam showed him her dive plan. A moment later, they were under way.

Their first site for the day was going to be the Steps. Sam had planned a thirty-minute dive to fifty-five feet. While Jem motored them out to the site, she sat with the children, going over the dive tables with them again so they would know how deep they could stay down and how much air they would use. Children were usually better dive students, in Sam’s opinion. Adults were too quick to assume they could stretch the safety factors built into the dive tables. Oddly enough, young divers also tended to be more careful with their equipment. She stressed to them how important that was—if someone had a hole in his tennis racket, he would be unhappy and might lose a match, but he would survive it. An improper mixture of air in a cylinder would not just be inconvenient—it could kill.

Sam had been determined to stay away from Adam on the way out, but Darlene had stars in her eyes where the man was concerned, and Brad found him just as interesting. Even when Sam had purposely gathered them around her to work on the tables, they had enthusiastically called Adam over, suddenly seeming to need him to confirm all her lessons.

“Nearly there, if you all want to start suiting up!” Jem called.

Sam slid into her own environmental protection suit, a light “skin,” since the water temperature around the island tended to remain warm, even in winter. She was an advocate of suits, though, simply because they did what their name implied—protected divers from the environment. She’d been hit a few times by the tentacles of jellyfish—with and without protection—and it was much, much better to have protection, she had discovered.

Liam Hinnerman was an old-time diver. He hated wearing a suit, but he did for her dives. He’d begun diving, he’d told her, before many of the associations that now certified divers had existed. Liam liked being a teacher. He’d wagged a finger beneath her nose, telling her, “You forget, young lady, that this certification thing is all comparatively new. I was diving when they still called a damn tank a tank instead of a cylinder. All this book learning and computers!”

She’d very patiently reminded him that with the number of sports divers that had begun enjoying the sea in the last few decades, it was necessary to train people in order to save lives.

“Humph!” he had told her. “Stupid people shouldn’t dive.”

It was difficult arguing with Liam Hinnerman. He had his own brand of logic.

Jem dropped anchor and came around to help the divers into their buoyancy control vests, weights and cylinders. Sam went through her speech, automatically slipping into her own vest and cylinder as Jem came up behind her to help her. Her speech was about taking care of coral, reminding them that it was actually alive. She also warned them that buddies needed to stay together and watch out for one another.

“We’re making this one a thirty-minute dive, folks, so enjoy the Steps, and if you take it all the way down to fifty-five feet, remember to watch yourselves coming up.”

“Watch out for our buddies—did we decide who our buddies are going to be?” Liam asked.

“Can’t be me today,” Jerry North said, waving a hand in the air. “I’ll be up here, sunning with Jem.”

“I’m with short stuff over there,” Sukee said, winking at Brad. “A promise is a promise.”

“I’m a threesome with Sam and Adam,” Darlene said, afraid that someone might try to change the previous night’s arrangements.

“I’ve got my wife!” Joey Emerson announced, smiling adoringly at Sue.

“And I’ve got my husband,” Sue said.

“Is that mushy, or what?” Brad muttered.

“Hey, kid, mind your manners!” Sukee suggested.

“Oh, I, er, I didn’t mean anything,” Brad moaned.

Adam tousled his hair. “She knows that. Women just like to give men a hard time.”

“I think it’s the other way around,” Sukee murmured suggestively.

Adam laughed, a smile on his face as he returned Sukee’s stare. The air seemed to sizzle between them.

Irritating as hell, Sam decided.

“Well, mushy or not, son, I’ve got your mother,” Lew Walker said.

“Oh, you guys aren’t mushy anymore,” Brad said.

“Ouch!” Judy murmured.

“Young man, you’d better mind your manners!” Sukee told him. Brad grinned.

“That means we’re stuck with one another,” Jim Santino told Liam, who nodded glumly in return.

“I can already tell that the dive we made the day before yesterday is going to prove to be the better of the two,” Jim said.

“But today we’re diving the Steps,” Sukee said. “Come on, short stuff, let’s get in the water. I want to see these magnificent relics.”

In twos and threes, the divers went off the back platform of the Sloop Bee. Sam held her mask to her face as she plunged in, checked to make sure that all her divers gave her an okay sign, then joined Darlene and Adam.

It was odd. Adam’s eyes, completely silver in the watery silence surrounding them, seemed very large behind his mask. He still seemed tense, watching her with the same anger he had shown her ever since they’d been at the breakfast buffet when Brian had come trundling out to demand a piece of corn muffin.

The hell with him, she decided. She pointed downward and began a slow descent, making sure that Darlene was following without suffering from any of the squeezes that could occur due to increasing water pressure.

It was a beautiful portion of the sea in which to dive. A coral slope fell slowly into the sea right by the sandy floor where the Steps plummeted downward. The Steps themselves were very large, a good foot thick, and approximately four feet by four feet wide. Following them downward, Sam and her party passed by a school of amberjack, a half dozen pretty yellow tangs, one massive grouper—a fish that weighed about five hundred pounds—and a curious barracuda. Darlene cringed at the sight of the multitoothed sea dweller. As Adam drifted by Sam to reach Darlene, it felt to Sam as if he touched the entire length of her body.

He seemed to realize the stirring he had caused and paused, staring at her.

She had to remind herself to breathe. This was ridiculous. He was behaving even more oddly than he had been now that he knew about Brian. Why? What difference did it make to him? He seemed convinced that Brian had to be hers, and angry about the baby’s father, which was absolutely ridiculous. Wasn’t it?

She was furious herself, dying to send him off the island. No, dying to hurt him the way he had hurt her. Then she had to admit that it wasn’t really the truth. The truth was, she was…

Dying to touch him. In the middle of the water. To reach out, take his hand.

No! She wanted to tear his hair out.

At least, that was what she should want, and she told herself it was what she did want. Wrong. She wanted to…just touch his hand….

Run her nails down his back….

No, just her fingertips….

She wasn’t breathing! she reminded herself. The first rule of diving was to breathe continuously. She tore her eyes from his. Darlene was still staring at the barracuda. At last Adam set a hand on Darlene’s shoulder and gave her the thumbs-up sign.

They moved by the barracuda without incident.

Sukee and Brad were just ahead of them. Sukee motioned them over, and they all watched a ray try to cover itself with the sand to escape their curious eyes. Sukee shot down lower, following the Steps. They followed.

It was a beautiful dive. They followed the Steps until they suddenly disappeared into the ocean floor, pointing out fish and sea fans and exceptional pieces of coral along the way.

At fifty-five feet the group was still basically together. The Emersons—hand in hand as they floated through the water—studied the ground. Brad and Sukee remained near. Lew and Judy Walker, too, seemed happy to stay hand in hand, cruising along the bottom.

Both Jim Santino and Liam Hinnerman seemed to be studying the stones.

Well, they had all wanted to see the Seafire Isle Steps. Everyone had seemed avidly determined, beyond eager. Now they were here. So just what in God’s name were they all looking for? she wondered.

Something. All of them.

And all of them somehow suspect.

Even if her father—and Hank—had met with foul play, she told herself sternly, it was only Adam’s presence making her feel that her father’s enemy was now among the guests on Seafire Isle.

Sam found herself studying the stones, seeking some elusive answer herself. Here, at the fifty-five-foot mark, they didn’t create a clean trail as they did at the lesser depths. It seemed that someone had tired of his task and thrown the last few any which way.

Ahead was an ocean ledge, leading to deeper water. Sam, with Darlene right beside her, was still staring at one of the Steps, studying the craftsman-ship, when she realized that Adam had gone ahead of them.

He had disappeared over the ocean ledge.

Curious, she caught Darlene’s hand and shot after him. When they reached the drop-off, he was already returning.

His right hand was clenched, as if he was carrying something. She stared at him questioningly, but he pretended not to notice and tapped his watch. It was time to go up.

Back on the Sloop Bee, the guests all talked excitedly about the Steps. Sam was quiet.

She’d tried very hard to watch Adam, to see what he was up to. But he’d never let her see what he had been carrying, and when she’d asked him outright, he denied that he had found anything, and the hostility between them made it difficult to insist he tell her the truth.

“Where next?” Liam Hinnerman demanded.

“Nellie’s Reef,” Sam said, forcing herself to forget Adam and whatever he was up to. “Our second dive of the day will be at a small outcropping of coral we call Nellie’s Reef—supposedly because a girl named Nellie chose it as a place to throw herself into the sea to drown.”

“Did she? Drown?” Darlene asked.

Sam smiled, shaking her head. “When she threw herself in it was low tide, and the coral was so high that she ended up standing on it—and then she was rescued by the young man she had thought had forsaken her.”

“That’s nice,” Darlene decided.

“Don’t tell her the rest of it!” Adam warned.

“The rest of it?” Darlene said.

Sam shrugged. “Some people say there’s more to the story. And it’s really not bad. Actually, it’s kind of nice.”

“Then tell me,” Darlene insisted.

Adam did the telling. “Nellie and her beau had a wonderful wedding, a half dozen children and lived happily ever after.”

“That’s still nice,” Darlene said.

He shrugged.

“Yes, they lived to ripe old ages—then had themselves buried at sea on Nellie’s Reef,” Sam said.

“Oh,” Darlene murmured. “So do they haunt the reef?”

“Well, only as really nice ghosts,” Adam assured her.

“Even if they were thrown in here,” Liam Hinnerman said, “the currents probably carried them elsewhere, and then the sharks probably ate them up right after their carcasses got tossed into the drink anyway.”

“Liam!” Jerry North—slicked down beautifully in suntan oil—moaned.

But Darlene laughed. “Mr. Hinnerman, you are very pessimistic!”

Nellie’s Reef was a nice dive, but it seemed almost anticlimactic after the Steps.

When the divers were all aboard the Sloop Bee after their second dive of the day, Sam realized just how compelling the Steps had been when Jim Santino said, “Great day, dive mistress! But let’s do the Steps longer, maybe tomorrow or the day after? That was the most fascinating dive I’ve had in a long time. Don’t you all agree?”

A chorus answered him affirmatively.

“Jerry will even go in if we go back,” Liam said.

Sam glanced at the blonde, who looked miserable. “Jerry, if you hate to dive—”

“I don’t hate to dive. And if you decide to go back to the Steps…” She shrugged. “I guess I’ll join the party.”

“See, Sam!” Joey Emerson said, his arm around his wife. “Even Jerry will dive.”

“Well, we’ll see,” she murmured.

Adam was staring at her. She returned his stare. What the hell had he been holding in his hand?

When the Sloop Bee returned at last to Seafire Isle, the guests were quick to disembark and disappear.

Except for Adam. He helped Jem rinse down equipment as if he’d been doing it every day for years. The two men worked naturally and well together. Sam watched them broodingly for a while, then felt Adam’s eyes on her.

Like a touch. Just like a damned touch.

She turned away, then started along the path to the main house and her own cottage.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

She turned to see him standing on the dock, his hands on his hips. He was barefoot, wearing just his swim trunks.

Damn. She wasn’t breathing again.

He was sleek and toned. Bronze muscles rippled along every hard inch of his body.

She threw up her hands, exasperated with him and with herself. “To bathe and change,” she said.

“Not alone, you’re not,” he told her.

She arched a brow. “Oh?”

“Damned right, oh.”

“Well, I’m going. So if you’re coming…”

She turned and started along the path again. Fine, she decided. If he was going to follow her, he could tell her what he’d had in his hand.

She didn’t look back, but she was certain that Adam and Jem had exchanged a look assuring one another that women were indeed cantankerous creatures. A man couldn’t live with one, but then, he couldn’t shoot her, either.

It didn’t matter. She knew he was behind her. She could almost feel his breath, sense his warmth.

She unlocked the door to her cottage and stepped inside. She left the door open.

She knew that he had followed her into the living room of her cottage, that he’d closed the door behind himself and carefully locked it. All too aware of him, she started down the hallway to the bathroom.

“Sam—”

She stopped, dead still, staring at him. “What?”

“Sam, you can’t stay alone.”

“What did you find at the Steps, Adam?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re a liar, Adam.”

“I can’t leave you alone, Sam.”

Can’t leave you alone…. What exactly did that mean? He couldn’t leave her alone because she might be in danger, or he couldn’t leave her alone because he was caught in the same tangle of emotion—and lust?

Maybe it was a little bit of both.

It didn’t really matter. She had lost. Lost what, though, she wasn’t quite certain. A battle with herself, she supposed. Longing was rising over dignity.

“Sam, you’ve got to realize, I can’t leave you—”

“Fine.” She turned again, peeling down the straps of her damp blue bathing suit as she went.

She stepped out of it completely in front of the bathroom door and left it lying in the hall.

He couldn’t leave her alone. Well, if he was going to be with her constantly, she couldn’t bear it if he left her alone.

He never attacked without an invitation. Well, now he had his damned invitation. She stood in the hallway for a moment with her naked back to him.

Then she walked into the bathroom and into the shower, turning the spray on full, allowing it to sluice through her hair. She moved mechanically, scrubbing her body, then her hair, rinsing, not opening her eyes, hearing only the thunder of the water.

He was there, she thought. He’d followed her. Into the bathroom. He was near her, now.

Because he couldn’t stay away.

Because he’d been invited….

And any minute, he would step in beside her. He would touch her.

He was near.

Wasn’t.

Was….

Oh, God…it was wrong, she tried to tell herself. What she was doing was wrong. Justin Carlyle had taught her all the right things about life. He had taught her that love was the greatest emotion. He had taught her to be considerate, caring, fair and honest. He had taught her to see the world through the eyes of others, to be just and understanding. He had taught her that sex wasn’t something to be engaged in lightly. He had taught her that it was an expression of love to be shared between two individuals when there was commitment and caring between them.

She had believed him. And she had been deeply in love with Adam O’Connor the first time she had ever made love with him.

Now…

Now, she just remembered.

The way he’d touched her.

The way he’d made her feel.

Now…

Now the man had scarcely come back in her life, and here she was, fantasizing. He didn’t know what her past few years had been like, and she didn’t know about his.

Of course, she could guess….

But that didn’t matter. The things her father had taught her didn’t matter. The look Adam had given her in the water did.

Just as her early years had been too sheltered, her last years had been too isolated. She wanted Adam. She didn’t want to think about right or wrong. She didn’t want to assess her feelings for him, and she most certainly didn’t want to think about the emotional hell she would endure once things were over. Her every action seemed to be ruled by her nearly desperate desire for him. She wanted to be held. Touched, stroked. More….

She opened her eyes at last, feeling the water pouring over her head and hair and shoulders.

He was there, standing just outside the shower door, arms crossed over his chest, silver-gray eyes hard on her. She stared at him. He opened the shower door, still in his trunks, stepped into the stall and stood before her. For long moments the water splashed and poured and rioted around them as he continued to stare at her.

She could tell him to get the hell out, and he would go.

But she had nothing to say.

Neither did he.

Suddenly he pulled her into his arms. His lips ground down on hers, hard, with the same anger that had radiated from him all day. It didn’t matter. She was just as angry. And she was glad of the rough feel of him, of his hands, hard as they moved down her back, crushing her shoulders closer, then her hips, then rounding over her buttocks until she was so intimately close against him that she could feel the rise of his erection through the material of his bathing briefs. He drew her even closer, kissing her all the while, openmouthed kisses, as hot and wet as the water streaming around them. Finally he stepped back ever so slightly, and his hand slipped between them to thrust her thighs apart, his fingers moving supplely over the riot of short red hair at her pubis, then drawing a gasp from her as they thrust inside. His lips remained on hers, his tongue moving within her mouth, his fingers within her, his thumb rubbing a tender nub of outer flesh. Weakness pervaded her, sensation spilling through her like the burning rays of the sun. She clung to his shoulders, nearly shrieking aloud.

His lips parted from hers, but his hands remained on her.

His eyes demanded, challenged or mocked, she wasn’t sure which. It didn’t matter. She still didn’t have anything to say.

Neither did he.

She leaned her head against his soaking chest, afraid that she was going to fall.

He whispered to her at last. “How many times do you think we made love?”

“I don’t know…maybe thirty, maybe—”

“Let’s make it thirty-one.”

“I…”

“Yes?”

“I thought we were already doing that.”

“Getting there,” he murmured. He slammed the faucet, and the cascade of water came to an abrupt stop.

She stared at him, hoping she wasn’t going to have to stand too much longer. She couldn’t breathe at all. Rivers of liquid heat were flooding her limbs. Her throat was dry, her knees incredibly weak.

Pathetic! she taunted herself.

Seduced. Needy.

“I thought—” she began.

“We’re both just too damned tall for a shower stall,” he said.

And then she didn’t have to stand any longer, because he picked her up.

And she was in his arms, her eyes on his….

Pathetic behavior, she warned herself.

No. Just…hungry.

God, yes.

Just so hungry….

10

T here was absolutely no question of thinking about what she was doing.

Maybe she had already done all the thinking.

And maybe all the thinking and logic in the world didn’t mean anything now.

Adam had returned to her life just the way he had come the first time, becoming the very center of it simply by being there. Adam was here, and she wanted him. Just as she had before. And his touch…

Just as she had wanted it before.

She was barely aware of being carried from the shower to her bedroom. Peripheral perceptions of tile, then carpet, as he moved, and nothing more. They were both still wet when he came down beside her on her bed, the room in shadow because the sun was starting its crimson fall into the west, and she’d left the drapes half closed, as well. There were a few streaks of light filtering in, rays upon which dust motes danced in a slow, magical swirl.

Her hair was soaked, splayed across the pillow. She would have been cold if not for the inferno of heat that seemed to exist between the two of them. She shivered at first, waiting for that heat to radiate through her limbs.

She was still seeing the fused silver of his eyes, so intent upon her own, when he moved against her, the dampness of his body covering her, the pressure of his lips against her throat. The fullness of his body covered hers; the stroking of his hands warmed her.

The focus of his mouth shifted from her pulse to her right breast. Caressing, tugging, rubbing. His knee intruded between her thighs. His hand followed suit. Fingers stroked, caressed, probed.

She shivered no more.

Her fingers bit into his shoulders; her body burst into heat. She shifted, trying to avoid the exquisite pleasure of his touch, then shifted again, eager for more of it. Climbing, rising, feeling the hot spiral that burned at the center of her sex, feeding her limbs, being fed in turn. She closed her eyes as thought momentarily intruded.

No, no, no…

Yes, yes, oh, God, yes…

His lips fed on her left breast. His free hand plunged into her hair, and then his mouth was covering hers, tongue invading so hotly, completely, wetly. In, out, around, decadently, like the motion between her thighs. Cries rose within her throat; she could bear no more, yet she was desperate for more.

Suddenly he drew away, staring at her as he ran his palms down her thighs, then lower. She met his gaze and tried to reach out, to caress him, to hold him intimately, to torment as he had done. To arouse him.

He pressed her back.

Rose over her.

Came into her….

Absorbing the pleasure of him, she briefly remembered words Yancy had said to her once, Yancy spilling out her own desperate emotions, laughter, love, pain….

Sometimes men wanted to be touched.

Sometimes they wanted to get right to it.

Oh, God.

He was getting right to it.

Her arms encircled him; her limbs embraced him. She clung to him, fingers digging, releasing, digging once more, as her breath was swept away again and again. Their bodies dried from the heat emanating from within them, sheened over again from that same heat. She felt him. In her. Deeper. Deeper. More a part of her than ever. Touching, rubbing, stroking. Harder, filling her, arousing her. In, out, she couldn’t think, could barely feel, had to, had to…

Suddenly he was gone completely. Her eyes had been closed, but now they opened, met his. Now his lips touched hers again. She made some sound of protest, but it didn’t matter. He was stroking her again, kissing her again. Her lips, breast, throat. Her abdomen, the curve of her hip, the soft skin of her inner thigh, higher, circling, never really touching, never touching…

Sam shrieked, twisting, writhing, struggling, constricting, soaring to a pinnacle with passions she thought could crest no higher. Yet he was atop her again, and the fire she felt within was stoked again, maddened, hardened, driven to a wilder, more urgent, desperate level. She was keenly aware of the force of his body, scarcely aware of anything else, the sheets, the dust motes on the air. She knew only the slickness of her flesh, of his, their bodies moving, ever moving, against each other. She could hear the wind, but it wasn’t the wind, it was her own breath, the husky, erotic whispers that complemented the scent, taste, the feel of their loving as he urged onward. At last a fountain of light and shadow seemed to erupt, and she heard the keening of the cries that exploded from her lips as the climax seized her.

He slid to her side, gasping for breath. She instantly and instinctively curled against him, her head on his chest so she could listen to the thunder of his heart. This was where she had wanted to be, this was what she had wanted to feel, since she had seen him, heard his voice, touched him. He’d gone out of her life, and sheltered as she might have been, she’d known that what they’d shared had been vivid, that someone to love so fiercely, someone who lived so determinedly and passionately, came along but seldom.

For long moments Sam simply breathed, inhaling deeply, trying to still the wild, erratic beating of her heart. She could still feel his body warmth like a blanket that swept over her in comforting waves.

They’d had sex, she tried to tell herself. Something as physical and natural as the simple breathing she was now trying so hard to achieve. Nothing miraculous, nothing unusual, nothing that wasn’t shared millions of times a day across the world. She had no right to look to the past, to make more of this relationship than what existed. She’d done that before, never realizing what a fool she was being. She couldn’t blame him for the way things had ended, not completely.

It had never been right between them.

No, it hadn’t been right. But it had been nearly perfect.

She didn’t want to think about the past right now. About the emotions she’d felt. The things she had done. The life she had been living.

But, oh, dear God, when it was nearly perfect, it was wonderful. Every part of it. The sweetness of wanting, of reaching. Flying higher and higher, savoring sensations, wanting them to go on forever, desperate to reach the climax.

Then the aftermath. The breathing. The intimacy. The wonderful closeness that could only be shared in the intimacy following lovemaking. Words could be so awkward, but also personal, reflecting the very uniqueness of being together, that special intimacy.

She felt his fingers on her chin, lifting her face to his. She offered him a slow smile, waiting to hear tender words that would envelop her more fully in the blanket of intimacy that was wrapped around them.

His eyes were sharp, his features taut, his jaw twisted at an angle.

“Tell me about you and Hank Jennings,” he demanded.

The phone rang.

The newly showered diver picked it up quickly, looking furtively over one shoulder.

“Yes?”

“We’ve got real trouble.”

“And that is?”

“There’s someone on the island who’s missing from elsewhere. Get that? Someone is missing from where he’s supposed to be. Escaped to the island.”

“Then someone is surely dead.”

“Bones and body parts make someone dead. Not missing. Missing is trouble.”

“All right, all right—”

“I want dead. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“A fucking head on a platter, you understand?”

“Yes, yes.”

“A head on a platter.”

“Yes.” Exasperated now.

“Soon. Damned soon.”

The diver hung up, shaking. It should never have come to this.

“What?” Sam demanded.

“What was your relationship? He came to study the Beldona. You apparently told him everything you knew. You went diving with him constantly.”

“Hardly constantly,” Sam said, her eyes narrowed.

“What was your relationship?” he insisted.

Sam tried to draw away from him, her temper so fierce that she seemed to be on fire again, her entire body shaking.

But his hold on her seemed fueled by a sudden rise in his own temper. His fingers gripped her arms, his leg, thrown over her lower body, seemed like an iron bar, blocking her.

“Why are you bothering to ask me? It seems to me as if you’ve already decided what my relationship with him was. Let’s see. You think I had a baby with the man, but God forbid I should admit it. So I gave the baby to Yancy and insisted that she raise him. That’s it. Hank came to the island, and I thought, wow, I never get a chance to have a relationship, and this guy has come to stay a while. Is that what you think? What the hell difference does it make to you? What right do you even have to ask?”

“I need to know!”

“Well, you know what? That’s too damned bad, because I’m not telling you anything. Now, move. Just move. Get your leg off me.” She threw her hands between them, pressing, straining against his chest. He caught her wrists and rolled atop her to stop the rising impetus of her attack.

Her eyes met his. She wanted to kill him.

She wanted him again.

The sun was murder. Just murder.

Jerry North loved it, but she knew too well what it did to the skin. She’d showered, and now she stroked lotion over the length of her body.

She was in pain.

Not in the flesh, but in the spirit.

And, of course, she knew of no way to ease that pain.

She had made her own choices in life. She couldn’t complain of rough beginnings, of having been an abused child. She couldn’t blame her actions, her choices, on anyone but herself. She could only blame them on being young. Foolish. On not seeing the forest for the trees. And then…

Well, then it always seemed that one mistake led to another. That once a bad path was chosen, it led farther and farther into ruts and bogs, darkness…even terror.

And now…

Now she could lie down and cry for a week straight. Now she almost longed to die from the pain that filled her, the pain of what she had done and, worse, the pain of what could have been.

She wasn’t evil. She knew that. But she had lived in the miasma of evil, and she had not remained unscathed. For her now, there was nothing left but the mechanics of going through day-to-day life. Washing, bathing, dressing. Eating, breathing. Responding.

Watching, and living in the hope that she could, having learned from her mistakes, perhaps keep the blood of evil from touching others.

Still wrapped in her towel, she sat at the foot of the bed, mechanically applying coral polish to her toes.

She realized suddenly that Liam had come into the room, that he was standing in front of her, his hands on his hips, staring at her.

“You’re going to dive.”

She didn’t reply.

“God damn you, bitch, you’re going to dive!”

Jerry shrugged.

Then she gasped, stunned from her self-absorption as the back of his hand came flying against her jaw, the force stinging and powerful enough to send her flat against the bed, staring up at him.

Forgotten, the bottle of polish rolled to the floor.

Liam leaned over her, jaw locked, eyes cold. “You are going to dive. And you are going to get me to that ship.”

She tried to crawl away from him, but he caught her by the ankles, flipping her violently onto her back again. He smiled. Gripped her ankles harder to drag her closer to him. She didn’t know if he meant to strike her again or force himself on her.

She didn’t know if she saw much of a difference between the two choices at that moment.

Either way, he would hurt her.

And either way, he would be careful not to leave a bruise.

She lay sleeping.

Propped up on one elbow, Adam watched Sam, smiling bittersweetly. She had to be completely on edge, but Sam was tough, cool, independent. Life had to be taking its toll, but she just kept moving right through it.

But now her exhaustion was evident. Not that they hadn’t expended a fair amount of energy between fighting and making love. It was just that the level of tension between them always seemed to remain so high.

Words were exchanged so heatedly. Okay, so maybe he was an ass. Maybe a great bout of sex shouldn’t be followed up by a question about a previous lover. It was just weighing so damned heavily on his heart and mind. He was wondering on the one very painful hand just what had befallen Hank, and then on the other hand wondering what had gone on between Hank and Sam. And then there was the question of the baby.

No question. That child was Hank’s. There should have been a question, he knew. Most babies just looked like little old men. Sometimes they were bald, sometimes they had hair, but they always had big eyes and round, creased faces. They didn’t look like anybody.

This baby was a dead ringer for Hank.

His heart seemed to squeeze. Someone had to be able to tell him. Someone had to know. He had to know. He itched to hold the baby. He wondered if he would break down if he did. He couldn’t let himself break down. Why ruin a perfectly good image?

So, Sam, what the hell went on? he longed to demand. He wanted to shake the truth out of her. To wake her up and force her to tell him.

He smiled at the thought. If she wasn’t ready to tell him, she wouldn’t tell him.

He moved a hand gently over her bare arm. She didn’t move. She was sleeping so deeply. A slight tremor shot through the length of his frame. Damn, it had been good. She reeked of sensuality. He would never forget the first time he’d seen her. He’d arrived on the island in much the same fashion as he had this time, completely undercover. She’d been in a yellow bathing suit that day, and she’d climbed atop the mainmast of a friend’s sailboat. A barefoot, hoydenish daredevil, diving into the depths below from the mast. She’d been a picture of grace and beauty, so natural, so fluid. Diving into the water, rising from it. Seeing him. Flirting. She’d been an outrageous flirt. And he’d been good, so damned good at first. He’d tried to explain things to her. But it hadn’t mattered.

He’d tried to keep his distance from her, but the attempt had been no good at all. He’d fallen in love. Any emotion he’d felt for another woman paled at what she awoke within him. Still, he’d meant to do everything the right way. Once he’d been in love, he’d planned on telling Becky the truth. But then Becky had shown up on the island, and Sam had thrown him out before he’d had a chance to explain anything to anyone.

He wasn’t in the clear. Older and wiser now, he knew he’d handled things wrong, no matter what his intentions had been.

Oh, well. At least he and Becky had made a clean break. He’d thrown himself into work. Becky had married a banker, and now she lived in Palm Beach and had two cute kids. The right life for Becky.

He shook his head, smiling, remembering the past. I’m sort of involved, he’d tried to tell her. There had been horror on her face. Oh, my God, you’re married? That had been easy to deal with. His answer had been, No, but…

Somehow, he hadn’t gotten to the “but” part of it. He had wound up naked with her on the sand, feeling the sun striking them both, warming them against the coolness of the water sweeping over their limbs.

It had been easy to forget what he should have been saying.

No excuses on his part.

No matter how much sensuality radiated from the woman at his side.

He smiled suddenly, glad of the honesty they had shared today. He’d been itching to touch her. Burning to feel her, taste her. He’d fought off his own climax so he could have more and more of her. He could see her in the darkness, every part of her, could see her with his eyes closed, recall her scent, her taste. He knew the texture of her flesh, the size and shape of her breasts, the color of her nipples, the feel of the red thatch at the top of her thighs. Knew the misty look of her eyes, the curve of her lips, the taste of her mouth. He knew those things in his dreams, waking, sleeping. At the strangest times in his life, he would recall something about her, the slope of a shoulder, the beautiful curve of her back, the pureness of her flesh. In the midst of a business dinner, beneath the currents of a river, he’d recalled Sam.

And now…

Now, for the moment, she had given up the fight. After the last explosive session of lovemaking between them, he’d had the God-given sense to keep his mouth shut. So she’d curled up beside him.

And slept.

Her hair was drying. Deep, dark tendrils of fire, it swept over the pastel-hued sheets. Her body was gloriously tan against that pale background, as well, except for the strips of more intimate flesh that hadn’t been bared to the sun. She was naturally toned and perfect, an athlete with the most feminine curves. He smiled, remembering what she’d once said about breasts.

“Yours are perfect, darling,” he whispered, kissing the classical sculpture of her cheek lightly. “Perfect. Not too much, not too little. Perfect.”

He was tempted to test that perfection again with the cup of his hand, but he rather liked the idea that she was sleeping. He needed to make a phone call.

He rose, pulled the covers over her and found his swim trunks. They were damp. Oh, well. He had no choice. He slipped into them, wincing as the cold hit personal places that had so recently been so warm.

He padded out to the kitchen and put coffee on, hoping that would ease some of the clammy feeling assailing him. When the coffee perked, he poured himself a cup and sat down at the desk in Sam’s small sunken office area.

He reached into the small inner front pocket of his bathing trunks and pulled out the encrusted article he had found caught in the step just at the cliffside nearly sixty feet below the surface of the water.

Sea growth was so attached to it that it was almost impossible to realize what the article was. He rubbed at the green and earth-toned growth. Gold appeared. He turned the article over in his hands. Studied it. Felt a plummeting of his heart. Pain. Squeezing.

He pocketed the article and sat thoughtfully for several seconds.

He picked up her private line. Unless the phones were tapped, he was safe.

It took him about sixty seconds to put his call through. He reached Sergeant James Estefan of the Mainland Metro Station dive squad at his desk.

“It would be you—I’m just about to go home,” James said.

Adam could picture him. James was thirty-three, blue-eyed, dark-haired. Dark, eternally touslehaired. James spent half his days in the water and the other half running his fingers through his drying hair. He was a good man and a good cop, an intuitive one.

“I’ve got your home number anyway,” Adam told him. “What have you got for me?”

“Well, I checked the death records, like you asked, and you were right on the money.”

“Yeah?” Adam leaned forward.

“A Marcus Shapiro was washed up around Daytona Beach exactly one week after the reported disappearance of Justin Carlyle.”

“Shapiro.” Tension seized Adam. “He was one of the main divers with SeaLink, right?”

“Had been,” James corrected.

Adam frowned. “So who was he working for when he was found dead?”

“Private concerns.”

“Oh, shit,” Adam muttered.

“Annoying, ain’t it? By the way, have you shared your own private concerns with your hostess yet?”

“No. Help me here, give me more. What was Shapiro’s cause of death? Drowning?”

“Stabbed to death.”

“Stabbed!”

“Right.”

“Carlyle’s disappearance and Shapiro’s death may have no connection whatsoever.”

“True. Maybe not even likely. You asked me to find whatever I could. I found Shapiro’s corpse.”

“Do you know anything about what Shapiro was doing?”

“No. His wife had reported him missing. She’d known he planned on going out diving, but she hadn’t known with whom or for whom. He could have been working for Robert Santino. Santino made no bones about the fact that he was sending divers out to scrounge around for the Beldona.”

“Anything else? Have you found backgrounds on any of the people I asked you to check up on?”

“I have.”

“Well, damn it, James—”

“You know, if this gets solved, I want one hell of a nice vacation out there on that island of yours.”

“Done.” Adam looked toward Sam’s bedroom and shrugged. “Sure. Now, talk to me.”

“You’ve got two people on the island who’ve changed their names a time or two.”

“Who?”

“Well, Mr. Joseph Emerson, for one.”

“Joseph Emerson? The honeymooner? Come on, James. Spit it out for me.”

“All right. Emerson was born Shapiro.”

“You don’t mean—”

“I do. His father’s body was the one washed up on the Daytona shore.”

“Go on,” Adam said.

“This one may hurt someone more than a bit,” James warned.

“Well?” Adam demanded.

“Might be better if I don’t tell you.”

“James, you’d damned well better tell me now,” Adam insisted. Then he listened. “What?”

James repeated what he had learned. Slowly.

And Adam sat back, stunned, staring toward the bedroom.

“Adam, you there?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here. I, uh, thanks, James. You’ve gone above and beyond. I’ll keep in touch.”

He hung up and walked into the kitchen. He stared at his freshly brewed coffee. Then he dug around in the cabinets until he found a bottle of booze. Rum. He hated rum.

He swigged it right down.

Oh, God.

He looked toward the bedroom again. Leaned against the counter. Groaned.

He was going to have to hold out on her about this one. Until…

Until…

Oh, hell.

Sam awoke, vaguely aware of voices in some other room.

She started to jump out of bed in a disoriented panic, then remembered why she was in bed and that she had fallen asleep.

Asleep!

She looked around for her clothing, then remembered that she had dropped her bathing suit in the hall. Shaking her head in disgust at what had surely been a complete mental breakdown, she reached into her closet for a robe. By the time she had belted it on, she had traced the voices to the kitchen. She hurried down the hallway, only to discover that Jem was in her cottage, along with Adam. She must have slept a good while, because both men were showered, shaved and dressed in casual dinner attire.

They had drinks in their hands. And they both stared at her strangely as she joined them.

“Is everything all right?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “Well, other than the fact that something’s going on. Actually, nothing’s right, but then, you know that already.”

She glanced at her watch. “Seven!” she exclaimed. She looked at them both accusingly.

“I just got back here myself,” Adam said. “I had to change,” he explained awkwardly.

“Dinner will be on. Yancy should have come for me. I can’t just ignore this entire business.”

“It’s not going to make any difference if you miss the cocktail hour and show up late for one evening meal,” Jem assured her.

“I’ve still got to shower,” she began, looking at Adam. She felt color filling her cheeks. “And dress.”

“We’ll wait,” Adam said.

She nodded. “I don’t believe I fell asleep like that. I don’t believe that…” Her voice trailed away. “I…excuse me.”

Sam showered in the hottest water she could find, then dressed quickly in a calf-length, teal silk off-the-shoulder dress.

She didn’t allow herself to think the entire while.

When she walked into the living room, she still felt that Adam was watching her peculiarly.

The strange thing was that he looked away when he caught her staring at him in return.

Was he feeling guilty again? she wondered. No, he’d never behaved so strangely before. Not now, not in the past.

“Are you sure nothing else has happened?” she demanded, walking toward the door and waiting for the men to follow.

“Nothing,” Jem said.

“At all,” Adam added.

They were lying.

Well, it didn’t matter. They weren’t going to tell her anything.

“Let’s go to dinner then, shall we?” Dinner. A meal. Everything felt different. She’d been with Adam again. She was different.

No control, she mocked herself.

Yet…

Had the past been her own fault? Could things be different now that she was older and wiser?

Sure, she told herself. She could just go for the good sex now.

Like hell. She cared about him, she was entwined with him. She wanted more than what she’d had.

And her business, her island and her life were falling apart.

“Dinner, guys,” she persisted, since they seemed to be moving slowly. “That meal that everyone else will be eating or getting ready to eat by the time we get there. I’ve already missed cocktail hour. You two have had yours while you were waiting, I see.”

She spun around, leaving the two of them. The hell with them if they weren’t ready to come. This place was her business. Her livelihood. Jem’s, too.

They were right behind her, then beside her, Jem to her left, Adam to her right.

Handsome guys, she thought. Both so tall, well-built, immaculately dressed, Jem ebony dark, Adam so bronze, with his clear gray eyes. Flanked to protect her.

She was lucky.

Jem would stay. Her friend for a lifetime.

While Adam…

He would always be a main force in her heart and mind, whether he stayed or sailed away tomorrow. She couldn’t change him, but one way or another, he would be with her for a lifetime. She felt a tightness beginning to burn within her chest.

Stay, Adam. This time, stay.

She had to remember, she had sent him away herself.

Adam cleared his throat, suddenly stopping, pulling back on her arm so that she stopped in front of him. Jem stood silently, waiting for him to speak. “I told Jem that Yancy thought someone had been in the house. He’s going to take the room next to hers until…”

“Until?” Sam stared at him.

Adam shrugged. “Until we know who was in the house with her.”

“Then I’ll be alone?” she queried, knowing his answer.

“No.”

“Because you’re going to stay in my cottage?” Sam asked.

“Yes.”

“But you haven’t stayed there before?” she asked. “Jem hasn’t just been letting you in? Or did you arrive early this morning so you could come sit by my bedside? Is that it?”

Jem choked.

Adam didn’t reply, just stared at her evenly. “Do you have an objection to my being there this evening?”

“Would it matter if I did?”

He looked at her, smiling slightly. “In a way.”

“Yes?”

“It would affect where I actually slept,” he said, his voice low.

No secrets here. Jem was too close. Jem knew. Jem had known.

Jem had probably been expecting this ever since Adam O’Connor had set foot on the island.

The hell with them both.

She managed to meet Adam’s eyes for several seconds, staring hard. But then her eyes dropped. She looked ahead and kept walking. “I don’t have an objection to you staying so that Jem can keep guard on Yancy.”

Jem made a choking sound.

Or outright laughed.

Sam wasn’t at all sure which.

Adam stepped closer to her. “Would you have an objection if Jem wasn’t going to guard Yancy?” he asked politely.

“Only regarding where you sleep,” she replied sweetly, and hurried by him, anxious to reach the main house.

Or to have the last word—at least this once.

11

D inner seemed so normal.

By the time they reached the main house, Yancy was lighting the flame under one of the buffet dishes. “Fiesta night,” she said, making no note of the fact that they had arrived so late. “Fajitas, burritos, quesadillas. Just a touch of Cajun to the salsa. It’s all absolutely delicious. Dig in.”

“Looks wonderful,” Sam commented. Adam and Jem were already making up plates of food. When she finished with her own, she discovered that the seat next to Jim Santino was open. He smiled when she joined him, tossing his hair back.

She smiled in return. Once upon a time, Jim had seemed cute. Sweet. Now she felt her skin crawling—just a little bit. Did she believe that the sins of the fathers were visited upon the sons? No.

But then again, she didn’t completely trust him anymore, either.

“You look lovely, Sam,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Different, somehow.”

“Oh?”

“Flushed, vibrant,” Jim said.

“Well-served,” Sukee drawled from across the table.

Sam’s eyes flew to the other woman, who smiled with all the cunning grace of a feline. Sam willed herself not to flush. Sukee had just been waiting for her to give herself away.

And now, everyone was staring at Sukee—and at her.

Jerry North stared at Sam with thoughtful, light blue eyes. She lowered them when Sam glanced her way.

It might have gone on forever, but Sam found herself with reason to be grateful to Jim Santino. He stood up, excusing himself. “You’re a lucky man, Mr. O’Connor. Very lucky. Sam, the food is delicious tonight. Everything on this island just gets better and better. Can I bring anyone anything?”

“Why is Mr. O’Connor a lucky man, Mom?” Brad asked Judy Walker.

“Lucky to be here,” Adam said matter-of-factly. “Is that a water pitcher? Could someone pass it to me, please?”

Jim delivered the water pitcher as he started to the buffet table. “Amazing, though,” Jim said, smiling as he filled his plate from the buffet. He started to the table. “I think you’ve both been holding out on us. Tell me, O’Connor. You already knew Miss Carlyle when you got here, didn’t you? From some kind of previous life?”

Adam set down his water.

“I can answer that,” Avery Smith said quietly. “Yes, Mr. Santino. They’d met before. Mr. O’Connor used to be a policeman. He was here undercover. I imagine that’s why neither one of them acknowledged the previous relationship. Miss Carlyle is the most discreet hostess. She’d keep her guests’ secrets right to her dying day, if necessary. Right, Miss Carlyle?”

Sam stared at Avery Smith, alias James Jay Astin. Was he threatening her? Warning her to keep quiet about his identity?

“I’ve always imagined that if people want others to know something about them, they’ll share it themselves in their own good time,” she said pleasantly.

Smith smiled. At one time he must have been a very handsome man. He still had quite a look about him. Completely distinguished. Confident.

Evil?

“You know what?” Brad said, ignoring the grown-ups and addressing Sam. “I started reading about sharks today. Sam, they can be bad, really bad.”

Sam frowned, hesitating. “Brad, I never said that sharks never harmed people. What I said was that they hardly ever harm divers. And I don’t think they’re evil—they’re just eternally hungry, and sometimes they bite the wrong food.”

“There was this really awful thing that happened during World War Two,” Brad said. “A ship sank—”

“The Indianapolis,” Adam volunteered.

“You know the story!” Brad said, pleased.

“The ship had delivered one of the components of the atom bomb to Tianian Island, in the Marianas, when it was spotted by a Japanese submarine. The Indianapolis was torpedoed right after midnight, and it sank within twelve minutes. I’m not sure how many men had originally been on board—”

“One thousand one hundred and ninety-nine,” Smith supplied. “Eight hundred and fifty escaped into the sea—the others were killed in the explosions or trapped inside the ship as it sank.”

“What happened to the men in the water?” Sukee asked.

Adam shrugged, his eyes meeting Sam’s. “During the first night, perhaps another hundred men drowned or perished from their injuries. The next morning they began to worry about sharks. They saw a little four-footer who had adopted them, or so it seemed. The men were mostly wearing life jackets and clinging to what they call floater nets. They knew they’d be best off to stay in large groups, so they did. They came up with a nickname for the shark that kept hovering around them. They called him Whitey. But Whitey was just a hint of the trouble to come. The men were in the water for four days and five nights, praying for rescue. Then the sharks really began to come. They picked off the men who had strayed from their groups. They went for the sick and the injured. There were all different kinds. Makos, whites, tigers—all attacking from below. When they were finally rescued, there were only three hundred and sixteen men remaining alive.”

“Oh, man, you’ve got to read about it!” Brad said. “One guy thought his friend was sleeping and went to wake him up, only to find that the whole bottom half of the guy’s body was gone. And they said that the more blood that was in the water, the more sharks that came—”

He was interrupted as Jerry North suddenly knocked over a dish of salsa.

The red sauce spread quickly across the table.

“Really, Brad, you’re a great storyteller,” Jerry murmured, “but perhaps this isn’t the best time.”

“Brad!” his father said.

“Brad, enough, we’re at dinner,” his mother began.

“Ooh,” Darlene said, staring at the red salsa that had stained the table. “Ooh,” she said again.

And promptly threw up.

The Walkers couldn’t apologize enough.

The Emersons couldn’t leave quickly enough.

The entire concept of dessert was lost. Only Jacques, bemoaning the fate of his exceptional flan, was desolate at the sad demise of the evening meal.

The dining room was cleaned up. Sam, Jem, Adam, Yancy, Jim, Sukee, Liam and Jerry had coffee together, but conversation lagged. Sukee seemed eager to disappear. Jim naturally offered to walk her to her cottage. Jerry looked exhausted. Exceptionally tired, Sam thought.

“I guess we’ll head back, too,” Liam said. “Jerry’s definitely diving tomorrow. Right, sweetheart?”

Jerry looked at Sam. “I—”

“Right, sweetheart?”

“Yeah.”

“No one can make you dive, Jerry,” Sam began.

“She’s just a little uneasy,” Liam said smoothly.

“We’ll all watch out for you,” Sam promised.

Liam set an arm around Jerry. “She’ll have me for a buddy. Just like a Siamese twin.”

“Well, if you need help, that’s what I’m here for,” Sam insisted.

“Thanks, sweetie. You’re a doll.” Impulsively, Jerry kissed her cheek. Then she seemed embarrassed. “Good night,” she said, hurrying on to the porch. Liam shrugged, then followed her.

Sam noted that Adam watched Jerry go with a very peculiar expression on his face. He caught her staring at him and shrugged. “I hope she’ll be okay.”

Sam shrugged, as well. “I guess we’ll get going,” she said.

“Good night,” Yancy told them.

Sam started out. Adam followed and set a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t protest; she didn’t touch him in return. She walked with him to the cottage, slipping her key into the lock. He followed her into the shadowy living room.

“Where did you want to sleep?” she asked him awkwardly. She didn’t know quite what the afternoon had meant to him.

Or to herself.

He didn’t reply. He left her standing there as he searched the cottage. He came back to where she stood, waiting in the filter of moonlight.

“Lock the door,” he told her.

She did so.

He walked up to her then. She looked at him in the shadows.

He should speak.

She should speak.

He spun her around and unzipped her dress. The silky fabric floated down the length of her body.

And then his hands were on her naked flesh.

And she knew exactly where he was going to sleep.

This time Yancy woke up entirely on her own. The baby hadn’t cried; and at first she wasn’t aware of any reason she should have awakened.

Then she listened.

And she heard it.

Movement down below.

Coming from Justin Carlyle’s office. Someone going through the papers, going through the books? Was that it? Was someone convinced that there was something to be found in those papers, something that had eluded those who had searched already?

Someone who came by night, determined not to be seen.

Someone who came furtively.

Someone dangerous. Who had killed already? Who would kill again?

Yancy crawled out of bed. The breeze was balmy and warm, lifting the soft cotton of her sheer gown around her. She wondered if she appeared like some demented creature of the night, a slim honey-colored waif, floating through the night in fear.

Alone.

Not alone.

Jem was near tonight.

And the baby…

The baby.

She checked on Brian. He slept like an angel, his breathing perfectly even, his little rump sticking up in the air. Nervously, she hugged her arms around her shoulders and walked to her door. It was locked; there was a chair in front of it. And Jem was sleeping in the room right beside hers.

Didn’t Jem hear what was going on in the office?

Maybe not, because Yancy couldn’t hear movement any longer. She stood next to the door, her ear against it, listening.

Nothing.

Something.

Yes, she heard something, but it didn’t seem to be coming from downstairs.

She swung around. The night breeze rustled, causing the drapes to float inward. The window. The damned window. There was no porch beyond it, but there were a number of trellises around the house, along with drain pipes.

The breeze, nothing more. The breeze rustling. There was no one out there. She could see no one in the moonlight.

She turned.

She could see…

A shadow.

A silhouette in the moonlight.

So close that she could feel the heat….

She inhaled to scream, so terrified that she choked and gasped. Jem was close, next door to her.

Too late. The shadow moved like mercury. She was dragged close, into the heat. A hand clamped over her mouth. Words were whispered.

“Hush. Hush! Don’t scream. Don’t say a word. Not one word. You don’t know what you’re risking.”

Waking beside Adam was a nice way to come back to the world of light, Sam decided.

Very nice.

Where she usually had the shrill sound of an alarm ringing in her ears, this morning she had the exquisite feel of something wet, light, very hot, tantalizing her nape.

The touch of his lips.

Very gentle. So gentle they aroused before they awoke.

Then there was that slow stroking down the length of her back, brushing her spine. Down, down…up again. So evocative.

Once again, gentle. Arousing before awakening.

Then the feel of his body, hard against hers. Those lips again. Whispering hot eroticisms against her earlobe, telling her each little thing he was going to do before he did it.

His lips against her spine.

His hands caressing her buttocks, locking onto her hips.

Again the fullness of him, flush against her.

Within her.

And then she was completely awake.

Completely aroused.

The alarm went off. Amazingly, the sound seemed to take its cue from the very moment in which everything inside her seemed to explode. For the space of several seconds, it might have been part of the raw, violent pleasure seizing her, shaking her, searing her.

Then, of course, she knew it was the alarm.

It was good sex, near perfect—not, however, miraculous. Yet even as she realized what the sound was, Sam lay back, her body slick and glistening, cooling, eyes half closed, her lips curled into a half smile, as well. It was Adam who reached over her, swearing, found the clock and nearly broke it before hitting the right button to turn off the alarm.

“Do you ever take a break?” he muttered. “Sleep late?”

“Rainy days,” she reminded him.

He shook his head. “I mean a real break. A vacation.”

“People come here to vacation. I live in paradise. An island Eden.”

“You work in paradise,” he told her. “And that’s quite different.” He was propped on one elbow, watching her.

She tried not to let him realize that she was watching him in return. Appreciating the length of his naked body. Darkened by the sun—except in strategic areas. Long, muscled, tight, slick. Handsome chest thickly furred with rich, dark hair. Tapered waist. Strong legs. Sexy legs. And hips. And other attributes.

“You need a break,” he continued. “A real break. A place where you don’t have to get up to make sure that other people are enjoying their croissants.”

She smiled and shrugged. “I love the island. But maybe you’re right. One day soon I’ll take a break. After…this.”

He nodded, then frowned slightly. “Where was the baby born?”

“Miami,” she said.

“Ah.”

“Ah, what?”

“So he is your baby?”

She stared at him, refusing to allow him to unsettle her. “Did I say that?”

“You knew where he was born.”

“Of course. I took Yancy to the hospital.”

“Or Yancy took you.”

“Adam, you really should go to hell.”

“You really should tell me about Hank.”

“Then you should tell me what you found in the water yesterday.”

He arched a brow at her, then shrugged with a dry grin. “Touché, Miss Carlyle.”

“Just what is it you want to know about Hank Jennings?”

“Your relationship with him.”

She smiled. Thinking of Hank always made her smile, even if it was a sad smile. “I loved him,” she said simply.

“But the baby is Yancy’s?”

“What makes you think that baby belongs to Hank Jennings?” she demanded.

“Because he loo—because from what I understand, Hank was the most likely candidate on the island.”

“Why did you just change what you were about to say?”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“Damn it, I don’t even know what I was going to say anymore.”

“You do, but you’re not going to tell me. Fine. My turn. What did you find in the water?” she demanded.

“You didn’t tell me anything, why should I tell you?”

“You did find something.”

“Maybe.”

“Tell me,” Sam insisted.

“I’m not telling you anything until you come clean with me,” Adam informed her curtly.

She didn’t like his attitude. “Why should I tell you anything until you come clean with me?”

“You owe me an explanation.”

“I owe you an explanation!” she exclaimed. “Wait a minute here—I own this island. You show up here, and I get attacked.”

“I did save your life, remember?”

Sam exploded with an expletive, telling him what he should do with himself, and rose from her side of the bed. She walked into the shower, turning the water on hard and hot.

A second later he had stepped in behind her. Groping for the soap. Groping for…her.

“I thought you didn’t like the shower?”

“Not for the first time after so many years.”

“Ah.”

He lifted her, drawing her legs around him, bracing her against the tile. The tile was cool. The water was stingingly hot. The steam rose around them. Sam felt as if she was sinking into it as they made love within the steam and heat of the water. Finally the water cooled. She was still in his arms, glad of his strength; she couldn’t have stood on her own. She didn’t speak, neither did he. The water continued to pour around them.

Only now it was turning cold.

“You have to trust me,” he said to her at last as she slid down his body, finding her feet, feeling the chill of the water.

“You have to trust me,” she insisted, staring at him. “There’s a lot you’re not telling me.”

To her surprise, he looked away, not denying what she said.

She felt a shivering inside her.

He knew something.

Something she wasn’t going to like.

Yancy wasn’t at breakfast. Lillie was filling in for her in the dining room.

“Is anything wrong?” Sam asked Lillie. It wasn’t like Yancy to have anyone substitute for her.

“No, the baby had a restless night. Yancy says she’s exhausted.”

“I’ll just check on her,” Sam said. She left her coffee by the buffet table and hurried up the stairs to Yancy’s room. Jem was just coming out of his own.

“Everything okay?” she asked him, not at all sure why she had such an uneasy feeling.

“As far as I know,” Jem said. “We’re still diving the Steps, huh?”

“I guess.”

“You’re the boss here. You can change the itinerary if you want.”

“If everyone is obsessed with the Steps, then we’ll go there. My dad was obsessed with them—you know that’s why I’m not crazy about diving there. But I haven’t got the right to keep others from it because of my own hang-ups.”

Jem grinned. “That sounds like a bunch of psychological claptrap to me. You want to go, we go—that’s where the truth of it lies. You almost ready to head down to the boat?”

“I’m just checking on Yancy.”

“Yeah, she seems wiped out today.”

“You talked to her?”

“Yeah. She looked like hell. Well, you check up on her, and I’ll see you down at the boat. By the way, we’ve got to keep an eye on the weather in the next few days.”

“A storm?” Sam asked, pausing.

“Yeah. That depression that formed off the east coast of Africa last week has been steadily strengthening. It rose to tropical storm velocity last night, and they’re expecting it to reach hurricane proportions by midnight tonight. It’s still a fair distance away, and you know how these things go. It probably won’t even hit here.”

“Yeah,” Sam muttered. “That’s what we were all saying about Hurricane Andrew right before it wiped out half a dozen cities. You’re right, we’ve got to keep an eye on it.”

“Yeah. Thank God one of us still has a little time left to watch the news now and then.”

“Don’t you dare torment me about Adam O’Connor, Jem Fisher. You brought that wretch right into my house.”

“And I suppose I twisted your arm into sleeping with him?”

“Jem!”

He chuckled softly. “Hey, the poor fellow didn’t have a chance the last time he was here. He would have had to be dead to resist you, the way you went after him.”

“Jem Fisher, that’s terrible.”

“Samantha Carlyle, that’s the truth!”

“Will you just go—go eat a doughnut or something!”

“We can use him here now,” Jem said quietly. Then he smiled and started down the stairs.

Sam looked after him thoughtfully for a moment. He was right. Maybe she did need Adam now.

And maybe he had been right in other ways. Maybe a lot of what had happened had been her fault.

She turned, still thoughtful, and tapped at Yancy’s door. There was no answer. She tried the knob. It was open.

She tiptoed into the room.

Brian was in his crib, sleeping away. He looked so sweet, in fact, that Sam experienced one of those little surges of panic that he might not be breathing. She gently set a hand on his back, then smiled. He was breathing quite nicely.

She turned and tiptoed to Yancy’s bed. Yancy, too, was asleep. Deeply asleep. The covers were practically over her head.

“Yancy?” Sam whispered.

“Umm.”

“I don’t mean to wake you, but do you need anything? Are you all right?”

“Hmm…tired.”

“Okay, get some sleep. I’ll see you later.”

Sam quietly left the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

When Sam had gone, Yancy sat up. Emotion began to shake her. Sobs, laughter. Laughter, sobs.

Oh, God….

Sam….

Soon, Sam, soon….

Adam watched Sam as they motored out to the dive site at the Steps. It was a beautiful day. There might be a storm coming, perhaps presaged by the very calm that seemed to sit upon the water, but it made for great conditions today.

Sam didn’t get much of a chance to reflect upon their trip. She was seated in the back of the Sloop Bee, an arm casually around Darlene’s shoulders as she tried very hard to explain that though it wasn’t impossible for a great white to be swimming in their warm tropical waters, it was unlikely. She was also trying to explain how the sharks who attacked people usually did so because they were attracted by blood or perhaps, on occasion, by the swimming, kicking motion of legs that dangled into the water. Divers were another case. They were beneath the surface, face to face with the sea’s great predators.

Darlene listened, wide-eyed.

It was fun to watch Sam with the little girl. Sam was a natural, Adam thought.

“There are dangers everywhere, Darlene.”

“Right,” Brad said. “I mean, houses fall on people. Things fall out of buildings. You can walk down a street and a big truck can hit you, right?”

Adam arched a brow at Brad, then decided that making the water appealing again for Darlene might be better than trying to convince her that she was going to meet a grisly end on solid ground.

“You know, when you become a more advanced diver, Darlene, there are more wrecks to see. There’s an old English ship, a man-of-war, that went down in about one hundred and twenty-five feet of water another hour’s ride out from the Steps.”

“A man-of-war?” Brad said.

“She was called Our Lady of Mercy. She was a ship in the English Navy. She went down in 1813—after a battle with the American ship Tallymar. The English ship was more powerful, but the Tallymar’s guns caught her just right, and down she went. Treasure hunters over the years since have dredged up most of what was of value on her, but she’s a great wreck to dive. You can almost imagine what she was like when she was under sail. Her figurehead is in a museum in Salem, Massachusetts, but one of the cruise ship companies put a copy of it back on her. Say, do you know why they call English sailors, and sometimes just Englishmen, limeys?”

“I didn’t know that they did call them limeys,” Darlene said mournfully.

Adam grinned. “Ships’ doctors back then didn’t understand about vitamin C, but they did realize that men got scurvy when they were kept from fresh fruit and vegetables too long. Limes lasted, and they were easy to purchase in any tropical port. English sailors were frequently given limes, so they became limeys.”

“Yeah, and the officers used to drink like fish, young man!” Liam Hinnerman added. “Water got bad on the ships quickly, turned green with slime. Didn’t matter to the bigwigs in charge if the ordinary seamen drank scum. Those officers, they kept all the liquor around that they could.”

“Sounds smart to me,” Sukee commented.

“Ah, it was a rough life,” Hinnerman continued. He had a look in his eye that said he was going to tell Brad about something bloody. “A British sailor often went to sea for a few square meals, but his meals were filled with weevils and maggots. Know one of the ways they got rid of the maggots that had gotten into their biscuits? They put a dead fish on top of the biscuits. The maggots crawled right for it. They kept putting in dead fish until all the maggots were gone.”

Sam looked at Adam and grimaced.

Darlene was looking a little green again, but Brad was fascinated.

“Being a sailor was hard,” Adam told Darlene. “They could punish men harshly for fairly minor infractions of the rules. One of the things they did was called ‘flogging around the fleet.’ The poor fellow was tied standing in one of the small boats, his back bared, and the boatswain’s mates from his fleet lashed him twenty-four times each. If there were a lot of ships, he could wind up with more than three hundred lashes.”

“He would die!” Darlene protested.

“He often did,” Adam told her. “If he survived, it was said that he had been given a ‘checkered shirt,’ because the lashes on his back crisscrossed in red ribbons and looked like a checked shirt.”

“I’m glad I didn’t live back then.”

“Yeah,” her mother teased, tousling her hair. “Now moms and dads have a bad time giving a kid a spanking! Not that children should be abused….”

“But a good spanking now and then seems in order to me,” Liam Hinnerman said, eyes glittering.

“Want to hear a funny one?” Adam asked Darlene.

“The seamen weren’t allowed to smoke—the fire hazard was too dangerous. They chewed tobacco instead. They were supposed to spit their tobacco into something called a spit kid. When they spat on the deck instead, their punishment was to have the spit kid tied around their necks. Then their shipmates were allowed to use them for a tobacco-spitting target.”

“Ugh. That’s gross!” Darlene said. But she grinned suddenly. “Brad would make a good target.”

“Maybe.”

Sam stood suddenly. She looked tense. “Suit up time,” she said. “We’ve got lots of company today.”

They did have company, Adam saw. At least half a dozen dive boats were anchored around the site, their flags waving. Beautiful weather, Adam thought.

The calm before the storm.

“Everybody buddied up?” Sam asked. Jem had cut the motor on the Sloop Bee, and was dropping the anchor.

“Joey and me forever!” Sue Emerson said happily.

“We expected nothing less,” Sukee murmured.

“I’ve got my honey today,” Liam said, lifting Jerry’s hand. Poor Jerry. She was very pale. Well, maybe she had a right to be. Adam made a mental note to keep a good eye on the pair.

“Thank God!” Jim Santino said, flipping back his hair. “I get a woman today! Sam—”

“I’ve got Darlene,” Sam said.

“There’s me,” Sukee offered dryly.

“So there is!” Jim murmured.

“Mr. O’Connor?” Brad said.

“Fine. You got me, kid.” Good. That made it a foursome—Darlene and Brad, Sam and himself.

He had to find a few minutes to get off on his own. And come tomorrow, he was going to have to get out here alone somehow.

Well, not alone.

With Sam.

“If we’re all buddied up, let’s take the dive. We have lots of time. Don’t forget, though—you especially, my talented new students,” Sam told the kids, smiling, “to always keep an eye on your air and your time. Right?”

“Right. But I’m with you,” Darlene said.

“Still…” Sam began.

“Still, if a big shark came along and ate Sam, you’d want to survive on your own, right?” Liam asked her politely.

“No big shark is coming along,” Adam said evenly. Liam Hinnerman was the kind of man who deserved a hard right to the jaw.

But this wasn’t the time or the place, and Hinnerman could probably also hit back. No matter. One to his kisser would be worth whatever he dished out in return.

“Divers in the water!” Jem called.

Suits on, masks on, fins, vests and cylinders, they entered the water. It was a familiar realm for Adam. A world he loved. Moving slowly, neutralizing the natural squeezes that occurred with the pressure as man moved deeper into the sea. In his work, he’d dived rivers, lakes, creeks, streams and canals, as well as dozens of different places in the ocean. Nothing was so beautiful as the tropical and semi-tropical sea. The reefs with their teeming, multicolored life, sea fans waving, anemones, tubes and more. Brad pointed to an outcropping of fire coral, bloodred, beautiful, painfully dangerous. They enjoyed its beauty and steered clear of it.

Following Sam and Darlene.

Following the Steps.

Twenty feet down, twenty-five feet. The air from their regulators bubbled around them, making a soft, constant sound within the watery world. Thirty feet, thirty-five feet. Forty feet, forty-five. Fifty. Fifty-five.

Sam had stopped at one of the Steps, studying it. Darlene paused with her. Adam pointed out the step to Brad, and they swam toward it. Adam caught Sam’s eyes beneath the glass of her mask. Framed there, a deep beautiful green. Her hair flared out, redder in the water. As red as the fire coral, or so it seemed. He motioned to Brad, drawing her attention to the boy. She frowned, alarmed to realize that he was about to move out on his own.

Alarmed…

Or curious. Determined to know what he was doing.

She couldn’t follow. He quickly left her with the children, kicking his fins hard against the water to reach the cliff and the last step embedded there.

The step where he had previously found the gold watch.

Hank’s watch.

He kept his eye out for the other divers as he swam, mentally counting off those in his party, trying to make certain they were all involved in their own explorations. Jerry and Liam, Sukee and Jim, the Emersons, the Walkers. They were all present and accounted for, all looking around.

Searching?

He kicked his way deeper, following the cliff face. The drop-off brought the ocean floor from a mere sixty feet to deeper than a hundred. He sank deeper still, studying the ragged edges of coral and rock along the way.

The watery world grew darker as he went ever downward.

He blinked suddenly, certain he had seen a light. It couldn’t be a light, logic told him. A reflection, perhaps.

Reflecting from what?

The world was silent, other than his air bubbles and the constant rhythm of his breathing. The light…

Flickered. Somewhere within the coral shelf. He moved along. Slowly, carefully.

The light, hazy in the shadowy darkness, flickered and blinked. He moved closer. Closer.

Bubbles. There were bubbles other than his own. Ahead of him. His muscles tensed. Someone was diving within the catacomb of coral. He moved closer, closer. He slipped through a break in the reef.

There was a diver ahead of him. A diver with his back to him and a light focused on the coral surrounding them. A lone diver, deep in a world of shadow.

Adam reached to his calf for his diving knife, tensed and ready.

The diver sensed Adam’s presence and turned with a defensive swirl, his own knife raised.

Adam met the diver’s eyes.

He gasped, stunned. Choked.

And the knife slipped from his suddenly frozen fingers and drifted endlessly downward to the shadowy depths below.

12

W here the hell had Adam gone?

Sam remained with the children, having little choice. But she couldn’t see Adam.

Minutes ticked by. Five, ten, fifteen. Twenty. She glanced at her computer, checking the time remaining until they had to surface. How deep had he gone? How much air was he using? Was he going to need a long decompression time?

Was he going to come back up?

Sheer panic seemed to seize her heart. She hadn’t had the sense to be alarmed at first when her father had disappeared. And she hadn’t even panicked when Hank had first come up missing; lightning didn’t strike twice.

But it had. And this might be the third time.

She waited miserably in the water, trying to pretend that everything was all right, forcing herself to remember that she was responsible for two innocent children. Crabs scuttled by; shrimp shot past. A friendly grouper brushed against her, startling her. Darlene tugged her in one direction to see a magnificent ray floating by, majestically cloaked and graceful. Brad found a silver barracuda hulking in the coral. Darlene jerked them away from the barracuda.

More minutes passed.

Sam watched for Adam, trying at the same time to watch for the other divers. Liam and Jerry. Sukee and Jim. The Walkers. The Emersons.

They all seemed to disappear, yet when she looked again, they had reappeared.

This was crazy.

Crazy.

She needed to dive alone with Jem and Adam.

She needed to look for the Beldona.

Just when she might truly have begun to panic about Adam’s disappearance, he materialized. Brad was pointing to a large blue fish swimming over from behind them. Darlene was suddenly by her side, gripping Sam’s arms so tightly that Sam thought the teenager’s nails might rip through her suit.

The fish was a shark. A blue, Sam thought. Perhaps five or six feet long, magnified by the water. It cruised closer to them.

She slipped an arm around Darlene, holding her steady. She felt the girl shaking.

The shark, she thought, must smell the girl’s fear.

But the animal behaved in a natural fashion, swimming toward them, glassy eyes on them, sleek body cutting the water smoothly.

It took a good look at them.

Veered.

And swam by.

Darlene was still shaking. She burst away from Sam, kicking hard to reach the surface, fifty-five feet over their heads.

Sam shot up, catching Darlene by the legs, pulling her down. She shook her head sternly, indicating that they had to rise slowly. Darlene blinked and seemed to bring herself under control.

That was when Adam appeared, taking Darlene’s hand. A second later Brad was with them, and as a foursome, they slowly made a proper ascent.

They were the first to reboard the dive boat. Freed from her heavy gear, Darlene began to gasp again. “Did you see it? It was huge! Ten feet—”

“Honey, that shark was no more than six feet, tops,” Adam told her. “The water magnifies what we see.”

“A shark. It was a shark. Just like the ones that ate all those men in World War Two.”

“Darlene, it was a blue. It took a look at us, and it said, ‘People, yuck. Way too much body fat in those suckers!’ And it swam by, because the sea is full of delicious fish.”

“But it was there, in the water—”

“Water is where sharks live,” Adam said.

Sam stood in front of Darlene and asked her sternly, “First rule of scuba?”

Darlene swallowed guiltily. “It was a shark.”

“First rule of scuba?”

“Breathe continuously.”

“Right. Second rule?”

“Regain control, respond, react.”

“Right. It was a shark. And we’ve talked a lot about sharks, and about seeing sharks in the water. It looked at you, you looked at it—it swam away. Right?”

Darlene swallowed again. “Yeah. We’re not diving again today, right?”

“Oh, man, she’s really going to be a ’fraidy cat now!” Brad moaned. “Right when things were getting so neat!”

“You leave me alone, Brad Walker!” Darlene threatened.

“What’s going on?” Judy Walker asked, climbing aboard, dripping water as Jem helped her off with her equipment. “Oh, no, Lew. Darlene did see the shark,” she said to her husband, who was climbing the ladder behind her. “You’re not going to be afraid now, are you, honey?”

Darlene was stubbornly silent for a minute.

“There’s no need to be afraid,” Sam said quietly.

“I…” Darlene paused, puzzled by the answer she seemed to come up with in her own mind. “No, I’m not afraid.” She looked at Sam triumphantly. “We stared it down, right? Isn’t that right, Mr. O’Connor?”

“Sure is. Something like that, anyway. If it had come closer, one of us would have bumped it on the nose with a dive light. They don’t like being bumped on their noses.”

Liam Hinnerman was up by then. “Hey, kid, do you know where we got the word shark?”

Darlene shook her head.

“It came from the German word schurke. It was a word for a land creature—man. It means ‘greedy parasite.”’

“Hey, that’s cool!” Brad laughed.

“Yeah,” Darlene agreed.

“And it’s not going to stop you from diving, right, sweetheart?” her father said. Lew Walker looked at Sam as he spoke. “Especially when you can go down with Miss Carlyle and see the underwater world through her eyes.”

He was looking at her peculiarly, Sam thought.

Schurkes.

Sharks.

She felt for a moment as if she was surrounded by greedy parasites. Who was innocent? Who was not?

She glanced at Adam.

Even Adam had a peculiar look about him. Perhaps the most peculiar look.

Just who was this “private concern” he was working for?

She shivered suddenly, looking around. Liam Hinnerman—hammerhead. Jim Santino—tiger shark. Joey Emerson—white tip. Sukee—mako. Lew Walker—a blue.

And Adam…

If Adam was a shark, he would be a damned great white. Deadly.

And the way he was looking at her now…

She was definitely surrounded by sharks.

Adam remained in an odd mood as they docked and left the Sloop Bee.

He remained close by her side, but he seemed completely withdrawn.

“I know what you found,” she told him as they entered her cottage.

“What?” he demanded, startled, staring at her, his gray eyes sharp.

“You disappeared for a long time. You must have found the Beldona, right? She’s just over the cliff. We’ve been staring straight at her for years, but we’ve simply never noticed her. Hundreds of divers swim over her and never see her, right.”

“No, I didn’t find the Beldona,” he told her.

“Then…”

“I went exploring the sides of that coral shelf. It plunges down at least another thirty feet, you know.”

She nodded. “Yes, but there’s nothing to see there, just sand and rock and water. No pretty vegetation. Just…nothing.”

“You have nitrox on the island, don’t you?”

Sam frowned, studying him. Sport divers never used pure oxygen; at depths past thirty-three feet it became toxic. Generally sport divers used a mixture of compressed air that was twenty percent oxygen and eighty percent nitrogen. The nitrogen, however, could produce a narcotic effect at depths of a hundred feet or more. Nitrox was a combination air that prevented that hallucinatory buildup. Sam never used it for the cylinders the guests used, but she and Jem sometimes used it when they went to greater depths with experienced friends who came to the island.

“Do you have it or not?”

“Of course.”

“Good.”

“Why?”

“I was thinking of making a few deeper dives.”

Sam hesitated. “You did find the ship.”

“No, I didn’t find the ship.”

He said it so strangely.

“Adam, what the hell is going on? Are you lying to me? Did you find something connected to that damn ship?”

“I’m not lying. I didn’t find the ship.”

“You think you can find her, though.”

“I don’t know. I’d just like to dive a little deeper, that’s all.” He stared straight at her. “I think I’ll shower.”

She arched a brow. “This is my cottage, you’re refusing to tell me what’s going on, and now you think you’ll shower.”

“Okay, then, you go ahead and shower.”

Baffled and irritated, Sam left him in the hallway.

“I’ll make some coffee,” he called after her. “When we’re all set, let’s head over to the main house and your father’s office. I want to read through some of those diaries and logbooks again.”

She slipped out of her suit and turned on the water in the shower. The fresh warmth rinsing away the salt from her body felt delicious. She dimly heard that Adam had turned on the news. She closed her eyes, leaning back, just feeling the water.

Why was he acting so strangely?

Why was he lying to her?

Just who in hell was he working for?

Her eyes flew open when she felt him step in behind her, sweeping his arms around her, drawing her close against him. The water splashed over her breasts, then over his hands. He rubbed his palms sensually down her rib cage and her belly, fingers splayed. Lower down over her abdomen, the gentle pressure became sweetly erotic. Step away, she told herself. Protest intimacy without honesty.

But then he spoke.

“I wonder if you ever knew just how deeply I was in love with you?” he said.

“Ah. But you were also in love with Becky.”

“I was seeing Becky. I was involved with Becky. I told you I was no innocent. You were determined to win whatever you set out to get in those days. What you wanted was me. You didn’t ask questions, and when you got answers anyway, you didn’t want them.”

“You could have—”

“I could have what? I wondered at the time if I was some kind of practice for you. Look at him, full-grown, definitely male. Test your powers. Look, touch, crook a finger. Get what you want. Use him. Then just shoot him when he doesn’t turn out to be exactly what you thought.”

He was saying these things to her, bitterly, with his hands still on her.

She closed her fingers around his. Wanting to stop their movement. Wanting to stop wanting him.

He held her more tightly against him. “I really was in love, you know. I didn’t want to be. I resisted.”

“Like hell. I wasn’t that good, I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“You knew exactly what you were doing.”

“You know that’s a lie—”

“I know I was your first experiment. You had damned good instincts.”

“You could have said that you were living with someone.”

“We weren’t actually living together at the time. We’d had a fight. She’d gone to her sister’s.”

“It was hard to tell you’d been fighting when she arrived on the island. The first time I saw her, she had her tongue down your throat. And that wasn’t an hour after…”

“An hour after,” he mused, his voice very strange. “An hour after. Everything so perfect, and then…Well, perfect can change quickly, can’t it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.”

“If you’d wanted to explain something to her, don’t you think it would have been a lot easier if your mouth hadn’t been quite so full with her tongue?”

“Right. She comes out here because she’s worried about me, she heard about the case and I haven’t appeared back home. Before she sets foot on dry land, I’m supposed to shout at her to get away, someone else has entered my life? I knew I was going to hurt her one way or the other. I wanted to be a little gentle about it.”

“A passionate kiss is always gentle.”

“I wasn’t kissing her. She was kissing me.”

“But resistance isn’t your strong point?”

She thought she’d angered him. He was silent for several seconds. “Sam, other than rather brutally disengaging myself, I couldn’t do much at the time. I was hoping to talk to her. And I didn’t realize you were there.”

“Obviously.”

He released her suddenly and stepped out of the shower. The water continued to run over Samantha as she still stood there, at a loss. She hadn’t meant to push so hard—yes, perhaps she had. She wanted an admission from him. She wanted to hear him say that he had been completely wrong. She was free from guilt.

She hadn’t wanted him to walk away just now, she realized. She’d wanted him to keep trying his best to earn her forgiveness.

She turned off the shower and wrapped herself in a large towel, then padded to the kitchen. He’d made coffee; it sat ready, letting off a pleasant aroma. But he wasn’t in the kitchen.

She walked down the hallway, pausing at her bedroom door. Adam was stretched out on her bed, a white bath towel wrapped around his hips. He was staring at the ceiling. Thinking? Waiting? Both?

She walked slowly to the bed, arms crossed over her chest as she stared at him. His fingers were laced behind his head. He met her eyes.

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe we were both just a little bit wrong?” he asked gravely.

She started to shake her head; then he was suddenly on his feet, moving like a panther, catching her by the waist and flinging her down on the bed where he straddled her. “No lies. Let’s go back. You were ripe. You—”

“Ripe!” she protested. “Now that should sweep me right off my feet. You’re making me sound like a banana.”

“Ripe. Like a piece of fruit. Just ready to be plucked.”

“It sounds awful.”

“It’s the exact word. Lots of women your age were already married, with children. The island offered slim pickings for a woman looking for a little experience.”

“And you were the best of those slim pickings?” she demanded.

He nodded.

“Get off me!”

“Admit it.”

She shook her head.

“You were ripe. You needed a man in your life. From the minute you saw me, you wanted sex.”

“I did not, I—”

“You wanted to be fu—”

“Don’t you dare say that!”

“Okay, but it won’t matter. It won’t change the truth.”

“I didn’t just decide that I was old enough and about to rot and that I needed sex. I wanted—I wanted—” She broke off.

“What, damn you? Say it!”

“I wanted you,” she whispered painfully.

He groaned suddenly. A deep groan that reverberated in his chest, tensed and tautened the length of him. He lay against her, enveloping her in his arms, holding her against him with both the greatest strength and the greatest tenderness. His lips brushed her forehead, found the pulse at her throat, pressed against the pounding there that grew ever more fierce with each millisecond slipping by. Again his lips brushed her forehead, and his whispers fanned her cheeks, her face, her earlobe. “I wanted you. I knew I was wrong, in a way, but by the time we actually made love, I wanted you so much that I would have risked the eternal fires of hell for one hour with you. Naked, of course. But I would have been willing to burn forever for my sins, for that damned hour. Except, of course, love is never so simple. I got more than an hour, and I didn’t go to hell—not yet, anyway. But I didn’t know how to tell you then that I was already involved with someone, that I needed a chance to explain to the woman I’d been living with that it was over, because I had fallen in love. Then she was suddenly here.”

“With her tongue down your throat,” Sam interjected softly, tears stinging her eyes. Silly. They’d both been wrong. So wrong.

“You could have given me a chance.”

“I could have,” she said.

“But you didn’t.”

She smiled slowly, ruefully. “I was too proud. And I felt like too big a fool. I’d never known anything like you. Never.”

“Maybe we were both a little wrong.”

“Maybe a lot wrong.”

“Both of us.”

“You were wrong, too?”

“Oh, God, yes. Wrong not to insist on you knowing there had been someone. Wrong not to tell Becky about you the second I saw her, even if it did hurt her. Most of all, I was wrong to leave, wrong not to fight for you. Wrong to let something as pathetic as pride make me walk away from you, when I should have realized what you saw and what you thought. I was just as mad at myself. I’ve paid for what I did since. More than you can know.”

“You’ve really missed me, remembered me, all this time?”

“I’ve really missed you.”

“There have been other women.”

“Yes. But not like you. There have been other men on the island.”

“You’re referring to Hank Jennings again?”

He made a strange sound at the back of his throat. Irritated, fierce.

“Why the hell are we still talking about the past?” he demanded with sudden anger. “This is now. And, Miss Carlyle, I do want you now.”

His mouth moved down on to hers then. Hard. Almost brutal. Tongue filling the void, stroking her teeth, her lips and her tongue, hungrily, kissing again and again, openmouthed, deeper, deeper, ever more insinuating. The towels tangled between them. He wasn’t exactly straddling her anymore, he was atop her, limbs burning against her, sex hot, hard, vibrant, against her abdomen, her thighs, stroking against her flesh with his every movement as he kissed her again…again. Her arms encircled him, tried to hold him. She kissed him passionately in return. Missed his mouth. Found his throat, his shoulders. She dug her fingers into his back, stroked the length of it with her nails, trailed her fingers along his spine, rounded his buttocks. But he was moving against her, and he was more powerful, one hand on her breast, kneading it, cupping it, holding it up to the tantalizing torment of his mouth, his lips closing around it, tongue edging against the nipple, laving the areola, teeth grazing. She strained against him, her fingers curling into the dark thickness of his hair. His tongue trailed the length of her side as his hand slipped beneath her thigh. His fingers stroked the length of it over and over, while the searingly subtle stroke of his tongue bathed her abdomen, delved into her navel. She began to burn, aching for him to touch her more deeply. Hunger gnawed at her, urging her to arch and writhe against him, to whisper his name, to whisper the truth.

“Adam, you were right. I did everything I could to get you. I didn’t want to know about any other woman. I didn’t want you to have a past. I wanted you.”

Fool, Adam taunted himself. Fool!

They were talking about honesty, about feelings, now.

Wanted. The key word. Wanted, yes. He’d wanted her then. He wanted her now. He spoke honestly of the past while the present remained a lie. No, not a lie, exactly. An omission of the truth. And when she knew…

But that was the point, wasn’t it? Have her, hold her, love her. Sink into the cauldron of desire, of hunger, of wanting. Hold as tight and fast to the intimacy, to the tenderness, to the passion, hold tight and fight the honesty that would have to come.

Down to the basics of it.

God, yes, he wanted her.

And she might not want him later.

He rose above her, finding her lips, kissing her, whispering just above them.

“Wanted? Did you say that you wanted me? Past tense? Tell me about the present.”

He watched her lips. Watched their fullness, the sensuality, watched the smile that curved them. “Wanted…want,” she promised breathlessly.

“Want?”

“Want.”

Odd, the things a man remembered about a woman. There was laughter, yes. A smile, a look, a touch. Her scent had lived with him. Unique. Both subtle and distinctive. She used a very softly scented soap, and it was a part of the mixture. She smelled of the freshness of a sea breeze. Somehow she was sweet, somehow musky, always evocative. He loved to bury himself against her, against that scent, against her flesh. Taste her, feel her, breathe her. Know her. Touch, stroke, intimately invade. Feel her response, the quickening of her breath, the undulation of her body, beginning within, touching him, rousing him. There were moments in life to hold fast, to savor….

Lips, breasts. The red thatch, as sensual as the woman. What lay within it. Touch, play, feel the warmth, caress. Find each tiny spot of absolute sensitivity. Watch her face. Feel her move. Caress anew with fingers, lips, tongue…feel the fever grow until it was unbearable, until there was nothing left but to sink within her, deeper. Nothing left but to drown within her, to feel the all-encompassing warmth, the agony and the ecstasy, the hunger that escalated, the urgency, the bursting, imploding, exploding, sleek, wet, searing, inhaling, exhaling, the tension, straining…and all the while, her.

The scent, the feel, the touch. The length of her limbs, the silk of her flesh, dampened, glistening with sweat. The sound of her whispers, gasps, moans.

He braced himself as the sudden bursting thrust of his climax seized him, slamming deeply inside of her. Once, again, again. A soft, gentle warmth spilled over him after the violence as the warmth of his own seed filled her.

And Samantha…

He held her against him, realizing that he hadn’t closed his eyes for a full second throughout. He’d watched her face. Watched the dark flame of her hair, fanning out, tangling on the pillow.

He’d watched her eyes as they glazed, narrowed, closed. Watched her mouth, her breathing, her breasts. The sheen upon her body.

He fell to her side at last, staring at the ceiling. Then he pulled her against him, kissing the top of her head, feeling the soft brush of her hair against his chin.

She raised her head, meeting his eyes. “Who are you working for, Adam?” she demanded.

He tensed, trying to keep her from realizing that he had done so.

“Well, hell, I must be losing my touch. Great sex, but no whispers or sighs or even a warm silence. Just a ‘Who are you working for, Adam?”’

“If I recall correctly, once I was naked and vulnerable and drifting in a nice little niche of pleasure, you were quick to ask me if I’d shared my sex life with another man.”

“I was never so blunt.”

“Damned close. So who are you working for?” Sam demanded.

“Always a question from you. You think I should answer you, but you never give me any answers. I don’t recall you ever answering me about your relationship with Hank Jennings. Am I here in his place?”

She smiled wryly. “Whoa. Testy question.”

“What’s the answer?”

“I loved Hank.”

He started to roll away from her.

“Like a brother.”

He paused, his back to her. “What did you say?” he demanded huskily.

“I considered Hank to be one of the finest men I had ever met. He was caring, concerned, intelligent. Loyal, gentle, kind. Who are you working for, Adam?”

“You loved him like a brother. Now, I hope that means you didn’t sleep with him.”

“Who are you working for, Adam?”

“You’re answering a question with another question again, Sam.”

“I know. What did you find in the water the other day?”

“You are annoyingly persistent.”

“It’s my island, remember?”

“Your bedroom,” he said agreeably.

“Adam…”

She suddenly found herself drawn into his arms. His eyes, glittering silver with intensity, searched hers. “I promise I’ll tell you soon.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“But you don’t give me any answers, either.”

“Maybe we don’t trust each other enough yet.”

“I do trust you, I just…Do me a favor.”

“What?” Sam asked cautiously.

“Pretend that the world is perfect. Just for a few more minutes.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you, Samantha.”

“What?” she whispered.

“I love you. I know the world isn’t perfect. It’s gone straight to hell around here, and we don’t know what’s going on. I think that secrets may start opening up like a summer shower, and I want to hold on to something very special between us right now. Something unique, something you don’t get many opportunities to touch, to feel, in a lifetime. Years ago I fell in love with a wild red-haired siren with a temper to match. I had too much pride to insist that you listen to me, that you love me back. I broke it off with Becky when I left here and I admit, I kept trying to fall in love with other people after that. Even when I came here, I told myself that I wasn’t going to want you, wasn’t going to touch you. I was determined to keep my dick in my dive suit, my mind on my own business. The concept of not touching you went out the window the minute I saw you. Time and distance can change everything. I shouldn’t even have known you anymore. But I touched you, and I love you. And it seems we’ve still got a long hard road ahead of us, so right now, I’d appreciate it very much if you would love the hell out of me for just a few more minutes.”

For long seconds Sam just stared at him. In a thousand years, she never would have expected such a declaration.

“Sam?”

She didn’t answer him. Instead she pulled his head down and kissed him.

And kissed him.

And forgot all about cocktail hour completely.

It was time to see Sam. No help for it. He had to pay a visit to Sam.

He could take no more chances.

He’d learned a few lessons.

He carried a Smith & Wesson thirty-two calibre thrust in the shoulder holster beneath his dark jacket.

An unfortunate necessity, he thought grimly.

Just as the shadows and the night were necessary.

He waited for darkness to fall, then walked quickly and silently across the island. He stuck to the shadows and the bushes as he approached her cottage, and he kept a determined eye out.

He saw no one.

One dilemma still remained. He had to get to her without frightening her. He had to find a way to get close to her before she could scream.

Silence. He had to keep moving in silence. Dead silence. Around the cottage, listening carefully, watching. He could easily see into the front of the cottage. The drapes hadn’t been drawn over the living room windows. It was empty, as the kitchen beyond seemed to be, as well.

For a moment he thought that she might have left the cottage for the main house. Not yet, he decided. He would have seen her, heard her. Their paths would have crossed. No. She was there. He was certain of it.

He tried the front door, twisting the knob slowly, carefully.

Silently.

It was securely locked.

Fine. He would have to try another way. He kept moving. Around to her bedroom. He heard movement. Voices.

Voices….

The drapes were drawn here, but there was a slim space at the far right side of the windows where light was escaping into the night. He ducked down, one with the shadows, trying to see what she was doing.

And with whom.

He saw her back. Long, sleek, beautiful. Naked. Saw the fall of her hair, deep, rich, fire red, flowing down her back, swaying….

He saw the movement of her hips. Saw the man beneath her.

She was…

Making love.

With Adam.

Adam O’Connor.

He leaned against the wall of her cottage, gritting his teeth.

13

L iam was out on the porch, drinking.

He’d been drinking since they’d come in from the dive earlier.

At least, Jerry thought that he had. She hadn’t actually seen him. He hadn’t bothered her, and she had been grateful.

She had certainly been determined to keep her distance from him. She’d spent the time doing the usual things. Showering. Rubbing lotion into her skin. Putting polish on her nails. Trying not to think.

She prayed instead. Prayed that Liam would stay on the porch until it was time to go to the main house. Praying that she could just walk away.

Funny. Once she had thought she could actually do just that. But she couldn’t.

And she knew it now.

She was brushing her hair when he came in at last. Still in his trunks, smelling like sea and salt and whiskey. She tried not to wrinkle her nose when he walked by. She thought he was heading for the bathroom.

He walked to her instead.

“Bitch,” he muttered.

She took a step back, looking downward, still moving the brush through her hair.

“I went diving,” she reminded him. “I dove the damn Steps.”

She cried out when he suddenly backhanded her so hard that she was flung across the room. She hit the wall and slid down the length of it, shaking.

He knew how to hit. It was a talent, actually.

Her lip was cut, bleeding. A little trickle fell down her chin. She quickly caught it with her finger, staring at Liam. He walked to her, standing over her. He pulled her up by the hair.

“You’re going diving again. This time, you’re finding the way in.”

“Let go of me, you bastard.”

He hit her again.

She started to laugh. “You don’t dare hit me too hard. You could find yourself thrown right off this island.”

“I don’t think so. What right would Miss Carlyle have to interfere with a domestic dispute? Would you really ever want her to know?”

Jerry stared at him, hating him, wondering how she had ever thought she could use him toward her own ends. Foolish. She’d made so many mistakes in her life. So damned many.

Suddenly both his hands were in her hair, pulling painfully. “You will dive again. You will dive, or you will get hurt. And when I’m through hurting you…”

It was Liam’s turn to smile. “When I’m through hurting you, I’ll hurt her, as well. Badly. Anything that happened to her before will just be child’s play, understand?”

Jerry stared at him.

He hit her one last time for good measure.

“Understand?”

“I understand.”

“Now, next time we dive, what are you going to do?”

“Find the Beldona,” she said tonelessly.

He slammed her against the wall, then walked away. She sank to the floor.

He was good at hitting people. But he might have left a few bruises this time. She would have to do her makeup again. She was going to have to do her makeup again anyway.

Everything on her was running.

Silent tears were sliding down her cheeks.

Not because he had hurt her. He really couldn’t hurt her. Not really. She’d managed to hurt herself enough.

And he probably couldn’t hurt Sam. Sam had Adam. Jerry smiled despite her tears. Maybe Sam and Adam would never make it, but Adam wouldn’t let anything happen to Sam. Neither would Jem. Sam was going to be okay.

Oh, God. Sam had to be okay.

Especially if Jerry did as she was told.

And still…

The tears kept falling silently down her face. Danger remained for them all, but she wasn’t crying because of the danger.

She was crying because of what she had become.

And because she didn’t want Sam to know what she might have been….

It was late, Sam thought. Very late. She should have been at the main house a long time ago. She was completely falling apart as a hostess on her own island. Did it matter? Half her guests were obviously involved in some manner of intrigue.

Adam seemed suspicious of them, as well. So were they all guilty? Of what? And if they were guilty of some evil in life, did it mean that they had come to Seafire Isle with evil designs?

This was a vacation destination, and even crooks took vacations.

She stretched, realizing that, curled in Adam’s arms, she had dozed. Now, glancing at her watch, she discovered just how late it was. Nearly seven-thirty. With a groan, she moved her hand over the bed, seeking Adam.

But Adam was gone.

He would be nearby, though, she was certain of it. And though it was late, she stretched again, smiling, and for long moments she allowed herself the luxury of enjoying what they had shared.

The intimacy.

The words.

And still…

All the trust that should have been there wasn’t. He still wanted to know about Hank Jennings.

At first she’d been glad that he wondered.

Now she just wanted an exchange of information. Especially since there really was nothing to tell him about Hank Jennings.

Hank had come to the island as a student. He’d pitched in to help with anything any time his help was needed. He had talked about her father for hours on end.

She had even told him some of the stories she knew about the Beldona.

He’d become like a brother to her, always entirely decent, honest, gentle, kind, smart. And he’d fallen in love with Yancy. Yancy had tried hard not to fall in love back—she’d been convinced that interracial marriages didn’t work, and it didn’t matter that she was biracial herself. “You don’t understand, Sam, because you’re like Hank—you don’t want to understand. One drop of black blood and a woman is black.”

“But who cares, if you and Hank don’t?”

“The world cares,” Yancy had insisted. “Eventually, I’d hurt him.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would. I wish I didn’t think it was so.”

“I wish you’d believe enough in Hank.”

Hank asked Yancy daily to marry him. Yancy turned him down daily. Hank persisted, insisting to Sam that he would wear Yancy down eventually. The three of them and Jem did everything together. Picnic, swim, dive. Watch tapes on the VCR, listen to music, dance, discuss the world at large, the sea…

The Beldona.

She hated that ship. He had been so excited listening to her talk about it. She’d given him information and he’d used it.

And then he’d disappeared.

Yancy had had her baby soon after Hank disappeared. They all adored Brian, but Yancy refused to let anyone in Hank’s family know about the baby’s existence. “It’s better that way. It’s the way I want it. He’s my baby. I’ll love him. You’ll love him. Jem will act as his dad. We’ll make it this way, and that’s that.”

It still hurt that Hank was gone. It hurt because she had loved him, though not the way Adam so clearly thought, and because Yancy had been in so much pain, and because Brian didn’t have his father.

It hurt because she blamed the ship. Beldona. And herself, for telling him about it.

It was getting later and later, she reminded herself.

She rose quickly, finding her towel on the floor, slipping it around her. She looked for Adam and came upon him in the living room. He was showered and dressed. She didn’t think that he’d left her alone so he could go get fresh clothing, and the realization that he and Jem had moved him in here so completely without her knowledge was both reassuring and annoying. He was staring at the charts on the wall.

“Adam, it’s late. You should have woken me.”

He glanced at her, smiling, tall, dark, very handsome in his casual suit. “I thought you needed the sleep.”

“I thought you liked to talk to the others at cocktail hour and try to draw out all their secrets.”

He shrugged. “We have to dive alone. That’s our only hope.”

“Our hope of what?”

“Finding the Beldona.”

He was staring pointedly at the chart of the island.

“What if I don’t want to find the Beldona?” she asked him quietly.

He looked from the chart to her. “I figured you didn’t want to find the ship,” he said softly. “Because if you had wanted to find it, you would have.”

She shook her head. “That isn’t true. But it doesn’t matter. She’s a wretched ship. She destroys lives.”

He shook his head firmly. “That ship is an inanimate object. It destroys nothing. Men destroyed your father’s life. And the Beldona may provide the clue to finding out what happened. Besides, even more is at stake now. Remember? Hank Jennings disappeared, too. You were attacked. Unless you want me on your tail night and day for the rest of your life, we’ve got to find out what happened.”

She thought about that, lowering her lashes. It wasn’t actually so bad to have him on her tail.

Telling her that he had been in love with her. That he still loved her. That he wanted her.

Making love to her. Holding her….

But she could feel it just the same—tension was growing on Seafire Isle. Like the pressure that came with a storm. She was in danger. He couldn’t guard her every moment of his life, but she wasn’t equipped to fight off whatever the threat might be by herself. She was strong, she was independent, she could fight—but she was also smart enough to realize that she could be caught unaware.

Drugged.

Taken.

And then what?

She didn’t know.

Emotional involvement aside, she needed Adam right now, and Adam needed her.

But Adam was holding out on her. She knew it, and she didn’t understand it. She couldn’t give herself totally to him when she knew he was still keeping secrets from her.

He could be so damned relentless. Like the others, it seemed he believed that she could find the ship. He saw more clearly than the others, though; he knew she didn’t want to find the ship.

She didn’t want to find her father’s remains.

Adam was staring at the charts again. “What are you looking for?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Something, some little clue that we’re all missing.” He spun around and stared at her. “Sam, you must know something,” he insisted.

“I have to shower and dress,” she told him, going quickly back down the hallway.

In the shower, she felt the water rushing over her. Her head seemed to pound in time with the beat of the water. She leaned against the tile while the water continued to fall.

Okay, so it was true that she had denied knowing anything about the Beldona because she didn’t want to find the ship.

She didn’t want to find her father’s body.

And Hank’s.

Then again, it was also true that she really didn’t know anything. Okay, perhaps that wasn’t quite true. She knew all the theories regarding the ship. She knew the Beldona’s history. The ship had gone down just after her English captain and crew had seized the Spanish ship Yolanda. Captain Reynolds of the Beldona had made prisoners of the Spaniard’s captain, his lieutenants—and the woman Reynolds had loved, a passenger on the Yolanda. So what did this give her?

Sam finished showering. She slipped into a short slinky silver-knit halter dress, then went out to the living room. Adam was still staring at the chart on the wall.

“I think I know why Robert Santino might have sent his son out to look for the Beldona,” she said.

Adam turned to stare at her. She walked into the room. “Captain Reynolds of the Beldona had fallen in love with Theresa-Maria Rodriguez, daughter of Don José Martinez-Rodriguez, a high official of the Spanish court. Theresa-Maria’s mother was an Englishwoman, and the young lady had lived in London for quite some time, long enough for her and Reynolds to form a passionate bond. Her father, however, was determined that she have nothing to do with an Englishman. He pulled her out of England and betrothed her to Don Carlos Esperanza, the—”

“The captain of the Yolanda,” Adam said. “Which made it an even greater triumph for Captain Reynolds when he seized the Yolanda. Unfortunately for him, of course, his own ship went down, as well.”

Sam hesitated for a second. “There was a theft of certain Spanish jewels at just around the same time,” she said. “I’d never heard of the theft in conjunction with the Beldona before, but my father was convinced that Don Carlos Esperanza had stolen the jewels. He was a man of standing in the community, and well to do, but not as rich as royalty, and it was often said that the young lady’s attraction to Captain Reynolds had a great deal to do with the fact that Captain Reynolds was as rich as Croesus. My father believed that, to convince the sweet and lovely young Theresa-Maria to fall in love with him, Don Carlos Esperanza stole the two missing Crown rubies. They were a matched set of rings, with enormous stones, nicknamed the Eyes of Fire.”

“Such jewels would definitely be enough to interest Robert Santino in finding the Beldona.”

Sam sat down across from him. “It’s obvious that Santino wants to find the ship. And maybe he’s sent his son here as a spy or whatever. But anyone can look for the ship. There’s nothing illegal in that.”

“There is something illegal about it if one party murders another party of that search.”

She raised a hand. “Let me try to get a solid grasp on everything you know—and suspect. Avery Smith is really James Jay Astin, we’ve established that. SeaLink is naturally interested in the discovery of the Beldona. They’re a marine company, and they have the financial backing and the wherewithal to bring up the treasure, should it be found. However, we have to assume that someone else is working for SeaLink—doing the actual diving with us, since we have the charming company of Mr. Smith for dinner but have yet to see him on the dive boat. Okay, back to the jewels. We have Jim Santino, son of organized crime boss Robert Santino—a man who might kill without blinking to acquire certain Spanish treasures. So it should be simple. One of them had probably been involved in the search for a long time, and when my father found the ship, he was killed.”

“You think your father found the ship?” Adam said.

Sam nodded.

“Then what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“If he found the ship and was killed for finding it, why is the ship still missing?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“If someone killed him once he found the ship so they could seize the treasure for themselves, wouldn’t the treasure and the ship have surfaced by now?” Adam mused.

“And why is Hank still missing?” she added.

Adam cleared his throat awkwardly and stood. “I’ve just found out about another guest on your island.”

“Who?” Sam asked.

“I’d asked a friend of mine who’s with the Metro cops in Dade County to do some searching for me. There was a diver with suspected crime connections who washed ashore about a week after your father’s disappearance was reported.”

Sam arched a brow. “Washed up—dead?”

“Yes.”

“Adam, if he was dead then and he’s on the island now, something strange is definitely going on.”

“Not the dead man,” Adam said, exasperated.

“Then…?”

“His name was Marcus Shapiro.”

“There are no Shapiros here.”

“Your honeymooner is his son.”

“My honeymooner—Joey Emerson?”

Adam nodded.

“You think that Joey Emerson is here for a reason other than his honeymoon?”

“Well, I know that Emerson isn’t the name he was given when he was born.”

“But he looks so…”

“Harmless?”

“Doting,” Sam said.

“Pussy whipped.” Adam laughed.

She cast him a glance of irritation. “Like Brad Walker would say, Joey and Sue are all mush.”

“They may really be honeymooners.”

“Right. So, this Marcus guy washed up on the Florida coast. Was he connected to the island in any way?”

“Not that I know about. He might have worked for Robert Santino now and then.”

“So Joey may just be a nice young man on his honeymoon who changed his name because his dad had mob connections.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re suspicious of everyone.”

“Sam, someone on this island tried to kidnap you,” he said in exasperation.

“There is the possibility that whoever attacked me isn’t a guest. Other boats do come here. Lots of people stop by for our lunch and dinner buffets, even breakfast. Sometimes they stop just for directions.”

“There is a slight possibility that our attacker came from somewhere else.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

“Not for a moment.”

“So what do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

She threw up her hands. “Who are you working for?” she asked again.

“I told you that I’d tell you soon. Very soon. For now, don’t you think we’d maybe better get on over for cocktail hour?”

“I think cocktail hour is over.”

“I’m famished, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose,” she murmured.

“Weren’t you the one in a hurry before?”

“Before I thought that you weren’t telling me something important.”

He flashed her a smile. “You’re not telling me everything, either.”

“I’m trying to.”

“So am I,” he said softly. “Let’s go over, shall we?”

Sam stared at him, then nodded slowly. “Yes, let’s go over.”

It was Chinese night. Jacques had put together three different kinds of lo mein, vegetable, beef and pork. The fried rice came in “house special” and vegetarian. There were deliciously seasoned little ribs, shrimp or vegetarian egg rolls, hot and sour soup, mushu pork and beef, chicken chow mein, and more.

The mood in the dining room seemed strangely festive.

Sam was glad to see that Yancy had come down, and that the baby was with her as well. Sukee had decided to play with Brian, who was in his high chair, contentedly gumming a teething cookie and watching the conversation around him.

“Yancy, you okay?” Sam asked her, getting a word in while replenishing one of the chafing dishes.

Yancy jumped, startled. She looked pale.

“I’m, uh, fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I thought you didn’t feel well this morning.”

“I was tired this morning, that’s all.”

Tired, and jumpy, Sam thought. Either that, or she was becoming paranoid herself, seeing things in others that just weren’t there.

“Jem’s cousin Matthew came in on the mail boat. He and Jem took their dinner over to Jem’s cottage,” Yancy said, changing the subject.

Sam frowned. “I don’t want you left alone,” she began in a whisper.

“I won’t be alone,” Yancy said.

“They’ll be back after dinner?”

“I need to talk to you then, anyway. Privately.”

“I’ll never ditch Adam.”

“I meant privately with Adam.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Sam left and took a seat beside Darlene, smiling in return at the pleased grin the girl offered her.

“Did you have fun today?” Sam asked her.

Darlene nodded strenuously. “I had a wonderful time. I love to dive so much—I’m just afraid of some of the things in the water. I can’t help it. I’d never be able to dive alone.”

Sam reached over to help herself to some of the sake sitting on the table in a little white porcelain ewer. “You’re never supposed to go diving alone.”

“Your father did,” Avery Smith said suddenly, quietly.

Sam looked at him across the table. She couldn’t read his expression. She wondered if the words had been said with sorrow or malice.

“Yes, my father did,” she said softly. She looked at Darlene. “My father was probably one of the best divers who ever lived. He knew the sea, respected all the creatures in it and was confident of his own abilities. He taught me never to go diving alone. But then he did it himself. And something happened to him. So no matter how good you are, or how brave, you should never go down alone.”

“Never!” came an emphatic exclamation from the end of the table.

Joey Emerson.

Née Shapiro.

His gaze was level. He smiled at Darlene, then offered Sam a rather awkward grin. “My dad died diving alone, too. It’s very dangerous. So it’s good that you have a healthy respect for the water.”

“Your father died while diving?” Adam said, sounding casual as he pulled up the chair next to baby Brian. A piece of teething cookie landed on Adam’s lo mein.

Brad shuddered.

Adam picked up the piece of cookie, staring nonplussed at Brad while he spoke to Joey. “I’m sorry to hear that about your father. What happened to him?”

Joey Emerson stared across the table at Sam. “It was just like Justin Carlyle. No one knows what happened.”

“Maybe neither one of them is dead!” Darlene said excitedly. She looked at Sam. “Maybe we could find that ship—that Beldona your father was looking for. My folks would be so excited. They’re just dying to find it.”

“Darlene!” her father snapped, a definite edge to his voice. His wife kicked him beneath the table—Sam saw the motion, then heard Lew Walker grunt. “Buried treasure and all. You know. It would be great to find the ship.”

“Right!” Darlene said happily. “We might find the ship, then find out that there’s some kind of air line going into it. We’d find your dad, Sam, and maybe we’d find your father, too, Mr. Emerson.”

Joey Emerson née Shapiro grimaced. “That would be real nice, kid,” he said softly. “Except that they found my dad. He washed up on shore.”

“Oh,” Darlene said. “I’m sorry.”

Sukee wagged a finger at her. “So there’s a lesson in that, young lady. No diving alone.”

“Right,” Darlene said.

Brad stared at Sam. “So why did your dad do it, Sam?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. But don’t you go getting any ideas, huh?”

“He won’t,” Judy Walker said sternly. “Actually, Sam, both my kids have gotten so fond of diving with you that they’re not going to want to go with anyone else.”

“Even Jerry had a wonderful time diving with you, Sam,” Liam Hinnerman said, setting his arm around Jerry’s shoulders.

Jerry offered Sam a weak smile. She looked lovely, as usual. Small, blond and delicate in a long-sleeved black knit. Pale, though. She didn’t seem to have acquired any sun while they were out, and not a trace of windburn. She was wearing more makeup than usual, though, Sam decided.

And she looked miserably nervous.

“Jerry, did you like the dive?” Sam asked.

“It was fine, thank you,” Jerry said politely.

“She can’t wait to dive the Steps again,” Liam said.

That was a lie. Jerry would like to do anything but dive the Steps again, Sam decided.

Yancy came around the buffet table with a washcloth, determined to clean Brian’s face, though the baby wanted no part of it.

“That storm’s brewing harder and faster,” Yancy warned. “If anyone wants to do any more diving, I think tomorrow has got to be it for a few days.”

“The Steps!” Liam said.

“Oh, come on, now, we’ve done those,” Sam protested.

“But it was wonderful!” Jim Santino exclaimed from the end of the table. He flashed a smile at Sam, but she realized he was studying Joey Emerson.

Shapiro.

“Even Jerry loves to dive the Steps,” Liam insisted. “Tell Sam, honey. Tell her that you’re dying to dive the Steps again. Just dying to.”

Jerry looked at her. Still so pale. “I’m just dying to dive the Steps,” she said flatly.

“Please, Sam, please!” Darlene said.

“This is really getting repetitious,” Sam said.

“But if it’s what everyone wants,” Adam said, “why not do it?”

“We’ll keep an eye on the storm,” Sam said, determined to maintain some kind of control.

“Well, of course,” Sukee said. “It would be just as dangerous to dive in bad weather as it would be to dive alone, right, Sam?”

“Yeah, it would be.”

Jim Santino stood and stretched. “One more excursion to the Steps! Well, folks, I’m for bed. If the weather is going to get us later, I’m going to dive bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow. Good night, all.”

“Walk me, Jim?” Sukee asked sweetly.

“Sure thing.”

“The kids should be in bed, too,” Lew Walker said firmly.

“Dad….” Brad protested.

“It may be our last diving day,” Judy said quickly, and the Walkers said their good-nights.

The Emersons followed suit.

Sam thought that Joey Emerson watched Jim Santino as he followed the other man out.

“Well, then, I shall retire myself,” Avery Smith said.

“Guess we’re all ready for bed, eh, sweetie?” Hinnerman asked Jerry, rubbing his fingers down her neck. Jerry seemed to grow even more pale.

“Is something wrong, Jerry?” Sam asked worriedly.

“Is there, sweetheart?” Liam asked.

“No,” Jerry said, shaking her head. “Everything is wonderful. Good night, Sam, Mr. O’Connor, Yancy. Do tell Jacques that dinner was wonderful.”

Sam had risen to say good-night. As Jerry North walked past her, Sam realized why she appeared so pale.

She was wearing too much makeup.

Trying to hide a growing bruise beneath her eye.

Sam followed the two of them out. “Jerry. Jerry!”

They stopped together.

“Are you sure you’re all right? If you’re not feeling well and don’t, er, and don’t want to disturb Liam, I can set up one of the rooms in the main house.”

“Thank you,” Jerry said as she looked at Liam and firmly put an arm around him. “I prefer being with—” she hesitated, then smiled and went on “—my man.”

Liam kissed her. “We’re just fine, Sam. You go on back in to that man of yours.”

Feeling frustrated, Sam went into the house. Was Jerry’s smile real? Had Liam been beating her? Some women just kept going back with a man no matter what.

Sam discovered that Adam was waiting for her at the door. Watching her.

“You can’t run off alone,” he told her.

“I just walked them out.”

“You can’t run off alone,” he repeated curtly. Then he inhaled deeply. “Come in. To the bar.”

Frowning, Sam let him lead her to the bar. Yancy was there, looking slightly ill.

“What the hell is going on?” Sam demanded.

Yancy drew a finger to her lips, then made certain that the doors to the porch were tightly closed. She nodded toward the stairs.

Sam turned to look.

She gasped, so stunned she nearly passed out.

A man was coming down the stairs. A young man with soft brown longish hair, blue eyes and an overgrown beard. He was incredibly thin, but other than that, he looked no worse for wear.

He was a man she knew very well. A man who had caused her endless hours of torment.

Because she had thought he was dead.

But he wasn’t. He was alive.

Alive and well and walking toward her.

“Sam,” he said.

He was alive! She gave a cry and streaked for him, throwing her arms around him.

He hugged her fiercely in return.

Shaking, she suddenly drew away from him. “You’re alive. You’re alive. We’ve been suffering all this time, and you’re here. Alive and well. And you didn’t try to contact us.”

“Sam, you don’t understand,” Adam began from behind her.

“No! You don’t understand!” she cried out. “This is—this is Hank. Hank Jennings. Hank! Damn you.” She hit Hank suddenly. Hit him again and again. Hank didn’t defend himself. He let her hit him.

It was Adam who stopped her at last, capturing her arms, pulling her against him.

“You don’t understand!” Sam lashed out. Hank was still staring at her, a sick look on his handsome face. “This is the man who supposedly disappeared. Who broke Yancy’s heart, who worried me halfway into an early grave. This is Hank—”

“I know,” Adam told her.

She pulled away. “How the hell do you know? How do you always know everything all the time? How do you know—”

“Sam, please, if you would just calm down….” Yancy tried.

“How?” Sam demanded. “Damn you, how do you know?”

Adam glanced at Hank. “I know Hank because…he’s my brother,” he said quietly.

Sam stared from one of them to the other. “What?” she demanded again, certain she hadn’t heard correctly.

“He’s my brother. Half brother, baby brother.”

“But—”

“It’s the truth, Sam,” Hank said wearily.

Sam took a step forward. This time she took a swing at Adam. He didn’t stop the first blow, or the second. Then he caught her wrists, saying, “Sam…”

“I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I am sick of whatever game you horrible people are playing. I hate you, Hank, and I swear to God, I despise you, Adam. You’re a pair of bloody bastards, and the sharks should have taken you both!” she cried.

She turned and burst through the doors from the bar to the porch, determined to leave with all the swift, sure, no-nonsense speed of light.

“Sam!” she heard Adam roaring.

She didn’t care. She started to run. Not toward her cottage; that was the way he would expect her to go.

Instead she ran toward the docks, almost blinded by the tears that sprang into her eyes. What the hell were they trying to do to her?

He’d known! It was obvious, Adam had known all afternoon that Hank was there, and he’d known Hank all along. He hadn’t come to the island to help her; he’d come because Hank was his brother. And he’d probably made up everything he’d ever said about loving her because, just like everyone else, the only thing he wanted was the Beldona.

Furious, hurt beyond measure, she ran across the lawn.

And that was when the dark figure stepped out from the bushes.

All in black from head to toe.

Black ski mask.

Black turtleneck. Black shoes.

Black cloth. Saturated in chloroform.

“No!” She had a chance to shriek the single word, but then the cloth was over her face. She tried not to breathe.

But she had been running.

She had to breathe.

She struggled. Fought the arms that held her. Kicked, fought…

But she had to breathe.

Soon her arms ceased to flail. She couldn’t kick.

And, like the figure attacking her, the world around her faded, blurred and deepened….

Until it, too, was totally black.

14

“W ell, we certainly handled that well, didn’t we?” Yancy murmured dryly, looking from Hank to Adam.

Adam stared at his brother. “I should have told her.”

“I thought she’d be happy I was alive,” Hank said miserably.

Yancy lowered her head, smiling slightly. “You came through my window and nearly gave me a heart attack. We should have realized that Sam was going to have a similar reaction.”

“She’s just as mad at me as she is at Hank,” Adam said.

“Obviously,” Yancy agreed. “You two have gotten pretty close again in the past few days. She probably thought you came back because of her. Now she realizes that not only did you and Hank keep your relationship from her, you knew that Hank was here and didn’t tell her.”

“I didn’t hold out on her when we met,” Adam said flatly. “I said that I had a half brother. And I had no idea he was alive myself until I nearly had a heart attack when I saw him in the water. Which I’m still trying very hard to understand myself!”

“Damn it, Adam, if I knew more myself, don’t you think I’d share the information? I’m the reader, remember? You were always the tough guy, the one who became the cop. I just wanted to explain to Sam what had happened to me. Adam, none of this was my fault. I was kidnapped.”

Adam looked at him inquiringly.

“I found out that Justin went to the Steps the day he disappeared. Along with thinking that the Beldona was in that vicinity, he’d started to see activity out there. If he was right, others were heading for the location, and he needed to move quickly. Anyway, I was certain I’d figured out that the ship had to be around the drop-off somewhere, and that’s where I was headed.”

“Diving alone,” Adam said.

“Well, that’s rather beside the point right now, isn’t it?” Hank asked. “Sweet Jesus, older brothers never do let you grow up, do they?” he said to Yancy with a smile.

“Hank….” Adam said, steering him back to the conversation.

“I was hit on the head. I woke up in what I thought was a damp basement. It seemed like I was kept in complete darkness forever. I was threatened daily to get me to talk about the ship. Water was kept from me. Food, too. I was stripped, left to lie on a concrete floor. I never saw my attackers. No one ever talked to me, except one man. His tone was always flat, no accent to his voice. He warned me to tell him what I knew about the ship or face torture, even death. Whoever it was eventually decided that I didn’t know as much as he had thought originally, but that maybe I could be helpful.

“One day I was given back my clothes and fed, I was even given wine and beer. Things were passed to me through a little swing in the bottom of a barred wooden door. There was always one guard at the door, and he was always replaced at about five in the evening.

“One day, I was given research books and materials, some that I’d never seen before. I was told that I could be a free man as soon as I could guarantee that I could find the ship. I never believed that. I figured I’d be a dead man as soon as I discovered where the ship might be.

“Anyway, a few days ago, it seemed that I became much less interesting. No one came to ask me what I might have learned. When the new guard came to replace the old guard in the afternoon, I heard them whispering to each other outside the door. I couldn’t hear everything, but they knew, Adam, that you’d come to Seafire Isle and that it might mess up some plans that were already under way here. Well, anyway, I’m not exactly the hero type. I’d never tried to bash down the door and kill the guards or anything. But I’d made a pet out of a rat, and he’d made a hole in the concrete. I spent months digging at that hole, and hiding it with the one blanket they’d given me. I managed to sneak out that night. I’d been in a warehouse on a river. I might have tried to reach the police, but there were men around the place, and I didn’t know who might be a legitimate worker and who might be ready to slit my throat. There happened to be a nice little yacht at the dock in front of the warehouse. I stole it. I let the current take me downriver at first so that I could make a silent getaway. I realized I was on the Miami River, revved up the motor, and high-tailed it for the sea. I knew I had to get here, because you were here, and I had to see Yancy and Sam. Besides, I was afraid to trust anyone else.”

Adam felt a shiver rake through him. Hank was alive. He had to remember just to be grateful for that fact. He had always blamed himself for Hank’s having come to the island. He’d never told him about his affair with Sam; he’d just told him about the diving.

And the Beldona.

Hank’s letters to him from the island had been filled with excitement. They’d described the diving, the house—and the dive mistress. The tragedy of Justin’s disappearance—and the dive mistress. The assumption that his little brother had fallen in love with Sam had been half of what had sent him flying off to work in South America.

The determination to find either Hank or his killer had brought him to the island.

He stepped forward a little awkwardly, taking his brother in his arms. Adam’s dad had been a cop, killed in action. Hank’s father had lost a battle with cancer, and their mother had died seven years ago of pneumonia. Each was all the other had.

“I wish Sam had been willing to wait for an explanation,” Hank said. “I just couldn’t step out in front of everyone. I took a boat out alone today with Yancy’s help because I was praying I could find the answer before anything else happened. I was wrong. I need help. I need Sam. But I also need to stay hidden, because I know if I’m discovered here, I’m dead. Someone on this island is working for the same people who made my life hell for a year.”

“You’re certain no one has seen you except for Yancy, Sam and me?”

Hank gave him an awkward grin. “And my baby. Adam, have you seen my baby? Isn’t he beautiful?” Hank slipped an arm around Yancy, pulling her against him. “Even when I was gone, when she thought I was dead, she wanted my baby.”

“The baby is great,” Adam said huskily. He didn’t want to tell his brother what a fool he felt, certain that Brian had belonged to Hank and Sam rather than Hank and Yancy. “I’ve got to find Sam, got to make her understand. Damn her, I was right about this. I couldn’t tell her about Hank when he insisted he had to tell her himself.”

“Adam, whether you’re right or wrong, what she feels right now is what matters. You’ve got to find a way to explain this to her,” Yancy said.

“Let me go after her,” Hank said. “And tell her that I was being held prisoner.”

“You can’t go after her. You can’t be seen, remember? Hank, it’s imperative now that you be extremely careful. Fool. You should have come to me before you went diving.”

“I tried to go to Sam, and I would have come to you. I came out to talk to you both earlier, but…”

“But what?”

“Well, damn it, Adam, you were both busy—with each other.” Hank looked down, embarrassed.

“Oh, God!” Adam groaned. So Hank had tried to see Sam earlier. Instead, he’d seen…

“Hank, don’t you think of leaving this house. You don’t know who’s working for the people who kidnapped you. You have to stay hidden here and try to think of anything at all that might help us, any little detail. Sam will understand once she’s had a chance to talk to you.”

“Maybe I should go look for her,” Yancy said. “Talk to her.”

“Oh, God,” Adam said suddenly.

“What?” Yancy demanded.

“She’s alone!” Adam hissed.

“We’re on an island. Where can she go?” Hank asked.

“Oh, God, I’d forgotten!” Yancy breathed.

“Forgotten what?” Hank demanded.

“I told you that she’d been attacked!” Yancy said to Hank. “Adam—”

Adam was already heading out of the house. “Damn, but we are fools! Hide Hank, Yancy, he’s in tremendous danger now. Sweet Jesus, she’s alone!” He swore, swiftly following in Sam’s wake. By the time he reached the porch, he was calling her name. By the time he reached the lawn, he was running, fear igniting inside him like wildfire.

What fools. Someone had surely just been waiting for them to make a mistake!

And they’d made it. Oh, God, they’d made it.

Water…

She could feel it. Not touching her, but around her. Rocking her. Her head was spinning painfully with the kind of spiraling sensation that made her afraid she was going to be sick.

As the whirling mire within her head began to subside, Sam realized that she was on a boat. She was feeling the rise and fall of the surf lifting the vessel, letting it fall again, lifting it once more.

She listened for the sound of a motor.

There was none.

She tried to open her eyes and realized that she was blindfolded.

She tried to move.

Her wrists were bound to something.

Oh, my God, Adam, what a fool I was to forget. Why didn’t you talk to me? Why didn’t you trust me? Why did I get so angry at seeing Hank when I’m so happy he’s alive? Why didn’t I realize my danger even when I was ready to wring your neck? Do you really love me, Adam, or were you after something else all along?

Will it ever matter?

She swallowed hard. Adam wasn’t here to help her. She would have to save herself.

She inhaled deeply, trying to remain calm, to keep some sense of reason. Trying to picture her position in her mind’s eye. She was lying on her back, head slightly propped. Once the spinning subsided a little more, she could even appreciate the fact that her head was on a pillow. Her legs were free, stretched out on a boat bunk. She had the sensation of close confinement and imagined that the boat had to be some kind of sport vessel, somewhere between twenty and forty feet, with perhaps a master’s and a guest cabin. The movement that rocked her made her think that she was in the aft of the boat—the guest cabin, perhaps? The bunk was center of the aft section, bolted down.

She struggled to free her wrists. She was bound with some material that wasn’t rough, like rope, but that seemed even stronger than rope might be. The more she struggled, the tighter her bounds seemed to get.

“I tie good knots.”

The strange, husky whisper startled her. She went dead still, listening.

Breathing. Slow, easy, even breathing. Near her. Very near her.

“Who are you? What do you want?” The words should have been forceful, adamant. Show no fear, she told herself.

But, of course, she was terrified. And the words were neither forceful nor adamant. They were a bare whisper.

“Who the hell are you?” That was better. “Other than a complete ass, because you can’t possibly get away with this.”

“I can, easily, because that storm is moving in much more quickly than you might imagine. And let’s see…”

There was a sibilant hiss to the words. They were drawn out, spoken very low. Deep. They had an edge that seemed to creep right beneath her skin.

“Let’s see…you fought with your lover, Miss Carlyle. Silly girl. So things aren’t always perfect with the ex-cop. But he’s a good lover, eh? Strong fellow. You should have stayed with him. He was trying very hard to protect you. But you know what, Miss Carlyle? The good guys don’t always win.”

“Who are you and what do you want?” she asked stubbornly. Her throat was bone dry. She was afraid to move. She was shivering, and yet she was surely dripping sweat. Her arms were beginning to feel painfully numb. She was beginning to feel a rise of absolute hysteria, desperate to get the blindfold off her eyes.

“I want you to dive, Miss Carlyle.”

“Why?”

“To take me to the Beldona.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“I know you can find her.”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know where she is.”

“Well, then, Miss Carlyle, you can find the ship, or you can rest with her. Do you understand?”

Sibilant laughter seemed to touch and surround her.

Fear crept along her spine. Like a crawling maggot. One maggot, two maggots, dozens of them….

“Who in God’s name are you?”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you dive.”

“Dive—like my father?” she said. “Dive and wind up dead just the same? You can kill me now.”

No, no, no, she didn’t mean that. She didn’t mean that at all. In seconds she would start crying, begging for her life. She wanted to live. She wanted to run to the house and the bar. Maybe take another good swing at Hank, and then one at Adam. Then she would stand her ground. Find out just what was going on. Demand to know what had happened, who had known what, where Hank had been…

What Adam had known.

And why Adam had come. What was real and what was not.

“Kill you,” the voice mused.

She felt him come closer. Felt his breath. She started to twist and kick. Hard. She lashed out with her feet and caught some body part.

He swore.

Then something was slipped around her feet and pulled tight. A belt? It was lashed to something at the foot of the bed, and she could no longer move her legs.

“This is going to be a difficult position to dive from,” she managed to say sarcastically.

“We’re not ready to dive yet. Besides, didn’t you suggest that I just go ahead and kill you now?”

“I—”

“But I’m not going to kill you. Yet. You’ve got to bear in mind, Miss Carlyle, that there are many things that are worse. Much worse than death….”

Husky, warm laughter fanned her cheeks.

Then she felt a touch on her bare thigh, moving upward along it.

“There are much, much worse things….”

Adam burst into Sam’s cottage.

“Sam!”

No reply.

He ran through the house quickly, calling her name. “Sam, please, for the love of God, talk to me!”

Silence.

He came running out on the lawn just as Yancy ran up to him worriedly. “She’s not here?”

“No.”

“We can’t just panic.”

“We have to panic. I’m going to keep looking. You get Jem and Matthew out, tell them to search everywhere.”

Yancy nodded and hurried toward the other cottages. Adam looked at the house, his heart pounding. She was upset, furious with both him and Hank, he told himself. Just because he couldn’t find her that minute, it didn’t mean something bad had happened.

He started around the main house, feeling the coolness of the wind.

It was rising already, though the storm wasn’t actually due for another day. That was what Yancy had said.

But storms were moody. They didn’t always do what the weather forecasters said they were supposed to. They could quicken without warning. Their velocity could rise.

The air was cool. Definitely a portent of a storm coming.

“Sam!” He shouted her name. The sound of it was carried on the rising wind. The damp air brushed against his cheeks; the breeze lifted the hair from his brow. “Sam!”

No answer. He started jogging toward the path that led to the docks.

The night was dark. The grounds were illuminated by spotlights, but bushes, trees and the angles of the main house and the cottages cast huge pools of shadow and blackness here and there, Stygian voids like black holes in time and space.

“Sam!” he called again.

Where the hell had she gone? Adam swore to himself. He should have told her earlier, but he hadn’t really understood a damned thing himself, except that Hank had been taken and held in a warehouse for nearly a year. Communicating a hundred feet beneath the water when he had been half in shock hadn’t been easy, even with a dive slate. Besides, Hank had begged his brother to keep his secret until he’d seen Sam.

And now this.

He was a fool, an ass….

Too late. Where the hell was she?

He heard footsteps, feet running on the grass behind him. He swung around.

Jem and his young cousin, Matt, a slimmer version of Jem, were running toward him, Yancy following a little breathlessly behind.

“Have you seen her?” Adam demanded.

“No,” Jem said.

“The only thing we can do is go from cabin to cabin,” Adam said.

“Yancy said she was upset,” Jem said calmly. “Maybe she just wants to stay away from you, Adam.”

“I—” he began, then broke off.

He bent down and picked up a shoe. A slim black heel, nine double A. He could remember her slipping into the shoes just before they had left her cottage earlier. A slim black heel to go with her short silver cocktail dress.

“Oh, God!” Yancy breathed.

“What do we do?” Jem asked.

“We go from cottage to cottage,” Adam said.

“Where do we start?”

“Avery Smith,” Adam said grimly. “But then, what the hell? Everyone on this island is living some kind of a lie.”

“I really don’t know about the Beldona!” Sam gasped. The fingers that had moved over her flesh went still for a minute. Then patterns were again being drawn on her skin. She felt the knit dress shoved up against her thighs, bunching at her hips. Felt the touch resume, circles being drawn higher and higher.

“What a waste to kill you, Miss Carlyle. You really are quite a phenomenal woman. Tell me why your father was so interested in the Beldona.”

She moistened her lips. “My father thought that—that some unique Spanish gems had been stolen and were aboard the ship.”

“Yes, and…?”

“He thought maybe there was something about the way the ship went down—perhaps a different reason than a storm that caused it to sink that might help in the finding of it.”

The fear was mounting in her again.

Maggots. Creeping all over her. Oh, God. His fingers felt like horrible crawling creatures. Just touching her. Not hurting. Just touching. Going up and down her leg. Now…oh, God. A finger slipping beneath the elastic of her black satin panties.

“What a waste it will be if I kill you….”

He spoke so close to her. The whisper directly above her lips. The breath fanning her flesh. His face coming closer and closer to her own….

“No, please…”

Oh, God, she sounded so pathetic. Like such a whimpering coward.

There had to be a way to fight. Hands tied, ankles bound, she could scarcely move.

She couldn’t see….

There was hope. As long as she was living, there was hope.

But, oh, God, oh, God…

The sound of that very husky laughter again.

And another touch. On the bodice of her silver dress.

She heard another sound. A ripping.

Her dress coming apart.

She opened her mouth to scream.

A hand clamped down over it, nearly smothering her.

And once again that wretched whisper fanned her cheek. “Let’s play chicken, Miss Carlyle. I want to hear you talk. While you talk, I’m distracted. I need to be distracted.”

Slowly the hand moved from her mouth.

“Don’t scream,” he warned her.

She inhaled raggedly.

She felt a rounded fist fall lightly against her heart. “Where life beats! Right there, your heart, Miss Carlyle. To kill you quickly, I could slip a knife right through you, there. But then, I would never want to kill you quickly.”

“Don’t kill me. Please.”

“Then tell me what I want to know.”

The whisper again brushed her cheeks with deadly menace as the fingers fell upon the bare flesh now exposed at her navel. “Don’t scream, Miss Carlyle. Just talk. Talk to me. I’m dying to listen. And surely, surely, my lovely Miss Carlyle, you must be dying to talk….”

Adam knew who was in each cottage; he had made a point of determining just who was staying where during the first hour he had spent on the island.

The door to Avery Smith’s cottage was locked.

No matter. He didn’t wait. He hefted a shoulder against the door.

“Damn you, you bastard!” he cried out.

The door gave, and he went flying into the darkened parlor area of the one-bedroom cottage, Jem, Matt and Yancy following behind him. “Astin, you bastard, get out here!” he shouted, striding toward the bedroom.

But before Adam could reach the hallway, James Jay Astin, alias Avery Smith, came walking out of the bedroom, tying the belt on his robe. He’d obviously been sleeping.

“Young man, just what the hell is your problem?” he demanded.

“I want Sam Carlyle.”

“I’ve been under the impression that you already have Miss Carlyle.”

Jem, apparently afraid that Adam would take a swing at the older man, stepped up behind him.

“Where is she?” Adam demanded.

“Mr. O’Connor, I’m well aware that your opinion of my means and methods is not high. And I admit, as well, that I came here to find out just what Miss Carlyle knows about the Beldona and the disappearances that have occurred in the search for her. I want that ship. I am the one who’s best suited to solve the mysteries regarding her, to bring up her treasures, to show her in her very best light.”