Moriah’s Mutiny
Elizabeth Bevarly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ELIZABETH BEVARLY

is a RITA® Award-nominated author of more than sixty works of contemporary romance. Her books regularly appear on the USA TODAY and the Waldenbooks bestseller lists for romance and mass-market paperbacks. Her novel The Thing About Men hit the New York Times extended bestseller list, as well. Her novels have been published in more than two dozen languages and three dozen countries, and there are more than ten million copies in print worldwide. She currently lives in a small town in her native Kentucky with her husband and son.

For my two big brothers, Danny and Jim(my), who’ve made my life an adventure since the very beginning.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

The weather on St. Thomas was hot and muggy, but the throngs of people drinking and dancing inside The Green House Restaurant and Bar didn’t seem to be affected by it. The band onstage was playing what Moriah Mallory guessed was supposed to be their rendition of a popular reggae tune, but in her opinion they were nowhere near as harmonic or hypnotic as the group who had originally recorded it. Yet the scantily clad bodies that crowded onto the tiny dance floor and spilled into the dining area didn’t seem to notice or care. They swayed and sweated in time to the irregular drumbeat, tipping back green and brown bottles of beer, or pink and yellow rum drinks to alleviate the steamy tropical heat.

If Moriah rose up enough from her bar stool and craned her head around the group of inebriated divers beside her, she could just glimpse the harbor of Charlotte Amalie, now hidden in the night, spattered by patches of glittering light that scattered across the darkness, the result of a small fleet of sailboats and cruise ships anchored offshore. Moriah sighed deeply, inhaling the warm night, and ordered another beer.

Tomorrow morning she would be boarding one of those vessels, or another very similar, and would embark on a two-week cruise through the Caribbean Islands, viewing the lush green jungles, the sparkling, pearly beaches and clear, turquoise-and-emerald waters from the deck of a quiet, softly rocking, tranquility-ridden sailboat. So why this feeling of utter dread that had settled like a cool clump of sand in her stomach? Why the worry that she was about to set sail on a ship of woe? Why did she want so desperately to hightail it back to Philadelphia and forget the entire episode?

Because this whole experience was going to be anything but quiet, and certainly none too tranquil, she amended, remembering that her three sisters would be accompanying her as usual on her summer vacation. As if she could forget them, she thought morosely, slugging back a deep swallow of cold beer. God, why did she continue to put herself through the misery of these annual vacation excursions? Why didn’t she do more than leave a day early to have just a little bit of time to herself? Why couldn’t she stick by the plans she made every summer after the ordeal ended, always swearing to God and heaven above that next year she was going to get away alone?

You can’t, because they’re your sisters, her inconvenient conscience nagged. They’re your family. It’s tradition.

The four Mallory sisters had been vacationing separately from their parents ever since they were children. Ever since the elder Mallorys, Theodore and Diana, understandably wanting to remove themselves from the shrieks and demands of their somewhat spoiled offspring, had begun a tradition of sending their daughters on a variety of exotic adventures befitting the children of a wealthy industrialist and an affluent bank president. Their trips had ranged from island-hopping in the South Pacific to llama trekking in the Andes, from cruises in the Mediterranean to a dude ranch in Wyoming.

And when the sisters had grown into womanhood and undertaken demanding careers, they had still upheld the tradition with vigor, religiously penning the word vacation in big red letters over the first two weeks in August in their engagement books. Last year they had gone hiking in the Alps. This year Morgana had thought it would be fun to charter a sailboat in the Caribbean.

Morgana always got to choose, Moriah thought with annoyance. Then her oldest sister would locate her next romance novel in the place and count most of the trip as a tax write-off. Of course Marissa and Mathilda were no better, always agreeing wholeheartedly with whatever Morgana wanted. Moriah couldn’t remember the last time they’d accepted one of her suggestions. Granted, she had enjoyed the llama trek when she was fifteen. It had surprised her that Marissa had come up with that idea. Her obsession with her physical appearance had been legendary long before she’d become a fashion model. Mathilda had always been the adventurous one, Moriah remembered, recalling the way in which her second-oldest sister had just up and left the sanctuary of her parents’ sprawling Rhode Island estate one day to stake her claim on the New York stage. It had been a well-calculated risk. In October Mathilda would be opening in her first starring role on Broadway.

In fact all of her sisters had become very successful, Moriah realized with a mixture of heartburn and pride. Of course, she hadn’t done too badly herself. But becoming a full professor of cultural anthropology wasn’t exactly the glamour position of the century. And certainly her recently published textbook about the primitive tribes of Peru and Venezuela wouldn’t reach the top of the bestseller list the way Morgana’s latest, Lust’s Crashing Waves, had done. Still, Moriah was very proud of her accomplishments, even if no one else in the family was.

Ever since they were children the Mallory sisters had taken their world by storm. At least the three eldest Mallory sisters had. All slender and tall with wide blue eyes and silver-blond hair, Morgana, Mathilda and Marissa had enjoyed one success after another. Spaced only a year apart, they’d each achieved fame, fortune and a faithful following of fans, things they’d even managed to garner on a smaller scale in Newport, where they’d all grown up.

Unlike her sisters, Moriah had arrived nearly four years after Marissa, and where the others were tall and slender, she barely topped five foot two and was much more rounded in the hips and breasts. She, too, was blond, but not with the straight, silky shafts of blinding white and silver that her sisters claimed. Instead her hair was thick and curly, falling past her shoulders in a tumbling mass, what a casual observer might call a rich, dark, honey blond. Moriah had always regarded it as mousy. And in place of the pale, sky-blue eyes that were so striking on her sisters, Moriah’s eyes were slate gray, deep and expressive almost to a fault. Friends told her she had compelling eyes. Moriah had always considered them cloudy.

All her life Moriah had traveled in the wake and the shadow of her sisters’ accomplishments, both social and academic. She couldn’t count how many times she had heard the grumbled comment, “You’re not much like your sisters, are you?” Countless, too, were the occasions when her teachers and her dates alike had begrudged her any effort to promote her individuality. And all too vivid still were the nights she had spent home alone because too many times she’d disappointed people for not being a real Mallory sister. By the time Moriah had entered the illustrious Prescott Academy, the other Mallorys had all graduated and become a past glory, each having left Newport to seek education and careers elsewhere. Moriah had been left alone to face the massive burden of carrying on the name and the Mallory mystique. With the name, she had little problem as it was hers by birth. The mystique, however, was something she’d never quite been able to master. Consequently it left town along with her sisters.

So Moriah tried to get by as best as she could. And academically, anyway, she did quite well; her grades were excellent. But then that was to be expected of a Mallory, so her parents had never bothered to congratulate her for her accomplishments. They did, however, continuously bemoan her lack of social achievements, her absence of chatty friends and moon-eyed suitors. They wondered avidly why she didn’t have the interest in clothes, cosmetics and the opposite sex that had kept her sisters giggling and shopping all the time. And they were constantly curious about her quiet and solitary habits. Moriah’s sisters had certainly never been that way.

Moriah gulped back the last of her second beer and quickly ordered a third. The divers beside her were staking drunken claims on a bevy of sunburned beauties that beckoned to them from the other side of the bandstand. They nudged one another clumsily in the ribs and slurred out their none too chivalrous intentions toward the women.

“Oh, for God’s sake, just go over there, toss them over your Neanderthal shoulders and carry them back to your caves,” Moriah muttered with sarcastic impatience at the largest of the men.

He turned at the sound of the deep, feminine voice beside him, his movements slow, though as a result of his drunkenness or his anger, Moriah wasn’t sure. Like his friends, he was blond and tanned from days spent under the scorching sun, and his numerous overdeveloped muscles let her know that diving wasn’t the only sport in which he excelled.

She wondered what had possessed her to speak to the giant amphibian in the first place. It was bad enough that she was sitting alone in a bar. Now she had gone and drawn unwanted attention to herself.

“Are you talkin’ to me?” the diver asked her thickly, as if his tongue was having trouble navigating.

“Uh, no. No,” Moriah said quickly, her eyes darting from one man to another as her brain scrambled for polite and credible excuses that would cover her colossal blunder. “I, uh, I was talking to myself. Yes, that’s it. I’m, uh, I’m schizophrenic, you see. And you know what they say. You’re never alone with a schizophrenic.”

The diver gazed at her with a foggy expression, trying to comprehend the information she offered him. “I’ve never heard that,” he finally told her, gazing at her with a newfound interest. A predatory light began to flicker in his eyes as another thought struck him. “So if we went to bed together, would that be like getting it on with twins?”

Moriah’s jaw dropped fast at the man’s blatant suggestion, and she tried to ignore the jeers and leers of his friends. Her slight sunburn from the afternoon spent at Magen’s Bay became a deep crimson. “Uh, no, actually,” she stammered. “I’m, uh, I’m sure you’d be very disappointed.”

But the big, blond diver was not about to be put off by what had become an intriguing idea. His eyes wandered lazily across Moriah’s face, down her loose-fitting black T-shirt and short denim skirt, along the length of her shapely legs. On the trip back, his eyes lingered at her chest, where the scooped neckline of her shirt revealed just a tantalizing hint of the swell of her breasts, and he lifted his beer thirstily to his finely chiseled lips. When he finally looked back at her face, Moriah began to feel more than a little frightened. This guy was huge. And he was drunk. There was no way to know what he was going to do next. She took a deep breath in order to steady the accelerated thumping of her heart and gripped her bottle of beer tightly, as if it were a weapon.

“You know,” the diver began slowly, allowing his hand to travel the short distance of the bar that separated them until his fingers settled gently over her wrist, “we could have a really good time together.”

“Not tonight, fella, I’m waiting for someone,” she lied with determination, hoping her voice didn’t illustrate any of the unsteadiness she felt.

His hand tightened on her wrist, and his smile became a disturbing grimace. “Yeah, tonight,” he whispered viciously. “All night. Any guy who’d leave you waiting here alone isn’t worth the effort. I don’t live too far from here, and we could—”

“You’ve got the wrong woman, pal,” Moriah insisted, trying to free herself from his iron grip. When had everything gone crazy? she wondered wildly. A moment ago she’d been sitting quietly, enjoying a beer while she contemplated with dread what awaited her with the arrival of her sisters the next day, and now she was suddenly fearing for her safety. How had this happened?

The muscle-bound giant’s grip grew tighter with her struggles. “Oh, you like to wrestle, huh?” he murmured angrily. “That’s fine, baby. I like it rough, too. Let’s go.” He stood then, his intentions stated, pulling Moriah to her feet along with him.

“No,” she said with as much conviction as she could muster in her growing panic. She glanced about furiously, but everyone else seemed oblivious to her situation. The bartender was pouring drinks with his back to her, and the diver’s friends were eagerly egging him on. “Let go of me, you big jerk,” she hissed anxiously.

“Ah, ah, ah,” the diver admonished her as he grasped her upper arm painfully with his other hand. “No name-calling. I don’t like that. It’s not polite.”

His voice had become malicious and low, and Moriah decided then and there that serious times called for serious crimes. She was just beginning to bend her knee, quickly assessing the exact amount of force necessary to drive it into the man’s private parts and completely incapacitate him with pain, when another man came suddenly out of nowhere, dropped his arm casually across her shoulder and cried out, “Darling! I’ve been looking all over for you! Hiya, Bart. What’s new?”

Simultaneously Moriah and the diver turned to stare at the newcomer, one face etched with surprise, the other with wariness. Moriah took in the man’s handsome features, ruggedly bronzed from the sun, his laughing amber eyes and the slightly curling hair that had probably once been a dark rich mahogany but was now also streaked with a dozen shades of copper and bronze. He was taller than the diver who still held on to her, but not nearly as physically overblown. This man was firm and muscular, yes, but as a result of physical labor and lean times, not from afternoons spent at a gym. Moriah could only stare at him speechless, but her tormentor obviously knew the man and was disappointed by his interruption.

“Austen,” the diver greeted the other man with a reluctant nod. “You know this babe?”

Austen cringed a little at Bart’s statement, but his smile didn’t falter. “Know her?” he asked, seemingly aghast. “Know her? Why, Muffy and I are practically engaged!”

“Muffy?” Moriah and Bart spoke as one.

Austen’s smile dropped somewhat. “It’s a pet name,” he explained to the diver. When he looked over at Moriah, the crooked grin reappeared. She looked as if she wanted to slug him instead of Bart, and he was the one trying to rescue her. When he’d entered The Green House, he’d almost turned right around to leave again. The popular night spot was even more packed than usual, and for some reason he didn’t feel like being part of a crowd tonight. Normally he enjoyed a party as much as the next guy, and the more people, the better. But tonight he felt differently. Tonight he felt restless and edgy, anxious even. As if there was something big coming, but for the life of him he didn’t know what.

As he’d turned to leave, he’d caught sight of Bart and the boys at the bar, then almost involuntarily his eyes had been drawn to the woman they seemed to be tormenting. It wasn’t just the fact that she was beautiful that made him catch his breath; there was something else, too…some raw energy, some unassuaged yearning caged within her, threatening to burst out any minute. The look in her eyes spoke of wild desires that wanted to burn free but that she kept buried with careful control.

He could tell by her expression that Bart was threatening her and she was about to strike back. He’d even noticed her preparation to nail the diver in a place that most men considered exceedingly important. He had to admire her insistence that she was not about to be manhandled by the big gorilla, but knowing Bart the way he did, there was unfortunately no way she would have been allowed to leave St. Thomas intact had she succeeded with such an act. Therefore, Austen had jumped in with both feet in an effort to defuse a potentially explosive situation, hoping unconsciously, too, that like the good guy in all his favorite Westerns, he might also wind up with the girl.

“Thanks for keeping an eye on her, Bart,” he told the other man with a wink. “I was afraid she’d gotten tired of waiting for me and taken off.” He playfully but meaningfully tugged Bart’s hands from the woman’s tender flesh, then put his own arm around her waist and pulled her close.

Moriah had no choice but to allow him the liberty, reasoning that at least this man seemed sober and more normally proportioned, and would prove a much less formidable adversary than Bart.

“Yes, uh, Austen,” she began slowly, thankful that she remembered Bart’s use of the stranger’s name. She, too, wound an arm around his lean waist, explaining away the pounding of her heart as the aftershocks of having been placed in a dangerous situation. “It’s about time you showed up. I was getting worried.”

“Isn’t that just like a woman?” Austen said to the group of divers who still gazed at him with no small amount of suspicion. Impulsively he swung the woman around to face him and buried his hands in the hair that had tantalized him ever since he’d entered the bar. Her gray eyes widened in startled surprise, but Austen couldn’t help himself. Telling himself he was only doing it to convince Bart he actually knew this woman, he lowered his lips to hers in what he’d intended to be a quick, light kiss. But once he knew the warmth and softness of her mouth, once he tasted her sweetness and passion, Austen couldn’t retreat.

At first Moriah was shocked by the man’s actions, even if she had thought the arm draped around her waist had brought on some very pleasant sensations. She was being kissed by an absolute stranger! In a public place! While other strangers looked on! But what was worse, she realized, as the handsome, wonderfully muscular man intensified the kiss, she was really beginning to enjoy it.

Maybe it was a result of consuming too much beer or having been far too long without any male companionship, or maybe it was a leftover reaction to the highly tense situation in which she’d been embroiled only moments before. Maybe it was for some other reason she didn’t want to think about right now, but almost of their own volition, Moriah’s arms crept slowly and reluctantly up Austen’s abdomen until her fingers spread possessively across his chest. And that was all the invitation he needed to pull her closer and deepen the kiss. As his hands wandered freely over her back and shoulders, her fingers became tangled in his thick hair. When Moriah felt his tongue graze along the line of her teeth, she opened her mouth to him willingly and nearly collapsed in his arms at the reckless, hot sensations that washed over her at being so filled by him. She allowed herself to become lost in the passionate embrace for a moment, clinging to him as he clung to her, locking her tongue with his in an intimate celebration. But when she realized with a start that she was clinging so desperately and passionately to a total stranger, Moriah gasped out loud and pulled her lips savagely away.

“Stop,” she whispered breathlessly, her fingers betraying her as they continued to clutch great handfuls of Austen’s pale yellow T-shirt. She was so close to him that she could feel through his faded, tight blue jeans how aroused he had become, and her shame and horror at having provoked him into this state was almost too much to bear. “Please, just stop,” she repeated, ducking her head in embarrassment, unable to meet his eyes.

Austen’s gasps for breath were ragged and shallow, and he, too, was appalled by what had just transpired between them. He didn’t even know this woman’s name!

Moriah took a deep, calming breath and expelled it slowly. “The others…” she muttered lamely, looking around the bar fearfully. “Bart…”

Austen glanced quickly over her head to discover that Bart and his cronies had disappeared from their seats at the bar. With a brief survey of the room, he saw that they had joined a group of giggling beach bunnies, their smiles broad, their chests swelled, enjoying their new celebrity.

“The others are gone,” Austen murmured into Moriah’s ear. “So’s Bart. See for yourself.”

She turned uncertainly, her eyes darting between Austen and the recently vacated bar stools behind her, then returned her attention to him. “If that’s the case, then why don’t you let go of me?” she asked him pointedly, indicating the strong hands still settled possessively on her hips.

“’Cause I don’t want to,” he told her with a crooked smile, his curiously colored eyes sparkling with humor. “Why don’t you let go of me?” he returned, and Moriah realized with chagrin that she still clung with some insistence to the front of his shirt.

Immediately she released it, nervously running her damp palms over his chest in an effort to smooth the softly worn fabric. “Um, sorry about that,” she mumbled sheepishly.

“Hey, no problem,” he drawled, loving the feel of her hands caressing his chest.

Moriah, too, was somewhat preoccupied with the motions of her hands, marveling at the strength and hardness she felt below her fingertips. He probably had a really magnificent chest, she thought fondly. Well, of course it was magnificent now, with his tight T-shirt straining across the finely tuned muscles. But when he was naked, it was probably incred—

She dropped her hands as if she’d been burned, and pulled away from his now-loosened grip to reseat herself at her original position at the bar. After a long, cooling swallow of beer, she managed to look over at him without feeling her stomach turn inside out, though she did squirm a little when she realized his chest was still at eye level. After clearing her throat nervously, she finally said, “Well, thank you for coming to my rescue, Mister…”

“Uh-uh. No ‘Mister,’” he told her. “Just Austen.”

“Well, then, thank you, Austen. It was, um, enlightening meeting you, but now I’m more than certain that you have to be going somewhere. Goodbye.”

Austen’s already handsome face was made radiant by the mischievous glimmer that lighted up his eyes as he seated himself on the bar stool Bart had vacated. “You’re damned right it was enlightening,” he agreed. “But I don’t have to be anywhere until tomorrow morning. And frankly, I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to leave you here alone with Bart lurking around. I’m afraid I know the guy. And the way he was looking at you tonight…well, let’s just say the old boy’s tenacious where women are concerned.”

Unconsciously Moriah’s hand encircled the wrist that the diver had gripped so painfully, and she gazed at him uncomfortably across the room.

Austen noted the gesture with a frown. “Did he hurt you?” he asked softly, taking her wrist gently in his own hand. Her soft flesh was red from Bart’s manhandling, and he traced over her delicate bones with a roughly padded thumb.

Moriah grew warm at the exquisiteness of his caresses, so different from the savage pawing she’d suffered from the other man. “Not much,” she replied quietly. “Thanks again for helping me out.”

With a casual shrug, Austen brushed off her unnecessary thanks, then caught the bartender’s eye. “Stu, bring us a couple of planter’s punches.”

“Oh, no,” Moriah objected. “I’ve still got a beer here, and I don’t want to mix.”

“Come on,” Austen insisted. “You’re in the Caribbean. Drink something festive. You can have beer any day. Besides, you’ll love this. Trust me.”

On cue the bartender placed two tall, pinkish-orange drinks on the bar before them.

“Stir it up first,” Austen instructed.

“Why?”

“They float one-fifty-one on top.”

“One-fifty-one?”

“Just do as I say, Muffy, or I’ll have to get ugly.”

“My name isn’t Muffy,” Moriah said with a laugh as she rattled her straw around in her drink. “It’s Moriah.”

“Wow, what a great name,” he remarked with genuine appreciation.

“Really?” she asked, irrationally pleased that he thought so. “Yeah. Isn’t there an old song or something about that?” He thought for a moment and then recited with mock seriousness, “Way out west they have a name for wind and rain and fire.’ Or something like that.”

“Yeah, the wind is ‘wind,’ the rain is ‘rain,’ and they call the fire ‘fire,’” she rejoined with a chuckle.

“No, no, that’s not it. They call the wind Moriah,” Austen corrected.

“Whatever.”

“After what happened tonight, though, I’d say the fire should be called Moriah,” he murmured in a silky voice.

Moriah tried to pretend she hadn’t heard, but she sloshed a good bit of her drink onto the bar as her stirring became more furious. Dropping her straw onto the napkin, she lifted the wet glass to her lips and took a deep sip of her drink. “Hey, this is really good. I could drink a lot of these.”

“You’ll be sorry if you do,” he cautioned. “If not tonight, then tomorrow.”

“I never get hangovers,” she told him. She neglected to add that it was because she so seldom drank alcohol.

“A lot of people have lived to regret those words. Especially down in the Caribbean.”

“Do you live here?” Moriah asked with great interest. She already pretty much knew the answer to the question just from looking at him. Tourists were far too easy to spot in their newly purchased vacation clothes, sunburned from head to toe and dead drunk most of the time. Austen was much too comfortable in his surroundings, and his sun-bleached, rebelliously long hair and basic choice of clothes indicated to her that he wouldn’t be flying back to the States for the opening bids at the stock exchange Monday morning.

“Yeah,” Austen responded as predicted. “I’ve been down here about five years. How about you? Do you live here?”

Moriah nearly choked on her drink. Did she live here? In the Caribbean? Really, it was all too funny. What would the other professors in the anthropology department think? “Do I look like I live down here?” she asked in lieu of an answer.

Austen turned her question into an opportunity to give her the once-over again, and he smiled. Moriah kept any comments to herself, as she realized belatedly that she’d set herself up for his ogling.

“No,” Austen answered. “Your sunburn is a dead giveaway.”

“Swell,” Moriah mumbled as she lifted her drink to her lips.

“But,” he hastened to add, “you look like you belong here.”

Moriah gazed at him openly, honestly amazed at his statement. “I do?” she asked softly. A small smile playing about her lips and eyes reflected her genuine pleasure at his compliment.

Austen caught his breath at her expression. She looked even more beautiful than before, her face almost childlike in its innocent delight, as if he had offered her the highest of praise. “Yeah,” he breathed out quietly. “You do.”

Moriah continued to beam. “Thanks, Austen.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied automatically, still entranced by the warmth that emanated from her gray eyes.

For several moments they only gazed at each other as if verbal communication was unnecessary. Then with a start, Austen realized he knew nothing of this woman except that her name was Moriah and she was a damned-nice kisser, and he’d better get his mind in gear if he was going to score any points with her.

“So I guess you’re here on vacation?” he asked lamely, realizing they both already knew the answer to the question. When Moriah nodded as she sipped more of her drink, he continued, trying not to sound like the idiot he must surely appear. “Where are you from?”

“Originally from Newport, Rhode Island,” Moriah informed him. “I grew up there. Now I live and work in Philadelphia.”

“Newport’s a big sailing mecca, isn’t it?” Austen asked, always interested in things nautical.

“There are a lot of big yachts and sailboats up there,” Moriah agreed distastefully. “But boating is something I was never much into, personally,” she added with an edge to her voice, remembering all the nightmarish occasions as a child when the family had gone out on their seventy-two-foot yacht, Teddy’s Toy. Her father had always been determined that his four daughters would be perfect sailors and flawless nautical hostesses, and he’d spent each excursion impressing them with the severity of a drill instructor. Naturally Morgana, Mathilda and Marissa had all passed the tests with flying colors and enjoyed the trips immensely. Moriah, on the other hand, had struggled for years with motion sickness and vertigo, for the most part losing her lunch over the leeward side while her father looked on, shaking his head in disappointment.

Austen detected the bitter note in Moriah’s voice and incorrectly surmised that it was there because she harbored a distaste for people who could afford big yachts and sailboats. Therefore he didn’t pursue the topic, wanting instead to reestablish their earlier humor and ease of communication. “So what do you do in Philadelphia?” he asked in an effort to change the subject.

“I’m a teacher,” Moriah responded proudly, sitting up a little straighter in her chair.

Austen couldn’t help but grin at her, so obvious was her love for her job. It seemed like an appropriate profession for her. He got the impression Moriah was the type of person who would take pleasure in giving something of herself to others. She was probably great with kids, too, he suspected, and with her abundant good humor and self-confidence, she must be a great inspiration to her students. They probably loved her. If he’d had a teacher like her when he was in school, he definitely would have been inspired. Not to mention in love.

“What grade do you teach? What subject?” he asked her. Then impulsively he rushed on. “No, wait. Don’t tell me. Let me guess.”

Moriah sipped her drink slowly and told him, “I’m the most obvious candidate for my position in the world. You’ll guess in a second.”

Austen looked at her once more, taking in not just her gorgeous body this time, but the carefree clothes that encased it, the tumbling wildness of her dark gold hair, the laughing fire in her huge, beautiful eyes. “You have to teach either art or music,” he decided, not sure if the widening of her eyes meant he was right or wrong. “And probably the seventh or eighth grade. Am I right?”

Moriah’s laughter erupted uncontrolled from deep inside her, full and rich and uninhibited. Austen thought it the most wonderful laugh he’d ever heard.

“What?” he demanded with a chuckle. Her mirth was highly contagious. “Am I right?”

His question made Moriah laugh even more, the image of her doing something creative and beautiful just too, too funny to imagine. It was true that there was an abundance of artistic genes in the Mallory DNA, but they’d all been used up by the time she’d come along. She had to be thankful that she’d gotten more than her share of the intellectual ones, though, she ceded, Marissa having been shorted a bit there.

“Oh, Austen,” she finally managed to say through her giggles. “That’s pretty humorous.”

“I guess you’re trying to tell me that my assumption was a little off target.”

“Actually, the only way you could have been further off would be to have placed me at the head of an elementary schoolroom.”

“Look, are you going to tell me what you do for a living, or am I just going to sit here looking like a fool?”

Moriah smiled sweetly at him as she announced, “I’m a professor of cultural anthropology at a Philadelphia university. I teach upper-level and graduate classes in primitive South American cultures, and right now I’m studying different tribes of the Carib Indians, trying to discern their original migration routes from one island to another.”

“Oh,” Austen muttered. Then after a thoughtful swallow of his planter’s punch, he added, “You don’t look much like an anthropologist.”

Moriah’s genuine look of bewilderment told him she thought he was out of his mind. “Of course I do,” she said simply.

“No, you don’t,” he insisted. “I always pictured anthropologists as dry and humorless.”

“I am dry and humorless,” Moriah told him simply.

The realization that she actually believed that struck Austen like a freight train, but his consequent shock prohibited him from coming up with the proper denial. Instead he demanded, “How come you don’t have your hair pulled back and wear glasses like anthropologists are supposed to? Where’s your gray flannel suit and starched white blouse and sensible shoes, hmm?”

Moriah shrugged, and her reply was matter-of-fact. “Actually, I do usually pull my hair back, but after all the salt-water and wind and humidity at the beach today, it just refused to be contained. And I only wear my glasses for close-up work. As for the suit and sensible shoes, well, that’s kind of an outdated fashion statement even for anthropologists. Besides, they’re terribly inappropriate for field study.”

She didn’t seem angry or resentful when she made her statement, Austen thought after she concluded. But there was something, some almost undetectable glimmer in her eyes that indicated she was somewhat resentful about the life she led. She’d delivered her words without malice or defensiveness, just plainspoken, unadulterated fact. But somehow he felt that hers was a hollow, inappropriate description, that the way she did live wasn’t the way she wanted to live. That the person she described herself to be was in fact just a facade to disguise who she really was. What he didn’t understand was why she would want to deny herself that way.

Before he could verbally pursue his suspicions, a shutter suddenly fell over her eyes, and he wasn’t altogether sure that the look he thought he’d seen was ever there. Instead he only said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“No apology is necessary,” Moriah told him honestly, wondering why he should think one was. Everything he’d asserted about anthropologists, save the flannel suit, had been right on the mark as far as she was concerned. And she was every bit as guilty of following the stereotype as her colleagues at the university. She did dress modestly, and she did lack a sense of humor. She knew that because her sisters always complained about her colossal lack of fashion sense and because every time she tried to make jokes among her family or her peers, she was met with either blank stares or condescension. As a result she’d given up just about any attempt to describe the humor she still found in situations, because evidently what she considered funny simply was not.

Austen was silent for a moment, contemplating the puzzle of this beautiful woman, more curious about what made her tick than any person he’d ever met. And in the five years that had passed since he’d moved to the Caribbean, he’d met dozens of strange and wonderful characters. He watched Moriah drain her glass of the sweet pink liquid it held, entranced by the slender length of her throat, inevitably letting his eyes fall to the neckline of her shirt and the subtle swell of her full breasts. A cultural anthropologist. My, my, my. Perhaps if he’d majored in that instead of business he would have wound up a more satisfied man.

But thoughts of the past were behind him now, and as he gazed lustily at the woman beside him, his future was looking brighter. Particularly his immediate future. When two sunburned dancers wearing matching striped rugby shirts fell drunkenly against him with a giggle and a gasp, he turned to Moriah with an idea.

“It’s getting awfully crowded in here. What say we go someplace else? Someplace where there aren’t so many fods.”

Moriah eagerly licked the last of the planter’s punch from her lips and offered him a mild grin, beginning to feel the effects of the mysterious concoction. “Fods?” she asked, drawing her brows down in confusion. “What are fods?”

“Fods are all those tourists you see dressed identically alike so they won’t lose each other in a crowd,” he informed her, trying to ignore what the motion of her tongue did to his body. “It’s a widespread, imported phenomenon down here.”

“I see.” Looking around, Moriah did detect the presence of a number of couples wearing identical sportswear. “It would appear that these fods breed like rabbits,” she noted.

Austen smiled at her culturally anthropological observation. “Virtually overnight,” he concurred. “Come on, I know a better place. There are still a lot of tourists, but they’re cool tourists. They like to hang with us locals. You’ll like it.”

“Gee, I don’t think so, Austen,” Moriah hedged. “The rest of my family is coming down tomorrow morning and I should meet them at the airport.”

“Where’s your hotel?” he asked.

“Bolongo Bay Beach,” she told him.

“Hey, that’s not bad,” he commented, thinking college professors must get paid pretty well these days. “But I wouldn’t sign up for any diving lessons if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“Bart’s one of the instructors.”

“You mean that big Neanderthal works in the same hotel where I’m staying?” Moriah’s concern was obvious.

“Don’t worry,” Austen assured her with a smile. “He usually has his head underwater. Explains the waterlogged brain, you know?”

Moriah smiled back at him. Austen had come at her virtually out of nowhere, looking like a bronzed Adonis, rescuing her from the menace of a pack of tiger sharks. He’d made her laugh a lot and enjoy herself immensely this evening, despite the dread she still harbored at her sisters’ impending arrival. Not to mention the fact that he was a remarkably talented kisser, too. Austen might have come as a surprise, but it had taken Moriah no time at all to decide that she liked him. A lot.

“Anyway,” he went on, interrupting her thoughts, “what I was going to say was that your hotel isn’t that far from the airport. You won’t have to get up too early. You could stay up just a little bit longer, couldn’t you?”

He’s so cute, Moriah thought with no small amount of surprise. She’d never fallen for a cute man in her life. She’d always gotten involved with men who were as dry and humorless and as ignorant of the concept of fun as she. And, of course, that’s why she’d always wound up dumping them.

“I don’t know,” she began reluctantly, obviously weakening in her conviction. “If you knew my family the way I do, you’d understand.”

“Hey, if they’re anything at all like you, I don’t think you’ll have any problem,” he told her.

But that was the problem, she wanted to tell him. The rest of the Mallory clan were nothing at all like her. Or rather, she was nothing at all like the rest of the Mallory clan. That’s what had always been the problem.

“Come on, Moriah,” Austen coaxed as he nudged her shoulder playfully with his. “You’re on vacation. Enjoy yourself.”

“Actually, it’s going to be something of a working vacation,” she told him, stalling for time. “I’ll be visiting several islands that have university and library facilities, and I’ve made some appointments with other anthropologists and professors. I’m doing some research for a new textbook that I hope will be a useful tool in classes focusing on primitive Caribbean cultures.”

Austen looked at her for a moment without speaking, then slowly, gradually, a wonderfully wicked, marvelously mischievous grin spread across his face. His amber eyes twinkled merrily when he finally spoke. “You know, you’re right. You are dry and humorless. But I have the perfect remedy for that.”

Moriah blinked. “You do?”

“Yeah.” Austen’s smile broadened, and Moriah felt her insides turning into mashed bananas. “Come on, Moriah. We’re going to Sparky’s.”

Chapter Two

“So what you’re saying, Austen, is that these naughty, um, I mean, these nautical nods—”

“Nautical nogs.”

“Whatever. What you’re saying is that these teeny little drinks are the ultimate cure-all for the world’s ills. That if every world leader past and present sat down at a big table at Sparky’s and sipped these little drinks, then the world would be a beautiful place. Is that about the gist of it?”

“That’s about the gist of it,” Austen agreed, smiling down at a flushed, soft, slightly inebriated Moriah.

“What I don’t understand, though,” she went on, then paused suddenly when she became fascinated by the gold-tipped errant curl that had tumbled over one eye as she spoke. She brushed at it weakly in an attempt to make it join the rest of the unruly mass, but it fell forward again almost immediately. “What I don’t understand is what I’m supposed to do with a collection of these little blue-and-white china mugs if they don’t make a pitcher to match them.”

Austen laughed and glanced at the man seated next to him. Upon entering Sparky’s, he had recognized Dorian Maxwell from across the room, no easy feat amid a crowd large enough to rival The Green House. Austen had shouted to his friend and partner, and the other man had waved an invitation to join him and the large group crammed around a small, scarred cocktail table. At Moriah’s enthusiastic consent, they had. Dorian was originally from Tortola, but the two men had both lived on St. Thomas for the past five years, having based their business there. So Dorian knew as well as Austen the effect that several of Sparky’s nautical nogs could have on a person, and the wide white grin that split the other man’s sable-skinned face mirrored the one Austen knew must be fast spreading across his own.

“Well, to be honest, Moriah,” Austen said, “very few people walk away from the table with a collection of the mugs, and I have to shudder at the concept of what an entire pitcher of nautical nogs might do to someone.”

Moriah’s eyes narrowed as the information Austen offered her seeped slowly into her brain. She blew an upward gust of breath from her lips and finally sent the unruly curl that had been plaguing her back from her forehead. “Oh,” she replied. “Okay. Can we have another one?”

Dorian laughed out loud, a rich, deep rumbling that seemed to erupt from his very soul. He slapped Austen soundly on the knee and said through his chuckles, “Looks like you got her right where you want her, mon. I guess you’ll be wantin’ the key now to Lionel’s apartment.”

Austen grinned sheepishly at the other man’s reference to a friend’s apartment near the bar that they both borrowed from time to time whenever it seemed one of them was going to get lucky. He mumbled vaguely, “Ah, not just yet.” Then to Moriah he responded, “I think you’ve had enough nautical nogs for one evening. They have a tendency to hit you when you’re not looking.”

Moriah gazed at him with a puzzled frown until the meaning of his statement hit her squarely in the brain. “Are you insinuating that I’m drunk?” she gasped in horror. “Why, I’ll have you know that I have never, never, never, never, never in my entire life been under the influence of anything.”

“Moriah…” Austen began to apologize.

But Moriah pushed on as if she hadn’t heard him. “Except for that Valentine’s Day dance at Barry Masterson’s house when I was sixteen. But that was Marissa’s fault. Hers and that geeky boyfriend’s of hers, Bra-ad.” She said the name in a singsong voice, rolling her eyes as she did so.

Austen’s smile broadened. He was having more fun tonight than he’d had in a long, long time, and he owed it all to the honey-haired, lushly curved, slightly sunburned woman at his side. Moriah was such a far cry from the numerous and redundant bleach-blonde, salon-tanned, surgically perfected, empty-headed women with whom he normally took up on St. Thomas. The ones who came down from the States with the dual intentions of toning up their tans and getting lucky with the locals. Even under the influence, Moriah was bright and fascinating, and the more time Austen spent with her, the deeper he felt himself falling into the inviting depths of her dark gray eyes.

“So what did Marissa and geeky Brad do?” he encouraged her to finish the story she’d left hanging.

“Hmm?” Moriah responded, gazing at him with warm, liquid eyes, thinking that this man was just about the most gorgeous one she’d ever seen.

“The Valentine’s Day dance when you were sixteen?” he prodded. “You got drunk that night?”

Moriah’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How did you know about that?” she demanded.

“You just brought it up,” he told her.

“I did?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Oh.”

When she didn’t continue, Austen tried again. “So what did Marissa and Brad do?”

Moriah frowned, drawing her brows downward comically. “They slipped me a Mickey,” she said with melodramatic bitterness. Almost immediately her face cleared of its feigned dark expression and she smiled broadly. “But I got even,” she announced.

“What did you do?” Austen tried not to laugh but found it nearly impossible.

“I countered with a Donald,” she told him, slapping a hand over her mouth to hold in the giggles she felt erupting. “Then we all went out and got Goofy,” she added through her chuckles. “Get it? Mickey? Donald? Goofy? Isn’t that hilarious?”

“Hilarious,” Austen agreed, though his own mirth wasn’t so much a result of the joke as it was from watching Moriah.

“I read that on a greeting card,” she said when she’d regained control of herself. “I love telling that story now. It used to be no fun at all.”

Austen shook his head as if to clear it. “I’m not sure I want to know where you shop for greeting cards.”

“What? Why not?”

He sighed. “Never mind, Moriah. You want to dance?”

Immediately her eyes cleared of their wariness and she answered enthusiastically, “Oh, yes. I love to dance.”

“Earlier this evening you told me you didn’t know how to dance,” he reminded her, referring to the talk they’d had as they were walking to Sparky’s, a talk in which Moriah had tried once again to convince him that she was every bit as humorless as she claimed. He eased out of his chair now, pulling Moriah gently behind him.

“I did?” she asked as she stood up and straightened the neckline of her shirt. “Why would I have said that? I don’t understand.”

“There’s a lot about you I don’t understand,” Austen mumbled under his breath, then added silently, But it’s going to be a pleasure figuring you out.

As they neared the dance floor, the duo performing onstage began a slow acoustic rendition of a relatively unknown Jimmy Buffett song. It was one of Austen’s favorites, and he pulled Moriah close, wanting to savor the tune and the woman who made the moment ideal. Swaying rhythmically to the gentle strains of the guitar and softly uttered words of the very romantic song, Austen tucked Moriah’s head under his chin, closed his eyes and sighed with complete contentment.

Moriah felt utterly at peace in Austen’s arms, marveling at how easily and naturally the two of them were getting along. She usually wasn’t very open to strangers, especially those of the masculine persuasion. And Austen was extremely masculine in his persuasion. Almost as if to illustrate that thought, her fingers pressed into the strong flesh on his back and waist, loving the firm muscles she encountered. In response to her exploration, Austen pulled her closer, and she gasped as her body was thrust once again into intimate contact with his. Instead of pushing away, though, Moriah found herself snuggling even closer to him, drawn by his warmth and strength, attracted by whatever it is that draws a woman so irrevocably to a man. She inhaled deeply the fragrance that surrounded him, something wonderfully elusive and utterly reminiscent of the sea.

Austen was so unlike other men she knew, so far removed from the dry, overly academic professors and the insecure, pseudo-intellectual students with whom she came into daily contact. Moriah only dated occasionally, and then never anyone outside her social or academic circles, which basically were one and the same. She shared common interests with men of her acquaintance, and she generally had a good time when she went out, but never had a man excited her the way Austen had within moments of meeting him. He was handsome in a rebellious, carefree sort of way, completely confident and self-assured. He was clever and interesting, and along with Dorian had told her some of the most wonderful stories about the Caribbean she’d ever heard. He made her laugh, and feel oh so good. Was it any wonder then that she found herself liking Austen, liking him a lot?

As one slow song faded into another, Austen continued to hug Moriah’s warm, softly curving body more expressively against his, unwilling to put an end to their intimacy just yet. Dancing with Moriah was the only socially acceptable way he could think of to be this close to her, but he realized unequivocally that even this closeness wasn’t enough. It shocked him how good she made him feel so soon after meeting her, but it was more than the sexual yearning she aroused in him. Hell, just about every night he met a woman he wanted to take to bed. With Moriah, though, the attraction was more complex, more puzzling. He figured that if he plied her with a few more drinks, he could probably talk her into anything. She seemed more than willing right now. But for some reason, sleeping with her tonight was the last thing he wanted to do. She wasn’t meant for one-night stands, and he knew a one-night stand wouldn’t even come close to satisfying what he wanted with her.

For the first time that he could ever remember, Austen wanted to get to know a woman, wanted to delve into her soul and discover everything he could. He wished fervently that he didn’t have so much work looming before him. Tomorrow afternoon he would have to leave St. Thomas, and he wouldn’t be back for almost a month. By that time Moriah would be long gone, back to Philadelphia and the stuffy, stifling world of anthropology, and he’d never have the chance to further explore these curiously tumultuous sensations that had been speeding through his body ever since he’d laid eyes on her.

He suddenly ceased the slow movement of their bodies that had passed for dancing and pushed her at arm’s length. Searching her face earnestly, focusing his amber eyes on her dark gray ones, he asked quickly, “Moriah, how long will you be staying on St. Thomas?”

The quickness of his movements and the intensity in his voice surprised her, and her eyes widened with confusion and concern. “Until tomorrow,” she told him.

He shook his head slowly as if he didn’t understand. “But you said your family is coming down tomorrow. How can you be leaving?”

“They are coming,” she assured him. “But we’re not staying here. We’re going island-hopping for the next two weeks, all over the place. It was my sisters’ idea.” And now I have another reason to resent them, she thought. Their decision to charter a boat and leave St. Thomas meant she wasn’t going to be able to meander down this new avenue her life had stumbled upon.

Austen’s thoughts suddenly became urgent. He didn’t know why, but somehow he had to see her again. “What islands?” he pressed. “Maybe we could meet up on one of them. I’ll be traveling, too, for the next four weeks.”

Moriah thought for a moment. It would be fabulous to meet up with Austen at some point during the cruise, especially since she knew her sisters would have more than their share of invitations from men. It was always the same. Morgana, Mathilda and Marissa would dazzle everyone who happened to meet the group of sisters, and Moriah would be unwittingly pushed into the background. It wasn’t that she was particularly unattractive, uninteresting or inept. It was just that the three elder Mallorys were, in a word, spectacular. Moriah, by comparison, was pretty, nice and well-bred. And most men, given the choice, would choose dazzling over decent any day.

Yet somehow Moriah sensed that Austen would be different. He wasn’t shallow and superficial like the men her sisters generally dated, and she felt he wouldn’t be impressed by the fame and fortune and flutter that surrounded them. Austen liked her; she could feel it. And even the looming specters of her sisters would fail to turn his head. She hoped.

“I…I’m not sure,” she replied honestly. “My sister has our itinerary, and to tell you the truth, I had very little to do with the planning.” That was a laugh, she thought. She’d never had any amount of input into the preparation of their vacations. Her sisters always chose the destinations and activities, always organized every detail, even decided what they’d order for dinner at the restaurants they selected. They never bothered to consult Moriah. Why should they? Every Mallory knew that little Mo was far too inexperienced to make suggestions of such magnitude. Every spring Moriah received a letter from Morgana telling her where they were going, when they would meet and how much she could expect to spend. And like the unobtrusive little sister that she was and had always been, Moriah went along obediently and silently.

“You came to the Caribbean for a vacation and you don’t even know where you’re going?” Austen asked incredulously.

Moriah became defensive at his tone of voice. “I’m not very good at organizing things,” she explained lamely. Then she quickly remembered that her flight home was from St. Vincent. “I know we’ll be in St. Vincent at the end of the trip,” she offered hopefully.

“Great.” Austen breathed with a sigh of relief. He was going to wind up there, too. “When?”

“We should be arriving on the fourteenth sometime, because our plane back to the States leaves the afternoon of the fifteenth.”

Austen couldn’t believe his good luck. “That’s terrific!” he exclaimed happily. “I’ll be there the fourteenth through the sixteenth!”

Moriah’s shy smile told him she was as happy about that as he.

He let his hands roam up to her shoulders and give them an affectionate squeeze. “We could meet there somewhere,” he told her uncertainly. “If you want to, I mean.”

She nodded slowly, confused by the sudden case of nerves that was invading her body. Her stomach tightened into a fist, while her heart pounded erratically in her throat. She felt as if she was a teenager again, back at The Prescott Academy, hanging out by the boys’ gym in hopes of catching a glimpse of the school quarterback. “Yes,” she answered breathlessly. “I’d like that a lot.”

“Great,” he repeated, then felt like an idiot for suddenly losing track of his normally extensive vocabulary.

“But I don’t know anything about St. Vincent,” she told him. “I don’t know where anything is.”

“No problem,” he assured her. “It’s not that big an island.” He wracked his brain to come up with a place where he could meet her that would be appropriate. Normally he saw very little of the islands he visited, usually restricting himself to the bar life—waterfront bars at that. But Moriah wasn’t exactly the type of woman to frequent such haunts. The Green House and Sparky’s were great places to go when he was home on St. Thomas, crawling with tourists and locals alike who might want to hire him and Dorian, or else put him in touch with someone else who would. But when he worked, he generally needed the distraction and escape that came with little hole-in-the-wall dives, wanting to get away from the demands of his employers, usually self-centered, whiny, red-faced little people who wanted to spend their vacations throwing their weight around because they’d been pushed too far by their own bosses at home.

After a moment’s thought, he came up with a brilliant idea, the perfect spot for trysting lovers. Somehow that’s the way he viewed their next meeting. “The airport is in Kingstown,” he told her. “Just north of town is the botanical gardens. They’re gorgeous. Any cabdriver can take you there. Meet me the evening of the fourteenth at, say, five o’clock?”

“Okay,” Moriah agreed. “Five o’clock it is.”

“I’ll be at the front entrance with a red hibiscus behind my left ear,” he said with a smile.

“I’ll find you,” she promised.

They gazed at each other for a long time, having forgotten that they were still standing in the middle of the dance floor until another couple bumped into them during the duo’s lively rendition of a popular Jimmy Cliff tune.

“Oops,” Moriah mumbled sheepishly as she was thrown once again into intimate contact with Austen’s tall, muscular form.

He caught her in his arms, steadying her even though there was very little need to do so; she had righted herself by gripping his big biceps possessively. He smiled when she looked up at him shyly with wide, questioning eyes. Almost involuntarily he lowered his mouth to hers, nibbling provocatively at her lips, tasting the corners of her mouth with the tip of his tongue, pulling her closer still until she wasn’t sure where she ended and he began. Moriah closed her eyes then and kissed him back, softly at first, in response to the gentle request in his actions, then more intensely as the passion built. Amid the sweating, gyrating, laughing dancers on the floor, Austen and Moriah became oblivious to everything except each other—exploring, touching, tasting as if they’d never experienced the glory that could be found with another human being. Only when a couple of islanders danced by and muttered, “Eh, go for it, mon,” did they put an end to their extensive research, standing still at the center of a crowd, feeling muddled and uncertain, gasping for breath and confused as hell.

“I’m sorry,” Austen whispered.

“For what?” she rasped through ragged breaths.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. Not out here in front of all these people.”

“I thought I was the one who kissed you,” Moriah told him.

“Did you?”

“I don’t know,” she confessed with a laugh, honestly confused. “I don’t know what’s happening between us. It’s like…”

“Like nothing you’ve ever experienced,” he finished for her.

“Yes,” she agreed with a slow nod.

He nodded, as well. “Me, too,” he said softly. After a brief instant he added, “Come on. Let’s go back to the table.”

When they returned to their seats, most of the original group had dispersed, leaving only Dorian and his date, Maggie, a very beautiful and exotic-looking woman from St. Lucia who was wearing the most form-fitting red dress Moriah had ever seen, and another couple from St. Thomas that Austen had called old friends, a sixty-three-year-old Norwegian named Gustav and his twenty-two-year-old Swedish wife of four years, Anna. They were passing around photographs of their eight-month-old twins when Moriah and Austen returned, and it occurred to Moriah then, that since she had arrived in the Caribbean, she hadn’t met a single person who wasn’t interesting in some way.

Despite Austen’s warnings, Moriah ordered another nautical nog, arguing that since the drink had coffee in it, she couldn’t possibly get that drunk from one or two more, and the group lapsed into lively conversation. Seated beside Austen, feeling more and more mellow as the night wore on, Moriah began to experience a most remarkable sense of well-being, as if the entire earth were beginning to rotate specifically as she dictated. All of a sudden her life seemed more appealing, her future more promising. And then, with surprising clarity, something very odd and very significant occurred to her.

For the first time that she could ever recall in her life, Moriah Mallory felt as if she was in the center of things instead of in the background, like she was a part of what was going on instead of a witness to it. Her insights into the dialogue surrounding her were well-heard and appreciated by the others, and their responses in return were pertinent and respectful. She simply wasn’t used to such reactions after years of being ignored or pooh-poohed by her family as too young, too inexperienced or too naive to know what she was talking about. Moriah liked Austen’s friends almost as much as she liked Austen, and she was startled to discover that she felt more at home in the dimly lighted, character-infested bar than she had ever felt among her family at home or her colleagues at the university. On top of everything else Austen had made her feel that evening, he’d given her the opportunity to be a part of something, had made her feel as if she belonged. And for that more than anything else, she felt she owed him the greatest thanks.

When the hour grew late and the conversation lagged, the group reluctantly but unanimously agreed that it was time to part ways. Gustav and Anna were going to head home, while Dorian and Maggie invited Austen and Moriah to an all-night party at the home of a mutual friend near Red Hook. With an expressive glance toward each other, both simultaneously declined. Instead Austen drove Moriah back to her hotel, taking a roundabout route to give her a casual tour of the island along the way. Even in the dark, the moonlit views were spectacular, and Moriah breathed deeply the balmy Caribbean night, so different from the stifling, stale heat that had pervaded Philadelphia all summer. What was it about the tropics that made the heat not only bearable but enjoyable? she wondered. Then gazing along the way at the silver moon and crystal stars that hung above the lush whispering palm trees and the long ribbon of surf that stretched around the U-shaped beach at Magen’s Bay, she realized the answer to her question. Who wouldn’t prefer this to the city?

Probably anyone who couldn’t find a job down here, she told herself drily. Too bad the number-one business was tourism, she added silently. She hadn’t gone to school for seven years and suffered through her thesis and dissertation to become a hotel manager or bartender or diving instructor. And even if her studies focused on primitive Caribbean cultures right now, there weren’t too many universities down here that could offer her the funds, the staff or the resources she needed to facilitate her research.

Moriah sighed heavily at the realization, and Austen glanced at her from the driver’s side of his Jeep. Every time he looked at her, she was more beautiful, he thought. And now, with the moon glinting off her curls like honeyed silver, her hair tossed about furiously by the wind, she nearly took his breath away. When they finally arrived at her hotel, he pulled into the parking lot and got out along with her, suggesting that they end the evening with a stroll along the beach.

“But it’s after one o’clock in the morning,” she protested reluctantly, beginning to feel a significant buzz from her drinks at Sparky’s but still unwilling to end what had been an exceptionally pleasurable evening.

“Just a short one, Moriah,” he entreated. “Please?”

She smiled at him and capitulated easily. “Okay.”

They found their way down to the beach through the nearly deserted hotel lobby and kicked off their shoes when they touched the warm, powdery white sand. They both reached automatically for the other’s hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, and Moriah found herself gazing up toward Austen’s face expectantly, as if he might be able to reveal to her all the secrets of the universe. Instead she saw a man whose burnished skin made him ruggedly handsome, whose charmingly crooked smile displayed a row of even, white teeth and gave rise to deep slashes on his square jaws that she supposed were meant to be dimples. A funny little heat seeped into Moriah’s stomach, as if she’d consumed a flaming dessert before the fire was extinguished. It spread into her heart and her breasts, creeping up her neck to her face, and she knew her temperature must have risen ten degrees just looking at him. Somewhere in the distance, perhaps at one of the bars or other hotels or maybe just somewhere in the hidden darkness of her feverish imagination, Moriah heard steel drums picking up a lively, joyful tune, something that reminded her of endless oceans and long sea voyages, of hot passion-filled nights and tranquil summer days.

Austen seemed to hear the magic, mystic music, too, because he stopped suddenly and turned to her, searching her face for something he didn’t voice. As the warm surf lapped playfully about their ankles and the cool breeze lifted their hair, Austen brought his hands up to gently cup Moriah’s face. For long moments he only looked at her, and gingerly, she covered his hands with her own and waited. Finally he dipped his head quickly and brushed her lips with his, so softly that Moriah thought at first she must have imagined it. But then he kissed her again, and again, this time gently urging her shy mouth with his, asking permission, petitioning, pleading.

Eagerly she answered him with a need and desire to rival his own, running her fingers down the length of his bent arms to rest on his shoulders, coming up on tiptoe to press her mouth anxiously against his. With a groan, Austen wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, lifting her easily from the sand to bury his face in the thick, sea-scented tresses that fell over her shoulder. Hungrily he kissed her neck and collarbone, her jaw, her cheek, her forehead. Then once again his lips traveled down to capture hers, hot and insistent. He traced her mouth with the tip of his tongue, then nipped and tasted her lower lip as if he couldn’t get enough.

“Moriah,” he rasped out softly, pulling her tightly into his arms, tucking her head snugly beneath his chin, “we have to stop this right now.”

Moriah’s heart banged against her rib cage with the speed and force of a battering ram. What am I doing? she asked herself frantically, realizing with utter shock that her behavior tonight was so unlike her usual stern reserve and propriety. It was as if she had become another person since she had met Austen. As if her personality had just split down the middle and now she was acting like some wanton, hedonistic, mindless being. Good heavens! She was acting like one of her sisters! It simply was not like Professor Mallory to pick up a man in a bar and follow him all over town. Never in her life had she reacted so wildly and impulsively to a man the way she had to Austen. Not with professional and academic men she had known for months and years, and certainly not with some beach bum she had just picked up in a bar.

Virtually all of her life she’d been building up sturdy walls and barriers to keep away the pain that came with continuous rejection, to protect herself from ever being thoughtlessly hurt again. But somehow, and in a very short span of time, Austen had managed to tear down those walls, break through those barriers and had experienced very little difficulty in doing so. Moriah had to admit with a good deal of surprise that she had been perfectly happy to let him do it. And standing here now on the beach of a tropical island, digging her toes into the sand, breathing in the fragrance of the summer night and the handsome, exciting man beside her, savoring the kiss of the breeze on her skin and watching the shimmery light of the wide silver moon dance across the tranquil water…it suddenly occurred to Moriah that this was exactly where she belonged. The scent of her stale, stark campus office was exactly where it belonged right now, too—a million miles away.

Moriah told herself that it was precisely because she did feel like another woman that she made her next suggestion. Because she was free of the restrictive leashes that her job and her relatives choked around her, free of the academic and familial mores that dictated she be stark and stale, too. With Austen, she was no longer Mo Mallory, underachieving younger sibling of the spectacular Mallory sisters, nor did she have to perform to the high standards and intellectual level of Professor Moriah Mallory, Ph.D., cultural anthropologist. Here, with him, she could be anyone she wanted to be, and for tonight, she just wanted to be Moriah, a woman with wants and needs like any other, a woman whose feelings were fierce and whose desires ran deep. A woman who wanted and needed the man who held her close in his strong arms.

“Austen,” she whispered quickly, breathlessly, fearful that the wind would whisk her words before he heard them, “I want you to spend the night with me. I want to make love with you.”

She heard him catch his breath, felt his heart begin to fire rapidly in his chest. For long moments neither of them moved, and she began to worry that Austen wasn’t going to answer her. Finally his softly uttered words splintered open the dark, quiet night.

“Moriah, you don’t know what you’re saying,” he told her softly.

“Yes, I do,” she insisted.

He pulled his head from above hers and looked affectionately down into her eyes, then shook his head slowly back and forth. “No, you don’t,” he repeated simply.

“Austen—”

“Moriah, you’re here temporarily on vacation,” he interrupted her. “And the Caribbean is a far cry from Philadelphia, believe me. It’s very, very easy to get things mixed up down here, very, very easy to confuse your priorities and values.”

“But—”

“I went a little crazy myself the first time I came down here, and when I went home, I had to do some pretty serious thinking before I decided to change the way I was living. It took me months to make the decision. You’ve only been here for one day.” He bunched a fistful of curls at her temple into his palm and gazed into her eyes with an expression Moriah didn’t understand. “You have no idea what you’re saying right now. Trust me. It’s your heart talking, not your head.”

She lifted her chin a little defiantly. “And what’s so wrong with that?” she demanded. “Maybe if everyone thought with his heart instead of his head the world would be a better place.”

He smiled at her, a smile that was sweet, serene and sad. “That’s never going to happen. Everyone would grow up to become a fireman or a ballerina, and we’d all do nothing but lie on the beach and eat out.”

“But, Austen,” she protested, “I’ve never met a man like you before. You’re…” She paused for a moment, uncertain what it was exactly she wanted to say. Finally she just told him, “I don’t want anything to happen. I don’t want you to disappear and then never know what it’s like to…”

When her voice trailed off, leaving her statement unfinished, he smiled at her again, but this time his smile was gentle, happy and warm. “You’re not going to lose me, Moriah,” he assured her.

Her eyes searched his frantically. “You promise?”

He nodded slowly and pushed back her hair with his hand. “I promise,” he vowed, leaning down to seal the bargain by placing a soft kiss on her forehead.

“Well, could we stay out walking a little longer anyway?” she asked him hopefully.

“What about your family tomorrow? Didn’t you want to get up early to meet them?”

Moriah pushed the annoying thought of her sisters to the back of her brain. “Oh, who cares?” she muttered irritably. “Let them get a taxi to the hotel, they’re not helpless.” She circled her arms around Austen’s neck and arched her body closely toward him. “I don’t want this night ever to end,” she said quietly.

Oh, God, he groaned inwardly, loving the way her body felt pressed so intimately against his, neither did he. He began to reconsider the wisdom of his previous statements to Moriah. Maybe he’d been a little rash in suggesting that she didn’t know what she was saying when she told him she wanted to make love. Hell, she was a grown woman; she knew what she was doing. What would be so wrong about the two of them spending the night together? When had he become so damned noble, for God’s sake? And when had he developed a conscience?

“All right,” he ceded to her request. “Just a little farther up the beach. But then I have to leave. I’ve got to work in the morning.”

Moriah was about to ask him what exactly it was that he did for a living, surprised that the question hadn’t come up before now, but at that moment, the steel-drum music started up again, a catchy mambo number that made her want to dance. “Let’s go find out where the music is coming from,” she said with an excited smile.

“Moriah, I just told you, I have to work in the morning.”

“But tonight you introduced Dorian as your business partner, so I assumed you have your own business. Don’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“So if you’re the boss, can’t you go in late for once?”

“No, it’s not like that. I can’t—”

“Please, Austen?”

She looked at him with such pure and childlike hopefulness that Austen had to smile at her and give in. What was wrong with him, thinking about work when he only had a few more short hours to spend with Moriah? “All right,” he surrendered, laughing at the look of naked relief and joy that spread across her beautiful features. “We’ll go and find out where the music is coming from.”

Moriah had never stayed out all night long before, but tonight had been full of firsts, she decided, so why not add one more? They wandered up the beach until they came to an open-air pavilion surrounded by dancing, laughing people. As they pushed their way through the crowd, they too became infected with the high spirits of the others. When they finally broke into the front of the group, they saw a tiny stage encircled by blue-tipped flaming torches, where four islanders wearing bright red shirts and white pants danced and shouted as they pounded out on their green-and-yellow steel drums the most wonderful music Moriah had ever heard. She laughed out loud at the feeling of fun and life that went rippling through her body while she watched them, and she scarcely paid attention when her feet and hands took up the rhythm of the drums. Someone pressed a tall tropical drink into her hands, and she consumed it thirstily, only to discover it replaced by another, then another when she was through.

For what seemed like hours she and Austen danced and sang and laughed, so caught up in their revels that they barely noted the passing time. When the musician reluctantly announced that their set was over, Moriah and Austen voiced their playful disappointment with the others and then made their way slowly back down the beach. Reaching absently for each other’s hand, they strolled in comfortable silence back to Moriah’s hotel. But when they arrived at her room and Moriah opened the door to the expansive pale-peach-and-white suite, she discovered to her annoyance that it was spinning and pitching precariously and that all she could do to make it stop was cling to Austen like there was no tomorrow.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her when she spun quickly and clumsily around to grab him.

“Room’s jumping around,” she mumbled into his broad, muscular chest.

“The room’s fine, Moriah,” he assured her with an affectionate chuckle, tugging at the arms that were circled possessively around his neck. “But I think you might be just a little bit tipsy.”

Instead of letting him go, she buried her face against his chest and clung more tightly. “No, no, no,” she said as she shook her head fiercely. “I told you I never, never, never, never, never…” Her words trailed off as she lost track of what she was going to say.

“You never get drunk,” Austen reminded her.

“Right.” This time she nodded her head eagerly up and down. “I never do.”

“Well, maybe you’re just a little bit tired then,” he corrected himself magnanimously.

“Yeah,” she said on a sigh. Then realizing somewhat foggily that if she was tired she wouldn’t be able to talk Austen into doing what she wanted so desperately to do, Moriah quickly changed her mind. “I mean no!” she exclaimed frantically, lifting her head enough to gaze groggily into his eyes. “I’m not tired! I’m not! I swear!”

Austen couldn’t help grinning. God, she was sexy. Her hair, that wonderfully thick mass of spun gold that he had delighted in touching all night, cascaded wildly about her face and shoulders like a crooked halo. Her huge, dark eyes danced dizzily with excitement, and her warm, curvaceous body was soft and pliant as she pressed it against him in an effort to remain standing. The scooped neckline of her black T-shirt had slipped over one shoulder to reveal sun-pinkened skin and the top of one lush, creamy breast. When Moriah rubbed herself against him unknowingly, Austen felt himself growing hard with need, felt all his good intentions about keeping his distance dissolving into a warm mist.

“Austen?” she whispered thickly against the tanned, salty skin of his neck. Her warm breath stirred him even more, and unconsciously he dropped his hands to her hips to steady her, pulling her even more intimately against him, getting little relief from the desire that was fast ripping through him.

“What, Moriah?” he rasped out raggedly. He had to get her into bed this instant. Alone. The longer he had to hold her up, the closer she’d pull herself next to him. And the closer Moriah got to him, the more dangerous their predicament became.

“Don’t go home tonight,” she murmured softly against his chin, following her words with feathery little kisses to his jaw. “Stay here with me.”

The hands that had been wrapped tightly around his neck now loosened, and Austen relaxed somewhat until he felt Moriah’s fingernails go scoring down his chest. He sucked in his breath as she spread her palms open across his flat belly and continued to kiss the warm flesh of his neck and collarbone. But when she came up on tiptoe to flick his lower lip with her tongue, reaching for the button of his jeans as she did so, Austen’s breath caught in a strangled gasp in his throat. “Moriah, don’t,” he warned her as he felt the first button slip through its hole.

“Austen,” she whispered on a seductive sigh. “I want you.”

The next button popped open at the same moment her lips fastened intently over his. Austen made a halfhearted effort to pull his mouth away from hers until he felt her fingers dip gently inside his waistband, then out again to stroke the hard fullness in his jeans.

“Oh, damn,” he muttered brokenly. “Moriah—” But his words were cut off as she cupped him fully in her palm and pressed her hand urgently against him.

That was the last straw. If she wanted to make whoopee, Austen thought, then damn it all, they were going to make whoopee. With the swiftness and grace of a pouncing jaguar, he swept Moriah into his arms and tossed her into the center of the flowered coverlet on the king-size bed. While she gazed at him with hungry intent, he reached back over his shoulder to bunch his T-shirt in one hand, then pulled it over his head and let it fall to the floor.

For a long moment he stood towering over her, his bronzed, naked chest sprinkled with coils of gold-tipped hair rising and falling rapidly with the passion she had raised in him, looking to Moriah like a glorious island king. Feeling more excited and reckless by the moment, she opened her arms to him in invitation, and with a deep and ragged groan, Austen threw himself onto the bed beside her.

For a moment he was too overcome with desire to know where to begin. He’d never, ever, wanted a woman the way he craved Moriah now. His arousal strained painfully against the heavy denim of his jeans, begging to be set free and buried deep inside her welcoming warmth. But Austen wanted this to go slowly, wanted to take his time savoring the gifts she had to offer, wanted her in turn to hit new heights with him she’d never known before. As she lay flat on her back feasting her eyes hungrily upon him, he felt as thought they had all the time in the world to satisfy each other, felt as though this night would be one that continued forever.

Wordlessly, his eyes never leaving hers, Austen dropped his fingers to the hem of Moriah’s denim skirt, spreading his hand open beneath her warm thigh before rubbing his palm urgently under her skirt to cup her hip tightly. Her pupils widened with wanting when he kneaded her flesh with determination, and she moaned out loud when his fingertips dipped quickly and firmly under the lacy fabric of her panties. He wedged his thigh between hers then, pressing it up feverishly to settle against the heated feminine core of her, pulling her body adamantly toward him to rub even more intimately against her. As Moriah arched her back and cried out loud, Austen’s other hand gripped the neckline of her shirt and urged it farther down her shoulder until he exposed one soft, supple breast. With a muffled growl he lowered his head to the swollen mound and took the rosy peak into his mouth. Moriah tangled her hands insistently in his hair and pulled him closer, crying his name out on a gasp, begging him please to never, ever, stop.

With one quick move, he pulled her T-shirt over her head and tossed it to join his on the floor, then bunched up her skirt around her waist and settled himself once again between her thighs. Grasping both of her slender wrists in one hand, he pulled her arms above her head until she was helpless to do anything but surrender to him. Her eyes grew stormy when she understood his intentions, and a wicked gleam joined the fire in Austen’s eyes. Bending his head once again over her breasts, he slowly circled the dusky peaks of one with the tip of his greedy tongue while thumbing the other to life with his rough, callused hand.

He’d never known a woman to be as sweet as Moriah, had never known a woman’s skin could be so soft, so warm, so incredibly responsive. As he touched and tasted her with quiet reverence, letting his fingers and his kisses blaze trails across her flat belly, Austen felt his own body coming alive for the first time. It was suddenly as if any other sexual experience he’d enjoyed in his life had only been a preliminary to this one, as if this time with Moriah were his first. All the anxiety and excitement of his first time paled in comparison to the feelings that burned and bothered him now.

When a new thought invaded his muddled mind, Austen raised himself up on his elbows and gazed down anxiously into Moriah’s drugged, delirious eyes. “Moriah,” he asked her urgently, “are you protected?”

She gazed at him blankly, clearly confused by his statement. “What do you mean?”

Austen dipped his head down with a defeated sigh. “No, for some reason, I didn’t think so.”

“What are you talking about?” Moriah demanded, feeling her blood start to cool rapidly at his seeming disappointment in her, suddenly feeling very tired.

“I mean, are you using any kind of birth control?” he clarified for her.

Her eyes widened in shock. “Birth control?” she repeated, aghast. “Why on earth would I be using birth control?”

He lifted an eyebrow suggestively and looked down meaningfully at their half-naked, intimately entwined bodies.

“Oh,” she said in a very small voice.

“It’s okay,” he reassured her. “I never leave home without one.”

Moriah was confused again, and Austen’s strange desire to have a conversation right now was really making her sleepy. “Without one what?” she wanted to know, successfully stifling the yawn she felt threatening.

But Austen had already started looking for the essential square, foil-covered packet that he always had tucked away in his wallet. As he pushed aside an assortment of business and credit cards, dumping a collection of bar receipts and hastily scribbled phone numbers onto the bedspread, he began to panic. He knew he had one in there, but where had it gone? Yanking out the contents of one of the wallet’s many compartments, he discovered an old photograph that he thought he’d lost, one of his father standing proudly beside the old man’s fishing boat. He smiled warmly and briefly at the picture, then remembered the task at hand. Dammit, where had he put it?

“Aha!” he cried triumphantly when he finally uncovered the small packet beside a torn, yellowed clipping from the Miami Herald that his mother had sent him some time ago, one about his ex-fiancée. “It’s all right, Moriah, I—” he turned quickly to Moriah, brandishing his find like a trophy “—I found it.” His shoulders drooped in comical defeat.

The woman who had lain so eagerly and anxiously at his side, the woman who had made him feel giddier and more aroused than he’d ever been in his life, the woman whose dangerous curves had promised the most enervating, exquisite, enlightening road to heaven, was now snuggled up against him like a child, fast asleep.

Chapter Three

When Moriah awoke the following morning, it was because a boisterous wrecking crew was slamming a big concrete ball with aching and annoying regularity against the tender membrane beneath her already-shattered skull. In addition to that, something furry and poisonous and foul had found its way into her mouth and died there, rotting away into some sort of linty gelatinous goo that had oozed all over her teeth and tongue. She opened her eyes slowly and painfully, wincing at the stabbing white light of early dawn that pierced her pupils, recoiling at the lurching, nauseating swells that washed up and down in her stomach. This was not a good sign, Moriah thought glumly, wondering where in the hell she was and how she had managed to sleep through the night while all of these terrible things had been happening to her.

It took her all of five minutes to finally inch onto her back so that she could gaze up curiously at the ceiling. Little by little she took in her surroundings and realized she was in a hotel room, and quite a nice one at that. From the sound of the quiet surf that met her ears through the open French doors to her left, Moriah brilliantly deduced that she must be at the shore. But she hated going to the Jersey shore, she remembered with a puzzled frown. Especially in the summer when it was so crowded. It was summer, wasn’t it? Yes, she was certain that it was. Hadn’t she been planning a vacation a short time ago? she wondered, her muddled brain beginning to function a little more clearly now. She vaguely recalled buying some sunscreen at the cosmetic counter in Wanamaker’s. Heavy sunscreen. Because she was going to be vacationing in…the Caribbean! Yes, that’s it! The Caribbean, that must be where she was. She was supposed to be meeting her sisters on St. Thomas at her hotel on Bolongo Bay Beach. That’s where she was all right. She remembered everything now. Sort of.

The prospect of seeing her sisters again in the very near future filled Moriah with a new kind of nausea and dread, and as her stomach revolted once more, she realized she had better haul herself up and out and get herself pulled together before they arrived and did it for her.

With a muffled groan she wrenched her stiff, aching body out of bed, then covered her burning eyes with both hands and stumbled into the bathroom. She leaned her forehead against the cool white tiles of the wall while waiting for the sink to fill with cold water, begging whatever was sloshing and spinning around in her stomach to stay there. When the water reached almost to the rim of the sink, Moriah took a deep breath and then dunked her head into its icy depths, trying to ignore the overflow that swept onto her bare feet. After that, with the assistance of a big glob of blue toothpaste she squeezed weakly onto her toothbrush, she scrubbed away the last remnants of death from her mouth and swallowed three aspirins with a very large glass of water.

The hot sting of the shower’s spray chased away a good deal of what was left of her hangover, and by the time she had towel-dried her hair, knotted the sash of her pale yellow terry bathrobe around her waist and called room service, Moriah felt almost human again. Of course her sisters were going to be highly perturbed when she wasn’t at the airport to meet them, but they were perfectly capable of finding their way to her hotel. As any civilized woman knew, when one awoke with a severely debilitating hangover, one simply had to get one’s priorities in order. And one’s first and foremost priority was to bring oneself back among the living.

A knock at the door alerted Moriah to the arrival of priority number two: a very large carafe of extremely black coffee. As she slowly sipped the dark, pungent brew, hoping to absorb even more caffeine by inhaling the fragrant steam, she finally began to relax, feeling for the first time that morning as if there was probably a chance for her, after all. She strode lightly and cautiously across the room to open wide the French doors so that nothing stood between her and the fresh Caribbean morning. Clutching the white china mug of coffee to her heart, Moriah breathed deeply the warm air and let her eyes rove appreciatively over the pearly beach and clear, sapphire ocean. It was going to be a gorgeous day. The sun hung in the sky like a beacon, children frolicked outside her room in the twinkling surf, her coffee tasted rich and smooth and delicious, and—

And she had picked up a strange man in a bar last night and brought him back to her hotel room so they could have sex.

The sudden, shocking realization hit Moriah squarely and blindly in the brain like a great big bag of wet sand. Oh, my God, she thought silently, gasping as hot coffee spilled onto her fingers when they trembled on the handle of the mug. Had she really done that? Had she actually been sitting in a bar last night and met a man with whom she’d spent the entire evening and at least part of the night? Moriah shook her head slowly as if trying to clear away the fog that had settled over her memories. She tried to retrace her steps of the previous evening, tried to remember exactly what her actions had been.

She recalled feeling restless after returning to her hotel from Magen’s Bay yesterday, so she went to The Green House to have a beer, one of her students having told her it was the place to go on St. Thomas. She remembered having had some problems with a group of obnoxious divers there, then being rescued by a very gallant and handsome man, leaving to go to another bar with him, dancing, walking along the beach, and then something about a steel band…

Austen. That had been the man’s name, and he had been very funny and pleasant to talk to and, she recalled with a warm feeling in her midsection, incredibly sexy. He’d brought her back to her room last night, and then… Moriah felt her flesh grow hot when memories of what followed came rushing over her like a boiling river.

“Oh, dear,” she said quietly. She also remembered that she had agreed to meet up with him on St. Vincent in two weeks before she was to fly back to Philadelphia. Well, that was certainly one appointment Moriah had absolutely no intention of keeping—even if Austen had been charming and wonderful, and even if she had enjoyed herself more with him than any man she’d ever known. There simply wasn’t any future in taking up with a beach bum who didn’t know the first thing about responsibility and probably couldn’t even hold down a decent job.

For a moment Moriah stared wistfully out to sea, thinking about warm, brandy-colored eyes and laughter that rumbled up freely and easily from a brawny, sun-browned chest. She thought about his reckless, confident masculinity and the urgency of his need to claim her, so much more exciting and tumultuous than the tentative fumblings she’d known from other men. Then reluctantly she forced herself to push thoughts of Austen away. She didn’t even know his last name, she realized sadly. And now she would never see him again.

She drained her coffee mug of its quickly cooling contents, then refilled it from the carafe on the table. The clothes she had been wearing the previous evening were folded and stacked neatly on a chair beside the bed, Moriah noted, and she smiled a little regretfully that even in her drunken state she had been her usual tidy self, having awakened in her regular sleepwear. But when she went to retrieve her clothes to pack them, she noticed for the first time a sheet of hotel stationery that was folded in quarters and tented on top of her shirt. In a bold, masculine script, her name was scrawled across the side that faced her, and her heart began to dance when she picked it up gingerly, cradling it in both hands. She opened the white vellum paper slowly and carefully, as if it were some ancient manuscript that might dissolve into timeless dust. Unwittingly she held her breath as she read the words contained within.

Don’t forget: St. Vincent on the fourteenth at 5:00 p.m. at the botanical gardens. Don’t stand me up, Moriah, please. If you can’t make it, CALL ME. My number on St. Thomas is 9653. Don’t disappoint me, lady. I have to see you again, and I don’t even know your last name. If you leave me without saying goodbye, I’ll never speak to you again.

Austen

Moriah was touched that he had taken the trouble to leave her a note, then remembered, of course, that Austen must have been as drunk as she was last night. She realized somewhat sadly that he had probably left it behind thanks to the same state of inebriation that had made her do things that she would normally never do. More than likely he was somewhere right now regretting the evening as much as she, worried that the troublesome woman he’d met at The Green House last night was going to be dialing his number this morning and putting him on the spot about his note.

Well, he needn’t worry, she told herself as she wadded up the scrap of paper in her hand. She was about to throw it into the wastebasket near the chair, but something stayed her hand. Carefully she opened the note once more and reread the wrinkled words, then chuckled a little nervously. Here she was at the ripe old age of thirty, and Moriah Mallory had just received her first mash note. Sort of. Refolding Austen’s letter carefully along its original creases, she tucked the paper into her weekender bag and smiled a secret little smile. Maybe she’d never see the man again, but he’d definitely given her something to remember.

The three elder Mallory sisters arrived in a flurry later that morning, creating a stir and a ruckus that Moriah sensed even before she heard it. Leaving the sanctuary of her room to view the commotion, she watched her sisters’ advent with eyebrows raised and lips curled in speculation. Amid a blur of tailored luggage and the very latest designer vacation wear, with the sun glinting blindly off perfectly coiffed silver-blond hair and excessively applied lip gloss, between demands for assistance and complaints about the service, Morgana, Mathilda and Marissa Mallory floated into the hotel lobby with all the splendor of a thousand doves released into the sun-drenched azure summer sky. At least that’s how Morgana would have described it, Moriah thought drily. To her it seemed as if they simply stumbled in from the street.

“Over here!” she called out to them.

As if the three of them shared one brain, they all turned at once with an identical expression of inquiry. Leaving their luggage where it lay—no one would dare have the audacity to steal Mallory luggage—they strolled carelessly to where their youngest sister awaited them. Each appraised Moriah with a critical eye, and none of them liked what she saw.

“Honestly, Mo, what are you trying to prove dressed that way?” Marissa asked in reference to Moriah’s attractive, pale blue sleeveless cotton dress. “You know you have Grandma Maxine’s fat calves! Why do you keep wearing those awful short skirts? Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve ever told you about fashion?”

“And my God, Mo, do something with your hair!” Mathilda instructed, her voice filled with horror at the rambling cascade of gold that fell over the shoulders of her youngest sister. “I’ll braid it for you before we get to the boat. You’ll thank me when we get out in that wind.”

“Mo, where are your glasses?” Morgana wanted to know. “I hope you haven’t left them somewhere again like that time in Fiji. We lost an entire day looking for them. I think it would be a good idea if you just wore them all the time on this trip. Now, where’s your room? We’d like to freshen up before you check out.”

Moriah took a deep breath and surrendered to her sisters. It was far easier than arguing with all three of them, she knew. The Mallory family history was long and vivid, filled with the bloody battles she had waged with her relatives and lost mightily. When they returned to her room, her sisters pounced on the mirror while Moriah changed into a pair of baggy khaki trousers and a white safari shirt. She fished her horn-rimmed glasses out of her purse and donned them obediently while Mathilda wove her thick, unruly tresses back into a long French braid. When she looked sufficiently anthropological, her sisters, as one, expelled a long sigh of relief, thankful that Mo was back and that the strange, vivacious-looking woman who had met them was now gone.

While her sisters chatted and rearranged their belongings, Moriah observed them with a casual eye. A lot of people claimed that they had trouble distinguishing one Mallory from the other, except for the youngest one, of course, but Moriah didn’t see how that was possible. Each one of her sisters looked exactly like who and what she was.

Morgana Mallory was the oldest and, for now, the most famous of the four, having recently seen her newest novel go skyrocketing up every bestseller list in the county. She wrote her first book, Up on Rapture Mountain, over ten years ago, but it wasn’t until her third, They Call Me Hussy, that she’d made it onto the New York Times bestseller list. The one following that, Passion Rides a Spotted Horse, was turned into a miniseries, and since then, the name Morgana Mallory had meant gold to booksellers everywhere. Some time ago she’d started wearing tailored suits and conservative separates, and she’d had her long tresses shorn into a chin-length blunt cut. All this was done at her publicist’s suggestion, in the hopes that it would make her appear less frivolous and more like a “serious writer.” Moriah had recommended that her eldest sister give her books serious titles if she wanted to be taken more seriously. Morgana had responded by demanding what Moriah knew about the publishing industry anyway, quickly cutting her off before she could mention that little piece of anthropological fluff she called a textbook.

Mathilda Mallory was a fast-rising star on the Broadway stage, quickly catching up with Morgana in the fame department, something which Moriah was certain annoyed her eldest sister to no end. She had never seen her sister act, but her parents had, of course, and were forever gushing about the rampantly flowing ocean of talent in their family. If Moriah gave it much thought, which she seldom did, she would probably admit that Mathilda had more common sense than her other sisters and was probably capable of freethinking if left to her own devices. There were times when Moriah felt that Mathilda was as much a victim of the Mallory mystique as she, and believed that Mathilda might possibly have turned out to be rather interesting if she hadn’t so closely resembled the others in looks and been forced to comply with family expectations. Mathilda still broke out of the mold every now and then, Moriah noted, wearing berry shades of lipstick and rouge instead of the traditional peach, styling her shoulder-length hair into complicated creations instead of letting the silvery sheaths flow like a celestial river as the others did.

Marissa Mallory posed the biggest irritation to Moriah. Next to her in age, Marissa had always been closer to what was going on in Moriah’s life, had always known exactly how to draw the most blood. Like a perfect stereotype of the glamorous supermodel, Marissa was shallow, vague and superficial, her vocabulary consciously restricted to less than a hundred words. With hair that streamed to her waist and a body that most men would kill to possess, she’d also delighted throughout childhood and adolescence in pointing out what she considered an abundance of physical imperfections all over her little sister’s curvy form. And now that Marissa was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to be so beautiful, she could smile in just such a way as to tell Moriah she was thinking, “I told you so.”

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