“You can’t go down the aisle empty-handed and alone!” About the Author Title Page Dedication CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN EPILOGUE Copyright

“You can’t go down the aisle empty-handed and alone!”

“I know,” Sophie said, holding out her arms for her son and pressing a kiss on his downy head.

If the guests at the Casson-Winter wedding happened to notice that the mother of the bride carried the bouquet intended for her daughter, they appeared not to care. They were too delighted by the sight of the bride carrying her infant son down the aisle to meet his father at the altar.

“It seemed the right thing to do,” Sophie whispered when she reached Dominic’s side. “Ryan should be part of this, not just an onlooker. We’re a family, after all.”

FROM HERE TO PATERNITY—romance novels that feature fantastic men who eventually make fabulous fathers. Some seek paternity, some have it thrust upon them, all will make it—whether they like it or not!

CATHERINE SPENCER, once an English teacher, fell into writing through eavesdropping on a conversation about Harlequin romances. Within two months she changed careers and sold her first book to Harlequin Mills & Boon in 1984. She moved to Canada from England thirty years ago and lives in Vancouver. She is married to a Canadian and has four grown children—two daughters and two sons—plus three dogs and a cat. In her spare time she plays the piano, collects antiques and grows tropical shrubs.

Dominic’s Child

Catherine Spencer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Grace Green with love and gratitude for her loyalty and support.

CHAPTER ONE

SOPHIE knew at once who it was rapping on her hotel room door in that imperious “Don’t keep me waiting” manner, partly, of course, because the chief of police had forewarned her that Dominic Winter was en route to St. Julian, but also because there was in the summons nothing of the islanders’ discreet tap tap that begged the favor of admittance.

Instead, this was the peremptory crack of bone on wood—the command of a superior being to one of lesser stature. If he’d bellowed, “Open the door, woman, and let me in!” his message could not have been clearer.

For all that she’d been expecting him, the proof of Dominic Winter’s arrival had Sophie starting up out of the chair in a flurry of agitation. The sound of his knock seemed indecently loud somehow, and not at all fitting to the somber gravity of the occasion.

On her way to answer him, she made an unplanned stop before the mirror, though why she bothered escaped her. She knew her hair was perfectly in place, her attire as suitably subdued as could be achieved, given the sort of clothes she’d brought with her.

Perhaps it was because she needed to be sure that nothing in her face gave her away. Of course she was upset, saddened; under the circumstances, that was to be expected. But there was more. There’d always been something more where Dominic Winter was concerned, and that was what he must never suspect.

He strode into the room and, without the slightest concession to civil good manners, said in a tone as forbiddingly cold as his name, “Well, I hope you’re happy with what you’ve done, Ms. Casson. My fiancée is dead and her parents are shattered.”

“It was an accident,” she heard herself reply defensively, and wondered why she didn’t just set him straight and have done with it. Whatever other guilty secrets she harbored, culpability in Barbara’s death was not among them. But one didn’t launch into a diatribe about a dead woman’s shortcomings, not to the man who’d hoped to marry her in another few months and certainly not within seconds of his arriving at the scene of her untimely demise. There would be opportunity enough for him to learn the details leading up to the accident later, when he’d recovered a little from the shock and from the draining exhaustion of travel.

If Sophie was prepared to show a little sensitivity, however, Dominic Winter was not. “You might call it an accident,” he declared flatly, “but I’ve yet to be convinced that you aren’t guilty of criminal negligence—in which case ‘manslaughter’ would be a more accurate term, or perhaps even ‘murder’.”

Sophie prided herself on being a capable, independent sort of woman. Going weak at the knees when someone tried to intimidate her simply wasn’t her style. But she felt the blood drain from her face at his intimation. “Mr. Winter,” she said, backing away from him unsteadily, “I was nowhere near Barbara when she died. In fact, I was completely unaware of her plans on Wednesday, and if you don’t believe me then I suggest you check my alibi with Chief Inspector Montand, who is perfectly satisfied that I am in no way to blame for what happened to her.”

“But I am not Chief Inspector Montand, Ms. Casson, and I do hold you to blame. You encouraged Barbara to come away with you. If you had not, she would be alive today.”

What could she say that didn’t sound like an excuse? Sophie bit her lip and turned toward the louvered doors that led to the balcony. Outside, the entire world seemed bent on the celebration of life. Everything, from the surf rolling rhythmically up the pale gold crescent of beach to the sultry sway of the coconut palms fringing the hotel grounds, seemed to echo the calypso beat of the everpresent steel band.

A scarlet hibiscus, shot full of burgundy fire from the sun, flamed next to an overpoweringly sweet-scented frangipani. Macaws perched on the backs of unoccupied sun chaises, brazenly flaunting their plumage.

But what she had found breathtakingly lovely only two days before struck Sophie now as obscene. How could there be death in the midst of such vibrant life? Tragedy did not marry easily with the carnival atmosphere that was St. Julian’s stock-in-trade.

Closing her eyes, she struggled to find the words to ease Dominic Winter’s pain. Because she knew he must be hurting, even though she’d noticed that he hadn’t included himself among those shattered by Barbara’s death. Or was that wishful thinking on her part? Would she have preferred him not to care?

Ashamed, she shut out the question just as, over the past ten weeks, she’d learned to shut out other inappropriate thoughts concerning this man. “I did not coerce Barbara into accompanying me, Mr. Winter,” she said at last. “It was entirely her idea. In fact, she was so insistent she needed a change of scene to get her through the coming winter that if she hadn’t come here with me, she’d undoubtedly have run off somewhere else.”

“And you never thought to question the logic of that?”

“Why should I?” she cried, stung by his unremitting air of condemnation. “She was an adult, capable of making up her own mind, and I hardly knew her. If anyone should have recognized that she was... highly strung and wildly impetuous, it should have been you.”

At that, the antagonism in his eyes faded somewhat and it occurred to Sophie that, for the only time in their acquaintance, he allowed her to see past the glower to the man inside. It also occurred to her how seldom she’d seen him smile, even in the early days of her association with Barbara when he’d presumably had every reason to be happy.

Sophie had met him in mid-September when she first began working at the Wexler estate, although perhaps “met” wasn’t quite the word to describe his remote nod of acknowledgment when she had been introduced to him. Her first impression had been that he was a snob, the kind of man who found it beneath his dignity to treat an employee, whether his or someone else’s, with the same respect he accorded to his own kind—even when, as in her case, the employee was a professional whose framed credentials attested to her expertise.

It was only later that she wondered if he made a particular point of maintaining a safe distance from her, a notion based more on feminine instinct than hard fact. Because, despite his apparent uninterest in her comings and goings, she’d several times caught him spying on her, even when she was at the far end of the property and about as far away from him as she could get. She’d look up and there he’d be at one of the long windows, or standing in the shade of the pergola that connected the Wexlers’ handsome Georgian-style mansion to the rose gardens below the terrace.

Tall and authoritative, with astonishingly beautiful eyes that, depending on his mood, changed from rich deep jade to brilliant emerald ice, he was a man of presence and impossible to ignore. She found him disturbingly attractive yet formidably remote. She’d had no more idea what went on in that head of his than she could have unraveled the mystery of the sphinx. He had remained an enigma, despite her clandestine fascination with him—until now, when tragedy fractured his reserve and rendered him marginally more human.

“Barbara was like a child,” he said, pacing back and forth across the tiled floor, “incapable of recognizing her own mortality. If she had told me ahead of time that she planned to sneak off with you, I’d have done my level best to stop her. And if I had not been able to succeed, I would have warned you to keep an eye on her. What I don’t understand is why, if, as you claim, you hardly knew her, you decided to share a holiday with her.”

“It was a last-minute thing,” Sophie explained. “Usually, I travel with my friend, Elaine, but she came down with the chicken pox three days before we were due to fly down here. I happened to mention it to Barbara and she immediately offered to buy Elaine’s ticket. I saw no reason to quarrel with that, especially since Elaine hadn’t bothered to take out cancellation insurance and stood to lose rather a lot of money. But I did make it clear to Barbara that, once we arrived here, we’d go our separate ways for most of the time.”

In less than a blink of his remarkable eyes, Dominic Winter’s antagonism rolled back into place again, swathed in biting sarcasm. “In other words, Barbara became an inconvenience once she’d served the purpose of averting a financial loss for your friend. Allow me to say, Ms. Casson, that I am overwhelmed by so commendable an attitude. You’re obviously all heart!”

“This is a working vacation for me, Mr. Winter. I couldn’t afford the luxury of whiling away the time the way Barbara did. She understood that. If you choose to put the worst possible interpretation on my actions, there’s little I can do about it.”

“And even less that you care.”

Oh, she cared, more than he could begin to guess! But she’d be damned if she’d let it show.

“Exactly,” she retorted, then made matters worse by compounding the lie with an even greater untruth. “Your opinion of me matters not one iota and if that offends you, Mr. Winter, perhaps the knowledge that I’m singularly unimpressed by you, too, will even the score between us. I don’t know quite how I expected you to behave today but if you’d shown a glimmer of compassion, I might have felt more kindly disposed to tolerate your insults. As it is, I can’t quite shake the feeling that perhaps it was the thought of spending the rest of her life with you that drove Barbara to behave so rashly last Wednesday.”

He had the kind of skin that glowed with sun-kissed radiance regardless of the season, but at her words his face grew bleached with shock. Equally appalled, Sophie stared at him, her gaze fused with his. The man was clearly in pain. What was it about him that compelled her to add to his misery?

She knew. She’d always known, right from the start: she was afraid of him.

She’d never dared explore the reasons. It was enough that, from the first moment she’d set eyes on him, she’d felt a stirring of hunger for something—someone—who wasn’t hers to have. And so, out of self-defense, she’d manufactured a dislike of him, and it had worked well enough until now when his chilly reserve slipped.

Perhaps it was as well that, at that moment, the phone rang and provided them both with a distraction. Certainly she was glad of the excuse to turn away from him and busy herself picking up the receiver.

She listened a moment, murmured assent, then hung up. “That was Chief Inspector Montand,” she told Dominic. “He’s downstairs in the hotel foyer and would like to speak to us.”

“Why us and not just me? If you’re as blamelessly detached from this tragedy as you claim to be, what more can he possibly have to say to you?”

She shrugged, calling up that old, contrived antipathy to arm herself against him. It was easy enough to do, given his miserable attitude. “Ask him. I don’t make the rules around here.”

Yet she hated the way she sounded, so hard and uncaring, as though the fact that a young woman had died didn’t matter as long as that person wasn’t Sophie Casson.

It was almost comforting to hark back to Wednesday evening when the wreckage of the Laser had been found and the awful truth of Barbara’s fate had begun to take shape. Sophie hadn’t been flippant then. Her initial reaction of paralyzed disbelief had given way to near hysteria. It had taken a sedative prescribed by the hotel doctor to calm her down. Not even Dominic Winter could have doubted the sincerity of her distress that night.

Today, however, was a different matter. Contempt curling his incredibly sexy mouth, he flung wide the door and with an extravagantly courteous flourish ushered her into the hall outside. “Well, let’s not keep the good inspector waiting, Ms. Casson. I’m sure you have more interesting things planned for this afternoon than rehashing the tedious minutiae of Barbara’s death.”

He is suffering, Sophie intoned silently. Remember that and refuse to enter into hurtful mind games with him, no matter how much he goads you.

Spine straight, head high, she swept ahead of him. Her navy-and-white-striped skirt fluttered around her calves in concealing folds but her low-backed white blouse with its halter neckline left her feeling woefully underdressed. She could almost feel Dominic’s glare branding her bare shoulders with the stigmata of his disapproval.

She had reached the top of the sweeping staircase before he caught up with her. His hand cupped her elbow, a cool, impersonal touch that stemmed less from concern for her safe descent than from the habit of inbred good manners. She was tall, almost five feet eight inches, but beside him she felt small. Small and defiant, like a child trying to match wits with a punitive uncle. But she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that. There would be no more snide, insulting remarks, no insinuations of blame—at least not from her and not for the next several days.

And after that? Well, he’d no longer be even remotely involved in her life and she would be free to forget him—if she could.

At the far end of the foyer, St. Julian’s chief of police, immaculate in white Bermudas and short-sleeved white shirt, tucked his pith helmet under one arm and snapped to attention at their approach. “Inspector Montand at your service, monsieur. I am sorry to welcome you to our island under such unhappy circumstances.”

Dominic nodded and came straight to the point. “Have you found my fiancée’s body yet, Montand?”

If the inspector was offended by so blunt an approach, he didn’t allow it to show. Ebony features impassive, he replied in the melodious island accent that Sophie found enchanting, “Sadly, we have not. The ocean currents beyond the reef, you understand, and the sharks...” His shrug, half Gallic, half native Caribbean, would have been comical at any other time. “We do not expect to find her, monsieur.”

“Her parents will find that very difficult to accept.”

“I understand. S’il vous plaît...” He extended a pale palm in the direction of a trio of rattan chairs grouped beneath one of the many whirling ceiling fans. “Perhaps we could talk where it is cooler and more private?”

“How is it,” Dominic asked when they were seated, “that no one thought to question my fiancée’s ability to handle one of the hotel sailboats alone? It strikes me that the staff must bear some responsibility for her death.”

Inspector Montand’s gaze flickered beseechingly in Sophie’s direction. She looked away and stared at an arrangement of tropical fruit on a side table, unwilling to help him out of what she knew to be a difficult spot.

The plain fact of the matter was that, practically from the moment she’d set foot on St. Julian, there had been any number of warnings leveled Barbara’s way, and from more than one source, too.

It is not customary for unescorted ladies to behave so freely with employees, mademoiselle...

Barbara, you can’t appear in public in that bikini! You’ll offend the locals...

Mademoiselle, it is unwise to venture alone at night into the old section of town...

But Barbara had willfully ignored them all and instead seemed driven to excess in everything she’d done. She’d flirted outrageously with every male in sight; she’d partied with a frenzy that bordered on desperation. And, most recently, she’d taken to staying out all night, slinking back to the room she shared with Sophie just as the sun was rising. Her behavior had been downright embarrassing—not to mention downright odd for a woman supposedly in love and soon to be married.

Not that there hadn’t been reason to question Barbara’s devotion to her fiancé before then. “Dom’s a wonderful catch,” she’d boasted during one of her first conversations with Sophie. “Daddy says he’s one of the few men who can afford me. Of course, he indulges my every whim, which is just as well because that’s the sort of thing I’ve been used to all my life and I’m not about to settle for anything less just because I’m married.”

Then she’d flashed her dazzling smile and shrugged as though to say she knew she sounded like a spoiled child but underneath she was really a charming, mature adult. As, indeed, she could be when it suited her. How else had she managed to wheedle Sophie into allowing her to tag along on the trip to the tiny island of St. Julian, a few hundred miles off the northeast coast of Venezuela?

Dominic’s fingers rapping irritably on the glass-topped table brought Sophie back to the present with a start. “Well, Inspector, don’t you agree? My fiancée didn’t know one end of a boat from the other. As for raising a sail—the mere idea is absurd! She should never have been allowed—”

“As it happens, Monsieur Winter, Mademoiselle Wexler was not alone. According to hotel personnel who spoke with her on Wednesday morning and arranged for her to use the boat, she was accompanied by a member of the staff, a young man quite skilled at handling small craft such as the Laser.”

“Then why the hell isn’t he here now, answering my questions, instead of leaving you to do it?”

“Sad to say, he, too, was lost.”

“Doesn’t say much for his so-called skill, does it?” Dominic snapped.

The inspector shrugged apologetically. “The trouble appears to have been that they took the boat beyond the reef on the windward side of the island. Quite apart from the fact that a Laser is not meant to be sailed in the dangerous currents sweeping in from the Atlantic, it is also impossible for a person on shore to notice so small a vessel in distress. I am afraid that neither your fiancée nor the young man she hired as her crew showed very good sense when they chose to ignore the posted signs along that stretch of coast.”

Dominic looked as if he might argue the point, then clamped his lips shut and glanced away. Sophie breathed a quiet sigh of relief. She would not have liked to be the one to corroborate what the chief inspector was trying so delicately to convey: that Barbara had invited her own disaster and was, perhaps, responsible for another person’s death, too.

At length, Dominic turned back and this time leveled his bleak gaze on Sophie. “Where were you while all this was going on?”

“In the middle of town, photographing the water gardens outside the former governor’s residence.” Determined to let her better self prevail no matter how much he provoked her, she laid a sympathetic hand on his arm. “Mr. Winter—Dominic, I know it’s hard not to want to lay blame on someone, but Barbara’s death truly was an accident and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll begin to heal.”

He shook her off as if she were an annoying little lapdog begging for favors. “It was an accident that could and should have been avoided. What was this employee thinking of that he sailed outside the reef to begin with?”

“I imagine because Barbara insisted he do so,” Sophie said, exasperation winning out over tact and lending a decided edge to her voice. “She could be very persuasive when she wanted something, as I think we both know.”

He dismissed the observation with an impatient shrug and turned back to Inspector Montand. “Have you called off the search?”

“Oui, monsieur. There is little point in continuing. The windward coast is extremely treacherous.”

“I’ll reserve judgment on that until I’ve seen the place for myself. This afternoon.”

The police chief nodded deferentially. “I will arrange for you to be taken there.”

“No need.” Dominic cut him off with an autocratic wave of the hand and favored Sophie with another inimical glare. “You’re reasonably familiar with the island, I take it?”

“Yes, I—”

“Then you can come with me.”

Not “will you?” or “would you mind?” and certainly not a hint of a “please”. Just another order, rapped out and expected to be obeyed without any regard for the fact that, for reasons that almost made her blush, she might not wish to be thrust into his company like this.

But he was not a mind reader, praise the Lord, so as much to put a speedy end to this whole sad business as to accommodate him, she stifled a refusal and said instead, “Of course.”

“Where can we rent a car?” He ran a finger inside the collar of his open-necked shirt. “Preferably one equipped with air-conditioning.”

“We can’t—at least not the sort you have in mind.”

“What? Why not?”

“Except for a very few registered government vehicles, there are no cars allowed on the island.”

“You mean that open contraption decked out in flowers that brought me from the airport—”

“It’s called a jitney. And it’s one of only two on St. Julian.”

An exasperated breath puffed from between his lips. “Then what’s the alternative? Riding bareback on a donkey and waving a straw hat in the air?”

Chief Inspector Montand’s posture, which would have done credit to the French Foreign Legion at the best of times, stiffened perceptibly. Sophie flung him a commiserating glance before saying mildly, “There’s no need to be offensive, Mr. Winter. St. Julian might lack the sort of sophistication you’re used to at home, but its other charms more than make up for that. We can take one of the mini-mokes provided by the hotel. It’ll be more than adequate. The island is quite small.”

Except for the streets in the center of town and the route from the airport, there was only one other paved road on St. Julian. The Coast Road, as its name suggested, ribboned around the perimeter of the island, dipping down at times into secluded coves and at others climbing to offer dizzying views of turquoise sea and jungle-clad mountains. Because its passage was so narrow, island custom dictated that traffic move always in a clockwise direction, even though that meant that a five mile trip out involved a twenty-five mile trip back again.

The little buggy, the fringe on its striped canvas canopy fluttering in the breeze, swooped merrily along with a scowling Dominic at the wheel. “I’ve driven more sophisticated golf carts,” he grumbled as they jolted over one particularly vicious bump in the road.

“Would you prefer walking?” Sophie inquired, unable to disguise the sarcasm as they approached the next steep incline.

“I’d prefer not to be here at all,” he shot back without a moment’s hesitation. “Nor would I be, if it weren’t for you and your half-baked ideas of a holiday paradise.”

“St. Julian doesn’t pretend to be Rio or Monte Carlo, Mr. Winter. If it did, I wouldn’t bother wasting my time visiting it. The sort of people who flock to places like that don’t particularly appeal to me.”

The merest hint of a grin touched his lips. “People like me, you mean?”

She pulled off her sunglasses and subjected him to a frank examination, wondering if the extraordinary conditions of their mission might offer a glimpse past the good looks to the man within.

She was doomed to disappointment. Black hair swept back from a wide, intelligent brow. His nose had been broken at some point but had suffered not the least for the misfortune and merely enhanced the strong, uncompromising line of his profile. His eyes were the deep still green of woodland pools and his lashes would have been laughable had not the set of his jaw promised dreadful retribution to anyone who dared to make light of their beauty. As for the rest of him, it was so formidably and sexily masculine that he’d probably had to beat women off since the onset of puberty. But as far as giving a clue to his inner self? Not a one!

“What are you staring at?” he inquired testily, swiveling a glance at her.

“You,” she replied. “I’m trying to figure out if you’re this irascible all the time or if it’s a temporary by-product of grief and heartache. I’m inclined to believe the latter since Barbara didn’t strike me as the type who’d willingly devote the rest of her life to a chronic grouch.”

He flung her another outraged glare before turning his attention once again to the road. “How much farther?” he barked.

“About seven miles. Once we round the headland, we drop down to the weather side of the island. You’ll notice the change in the coastline immediately. It’s very wild.”

That he grew progressively more withdrawn as they covered the distance was indication enough that he agreed with her assessment. “Good God!” he muttered at one point, as spray flying across the windswept beach and on to the road caused visibility to shrink to a few yards. “Is it always like this?”

“More or less, though during the hurricane season it gets much worse.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” he replied dryly. “Barbara must have been mad to consider trying to sail in this.”

They were approaching the wind-battered southeastern tip of St. Julian, the place where Atlantic fury met the point of most resistance from the land mass. The shore there was littered with easy pickings for the beachcomber: driftwood forged into fantastic shapes, and seashells by the thousand in every shade from dark pearlescent purple to palest satin pink.

“There’s a lookout point right ahead,” Sophie said. “If you pull over, we can walk across the dunes and you’ll see the reef where...”

He nodded, sparing her the necessity of having to elaborate, and swung the mini-moke off the road.

They clambered down to the beach and waded through the fine, soft sand. Then stood shoulder to shoulder and leaned into the wind, together yet separated by the intensely private silence in which Dominic wrapped himself.

A jagged line of surf marked the hidden reef. Close into shore the water swirled and foamed, subdued but by no means tamed by the barrier over which it had hurled itself. But beyond, where the heaving green Atlantic rollers let loose their fury... Dear Lord, Barbara must have been bent on suicide to have tried to sail in that, because no sane person could have hoped to survive such unleashed violence!

Sophie couldn’t quell her shudder and looked away. Small wonder no trace of bodies had been found. It was a miracle the splintered wreckage of the Laser had endured the sort of beating it had taken.

Dominic, however, stared impassively for so long at the scene before him that Sophie half wondered if he’d forgotten her presence. Then, without warning, he swung toward her, his features stark with misery. “Get me the hell away from here before I really lose it,” he muttered savagely.

He saw the dismay she couldn’t hide, saw how it softened to compassion, and didn’t know how he contained himself. He wanted to howl his outrage to the heavens; to curse and revile the cruelty and waste he’d been helpless to prevent. But the shock Sophie Casson now felt would be nothing compared to how she’d react if he really let loose his emotions. They boiled inside him with the same destructive fury of the seas out there, clenching his jaw, his fists, the ridged muscles of his abdomen.

“Dominic,” she said, so softly he could barely hear her above the roar of the seas, “what can I do to help you?”

How certain she was that she understood him, how sure that she could assuage the misery. And how badly he wanted to smash her complacency! Out of the blue, a suggestion of the most outrageous magnitude sprang to mind, explicit, indecent.

Should he voice it? And would she accede to his wishes? Or would her wide gray eyes darken with horror as she backed away and began to run blindly as far from him as she could get?

He swiped at his hair with shaking fingers, appalled at the demons possessing him. Marshaling his features into a semblance of composure, he discarded the unconscionable and settled for the clichéd. “I think I would like to go back to the hotel and get thoroughly drunk. Would you care to join me?”

She was supposed to pucker up her sweet little mouth and simper that alcohol would merely add to his problems, not alleviate them. Instead, her eyes grew suspiciously bright and the next thing he knew, her tanned little hand with its short pink nails had tucked itself into the crook of his elbow. “Of course,” she murmured sympathetically. “Anything you say.”

And then she slipped her arm around his waist and led him back the way they’d come. Slowly, carefully, as if he were a very old, enfeebled man. The demons within itched to succumb to a black, unholy bellow of laughter. He could feel it pulsing deep in his chest and had one hell of a time suppressing it.

“Would you like me to drive?” she asked when they reached the toy that passed for transportation.

“No,” he said, shrugging her off. Heaven forbid he should have a reason not to keep his eyes on the road!

Happy hour was well under way by the time they reached the hotel again. The sun hung just above the horizon, a great flaming ball far too large for its playground. Kerosene torches flickered palely among the trees in anticipation of the sudden rush of night typical of the tropics. Laughter and music combined to drown out the macaws’ last screeching chorus of the day. It was party time. For everyone except Dominic Winter and Sophie Casson.

He decided it was in both their interests for him to ditch her and be alone to drown, if not his sorrows, then at least his guilt. “Look,” he said, “I’m not fit company for a wolverine. What say we hold off on that drink until another time?”

She paused for as long as it took her to catch her lower lip between her teeth, then said, “Yes, of course. Actually, I’d just as soon go upstairs and take a shower before dinner.” She rubbed at her bare arms and indicated the folds of her skirt. “The sea spray’s—”

The last thing he needed was a guided tour on how the fabric clung damply to her long, slender thighs. “Whatever,” he said rudely and, turning his back on her in a deliberate snub, headed straight for the bar and ordered a double brandy.

Let her think he was a sot. He didn’t care, and the bottom line was he needed a little Dutch courage before he phoned the Wexlers. Not that anything he had to tell them would offer a grain of solace, but he’d promised he’d call and he would not willingly renege on a promise to them. If there was anything fine or good left within him after all that had happened, it was his genuine fondness for Barbara’s parents.

Leaning both elbows on the bar, he stared down at the drink in his hand. What a hell of a mess—a no-win situation regardless of which way he looked at it! And those paying the heaviest price were two people who deserved something better in their old age than the heartbreak of outliving their only child. He downed the brandy in one gulp and raised a finger to the bartender for a refill.

Dutch courage be damned! He wanted to be numbed from the neck up. Maybe then he’d be able to banish the demons possessing him.

CHAPTER TWO

BY THE time Sophie had bathed and changed, another flower-scented night had fallen, the third since Barbara’s death. The cocktail crowd had gathered around the outdoor bar. She could hear their laughter mingling with the clink of ice on crystal and the throbbing beat of the steel drums. Was Dominic Winter part of that group, his brain sufficiently desensitized by alcohol that the edges of his pain had blurred? Or was he holed up in his room, determinedly drinking himself into oblivion?

“It’s not your business, Sophie,” she muttered, slipping silver and amethyst hoops on her ears. “Let him deal with what’s happened on his own. It’s safer that way.”

Still, she found herself scanning the crowd, looking for him, when she went downstairs. He was not in the dining room, nor, as far as she could tell, was he outside on the wide, tiled patio. But the table she’d shared with no one since Wednesday tonight was again set for two.

She had finished the chilled cucumber soup and was halfway through her conch salad when he appeared. He wore the same open-necked white shirt and ecru linen trousers that he’d worn that afternoon. His hair had been combed repeatedly—by very irritable fingers. There was the faintest shadow of beard on his determined jaw. He looked like a man who’d had one too many—a man looking for trouble and ready to take on the entire world.

Forcibly reminding herself that he had just lost the woman he loved and was more to be pitied than reviled, Sophie forbore to point out that adding a monumental hangover to his troubles would not make them any easier to bear. Instead, she nodded pleasantly and waited for him to make social overtures if, and when, he felt so inclined.

He quickly made it clear he did not feel inclined. “Looks like the hotel is determined to throw us together every chance they get,” he remarked caustically, flinging himself into the seat opposite with rather more grace than one might have expected from a drunk. “Or did your Mother Teresa complex prompt you to request my company so that you could keep an eye on me in case despair drove me to the same sad end that Barbara suffered? Because if it did, I wish to hell you’d just butt out of my affairs.”

His deft handling of the cutlery and lack of slurred speech gave Sophie pause. Dominic Winter was not drunk, as she had first supposed. He was a powder keg ready to explode—wanting to explode—and searching futilely for an excuse to do so. And there wasn’t enough alcohol on St. Julian to do the job. He could have imbibed all night and still remained painfully sober. It was there for anyone to see in his smoldering green eyes. The torment was eating him alive.

“I’m not trying to interfere in your affairs,” she said quietly. “I just want to do whatever I can to help.”

He picked up the scrolled sheet of parchment on which the dinner menu had been printed and slid off the silk tassel encircling it. “It would help me enormously if you’d get on with your meal without feeling the need to engage me in conversation. And it would help me even more if you’d do so quickly and then quietly disappear.”

Normally, Sophie would have refused on principle to do any such thing, even given that his painstaking rudeness had robbed her of her appetite. But in his present mood, she had no more wish to spend time with him than he had with her. So why did she half rise from her seat, then pause uncertainly as if about to change her mind, thereby giving him opportunity to insult her further?

Sensing her hesitation, he glared out from behind the parchment. “I do not want your company, Ms. Casson, nor do I need it,” he declared brusquely.

Cheeks flaming, she dropped her napkin beside her plate and, like the spineless ninny she undoubtedly must be, scuttled away.

She did not see him again until the following evening. “Monsieur has gone to police headquarters with Chief Inspector Montand, to take care of the necessary paperwork, you understand,” the clerk at the front desk told her when she stopped by shortly after breakfast the next morning. “Such a shocking loss of a life can never be dismissed lightly, mademoiselle.” He wrinkled his nose as though to imply that only someone as inconsiderate as Barbara would behave so boorishly in alien territory. “Hélas, that is especially true in the case of foreigners who die while they are here.”

Sophie understood. Fellow guests who’d been friendly enough before the tragedy avoided her now as though afraid she’d somehow cast an evil spell on her friend and might do the same to them. If there’d been any way to cut her holiday short she’d have done so on the spot, but there were only two flights a week in and out of St. Julian, on Tuesdays and Fridays. Whether she liked it or not, she was prisoner there for another four days.

She spent the afternoon at an orchid farm and returned late to the hotel, leaving herself with barely enough time to shower and change for the evening meal. To her surprise, Dominic was already seated at the table when she went down to the dining room.

“Ah, Ms. Casson,” he murmured, rising smoothly and pulling out her chair, “I was hoping you’d favor me with your presence again tonight.”

He looked quite devastating in pale gray trousers and shirt. Urbane, sophisticated and thoroughly in control of himself and the situation.

Very much on her guard, Sophie said, “Were you? Well, I hate to add to your troubles, Mr. Winter, but if you’re hoping to drive me off again by plying me with insults, I’m afraid you’re in for a disappointment. I’m far too hungry to allow you to get away with it a second time.”

Even after only one day of tropical sun, his olive skin was burnished with color, so it was difficult to be sure but she thought perhaps he blushed a little at that, an assumption that gained credence with his next words. “I’m afraid I behaved very badly last night,” he said contritely. “I must beg your pardon. I wasn’t at my best.”

You don’t have a best! she felt like informing him. Except she didn’t really believe that. She’d thought for a long time that he was far too good for Barbara. She’d even gone so far as to wish....

Conscience-stricken, she picked up the menu and pretended to read it. Bad enough she’d allowed herself to fantasize when Barbara was alive. To do so now was tantamount to dancing on her grave!

Glancing up, Sophie found his gaze trained on her face. He was different tonight. The rage in his eyes had been replaced by a clouded emptiness as though the reality of Barbara’s death had at last sunk in and he realized no amount of ranting or blaming was going to bring her back.

Sophie almost preferred the other Dominic, the one breathing fire and condemnation. That one moved her to anger despite her better nature; this one moved her to pity—dangerous territory at the best of times.

“I really do apologize,” he said.

“Apology accepted.” She shrugged and searched for another subject, one that would draw her attention away from his broad shoulders and the burden they carried. He was a Samson of a man not intended to be broken, but Barbara’s death had brought him perilously close to the edge. “What looks good for dinner, do you think?”

After some discussion, he ordered turtle steak and she the fish caught fresh that morning. “And wine,” he decided, adding with a faint inflection of humor, “Don’t worry, I’ll behave. I’m a man of fairly temperate habits and don’t, as a rule, choose to drown my sorrows in drink.”

He was trying to be charming and succeeding, and she wished he’d stop. It made too great an assault on her defenses, leaving her vulnerable to the most preposterous urge to comfort him. It was a relief when their food arrived. It gave her something else to do with hands that ached to reach out and touch his long, restless fingers; to cup his cheek and stroke the severe line of his mouth. To pillow his head against her breast...

He’d probably deck her! He wanted glamorous Barbara Wexler, not unremarkable Sophie Casson, and would almost certainly view any attempt on the latter’s part to share his grief as unforgivably presumptuous.

“What did you do today?” he asked, interrupting her line of thought and, when she told him, said, “Do you get many ideas from your travels abroad? For your work, I mean?”

He was no more interested in her answer than was she in his question, but meaningless small talk was safer than silence that allowed her mind to stray to thoughts better left unexplored.

“I remember the first time we met,” he remarked later, staring absently into his glass of wine. “You were halfway up a tree on the Wexler estate, wearing dungarees covered in mud and with a camera slung around your neck.”

“And you thought I was trespassing. You were ready to throw me off the property.”

He nodded. “Yes. I knew they’d hired a landscape architect to design a waterfall and lily pond, but you hardly fitted the description. I’d expected—”

“What?” she snapped, welcoming the surge of annoyance his words inspired. “A man?”

“Not necessarily. Just someone more... professional-looking.”

“Tell me, Mr. Winter,” Sophie shot back, “when you first started out in the construction business, did you show up on the job wearing a three-piece suit?”

He smiled, such a rare and pleasant change from his usual gravity. “As a matter of fact, I did. I’d decided to buy five adjacent properties, all very run-down, and wanted to impress my bank manager into lending me the money to complete the sale. And I think we should drop the Mr. Winter—Ms. Casson thing. It seems to breed hostility between us and we’ve got enough to deal with, without that.”

“If there’s hostility,” Sophie couldn’t help retorting, “it’s of your making, not mine, and has been ever since we met.”

She expected he’d argue the point but he didn’t. He merely raised his elegant black brows and shrugged. “I daresay you’re right,” he admitted. “But that was then and this is now. Things have changed.”

His habitually somber expression was firmly back in place. It was hard to imagine him succumbing to flighty Barbara’s charms; harder still to picture him lowering his icy reserves and making love to her.

The audacity of such speculation sent a wash of color over Sophie’s cheeks. “Um...” she said, nearly choking on a morsel of fish, “I wonder if the Wexlers will still want me about the place after this. Have you spoken with them since...?”

His manner became even more guarded than usual. “I called them last night.”

“They must be—”

“They’re devastated.”

Sophie sighed, thinking of the gentle elderly couple whose entire existence had revolved around the daughter who’d arrived on the scene so late in their lives. “Yes,” she said softly. “To outlive your children is completely contrary to the proper order of nature. I can only imagine how difficult they must be finding it.”

“Try ‘impossible’,” he suggested shortly. “Nothing you imagine can begin to equate with what they’re going through. At this point, I doubt they’re fully able to comprehend it themselves.” The animosity that, fleetingly, had faded from his eyes, resurfaced. “And I’m quite sure they won’t want you around to remind them of what they’ve lost. At the very least, stay away until you hear from them—or better yet, from me. In fact, it might be best for everyone if you were to delegate someone else from your company to complete your share of the landscape project.”

Sophie stared at him over the rim of her glass. “It really doesn’t come as much of a surprise that you’d assume I’m too lacking in tact or respect to show any sensitivity toward the Wexlers, so I won’t waste my breath trying to counteract your opinion,” she said, nothing in her demeanor betraying the hurt his remark had inflicted. “I can live with the fact that you don’t much like me, Mr. Winter, but I will not tolerate your repeated insinuations that Barbara’s death was in any way my fault, and I will not allow you to drive me into hiding. If and when the Wexlers are ready to have me finish the job they hired me to do, I shall make myself available.”

“It would be better for all of us if you stayed away,” he maintained obstinately, and for all that she tried to stern it, another blast of hurt shafted through her at the unbending accusation in his voice. She could protest until the world stopped turning but, just as it was clear nothing could alter his initial antipathy toward her, so it was equally clear that he still held her accountable for the pain he was now suffering.

She was sorely tempted to get up and leave, but pride wouldn’t let her be put to rout two nights in a row. So, willing her voice not to betray her by trembling, she said, “In that case, why don’t you ask to sit somewhere else for the duration of your stay here? Because heaven forbid I should cause you indigestion on top of all my other manifest sins.”

Sophie didn’t know whether or not he’d taken her suggestion to heart because she walked into town for breakfast on Sunday, spent the rest of the morning in the botanical gardens and stopped at a roadside stand for a lunch consisting of a sandwich and freshly squeezed fruit juice cocktail.

It was after two when she got back to the hotel and the breeze that normally made the heat tolerable had died completely. Out of respect for Barbara, she’d abandoned her habit of skin diving in the lagoon beyond the palm-fringed beach each afternoon, and spent the time instead with a book under an umbrella on the patio. But that day, fatigued as much by the fact that she hadn’t slept well the night before as by the hot Caribbean sun, she slipped into a bikini and stretched out on a wicker chaise in the restful shade of her balcony. That she was also going out of her way to avoid Dominic Winter and his cold, disapproving gaze was something she preferred not to acknowledge.

The murmur of the ocean, in concert with the musical splash of the fountains in the gardens below, soothed like a lullaby. All the hard-edged events of the past few days softened, their colors paling to dreamy pastels. Lassitude spread through Sophie’s arms, her legs, and she welcomed it, happy to drift in the no-man’s-land between waking and sleeping.

She didn’t notice when the colors faded to black or the languor took complete possession of her mind as well as her body. She knew nothing until she became suddenly and alarmingly conscious of someone moving about in her room.

There were discreet signs posted throughout the hotel, warning guests to keep their bedroom doors locked and all valuables stored in the safe at the front desk. Sophie had no valuables worth worrying about except for her camera equipment, and she was reasonably certain she’d locked her door, but there was no doubt someone had managed to gain access. Slewing her gaze sideways, she could see through the slats of the louvered balcony doors the shadow of a man moving back and forth within the room.

A glance at her watch showed that more than an hour had passed since she’d apparently fallen asleep. Time enough for a seasoned burglar to pick the lock and go about his business. His mistake, however, lay in choosing a victim who’d already been on the receiving end of Dominic Winter’s unabashed displeasure. She was in no mood to take further abuse from anyone else.

Without stopping to consider the wisdom of such a move, she slid off the chaise and moved swiftly around the half-open door. But the outrage she’d been about to vent at the intruder dwindled to wordless shock at the sight before her.

Dominic was naked from the waist up, his torso in all its sleekly muscled beauty narrowing to fit snugly into the waist of khaki linen shorts. And yet, that was not quite accurate. Although invisible, desolation hung about him like a second presence.

He stood before the low dresser that still contained Barbara’s things, his broad shoulders paralleling the bowed despair of his dark head. In the palm of his hand lay the diamond ring he’d given her, even its bright fire temporarily dimmed.

Sophie’s breath escaped in a soft exhalation of protest at being too long trapped in her throat. The sound looped across the mourning hush that filled the room and wound itself around him, bringing his head up and swinging around to face her. His eyes were the deep dark green of moss clothing ancient gravestones. And his mouth...!

Her heart contracted with pity, leaving no room for the anger and hurt she’d nurtured from the night before. “Dominic,” she breathed, and cupped her hands in front of her as if they held the magic formula guaranteed to wipe away his hurt.

He blinked and focused his gaze on her slowly, the way a person does when emerging from deep sleep. “They told me you were gone for the day,” he said, his voice a husky echo of its usual rich baritone. “I thought it would be a good time to take care of... this.”

His fingers closed around the ring, his other hand gesturing at the contents of the open drawer. Little bits of silk and ribbon-trimmed lingerie frothed in disorder, just the way Barbara had left them. Her suitcase lay open on Sophie’s bed, one half already filled with items from her share of the closet.

Still poised near the balcony doors, Sophie nodded understanding. “I would have done it myself, except I didn’t feel it was my place.”

“It wasn’t your responsibility.” Impatiently, Dominic tossed the ring on top of the articles of clothing remaining in the drawer and, scooping everything up in both hands, turned to stuff it in the suitcase.

As he did so, something slid out from between the folds of fabric and slipped to the floor despite Sophie’s attempt to catch it. It was the tooled-leather picture frame that, for the first few days of the holiday, had sat on the bedside table next to Barbara’s bed. Hinged in the middle, it contained two photographs, one of Dominic and one of Barbara.

Stooping, Sophie retrieved it and passed it to him. He sank to the edge of Barbara’s bed and for the longest time stared at the image of his dead fiancée.

Not a trace of emotion showed on his face. The seconds slowed, tightening the already-tense atmosphere so painfully that Sophie wished she’d ignored her scruples and simply taken charge of packing Barbara’s things herself.

At last, Dominic slapped the frame closed the way a man does a book that, regretfully, he’s finished reading for all that he never wanted it to end. But instead of completing packing Barbara’s things, he remained where he was, hands idle, with the photograph frame clasped between them.

Yet another goodbye, Sophie thought, sympathy welling within her. He must wonder if they’ll ever end.

Covering the small distance that separated them, she perched next to him and gently removed the frame from his hands. Unwillingly, he looked at her, the expression in his eyes veiled by the thick fringe of his lashes.

He did not want her to see his grieving, as though there was something shameful in allowing himself to succumb to it. She knew because her brother, Paul, was just the same.

What was it about men that what they accepted as healthy and normal in a woman they saw as weakness in themselves? Didn’t they know the healing took longer if it was denied? That only by accepting it and dealing with it could they validate eventual recovery from it?

Seeing Dominic closing in on himself and refusing to let go, Sophie could only suppose they didn’t, and so she offered comfort exactly as she’d have extended it to anyone, man, woman or child, in the same state of grief. With one hand she reached up and brought his head down to her shoulder, and with the other raised his fingertips to her mouth and kissed them.

For an instant, he resisted. She felt his opposition in the sudden rigidity of his arm, heard it in the hissing intake of his breath. And then, like a house of cards caught in a sudden draft of air, he collapsed against her, the weight of him catching her off guard and pushing her backward on the bed. He followed, his face buried at her neck, his hands tangling in her hair, his legs entwined with hers.

He smelled of soap and clear blue skies and sundrenched ocean, all bound together by lemon blossoms. His skin, more bronzed than ever, scalded where it touched, the heat of him a strange elixir that penetrated her pores to coil within her bloodstream.

At least, she thought it did—as much as she was capable of thought. Because what had begun as a reaching out in commiseration changed course dramatically, though exactly how and when escaped her. One minute she and Dominic were behaving with the decorum of two people sitting side by side in church, and the next they were rolling around on the brightly patterned bedspread with the hungry abandon of lovers.

Somehow, his mouth found hers and fastened to it, seeking comfort wherever it was to be found. How could she have known the shape it would take, how have avoided what happened next?

Without volition, her lips opened. She felt the heat of his breath, the moisture of his tongue accepting the invitation so flagrantly offered. There was no use pretending it was an accidental and utterly chaste collision of two mouths intent on other things, because it was not. It was a wrong and unprincipled and utterly, irresistibly erotic prelude to even greater sin.

Without warning, the cool and distant Dominic Winter she’d known metamorphosed into a lover as swiftly as night fell on St. Julian.

Of course, he could be excused. He was not himself. He was ripped apart with anguish, lost, lonely... oh, there was any number of reasons for him to behave irrationally. But what was her justification? Why did she wind her arms around his neck as if she never wanted to let him go, then kiss him back and let him touch her near naked body in its pitifully brief little bikini that she’d never have countenanced wearing in public?

Why, when he pushed aside the spaghetti straps holding up the bra, did she shift to accommodate him? And when he stroked her breasts, then lowered his head to kiss them, why did she arch toward him with about as much restraint as a drowning woman reaching for a lifeline? How could she explain the rush of damp heat between her thighs or the aching drumroll of desire building within her womb?

She knew why. This wasn’t some sudden tropical fever robbing her of propriety or decency; it was a slow-growing affliction that had begun months ago. That day in the Wexlers’ garden, it had been the impact of his cool green inspection, and not her rapid descent from the tree, that had sent her practically sprawling at his feet. He’d stood there like some beautiful avenging angel, and despite the disapproval manifest in his gaze and in his voice, something inside her had responded to him in a very primal way. He’d ignited a spark that had been waiting for a chance to burst into flame.

She’d tried to ignore it, heaven knew. It had been the only sane course to follow, given that, in addition to his overt disaffection for her, he was also engaged to marry Barbara. A woman would have to be blind as well as stupid to think for a moment that a man—any man—would look twice at ordinary Sophie Casson if fascinating Barbara Wexler was his for the taking.

But that was then and this was now. Barbara had gone, and for whatever reason, Dominic had turned to her, Sophie. Even in the midst of passion, she knew he was trying to lose himself, to forget, if only for a little while, his pain. And if it was shameful to welcome the chance to assuage his need, then she was guilty. Because wild dogs would not have deterred her at that moment.

He stripped away her bikini bottom, fumbled with the belt at his waist, and she helped him, her fingers nimble at the buttoned fly of his khaki shorts. He rolled to one side, shrugged himself free of the confinement of clothing, and then he was covering her again. Covering her, and entering her, hot, frenzied, reckless.

She took him into herself. Absorbed his pain, his loss, and made it hers. Did whatever she had to do, gave everything he silently begged of her, to make things more bearable for him. If it had been within her power, she’d have brought Barbara back, even though doing so would have made her own loneliness more acute.

And why? Never mind why. The reason wasn’t to be entertained. To allow it even momentary lodging in her mind would be to invite misery into her heart as a permanent guest. Instead, she shut out her own needs and catered to his.

He drove himself as if the hounds of hell were in pursuit and he was desperate to outrace them. Willingly, Sophie raced with him, her peripheral awareness shrinking as a great roaring flood gathered inside her. There was not a force in this world or any other that could have stopped either of them.

And then it was over as suddenly as it had begun and there was nothing but the sound of sudden rain splashing on the tropical shrubs outside and dimpling the surface of the pool. As if the sun couldn’t bear to witness such wanton conduct and had ordered the rain to wash away the shame of it all.

Looking anywhere but at her, Dominic rolled into a sitting position, reached for his clothes and climbed into them even more speedily than he’d shed them. She thought he’d simply walk out of the room and that would be that, but he didn’t. Instead, he stood at the open balcony doors and stared out.

Unable to bear his silence a moment longer, Sophie slid to her feet, wrapping herself in the flowered bedspread as she did so, and went to stand beside him. “Say something, Dominic,” she begged.

His shoulders rose in a great sigh. An unguarded sorrow formed in the curve of his mouth, then in his eyes as they focused on the distance beyond the windows. As if he was watching a ship bearing a loved one disappear over the horizon. “What in God’s name can I say?”

A slow trembling began inside her, gathering force as it spread until she shook from head to foot. She was the one who’d started everything when she’d reached out and touched him. It was all her fault.

“Tell me that you don’t hate me for what I allowed to happen,” she whispered. “That you don’t think it was something I planned. I feel guilty enough without that.”

He swung his head toward her and she thought she had never looked into such emptiness as she found in his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was raw with...what? Rage, pain, regret?

“Right now,” he said, “I don’t give a rat’s rear how you’re feeling. I’m too busy despising myself.”

Once again, he reduced her to such shock that her knees almost buckled beneath her as the blood rushed from her face. But he didn’t notice, nor would he probably have cared. Snatching up Barbara’s suitcase, he rammed it shut. Then he stalked across the room to the door, opened it, stepped through and closed it quietly behind him. And just to add salt to Sophie’s wounds, the rain passed as suddenly as it had begun and the sun came out again.

She did not go down for dinner that night. She took a long, too-hot bath and tried to scrub away the shame and the hurt. And then, while people laughed and danced on the patio below, she lay in her bed and tried to ignore its twin standing empty only a few feet away.

But even though the night was moonless, the hurricane lamps in the garden flung up enough of a glow for her to see the other bed’s outline quite clearly. Its pillows sat not quite straight and one corner of the flowered cover trailed on the floor. As though whoever had thrown it back in place had done so carelessly. Or furtively, because its disarray had been caused by people who had no business lying on it in the first place, let alone making unseemly imitation love there.

Shame flowed over Sophie again, more invasive even than Dominic’s hands, licking over every inch of her skin, into every secret curve and fold until she burned from its onslaught. How could she have allowed herself?

If only Elaine hadn’t fallen victim to the chicken pox. If only she hadn’t agreed to let Barbara take Elaine’s place! Why had she when, of all people, Barbara Wexler was a woman with whom she shared nothing in common?

She knew why. For the sadistic pleasure of listening to Barbara talk about her fiancé. For vicarious thrills. Because, from the outset, Sophie had wanted him.

Well, now she’d had him, however briefly. And she felt like the lowest form of life ever to slither across the face of the earth.

CHAPTER THREE

IN THE hours following, Sophie learned that it didn’t take sleep for a person to find herself trapped in a nightmare. Much though she would have liked to divert them, disturbing questions raced through her mind. Had he known to whom he’d just made such desperate love? Was it Sophie Casson with her conscience, like her mind, clouded by a raging hunger, who’d filled him with passion—or Barbara’s ghost taking up temporary residence for one last farewell?

Worn out with anguish, Sophie fell asleep just before dawn and awoke a short time later to a day luminous with sun and that special clarity of light indigenous to the Caribbean. Her immediate reaction was to bury her head under the pillows and remain there well into the next century, but a thump on her door put an end to such wishful thinking.

Probably the maid, she thought drearily. But it was Dominic, the very last person in the world she wanted to face with her hair standing on end and her eyes red ringed from hours of on-again, off-again crying.

He stared at her, the turmoil he was suffering plain to see. From the beginning of their association, he’d struck her as a man of many layers, all of them designed to keep her at a distance. He wore pride over arrogance, distaste over reserve, hauteur over grief, drawing each one around himself like a cloak. And now, on top of them all, his raging disgust for having allowed her to glimpse that vulnerable side of himself that she suspected he seldom acknowledged even to himself.

Without invitation, he stepped into the room and shouldered the door closed. Too dismayed to ask what he thought he was doing barging in on her like that, she backed away from him, cringing inwardly at the bars of sunlight slanting through the louvered windows to reveal her in all her disheveled glory.

“I expected you’d be awake already,” he said, following her.

She tugged furtively on the hem of her nightshirt, which came only midway down her thighs. “I am—now.”

His beautiful brows shot upward as though he thought only the most dissolute of creatures would still be in bed at such an hour, but at least he had the good grace not to voice the opinion aloud. “I just came back from a meeting with Inspector Montand. All the red tape’s taken care of finally, so I’m free to leave. I’ll be on my way within a couple of hours.”

That’s all he knew! “There isn’t another flight out until tomorrow afternoon,” Sophie informed him, a certain malicious satisfaction at being one step ahead of him for a change coloring her tone.

His gaze slewed past her as if he found the sight of her singularly offensive. “For other people, perhaps, but I’m not prepared to wait that long, so I’ve chartered a private jet. If you care to, you’re welcome to come with me. I can’t imagine you’re still in a holiday mood after everything that’s happened.”

He was right. More than anything, she wanted to escape from this island and all its painful memories. But the thought of spending ten or more hours in the undiluted company of a man who clearly viewed her with a combination of embarrassment and disgust was even less appealing. “Thanks anyway, but I think I should stick to my original travel plans.”

His gaze flickered to Barbara’s bed and away again. “Yes,” he conceded. “Perhaps that would be best.”

His attitude, and the way he abruptly turned and left, reminded her of another time earlier that fall. Sophie had started work at the Wexlers’ about nine on a morning so damp and dreary that Mrs. Wexler had insisted she come in out of the cold and have lunch with them.

She hadn’t found it a particularly relaxed meal. The Wexlers were kind and called her “Sophie” and “dear”. Barbara, who seemed compelled to abbreviate everyone’s name but her own, called her “Sophe”. But Dominic had steadfastly stuck to “Ms. Casson”—on those few occasions that he called her anything at all.

“So you’re still here, Ms. Casson,” he’d said when he came upon her still hard at it later that afternoon. “Does that mean you’ll be joining us for dinner, too?”

From his tone, one would have thought she made a habit of cadging free meals! “No,” she’d assured him, aware as always of the undeclared currents of war flowing between them. “I’m an employee, not a friend of the family, and hardly belong at the dinner table.”

“It might be a good idea for us all to remember that,” he’d replied enigmatically, then stalked away, just as he did now, without bothering to say goodbye. An adversarial, uncivil man, she’d decided at the time, his exquisitely tailored suits and elegant black Jaguar with its pale gray leather upholstery notwithstanding.

Well, the war had been waged at last, and Barbara’s bed had been the battlefield. The question was, had anyone emerged a winner?

She didn’t see him again. By the time she came downstairs he’d already left, and her last day on St. Julian was uneventful. The next afternoon, she left, too, and slept that night in her own bed, comforted by the knowledge that once she’d sent flowers and a note of condolence to the Wexlers, it would be over, all of it.

But it wasn’t. The following week, she got a call from Barbara’s mother. “I wonder, my dear, if you’d come to see us and tell us, if you will, what you know... ?” Gail Wexler’s voice broke, and a stifled sob punctuated the brief silence before she was able to continue. “Please, will you come, Sophie? You were the last person to see our daughter alive, and if we could talk to you, it might help us to... accept what’s happened.”

It required a colder heart than Sophie possessed to refuse. Nothing would be over for any of them, she realized then, until all the rituals of grieving had been observed. “When would you like to see me?”

They settled on the following evening at eight o’clock. When Sophie pulled up in her car, she found Dominic’s Jaguar already parked in the driveway outside the house. She’d half expected he’d be in attendance, too, since the Wexlers clearly regarded him as a son, and she had thought herself prepared to cope with the eventuality. Still, when he opened the mansion’s front door to her, the sight of his unsmiling face unsettled her badly.

I let him make love to me, she thought, appalled all over again. I shared the ultimate intimacy with a man whom I knew to be in love with someone else at the time.

Something of her dismay must have showed on her face because as soon as she’d greeted the Wexlers in the drawing room, Dominic took her by the elbow and steered her to a side table where a silver coffee service waited.

Under the pretext of filling a cup for her, he said in a low tone, “Please try to hide your aversion to being here. It isn’t pleasant for any of us, but you don’t have to make it any harder on the Wexlers than it already is.”

“I’m fully aware of that,” she said softly, annoyance at his choosing once again to interpret her actions in the most unfavorable light diminished by her shock at the change in Barbara’s parents. They had aged dreadfully over the past few weeks and seemed terribly fragile.

But Dominic wasn’t done harassing her. “Furthermore,” he decreed in that bossy way of his, “although I gathered from Montand that you pretty well agreed with him when he intimated that Barbara asked for trouble down on St. Julian, her parents don’t need to be told that.”

It was the verbal slap in the face needed to restore Sophie. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she muttered indignantly. “What sort of person do you take me for?”

“You don’t want to know,” he shot back, lowering his lashes to hide the scorn flaring in his eyes.

Mrs. Wexler patted the cushion beside her on the brocade sofa. “Bring your cup and sit here with me, Sophie. We’re so grateful to you for coming tonight and I know we’ll both feel better for your visit. Won’t we, John?”

If anything, Barbara’s father looked even frailer than his wife. “She was only twenty-four,” he murmured plaintively. “I don’t understand how someone so young and full of life could be snuffed out like that. Why did it happen?”

“I think perhaps because she was so full of life, just as you say, Mr. Wexler,” Sophie suggested, trying hard to tread the fine path between honesty and tact. “She was impatient...”

Apparently, she hadn’t tried hard enough. From his post at the corner of the fireplace, Dominic frowned a caution. “‘Eager’ might be a better word, Ms. Casson.”

So might “rebellious”, Sophie thought, not to mention “selfish” and “willful” and “downright cheap”. But of course, he didn’t want to hear that sort of thing, any more than the Wexlers did, and who was she to belittle anyone else’s morals in light of her own fall from grace?

“But was she having fun... until... ?”

The pathetic hope in Mrs Wexler’s next question broke Sophie’s heart. It was a relief to be able to say quite truthfully that, until the accident, Barbara had been busy having a wonderful time on St. Julian. Fortunately, neither parent asked Sophie to elaborate on the remark.

“There’ll be a service next week in the Palmerstown Memorial Chapel, and a plaque placed in the gardens,” Dominic informed her when he saw her out. “The Wexlers would appreciate your being there.”

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