Dominic's Child

“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That he grew progressively more withdrawn as they covered the distance was indication enough that he agreed with her assessment.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.