Dominic's Child

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 The rage in his eyes had been replaced by a clouded emptiness as though the reality of Barbara’s death had at last sunk in and he realized no amount of ranting or blaming was going to bring her back.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.