Remarried In Haste

“You need to see Rowan!”

“I don’t know where she is and I’m not going looking for her!”

“I know where she is.” Gabrielle turned and from a wrought-iron shelf picked up a folded brochure, waving it in the air. “In three days she’ll be leading a small group of people through various islands in the West Indies looking for endemic birds. Which, in case you didn’t know, means birds native to the area. I had to look it up.”

In spite of himself, Brant’s eyes had flown to the folded piece of paper and his feet had glued themselves to the parquet floor. Conquering the urge to snatch the brochure from her, he rapped, “So what?”

“There’s a vacancy on that trip. My friend Sonia’s husband—Rick Williams—was to have gone, but he’s come down with a bad respiratory infection. You could take his place.”

His mouth dry, Brant sneered, “Me? Looking for endemic birds on those cute little Caribbean islands? That’s like telling a mercenary soldier he’s going back to kindergarten.”

“You’d be looking for your wife, Brant.” Gabrielle’s smile was ironic. “Looking for your life, Brant. You didn’t know I was a poet, did you?”

“You’ve been watching too many soap operas.”

“Kindly don’t insult me!”

His lashes flickered. Gabrielle almost never lost her temper, unlike Rowan, who lost it frequently.

Rowan. He’d always loved her name. His first gift to her had been a pair of earrings he’d had designed especially for her, little enameled bunches of the deep orange berries of the rowan tree, berries as fiery-colored as her tumbled, shoulder-length hair. Spread on the pillow, her hair had had the glow of fire....

With an exclamation of disgust, because many months ago he’d rigorously trained himself to forget everything that had happened between him and Rowan in their big bed, he held out his hand. Gabrielle passed him the brochure. Brant flattened it; from long years of hiding anything remotely like fear, his hands were as steady as if he were unfolding the daily newspaper. “‘Endemic Birds of the Eastern Caribbean,’” he read. “‘Guided by Rowan Carter.”’

She’d kept her own name even when they’d been married. For business reasons, she’d said. Although afterward, when she’d left him, he’d wondered if it had been for other, more hidden and more complicated reasons.

He cleared his throat. “You’re suggesting I phone the company Rowan works for and propose myself as a substitute for your friend’s husband? Rowan, as I recall, has a fair bit of say about the trips she runs—the last person in the world she’d allow to go on one of them would be me.”

“Don’t tell her. Just turn up.”

His jaw dropped. For the space of a full five seconds he looked at Gabrielle in silence. “Intrigue,” he said, “that’s what you should be writing.”

“Rick can cancel easily enough—he bought insurance and he’ll get his money back. Or you can pay him for the trip and go in his place. All you’d have to do is change the airline tickets to your name.”

“So I’d turn up at the airport in—” he ran his eyes down the page “—Grenada, and say, ‘Oh, by the way, Rowan, Rick couldn’t make it so I thought I’d come instead.’” He gave an unamused bark of laughter. “She’d throw me on the first plane back to Toronto.”

“Then it’ll be up to you to convince her otherwise.”

“You’ve never met her—you have no idea how stubborn she can be.”

“Like calls to like?” Gabrielle asked gently.

“Oh, do shut up,” he snapped. “Of course I’m not going, it’s a crazy idea.” Nevertheless, with a detached part of his brain, Brant noticed he hadn’t put the brochure back on the shelf. Or—more appropriately—thrown it to the floor and trampled on it.

“I made tiramisu for dessert. And I’ll put the coffee on.”

Gabrielle vanished into the kitchen. Like a man who couldn’t help himself, Brant started reading the description of the trip that would be leaving on Wednesday. Seven different islands, two nights on each except for the final island of Antigua, where a one-night stopover was scheduled. Hiking in rain forests and mangrove swamps, opportunities for swimming and snorkeling.

Opportunities for being with Rowan.

For two whole weeks.

He was mad to even consider it. Rowan didn’t want anything to do with him, she’d made that abundantly clear. So why set himself up for another rejection when he was doing just fine as he was?

Because he was doing fine. Gabrielle’s imagination was way out of line with all her talk of love and needs and repressions. He didn’t need Rowan any more than Rowan needed him.

He’d hated it when his checks had been returned by that smooth-tongued bastard of a lawyer. Hated not knowing where she was living. Hated it most of all that she’d never wanted to see him again.

But he’d gotten over that. Gotten over it and gone on with his life, the only kind of life he thrived on.

The last thing he needed was to see Rowan again.

What he needed was a cup of strong black coffee and a bowl of tiramisu laden with marscapone. Brant tossed the brochure onto the dining room table and followed Gabrielle into the kitchen.

CHAPTER ONE

AT THIRTY-seven thousand feet the clouds looked solid enough to walk on, and the sky was a guileless blue. Brant stretched his legs into the comfortable amount of space his executive seat allowed him and gazed out of the window. He was flying due south, nonstop, from Toronto to Antigua; in Antigua he’d board a short hop to Grenada.

Where Rowan should be on hand to meet him.

Among the various documents Rick had given him had been a list of participants; he, Brant, was the only Canadian other than Rowan on the trip. Therefore, he’d presumably be the only one coming in on that particular Hight; the rest of the group would fly via Puerto Rico or Miami.

It should be an interesting meeting.

Which didn’t answer the question of why he was going to Grenada.

His dinner with Gabrielle had been last Sunday. On Monday he’d phoned Rick’s wife Sonia and told her he’d take Rick’s tickets. On Tuesday his boss—that enigmatic figure who owned and managed an international, prestigious and highly influential magazine of political commentary—bad sent a fax requesting him to go to Myanmar, as Burma was now known, and write an article on the heroin trade. Whereupon Brant had almost phoned Sonia back. He liked going to Myanmar, it had that constant miasma of danger on which he flourished. His whole life revolved around places like that.

Grenada wouldn’t make the list of the world’s most dangerous places. Not by a long shot.

So why was he going to Grenada and not Myanmar?

To prove himself right, he thought promptly. To prove he no longer had any feelings for Rowan.

Yeah? He was spending one hell of a lot of money to prove something he’d told Gabrielle didn’t need proving.

And why did he, right now, have that sensation of supervigilance, of every nerve keyed to its highest pitch, the very same feeling that always accompanied him on his assignments?

Don’t try and answer that one, Brant Curtis, he told himself ironically, watching a cloud drift by that had the hooked neck and forked tongue of a prehistoric sea monster. He’d told his boss he had plans for a well-earned vacation; and the only reason he’d phoned Sonia back was to borrow Rick’s high-powered binoculars and a bird book about the West Indies. The book was now sitting in his lap, along with a list of the birds they were likely to see. He hadn’t opened either one.

Why in God’s name was he wasting two weeks of his precious time to go and see a woman who thought he was a liar and a cheat? A sexual cheat. How she’d laugh if she knew that somehow, in the eight months he and Gabrielle had been held for ransom in Colombia, Gabrielle had seemed more like the sister he’d never had, the mother he could only dimly remember, than a potential bed partner. This despite the fact that Gabrielle was a very attractive woman.

He’d never told Gabrielle that, and never would. Nor would he ever tell Rowan.

A man was entitled to his secrets.

Tension had pulled tight the muscles in Brant’s neck and shoulders; he was aware of his heartbeat thin and high in his chest. But those weren’t feelings, of course. They were just physiological reactions caused by adrenaline, fight or flight, a very useful mechanism that had gotten him out of trouble more times than he cared to count. The airplane was looking after the flight part, he thought semihumorously. Which left fight.

Rowan would no doubt take care of that. She’d never been one to bite her tongue if she disagreed with him or disliked what he was doing; it was one of the reasons he’d married her, for the tilt of her chin and the defiant toss of her curly red hair.