Island Heat

“Okay,” he said. He had a sudden urge to simply refuse to hand Eva back, but it passed as soon as it registered in his mind. He had no rights in this situation.

“I’ve got two shifts again next week,” Danique said. She was working at the local kindergarten as an assistant. “If you want, I can drop Eva by…”

He shook his head and took one deep lungful of sweet Eva-scented air before he handed her over.

“I’ll be away for the next week or so. Nick Pappas called. Jacques was scheduled to run a lecture series on board his new ship, and they need a replacement.”

Jacques’s restaurant was situated on St. Maarten, a twenty-minute ferry ride away from Anguilla, but despite the distance, the fact that he’d broken his leg trying to climb a coconut tree while blind drunk was common knowledge.

“So you’re filling in?” Danique said. “That’s nice of you.”

Ben shrugged. He wasn’t doing it out of kindness. Even the lesser of his two motivations wasn’t remotely kind—wanting to be as far from Danique and a smugly self-satisfied Monty as possible. In fact, he’d been on the verge of saying no to Nikolas, a good customer and a personal friend, when the captain of Alexandra’s Dream had uttered two words that had made Ben’s baser self prick up its ears.

Victoria Fournier.

Tory Fournier, as he’d known her.

Well, well.

He could just imagine her face when she learned at the last minute that she’d been paired with him for a whole cruise. It was almost delicious, if you were the kind of person who didn’t forgive and forget, even after eight long years.

He guessed he must be that kind of person. To be fair, he argued in his own favor, Tory had humiliated him in a spectacular way. He’d have to be suffering from a severe form of premature dementia to forget it. As for forgiving…He wasn’t a saint. Never had been, never would be.

“I’ll bring her by when you get back, then,” Danique said awkwardly.

Ben gritted his teeth and did what needed to be done. “Look, it’s probably not a good idea. You and Monty have got your own thing going on now. And I’ve got my life.”

His gesturing hand took in the comfortable wicker furniture, terra-cotta-tile floors and mishmash of local art hanging on the walls of his hilltop cottage.

“But I know how much she means to you,” Danique said, holding Eva close, as though she were the one being asked to give her up.

“No point in perpetuating the situation,” Ben said flatly. “How long do you think it’s going to take for Monty to get sick of me butting my head in?”

Danique’s expression told him Monty’s nose was already on the way to being out of joint.

“It’s for the best,” he said, moving toward the door so she’d have to follow him. He wanted them gone now that he’d said it out loud.

Danique sniffed loudly as she passed him. She was crying. He tried to feel sorry for her but couldn’t. Sure, she’d been in a tough situation. But he was the one who’d come out a loser. Him and Angela Blackman.

Ben shut the door firmly behind her, crossing straight to the fridge to grab himself a beer. He was striding out toward the terrace when he heard the sound of Danique’s car pulling out of his gravel driveway.

Outside on the terrace, he braced an arm against the railing and took a long swallow of cold, bitter beer. Below him, the hillside swept down toward the beach of Rendezvous Bay, green vegetation standing in stark contrast to the golden perfection of the beach. Beyond that, the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean stretched off into the distance.

A brisk ocean breeze cooled his overheated emotions, and he dropped down onto one of the weathered timber lounges he kept on the terrace.

Eva was gone. Many of his single buddies would tell him he’d dodged a bullet. He reminded himself of how unhappy he’d been when he’d first learned about Danique’s pregnancy, how trapped and angry and hunted he’d felt. He’d gotten lucky. He needed to keep reminding himself of that.

Somehow, the sentiment just didn’t ring true.

Squinting out to sea, he saw a slow-moving ship crawling across the horizon, and his thoughts turned to Alexandra’s Dream and Tory Fournier.

A feral grin twisted his lips as he contemplated the next week or so. He wondered what she looked like now that she was in her late twenties. She’d been slim when he’d known her, with small, high breasts and long, coltish legs. Her delicate heart-shaped face had been deceptively sweet-looking, he recalled, especially with that beguiling chin dimple. She’d suckered him in for weeks after casually letting him down after their one night together. Then she’d sprung her little surprise. They said that revenge was a dish best served cold. He wondered if eight years qualified as being too cold? Perhaps even…petty?

He laughed into the ocean breeze. So maybe he wasn’t about to wreak revenge on her. After all, maybe he’d had it coming a little. But he certainly wouldn’t be letting her walk all over him with her elegant designer pumps, flashing those pearly whites of hers and flicking that long straight hair over her shoulder. Eight years ago they’d drawn the battle lines between them, and they were still there.

But he was no longer a gauche island boy intimidated by her family pedigree and industry contacts. He’d had his own successes now.

This time they’d meet as equals. He had a feeling it was going to be interesting.

And he needed something interesting right now. Anything, really, to distract him from the empty space where his heart used to be.

TORY SPENT THE FIRST evening on board familiarizing herself with the ship. Since she’d never been hot on Greek mythology at school, she didn’t have a chance in hell of remembering many of the deck names, as they were all named after Greek gods, except for the obvious ones that repeated viewings of Xanadu had imprinted on her memory. She managed to find the gym, the cinema, the various bars and clubs, the day spa. And all the while her brain was working like a crazed hamster in a wheel, worrying at the problem of Ben Cooper.

She didn’t want to see him again. Not because she was scared of how he might react all these years after her revenge. She didn’t want to see him because he’d made her feel so foolish. She’d been charmed by him, besotted and bedazzled. She’d said things to him, done things with him that she’d never done with another man. She was no prude and she definitely wasn’t ashamed of any of it. But it made her feel so stupid that she’d allowed him to touch her, to know her so intimately, and all along he’d been playing her.

Just remembering made her grind her teeth together. What a jerk! And what a sap she’d been, allowing him to sweet-talk her into a date and then into his bed.

She could never fully regret their one night, however. And it wasn’t about the sex—even if she was willing to admit that he’d been one of the best lovers she’d ever had. It was because he was the person who had given her her first taste of island food. She could trace her love affair with all things Caribbean back to the moment when she’d first smelled his unique jerk spices frying in the pan. She could still close her eyes and remember the meal he’d cooked her that night: succulent, spicy jerk chicken, coconut rundown and his own special take on johnnycakes for dessert. The child of a classically trained chef who believed that French cooking was the only true way, Tory had been blown away by the exciting flavors warring for supremacy in her mouth. Then Ben had talked about Anguilla and his family and the shabby beachfront takeaway stand that he one day planned to transform into a prestigious establishment, and the magic had been complete—she’d been utterly enchanted and enslaved by all things Caribbean.

Stupid, stupid girl. Tory shook her head in disgust over her own past naiveté as she made her way back to her cabin. He must have been laughing up his sleeve at how easily he’d gotten beneath her defenses.

She slammed her state room door with a little more verve than was strictly necessary and crossed to the bathroom to brush and floss her teeth and wash her face. Buttoning up the cotton pyjamas she preferred to sleep in, Tory pulled down the covers and crawled into bed. Yawning widely, she flicked the light off, rolled onto her side and slid her hand under the pillow, her habitual sleeping posture. She gave a gasp of surprise and sat bolt upright when something cold and slithery met her fingers. Fumbling for the lamp switch, she flipped her pillow out of the way, then bit her lip on an involuntary laugh when she saw that the object of her fear was a necklace and pendant. Now that she knew it was harmless, she mocked her childish reaction. What had she thought it was—the world’s thinnest snake?

Still smiling, she lifted the necklace and weighed the pendant in her hand. Made from silver and shaped like a solid teardrop, it was slightly tarnished and looked like a much-loved, wear-it-every-day kind of necklace. She frowned for a moment, wondering how it gotten in her bed. The sheets were crisp and fresh, so there was no way that it could belong to the previous occupant. Her frown cleared as she guessed what must have happened—the maid had lost her necklace while cleaning Tory’s room.

Checking the time, Tory saw it was still early—barely nine. She could notify Lost and Found that she’d located the maid’s necklace; no doubt the woman was fretting.

As soon she’d explained the situation to Lost and Found, however, the woman on the other end of the line laughed loudly and asked her to hold. Tory turned the pendant over and over in her hand while she waited for someone else to take her call, and finally a familiar voice came on the line.

“Victoria, it’s Patti Kennedy here. How are you doing?”

Tory was a little taken aback that the cruise director would show interest in something as insignificant as a lost necklace.

“Hi, Patti. Sorry, there must be some kind of mistake. I was just reporting a lost necklace in my room….”

Patti laughed. “You obviously haven’t read through your orientation material yet. If you open the folder, you’ll see a colored glossy flyer with the heading ‘Teardrops of the Moon.’ The flyer will explain everything, but basically it’s a little tradition we’ve developed on board where we hide the necklace in a stateroom for one of our passengers to find. According to an old legend, the necklace is supposed to bring good luck, especially in love.”

“Oh,” Tory said, viewing the pendant in an entirely different light now. Good luck she welcomed, but good luck in love? She didn’t really have time in her life for love, not with a book to promote and a new restaurant to start up, let alone the more immediate challenge of keeping dozens of cruise passengers informed and titillated on a daily basis—all while working alongside Ben Cooper.

“Maybe you guys should put it in someone else’s room. I mean, I’m not really a guest, am I?” Tory said. She’d been assigned a stateroom because of the short duration of her stay on board and the lack of availability of other crew accommodation. The pendant must have been meant for someone else.

“Don’t tell me—a pretty girl like you doesn’t need luck in love?” Patti guessed.

“It’s not that,” Tory said, thinking wryly of how long it had been since she’d even been on a date, let alone gotten lucky. “It’s more I kind of feel like a fraud, being here to work and all.”

Patti made a dismissive noise. “Forget it. You’re a high-profile guest lecturer, not a dishwasher. I think it’s terrific you’ve found it. But if you really don’t want it, you can turn it in to us tomorrow and we’ll hide it again.”

“Okay. Thanks, Patti.”