The Bride's Rescuer

Frustration had robbed her of her appetite, and she ignored the supper tray the housekeeper had left on the dresser. She would wait until everyone was asleep, then search for a telephone.

The darkness gathered with irritating slowness. Feeling hemmed in, almost a prisoner, she crossed the room onto the veranda, where broad fronds of cabbage palms crackled like stiff paper against the weathered, second-story balustrade. Beyond the house, a narrow path wound through a sea grape hedge toward dunes fringed with sea oats. Moonlight cut a silver swath across calm gulf waters. Directly below, a rectangle of light from a downstairs window fell on the ground. Abruptly the light disappeared. Mrs. Givens must have gone to bed.

The silence of the room oppressed Celia. The oil lamp on the dresser indicated the house lacked electricity. She could do without power. What she needed was a telephone. Or maybe a generator and a short-wave radio. She’d search the house for a way to contact the mainland, to rent a boat, if necessary. A charter would be the quickest way to return to home and to work. And attending to her bookstore and its clients would be the best way to put her disastrous engagement behind her.

She doused the light on the dresser, crossed to the door, and laid her ear against the smooth pine panel. When she heard nothing, she opened the door and eased herself into the hallway.

Her bare feet made no sound on the stairs that descended to the lower hallway. Her head still throbbed, and vertigo made her unsteady, but she was determined to find a way to call for help.

In the dimness of the moonlight, the first room on the right appeared to be a study where the faint odor of leather, saddle soap and pipe tobacco hung in the air. In the darkness, she fumbled across the surface of the large desk, then searched the bookshelves, but she found nothing except books, papers and a humidor.

Celia returned to the hallway. Behind the door to the next room, Mrs. Givens’s loud snores rattled. Celia tiptoed through the outer doors across a dogtrot to the kitchen. A massive woodstove, where embers lay banked for the night, dominated the room. Celia shook her head in sympathy. Without electricity and the convenience of modern appliances, the housekeeper had her work cut out for her.

Celia sneaked back into the main house and peered into the dining room, filled with the wicker and rattan furniture she’d expected in a Florida island house. But so far, no sign of a phone or any other means of communication.

Only one room remained, and her hopes of finding a means to call for help dwindled. She was treading softly toward the front room when dizziness engulfed her. She steadied herself against the paneling of the hallway, but her legs weakened, and for a moment, she feared she would faint. Her head throbbed from the blow she’d received when she capsized. Common sense told her to return to bed, but the need to find a radio or a phone kept her searching.

The door of the front room stood slightly ajar, and inside, a lamp burned low on the mantelpiece, illuminating a life-sized portrait of a woman and boy. The woman, elegantly beautiful in a long formal gown, stood with her hand on the shoulder of a small boy with plump, rosy cheeks and a mischievous smile. The warm light and friendly expression of the child beckoned, and Celia entered the room.

A camel-backed sofa, flanked by deep chairs, faced the fireplace, whose black, gaping maw devoured a profusion of potted ferns and bromeliads. She shuddered at the image and stepped around the sofa for a better look at the portrait, wondering if the pair were related to the present occupants.

Someone muttered incoherently behind her. Startled, she jumped and clasped her chest to prevent her heart from pounding through her breastbone. Whirling around, she discovered a man stretched out asleep upon the sofa. Her fear turned to surprise when she recognized Cameron Alexander, and surprise dissolved into a surge of relief. She would shake him awake and beg him to take her to the mainland.

But her vision blurred, her head throbbed, and the pain and dizziness returned. She slid weakly onto a chair beside the sofa. When the vertigo passed, she focused slowly on the man before her. With sun-burnished hair the color of a lion’s mane, he lay on his back. His unbuttoned shirt fell open, revealing the tanned muscles of a powerful chest, rising and falling in a hypnotic rhythm.

The strong lines of his sun-bronzed face, handsome, square-jawed and high-cheekboned, were softened by a lock of hair that fell over his forehead. A frown drew down the corners of his wide mouth, and a deep vertical line creased his forehead between his eyebrows, as if he dreamed unpleasant dreams.

His fitted pants accentuated muscular thighs, and his boots seemed more suitable for riding than boating. He had flung one arm over his head, and the other hung to the floor, where an empty brandy snifter rested in his curled fingers.

He didn’t dress like a boater, no jeans or shorts or T-shirt, but, living on the island, he had to have a boat.

She rose, gripped the firm muscles of his shoulder, and shook him gently.

Instantly, his hand flew up and seized her wrist. In the same moment, his lids sprang open, and his eyes gleamed golden and wild. The dreaming frown intensified, and he stared at her so fiercely, she shivered in the warm air.

“What are you doing here?” His voice rumbled like distant thunder.

She pried his fingers from her wrist, realizing she couldn’t have freed herself if he hadn’t allowed it, and took a step back. “Looking for a way to contact the mainland to charter a boat. Do you have a radio?”

“No.” In contrast to his harsh tone, his eyes flickered with sympathy.

“Can you take me to the mainland?”

“The closest town is Key West.” He snarled the words, but his hands clenched and unclenched as if he fought some inner battle.

Instinctively, she retreated a few steps. “Will you take me there?”

He shook his head, as if to clear the sympathetic look from his eyes. “I haven’t been to Key West in six years.”

“But you said Key West is the closest town—”

“It is.”

His gaze shifted past her to the portrait above the mantel, and when he spoke again, he seemed to be speaking to himself. “I haven’t set foot there in six years and I have no intention of returning now.”

Giddiness struck her once more, and she comprehended his words with difficulty.

“I have to go home—” The pain in her head stabbed and swelled, the room spun wildly, her knees buckled, and the floor came up to meet her.

CAMERON ALEXANDER scooped the slender figure into his arms for the second time that day and placed her on the sofa. He had sworn to avoid her, to closet himself away until she left the island, but she’d found him.

He should awaken Mrs. Givens and leave the girl to her, but his resolve to keep away weakened as he feasted on the sight of her. His hands tingled with longing to bury themselves in the halo of her auburn hair with its highlights bleached by the sun. Golden lashes brushed her cheeks, hiding her sea-blue eyes, but the wide-eyed stare she had bestowed on him when he first gathered her off the beach remained etched in his mind.

He had seen no woman other than Mrs. Givens in over six years, but if he saw hundreds a day, the one before him would still captivate him. Fleetingly, he wished he’d met her years ago in the drawing room of a respectable London home, before his marriage, before his trouble. He’d believed he’d lost everything before he came to the island, but he hadn’t calculated losing someone he had yet to meet. He’d had no way to predict a storm would wash such a woman onto his beach.

Poised and elegant, even in distress, yet poignantly vulnerable, Celia Stevens called forth all his protective instincts. A groan escaped his lips. He yearned to safeguard her, yet the most prudent thing he could do was place as much distance between himself and the woman before him as possible.

Had the Devil sent this vision to torment him? Worse yet, had God Almighty sent her as punishment for his grievous sins, a sight to conjure up memories of the horror he had spent so many years trying to forget?

He could not break his exile to take her away. He must avoid her, so there would never be another disaster.

Another death.

But even as he pledged to stay away, he could not refrain from staring at his gift from the sea.

CELIA OPENED HER EYES and gazed at the strange, lamplit ceiling in confusion. A glass clinked, and she looked toward the sideboard where the handsome stranger stood, filling a snifter with brandy from a crystal decanter.

“Feeling better?” The soft glow from the lamp bathed Cameron’s face in golden light, and a concerned look replaced his earlier fierce expression.

She pulled herself up to a sitting position and curled into the corner of the sofa with her knees tucked beneath her, uncomfortably aware she wore only a thin cotton nightgown.

He handed her a snifter of brandy, folded his tall frame onto a chair beside her, raised his glass in a salute, and downed his drink in a great gulp. “Drink, Miss Stevens. The brandy will revive you, bring the color back to your cheeks.”

She sipped the smooth cognac, and a flash of heat seared down her throat. “I’ve never been this giddy. When my boat broke up at sea, I banged my head somehow.”

He leaned toward her and parted her hair with gentle fingers. “You have an angry knot there, but the skin isn’t broken. Your dizziness should soon pass.”

He smoothed her hair back with the palm of his hand in a gesture both comforting and disturbing.

“You never answered my question.” Her throat burned from the brandy, and her voice came out a whisper.

“What question?” The edge returned to his tone, and his strange-colored eyes drilled into hers.

“Will you take me to Key West—or at least to the mainland?”

A wariness touched his eyes, and he appeared to withdraw inward. “No, I cannot.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

As her strength returned, her anger grew. If he was the man of leisure he appeared, why couldn’t he take a few hours to sail her to the mainland?

“Captain Biggins brings supplies to the island.” He leaned back in his chair and rolled his glass between the palms of his strong, square hands. “He was here only a few days ago, but he will return in twelve weeks.”

Dizziness and brandy made concentration difficult. “What’s Captain Biggins got to do with me?”

Cameron refused to meet her eyes. “He will be happy to take you to Key West, and I will gladly pay your passage.”

“But twelve weeks—that’s three months! I can’t stay here that long. I have a business to run, my home to look after, friends who are worried about me.”

His mouth settled into a grim, intractable line. “You have no choice but to wait for Captain Biggins.”

A brandied fog enveloped her brain. “But I—”

“You are different from this afternoon when I carried you in from the beach.” His expression softened.

She was not too drunk to notice his change of subject.

“When you ordered me locked in my room?” She smiled to lessen the mockery of her words. He’d be more inclined to help if she didn’t antagonize him.

When he returned her smile, a strange fluttering developed beneath her ribs, and she swallowed a generous swig of brandy to hide her confusion.

“So I did. It appears Mrs. Givens ignored my instructions.” Her host looked at his glass as if surprised to find it empty, then gazed at her again, tenderness gleaming in his amber eyes. “You were so weak and battered, we feared you might not survive. You have a resilient spirit.”

His wide mouth curved upward in another smile, and warmth radiated from her forehead to her bare toes.

Cameron took her empty glass, refilled it, and handed it back. Her fingers brushed his when she took the glass, and his skin tingled with warmth where she touched him. He had reacted that way toward Clarissa at first, and disaster had followed. If he learned more about this Celia, he might find her less enchanting. “Was there anyone else with you when the storm destroyed your ship?”

She shook her head. “I usually sail alone. That’s when I do most of my thinking.”

He felt himself drowning in the whirlpools of blue that stared up at him, while she traced the rim of her snifter with a slender index finger tipped with a pale pink nail.

“And what do you think about?” he asked.

A rosy blush suffused her skin above the lace-trimmed collar of her gown, and a delicate blue vein pulsed at her throat. “Problem-solving, mostly.”

Like a sneak attack, a desire to protect her from all dilemmas surged through him. “What kind of problems?”

She lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes in a determined squint. “Nothing that can’t be solved by returning home immediately.”

An illogical stab of jealousy pierced him. “Is there someone waiting for you?”

Her blush deepened. “My parents are dead, and I have no other family.”

“No one who misses you?”

Celia bit back her reply. Would she endanger herself by admitting no one would miss her if she didn’t return immediately? Her friends would think she was hiding out, ashamed to show her face until the scandal of running away from her wedding had died down. At first, her clients would believe she was on her honeymoon, as scheduled.

“There are those who’ll search for me if I don’t return home soon,” she lied.

“Where do you live?” Cameron’s golden gaze seemed to penetrate her deception.

She hesitated, but could think of no reason why her residence should be a secret. “Clearwater Beach.”

“Clearwater Beach?”

“It’s in the center of the state on the Gulf Coast.”

His eyebrows arched in surprise. “You’re a long way from home.”

“Judging from your accent, so are you.”

His eyes glittered with irony. Or was it madness? He was like no one she had ever met.

Marooned with a madman jumped unbidden into her mind.

It sounded like the title of a B-horror flick. She giggled as hysteria closed in. To calm herself, she chugged the remaining brandy in her glass.

He must have seen her distress, because he set down his glass. “You must be exhausted. You should be in bed.”

That statement seemed reasonable enough. Except for his refusal to take her to the mainland, he didn’t act crazy. If she hadn’t drunk so much brandy, she could think straight. God, what was happening to her? And why hadn’t she kept a clear head to deal with it?

Before she could protest, Cameron swept her off the sofa and into his arms. The hard warmth of his body pressed through the thin fabric of her gown, and involuntarily her arms reached up to twine around his neck.

Who was crazy now?

Her dizziness returned, probably a combination of the knock on her head with too much brandy. She didn’t resist when he tucked her head into the hollow of his throat where his pulse pounded and carried her into the hallway and up the stairs.

Brandy coursed like fire through her veins. In a state close to dreaming, nearer to drunkenness, she nestled deeper into Cameron’s embrace. Before she drifted into unconsciousness, a scene from Gone with the Wind flashed through her mind of Rhett carrying Scarlett up a wide stairway.

Home, she reminded herself, she had to get home.

“I’ll worry about that tomorrow.” Her voice slurred, and the last thing she remembered was giggling at her own cleverness.

AS HE CARRIED HER UP THE stairs, Cameron sensed her breath against his throat and the softness of her body in his arms. She smelled of Mrs. Givens’s frangipani soap and sunshine and an intoxicating fragrance uniquely her own. He brushed his face against her hair, clasping her to him with one arm and opening her door with the other.

Before placing her on the bed, he folded the coverlet at the foot, reluctant to draw it over her and hide the sight before him. He knelt beside the bed, drank in the details of her unconscious figure, and resisted the urge to trace a finger over her high cheekbone, down the slender column of her throat, and across her delicate shoulder.

She would stay until the supply boat arrived. Even if friends or family came searching for her, they’d not find her among the Ten Thousand Islands of Florida’s southeast coast. He’d barely found the place himself the first time, even with detailed maps and the competent guidance of Captain Biggins.

Twelve weeks would give him time to convince her to keep his secrets. And for him to learn if he could trust her.

She moaned slightly in her sleep, and he drew back, fearful of waking her.

When he gazed at her again, her image wavered before him, the flawless contours of her face dissolved into Clarissa’s features, and blood ran in rivers across the bed.

He buried his face in his hands, forcing the waking nightmare away, and when he looked once more, she slept peacefully, whole and unharmed. He drew the covers over her, then straightened and left.

In his own room, the imagined sound of her breathing tortured him as he paced like a caged animal. The horns of a cruel dilemma impaled him. He could not take her off the island and risk discovery, yet for her own sake, he dared not let her stay.

Dawn light illuminated the veranda outside his door before he closed his eyes to sleep.

WHEN CELIA AWOKE, sunlight streamed through the French doors of the upstairs bedroom. The pain in her head had receded to a dull ache, throbbing both from her injury and her host’s generosity with his brandy. Her encounter with Cameron Alexander the night before seemed like a dream. She’d been sound asleep when he tucked her into bed, so she remembered nothing after he’d carried her up the stairs.

The problem of getting off the island still faced her.

Using the basin and pitcher of water on the dresser, she washed her face, then inspected the garments Mrs. Givens must have left for her. The clothes were not only too big, which she expected, considering the plumpness of their owner, but lacked any sense of style. In addition to the skirt and blouse, she found a shapeless chemise, a slip and a pair of ruffled drawers.

She shrugged off the nightgown, stepped into the strange panties and pulled the drawstring on the voluminous drawers taut, noting the tiny, even hand-stitching. Mrs. Givens apparently made all her clothes since Cameron Alexander probably wouldn’t let his housekeeper leave the island to shop. How did one order underwear from a charter boat captain?

Celia shook her head at her dilemma. The sooner she returned to the mainland, the sooner she could end this crazy nightmare.

She rejected the too large chemise and heavy slip—the Florida climate was too hot for either—and slipped on the gathered skirt, which hung just above her ankles. She pulled on the blouse, roomy enough for two, tied the shirttail into a knot at her waist, and rolled the long sleeves above her elbows.

After plaiting her hair into a loose French braid, she hurried down to the kitchen, determined to find Cameron and force or cajole him—whichever it took—to take her to Key West.

Chapter Two

The house looked bigger in the morning light. Double doors at each end of the hallways and in every room opened to the cooling winds, and the broad, encircling roof of the veranda shaded every window. From the dogtrot, Celia noted the house was built on stilts to allow breezes and high water to circulate beneath, just like many of the homes on her own Clearwater Beach.

When she entered the kitchen, Mrs. Givens looked up from her baking. The housekeeper’s mouth dropped as her gaze traveled upward from Celia’s bare feet and ankles, exposed by the skirt, to the strip of midriff where she’d tied the blouse above her waistline, to her cleavage where she’d folded back the high-necked blouse for coolness.

The older woman’s cheeks glowed pink, probably from the heat of the open hearth, and her tongue tripped on her words. “Very pretty you are, m’dear, and looking less like flotsam every day.”

“Thanks for lending me these clothes.”

“Well, now, you couldn’t have worn that wedding gown, even if it was still in one piece, could you? Not in this heat.”

Curiosity glimmered in the older woman’s eyes, but Celia wasn’t ready to discuss her hasty flight from the church. Mrs. Seffner’s visit and her accusations against Darren seemed like a distant nightmare, one Celia wished she could forget. She wondered how Darren had taken being jilted at the altar. Had he slunk away in disgrace? Expressed concern and organized a search? Or, if he was really the murderer Mrs. Seffner believed him to be, would he attempt to track Celia down for vengeance? The possibility made her shiver in the warm air.

“Sit yourself down,” Mrs. Givens said. “Your breakfast is ready.”

Celia settled at one end of a large wooden table whose battered, well-scrubbed surface smelled of lemons. Mrs. Givens poured steaming coffee from an enamel pot, filled Celia’s plate with scrambled eggs, grits and sliced mangoes, and moved a basket of hot rolls and a pot of honey within her reach.

Celia discovered her appetite had returned. Besides, she’d need her strength to find a way off the island. While she ate, she gazed through the open doorway of the kitchen. The island apparently was a narrow key with the Gulf of Mexico beyond the dunes to the west, and to the south and east, a bay, dotted with islands, stretched off toward the dark green mass of the mainland.

The house would have only a tenuous anchorage on the slender strip of land during a violent storm like the one that had wrecked the Morgan. Her hands trembled at the memory, and a suffocating sense of panic squeezed the air from her throat. She gulped coffee, and the scalding liquid doused the terrifying recollections of the storm and eased her breathing.

“What’s this island called?” she asked, anxious to push her memories of the storm aside.

“It isn’t named on any map, but Mr. Alexander calls it Solitaire.”

Celia shuddered. The name evoked haunting images of a place withdrawn from society, forgotten by the world, almost as if suspended in time, like a place of legend. Its disquieting stillness made the name an apt one.

“I’d hoped after six years of Solitaire, he’d be ready to return to England.” Sadness clouded Mrs. Givens’s green eyes as she added eggs and butter to a bowl and began mixing with a wooden spoon. “But the longer he’s here, the more determined he is to stay. I’m afraid his exile might last forever.”

Celia pictured the golden stranger with the classically handsome face and a body like a Greek god. Who was this Cameron Alexander? She needed to know more about him if she was to persuade him to help end her own exile.

“What did he do in England?”

Mrs. Givens’s head snapped up, and her green eyes narrowed. “Do? What do you mean?”

“What kind of work did he do?” Whatever it was, Celia mused, he must have been successful to have purchased his own island worth millions in the Florida real estate market.

Mrs. Givens laughed with a nervous twittering sound. “He was a gentleman landowner with farms, mines and such.”

His work didn’t sound ominous enough to make him run away to a deserted island. Maybe the illness Mrs. Givens had mentioned had caused his early retirement. “Why did he leave all that behind?”

The housekeeper ceased her stirring and set the mixing bowl down with a heavy thud. Pain contorted her face. “I am never to speak a word about that. And you mustn’t ask. Mr. Alexander has sworn me not to speak of it.”

“You hinted yesterday that he’s ill.” The night before Cameron had appeared strong and healthy, suffering only from the effects of too much brandy and his peculiar insistence that she remain on the island.

“Aye, so I did. Suffice it to say his illness is one of the heart, and let it go at that. I’ve said too much already.”