Nighttime Sweethearts

“Your idea of fun,” she reminded herself, “is an evening with a good book. You look exactly like what you are—a research assistant who has never had a real live adventure in her whole life.”

Only that wasn’t quite true. A long time ago, shrieking with laughter, her arms wrapped around the solid, muscled body of the most beautiful boy in the world, she had ridden behind him on a speeding motorcycle.

His eyes had been the most stunning color of midnight blue, and he’d had the most amazing smile. She’d met him at high school, the high schools in those old districts having an eclectic mix of rich and poor. And he’d been poor. From the wrong side of the tracks, though his humble home had been only a block or two from where she now lived.

It had been years since she’d allowed herself to think of him, and she did not know why she had thought of him now. She brushed away the memory, a tormenting mix of delight and pain.

Still, something lingered and increased her sense of restlessness.

What did a restless person do on this secluded island resort? She had not heard her mother come back yet. Should she go and join them? They would be dancing by now, her mother whirling and twirling like a woman twenty years her junior.

But Cynthia knew that kind of entertainment would not take away the restlessness she was feeling. It might make it worse, make her feel even emptier, as if she was an actress playing a role she could not quite get into.

She left the bathroom and went to the French doors that led outside. She intended to close them, suppress these out-of-character thoughts, cream her face and go to bed.

But with her hand resting on the door handle, she felt the pull of the night. It was incredibly dark out. She could hear the whisper of a restless ocean. And then, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw thousands of little lights in the sea, bobbing and dancing.

La Torchere had been named for these small phosphorescent sea creatures that lit up the waters around the candelabra-shaped island at night.

But tonight, it seemed those lights dancing playfully in a sea of darkness were calling her name.

“You can’t go swimming by yourself in the middle of the night. Alone. It would be reckless.”

Her mother’s voice, again.

But then Cynthia wondered exactly how reckless it would be. She was a strong swimmer. The only residents of the island were La Torchere’s well-heeled guests. In fact, the only way to arrive here was by private ferry or float plane. The employees lived here, too, but all of them seemed charmingly ancient and imminently harmless. The scary people—the kind her mother had warned her about her entire life—were back on the mainland.

If she was going to have an adventure, even a small one, this seemed like it might be the perfect place to indulge herself.

Quickly, before she could change her mind and come to her senses, Cynthia went into her bedroom and put on her bathing suit, an unexciting one-piece high-necked tank suit.

“At least I do have a figure,” she muttered to herself, and then quickly slipped a cover over her body as if just having one was inviting temptations of the sort her mother did not approve.

She turned off all the lights so that if her mother returned to her suite next door she would think her daughter was sleeping. Locking the door behind her, Cynthia made her cautious way down to the flower-scented walkways that led to the beach.

Though late, the air remained as warm as an embrace. The gentle breeze lifted her hair and caressed her skin. The beach was, as she had known it would be, completely deserted. She went to the water’s edge, put down her towel, kicked off her shoes, and peeled off the swimsuit cover. The air smelled intoxicating, of the sea, of the night, of mystery.

Cynthia stuck her toe in the water and was greeted by more warmth. It was the first night of the new moon, and the night was so dark she could not tell where the water ended and the sky began.

She was utterly alone, and a new thought came to her.

Skinny dip.

It was ludicrous.

There was her mother’s voice again! But the truth was, Cynthia was not the type of woman who did that kind of thing, though she suddenly found herself pondering the type of woman who did. A rather enticing picture formed in her mind of a woman who was free-spirited, fully engaged in life, adventurous, laughter-filled, not so damned serious, not in the least bit tired or unhappy.

A woman who invited exactly the kind of temptations her mother disapproved of!

Ludicrous, her mother’s voice repeated within Cynthia’s own mind, and it proved to be the deciding factor.

All right. She would be ludicrous, then, and just a tiny bit reckless. She would give herself this small adventure—this break from convention—as a gift. Tonight, for a few minutes, she would be that free-spirited woman instead of Cynthia Forsythe, professional drudge.

Quickly, before she chickened out, squinting nervously into the impenetrable darkness, Cynthia shed her bathing suit. The night air was astonishing on her naked skin, tender and sensual.

She waded waist-deep and then dove. The water was even better than the air against her nakedness. It was warm and textured, as if she was embraced by liquid silk. Her body felt marvelous, as if it was humming. Cynthia laughed out loud. She became that light-spirited woman of her fantasies as she ducked and dove and swam and played amongst the tiny dancing lights of the sea creatures.

Finally, happy, she flipped on her back and floated in the sea of black—shiny black water meeting inky black sky with no boundary between the two. She imagined she was a star blinking brightly in a universe of darkness.

But she became Cynthia Forsythe again—fell back into her own body with dizzying swiftness—when she heard the slightest sound from the beach.

She lost the relaxation of the float, went under and resurfaced sputtering, her eyes stinging from salt water and her mouth full of the bitter taste. Warily, she turned her attention beachward.

She saw the distinctive flaring of a match, and then the glowing red tip of a cigarette. No, a cigar. The pungent aroma floated out over the darkness to her, rich and spicy.

Women didn’t generally smoke cigars, so unless she was mistaken there was a man on that beach! And here she was cavorting around, nude.

Completely vulnerable, her mother’s voice informed her with a little tsk of satisfaction. This was where heeding the call of adventure led: to the unpredictable, to trouble, to danger.

Cynthia forced herself to think. She could swim farther up the shore and get out of the water, but unfortunately her clothes were on the beach. She did not relish a long walk through the privileged enclaves of La Torchere without a stitch of clothing.

Her other option was to wait, and that she did, but the minutes dragged by, and even after the light of the cigar had been extinguished, she could see a dark shape still on the beach. Her eyes had now adjusted enough to the darkness that the outline told her quite a bit about this unexpected intruder. He was definitely masculine, definitely powerful, infinitely formidable.

Did he know she was there? Had he heard her? Had he seen her bathing suit and cover and towel and shoes?

The best-case scenario was that the resolution of this situation was going to be embarrassing, and the worst-case scenario was that it would become very dangerous.

“Cynthia Forsythe,” she chided herself inwardly, her teeth beginning to chatter. “You should have known you were the least likely person to have an adventure!”

Rick Barnett had come to love the night. It protected him from people’s curious stares, but it was more than that.

Almost in compensation for the damage to his left eye, his right one had developed quite amazing nocturnal vision. At night, it felt as though he had a sixth sense that warned him of obstacles before he even saw them. It wasn’t perfect, he still had a tendency to bash himself on his blind left side, but it was better than during the day, when he often felt he was listing crazily, unbalanced and uneasy with his restricted vision.

Tonight, he had come to scout sites for the chapel. Ms. Montrose, that strange old woman with a young woman’s eyes, an astonishing color of blue-violet, had mentioned a number of possible locations to him, but he had checked them all out and none had spoken to him.

Perhaps accepting the commission to design and build a wedding chapel had been a mistake.

He was a cynical man by nature. He had been even before the accident that had blinded him, laid waste to half his face, and crushed his larynx so that his voice was a harsh growl, almost animallike. Now he was more so, particularly given how rapidly the female of the species assessed the damage to his face and ran the other way. Six months since the accident. His calendar was empty; the lights on his message machine did not blink; his phone did not ring. He had been seeing a woman, fairly seriously, at the time of the accident. She had abandoned ship and when he looked at himself in the mirror he did not blame her.

The doctors told him that eventually the scarring would fade and he would learn to compensate for the loss of half his vision.

Eventually.

There would be no repair for his voice.

Meanwhile, the accident had left him even more hardened than he had been before, only now he wasn’t even attractive. So, he certainly did not believe in anything as ethereal as happily-ever-after.

The truth was, Rick Barnett was not sure what he believed in anymore.

As if his life didn’t feel hellish enough, he’d had to spot Cynthia Forsythe at this very resort? What were the chances of that? The gods seemed to be having quite a good chuckle at his expense!

Once he would have loved to run into her, the girl who had scorned his high-school advances because he was from the wrong side of the tracks. Once he would have loved to introduce her to some of the old-money beauties who clung to his arm and stared into his face as if they could not get enough of him.

But now? He did not want to see Cynthia. He hoped she’d be leaving La Torchere soon and their paths would not cross before that happened.

Rick found himself on a bluff, a rocky outcropping west of the beach, and the hair raised suddenly on the back of his neck. This place did not have the manicured feel of the rest of the resort. It had been left natural. A place of rocks and trees, the landscape rugged and untamed.

He was not sure how he knew, but he knew. This was it. This was where the chapel would go. Was it hypocritical for a man who had no belief in romance, nor in the power of love, to build a wedding chapel?

Probably.

And yet, as he stood here, on this piece of ground, he could almost feel the chapel forming around him. The spirit of it, for no vision of the building itself came to him. He just knew he would put it here, on this rock bluff, facing the sea and all its mysteries.

He loved to build. That did not mean he had to believe in love.

A beautiful, carefree feminine laugh floated over the night air. The hackles on the back of his neck rose again. It was almost as though the gods were laughing at his refusal to believe in love.

It was nonsense, of course. When he walked to the edge of the bluff, he could see the water rippling around a woman who was swimming, alone, in the bay. She laughed again, and the sound tickled along his spine.

Good God. Cynthia?

He would know her laugh anywhere. He had heard it, the robust joyousness of it, a long time ago when she had had her cheek pressed hard into the black leather of his jacket, when her arms had been curled tight around him.

For a moment, he could taste the bitterness of her rejection, and it combined with all the other rejections he had received recently.

He squinted at her, her body a pool of light in a sea of darkness. Those unusual, glow-in-the-dark sea creatures lit the water around her so that it looked as though she was swimming in the sky, not the ocean.

That sixth sense, so finely honed, filled in what he could not see. Cynthia-Miss-Snooty-Forsythe was swimming in the buff.

It was childish and vindictive, and Rick Barnett didn’t give a damn. It was payback time. For her snub of him, for all the snubs of beautiful women who now found him unworthy, he was exacting revenge. Nothing major. Small but satisfying.

He made his way off the bluff to the beach. It was even better than he thought. Her clothes were in an untidy bundle on the sand. If he was not mistaken, her bathing suit—black and proper, exactly what the Cynthia he had known would wear—was on the top of the heap.

He propped himself up against a huge piece of driftwood that had washed in and took his time preparing and lighting the cigar.

She noticed him right away, the movement in the water suddenly stilled. Though it was very dark out, he could see the white roundness of her head bobbing as she trod water and tried to think what to do.

He let her think, never letting on that he knew she was there.

He took his time with the cigar, but even so, she said nothing, hoping to outwait him. He laughed to himself at that and put out the cigar. He crossed his arms over his chest. No one could outwait a man who had all the time in the world.

Finally her voice called out, tremulous.

He frowned at the faint tremor. He’d meant to embarrass her, not scare her. On the other hand, maybe she was just cold.

“Excuse me?” she called.

“Yes?” he answered back.

The growl was not what she was expecting, because she was silent for a moment, contemplating. Then she continued.

“You’ve caught me at an awkward moment. Do you think you could leave the beach while I get out of the water?”

“No.” Had he known her own delight in the power of that word only hours before, he might have said it again.

Her attempt at politeness vanished. “A gentleman would.”

“I’m not a gentleman,” Rick assured her, and the rasp of his voice backed him up. In fact these days when he looked in the mirror, a pirate looked back at him, battle-scarred and hard. Miss Snobby would be swimming the other way if she had any idea.

“Look, it would be a shame if I had to report you to the authorities.”

He smiled at that. Authorities on Torchere Key? But the smile faded. She had that same note in her voice that he had always remembered. Blue-blooded. Used to being listened to. Her pronunciation perfect.

“Report me to the authorities?” he said. “I’m enjoying a quiet moment on the beach, perfectly attired, I might add. You’re the one out there with nothing on.”

He heard her gasp.

“How do you know?” she snapped. “It’s dark!”

Despite her combative tone, he heard the plea in her words, and the prayer. She was hoping he hadn’t seen her. Was she every bit the same Miss Priss she had been? Impossible. She was twenty-six years old now. Some man, somewhere, had tasted the honey of her lips, brought all that leashed passion to the surface.

He didn’t want to think about that, so he walked over to the bundle of her clothes and lifted them with his toe. “Your suit is here on the beach. And some sort of shift. And a towel.” He studied the suit more closely than he had the first time, and then the shift underneath it. Cynthia had always had a glorious body, slender, but round in all the right places.

The suit, and the hideous shift, did not look like clothing that belonged to a woman who had come into herself, found her passion.

Had she married? The thought brought unexpected pain, like a knife going through his heart. She might have three children by now, for all he knew.

He told himself the ache in his heart was only because it would be so unfair if she had gone on to find happiness when his life was in such shambles. He would just find out, that was all. He’d find out, and then he’d fade back into the night, where he had become so comfortable.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said.

“I’ll hear what you have to say.”

He found it faintly amusing that she wasn’t giving an inch even though she was in no position to bargain.

“I’ll turn my back while you come out of the water and get wrapped up in a towel.”

“Is that your best offer?”

At least she didn’t sound afraid. Madder than a wet hen, but not afraid.

“Actually, there’s more. I’ll turn my back in exchange for something.”

Her silence was long. “What?” she finally asked.

It was his silence that was long this time, as he contemplated what he was about to ask her. “A kiss,” he finally said.

“Are you insane?” she sputtered.

“Maybe.”

Again the silence was long. “What kind of kiss?” she asked, finally.

“How many kinds are there?” he asked back.

“There’s the gentle, kiss-on-the-cheek kind.” She sounded extremely hopeful.

“That wasn’t quite what I had in mind,” he said drily.

“There’s the little buss on the lips kind.”

“Getting closer.” This exchange was already revealing an amazing fact to him. She was still the innocent girl she had been, her passion leashed, subdued. If she were married, she’d had plenty of opportunity to tell him she was going to sic her husband on him.

“You are not engaging me in a wet, sloppy kiss! You are a complete stranger. And you’ve been smoking a cigar.”

Cynthia Forsythe was twenty-six years old and she thought kissing was wet and sloppy? And she sounded more concerned about the cigar than the fact he was a stranger.

“Take it or leave it,” he said, and he turned his back. “I’m counting to twenty, and then I’m turning around.”

“Oh! You are impossible. This is absurd.”

“One…two…three…”

Her griping came to an abrupt end and he could hear her moving strongly through the water. His diminished vision had heightened some of his other senses, and so he could tell by the sounds exactly where she was. At the water’s edge, coming up the beach, grabbing her clothes. It took a will of absolute iron to not turn and take a small peek.

Her scent caught him. She was right behind him. She smelled of the sea, but also sweet and clean. Delicious.

She could, of course, pick up her clothes and run, but she didn’t. He heard her struggling into them, the dry cloth catching on her wet skin.

“All right,” she said regally. “You may turn around.”

“Close your eyes,” he ordered her softly.

“Humph. No description for the authorities.”

He turned and looked. Her eyes were obediently screwed closed. She was beautiful up close, her face unmarred by life. Her cheekbones were high; her small nose tilted regally toward the heavens. Her wet hair was plastered against her head, the color of dark gold. It would be lighter in color when it was dry, in the sunlight, and for some reason he was pleased that it was not full of the streaks and dyes dictated by current fashion.

The swimsuit cover was not anything dictated by current fashion either. It looked much worse on than it had off. It had the shape and style and coloring of a gunny sack. But it was clinging delightfully to some of her wetter curves. Her figure was slightly fuller than it had been, and it reminded him she was a woman now, not a girl.

It reminded him he did not know her at all. Not now.

But her mouth was as glorious a creation as he had remembered, generous, the bottom lip plump and full.

“What would you report, anyway?” he asked her, softly, trying to strip some of the harshness from his voice. “A kiss bandit?”

“Just get it over with,” she said icily. “And if you taste like cigars, I’ll probably puke on your shoes.”

He gazed at her a moment longer and then leaned toward her. He touched her lips with his own.

He tasted the sweetness and innocence that he had suspected from her earlier words. And despite her claim that she would be repelled by the lingering taste of the cigar on his lips, her mouth remained soft underneath his, pliable, almost inviting.

How could she be both? Sweet and innocent? And yet inviting a deeper kiss with a strange man?

“Will your husband be coming to even the score with me?” he asked. He had to know. It wasn’t enough to guess.

“I’m not married,” she said, and her voice held the quiver of that kiss. “I’ve never been married.”

“Ah.”

He pulled back from her, saw her eyes begin to flutter open and resisted the urge to see them once again. Her eyes had been her glory, a mix of gold and green and brown that was intoxicating. He covered them quickly with his palm.

“Good night, sweet lady,” he said, turned swiftly and walked quickly away through the sand.

He had accomplished nothing that he had set out to, least of all revenge. He felt terribly unsettled by the touch of her lips, by this midnight encounter with an old love.

He turned on the edge of the palm-lined walk that went back toward the main resort and looked back at her.

She stood frozen in the night, a hand lifted to her lips. A faint breeze had kicked up, and the swim cover was molded to the beautiful ripeness of her breasts, the strong, slender length of her upper legs. Strands of her wet hair lifted and whipped around the soft profile of her lovely face. In dark silhouette, she looked like a goddess who had walked out of the sea.

The scars on his face ached, a painful and ruthless reminder that he was the man least likely to have anything to offer a goddess.

Chapter Two

Cynthia stood, her hand to her lips, looking at the empty space where the darkness had swallowed the stranger. He had disappeared completely, almost reminding her of how wild creatures could melt into invisibility.

The wind off the ocean caressed her wet body and lifted the heaviness of her hair. She felt a wonderful surging power, as if she were a goddess standing on that beach embraced by darkness.

“Wild creatures and goddesses,” she muttered derisively, broken from her trance. She stooped to pick up her towel. Still, she felt reluctant to leave the image of herself as a woman of such seductive powers that she could tempt a perfectly sane man into participating in that encounter.

Because for all that it had been bizarre, she had been left with a sense that he was not. His lips, when they had touched hers, had not been hard or grasping. The kiss had not been creepy. In fact, far from it. His lips had told her secrets. They had told her he was a man of solidness and strength, a man who did not make it a habit to kiss strangers on the beach.

“Cynthia,” she told herself primly, “you did not lure!” For heaven’s sake, she had been accosted by a complete barbarian. Why was she making excuses for him? Who in this day and age demanded a kiss in return for civilized behavior?

And got away with it, she reminded herself with an attempt at stern disapproval.

The problem was that she didn’t feel the least little bit accosted. Try as she might, Cynthia could not seem to whip herself into the frenzy of indignation the encounter deserved! She had just come away from a bad deal with the devil. She had actually agreed to trade a kiss for a moment’s privacy. The man was a pirate.

“I’ve been victimized,” she told herself, kicking up the sand looking for her shoes. The words totally lacked conviction. If she was honest, she would admit it felt as though she was trying to manufacture the way her mother would have wanted her to feel.

She gave up the search for the shoes and headed across the sand toward the beautiful twisting pathway that would lead her through an exotic world of tropical plants back to the safety of her room. But rather than hurrying back to that sanctuary, she found herself dawdling. She was aware of how delightful the sand felt squishing up between her toes and then of the warmth seeping through the pavement into her bare feet. She was aware of the scent of the night, the sea smell mixed with the wild abundance of colorful and aromatic flowers that bloomed in well-groomed beds. Most of all, she was aware of the night air on her cool, damp skin, sensuous as a touch.