A Marriage In The Making

Yes, she would have so much to tell him, so why was that grey cloud of uncertainty looming? She knew but didn’t want to think about it. One day soon, she and Tara would lose Josh to his cold, unfeeling father and…No, she wouldn’t think about it, not yet. Josh wanted to swim and dive and chase sea turtles under the water and frankly so did she.

‘Are you sure you don’t mind staying on while I’m over at the main house, Saffron?’ Karis asked later.

Saffron lived over at the staff cottages behind the plantation house and Karis had never had reason to ask her to stay late before. She had no social life and there was certainly nowhere to go on the tiny island even if she had. She had never been issued with an invitation to join one of Fiesta’s house parties, of which there were numerous in the holiday season. She was staff after all.

‘Of course I don’t mind,’ Saffron told her as she finished off the washing up and turned to gaze at Karis, who was trying to do something with her unruly hair in front of the kitchen mirror. ‘Best if you find out what that boy’s father’s intentions are.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Karis murmured thoughtfully. She coiled her hair in a bundle on the top of her head and secured it with a gilt clasp. She had dressed in her best outfit—a slip of a silk dress in dark green with fine shoulder straps. Her feet were bare, though. After a year of tropical island living shoes and even sandals were unbearable on her feet. She supposed she had gone native this last year but the laidback lifestyle of the West Indians had appealed to her after the formality of life in Britain. She was freer here than she had ever been before. But she was bowing to convention now, making the best of herself to face Fiesta and possibly Josh’s father, because it was important that she give a good impression…but blow the shoes!

‘Are you sure Josh’s father didn’t come to the cottage while Josh and I were along at the creek?’ she asked as she tucked an unruly wisp of dark hair back into the clasp.

Earlier she’d told Saffron about Josh’s father arriving on the island and had fully expected him to come to the cottage to see his son once he had unpacked. She couldn’t believe that he hadn’t.

‘I’m sure,’ Saffron assured her. ‘I sat out on that verandah all the time and he didn’t come near.’

And yet Karis had been sure they had been watched as they’d swum and practised diving in the tiny creek on the other side of the island, only fifteen minutes’ walk away but far enough to claim seclusion. Fiesta’s guests were generally a lazy lot who never ventured far from the opulent plantation house with its swimming pool and the bar lavishly stocked with every cocktail ingredient imaginable.

She must have been mistaken, unnerved by that dark man’s unyielding eyes as he had stopped and stared earlier, and imagined he must be shadowing her and Josh.

‘It’s awful,’ Karis sighed, and licked her fingers and smoothed them over her dark brows. ‘He hasn’t seen him at all since I’ve been looking after him. It’s the first time I’ve seen him.’

‘He came when you were on St Lucia with Tara for her check-up, six months ago,’ Saffron told her, rubbing her hands on a tea-towel as Karis swung to face her in surprise. ‘You remember the boy was yowling for a week when you came back.’

‘I thought it was because he was angry with me for not taking him,’ Karis stated in astonishment ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Saffron?’ Oh, she should have done. It would have helped to know the real reason for Josh’s distress.

Saffron shrugged without looking at her. ‘No good you vexing yourself about it too.’

‘Hmm. Maybe.’ Karis exhaled. That was Saffron’s reasoning—ignorance was bliss—and perhaps she was right. Karis would have vexed herself over it.

She would have liked to know all the same; after all, she was the closest to the small, troubled boy and she might have been able to draw him out if she had known what was bothering him. It dragged at her heart to think the child was in such fear of his own father.

‘I won’t be long,’ she told Saffron from the open door onto the verandah. ‘If the children wake—’

“They won’t,’ Saffron laughed, and then the wide grin drained from her round face and she grew serious. ‘I wish you were all dressed up like that for a date.’

‘A date with whom?’ Karis laughed softly and added teasingly, ‘One of those ghastly rich old men that fly down from Miami for Fiesta’s vacations? I’d rather court the devil, Saffron.’

‘Wicked girl!’ Saffron chastised her, with humour softening the remark.

‘Not at all a wicked girl,’ Karis muttered under her breath as she followed the path to the plantation house through the subtly lit gardens. The devil himself was a safer bet than the one man she’d allowed into her life, the man she had married and lost so tragically. Poor Aiden. Karis shivered sorrowfully in spite of the cloying heat. He hadn’t deserved what fate had dealt him, no matter what he had done. But he had given her Tara, the one good thing he had done in his life, and for that she couldn’t allow his memory to fade though her memories of him were tinged with sadness and bitterness most of the time.

It was a velvety black tropical night with heavy cloud obscuring the moon and pressing the heat of the day back down to earth, making the air thick and heady. Karis could hear laughter coming from the beach and smell the charcoal grill sizzling T-bone steaks and so she avoided the waterfront route to the house. Fiesta hadn’t got her nickname for nothing. She knew how to throw a beach party.

As Karis strolled unhurriedly through the scented gardens she rehearsed in her head what she wanted to say to Fiesta…and Josh’s father if he was around. The boy needed so much more than he was getting on the island. He needed proper schooling for one thing, though Karis did her best She didn’t want to lose him, dreaded the thought in fact, but his welfare and future were her chief concern and that small thought she had grasped to her earlier was growing in momentum. If this wasn’t just a visit and Daniel was planning on taking Josh back to the States he would need a nanny for him, and who better for the job than the one who had cared for the child and had worked a small miracle on him this last year?

Karis circled the house till she was under the wide wrought-iron balcony of the sitting room, where lights blazed out from the open French doors. She’d checked with Fiesta’s housekeeper where she was and rather than go through the house and run the risk of bumping into any of the house guests, who were usually well on the way to being drunk at this time of the night, she had skirted the house and opted for the balcony and the small flight of wrought-iron steps that led up to it from the rose gardens beneath.

‘What qualifications has she got?’ The brutal query came from above Karis’s head and it stilled her instantly. She flattened herself against the scratchy coral wall of the house, under the balcony where it was shadowy and she couldn’t be seen. The deep, resonant voice was Daniel Kennedy’s and she knew instinctively he was referring to her.

‘Qualifications? You expect someone with qualifications to give your uncontrollable son the time of day? Get real, Daniel. Karis is the only one to have stayed!’ Fiesta argued stiffly.

‘And it’s quite obvious why,’ Daniel stated emphatically. ‘She’s nothing but a child herself, and wild with it—all that hair and barefoot like a native. She must have thought she’d landed on her feet when you offered her this luxurious life. Where the hell did you drag her up from?’

Karis steeled herself, muscles cramping, closing her eyes tightly against the pain of the insult.

‘And the baby on her hip,’ he ground on, not giving Fiesta a chance to explain. ‘I don’t expect her to look after other people’s children when I’m paying her to look after Josh.’

‘Tara is her own child.’

There was a gasp of exasperation from Josh’s father. ‘It gets worse! You never told me all this the last time I was here.’

‘I wasn’t going to cook the golden goose, was I? I took her on because she was young and looked capable enough to handle him. Having her own child didn’t matter to me. As it turns out Karis is good for the boy.’

‘Good for him!’ he responded in disbelief. ‘Some unkempt teenager with an illegitimate—’

Karis’s fiercely clenched fists bunched over her ears to shut the world out. She didn’t want to hear any more—she couldn’t; it was unbearable.

Hurt beyond measure by that cutting jibe against her, she stealthily crept away from the house and only broke into a shaky trot when she knew she couldn’t be heard blundering through the vegetation in the gardens. The suffocating humidity of the night quickly drained her and by the time she reached the beach she was breathless, clutching at her throat for air and ripping the clasp from her hair with her other hand and shaking it wild and free.

Unkempt, was she? Wild, was she? What did he know? Just what did he know? Tears streamed down her cheeks and with a sob she lifted her face to the soft, warm breeze to dry them. She was hurt and angry—yes, very angry.

How could he have said all those dreadful things about her? How arrogant, how unfair, he didn’t even know her! And surely Fiesta could have spoken up for her more loyally? She’d done her very best for Josh and Fiesta knew it, so why hadn’t she told him more forcefully?

Her pulse rate levelled and common sense prevailed at last as she kicked surf at the water’s edge. But perhaps Fiesta was even now telling that poor excuse for a father just how good for Josh she was when he should have been doing the job himself! But she had to concede that Daniel Kennedy had sounded, if in a brutal way, caring as to who was looking after his son. At the expense of her emotions and senses, though, Karis thought miserably. Why make excuses for him? He was the father from hell!

‘And while you are out here gazing at the stars who the devil is watching over my son?’

Karis’s heart missed several beats as her elbow was imprisoned in a vice-like grip and she was hauled back from the surf and onto dry sand. She was whirled around to face her accuser, judge and jury! Condemned before she’d had a chance to speak in defence of herself!

Menacing clouds tore apart to reveal the moon and his stern features were clearly visible as he held her firmly, his eyes steely and accusing. Daniel Kennedy.

Recovering quickly, Karis lifted her chin defiantly and shook her arm from his grasp, and when she spoke her voice was clear and controlled because his insults had angered her so much it had fired her adrenalin, spicing up her strength, giving her courage to stand up for herself.

‘Your son is in good hands,’ she told him confidently. ‘He is asleep and I’m not gazing at the stars as if I’ve nothing better to do. I don’t default in my duties as your son’s carer—even if I am seen as wild and unkempt,’ she added meaningfully.

He looked perplexed for a moment, not understanding the last statement. Karis put him out of his misery at the expense of her own. ‘I came over to the plantation house to see Fiesta and overheard you both talking,’ she explained. Her green eyes narrowed. ‘I walked away when you hit the illegitimate bit,’ she added thinly, and then, giving him a last look of indifference, turned and walked away again. He didn’t follow.

She was still angry and hurt but managed to hide it as she dismissed Saffron, thanking her for staying on to watch over the sleeping children and promising her she would tell her everything in the morning. Saffron seemed satisfied with the promise of a gossip the next day and said nothing but a warm goodnight as she left.

Karis poured herself a fruit juice and took it onto the candlelit verandah to drink it and cool herself down after what she had heard from Daniel Kennedy—his angry implication that she wasn’t doing her job properly. How that hurtful remark made her blood boil. That he should come here after goodness knew how long and start—

‘I’d like to see my son.’

Like a spectre, he had suddenly appeared at the rail of the verandah. Karis looked at him with wide, surprised eyes. At least he had asked—or maybe she was misinterpreting his change of tone and that was an order, not a request.

‘He’s asleep,’ she told him quietly.

He stepped up onto the verandah and Karis was able to see him better in the glow of the candles. He wore tropical whites and was an incredibly forbidding creature. Darkly good-looking and charismatic, with an air of mystery about him, he obviously had the capability of charming the birds from the trees, but not with Karis. As his unyielding eyes challenged hers frostily she was chilled through, in spite of the heat of the tropical night.

‘I said I’d like to see him and I wasn’t asking your permission,’ he stated flatly.

Karis hesitantly stood up. She didn’t like this man. She hadn’t liked him before meeting him so nothing was new. He had a serious attitude problem. He had nothing good to say about her and that was unjustified because he didn’t know her. But he was Josh’s father and unfortunately that couldn’t be questioned so she couldn’t deny access to him, whatever the time of night. Without another word Karis lifted a candle in a jar from the table to light the way.

He followed her along the verandah and she felt his dark, disapproving eyes boring into the exposed skin of her back. Again those prickles of awareness played at the base of her spine.

Carefully Karis slid open the door and, holding the candle up, stepped back to let him pass through into the little boy’s bedroom. To her utter surprise he took her elbow and urged her into the room ahead of him and then shocked her deeply by saying under his breath, ‘I don’t want him to awake and be afraid.’

With her heart twisting Karis stood beside him at the foot of Josh’s bed. What an appalling admission that was. What dark past had these two shared? But at least by visiting him while he slept Daniel was showing some concern for his son’s feelings.

Josh slept peacefully on his back, his head turned to one side, the sheet pushed down to his waist in the heat of the night. The child, in sleep, was unaware he was being gazed down on, Karis with love and caring in her eyes for she did indeed love the little boy…but the father? Karis dared take a sidelong glance at the man who gripped the brass footrail of his son’s bed as fiercely as he had grasped the rail of the yacht he’d arrived on.

He didn’t want to be here, she thought despondently. This was a duty call to his son. His face was set, unyielding, showing no emotion as he gazed down at the boy.

Then Josh stirred and in that instant Daniel Kennedy’s lashes flickered. A tiny, fleeting reaction that had Karis’s heart beating wildly in the hope that she might see some of the love this boy deserved from his father.

The flickering reaction to his son’s movement was gone as swiftly as it had appeared. Stiffly he stepped back from the bed and so did Karis, and then the candle flame wavered as the movement of his body turning to face her stirred the still air around them.

‘You have cared for him well,’ he said, his voice so low and throaty, she scarcely caught the words.

A compliment? She hadn’t expected one.

‘To outward appearances,’ he added, so meanly that Karis’s heart nearly stopped with shock.

Once they were back outside on the verandah Karis slid the door shut behind them and lifted the candle so she could see his face more clearly.

‘I don’t think you will be disappointed, Mr Kennedy,’ she said softly but firmly.

‘I’d better not be,’ he said thinly. ‘I don’t want to start my married life putting right all the added damage you might have done this past year.’

He gave her no space, no time to respond to that wicked, uncalled-for criticism. He was gone into the airless night before she’d fully taken in what he had said.

Karis stood for a long while on the verandah, staring out over the gardens and not seeing anything, trying to cool her anger and to grasp at the reality of what he had said. Starting married life? Daniel Kennedy was married to that beautiful but awful screeching woman and this was their honeymoon?

Was Daniel Kennedy divorced from Josh’s mother and Simone the second wife or even the third or the fourth? Oh, it didn’t bear thinking about. Poor little Josh. He didn’t deserve that.

And it was none of her business, Karis told herself miserably and unconvincingly. The night seemed to oppress her and the cloying heat to press down on her and she was swamped with dreadful thoughts of that Simone taking over and being Josh’s mother.

The pair of them had come to take Josh off the island. They were good-looking but seemed distinctly lacking in terms of character.

And then she felt again that mysterious snap of envy she had been whiplashed with earlier. She did envy that siren Simone. She envied her for being married to Josh’s father and claiming Josh for her own and she envied them all starting a family life together because that was something she had been cheated out of in her own life. But that was all she envied Simone for; the rest of her feelings were taken up with pity. Being married to Daniel Kennedy must be like living with Satan’s first cousin: hell on earth.

CHAPTER TWO

‘HEAD tucked in. Beautiful. Bend your knees, Josh. Super. Go for it,’ Karis encouraged warmly from the rocks below.

The boy didn’t hesitate this time. From a higher rock he executed the most perfect dive into the warm, limpid waters of the creek. Karis raced into the water and swam strongly towards him.

‘I did it! I did it!’ Josh spluttered in excitement, his wet face flushed with pleasure as he bobbed up and down in the water, stretching his arms out to her.

‘I knew you could,’ Karis laughed as she hugged him tightly, and then tipped him back into the water and spun round so he could straddle her back. He screamed with laughter as she swam to the shore with him. Once they were on the beach she felt Josh stiffen suddenly. She let him go and he slithered down her back to the warm sand and stood rigid behind her.

Daniel Kennedy stood watching them from another outcrop of rocks, his eyes shaded by sunglasses, so that Karis couldn’t gauge whether he looked pleased with his son’s dive or not.

Josh had seen his father too, hence the stiffening of his slight body and his hiding behind her now. Karis moved aside because to screen him from his father was wrong, but before she could grasp his hand to reassure him he was gone, sprinting in the opposite direction to his father, back towards the cottage where Saffron was watching over baby Tara.

With a sigh Karis picked up her sarong to wrap around her wet, bikini-clad body while she tentatively watched Daniel coming towards her across the sand.

He stopped in front of her and stripped the glasses from his face. He was frowning and really Karis wasn’t surprised. She doubted he smiled very much.

‘Were you responsible for that performance?’ he asked her tightly.

Karis knotted the sarong at her cleavage and tensed in surprise as Daniel Kennedy’s eyes, frown and all, settled on the knot for a few dangerous seconds. For a newly-wed he certainly hadn’t thrown off the cloak of bachelorhood yet, Karis thought ruefully. Obviously a man with an eye for women, which explained a lot. The second or third or fourth wife theory gained strength in her mind. Perhaps this Daniel Kennedy was into serial marriage.

Deliberately folding her arms across her front to hide the cleavage he found so fascinating, she lifted her chin and asked bluntly, ‘The dive or him running away?’

The frown deepened and his concentration shifted to the defiance in her eyes. ‘The dive,’ he insisted quickly and quite challengingly, too, as if he thought her too smart by half even to have suggested otherwise.

Lucky for him, Karis thought. ‘Yes, I’ve been teaching him. It was Josh’s first perfect dive,’ she told him, and then added, ‘I’m Karis Piper by the way. We missed out on formalities last night.’

She forced a smile, trying to warm to him for Josh’s sake. She’d given her own attitude a lot of thought overnight. She didn’t like him and so long as there was an R in the month of April she doubted she ever would, but, putting personalities aside, she had to do her best for the boy and if being nice to his father helped she’d have a go at the very least. She even lifted her hand to him.

He took it and their exchange was brief but long enough for Karis to know he had blood running through his veins, not iced water as she might have anticipated. His touch had been surprisingly warm.

‘Yes. I know who you are, Miss Piper.’

‘Mrs, as it happens,’ she asserted quickly, giving him a warning flash of her green eyes. ‘My daughter, Tara, isn’t illegitimate and I’m not a teenager either,’ she added tightly, reminding him of what she had overheard last night. ‘To classify me correctly you would have to file me under the emotion-weary widow heading. I thought you would have checked with Fiesta by now, seeing as you pay my wages for looking after your son.’

So much for the be-nice-to-Josh’s-father resolve. But hardly her fault, she excused herself; he wasn’t exactly the easiest subject to be nice to.

His steely eyes glared at her hard. ‘You have a lot of spirit. I’m not sure that is enough qualification to be caring for my son.’

Karis’s heart flipped in defence. This man was something else. Not real at all, as Fiesta had suggested when she had overheard them arguing the night before.

She met his cold glare with eyes equally determined not to be put down. ‘I think being spirited is an ideal qualification to be looking after Josh, Mr Kennedy. Lesser spirited people than myself haven’t achieved a smidgen of what I’ve done for him.’

‘And what exactly have you done for him?’

His tone was unremittingly censorious and Karis gave up the struggle not to rile against it. ‘Plenty,’ she stated, and added with a sweet smile, ‘Why don’t you spend some time with him and find out?’

She stooped down to gather up Josh’s towel and hoped her cheeks weren’t flushed with anger. She really had tried but he was impossible.

‘I intend to do just that,’ he told her determinedly.

Karis straightened herself up and looked at him, her eyes narrowed. ‘Not before time,’ she let slip before she could help herself.

He caught her arm as she turned away, a grip so jarring it cascaded droplets of water down from her hair to glisten on her sun-warmed bare shoulders. He let her go immediately after securing her attention.

‘There is a reason for everything,’ he told her quietly and seriously. ‘Choices and decisions have had to be made for my son in the past, all with the best intentions and all unavoidable. Whether those harrowing decisions were right or wrong only time will tell. I care very deeply for Josh and I want what is best for him. I always have and I always will. Please remember that before you pre-form impressions in that pretty little head of yours. Don’t fight me, because I need your help to smooth the path between me and my son before I take him away from here. Have I made myself clear?’

Karis stared blindly at him for a few seconds, wondering whether to argue with that in case he hadn’t noticed she was a human being and didn’t like being spoken to as if she were some newly acquired puppy needing to be housetrained. But she shouldn’t care how he treated her because her feelings were immaterial; it was his son that mattered.

So, he wanted her to smooth the path for him, did he? The request was heart-wrenchingly sad coming from a father to a stranger who had cared for his son. And did he seriously think she would object to what he had in mind? That was even sadder. Couldn’t he see how much she cared for the little boy?

‘Will I have your full co-operation?’ he urged when she made no attempt to answer him. There was only a slight softening of tone in the request.