No Place Like Home Read online

  He picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips, and the pact was made.

  The flight seemed incredibly short, and she was astonished when the seatbelt warning sign came on. A bit later, Brendan cut short her description of Blackbeard’s marauding tours through the Caribbean by taking the guide book out of her hands. “Don’t you want to know about the history of the islands?” she protested.

  “Wouldn’t you rather see them as they are right now?” he countered, and leaned over her to point out the tiny window.

  She had scarcely noticed that the plane had been gradually descending, but below them—almost close enough to touch, it seemed—lay a green and white jewel of an island surrounded by a sapphire sea. Foamy white waves rolled lazily toward the beaches and shattered themselves against the sand, withdrawing to regroup and then reach out again. Buildings glistened in the strong sunlight, and palm trees formed a muted green backdrop.

  She closed her eyes in sheer delight, and then was almost afraid to open them again for fear it was all just imagination.

  It wasn’t until the taxi had dropped them in Nassau itself that Kaye allowed herself to believe it was really happening. She stopped in the middle of Bay Street, turned her face up to the sun, drew a breath of pure happiness, and said dreamily, “I’d love to live where it’s summer all the time.”

  “How could you appreciate it, if you never had anything to compare it with?” Brendan asked practically. “And get a hat on—you may adore the sun, but with that fair skin of yours, it isn’t going to be very friendly to you.”

  “I forgot to bring one.”

  “Then shopping is the first order of business.”

  “I suppose you’d rather be fishing, like that man you were talking to on the plane.”

  “Oh, no,” Brendan said airily. “Not after everything you told me about the pirates.”

  “Are you afraid they’re still lurking in the inlets, ready to come and get you? I never dreamed you were a chicken!”

  “I’m not. I just think that someone ought to stay around and protect the pirates from you. And if you think that shows a lack of courage...”

  “Protect them from me—well!” she spluttered, and he laughed at her, grabbed her hand, and pulled her across to a brightly-painted pushcart where he bought a hand-woven hat and put it on her head himself.

  It was a golden day. She stood in the straw market near the waterfront and watched as a woman wove a precious, fine-textured little doll, and then bought it so she would always remember.

  She was starting to turn away from the little stand when she saw a basket. It was about two feet in diameter, but the pale gold straw was finely woven like that of a much smaller basket, and a dainty pattern in darker straw repeated throughout the delicate work. She had never seen anything quite like it, and Kaye fought a brief battle with her conscience before she bought it. The last thing she needed was another basket. Nevertheless, it would fit nicely in the corner of her apartment, and it would be wonderful to hold all of those magazines that seemed to collect unread, spilling over everything. She gathered up her trophies and turned to look for Brendan.

  For a moment, she thought he had disappeared. In his white trousers and brightly printed shirt, he blended right into the rest of the crowd. Then he came toward her from across the market, a silky jade-green scarf fluttering from his fingers. He tied it casually around the crown of her new hat and said, “There. That should make you easier to keep track of.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I should think it would be no trouble at all to spot me—just look for the tourist with the palest skin in town. Now you look like a native, at least as far as the costume is concerned. Tell me, did you just happen to have those clothes, or did you have to go shopping?”

  His hands were buried in his pockets. “Oh, these old things?” he drawled. “One has to have them to go yachting with the boys, don’t you know.”

  “The trousers, perhaps. But you’d be thrown off any self-respecting yacht in that shirt.”

  “Do you insist on having all my secrets revealed? It’s a souvenir of a Hawaiian vacation, I’m afraid, and it’s one of the calmer ones I own, at that. Are you disappointed?”

  “Only mildly. See my new treasure?” She held up the basket.

  “I was trying to pretend I didn’t see it. Are you really planning to carry that enormous thing around Nassau all day?”

  “Oh.” She shifted the weight of her beach bag and looked down at the bulky basket doubtfully. They had left their coats aboard the plane, but she hadn’t considered that she would have to carry her souvenirs until they returned to the airport in late evening. “Perhaps she’d keep it for me,” she pointed out hopefully. “The woman who made it, I mean.”

  “You might not get back here to pick it up. And don’t look at me—I have no plans to haul it around. But if you won’t go all Victorian on me, we can rent a hotel room for the day.”

  “I have no intention of spending the day in a hotel room.”

  “To leave our excess stuff in,” he went on, as if she hadn’t interrupted. “And to change clothes, and a few things like that. Or had you planned to get into your swimsuit right on the beach?”

  “I could. I’m wearing it under my clothes.”

  “Well, that’s handy. But it might be a little less than comfortable on the trip home.”

  She had to admit the truth of that. She hadn’t been thinking quite clearly enough at five in the morning to have considered all the problems of a trip like this, she decided. “All right,” she agreed warily. “A hotel room it is. But I insist on paying my half. It is my basket, after all.” And an expensive souvenir it was turning out to be, she reflected.

  “I can’t wait to see the desk clerk’s face when he hears this one,” Brendan said.

  The hotel clerk, however, made no fuss at all; he simply handed over the key with a smile and a pleasant wish for them to enjoy their stay. And any distrust she might have felt about Brendan’s motives vanished when he ushered her into the room and promptly disappeared into the bathroom to change into his swimming trunks.

  “So much for my maidenly fears of being held captive in a hotel room for the rest of the day,” Kaye mocked herself, as she traded her own street clothes for a terry robe to cover her swimsuit. “He doesn’t want to miss a minute in the sun any more than I do!”

  Brendan certainly seemed to have no intention of breaking their agreement to discuss nothing serious, or of repeating the craziness that had nearly overcome them both last night in her apartment.

  And it was really insane, she told herself sternly, to be wondering why, and regretting it.

  They swam and played in the waves. “Too bad we don’t have time to learn to scuba dive,” Brendan mused as they lay on the white sand. “Emily could have been thoughtful enough to let us know we were coming, so we could have prepared ourselves.”

  “By taking lessons in Lake Henderson, I suppose,” Kaye said, with a shiver.

  He propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at her, and she wondered for one shaky instant if he was going to kiss her. He had that sort of look about him. But he only said, “In the summer, the lake is perfectly warm. Next time, we’ll have to plan ahead.”

  “Is there going to be a next time?” she asked, and could have bitten her tongue off. He was certainly keeping his end of the bargain, while she—

  “Sorry,” she muttered. “We weren’t going to discuss that.”

  What’s the matter with you, Kaye Reardon? she asked herself. It’s driving you bananas that he doesn’t seem to feel any need to get things hashed out and decided. He’s quite willing to have a good time, and let tomorrow worry about itself.

  The darkness in his eyes hovered there for another moment, and she sucked in a deep breath of discovery. You want him to be serious, she accused herself. She wanted things all straightened out and neatly packaged. She wanted her future wrapped up in pink paper with a guarantee attached. She wasn’t suffering from some mere pas
sing fancy, or infatuation.

  You’ve fallen in love with Brendan McKenna, and you want to be his wife...

  Well, she told herself, the first step was to tell him about that ring in his pocket at the hotel, and how she was planning to give it back the next time she saw Graham.

  Tell him, Kaye, she ordered herself. Tell him, and then you’ll know.

  But remember, she reminded herself, that he may not feel the same way you do.

  She might be certain that she wanted to marry him, but that didn’t mean that he was going to throw himself at her feet with a proposal. He might not be flattered at the idea that just yesterday she’d had every intention of marrying Graham, but today it was Brendan she wanted.

  And remember that he’s the one who said he didn’t want to ruin this day with serious things...

  He grinned. “You’re getting pink,” he said. “One more dip, and then we’ll have to get you out of the sun.”

  It wasn’t the sun, she wanted to tell him. But her nerve had vanished; she didn’t have the courage to tell him, and risk the rest of this day. One day of fun...

  That was why it had been so much fun to look at houses with him, she thought. Even then, she had been falling in love with him.

  They swam some more, and then had a late lunch at a little restaurant near the beach, where most of the diners were dressed as casually as they. They ate fried conch and drank banana rum, and Kaye tried to forget that her island idyll was more than half over. Every time he touched her, no matter how casually, the hunger to be in his arms grew.

  In the late afternoon, Brendan dragged her off the beach, despite her protests. “If you stay out in the sun any longer, you’ll be so burned that you won’t be able to sit down for days,” he argued. “We’ll have a shower first, and look in on what’s happening in one of the casinos, and then we’ll find some place quiet to have dinner.”

  And then we’ll go home. He didn’t say it, and she didn’t want to think it. But the end of the day hovered over her like a threatening cloud.

  She hurried to shampoo the salt water from her hair, unwilling to waste an instant of time. But suddenly it wasn’t the island, and the beach, and the city that called to her, but him. It wasn’t that she couldn’t bear to miss a moment of Nassau, she realized; it was the minutes with Brendan that she didn’t want to lose.

  A sound outside the shower made her jump, and her heart beat a little faster at the idea that he might have come in to join her. But then there was silence again, and she turned the shower spray off and wrapped herself in the thick terry robe so thoughtfully provided by the hotel.

  Brendan was lounging on the bed, the pillows piled up behind him, and she stopped in the bathroom door and watched him greedily for a moment, his long legs stretched out, his hands clasped behind his head, the dark blue swimsuit hiding so little of him that he might as well have been stretched out there naked for her inspection.

  If Emily were to see him like this, Kaye thought with a sudden dart of humor, she’d say, “Excuse me, Kaye, but under these circumstances it’s every woman for herself,” and she’d attack him.

  And just what, Kaye wondered, was holding her back from doing just that? Ladylike restraint? Fear of being rejected? That was a little ridiculous; she’d practically been in bed with him last night, and he’d certainly shown no hesitation then. She’d spent the afternoon hoping that he would stop being such a damned perfect gentleman, but he was only obeying the rules they had agreed to that morning. What if she simply stopped playing by the rules? What better way was there to tell him how much she wanted him?

  She was hardly breathing as she walked across the room to him. He looked up as she paused beside the bed, and then she sat down beside him and very deliberately ran one index finger from his throat, where a gold medallion on a chain nestled almost hidden among the dark curls of hair on his chest, to the elastic band of his swimming trunks. Then she leaned forwards and kissed him, slowly, with every ounce of enticing energy she could muster.

  His mouth was warm and mobile under hers, and by the time she ended the kiss her head was swimming and her insides had melted into a pool of lava, ready to erupt without thought of consequences, or damage.

  “If I didn’t know better,” he said in a husky, unsteady voice, “I’d think I was being treated as a sex object.”

  “Would you mind?” she whispered.

  “Mind?” It was a drawl now, frankly seductive. “Honey, I’d be delighted.” He moved a fraction of an inch, and pulled her gently down beside him, into the nest of pillows he had made for himself. She could smell the salt water still on his skin, and something more that was indefinably him, and that she would recognize, she was convinced, at the ends of the earth. Essence of Brendan, she thought muzzily. Bottle it, and women all over the world would buy it for their men...

  Her fingers wandered over his body, exploring shyly, tentatively, and then with growing confidence and a sense of delighted wonder as his tightened breathing told her what she was doing to him. Then, suddenly and unaccountably, her plaything growled and twisted out of her grasp, and suddenly she was the aggressor no more. In the abrupt shift of pattern, she found herself the toy as he caressed and cherished her, and she struggled to hold on to sanity and cling to the ever-shifting edge of a world that had suddenly gone quite mad, a world that seemed to fade and ooze and blur...

  And then not even the world mattered any more, as he took her over the edge. Reality slipped slowly from her loosened fingers, and the single truth that remained was the man who was her only shelter from the volcano that threatened to consume her alive. She clung to him, pulling him down, begging him with her body not to leave her, never to let her be alone again...

  It took a long time after that before she could even breathe normally. She was afraid to look at Brendan; she was vaguely embarrassed to have displayed such shamelessness, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what he thought about it. He had collapsed next to her, his raspy breathing tickling her throat, as if he never intended to move again.

  Eventually he captured her hand and began to kiss each fingertip, slowly and sensually. He was working his way up her arm, pausing at each pulse-point, when she opened her eyes and was shocked to see that dusk had fallen.

  “Brendan, what time is it?” she asked in panic. “We’re going to miss the plane!”

  He didn’t bother to open his eyes. “The hell with the plane. Let’s stay in bed for a couple of days, and then think about going back.”

  “We can’t be so irresponsible.” She struggled out of his grasp and reached for her wristwatch.

  “Why can’t we? We were irresponsible enough to come in the first place. I’m sure we can explain it to Marilyn somehow.”

  “Marilyn gave me one day off—not the whole week. And it isn’t only Marilyn I’m thinking about,” she muttered. She shrugged herself into the terry robe and began frantically throwing things into her bag.

  “Well, I don’t think there will be people standing in line outside my door. You’re my only important client at the moment. Everybody else can wait till next week to buy a house.”

  A cold chill settled around her heart. You’re my only important client...

  Did that mean she was only important to him as a client? Had nothing changed at all?

  Only you, Kaye, she told herself. He’s made no promises, asked no questions, arranged no plans. You’re the one who’s doing the assuming here.

  Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. Of course things have changed. He couldn’t have made love to her like that if she meant nothing to him. If the sale was all that was important to him, he wouldn’t have risked it like this.

  But it made her feel rather sick even to think about that.

  She turned to him, her green eyes pleading. “Brendan, we don’t have time to talk about it now. I have to make that plane.”

  His eyes had chilled to blue ice. “Of course,” he said. “How foolish of me. It’s Graham you’re concerned about
, and not Marilyn.”

  That’s not true, she wanted to say. You must know that’s not true!

  But it was, in a way. She wanted to talk to Graham right away, before any gossip could reach him. She didn’t want to hurt him any more than she had to.

  “Tell me, Kaye,” Brendan asked, “how are you going to explain this little aberration to Graham?”

  She tried to swallow, and couldn’t. That actually sounded like a threat, she thought dizzily. Was this the man she thought she loved?

  Her nails were cutting into her palms. She didn’t look at him. I can’t bear to tell him I love him, she was screaming inside, if all I am to him is a client, a source of income to pay for that new car. It would kill me to say that to him, and have him laugh at me—