A lot of men, apparently, liked cute women. Kendall had met some ranging from polished charmers to blunt, few-worded engineers. There had even been an Arabian sheikh who had very nearly swept her off her feet in an unguarded moment. But she had generally managed to emerge scatheless from the romantic interludes.
She had an awful feeling, though, that Hawke wasn’t going to fit into any of her neat little categories. And that meant that past experience wasn’t going to do her a damn bit of good when it came to dealing with him.
It made her distinctly uneasy to be playing a game in which she hadn’t the foggiest idea of the rules. And something told her that Hawke was an excellent gamesman.
So … her safest bet would be to stick with her protective coloration. Play dumb—at least until she figured out the rules of this game. And the stakes…
Hawke returned to her side on the heels of this decision, and she managed to greet him with an unclouded smile. Innocently, she asked, “Should you be taking the time to talk to me like this? I mean—you’re obviously busy, and—”
“I’ll make the time to talk to you, honey,” he replied easily, reclaiming his lounge.
Kendall was tempted to snap that a forty-five-minute acquaintance hardly gave him the right to call her honey, but bit back the words with an inward sigh. It wouldn’t be in character, after all, for her to object. Dammit.
“Besides,” he was going on calmly, “I don’t have much time where you’re concerned, do I? Relationships generally take months to develop, but you’re planning to be here for only a few weeks. I have to move fast if I plan to get anywhere.”
Kendall glared through the shielding sunglasses and wondered if he openly stalked—or was it hunted?—every woman he set his sights on, or if this was simply his tactic for dumb blondes. Either way, she didn’t like it. Abruptly deciding not to be as dumb as all that, she raised one eyebrow above the rim of her glasses and murmured blandly, “Where have I heard that line before?”
“All over the world, I’d imagine,” he responded dryly, a definite gleam in his eye. “Judging by your suitcases, you’ve been pretty nearly everywhere, and men are the same no matter where you go.”
She pulled the sunglasses down her nose and peered over the top of them at him. Ignoring the rueful statement on his own sex, she said with all the sweet innocence she could muster, “I’ve never approved of summer romances, Hawke. They tend to fizzle out as soon as the weather starts to cool.”
“But we’re in the subtropics.” He smiled slowly. “It’s hot all year round.”
Kendall hastily pushed the glasses back up her nose, torn between irritation and amusement and unsure which emotion was showing in her eyes. Oh, she would have to watch herself with this man! She sensed that he was utterly determined … and determined men were dangerous. Dumb, she reminded herself sternly. Play dumb! “I came here to rest, Hawke,” she told him earnestly.
“Rest from what?” He was smiling, but his eyes were intent.
Caught off guard because he had taken her words literally, Kendall automatically told him the truth. “There was some trouble in South America.”
“South America? I understood you flew into Nassau from Paris.”
Which would teach her not to be so expansive with bellhops and taxi drivers, Kendall thought ruefully. “Oh, I did. But I spent only a week in Paris; before that I was in South America.” She had no intention of telling him why she had given in to her father’s demand that she leave South America after the revolution broke out.
“What was in South America? Or is that an indelicate question?”
Kendall couldn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t tell him that—she couldn’t see any reason why she should either. “My father,” she heard herself replying. “He’s a mining engineer.”
“I see.” He leaned forward to brush a hovering insect away from her upper thigh, and Kendall felt an unfamiliar shiver radiating outward from the base of her spine. “What kind of trouble, Kendall?”
“A revolution.” The answer came without her volition, and sounded stilted even to her own ears. She stared into the curiously intense gray eyes, and felt suddenly that she had stepped into deep water and something—someone—was trying to pull her under.
It was his eyes, she realized abruptly. This man possessed more power in his eyes than most men could boast of in their entire bodies. Once, some years before, a friend of her father’s had gotten into a long, involved discussion with Kendall about what he called a “leadership quality” in men. There were some men, he had insisted, who were born to lead. They were “alpha” males, dominant, powerful. Striding through life with absolute self-knowledge and certainty.
Kendall hadn’t really been able to grasp the concept—probably because she hadn’t been able to relate it to anyone she knew. But the man had insisted that she was a member of that curious group of dominant personalities. He’d told her that it was her “alpha” instincts that allowed her to play the feather-headed innocent with such ease and to such good effect. She was so certain of herself, he’d said, that she felt no need to prove anything to anyone. And he’d expressed a wistful desire to be a fly on the wall when she finally bumped into an “alpha” male.
He hadn’t warned her what to expect in the unlikely possibility that such an event would occur. But she distinctly remembered him muttering something about the clash of the Titans.
Now she knew what he meant.
Hawke Madison was an “alpha” male. For all his charm and amiable conversation, for all his polished, sophisticated manner—probably garnered in his trade as a hotelier—his was a pose just as deft, and just as unreal, as her own.
Kendall couldn’t help but wonder which of them would abandon the charade first.
She tore her eyes from his with a silent gasp and thanked heaven for the sunglasses. Trying desperately to get the conversation back to unimportant things, she said lightly, “I didn’t expect this island to be so large. How large is it, by the way? When I flew over from Nassau in that little plane, I just closed my eyes.”
Hawke was still regarding her with that smile that was doing peculiar things to her nervous system. “It’s big,” he murmured, giving Kendall the unsettling impression that his mind was on something else. “There’s a decent-size village a couple of miles away that caters to tourists, half a dozen churches, a nice harbor with sailboats for rent. There’s even another hotel on the other side of the island.”
“Competition?” she asked innocently.
“Friendly competition.” He laughed. “They cater more to families. With the casino here, we attract a slightly more sophisticated crowd.”
Kendall looked toward the shallow end of the pool, where several dark-skinned children were playing noisily, and then looked back at Hawke with a questioning lift of her brows.
“Kids from the village,” he explained with a slight shrug. “I let them use the pool in the afternoons.” He gestured toward one of the little boys. “Robbie—the one who ran into you in the lobby.”
Looking back at the children, Kendall noted silently that Robbie hadn’t, apparently, been scolded or forbidden the pool for nearly knocking down a guest. A little thing, perhaps, but it told Kendall a great deal. Hawke liked kids. She was vaguely irritated with herself for finding something they had in common.
“Excuse me, Hawke.” A fair-haired man with an easy smile was gazing down at them both apologetically. “You confirmed some of these reservations personally, and I need to know—”
“Of course, Rick,” Hawke interrupted calmly, reaching for the sheaf of papers in the other man’s hand. “Kendall, this is my manager, Rick Evans. Rick—Kendall James,” he said absently as his eyes scanned the papers.
Kendall smiled at the manager. “Mr. Evans. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Miss James.” His cheerful brown eyes swept her bikini-clad figure with pure masculine appreciation, even as they laughed in familiarity. “My pleasure—believe me!”
Wishin
g vaguely that Rick’s boss could be as uncomplicated as he was, Kendall listened as they began going over the reservations list. A few minutes later she absently pushed her sunglasses up to rest on top of her head, her gaze fixed on the children in the pool as she tuned out the conversation going on beside her. She watched the kids splashing happily and, unbidden, her mind wondered how some children could have so much and others so little. Did any of these happy, healthy kids know what it meant to barely have enough, water to drink and none to wash in? Surrounded by what most people would call paradise, did they know that there were children in the world who lived on a heartbeat, hungry and cold and scared in war-torn lands?
A tiny face, pinched from too many years of an empty belly, swam before her inner eye. A face with a smile like sunshine and brown eyes sweet enough to melt a stone statue, eyes innocent and loving in spite of the cruelties they had seen…
Kendall winced and gently pushed the face and the memory back into the dark corner of her mind once again. She wasn’t ready to face that. Not yet.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
Startled, she surfaced from an inescapable past into an equally inescapable present. The manager had gone; she and Hawke were alone. And his gray eyes were filled with concern. “N-nothing.” She corrected the stammer immediately, astonished that her lifelong control was slipping rapidly, inexplicably from her grasp. “What could be wrong?”
“I don’t know.” His deep voice was serious. “You looked so sad. And there was something … old in your eyes.”
“Old?” Kendall laughed lightly, more shaken than she wanted to admit—even to herself. Deliberately misunderstanding him, she went on sweetly. “I’m only twenty-five, Hawke—my eyes can’t possibly be any older than that.”
For a moment she thought that he was going to press her for a reasonable answer to his question. But then heavy lids dropped to veil his strange eyes. “My mistake,” he murmured with an almost imperceptible hint of dryness in his tone. “It must have been sunlight glinting off the water. Or something.”
A wise little voice inside Kendall warned that she could land herself in a hell of a lot of trouble by playing too dumb with this man. For the first time in many years, Kendall ignored the voice. Her motivation for the decision wasn’t very rational, and the little voice sneered at her.
She was afraid of Hawke Madison. Not physically. She was afraid because her body was sending strange signals to her brain, because his eyes were making wordless promises. She was afraid because he saw too much and sensed even more, because he was damnably attractive. Because he was an “alpha” male, and she didn’t know how to cope with him. She was afraid because the desire she saw in his eyes was echoed by nameless yearnings in herself, and that had never—ever—happened before.
And she clung to her charade because it possessed the comforting familiarity of a well-worn shoe.
“Have you always traveled with your father?” he asked casually, breaking into her thoughts.
They were back to square one. Dammit. “Ever since I was ten,” she answered sunnily.
“And your mother?”
Kendall reached up to pull her sunglasses back into place. “She died when I was five.” Before he could make any response, she went on chattily. “What about you, Hawke? You’re obviously American—how did you wind up here in paradise?”
He sat back in his lounge and shrugged slightly, the gray eyes still hooded. “I saw quite a bit of the world when I was in the army. When I got out, it seemed natural to go into the hotel business; my family owns a string of hotels in the States. I came here, liked the area, and bought this hotel. That was five years ago.”
With a certain deliberation he went on. “I’m thirty-four, unmarried, reasonably intelligent. My favorite color is green, I love Italian food and mood music, children and animals. I don’t bite my nails, grind my teeth, or snore.”
Trying not to laugh, she said, “Well … that takes care of the vital statistics.”
“I’ve also recently discovered a weakness for pint-size blondes.”
“How recently?” she demanded suspiciously, forgetting the role she was supposed to be playing.
“A few hours ago. At precisely one-fifteen, as a matter of fact.” His deep voice was amused, but not in the least teasing.
Kendall didn’t have to think back to remember where she had been at one-fifteen. She’d been walking through the door of this hotel. “Weaknesses like that could become dangerous,” she retorted, reaching to brush a strand of drying blond hair away from her face.
“Only if a man doesn’t know what he’s getting into. I do.”
Annoyed by the certainty in his voice, and not entirely sure that they weren’t talking at cross-purposes, Kendall hastily reverted to the scatterbrained tourist. “I’ll bet you’ve said exactly the same thing to hundreds of other women since you started running this hotel!” she exclaimed with a giggle.
“Nope. Just you.”
“Didn’t that line work with the others?”
“I didn’t try it.” He leaned forward suddenly, heavy lids lifting to reveal gray eyes glittering with a curious laughing intensity. “Because it isn’t a line, Kendall. Consider yourself warned—I’m going to do my damnedest to sweep you right off your feet.”
She stared at him blankly for a moment. Right offhand the only thing she could have said about his tactics was that they were certainly original. Hadn’t he just announced his intention of seducing her? “I—consider myself warned,” she managed to say at last, only dimly noticing the breathlessness of her voice.
Having made his point, Hawke—oddly enough—didn’t press. He started talking casually about the island, promising cheerfully to take her sailing in a few days. Or shopping or sight-seeing—whatever she liked. The moment of intensity had passed.
Kendall was grateful for the opportunity to relax a bit—although her instincts warned against relaxing too much around this man. She responded to him lightly, talking a great deal without saying very much. Absently, she noticed the children being herded away from the pool by a tanned young man—apparently a lifeguard—and didn’t think much about it when one of them slipped away from the group.
The poolside guests had all headed back inside sometime before, and Kendall was beginning to think about going in herself. As she chattered brightly, her eyes wandered around the now-deserted pool and back to Hawke’s face. And then something clicked in her mind, and she knew that the dark shape near the pool’s bottom didn’t belong there. In a single motion she ripped the sunglasses off and rose to her feet, her chatter shutting off as though a switch had been thrown. Two swift steps took her to the edge of the pool, and she dived cleanly, intent only on reaching the child in time.
Chapter 2
It was Robbie, the little boy who had run into her in the lobby, and Kendall’s heart clenched in fear even as she caught him and propelled them both to the surface. She was barely aware of strong hands reaching for the boy as they reached the edge of the pool, allowing Hawke to pull him from the water as she herself hastily climbed up onto the tiles. He barely had time to lay the still child gently on the tiles before Kendall was there, immediately beginning the resuscitation techniques she’d been taught long ago.
Unaware that a shocked, silent crowd had gathered, Kendall worked grimly. Silently, fiercely, she vowed that she would not allow another child to die if she could help it. “Breathe,” she whispered, utterly determined. “Breathe, dammit!”
At last the boy coughed weakly and retched, and Kendall rolled him onto his side, thumping him on the back to expel the last of the water. She was too relieved to notice the buzz of admiring conversation from the surrounding group, feeling a tremor possess her now, in the aftermath of unbearable tension. She held the scared, sobbing child to her breast, murmuring soothingly until he was relatively calm.
“I’ll take him, Miss James.” It was Hawke’s manager, Rick, speaking in a gruff voice as he stepped forward. “Come on, Robbie—let??
?s go inside and get you dried off.”
Kendall surrendered the child reluctantly, her heart touched by the way he clung to her. She looked up as Rick carried the boy toward the hotel, and the first thing she saw was the admiration glinting in Hawke’s darkening gaze. Admiration and something else.
Softly, he asked, “Where did you learn that, Kendall?”
She glanced at the circle of inquiring faces and smiled brightly. “Well,” she replied in an earnest, confiding tone, “I used to date a lifeguard. And he needed a lot of practice!”
It was the right thing to say. Laughing, the group broke up, most of them heading back into the hotel. Avoiding Hawke’s thoughtful gaze, Kendall walked over to her cover-up—still lying on the tiles—and casually put it on.
“Father Thomas will want to thank you,” Hawke said as he moved slowly toward her.
“Father Thomas?” She stepped into her thongs and reached to get her sunglasses and drop them into the beachbag.
“He runs the orphanage near here. Robbie’s one of his kids.”
Kendall felt her thinly healed wound throb in pain. Another orphan. Did it even the score somehow? she wondered dimly. One orphan had died because of her, and another had lived—because of her. Did it make up for … No. Nothing could ever make up for the loss of a precious life. Nothing…
“Kendall?”
She felt hands holding her shoulders in a gentle grip, and stared blankly up at Hawke’s concerned face. “You’ve got that look in your eyes again,” he said huskily. “That sad, hurting look. Kendall—”
Her eyes felt dry, scratchy. She wanted, suddenly, to cry. She wanted to throw herself on this man’s broad chest and sob her heart out. But she couldn’t. The tears were dammed up somewhere inside of her. Stepping back from him with fragile dignity, she clutched her beachbag firmly. “I think—that I’ll go and lie down before dinner,” she announced. “I’m very tired.”