Читать книгу Moriah's Mutiny - Elizabeth Bevarly - Страница 6

The weather on St. Thomas was hot and muggy, but the throngs of people drinking and dancing inside The Green House Restaurant and Bar didn’t seem to be affected by it. The band onstage was playing what Moriah Mallory guessed was supposed to be their rendition of a popular reggae tune, but in her opinion they were nowhere near as harmonic or hypnotic as the group who had originally recorded it. Yet the scantily clad bodies that crowded onto the tiny dance floor and spilled into the dining area didn’t seem to notice or care. They swayed and sweated in time to the irregular drumbeat, tipping back green and brown bottles of beer, or pink and yellow rum drinks to alleviate the steamy tropical heat.

If Moriah rose up enough from her bar stool and craned her head around the group of inebriated divers beside her, she could just glimpse the harbor of Charlotte Amalie, now hidden in the night, spattered by patches of glittering light that scattered across the darkness, the result of a small fleet of sailboats and cruise ships anchored offshore. Moriah sighed deeply, inhaling the warm night, and ordered another beer.

Tomorrow morning she would be boarding one of those vessels, or another very similar, and would embark on a two-week cruise through the Caribbean Islands, viewing the lush green jungles, the sparkling, pearly beaches and clear, turquoise-and-emerald waters from the deck of a quiet, softly rocking, tranquility-ridden sailboat. So why this feeling of utter dread that had settled like a cool clump of sand in her stomach? Why the worry that she was about to set sail on a ship of woe? Why did she want so desperately to hightail it back to Philadelphia and forget the entire episode?

Because this whole experience was going to be anything but quiet, and certainly none too tranquil, she amended, remembering that her three sisters would be accompanying her as usual on her summer vacation. As if she could forget them, she thought morosely, slugging back a deep swallow of cold beer. God, why did she continue to put herself through the misery of these annual vacation excursions? Why didn’t she do more than leave a day early to have just a little bit of time to herself? Why couldn’t she stick by the plans she made every summer after the ordeal ended, always swearing to God and heaven above that next year she was going to get away alone?

You can’t, because they’re your sisters, her inconvenient conscience nagged. They’re your family. It’s tradition.

The four Mallory sisters had been vacationing separately from their parents ever since they were children. Ever since the elder Mallorys, Theodore and Diana, understandably wanting to remove themselves from the shrieks and demands of their somewhat spoiled offspring, had begun a tradition of sending their daughters on a variety of exotic adventures befitting the children of a wealthy industrialist and an affluent bank president. Their trips had ranged from island-hopping in the South Pacific to llama trekking in the Andes, from cruises in the Mediterranean to a dude ranch in Wyoming.

And when the sisters had grown into womanhood and undertaken demanding careers, they had still upheld the tradition with vigor, religiously penning the word vacation in big red letters over the first two weeks in August in their engagement books. Last year they had gone hiking in the Alps. This year Morgana had thought it would be fun to charter a sailboat in the Caribbean.

Morgana always got to choose, Moriah thought with annoyance. Then her oldest sister would locate her next romance novel in the place and count most of the trip as a tax write-off. Of course Marissa and Mathilda were no better, always agreeing wholeheartedly with whatever Morgana wanted. Moriah couldn’t remember the last time they’d accepted one of her suggestions. Granted, she had enjoyed the llama trek when she was fifteen. It had surprised her that Marissa had come up with that idea. Her obsession with her physical appearance had been legendary long before she’d become a fashion model. Mathilda had always been the adventurous one, Moriah remembered, recalling the way in which her second-oldest sister had just up and left the sanctuary of her parents’ sprawling Rhode Island estate one day to stake her claim on the New York stage. It had been a well-calculated risk. In October Mathilda would be opening in her first starring role on Broadway.

In fact all of her sisters had become very successful, Moriah realized with a mixture of heartburn and pride. Of course, she hadn’t done too badly herself. But becoming a full professor of cultural anthropology wasn’t exactly the glamour position of the century. And certainly her recently published textbook about the primitive tribes of Peru and Venezuela wouldn’t reach the top of the bestseller list the way Morgana’s latest, Lust’s Crashing Waves, had done. Still, Moriah was very proud of her accomplishments, even if no one else in the family was.

Ever since they were children the Mallory sisters had taken their world by storm. At least the three eldest Mallory sisters had. All slender and tall with wide blue eyes and silver-blond hair, Morgana, Mathilda and Marissa had enjoyed one success after another. Spaced only a year apart, they’d each achieved fame, fortune and a faithful following of fans, things they’d even managed to garner on a smaller scale in Newport, where they’d all grown up.

Unlike her sisters, Moriah had arrived nearly four years after Marissa, and where the others were tall and slender, she barely topped five foot two and was much more rounded in the hips and breasts. She, too, was blond, but not with the straight, silky shafts of blinding white and silver that her sisters claimed. Instead her hair was thick and curly, falling past her shoulders in a tumbling mass, what a casual observer might call a rich, dark, honey blond. Moriah had always regarded it as mousy. And in place of the pale, sky-blue eyes that were so striking on her sisters, Moriah’s eyes were slate gray, deep and expressive almost to a fault. Friends told her she had compelling eyes. Moriah had always considered them cloudy.

All her life Moriah had traveled in the wake and the shadow of her sisters’ accomplishments, both social and academic. She couldn’t count how many times she had heard the grumbled comment, “You’re not much like your sisters, are you?” Countless, too, were the occasions when her teachers and her dates alike had begrudged her any effort to promote her individuality. And all too vivid still were the nights she had spent home alone because too many times she’d disappointed people for not being a real Mallory sister. By the time Moriah had entered the illustrious Prescott Academy, the other Mallorys had all graduated and become a past glory, each having left Newport to seek education and careers elsewhere. Moriah had been left alone to face the massive burden of carrying on the name and the Mallory mystique. With the name, she had little problem as it was hers by birth. The mystique, however, was something she’d never quite been able to master. Consequently it left town along with her sisters.

So Moriah tried to get by as best as she could. And academically, anyway, she did quite well; her grades were excellent. But then that was to be expected of a Mallory, so her parents had never bothered to congratulate her for her accomplishments. They did, however, continuously bemoan her lack of social achievements, her absence of chatty friends and moon-eyed suitors. They wondered avidly why she didn’t have the interest in clothes, cosmetics and the opposite sex that had kept her sisters giggling and shopping all the time. And they were constantly curious about her quiet and solitary habits. Moriah’s sisters had certainly never been that way.

Moriah gulped back the last of her second beer and quickly ordered a third. The divers beside her were staking drunken claims on a bevy of sunburned beauties that beckoned to them from the other side of the bandstand. They nudged one another clumsily in the ribs and slurred out their none too chivalrous intentions toward the women.

“Oh, for God’s sake, just go over there, toss them over your Neanderthal shoulders and carry them back to your caves,” Moriah muttered with sarcastic impatience at the largest of the men.

He turned at the sound of the deep, feminine voice beside him, his movements slow, though as a result of his drunkenness or his anger, Moriah wasn’t sure. Like his friends, he was blond and tanned from days spent under the scorching sun, and his numerous overdeveloped muscles let her know that diving wasn’t the only sport in which he excelled.

She wondered what had possessed her to speak to the giant amphibian in the first place. It was bad enough that she was sitting alone in a bar. Now she had gone and drawn unwanted attention to herself.

“Are you talkin’ to me?” the diver asked her thickly, as if his tongue was having trouble navigating.

“Uh, no. No,” Moriah said quickly, her eyes darting from one man to another as her brain scrambled for polite and credible excuses that would cover her colossal blunder. “I, uh, I was talking to myself. Yes, that’s it. I’m, uh, I’m schizophrenic, you see. And you know what they say. You’re never alone with a schizophrenic.”

The diver gazed at her with a foggy expression, trying to comprehend the information she offered him. “I’ve never heard that,” he finally told her, gazing at her with a newfound interest. A predatory light began to flicker in his eyes as another thought struck him. “So if we went to bed together, would that be like getting it on with twins?”

Moriah’s jaw dropped fast at the man’s blatant suggestion, and she tried to ignore the jeers and leers of his friends. Her slight sunburn from the afternoon spent at Magen’s Bay became a deep crimson. “Uh, no, actually,” she stammered. “I’m, uh, I’m sure you’d be very disappointed.”

But the big, blond diver was not about to be put off by what had become an intriguing idea. His eyes wandered lazily across Moriah’s face, down her loose-fitting black T-shirt and short denim skirt, along the length of her shapely legs. On the trip back, his eyes lingered at her chest, where the scooped neckline of her shirt revealed just a tantalizing hint of the swell of her breasts, and he lifted his beer thirstily to his finely chiseled lips. When he finally looked back at her face, Moriah began to feel more than a little frightened. This guy was huge. And he was drunk. There was no way to know what he was going to do next. She took a deep breath in order to steady the accelerated thumping of her heart and gripped her bottle of beer tightly, as if it were a weapon.

“You know,” the diver began slowly, allowing his hand to travel the short distance of the bar that separated them until his fingers settled gently over her wrist, “we could have a really good time together.”

“Not tonight, fella, I’m waiting for someone,” she lied with determination, hoping her voice didn’t illustrate any of the unsteadiness she felt.

His hand tightened on her wrist, and his smile became a disturbing grimace. “Yeah, tonight,” he whispered viciously. “All night. Any guy who’d leave you waiting here alone isn’t worth the effort. I don’t live too far from here, and we could—”

“You’ve got the wrong woman, pal,” Moriah insisted, trying to free herself from his iron grip. When had everything gone crazy? she wondered wildly. A moment ago she’d been sitting quietly, enjoying a beer while she contemplated with dread what awaited her with the arrival of her sisters the next day, and now she was suddenly fearing for her safety. How had this happened?

The muscle-bound giant’s grip grew tighter with her struggles. “Oh, you like to wrestle, huh?” he murmured angrily. “That’s fine, baby. I like it rough, too. Let’s go.” He stood then, his intentions stated, pulling Moriah to her feet along with him.

“No,” she said with as much conviction as she could muster in her growing panic. She glanced about furiously, but everyone else seemed oblivious to her situation. The bartender was pouring drinks with his back to her, and the diver’s friends were eagerly egging him on. “Let go of me, you big jerk,” she hissed anxiously.

“Ah, ah, ah,” the diver admonished her as he grasped her upper arm painfully with his other hand. “No name-calling. I don’t like that. It’s not polite.”

His voice had become malicious and low, and Moriah decided then and there that serious times called for serious crimes. She was just beginning to bend her knee, quickly assessing the exact amount of force necessary to drive it into the man’s private parts and completely incapacitate him with pain, when another man came suddenly out of nowhere, dropped his arm casually across her shoulder and cried out, “Darling! I’ve been looking all over for you! Hiya, Bart. What’s new?”

Simultaneously Moriah and the diver turned to stare at the newcomer, one face etched with surprise, the other with wariness. Moriah took in the man’s handsome features, ruggedly bronzed from the sun, his laughing amber eyes and the slightly curling hair that had probably once been a dark rich mahogany but was now also streaked with a dozen shades of copper and bronze. He was taller than the diver who still held on to her, but not nearly as physically overblown. This man was firm and muscular, yes, but as a result of physical labor and lean times, not from afternoons spent at a gym. Moriah could only stare at him speechless, but her tormentor obviously knew the man and was disappointed by his interruption.

“Austen,” the diver greeted the other man with a reluctant nod. “You know this babe?”

Austen cringed a little at Bart’s statement, but his smile didn’t falter. “Know her?” he asked, seemingly aghast. “Know her? Why, Muffy and I are practically engaged!”

“Muffy?” Moriah and Bart spoke as one.

Austen’s smile dropped somewhat. “It’s a pet name,” he explained to the diver. When he looked over at Moriah, the crooked grin reappeared. She looked as if she wanted to slug him instead of Bart, and he was the one trying to rescue her. When he’d entered The Green House, he’d almost turned right around to leave again. The popular night spot was even more packed than usual, and for some reason he didn’t feel like being part of a crowd tonight. Normally he enjoyed a party as much as the next guy, and the more people, the better. But tonight he felt differently. Tonight he felt restless and edgy, anxious even. As if there was something big coming, but for the life of him he didn’t know what.

As he’d turned to leave, he’d caught sight of Bart and the boys at the bar, then almost involuntarily his eyes had been drawn to the woman they seemed to be tormenting. It wasn’t just the fact that she was beautiful that made him catch his breath; there was something else, too…some raw energy, some unassuaged yearning caged within her, threatening to burst out any minute. The look in her eyes spoke of wild desires that wanted to burn free but that she kept buried with careful control.

He could tell by her expression that Bart was threatening her and she was about to strike back. He’d even noticed her preparation to nail the diver in a place that most men considered exceedingly important. He had to admire her insistence that she was not about to be manhandled by the big gorilla, but knowing Bart the way he did, there was unfortunately no way she would have been allowed to leave St. Thomas intact had she succeeded with such an act. Therefore, Austen had jumped in with both feet in an effort to defuse a potentially explosive situation, hoping unconsciously, too, that like the good guy in all his favorite Westerns, he might also wind up with the girl.

“Thanks for keeping an eye on her, Bart,” he told the other man with a wink. “I was afraid she’d gotten tired of waiting for me and taken off.” He playfully but meaningfully tugged Bart’s hands from the woman’s tender flesh, then put his own arm around her waist and pulled her close.

Moriah had no choice but to allow him the liberty, reasoning that at least this man seemed sober and more normally proportioned, and would prove a much less formidable adversary than Bart.

“Yes, uh, Austen,” she began slowly, thankful that she remembered Bart’s use of the stranger’s name. She, too, wound an arm around his lean waist, explaining away the pounding of her heart as the aftershocks of having been placed in a dangerous situation. “It’s about time you showed up. I was getting worried.”

“Isn’t that just like a woman?” Austen said to the group of divers who still gazed at him with no small amount of suspicion. Impulsively he swung the woman around to face him and buried his hands in the hair that had tantalized him ever since he’d entered the bar. Her gray eyes widened in startled surprise, but Austen couldn’t help himself. Telling himself he was only doing it to convince Bart he actually knew this woman, he lowered his lips to hers in what he’d intended to be a quick, light kiss. But once he knew the warmth and softness of her mouth, once he tasted her sweetness and passion, Austen couldn’t retreat.

At first Moriah was shocked by the man’s actions, even if she had thought the arm draped around her waist had brought on some very pleasant sensations. She was being kissed by an absolute stranger! In a public place! While other strangers looked on! But what was worse, she realized, as the handsome, wonderfully muscular man intensified the kiss, she was really beginning to enjoy it.

Maybe it was a result of consuming too much beer or having been far too long without any male companionship, or maybe it was a leftover reaction to the highly tense situation in which she’d been embroiled only moments before. Maybe it was for some other reason she didn’t want to think about right now, but almost of their own volition, Moriah’s arms crept slowly and reluctantly up Austen’s abdomen until her fingers spread possessively across his chest. And that was all the invitation he needed to pull her closer and deepen the kiss. As his hands wandered freely over her back and shoulders, her fingers became tangled in his thick hair. When Moriah felt his tongue graze along the line of her teeth, she opened her mouth to him willingly and nearly collapsed in his arms at the reckless, hot sensations that washed over her at being so filled by him. She allowed herself to become lost in the passionate embrace for a moment, clinging to him as he clung to her, locking her tongue with his in an intimate celebration. But when she realized with a start that she was clinging so desperately and passionately to a total stranger, Moriah gasped out loud and pulled her lips savagely away.

“Stop,” she whispered breathlessly, her fingers betraying her as they continued to clutch great handfuls of Austen’s pale yellow T-shirt. She was so close to him that she could feel through his faded, tight blue jeans how aroused he had become, and her shame and horror at having provoked him into this state was almost too much to bear. “Please, just stop,” she repeated, ducking her head in embarrassment, unable to meet his eyes.

Austen’s gasps for breath were ragged and shallow, and he, too, was appalled by what had just transpired between them. He didn’t even know this woman’s name!

Moriah took a deep, calming breath and expelled it slowly. “The others…” she muttered lamely, looking around the bar fearfully. “Bart…”

Austen glanced quickly over her head to discover that Bart and his cronies had disappeared from their seats at the bar. With a brief survey of the room, he saw that they had joined a group of giggling beach bunnies, their smiles broad, their chests swelled, enjoying their new celebrity.

“The others are gone,” Austen murmured into Moriah’s ear. “So’s Bart. See for yourself.”

She turned uncertainly, her eyes darting between Austen and the recently vacated bar stools behind her, then returned her attention to him. “If that’s the case, then why don’t you let go of me?” she asked him pointedly, indicating the strong hands still settled possessively on her hips.

“’Cause I don’t want to,” he told her with a crooked smile, his curiously colored eyes sparkling with humor. “Why don’t you let go of me?” he returned, and Moriah realized with chagrin that she still clung with some insistence to the front of his shirt.

Immediately she released it, nervously running her damp palms over his chest in an effort to smooth the softly worn fabric. “Um, sorry about that,” she mumbled sheepishly.

“Hey, no problem,” he drawled, loving the feel of her hands caressing his chest.

Moriah, too, was somewhat preoccupied with the motions of her hands, marveling at the strength and hardness she felt below her fingertips. He probably had a really magnificent chest, she thought fondly. Well, of course it was magnificent now, with his tight T-shirt straining across the finely tuned muscles. But when he was naked, it was probably incred—

She dropped her hands as if she’d been burned, and pulled away from his now-loosened grip to reseat herself at her original position at the bar. After a long, cooling swallow of beer, she managed to look over at him without feeling her stomach turn inside out, though she did squirm a little when she realized his chest was still at eye level. After clearing her throat nervously, she finally said, “Well, thank you for coming to my rescue, Mister…”

“Uh-uh. No ‘Mister,’” he told her. “Just Austen.”

“Well, then, thank you, Austen. It was, um, enlightening meeting you, but now I’m more than certain that you have to be going somewhere. Goodbye.”

Austen’s already handsome face was made radiant by the mischievous glimmer that lighted up his eyes as he seated himself on the bar stool Bart had vacated. “You’re damned right it was enlightening,” he agreed. “But I don’t have to be anywhere until tomorrow morning. And frankly, I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to leave you here alone with Bart lurking around. I’m afraid I know the guy. And the way he was looking at you tonight…well, let’s just say the old boy’s tenacious where women are concerned.”

Unconsciously Moriah’s hand encircled the wrist that the diver had gripped so painfully, and she gazed at him uncomfortably across the room.

Austen noted the gesture with a frown. “Did he hurt you?” he asked softly, taking her wrist gently in his own hand. Her soft flesh was red from Bart’s manhandling, and he traced over her delicate bones with a roughly padded thumb.

Moriah grew warm at the exquisiteness of his caresses, so different from the savage pawing she’d suffered from the other man. “Not much,” she replied quietly. “Thanks again for helping me out.”

With a casual shrug, Austen brushed off her unnecessary thanks, then caught the bartender’s eye. “Stu, bring us a couple of planter’s punches.”

“Oh, no,” Moriah objected. “I’ve still got a beer here, and I don’t want to mix.”

“Come on,” Austen insisted. “You’re in the Caribbean. Drink something festive. You can have beer any day. Besides, you’ll love this. Trust me.”

On cue the bartender placed two tall, pinkish-orange drinks on the bar before them.

“Stir it up first,” Austen instructed.

“Why?”

“They float one-fifty-one on top.”

“One-fifty-one?”

“Just do as I say, Muffy, or I’ll have to get ugly.”

“My name isn’t Muffy,” Moriah said with a laugh as she rattled her straw around in her drink. “It’s Moriah.”

“Wow, what a great name,” he remarked with genuine appreciation.

“Really?” she asked, irrationally pleased that he thought so. “Yeah. Isn’t there an old song or something about that?” He thought for a moment and then recited with mock seriousness, “Way out west they have a name for wind and rain and fire.’ Or something like that.”

“Yeah, the wind is ‘wind,’ the rain is ‘rain,’ and they call the fire ‘fire,’” she rejoined with a chuckle.

“No, no, that’s not it. They call the wind Moriah,” Austen corrected.

“Whatever.”

“After what happened tonight, though, I’d say the fire should be called Moriah,” he murmured in a silky voice.

Moriah tried to pretend she hadn’t heard, but she sloshed a good bit of her drink onto the bar as her stirring became more furious. Dropping her straw onto the napkin, she lifted the wet glass to her lips and took a deep sip of her drink. “Hey, this is really good. I could drink a lot of these.”

“You’ll be sorry if you do,” he cautioned. “If not tonight, then tomorrow.”

“I never get hangovers,” she told him. She neglected to add that it was because she so seldom drank alcohol.

“A lot of people have lived to regret those words. Especially down in the Caribbean.”

“Do you live here?” Moriah asked with great interest. She already pretty much knew the answer to the question just from looking at him. Tourists were far too easy to spot in their newly purchased vacation clothes, sunburned from head to toe and dead drunk most of the time. Austen was much too comfortable in his surroundings, and his sun-bleached, rebelliously long hair and basic choice of clothes indicated to her that he wouldn’t be flying back to the States for the opening bids at the stock exchange Monday morning.

“Yeah,” Austen responded as predicted. “I’ve been down here about five years. How about you? Do you live here?”

Moriah nearly choked on her drink. Did she live here? In the Caribbean? Really, it was all too funny. What would the other professors in the anthropology department think? “Do I look like I live down here?” she asked in lieu of an answer.

Austen turned her question into an opportunity to give her the once-over again, and he smiled. Moriah kept any comments to herself, as she realized belatedly that she’d set herself up for his ogling.

“No,” Austen answered. “Your sunburn is a dead giveaway.”

“Swell,” Moriah mumbled as she lifted her drink to her lips.

“But,” he hastened to add, “you look like you belong here.”

Moriah gazed at him openly, honestly amazed at his statement. “I do?” she asked softly. A small smile playing about her lips and eyes reflected her genuine pleasure at his compliment.

Austen caught his breath at her expression. She looked even more beautiful than before, her face almost childlike in its innocent delight, as if he had offered her the highest of praise. “Yeah,” he breathed out quietly. “You do.”

Moriah continued to beam. “Thanks, Austen.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied automatically, still entranced by the warmth that emanated from her gray eyes.

For several moments they only gazed at each other as if verbal communication was unnecessary. Then with a start, Austen realized he knew nothing of this woman except that her name was Moriah and she was a damned-nice kisser, and he’d better get his mind in gear if he was going to score any points with her.

“So I guess you’re here on vacation?” he asked lamely, realizing they both already knew the answer to the question. When Moriah nodded as she sipped more of her drink, he continued, trying not to sound like the idiot he must surely appear. “Where are you from?”

“Originally from Newport, Rhode Island,” Moriah informed him. “I grew up there. Now I live and work in Philadelphia.”

“Newport’s a big sailing mecca, isn’t it?” Austen asked, always interested in things nautical.

“There are a lot of big yachts and sailboats up there,” Moriah agreed distastefully. “But boating is something I was never much into, personally,” she added with an edge to her voice, remembering all the nightmarish occasions as a child when the family had gone out on their seventy-two-foot yacht, Teddy’s Toy. Her father had always been determined that his four daughters would be perfect sailors and flawless nautical hostesses, and he’d spent each excursion impressing them with the severity of a drill instructor. Naturally Morgana, Mathilda and Marissa had all passed the tests with flying colors and enjoyed the trips immensely. Moriah, on the other hand, had struggled for years with motion sickness and vertigo, for the most part losing her lunch over the leeward side while her father looked on, shaking his head in disappointment.

Austen detected the bitter note in Moriah’s voice and incorrectly surmised that it was there because she harbored a distaste for people who could afford big yachts and sailboats. Therefore he didn’t pursue the topic, wanting instead to reestablish their earlier humor and ease of communication. “So what do you do in Philadelphia?” he asked in an effort to change the subject.

“I’m a teacher,” Moriah responded proudly, sitting up a little straighter in her chair.

Austen couldn’t help but grin at her, so obvious was her love for her job. It seemed like an appropriate profession for her. He got the impression Moriah was the type of person who would take pleasure in giving something of herself to others. She was probably great with kids, too, he suspected, and with her abundant good humor and self-confidence, she must be a great inspiration to her students. They probably loved her. If he’d had a teacher like her when he was in school, he definitely would have been inspired. Not to mention in love.

“What grade do you teach? What subject?” he asked her. Then impulsively he rushed on. “No, wait. Don’t tell me. Let me guess.”

Moriah sipped her drink slowly and told him, “I’m the most obvious candidate for my position in the world. You’ll guess in a second.”

Austen looked at her once more, taking in not just her gorgeous body this time, but the carefree clothes that encased it, the tumbling wildness of her dark gold hair, the laughing fire in her huge, beautiful eyes. “You have to teach either art or music,” he decided, not sure if the widening of her eyes meant he was right or wrong. “And probably the seventh or eighth grade. Am I right?”

Moriah’s laughter erupted uncontrolled from deep inside her, full and rich and uninhibited. Austen thought it the most wonderful laugh he’d ever heard.

“What?” he demanded with a chuckle. Her mirth was highly contagious. “Am I right?”

His question made Moriah laugh even more, the image of her doing something creative and beautiful just too, too funny to imagine. It was true that there was an abundance of artistic genes in the Mallory DNA, but they’d all been used up by the time she’d come along. She had to be thankful that she’d gotten more than her share of the intellectual ones, though, she ceded, Marissa having been shorted a bit there.

“Oh, Austen,” she finally managed to say through her giggles. “That’s pretty humorous.”

“I guess you’re trying to tell me that my assumption was a little off target.”

“Actually, the only way you could have been further off would be to have placed me at the head of an elementary schoolroom.”

“Look, are you going to tell me what you do for a living, or am I just going to sit here looking like a fool?”

Moriah smiled sweetly at him as she announced, “I’m a professor of cultural anthropology at a Philadelphia university. I teach upper-level and graduate classes in primitive South American cultures, and right now I’m studying different tribes of the Carib Indians, trying to discern their original migration routes from one island to another.”

“Oh,” Austen muttered. Then after a thoughtful swallow of his planter’s punch, he added, “You don’t look much like an anthropologist.”

Moriah’s genuine look of bewilderment told him she thought he was out of his mind. “Of course I do,” she said simply.

“No, you don’t,” he insisted. “I always pictured anthropologists as dry and humorless.”

“I am dry and humorless,” Moriah told him simply.

The realization that she actually believed that struck Austen like a freight train, but his consequent shock prohibited him from coming up with the proper denial. Instead he demanded, “How come you don’t have your hair pulled back and wear glasses like anthropologists are supposed to? Where’s your gray flannel suit and starched white blouse and sensible shoes, hmm?”

Moriah shrugged, and her reply was matter-of-fact. “Actually, I do usually pull my hair back, but after all the salt-water and wind and humidity at the beach today, it just refused to be contained. And I only wear my glasses for close-up work. As for the suit and sensible shoes, well, that’s kind of an outdated fashion statement even for anthropologists. Besides, they’re terribly inappropriate for field study.”

She didn’t seem angry or resentful when she made her statement, Austen thought after she concluded. But there was something, some almost undetectable glimmer in her eyes that indicated she was somewhat resentful about the life she led. She’d delivered her words without malice or defensiveness, just plainspoken, unadulterated fact. But somehow he felt that hers was a hollow, inappropriate description, that the way she did live wasn’t the way she wanted to live. That the person she described herself to be was in fact just a facade to disguise who she really was. What he didn’t understand was why she would want to deny herself that way.

Before he could verbally pursue his suspicions, a shutter suddenly fell over her eyes, and he wasn’t altogether sure that the look he thought he’d seen was ever there. Instead he only said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“No apology is necessary,” Moriah told him honestly, wondering why he should think one was. Everything he’d asserted about anthropologists, save the flannel suit, had been right on the mark as far as she was concerned. And she was every bit as guilty of following the stereotype as her colleagues at the university. She did dress modestly, and she did lack a sense of humor. She knew that because her sisters always complained about her colossal lack of fashion sense and because every time she tried to make jokes among her family or her peers, she was met with either blank stares or condescension. As a result she’d given up just about any attempt to describe the humor she still found in situations, because evidently what she considered funny simply was not.

Austen was silent for a moment, contemplating the puzzle of this beautiful woman, more curious about what made her tick than any person he’d ever met. And in the five years that had passed since he’d moved to the Caribbean, he’d met dozens of strange and wonderful characters. He watched Moriah drain her glass of the sweet pink liquid it held, entranced by the slender length of her throat, inevitably letting his eyes fall to the neckline of her shirt and the subtle swell of her full breasts. A cultural anthropologist. My, my, my. Perhaps if he’d majored in that instead of business he would have wound up a more satisfied man.

But thoughts of the past were behind him now, and as he gazed lustily at the woman beside him, his future was looking brighter. Particularly his immediate future. When two sunburned dancers wearing matching striped rugby shirts fell drunkenly against him with a giggle and a gasp, he turned to Moriah with an idea.

“It’s getting awfully crowded in here. What say we go someplace else? Someplace where there aren’t so many fods.”

Moriah eagerly licked the last of the planter’s punch from her lips and offered him a mild grin, beginning to feel the effects of the mysterious concoction. “Fods?” she asked, drawing her brows down in confusion. “What are fods?”

“Fods are all those tourists you see dressed identically alike so they won’t lose each other in a crowd,” he informed her, trying to ignore what the motion of her tongue did to his body. “It’s a widespread, imported phenomenon down here.”

“I see.” Looking around, Moriah did detect the presence of a number of couples wearing identical sportswear. “It would appear that these fods breed like rabbits,” she noted.

Austen smiled at her culturally anthropological observation. “Virtually overnight,” he concurred. “Come on, I know a better place. There are still a lot of tourists, but they’re cool tourists. They like to hang with us locals. You’ll like it.”

“Gee, I don’t think so, Austen,” Moriah hedged. “The rest of my family is coming down tomorrow morning and I should meet them at the airport.”

“Where’s your hotel?” he asked.

“Bolongo Bay Beach,” she told him.

“Hey, that’s not bad,” he commented, thinking college professors must get paid pretty well these days. “But I wouldn’t sign up for any diving lessons if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“Bart’s one of the instructors.”

“You mean that big Neanderthal works in the same hotel where I’m staying?” Moriah’s concern was obvious.

“Don’t worry,” Austen assured her with a smile. “He usually has his head underwater. Explains the waterlogged brain, you know?”

Moriah smiled back at him. Austen had come at her virtually out of nowhere, looking like a bronzed Adonis, rescuing her from the menace of a pack of tiger sharks. He’d made her laugh a lot and enjoy herself immensely this evening, despite the dread she still harbored at her sisters’ impending arrival. Not to mention the fact that he was a remarkably talented kisser, too. Austen might have come as a surprise, but it had taken Moriah no time at all to decide that she liked him. A lot.

“Anyway,” he went on, interrupting her thoughts, “what I was going to say was that your hotel isn’t that far from the airport. You won’t have to get up too early. You could stay up just a little bit longer, couldn’t you?”

He’s so cute, Moriah thought with no small amount of surprise. She’d never fallen for a cute man in her life. She’d always gotten involved with men who were as dry and humorless and as ignorant of the concept of fun as she. And, of course, that’s why she’d always wound up dumping them.

“I don’t know,” she began reluctantly, obviously weakening in her conviction. “If you knew my family the way I do, you’d understand.”

“Hey, if they’re anything at all like you, I don’t think you’ll have any problem,” he told her.

But that was the problem, she wanted to tell him. The rest of the Mallory clan were nothing at all like her. Or rather, she was nothing at all like the rest of the Mallory clan. That’s what had always been the problem.

“Come on, Moriah,” Austen coaxed as he nudged her shoulder playfully with his. “You’re on vacation. Enjoy yourself.”

“Actually, it’s going to be something of a working vacation,” she told him, stalling for time. “I’ll be visiting several islands that have university and library facilities, and I’ve made some appointments with other anthropologists and professors. I’m doing some research for a new textbook that I hope will be a useful tool in classes focusing on primitive Caribbean cultures.”

Austen looked at her for a moment without speaking, then slowly, gradually, a wonderfully wicked, marvelously mischievous grin spread across his face. His amber eyes twinkled merrily when he finally spoke. “You know, you’re right. You are dry and humorless. But I have the perfect remedy for that.”

Moriah blinked. “You do?”

“Yeah.” Austen’s smile broadened, and Moriah felt her insides turning into mashed bananas. “Come on, Moriah. We’re going to Sparky’s.”