Loe raamatut: «Dominic's Child»

CHAPTER ONE

SOPHIE knew at once who it was rapping on her hotel room door in that imperious “Don’t keep me waiting” manner, partly, of course, because the chief of police had forewarned her that Dominic Winter was en route to St. Julian, but also because there was in the summons nothing of the islanders’ discreet tap tap that begged the favor of admittance.

Instead, this was the peremptory crack of bone on wood—the command of a superior being to one of lesser stature. If he’d bellowed, “Open the door, woman, and let me in!” his message could not have been clearer.

For all that she’d been expecting him, the proof of Dominic Winter’s arrival had Sophie starting up out of the chair in a flurry of agitation. The sound of his knock seemed indecently loud somehow, and not at all fitting to the somber gravity of the occasion.

On her way to answer him, she made an unplanned stop before the mirror, though why she bothered escaped her. She knew her hair was perfectly in place, her attire as suitably subdued as could be achieved, given the sort of clothes she’d brought with her.

Perhaps it was because she needed to be sure that nothing in her face gave her away. Of course she was upset, saddened; under the circumstances, that was to be expected. But there was more. There’d always been something more where Dominic Winter was concerned, and that was what he must never suspect.

He strode into the room and, without the slightest concession to civil good manners, said in a tone as forbiddingly cold as his name, “Well, I hope you’re happy with what you’ve done, Ms. Casson. My fiancée is dead and her parents are shattered.”

“It was an accident,” she heard herself reply defensively, and wondered why she didn’t just set him straight and have done with it. Whatever other guilty secrets she harbored, culpability in Barbara’s death was not among them. But one didn’t launch into a diatribe about a dead woman’s shortcomings, not to the man who’d hoped to marry her in another few months and certainly not within seconds of his arriving at the scene of her untimely demise. There would be opportunity enough for him to learn the details leading up to the accident later, when he’d recovered a little from the shock and from the draining exhaustion of travel.

If Sophie was prepared to show a little sensitivity, however, Dominic Winter was not. “You might call it an accident,” he declared flatly, “but I’ve yet to be convinced that you aren’t guilty of criminal negligence—in which case ‘manslaughter’ would be a more accurate term, or perhaps even ‘murder’.”

Sophie prided herself on being a capable, independent sort of woman. Going weak at the knees when someone tried to intimidate her simply wasn’t her style. But she felt the blood drain from her face at his intimation. “Mr. Winter,” she said, backing away from him unsteadily, “I was nowhere near Barbara when she died. In fact, I was completely unaware of her plans on Wednesday, and if you don’t believe me then I suggest you check my alibi with Chief Inspector Montand, who is perfectly satisfied that I am in no way to blame for what happened to her.”

“But I am not Chief Inspector Montand, Ms. Casson, and I do hold you to blame. You encouraged Barbara to come away with you. If you had not, she would be alive today.”

What could she say that didn’t sound like an excuse? Sophie bit her lip and turned toward the louvered doors that led to the balcony. Outside, the entire world seemed bent on the celebration of life. Everything, from the surf rolling rhythmically up the pale gold crescent of beach to the sultry sway of the coconut palms fringing the hotel grounds, seemed to echo the calypso beat of the everpresent steel band.

A scarlet hibiscus, shot full of burgundy fire from the sun, flamed next to an overpoweringly sweet-scented frangipani. Macaws perched on the backs of unoccupied sun chaises, brazenly flaunting their plumage.

But what she had found breathtakingly lovely only two days before struck Sophie now as obscene. How could there be death in the midst of such vibrant life? Tragedy did not marry easily with the carnival atmosphere that was St. Julian’s stock-in-trade.

Closing her eyes, she struggled to find the words to ease Dominic Winter’s pain. Because she knew he must be hurting, even though she’d noticed that he hadn’t included himself among those shattered by Barbara’s death. Or was that wishful thinking on her part? Would she have preferred him not to care?

Ashamed, she shut out the question just as, over the past ten weeks, she’d learned to shut out other inappropriate thoughts concerning this man. “I did not coerce Barbara into accompanying me, Mr. Winter,” she said at last. “It was entirely her idea. In fact, she was so insistent she needed a change of scene to get her through the coming winter that if she hadn’t come here with me, she’d undoubtedly have run off somewhere else.”

“And you never thought to question the logic of that?”

“Why should I?” she cried, stung by his unremitting air of condemnation. “She was an adult, capable of making up her own mind, and I hardly knew her. If anyone should have recognized that she was... highly strung and wildly impetuous, it should have been you.”

At that, the antagonism in his eyes faded somewhat and it occurred to Sophie that, for the only time in their acquaintance, he allowed her to see past the glower to the man inside. It also occurred to her how seldom she’d seen him smile, even in the early days of her association with Barbara when he’d presumably had every reason to be happy.

Sophie had met him in mid-September when she first began working at the Wexler estate, although perhaps “met” wasn’t quite the word to describe his remote nod of acknowledgment when she had been introduced to him. Her first impression had been that he was a snob, the kind of man who found it beneath his dignity to treat an employee, whether his or someone else’s, with the same respect he accorded to his own kind—even when, as in her case, the employee was a professional whose framed credentials attested to her expertise.

It was only later that she wondered if he made a particular point of maintaining a safe distance from her, a notion based more on feminine instinct than hard fact. Because, despite his apparent uninterest in her comings and goings, she’d several times caught him spying on her, even when she was at the far end of the property and about as far away from him as she could get. She’d look up and there he’d be at one of the long windows, or standing in the shade of the pergola that connected the Wexlers’ handsome Georgian-style mansion to the rose gardens below the terrace.

Tall and authoritative, with astonishingly beautiful eyes that, depending on his mood, changed from rich deep jade to brilliant emerald ice, he was a man of presence and impossible to ignore. She found him disturbingly attractive yet formidably remote. She’d had no more idea what went on in that head of his than she could have unraveled the mystery of the sphinx. He had remained an enigma, despite her clandestine fascination with him—until now, when tragedy fractured his reserve and rendered him marginally more human.

“Barbara was like a child,” he said, pacing back and forth across the tiled floor, “incapable of recognizing her own mortality. If she had told me ahead of time that she planned to sneak off with you, I’d have done my level best to stop her. And if I had not been able to succeed, I would have warned you to keep an eye on her. What I don’t understand is why, if, as you claim, you hardly knew her, you decided to share a holiday with her.”

“It was a last-minute thing,” Sophie explained. “Usually, I travel with my friend, Elaine, but she came down with the chicken pox three days before we were due to fly down here. I happened to mention it to Barbara and she immediately offered to buy Elaine’s ticket. I saw no reason to quarrel with that, especially since Elaine hadn’t bothered to take out cancellation insurance and stood to lose rather a lot of money. But I did make it clear to Barbara that, once we arrived here, we’d go our separate ways for most of the time.”

In less than a blink of his remarkable eyes, Dominic Winter’s antagonism rolled back into place again, swathed in biting sarcasm. “In other words, Barbara became an inconvenience once she’d served the purpose of averting a financial loss for your friend. Allow me to say, Ms. Casson, that I am overwhelmed by so commendable an attitude. You’re obviously all heart!”

“This is a working vacation for me, Mr. Winter. I couldn’t afford the luxury of whiling away the time the way Barbara did. She understood that. If you choose to put the worst possible interpretation on my actions, there’s little I can do about it.”

“And even less that you care.”

Oh, she cared, more than he could begin to guess! But she’d be damned if she’d let it show.

“Exactly,” she retorted, then made matters worse by compounding the lie with an even greater untruth. “Your opinion of me matters not one iota and if that offends you, Mr. Winter, perhaps the knowledge that I’m singularly unimpressed by you, too, will even the score between us. I don’t know quite how I expected you to behave today but if you’d shown a glimmer of compassion, I might have felt more kindly disposed to tolerate your insults. As it is, I can’t quite shake the feeling that perhaps it was the thought of spending the rest of her life with you that drove Barbara to behave so rashly last Wednesday.”

He had the kind of skin that glowed with sun-kissed radiance regardless of the season, but at her words his face grew bleached with shock. Equally appalled, Sophie stared at him, her gaze fused with his. The man was clearly in pain. What was it about him that compelled her to add to his misery?

She knew. She’d always known, right from the start: she was afraid of him.

She’d never dared explore the reasons. It was enough that, from the first moment she’d set eyes on him, she’d felt a stirring of hunger for something—someone—who wasn’t hers to have. And so, out of self-defense, she’d manufactured a dislike of him, and it had worked well enough until now when his chilly reserve slipped.

Perhaps it was as well that, at that moment, the phone rang and provided them both with a distraction. Certainly she was glad of the excuse to turn away from him and busy herself picking up the receiver.

She listened a moment, murmured assent, then hung up. “That was Chief Inspector Montand,” she told Dominic. “He’s downstairs in the hotel foyer and would like to speak to us.”

“Why us and not just me? If you’re as blamelessly detached from this tragedy as you claim to be, what more can he possibly have to say to you?”

She shrugged, calling up that old, contrived antipathy to arm herself against him. It was easy enough to do, given his miserable attitude. “Ask him. I don’t make the rules around here.”

Yet she hated the way she sounded, so hard and uncaring, as though the fact that a young woman had died didn’t matter as long as that person wasn’t Sophie Casson.

It was almost comforting to hark back to Wednesday evening when the wreckage of the Laser had been found and the awful truth of Barbara’s fate had begun to take shape. Sophie hadn’t been flippant then. Her initial reaction of paralyzed disbelief had given way to near hysteria. It had taken a sedative prescribed by the hotel doctor to calm her down. Not even Dominic Winter could have doubted the sincerity of her distress that night.

Today, however, was a different matter. Contempt curling his incredibly sexy mouth, he flung wide the door and with an extravagantly courteous flourish ushered her into the hall outside. “Well, let’s not keep the good inspector waiting, Ms. Casson. I’m sure you have more interesting things planned for this afternoon than rehashing the tedious minutiae of Barbara’s death.”

He is suffering, Sophie intoned silently. Remember that and refuse to enter into hurtful mind games with him, no matter how much he goads you.

Spine straight, head high, she swept ahead of him. Her navy-and-white-striped skirt fluttered around her calves in concealing folds but her low-backed white blouse with its halter neckline left her feeling woefully underdressed. She could almost feel Dominic’s glare branding her bare shoulders with the stigmata of his disapproval.

She had reached the top of the sweeping staircase before he caught up with her. His hand cupped her elbow, a cool, impersonal touch that stemmed less from concern for her safe descent than from the habit of inbred good manners. She was tall, almost five feet eight inches, but beside him she felt small. Small and defiant, like a child trying to match wits with a punitive uncle. But she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that. There would be no more snide, insulting remarks, no insinuations of blame—at least not from her and not for the next several days.

And after that? Well, he’d no longer be even remotely involved in her life and she would be free to forget him—if she could.

At the far end of the foyer, St. Julian’s chief of police, immaculate in white Bermudas and short-sleeved white shirt, tucked his pith helmet under one arm and snapped to attention at their approach. “Inspector Montand at your service, monsieur. I am sorry to welcome you to our island under such unhappy circumstances.”

Dominic nodded and came straight to the point. “Have you found my fiancée’s body yet, Montand?”

If the inspector was offended by so blunt an approach, he didn’t allow it to show. Ebony features impassive, he replied in the melodious island accent that Sophie found enchanting, “Sadly, we have not. The ocean currents beyond the reef, you understand, and the sharks...” His shrug, half Gallic, half native Caribbean, would have been comical at any other time. “We do not expect to find her, monsieur.”

“Her parents will find that very difficult to accept.”

“I understand. S’il vous plaît...” He extended a pale palm in the direction of a trio of rattan chairs grouped beneath one of the many whirling ceiling fans. “Perhaps we could talk where it is cooler and more private?”

“How is it,” Dominic asked when they were seated, “that no one thought to question my fiancée’s ability to handle one of the hotel sailboats alone? It strikes me that the staff must bear some responsibility for her death.”

Inspector Montand’s gaze flickered beseechingly in Sophie’s direction. She looked away and stared at an arrangement of tropical fruit on a side table, unwilling to help him out of what she knew to be a difficult spot.

The plain fact of the matter was that, practically from the moment she’d set foot on St. Julian, there had been any number of warnings leveled Barbara’s way, and from more than one source, too.

It is not customary for unescorted ladies to behave so freely with employees, mademoiselle...

Barbara, you can’t appear in public in that bikini! You’ll offend the locals...

Mademoiselle, it is unwise to venture alone at night into the old section of town...

But Barbara had willfully ignored them all and instead seemed driven to excess in everything she’d done. She’d flirted outrageously with every male in sight; she’d partied with a frenzy that bordered on desperation. And, most recently, she’d taken to staying out all night, slinking back to the room she shared with Sophie just as the sun was rising. Her behavior had been downright embarrassing—not to mention downright odd for a woman supposedly in love and soon to be married.

Not that there hadn’t been reason to question Barbara’s devotion to her fiancé before then. “Dom’s a wonderful catch,” she’d boasted during one of her first conversations with Sophie. “Daddy says he’s one of the few men who can afford me. Of course, he indulges my every whim, which is just as well because that’s the sort of thing I’ve been used to all my life and I’m not about to settle for anything less just because I’m married.”

Then she’d flashed her dazzling smile and shrugged as though to say she knew she sounded like a spoiled child but underneath she was really a charming, mature adult. As, indeed, she could be when it suited her. How else had she managed to wheedle Sophie into allowing her to tag along on the trip to the tiny island of St. Julian, a few hundred miles off the northeast coast of Venezuela?

Dominic’s fingers rapping irritably on the glass-topped table brought Sophie back to the present with a start. “Well, Inspector, don’t you agree? My fiancée didn’t know one end of a boat from the other. As for raising a sail—the mere idea is absurd! She should never have been allowed—”

“As it happens, Monsieur Winter, Mademoiselle Wexler was not alone. According to hotel personnel who spoke with her on Wednesday morning and arranged for her to use the boat, she was accompanied by a member of the staff, a young man quite skilled at handling small craft such as the Laser.”

“Then why the hell isn’t he here now, answering my questions, instead of leaving you to do it?”

“Sad to say, he, too, was lost.”

“Doesn’t say much for his so-called skill, does it?” Dominic snapped.

The inspector shrugged apologetically. “The trouble appears to have been that they took the boat beyond the reef on the windward side of the island. Quite apart from the fact that a Laser is not meant to be sailed in the dangerous currents sweeping in from the Atlantic, it is also impossible for a person on shore to notice so small a vessel in distress. I am afraid that neither your fiancée nor the young man she hired as her crew showed very good sense when they chose to ignore the posted signs along that stretch of coast.”

Dominic looked as if he might argue the point, then clamped his lips shut and glanced away. Sophie breathed a quiet sigh of relief. She would not have liked to be the one to corroborate what the chief inspector was trying so delicately to convey: that Barbara had invited her own disaster and was, perhaps, responsible for another person’s death, too.

At length, Dominic turned back and this time leveled his bleak gaze on Sophie. “Where were you while all this was going on?”

“In the middle of town, photographing the water gardens outside the former governor’s residence.” Determined to let her better self prevail no matter how much he provoked her, she laid a sympathetic hand on his arm. “Mr. Winter—Dominic, I know it’s hard not to want to lay blame on someone, but Barbara’s death truly was an accident and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll begin to heal.”

He shook her off as if she were an annoying little lapdog begging for favors. “It was an accident that could and should have been avoided. What was this employee thinking of that he sailed outside the reef to begin with?”

“I imagine because Barbara insisted he do so,” Sophie said, exasperation winning out over tact and lending a decided edge to her voice. “She could be very persuasive when she wanted something, as I think we both know.”

He dismissed the observation with an impatient shrug and turned back to Inspector Montand. “Have you called off the search?”

“Oui, monsieur. There is little point in continuing. The windward coast is extremely treacherous.”

“I’ll reserve judgment on that until I’ve seen the place for myself. This afternoon.”

The police chief nodded deferentially. “I will arrange for you to be taken there.”

“No need.” Dominic cut him off with an autocratic wave of the hand and favored Sophie with another inimical glare. “You’re reasonably familiar with the island, I take it?”

“Yes, I—”

“Then you can come with me.”

Not “will you?” or “would you mind?” and certainly not a hint of a “please”. Just another order, rapped out and expected to be obeyed without any regard for the fact that, for reasons that almost made her blush, she might not wish to be thrust into his company like this.

But he was not a mind reader, praise the Lord, so as much to put a speedy end to this whole sad business as to accommodate him, she stifled a refusal and said instead, “Of course.”

“Where can we rent a car?” He ran a finger inside the collar of his open-necked shirt. “Preferably one equipped with air-conditioning.”

“We can’t—at least not the sort you have in mind.”

“What? Why not?”

“Except for a very few registered government vehicles, there are no cars allowed on the island.”

“You mean that open contraption decked out in flowers that brought me from the airport—”

“It’s called a jitney. And it’s one of only two on St. Julian.”

An exasperated breath puffed from between his lips. “Then what’s the alternative? Riding bareback on a donkey and waving a straw hat in the air?”

Chief Inspector Montand’s posture, which would have done credit to the French Foreign Legion at the best of times, stiffened perceptibly. Sophie flung him a commiserating glance before saying mildly, “There’s no need to be offensive, Mr. Winter. St. Julian might lack the sort of sophistication you’re used to at home, but its other charms more than make up for that. We can take one of the mini-mokes provided by the hotel. It’ll be more than adequate. The island is quite small.”

Except for the streets in the center of town and the route from the airport, there was only one other paved road on St. Julian. The Coast Road, as its name suggested, ribboned around the perimeter of the island, dipping down at times into secluded coves and at others climbing to offer dizzying views of turquoise sea and jungle-clad mountains. Because its passage was so narrow, island custom dictated that traffic move always in a clockwise direction, even though that meant that a five mile trip out involved a twenty-five mile trip back again.

The little buggy, the fringe on its striped canvas canopy fluttering in the breeze, swooped merrily along with a scowling Dominic at the wheel. “I’ve driven more sophisticated golf carts,” he grumbled as they jolted over one particularly vicious bump in the road.

“Would you prefer walking?” Sophie inquired, unable to disguise the sarcasm as they approached the next steep incline.

“I’d prefer not to be here at all,” he shot back without a moment’s hesitation. “Nor would I be, if it weren’t for you and your half-baked ideas of a holiday paradise.”

“St. Julian doesn’t pretend to be Rio or Monte Carlo, Mr. Winter. If it did, I wouldn’t bother wasting my time visiting it. The sort of people who flock to places like that don’t particularly appeal to me.”

The merest hint of a grin touched his lips. “People like me, you mean?”

She pulled off her sunglasses and subjected him to a frank examination, wondering if the extraordinary conditions of their mission might offer a glimpse past the good looks to the man within.

She was doomed to disappointment. Black hair swept back from a wide, intelligent brow. His nose had been broken at some point but had suffered not the least for the misfortune and merely enhanced the strong, uncompromising line of his profile. His eyes were the deep still green of woodland pools and his lashes would have been laughable had not the set of his jaw promised dreadful retribution to anyone who dared to make light of their beauty. As for the rest of him, it was so formidably and sexily masculine that he’d probably had to beat women off since the onset of puberty. But as far as giving a clue to his inner self? Not a one!

“What are you staring at?” he inquired testily, swiveling a glance at her.

“You,” she replied. “I’m trying to figure out if you’re this irascible all the time or if it’s a temporary by-product of grief and heartache. I’m inclined to believe the latter since Barbara didn’t strike me as the type who’d willingly devote the rest of her life to a chronic grouch.”

He flung her another outraged glare before turning his attention once again to the road. “How much farther?” he barked.

“About seven miles. Once we round the headland, we drop down to the weather side of the island. You’ll notice the change in the coastline immediately. It’s very wild.”

That he grew progressively more withdrawn as they covered the distance was indication enough that he agreed with her assessment. “Good God!” he muttered at one point, as spray flying across the windswept beach and on to the road caused visibility to shrink to a few yards. “Is it always like this?”

“More or less, though during the hurricane season it gets much worse.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” he replied dryly. “Barbara must have been mad to consider trying to sail in this.”

They were approaching the wind-battered southeastern tip of St. Julian, the place where Atlantic fury met the point of most resistance from the land mass. The shore there was littered with easy pickings for the beachcomber: driftwood forged into fantastic shapes, and seashells by the thousand in every shade from dark pearlescent purple to palest satin pink.

“There’s a lookout point right ahead,” Sophie said. “If you pull over, we can walk across the dunes and you’ll see the reef where...”

He nodded, sparing her the necessity of having to elaborate, and swung the mini-moke off the road.

They clambered down to the beach and waded through the fine, soft sand. Then stood shoulder to shoulder and leaned into the wind, together yet separated by the intensely private silence in which Dominic wrapped himself.

A jagged line of surf marked the hidden reef. Close into shore the water swirled and foamed, subdued but by no means tamed by the barrier over which it had hurled itself. But beyond, where the heaving green Atlantic rollers let loose their fury... Dear Lord, Barbara must have been bent on suicide to have tried to sail in that, because no sane person could have hoped to survive such unleashed violence!

Sophie couldn’t quell her shudder and looked away. Small wonder no trace of bodies had been found. It was a miracle the splintered wreckage of the Laser had endured the sort of beating it had taken.

Dominic, however, stared impassively for so long at the scene before him that Sophie half wondered if he’d forgotten her presence. Then, without warning, he swung toward her, his features stark with misery. “Get me the hell away from here before I really lose it,” he muttered savagely.

He saw the dismay she couldn’t hide, saw how it softened to compassion, and didn’t know how he contained himself. He wanted to howl his outrage to the heavens; to curse and revile the cruelty and waste he’d been helpless to prevent. But the shock Sophie Casson now felt would be nothing compared to how she’d react if he really let loose his emotions. They boiled inside him with the same destructive fury of the seas out there, clenching his jaw, his fists, the ridged muscles of his abdomen.

“Dominic,” she said, so softly he could barely hear her above the roar of the seas, “what can I do to help you?”

How certain she was that she understood him, how sure that she could assuage the misery. And how badly he wanted to smash her complacency! Out of the blue, a suggestion of the most outrageous magnitude sprang to mind, explicit, indecent.

Should he voice it? And would she accede to his wishes? Or would her wide gray eyes darken with horror as she backed away and began to run blindly as far from him as she could get?

He swiped at his hair with shaking fingers, appalled at the demons possessing him. Marshaling his features into a semblance of composure, he discarded the unconscionable and settled for the clichéd. “I think I would like to go back to the hotel and get thoroughly drunk. Would you care to join me?”

She was supposed to pucker up her sweet little mouth and simper that alcohol would merely add to his problems, not alleviate them. Instead, her eyes grew suspiciously bright and the next thing he knew, her tanned little hand with its short pink nails had tucked itself into the crook of his elbow. “Of course,” she murmured sympathetically. “Anything you say.”