The Wedding Promise

Sara felt a sheet of heat skim from her neck to the tips of her toes. She had no idea how much of her was visible through the scanty remaining foam—but she’d have walked barefoot over white-hot coals rather than give this man the satisfaction of seeing her peek to check.

‘All right.’ She tilted her chin regally. ‘Please leave now. Your explanation and apology are accepted—’

‘Apology?’ he sputtered. ‘What apology? You’re the one who should be doing the apologising—’

A loud hammering on the front door stopped him short.

‘Hello?’ The voice was high-pitched, nervous, young. ‘Anyone in there? Is everything OK?’

Sara saw him roll his eyes.

‘My daughter!’ He raked a hand through his already mussed black hair, his expression that of an animal caught in a leghold trap. ‘Where angels fear to tread, she just barges in—’

‘Like father, like daughter!’ Sara’s courage had swelled up again, but too late to give her any feeling of pride or pleasure.

‘I guess.’ The faintest twinkle gleamed in his eyes.

Green eyes. Sara had noticed that when she’d first met him. Then, and moments ago, they’d been cold and hostile. Now, for the first time, she saw a glimmer of warmth, and it kindled an odd spark of excitement deep inside her.

‘For God’s sake—’ his voice was hoarse ‘—don’t tell her about this. I’ll never hear the end of it.’

Without waiting for an answer, he wheeled away, slamming the bathroom door behind him.

Sara slumped, boneless as a drunken jellyfish. Her body trembled; her heart trembled. If that confrontation was a portent of the kind of holiday that lay ahead, perhaps it would indeed have been better if Zach had rented her a de luxe condo in a busy holiday resort...

‘What happened, Dad?’ The girl’s voice drifted into the bathroom through the open window as father and daughter walked along the side of the cottage. ‘I heard the scream and I ran to your room to see if you had too, but you weren’t there, so I guessed you must have come down to investigate.’

Sara held her breath, curious to hear Logan’s answer.

‘It was nothing, sweetie. Zach Grant’s gone—his girlfriend’s here on her own, and apparently when she was in the bathroom she saw a... mouse.’

The voices faded, and once again Sara relaxed.

A mouse. No, Mr Logan, she disdainfully corrected him, what I saw in my bathroom was certainly not a mouse.

It looked much more like a rat.

‘After we finish breakfast, I’m going to start clearing out your mother’s things from the master bedroom.’ Logan watched his daughter carefully from across the verandah table, alert to any sign of distress. ‘Care to help?’

Andy’s huge brown eyes gave nothing away as they met his. ‘No, that’s OK, Dad. You should probably do it on your own. I’ll start packing up the books in the den. Where are the boxes?’

‘Should be a bunch up in the attic. We’ll get them later.’

Andy nodded and, bending her head over her bowl, dug her spoon into her cereal.

Logan felt a wave of weariness wash over him. Andy was a real trooper and he was so proud of her he sometimes could hardly contain it...but he wished new, as he so often did, that she weren’t so adept at keeping her emotions under control. Apart from an outburst of hysterical sobbing when her mother had died, she’d never let go. Not once. At least, not in front of him. If she cried, she cried alone.

In the beginning, he’d tried to talk to her about her Mom, but in the end had given up. She was as closed as a clam. It would have helped her, he felt sure, if they could have shared their sorrow. And it would have helped him too.

Another problem was that everybody they knew avoided talking about Bethany. They probably thought they were being kind, but it would have been more natural to remember her aloud, to recall all the wonderful things about her.

Sometimes it seemed to him as if his beloved wife had never existed...except in his own life.

‘That was a big sigh, Dad,’ Andy murmured. ‘What’s up?’

‘Oh...it’s...’ he searched his brain for an answer that would satisfy her ‘...um...just that woman in the cottage, sweetie—I want you to keep away from her.’

He got up from the table and, shoving his hands into his pockets, looked down at his daughter. Her hair was damp from her shower, and the sun caught copper highlights in the ragged strands. His heart ached as he remembered how Bethany’s long brown hair had glinted in just such a way...

‘Why, Dad?’

‘Why what?’

Andy uttered a sound of exasperation. ‘Why must I keep away from “that woman”?’

She said ‘that woman’ in a tone of dark melodrama, which Logan chose to ignore. ‘Because, daughter mine, rightly or wrongly, society judges people by the company they keep. I want you to stick with people whose values are the same as your own. A good reputation’s worth its weight in gold—and it’s something you can lose only once.’

‘Kind of like virginity, right, Dad?’

Logan cleared his throat, and busied himself with gathering up his dishes. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Darned right.’

A feeling of helplessness and inadequacy almost swamped him. He was no good at this; he was clumsy, awkward—or, to use Andy’s latest expression of derision, ‘pathetic’.

She needed a mother, especially at this stage in her life, where she was herself on the threshold of womanhood. And he did intend to take himself another wife...but only because of his promise to Bethany.

Just the memory of it broke his heart.

‘Darling,’ she’d whispered as she’d lain dying in the stark white hospital bed, ‘promise me you’ll marry again.’ Her voice had caught. ‘I couldn’t bear it if I thought you’d go through the rest of your life grieving...’

He’d have promised her the moon if he’d thought it would give her a moment’s respite from her suffering.

‘I promise—’ the lump in his throat had almost choked him ‘—if that’s what you want, I’ll marry again...’

And the promise had been worth it, to see the quick shine of relief in her dulled eyes, to feel the tiny surge of strength in the fragile fingers clutching his.

He’d had to turn away to hide his tears.

Five years had passed since he’d made that promise.

Five long years, and his failure to honour it weighed on him more heavily with each passing day.

No more.

He’d sworn to himself that this summer he’d find himself a wife.

She’d have to be someone Andy liked.

She’d have to be someone he himself found compatible.

She’d have to be someone sensible. Someone with no frilly romantic notions. Someone willing to enter into a marriage of convenience.

He felt a dark cloud of despair settle over him as he carried his dishes into the house.

Where the hell would he find somebody like that?

Marriage to Travis Wynter had stifled Sara’s creativity. Had all but killed it.

It hadn’t happened straight away, but it had started to happen soon after the honeymoon.

Unhappy memories flowed into Sara’s mind as she tugged the last item from her travel bag—an elegant silk and rayon sweater of turquoise and silver, with the trademark Sally Cole label hand-sewn inside the back neckline.

Her label.

Her design.

Her pride.

She sighed, and ran a gentle hand over the soft fabric. Her marriage had been a mistake; she and Travis had been totally wrong for each other. His possessiveness, the way he’d treated her like an item in his collection of beautiful artifacts...well, that had been one thing... but his dismissal of her talent had been another.

Travis was an accountant; he saw life in terms of facts and figures. His favourite expression was ‘the bottom line’. And she’d discovered, to her dismay, that where their marriage was concerned ‘the bottom line’ was that he expected her to run his home the way he ran his business: efficiently and economically. He’d seen no reason to hire a housekeeper when he had a wife. He’d entertained clients at home on a regular basis, and on those occasions he’d expected her to cook the meal, serve it, and be the perfect hostess. And he’d expected the enormous Wynter house, in Vancouver’s glitziest suburb, to be kept in immaculate condition.

If he’d seen as much as one mote of dust on the furniture, his disapproval had been swift and harsh.

‘For God’s sake, Sara, what do you do all day? All I ask is that you keep house and provide meals for my clients. Make them feel special. How special do you think they feel when they see you haven’t even dusted the damned coffee table before they turned up? This is business—’

‘But my designs, my knitwear—that’s business too,’ she’d protested vigorously in the beginning. ‘I’m not going to give it up!’

‘Nobody’s asking you to give it up. Just for God’s sake get things in perspective. Could we survive on the income from your little sweaters? I think not. The bottom line is, I’m the breadwinner here. If you want to draw and knit, go ahead. But after everything else gets done, mmm?’

His business had been prospering by leaps and bounds, and before very long Sara had found, wearily, that there was no ‘after’. And even if there had been his cold dismissal of her work had shrivelled something inside her.

Life with Travis Wynter had allowed no room for that soaring of the spirit that she needed if she were to create.

She’d wondered, sometimes—and still wondered—if he had not only stifled her creativity, but had killed it.

Inhaling a deep breath, she rose from the bed and slung the lightweight sweater over her shoulders. On her way to the bedroom door, she paused as a movement outside the window caught her attention.

It was the girl from the white house—Logan Hunter’s daughter. She was running down the sloping lawn, towards the cottage.

What could she want?

Sara walked along the narrow passageway to the front door, and opened it. The girl was now just a few feet away, coming up the path. She stopped abruptly when she saw Sara.

‘His,’ Sara greeted her, and thought, What a lovely child...huge brown eyes, smooth clear skin, neat little figure...but oh, that hair! ‘Were you looking for me?’

The girl’s cheeks had turned pink, and she seemed on the point of flight.

‘I was up in the attic,’ she said in a rush, ‘looking for boxes...for packing...and I found this.’

‘This’ was a mouse trap! Somehow Sara managed to keep her face straight. ‘Just what I need!’ She took the trap, gave a dainty shiver. ‘I’m such a coward when it comes to mice. A lion, now...if I saw one of those in the bathroom, I’d just grab a back scrubber and attack with gusto!’

The girl giggled. ‘Oh, yeah, sure...’

‘Would you like to come in...have a cup of coffee?’

‘I don’t drink coffee.’

‘Iced tea, then, or a pop?’

‘No, thanks.’ Her gaze trailed wistfully over Sara’s sweater. ‘That’s a Sally Cole original, isn’t it? They’re way cool...my friend Chrissie’s mom has one; she bought it years ago but she says you can’t get them any more.’ She sighed. ‘Well, I’d better get back...’

‘Ah, yes, the packing.’

‘We’re going to sell. The house and the cottage. Everything. My dad’s putting the property up for sale.’

‘I guess you’re in a hurry to go back and help him, then. Many hands make light work, don’t they say?’

‘Well, he’s upstairs and I’m not actually helping him this morning. He’s clearing out Mom’s things—I thought he’d want to do that on his own.’

A chill prickled Sara’s nape as she heard the catch in the young voice, saw the quickly blinked-back tears in the luminous brown eyes. She wanted to reach out to the child, but without warning the slight figure whirled away and ran off, taking a short cut over an overgrown rosebed. To Sara’s horror, she tripped on a tangled root, and fell forward, to land in a crumpled heap on the ground.

Sara rushed to help her get up, but as the girl put her weight on her right foot she winced and grabbed onto Sara for support.

‘I’ve done something to my ankle,’ she said with a half-sob. ‘It really hurts.’

‘Come inside and—’

‘Thanks...but I’d rather go home. Will you help me walk back? I don’t think I can do it on my own.’

‘Of course. Here, put your arm around my neck.’ Sara grimaced. ‘I haven’t even asked you your name,’ she said as she braced herself to support the slender figure.

‘It’s Andrea. Andrea Beth Hunter.’

‘Andrea. That’s pretty. I’m Sara Wynter.’

‘Miss Wynter, I—’

‘It’s Mrs Wynter, actually, but please call me Sara.’

They started up towards the house, with Andrea hopping erratically on her left leg, and leaning heavily on Sara.

‘Mrs Wynter, I...um...saw you with Zach Grant.’

Sara hid a smile as she heard the wistful note in Andrea’s voice. So... a fan. ‘Yes, he brought me here. I wish he could’ve stayed longer, but he’s—’

‘He’s filming in Vancouver. I know. My friend Chrissie and I—we’re members of his fan club. Will he...be coming back?’

‘He’ll be coming to pick me up in a couple of weeks. Then shortly after he’ll be returning to Los Angeles. He lives there...but of course—’ Sara smiled ‘—you’ll already know that.’

She was heading for the front door, but Andrea said, ‘Let’s use the side door. I don’t want Dad to hear me come in...if he sees me hopping like this...well, he’s a regular old fusspot!’

‘But you’ll have to tell him about your ankle—’

‘Oh, I will. But first I’ll put an ice pack on it. There’s a bag of green peas in the freezer; I’ll use that.’

On reaching the side door, Sara tugged it open, and they entered what turned out to be a small sitting room.

‘The kitchen’s across the hall from here,’ Andrea said.

Sara noticed her face had become very white. ‘Come sit down on this sofa and put your leg up while I get the ice.’

After a token protest, Andrea allowed herself to be helped onto the sofa, where she lay back, her eyes closed. ‘There’s a bottle of aspirin in one of the drawers,’ she said huskily. ‘Could you bring me a couple?’

‘Of course.’

From above came the sound of someone moving about.

‘That’s Dad,’ Andrea offered with a weak gesture of one hand. ‘He’s packing in the master bedroom. Like I said...’ Her voice trailed away.

Sara hurried to the kitchen, and found the bag of peas in the freezer section of the fridge. Locating the aspirin wasn’t so easy. She pulled out drawer after drawer, riffled through the tidy contents of each one, and had reached the last, in a cabinet at the far end of the kitchen, when she heard Logan Hunter’s voice come from the doorway behind her.

‘What the hell,’ he said in a tone of quiet menace, ‘are you doing in my house?’

She put a hand to her throat as she swivelled round, and threw him a shaky smile. ‘You startled me! I’m just looking for—’

‘What you’re looking for, and what you’re going to get, lady, is trouble. You’ll find nothing else here. I don’t keep money stashed in the kitchen, and if you’re looking for drugs in that medicine cabinet you’ve come to the wrong place—’

‘Daddy!’ Horror filled the voice that came from behind Logan. ‘Don’t! Mrs Wynter came to help me—’

Sara looked beyond Logan as he spun round, and saw Andy hopping along the carpeted hallway in her bare feet, bracing her hand against the wall with each jerky hop.

‘Andy? What the—?’ Logan sounded shocked.

‘I fell, Dad, and twisted my ankle, or sprained it or something. I had to ask Mrs Wynter to help me back to the house, and then she offered to get me an ice bag and some aspirin.’ Face ashen, Andrea started to slump, and would have slid to the floor if her father hadn’t moved fast.

He scooped her up in his arms and, muttering under his breath, took off with her in the direction of the small sitting room, leaving Sara standing alone in the kitchen, feeling limp as a wet rag herself.

Her hand shook as she put the aspirin bottle on the countertop. It shook as she set down the frozen peas beside the aspirin. And by the time she had poured a glass of cold water from the tap, and placed it by the peas, her whole body was trembling.

The man, she decided with a rising tide of anger, was an ogre...and he certainty didn’t deserve to have a daughter as sweet as Andrea.

She hoped the child was going to be all right.

But, either way, she herself was going to avoid both father and daughter, for the rest of her time on the island.

And if that turned out to be impossible she’d place a call to Zach and ask him to come back early and pick her up.

No way would her creative juices ever have a chance to start flowing again as long as Logan Hunter was around.

The thought added fuel to her anger, and resentment burned to her very bones as she let herself out by the kitchen door and stomped back down the hill to the cottage.

CHAPTER THREE

JUST before noon, Sara heard heavy footsteps outside the bathroom window and recognised Logan Hunter’s purposeful tread.

What did he want this time?

And his timing couldn’t have been worse, she decided as she glanced ruefully down at her skimpily clad figure!

She jumped when she heard his loud rat-tat-tat on the front door.

Wrapping a huge terry towel around herself, over her undies, she padded barefoot out of the bathroom, and was halfway along the passage when he knocked again.

She stopped at the closed door and spoke through it. ‘What do you want?’ Her tone was frosty.

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘This is not a good time.’

She listened. There was no sound of retreating feet. Heaving out a frustrated sigh, she leaned back against the door and looked down the narrow hallway to the living room. A dingy little room. And bare as a baby’s bottom. Minimum amount of furniture...sofa, two armchairs, one coffee table, one ancient TV. ‘I said,’ she threw into the hallway, ‘this is not a good time.’

‘Then I’ll wait here till it is. What I want to say has to be said.’

‘Through the door, then.’

‘To your face.’

‘Sorry, but—’

He shoved the door open and sent her flying down the passage. She only just managed to keep her balance, but as she scrambled to stay upright the towel became dislodged, caught under her feet and she tripped. Flailing in the air, she fell against the wall with a sideways thud that jarred her shoulder and knocked the breath out of her.

Logan Hunter loomed over her, his arms outstretched in an offer of help that wasn’t only too late, but also unwelcome.

‘You,’ she gasped, ‘are a menace!’ She snatched up her towel and breathlessly wrapped it around herself... but not before he’d treated himself to a good eyeful of every creamy curve! Resentment swept through her with the steaming heat of tropical rain.

‘Hey,’ he protested, ‘how was I expected to know you were leaning against the—?’

‘What right do you think you have to push your way in here as if you owned the place...?’ She halted, jolted by the sudden stunned expression in his eyes. ‘What’s the...?’

‘You’re green,’ he choked out. ‘What in the world happened to you? Are you sick?’

He staggered back against the opposite wall as if the very sight of her had knocked the knees from under him.

‘All right,’ she snapped, ‘say what you have to say then get out.’

‘It’s a face mask.’ He ran a hand over his mouth, and she was sure he was hiding a smile. ‘Ruined now, of course. Cracked all to hell.’ The smile couldn’t be contained. It became a chuckle. And then a full-bodied belly laugh. ‘Hey, I’m sorry ... but if you could only see yourself—’

‘Say what you have to say,’ she gritted, ‘and get out of here!’ Out of my life!

‘First of all, then—’ his voice had a strangled sound ‘—I came in here as if I owned the place because I do own the place.’

‘When it’s rented out, you have absolutely no right whatsoever to come in here without an invitation.’

‘Which you were not about to offer, as I recall—’

‘Nor ever will! OK, that’s the “First of all” taken care of. Now, what was the real point of your visit?’

‘I came to apologise.’

‘For...?’

‘For... assuming the worst this morning. For accusing you without asking for your side of the story. I assure you it won’t ever happen again.’

For a second, she melted. He looked so sincerely repentant, she was almost on the point of forgiving him. And then she heard a muffled moan come from deep in his throat, and she knew he was laughing at her. Again.

‘Get out!’ Temper aflare, she jerked the towel even more tightly around her breasts to make doubly sure it wouldn’t fall again as she marched back along the hall to the door, which still lay open.

She stalked to one side, bracing herself, waiting for him to pass by.

‘I think,’ he said softly, ‘it would be a good idea if, from now on, you and I could keep out of each other’s way.’

‘Oh, you’ll get no argument from me on that point, Mr Hunter. I couldn’t agree more.’

‘Well, hell, finally we’ve agreed on something. Who says miracles don’t happen?’

He grinned, and the sight infuriated her. She wanted to slap him, but she stood still as a marble statue, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing how close to being out of control she really was.

He left then. And as he brushed past her his arm touched hers. She hadn’t been expecting that, nor could she possibly have anticipated the shock of electricity that passed between them. It jolted her whole body and she inhaled sharply. With the inhalation came the musky scent of him.

It was heady, and intoxicating, and erotic.

She stared after him, her legs sagging, her mind reeling, as he strode away along the path.

She couldn’t have moved had her life depended on it.

She was still standing there, rooted to the floor, long after he’d disappeared around the corner.

She’d never felt such a thing before. Oh, she’d read about it, but she’d never experienced it—that sexual electricity that could arc between a man and a woman.

It was disturbing...it was exhilarating.

And it was the very last thing in the world she wanted.

Over the next week, Logan saw next to nothing of his near-neighbour...but that didn’t mean he didn’t think about her.

He didn’t want to think about her, but from time to time, when he least expected it, images of her would sneak into his mind.

Two images, to be exact.

The first invariably set his pulses pounding: the fiery Mrs Wynter wearing nothing but a white cotton bra and bikini panties, her skin so smooth it just begged to be caressed.

The second...well, even now he couldn’t think of it without chuckling. She’d looked like an alien from Mars with that green face mask...but with those turquoise eyes spitting at him and those pink lips snapping at him and that glorious blonde hair scraped back in a perky ponytail she’d been something else again...

Only what that something else was he couldn’t pin down. And he didn’t even begin to try to.

The woman spelled trouble, with every letter in bold black caps!

His decision to stay away from her was one of the most sensible he’d ever made in his life.

And on this sunny afternoon, as he walked into his study, he idly congratulated himself on that very thing. Life on the island had always been simple, and he wanted to keep it that way. No complications, no entanglements.

‘Andy—’ he hitched a hip on the edge of the computer desk, where his daughter was sitting at the keyboard ‘—I thought I’d take a hike to the old swimming hole and cool off. Want to come?’

‘No, thanks, Dad.’ Andrea’s eyes were fixed on the monitor. ‘I’ve got tons of e-mail to answer. You go, though. I’ll catch you later.’

‘Fan club stuff?’

‘Mmm...’

‘OK.’ He glanced around. ‘Can’t believe we’ve been here a week, but we’ve gotten a pile of work done...though this room looks so darned bare now without all our books. The whole house looks bare, with all the knick-knacks packed away—’