Hours to Cherish (5 page)

“Relax, Mrs. Miller,” he told her, “I have no designs upon Tiger Cay.”

Cat carefully hid her surprise beneath another demand. “How did you get in here?”

“No lock-picking needed. You left your door open.”

“How did you know this door was my room?”

“That’s no great mystery.”

Cat stood silent for a moment, wishing she could either hurl something at him or kick a hole in the bathroom door. He’d love that, she thought, he wants to see me lose my temper.

She remained in the doorway, afraid to sit lest she lose her towel, yet also determined not to rush around like an idiot to grab her clothing—and further display the discomfort he was causing her.

“All right,” she snapped. “Just what do you want?”

“Let’s see,” he murmured. “You owe me five hundred thousand, correct?”

“Even that is debatable.”

“Not debatable,” he argued firmly. “You owe me five hundred thousand.” Feigning mock sympathy, he added, “Really, Mrs. Miller, instead of outrage you should be displaying appreciation for my discretion. I came here to avoid any of our conversation being overheard.”

“That was magnanimous,” Cat said sarcastically. “Get to the point. What do you want?”

He still didn’t answer. Deserting his relaxed pose, he stood and began idly prowling her room. Heaven’s Harbour Lodge had been built in the late eighteen hundreds by the head of a small colony of British subjects. Everything about the place was airy and spacious with a touch of island ease combined with basic Victorian principles. Cat’s room was huge, yet warm and inviting. Her bed and the wicker rocker sat far across from the modernized bath, a wardrobe sat in the far corner from the bed, her dressing table and a second dresser stood sentinel at either side of the bathroom door. Dead center in the room was a charming and light circular teakwood table, displayed beautifully by a burst of sunlight from the floor-length window that opposed it.

Cat watched suspiciously as her strange intruder walked to the dresser—uncannily as if he knew where he was going—and picked up a piece of scrimshaw. Upon the piece of ivory was delicately etched the fine lines of an old clipper ship. The stranger began to prowl again, palming the ivory and moving it in his hand with his fingers. He approached the window and stared out. Cat was about to lose her cool when he spoke again.

“I hear you’re about to marry Jules DeVante. Is that true?”

Cat bit her lip but couldn’t keep the impatience from her voice. “Listen, I’m getting tired of this. I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but if you don’t get out of here I’m going to scream and get Sam in to throw you out.” And, she added silently, in two seconds I’ll rip off those glasses. …

He turned back to her—that constant, annoying, amused smile still clearly etched into his unperturbed features. “Really?” He chuckled. “I wouldn’t bother if I were you—Sam is nowhere around, and if he were, he wouldn’t throw me out. Oh—don’t touch the glasses. Remember? Curiosity killed the cat.”

“Go to hell,” Cat snapped, irritated that he could so easily read her and chagrined with his certainty concerning
her
employee. So Sam did know him! And whoever this thorn in her life was, Sam respected the man.

“Don’t count on that,” Cat snapped out. “Sam may like you, sir, but this is my bedroom—” She broke off, suddenly furious with his mystery and games. “Who the hell are you?”

“Answer my question first.”

“If you’re writing a book on the islands,” Cat drawled, her eyes sparkling with venom, “I don’t care to be a chapter.”

“If you want answers from me, Mrs. Miller, you should give some.”

“All right,” Cat replied dryly. “Jules is no secret either. Yes, I intend to marry him. You’ve got your answer. Now, who are you and what do you want? You say you don’t want the cay—quite bluntly, it’s the only thing I’ve got that comes near that sum in value. Unless, of course, you’re willing to give me some time to raise the money—”

“Until you marry Jules?”

Cat hesitated. “Yes.”

He paused for a minute. “No, I’m not willing to wait.”

“
Then what do you want
?” Cat didn’t exactly break, but her cool was gone. Her question was much more of a semi-hysterical hiss than she had intended.

“Oh, Mrs. Miller, for all your apparent savvy, you are naive. What am I after? You—of course.”

She was sure her jaw dropped. It felt as if it fell all the way to the floor. Lord, she was naive. But then the whole thing was so ridiculous. Incredulously, she began to laugh, recovering a modicum of brittle composure.

“Surely you must be joking,” she managed. “I value my self-esteem, but really, I can’t imagine your considering having me for one night to be worth five hundred thousand dollars!” Cat sobered uneasily as she realized the man was still smiling.

“You’re right,” he said, not unpleasantly. “You do look rather tempting in that towel—but one night, definitely no. I was thinking more along the lines of two months—maybe three.” He paused a second. “Really, Mrs. Miller, I do think you should sit down. You’re whiter than the sand.”

Was she white? she wondered vaguely. Quite possibly. The realization that he was serious seemed to have drained her blood … her strength. A chill reverberated down her spine, then she blinked, mentally stiffening.

“I don’t want to sit down. Your proposal is absurd—out of the question.”

“Oh?” He moved a few steps toward her from the window, and she was fully aware, despite the darkness of the glasses, that his eyes were searing into hers. “You were willing to sell out for a night, but not for two months?”

“I never said any such thing,” Cat grated. She suddenly realized that she was close to tears; she was finding it difficult to breathe. Belated remorse filled her. How did I get myself into this? she wondered desperately. She knew how to handle herself, but he was corroding the self-confidence of a lifetime. Nothing she said daunted him. He was like a cat playing with an unwary mouse, fully aware that the mouse was trapped while the mouse still believed in an escape hole.

“Will you please get out of my bedroom!” she demanded, not caring that her voice held a note of beseechment.

Something about her plea seemed to touch him. His voice gentled. “Soon,” he promised. He began to stalk the room again, the scrimshaw still in his hand, still being idly massaged by his fingers.

“What about Mr. Miller?” he suddenly queried, fingers tense around the ivory.

Cat was too overwrought at the moment to sense the depth of the question. “What about him?” she asked through clenched teeth. The stranger said nothing and she uneasily blurted, “Mr. Miller is ancient history.”

“Oh,” the stranger said lightly. He finally returned the scrimshaw to the dresser. “Think it over, Mrs. Miller. You have until tonight. All I want is two months.”

“There’s nothing to think over,” Cat told him. “I’m not for sale. I’ll think of something.”

“Well,” he warned, his deceptively low tone carrying a husk of danger, “I wouldn’t go to Monsieur DeVante if I were you.”

“Oh, and why not?” She shouldn’t have asked him, Cat realized, she should have just let him go.

“Because you won’t be marrying him.”

“I certainly will.”

The stranger shook his head. “Correction,” he said firmly, and a tone that was low, carrying a strange combination of bitter sadness and mockery, suddenly sent eerie shivers through her. Even before he slowly slipped the glasses from his eyes, a part of her
knew
. As Sam had said,
she should have known all along
!

Pinwheels in black exploded in her mind; her limbs grew as weak as liquid. How could she have known? Clay Miller was a ghost, a ghost of the long-forgotten past. Almost seven years had passed since she had seen him, almost six since she had accepted his death. If he really were before her now, he had to be a ghost.

He had changed. Drastically. He was a good twenty pounds heavier. The years had changed his frame from that of pliant youth to that of well-defined maturity. She had never seen him with a beard, never seen his hair long enough to curl over his nape, wave past his forehead, the color changed by the bleach of the sun. The mustache had hidden his mouth, the glasses, his eyes.

But now that she could see those fathomless eyes, she knew there could be no mistake. No one had eyes quite like Clay. Their brown so dark … so incredibly dark. When he was angry, they seemed as black as jet. They could pierce the soul, sizzle and burn the heart. And sometimes, sometimes touch upon one with such tenderness that the entire earth might have been swept into an ocean-blue hole, leaving only the delight of that strange mesmerization.

But, oh, God! She had been married to him, how had she failed to recognize him?

Because he is a ghost … a ghost … a ghost.

Cat’s hand moved to her throat; it jerked before her, fell back to her side. Quicksand. Drowning hadn’t been in the water. This was drowning, in a quagmire of emotions that crippled and stunned. What was she feeling? Everything was whirling. This man had used her; their lives had been hell. When he had disappeared, she had wanted to die. She hated him; she loved him. She didn’t feel anything because it had been so long. …

He was alive!

“I think you’d best sit, Catherine,” he said softly. “I assure you, I’m not a ghost.”

He reached out to touch her and the spell of the shock was broken and the emotion that prevailed was rage. Once, long ago, a girl had wanted to die because she thought he no longer existed. She had cried until her eyes had run dry remembering their stormy parting, spent years,
years
, learning to live again, convincing herself she could love again.

And now here he was, obviously in the peak of health, waltzing in to hand her further torture, further humiliation … But, oh, dear God, yes, he was alive. For a second, years slipped away. She wanted to fly across the room, hurl herself into his arms, touch him, feel him, cry and hold him.

He is alive, her mind murmured over and over again. Thank you, God, thank you, God, thank you, God. …

Cat closed her eyes for a moment, silently hearing a mental screech of agony that shouted out, “
No
!”

Yes, he was alive. In her prayers and dreams she would never stop being grateful, happy that he walked the earth. But he was her past. She didn’t, couldn’t, love him anymore because she loved Jules, because her life was back together. She had her own strength and she couldn’t lose it because she couldn’t bear a repeat of what had happened before.

And he was very obviously in excellent health, in excellent financial shape. She was shaking with joy that he was alive, but also with rage because this meant that he had simply deserted her. She had spent a year in tears over a man who had walked out on her cold … nights in agony, longing, praying … burning, tossing. …

A man who was still reaching for her.

He could never, never know what he had done to her, how it had taken her years to want to breathe again, how just seeing him now brought back the ecstasy they had shared with a deafening torment that almost obliterated the hell he had put her through.

“Don’t!” Cat rasped out. “Whatever you do, don’t touch me.” She took a deep breath.

He stared at her a long moment; the strong, sun-browned hand he had extended dropped to his hip and he shrugged. “Sorry—I thought you were going to keel over.”

“For you?” She couldn’t keep the bitter venom from her voice. “Hardly. As I told you, Mr. Miller, ghost or real, you’re my ancient past.”

His brows, high-arched over the hellfire eyes, rose slightly. “I’ll admit, Cat, I wasn’t expecting you to shower me with kisses. But out of normal human decency I hadn’t expected you to resent the fact that I was alive. You might have had a question or two about what happened.”

“I don’t care what happened. You didn’t come home. That shouldn’t have been a tremendous shock to me. It was probably foolish for me to assume you dead. I was certainly never the driving force in your life.”

“Cat—”

“Clay, I’m serious. I don’t want to know what happened, or where you’ve been. You’re not dead. Fine. I mean wonderful, really. I’m very happy for you. But don’t expect me to feel much of anything else. I’m a very different person now. And I’m in love with another man—one I still intend to marry—”

“Cat!” The slash of his voice cut across her full-speed monologue. “You can’t marry that damned Frenchman. You’re still married to me.”

“The hell I am!” Cat protested.

Clay sighed and patiently scratched his bearded chin. “You can’t have declared me legally dead—you have a few more months before that could have been done. And you haven’t divorced me.”

“How do you know?” Cat demanded, stalling for time. Why hadn’t she divorced him? Because she had thought him dead! And though engaged, she hadn’t applied for a marriage license and therefore hadn’t thought of declaring him legally dead. She couldn’t grasp the fact that she was still legally tied to a man she hadn’t seen in years.

“I know everything about you at the moment, Cat,” he told her, his tone now a little weary, a little harsh. “You’re still my wife and indebted to me as well. I want my two months, Cat. If you want a divorce after that time, I’ll see to it that it’s quick and easy for you. And in the meantime, I’ll keep my identity secret—your fiancé won’t know a thing.”

“No! I don’t need to bargain with you! I can get a divorce right now with no deals,” Cat interrupted. “Desertion,” she added, “is considered excellent grounds.”

“Not, Mrs. Miller, if the judge is willing—where you are not—to hear what did happen and where I’ve been.”

Icicles suddenly seemed to form in Cat’s bloodstream. He was so certain. For a moment her heart lurched heavily against her chest. Some secret part of her was crying out, a part that had never forgotten how she loved him. Where had he been? Dear God, what had happened? Was there a legitimate excuse for disappearing for almost seven years?

No. She clenched her eyes tightly closed. She
had
made a new life. She
was
strong, she felt a comfortable love for a man who gave her everything so gallantly … a man with whom she had only ever had one argument … a man with whom she could reason.