Volcano (9 page)

“It's lost. We need to get the damned thing out.”

“Suggestions?” she asked dryly.

Most well-appointed hotel rooms did not come equipped with brooms for sweeping out nocturnal visitors. Most didn't come equipped with bats either. Charlie didn't relish kicking the thing out between the louvers from which it had entered. Bat wings in his face had never amused him.

“We could just go to the bar and wait for it to leave,” he suggested.

“There is no way in heaven or hell I'm traipsing down that mountain one more time tonight. I'll sleep with bats first.”

As she flounced off to the bathroom and slammed the door, Charlie wondered if he ranked lower than bats as a bedmate. His mind had a one-track kink in it tonight.

Sighing with resignation, he searched the high-ceilinged room for a weapon.

After washing and changing, Penelope emerged from the bathroom to find Charlie sprawled across the double bed, posterior side up, mosquito netting draped around him, poking what appeared to be a tree limb at the floor.

“Shh, don't move. I've almost got him out.”

There was something innately appealing about a large man sprawled across a bed, gently poking a furry critter to safety. Or maybe it was just his tight buns.

Obviously, exhaustion had exploded inside her head, turning her brains to dust.

“Got him!” Charlie leapt from the bed, tangled with the netting, and nearly collapsed through the louvered walls before locating the closure rod and snapping the blinds shut.

All right, so maybe even suspicious characters like him had been little boys once. That didn't mean they weren't evil. She wouldn't fall for that conquering male look of triumph. He'd pushed a baby bat out the window, not killed a mastodon.

“There's no air-conditioning,” she pointed out prosaically. “We'll suffocate with the louvers closed.”

“The wind comes from the other direction. He's not likely to cross a porch to get at us.”

Penelope noted his glance dropping to her rose silk pajamas. She wore more now than she had earlier, but logic had little to do with the male mind. “You were going to the bar?” she reminded him.

“Oh, yeah. Well...”

She had no difficulty reading his regret as he glanced at the rumpled bed. If he was half as exhausted as she was, she would almost believe his thoughts were entirely on a good night's sleep. She knew better though.

“Maybe you'll find a lonely fisherman's widow,” she offered maliciously.

“Yeah, right. If they're anything like golf widows, forget it. I'm better off with a bottle of beer. Good night.”

He slammed out.

Penelope listened to the crunch of his shoes against the gravel walk until the whisper of the tide below drowned him out. A puff of breeze lifted a strand of hair from her face. Why did she wish it were a man's hand instead?

She'd never felt this lonely in her life. She was accustomed to climbing into an empty bed every night. She used those minutes before sleep to line up the problems she must tackle the next day. Sometimes, they unraveled overnight and the solution presented itself when she woke. Having a man in her bed would only distract her.

Penelope lined the sofa bolsters down the middle of the bed, switched off the light, and slipped beneath the mosquito netting. He'd taken the key with him. He would be back.

The sea had submerged the moon by the time Charlie traipsed back up the hill to the cottage. He'd had a hell of a time explaining to Henwood why he'd left his bride alone on their first romantic evening in the Caribbean. Mixing margaritas and beers hadn't been a smart idea, but it had distracted the man for a while.

And he'd secured the jeep. Fingering the keys in his pocket, Charlie slipped into the cottage as quietly as the obdurate lock would allow. He'd like to drive into the interior now, find Raul, and get home quickly. But driving island roads at night was the act of an insane man, particularly after ten years away. The forest would have reclaimed the roads he knew, and even the new ones tended to halt abruptly, buried under rock slides. Besides, he needed sleep.

His “bride” had curled up around her pillow in a waterfall of silken black hair and rose pajamas, resembling some exotic flower in the dim light. If he could just think of her in terms of objects, he could survive the night.

Eyeing the bolsters and the narrow space remaining on the bed with disfavor, Charlie jerked off his shirt and sat down to remove his shoes.

Penelope whimpered and stirred restlessly in her sleep.

Oh, hell, he'd be better off sleeping on the porch.

The problem was, despite all the grief they gave him, he really
liked
women. He even enjoyed finding feminine dainties strewn across his room. He didn't much enjoy their blather over coffee in the morning or their possessive instincts when they thought they had their claws in him, but up until that point, he really enjoyed himself.

Maybe that's why he'd chosen this hard-as-nails, no- nonsense tailored robot to appropriate. But then she had to go and put on pink silk pajamas. Damn, his hands itched to touch.

He dropped his shoes on the floor and unsnapped his pants. Glancing at the woman sleeping in the bed, he resisted pulling his trousers off. He'd be as uncomfortable as hell, but he didn't relish the scene she'd create otherwise. He didn't own any pajamas.

***

Intoxicating warmth enveloped her. Penelope buried her nose in her pillow. The alarm hadn't gone off. She could sleep a minute longer.

Sunlight flickered on her eyelids, but she ignored it. She loved the sound of waves lapping on the shore. Tropical warmth caressed her. She could conquer whole new worlds like this.

A masculine snort near her ear shattered the illusion.

Springing awake, Penelope discovered she was snagged in the trap of a muscular arm. A very naked, very broad chest pressed against her back. She wouldn't think about what her bottom curved against. The snore in her ear was sufficient distraction.

She jerked her elbow backward. “Let go of me!” she hissed as she connected with a taut midriff instead of soft belly.

“Oomph.”

She tensed as a wide hand flattened against her stomach, hesitated, then drifted ever so slightly upward. She elbowed him again.

“Arghh,” he groaned sleepily.

He rolled over, releasing her. She jumped from the bed and immediately tangled with the mosquito netting. Ignoring his snicker, she swatted at the netting until she had it over her head. Damned man, he had no right....

She slammed into the bathroom. When she emerged half an hour later, wearing her linen pantsuit, he was gone.

***

“Smith and Son,” Sherry chirped into the phone as she examined a nail she'd broken in the filing cabinet. “Mr. Smith isn't in. May I take a message?” she answered automatically.

Charlie was never in, even when he was here. He didn't like being interrupted during his few hours in the office. In the year since she'd had the job, she'd become quite expert at knowing which callers she could handle on her own, which messages to jot down on pink memo slips for Charlie to follow up, and which calls to divert directly to her boss, whether he liked it or not. She was rather proud of her accomplishment. It hadn't helped her much these last two days.

“It's urgent. I must speak with him this moment. Can you not put me through to his cellular?”

The lilting Caribbean accent alerted her. Dropping the file, she grabbed a pencil. “Mr. Smith is unavailable. Is that you, Raul?” The man with the subpoena hadn't returned yet this morning, but Sherry still spoke furtively, afraid the walls might have ears.

“Tell him not to come to St. Lucia. Do you understand? Don' come to St. Lucia.”

Horrified, Sherry tried to untangle her thoughts and her tongue and keep the construction foreman on the line. The phone went dead before she could stutter out a single word.

Shaken by the ominous tone of his warning, Sherry stared at the buttons on her phone. Who did she call now? Old Mr. Smith was dead. Charlie was incommunicado. The company's best foreman had disappeared into the jungle and just called from out of nowhere. What should she do now?

Biting her bottom lip, she picked up her nail file and thought about it.

Anticipating the tropical treat of fresh juice on the veranda in the warmth of a Caribbean February sun, Penelope ignored the niggling concern over Charlie's whereabouts. If she had any luck at all, he'd stolen a jeep and disappeared from her life forever. She could immerse herself in the world of accounting software she knew so well and not be disturbed by unruly thoughts of imposing men and life passing her by. It would have been nice if she'd been sent to a singles' resort where she might at least have dallied with some interesting young engineer or lawyer.

That wistful thought shocked her sufficiently to force her to look around for other objects to concentrate on.

Following the waitress to a table overlooking the beach below, Penelope noted a small crowd forming in the cove where they'd left the boat. She wouldn't think a fishing boat was worthy of that much interest, even on a private beach.

Watching the crowd from the safety of the high veranda occupied her thoughts as she waited for someone to return with a menu. Two of the black men gesticulating vehemently on the beach wore the white shorts and shirts of resort employees. Several others wore cutoffs and T-shirts. She couldn't precisely place them as staff, but the resort had a variety of maintenance employees and occasionally allowed local artisans to set up booths on the beach.

She watched as Mr. Henwood hurried across the sand to join them, accompanied by a man in what appeared to be a khaki uniform. Police?

Liquid panic shot through her veins, fed by memories of yesterday at the airport.

The men below were looking at the boat, not knocking on her door, she reminded herself as she calmly accepted the menu and pretended to peruse it. But Charlie's warnings about catastrophic prison conditions on the island played a horror film through her mind.

Maybe the uniform was for security employees.

That thought evaporated with the arrival of a motorboat bearing an official-looking insignia and occupied by uniformed men. It might not be Miami Vice, but from this distance, the boat gave a good imitation.

Penelope clenched her fingers around her juice glass and tried not to panic. It was just a fishing boat, for heaven's sake. If Charlie had taken the wrong boat, he could pay the owner rent for its use, if that was the problem. Where was Charlie? He could explain.

Charlie
. Horror washed over her as she stared down at the vignette playing before her eyes. Had something happened to Charlie?

And where the hell had that concern come from?

She suffered a moment's unreasonable dismay before the object of her fear sauntered from behind the beach umbrella stand at some signal from Mr. Henwood. She would recognize her roommate's hulking shoulders in that red muscle shirt anywhere. The damned man dressed like a pig. He probably rode a Harley. No, she mentally corrected herself. Good ol' boys like Charlie Smith drove battered red pickup trucks with “No Fear” stickers in the window.

Her horror and fear turned to disgust. A man like that
would
poke his nose in where it didn't belong, like a gawking voyeur at an accident scene. Rude, crude, and uncouth.

As if he'd heard her thoughts, Charlie glanced up the hill in her direction. Penelope imagined him straining to see her, and she had the foolish urge to duck from sight. He couldn't possibly pick her out from the other diners.

To her dismay, she saw him speak intensely with Henwood and the policeman, pound the slightly built manager on the back—probably enough to make him wince—and saunter off in the direction of the beach stairs. And her.

She would not panic. She had no reason to panic. She would sit here and eat a civilized breakfast like any rational person on a lovely day like this. Then she would introduce herself to the office staff and go to work. Perfectly logical, sane, and safe.

Until the disruptive force with the improbable name of Charlie Smith swept onto the veranda.

Heads swiveled as he muscled his way past tables of decently dressed couples. Waitresses in their triple-knotted head scarves stopped and gawked as he winked in their direction. He swiped a glass of juice as he passed the juice bar, sprawled in the chair across from her, threw back the juice, glanced around, and, discovering a coffeepot, got up and helped himself. On a second thought, he carried the pot to the table and poured Penelope some.

“Act calm,” he ordered as he poured. “Drink your coffee while I talk.” He returned to his chair, swigged from his cup, and grimaced. He hadn't shaved, and the stubble of the beard darkened his angular jaw in a manner Penelope wanted to label “criminal,” but her libido yelled “sexy!”

For a moment, Penelope had the dizzying sensation that Charlie's bronzed shoulders and piercing blue eyes had obliterated her surroundings. Shaking her head, she forced her gaze away from the mountain of masculinity across from her. She had to get out of here.