Chapter Four
Marcus could hardly believe this was the same shy, conservative woman he’d met only the night before. She looked exciting in that lacy white thing, with her long hair down. He’d had second thoughts about involving her in his life when it was in flux, but in the end, he hadn’t had a choice. It had been pure luck that Fred had chosen to bring her along to the meeting they didn’t get to have. She was Barney’s sister-in-law and that gave him a connection to a badly needed contact. He could pass a message along in a very innocent way, through a woman he could pretend to be interested in. The fly in the ointment was Barbara, Delia’s sister, who was not going to approve of her baby sister dating a gangster.
It was amazing, that of all the women he’d known—and there had been some beautiful ones—he honestly was interested in her. It wasn’t like him to be attracted to a small-town girl like Delia. She wasn’t his style at all. Then, too, there was the question of his past. She thought he was a security guard. She had no idea who, or what, he really was. It wasn’t fair to her to let her believe a lie. But he didn’t dare tell her the truth. She didn’t seem the sort of woman to be comfortable spending time with a gangster, even if he was reformed. And he needed her to spend time with him. For a few weeks, at least.
He reached out slowly and caught her cold, nervous fingers in his, linking them together. It was like touching a live wire. Her hand jerked in his, as if she, too, felt the electricity. Her breath caught audibly. She winced when she realized that he knew exactly what she was feeling.
“Don’t look like that,” he said in a deep, velvet tone, moving closer. “I feel it, too.”
“I haven’t slept,” she choked, lost in his eyes.
“Neither have I,” he replied curtly. He studied her perfect complexion, the faint flush on her cheeks a dead giveaway of her turmoil. “Where’s your sister?”
“On her way to Miami with Barney. Some sort of crisis. And Fred’s gone there, too,” she added breathlessly.
“To Miami?” He looked thoughtful.
“So Barney said. God knows why, Barney says he’s got no business interests there.”
“None that Barney knows about, maybe,” Marcus mused. He seemed distant for a moment. Then he blinked and smiled down at Delia. “I’ve got a big day planned for us. Let’s go.”
“Okay,” she said softly.
He didn’t ask any questions and she didn’t tell him about Barb’s warning about him. She was going to pretend that there were no complications. She was going to pretend she didn’t know who he was, too. This was one day she was simply going to enjoy. It might be the only one she had with him. She wasn’t going to waste it in worry.
They walked out the front door holding hands, but Mr. Smith and the limo were nowhere in sight. A cab was waiting at the entrance instead.
“I didn’t want to raise eyebrows, in case your sister had told you something about me,” he murmured.
“What would she have told me about you?” she wondered, pretending innocence.
His expression was priceless. He looked relieved. “What did you tell her?”
“That Fred assaulted me and the head of security at the hotel brought me home,” she said simply.
“Not my name?” he persisted.
She grimaced. “I didn’t think of it until it was too late…”
“Don’t think of it,” he said tersely. “I’ll explain later.”
He put her into the back of the cab and climbed in beside her. “Take us back to the Bow Tie, John,” he told the driver.
“Yes, sir,” the man said with a big grin. “You going around in disguise, huh, Mr. Carrera?”
“Big disguise, and you get a bonus for forgetting it.”
“I’m your man.”
“You can take her home tonight, as well,” he told Harry. “For another bonus.”
“I don’t know who you are, Mr. Carrera,” he said blithely. “Never met you in my life.”
Carrera chuckled. “That’s the spirit.”
“What sort of disguise does he mean?” Delia asked wryly.
“Never mind,” he replied. “I thought we’d have lunch before we go out.”
“Lovely!” she said.
He felt guilty for a minute about the game he was playing. He didn’t want to hurt her, but she gave him a connection he needed very badly. Apart from that, she appealed to him physically in a forbidden way. She was a sweet kid and he was going to spoil her a little, so she wouldn’t lose by the association with him. She didn’t ever need to know who he really was, and he didn’t plan to tell her. Not until he had to, anyway.
They passed over the bridge to Paradise Island, and in daylight she was able to see the incredible assortment of boats moored at the big marina. There were sailboats and motorboats and ferry boats, carrying people from Nassau to Paradise Island on the water instead of the road.
“Just look at all the boats!” she exclaimed, looking out the cab’s window. “There’s one with black sails!”
“He must be a pirate then, huh?” he teased, following her gaze.
She turned her head and looked straight into his eyes. She felt him, strong and warm at her back, and her whole body tensed with hunger.
He saw that, enjoyed it, savored it. She couldn’t hide anything from him. That was pleasurable, like the touch of her shoulder against his chest. His eyes darkened and he moved back abruptly. This wasn’t the place, he told himself, even if he was crazy enough to make a move on her. He had to try to remember what was at stake right now. He had to keep his mind on business, not on Delia.
The casino looked different in daylight, she thought as they got out of the cab. While Marcus was paying the fare, Delia walked over to a bank of hibiscus and touched the red blossoms with a delicate hand. She loved flowers. She had a huge garden at home, full of every sort of blooming plant. But she didn’t have hibiscus. They weren’t comfortable in her part of Texas through the winter.
“Do you like them?” Marcus asked.
She nodded. “I can’t grow them at home. The winters are too cold.”
“I thought Texas was hot.”
She chuckled. “It is, in the summer. But we actually have snow sometimes in Jacobsville in the winter, and it gets down to freezing. Tropical plants can only be grown in a greenhouse, and I can’t afford one.”
He reached down and picked one of the flowers, tucking it behind her ear. He smiled. “It suits you.”
She laughed self-consciously. “I’m not pretty, but you make me feel like I am. That sounds silly, I guess.”
He shook his head. He was searching her green eyes quietly, intently. She blushed, and he smiled. It amused him that she found him attractive, that she reacted to him so hungrily.
She was twenty-three. He was certain that she had some experience, at that age. He was curious to see how much. But he couldn’t rush his fences. She was going to fit nicely into the scheme of things. He had to keep her around.
He took her hand in his again. “Let’s go. I want to show you around my house.”
“You don’t live in the hotel?” she asked.
“The boss keeps a penthouse apartment there,” he said evasively. “But I like my own space.”
He led her around the grounds of the hotel to a wrought-iron gate in a white stucco fence. He unlocked it and ushered her in.
There was a huge expanse of grass and flowering shrubs and trees. Beyond it, just on the spotless beach, was a sprawling white adobe house with graceful arches and a red tiled roof.
“Wow,” she said as they approached it. The porch had white wicker furniture, and there were pots of flowers everywhere, hanging from the eaves of the house, sitting on the ceramic tile of the wide, long porch.
“Do you like it?” he asked, smiling. “I thought you might. I love flowers, too. I planted most of these as seed. A couple of the shrubs were imported. The hibiscus and oleander were already here, but I planted a few more. There’s a greenhouse, too, where I raise orchids. You can’t see the driveway from here, but it’s lined with royal palms.”
“Those are the ones with the white trunks, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Are those casuarina pines?” she added, nodding toward the trees lining the yard, near the beach. They looked like white pines, but with long fronds that waved gracefully in the breeze.
“They are,” he said, surprised. “Don’t tell me you have those in Texas,” he teased.
She shook her head. “I bought a book on native plants and trees the day I got here,” she told him. “Everything is so different down here!”
“I like the scenery, too,” he said. “But there’s something more. It’s the sort of place that relaxes you, slows you down.”
“In your line of work, I guess it’s a relief to get away from brawls,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Security work,” she prompted.
He smiled ruefully. He’d actually forgotten the role he was playing. “That’s right,” he said. “I need a place that takes my mind off work.”
He led her inside the beautiful house, through open rooms with stone floors that were cool and eye-catching. She thought about how wonderful that stone would feel under bare feet and had to resist taking off her shoes.
“I don’t see a television,” she remarked when they were in the living room.
“I’ve got one in the den,” he said lazily, “along with all the electronic equipment I have to keep for the sake of security around here. Smith has some of it in his suite. I have the rest.”
“Mr. Smith lives with you?” she asked, surprised.
“Well, not in the same room,” he said at once.
She laughed at his indignation. “Sorry.”
“Damn, woman,” he cursed, and then laughed. “Smith takes care of the house for, uh, the boss,” he added. “So do I, when I’m off duty.”
She knew it was his house, but she didn’t let on. She looked around with warm, approving eyes. “It must be great, living here, with the ocean so close.”
“It gets a little hectic during hurricane season,” he said.
“Which is when?”
He pursed his lips. “From May until late September or early October.”
She gasped. “It’s late August!”
He chuckled at her expression. “Don’t worry. We don’t get that many.”
“Does the house flood?”
“It has, in the past,” he said. “I…the boss, I mean…has rebuilt it once. Otherwise, we just drain it out and have a crew come in and clean out the water damage.”
She nodded, as if she understood.
He knew she didn’t. He turned and looked down at her. “Cleaning up water damage is a specialized job,” he said. “The same people come in after a fire when the hoses have been used on furniture and drapes.”
“Oh!”
He grinned at her. “Don’t ever be ashamed to admit you don’t know something, Delia,” he said gently. “It’s not a crime.”
She smiled ruefully. “Sorry. I just don’t want you to think I’m an utter idiot. I don’t know a lot about the world.”
“Stick with me, kid,” he said in a teasing tone. “I’ll clue you in.”
She laughed with delight. “How exciting.”
He pursed his lips and gave her slender body a mock leer. “You’re the exciting one. Come on. We’ll finish the tour and then we’ll drive over to Blackbeard’s Tower.”
“I can hardly wait!”
He showed her the lavish master bedroom, with heavy Mediterranean furniture and carpet and drapes in earth-tones. There was a huge bathroom with a hot tub, and a vanity. The other two bedrooms were similar, if smaller. There was a laundry room, too.
“I don’t use it,” he told her with a grin. “We have a lady, Lucy, who comes in to cook every day, and two days a week she does laundry for me and Smith. And the boss, of course.”
“I have a laundry room, too, but no Lucy.”
He smiled. “And this is the garage,” he added, opening a door.
She gasped. Inside were five cars. One was the stretch limousine that had taken her back to her hotel the night before. There were four others, none of which she recognized. Well, except for the silver Jaguar. The Ballenger brothers mostly drove Jaguars, so she knew what they looked like. The others were unusual, and she hadn’t seen anything like them.
“We’ll take this one,” he said, guiding her to a small red sports car.
“Wow,” she said as he seated her. “This is cute.”
He could tell that she didn’t know what an Alfa Romeo was, so he didn’t expound on how much it cost. “Yes,” he agreed, starting the engine. “It’s cute.”
“Are we going to see Blackbeard’s place now?” she asked.
He chuckled. “That’s right. Hang on to your seat, honey. This is a car you drive.”
He shifted gears, whipped it out of the garage, and sent it racing down the driveway. All she saw was a blur of green and white on the way to the road.
Once they were across the Paradise Island bridge again and on the paved road that led around the island, she began to relax. The wind in her hair was delightful. She didn’t reach for a scarf or hairpins. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the feel of the wind.
“You’re an elemental, aren’t you?” he called above the roar of the engine.
“Excuse me?”
“You like wind and storms.”
“Yes,” she called back, smiling.
“Me, too,” he murmured.
They passed small houses and public beaches, where local people were playing in the surf. There were houses recessed down past wrought-iron gates and roadside stands where tourists could buy drinks and food. Everything was colorful. A lot of the small houses were painted in pastel colors, pinks and blues and greens. They looked homey and welcoming, and the people seemed always to be smiling.
Marcus drew up at a deserted beach and pulled off into the small dirt track that led toward a grown-up, ruin of a building.
“This is it,” he said, helping her out after he’d parked.
“The tower?” she parroted.
“The very same.” He led her around the growth of vegetation to a stone ruin, a circular building that had relatively new wooden steps. “Most tourists don’t know about this place,” he told her. “They can’t prove that Blackbeard watched out for treasure ships here, but they think he did. Local legends say so, anyway.”
“A real pirate,” she enthused. “That’s exciting.”
“Pirates were all over the Bahamas and the Caribbean,” he remarked, nudging her toward the staircase. “Woodes Rogers, who became governor of the Bahamas, was a pirate himself, like Henry Morgan, who later became governor of Jamaica.”
“Renegades,” she mused under her breath.
“Sometimes a reformed bad man makes a good man,” he said quietly.
She laughed. “So they say.”
She got to the top and looked out over the remaining gray stone blocks to the ocean. “It’s beautiful,” she said to herself, noting the incredible color of the ocean, the blistering sugar whiteness of the beach. Between the tower and the beach were sea grape bushes. One of the cabdrivers had pointed them out and told her that they were once used as plates in the early days of settlement.
“Do you like pirates?” she asked, glancing up at him with a wicked smile.
He shrugged. “They’re my sort of people,” he commented, looking down at her quietly. “I’m an outsider.”
Her fingers itched to touch him, but she was nervous about it. He looked formidable.
“You’d be surprised at the number of tough guys who live in my town. We’ve got everything from ex-black ops to ex-mercenaries. I hear there’s even a reformed gun runner in town somewhere. Our police chief, Cash Grier, was in black ops, we heard.”
His eyebrows arched. “You don’t say?” he mused. He didn’t tell her that he knew Cash Grier quite well, or that he’d heard of Jacobsville. He’d helped Grier keep his wife, Tippy, from being victimized after her kidnapping back in the winter.
“I need to visit this town,” he said, studying her.
“You’d be welcome,” she replied, lowering her eyes shyly. “I could take you around our local points of interest. Not that we’ve got such exciting ones as this, but Jacobsville was once the center of Comanche country, and there was a famous gunfighter who had property there.”
“You like outlaws, don’t you?”
She grinned. “Well, they’re interesting,” she pointed out.
“And dangerous.”
She stared at his chin. It had just a faint cleft and looked stubborn. “Life is boring without a little spice.”
He moved a step closer and touched her hair. He’d been itching to, ever since he picked her up at her hotel. “Your hair fascinates me. I love long hair.”
“I figured that out,” she confessed breathlessly.
He chuckled. “Is that why you wore it down? For me?”
“Yes.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t you know how to lie?”
“It’s a waste of time,” she said simply. “And it complicates things.”
He couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “Yes. It complicates things.” He dropped his hand.
She was going to ask him why he’d become so remote suddenly, but a tour bus drove up next to the Alfa Romeo and parked.
“It seems we’ve been discovered,” he said, smiling at her, but not with the same sensuousness as before. “We’d better go.”
She followed him down the staircase. They got to the bottom just as six tourists followed a heavyset, laughing, tour guide to the tower. One of the women was young, blond, sophisticated and dripping expensive jewelry. She gave Marcus a sultry look from her heavily shadowed blue eyes. He ignored her completely, locking Delia’s fingers into his as he nodded politely at the tour guide and kept walking.
The blonde shrugged and turned away.
Delia was curious about his lack of interest.
He gave her a keen glance and laughed hollowly. “I may not be Mr. America, but the car attracts women,” he hedged. “Even though it’s not mine,” he added quickly. “I don’t like women who find my possessions attractive.”
“I guess it would be demeaning,” she agreed, because she knew what he was saying. A lot of women over the years must have liked him for his money, his power, his position alone.
“Demeaning.” He savored the word. “Yes. That’s a good way to express it.”
He opened the passenger door of the car and helped her in. “You’re perceptive,” he mused.
She leaned her head back against the seat. “Everybody says that, but I’m not, really. I just know how to listen.”
He got in beside her and laid his arm over the back of her seat. He stared at her until her eyes opened and her head turned toward him.
“Listening is a rare gift,” he said. “Most people only want to talk about themselves.”
She smiled warmly. “I’m not that interesting, and I haven’t done anything that would be worth talking about to people. I do alterations and make quilts. What’s exciting about that?”
“As a fellow quilt-maker,” he pointed out dryly, “I find it very exciting.”
She leaned forward and whispered, “I know where to find some floral fabric that dates to 1948, and the lady’s willing to sell it for the right price!”
“Darling!” he exclaimed.
She laughed with pure delight at the twinkle in his dark eyes. “You’re not anything like I used to picture security people,” she told him. “The only bouncer I know is Tiny, who works at Shea’s Roadhouse and Bar, and he’s, well, he’s not much to look at.”
“Neither is Mr. Smith’s pet iguana—who is also named Tiny,” he chuckled ironically. “We should introduce them one day!”
“Funny coincidence.” She lifted her hand daringly and traced his big nose, to the crook in the middle. “Has your nose been broken?” she asked.
He caught her hand and pressed the palm to his mouth. “Only once,” he said. “But it’s so big that I hardly felt it,” he teased.
She smiled, looking hungrily at him.
He felt a sudden painful urge to bend and kiss the breath out of her. But it was a public place and this wasn’t the time. He kissed her palm again and gave it back to her.
“We’d better go before the tourists get back,” he said dryly. “Could you eat?”
“I could.”
“Great. I had Lucy make us a seafood salad and slice some mangos last night. It’ll be cold and sweet.”
“I’ll enjoy that,” she murmured.
Marcus smiled at her radiant delight as the wind tore through her hair once more in the little convertible on the way back to his house. He noted that she didn’t protest that it was messing up her hair, or complain about the wind. She seemed to love it.
It had been years since he’d driven a woman on a date. He usually took the limo and had Smith drive him. When he wanted to impress a woman, which was rarely these days, the limo always did the job.
But he’d suspected that Delia wouldn’t know an expensive sports car from a domestic model, and he was right. She was so honest, so natural, that she made him feel like a total fraud.
He pulled into a paved driveway that led up to white wrought-iron gates. He pressed a button in the car and the gates swung open.
Delia laughed with surprise. “How did you do that?”
“Magic,” he teased. He drove through the gate and it closed automatically behind them.
“It looks different than it did when we left,” she mused as she noted royal palm trees on both sides of the driveway, along with masses of hibiscus and bougainvillea and jasmine, all in glorious bloom. Farther along, tall casaurina pines swayed gracefully beyond the graceful white adobe house, its eaves dripping with flowers of every color and variety.
He laughed amusedly. “I get the message. I’ll slow down so that you can see it this time.”
“Your boss must think a lot of you, to give you such a spectacular place to live.”
“You really like it?” he asked, pleased by her enthusiasm.
“Oh, I like it,” she said in almost a whisper as he stopped and cut off the engine. Her eyes were everywhere, softening as they rested on the flowers. “It’s so beautiful.”
Other women he’d invited here had used different adjectives: dull, boring, rustic. It was too small, or too primitive, or too remote from the city. The bottom line was that they hated it. He was crazy about the place. He spent hours working in the flowers, fertilizing and pruning and landscaping.
“You must be a terrific gardener,” she murmured as they got out and walked across a stone patio to the wide steps and spacious front porch. “I’ve never seen so many flowers! And that tree looks like a…no, it couldn’t be.” She hesitated.
“It’s exactly what it looks like, an umbrella plant,” he confirmed. “And that one over there is a Norfolk Island Pine.”
“But they’re monstrous!”
“Compared to the potted plants back in the States, they certainly are. But here they’re in their natural element, and they grow like crazy.”
“They’re beautiful,” she said solemnly.
He smiled. “I think so, too.”
He parked the car and led the way into the kitchen, sliding his car keys back into his pocket.
He opened the refrigerator and produced a huge covered bowl full of seafood salad and a covered plate with sliced mango. “There’s a lemon meringue pie as well, if you like lemon.”
“Oh, it’s my favorite,” she enthused.
He chuckled. “We’ll have it for dessert. It’s my favorite, too.” He took down plates and glasses and she set the table, arranging the silver he gave her and the napkins as well.
“What do you want to drink?” he asked.
“I like iced tea, but milk is okay.”
He gave her a curious glance. “I usually have coffee…”
“That would be even better, but I didn’t want to impose,” she added. “You went to a lot of trouble for this.”
She was constantly surprising him. Nobody wanted to “rough it” by eating leftovers here, when there were five-star restaurants all over Nassau. Here she was worried about making more work for him. He was impressed by Delia’s companionable spirit.
He had the light meal together in no time, and they lingered over a second cup of coffee on the veranda, overlooking the casuarinas and, beyond them, the blinding white sand and turquoise waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
Heavy, low clouds were building around them, blackened and towering into the heavens. The sun had been out earlier, but a storm was clearly on its way into the bay.
“Do you like storms?” she asked absently as she leaned back against a palm tree trunk, watching the churning of the waves on the beach.
“Yes. I’d already figured that you did,” he replied.
She smiled. “I should be afraid of them, I expect, because lightning terrifies me. But I love a storm. I love the fury of the wind, and the sound of rain coming down. We have a tin roof on our house. When it rains, it’s like a metallic lullaby, especially at night. I don’t know why, but rain makes me feel safe.”
He was studying her face with intent interest. His dark eyes slid down her trim figure in the gossamer-thin garments she was wearing, and he wondered hungrily what she looked like under her clothes.
As if in response to his mental images, the skies suddenly burst open and rain came down immediately, in torrents.
Delia gasped as the rain soaked her blouse and skirt and drenched her hair.
Laughing, Marcus caught her hand and ran with her to the protection of the roofed patio, where she stood dripping near a wall, trying to shake the water from her skirt.
Marcus’s eyes were suddenly narrow and glittery, and he was looking at her with an expression she couldn’t fathom.
When she looked down at herself, she understood. The fabric was transparent. He could see right through her clothes, right down to her flimsy bra and panties. It was like being naked.
She started to raise her hands. Seconds later, Marcus backed her against the wall and pinned her wrists to the smooth surface with his big hands, while his knee coaxed her legs apart and his eyes went to her breasts.
Instinctively she began to struggle, remembering Fred.
“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered softly, holding her gaze. “I won’t force you. Trust me.”
Her face flushed as he looked down at her again, slowly levering his hips into slow contact with hers while the wind blew wildly around them.
“Your breasts are incredible,” he said huskily. “I ache just looking at them. And your mouth has the most seductive curve in your lower lip…”
As he spoke, he bent. He found her mouth and caressed it slowly, tenderly with his lips, while his tongue ran along the inside of her upper lip and drove her heartbeat over the edge. His mind was telling him it was too soon for this. His body wasn’t listening.
Neither was Delia’s. Throwing caution to the wind, she reached up around his neck, opened her mouth under his and held on for dear life.