A Baby For Christmas. Anne McAllister
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to see her come back would be something of an understatement.
He’d said, ‘You!’ in a horrid voice and fumbled to fasten the top button of his trousers.
Carly had watched with undisguised interest. ‘Perhaps you were expecting someone else?’ she’d suggested, and fluttered her lashes at him, irritated that he would disbelieve her about a thing like this.
‘I was taking a nap,’ he’d retorted stiffly.
‘Oh. Right. Sorry to disturb you.’
‘You’re not,’ he’d said, which was the absolute truth.
He said now, ‘What about Maisie Cash’s house?’
‘The Potters are there from Phoenix for the holidays,’ Carly recited from memory.
‘It’s not the holidays yet.’
‘Tell that to the Potters.’
‘Well, what about the Kellys?’ he said impatiently. ‘They take in visitors.’
‘Lots of people take in visitors, Piran. Tourism is the prime industry on the island.’
‘I know that. So—’
‘So Conch Cay has a bumper crop. It might not look like Christmas out here, but everyone is here to celebrate it. I stopped at the grocery. Old Bill gave me a list.’
‘And?’
‘And they were all full.’
‘You can’t have looked everywhere!’
Carly unfolded the list and shoved it at him. ‘Then you look. I’ve looked until I’m ready to drop.’ She lay back on the floor of the veranda and closed her eyes.
Piran muttered under his breath. He prowled up and down the veranda, then stood glowering down at her.
Carly opened one eye. ‘And don’t tell me to go over to Eleuthera and take the launch back every day, because I won’t.’
He muttered again and paced the length of the veranda once more. ‘I suppose that means you expect to stay here?’
‘Unless you have a better idea, I don’t see any other option.’
‘Go home.’
‘We’ve been through that already.’
Piran made a furious sound deep in his throat.
‘What’s the matter really, Piran? Are you afraid I’ll take advantage of your virtue?’
He let out an explosive breath. ‘Maybe I’m afraid I’ll take advantage of yours?’
‘I didn’t think you thought I had any virtue.’
His teeth came together with a snap. ‘Don’t bait me, Carlota. If you want to stay here, don’t bait me.’
‘I have no intention of baiting you,’ Carly said hastily.
‘Good. Remember that. This is work. That’s all.’
‘You’re damn right it is,’ Carly said, incensed, sitting up and glaring at him. ‘And you’re a jerk if you think I want it to be any more than that!’
He met her gaze. ‘Just so we understand each other.’
‘We do.’
The look went on…and on. Finally he nodded curtly. ‘Use your old bedroom. But leave me alone. We can start work in the morning.’
She was surprised Piran remembered which bedroom had been hers.
Or maybe he didn’t, she thought when she finally got up and made her way toward the small bedroom next to the kitchen. Maybe he just assumed that she would remember and didn’t care as long as it wasn’t anywhere near his.
It wasn’t. It faced away from the ocean, bordering the narrow drive up which she’d come. The room Piran was using had been her mother’s and his father’s the last time they’d come here. It was on the other side of the house with access to the deck and the stairs to the path leading to the beach.
Bigger and airier than hers, it also had a lovely view across the treetops toward the ocean. But the small back bedroom with the narrow wicker bed and freestanding cupboard in which to hang her clothes suited Carly just fine.
She opened the windows and got a cross-breeze almost at once. But to aid its movement she turned on the overhead fan. Then she put her things away, slipped off her sandals and lay down on the bed.
She only intended to rest her eyes for a moment. Then she would go out and walk on the beach in the waning summer light. She would dig her toes in the sand and wade in the warm Caribbean water. She would savor the moment and appreciate the parts of Conch Cay she had no trouble enjoying. In just a few minutes she would do that…
It was pitch-dark when she woke up.
It took her a moment to remember where she was. Then it came back in a rush.
Des. Diana. The book. Piran. Christmas. The long trip by taxi, plane, taxi, and boat to Conch Cay. Piran’s less than enthusiastic welcome. Her fruitless search for a room. Her return to Blue Moon Cottage. Piran’s reluctant agreement to her staying with him. Piran. Always Piran.
Carly rolled over and tried to forget him, tried to go back to sleep because it was obviously quite late now. But she wasn’t tired enough to go back to sleep, and trying not to think about Piran only insured that she would.
Finally, after she’d tossed and turned for half an hour, she got up and put her sandals on, then padded through the silent house.
The lights were all shut off and the door to Piran’s room was closed. She didn’t know the time, but figured that it must be sometime after midnight.
Quietly she slid open the door to the veranda and padded out. A swath of silvery moonlight spilled across the ocean, lighting her way as she went down the steps. At the bottom she found the narrow path that led through the trees down the hill to the beach.
Before she was more than twenty yards along the path, she heard a rustling sound in the brush and saw a dark, slithering shape. Swallowing a scream, she stopped dead right where she was.
There were snakes on Conch Cay. She remembered Des showing her the marks they made in the sand which had looked to Carly like the imprints from bicycle tires. But she didn’t know what kind they were and she didn’t know if any of them were poisonous.
It wouldn’t do to get herself bitten by a snake the first night she was here. Piran wouldn’t be in the least bit understanding.
The rustling noise stopped and eventually Carly went on. She moved on carefully now, watching her every step, doing her best to make sure she didn’t step on anything alive and capable of objecting.
She didn’t notice when the path curved and the beach came into view. She didn’t see the lean masculine form that slowly rose out of the water and made its way across the narrow sand beach toward the trail.
She didn’t see Piran at all until it was too late, until she ran right into his bare wet chest.
‘Ooof!’
‘Bloody hell!’ Hard fingers came out and grabbed her arms.
‘P-Piran?’
‘Who’d you think it was? The Loch Ness monster?’ His fingers were still biting into her flesh as he snarled at her.
Carly looked up into hard eyes, then down at a shadowed but all too evident masculine nakedness, and finally, desperately, away into the jungle brush.
Snakes seemed suddenly far preferable.
‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ he demanded.
‘G-going for a walk.’
‘In the middle of