Island Heat. Sarah Mayberry
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expected to be a dutiful father, at best. The kind of guy who handed over the right amount of child maintenance without quibbling, cooed at how cute the baby was at the appropriate moments and kept a miniature portrait in his wallet for appearances’ sake.
She’d sneaked up on him, though, this little cutie with her wide-eyed stare and her chubby limbs and her repertoire of gurgles and grunts. Perhaps it was her utter vulnerability, her absolute trust in and reliance on him. Or perhaps it was the young/old wisdom shining from her big brown eyes.
Whatever, he’d fallen hard. He’d become the talk of the small island of Anguilla, with everyone nudging one another with amusement that the last of the Caribbean playboys had fallen, taken out not by a woman but by a baby girl.
It was true. He loved her. Dearly. Fiercely. Irreversibly.
And she wasn’t his.
Danique had told him just last week when she’d come to collect Eva from her weekend visitation. His fling with Danique had been all about fun and no tomorrows, and neither of them had ever pretended it was any different. They’d remained friends, though, when the passion had died out, and it had proved a solid basis for their new partnership. Since Danique had had trouble breast-feeding, Eva had been on a bottle since three months, and they’d shared the load between them as much as possible despite the fact that they lived separately and led very different lives.
Last week, Danique had been unusually quiet as she’d gathered up Eva’s diaper bag and other baby paraphernalia, and she’d waited until she was ready to go to drop her bomb.
“Ben, there’s something you need to know. Before I was seeing you for those few weeks, I had a…thing going with Monty Blackman.” Danique’s eyes had shifted over Ben’s shoulder to focus on the wall behind him.
Ben had frowned; Monty was a well-known local businessman. He was also a very married man with a high-profile, politically astute wife.
“Eva is his,” Danique had blurted as though she couldn’t hang on to the words any longer. Tears had stood out in her pansy-brown eyes. “I’ve tried to tell you so many times, but I was scared of how you would react. You’ve been so great with her, and then there’s the money and everything else….”
Ben had shaken his head. “I’m sorry. I just—I don’t believe you.”
When he held Eva in his arms, his heart ached. How could that be if she wasn’t his?
“I had a test done—you can see the results if you like,” Danique had said. “And about the money—I’ll pay you back, I promise. Every cent.”
Ben had sworn pithily. “I don’t give a damn about the money.” He’d paced agitatedly, then stopped to frown at her. “Why now? What’s changed?” he’d asked. Then his frozen brain had swung back into motion and he’d held up a hand to forestall her answering. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. Monty’s leaving Angela.”
Danique had nodded slowly. “I love him, Ben. I’ve loved him for years and I only broke it off with him because I knew it was hopeless. What you and I had—that was about me trying to feel like a whole person again after waiting all those years for Monty to be honest about us.”
“So I was just an insurance policy?” he’d asked bitterly. “A convenient stopgap until the real guy came good?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Danique had cried.
But it had been, and they both knew it.
Now Ben smoothed a thumb across the silky curve of Eva’s cheek. She smelled of frangipanis and milk, and he didn’t know what he was going to do without her in his life. Danique had promised to let him visit, and he was first on the list of babysitters. But it wasn’t enough. It never would be.
“I think that’s everything,” Danique said as she appeared in the living room doorway, two carry bags in hand. She’d come over to collect the last of Eva’s baby debris from his home.
“Okay,” he said. He had a sudden urge to simply refuse to hand Eva back, but it passed as soon as it registered in his mind. He had no rights in this situation.
“I’ve got two shifts again next week,” Danique said. She was working at the local kindergarten as an assistant. “If you want, I can drop Eva by…”
He shook his head and took one deep lungful of sweet Eva-scented air before he handed her over.
“I’ll be away for the next week or so. Nick Pappas called. Jacques was scheduled to run a lecture series on board his new ship, and they need a replacement.”
Jacques’s restaurant was situated on St. Maarten, a twenty-minute ferry ride away from Anguilla, but despite the distance, the fact that he’d broken his leg trying to climb a coconut tree while blind drunk was common knowledge.
“So you’re filling in?” Danique said. “That’s nice of you.”
Ben shrugged. He wasn’t doing it out of kindness. Even the lesser of his two motivations wasn’t remotely kind—wanting to be as far from Danique and a smugly self-satisfied Monty as possible. In fact, he’d been on the verge of saying no to Nikolas, a good customer and a personal friend, when the captain of Alexandra’s Dream had uttered two words that had made Ben’s baser self prick up its ears.
Victoria Fournier.
Tory Fournier, as he’d known her.
Well, well.
He could just imagine her face when she learned at the last minute that she’d been paired with him for a whole cruise. It was almost delicious, if you were the kind of person who didn’t forgive and forget, even after eight long years.
He guessed he must be that kind of person. To be fair, he argued in his own favor, Tory had humiliated him in a spectacular way. He’d have to be suffering from a severe form of premature dementia to forget it. As for forgiving…He wasn’t a saint. Never had been, never would be.
“I’ll bring her by when you get back, then,” Danique said awkwardly.
Ben gritted his teeth and did what needed to be done. “Look, it’s probably not a good idea. You and Monty have got your own thing going on now. And I’ve got my life.”
His gesturing hand took in the comfortable wicker furniture, terra-cotta-tile floors and mishmash of local art hanging on the walls of his hilltop cottage.
“But I know how much she means to you,” Danique said, holding Eva close, as though she were the one being asked to give her up.
“No point in perpetuating the situation,” Ben said flatly. “How long do you think it’s going to take for Monty to get sick of me butting my head in?”
Danique’s expression told him Monty’s nose was already on the way to being out of joint.
“It’s for the best,” he said, moving toward the door so she’d have to follow him. He wanted them gone now that he’d said it out loud.
Danique sniffed loudly as she passed him. She was crying. He tried to feel sorry for her but couldn’t. Sure, she’d been in a tough situation. But he was the one who’d come out a loser. Him and Angela Blackman.
Ben shut the door firmly behind her, crossing straight to the fridge to grab himself a beer. He was striding out toward the terrace when he heard the sound of Danique’s car pulling out of his gravel driveway.
Outside on the terrace, he braced an arm against the railing and took a long swallow of cold, bitter beer. Below him, the hillside swept down toward the beach of Rendezvous Bay, green vegetation standing in stark contrast to the golden perfection of the beach. Beyond that, the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean stretched off into the distance.
A brisk ocean breeze cooled his overheated emotions, and he dropped down onto one of the weathered timber lounges he kept on the terrace.
Eva was gone.