“Oh, it’s you.”
Waking to the sound of Babs Brewster’s voice was not Rik’s idea of a morning in Paradise, but he did his best to be cheerful. “Good morning, Mrs. Brewster.” He yawned into the phone as Hallie stirred to life beside him. “You’re up bright and early.”
“It’s eleven,” Babs informed him promptly. “And I was trying to find that wedding coordinator. The desk clerk rang through to you again by mistake.”
“Hmm.” Rik glanced at the huddled lump under the sheets and smiled. “The phone lines must still be messed up. I guess you’ll have to try the call again.”
‘I’ll do that” Her tone of voice was perfectly pleasant, so Rik figured he only imagined the word “moron” tacked on, by inflection, to the end of her sentence. “Do you and Jack have plans for the day?”
“Plans?” he repeated, distracted by the bare leg Hallie drew from beneath the covers and draped over the top of the tangled sheets. “Uh, yes. Yes, I do.”
“Dan had planned to play golf, but with this nasty weather, he’s going a bit stir-crazy. Would you mind if he joined the two of you?”
Rik tried to concentrate. He really did, but there was an inch or two of bare hip emerging from under the sheets and he just- couldn’t focus on conversation. “What?” he said hoarsely. “He wants to join us now?”
Babs’s sigh was classically impatient “No, not this minute. Later. Whenever you and Jack do whatever it is you’re planning to do.”
Rik suddenly recalled Lynn, Sam and Big Bird and their places on his agenda…and Jack’s. “Oh. My plans with Jack. That doesn’t happen until later this afternoon and I’m not sure Jack will want company then. But he’s probably not doing a thing now. You ought to call him, Mrs. Brewster.”
“I tried. He wasn’t in his room when I phoned a little while ago.”
“Hmm.” Rik smiled into the one eye Hallie had open, wanting to kiss her awake…and back under the covers with him. “I can’t imagine where he might be.”
“It seems to me no one is where they’re supposed to be when I call,” Babs said pointedly.
“Darn weather,” Rik said with feeling.
“Humph,” she said, and hung up.
Hallie stretched and slipped out of bed. Rik made a grab for her but missed as she headed for the bathroom. “Hey, come back here.”
She tossed a sleepy, sexy smile over her shoulder and he went weak with wanting her. “No,” she said resolutely. “I have things to do.”
“So do I and you’re at the top of the list”
She paused in the doorway, one hand on the frame, as she looked longingly back at him. “I have to work.” But her tone waffled with lack of conviction. “Babs is going to be calling any second now.”
“Don’t answer the phone.”
“I’m here to work, Rik, and I’m getting a late start as it is.”
He stretched back on the bed, hands behind his head, content to watch her just standing there, her hair all tousled, her body language indecisive, her face tinted with the look of a woman well loved. “I’ll help,” he offered. “I have a luncheon appointment at twelvethirty, but until then I’m yours to command.”
“You’re offering me a whole hour and a half of your day?”
He waggled his eyebrows. “It will be the best hour and a half of your day, kiddo.”
The phone rang and she pursed her lips. Rik waited, willing her to ignore the insistent intrusion—and everything else in the world except her desire to be with him. The hesitant, uncertain woman of last night was gone, though, replaced this morning with organized, efficient and no-nonsense Hallie Bernhardt of Bernhardt Bridal. But he wasn’t fooled. She had been magnificent, once she got past the idea she was inept in the art of lovemaking. He’d thought he would be her mentor, gently instructing her in the myriad pleasures possible between a man and a woman. But she’d developed her own style rather quickly and he’d spent most of the night marveling at her innate expertise. Early on, he’d made a fast trip to the hotel gift shop for a box of condoms, but there had been a couple of moments during the passion-filled night when he feared he’d underestimated her enthusiasm and endurance. At the time, he wasn’t sure if he wished he’d bought the economy-size box or if he merely prayed she’d tire out before he was forced to confess that he wasn’t really Superman.
“What are you smiling, about?” she asked, then added, “Never mind. I don’t care what you say, I’m getting my glasses.”
“The better to see me with?”
Her gaze dropped like a rock to the sheet draped across his lower body. “The better to get a good look at—”
“Now, now,” he said hastily. “Remember my sensitive male ego. It may be large, but it’s extremely fragile.”
“I was going to say, the better to get a good look at the room service menu. Don’t men think about anything but sex?”
“Well, sure. Let’s see. There’s football, basketball, baseball, soccer. Work, food, helicopters, electronics, the space program, politics…” He broke off with a frown. “No, basically, it’s sex right down the line.”
Hallie shook her head and disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door—firmly—behind her. Rik smiled, pleasure uncoiling inside him like the warmth of good scotch. Stretching lazily, he settled more comfortably against the pillows to consider what had happened to him somewhere between yesterday afternoon and today. Hurricane Hallie. She’d swept into the hotel bar, into his sights, and nailed him.
He’d been minding his own business—well, trying to mind Jack’s, anyway. But definitely not looking for a relationship. And now he was in one. At least, he thought this had all the markings of a relationship, plus the added benefit of being with a real, live person. Not just an imaginary, maybe kind of thing, as Stephanie had been. Of course, being mostly imaginary, Stephanie had the advantage of being whoever and whatever he wanted her to be. Reality hadn’t been a true consideration.
And until last night, Rik had preferred it that way.
He noticed in a glance a single plumeria petal on the pillow next to him and picked it up. There was no way of knowing where the rest of the flower was now. Petals were probably strewn from the elevator to the door of the thirteenth room on the thirteenth floor. But at least one petal had made it into bed with them, much the worse for wear, and the scent remained. He closed his eyes, inhaled the crushed fragrance and remembered Hallie, taking his breath away with a look, stealing his reason with a kiss, slipping into his heart when he wasn’t looking.
HALLIE WIPED THE STEAM from the mirror and checked her appearance, wishing she had a hair dryer, real underwear and a book on the etiquette of postseduction small talk. Last night had been perfect, in practically every way. Rik had been fiercely tender, a wonderful lover. If she thought about it for ten seconds, she could imagine herself in love with him, could imagine a lifetime with him, home, family, the whole nine yards. But she mustn’t let her imagination run wild. Just because she’d finally found a man with whom sex was good… Oh, okay, not good. Phenomenal. Well, that didn’t mean she had to fall head over heels in love with him. Probably the best reason not to. Rik had his own agenda. She had hers. She was Boston. He was Tarzan. She had a wedding to plan. He might be in love with someone else.
Swallowing hard, Hallie scrubbed her freshly washed hair with a towel, then used one corner of the terry cloth to wipe more condensation from the mirror surface. Rik had been her brave, bold experiment, her fantasy come to life. She had no reason to be disappointed because it couldn’t last.
With a frown at her water-streaked reflection, Hallie lifted her chin. It was this room, she thought. This unlucky thirteenth room. Where else would someone as unlucky as she find the man of her dreams?
Beyond the closed door, she heard the phone ring. Pulling her with shrill insistence to the reality of another woman’s wedding, another bride’s dream come true. In this instance, it was more like the mother of the bride’s dream come true, but the point was, Hallie was merely a labor-saving device, a bridge between everything that could go wrong and the beginning of a happily-everafter. And last night had been merely a perfect moment in a not-so-perfect life. It was just a good thing she hadn’t been wearing her glasses then.
If she could have gotten Rik into focus at any time during their long, loving night, she might have believed, quite foolishly, that she was lucky in love, after all.
“YOU HAVE TO DO something about this.” Babs gripped Hallie’s arm with the strength of a determined mother. “I promised Stephanie a weddingcake with a fountain and you promised me she could have it. Now that horrible Jacques person is leaving because of the hurricane and the cake isn’t ready and something will have to be done.”
Hallie tried for a confident, leave-it-to-me tone of voice. “I’ll take care of it, Mrs. Brewster. But you’re going to have to trust me. Jacques is temperamental and he takes special handling. Let me do the talking. Please.”
“All right, but when we leave his office, I want to have that cake in my pocket. Not literally, of course, but you understand my meaning.”
“Perfectly,” Hallie said.
Unfortunately, Jacques didn’t understand the first thing about mothers of brides. Within two minutes of their arrival in his office, he referred to Babs as a fruitcake—pronouncing it in four insulting syllables. Not an auspicious beginning. Two minutes later, Babs accused him of being a kitchen nazi with the IQ of an apple strudel, and it was all downhill from there. Hallie wanted to tell them both they didn’t have a brain cell to spare between them. But diplomacy was her stockin-trade and she jumped in decisively when the opportunity came.
“We’re going to stop yelling and start talking,” she announced. “Mrs. Brewster? Let me talk to our chef in private. Jacques, sit down before your blood pressure hits the danger zone.” Amazingly, they did as directed, and Hallie reopened the negotiations, resigning herself to the hassle of shipping chocolate-marshmallow cookies to the island for the rest of her life.
But Jacques’s fondness for Mallomars had taken a back seat to his aversion to hurricanes, and when she left his office, she had nothing in her muumuu pocket except a recipe for disaster.
“YOU’D BETTER COME with me.” Dan Brewster cupped Hallie’s elbow and steered her in the direction of the lanai. “Something will have to be done before Babs sees this.”
This was a huge, flapping, hulk of canvas mounded over a mass of perspiring orchids that took up the center portion of the hotel lanai. Harold stood, arms akimbo, ball cap pushed back on his head, lips pursed in a disapproving pucker. “Never seen anything like it,” he said. “About an hour ago, a truck pulls up and the guy tells me he’s delivering flowers. I didn’t think much about it at the time, just told him to take ‘em inside to the concierge and she’d take care of the delivery. Next thing I know, I’m bein“ paged all over the place. Seems like your florist—” he looked at Hallie directly “—is closing shop today and heading inland. So your orchids arrived a day early.”
“Babs isn’t going to be happy about this,” Dan said.
Hallie lifted a corner flap and was nearly jerked off her feet when the wind caught it and billowed the canvas like a giant balloon. Harold grabbed the canvas and Dan grabbed her and the three of them wrestled the thing back to its anchor. “This is going to end in a lawsuit,” Hallie said, feeling the steel of desperation. “And before it’s over, the Brewsters and I will own that florist’s shop.”
Harold shook his head. “Unless you were able to get a better contract than St Peter, that florist is covered against hurricanes and such.” He looked pointedly at the roiling gray sky and white-capped swells. “And whether you believe my bunions or the local weatherman, that there is about to be an act of God.”
“MAYBE YOU SHOULD cancel your appointment” Rik looked up from admiring his nephew to frown at his sister. “That’s a heck of a wind out there, Lynn.”
“Since when did you develop this overweening concern about Mother Nature?”
“I didn’t live in the Amazonian jungle for thirteen years without learning to pay attention to the weather. And this looks bad.”
“I’ll be back before either one of you has time to miss me. Well, before Sam does, at any rate.” Picking one last french fry off her lunch plate, Lynn popped it in her mouth, and began unstrapping Sam from the high chair. He kicked his feet and reached for Rik with a let’s-blow-this-joint expression. Rik lifted Sam out of the chair and up onto his shoulders, where the little dickens grabbed a healthy handful of his uncle’s hair and held on.
“You’re sure he’ll be all right with me?” Rik asked, still wavering between confessing his scheme to Lynn— thereby ensuring she would cancel her appointment and never let him baby-sit Sam again—and telling himself he was worrying way too much about a harmless little joke. A baby fist bopped him on the head and he opted for confession. “Sit back down,” he said. “There’s something I have to ask you.”
“LET ME GET THIS straight.” Lynn leaned across the table where they’d eaten lunch, no longer interested in the leftovers on her plate. “You’re going to save Jack from a loveless marriage by depositing Sam on his doorstep and telling him it’s his baby?”
“I’m not going to tell him,” Rik hedged. “Big Bird is going to.”
“And you think he’s going to believe that?”
“Well, no, probably not, but he’s going to have to give it some thought. And Sam is so darn cute, how can Jack help but realize what he’ll be missing if he goes ahead with this marriage?”
“You may be overestimating your nephew’s charm,” Lynn said as she shifted her whining, wiggling baby from one side of the narrow restaurant booth to the other. She tried to put him back in the high chair and nearly provoked a tantrum for her effort “He isn’t always this adorable.”
Rik wished he didn’t care one way or the other what Jack did to screw up his life. But he did care. A lot. “I knew it was a dumb idea. But I thought…hoped…”
“It is a dumb idea, Rik, and if you weren’t my favorite brother, I’d tell you exactly how stupid it is. But if you expect me to tell you not to pull this nutty scheme, you’re in for a surprise. You understand, of course, that if I didn’t love Jack almost as much as I love you, I’d never agree to the two of you passing my baby back and forth like a football. But I trust you both and I know how carefully and affectionately you treat a football. So as long as you promise me Sam will have constant, caring attention, a clean diaper and his bottle when he wants it, you have my permission to let Jack baby-sit.”
Rik made a face and reached for Sam. “I won’t let anything happen to him,” he promised as he lifted the little guy across the table. “You can depend on that.”
She scooted out of the booth, pulling the diaper bag behind her. “If I couldn’t, believe me, he’d be coming with me.” She waited until they were almost at the door before she hit him with the one question he should have expected all along. “Who’s the girl?”
“Girl,” he repeated. “I don’t know any girls, Lynn. Except you, maybe.”
“Woman, then. Come on, who is she?”
“Who is she who?”
“The person who put that sparkle in your eyes. If you’ve met someone, you’d better tell me.”
“You always ask me this, Lynn, and I always answer the same way.”
“Sparkling eyes are a result of clean living,” she repeated dutifully.
“And B vitamins,” he added. “I despair of ever getting you to remember that part.”
“Well, I despair of ever having a sister-in-law.” She wrinkled her nose in disappointment. “I’d hoped that since you’re starting your new business here and looking for a house to buy that maybe there was a woman involved. I want you to find the right woman, get married and have cousins for Sam. He needs someone to play with, you know.”
“He has Keanu.” Rik raised the baby in the air and blew bubbles on his belly, causing Sam to laugh aloud. “And he has me. Why would he want some other baby stealing the limelight?”
“He just does,” Lynn said. “So any chance he may get a kissing cousin anytime soon?”
Rik tried to look suitably shocked, although the idea was not without appeal. He could imagine a couple of cute kids with their mother’s funny haircut and John Lennon glasses. Whoa. That was moving pretty fast, even for a take-action kind of guy like himself. “No chance, kiddo,” he told Lynn firmly. “I’m already behind the production curve as it is. Even if I got married tomorrow, it would take nine months to deliver a cousin for Sam the Man here. And I’d want to spend a little time just being married before starting a family. That’ll make Sam at least three or four and past the point of caring about a younger cousin, believe me.”
“Which tells me nothing about the current state of your love life.”
“Exactly what I intended.” He held open the door and they walked out of the restaurant and into the sting of the tropical wind. Rik used his body to shield the baby carrier—with Sam tucked inside—from the damp air. “You’re sure it’s all right if Sam spends the afternoon with Jack?”
“You’re the one who sounds uneasy,” Lynn said with a short laugh. “Trust me, Rik, Jack isn’t going to be fooled by this. He knows me. He knows about Sam. It may take him a few minutes to figure this out, but I can’t believe it will take much longer than that.”
“Jack hasn’t seen you since you stopped wearing braids and overalls, and the only picture he’s seen of Sam is the one where you and Keanu are in Washington, D.C., and the three of you are knee-deep in snow. Sam was only three months old then and bundled up so well he could have been a monkey. I don’t think Jack will connect the name with you, either, because I usually refer to Sam as Keanu, Too. So, there’s a chance it will take a while to discover just whose baby this really is.” Rik shrugged. “It’s my only hope of getting Jack to stop and think about what he’s actually doing with his life.”
Lynn slipped her arm in his and pecked him on the cheek. “I’m so proud you’re my brother,” she said. “And I’m so happy you’re going to be living here, where I can see you more than twice a year.”
“I bet you say that to all your brothers.”
“Yeah, I do. You and all those other imaginary siblings we never had.” She caught the handle of the carrier and lifted the blanket so she could kiss Sam goodbye. “You take care of your uncle, you hear? Don’t let him get in any trouble and don’t pay a bit of attention to any story he tells you about me and a rock star, understand?”
“Now you’ve done it,” Rik said, turning the carrier so the contact between mother and baby was lost “Now I’ll have to tell him. Go on to your doctor’s appointment. He’ll be just fine.”
She pinched Rik’s side with firm affection. “You make certain he stays that way.” Then, bowing her head against the wind, she jogged off to her car.
“Okay, Sam, my man,” Rik said to his nephew. “This is our big adventure. I really hope you like Big Bird.”
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Hallie’s voice echoed up the stairwell and Rik jumped a guilty foot Spinning around, he let go his hold on the fire escape door, which clicked shut behind him as he watched her climb the last few steps to reach the landing.
“Babs isn’t out there, is she?” Hallie asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
He shook his head, his vocal cords paralyzed by the start of surprise she’d given him. Or maybe it was the way she looked with her hair combed, but still tousled, her body disguised by the tentlike muumuu and her eyes clear and focused behind the duct-taped glasses. He would have cleared his throat then, but couldn’t because his heart was in it.
“I came up the stairs—thirteen flights—just so she wouldn’t be able to corner me in the elevator.”
“Who?” he asked huskily, lost in the sudden wonder of being near her again.
“Babs. Who else?” Hallie looked at him with concern, then reached for the door, but he stopped her by putting his hand over hers.
“You don’t want to go out there,” he said.
“I don’t?”
“No.” He did not want her walking out and into the discussion going on in the hallway between Jack and a big yellow bird. A delaying tactic was obviously in order, so with no hesitation and a still-racing heartbeat, he kissed Hallie the way he’d been thinking about kissing her all day.
It was better even than he’d imagined. And when he drew back to share a smile with her, she sagged against him, obviously a little weak in the knees, as well. “Where have you been all day?” He caressed her cheek with a gentle stroking of his finger. “I missed you.”
“I’ve been in the hotel all day. So, what are you doing in the fire escape? Are you hiding from Babs, too?”
He shook his head and thought quickly. “It’s, uh…Celeste.”
“Really?”
He nodded for effect and hoped she was buying this. “She…he…came back to get my measurements.”
“That’s odd.”
“It is?”
“Mmm-hmm. She told me she’d fit Dan’s and your tuxes Saturday morning.”
“I don’t see how she…he…can do that.”
Hallie smiled. “It’s only you that needs fitting. She can hem Dan’s trousers and make what few adjustments are needed for you on-site.”
“She…he…didn’t measure me.”
“She eyeballed it.”
“What?”
“She said she has a good eye for size.”
“If my tuxedo is too small, my size and I are going to be offended.”
“You’ll get over it” She reached for the door handle, then paused. “Is Celeste really out there?”
“Let me look.” He cracked the door, checking for Big Bird tracks and making certain Hallie couldn’t see anything except him, blocking her view. “Whew! She’s gone”
“I can’t imagine what she was doing back here, anyway.”
“Probably looking for her tape measure.”
Hallie sighed. “I have her tape measure because I was supposed to measure you.”
He closed the door. “You,” he said, tapping her lightly on the chin, “may measure me anytime, anywhere, any way you want.”
“Appealing,” she said. “But not on my schedule.”
“Cancel something.” He reached for her. “Cancel everything for the rest of the day.”
She came up on tiptoe to kiss him and make him all weak in the knees, then she pulled back with a frown. “Get out of my way. I have to bake a cake.”
“What?”
“Jacques the chef has left the hotel. He’s going inland before the hurricane hits.”
“Would that be the hurricane that’s going to miss the island by miles?”
“That’d be the one.”
“Hasn’t he heard the weather reports?”
“He’s been listening to Harold’s bunions.” She tilted her head to the side to look up at him. “Have you ever baked a cake?”
“I’ve made cornbread in a skillet. Does that count?”
“I don’t think Babs will be happy with a cornbread wedding cake. Charles will just have to do the best he can.”
“Charles?”
“The assistant chef.”
“Well, there you have it,” Rik said, pleased to be able to stand here and watch the expressions passing over her face. “You don’t have to bake a cake. Chef Charles will be glad to do it for you.”
“It’s my responsibility to see that Stephanie and Jack get the cake they ordered, and if I have to supervise the entire baking process, then that’s what I’ll do.” She bypassed him entirely and caught the handle, moving him aside as she pulled open the door and stepped into the hallway.
Rik followed her, practicing a speech in his head in case he ran &-fowl of his own plan and had to convince someone he’d never seen Big Bird before in his life. There was one lone yellow feather on the carpet outside Jack’s room, and of course, Hallie saw it
“Wonder where that came from,” she said as she unlocked the door of their room and walked inside.
He picked it up and carried it into the room with him. “It’s from a rare bird. A Storkus Rentalis. That’s the scientific name for Hawaiian chicken.”
Hallie laughed. “I suppose these Hawaiian chickens are migrating to the Big Island and stopped to spend the night at Paradise Bay.”
He shrugged and closed the door. “Well, even chickens get a night out every now and then.”
“And how do you know so much about chickens?” “That’s easy,” he said. “I’m Superman.”
Taking off her glasses in one seductive move, she sauntered slowly toward him. “Superman,” she crooned, playing him like a banjo. “Something very sinful is about to happen to you.”
“My mother warned me about women like you. She said you’d have Kryptonite in your pocket and lust in your heart.” Hallie’s march on his Atlanta didn’t falter. “I’d almost given up hope of ever meeting one, though.”
With a determined look in her eyes, she put her palms against his chest and pushed him onto the bed. Grabbing the hem of her muumuu, she pulled it over her head and Rik lost what little reason he had left
Lost it, that is, until he heard the faint, distant and unmistakable sound of a baby’s cry. Sam. “Well, hell,” he said.