Wouldn’t it be wonderful to escape to a Caribbean paradise island? Imagine it: palm-fringed beaches, turquoise lagoons, hummingbirds sipping honey from deep-throated flowers. We could leave our troubles behind and indulge our dreams in this idyllic place.
Or could we?
That’s exactly what Jessie hopes to do when she leaves the UK for warmer shores, but things turn out to be not quite so peaceful in paradise as she might have hoped for.
Trouble seems to follow her brother around, for one thing, and her father adds his two-pennyworth, but the biggest headache of all comes in the form of a heartbreaker doctor who seems to have his sights firmly fixed on her.
Will Jessie and José manage to sort out their problems? Well, this is a magical island, after all …
With love
Joanna
When JOANNA NEIL discovered Mills & Boon®, her lifelong addiction to reading crystallised into an exciting new career writing Medical Romance™. Her characters are probably the outcome of her varied lifestyle, which includes working as a clerk, typist, nurse and infant teacher. She enjoys dressmaking and cooking at her Leicestershire home. Her family includes a husband, son and daughter, an exuberant yellow Labrador and two slightly crazed cockatiels. She currently works with a team of tutors at her local education centre to provide creative writing workshops for people interested in exploring their own writing ambitions.
Temptation in Paradise
Joanna Neil
Table of Contents
Dear Reader
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘I’M REALLY GLAD you decided to come out to the Caribbean, Jessie.’
Ben raised his voice above the sound of merrymaking going on inside the house immediately behind them, and for a moment or two his expression was solemn.
‘I didn’t expect you to come, you know—it must have taken a lot of sorting out and I feel really bad about pouring out my troubles to you and putting pressure on you that way. I shouldn’t have done it.’
He pressed his lips together in a rueful grimace.
‘You had enough on your plate back in London, and I know I ought to have kept things to myself, but I wasn’t thinking properly. I just needed to talk to you. Somehow, you always manage to make me feel better when I’m at my lowest.’
Jessie reached for his hand. ‘You’re my brother,’ she said softly. ‘I’ll always be there for you. You can depend on it.’
He gave her fingers an answering squeeze. ‘I’ll do the same for you, Jessie. You’ll see.’
‘I know you will,’ she said.
They were sitting on the terrace of a beautiful house, facing the sea, the darkness lit by flickering golden light from tiki torches planted at intervals along the paths and among the shrubbery. French doors opened out on to the patio to let the balmy tropical air circulate through the house, and in the background the heavy, rhythmic sound of steel drums beat out a lively calypso melody.
Inside the house, people were dancing, just as Jessie had been doing a short while ago with a number of eager partners. She hadn’t taken any of them up on their pleas for future romantic dates. Having her fingers burned back home had been warning enough and she wasn’t looking to get caught out that way again. As for the rest of the partygoers, they were chatting or helping themselves to the delicious food that had been set out on the island bar in the kitchen.
For now, though, Jessie just wanted to breathe in the night air and spend some time with her brother.
‘I feel as though I’ve landed in paradise,’ she said, sighing with contentment. ‘The island is incredible, fantastic. And as for this house, it’s so lovely—the owner must be very trusting to allow your friends to throw a party here while he’s away.’
‘I suppose so.’ Ben frowned, as though he hadn’t thought about it before now. ‘Anyway, Zach and Eric said they had his blessing. But, then, we’ve been renovating the place for him for the last couple of weeks—he let us have the keys so we could come and go as we pleased. I think he probably knows by now that we can be trusted.’
‘I guess so.’ She was puzzled. ‘Is that how long you’ve worked for him—a couple of weeks?’ It didn’t seem long enough for a man to decide he could safely leave his home in the hands of strangers.
‘Yes. I had to find work quickly after Dad kicked me out, and they needed an extra man on the team to do the labouring. Dr Benitez—the owner—already knew me because I’ve been helping out with the diving for the coral reef study alongside him in my spare time, so he set me on. He said I could do some work on his other properties when the renovations here were finished. He has a building company and rents out the properties once they’ve been brought up to a good standard.’
‘It’s good you were able to find something so soon.’ It sounded as though his new employer, Dr Benitez, was a wealthy, powerful individual—some kind of marine biologist who also had a property portfolio. It was good that Ben had landed on his feet.
She looked at her brother. He was barely nineteen, well muscled and fit from working out, but his appearance disguised the fact that he was young for his years and was still racked by the legacy of a troubled childhood. Of course, they’d both been affected by the break-up of their parents’ marriage, but Ben had only been eleven when it had happened, and his whole world had been turned upside down. Perhaps Jessie, being a few years older, had managed to handle the situation better.
Their mother had been devastated by the divorce, and had retreated into a world of her own, leaving Jessie, seventeen years old at the time, to do what she could to take care of her brother and support him emotionally. She’d carried on doing that while she’d been at medical school, being able to go on living at home to care for him and her mother, but for a long time Ben had struggled. He’d tried desperately to hold on to the image of a father figure, but it had all been in vain. In the end his hopes