“Cynthia Forsythe,” she chided herself inwardly, her teeth beginning to chatter. “You should have known you were the least likely person to have an adventure!”
Rick Barnett had come to love the night. It protected him from people’s curious stares, but it was more than that.
Almost in compensation for the damage to his left eye, his right one had developed quite amazing nocturnal vision. At night, it felt as though he had a sixth sense that warned him of obstacles before he even saw them. It wasn’t perfect, he still had a tendency to bash himself on his blind left side, but it was better than during the day, when he often felt he was listing crazily, unbalanced and uneasy with his restricted vision.
Tonight, he had come to scout sites for the chapel. Ms. Montrose, that strange old woman with a young woman’s eyes, an astonishing color of blue-violet, had mentioned a number of possible locations to him, but he had checked them all out and none had spoken to him.
Perhaps accepting the commission to design and build a wedding chapel had been a mistake.
He was a cynical man by nature. He had been even before the accident that had blinded him, laid waste to half his face, and crushed his larynx so that his voice was a harsh growl, almost animallike. Now he was more so, particularly given how rapidly the female of the species assessed the damage to his face and ran the other way. Six months since the accident. His calendar was empty; the lights on his message machine did not blink; his phone did not ring. He had been seeing a woman, fairly seriously, at the time of the accident. She had abandoned ship and when he looked at himself in the mirror he did not blame her.
The doctors told him that eventually the scarring would fade and he would learn to compensate for the loss of half his vision.
Eventually.
There would be no repair for his voice.
Meanwhile, the accident had left him even more hardened than he had been before, only now he wasn’t even attractive. So, he certainly did not believe in anything as ethereal as happily-ever-after.
The truth was, Rick Barnett was not sure what he believed in anymore.
As if his life didn’t feel hellish enough, he’d had to spot Cynthia Forsythe at this very resort? What were the chances of that? The gods seemed to be having quite a good chuckle at his expense!
Once he would have loved to run into her, the girl who had scorned his high-school advances because he was from the wrong side of the tracks. Once he would have loved to introduce her to some of the old-money beauties who clung to his arm and stared into his face as if they could not get enough of him.
But now? He did not want to see Cynthia. He hoped she’d be leaving La Torchere soon and their paths would not cross before that happened.
Rick found himself on a bluff, a rocky outcropping west of the beach, and the hair raised suddenly on the back of his neck. This place did not have the manicured feel of the rest of the resort. It had been left natural. A place of rocks and trees, the landscape rugged and untamed.
He was not sure how he knew, but he knew. This was it. This was where the chapel would go. Was it hypocritical for a man who had no belief in romance, nor in the power of love, to build a wedding chapel?
Probably.
And yet, as he stood here, on this piece of ground, he could almost feel the chapel forming around him. The spirit of it, for no vision of the building itself came to him. He just knew he would put it here, on this rock bluff, facing the sea and all its mysteries.
He loved to build. That did not mean he had to believe in love.
A beautiful, carefree feminine laugh floated over the night air. The hackles on the back of his neck rose again. It was almost as though the gods were laughing at his refusal to believe in love.
It was nonsense, of course. When he walked to the edge of the bluff, he could see the water rippling around a woman who was swimming, alone, in the bay. She laughed again, and the sound tickled along his spine.
Good God. Cynthia?
He would know her laugh anywhere. He had heard it, the robust joyousness of it, a long time ago when she had had her cheek pressed hard into the black leather of his jacket, when her arms had been curled tight around him.
For a moment, he could taste the bitterness of her rejection, and it combined with all the other rejections he had received recently.
He squinted at her, her body a pool of light in a sea of darkness. Those unusual, glow-in-the-dark sea creatures lit the water around her so that it looked as though she was swimming in the sky, not the ocean.
That sixth sense, so finely honed, filled in what he could not see. Cynthia-Miss-Snooty-Forsythe was swimming in the buff.
It was childish and vindictive, and Rick Barnett didn’t give a damn. It was payback time. For her snub of him, for all the snubs of beautiful women who now found him unworthy, he was exacting revenge. Nothing major. Small but satisfying.
He made his way off the bluff to the beach. It was even better than he thought. Her clothes were in an untidy bundle on the sand. If he was not mistaken, her bathing suit—black and proper, exactly what the Cynthia he had known would wear—was on the top of the heap.
He propped himself up against a huge piece of driftwood that had washed in and took his time preparing and lighting the cigar.
She noticed him right away, the movement in the water suddenly stilled. Though it was very dark out, he could see the white roundness of her head bobbing as she trod water and tried to think what to do.
He let her think, never letting on that he knew she was there.
He took his time with the cigar, but even so, she said nothing, hoping to outwait him. He laughed to himself at that and put out the cigar. He crossed his arms over his chest. No one could outwait a man who had all the time in the world.
Finally her voice called out, tremulous.
He frowned at the faint tremor. He’d meant to embarrass her, not scare her. On the other hand, maybe she was just cold.
“Excuse me?” she called.
“Yes?” he answered back.
The growl was not what she was expecting, because she was silent for a moment, contemplating. Then she continued.
“You’ve caught me at an awkward moment. Do you think you could leave the beach while I get out of the water?”
“No.” Had he known her own delight in the power of that word only hours before, he might have said it again.
Her attempt at politeness vanished. “A gentleman would.”
“I’m not a gentleman,” Rick assured her, and the rasp of his voice backed him up. In fact these days when he looked in the mirror, a pirate looked back at him, battle-scarred and hard. Miss Snobby would be swimming the other way if she had any idea.
“Look, it would be a shame if I had to report you to the authorities.”
He smiled at that. Authorities on Torchere Key? But the smile faded. She had that same note in her voice that he had always remembered. Blue-blooded. Used to being listened to. Her pronunciation perfect.
“Report me to the authorities?” he said. “I’m enjoying a quiet moment on the beach, perfectly attired, I might add. You’re the one out there with nothing on.”
He heard her gasp.
“How do you know?” she snapped. “It’s dark!”
Despite her combative tone, he heard the plea in her words, and the prayer. She was hoping he hadn’t seen her. Was she every bit the same Miss Priss she had been? Impossible. She was twenty-six years old now. Some man, somewhere, had tasted the honey of her lips, brought