“Oh yes, lady,” he replied, his deep baritone suddenly adopting a musical Caribbean lilt. “Master lets me feed and tend his fish. Gives me hut to live in, and rum to drink. Fish man very lucky guy.”
“There’s no need to be so offensive. It’s not my fault if the work you do isn’t properly appreciated.” She tipped her head to one side, intrigued by his preoccupation with the task at hand. “Exactly what is it that you’re doing?”
“An egret’s had a go at the koi. I’m repairing the damage.”
“I didn’t know that was possible. How do you do it?”
“I get the fish to come to the surface so that I can treat their injuries.”
“Of course you do,” she said mockingly. “And because they’re obedience trained, they stay put while you bandage them.”
“Not quite. But they stick around long enough for me to disinfect the puncture wounds inflicted by the bird.”
She stepped closer and saw that he wasn’t exaggerating. One fish, over a foot long, was happily nibbling food pellets from one of his hands and, with the other, allowing him to dab some substance on the nasty-looking hole piercing its back.
“You really care about them, don’t you?” she said, impressed despite herself.
“I respect them,” he said. “Some are over fifty years old. They deserve to be well cared for. Is there a reason you’re wandering around the gardens at this hour?”
“I’m looking for a way to get down to the beach. I’d like to go for a swim.”
“What’s wrong with the guest pool?”
“My friend’s still sleeping and I don’t want to disturb her. She hasn’t had a very easy time of things lately.”
“How so? Isn’t she about to marry the man of her dreams?”
“It’s the other man that’s part of the package who’s causing her grief.”
He ran a caressing finger over the back of the fish he’d been tending. “There’s another man in the picture? That hardly bodes well for the marriage.”
“Not that kind of other man. But never mind. I shouldn’t even be discussing the matter with you. Monsieur Beaumont wouldn’t approve.”
“No, Monsieur Beaumont certainly wouldn’t,” he said. “There isn’t a path to the beach on this side of the property. If you want an early swim, I suggest you go up to the main house and use the pool there.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. It’s probably against the rules for a guest to dip her toe in the family pool without invitation.”
“You don’t seem fond of the Beaumonts. Do you know them well?”
“Except for the bridegroom, hardly at all. I haven’t even met the big cheese yet, but what I’ve heard hasn’t exactly swept me off my feet.”
He wiped his hands on the seat of his cutoffs, and jumped lithely to his feet. He was very tall. Very. “The big cheese will be crushed to hear that.”
“Who’s going to tell him—you?”
He laughed, and turned toward her just as the sun lifted over the side of the hill and afforded her first good look at him, and she almost cringed.
This was no common laborer! He had the face of an aristocrat, with high, elegantly carved cheekbones, and a mouth set in the lines of one unaccustomed to suffering fools gladly. His jaw, faintly shadowed, was lean, and his eyes, vivid beneath dark sweeping brows, the bluest she’d ever seen. And she didn’t need an introduction to know his name.
“You don’t work here!” she said, weakly.
“Certainly I do. Very hard, in fact.”
“No, you don’t, and you’re not the fish man. You’re Ethan Beaumont!”
He inclined his head. “And where is it written that I can’t be both?”
Oh, rats! Talk about putting her foot in it! “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“Because it was more informative listening to you running off at the mouth. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about myself?”
“No,” she mumbled, so embarrassed she wanted to die. “I don’t have anything else to say right now.”
“In that case, allow me to escort you up to the house where, at my invitation, you may swim in the pool to your heart’s content.”
“I don’t think I feel like swimming anymore. I think I’ll just go back to the guest house.”
“And disturb the delicate bride-to-be? I won’t hear of it.” He towered over her and took her elbow in a not-to-be-thwarted grip. “Come along, Mademoiselle. Let’s not waste any more time debating the issue. It’s already been settled. By the big cheese.”
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU’RE supposed to be digging for oil in Venezuela,” she panted, struggling to keep up with his long-legged stride.
“We don’t dig, we drill.”
“You know what I mean!”
“Oh yes,” he assured her, the seductive baritone of his voice laced with irony. “You have a way with words which leaves a man in little doubt about their meaning.”
Although she’d sooner have poked hot needles in her eyes than offer an apology, she knew one was called for. “I’m afraid I was out of line, talking to you the way I did when I first saw you, and I’m sorry.”
“You should be. Is it customary in your part of the world to criticize one’s host to his employees?”
The distaste with which he said “your part of the world” made it sound as if she’d emerged from under a very unsavory rock. “No,” she said. “But where I come from, hosts aren’t usually so inhospitable. Nor do they go around impersonating other people.”
“Inhospitable?” His sleekly elegant brows rose in mock surprise. “Your accommodation falls short of your expectations? The food is not to your liking? My staff have treated you discourteously?”
“Dinner was exquisite, your staff couldn’t be kinder or more helpful, and my accommodation,” she replied, thinking of the delicately fashioned iron four-poster bed with its Sea Island cotton sheets, and elegant draperies which more closely resembled silk wedding-veil tulle than mosquito netting, “is everything I could wish for. It’s the atmosphere around here that leaves something to be desired.”
“A sentiment which my future sister-in-law appears to share. Dare I ask why?”
“Let’s just say she’s hardly the poster child for bridal bliss, and leave it at that.”
He held back the fronds of a giant fern and waited for her to pass by. Just there, the path was narrow, an iridescent green lane awash with the scent of the jungle, a thousand hidden flowers—and him.
He smelled of morning and cool water faintly kissed by the tropics. He oozed raw strength, the kind which defied the elements. He would neither wilt under the sun’s heat, nor bend before the storms which swept over the island during hurricane season, and as long as she didn’t look at him, she could prolong the illusion that he was exactly what she’d first assumed him to be: a subordinate born to the grinding, endless toil of working the cotton plantation or tending the gardens.
But one glance at the elegant conformation of bone and muscle underlying the gleaming skin, at the well-shaped hands, the patrician features, and most of all, at the intelligence in those cool, spectacular eyes, and she felt herself dwindle into insignificance. This was a giant of a man, not so much because of his size and