On Wings of Magic (11 page)

“You’ll hurt my feelings if you don’t.” He sat down on the end of the lounge, regarding her thoughtfully. “And I picked that because it reminded me of you.”

She waited a beat, then asked carefully, “I remind you of a carnivorous plant?”

“Sure.” Hawke smiled slowly. “Beautiful, deceptively fragile, and potentially deadly.”

Kendall started to say that she’d been compared to worse things, then realized that she
hadn’t
. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” he responded solemnly.

She decided that if
he
wasn’t going to mention last night’s confession,
she
certainly wasn’t. It probably hadn’t meant anything to him anyway. In spite of what she’d thought. “I’m trying to read this book, you know,” she pointed out.

“Sorry.” He got to his feet. “I just came to say good-bye.”

“You—you’re leaving?” It was the last thing she had expected.

The response seemed to satisfy him. “For a couple of days. I have some business in Florida. Will you miss me?”

“Dreadfully!” she snapped, angry at herself for the betraying uncertainty. “How soon are you leaving?”

“Right away.” He was amused now. “Helicopter to Nassau, then a plane to Miami.”

“Have a nice trip.” Resolutely, she went back to the book.

“Not so fast.” He reached down to grip her upper arms firmly, pulling her effortlessly to her feet. “Not without a kiss good-bye.”

“Hawke!” she protested as he removed her sunglasses and tossed them onto the lounge. “I can’t—I won’t—dammit, stop manhandling me!”

He took the book away from her and tossed it on the lounge. “A kiss for luck,” he told her reproachfully. “It’s a savage world out there. Never know what I might run into. Isn’t a maiden supposed to give her knight a kiss for luck?”

“No,” Kendall said a little desperately. “She gives him a scarf to wear into battle. But since you’re
not
my knight, you’re
not
going into battle, and I
don’t
happen to have a scarf handy, it doesn’t really matter!”

“A kiss will do.”

She stared up at him for a moment, then muttered “Oh, hell.” And she swayed toward him, her face lifted invitingly.

There was a slight pause, and then Hawke kissed her. On the forehead. Chastely. Just like a knight in the age of chivalry. If Kendall had been holding something heavy, she would have hit him with it.

“Bye, honey.” His deep voice was threaded with laughter.

Kendall sank down on the lounge as he released her arms, not trusting herself to speak. And it didn’t help her temper one bit to see that several hotel guests had watched the little scene with great interest.

Hawke started to turn away, then looked back at her as though he’d had a sudden thought. “What would you like me to bring you from Florida?” he asked cheerfully.

She picked up her sunglasses from the lounge and shoved them onto her nose. “That,” she told him carefully, “is a dangerous question to ask me right now.”

“Oh.” His lips twitched slightly. “Sorry. HI just find something on my own; how’s that?”

“Don’t go to any trouble on my account,” she advised him politely.

Grinning, he started toward the hotel, throwing one last remark over his shoulder. “Don’t forget me, now!”

“Fat chance,” Kendall muttered to herself. Resolutely, she picked up her novel again and began to read. Half an hour later, still reading the same page, she swore softly and dropped the novel into her beachbag. And she didn’t even feel a twinge of dismay when she realized that the book had completely lost its appeal.

She rose from the lounge, pulled on her shorts and T-shirt, and headed for the hotel, swinging the beachbag as though she wanted to throw it at someone. Unfortunately, the target she was longing for had already left.

There was a package waiting for her at the desk. It was about five inches square, three inches deep, and wrapped in glittering silver paper. And there was a small card tucked into a snowy envelope. Kendall didn’t say a word as she accepted the package from Rick. She even resisted an impulse to tear into the envelope when she was alone in the elevator.

Common sense told her it was from Hawke. Temper told her to drop it from her balcony. Dignity and pride commanded her to place the gift in his suite—unopened. Curiosity ate at her.

Alone in her suite, Kendall dropped her beachbag, sank on to the sofa, and hastily opened the envelope.
This is your symbol
, he’d written on the card, the handwriting as bold and decisive as the man himself.
A creature of myth and legend, lovely and fragile
…
and just slightly unreal. Hawke
.

Kendall was almost afraid to open the box. But she did. And a soft “Oh!” escaped her as she carefully lifted the delicate cut-glass unicorn from the tissue paper. It was absolutely beautiful.

She wanted to cry. Half angrily, she realized that there always seemed to be a cloudburst just over the horizon these days. Oh, God, what was the man
doing
to her? He made her laugh, made her angry, made her cry. In two short days he’d literally turned her life upside down.

Never in her life had she known a man like him. When most men wooed a woman, they sent flowers, candy, perfume. Not Hawke. He sent seashells. And carnivorous plants in expensive copper bowls. And unicorns. What had he told her? That knowing him would be an education? Damn the man—right again.

Kendall cradled the glass creature in her hands and stared down at it. Beautiful things such as this were her weakness, but she had never gotten the chance to collect them. Living as she did, out of suitcases, it just wasn’t practical. Had he guessed?

She wondered vaguely if he had written the note with a straight face. And knew that he had. He was a strange man, Hawke Madison. She had already noticed that his staff treated him with the utmost respect. Instinct told her that he would be formidable indeed if he were roused to temper. He’d come of age
in a brutal war and, God knew, that would harden a man.

And yet … the sensitivity was there. He loved children. He could cheerfully sweep a woman off her feet and carry her through a crowded lobby or bar. He could talk of fairy tales and myths. He could hold her gently in his arms as she cried, sharing the pain of grief and a nightmare.

A romantic man. A
storybook
romantic man. And what woman could resist that?

Kendall wasn’t angry with him any longer—if, indeed, she had ever been angry in the first place. And that was a bad sign. A very bad sign.

Rick escorted her to dinner that night—something that Kendall didn’t question until they were at their table. She found Rick to be uncomplicated next to his friend and employer, and had no trouble at all in talking to him. The conversation flowed easily between them.

Kendall’s question was calm, but she timed it so that Rick was somewhat involved with eating. “Did Hawke tell you to do this?”

Her escort choked and hastily reached for his wineglass, then looked at her with watering, faintly accusing eyes. “Of course not,” he said stoutly.

He was a bad liar.

She sighed and went on with her meal, not even able to conjure up a flash of temper. And her involuntary thought of
Damn the man!
was more rueful than anything else. Her thoughts were distracted, though, when Rick began to speak.

“You know, you’re not at all what I thought you
were,” he commented slowly, watching her. “When you came in the other day, I thought you were—well—” He made a vague gesture.

“The phrase,” Kendall told him dryly, “is ‘dumb blonde.’ A little game I used to play.”

“Did you enjoy the game?” His brown eyes gleamed cheerfully.

“Immensely. I never had to carry my own luggage.”

“Then why did you stop?” Rick smiled faintly. “Hawke?”

Staring down at the fork in her hand, Kendall only then noticed that it was monogramed. Stamped into the silver was a tiny bird. It might have been an eagle. Or even a particularly handsome chicken. Except that it was a hawk. It was very discreet; she never would have noticed it except that the subject tended to prey on her mind.

Looking up at Rick, she gave a shrug and asked in a defeated tone, “Can we please talk about something else?”

Trying unsuccessfully to hide his grin, Rick obligingly changed the subject.

The next two days were a somewhat trying test of Kendall’s composure. Hawke might not have been present in the flesh, but his spirit was slowly boxing her in. Reminders of him were everywhere. Hotel stationery stamped with a tiny hawk. The tennis racket she used to play tennis with Rick—again, stamped with a hawk. Small emblems on the clothing of the hotel staff.

Escaping from the hotel on the second day, Kendall went to the orphanage and played with the children for a while, then walked back through the
village. Stopping before the window of a gift shop, she stared wryly at two figurines of hawks. The first was a somewhat savage hawk clasping a thankfully unidentified victim in his talons. The second—shaking Kendall oddly—was a more sensitive scene. Two hawks hovering over a nest filled with their young.

Turning hastily away, she came face-to-face with a sign hanging over the doorway of a nearby building. The Hawk’s Nest Tavern.

It was enough to drive a woman crazy.

And then there were the gifts. They were always waiting for her at the desk—although there were no more notes. On the first day there was one delivered to her by Rick as she was passing the desk on her way back from breakfast. It was a stained-glass sun-catcher, complete with a fine chain to hang it in a window. The workmanship was exquisite, and the scene was a rainbow—complete with a pot of gold. There was a tiny bird on the pot.

On the second day there was another suncatcher—this time with a unicorn beneath the rainbow and prancing toward the pot of gold. After dinner she was given another silver-wrapped box. This one held a small brass paperweight bearing another unicorn.

By the morning of the third day Kendall was wishing desperately for Hawke to come back just so she could strangle him. It wasn’t that she was angry. It would have been
impossible
to be angered by such wonderfully romantic gifts.

Still, she wanted to strangle him. He’d begun this absurd courtship beneath the eyes of a hotel full of strangers, and everyone was interested in the outcome. And they were no longer strangers. She’d been approached by all of them at one time or another.
Some just said hello, others told her soothingly that Mr. Madison would soon return. The men were a bit wary—apparently considering her staked out as private property—and the women were openly envious.

Some, like Amanda Foster, offered advice on how to tether a hawk. Others merely smiled in an unusually friendly manner. It was like living in a very small town.

So Kendall was feeling a bit desperate as she approached the desk in the lobby early on the third morning. With a calm expression belied by the frantic gleam in her blue-green eyes, she leaned against the desk and looked steadily at Rick.

He reached beneath the desk and pulled out another package.

Kendall propped both elbows on the desk and covered her face with her hands. “What’s he trying to do to me?” she moaned.

“I think you know!” Rick was openly laughing.

She gave him a goaded stare and tore into the package. It was a set of delicate wind chimes, made of seashells. Kendall stared at them for a moment, then carefully put them back into the box. “How did he know I loved wind chimes?” she asked herself.

Rick took it upon himself to offer an answer. “Maybe he reads minds.”

“Oh, God. That
would
be the final straw.” Gathering up her package, Kendall started to turn away, then hesitated. “I think I’ll have breakfast in my room. Rick, could you send up a very small bowl of ground hamburger?”

“For breakfast?” He looked startled.

“No. I’ll call room service for my breakfast.”

“Oh. For Gypsy?” Like the rest of the staff, Rick
had become fairly well acquainted with Kendall’s feline pet.

Kendall sighed. “No. For my plant. There are very few flies in this hotel.” She headed for the elevator, not noticing the puzzled stare that followed her.

She fed her plant, her cat, and herself, then set the plant on the balcony for sun and took Gypsy for a walk on the beach. The rest of the day was spent in her suite, where she spent a great deal of time staring at Hawke’s presents.

And she had an awful feeling that she was going down for the third time. She’d been out of her depth going in—and she had
known
it. Just her luck to run into an “alpha” male on this relatively small island. Clash of the Titans, indeed. She was a very small Titan compared to Hawke.

Things were happening much too fast. She had a crazy impression of being inside a spiraling tunnel, rushing toward the bottom too rapidly to stop herself. And she didn’t know what lay at the bottom.

Even supposing that Hawke had more in mind than a summer fling—and he’d never hinted that he did—what then? In the fairy tales it was always phrased “And they lived happily ever after.” But Kendall had always wondered what happened after the story was ended.

Silly thing for a grown woman to wonder. But perhaps the question grew out of the years when Kendall had been learning about the real world at a time when other little girls had been playing with dolls and having tea parties.

And that was probably why Hawke’s “storybook” romance was touching her so deeply. Having outgrown childish fantasies, few adults were granted
the opportunity to wander through fairy tales and myths. But the little girl who had grown up too quickly still wondered what would happen when the romance came to an end.

In a thoughtful mood Kendall got ready for dinner that night. She’d heard nothing from Hawke, and presumed that he hadn’t yet returned from his trip. She had a feeling, though, that he would show up sometime that night.

With that in mind she studied her wardrobe carefully. Closing her ears to the little voice warning that she’d be sorry, she chose the sexiest dress in her closet. It was made of shimmering material, blue-green in color, and made her eyes look as changeable and mysterious as the sea. The skirt was open in the front nearly to her thighs. And the dress itself … it was backless, and two narrow straps rose from the waist to barely cover the tips of her breasts. The resulting plunging neckline plunged all the way to her navel.