On Wings of Magic (2 page)

Two hours later Kendall had completed her unpacking and cleaned up the mess her pet had made in the beautiful green-tiled bathroom. Leaving her cat to sun herself while leashed on the balcony—where, Kendall hoped, she wouldn’t decide to test her flying ability—Kendall changed into one of her more modest bathing suits and an ankle-length terry cover-up, grabbed her beachbag, and headed for the inviting pool behind the hotel.

Emerging from the elevator in the lobby and pausing to get her bearings, she overheard a snatch of conversation between the desk clerk and one of the bellboys, and felt her interest pique.

“Did you see the gleam in his eye?” the young woman was laughingly asking. “Mark my words— the hawk’s going hunting!”

The blond bellboy responded mournfully. “Yeah—but this time he’s going after a hummingbird! The poor little thing won’t stand a chance. Think we should warn her?”

“And miss what’ll probably be the best entertainment of the summer? No way!”

The elevator doors opened behind her, and Kendall hastily slung the beachbag over her shoulder and crossed the lobby. She smiled sunnily at the pair by the desk, waved, and immediately noted their twin expressions of consternation.
Oh, no!
she thought with rueful amusement.
That means I’m the intended prey!
A hummingbird, huh? Well, she’d probably been called worse. Translated: a pretty, helpless, fluttery creature.

And, quite suddenly, her father’s parting words
to her made far more sense than they had at the time. “Beware of the hawk!” he’d told her with a laugh as she’d boarded the plane in South America. But who was the hawk? And how did her father know him—or know of him?

Kendall had a sudden uneasy feeling that her father had been in one of his infrequent alarmingly scheming moods when he’d chosen this resort for her. And the last time
that
had happened, she’d found herself very nearly engaged. It had taken some fancy footwork to get herself out of the mess, and she’d retaliated by doing some unsubtle matchmaking of her own. Alarmed, the elder James had stopped pushing.

It wasn’t that he wanted to get rid of her and figured that a husband was the best way, Kendall mused wryly as she stepped out into the bright sunlight and headed for an unoccupied lounge by the pool. It was simply her father’s belief—unequivocally stated more than once—that following him, a mining engineer, into some of the more godforsaken areas of the world was not the life he wanted for his daughter. She didn’t really blame him for that; she understood completely. But she enjoyed travel and was perfectly capable of taking care of herself—even her father admitted that.

The past fifteen years
had
complicated her love life, though. And not just because she was rarely in one place long enough to form more than a surface relationship. Through wry experience, Kendall knew that her ability to take care of herself had jarred more than one male ego. It probably had a great deal to do with the fact that she looked so feminine and so ridiculously
helpless, she thought. And her near-constant charade hadn’t helped.

Pushing the thoughts away, Kendall dropped her bag on the lounge she had selected, untied her cover-up, and allowed it to drop to the multicolored tiles surrounding the tremendous pool. She stepped out of her thongs and strolled to the edge of the pool, never noticing that one rather paunchy guest choked on his drink and another grossly offended his female companion by staring at Kendall for a full minute.

The black bikini was the most modest one in Kendall’s wardrobe, but only the liberal-minded would have believed that. The best thing that could have been said for it was that it probably wouldn’t get her arrested. It was a string bikini, with tiny black triangles covering what absolutely had to be covered and not a fraction of an inch more. And since her petite figure was surprisingly voluptuous, the effect was distinctly eye-catching.

Unconcerned with the attention she had attracted, Kendall cautiously stuck one toe in the water, then took a deep breath and dived cleanly off the side. Without pausing, she swam the length of the pool twice, displaying the smooth coordination of a skilled swimmer. Her earlier weariness dissipated by the brisk exercise, she headed for the shallow end of the pool feeling refreshed and alert.

A male hand was extended to help her up the steps, and Kendall took it automatically, her widening eyes fixed in utter fascination on the colorful bird drawn with a skillful hand on the tanned forearm. No doubt about it—it was a hawk.

“Oh,” she murmured, still staring at the tattoo. “Then
that’s
the hawk!”

“No—I am,” returned the amused and startlingly deep masculine voice that obviously owned the tattoo.

“Hawk like the bird?” she inquired innocently, raising her gaze to meet a pair of striking light-gray eyes, and thinking insanely,
Oh, no! Anybody but him!

The dark man from the lobby laughed and assisted her up the steps. “Hawk with an
e
. I’m Hawke Madison, Miss James. I own the hotel.”

“Kendall—please,” she murmured, holding on to her charade with an effort and wondering ruefully if the next few weeks were going to be as restful as she had supposed. Without bothering to dry off, she moved her beachbag and sank down on the lounge, feeling more than a little unnerved and wondering why.

“Only if you’ll call me Hawke.” He sank down on the lounge beside her own, smiling with devastating effect.

Kendall’s veiled gaze swept his muscular length, noting that he had changed out of the suit and into a pair of casual slacks and a knit sport shirt. Trying to ignore the rapid-fire pace of her heart, she said sweetly, “That shouldn’t be hard to remember,” and nodded at the small but colorful tattoo.

One large hand brushed over the hawk as he laughed. “I’m afraid I can’t be held responsible for this, Kendall. A couple of army buddies decided years ago that I should wear my name on my arm, so to speak, and they took care of it.”

“Didn’t it hurt?” she asked curiously.

“To be perfectly truthful, I can’t remember,” he confessed with an absurdly shamefaced expression.

She considered his answer for a moment and bit the inside of her lip to keep from laughing. “You were drunk?”

“They never would have gotten me into the tattoo parlor otherwise,” he explained gravely.

As Hawke talked more about his past, Kendall’s first instinct was to abandon her charade and get to know this fascinating man, but she swiftly discarded the notion. She did
not
want a summer fling, and after overhearing the desk clerk and bellboy in the lobby, she was fairly certain that was all Hawke Madison had in mind. And if she were, by chance, wrong about what he wanted from her, the situation could become dangerous for her peace of mind.

Smiling at him sunnily, she began to chatter, knowing from experience that few things put a man off quicker than an extremely talkative woman. She talked a great deal without saying a thing, sprinkling the one-sided conversation with questions she barely gave Hawke time to answer and jumping from topic to topic bewilderingly.

Half an hour later Hawke was called from the poolside to answer a phone call. Rummaging in her bag for her sunglasses, Kendall shoved them onto her nose and decided a bit grimly that she was definitely in trouble. Hawke Madison had the patience of Job. He’d answered each breathless question with amused indulgence, and seemed fascinated by her empty chatter. Now what?

Kendall wasn’t vain by any means. She knew that men found her to be attractive and she knew that her figure was good. But she’d always admired darkly exotic beauty, and her own reflection in a mirror always
reminded her of a startled kitten. Startled kittens were cute, but they weren’t beautiful.

A lot of men, apparently, liked cute women. Kendall had met some ranging from polished charmers to blunt, few-worded engineers. There had even been an Arabian sheikh who had very nearly swept her off her feet in an unguarded moment. But she had generally managed to emerge scatheless from the romantic interludes.

She had an awful feeling, though, that Hawke wasn’t going to fit into any of her neat little categories. And that meant that past experience wasn’t going to do her a damn bit of good when it came to dealing with him.

It made her distinctly uneasy to be playing a game in which she hadn’t the foggiest idea of the rules. And something told her that Hawke was an excellent gamesman.

So … her safest bet would be to stick with her protective coloration. Play dumb—at least until she figured out the rules of this game. And the stakes…

Hawke returned to her side on the heels of this decision, and she managed to greet him with an unclouded smile. Innocently, she asked, “Should you be taking the time to talk to me like this? I mean—you’re obviously busy, and—”

“I’ll make the time to talk to you, honey,” he replied easily, reclaiming his lounge.

Kendall was tempted to snap that a forty-five-minute acquaintance hardly gave him the right to call her honey, but bit back the words with an inward sigh. It wouldn’t be in character, after all, for her to object. Dammit.

“Besides,” he was going on calmly, “I don’t have much time where you’re concerned, do I? Relationships generally take months to develop, but you’re planning to be here for only a few weeks. I have to move fast if I plan to get anywhere.”

Kendall glared through the shielding sunglasses and wondered if he openly stalked—or was it hunted?—every woman he set his sights on, or if this was simply his tactic for dumb blondes. Either way, she didn’t like it. Abruptly deciding not to be as dumb as all that, she raised one eyebrow above the rim of her glasses and murmured blandly, “Where have I heard that line before?”

“All over the world, I’d imagine,” he responded dryly, a definite gleam in his eye. “Judging by your suitcases, you’ve been pretty nearly everywhere, and men are the same no matter where you go.”

She pulled the sunglasses down her nose and peered over the top of them at him. Ignoring the rueful statement on his own sex, she said with all the sweet innocence she could muster, “I’ve never approved of summer romances, Hawke. They tend to fizzle out as soon as the weather starts to cool.”

“But we’re in the subtropics.” He smiled slowly. “It’s hot all year round.”

Kendall hastily pushed the glasses back up her nose, torn between irritation and amusement and unsure which emotion was showing in her eyes. Oh, she would have to watch herself with this man! She sensed that he was utterly determined … and determined men were dangerous.
Dumb
, she reminded herself sternly.
Play dumb!
“I came here to rest, Hawke,” she told him earnestly.

“Rest from what?” He was smiling, but his eyes were intent.

Caught off guard because he had taken her words literally, Kendall automatically told him the truth. “There was some trouble in South America.”

“South America? I understood you flew into Nassau from Paris.”

Which would teach her not to be so expansive with bellhops and taxi drivers, Kendall thought ruefully. “Oh, I did. But I spent only a week in Paris; before that I was in South America.” She had
no
intention of telling him why she had given in to her father’s demand that she leave South America after the revolution broke out.

“What was in South America? Or is that an indelicate question?”

Kendall couldn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t tell him that—she couldn’t see any reason why she
should
either. “My father,” she heard herself replying. “He’s a mining engineer.”

“I see.” He leaned forward to brush a hovering insect away from her upper thigh, and Kendall felt an unfamiliar shiver radiating outward from the base of her spine. “What kind of trouble, Kendall?”

“A revolution.” The answer came without her volition, and sounded stilted even to her own ears. She stared into the curiously intense gray eyes, and felt suddenly that she had stepped into deep water and something—someone—was trying to pull her under.

It was his eyes, she realized abruptly. This man possessed more power in his eyes than most men could boast of in their entire bodies. Once, some years before, a friend of her father’s had gotten into a
long, involved discussion with Kendall about what he called a “leadership quality” in men. There were some men, he had insisted, who were born to lead. They were “alpha” males, dominant, powerful. Striding through life with absolute self-knowledge and certainty.

Kendall hadn’t really been able to grasp the concept—probably because she hadn’t been able to relate it to anyone she knew. But the man had insisted that
she
was a member of that curious group of dominant personalities. He’d told her that it was her “alpha” instincts that allowed her to play the feather-headed innocent with such ease and to such good effect. She was so certain of herself, he’d said, that she felt no need to prove anything to anyone. And he’d expressed a wistful desire to be a fly on the wall when she finally bumped into an “alpha” male.

He hadn’t warned her what to expect in the unlikely possibility that such an event would occur. But she distinctly remembered him muttering something about the clash of the Titans.

Now she knew what he meant.

Hawke Madison was an “alpha” male. For all his charm and amiable conversation, for all his polished, sophisticated manner—probably garnered in his trade as a hotelier—his was a pose just as deft, and just as unreal, as her own.

Kendall couldn’t help but wonder which of them would abandon the charade first.

She tore her eyes from his with a silent gasp and thanked heaven for the sunglasses. Trying desperately to get the conversation back to unimportant things, she said lightly, “I didn’t expect this island to be so large. How large is it, by the way? When I flew over
from Nassau in that little plane, I just closed my eyes.”

Hawke was still regarding her with that smile that was doing peculiar things to her nervous system. “It’s big,” he murmured, giving Kendall the unsettling impression that his mind was on something else. “There’s a decent-size village a couple of miles away that caters to tourists, half a dozen churches, a nice harbor with sailboats for rent. There’s even another hotel on the other side of the island.”