On Wings of Magic (3 page)

“Competition?” she asked innocently.

“Friendly competition.” He laughed. “They cater more to families. With the casino here, we attract a slightly more sophisticated crowd.”

Kendall looked toward the shallow end of the pool, where several dark-skinned children were playing noisily, and then looked back at Hawke with a questioning lift of her brows.

“Kids from the village,” he explained with a slight shrug. “I let them use the pool in the afternoons.” He gestured toward one of the little boys. “Robbie—the one who ran into you in the lobby.”

Looking back at the children, Kendall noted silently that Robbie hadn’t, apparently, been scolded or forbidden the pool for nearly knocking down a guest. A little thing, perhaps, but it told Kendall a great deal. Hawke liked kids. She was vaguely irritated with herself for finding something they had in common.

“Excuse me, Hawke.” A fair-haired man with an easy smile was gazing down at them both apologetically. “You confirmed some of these reservations personally, and I need to know—”

“Of course, Rick,” Hawke interrupted calmly,
reaching for the sheaf of papers in the other man’s hand. “Kendall, this is my manager, Rick Evans. Rick—Kendall James,” he said absently as his eyes scanned the papers.

Kendall smiled at the manager. “Mr. Evans. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Miss James.” His cheerful brown eyes swept her bikini-clad figure with pure masculine appreciation, even as they laughed in familiarity. “My pleasure—believe me!”

Wishing vaguely that Rick’s boss could be as uncomplicated as he was, Kendall listened as they began going over the reservations list. A few minutes later she absently pushed her sunglasses up to rest on top of her head, her gaze fixed on the children in the pool as she tuned out the conversation going on beside her. She watched the kids splashing happily and, unbidden, her mind wondered how some children could have so much and others so little. Did any of these happy, healthy kids know what it meant to barely have enough, water to drink and none to wash in? Surrounded by what most people would call paradise, did they know that there were children in the world who lived on a heartbeat, hungry and cold and scared in war-torn lands?

A tiny face, pinched from too many years of an empty belly, swam before her inner eye. A face with a smile like sunshine and brown eyes sweet enough to melt a stone statue, eyes innocent and loving in spite of the cruelties they had seen…

Kendall winced and gently pushed the face and the memory back into the dark corner of her mind once again. She wasn’t ready to face that. Not yet.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

Startled, she surfaced from an inescapable past into an equally inescapable present. The manager had gone; she and Hawke were alone. And his gray eyes were filled with concern. “N-nothing.” She corrected the stammer immediately, astonished that her lifelong control was slipping rapidly, inexplicably from her grasp. “What could be wrong?”

“I don’t know.” His deep voice was serious. “You looked so sad. And there was something … old in your eyes.”

“Old?” Kendall laughed lightly, more shaken than she wanted to admit—even to herself. Deliberately misunderstanding him, she went on sweetly. “I’m only twenty-five, Hawke—my eyes can’t possibly be any older than that.”

For a moment she thought that he was going to press her for a reasonable answer to his question. But then heavy lids dropped to veil his strange eyes. “My mistake,” he murmured with an almost imperceptible hint of dryness in his tone. “It must have been sunlight glinting off the water. Or something.”

A wise little voice inside Kendall warned that she could land herself in a hell of a lot of trouble by playing too dumb with this man. For the first time in many years, Kendall ignored the voice. Her motivation for the decision wasn’t very rational, and the little voice sneered at her.

She was afraid of Hawke Madison. Not physically. She was afraid because her body was sending strange signals to her brain, because his eyes were making wordless promises. She was afraid because he saw too much and sensed even more, because he was damnably attractive. Because he was an “alpha” male, and she didn’t know how to cope with him. She was
afraid because the desire she saw in his eyes was echoed by nameless yearnings in herself, and that had never—ever—happened before.

And she clung to her charade because it possessed the comforting familiarity of a well-worn shoe.

“Have you always traveled with your father?” he asked casually, breaking into her thoughts.

They were back to square one. Dammit. “Ever since I was ten,” she answered sunnily.

“And your mother?”

Kendall reached up to pull her sunglasses back into place. “She died when I was five.” Before he could make any response, she went on chattily. “What about you, Hawke? You’re obviously American—how did you wind up here in paradise?”

He sat back in his lounge and shrugged slightly, the gray eyes still hooded. “I saw quite a bit of the world when I was in the army. When I got out, it seemed natural to go into the hotel business; my family owns a string of hotels in the States. I came here, liked the area, and bought this hotel. That was five years ago.”

With a certain deliberation he went on. “I’m thirty-four, unmarried, reasonably intelligent. My favorite color is green, I love Italian food and mood music, children and animals. I don’t bite my nails, grind my teeth, or snore.”

Trying not to laugh, she said, “Well … that takes care of the vital statistics.”

“I’ve also recently discovered a weakness for pint-size blondes.”

“How recently?” she demanded suspiciously, forgetting the role she was supposed to be playing.

“A few hours ago. At precisely one-fifteen, as a matter of fact.” His deep voice was amused, but not in the least teasing.

Kendall didn’t have to think back to remember where she had been at one-fifteen. She’d been walking through the door of this hotel. “Weaknesses like that could become dangerous,” she retorted, reaching to brush a strand of drying blond hair away from her face.

“Only if a man doesn’t know what he’s getting into. I do.”

Annoyed by the certainty in his voice, and not entirely sure that they weren’t talking at cross-purposes, Kendall hastily reverted to the scatterbrained tourist. “I’ll bet you’ve said exactly the same thing to hundreds of other women since you started running this hotel!” she exclaimed with a giggle.

“Nope. Just you.”

“Didn’t that line work with the others?”

“I didn’t try it.” He leaned forward suddenly, heavy lids lifting to reveal gray eyes glittering with a curious laughing intensity. “Because it isn’t a line, Kendall. Consider yourself warned—I’m going to do my damnedest to sweep you right off your feet.”

She stared at him blankly for a moment. Right offhand the only thing she could have said about his tactics was that they were certainly original. Hadn’t he just announced his intention of seducing her? “I—consider myself warned,” she managed to say at last, only dimly noticing the breathlessness of her voice.

Having made his point, Hawke—oddly enough—didn’t press. He started talking casually about the island, promising cheerfully to take her sailing in a
few days. Or shopping or sight-seeing—whatever she liked. The moment of intensity had passed.

Kendall was grateful for the opportunity to relax a bit—although her instincts warned against relaxing too much around this man. She responded to him lightly, talking a great deal without saying very much. Absently, she noticed the children being herded away from the pool by a tanned young man—apparently a lifeguard—and didn’t think much about it when one of them slipped away from the group.

The poolside guests had all headed back inside sometime before, and Kendall was beginning to think about going in herself. As she chattered brightly, her eyes wandered around the now-deserted pool and back to Hawke’s face. And then something clicked in her mind, and she knew that the dark shape near the pool’s bottom didn’t belong there. In a single motion she ripped the sunglasses off and rose to her feet, her chatter shutting off as though a switch had been thrown. Two swift steps took her to the edge of the pool, and she dived cleanly, intent only on reaching the child in time.

Chapter 2

It was Robbie, the little boy who had run into her in the lobby, and Kendall’s heart clenched in fear even as she caught him and propelled them both to the surface. She was barely aware of strong hands reaching for the boy as they reached the edge of the pool, allowing Hawke to pull him from the water as she herself hastily climbed up onto the tiles. He barely had time to lay the still child gently on the tiles before Kendall was there, immediately beginning the resuscitation techniques she’d been taught long ago.

Unaware that a shocked, silent crowd had gathered, Kendall worked grimly. Silently, fiercely, she vowed that she would not allow another child to die if she could help it. “Breathe,” she whispered, utterly determined.
“Breathe
, dammit!”

At last the boy coughed weakly and retched, and Kendall rolled him onto his side, thumping him on
the back to expel the last of the water. She was too relieved to notice the buzz of admiring conversation from the surrounding group, feeling a tremor possess her now, in the aftermath of unbearable tension. She held the scared, sobbing child to her breast, murmuring soothingly until he was relatively calm.

“I’ll take him, Miss James.” It was Hawke’s manager, Rick, speaking in a gruff voice as he stepped forward. “Come on, Robbie—let’s go inside and get you dried off.”

Kendall surrendered the child reluctantly, her heart touched by the way he clung to her. She looked up as Rick carried the boy toward the hotel, and the first thing she saw was the admiration glinting in Hawke’s darkening gaze. Admiration and something else.

Softly, he asked, “Where did you learn that, Kendall?”

She glanced at the circle of inquiring faces and smiled brightly. “Well,” she replied in an earnest, confiding tone, “I used to date a lifeguard. And he needed a
lot
of practice!”

It was the right thing to say. Laughing, the group broke up, most of them heading back into the hotel. Avoiding Hawke’s thoughtful gaze, Kendall walked over to her cover-up—still lying on the tiles—and casually put it on.

“Father Thomas will want to thank you,” Hawke said as he moved slowly toward her.

“Father Thomas?” She stepped into her thongs and reached to get her sunglasses and drop them into the beachbag.

“He runs the orphanage near here. Robbie’s one of his kids.”

Kendall felt her thinly healed wound throb in pain. Another orphan. Did it even the score somehow? she wondered dimly. One orphan had died because of her, and another had lived—because of her. Did it make up for … No. Nothing could ever make up for the loss of a precious life. Nothing…

“Kendall?”

She felt hands holding her shoulders in a gentle grip, and stared blankly up at Hawke’s concerned face. “You’ve got that look in your eyes again,” he said huskily. “That sad, hurting look. Kendall—”

Her eyes felt dry, scratchy. She wanted, suddenly, to cry. She wanted to throw herself on this man’s broad chest and sob her heart out. But she couldn’t. The tears were dammed up somewhere inside of her. Stepping back from him with fragile dignity, she clutched her beachbag firmly. “I think—that I’ll go and lie down before dinner,” she announced. “I’m very tired.”

He didn’t try to stop her or go with her, but Kendall could feel his eyes boring into her back all the way to the hotel doors. By the time she reached her room, she was in control again, although too tired to think about much of anything.

She took a shower and washed her hair, then slipped into a loose robe and went into the bedroom to find her dryer. Deliberately, she kept her mind blank while she dried her hair, unwilling to probe old wounds or wonder if she was about to acquire new ones.

Someone knocked on the door as she was putting the dryer away, and Kendall frowned as she checked her watch on the dresser. After five. She crossed the
room to open the door, feeling her heart begin to beat unaccountably fast.

A red-jacketed waiter immediately swept in, propelling a small cart in front of him.

“But—I didn’t order anything,” Kendall protested blankly.

“Compliments of Mr. Madison, Miss James.” The young waiter grinned engagingly as he gestured to the small plate of sandwiches and pitcher of iced tea on the cart. “He said to tell you that dinner would be served at eight downstairs.”

Kendall didn’t tell him that she’d read the hotel’s brochure and knew very well when dinner would be served. She stepped closer to the cart and pointed to a small bowl. “And this?”

“Milk.” The young man glanced rather warily at the spotted cat lying on the foot of the bed and staring at him balefully. “Mr. Madison sent it up for your cat.”

“I see.” She smiled at him sweetly. “Would you—express my appreciation to Mr. Madison, please?”

“Of course, Miss James.” He started for the door.

“Just a minute—” Kendall reached for her purse, but the waiter was shaking his head.

“Mr. Madison took care of it, miss.” He closed the door quietly behind him.