Читать онлайн книгу «Man Overboard» автора Karen Leabo
Man Overboard
Karen Leabo
What Paige Did on Her Vacation… Prim and proper Paige Stovall knew that Harrison Powell was after something… and it certainly wasn't her body! After all, Paige was just a small-town gal on a big-time vacation, not the type that a debonair, carefree bachelor would find appealing. Still, she wouldn't kick Harrison out of her bedroom - if he ever decided to come in… .Harrison was after something, all right. The suave private investigator was searching for some stolen goods, and he was convinced Paige had the loot! The only way he could think of to get near her was to butter her up with loving words and longing glances. Then he made his biggest mistake - he fell for her… even though he was lying to her.
Man Overboard
Karen Leabo
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
One (#uf11b370f-9141-570f-ae9a-0e16cafacf65)
Two (#u5b261221-d3b4-53cb-80d9-ea9d7ce1e495)
Three (#u6c130bd3-73ee-57c5-aa23-c3a8b6077278)
Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
One
Harrison Powell leaned against the railing of the Caribbean Mermaid’s Lido Deck, perusing the stream of passengers boarding below him. His gaze stopped on a tall, slender woman with a short cap of platinum blond hair. “There she is, in the red dress,” he told the man standing beside him.
The other man, James Blair, peered at the woman through binoculars. He issued a low whistle. “That’s her, looking sharp as ever. I can’t believe she’s fifty-eight years old. I thought she was more like forty-five.”
“A face lift never hurts,” Harrison said. His investigation into Aurora Cheevers’s background had uncovered numerous interesting facts about her in addition to the cosmetic surgery. She’d been married and divorced four times; she was addicted to playing the Florida Lottery; and she had a twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Paige, who was even prettier than her mother, though in a much more subtle way.
The most fascinating fact about Aurora, however, was that her extravagant life-style far exceeded her income. Which lent credence to his theory that she was the Caribbean Mermaid’s jewel thief, the one he’d been hired to catch before any adverse publicity could get out.
“Would you stop staring at Aurora through those binoculars?” Harrison said, scowling at James, the ship’s security director. A lot of pressure had been put on James to put an end to the daring thefts, which was why he’d hired Harrison.
“She’s worth staring at, even if she is old enough to be my mother,” James replied in a distracted tone. “Nice legs. You’ll have some competition, I guarantee.”
Harrison grimaced at the reminder of the plan he and James had agreed on. Aurora had a known penchant for younger men. Harrison intended to take advantage of that fact, playing the ardent suitor in order to stay close to her. If he couldn’t catch her in the act, he intended to get inside her cabin and find conclusive evidence that she was the thief he sought.
James had wanted to simply wait for a theft to occur, then search Aurora’s cabin. The ship’s captain could authorize it. But the captain was adamant about protecting his passengers’ privacy. He would not move against Aurora until he saw compelling evidence indicating she was the culprit. It was up to Harrison to provide that evidence.
The role of suitor wasn’t one he looked forward to. His work usually involved behind-the-scenes investigation for the large security firm he worked for, not undercover jobs. But sometimes he didn’t have a choice in which jobs he accepted. This was one of those times.
A younger woman standing next to Aurora caught Harrison’s attention. He couldn’t tell much from this distance, but...no, wait a minute. She did look familiar—petite and shapely, auburn hair that hung thick and rich past her shoulders, a generous mouth.
“Give me those binoculars,” he said, nearly jerking James’s head off as he made a grab for the glasses while the strap was still around the other man’s neck. The moment he observed the magnified image of the woman, his suspicions were confirmed. “That’s Aurora’s daughter, Paige Stovall. What’s she doing here? I thought Aurora always traveled alone.”
“She does. I didn’t know she had a daughter.”
“That’s why you hired me.”
“Are you sure that’s her?”
“I’m sure,” Harrison answered grimly. He’d only seen her once, from a distance, during the two weeks he’d had Aurora under surveillance. But he’d seen enough of Paige to know she was the sort of woman who made his knees go weak, not to mention any good intentions he might have.
Green eyes, freckles and old-fashioned curves. The combination was lethal to his libido.
James reclaimed his binoculars. “She doesn’t look much like her mother, but she’s not bad, either. Damn. Do you think this will foul things up? Aurora might not want to risk stealing jewelry with her daughter around.”
“I’ll just have to keep the daughter conveniently out of the way, somehow.”
“I could distract her.”
The suggestive note in James’s voice set Harrison’s teeth on edge. He appraised the man anew. James was the sort a lot of women went for. He wasn’t a large man, but he was blond and pretty-boy handsome, clean-cut without even the shadow of a beard. He might be able to turn Paige’s head.
“No, James, forget it. Acting a role is a lot trickier than it sounds. I don’t want either woman’s suspicions to be even mildly aroused.”
“Who says I’d be acting?” James countered, again peering toward the boarding passengers. “Blondes are more my style, but this chick is tolerable. And it’s not suspicions I’d like to arouse.”
Harrison closed his eyes and silently counted to ten. “James, this might be our only chance to catch Aurora Cheevers. Do not, I repeat, do not, screw this up.”
He studied Paige once more. The wind molded her pistachio green skirt to her shapely legs and teased her auburn curls. Holding her hair away from her face with one hand, she laughed at something her mother said.
Harrison’s mouth went dry. Tolerable? Paige was undeniably gorgeous, yet she carried an air of innocence about her that was endlessly appealing to Harrison. Too bad his job was to entrap her mother and send her to jail.
* * *
Paige Stovall hated every square inch of the Caribbean Mermaid before the ship had even cleared the Miami dock. She couldn’t tolerate a lot of sun, she wasn’t much good at shuffleboard, and the idea of Las Vegas-style shows made her long for her own bed and a good book.
And then there was the seasickness.
“Did you take your motion sickness pills?” Aurora asked.
“Yes, Mother.”
“Paige,” Aurora huffed, “don’t call me that. I don’t want anyone to know I’m old enough to have a twenty-seven-year-old daughter. For this week I’m not a day over forty-five, and you’re my niece.”
Paige could only shake her head as she hung her new clothes in the surprisingly roomy closet of their first-class suite. She had to admit their quarters were more luxurious than she would have guessed possible aboard a ship. They even had a small veranda.
Her mother’s room was on the other side of a connecting door. She’d tried to get Aurora to share a single cabin, but Aurora had ruled that out immediately. What if one of them had a guest? she’d discreetly pointed out.
That’s just what Paige was worried about. Aurora was definitely on the prowl—husband hunting again. Every time she went on a cruise, she came home married, or nearly so. Paige was determined her mother was not going to hook up with another loser.
Aurora eyed her daughter’s simple green skirt and cotton print blouse, then pursed her lips disapprovingly. “You’re not going to the cocktail party like that, are you?”
“What’s wrong with this?” Paige asked defensively.
“Well, nothing, if you’re teaching school. But this is a cruise. Liven up, girl! Put on one of those cute outfits I bought for you. First impressions are essential. You want to make an impact during the first official cruise function, start carving out your territory.” As she spoke, she pawed through Paige’s closet.
Paige wondered what Aurora meant by carving out territory.
“Now this—this is perfect,” Aurora said, pulling from the closet a crisp, white shorts outfit trimmed in navy blue piping. “I have a little navy straw hat that’ll go perfectly. Wait right here.” She thrust the outfit at Paige and disappeared through the connecting door.
With a sigh, Paige began undressing. This was a familiar scene. Aurora was always trying to turn her daughter into a clothes horse, and it never worked out. With her short stature and curvy figure, Paige simply wasn’t the high-fashion type. Whenever she took Aurora’s advice, she ended up looking like an overdressed doll instead of a sophisticated woman. But Aurora simply refused to understand that Paige’s personal style was quite different from her mother’s.
Well, what did it matter? Maybe if Aurora spent the next seven days dressing Paige and telling her how to behave on a cruise, she would be too busy to meet and fall in love with some freeloading bum.
Aurora had a real talent for picking the most inappropriate men to marry. The only exception to that rule was Aurora’s first husband, Paige’s father. He was the one who’d convinced Paige to brave the hated cruise ship in order to keep her mother out of matrimonial trouble. Bobby Stovall had bailed Aurora out of more than one disastrous marriage and continued to support her financially, although his legal obligation to do so had ended long ago. He was still genuinely fond of her—but he’d made it clear that if she married again, he would cut her off for good.
Paige didn’t want that. Aurora needed Bobby, although she would never admit it.
Fifteen minutes later, feeling rather foolish in the hat Aurora had insisted she wear, Paige walked with her mother onto the Lido Deck, where a lavish buffet of fresh fruit, cheese and crackers awaited them. A smiling waiter thrust a glass of champagne into Paige’s hand. Since champagne always gave her a headache, she set the full glass on the first empty tray she saw.
“Come on, let’s get in line for the food,” Aurora said as she surveyed the milling crowd with a practiced eye. Then, under her breath, she added, “Gawd, is there anyone here under seventy?”
There did seem to be a preponderance of silver hair and canes among the Caribbean Mermaid’s passengers, but no shortage of male hormones, if the stares Aurora drew were any indication. Even in her clever new outfit, Paige felt like a plain brown duck next to her mother.
It had always been like that.
The two women found a table and sat down with their plates of fresh fruit. Aurora nibbled at a melon wedge disinterestedly as she continued to eye the crowd. “Where are all the good-looking men?”
“What about that one over there?” Paige said, nodding toward a distinguished, sixtyish-looking man with a head of thick, silver hair and a healthy tan. He looked pretty respectable.
“Oh, that’s Doc Waller,” Aurora said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “He’s a widower. I’ve met him on several cruises. He’s quite a nice gentleman, but...too old for me. They’re all too old. I hope this cruise doesn’t turn out to be a total waste of—wait a minute!” She grew very still, and her sharp blue eyes stared intently at some point in the distance. “Would you look at that?” she whispered.
“What?” Paige asked, squinting in the same direction. Then she saw him, and she wondered how they’d missed him before. Standing a good head taller than most of the people around him, he possessed the sort of lean, hard good looks one might expect to see on a man driving a race car or climbing a mountain. His hair, a rich, dark brown with slight silvering at the temples, was longer than conservative fashion dictated, and the wind rippled it like a woman’s fingers would. His impossibly wide shoulders stretched the confines of the cotton print shirt he wore, and his legs appeared too muscular, too powerful, for his tame, white twill shorts.
He was easily the best-looking man Paige had seen in months. Years, maybe. Unfortunately, there was a comely dark-haired woman clinging to his arm.
He was talking to another man, one of comparable age—late thirties, Paige guessed—and nice looking, but not in the same league as the tall, dark-haired one.
“Not bad, eh?” Aurora commented from the side of her mouth. “And there are two of them.”
“Mother! Aside from the fact that they’re both young enough to be your—”
“Bite your tongue,” Aurora whispered. “And stop calling me Mother.”
“All right, Aurora. But you talk like those two men are a couple of ripe plums we can just pick from a tree. What makes you think either of them will have the slightest interest in us?”
“Instinct, my dear,” Aurora purred. “And besides, I don’t see much competition.”
“You don’t see the large-breasted brunette in the halter top, breathing into the taller man’s ear?” Paige asked dryly.
“Oh, her. She’s too young to hold his interest for long. Now, a man like that, he no doubt appreciates a woman with a little sophistication, one who’s been around the block.”
“How about one who’s been around the world a couple of times?” Paige murmured.
“What?”
“Nothing. Oh, Lord, they’re coming this way.” Paige quickly pretended interest in her strawberries.
“Well, of course they’re coming this way. I gave them my look.”
“What look?”
“The one that says, ‘You interest me.’ Not too bold. Just a brief holding of eye contact, between one and two seconds. Oh, nuts, that bosomy brunette waylaid them again.”
Paige looked up. Her gaze immediately caught and held with the dark-haired man’s—one second, two seconds, three, four...
“Psst! Paige, that’s long enough,” Aurora hissed.
Paige reluctantly broke eye contact. “What?” she asked, feeling a little dazed. His eyes were dark brown, just like his hair. Even from this distance she could easily lose herself in those velvety brown depths.
“The look you’re giving him is saying a lot more than you want it to, I’m afraid. Watch it.”
“Watch what?”
Aurora threw up her hands. “How in the hell did I raise such an innocent daughter?”
“Just because I don’t play games with my eyes doesn’t mean I’m innocent,” Paige pointed out. “Anyway, what’s wrong with a little innocence?”
“It’s no fun, that’s what’s wrong.”
“Well, I may not be the most worldly woman, but at least I don’t get married at the drop of a hat.” The unfortunate words were out of Paige’s mouth before she could stop them, and she immediately regretted her pettiness. For all her seeming worldly sophistication, Aurora really was the naive one. Despite her checkered past filled with less-than-honorable men, she still would believe anything a handsome man told her. She had never developed that hard edge of cynicism so common among women of her age and circumstances.
“I may be divorced four times, but I’ve fallen in love and married four times, too,” Aurora said quietly. “And I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything. There is nothing more glorious than falling in love, even if you know it’s not going to last. And you, my dear, are going to be a dried-up prune by the time you’re thirty if you don’t find yourself a man.” She downed the last of her champagne in one gulp and banged her glass on the table so hard that Paige jumped.
“I’m sorry, Moth—I mean, Aurora. That was an ugly and hurtful thing I said, and I didn’t mean it.”
Aurora wiped her mouth delicately with her napkin. “And you’re a long way from being a prune,” she conceded gracefully. “If only you’d loosen up a little...”
“I’ll try. I promise.” And maybe she really would. That man with the brown eyes could certainly inspire her to try. Of course, that was probably just her neglected hormones talking. Her love life could definitely use some shoring up. It wasn’t that she didn’t want a man in her life. She just didn’t seem to communicate well with the opposite sex, at least not on a romantic wavelength. Most men tended to treat her like someone’s kid sister.
“Mind if we sit down?” a voice beside her asked.
Paige almost swallowed whole the strawberry she’d just popped into her mouth. He was here, Mr. Gorgeous, sans the brunette. He stared at her with those warm brown eyes, his gaze checking her out in a most unbrotherly way, roaming from the top of her head to her waist and back up, lingering on her full breasts. Her nipples tightened reflexively, and she could only hope they didn’t show.
Her face grew warm as she struggled for something clever and sophisticated to say.
“Please, join us,” Aurora said, easing over the awkward moment. “I just love meeting new people on these cruises. I’m Aurora Cheevers, and this is my niece, Paige Stovall.”
Both men nodded and sat down, offering their names, as well. The tall one was Harrison Powell, a name that seemed to fit perfectly; the shorter, blond man was James something. Paige didn’t like the way James looked at her, although his gaze certainly wasn’t as bold as Harrison’s had been.
“Is this your first cruise?” Aurora asked both men, but her eyes focused on Harrison. She tapped a cigarette out of a pack she’d pulled from her purse and inserted it into a holder. Harrison took her lighter and flicked it, cupping his hand around the flame to protect it from the wind.
Aurora touched his hand briefly to steady it, then smiled, a sly, cat’s-in-the-cream smile Paige had seen a hundred times.
Inwardly Paige sighed. Her mother sure didn’t waste much time.
“Actually, this is my first cruise,” Harrison said. “And you?”
Aurora gave a throaty laugh. “Oh, my goodness, I’ve lost track of the number of cruises I’ve been on. I’m positively addicted to the Caribbean. But this is Paige’s first, isn’t it, dear?”
“Yes. Mmm-hmm.” Brilliant. Her mind felt like it was on novocaine.
“And what about you, James?” Aurora asked. “I do believe you look familiar to me.”
“I work for Mermaid Cruise Line, in administration,” he said with a charming smile. “I’m usually holed up in the offices down in the bowels of the ship, and I don’t often get to socialize with the passengers. My loss.” He looked at Paige as he said this.
Oh, brother, she thought. This James obviously believed he was a real smooth operator. Well, he could just operate on someone else. She wasn’t interested.
Now, Harrison was another story.
“What made you decide to come on a cruise?” Aurora asked Harrison.
“Actually, I’m thinking of investing in the Mermaid Line. But I never put my money into something without thoroughly investigating it first.” He shrugged. “This is part of the investigation.”
“And do you like what you see so far?” Aurora asked.
“Very much.”
Aurora’s and Harrison’s gazes locked for a brief interlude. But not so brief that Paige didn’t see what was going on. Her mother was in the process of making another conquest.
The realization hit Paige in the stomach. It shouldn’t bother her, really. Men were always attracted to Aurora. Men fell in love with Aurora. They flocked around her in crowds, vying for her attention. She was so sweet and easy to be with, they said. Instinctively she knew just how to make them feel handsome and desirable and utterly masculine.
Paige had witnessed it dozens of times. Why, then, did it suddenly bother her so much? Was it because the object of Aurora’s attention just happened to be the one man on this whole godforsaken ship that interested Paige?
Feelings Paige thought she had long ago dealt with rushed to the surface. The incident with Curtis Rittenour hadn’t been Aurora’s fault, she reminded herself. Aurora had just been her usual bubbly, charming self.
Curtis had been an older man—all of thirty-four to Paige’s star-struck twenty-three—and a sophisticated, wealthy doctor. Paige had been convinced he was her destiny. The man had showered her with attention. He’d seemed very pleased when Paige had nervously invited him to travel to Ft. Lauderdale with her from Miami, where she was in graduate school, and meet her mother.
Poor Curtis. He hadn’t even had a chance. The moment he’d set eyes on Aurora, he’d fallen in love with the swiftness of a diver leaping from the high board—although without the grace.
To her credit, Aurora had not encouraged him in any way. But Aurora didn’t have to encourage. Smitten, Curtis had pursued her relentlessly to the point of buying her a diamond ring. Never mind that Aurora had made it clear she did not reciprocate his feelings. It had taken Bobby’s intervention to get rid of the guy.
All that was ancient history, Paige reminded herself. But the remembered pain brought on by Curtis’s betrayal still could give her a twinge now and then.
Like now. Only this was more than a twinge.
Harrison laughed at something Aurora said. It was a low, full-bodied laugh that skittered pleasurably up and down Paige’s nerve endings, bringing goosebumps to her arms. His lips were full and sensual, his teeth even and white.
The man Aurora had identified as Doc Waller wandered up and joined their party. Within moments he was hanging on Aurora’s every word. Even James, who earlier had been looking at Paige with something akin to interest, seemed to have forgotten her existence. She felt utterly invisible.
This was ridiculous, she told herself. There was no reason in the world she should begrudge her mother’s enjoyment. If anything, she should be overjoyed that the object of Aurora’s attentions appeared to be a wealthy and stable man, not some penniless fortune hunter.
Of course, appearances could be deceiving.
Paige stood abruptly. “I hope you’ll all excuse me, but this afternoon sun is so strong, it’s given me a headache. I think I’ll go lie down for a while.”
She tried to stand and make a graceful exit, but her purse got hung up on her chair. A gusty breeze nearly unseated her hat. The last thing she saw before she managed to disentangle herself and make her ungainly escape was Harrison, watching her, obviously amused.
Two
Harrison turned his attention back to Aurora, but his thoughts were with Paige. What was troubling her? he wondered. He’d gotten the distinct impression that she wasn’t ill so much as irritated.
Aurora’s gaze was locked on the retreating form of her daughter. “Now I wonder what’s eating her?” she asked with a worried frown, echoing Harrison’s thoughts. “Maybe I should go check on her. She’s prone to seasickness.”
James stood up. “I’ll see that she gets back to her cabin all right.”
“And I’ve got plenty of seasick pills with me,” Doc Waller added, starting to rise also.
“Oh, please, don’t bother,” Aurora argued amiably. “Besides, James, I have a million questions I want to ask you about running a big cruise ship like this one. It must be fascinating work. And you, Doc—the last thing you need is to be taking care of sick people on your vacation. But maybe...” She batted her eyelashes at Harrison. “Would you mind, Harrison, seeing that my niece makes it safely back to her cabin? We’re on the Marlin Deck.”
“Sure, I’d be happy to.” Happier than he’d like to admit. He was supposed to be romancing Aurora, but that was a damned impossible task with her daughter sitting across the table. Now that Paige was out of the way he should lay it on thick. But all he could think about was running after her to find out what the problem was.
Well, Aurora had asked him to do it, he reasoned. And he wanted to please her, right?
“I’ll be back.” He gave her what he hoped was a charming smile as he stood and turned to make his escape.
Harrison had no trouble catching up to Paige. She had paused at the buffet table to sample some Brie cheese on a cracker.
“Must be some headache,” he said from behind her.
She made a startled little noise and whirled around, her face turning pink. “Oh, it’s you. I thought maybe some cheese and crackers would help the headache,” she said, crossing her arms defensively. “Protein and carbohydrate to increase the blood sugar, you know. Besides, Aurora signed us up for the late dinner seating, and I haven’t eaten all day except for those few strawberries.”
He remembered the strawberries. He’d hardly been able to keep his eyes off her as she’d delicately nibbled the juicy red morsels.
“In that case, try some of this Swiss cheese.” He stabbed a small yellow cube with a toothpick and held the tidbit in front of her mouth.
After giving him a suspicious look, she reluctantly parted her moist lips and plucked the cheese cube from the toothpick, then chewed it thoughtfully. “Mmm, you’re right, it is good,” she conceded.
“How about some white cheddar on a wheat cracker?” He cut a generous slice of the thick, white cheese, set it on a cracker and handed it to her. He’d almost held it in front of her mouth again, just for the sensual pleasure of feeding her, but he figured that would be pushing his luck. While she munched on the treat, he popped a slice into his own mouth.
“Headache any better?” he asked.
“I guess I don’t really have a headache,” she admitted. “I just get annoyed watching Mo—Aurora flirt so shamelessly.”
“Why does it annoy you? Flirtation is a dying art, and she’s very good at it. Besides, it’s fun. You ought to try it.”
“No, thanks,” Paige said with a haughty frown. “I’d rather be a bump on a log. I’m very good at that.”
“I didn’t mean to imply you were a bump. In fact, you don’t resemble any part of a log.”
She gave him an appraising look. “Are you flirting with me? Hedging your bets in case Aurora doesn’t take your bait?”
He didn’t answer. She’d caught him. But he couldn’t help himself. Paige Stovall begged to be cajoled into a smile, and he wanted to be the one to do it.
He’d better cut it out, he decided, or he would alienate both women. A man who set his sights on a mother and daughter—or an aunt and her niece, as he was supposed to believe them to be—could only be labeled a jerk.
“Well, I suppose it’s none of my business if you want to throw yourself at Aurora,” Paige said. “But I should warn you, her flirtations are anything but innocent. She’s been married four times.”
Harrison was careful to show the appropriate degree of surprise. “Really?”
“And I’d be leery if I were you. She might have you selected as husband number five.”
“I think you’re exaggerating. We were just enjoying a conversation. But would it bother you terribly if she had set her sights on me?”
“Damn right, it would! She’s old enough to be your...well, your much older sister.”
“I don’t see that age is so important. In fact, I’d guess the age difference between Aurora and me isn’t as great as the one between me and you.” Actually, he was about ten years older than Paige and more than twenty years Aurora’s junior. But he wasn’t supposed to know that.
“The age difference between us isn’t the issue.” She shrugged, though she didn’t appear as unaffected as she pretended. “Think what you like. But I warn you, I won’t let Aurora have her head turned by another handsome younger man, who has nothing in common—”
“You think I’m handsome?”
She blushed again. “What I think about you isn’t important.” She turned away, clearly dismissing him, and left the buffet table.
Harrison wasn’t finished with this conversation. Paige’s concerns about her mother fascinated him. Had she come on this cruise solely to protect Aurora from male predators like the cad she thought him to be?
He followed Paige to the railing, where she paused to look out over the inky blue water. Taking up a position beside her, he said, “If you’re trying to prevent your aunt from marrying another loser, you have nothing to fear from me. I find her charming, but I have no intention of marrying anyone, not in this century.”
Paige tilted her head and looked at him skeptically through slitted green eyes. “So you’d rather use her and drop her? Oh, that’s reassuring.”
“What makes you so sure I intend to ‘use her,’ as you so delicately put it? Couldn’t I just enjoy her company?”
“If that’s all you’re after, you would be an unusual man indeed, certainly for Aurora,” Paige said. Her head was lowered, her face hidden from view by the wide brim of her ridiculous hat.
Wanting to see her face, and those incredible green eyes, he impulsively pulled the hat off her head. She looked up suddenly, surprise and confusion warring on her expressive face.
“Who gave you such a low opinion of men, Paige Stovall?” he asked. When she looked away, refusing to meet his gaze, he touched her chin and gently drew her face toward him again.
“I’m just a realist,” she countered. “When a man approaches a woman, he has one of only two things on his mind.”
“Is that so? Which do I have on my mind right now?”
She stared at him, her eyes wide with surprise, and for a moment he worried that she really could read the less-than-pure thoughts in his head.
“I don’t know, and I don’t really care,” she finally answered, grabbing her hat from him and jamming it on her head. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my room.”
“I’ll walk with you,” he said affably, despite the withering dismissal she’d just given him.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“But I promised Aurora I’d see you safely back to your cabin. She was worried about you. Umm, the elevators are this way,” he added when Paige took a wrong turn.
“How do you already know so much about the ship?” she asked, accepting his company for the moment, the way someone accepts taxes and junk mail. “I thought this was your first cruise.”
“The Mermaid people invited me aboard a day early, so I could observe the cruise preparations. It seems to be a very efficient operation.”
“Then why do they need your money?” Paige asked as she and Harrison stepped aboard the elevator.
“Expansion takes capital. Mermaid wants to build a new ship. I’m looking for a way to shelter some of my income for the next couple of years.” He hoped she didn’t delve any deeper than that into his supposed background. His knowledge of the world of high finance was abstract at best.
Besides, he really hated lying, even if lying was a part of his job. Paige already had a less than sterling opinion of him. He didn’t like giving her more fuel. In fact, he found himself wanting to convince her that there were honorable men on this earth, men who were after more than sex, money and power. He wanted to prove to her that he was just such a man, a man who could value a woman’s intelligence as well as her body, one who enjoyed quiet walks in the moonlight as much as a night of mindless passion in bed.
But he could hardly prove that to her when it wasn’t entirely true. When it came to Aurora, he might not have money or sex on his mind, but he did have an angle, a self-serving angle. And when Paige discovered he wanted to put her mother in jail, he wasn’t likely to climb in her estimation.
When he and Paige arrived at the door to her cabin, she had to fish around in her handbag for the pass card. Harrison leaned one shoulder against the door frame and folded his arms.
“You could at least give me the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “I might not be the ideal match for Aurora, but with me hanging around, she won’t have time to take up with someone even worse than me. That is what you’re worried about, right?”
Paige seemed to consider his words. “If you and Aurora want to spend time together, there’s not much I can do about it. And I suppose she could do worse than to fall for some wealthy financier—if that’s what you are. But just remember this—I’ll be watching. And if I find out you’re not who you say you are, I’ll show no mercy.” She shoved the magnetic card into the slot and jerked it out, then tried the door. It didn’t open.
“You did it too fast,” Harrison said.
“I know how to open a door,” she said impatiently as she repeated the procedure. This time she got the flashing green light, opened the door, stepped inside and closed it again—firmly.
Harrison felt a pang of guilt, and he had to remind himself again that this was all part of his job. He was being paid to catch a jewel thief. But it seemed grossly unfair that the thief’s innocent daughter would be hurt in the process.
On the other side of the thin door, Paige held her breath until she was sure Harrison was gone and then released a long, tension-filled sigh. The nerve of that man, hitting on two women at the same time.
Well, okay, Paige conceded, he hadn’t really been hitting on her. But she’d had this vague but undeniable feeling that something had been going on between them, something sort of...sexual.
Or maybe she was imagining things. As Aurora so often and annoyingly pointed out, Paige was no expert when it came to men and their baffling ways. Maybe it was only wishful thinking on her part that a wealthy, good-looking man like Harrison Powell would take any interest in an ordinary hospital dietitian like her.
She threw the silly navy hat onto her bed, then followed it, sitting gingerly on the mattress and leaning her head against the wall. How was she going to keep Aurora from making a fool of herself over this guy? And did she really want to? Harrison had made a valid point when he’d said that, so long as he kept Aurora interested, she wouldn’t have time to fall in love with an even worse prospect.
An insidious, nasty thought worked its way into Paige’s consciousness. There was one way she might be able to keep Aurora and Harrison apart, and that was to throw herself at Harrison. For her it would be only a meaningless shipboard romance, and through her efforts she might just keep Aurora from walking down the aisle a fifth time. Despite Harrison’s reassurances that he didn’t have marriage on his mind, he might yet fall victim to Aurora’s charisma.
Nice try, she told herself, attempting unsuccessfully to tamp down her bubbling self-disgust. If Harrison had the slightest interest in her—and that was a big if—it was inexcusable of her to even think of stealing the man her mother had her eye on. And if the very idea weren’t laughable, such a despicable act was not the way to bolster her ego and assuage the five-year-old hurt of Curtis Rittenour’s defection.
* * *
When Aurora finally returned from the cocktail party—half-looped, in Paige’s estimation—she solicitously asked after Paige’s headache. Paige resisted the urge to snap, since Aurora had done nothing wrong per se, and gave a noncommittal reply.
“You’ll feel better once you eat some real food,” Aurora soothed. “I heard there’s shark on the menu tonight. James says they have a new French chef who’s marvelous. He has his own TV show and everything.”
“Mmm,” Paige said, waving her hands in the air to dry her recently polished nails. She hadn’t been able to think of any other way to kill time while nursing her supposed headache.
“You know, that James is a very nice-looking man,” Aurora said, “and I think he’s rather intrigued with you. He asked a lot of questions about you.”
“I hope you told him I have a boyfriend who plays linebacker for the Dolphins.”
“Oh, Paige, I told him no such thing. In fact, I made it known that you were quite available. I hope that was all right. Don’t you like James?”
“It wasn’t all right, and no, I don’t particularly like James—at least, not in that way. Please, Mother, stay out of my love life.”
“I’m only trying to help,” Aurora said, undaunted. “What did you come on this cruise for, if not to meet men?”
To keep you from meeting men. “To relax,” she answered as she abruptly stood and began pacing the tiny floor space.
“It doesn’t seem to be working.”
Paige sat down again. “Give it time,” she said, softening. “I’ve only been on board a few hours. I’ll get the hang of it soon.”
By the time they headed for the nine-o’clock dinner seating in the elegant Seascape Dining Room, Paige’s mood had improved. She felt more like herself in an uncomplicated silk sheath and simple accessories, her unruly hair folded into a sophisticated twist atop her head. She wasn’t looking forward to eating shark, no matter who prepared it, but she figured the menu would also include steak or chicken.
Her optimism took an abrupt nosedive when the steward showed them to their table and she saw who else was seated there.
Harrison and James both stood as the ladies approached. “Good evening,” Harrison said as he took Aurora’s hand between his and gave her a peck on the cheek in an irritatingly debonair gesture.
Who did he think he was, Cary Grant? Paige groused inwardly, although she had to admit he looked the part in his starched white shirt, conservative tie and a charcoal jacket that had obviously been tailored to fit his wide shoulders.
“I hope you don’t mind that we arranged to share a table with you,” he said.
“We’re delighted,” Aurora answered smoothly. She looked expectantly at Paige, who remained silent.
The two men and Aurora carried the conversation through most of dinner, sometimes discussing serious topics, other times sharing silly jokes and laughing until their eyes were moist with tears.
No one seemed to mind Paige’s pensiveness. Every so often James would lean over and offer an aside to Paige, speaking in a low voice much too near her ear. His warm breath against her cheek, far from provocative, made her want to flee to her cabin and wash her face.
When the waiter set the shark steak in front of her, Paige questioned her impulsive decision to be brave and try something new. What was she trying to prove, anyway? But she ate it without complaint, hardly tasting it, washing it down with the less-than-palatable Chablis from her constantly filled glass.
After dinner Paige considered calling it a night. It was almost eleven. But she had promised Bobby she would keep an eye on Aurora, so she found herself following the others to the Copacabana Lounge. A small orchestra was doing a creditable job on some big band numbers despite its size. Bobby had once sung with a similar band, and a wave of unexpected nostalgia hit her.
“Would you like to dance?” James asked her.
“Umm, no, actually...” she stammered.
“C’mon, Paige,” he wheedled. “I’m a terrific ballroom dancer. I’ll teach you the steps in no time.”
An amused look passed between mother and daughter. If there was one thing Paige didn’t need lessons on, it was dancing. Touring the country with her father’s band, she had practically grown up in nightclubs, learning everything from the tango to the twist to the Texas two-step.
Harrison was watching her, too, seemingly interested in her response. She felt a sudden, illogical urge to show him that she wasn’t completely inept when it came to social skills.
She smiled up at James. “All right, one dance.”
The band had just launched into “In the Mood,” and she and James fell into an easy jitterbug. James was an adept partner, if not an inspired one, and Paige found that she was almost enjoying herself. They fit well together, James’s less-than-towering height complementing her petite size.
“I think you’re the one who should be giving lessons,” he said when the song ended. “How did you learn to dance like that?”
“My parents taught me,” she said, choosing not to elaborate.
The band started a slower number, and James drew her into his arms for a waltz. She wasn’t as comfortable dancing so close, and she did her best to maintain some distance between their bodies while James did his best to maximize contact.
She glanced wistfully at their table, wondering how she could end the dance without sounding horribly rude, when she saw Harrison watching them, his black gaze practically burning a hole through her.
Rather than pleasing her, as it should have, the look on his face disturbed her.
Fortunately a beeper in James’s coat pocket chose that moment to chirp. “Damn,” he said under his breath as he reluctantly released Paige. “Looks like I’ll have to go take care of some small emergency. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Paige murmured her insincere regrets over his leaving, breathed a quiet sigh of relief and went back to the table.
“How about it, Aurora?” Harrison was saying, apparently oblivious to Paige’s return.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Aurora demurred. “I’m not much for dancing, not tonight, anyway. My feet hurt.”
What? Paige thought. Since when did her mother not like to dance?
“Besides, I need to go powder my nose,” Aurora continued. “If you’re set on dancing, why don’t you give Paige a try?”
Paige gave a small gasp as they both looked expectantly at her. Dance with Harrison? The mere thought made her dizzy. Or maybe that was just the wine.
“Would you like to dance, Paige?” Harrison asked politely. “If James doesn’t mind, that is.”
That infuriated her. “James was called away on business,” she informed him icily. “But I’m sure he doesn’t give a fig whom I dance with, nor would I care if he did.”
“Good.” Harrison stood and took her hand, urging her out of her chair.
Aurora leaned over to Paige and whispered, “Don’t let him dance with anyone else, particularly not that stacked brunette who keeps making cow eyes at him from across the room. I’ll be back shortly.”
It appeared Paige had no choice but to acquiesce. It irked her that her mother thought her to be far less of a threat than the silicone-implanted bimbo. It irked her again that she even cared.
The band was playing another slow, dreamy number, and Harrison drew her easily into his arms. He was not so skillful a dancer as James, but he was obviously comfortable with his own body and his movements. In moments they were dancing in harmony, despite the height difference between them. He held her not too stiffly, yet not too close, either.
“Could you at least try to appear as if you’re enjoying this?” Harrison said. “People will think I’m pulling your fingernails out one by one instead of dancing with you.”
Little did he know that he was inflicting a very different brand of torture on her. His nearness caused her body to respond, despite her efforts to remain indifferent. She was acutely aware of his hard, lean torso brushing against hers, the warmth of his hand enveloping hers, the strength of his shoulder where she touched him, the subtle, spicy fragrance of his after-shave.
And the way he looked at her. She could have easily drowned in those brown eyes, which seemed so sincere.
She forced a smile.
“That’s a little better. Why do you dislike me so intensely?
“It’s habit,” she replied, not even bothering to deny the accusation. “I’ve never liked any of Aurora’s suitors. She tends to attract a certain brand of man.”
“What if I’m different?” he countered, his hand making slow, sensual circles at the small of her back. “What if I’m gainfully employed, financially secure and a gentleman without designs on Aurora’s matrimonial status?”
Paige didn’t answer. The feel of his hand, warm and insistent through the silk of her dress, had paralyzed her brain and turned her body into one big nerve ending.
“Well, it’s possible, isn’t it?” he prompted.
With no small effort Paige collected her wits. What was she doing? What was she allowing him to do?
“You may be gainfully employed and financially secure,” she said evenly. “But a gentleman? For the past few minutes you’ve been rubbing circles on my back, and now your hand is perilously close to a part of my anatomy that shouldn’t be fondled in public. In conclusion, only a cur dog pursues two females at the same time, much less two females who are close to each other. This dance is finished, Mr. Powell. And when I tell Aurora what you’re up to, you’ll be finished with her, as well.”
Looking a bit startled at her vehement outburst, he dropped his hands, allowing her to escape.
Paige resisted the urge to run. Her face flaming, she left the dance floor, bypassed their table and headed straight for the exit. A detached part of her applauded her blistering speech. Her outrage was perfectly justified; the dressing down was no more than the cad deserved.
But another, more frightened part of herself was forced to admit that she’d liked the way he’d been touching her. For the first time in years she’d felt the full force of her own healthy, feminine response to a man’s touch, complete with watery knees, fluttering stomach, heart palpitations and an insistent tug deep in her abdomen, an ache that begged for fulfillment.
If she hadn’t willfully summoned up that anger, she would have melted against him, turned her face upward and accepted the kiss she knew had been on his mind.
She probably would have enjoyed it, too.
Three
The next morning Paige was determined to put the previous evening’s disturbing events behind her. The weather outside was gorgeous, she had a new, sleek, emerald green swimsuit, and the breakfast buffet on the Lido Deck beckoned. After she sated herself, she planned to find a deck chair, an umbrella and several undisturbed hours to lose herself in Stephen King’s latest bestseller.
She didn’t have to worry about her mother. She’d heard Aurora come dragging in after 2:00 a.m., giggling like a teenager as someone—Paige didn’t want to think too hard about who—had walked her to her door. If Aurora was true to form, she wouldn’t be out of bed until noon.
Paige did, however, need to borrow Aurora’s bottle of sun block. She eased the connecting door open and tiptoed inside her mother’s room, where Aurora snored softly, a satin sleeping mask protecting her eyes from the sunlight streaming through the cracks in the curtains.
Now, where would her mother have hidden the suntan lotion? Paige wondered.
“Mmm, Paige?” Aurora said muzzily.
“Sorry, Mother,” Paige whispered. “I’m just looking for the sun block.”
Aurora leaned up on one elbow and pulled off the mask. “‘S in that beach bag...oh, there, under the dressing table. Why’d you run off so early last night?” she asked, obviously irritated. “You missed the champagne.”
“It wasn’t early, it was after midnight,” Paige argued amiably. Sooner or later she would have to tell her mother about Harrison’s lack of fidelity, but that could wait—at least until Aurora had drunk her first cup of coffee.
“Harrison seemed to think you were miffed at him.”
“Oh, he did, did he?”
“Were you?”
Paige weighed her answer carefully. “A bit. You should watch him, Mother. I don’t think his intentions are honorable.”
“I certainly hope not,” Aurora said with a wicked laugh.
“Mother!”
“Oh, Paige, would you lay off the ‘Miss Prim’ stuff? I’m a grown woman, and I don’t need you watchdogging my social life.”
“Someone should,” Paige muttered.
Aurora chose to ignore the dig. “So where are you off to this morning so disgustingly bright and early?”
Paige was relieved at the change of subject. “To breakfast and then the pool. Want to come?”
Aurora shuddered delicately at the mention of food. “No, thanks, not until I beat this hangover. I’d forgotten what a chipper little morning person you are. Now, go away. I’ll see you at a more civilized hour.” She shoved the mask back over her eyes and burrowed into the bed covers.
With a shrug Paige grabbed the beach bag, which felt as if it contained a bowling ball, and returned to her own room.
“What in the world is in this thing?” she wondered aloud as she opened the drawstring top and checked out the contents. There were two pairs of sunglasses, a tube of lip balm, under-eye moisturizer, three scarves, and four economy-size bottles of suntan oil, each with a different SPF. The outside zipper pockets held clips to Aurora’s electric rollers, a packet of tissues and a costume-jewelry necklace.
Paige examined the necklace. It was pretty, she decided. In fact, she would have thought it was the real thing if she didn’t know that stones of this size were well beyond Aurora’s means. Still, it was obviously an expensive piece of fakery. She would have to remind Aurora to take better care of it.
Paige laid the necklace on the dresser, intending to return it to her mother later. She selected a few essentials and put them back into the bag, plopped a wide-brimmed straw hat onto her head and headed for the Lido Deck.
* * *
“As nearly as we can pinpoint it, the theft occurred between 9:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m.,” James said in a low voice, craning his neck this way and that to be sure there were no eavesdroppers lurking about. He and Harrison were going over the details of the break-in that had occurred last night, proving that the Mermaid cat burglar was on the prowl.
“What exactly was stolen?” Harrison asked.
“A sapphire-and-diamond necklace, worth a cool twenty-seven thousand dollars,” James said. “Fortunately the owner isn’t the hysterical type. She reported the theft very quietly, and I’ve convinced her to keep mum so our chief suspect won’t know we’re on to her. Which leads me to...did you get lucky with Aurora last night?”
Harrison sighed tiredly. “No. An elderly gentleman, a Dr. Waller, walked her back to her cabin at about two. I followed them, then stuck around in the passageway long enough to be sure she didn’t take a late-night stroll.”
“Then she isn’t responsible?” James asked, frowning.
“I didn’t say that.” Damn, he almost wished he could serve as Aurora’s alibi. He was growing fond of her, and it was getting harder and harder for him to believe she was a world-class jewel thief.
What was even harder to swallow was how Paige would handle her mother’s arrest. “Aurora went to the ladies’ room shortly after you were called away,” he admitted. “She was gone more than twenty minutes. I should have followed her, but I didn’t. She said she’d be right back, and I didn’t think that much of it.” He’d been too intent on dancing with Paige to think clearly, anyway.
“Twenty minutes would be enough time, barely,” James said, his irritated frown fading. Clearly he was eager to close this case, which had plagued him for more than a year.
“How did the burglar get into the cabin?” Harrison asked.
“A glass cutter was used on the terrace door. It was a clean, quick job. And, Harrison, the cabin that was hit is next door to Aurora’s.”
“Well, hell, that clinches it, then.” Aurora must have climbed over the railing of her veranda and worked her way over to the victim’s. Although the woman was fifty-eight years old, she was trim and athletic. The caper wasn’t inconceivable. “Any fingerprints?”
“Nope. Like I said, clean and fast.”
“Why didn’t you tell me as soon as the theft was reported?” Harrison asked.
James’s expression hardened. “Silly me. I thought you were making some progress with Aurora, and I didn’t want to mess that up. I was hoping you’d get into her cabin and find something useful.” He was clearly disgusted with Harrison’s lack of success on that front.
“Hey, you think this is easy? Aurora’s no pushover.”
“That’s not what I hear.”
All right, so maybe Harrison hadn’t tried all that hard, especially when Aurora seemed to be having such a good time with the doctor. “Don’t worry, she’ll invite me in.”
“You know, we could use a passkey. If we knew where the necklace was ahead of time—”
“Forget it,” Harrison said, cutting him off. “I work strictly by the book. We can’t search without the captain’s say-so, and he won’t give us that without stronger evidence. So Aurora has to invite me in.”
James laughed without humor. “Sometimes I wonder about you, Harrison. I’d be willing to bet I can get into Paige’s bed before you get into Aurora’s.”
Harrison’s hand clenched into a fist beneath the table. He longed to punch that self-satisfied smirk off James’s face. God, how he hated the other man’s attitude. At least Harrison had a halfway defensible reason for romancing Aurora. But James’s only motivation for putting the moves on Paige was so he could chalk up another conquest.
“Yeah, the more I think about it,” James continued, oblivious to Harrison’s suppressed anger, “the more I believe it’s essential for me to keep Paige occupied and safely out of the way. Aurora’s more likely to tip her hand if she doesn’t have to worry about her daughter. Not that Paige is really my type, but she’s not half-bad.”
Not half-bad? Harrison had to exert excruciating self-control not to lunge for James’s throat. Paige Stovall was the sweetest combination of strength and vulnerability Harrison had ever encountered, demurely feminine one minute and fierce as any lioness the next, especially when it came to protecting her mother. Fire and ice. How could anyone think she was less than magnificent?
With a jolt, Harrison realized he was jealous. That’s what he’d felt last night, all the way to his gut, when he’d watched Paige dancing with James, laughing with him, touching him. And when Aurora had unwittingly answered his fantasies by practically thrusting Paige into his arms, he’d felt as if the angels had smiled on him. Even though she’d danced with him under protest, he’d enjoyed staring down into those luminous eyes, watching the sparkling night-club lights play against her auburn hair, feeling the firm flesh at the small of her back beneath her silk dress.
She had enchanted him, and he’d completely forgotten himself. It had seemed as natural as breathing to caress her as they danced. It had also been a near-fatal blow to his investigation. He’d have to do a lot of fence mending if he wanted to salvage the operation.
He hadn’t confessed that blunder to James. He might still be able to pick up the pieces.
He allowed his hands to relax. It wasn’t worth getting thrown off this case just for the satisfaction of breaking James’s nose. Besides, there was no reason for him to worry about James getting to Paige. She might be an innocent, but she wasn’t stupid.
“Say, speak of the devil, look who’s in the buffet line,” James said.
Harrison looked, scanning the crowd, uncomfortably eager to catch a glimpse of Paige. There she was, wearing sunglasses and a bulky terry robe that hid her curves, her sun-bright hair tucked beneath a floppy hat. A huge canvas beach bag hung from one shoulder. She was trying to be inconspicuous, no doubt, but he would have recognized those legs anywhere. They might not be terribly long, but they were trim and shapely. For an instant his imagination conjured up an image of those legs wrapped around— No, no, no. He had to stop thinking along those lines.
Aurora, he noticed, was nowhere around.
“Why don’t you leave Paige alone?” he said, when he noticed James smoothing his hair and flicking an invisible speck of lint from his razor-creased trousers. “She doesn’t deserve this.” But as always, James didn’t listen. He quickly made his move, swooping down on Paige like a dive-bomber, picking up her tray from beneath her nose and carrying it back to their table despite her protests.
She had little choice but to follow her breakfast.
“Oh, good morning,” she said coolly when she spotted Harrison. “You’re up early for having been out so late.”
James drew back in surprise. “And just how do you know how late Harrison stayed up?” he asked. Although he appeared to be teasing, there was a hard edge to his question.
“My aunt got back to her cabin after two,” she said. “I just assumed she was still with Harrison.”
Although she was answering James, she looked straight at Harrison as she spoke. Was she challenging him, daring him to contradict her? Getting into her good graces wasn’t going to be easy. Of course, he’d already known that.
“I don’t need much sleep,” he said pleasantly.
“Would you like me to get you some coffee?” James asked solicitously, helping her remove the plates of fruit, yogurt and muffins from her tray.
“Yes, please,’ she said, her voice resigned. “Decaf, black.”
James scurried to do her bidding, pausing to tuck her cumbersome beach bag under the table—probably so there would be more room for him to sit close to her.
“Where’s Aurora this morning?” Harrison asked.
“I’m afraid she’s not feeling well,” Paige replied as she reluctantly settled onto the bench opposite him. She spread margarine onto a blueberry muffin, her eyes impossible to read behind the dark glasses.
“That’s terrible,” Harrison said. “Has she been to see the ship’s doctor?”
“Oh, it’s nothing so serious,” Paige said. “She’s just a little woozy.”
A few minutes ago Harrison could have easily believed Aurora was hung over. Last night she’d seemed pretty tipsy when he’d followed her back to her cabin. But that must have been an act, he realized. She would have needed all her wits about her to carry off the theft of the necklace.
The gears in his mind turned furiously. Here was the perfect opportunity to get into Aurora’s cabin. “Maybe I should pay her a visit. Does she like flowers? Would that cheer her up?”
He saw the negative answer on Paige’s face. But before she could deliver some scathing comment, her expression abruptly softened. “You know, that’s really sweet of you. Aurora loves flowers, roses in fact. And chocolates, the kind with nuts in the center. Yes, I think some attention from you would make her feel lots better.”
Harrison was skeptical of Paige’s sudden change of heart. He would have liked to think he had swayed her with his show of concern, but somehow he didn’t think it was that easy.
“You’re not just trying to get rid of me, are you?” he asked, snitching a strawberry from her plate despite the fact that he’d hardly touched his own breakfast of eggs and toast.
She surprised him by flashing a mischievous smile and peeking over the top of her sunglasses at him, giving him a heart-stopping glimpse of those amazingly clear green eyes. “Of course not. But if you’re going to persist in throwing yourself at Aurora, you might as well do it right.”
Had she really decided he wasn’t so bad for Aurora? Somehow, that thought didn’t cheer him very much.
He was reluctant to leave the table when Paige was feeling more charitable toward him. Especially if James was around. But duty called. He gulped down the last of his coffee, bade her a jaunty good morning and set out on his mission.
Amazingly, he found roses and chocolates, the kind with nuts in the center, in the well-stocked gift shop. Whistling tunelessly, he headed down to the Marlin Deck, acknowledging the smiles of passersby who recognized that he was on a romantic errand.
Suddenly feeling like a complete fraud, he stopped whistling as thoughts of an unpleasant chapter from his past assaulted him. He’d once worked as a criminal defense attorney, and there had been a client, a woman named Kitty Cirello, accused of embezzlement. Kitty had lured him into her bed and convinced him of her love, knowing that if she won him over, he would trade his soul to get her acquitted in court.
That was exactly what he’d done. Afterward, Kitty had admitted her guilt, deliberately making him feel like a fool. The way she’d used him, playing on his emotions to get what she’d wanted, had left a bad taste in his mouth. Right now was he behaving any better?
But I’m the good guy, he tried to convince himself. He was on the side of law and order, and Kitty had been a criminal, just like Aurora.
Did that excuse his behavior?
By the time he knocked on Aurora’s door, he was pretty disgusted with himself. Once this assignment was over, he was lowering the boom on his boss—no more undercover work. There was already too much deception in this world without his adding to it.
After what seemed a long time, the door cracked open and one red-rimmed eye peered out at him. “Oh, Lord,” Aurora said in a gravelly voice, as she shoved a pair of sunglasses onto her face. “What are you doing here at this ungodly hour?”
“Paige said you weren’t feeling well. I thought flowers and candy would cheer you up.”
She opened the door another inch to peer at the bouquet of roses and the candy he held. “Dear boy,” she said, “there is nothing wrong with me that a few more hours of sleep won’t cure. For future reference, I don’t socialize before noon. I’m allergic to roses, and I despise chocolate with nuts.”
She started to close the door, then paused. “I’m sorry you wasted your money. Don’t throw away the candy, though. Paige likes the kind with nuts.” She slammed the door, leaving Harrison standing in the passageway feeling like a ninny.
He’d known Paige’s sudden affability was too good to be true. He should have smelled the trap. What had happened to his instincts, which his boss had so eloquently bragged about to James Blair?
The only other time he’d lost his ability to think clearly was when he’d been a young, eager attorney, defending Kitty Cirello against what he thought was a gross miscarriage of justice. He had been so wrong about her.
Not that he was wrong about Paige. Oh, she might have a little streak of wickedness in her soul. At least, she wasn’t above putting a well-deserved prank over on him. But she wasn’t in the same league as Kitty...or her own mother. Still, he resolved to do a better job of keeping his wits about him.
He gave the roses to an elderly woman on the elevator, but he kept the chocolates. Hell, he liked the kind with nuts. And he would choke down the entire pound box before he would let Paige have even one.
* * *
Paige’s morning plans had been shot to hell. First there was her encounter with Harrison, about which she was feeling slightly guilty. Aurora would chew him up and spit him out. Then there was breakfast with James, who had hovered over her like a nervous waiter on his first day while she ate—or tried to eat—her meal. He had stuck to her like lint, just as annoying and just as impossible to shake loose.
She now sat in a deck chair under an umbrella, paperback in hand, but she hadn’t made it through a single page. James seemed determined to converse with her, regardless of her broad hints that she wanted to be left alone. She even had to slap his hands away from her beach bag when he tried to dig into it for her sun block, offering to rub some on her back. The prospect gave her more shivers than Stephen King.
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Karen Leabo
What Paige Did on Her Vacation… Prim and proper Paige Stovall knew that Harrison Powell was after something… and it certainly wasn't her body! After all, Paige was just a small-town gal on a big-time vacation, not the type that a debonair, carefree bachelor would find appealing. Still, she wouldn't kick Harrison out of her bedroom - if he ever decided to come in… .Harrison was after something, all right. The suave private investigator was searching for some stolen goods, and he was convinced Paige had the loot! The only way he could think of to get near her was to butter her up with loving words and longing glances. Then he made his biggest mistake - he fell for her… even though he was lying to her.
Man Overboard
Karen Leabo
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
One (#uf11b370f-9141-570f-ae9a-0e16cafacf65)
Two (#u5b261221-d3b4-53cb-80d9-ea9d7ce1e495)
Three (#u6c130bd3-73ee-57c5-aa23-c3a8b6077278)
Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
One
Harrison Powell leaned against the railing of the Caribbean Mermaid’s Lido Deck, perusing the stream of passengers boarding below him. His gaze stopped on a tall, slender woman with a short cap of platinum blond hair. “There she is, in the red dress,” he told the man standing beside him.
The other man, James Blair, peered at the woman through binoculars. He issued a low whistle. “That’s her, looking sharp as ever. I can’t believe she’s fifty-eight years old. I thought she was more like forty-five.”
“A face lift never hurts,” Harrison said. His investigation into Aurora Cheevers’s background had uncovered numerous interesting facts about her in addition to the cosmetic surgery. She’d been married and divorced four times; she was addicted to playing the Florida Lottery; and she had a twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Paige, who was even prettier than her mother, though in a much more subtle way.
The most fascinating fact about Aurora, however, was that her extravagant life-style far exceeded her income. Which lent credence to his theory that she was the Caribbean Mermaid’s jewel thief, the one he’d been hired to catch before any adverse publicity could get out.
“Would you stop staring at Aurora through those binoculars?” Harrison said, scowling at James, the ship’s security director. A lot of pressure had been put on James to put an end to the daring thefts, which was why he’d hired Harrison.
“She’s worth staring at, even if she is old enough to be my mother,” James replied in a distracted tone. “Nice legs. You’ll have some competition, I guarantee.”
Harrison grimaced at the reminder of the plan he and James had agreed on. Aurora had a known penchant for younger men. Harrison intended to take advantage of that fact, playing the ardent suitor in order to stay close to her. If he couldn’t catch her in the act, he intended to get inside her cabin and find conclusive evidence that she was the thief he sought.
James had wanted to simply wait for a theft to occur, then search Aurora’s cabin. The ship’s captain could authorize it. But the captain was adamant about protecting his passengers’ privacy. He would not move against Aurora until he saw compelling evidence indicating she was the culprit. It was up to Harrison to provide that evidence.
The role of suitor wasn’t one he looked forward to. His work usually involved behind-the-scenes investigation for the large security firm he worked for, not undercover jobs. But sometimes he didn’t have a choice in which jobs he accepted. This was one of those times.
A younger woman standing next to Aurora caught Harrison’s attention. He couldn’t tell much from this distance, but...no, wait a minute. She did look familiar—petite and shapely, auburn hair that hung thick and rich past her shoulders, a generous mouth.
“Give me those binoculars,” he said, nearly jerking James’s head off as he made a grab for the glasses while the strap was still around the other man’s neck. The moment he observed the magnified image of the woman, his suspicions were confirmed. “That’s Aurora’s daughter, Paige Stovall. What’s she doing here? I thought Aurora always traveled alone.”
“She does. I didn’t know she had a daughter.”
“That’s why you hired me.”
“Are you sure that’s her?”
“I’m sure,” Harrison answered grimly. He’d only seen her once, from a distance, during the two weeks he’d had Aurora under surveillance. But he’d seen enough of Paige to know she was the sort of woman who made his knees go weak, not to mention any good intentions he might have.
Green eyes, freckles and old-fashioned curves. The combination was lethal to his libido.
James reclaimed his binoculars. “She doesn’t look much like her mother, but she’s not bad, either. Damn. Do you think this will foul things up? Aurora might not want to risk stealing jewelry with her daughter around.”
“I’ll just have to keep the daughter conveniently out of the way, somehow.”
“I could distract her.”
The suggestive note in James’s voice set Harrison’s teeth on edge. He appraised the man anew. James was the sort a lot of women went for. He wasn’t a large man, but he was blond and pretty-boy handsome, clean-cut without even the shadow of a beard. He might be able to turn Paige’s head.
“No, James, forget it. Acting a role is a lot trickier than it sounds. I don’t want either woman’s suspicions to be even mildly aroused.”
“Who says I’d be acting?” James countered, again peering toward the boarding passengers. “Blondes are more my style, but this chick is tolerable. And it’s not suspicions I’d like to arouse.”
Harrison closed his eyes and silently counted to ten. “James, this might be our only chance to catch Aurora Cheevers. Do not, I repeat, do not, screw this up.”
He studied Paige once more. The wind molded her pistachio green skirt to her shapely legs and teased her auburn curls. Holding her hair away from her face with one hand, she laughed at something her mother said.
Harrison’s mouth went dry. Tolerable? Paige was undeniably gorgeous, yet she carried an air of innocence about her that was endlessly appealing to Harrison. Too bad his job was to entrap her mother and send her to jail.
* * *
Paige Stovall hated every square inch of the Caribbean Mermaid before the ship had even cleared the Miami dock. She couldn’t tolerate a lot of sun, she wasn’t much good at shuffleboard, and the idea of Las Vegas-style shows made her long for her own bed and a good book.
And then there was the seasickness.
“Did you take your motion sickness pills?” Aurora asked.
“Yes, Mother.”
“Paige,” Aurora huffed, “don’t call me that. I don’t want anyone to know I’m old enough to have a twenty-seven-year-old daughter. For this week I’m not a day over forty-five, and you’re my niece.”
Paige could only shake her head as she hung her new clothes in the surprisingly roomy closet of their first-class suite. She had to admit their quarters were more luxurious than she would have guessed possible aboard a ship. They even had a small veranda.
Her mother’s room was on the other side of a connecting door. She’d tried to get Aurora to share a single cabin, but Aurora had ruled that out immediately. What if one of them had a guest? she’d discreetly pointed out.
That’s just what Paige was worried about. Aurora was definitely on the prowl—husband hunting again. Every time she went on a cruise, she came home married, or nearly so. Paige was determined her mother was not going to hook up with another loser.
Aurora eyed her daughter’s simple green skirt and cotton print blouse, then pursed her lips disapprovingly. “You’re not going to the cocktail party like that, are you?”
“What’s wrong with this?” Paige asked defensively.
“Well, nothing, if you’re teaching school. But this is a cruise. Liven up, girl! Put on one of those cute outfits I bought for you. First impressions are essential. You want to make an impact during the first official cruise function, start carving out your territory.” As she spoke, she pawed through Paige’s closet.
Paige wondered what Aurora meant by carving out territory.
“Now this—this is perfect,” Aurora said, pulling from the closet a crisp, white shorts outfit trimmed in navy blue piping. “I have a little navy straw hat that’ll go perfectly. Wait right here.” She thrust the outfit at Paige and disappeared through the connecting door.
With a sigh, Paige began undressing. This was a familiar scene. Aurora was always trying to turn her daughter into a clothes horse, and it never worked out. With her short stature and curvy figure, Paige simply wasn’t the high-fashion type. Whenever she took Aurora’s advice, she ended up looking like an overdressed doll instead of a sophisticated woman. But Aurora simply refused to understand that Paige’s personal style was quite different from her mother’s.
Well, what did it matter? Maybe if Aurora spent the next seven days dressing Paige and telling her how to behave on a cruise, she would be too busy to meet and fall in love with some freeloading bum.
Aurora had a real talent for picking the most inappropriate men to marry. The only exception to that rule was Aurora’s first husband, Paige’s father. He was the one who’d convinced Paige to brave the hated cruise ship in order to keep her mother out of matrimonial trouble. Bobby Stovall had bailed Aurora out of more than one disastrous marriage and continued to support her financially, although his legal obligation to do so had ended long ago. He was still genuinely fond of her—but he’d made it clear that if she married again, he would cut her off for good.
Paige didn’t want that. Aurora needed Bobby, although she would never admit it.
Fifteen minutes later, feeling rather foolish in the hat Aurora had insisted she wear, Paige walked with her mother onto the Lido Deck, where a lavish buffet of fresh fruit, cheese and crackers awaited them. A smiling waiter thrust a glass of champagne into Paige’s hand. Since champagne always gave her a headache, she set the full glass on the first empty tray she saw.
“Come on, let’s get in line for the food,” Aurora said as she surveyed the milling crowd with a practiced eye. Then, under her breath, she added, “Gawd, is there anyone here under seventy?”
There did seem to be a preponderance of silver hair and canes among the Caribbean Mermaid’s passengers, but no shortage of male hormones, if the stares Aurora drew were any indication. Even in her clever new outfit, Paige felt like a plain brown duck next to her mother.
It had always been like that.
The two women found a table and sat down with their plates of fresh fruit. Aurora nibbled at a melon wedge disinterestedly as she continued to eye the crowd. “Where are all the good-looking men?”
“What about that one over there?” Paige said, nodding toward a distinguished, sixtyish-looking man with a head of thick, silver hair and a healthy tan. He looked pretty respectable.
“Oh, that’s Doc Waller,” Aurora said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “He’s a widower. I’ve met him on several cruises. He’s quite a nice gentleman, but...too old for me. They’re all too old. I hope this cruise doesn’t turn out to be a total waste of—wait a minute!” She grew very still, and her sharp blue eyes stared intently at some point in the distance. “Would you look at that?” she whispered.
“What?” Paige asked, squinting in the same direction. Then she saw him, and she wondered how they’d missed him before. Standing a good head taller than most of the people around him, he possessed the sort of lean, hard good looks one might expect to see on a man driving a race car or climbing a mountain. His hair, a rich, dark brown with slight silvering at the temples, was longer than conservative fashion dictated, and the wind rippled it like a woman’s fingers would. His impossibly wide shoulders stretched the confines of the cotton print shirt he wore, and his legs appeared too muscular, too powerful, for his tame, white twill shorts.
He was easily the best-looking man Paige had seen in months. Years, maybe. Unfortunately, there was a comely dark-haired woman clinging to his arm.
He was talking to another man, one of comparable age—late thirties, Paige guessed—and nice looking, but not in the same league as the tall, dark-haired one.
“Not bad, eh?” Aurora commented from the side of her mouth. “And there are two of them.”
“Mother! Aside from the fact that they’re both young enough to be your—”
“Bite your tongue,” Aurora whispered. “And stop calling me Mother.”
“All right, Aurora. But you talk like those two men are a couple of ripe plums we can just pick from a tree. What makes you think either of them will have the slightest interest in us?”
“Instinct, my dear,” Aurora purred. “And besides, I don’t see much competition.”
“You don’t see the large-breasted brunette in the halter top, breathing into the taller man’s ear?” Paige asked dryly.
“Oh, her. She’s too young to hold his interest for long. Now, a man like that, he no doubt appreciates a woman with a little sophistication, one who’s been around the block.”
“How about one who’s been around the world a couple of times?” Paige murmured.
“What?”
“Nothing. Oh, Lord, they’re coming this way.” Paige quickly pretended interest in her strawberries.
“Well, of course they’re coming this way. I gave them my look.”
“What look?”
“The one that says, ‘You interest me.’ Not too bold. Just a brief holding of eye contact, between one and two seconds. Oh, nuts, that bosomy brunette waylaid them again.”
Paige looked up. Her gaze immediately caught and held with the dark-haired man’s—one second, two seconds, three, four...
“Psst! Paige, that’s long enough,” Aurora hissed.
Paige reluctantly broke eye contact. “What?” she asked, feeling a little dazed. His eyes were dark brown, just like his hair. Even from this distance she could easily lose herself in those velvety brown depths.
“The look you’re giving him is saying a lot more than you want it to, I’m afraid. Watch it.”
“Watch what?”
Aurora threw up her hands. “How in the hell did I raise such an innocent daughter?”
“Just because I don’t play games with my eyes doesn’t mean I’m innocent,” Paige pointed out. “Anyway, what’s wrong with a little innocence?”
“It’s no fun, that’s what’s wrong.”
“Well, I may not be the most worldly woman, but at least I don’t get married at the drop of a hat.” The unfortunate words were out of Paige’s mouth before she could stop them, and she immediately regretted her pettiness. For all her seeming worldly sophistication, Aurora really was the naive one. Despite her checkered past filled with less-than-honorable men, she still would believe anything a handsome man told her. She had never developed that hard edge of cynicism so common among women of her age and circumstances.
“I may be divorced four times, but I’ve fallen in love and married four times, too,” Aurora said quietly. “And I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything. There is nothing more glorious than falling in love, even if you know it’s not going to last. And you, my dear, are going to be a dried-up prune by the time you’re thirty if you don’t find yourself a man.” She downed the last of her champagne in one gulp and banged her glass on the table so hard that Paige jumped.
“I’m sorry, Moth—I mean, Aurora. That was an ugly and hurtful thing I said, and I didn’t mean it.”
Aurora wiped her mouth delicately with her napkin. “And you’re a long way from being a prune,” she conceded gracefully. “If only you’d loosen up a little...”
“I’ll try. I promise.” And maybe she really would. That man with the brown eyes could certainly inspire her to try. Of course, that was probably just her neglected hormones talking. Her love life could definitely use some shoring up. It wasn’t that she didn’t want a man in her life. She just didn’t seem to communicate well with the opposite sex, at least not on a romantic wavelength. Most men tended to treat her like someone’s kid sister.
“Mind if we sit down?” a voice beside her asked.
Paige almost swallowed whole the strawberry she’d just popped into her mouth. He was here, Mr. Gorgeous, sans the brunette. He stared at her with those warm brown eyes, his gaze checking her out in a most unbrotherly way, roaming from the top of her head to her waist and back up, lingering on her full breasts. Her nipples tightened reflexively, and she could only hope they didn’t show.
Her face grew warm as she struggled for something clever and sophisticated to say.
“Please, join us,” Aurora said, easing over the awkward moment. “I just love meeting new people on these cruises. I’m Aurora Cheevers, and this is my niece, Paige Stovall.”
Both men nodded and sat down, offering their names, as well. The tall one was Harrison Powell, a name that seemed to fit perfectly; the shorter, blond man was James something. Paige didn’t like the way James looked at her, although his gaze certainly wasn’t as bold as Harrison’s had been.
“Is this your first cruise?” Aurora asked both men, but her eyes focused on Harrison. She tapped a cigarette out of a pack she’d pulled from her purse and inserted it into a holder. Harrison took her lighter and flicked it, cupping his hand around the flame to protect it from the wind.
Aurora touched his hand briefly to steady it, then smiled, a sly, cat’s-in-the-cream smile Paige had seen a hundred times.
Inwardly Paige sighed. Her mother sure didn’t waste much time.
“Actually, this is my first cruise,” Harrison said. “And you?”
Aurora gave a throaty laugh. “Oh, my goodness, I’ve lost track of the number of cruises I’ve been on. I’m positively addicted to the Caribbean. But this is Paige’s first, isn’t it, dear?”
“Yes. Mmm-hmm.” Brilliant. Her mind felt like it was on novocaine.
“And what about you, James?” Aurora asked. “I do believe you look familiar to me.”
“I work for Mermaid Cruise Line, in administration,” he said with a charming smile. “I’m usually holed up in the offices down in the bowels of the ship, and I don’t often get to socialize with the passengers. My loss.” He looked at Paige as he said this.
Oh, brother, she thought. This James obviously believed he was a real smooth operator. Well, he could just operate on someone else. She wasn’t interested.
Now, Harrison was another story.
“What made you decide to come on a cruise?” Aurora asked Harrison.
“Actually, I’m thinking of investing in the Mermaid Line. But I never put my money into something without thoroughly investigating it first.” He shrugged. “This is part of the investigation.”
“And do you like what you see so far?” Aurora asked.
“Very much.”
Aurora’s and Harrison’s gazes locked for a brief interlude. But not so brief that Paige didn’t see what was going on. Her mother was in the process of making another conquest.
The realization hit Paige in the stomach. It shouldn’t bother her, really. Men were always attracted to Aurora. Men fell in love with Aurora. They flocked around her in crowds, vying for her attention. She was so sweet and easy to be with, they said. Instinctively she knew just how to make them feel handsome and desirable and utterly masculine.
Paige had witnessed it dozens of times. Why, then, did it suddenly bother her so much? Was it because the object of Aurora’s attention just happened to be the one man on this whole godforsaken ship that interested Paige?
Feelings Paige thought she had long ago dealt with rushed to the surface. The incident with Curtis Rittenour hadn’t been Aurora’s fault, she reminded herself. Aurora had just been her usual bubbly, charming self.
Curtis had been an older man—all of thirty-four to Paige’s star-struck twenty-three—and a sophisticated, wealthy doctor. Paige had been convinced he was her destiny. The man had showered her with attention. He’d seemed very pleased when Paige had nervously invited him to travel to Ft. Lauderdale with her from Miami, where she was in graduate school, and meet her mother.
Poor Curtis. He hadn’t even had a chance. The moment he’d set eyes on Aurora, he’d fallen in love with the swiftness of a diver leaping from the high board—although without the grace.
To her credit, Aurora had not encouraged him in any way. But Aurora didn’t have to encourage. Smitten, Curtis had pursued her relentlessly to the point of buying her a diamond ring. Never mind that Aurora had made it clear she did not reciprocate his feelings. It had taken Bobby’s intervention to get rid of the guy.
All that was ancient history, Paige reminded herself. But the remembered pain brought on by Curtis’s betrayal still could give her a twinge now and then.
Like now. Only this was more than a twinge.
Harrison laughed at something Aurora said. It was a low, full-bodied laugh that skittered pleasurably up and down Paige’s nerve endings, bringing goosebumps to her arms. His lips were full and sensual, his teeth even and white.
The man Aurora had identified as Doc Waller wandered up and joined their party. Within moments he was hanging on Aurora’s every word. Even James, who earlier had been looking at Paige with something akin to interest, seemed to have forgotten her existence. She felt utterly invisible.
This was ridiculous, she told herself. There was no reason in the world she should begrudge her mother’s enjoyment. If anything, she should be overjoyed that the object of Aurora’s attentions appeared to be a wealthy and stable man, not some penniless fortune hunter.
Of course, appearances could be deceiving.
Paige stood abruptly. “I hope you’ll all excuse me, but this afternoon sun is so strong, it’s given me a headache. I think I’ll go lie down for a while.”
She tried to stand and make a graceful exit, but her purse got hung up on her chair. A gusty breeze nearly unseated her hat. The last thing she saw before she managed to disentangle herself and make her ungainly escape was Harrison, watching her, obviously amused.
Two
Harrison turned his attention back to Aurora, but his thoughts were with Paige. What was troubling her? he wondered. He’d gotten the distinct impression that she wasn’t ill so much as irritated.
Aurora’s gaze was locked on the retreating form of her daughter. “Now I wonder what’s eating her?” she asked with a worried frown, echoing Harrison’s thoughts. “Maybe I should go check on her. She’s prone to seasickness.”
James stood up. “I’ll see that she gets back to her cabin all right.”
“And I’ve got plenty of seasick pills with me,” Doc Waller added, starting to rise also.
“Oh, please, don’t bother,” Aurora argued amiably. “Besides, James, I have a million questions I want to ask you about running a big cruise ship like this one. It must be fascinating work. And you, Doc—the last thing you need is to be taking care of sick people on your vacation. But maybe...” She batted her eyelashes at Harrison. “Would you mind, Harrison, seeing that my niece makes it safely back to her cabin? We’re on the Marlin Deck.”
“Sure, I’d be happy to.” Happier than he’d like to admit. He was supposed to be romancing Aurora, but that was a damned impossible task with her daughter sitting across the table. Now that Paige was out of the way he should lay it on thick. But all he could think about was running after her to find out what the problem was.
Well, Aurora had asked him to do it, he reasoned. And he wanted to please her, right?
“I’ll be back.” He gave her what he hoped was a charming smile as he stood and turned to make his escape.
Harrison had no trouble catching up to Paige. She had paused at the buffet table to sample some Brie cheese on a cracker.
“Must be some headache,” he said from behind her.
She made a startled little noise and whirled around, her face turning pink. “Oh, it’s you. I thought maybe some cheese and crackers would help the headache,” she said, crossing her arms defensively. “Protein and carbohydrate to increase the blood sugar, you know. Besides, Aurora signed us up for the late dinner seating, and I haven’t eaten all day except for those few strawberries.”
He remembered the strawberries. He’d hardly been able to keep his eyes off her as she’d delicately nibbled the juicy red morsels.
“In that case, try some of this Swiss cheese.” He stabbed a small yellow cube with a toothpick and held the tidbit in front of her mouth.
After giving him a suspicious look, she reluctantly parted her moist lips and plucked the cheese cube from the toothpick, then chewed it thoughtfully. “Mmm, you’re right, it is good,” she conceded.
“How about some white cheddar on a wheat cracker?” He cut a generous slice of the thick, white cheese, set it on a cracker and handed it to her. He’d almost held it in front of her mouth again, just for the sensual pleasure of feeding her, but he figured that would be pushing his luck. While she munched on the treat, he popped a slice into his own mouth.
“Headache any better?” he asked.
“I guess I don’t really have a headache,” she admitted. “I just get annoyed watching Mo—Aurora flirt so shamelessly.”
“Why does it annoy you? Flirtation is a dying art, and she’s very good at it. Besides, it’s fun. You ought to try it.”
“No, thanks,” Paige said with a haughty frown. “I’d rather be a bump on a log. I’m very good at that.”
“I didn’t mean to imply you were a bump. In fact, you don’t resemble any part of a log.”
She gave him an appraising look. “Are you flirting with me? Hedging your bets in case Aurora doesn’t take your bait?”
He didn’t answer. She’d caught him. But he couldn’t help himself. Paige Stovall begged to be cajoled into a smile, and he wanted to be the one to do it.
He’d better cut it out, he decided, or he would alienate both women. A man who set his sights on a mother and daughter—or an aunt and her niece, as he was supposed to believe them to be—could only be labeled a jerk.
“Well, I suppose it’s none of my business if you want to throw yourself at Aurora,” Paige said. “But I should warn you, her flirtations are anything but innocent. She’s been married four times.”
Harrison was careful to show the appropriate degree of surprise. “Really?”
“And I’d be leery if I were you. She might have you selected as husband number five.”
“I think you’re exaggerating. We were just enjoying a conversation. But would it bother you terribly if she had set her sights on me?”
“Damn right, it would! She’s old enough to be your...well, your much older sister.”
“I don’t see that age is so important. In fact, I’d guess the age difference between Aurora and me isn’t as great as the one between me and you.” Actually, he was about ten years older than Paige and more than twenty years Aurora’s junior. But he wasn’t supposed to know that.
“The age difference between us isn’t the issue.” She shrugged, though she didn’t appear as unaffected as she pretended. “Think what you like. But I warn you, I won’t let Aurora have her head turned by another handsome younger man, who has nothing in common—”
“You think I’m handsome?”
She blushed again. “What I think about you isn’t important.” She turned away, clearly dismissing him, and left the buffet table.
Harrison wasn’t finished with this conversation. Paige’s concerns about her mother fascinated him. Had she come on this cruise solely to protect Aurora from male predators like the cad she thought him to be?
He followed Paige to the railing, where she paused to look out over the inky blue water. Taking up a position beside her, he said, “If you’re trying to prevent your aunt from marrying another loser, you have nothing to fear from me. I find her charming, but I have no intention of marrying anyone, not in this century.”
Paige tilted her head and looked at him skeptically through slitted green eyes. “So you’d rather use her and drop her? Oh, that’s reassuring.”
“What makes you so sure I intend to ‘use her,’ as you so delicately put it? Couldn’t I just enjoy her company?”
“If that’s all you’re after, you would be an unusual man indeed, certainly for Aurora,” Paige said. Her head was lowered, her face hidden from view by the wide brim of her ridiculous hat.
Wanting to see her face, and those incredible green eyes, he impulsively pulled the hat off her head. She looked up suddenly, surprise and confusion warring on her expressive face.
“Who gave you such a low opinion of men, Paige Stovall?” he asked. When she looked away, refusing to meet his gaze, he touched her chin and gently drew her face toward him again.
“I’m just a realist,” she countered. “When a man approaches a woman, he has one of only two things on his mind.”
“Is that so? Which do I have on my mind right now?”
She stared at him, her eyes wide with surprise, and for a moment he worried that she really could read the less-than-pure thoughts in his head.
“I don’t know, and I don’t really care,” she finally answered, grabbing her hat from him and jamming it on her head. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my room.”
“I’ll walk with you,” he said affably, despite the withering dismissal she’d just given him.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“But I promised Aurora I’d see you safely back to your cabin. She was worried about you. Umm, the elevators are this way,” he added when Paige took a wrong turn.
“How do you already know so much about the ship?” she asked, accepting his company for the moment, the way someone accepts taxes and junk mail. “I thought this was your first cruise.”
“The Mermaid people invited me aboard a day early, so I could observe the cruise preparations. It seems to be a very efficient operation.”
“Then why do they need your money?” Paige asked as she and Harrison stepped aboard the elevator.
“Expansion takes capital. Mermaid wants to build a new ship. I’m looking for a way to shelter some of my income for the next couple of years.” He hoped she didn’t delve any deeper than that into his supposed background. His knowledge of the world of high finance was abstract at best.
Besides, he really hated lying, even if lying was a part of his job. Paige already had a less than sterling opinion of him. He didn’t like giving her more fuel. In fact, he found himself wanting to convince her that there were honorable men on this earth, men who were after more than sex, money and power. He wanted to prove to her that he was just such a man, a man who could value a woman’s intelligence as well as her body, one who enjoyed quiet walks in the moonlight as much as a night of mindless passion in bed.
But he could hardly prove that to her when it wasn’t entirely true. When it came to Aurora, he might not have money or sex on his mind, but he did have an angle, a self-serving angle. And when Paige discovered he wanted to put her mother in jail, he wasn’t likely to climb in her estimation.
When he and Paige arrived at the door to her cabin, she had to fish around in her handbag for the pass card. Harrison leaned one shoulder against the door frame and folded his arms.
“You could at least give me the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “I might not be the ideal match for Aurora, but with me hanging around, she won’t have time to take up with someone even worse than me. That is what you’re worried about, right?”
Paige seemed to consider his words. “If you and Aurora want to spend time together, there’s not much I can do about it. And I suppose she could do worse than to fall for some wealthy financier—if that’s what you are. But just remember this—I’ll be watching. And if I find out you’re not who you say you are, I’ll show no mercy.” She shoved the magnetic card into the slot and jerked it out, then tried the door. It didn’t open.
“You did it too fast,” Harrison said.
“I know how to open a door,” she said impatiently as she repeated the procedure. This time she got the flashing green light, opened the door, stepped inside and closed it again—firmly.
Harrison felt a pang of guilt, and he had to remind himself again that this was all part of his job. He was being paid to catch a jewel thief. But it seemed grossly unfair that the thief’s innocent daughter would be hurt in the process.
On the other side of the thin door, Paige held her breath until she was sure Harrison was gone and then released a long, tension-filled sigh. The nerve of that man, hitting on two women at the same time.
Well, okay, Paige conceded, he hadn’t really been hitting on her. But she’d had this vague but undeniable feeling that something had been going on between them, something sort of...sexual.
Or maybe she was imagining things. As Aurora so often and annoyingly pointed out, Paige was no expert when it came to men and their baffling ways. Maybe it was only wishful thinking on her part that a wealthy, good-looking man like Harrison Powell would take any interest in an ordinary hospital dietitian like her.
She threw the silly navy hat onto her bed, then followed it, sitting gingerly on the mattress and leaning her head against the wall. How was she going to keep Aurora from making a fool of herself over this guy? And did she really want to? Harrison had made a valid point when he’d said that, so long as he kept Aurora interested, she wouldn’t have time to fall in love with an even worse prospect.
An insidious, nasty thought worked its way into Paige’s consciousness. There was one way she might be able to keep Aurora and Harrison apart, and that was to throw herself at Harrison. For her it would be only a meaningless shipboard romance, and through her efforts she might just keep Aurora from walking down the aisle a fifth time. Despite Harrison’s reassurances that he didn’t have marriage on his mind, he might yet fall victim to Aurora’s charisma.
Nice try, she told herself, attempting unsuccessfully to tamp down her bubbling self-disgust. If Harrison had the slightest interest in her—and that was a big if—it was inexcusable of her to even think of stealing the man her mother had her eye on. And if the very idea weren’t laughable, such a despicable act was not the way to bolster her ego and assuage the five-year-old hurt of Curtis Rittenour’s defection.
* * *
When Aurora finally returned from the cocktail party—half-looped, in Paige’s estimation—she solicitously asked after Paige’s headache. Paige resisted the urge to snap, since Aurora had done nothing wrong per se, and gave a noncommittal reply.
“You’ll feel better once you eat some real food,” Aurora soothed. “I heard there’s shark on the menu tonight. James says they have a new French chef who’s marvelous. He has his own TV show and everything.”
“Mmm,” Paige said, waving her hands in the air to dry her recently polished nails. She hadn’t been able to think of any other way to kill time while nursing her supposed headache.
“You know, that James is a very nice-looking man,” Aurora said, “and I think he’s rather intrigued with you. He asked a lot of questions about you.”
“I hope you told him I have a boyfriend who plays linebacker for the Dolphins.”
“Oh, Paige, I told him no such thing. In fact, I made it known that you were quite available. I hope that was all right. Don’t you like James?”
“It wasn’t all right, and no, I don’t particularly like James—at least, not in that way. Please, Mother, stay out of my love life.”
“I’m only trying to help,” Aurora said, undaunted. “What did you come on this cruise for, if not to meet men?”
To keep you from meeting men. “To relax,” she answered as she abruptly stood and began pacing the tiny floor space.
“It doesn’t seem to be working.”
Paige sat down again. “Give it time,” she said, softening. “I’ve only been on board a few hours. I’ll get the hang of it soon.”
By the time they headed for the nine-o’clock dinner seating in the elegant Seascape Dining Room, Paige’s mood had improved. She felt more like herself in an uncomplicated silk sheath and simple accessories, her unruly hair folded into a sophisticated twist atop her head. She wasn’t looking forward to eating shark, no matter who prepared it, but she figured the menu would also include steak or chicken.
Her optimism took an abrupt nosedive when the steward showed them to their table and she saw who else was seated there.
Harrison and James both stood as the ladies approached. “Good evening,” Harrison said as he took Aurora’s hand between his and gave her a peck on the cheek in an irritatingly debonair gesture.
Who did he think he was, Cary Grant? Paige groused inwardly, although she had to admit he looked the part in his starched white shirt, conservative tie and a charcoal jacket that had obviously been tailored to fit his wide shoulders.
“I hope you don’t mind that we arranged to share a table with you,” he said.
“We’re delighted,” Aurora answered smoothly. She looked expectantly at Paige, who remained silent.
The two men and Aurora carried the conversation through most of dinner, sometimes discussing serious topics, other times sharing silly jokes and laughing until their eyes were moist with tears.
No one seemed to mind Paige’s pensiveness. Every so often James would lean over and offer an aside to Paige, speaking in a low voice much too near her ear. His warm breath against her cheek, far from provocative, made her want to flee to her cabin and wash her face.
When the waiter set the shark steak in front of her, Paige questioned her impulsive decision to be brave and try something new. What was she trying to prove, anyway? But she ate it without complaint, hardly tasting it, washing it down with the less-than-palatable Chablis from her constantly filled glass.
After dinner Paige considered calling it a night. It was almost eleven. But she had promised Bobby she would keep an eye on Aurora, so she found herself following the others to the Copacabana Lounge. A small orchestra was doing a creditable job on some big band numbers despite its size. Bobby had once sung with a similar band, and a wave of unexpected nostalgia hit her.
“Would you like to dance?” James asked her.
“Umm, no, actually...” she stammered.
“C’mon, Paige,” he wheedled. “I’m a terrific ballroom dancer. I’ll teach you the steps in no time.”
An amused look passed between mother and daughter. If there was one thing Paige didn’t need lessons on, it was dancing. Touring the country with her father’s band, she had practically grown up in nightclubs, learning everything from the tango to the twist to the Texas two-step.
Harrison was watching her, too, seemingly interested in her response. She felt a sudden, illogical urge to show him that she wasn’t completely inept when it came to social skills.
She smiled up at James. “All right, one dance.”
The band had just launched into “In the Mood,” and she and James fell into an easy jitterbug. James was an adept partner, if not an inspired one, and Paige found that she was almost enjoying herself. They fit well together, James’s less-than-towering height complementing her petite size.
“I think you’re the one who should be giving lessons,” he said when the song ended. “How did you learn to dance like that?”
“My parents taught me,” she said, choosing not to elaborate.
The band started a slower number, and James drew her into his arms for a waltz. She wasn’t as comfortable dancing so close, and she did her best to maintain some distance between their bodies while James did his best to maximize contact.
She glanced wistfully at their table, wondering how she could end the dance without sounding horribly rude, when she saw Harrison watching them, his black gaze practically burning a hole through her.
Rather than pleasing her, as it should have, the look on his face disturbed her.
Fortunately a beeper in James’s coat pocket chose that moment to chirp. “Damn,” he said under his breath as he reluctantly released Paige. “Looks like I’ll have to go take care of some small emergency. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Paige murmured her insincere regrets over his leaving, breathed a quiet sigh of relief and went back to the table.
“How about it, Aurora?” Harrison was saying, apparently oblivious to Paige’s return.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Aurora demurred. “I’m not much for dancing, not tonight, anyway. My feet hurt.”
What? Paige thought. Since when did her mother not like to dance?
“Besides, I need to go powder my nose,” Aurora continued. “If you’re set on dancing, why don’t you give Paige a try?”
Paige gave a small gasp as they both looked expectantly at her. Dance with Harrison? The mere thought made her dizzy. Or maybe that was just the wine.
“Would you like to dance, Paige?” Harrison asked politely. “If James doesn’t mind, that is.”
That infuriated her. “James was called away on business,” she informed him icily. “But I’m sure he doesn’t give a fig whom I dance with, nor would I care if he did.”
“Good.” Harrison stood and took her hand, urging her out of her chair.
Aurora leaned over to Paige and whispered, “Don’t let him dance with anyone else, particularly not that stacked brunette who keeps making cow eyes at him from across the room. I’ll be back shortly.”
It appeared Paige had no choice but to acquiesce. It irked her that her mother thought her to be far less of a threat than the silicone-implanted bimbo. It irked her again that she even cared.
The band was playing another slow, dreamy number, and Harrison drew her easily into his arms. He was not so skillful a dancer as James, but he was obviously comfortable with his own body and his movements. In moments they were dancing in harmony, despite the height difference between them. He held her not too stiffly, yet not too close, either.
“Could you at least try to appear as if you’re enjoying this?” Harrison said. “People will think I’m pulling your fingernails out one by one instead of dancing with you.”
Little did he know that he was inflicting a very different brand of torture on her. His nearness caused her body to respond, despite her efforts to remain indifferent. She was acutely aware of his hard, lean torso brushing against hers, the warmth of his hand enveloping hers, the strength of his shoulder where she touched him, the subtle, spicy fragrance of his after-shave.
And the way he looked at her. She could have easily drowned in those brown eyes, which seemed so sincere.
She forced a smile.
“That’s a little better. Why do you dislike me so intensely?
“It’s habit,” she replied, not even bothering to deny the accusation. “I’ve never liked any of Aurora’s suitors. She tends to attract a certain brand of man.”
“What if I’m different?” he countered, his hand making slow, sensual circles at the small of her back. “What if I’m gainfully employed, financially secure and a gentleman without designs on Aurora’s matrimonial status?”
Paige didn’t answer. The feel of his hand, warm and insistent through the silk of her dress, had paralyzed her brain and turned her body into one big nerve ending.
“Well, it’s possible, isn’t it?” he prompted.
With no small effort Paige collected her wits. What was she doing? What was she allowing him to do?
“You may be gainfully employed and financially secure,” she said evenly. “But a gentleman? For the past few minutes you’ve been rubbing circles on my back, and now your hand is perilously close to a part of my anatomy that shouldn’t be fondled in public. In conclusion, only a cur dog pursues two females at the same time, much less two females who are close to each other. This dance is finished, Mr. Powell. And when I tell Aurora what you’re up to, you’ll be finished with her, as well.”
Looking a bit startled at her vehement outburst, he dropped his hands, allowing her to escape.
Paige resisted the urge to run. Her face flaming, she left the dance floor, bypassed their table and headed straight for the exit. A detached part of her applauded her blistering speech. Her outrage was perfectly justified; the dressing down was no more than the cad deserved.
But another, more frightened part of herself was forced to admit that she’d liked the way he’d been touching her. For the first time in years she’d felt the full force of her own healthy, feminine response to a man’s touch, complete with watery knees, fluttering stomach, heart palpitations and an insistent tug deep in her abdomen, an ache that begged for fulfillment.
If she hadn’t willfully summoned up that anger, she would have melted against him, turned her face upward and accepted the kiss she knew had been on his mind.
She probably would have enjoyed it, too.
Three
The next morning Paige was determined to put the previous evening’s disturbing events behind her. The weather outside was gorgeous, she had a new, sleek, emerald green swimsuit, and the breakfast buffet on the Lido Deck beckoned. After she sated herself, she planned to find a deck chair, an umbrella and several undisturbed hours to lose herself in Stephen King’s latest bestseller.
She didn’t have to worry about her mother. She’d heard Aurora come dragging in after 2:00 a.m., giggling like a teenager as someone—Paige didn’t want to think too hard about who—had walked her to her door. If Aurora was true to form, she wouldn’t be out of bed until noon.
Paige did, however, need to borrow Aurora’s bottle of sun block. She eased the connecting door open and tiptoed inside her mother’s room, where Aurora snored softly, a satin sleeping mask protecting her eyes from the sunlight streaming through the cracks in the curtains.
Now, where would her mother have hidden the suntan lotion? Paige wondered.
“Mmm, Paige?” Aurora said muzzily.
“Sorry, Mother,” Paige whispered. “I’m just looking for the sun block.”
Aurora leaned up on one elbow and pulled off the mask. “‘S in that beach bag...oh, there, under the dressing table. Why’d you run off so early last night?” she asked, obviously irritated. “You missed the champagne.”
“It wasn’t early, it was after midnight,” Paige argued amiably. Sooner or later she would have to tell her mother about Harrison’s lack of fidelity, but that could wait—at least until Aurora had drunk her first cup of coffee.
“Harrison seemed to think you were miffed at him.”
“Oh, he did, did he?”
“Were you?”
Paige weighed her answer carefully. “A bit. You should watch him, Mother. I don’t think his intentions are honorable.”
“I certainly hope not,” Aurora said with a wicked laugh.
“Mother!”
“Oh, Paige, would you lay off the ‘Miss Prim’ stuff? I’m a grown woman, and I don’t need you watchdogging my social life.”
“Someone should,” Paige muttered.
Aurora chose to ignore the dig. “So where are you off to this morning so disgustingly bright and early?”
Paige was relieved at the change of subject. “To breakfast and then the pool. Want to come?”
Aurora shuddered delicately at the mention of food. “No, thanks, not until I beat this hangover. I’d forgotten what a chipper little morning person you are. Now, go away. I’ll see you at a more civilized hour.” She shoved the mask back over her eyes and burrowed into the bed covers.
With a shrug Paige grabbed the beach bag, which felt as if it contained a bowling ball, and returned to her own room.
“What in the world is in this thing?” she wondered aloud as she opened the drawstring top and checked out the contents. There were two pairs of sunglasses, a tube of lip balm, under-eye moisturizer, three scarves, and four economy-size bottles of suntan oil, each with a different SPF. The outside zipper pockets held clips to Aurora’s electric rollers, a packet of tissues and a costume-jewelry necklace.
Paige examined the necklace. It was pretty, she decided. In fact, she would have thought it was the real thing if she didn’t know that stones of this size were well beyond Aurora’s means. Still, it was obviously an expensive piece of fakery. She would have to remind Aurora to take better care of it.
Paige laid the necklace on the dresser, intending to return it to her mother later. She selected a few essentials and put them back into the bag, plopped a wide-brimmed straw hat onto her head and headed for the Lido Deck.
* * *
“As nearly as we can pinpoint it, the theft occurred between 9:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m.,” James said in a low voice, craning his neck this way and that to be sure there were no eavesdroppers lurking about. He and Harrison were going over the details of the break-in that had occurred last night, proving that the Mermaid cat burglar was on the prowl.
“What exactly was stolen?” Harrison asked.
“A sapphire-and-diamond necklace, worth a cool twenty-seven thousand dollars,” James said. “Fortunately the owner isn’t the hysterical type. She reported the theft very quietly, and I’ve convinced her to keep mum so our chief suspect won’t know we’re on to her. Which leads me to...did you get lucky with Aurora last night?”
Harrison sighed tiredly. “No. An elderly gentleman, a Dr. Waller, walked her back to her cabin at about two. I followed them, then stuck around in the passageway long enough to be sure she didn’t take a late-night stroll.”
“Then she isn’t responsible?” James asked, frowning.
“I didn’t say that.” Damn, he almost wished he could serve as Aurora’s alibi. He was growing fond of her, and it was getting harder and harder for him to believe she was a world-class jewel thief.
What was even harder to swallow was how Paige would handle her mother’s arrest. “Aurora went to the ladies’ room shortly after you were called away,” he admitted. “She was gone more than twenty minutes. I should have followed her, but I didn’t. She said she’d be right back, and I didn’t think that much of it.” He’d been too intent on dancing with Paige to think clearly, anyway.
“Twenty minutes would be enough time, barely,” James said, his irritated frown fading. Clearly he was eager to close this case, which had plagued him for more than a year.
“How did the burglar get into the cabin?” Harrison asked.
“A glass cutter was used on the terrace door. It was a clean, quick job. And, Harrison, the cabin that was hit is next door to Aurora’s.”
“Well, hell, that clinches it, then.” Aurora must have climbed over the railing of her veranda and worked her way over to the victim’s. Although the woman was fifty-eight years old, she was trim and athletic. The caper wasn’t inconceivable. “Any fingerprints?”
“Nope. Like I said, clean and fast.”
“Why didn’t you tell me as soon as the theft was reported?” Harrison asked.
James’s expression hardened. “Silly me. I thought you were making some progress with Aurora, and I didn’t want to mess that up. I was hoping you’d get into her cabin and find something useful.” He was clearly disgusted with Harrison’s lack of success on that front.
“Hey, you think this is easy? Aurora’s no pushover.”
“That’s not what I hear.”
All right, so maybe Harrison hadn’t tried all that hard, especially when Aurora seemed to be having such a good time with the doctor. “Don’t worry, she’ll invite me in.”
“You know, we could use a passkey. If we knew where the necklace was ahead of time—”
“Forget it,” Harrison said, cutting him off. “I work strictly by the book. We can’t search without the captain’s say-so, and he won’t give us that without stronger evidence. So Aurora has to invite me in.”
James laughed without humor. “Sometimes I wonder about you, Harrison. I’d be willing to bet I can get into Paige’s bed before you get into Aurora’s.”
Harrison’s hand clenched into a fist beneath the table. He longed to punch that self-satisfied smirk off James’s face. God, how he hated the other man’s attitude. At least Harrison had a halfway defensible reason for romancing Aurora. But James’s only motivation for putting the moves on Paige was so he could chalk up another conquest.
“Yeah, the more I think about it,” James continued, oblivious to Harrison’s suppressed anger, “the more I believe it’s essential for me to keep Paige occupied and safely out of the way. Aurora’s more likely to tip her hand if she doesn’t have to worry about her daughter. Not that Paige is really my type, but she’s not half-bad.”
Not half-bad? Harrison had to exert excruciating self-control not to lunge for James’s throat. Paige Stovall was the sweetest combination of strength and vulnerability Harrison had ever encountered, demurely feminine one minute and fierce as any lioness the next, especially when it came to protecting her mother. Fire and ice. How could anyone think she was less than magnificent?
With a jolt, Harrison realized he was jealous. That’s what he’d felt last night, all the way to his gut, when he’d watched Paige dancing with James, laughing with him, touching him. And when Aurora had unwittingly answered his fantasies by practically thrusting Paige into his arms, he’d felt as if the angels had smiled on him. Even though she’d danced with him under protest, he’d enjoyed staring down into those luminous eyes, watching the sparkling night-club lights play against her auburn hair, feeling the firm flesh at the small of her back beneath her silk dress.
She had enchanted him, and he’d completely forgotten himself. It had seemed as natural as breathing to caress her as they danced. It had also been a near-fatal blow to his investigation. He’d have to do a lot of fence mending if he wanted to salvage the operation.
He hadn’t confessed that blunder to James. He might still be able to pick up the pieces.
He allowed his hands to relax. It wasn’t worth getting thrown off this case just for the satisfaction of breaking James’s nose. Besides, there was no reason for him to worry about James getting to Paige. She might be an innocent, but she wasn’t stupid.
“Say, speak of the devil, look who’s in the buffet line,” James said.
Harrison looked, scanning the crowd, uncomfortably eager to catch a glimpse of Paige. There she was, wearing sunglasses and a bulky terry robe that hid her curves, her sun-bright hair tucked beneath a floppy hat. A huge canvas beach bag hung from one shoulder. She was trying to be inconspicuous, no doubt, but he would have recognized those legs anywhere. They might not be terribly long, but they were trim and shapely. For an instant his imagination conjured up an image of those legs wrapped around— No, no, no. He had to stop thinking along those lines.
Aurora, he noticed, was nowhere around.
“Why don’t you leave Paige alone?” he said, when he noticed James smoothing his hair and flicking an invisible speck of lint from his razor-creased trousers. “She doesn’t deserve this.” But as always, James didn’t listen. He quickly made his move, swooping down on Paige like a dive-bomber, picking up her tray from beneath her nose and carrying it back to their table despite her protests.
She had little choice but to follow her breakfast.
“Oh, good morning,” she said coolly when she spotted Harrison. “You’re up early for having been out so late.”
James drew back in surprise. “And just how do you know how late Harrison stayed up?” he asked. Although he appeared to be teasing, there was a hard edge to his question.
“My aunt got back to her cabin after two,” she said. “I just assumed she was still with Harrison.”
Although she was answering James, she looked straight at Harrison as she spoke. Was she challenging him, daring him to contradict her? Getting into her good graces wasn’t going to be easy. Of course, he’d already known that.
“I don’t need much sleep,” he said pleasantly.
“Would you like me to get you some coffee?” James asked solicitously, helping her remove the plates of fruit, yogurt and muffins from her tray.
“Yes, please,’ she said, her voice resigned. “Decaf, black.”
James scurried to do her bidding, pausing to tuck her cumbersome beach bag under the table—probably so there would be more room for him to sit close to her.
“Where’s Aurora this morning?” Harrison asked.
“I’m afraid she’s not feeling well,” Paige replied as she reluctantly settled onto the bench opposite him. She spread margarine onto a blueberry muffin, her eyes impossible to read behind the dark glasses.
“That’s terrible,” Harrison said. “Has she been to see the ship’s doctor?”
“Oh, it’s nothing so serious,” Paige said. “She’s just a little woozy.”
A few minutes ago Harrison could have easily believed Aurora was hung over. Last night she’d seemed pretty tipsy when he’d followed her back to her cabin. But that must have been an act, he realized. She would have needed all her wits about her to carry off the theft of the necklace.
The gears in his mind turned furiously. Here was the perfect opportunity to get into Aurora’s cabin. “Maybe I should pay her a visit. Does she like flowers? Would that cheer her up?”
He saw the negative answer on Paige’s face. But before she could deliver some scathing comment, her expression abruptly softened. “You know, that’s really sweet of you. Aurora loves flowers, roses in fact. And chocolates, the kind with nuts in the center. Yes, I think some attention from you would make her feel lots better.”
Harrison was skeptical of Paige’s sudden change of heart. He would have liked to think he had swayed her with his show of concern, but somehow he didn’t think it was that easy.
“You’re not just trying to get rid of me, are you?” he asked, snitching a strawberry from her plate despite the fact that he’d hardly touched his own breakfast of eggs and toast.
She surprised him by flashing a mischievous smile and peeking over the top of her sunglasses at him, giving him a heart-stopping glimpse of those amazingly clear green eyes. “Of course not. But if you’re going to persist in throwing yourself at Aurora, you might as well do it right.”
Had she really decided he wasn’t so bad for Aurora? Somehow, that thought didn’t cheer him very much.
He was reluctant to leave the table when Paige was feeling more charitable toward him. Especially if James was around. But duty called. He gulped down the last of his coffee, bade her a jaunty good morning and set out on his mission.
Amazingly, he found roses and chocolates, the kind with nuts in the center, in the well-stocked gift shop. Whistling tunelessly, he headed down to the Marlin Deck, acknowledging the smiles of passersby who recognized that he was on a romantic errand.
Suddenly feeling like a complete fraud, he stopped whistling as thoughts of an unpleasant chapter from his past assaulted him. He’d once worked as a criminal defense attorney, and there had been a client, a woman named Kitty Cirello, accused of embezzlement. Kitty had lured him into her bed and convinced him of her love, knowing that if she won him over, he would trade his soul to get her acquitted in court.
That was exactly what he’d done. Afterward, Kitty had admitted her guilt, deliberately making him feel like a fool. The way she’d used him, playing on his emotions to get what she’d wanted, had left a bad taste in his mouth. Right now was he behaving any better?
But I’m the good guy, he tried to convince himself. He was on the side of law and order, and Kitty had been a criminal, just like Aurora.
Did that excuse his behavior?
By the time he knocked on Aurora’s door, he was pretty disgusted with himself. Once this assignment was over, he was lowering the boom on his boss—no more undercover work. There was already too much deception in this world without his adding to it.
After what seemed a long time, the door cracked open and one red-rimmed eye peered out at him. “Oh, Lord,” Aurora said in a gravelly voice, as she shoved a pair of sunglasses onto her face. “What are you doing here at this ungodly hour?”
“Paige said you weren’t feeling well. I thought flowers and candy would cheer you up.”
She opened the door another inch to peer at the bouquet of roses and the candy he held. “Dear boy,” she said, “there is nothing wrong with me that a few more hours of sleep won’t cure. For future reference, I don’t socialize before noon. I’m allergic to roses, and I despise chocolate with nuts.”
She started to close the door, then paused. “I’m sorry you wasted your money. Don’t throw away the candy, though. Paige likes the kind with nuts.” She slammed the door, leaving Harrison standing in the passageway feeling like a ninny.
He’d known Paige’s sudden affability was too good to be true. He should have smelled the trap. What had happened to his instincts, which his boss had so eloquently bragged about to James Blair?
The only other time he’d lost his ability to think clearly was when he’d been a young, eager attorney, defending Kitty Cirello against what he thought was a gross miscarriage of justice. He had been so wrong about her.
Not that he was wrong about Paige. Oh, she might have a little streak of wickedness in her soul. At least, she wasn’t above putting a well-deserved prank over on him. But she wasn’t in the same league as Kitty...or her own mother. Still, he resolved to do a better job of keeping his wits about him.
He gave the roses to an elderly woman on the elevator, but he kept the chocolates. Hell, he liked the kind with nuts. And he would choke down the entire pound box before he would let Paige have even one.
* * *
Paige’s morning plans had been shot to hell. First there was her encounter with Harrison, about which she was feeling slightly guilty. Aurora would chew him up and spit him out. Then there was breakfast with James, who had hovered over her like a nervous waiter on his first day while she ate—or tried to eat—her meal. He had stuck to her like lint, just as annoying and just as impossible to shake loose.
She now sat in a deck chair under an umbrella, paperback in hand, but she hadn’t made it through a single page. James seemed determined to converse with her, regardless of her broad hints that she wanted to be left alone. She even had to slap his hands away from her beach bag when he tried to dig into it for her sun block, offering to rub some on her back. The prospect gave her more shivers than Stephen King.
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