Island Heat
Island Heat
Sarah Mayberry
It's been eight years since Tory Sanderson has seen Ben Cooper–eight years since she found out he seduced her to win a bet with some classmates at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, and eight years since she got her revenge. . . . After fulfilling her dream of publishing a cookbook of island recipes, Tory is thrilled when she's invited on a Caribbean cruise as a guest lecturer. But excitement turns to anxiety when she finds out that Ben, who is now a celebrated restaurateur, will join her as the guest chef. Ben accepted the guest chef gig in order to enjoy a week of Tory sweating it out in the kitchen.But once the heat starts to climb, getting even turns out to be the last thing on his mind. In fact, picturing a future with Tory in his kitchen might add just the right amount of spice to his life. . . .
Sarah Mayberry
ISLAND HEAT
A huge thanks to my amazing partner, Chris, for his
patience and sense of humor during the writing of
this book. We’ll never move houses mid-manuscript
again, I promise! Thanks also to the amazing Ms W
for putting me in the writer’s seat on this one, and
to Harlequin for inviting me to play with a bunch of
talented, amazing ladies.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
TORY FOURNIER UNZIPPED her suitcase and flipped it open. Inside nestled a host of flimsy dresses, swimsuits, flip-flops and sun hats. She frowned at the bright colors and lightweight cottons. Why had she gone crazy and bought hot-pink and aqua? She only ever wore black, beige or white. Suddenly everything in her case looked garish and cheap and even vaguely slutty.
Great.
Pushing a hand through her straight blond hair, Tory started to unpack. She didn’t really hate her new tropical wardrobe. Deep inside she knew that. But she was feeling frustrated and oddly depressed. As she hung her sundresses in the closet in the stateroom she’d been assigned, she forced herself to remember that she was on a luxurious cruise ship, about to sail into the Caribbean for ten sun-filled days. There were about a million worse places to be, and not many better.
Back in New York, for example, it was snowing. People were wearing gloves, scarves and hats and tucking their faces into their turned-up collars as they trudged to work. They could see their breath in the air, for Pete’s sake.
And she was about to explore sunny, exotic St. Bart’s and Grenada and the Bahamas. What was wrong with her?
She didn’t have to go far to unearth the source of her downer: her father. At twenty-nine, she should have been used to his unenthusiastic reactions to her good news. It was his way, that was all. He rarely lavished praise on anything or anyone, and his only daughter was no exception. All her life he’d greeted her successes with a nod of acknowledgment and little more. When she’d been accepted into the prestigious Cuisine Institute of America to do her chef’s training, she’d expected champagne corks and back pats from him. She’d been following in his footsteps, after all. But he’d simply reviewed her course selection and told her to avoid working under Monsieur St Pierre. When she’d scored a publishing contract for her collection of Caribbean-inspired recipes, he’d just looked confused and asked why she was dabbling when she should be pursuing her first Michelin star ranking in a prestige restaurant.
And when she’d told him her publicist had organized for her to come on board Alexandra’s Dream as a guest lecturer to work in conjunction with a local celebrity chef for a special Caribbean-cuisine-themed cruise, he’d shaken his head in disbelief.
“What about this Caribbean-themed restaurant you want to start up?” he’d asked. “That’s just going to go on hold, is it? You know I’m not sold on the idea anyway, but you need to show some commitment, Victoria.”
He’d slipped into his chef-de-cuisine tone, the one he used to employ when he was castigating a lowly member of his kitchen staff. Perhaps because he was retired now, he used it on her more and more often these days.
“It’s ten days, Andre,” she’d said. She’d gotten into the habit of calling her father by his name over the long summers she’d helped out in his former restaurant, the critically acclaimed Le Plat. “My real-estate agent is finalizing a list of properties for me, my backers are in place. This isn’t going to interfere with my plans.”
Her father had just thrown his hands in the air in perfect imitation of her Gallic grandfather.
“No one will ever take you seriously if you flit about like this,” he’d said.
Just remembering the conversation made Tory mad all over again. She wasn’t flitting. She had a well-thought-out business plan to have her own restaurant fitted out and up and running within the next three months. She’d scouted sites, finalized a menu. She’d even tapped some past colleagues on the shoulder to warn them she would be head-hunting them soon. Ten days in the Caribbean was not going to derail any of that.
She knew that part of her father’s attitude could be laid at the door of his retirement. He hated being a man of leisure. Practically his entire adult life had been spent in the stress and drama of a commercial kitchen; playing a round of golf in the morning and flicking through industry magazines for the afternoon just did not do it for him. But apart from being patient, there was precious little Tory could do about that. He’d chosen to hang up his apron—going out on a high, he’d called it—so he was going to have to come to terms with this new stage in his life. Unfortunately, it had been two years now and he was still showing no signs of accepting that his career was over.
Of course, she could have told her father her other reasons for wanting to go to the Caribbean, but he wouldn’t have understood those, either, just as he didn’t understand her passion for island food.
Her fingers brushed against something cool and metallic in her suitcase as she reached in for another stack of clothes, and she pulled a small photo frame from where she’d stowed it safely between two tank tops. Her brother Michael’s bright blue eyes smiled out at her, his handsome face tanned and his curly blond hair bleached white from long days in the sun. He looked so happy, so open. The old emptiness echoed inside her as she looked into his beloved face. It had been eight years, but she still missed him every day. Perhaps it was because they had been twins. Perhaps it was because they’d been best friends as well as brother and sister. Or maybe everyone felt the same aching sense of loss when a brother or sister died, as though nothing was ever going to be the same again.
Cleaning the smudged glass on the hem of her T-shirt, Tory placed the photo frame on her bedside unit. She didn’t normally travel with a picture of her brother, but this trip was special. Michael was the reason she’d jumped at the unexpected offer when her publicist had called. She wanted to visit the place where her brother had spent the last months of his life, see the islands where he had been so happy. He’d joined the DEA straight out of college, and his first big posting had been to the Caribbean, working with local authorities, using his pilot’s skills to best effect in undercover operations. She could still recall the vivid descriptions of the islands in his letters and e-mails home. She wanted to see the Caribbean through his eyes. Maybe it would help her say goodbye to him at last.
Sighing heavily, Tory crossed to the en suite bathroom to stow her toiletries. She caught sight of her reflection in the bathroom mirror—her blue eyes looked troubled, her skin pale after months of winter. She had the same dimpled chin as her brother, but her nose was more snubbed than his. Her shoulder-length blond hair was starting to frizz a little from a day in the Florida humidity, and she smoothed it with her hand. She knew she was generally considered more pretty than beautiful, but she’d never had a problem with her looks—except for her curly hair. Fortunately a few minutes with her straightening iron fixed that every morning.
She tried a smile in the bathroom mirror. She looked tense, uptight.
Unbidden, words from long ago popped into her mind.
So you can laugh. I thought maybe you were missing a humor chromosome or something.
She squelched the rogue memory back down where it belonged—in the X files, never to see the light of day.
Stepping back into the cabin, she picked up the information folder she’d been given when she’d reported to the personnel department that afternoon. Flicking past a detailed sailing schedule, information on lifeboat drills and pages of rules and regulations, she found what she was looking for—a detailed plan of the ship. The cuisine arts center, a purpose-built venue unique to the Dream, was on the Aphrodite deck, two decks above her cabin. Officially she didn’t hold her first onboard lecture until the day after tomorrow, and the bulk of the time she’d be working in tandem with Jacques St. Clair, a high-profile local chef the shipping line had recruited for this specially themed cruise. If she wanted to, she could just kick back and play at being a real passenger for the evening. But Tory had always been a big planner—she didn’t do anything by the seat of her pants unless she absolutely had to.
Collecting a notebook and pen, she pocketed her key card and exited into the corridor. It was only when she started walking that she noticed the faint swaying of the ship. She guessed that after a few days she wouldn’t even register it. She’d only ever been on smaller yachts and catamarans, but she was pretty confident she wasn’t going to spend half the voyage hugging the toilet bowl. Just in case, however, she’d brought some motion-sickness pills. Like a Boy Scout, she was always prepared.
She decided to take the stairs rather than the elevator and was pleased to find she was barely out of breath by the time she’d gained the Aphrodite deck. All those early mornings at the gym had paid off a little, then. The moment she’d agreed to come on board Alexandra’s Dream she’d gone into bikini-panic mode, booking herself into every body-blasting, fat-pummeling, trimming, toning class her gym had on offer. Since she was so tall—five feet eight inches barefoot—she’d never put on weight easily, but she’d figured she was already going to be feeling pretty self-conscious about her glow-in-the-dark winter-white body, so there was no reason to compound the misery with a spare tire or two around her middle.
The Aphrodite deck seemed to be made up mostly of staterooms, and she made her way along the corridors until she came to two large double doors. A shiny brass plaque announced the cuisine arts center. Pushing through the doors, she found herself in a decent-size theater not unlike a movie cinema, only instead of a movie screen at the front, there was a state-of-the-art demonstration kitchen facing the rows of stadium seating. She noted that each chair had a small fold-down table similar to a true lecture theater, but she doubted many of the passengers would be going to the trouble of making notes.
She turned her attention to the kitchen itself. The countertops were granite, and there were three deep sinks along the back wall. The fridge was positioned to one side, a large double-doored unit, and when she opened it she saw it was already loaded with many condiments and basic staples like milk and butter. There were two ovens, both gas, and she noted that a series of small cameras had been built into the lighting rig above the countertop. She guessed that they would be fed live to the big plasma screens at either side of the stage so that everyone in the audience could see what was going on on the stove top or countertop.
A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she recognized the pleasant hum of anticipation in her stomach. She loved talking about food and she was particularly looking forward to working with Jacques during the cruise. The kitchen was great, the decor attractive and she was about to visit the spice islands that she’d read about and researched so much. What was not to love?
The buzz that had eluded her earlier at last arrived. This was going to be fun.
She was running an appreciative hand along the edge of the European-designed gas stove, complete with eight burners and a fish cooker, when the double doors swung open and an attractive dark-haired woman entered the room. The woman’s crisp navy uniform flattered her curvaceous figure, and Tory guessed she must be in her late thirties.
“You’re Victoria Fournier, aren’t you?” the woman said, striding forward with her hand extended. “I recognize you from the photo on your book jacket. I’m Patti Kennedy, the cruise director.”
Tory shook hands and grimaced comically. “Pleased to meet you, Patti. I’m almost embarrassed you recognize me from that photo—I look like someone just told me I was about to be audited by the IRS.”
Patti smiled readily. “I wanted to make sure you were settling in and to let you know it’s definitely worth your while getting to know all the little idiosyncrasies of the equipment before you take your first session. We’ve had some disasters in the past.”
“I can imagine, but I never cook in an oven I haven’t tested first,” Tory assured her. “Several disasters of my own taught me that one.”
“I’ll leave you to get acquainted with the facilities, then. But before I go, there has been one slight change to the program that you’ll need to be aware of,” Patti said. “It won’t alter anything dramatically, but you might get a few inquiries from our guests if they notice the substitution. We just heard this morning that Jacques St. Clair has broken his leg.”
Tory’s eyebrows rose toward her hairline.
“I hope he’s okay?” she asked, her mind automatically slipping into crisis mode. She had a feeling she knew what Patti was about to ask her—if she felt up to hosting the entire culinary program on her own, delivering lectures and providing the cooking demonstrations. She was so busy calculating what sort of preparation time she’d need to reconfigure the syllabus she’d worked up that she almost missed Patti’s next words.
“He’s going to be fine. And so are we, happily. Thank heaven we have a captain who enjoys five-star cuisine. He’s called on the owner of his favorite restaurant in the region to rope us in another top-drawer chef at the last moment. You’ve probably heard of him, actually—his restaurant won a third Michelin star recently. Ben Cooper, from Café Rendezvous on Anguilla? The captain and Ben have been great friends ever since the captain fell in love with Ben’s food several years ago.”
Patti cocked her head to one side, waiting for some sign of recognition from Tory.
It took a few seconds for Tory’s brain to do anything but resound with shock.
Ben Cooper. Here. On board the ship, working intimately with her, side by side.
Surely not. Surely fate could not be so damned tricky and contrary?
Belatedly she realized Patti was still waiting for her response.
“Um, yes. I know Ben. We…we trained together at the Culinary Institute,” Tory heard herself say.
Patti clapped her hands together with delighted satisfaction.
“There you go, then—it will be like old times,” she said.
Tory somehow managed to smile and talk semicoherently for the next few minutes until the other woman took her leave. Then she just stood and stared vacantly out into the empty auditorium.
Ben Cooper. It had been a long time since she’d even thought his name. But now she was going to see him—in just three days, in fact, when he came aboard in St. Bart’s.
A shiver of something almost like fear raced up her spine.
I’m not afraid of Ben, she assured herself. He got what was coming to him. So what if he’s still angry with me for what I did to him all those years ago? I’m still angry with him for what he did to me. So we’re even.
Problem was, none if it made a difference to the feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Ben Cooper. She just couldn’t believe it.
BEN STARED DOWN INTO the perfect, cherubic face of the baby in his arms, his lips curving into a spontaneous, utterly involuntary grin as Eva offered him a slobbery smile. She was so beautiful. Something tightened in his chest, and he fussed with her brightly colored playsuit for a few seconds as hot emotion burned at the back of his eyes.
For six months now he’d nursed this little urchin to sleep, fed her, bathed her, changed her nappies. He’d shared all the responsibilities of raising her with Danique, his ex-girlfriend, just as any decent man would when he learned one of his guys had gotten past the keeper, so to speak, and scored a goal.
He’d expected to be a dutiful father, at best. The kind of guy who handed over the right amount of child maintenance without quibbling, cooed at how cute the baby was at the appropriate moments and kept a miniature portrait in his wallet for appearances’ sake.
She’d sneaked up on him, though, this little cutie with her wide-eyed stare and her chubby limbs and her repertoire of gurgles and grunts. Perhaps it was her utter vulnerability, her absolute trust in and reliance on him. Or perhaps it was the young/old wisdom shining from her big brown eyes.
Whatever, he’d fallen hard. He’d become the talk of the small island of Anguilla, with everyone nudging one another with amusement that the last of the Caribbean playboys had fallen, taken out not by a woman but by a baby girl.
It was true. He loved her. Dearly. Fiercely. Irreversibly.
And she wasn’t his.
Danique had told him just last week when she’d come to collect Eva from her weekend visitation. His fling with Danique had been all about fun and no tomorrows, and neither of them had ever pretended it was any different. They’d remained friends, though, when the passion had died out, and it had proved a solid basis for their new partnership. Since Danique had had trouble breast-feeding, Eva had been on a bottle since three months, and they’d shared the load between them as much as possible despite the fact that they lived separately and led very different lives.
Last week, Danique had been unusually quiet as she’d gathered up Eva’s diaper bag and other baby paraphernalia, and she’d waited until she was ready to go to drop her bomb.
“Ben, there’s something you need to know. Before I was seeing you for those few weeks, I had a…thing going with Monty Blackman.” Danique’s eyes had shifted over Ben’s shoulder to focus on the wall behind him.
Ben had frowned; Monty was a well-known local businessman. He was also a very married man with a high-profile, politically astute wife.
“Eva is his,” Danique had blurted as though she couldn’t hang on to the words any longer. Tears had stood out in her pansy-brown eyes. “I’ve tried to tell you so many times, but I was scared of how you would react. You’ve been so great with her, and then there’s the money and everything else….”
Ben had shaken his head. “I’m sorry. I just—I don’t believe you.”
When he held Eva in his arms, his heart ached. How could that be if she wasn’t his?
“I had a test done—you can see the results if you like,” Danique had said. “And about the money—I’ll pay you back, I promise. Every cent.”
Ben had sworn pithily. “I don’t give a damn about the money.” He’d paced agitatedly, then stopped to frown at her. “Why now? What’s changed?” he’d asked. Then his frozen brain had swung back into motion and he’d held up a hand to forestall her answering. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. Monty’s leaving Angela.”
Danique had nodded slowly. “I love him, Ben. I’ve loved him for years and I only broke it off with him because I knew it was hopeless. What you and I had—that was about me trying to feel like a whole person again after waiting all those years for Monty to be honest about us.”
“So I was just an insurance policy?” he’d asked bitterly. “A convenient stopgap until the real guy came good?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Danique had cried.
But it had been, and they both knew it.
Now Ben smoothed a thumb across the silky curve of Eva’s cheek. She smelled of frangipanis and milk, and he didn’t know what he was going to do without her in his life. Danique had promised to let him visit, and he was first on the list of babysitters. But it wasn’t enough. It never would be.
“I think that’s everything,” Danique said as she appeared in the living room doorway, two carry bags in hand. She’d come over to collect the last of Eva’s baby debris from his home.
“Okay,” he said. He had a sudden urge to simply refuse to hand Eva back, but it passed as soon as it registered in his mind. He had no rights in this situation.
“I’ve got two shifts again next week,” Danique said. She was working at the local kindergarten as an assistant. “If you want, I can drop Eva by…”
He shook his head and took one deep lungful of sweet Eva-scented air before he handed her over.
“I’ll be away for the next week or so. Nick Pappas called. Jacques was scheduled to run a lecture series on board his new ship, and they need a replacement.”
Jacques’s restaurant was situated on St. Maarten, a twenty-minute ferry ride away from Anguilla, but despite the distance, the fact that he’d broken his leg trying to climb a coconut tree while blind drunk was common knowledge.
“So you’re filling in?” Danique said. “That’s nice of you.”
Ben shrugged. He wasn’t doing it out of kindness. Even the lesser of his two motivations wasn’t remotely kind—wanting to be as far from Danique and a smugly self-satisfied Monty as possible. In fact, he’d been on the verge of saying no to Nikolas, a good customer and a personal friend, when the captain of Alexandra’s Dream had uttered two words that had made Ben’s baser self prick up its ears.
Victoria Fournier.
Tory Fournier, as he’d known her.
Well, well.
He could just imagine her face when she learned at the last minute that she’d been paired with him for a whole cruise. It was almost delicious, if you were the kind of person who didn’t forgive and forget, even after eight long years.
He guessed he must be that kind of person. To be fair, he argued in his own favor, Tory had humiliated him in a spectacular way. He’d have to be suffering from a severe form of premature dementia to forget it. As for forgiving…He wasn’t a saint. Never had been, never would be.
“I’ll bring her by when you get back, then,” Danique said awkwardly.
Ben gritted his teeth and did what needed to be done. “Look, it’s probably not a good idea. You and Monty have got your own thing going on now. And I’ve got my life.”
His gesturing hand took in the comfortable wicker furniture, terra-cotta-tile floors and mishmash of local art hanging on the walls of his hilltop cottage.
“But I know how much she means to you,” Danique said, holding Eva close, as though she were the one being asked to give her up.
“No point in perpetuating the situation,” Ben said flatly. “How long do you think it’s going to take for Monty to get sick of me butting my head in?”
Danique’s expression told him Monty’s nose was already on the way to being out of joint.
“It’s for the best,” he said, moving toward the door so she’d have to follow him. He wanted them gone now that he’d said it out loud.
Danique sniffed loudly as she passed him. She was crying. He tried to feel sorry for her but couldn’t. Sure, she’d been in a tough situation. But he was the one who’d come out a loser. Him and Angela Blackman.
Ben shut the door firmly behind her, crossing straight to the fridge to grab himself a beer. He was striding out toward the terrace when he heard the sound of Danique’s car pulling out of his gravel driveway.
Outside on the terrace, he braced an arm against the railing and took a long swallow of cold, bitter beer. Below him, the hillside swept down toward the beach of Rendezvous Bay, green vegetation standing in stark contrast to the golden perfection of the beach. Beyond that, the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean stretched off into the distance.
A brisk ocean breeze cooled his overheated emotions, and he dropped down onto one of the weathered timber lounges he kept on the terrace.
Eva was gone. Many of his single buddies would tell him he’d dodged a bullet. He reminded himself of how unhappy he’d been when he’d first learned about Danique’s pregnancy, how trapped and angry and hunted he’d felt. He’d gotten lucky. He needed to keep reminding himself of that.
Somehow, the sentiment just didn’t ring true.
Squinting out to sea, he saw a slow-moving ship crawling across the horizon, and his thoughts turned to Alexandra’s Dream and Tory Fournier.
A feral grin twisted his lips as he contemplated the next week or so. He wondered what she looked like now that she was in her late twenties. She’d been slim when he’d known her, with small, high breasts and long, coltish legs. Her delicate heart-shaped face had been deceptively sweet-looking, he recalled, especially with that beguiling chin dimple. She’d suckered him in for weeks after casually letting him down after their one night together. Then she’d sprung her little surprise. They said that revenge was a dish best served cold. He wondered if eight years qualified as being too cold? Perhaps even…petty?
He laughed into the ocean breeze. So maybe he wasn’t about to wreak revenge on her. After all, maybe he’d had it coming a little. But he certainly wouldn’t be letting her walk all over him with her elegant designer pumps, flashing those pearly whites of hers and flicking that long straight hair over her shoulder. Eight years ago they’d drawn the battle lines between them, and they were still there.
But he was no longer a gauche island boy intimidated by her family pedigree and industry contacts. He’d had his own successes now.
This time they’d meet as equals. He had a feeling it was going to be interesting.
And he needed something interesting right now. Anything, really, to distract him from the empty space where his heart used to be.
TORY SPENT THE FIRST evening on board familiarizing herself with the ship. Since she’d never been hot on Greek mythology at school, she didn’t have a chance in hell of remembering many of the deck names, as they were all named after Greek gods, except for the obvious ones that repeated viewings of Xanadu had imprinted on her memory. She managed to find the gym, the cinema, the various bars and clubs, the day spa. And all the while her brain was working like a crazed hamster in a wheel, worrying at the problem of Ben Cooper.
She didn’t want to see him again. Not because she was scared of how he might react all these years after her revenge. She didn’t want to see him because he’d made her feel so foolish. She’d been charmed by him, besotted and bedazzled. She’d said things to him, done things with him that she’d never done with another man. She was no prude and she definitely wasn’t ashamed of any of it. But it made her feel so stupid that she’d allowed him to touch her, to know her so intimately, and all along he’d been playing her.
Just remembering made her grind her teeth together. What a jerk! And what a sap she’d been, allowing him to sweet-talk her into a date and then into his bed.
She could never fully regret their one night, however. And it wasn’t about the sex—even if she was willing to admit that he’d been one of the best lovers she’d ever had. It was because he was the person who had given her her first taste of island food. She could trace her love affair with all things Caribbean back to the moment when she’d first smelled his unique jerk spices frying in the pan. She could still close her eyes and remember the meal he’d cooked her that night: succulent, spicy jerk chicken, coconut rundown and his own special take on johnnycakes for dessert. The child of a classically trained chef who believed that French cooking was the only true way, Tory had been blown away by the exciting flavors warring for supremacy in her mouth. Then Ben had talked about Anguilla and his family and the shabby beachfront takeaway stand that he one day planned to transform into a prestigious establishment, and the magic had been complete—she’d been utterly enchanted and enslaved by all things Caribbean.
Stupid, stupid girl. Tory shook her head in disgust over her own past naiveté as she made her way back to her cabin. He must have been laughing up his sleeve at how easily he’d gotten beneath her defenses.
She slammed her state room door with a little more verve than was strictly necessary and crossed to the bathroom to brush and floss her teeth and wash her face. Buttoning up the cotton pyjamas she preferred to sleep in, Tory pulled down the covers and crawled into bed. Yawning widely, she flicked the light off, rolled onto her side and slid her hand under the pillow, her habitual sleeping posture. She gave a gasp of surprise and sat bolt upright when something cold and slithery met her fingers. Fumbling for the lamp switch, she flipped her pillow out of the way, then bit her lip on an involuntary laugh when she saw that the object of her fear was a necklace and pendant. Now that she knew it was harmless, she mocked her childish reaction. What had she thought it was—the world’s thinnest snake?
Still smiling, she lifted the necklace and weighed the pendant in her hand. Made from silver and shaped like a solid teardrop, it was slightly tarnished and looked like a much-loved, wear-it-every-day kind of necklace. She frowned for a moment, wondering how it gotten in her bed. The sheets were crisp and fresh, so there was no way that it could belong to the previous occupant. Her frown cleared as she guessed what must have happened—the maid had lost her necklace while cleaning Tory’s room.
Checking the time, Tory saw it was still early—barely nine. She could notify Lost and Found that she’d located the maid’s necklace; no doubt the woman was fretting.
As soon she’d explained the situation to Lost and Found, however, the woman on the other end of the line laughed loudly and asked her to hold. Tory turned the pendant over and over in her hand while she waited for someone else to take her call, and finally a familiar voice came on the line.
“Victoria, it’s Patti Kennedy here. How are you doing?”
Tory was a little taken aback that the cruise director would show interest in something as insignificant as a lost necklace.
“Hi, Patti. Sorry, there must be some kind of mistake. I was just reporting a lost necklace in my room….”
Patti laughed. “You obviously haven’t read through your orientation material yet. If you open the folder, you’ll see a colored glossy flyer with the heading ‘Teardrops of the Moon.’ The flyer will explain everything, but basically it’s a little tradition we’ve developed on board where we hide the necklace in a stateroom for one of our passengers to find. According to an old legend, the necklace is supposed to bring good luck, especially in love.”
“Oh,” Tory said, viewing the pendant in an entirely different light now. Good luck she welcomed, but good luck in love? She didn’t really have time in her life for love, not with a book to promote and a new restaurant to start up, let alone the more immediate challenge of keeping dozens of cruise passengers informed and titillated on a daily basis—all while working alongside Ben Cooper.
“Maybe you guys should put it in someone else’s room. I mean, I’m not really a guest, am I?” Tory said. She’d been assigned a stateroom because of the short duration of her stay on board and the lack of availability of other crew accommodation. The pendant must have been meant for someone else.
“Don’t tell me—a pretty girl like you doesn’t need luck in love?” Patti guessed.
“It’s not that,” Tory said, thinking wryly of how long it had been since she’d even been on a date, let alone gotten lucky. “It’s more I kind of feel like a fraud, being here to work and all.”
Patti made a dismissive noise. “Forget it. You’re a high-profile guest lecturer, not a dishwasher. I think it’s terrific you’ve found it. But if you really don’t want it, you can turn it in to us tomorrow and we’ll hide it again.”
“Okay. Thanks, Patti.”
“Read your orientation folder,” Patti admonished lightly before ending the call.
Feeling duly chastised, Tory clambered out of bed and grabbed the folder. Propped up against two pillows, she sorted through the folder until she found the flyer Patti had been talking about.
It outlined the legend behind the pendant, detailing how the moon goddess and a handsome shepherd had had to hide their love from the jealous sun god, concealing themselves under an invisible cloak with a diamond clasp. They’d been caught, however, and eventually punished. The moon goddess had been so inconsolable over the loss of her one true love that she’d cried for days and days and days. Her grief was so great and her love so unwavering that her story came to symbolize the power of true love. One of her tears had hardened over the diamond in the lovers cloak and subsequently, tear-shaped pendants became a traditional wedding gift to remind brides of the enduring quality of love.
As Tory read on, she discovered there were more benefits to her wearing the pendant than just being the recipient of good luck in love. Apparently crew members would single her out for special treats and discounts when they noticed her with the pendant, giving her the experience of being a VIP on board. And, of course, she had to hand the pendant back at the end of the cruise in order for the next passenger to play the game all over again.
Tory studied the pendant for a few minutes. She wasn’t even sure if she believed in love, let alone true love. She’d been on the planet twenty-nine years and had never really been in love with anyone. Not enough that she had imagined a shared future, babies, the whole shooting match. Maybe she was just going to be one of those women who poured her passion into her work.
It was a peculiarly depressing thought.
Feeling very self-conscious and stupid, she put the necklace on. The pendant slid down her chest to rest heavily at the very top of her cleavage. Switching the light off, Tory rolled onto her stomach and closed her eyes.
Probably she would hand the pendant back to Patti first thing tomorrow.
But maybe she wouldn’t.
CHAPTER TWO
“OKAY, PEOPLE, THAT’S enough,” Janice called. “We’ll break for lunch. I’ll see you back here at two.”
Like the other dancers around her, Tracy let her shoulders drop and her stomach pop out. Sweat made her leotard stick to her back and chest, and her knee ached from all the high kicks Janice had made them do, over and over. Even though they all knew the routine backward, forward, inside out, their tyrannical leader and choreographer was a stickler for rehearsal and she ensured that they all went over the evening’s routines each day before releasing them for their other onboard duties.
“You’re not on vacation,” Janice said at least once a day to some member or other of the entertainment crew.
Tracy always wanted to respond with a smart-ass quip. They were floating in the middle of the Caribbean on an enormous cruise ship, they lived in crowded crew quarters up to eight berths per cabin and they worked almost constantly. It was highly unlikely that anyone, no matter how optimistic, could kid themselves that this was anything like a vacation. But she never said a word, smart or otherwise. She needed this job. More than ever, she needed this job.
She sighed heavily as she remembered the phone call she’d had from Salvatore last night. He’d let her talk to their son Franco for just a few minutes before getting back on the line.
“He’s fine,” he’d said in his flat, cold voice. His business voice. They were just business to him now, her and Franco. “Do your job. Find the pendant—and get it right this time. Then this’ll all be over and you’ll never see me again.”
Amen to that.
Grabbing a hand towel from her bag, Tracy mopped at her shiny face as she made her way to the elevator and down to the administration level of the Dream, determined to “get it right” this time, as Salvatore had so charmingly put it.
She’d done everything she could to snatch his damned necklace on the cruise before Christmas, but fate or luck or whatever it was that decided these things had been against her.
This time it would be different, she promised herself. This time she would find the pendant and get Sal out of her life once and for all. She was convinced the pendant was the only reason he still had any contact with her and Franco. He’d been absent from their lives for months before he’d suddenly turned up out of nowhere and explained he’d scored an audition for her on Alexandra’s Dream. Straightaway she’d known he wasn’t doing her a favor out of the kindness of his heart; he’d wanted her on the ship very badly for his own reasons. She’d soon learned what they were—one of Sal’s gambling customers, some guy called Giorgio, had run up an enormous debt with Sal’s people and planned to pay it off with a precious antique necklace he’d smuggled on board the ship prior to handing it over to Sal. Great plan, except Giorgio had gotten himself arrested for involvement in the high-level smuggling ring that had been busted on the Dream during its Mediterranean run. Sal had been left holding the debt, and the only chance of satisfying his bosses and securing his own financial future was to grab the pendant off the cruise ship himself. Which was where Tracy was supposed to come in.
Tracy smiled grimly to herself as she remembered Sal’s fury when he’d learned that the pendant had fallen into the hands of the cruise director and the ship’s librarian and promptly been turned into a promotional gimmick for passengers. She’d never heard him swear so much or in so many different languages.
The really great thing was that she was the one stuck with the task of unraveling this mess—or risk losing her boy forever.
It was a depressing thought, and Tracy couldn’t even muster her plastic polite smile for the male passengers she passed who tried to catch her eye, clearly liking the look of her tight leotard and workout leggings. She’d never been falsely modest about her looks. Men liked her, always had. She had long legs, good boobs, long dark hair—and, best of all, she was a dancer, a former Vegas showgirl who could shake it with the best of them. For some men, she was a fantasy brought to life.
But she never encouraged any of them, no matter how built or wealthy-looking. More likely than not, they were married. And even if they weren’t, she wasn’t interested. Being interested was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place.
She took a deep breath and stepped into the administration offices, smiling at the receptionist and wandering idly over to the notice board that covered one wall. To her left was the doorway to Patti Kennedy’s office. It was slightly open, and Tracy stood staring at the notice board, trying to come up with some excuse to talk to Patti. The cruise director would know where the pendant had been hidden this trip, and if it had been found already. Patti had helped come up with the scheme to use the pendant as part of the onboard entertainment, and she took a personal interest in the person who found it. Tracy just had to get her talking about the damned thing and surely she’d let slip who had it. But as Tracy read the same staff memo over and over, her mind remained resolutely blank as she tried to come up with an opening gambit. Closing her eyes, she swore at herself. This was why she’d left school early—she’d never been good under pressure, and her end-of-year exams had always been a disaster. Her mother used to say her brains were in her feet. Maybe she’d been right, after all.
Checking her watch again, she saw that she’d chewed up ten minutes of her lunch break already. To hell with it—she’d just wing it, pretend she’d come down to ask about the weather or something. Patti would think she was a moron, but no one expected ex-showgirls to be rocket scientists after all.
She almost had a heart attack when she whirled around, all ready to barge into Patti’s office, only to find the other woman standing right behind her.
“Oh!” Tracy gasped stupidly, slapping a hand to her chest.
Patti’s eyebrows lifted in bemusement. “Sorry, Tracy, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said.
“No, you didn’t,” Tracy said automatically.
Patti’s eyebrows arched even higher, and Tracy shrugged ruefully.
“I mean, yeah you did, but it wasn’t your fault.”
“Were you looking for me?” Patti asked pleasantly.
“Um, yeah, I was just talking with the other girls about the special deal we’ve got going on with the teardrop pendant,” Tracy said, her brain just barely keeping two words ahead of her mouth. “We were thinking that it might be cute to kind of incorporate whoever found it this cruise into the end of our routine. You know, pull them out of the audience and make a fuss of them, tell everyone about the legend, that sort of thing.”
Patti looked thoughtful. “That’s a nice idea, and I’m sure Tory would enjoy being made a fuss of, but it might be a little late to incorporate it into the routine this time around. Maybe next cruise we could think about it, though. Thanks for the thought, Tracy.”
Patti smiled, already turning away. Tracy’s palms were sweaty with anxiety. She was so close to knowing who’d found the pendant, but a first name wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Usually the winner of the pendant was announced to the crew at some point during the cruise, but Tracy had no time to lose—she had Sal breathing down her neck, wanting action pronto. She needed to know now.
Patti was about to enter her office. Tracy opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She stared at Patti’s door as it clicked shut.
Damn it, she’d missed her chance again. Feeling sick and angry with herself, Tracy strode out into the corridor, away from the curious eyes of the receptionist. She was hopeless at this sneaking-around stuff, absolutely hopeless. Lying and flirting and stealing—she hadn’t asked for any of it and she wanted it all to be over. Most of all, she wished she’d never met Salvatore Morena and allowed him to con her into his bed.
Instantly she slapped the thought down. No matter how much she hated him, she could never regret what he’d given her—Franco. Her funny, quirky five-year-old son. Even though she was worried sick about him, about what Salvatore might do if she didn’t succeed soon and find his stupid pendant for him, she smiled as she remembered what Franco had said to her on the phone last night.
“I’ve decided I’m going to be an elephant when I grow up,” he’d said confidently.
“An elephant?”
She loved that he hadn’t quite grasped the concept that people and animals and inanimate objects were different. Until recently, he’d wanted to be a motor-cycle when he grew up.
“An elephant. But I want to sleep in a bed. A nice big bed made from grass and pillows,” Franco had said with his habitual lisp.
The smile faded from Tracy’s lips as the reality of her situation hit home once again.
If she didn’t find Salvatore’s necklace, as he wanted, she’d never see her son again. And she’d just blown her one sure-fire chance to find out who had it this cruise. Alexandra’s Dream could accommodate up to a thousand passengers. She had nine days—and counting—to find a needle in a haystack.
She clenched her jaw and lengthened her stride as her long legs ate up the corridor. She’d find out who had it. She had to. She had a first name: Tory. And this time nothing was going to stop her from making her son safe.
THE FIRST TWO DAYS OF the cruise were at-sea days with no port visits. Tory spent her first full day on board experimenting in the demonstration kitchen. The oven was a little hot, she now knew, but the stove top was excellent and she’d fallen in love with the high-end mixer and food processor. As usual, she’d brought her own knives with her, and once she got the measure of the oven and the appliances, she spent some time with her sharpening steel and whetstone ensuring that all her blades were at their best.
She told herself it was because she liked to be prepared, that she’d be doing this no matter who she was sharing the podium with, but she wasn’t in the habit of self-delusion—she wanted everything to be perfect when Ben arrived. She wanted to have put her indelible stamp on the kitchen, marking it as her territory and identifying him as the stranger, the trespasser in her domain. So she arranged her reference books on the handy shelf near the fridge and she reorganized the spice and herb jars and reordered the various contents of the kitchen drawers. By the end of her first day she was confident she knew the kitchen and where everything she might need could be found.
The next day she delivered her first lecture to a bright-eyed audience of two hundred odd guests, the majority of them women. After introducing herself and explaining a little about her cookbook, Tory began to outline the colorful history of the food of the Caribbean islands.
“The Caribbean offers a unique selection of cuisines evolved from the many cultural influences that have touched the islands over the centuries. Today, we can trace recipes and ingredients back to the Arawak Indians, the original inhabitants, as well as the French, English and African immigrants who have all made their homes here. One of the first things you’ll learn is that Caribbean food is party food, because the island people love to party. Even though true Carnival is still a few weeks away, you’ll find pre-Carnival costume parades on every island when we dock.”
To either side of the kitchen on the plasma screens, images from her digital library flashed on the screen—spice markets, beachside traders, laughing brown-skinned children, colorful Carnival parades.
“Contrary to common belief, not all Caribbean food is hot and spicy,” Tory said. “Island food can be infinitely subtle, but it can also punch you in the face with fiery heat. Over the cruise we’ll sample a number of famous islander dishes like jerk chicken, johnnycakes, rum cakes and rum punches. I’ll show you how to select the best spices and herbs for your cooking, how to store them and mix them and the best cuts of meat for each dish. Island food is casual, family fare, and most of the recipes we’ll explore are simple and don’t require elaborate preparation or long cooking times. I guarantee that by the time you go home you’ll be ready, willing and able to treat your family and friends to a Caribbean feast.”
She spent the remainder of her first lecture familiarizing her audience with the individual cuisines of the various islands they would be visiting, focusing particularly on providing a context for their first stop in St. Bart’s the following day. Once she was finished, she opened the floor to questions and spent a further ten minutes elaborating on her lecture. She was flattered to learn that many of the guests had read her book—one woman confessed that Tory’s recipes had in fact inspired her to take the cruise in the first place—and by the time she’d said goodbye to the last guest and turned off the audio-visual equipment, she was feeling flushed with achievement.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that Ben Cooper would arrive tomorrow morning, she would be a happy woman indeed. She caught sight of herself in the tinted glass of the oven door, and the nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach increased tenfold as she frowned at her wildly curling hair. Okay, Ben Cooper and her hair—if she could just fix those two things, she’d be over the moon.
Yesterday morning she’d made the unpleasant discovery that she’d left her beloved hair-straightening iron behind in New York. She’d scrabbled through her suitcase, pointlessly tossing around the few items she’d left unpacked as she’d searched in vain for the trusty appliance. She had a very clear picture of it on her bed at home, cord wrapped tightly around the handle, ready to go in her case. Unfortunately it hadn’t actually made it in, and now she was faced with the prospect of being a human fuzz-ball for the entire cruise.
Ever since she’d been a teen, Tory had hated her curly hair. In senior high, before she’d discovered the modern wonder of the straightening iron, she’d worn a scarf to bed to try and flatten her unruly head of hair. By the time she was twenty she had managed to tame the fuzz with salon treatments and daily use of a straightening iron and she’d never looked back. Now, however, she was in a bind. There was a hair salon on board, but it was expensive and already overbooked. She had vague ideas of picking up a new straightening iron in St. Bart’s when they docked, but she knew she might not have a chance to go ashore since Ben was coming on board and they needed to sit down and talk about the rest of the lecture series. Short of not washing her hair for the entire cruise, she’d quickly realized that in the short term she was going to have to endure the curls.
Shoving a fistful of golden-blond fluff behind her ear, she turned away from her reflection. Perhaps if she just avoided any and all reflective surfaces, she could pretend she looked the way she always did—cool, elegant, in control. For some reason, it felt very important that Ben Cooper see her that way when he came on board tomorrow.
Ready to finish up for the day, she saw that someone had left a newspaper folded on a seat in the front row. Hoping against hope that it was a New York Times, Tory veered from her course to the door to pick it up. She saw immediately that it was a local weekly paper, the Island Gazette, but decided to read it anyway. It might not be quite the lifeline to the outside world that she’d been looking for, but it would do.
She didn’t see the photograph until she’d settled down in the bar with a glass of single-malt scotch on the rocks. She almost swallowed the whole lot in one gulp when she flicked the page over and saw the boy. There were a number of colorful shots making up the double-page spread on recent pre-Carnival parades on various islands. But her gaze flew to the central photograph—a shot of a delighted crowd cheering on a parade.
There, in the front row, his face turned toward the camera, was a small boy with bright blue eyes and dusky skin. Perhaps it was the startling blue of his eyes against his dark complexion or the fact that he was surrounded by dozens of brown-eyed, brown-skinned children or the fact that he seemed to be looking directly down the lens of the camera. Whatever it was, it made the breath catch in the back of her throat, and she sucked in too much whisky as she tried to recover. She coughed till her eyes watered, the paper rattling in her hands, and she brushed the tears away impatiently. It was dark in the Emperor’s Club, the very masculine cigar bar she’d chosen to enjoy her drink, and no matter how she angled the paper, she couldn’t get enough light on the image. She surged abruptly to her feet and strode out into the corridor, then stopped to stare intently at the photograph under the brighter light.
Blue eyes. A small, neat nose. Dark brown curly hair. A cleft chin. And…She peered closer and a chill stole up her spine. Just visible on the side of the boy’s neck was a birthmark.
Her head shot up, and she glanced first left and then right, trying to get her bearings. She was on the sixth deck, one level above her own. Feeling a strange compulsion, she found the nearest staircase and wove her way through the corridors back to her cabin.
The instant she was in her room she booted up her laptop and scrolled through her digital library until she found her folder of family snaps. She’d scanned in a bunch of images from old family albums a while ago, liking the idea of having them easily accessible no matter where she went. The shot she’d been looking for filled the screen as she double-clicked on it. Her heart pounding stupidly against her rib cage, Tory compared the two faces—the little boy from the paper and the little boy on her computer screen. The similarity between the two was uncanny. Same nose. Same chin. Same eyes. Same birthmark.
The boy in the crowd, whoever he was, was the spitting image of her twin brother, Michael, at age seven.
She knew it could just be a coincidence. Lots of people had blue eyes, even among the islanders, where brown was the predominant color. Plenty of people had cleft chins, too, although it was a reasonably rare genetic trait. But the birthmark…Her eyes traveled from the newspaper photograph of the boy to the old shot of her brother. Just visible against the neckline of Michael’s T-shirt was the dull red of a port-wine-colored birthmark. The same birthmark that her father had and her grandfather before him and his father before him. It was a Fournier family legacy, that birthmark, passed on from father to son for more generations than anyone could remember.
So what was it doing on the neck of this blue-eyed, smiling boy?
Her gaze dropped to the caption beneath the photograph. Crowds welcome the arrival of Carnival season, it read. She felt a ridiculous sense of disappointment. What had she expected, after all—that the boy’s name would be there, listed alongside everyone else in the crowd?
Tossing the newspaper onto her bed, Tory ran her fingers through her unruly mop of hair. What she was thinking was crazy. Surely it was. There was no way that boy in the photograph could be her brother’s son.
And yet…
She remembered the way her eyes had zeroed in on him right from the start. The jolt of recognition she’d felt when she’d looked into his face. He looked so much like Michael. And that birthmark…What if he was Michael’s son? What if there was still a piece of her brother alive in the world, a living legacy? Tears burned at the back of her eyes at the thought. Michael’s son. It would be amazing. A miracle. A gift.
Suddenly the utter absurdity of what she was contemplating hit her, and she recalled her mother’s parting words at the airport: “I hope you can let go of him at last, Tory. You can’t carry all that sadness around with you forever.”
She scrubbed her face with her hands, then shook her head at her own thoughts.
What she’d been thinking was impossible. Too crazy. Too convenient. An artifact of her inability to move on from the loss of her twin, nothing else. For eight years she’d missed him every single day. But it was time to move on. What had just happened showed her that beyond a doubt.
You’re here to say goodbye, not build castles in the air, she reminded herself.
Snatching up the newspaper, she tossed it in the bin. Moment of craziness gone, she assured herself. Never to be seen again.
Except that night she dreamed of Michael.
They were standing on a beach, the sand stretching away on either side of them, endless, limitless, the water in front of them a bright, crystal blue. Michael was crying, a lone tear sliding down his sun-tanned cheek, his arms held before him in bewilderment, as though something had just been taken from him and he couldn’t quite believe it.
She ran to his side, threw her arms around him, welcomed him back. But it was as though he couldn’t hear or see or feel her. He just kept staring at his outstretched, beseeching arms.
“Where is he? I’ve lost him,” he said, and her heart broke at how shattered he sounded.
“Who have you lost, Michael?” she asked, trying to make him acknowledge her. “Tell me.”
But he turned away from her and walked away.
“Where is he?” she heard him yell at the sea, his voice half angry, half fearful.
And then she woke up.
She was damp with perspiration, her face wet with tears. Kicking herself free of her tangled sheets, she staggered into her bathroom and flicked on the light. She looked terrible—puffy-eyed, shaken.
“It’s just a stupid dream,” she told her reflection.
But the memory of it stayed with her and kept her staring at the ceiling until her alarm went off at seven.
She sat up and saw the chef’s whites she’d laid out the night before. Today was the day Ben Cooper came aboard. So much for feeling cool and in control and elegant. She’d had next to no sleep, her hair was a disaster and she was feeling more vulnerable than she’d felt in years.
Great, she thought sourly. Way to go, Tory.
He was going to take one look at her with those cocky, all-seeing eyes of his and know he had her whipped before he even started.
BEN SET OUT HAPPILY enough for his one week sojourn aboard Alexandra’s Dream, flying out of the airport on the neighboring island of St. Maarten early in the morning. His good mood lasted until he spotted Monty Blackman as he disembarked into the airport terminal on St. Bart’s. The man stood out like a sore thumb with his garishly bright shirt in hot-pink and lime-green stripes and his baby-blue golf pants. Was the guy color-blind? And where did he find such ridiculous stuff, anyway? Ben figured he’d have to search every island in the Caribbean chain before he could come up with such a bad-taste ensemble.
The last thing he wanted was to talk to the smug, leathery-skinned bastard. Even though Danique was the one who had perpetuated the fraud that Ben was Eva’s father, it was Monty he resented the most—Monty with his oily smile and his string of cheap tourist motels and his bad taste in fashion. It seemed impossible that a child as sweet and beautiful as Eva could have been fathered by someone so unworthy. For the first few days after he’d found out Ben had toyed with the idea of demanding a DNA test just in case Eva was really his. But in his gut he’d known Danique was telling the truth.
Turning a shoulder, Ben took pains to keep a huddle of tourists between the two of them as he made his way to the exit.
“Cooper! Just the man I’ve been meaning to see!”
Ben closed his eyes in frustration as Monty’s voice echoed along twenty feet of concourse. Forcing a neutral expression onto his face, he turned.
“Monty,” he said, flicking his wrist over to check the time ostentatiously. “Can’t really talk right now, sorry—got a boat to catch.”
“This won’t take a minute. I wanted to talk about Danique and the little one.”
Ben ground his teeth together. Eva, he wanted to say. Her name is Eva. Danique and I named her because you were too busy covering your ass to be bothered.
“I really don’t think now’s the best time—” he tried again, but Monty just talked overtop him.
“I know you’ve been helping Danique out with making ends meet, paying for the little one’s odds and ends, medical bills, whatever. I just wanted to make things square with you now that things have been sorted out.”
Ben was gripped with an icy anger as he saw Monty pull out his checkbook. “Like I told Danique, I don’t care about the money,” he said, turning away.
“Stop being so bloody noble, Cooper. Everyone cares about money. It’s what makes the world go ’round.” Monty laughed loudly at his own joke, and Ben was hard put not to knock the other man’s too-white teeth down his throat.
“I’m not everyone. Forget about it. I did it for Eva and Danique.”
He started to walk off, but Monty stepped in front of him, his smile fading. Suddenly Ben could see the edge that had helped Monty become a multimillionaire by his mid forties.
“I don’t like being beholden to anyone,” Monty said. “You looked after my girls for me, and I appreciate it, but I want to put an end to it now.”
Ben reached for the last shreds of his patience as Monty signed a check with a flourish and tore it free from the book. The check hung in the air between them as Monty offered it and Ben refused to take it. Shaking his head and smiling to himself, Monty folded the check neatly and tucked it into the front pocket of Ben’s white linen shirt.
“You young guys crack me up,” he said.
Ben walked away without comment. It was either that or give in to the frustration coursing through him and land one on Monty’s overtanned face. Not caring if the other man was out of sight or not, he stopped at the nearest garbage can to tear the check into confetti. He didn’t want a cent of Monty’s money. He wanted his daughter back—and that was never going to happen.
The encounter left him raring for a fight. He didn’t consider himself a bad-tempered guy, but the whole situation had left him feeling cheated and angry, and now Monty had pushed all his buttons, offering him money as though that was all it would take to rectify the situation.
By the time he was crossing the gangway onto the Dream he was in a foul frame of mind. Suddenly the prospect of seeing Tory Fournier was a lot less amusing than it had seemed a few days ago. He was in no mood for her cool superiority. In fact, if she gave him one hint of attitude, there was every chance he’d let rip with a few home truths. He smiled grimly to himself as he navigated the corridors toward the cuisine arts center. Perhaps a damned good screaming match with his old school buddy was just what the doctor ordered.
Then he walked in the door of the cuisine center and stopped in his tracks. He hadn’t given it a lot of thought, but somehow he’d figured that time would only have honed Tory’s hard, sharp edges. Back in school, she’d been distant, intense, composed. He’d expected more of the same from the twenty-nine-year-old version of Tory.
But the woman jotting down notes at the counter of the demonstration kitchen looked anything but sharp or hard. She was wearing a pair of stylish, tailored checked chefs pants with a bright red tank top, and he saw that her hips were more softly curved than he remembered, her breasts fuller. Her hair was shorter, a riot of curls that teased at her neck and jawline. Her face in profile was gentler, prettier than he’d sketched it in his memory.
All in all, she was totally unexpected. He frowned, feeling a dart of unease.
Before he could pinpoint the cause of his discomfort, she lifted her head and caught sight of him.
For just a second they stared at each other, taking stock. Then he saw about a million security cordons clang into place behind her eyes as she straightened and swiveled to face him head-on.
“Ben.”
“Tory.”
A small muscle flickered in her jaw as he used the shortened version of her name. She’d invited him to call her Tory on their one and only date, and he waited for her to revoke the privilege and instruct him to call her Victoria. He knew the exact moment she decided that there were bigger battles to fight—she broke eye contact with him and her face smoothed into an unreadable mask.
“You’re early,” she said, reaching for the white chef’s jacket lying on the counter nearby.
“Yep,” he said.
He was aware of her gaze darting up and down his body once, very briefly, as she shrugged into her coat and buttoned the quick-release closures with dexterous hands.
“Probably just as well. We’ve got our first demonstration before lunch. I wasn’t sure what you were planning on cooking, but I’ve prepared a general talk on spices and jerk mixes.”
“I’ll be demonstrating some local recipes,” he said unhelpfully. He wasn’t going to make it easy for her. She didn’t deserve it.
She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked a hip against the counter. “That’s it? You’re not going to tell me any more than that?”
“I’ll jot down the ingredients for you, if that’s what you’re after,” he said, shrugging.
He slung his toolbox up onto the bench and started to unpack his knives. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her straighten.
“If you have a problem working with me, you shouldn’t have said yes,” she said crisply.
Trust her to get straight to the heart of the matter. She never had been one to back away from confrontation.
“I said yes because a friend was in a bind. But beyond that, I don’t have a problem working with you, Tory. In fact, the way I see it, I owe you a debt of gratitude.” He began opening drawers and inspecting their contents.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked, clearly suspicious.
As well she might be.
“If you hadn’t sent me on that wild-goose chase to New York, I would never have met Signor D’Sarro. And I wouldn’t be where I am today,” he said.
That got her. She opened her mouth to ask who Signor D’Sarro was, but she shut it again without saying a word. She hated being behind the eight ball. He remembered that about her very clearly. It was one thing that obviously hadn’t changed.
Spotting the rolling pin, he pulled it out of the bottom drawer and transferred it to the top drawer, along with some wooden spoons, the citrus zester and the garlic crusher.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m setting the kitchen up so I can work.”
She huffed out a breath. “I already had it set up the way I like it,” she said stiffly.
“Tough,” he said, shrugging again.
She reached out and snatched the rolling pin from the top drawer before he could close it. “A little common courtesy wouldn’t go astray,” she said. “I have been working in this kitchen for two days, you know.”
“Who’s the guest chef here, you or me?” he asked, turning to face her.
God, he wanted her to fight back, he suddenly realized. He wanted her to say something so incendiary, so provocative that he’d have every excuse in the world to tap into the bellyful of anger that had been growing inside him ever since Danique dropped her bomb.
“We’re supposed to work together, share this kitchen,” she said, sidestepping his question.
“I repeat, who is the guest chef?” he asked.
She glared at him. He waited for her to pick up the gauntlet that he’d thrown down.
“You always were an arrogant jerk,” she said.
He felt a fierce surge of satisfaction. At last, something he could sink his teeth into.
“I’m arrogant? That’s pretty rich, coming from the Ice Queen,” he said.
The hot retort he’d been expecting from her never came. Instead she paled, and he saw that she clenched her hands into fists.
“Don’t call me that,” she said with quiet intensity, her voice wavering.
It threw him utterly. He wanted to fight, but she’d just thrown him a curveball. He’d been called a lot of things in his time—insensitive, irresponsible, childish—but no one had ever accused him of being deliberately cruel. He had the sudden sense that if he pushed any harder, Tory might burst into tears.
It was so removed from his memories of the self-contained, coolly poised young woman he’d trained with that he was forced to look away.
But it didn’t mean he was going to concede the battle. Tory hadn’t changed that much; if he gave her an inch, she’d take charge and start throwing her weight around as though she owned the place. Working methodically, he began to rearrange the drawers once again. After a few seconds, Tory made a small disgusted sound in the back of her throat, then she elbowed her way past him and pulled open the bottom drawer, dumping the rolling pin back in it. Shoving the drawer shut with her foot, she crossed her arms over her chest and challenged him with her eyes.
“I’ll just move it later,” he said.
“Try it.”
“Oh, I will,” he assured her.
Her eyes narrowed, and her cheeks puffed out as if she were holding in a few choice words of four letters.
He found himself fixating on her mouth, on the full rosebud of her lips. For a long second he couldn’t take his eyes off them.
“If I could have, I would have said no to this—you know that,” she finally said.
“Then I guess we’re both going to have to suck it up.”
She turned away without another word, and he stared at her back for a long beat. It hadn’t been anything like the first meeting he’d anticipated. He’d expected the conflict but not her vulnerability, and he didn’t quite know what to do with it. Frowning, he got down to work.
CHAPTER THREE
THE TERMBUTT-HEADHAD been expressly invented for Ben Cooper, Tory decided as she forced another smile onto her stiff lips. They’d nearly finished their afternoon cooking demonstration, and if she had a voodoo doll made in his image, she’d twist its head off and throw it in the rubbish disposal.
She bristled all over again as she remembered the way he’d walked in as though he owned the place and started rearranging the kitchen. He was exactly the way she’d remembered him, only more so. More confident. More cocky. More charismatic.
God, how she hated admitting that to herself, especially after what he’d said to her. But it was the truth. Age had not wearied him. Age had in fact been damned kind to him. His body was stronger, more muscular, his face more attractive with its laugh lines and the hint of roguish crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes.
The thing that really got her goat—apart from his born-to-rule mentality in their shared kitchen—was that he patently thought he was God’s gift to womankind. It was no wonder, of course, given the way the women in the audience responded to him. It almost made her ashamed of her sex. Word had clearly spread since their morning session, and the number of women seated in the theater had doubled for this afternoon’s lecture. And it wasn’t because they wanted to hear more from Tory. She had no illusions there. They had come to ogle and flirt with Ben—and, worse, he was encouraging it.
For starters, there was his chef’s uniform. Every chef she knew wore a white or black jacket with checked pants. It was traditional, professional. Ben, however, wore a pair of dark indigo wrinkled linen trousers paired with a navy singlet worn beneath his open white chef’s coat, the ensemble casually revealing his well-sculpted chest and long, strong legs to all comers. She’d stared outright when he’d come back into the cuisine center after changing.
“You’re not going to do up your jacket?” she’d asked him incredulously when he’d started preparing food for their demonstration.
“Nope. Cooler this way.”
“No doubt, but I would have thought that safety might rate a little higher than your groove factor,” she’d said.
Chef’s coats were designed to protect the wearer’s torso and arms and be easily removed in case of hot spills. She’d escaped many a burn over the years thanks to her chef’s whites.
He’d laughed briefly to himself. “Man, you are so uptight. I’d forgotten that. I meant it’s less hot this way, not more fashionable. And I won’t be working with hot oil, so the risk factor is low. Unless you think this coconut salad is going to leap up and attack me?”
She’d ignored him, just as she’d tried to ignore everything else about him, from his low laugh to the deep timbre of his voice to the fresh, crisp aftershave he wore. It was hard to ignore his skill in the kitchen, however.
She’d opened both sessions, talking about spices in general in the first, then jerk mixes more specifically in the second, explaining, among other things, how many of the strong spices in Caribbean foods had originally been employed to cover the lack of refrigeration in the region and that jerk pork had been brought to the islands by the Cormantee slaves from West Africa in the 1600s. Once she’d finished her spiel, Ben had stepped up and immediately upstaged her with his humor, his stupid exposed chest and his show-off cooking skills.
The audience had oohed at his speed with a knife. They’d aahed when he’d dramatically flambéed some bananas in the pan. They’d laughed when he’d juggled mangoes for them.
And she’d stood on the sidelines and known that her own presentation had been about as interesting as a stale bottle of beer by comparison. Now, watching him invite the audience up to taste-test the meals he’d just demonstrated, she thought of her carefully prepared lectures, all her local information, all the images she’d sourced and organized for each lecture. She’d have to stay up late tonight to revamp it all if she wasn’t going to wind up looking like a theology lecturer by comparison for the rest of the cruise.
Which brought her back to why Ben Cooper was a butt-head. He was funnier than her. He oozed charisma. And he was sexy. How was she supposed to compete with that?
And it was a competition, she had no doubt about that. She’d caught him watching her out of the corners of his eyes a few times, enjoying her growing awareness that his portion of their dual presentation was a hit and that hers was most definitely a flop.
But the worst thing—the absolute very, very worst thing—was that she wasn’t immune to his flashy charms, either. She’d tried with every ounce of willpower she possessed to keep her gaze from lingering on the well-defined planes of his chest. She’d ordered herself very specifically not to check out his cute, tight rear end when he bent to pull something from a lower drawer. And she absolutely forbade herself to respond to a single one of his charming jokes, quips or witticisms. To no avail. She’d stared, she’d run greedy eyes over his sexy butt and she’d caught herself smiling more than once at something he’d said.
It made her feel so pathetic. Especially after the fight they’d had when he’d first arrived. She had no illusions about the way he felt about her—he’d made it clear that he wasn’t here to make nice. In fact, she’d gotten the distinct feeling earlier that he’d been more than ready and willing to keep battling it out with her until the cows came home. There’d been something intense and almost desperate in his eyes as he’d goaded her. Then he’d called her that old, nasty name from school, and it had taken the wind out of her sails in an instant.
It was stupid to let something so ancient and dusty get to her like that. Before he’d walked in the door this morning, she’d been so sure that she’d come to terms with what had happened between them. But one look into his navy-blue eyes and she’d been awash in memories….
She’d noticed Ben from the first moment she walked into her first class. Along with every other girl, of course. He was tall, dark and handsome, with a cheeky smile and a laconic charm that encompassed everyone and everything—except, it seemed, her. He’d never once given her one of his lazy smiles. And he’d certainly never run his eyes over her in warm appreciation the way he did with the other girls—not until he had an ulterior motive, that is. She’d told herself that she was too busy acing her way through the Cuisine Institute to care. But she’d cared. She’d noticed him and she’d wanted him to notice her back. And then he had, and she’d fallen into his bed as though it was meant to be.
And the next day she’d learned the truth.
“You just going to stand there or are you going to pack up?” Ben asked.
Tory jolted out of her reverie and blinked at him. “Sorry?” She realized too late that the theater had emptied and they were alone again.
He shot her a searching look, and she busied herself disconnecting her notebook computer from the plasma screens and collecting her notes. She could hear the clang and clatter of him tidying the demonstration kitchen, and when she’d finished stowing her own gear, she automatically reached for a bottle of cleaning spray to wipe down the counter.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“I can’t just stand around and watch you work,” she said, spraying cleaner across the counter.
He looked thrown, as if she’d surprised him.
“What? I can’t help out in the kitchen now? You want to do your own cleaning as well as all the prep and cooking work?” She dropped the spray bottle and held her hands in the air as though he’d told her to stick ’em up.
“No. You don’t have to help, that’s all,” he repeated.
She frowned at him, then her hands found her hips and her frown turned into a glare. “I get it—you think I think I’m too good to clean, is that it?” she asked.
“You are Little Miss Haute Cuisine.” He shrugged. “Cleaning up is for the apprentices.”
She flinched, stung by his comment. Was that what he really thought of her? What he’d always thought of her?
“You have no idea who I am,” she said.
He picked up her cookbook, Island Style, and waved it under her nose. “You might be slumming it with us islanders for a little while, but you’ll be back serving up chateaubriand and chausson aux framboises at Le Plat once you’ve finished playing around.”
She was surprised to realize that he didn’t know that her father had closed Le Plat on his retirement rather than pass it on to her. She understood why Andre had made that decision, but she doubted Ben would and she wasn’t about to give him more ammunition. He’d just take enormous satisfaction from learning that she’d apparently missed out.
She made a grab for her cookbook, but he held on tight and she had to put all her weight behind it to tug it from his grasp.
“You know what, you can clean up on your own,” she said, tucking her book under her arm and grabbing her computer bag and notes.
She turned for the door but stopped in her tracks when she saw Patti, the cruise director, standing there.
Hot color stained her cheeks as she wondered how much of her and Ben’s exchange the other woman had heard. To say they were being unprofessional was a gross understatement. Immature, childish—both descriptions were much more accurate.
“Hi, guys. Welcome aboard, Ben. Nice to be offering you hospitality for a change instead of the other way around.” She smiled at Tory, obviously feeling an explanation was in order. “We try to dine at Ben’s restaurant every time we pass through. Best food in the islands.”
“You’re just saying that,” Ben said modestly. “But don’t stop—I like it.”
Patti laughed. “Plus he’s charming, but I’m sure you already know that.”
Definitely the other woman hadn’t overhead their exchange. Tory felt some of the tension leave her shoulders. Somehow she and Ben had to find a way to get through the next few days without sniping at each other. At least not in public, anyway.
“I came to let you know the captain has invited you both to dine with him this evening,” Patti said.
“That sounds great,” Ben said easily. “Tell Dominique I’ll be taking notes on her secret conch sauce.”
Tory rolled her eyes. Dominique Charest was the chef de cuisine on Alexandra’s Dream. Trust Ben to know her personally.
“The captain’s dining room is on the Artemis deck, Victoria,” Patti said. “I’m sure Ben wouldn’t mind showing you the way.”
“Of course,” Ben said politely.
Tory waited until the other woman had gone before letting her smile fade.
“I have a map,” she said shortly as she turned once more for the door. “I can find my own way.”
“Good,” he said.
She gritted her teeth, a dozen pithy insults tingling on the tip of her tongue. But he’d turned his back, and she found herself measuring his broad, well-muscled shoulders with her eyes.
Confused, annoyed, flustered, she headed for the exit. How on earth could she find anything about this man attractive when he had such a low opinion of her? And then there was her opinion of him—also low. Positively subterranean, in fact. Really, it was an insane situation, and she hoped her stupid hormones would snap out of it soon. The last thing she wanted was to have the hots for Ben Cooper all over again. God forbid.
BEN SAT BACK IN HIS chair and took a sip from his champagne cocktail. Nikolas had opted to open the French doors on his private dining room this evening, and the cool night air almost made up for having to wear a suit. The one downside to eating at the captain’s table, he decided as he eased a finger beneath his collar. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so trussed up. The Caribbean wasn’t exactly known for its formal dress code, but he’d suspected the Dream might have different standards and was glad now he’d packed his suit.
His eyes automatically flicked to his watch again, and he felt a curl of annoyance at himself. So what if Tory hadn’t turned up yet? So what if he suspected she was lost? It was no skin off his nose, after all. She was nothing to him. In fact, if anything, rather than being worried, he should be actively hoping she was lost, that she would be forced to make an embarrassingly late arrival. It was the kind of social faux pas that he imagined would send Tory and her blue-blood family screaming for the hills.
Despite himself, he was about to make an excuse to go scout around for her when she swanned in the door. He blinked as he took in the dress she was wearing. Made from some clingy, gauzy fabric in hot-pink and aqua florals, it had a halter neck and a plunging neckline. A single row of soft ruffles ran down the front to the full-length hemline, and the clingy fabric outlined every curve of her breasts and hips faithfully. Patti was on hand to introduce her to Nick and his fiancée Helena, and Ben’s eyes widened involuntarily as Tory turned and he caught sight of the back of her dress. Or, more accurately, the lack of a back. Bar the bow that dangled down the line of her delicate vertebrae from where the halter tied, her back was deliciously, decadently bare. The skirt of the dress kicked in just short of indecently exposing the perky curves of her butt, also showcased to perfection by the figure-hugging fabric.
“Nice,” he heard someone say beside him, and he turned a frown on the blond-haired guy who’d been introduced to him earlier as a travel journalist. The guy shot him a conspiratorial male smile, inviting Ben to comment in return on Tory’s figure. Ben just took another slug of his drink.
He didn’t want to find Tory attractive, but it was useless to pretend he didn’t. He’d been fighting a losing battle against his libido all day. The truth was, he’d always been hot for her. From the first day he’d arrived at the Institute, his gaze had been drawn to her tall, slim figure. There was something about the way she held herself, the beauty of her face combined with her cool composure. His poor-boy’s antennae had told him instantly that she came from money, and straight off he’d understood that she belonged at the Institute in a way that he never would. Then he’d learned who her father was and her grandfather, and his already burgeoning sense of inferiority and insecurity had burst into full bloom. He’d spent half his time at the Institute ignoring her or resenting her, suffering from what he now ruefully acknowledged as a bad dose of small-island syndrome.
Belatedly Ben glanced around and registered that there was only one empty seat at the table—and it was beside him. Before he could do more than swear under his breath, Tory was being ushered toward him.
He inhaled a waft of vanilla and musk as she sat beside him and they exchanged unamused looks at their forced proximity.
“Believe me, I know,” she said fervently.
“Feel free to ignore me,” he said as he drained the last of his cocktail.
“Ditto,” she said.
So saying, they both swiveled away from each other to face the person on their other side. Ben eyed the travel journalist with determination. He despised small talk, but the alternative—tense silence while pretending not to notice how good Tory looked and smelled—was not an option.
“So how are you finding the cruise so far?” he asked.
THE CAPTAIN’S PRIVATE dining room was a revelation. Timber floorboards glowed in soft candlelight, and plantation shutters gave the windows an exotic appeal. The table was a superb slab of honey-colored timber, the linen crisp and white, the table settings divine. The captain himself was a handsome, charismatic man, his fiancée equally attractive and vivacious. That they were wildly in love with each other was ridiculously obvious to Tory. The only fly in the ointment was Ben Cooper. But what was new about that? He’d single-handedly turned her tropical jaunt into a war zone—and they were only on the first day of their enforced collaboration.
Fortunately the middle-aged woman on her right turned out to be good company. Recently retired from the military, Lt. Williams had a host of fascinating stories about her postings throughout Asia, and they chatted easily through the starter and main course. Almost it stopped her from being aware of the man seated beside her. Almost she could ignore the low timbre of his voice, the brush of his shoulder against hers, the sound of his laughter. Almost but not quite. She was feeling just a little edgy as they neared the end of the main course—then she tuned in to Ben’s conversation with his neighbor, a travel writer who’d been introduced to her as David, and nearly dropped her wineglass. The instant she heard the words Cuisine Institute and petty revenge her stomach lurched and she jerked upright in her chair.
He wouldn’t dare. Surely he wouldn’t dare.
“…if it hadn’t happened to me, I probably would have thought it was pretty funny, too,” Ben was saying as she turned to face him.
His head was angled toward the man on his other side, but she glared at him nonetheless. She simply couldn’t believe he was about to do what she suspected he was about to do. Even Ben could not be that brazen. Could he?
“So, what, this guy just turns up at the Institute purporting to be a representative of one of the best, most exclusive restaurants in New York, and you bought it?” David said skeptically.
Tory’s whole body tensed.
“He was a brilliant actor. And it was more subtle than that. This classmate of mine—Victor—had set it all up beautifully.” Ben shot Tory a loaded look before returning his attention to the man on his left. “He started a rumor that a talent scout from Brown’s would be coming to put us through our paces, so when this guy called me out of the Institute’s restaurant kitchen after the meal and offered me a job once I’d graduated, I thought it was all aboveboard. I thought I was the luckiest bastard under the sun. I rang home and told my folks I wouldn’t be coming back to the family business straightaway after graduation, told them this was too good a chance to learn how it was really done to pass up. Then I hocked everything I owned to buy a wreck of a car and get to Manhattan.”
“Then you walked in the door at Brown’s…” David guessed, leaping ahead to the coup de grâce of Tory’s revenge.
“And they’d never heard of me, of course. Every single goddamned person in the kitchen turned around to stare at me when I announced myself, from the pot scrubbers to the chef de cuisine. I could still hear them laughing when I was back out front on the sidewalk.”
“So you had to go home with your tail between your legs?” David asked, shaking his head. “Tough luck, man.”
“Are you kidding? For starters, I’d lost my nonrefundable flight home when I decided to head to New York. Then there was the fact that I had told my parents I was going to be this big-shot New York haute cuisine chef,” Ben explained.
Tory squirmed in her seat as she felt a dull flush running up the back of her neck. She told herself that Ben had deserved every moment of her well-planned and executed revenge, but still her conscience burned.
“So what did you do?”
Tory realized she was holding her breath, wanting to know, too, how Ben had responded.
“I stood out on the street for about ten minutes, putting all the pieces together until I realized Victor had set me up. I swore a bit. Well, a lot, really. Then I finally realized that I had to find some work or starve. Across the road from Brown’s was this dinky little Italian place, Signor Mario’s, although the owner was actually called Luigi. He had a Help Wanted sign in the window, so I just walked across the street and told him I needed a job.”
“From haute cuisine to spaghetti Bolognese in five paces,” David said with an appreciative guffaw.
“Best thing that ever happened to me,” Ben said firmly. “The way he ran that kitchen, the way he loved and respected the food he cooked, the way he treated his staff, his customers—I couldn’t have had a better mentor.”
Tory squirmed again, gripped by an odd mixture of guilt, relief and annoyance. How typical—putting Ben on the spot at Brown’s might have momentarily fazed him, but, as usual, he’d landed on his feet. If only she’d been able to move on from what he’d done to her so easily.
To her dismay, she could feel Lt. Williams leaning forward on her other side to join in the conversation.
“I couldn’t help overhearing—it sounds just like the sort of cruel pranks that cause so many problems in the military academies,” she said, her dark eyes flashing with censure.
“Cruel—I guess I hadn’t thought of it in that context before,” Ben said. “But it was a pretty cruel thing to do. That’s a good word for it, actually.”
He didn’t so much as glance sideways at her, but Tory bristled nonetheless. He was using their dinner-table conversation to put her on trial. Any minute now he was probably going to reveal that she was the one who’d set him up, and she’d become a social pariah for the rest of the evening.
“You were at this Institute with Ben, I understand?” Lt. Williams asked Tory. “Was this sort of thing common?”
“Not precisely, no,” Tory said, hating herself for blushing furiously. She could feel smug satisfaction radiating off Ben in waves. Before she knew it, she was opening her mouth again. “We certainly had our fair share of frat-house bad behavior, though. And some of that was definitely cruel.”
It was Ben’s turn to stiffen in his seat, and she felt a surge of triumph. See how he liked it when the shoe was on the other foot.
“There was one girl in our year level who, through no fault of her own, had gained the reputation for being standoffish. They called her the Ice Queen, didn’t they, Ben?” Tory tilted her head to one side as though she were genuinely asking him to verify her memory of events.
He nodded minutely and avoided her eye. “I believe that was it.”
“Anyway, the guys started a book on who could be the first to get the Ice Queen to melt, if you know what I mean,” Tory explained.
David smirked, but Lt. Williams frowned.
“How charming,” she said. “I hope no one collected.”
“Unfortunately she was a little gullible. I understand she wasn’t very experienced with men, so when this one student turned on the charm, she was pretty much putty in his hands.”
“Let me guess—she found out about the bet, didn’t she?” the lieutenant asked, looking really angry now.
“Yes,” Tory said. “But not until afterward.”
There was a small pause as they all absorbed this.
“How humiliating,” the other woman said in sympathy.
“Yes,” Tory said again, more quietly this time as she remembered the stinging hurt she’d felt when she’d overheard Ben’s friends laughing at her and talking about the bet.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ben shift in his chair and open his mouth as though he was about to defend himself. She waited for him to dare try it, but he obviously thought better of the impulse.
“Wow, and I thought the world of journalism was cutthroat,” David said.
The arrival of dessert distracted both of their dining companions for the next few minutes, and Tory smoothed her napkin in her lap and absolutely refused to look in Ben’s direction. She couldn’t believe he’d brought up their personal history like this in front of everybody. And she couldn’t quite believe that she’d taken a shot back at him, either. She wondered if anyone realized that they’d both been taking veiled jabs at each other beneath their apparently innocuous anecdotes. She’d tried very hard not to react to what he’d been saying, but she wasn’t certain she’d succeeded very well.
At last she risked a sideways glance at Ben. He was looking at her, she realized. They locked eyes for a split second, then broke contact simultaneously.
Concentrating on her dessert, Tory willed the evening to be over.
AFTER DESSERT, COFFEE and liqueurs were served, the captain invited his guests to move away from the formality of the table and take advantage of the couches and occasional chairs nearby. Ben heaved a silent sigh of relief as he at last moved beyond the range of Tory’s perfume.
He’d had worse dinners—but not many. The meal itself had been fine—parts of it excellent—but being trapped next to Tory for two hours had been a new and exquisite form of torture. Every time he’d let his guard down and his gaze wander, he’d found himself studying the swanlike line of her elegant neck or the golden curls teasing at her delicate ears. Several times during dinner he’d heard her low, melodious laugh as she’d talked with the woman on her right, and the hairs on his arms had stood on end.
Then there was the little game of tit for tat they’d played. He was still trying to come to terms with the hurt he’d heard in her voice when she’d talked about their date. And that damned stupid bet…
“More coffee, sir?” a waiter asked, and Ben shook off his preoccupation and held out his cup.
He’d never been the kind of person who dwelled on the past. Besides, she’d gotten her own back. More than gotten her own back, in his opinion.
Glancing up, he saw that Nikolas was crossing the room to join him.
“Captain,” Ben said with a half-assed attempt at a salute.
“Maître d’. Sorry, no, it’s something else, isn’t it?” Nikolas pretended to be confused. “Chef de something or other?”
“Close but no cigar,” Ben said drily.
Nikolas grinned, his teeth very white against his olive skin. “How did you rate Dominique’s efforts tonight?” he asked, his gray eyes intent.
He prided himself on setting a good table, Ben knew.
“Her sauces are excellent. The fish was very fresh and beautifully cooked.”
Nikolas made a low sound of agreement. Neither of them mentioned the slightly soggy berries in the dessert.
“And how are you finding working with Ms. Fournier?”
“Tory is also very good at what she does,” Ben said easily.
“Helena swears by her cookbook. She’s fallen in love with your spicy Caribbean food.”
“If Helena is interested in trying real island food, I’ll give her some local recipes to try,” Ben said.
Ever astute, Nikolas picked up on the reserve in Ben’s tone.
“You don’t like Ms. Fournier’s cookbook?” he asked with the quirk of a dark eyebrow.
“It’s fine. It’s just not authentic, that’s all.”
“What do you mean it’s not authentic?” an all-too-familiar voice demanded.
Ben turned to see Tory standing behind him, Helena at her side.
“I was bringing Tory over to meet you,” Helena said to her fiancée, obviously trying to smooth over the awkward moment.
But Tory wasn’t about to let his comment go. “Well? What’s not authentic about my book?” she asked again.
Her cheeks had flushed a becoming pink, the color flattering against her creamy skin.
“For starters, have you ever visited half the places you’ve written about?” Ben asked.
“No. Have you ever visited France?” she countered.
“No.”
“Yet I bet you dare to serve a bouillabaisse in your restaurant, right? And I bet there are a host of other recipes cherry-picked from half a dozen other countries around the world on your menu.”
He nodded. “That’s true.”
“I researched my book meticulously and I worked with dozens of expat islanders in New York. I may not have the same beach view you have from your restaurant, but I know what I’m talking about.”
“If I’m willing to concede that my bouillabaisse might not hold its own against a local offering in Marseille, will you concede that as a born-and-bred islander I might just have the edge on you?” Ben asked.
Her chin came up and her hand rested her hip. Despite how annoying he found her, a part of him couldn’t help admiring her chutzpah. Did this woman never admit defeat?
“Nope. I’d pit my jerk chicken against yours any day,” she said proudly.
“Sounds like a challenge.” Nikolas was clearly enjoying their sparring.
“Why not?” Tory said.
All eyes turned to Ben. He shrugged nonchalantly. “It’ll be like taking candy from a baby, but if that’s what the lady wants…” he said provocatively.
Tory didn’t rise to the bait. Instead she smiled a secretive, confident smile.
“Done.” She agreed. “My jerk chicken versus your jerk chicken. Time and place of your choosing. And when I win, I’ll expect a quote for the review pages of my next cookbook.”
That nearly made him choke. He’d rather eat her damned cookbook than endorse it. But she was hardly likely to beat him.
“Deal. And if I win…” He couldn’t think of what to say because the only idea that popped into his head was so inappropriate and never-going-to-happen that it made him want to shake his head to knock the thought loose from his mind. “If I win, you give me your father’s famous secret recipe for port wine glaze,” he finally said.
“Still haven’t worked it out, Ben?” she asked mockingly. “It’s very simple, really.”
Very aware of Helena and Nikolas watching their interplay like spectators at a tennis match, Ben stuck out his hand. “Are we agreed or not?”
Her hand was warm and firm as it slid into his. “Agreed.”
Helena cleared her throat. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Ben stared at her blankly and was aware of Tory doing the same.
“Such as?” he asked.
“Who is to decide the winner?” Nikolas asked.
“Oh,” Tory said.
“Of course, Nikolas and I might be available….” Helena hinted with a glint of mischief in her eyes.
“Perfect,” Ben said. “You two are the judges and your decision is final. We’ll use the cuisine center as a base. How does two day’s time sound, after we’ve departed Grenada?”
Tory lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug. “If you need two days to get your act together, by all means,” she drawled.
Ben looked down at her, at the flush in her cheeks and the challenge in her blue, blue eyes.
“It’s a date,” he said.
CHAPTER FOUR
TORY TURNED HER FACE into the cool sea breeze and stared up at the navy-blue sky. Why was it that the stars seemed to sparkle so much more brightly out at sea? She told herself there was probably some incredibly rational scientific explanation, like the fact that there was less ambient light from city streetlights to distract the eye, for example. Not quite as romantic and magical an explanation as a woman might hope for but probably more accurate than putting the spectacular sky show down to there being tropical magic in the air.
Of its own accord, her hand found the silver teardrop pendant hanging from her neck. The precious metal was warm from her skin, and she peered down at it wryly. Perhaps this whole true-love-legend thing was starting to rub off on her after all.
Dinner had been a trial. There was no other word for it. Being forced to sit next to Ben all night, rubbing shoulders with him occasionally, inhaling his crisp aftershave…She’d felt on edge and on her guard through the whole meal. Both before and after his childish attempt to make her squirm.
She dropped the pendant as she forced herself to acknowledge that she’d gotten her own back, which probably made her just as childish as him. She frowned at the inky sea. She really should try to rise above it, tell herself that nothing he did or said mattered.
Turning away from the railing, she reluctantly decided that it was time to turn in for the evening. Tucking a stray curl behind her ear, she started back along the deck, looking for the entrance that would lead her to the elevator bank. Her steps slowed, then halted altogether when she spotted the newspaper folded neatly on one of the sun lounges lining the deck. It had been discarded inside out so that the photograph that had so intrigued her last night was staring straight up at her. She wasn’t a superstitious person, but she couldn’t just ignore it and walk past. She hesitated, then reached for the paper, lifting it to stare into the little boy’s eyes again. Just as she had last night, she felt a resonating sense of recognition. She knew this boy. She recognized the soul staring out at her from those clear blue eyes.
Her fingers tightened around the paper. Last night she’d told herself she was crazy to even contemplate the idea that this might be her brother’s lost son, but tonight she acknowledged that she’d never stopped thinking about this photograph since the moment she’d seen it. Even when she’d been sparring and sniping with Ben today, a part of her mind had been dwelling on this little boy’s face.
Just like that, she made her decision. It might be crazy, it might be a sign that she had more issues around her brother’s death than she’d yet acknowledged, but she was going to pursue this. She was going to do everything in her power to find this little boy and verify for herself that he was not her brother’s son.
Folding the paper more carefully, she turned to head back to her cabin only to almost walk straight into Ben. They both froze, then took a step backward as though being within touching distance might give them cooties or something. He’d taken off his tie and loosened his collar, she noted, and his hair was wind-rumpled. She didn’t need to see the thin line of his lips to know that he was as unthrilled to see her as she was to see him. The air practically vibrated with their mutual antipathy.
“Enjoying the ocean breeze?” he asked after the silence had stretched a little too long.
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Are we making small talk with one another now?”
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Sarah Mayberry
It's been eight years since Tory Sanderson has seen Ben Cooper–eight years since she found out he seduced her to win a bet with some classmates at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, and eight years since she got her revenge. . . . After fulfilling her dream of publishing a cookbook of island recipes, Tory is thrilled when she's invited on a Caribbean cruise as a guest lecturer. But excitement turns to anxiety when she finds out that Ben, who is now a celebrated restaurateur, will join her as the guest chef. Ben accepted the guest chef gig in order to enjoy a week of Tory sweating it out in the kitchen.But once the heat starts to climb, getting even turns out to be the last thing on his mind. In fact, picturing a future with Tory in his kitchen might add just the right amount of spice to his life. . . .
Sarah Mayberry
ISLAND HEAT
A huge thanks to my amazing partner, Chris, for his
patience and sense of humor during the writing of
this book. We’ll never move houses mid-manuscript
again, I promise! Thanks also to the amazing Ms W
for putting me in the writer’s seat on this one, and
to Harlequin for inviting me to play with a bunch of
talented, amazing ladies.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
TORY FOURNIER UNZIPPED her suitcase and flipped it open. Inside nestled a host of flimsy dresses, swimsuits, flip-flops and sun hats. She frowned at the bright colors and lightweight cottons. Why had she gone crazy and bought hot-pink and aqua? She only ever wore black, beige or white. Suddenly everything in her case looked garish and cheap and even vaguely slutty.
Great.
Pushing a hand through her straight blond hair, Tory started to unpack. She didn’t really hate her new tropical wardrobe. Deep inside she knew that. But she was feeling frustrated and oddly depressed. As she hung her sundresses in the closet in the stateroom she’d been assigned, she forced herself to remember that she was on a luxurious cruise ship, about to sail into the Caribbean for ten sun-filled days. There were about a million worse places to be, and not many better.
Back in New York, for example, it was snowing. People were wearing gloves, scarves and hats and tucking their faces into their turned-up collars as they trudged to work. They could see their breath in the air, for Pete’s sake.
And she was about to explore sunny, exotic St. Bart’s and Grenada and the Bahamas. What was wrong with her?
She didn’t have to go far to unearth the source of her downer: her father. At twenty-nine, she should have been used to his unenthusiastic reactions to her good news. It was his way, that was all. He rarely lavished praise on anything or anyone, and his only daughter was no exception. All her life he’d greeted her successes with a nod of acknowledgment and little more. When she’d been accepted into the prestigious Cuisine Institute of America to do her chef’s training, she’d expected champagne corks and back pats from him. She’d been following in his footsteps, after all. But he’d simply reviewed her course selection and told her to avoid working under Monsieur St Pierre. When she’d scored a publishing contract for her collection of Caribbean-inspired recipes, he’d just looked confused and asked why she was dabbling when she should be pursuing her first Michelin star ranking in a prestige restaurant.
And when she’d told him her publicist had organized for her to come on board Alexandra’s Dream as a guest lecturer to work in conjunction with a local celebrity chef for a special Caribbean-cuisine-themed cruise, he’d shaken his head in disbelief.
“What about this Caribbean-themed restaurant you want to start up?” he’d asked. “That’s just going to go on hold, is it? You know I’m not sold on the idea anyway, but you need to show some commitment, Victoria.”
He’d slipped into his chef-de-cuisine tone, the one he used to employ when he was castigating a lowly member of his kitchen staff. Perhaps because he was retired now, he used it on her more and more often these days.
“It’s ten days, Andre,” she’d said. She’d gotten into the habit of calling her father by his name over the long summers she’d helped out in his former restaurant, the critically acclaimed Le Plat. “My real-estate agent is finalizing a list of properties for me, my backers are in place. This isn’t going to interfere with my plans.”
Her father had just thrown his hands in the air in perfect imitation of her Gallic grandfather.
“No one will ever take you seriously if you flit about like this,” he’d said.
Just remembering the conversation made Tory mad all over again. She wasn’t flitting. She had a well-thought-out business plan to have her own restaurant fitted out and up and running within the next three months. She’d scouted sites, finalized a menu. She’d even tapped some past colleagues on the shoulder to warn them she would be head-hunting them soon. Ten days in the Caribbean was not going to derail any of that.
She knew that part of her father’s attitude could be laid at the door of his retirement. He hated being a man of leisure. Practically his entire adult life had been spent in the stress and drama of a commercial kitchen; playing a round of golf in the morning and flicking through industry magazines for the afternoon just did not do it for him. But apart from being patient, there was precious little Tory could do about that. He’d chosen to hang up his apron—going out on a high, he’d called it—so he was going to have to come to terms with this new stage in his life. Unfortunately, it had been two years now and he was still showing no signs of accepting that his career was over.
Of course, she could have told her father her other reasons for wanting to go to the Caribbean, but he wouldn’t have understood those, either, just as he didn’t understand her passion for island food.
Her fingers brushed against something cool and metallic in her suitcase as she reached in for another stack of clothes, and she pulled a small photo frame from where she’d stowed it safely between two tank tops. Her brother Michael’s bright blue eyes smiled out at her, his handsome face tanned and his curly blond hair bleached white from long days in the sun. He looked so happy, so open. The old emptiness echoed inside her as she looked into his beloved face. It had been eight years, but she still missed him every day. Perhaps it was because they had been twins. Perhaps it was because they’d been best friends as well as brother and sister. Or maybe everyone felt the same aching sense of loss when a brother or sister died, as though nothing was ever going to be the same again.
Cleaning the smudged glass on the hem of her T-shirt, Tory placed the photo frame on her bedside unit. She didn’t normally travel with a picture of her brother, but this trip was special. Michael was the reason she’d jumped at the unexpected offer when her publicist had called. She wanted to visit the place where her brother had spent the last months of his life, see the islands where he had been so happy. He’d joined the DEA straight out of college, and his first big posting had been to the Caribbean, working with local authorities, using his pilot’s skills to best effect in undercover operations. She could still recall the vivid descriptions of the islands in his letters and e-mails home. She wanted to see the Caribbean through his eyes. Maybe it would help her say goodbye to him at last.
Sighing heavily, Tory crossed to the en suite bathroom to stow her toiletries. She caught sight of her reflection in the bathroom mirror—her blue eyes looked troubled, her skin pale after months of winter. She had the same dimpled chin as her brother, but her nose was more snubbed than his. Her shoulder-length blond hair was starting to frizz a little from a day in the Florida humidity, and she smoothed it with her hand. She knew she was generally considered more pretty than beautiful, but she’d never had a problem with her looks—except for her curly hair. Fortunately a few minutes with her straightening iron fixed that every morning.
She tried a smile in the bathroom mirror. She looked tense, uptight.
Unbidden, words from long ago popped into her mind.
So you can laugh. I thought maybe you were missing a humor chromosome or something.
She squelched the rogue memory back down where it belonged—in the X files, never to see the light of day.
Stepping back into the cabin, she picked up the information folder she’d been given when she’d reported to the personnel department that afternoon. Flicking past a detailed sailing schedule, information on lifeboat drills and pages of rules and regulations, she found what she was looking for—a detailed plan of the ship. The cuisine arts center, a purpose-built venue unique to the Dream, was on the Aphrodite deck, two decks above her cabin. Officially she didn’t hold her first onboard lecture until the day after tomorrow, and the bulk of the time she’d be working in tandem with Jacques St. Clair, a high-profile local chef the shipping line had recruited for this specially themed cruise. If she wanted to, she could just kick back and play at being a real passenger for the evening. But Tory had always been a big planner—she didn’t do anything by the seat of her pants unless she absolutely had to.
Collecting a notebook and pen, she pocketed her key card and exited into the corridor. It was only when she started walking that she noticed the faint swaying of the ship. She guessed that after a few days she wouldn’t even register it. She’d only ever been on smaller yachts and catamarans, but she was pretty confident she wasn’t going to spend half the voyage hugging the toilet bowl. Just in case, however, she’d brought some motion-sickness pills. Like a Boy Scout, she was always prepared.
She decided to take the stairs rather than the elevator and was pleased to find she was barely out of breath by the time she’d gained the Aphrodite deck. All those early mornings at the gym had paid off a little, then. The moment she’d agreed to come on board Alexandra’s Dream she’d gone into bikini-panic mode, booking herself into every body-blasting, fat-pummeling, trimming, toning class her gym had on offer. Since she was so tall—five feet eight inches barefoot—she’d never put on weight easily, but she’d figured she was already going to be feeling pretty self-conscious about her glow-in-the-dark winter-white body, so there was no reason to compound the misery with a spare tire or two around her middle.
The Aphrodite deck seemed to be made up mostly of staterooms, and she made her way along the corridors until she came to two large double doors. A shiny brass plaque announced the cuisine arts center. Pushing through the doors, she found herself in a decent-size theater not unlike a movie cinema, only instead of a movie screen at the front, there was a state-of-the-art demonstration kitchen facing the rows of stadium seating. She noted that each chair had a small fold-down table similar to a true lecture theater, but she doubted many of the passengers would be going to the trouble of making notes.
She turned her attention to the kitchen itself. The countertops were granite, and there were three deep sinks along the back wall. The fridge was positioned to one side, a large double-doored unit, and when she opened it she saw it was already loaded with many condiments and basic staples like milk and butter. There were two ovens, both gas, and she noted that a series of small cameras had been built into the lighting rig above the countertop. She guessed that they would be fed live to the big plasma screens at either side of the stage so that everyone in the audience could see what was going on on the stove top or countertop.
A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she recognized the pleasant hum of anticipation in her stomach. She loved talking about food and she was particularly looking forward to working with Jacques during the cruise. The kitchen was great, the decor attractive and she was about to visit the spice islands that she’d read about and researched so much. What was not to love?
The buzz that had eluded her earlier at last arrived. This was going to be fun.
She was running an appreciative hand along the edge of the European-designed gas stove, complete with eight burners and a fish cooker, when the double doors swung open and an attractive dark-haired woman entered the room. The woman’s crisp navy uniform flattered her curvaceous figure, and Tory guessed she must be in her late thirties.
“You’re Victoria Fournier, aren’t you?” the woman said, striding forward with her hand extended. “I recognize you from the photo on your book jacket. I’m Patti Kennedy, the cruise director.”
Tory shook hands and grimaced comically. “Pleased to meet you, Patti. I’m almost embarrassed you recognize me from that photo—I look like someone just told me I was about to be audited by the IRS.”
Patti smiled readily. “I wanted to make sure you were settling in and to let you know it’s definitely worth your while getting to know all the little idiosyncrasies of the equipment before you take your first session. We’ve had some disasters in the past.”
“I can imagine, but I never cook in an oven I haven’t tested first,” Tory assured her. “Several disasters of my own taught me that one.”
“I’ll leave you to get acquainted with the facilities, then. But before I go, there has been one slight change to the program that you’ll need to be aware of,” Patti said. “It won’t alter anything dramatically, but you might get a few inquiries from our guests if they notice the substitution. We just heard this morning that Jacques St. Clair has broken his leg.”
Tory’s eyebrows rose toward her hairline.
“I hope he’s okay?” she asked, her mind automatically slipping into crisis mode. She had a feeling she knew what Patti was about to ask her—if she felt up to hosting the entire culinary program on her own, delivering lectures and providing the cooking demonstrations. She was so busy calculating what sort of preparation time she’d need to reconfigure the syllabus she’d worked up that she almost missed Patti’s next words.
“He’s going to be fine. And so are we, happily. Thank heaven we have a captain who enjoys five-star cuisine. He’s called on the owner of his favorite restaurant in the region to rope us in another top-drawer chef at the last moment. You’ve probably heard of him, actually—his restaurant won a third Michelin star recently. Ben Cooper, from Café Rendezvous on Anguilla? The captain and Ben have been great friends ever since the captain fell in love with Ben’s food several years ago.”
Patti cocked her head to one side, waiting for some sign of recognition from Tory.
It took a few seconds for Tory’s brain to do anything but resound with shock.
Ben Cooper. Here. On board the ship, working intimately with her, side by side.
Surely not. Surely fate could not be so damned tricky and contrary?
Belatedly she realized Patti was still waiting for her response.
“Um, yes. I know Ben. We…we trained together at the Culinary Institute,” Tory heard herself say.
Patti clapped her hands together with delighted satisfaction.
“There you go, then—it will be like old times,” she said.
Tory somehow managed to smile and talk semicoherently for the next few minutes until the other woman took her leave. Then she just stood and stared vacantly out into the empty auditorium.
Ben Cooper. It had been a long time since she’d even thought his name. But now she was going to see him—in just three days, in fact, when he came aboard in St. Bart’s.
A shiver of something almost like fear raced up her spine.
I’m not afraid of Ben, she assured herself. He got what was coming to him. So what if he’s still angry with me for what I did to him all those years ago? I’m still angry with him for what he did to me. So we’re even.
Problem was, none if it made a difference to the feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Ben Cooper. She just couldn’t believe it.
BEN STARED DOWN INTO the perfect, cherubic face of the baby in his arms, his lips curving into a spontaneous, utterly involuntary grin as Eva offered him a slobbery smile. She was so beautiful. Something tightened in his chest, and he fussed with her brightly colored playsuit for a few seconds as hot emotion burned at the back of his eyes.
For six months now he’d nursed this little urchin to sleep, fed her, bathed her, changed her nappies. He’d shared all the responsibilities of raising her with Danique, his ex-girlfriend, just as any decent man would when he learned one of his guys had gotten past the keeper, so to speak, and scored a goal.
He’d expected to be a dutiful father, at best. The kind of guy who handed over the right amount of child maintenance without quibbling, cooed at how cute the baby was at the appropriate moments and kept a miniature portrait in his wallet for appearances’ sake.
She’d sneaked up on him, though, this little cutie with her wide-eyed stare and her chubby limbs and her repertoire of gurgles and grunts. Perhaps it was her utter vulnerability, her absolute trust in and reliance on him. Or perhaps it was the young/old wisdom shining from her big brown eyes.
Whatever, he’d fallen hard. He’d become the talk of the small island of Anguilla, with everyone nudging one another with amusement that the last of the Caribbean playboys had fallen, taken out not by a woman but by a baby girl.
It was true. He loved her. Dearly. Fiercely. Irreversibly.
And she wasn’t his.
Danique had told him just last week when she’d come to collect Eva from her weekend visitation. His fling with Danique had been all about fun and no tomorrows, and neither of them had ever pretended it was any different. They’d remained friends, though, when the passion had died out, and it had proved a solid basis for their new partnership. Since Danique had had trouble breast-feeding, Eva had been on a bottle since three months, and they’d shared the load between them as much as possible despite the fact that they lived separately and led very different lives.
Last week, Danique had been unusually quiet as she’d gathered up Eva’s diaper bag and other baby paraphernalia, and she’d waited until she was ready to go to drop her bomb.
“Ben, there’s something you need to know. Before I was seeing you for those few weeks, I had a…thing going with Monty Blackman.” Danique’s eyes had shifted over Ben’s shoulder to focus on the wall behind him.
Ben had frowned; Monty was a well-known local businessman. He was also a very married man with a high-profile, politically astute wife.
“Eva is his,” Danique had blurted as though she couldn’t hang on to the words any longer. Tears had stood out in her pansy-brown eyes. “I’ve tried to tell you so many times, but I was scared of how you would react. You’ve been so great with her, and then there’s the money and everything else….”
Ben had shaken his head. “I’m sorry. I just—I don’t believe you.”
When he held Eva in his arms, his heart ached. How could that be if she wasn’t his?
“I had a test done—you can see the results if you like,” Danique had said. “And about the money—I’ll pay you back, I promise. Every cent.”
Ben had sworn pithily. “I don’t give a damn about the money.” He’d paced agitatedly, then stopped to frown at her. “Why now? What’s changed?” he’d asked. Then his frozen brain had swung back into motion and he’d held up a hand to forestall her answering. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. Monty’s leaving Angela.”
Danique had nodded slowly. “I love him, Ben. I’ve loved him for years and I only broke it off with him because I knew it was hopeless. What you and I had—that was about me trying to feel like a whole person again after waiting all those years for Monty to be honest about us.”
“So I was just an insurance policy?” he’d asked bitterly. “A convenient stopgap until the real guy came good?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Danique had cried.
But it had been, and they both knew it.
Now Ben smoothed a thumb across the silky curve of Eva’s cheek. She smelled of frangipanis and milk, and he didn’t know what he was going to do without her in his life. Danique had promised to let him visit, and he was first on the list of babysitters. But it wasn’t enough. It never would be.
“I think that’s everything,” Danique said as she appeared in the living room doorway, two carry bags in hand. She’d come over to collect the last of Eva’s baby debris from his home.
“Okay,” he said. He had a sudden urge to simply refuse to hand Eva back, but it passed as soon as it registered in his mind. He had no rights in this situation.
“I’ve got two shifts again next week,” Danique said. She was working at the local kindergarten as an assistant. “If you want, I can drop Eva by…”
He shook his head and took one deep lungful of sweet Eva-scented air before he handed her over.
“I’ll be away for the next week or so. Nick Pappas called. Jacques was scheduled to run a lecture series on board his new ship, and they need a replacement.”
Jacques’s restaurant was situated on St. Maarten, a twenty-minute ferry ride away from Anguilla, but despite the distance, the fact that he’d broken his leg trying to climb a coconut tree while blind drunk was common knowledge.
“So you’re filling in?” Danique said. “That’s nice of you.”
Ben shrugged. He wasn’t doing it out of kindness. Even the lesser of his two motivations wasn’t remotely kind—wanting to be as far from Danique and a smugly self-satisfied Monty as possible. In fact, he’d been on the verge of saying no to Nikolas, a good customer and a personal friend, when the captain of Alexandra’s Dream had uttered two words that had made Ben’s baser self prick up its ears.
Victoria Fournier.
Tory Fournier, as he’d known her.
Well, well.
He could just imagine her face when she learned at the last minute that she’d been paired with him for a whole cruise. It was almost delicious, if you were the kind of person who didn’t forgive and forget, even after eight long years.
He guessed he must be that kind of person. To be fair, he argued in his own favor, Tory had humiliated him in a spectacular way. He’d have to be suffering from a severe form of premature dementia to forget it. As for forgiving…He wasn’t a saint. Never had been, never would be.
“I’ll bring her by when you get back, then,” Danique said awkwardly.
Ben gritted his teeth and did what needed to be done. “Look, it’s probably not a good idea. You and Monty have got your own thing going on now. And I’ve got my life.”
His gesturing hand took in the comfortable wicker furniture, terra-cotta-tile floors and mishmash of local art hanging on the walls of his hilltop cottage.
“But I know how much she means to you,” Danique said, holding Eva close, as though she were the one being asked to give her up.
“No point in perpetuating the situation,” Ben said flatly. “How long do you think it’s going to take for Monty to get sick of me butting my head in?”
Danique’s expression told him Monty’s nose was already on the way to being out of joint.
“It’s for the best,” he said, moving toward the door so she’d have to follow him. He wanted them gone now that he’d said it out loud.
Danique sniffed loudly as she passed him. She was crying. He tried to feel sorry for her but couldn’t. Sure, she’d been in a tough situation. But he was the one who’d come out a loser. Him and Angela Blackman.
Ben shut the door firmly behind her, crossing straight to the fridge to grab himself a beer. He was striding out toward the terrace when he heard the sound of Danique’s car pulling out of his gravel driveway.
Outside on the terrace, he braced an arm against the railing and took a long swallow of cold, bitter beer. Below him, the hillside swept down toward the beach of Rendezvous Bay, green vegetation standing in stark contrast to the golden perfection of the beach. Beyond that, the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean stretched off into the distance.
A brisk ocean breeze cooled his overheated emotions, and he dropped down onto one of the weathered timber lounges he kept on the terrace.
Eva was gone. Many of his single buddies would tell him he’d dodged a bullet. He reminded himself of how unhappy he’d been when he’d first learned about Danique’s pregnancy, how trapped and angry and hunted he’d felt. He’d gotten lucky. He needed to keep reminding himself of that.
Somehow, the sentiment just didn’t ring true.
Squinting out to sea, he saw a slow-moving ship crawling across the horizon, and his thoughts turned to Alexandra’s Dream and Tory Fournier.
A feral grin twisted his lips as he contemplated the next week or so. He wondered what she looked like now that she was in her late twenties. She’d been slim when he’d known her, with small, high breasts and long, coltish legs. Her delicate heart-shaped face had been deceptively sweet-looking, he recalled, especially with that beguiling chin dimple. She’d suckered him in for weeks after casually letting him down after their one night together. Then she’d sprung her little surprise. They said that revenge was a dish best served cold. He wondered if eight years qualified as being too cold? Perhaps even…petty?
He laughed into the ocean breeze. So maybe he wasn’t about to wreak revenge on her. After all, maybe he’d had it coming a little. But he certainly wouldn’t be letting her walk all over him with her elegant designer pumps, flashing those pearly whites of hers and flicking that long straight hair over her shoulder. Eight years ago they’d drawn the battle lines between them, and they were still there.
But he was no longer a gauche island boy intimidated by her family pedigree and industry contacts. He’d had his own successes now.
This time they’d meet as equals. He had a feeling it was going to be interesting.
And he needed something interesting right now. Anything, really, to distract him from the empty space where his heart used to be.
TORY SPENT THE FIRST evening on board familiarizing herself with the ship. Since she’d never been hot on Greek mythology at school, she didn’t have a chance in hell of remembering many of the deck names, as they were all named after Greek gods, except for the obvious ones that repeated viewings of Xanadu had imprinted on her memory. She managed to find the gym, the cinema, the various bars and clubs, the day spa. And all the while her brain was working like a crazed hamster in a wheel, worrying at the problem of Ben Cooper.
She didn’t want to see him again. Not because she was scared of how he might react all these years after her revenge. She didn’t want to see him because he’d made her feel so foolish. She’d been charmed by him, besotted and bedazzled. She’d said things to him, done things with him that she’d never done with another man. She was no prude and she definitely wasn’t ashamed of any of it. But it made her feel so stupid that she’d allowed him to touch her, to know her so intimately, and all along he’d been playing her.
Just remembering made her grind her teeth together. What a jerk! And what a sap she’d been, allowing him to sweet-talk her into a date and then into his bed.
She could never fully regret their one night, however. And it wasn’t about the sex—even if she was willing to admit that he’d been one of the best lovers she’d ever had. It was because he was the person who had given her her first taste of island food. She could trace her love affair with all things Caribbean back to the moment when she’d first smelled his unique jerk spices frying in the pan. She could still close her eyes and remember the meal he’d cooked her that night: succulent, spicy jerk chicken, coconut rundown and his own special take on johnnycakes for dessert. The child of a classically trained chef who believed that French cooking was the only true way, Tory had been blown away by the exciting flavors warring for supremacy in her mouth. Then Ben had talked about Anguilla and his family and the shabby beachfront takeaway stand that he one day planned to transform into a prestigious establishment, and the magic had been complete—she’d been utterly enchanted and enslaved by all things Caribbean.
Stupid, stupid girl. Tory shook her head in disgust over her own past naiveté as she made her way back to her cabin. He must have been laughing up his sleeve at how easily he’d gotten beneath her defenses.
She slammed her state room door with a little more verve than was strictly necessary and crossed to the bathroom to brush and floss her teeth and wash her face. Buttoning up the cotton pyjamas she preferred to sleep in, Tory pulled down the covers and crawled into bed. Yawning widely, she flicked the light off, rolled onto her side and slid her hand under the pillow, her habitual sleeping posture. She gave a gasp of surprise and sat bolt upright when something cold and slithery met her fingers. Fumbling for the lamp switch, she flipped her pillow out of the way, then bit her lip on an involuntary laugh when she saw that the object of her fear was a necklace and pendant. Now that she knew it was harmless, she mocked her childish reaction. What had she thought it was—the world’s thinnest snake?
Still smiling, she lifted the necklace and weighed the pendant in her hand. Made from silver and shaped like a solid teardrop, it was slightly tarnished and looked like a much-loved, wear-it-every-day kind of necklace. She frowned for a moment, wondering how it gotten in her bed. The sheets were crisp and fresh, so there was no way that it could belong to the previous occupant. Her frown cleared as she guessed what must have happened—the maid had lost her necklace while cleaning Tory’s room.
Checking the time, Tory saw it was still early—barely nine. She could notify Lost and Found that she’d located the maid’s necklace; no doubt the woman was fretting.
As soon she’d explained the situation to Lost and Found, however, the woman on the other end of the line laughed loudly and asked her to hold. Tory turned the pendant over and over in her hand while she waited for someone else to take her call, and finally a familiar voice came on the line.
“Victoria, it’s Patti Kennedy here. How are you doing?”
Tory was a little taken aback that the cruise director would show interest in something as insignificant as a lost necklace.
“Hi, Patti. Sorry, there must be some kind of mistake. I was just reporting a lost necklace in my room….”
Patti laughed. “You obviously haven’t read through your orientation material yet. If you open the folder, you’ll see a colored glossy flyer with the heading ‘Teardrops of the Moon.’ The flyer will explain everything, but basically it’s a little tradition we’ve developed on board where we hide the necklace in a stateroom for one of our passengers to find. According to an old legend, the necklace is supposed to bring good luck, especially in love.”
“Oh,” Tory said, viewing the pendant in an entirely different light now. Good luck she welcomed, but good luck in love? She didn’t really have time in her life for love, not with a book to promote and a new restaurant to start up, let alone the more immediate challenge of keeping dozens of cruise passengers informed and titillated on a daily basis—all while working alongside Ben Cooper.
“Maybe you guys should put it in someone else’s room. I mean, I’m not really a guest, am I?” Tory said. She’d been assigned a stateroom because of the short duration of her stay on board and the lack of availability of other crew accommodation. The pendant must have been meant for someone else.
“Don’t tell me—a pretty girl like you doesn’t need luck in love?” Patti guessed.
“It’s not that,” Tory said, thinking wryly of how long it had been since she’d even been on a date, let alone gotten lucky. “It’s more I kind of feel like a fraud, being here to work and all.”
Patti made a dismissive noise. “Forget it. You’re a high-profile guest lecturer, not a dishwasher. I think it’s terrific you’ve found it. But if you really don’t want it, you can turn it in to us tomorrow and we’ll hide it again.”
“Okay. Thanks, Patti.”
“Read your orientation folder,” Patti admonished lightly before ending the call.
Feeling duly chastised, Tory clambered out of bed and grabbed the folder. Propped up against two pillows, she sorted through the folder until she found the flyer Patti had been talking about.
It outlined the legend behind the pendant, detailing how the moon goddess and a handsome shepherd had had to hide their love from the jealous sun god, concealing themselves under an invisible cloak with a diamond clasp. They’d been caught, however, and eventually punished. The moon goddess had been so inconsolable over the loss of her one true love that she’d cried for days and days and days. Her grief was so great and her love so unwavering that her story came to symbolize the power of true love. One of her tears had hardened over the diamond in the lovers cloak and subsequently, tear-shaped pendants became a traditional wedding gift to remind brides of the enduring quality of love.
As Tory read on, she discovered there were more benefits to her wearing the pendant than just being the recipient of good luck in love. Apparently crew members would single her out for special treats and discounts when they noticed her with the pendant, giving her the experience of being a VIP on board. And, of course, she had to hand the pendant back at the end of the cruise in order for the next passenger to play the game all over again.
Tory studied the pendant for a few minutes. She wasn’t even sure if she believed in love, let alone true love. She’d been on the planet twenty-nine years and had never really been in love with anyone. Not enough that she had imagined a shared future, babies, the whole shooting match. Maybe she was just going to be one of those women who poured her passion into her work.
It was a peculiarly depressing thought.
Feeling very self-conscious and stupid, she put the necklace on. The pendant slid down her chest to rest heavily at the very top of her cleavage. Switching the light off, Tory rolled onto her stomach and closed her eyes.
Probably she would hand the pendant back to Patti first thing tomorrow.
But maybe she wouldn’t.
CHAPTER TWO
“OKAY, PEOPLE, THAT’S enough,” Janice called. “We’ll break for lunch. I’ll see you back here at two.”
Like the other dancers around her, Tracy let her shoulders drop and her stomach pop out. Sweat made her leotard stick to her back and chest, and her knee ached from all the high kicks Janice had made them do, over and over. Even though they all knew the routine backward, forward, inside out, their tyrannical leader and choreographer was a stickler for rehearsal and she ensured that they all went over the evening’s routines each day before releasing them for their other onboard duties.
“You’re not on vacation,” Janice said at least once a day to some member or other of the entertainment crew.
Tracy always wanted to respond with a smart-ass quip. They were floating in the middle of the Caribbean on an enormous cruise ship, they lived in crowded crew quarters up to eight berths per cabin and they worked almost constantly. It was highly unlikely that anyone, no matter how optimistic, could kid themselves that this was anything like a vacation. But she never said a word, smart or otherwise. She needed this job. More than ever, she needed this job.
She sighed heavily as she remembered the phone call she’d had from Salvatore last night. He’d let her talk to their son Franco for just a few minutes before getting back on the line.
“He’s fine,” he’d said in his flat, cold voice. His business voice. They were just business to him now, her and Franco. “Do your job. Find the pendant—and get it right this time. Then this’ll all be over and you’ll never see me again.”
Amen to that.
Grabbing a hand towel from her bag, Tracy mopped at her shiny face as she made her way to the elevator and down to the administration level of the Dream, determined to “get it right” this time, as Salvatore had so charmingly put it.
She’d done everything she could to snatch his damned necklace on the cruise before Christmas, but fate or luck or whatever it was that decided these things had been against her.
This time it would be different, she promised herself. This time she would find the pendant and get Sal out of her life once and for all. She was convinced the pendant was the only reason he still had any contact with her and Franco. He’d been absent from their lives for months before he’d suddenly turned up out of nowhere and explained he’d scored an audition for her on Alexandra’s Dream. Straightaway she’d known he wasn’t doing her a favor out of the kindness of his heart; he’d wanted her on the ship very badly for his own reasons. She’d soon learned what they were—one of Sal’s gambling customers, some guy called Giorgio, had run up an enormous debt with Sal’s people and planned to pay it off with a precious antique necklace he’d smuggled on board the ship prior to handing it over to Sal. Great plan, except Giorgio had gotten himself arrested for involvement in the high-level smuggling ring that had been busted on the Dream during its Mediterranean run. Sal had been left holding the debt, and the only chance of satisfying his bosses and securing his own financial future was to grab the pendant off the cruise ship himself. Which was where Tracy was supposed to come in.
Tracy smiled grimly to herself as she remembered Sal’s fury when he’d learned that the pendant had fallen into the hands of the cruise director and the ship’s librarian and promptly been turned into a promotional gimmick for passengers. She’d never heard him swear so much or in so many different languages.
The really great thing was that she was the one stuck with the task of unraveling this mess—or risk losing her boy forever.
It was a depressing thought, and Tracy couldn’t even muster her plastic polite smile for the male passengers she passed who tried to catch her eye, clearly liking the look of her tight leotard and workout leggings. She’d never been falsely modest about her looks. Men liked her, always had. She had long legs, good boobs, long dark hair—and, best of all, she was a dancer, a former Vegas showgirl who could shake it with the best of them. For some men, she was a fantasy brought to life.
But she never encouraged any of them, no matter how built or wealthy-looking. More likely than not, they were married. And even if they weren’t, she wasn’t interested. Being interested was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place.
She took a deep breath and stepped into the administration offices, smiling at the receptionist and wandering idly over to the notice board that covered one wall. To her left was the doorway to Patti Kennedy’s office. It was slightly open, and Tracy stood staring at the notice board, trying to come up with some excuse to talk to Patti. The cruise director would know where the pendant had been hidden this trip, and if it had been found already. Patti had helped come up with the scheme to use the pendant as part of the onboard entertainment, and she took a personal interest in the person who found it. Tracy just had to get her talking about the damned thing and surely she’d let slip who had it. But as Tracy read the same staff memo over and over, her mind remained resolutely blank as she tried to come up with an opening gambit. Closing her eyes, she swore at herself. This was why she’d left school early—she’d never been good under pressure, and her end-of-year exams had always been a disaster. Her mother used to say her brains were in her feet. Maybe she’d been right, after all.
Checking her watch again, she saw that she’d chewed up ten minutes of her lunch break already. To hell with it—she’d just wing it, pretend she’d come down to ask about the weather or something. Patti would think she was a moron, but no one expected ex-showgirls to be rocket scientists after all.
She almost had a heart attack when she whirled around, all ready to barge into Patti’s office, only to find the other woman standing right behind her.
“Oh!” Tracy gasped stupidly, slapping a hand to her chest.
Patti’s eyebrows lifted in bemusement. “Sorry, Tracy, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said.
“No, you didn’t,” Tracy said automatically.
Patti’s eyebrows arched even higher, and Tracy shrugged ruefully.
“I mean, yeah you did, but it wasn’t your fault.”
“Were you looking for me?” Patti asked pleasantly.
“Um, yeah, I was just talking with the other girls about the special deal we’ve got going on with the teardrop pendant,” Tracy said, her brain just barely keeping two words ahead of her mouth. “We were thinking that it might be cute to kind of incorporate whoever found it this cruise into the end of our routine. You know, pull them out of the audience and make a fuss of them, tell everyone about the legend, that sort of thing.”
Patti looked thoughtful. “That’s a nice idea, and I’m sure Tory would enjoy being made a fuss of, but it might be a little late to incorporate it into the routine this time around. Maybe next cruise we could think about it, though. Thanks for the thought, Tracy.”
Patti smiled, already turning away. Tracy’s palms were sweaty with anxiety. She was so close to knowing who’d found the pendant, but a first name wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Usually the winner of the pendant was announced to the crew at some point during the cruise, but Tracy had no time to lose—she had Sal breathing down her neck, wanting action pronto. She needed to know now.
Patti was about to enter her office. Tracy opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She stared at Patti’s door as it clicked shut.
Damn it, she’d missed her chance again. Feeling sick and angry with herself, Tracy strode out into the corridor, away from the curious eyes of the receptionist. She was hopeless at this sneaking-around stuff, absolutely hopeless. Lying and flirting and stealing—she hadn’t asked for any of it and she wanted it all to be over. Most of all, she wished she’d never met Salvatore Morena and allowed him to con her into his bed.
Instantly she slapped the thought down. No matter how much she hated him, she could never regret what he’d given her—Franco. Her funny, quirky five-year-old son. Even though she was worried sick about him, about what Salvatore might do if she didn’t succeed soon and find his stupid pendant for him, she smiled as she remembered what Franco had said to her on the phone last night.
“I’ve decided I’m going to be an elephant when I grow up,” he’d said confidently.
“An elephant?”
She loved that he hadn’t quite grasped the concept that people and animals and inanimate objects were different. Until recently, he’d wanted to be a motor-cycle when he grew up.
“An elephant. But I want to sleep in a bed. A nice big bed made from grass and pillows,” Franco had said with his habitual lisp.
The smile faded from Tracy’s lips as the reality of her situation hit home once again.
If she didn’t find Salvatore’s necklace, as he wanted, she’d never see her son again. And she’d just blown her one sure-fire chance to find out who had it this cruise. Alexandra’s Dream could accommodate up to a thousand passengers. She had nine days—and counting—to find a needle in a haystack.
She clenched her jaw and lengthened her stride as her long legs ate up the corridor. She’d find out who had it. She had to. She had a first name: Tory. And this time nothing was going to stop her from making her son safe.
THE FIRST TWO DAYS OF the cruise were at-sea days with no port visits. Tory spent her first full day on board experimenting in the demonstration kitchen. The oven was a little hot, she now knew, but the stove top was excellent and she’d fallen in love with the high-end mixer and food processor. As usual, she’d brought her own knives with her, and once she got the measure of the oven and the appliances, she spent some time with her sharpening steel and whetstone ensuring that all her blades were at their best.
She told herself it was because she liked to be prepared, that she’d be doing this no matter who she was sharing the podium with, but she wasn’t in the habit of self-delusion—she wanted everything to be perfect when Ben arrived. She wanted to have put her indelible stamp on the kitchen, marking it as her territory and identifying him as the stranger, the trespasser in her domain. So she arranged her reference books on the handy shelf near the fridge and she reorganized the spice and herb jars and reordered the various contents of the kitchen drawers. By the end of her first day she was confident she knew the kitchen and where everything she might need could be found.
The next day she delivered her first lecture to a bright-eyed audience of two hundred odd guests, the majority of them women. After introducing herself and explaining a little about her cookbook, Tory began to outline the colorful history of the food of the Caribbean islands.
“The Caribbean offers a unique selection of cuisines evolved from the many cultural influences that have touched the islands over the centuries. Today, we can trace recipes and ingredients back to the Arawak Indians, the original inhabitants, as well as the French, English and African immigrants who have all made their homes here. One of the first things you’ll learn is that Caribbean food is party food, because the island people love to party. Even though true Carnival is still a few weeks away, you’ll find pre-Carnival costume parades on every island when we dock.”
To either side of the kitchen on the plasma screens, images from her digital library flashed on the screen—spice markets, beachside traders, laughing brown-skinned children, colorful Carnival parades.
“Contrary to common belief, not all Caribbean food is hot and spicy,” Tory said. “Island food can be infinitely subtle, but it can also punch you in the face with fiery heat. Over the cruise we’ll sample a number of famous islander dishes like jerk chicken, johnnycakes, rum cakes and rum punches. I’ll show you how to select the best spices and herbs for your cooking, how to store them and mix them and the best cuts of meat for each dish. Island food is casual, family fare, and most of the recipes we’ll explore are simple and don’t require elaborate preparation or long cooking times. I guarantee that by the time you go home you’ll be ready, willing and able to treat your family and friends to a Caribbean feast.”
She spent the remainder of her first lecture familiarizing her audience with the individual cuisines of the various islands they would be visiting, focusing particularly on providing a context for their first stop in St. Bart’s the following day. Once she was finished, she opened the floor to questions and spent a further ten minutes elaborating on her lecture. She was flattered to learn that many of the guests had read her book—one woman confessed that Tory’s recipes had in fact inspired her to take the cruise in the first place—and by the time she’d said goodbye to the last guest and turned off the audio-visual equipment, she was feeling flushed with achievement.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that Ben Cooper would arrive tomorrow morning, she would be a happy woman indeed. She caught sight of herself in the tinted glass of the oven door, and the nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach increased tenfold as she frowned at her wildly curling hair. Okay, Ben Cooper and her hair—if she could just fix those two things, she’d be over the moon.
Yesterday morning she’d made the unpleasant discovery that she’d left her beloved hair-straightening iron behind in New York. She’d scrabbled through her suitcase, pointlessly tossing around the few items she’d left unpacked as she’d searched in vain for the trusty appliance. She had a very clear picture of it on her bed at home, cord wrapped tightly around the handle, ready to go in her case. Unfortunately it hadn’t actually made it in, and now she was faced with the prospect of being a human fuzz-ball for the entire cruise.
Ever since she’d been a teen, Tory had hated her curly hair. In senior high, before she’d discovered the modern wonder of the straightening iron, she’d worn a scarf to bed to try and flatten her unruly head of hair. By the time she was twenty she had managed to tame the fuzz with salon treatments and daily use of a straightening iron and she’d never looked back. Now, however, she was in a bind. There was a hair salon on board, but it was expensive and already overbooked. She had vague ideas of picking up a new straightening iron in St. Bart’s when they docked, but she knew she might not have a chance to go ashore since Ben was coming on board and they needed to sit down and talk about the rest of the lecture series. Short of not washing her hair for the entire cruise, she’d quickly realized that in the short term she was going to have to endure the curls.
Shoving a fistful of golden-blond fluff behind her ear, she turned away from her reflection. Perhaps if she just avoided any and all reflective surfaces, she could pretend she looked the way she always did—cool, elegant, in control. For some reason, it felt very important that Ben Cooper see her that way when he came on board tomorrow.
Ready to finish up for the day, she saw that someone had left a newspaper folded on a seat in the front row. Hoping against hope that it was a New York Times, Tory veered from her course to the door to pick it up. She saw immediately that it was a local weekly paper, the Island Gazette, but decided to read it anyway. It might not be quite the lifeline to the outside world that she’d been looking for, but it would do.
She didn’t see the photograph until she’d settled down in the bar with a glass of single-malt scotch on the rocks. She almost swallowed the whole lot in one gulp when she flicked the page over and saw the boy. There were a number of colorful shots making up the double-page spread on recent pre-Carnival parades on various islands. But her gaze flew to the central photograph—a shot of a delighted crowd cheering on a parade.
There, in the front row, his face turned toward the camera, was a small boy with bright blue eyes and dusky skin. Perhaps it was the startling blue of his eyes against his dark complexion or the fact that he was surrounded by dozens of brown-eyed, brown-skinned children or the fact that he seemed to be looking directly down the lens of the camera. Whatever it was, it made the breath catch in the back of her throat, and she sucked in too much whisky as she tried to recover. She coughed till her eyes watered, the paper rattling in her hands, and she brushed the tears away impatiently. It was dark in the Emperor’s Club, the very masculine cigar bar she’d chosen to enjoy her drink, and no matter how she angled the paper, she couldn’t get enough light on the image. She surged abruptly to her feet and strode out into the corridor, then stopped to stare intently at the photograph under the brighter light.
Blue eyes. A small, neat nose. Dark brown curly hair. A cleft chin. And…She peered closer and a chill stole up her spine. Just visible on the side of the boy’s neck was a birthmark.
Her head shot up, and she glanced first left and then right, trying to get her bearings. She was on the sixth deck, one level above her own. Feeling a strange compulsion, she found the nearest staircase and wove her way through the corridors back to her cabin.
The instant she was in her room she booted up her laptop and scrolled through her digital library until she found her folder of family snaps. She’d scanned in a bunch of images from old family albums a while ago, liking the idea of having them easily accessible no matter where she went. The shot she’d been looking for filled the screen as she double-clicked on it. Her heart pounding stupidly against her rib cage, Tory compared the two faces—the little boy from the paper and the little boy on her computer screen. The similarity between the two was uncanny. Same nose. Same chin. Same eyes. Same birthmark.
The boy in the crowd, whoever he was, was the spitting image of her twin brother, Michael, at age seven.
She knew it could just be a coincidence. Lots of people had blue eyes, even among the islanders, where brown was the predominant color. Plenty of people had cleft chins, too, although it was a reasonably rare genetic trait. But the birthmark…Her eyes traveled from the newspaper photograph of the boy to the old shot of her brother. Just visible against the neckline of Michael’s T-shirt was the dull red of a port-wine-colored birthmark. The same birthmark that her father had and her grandfather before him and his father before him. It was a Fournier family legacy, that birthmark, passed on from father to son for more generations than anyone could remember.
So what was it doing on the neck of this blue-eyed, smiling boy?
Her gaze dropped to the caption beneath the photograph. Crowds welcome the arrival of Carnival season, it read. She felt a ridiculous sense of disappointment. What had she expected, after all—that the boy’s name would be there, listed alongside everyone else in the crowd?
Tossing the newspaper onto her bed, Tory ran her fingers through her unruly mop of hair. What she was thinking was crazy. Surely it was. There was no way that boy in the photograph could be her brother’s son.
And yet…
She remembered the way her eyes had zeroed in on him right from the start. The jolt of recognition she’d felt when she’d looked into his face. He looked so much like Michael. And that birthmark…What if he was Michael’s son? What if there was still a piece of her brother alive in the world, a living legacy? Tears burned at the back of her eyes at the thought. Michael’s son. It would be amazing. A miracle. A gift.
Suddenly the utter absurdity of what she was contemplating hit her, and she recalled her mother’s parting words at the airport: “I hope you can let go of him at last, Tory. You can’t carry all that sadness around with you forever.”
She scrubbed her face with her hands, then shook her head at her own thoughts.
What she’d been thinking was impossible. Too crazy. Too convenient. An artifact of her inability to move on from the loss of her twin, nothing else. For eight years she’d missed him every single day. But it was time to move on. What had just happened showed her that beyond a doubt.
You’re here to say goodbye, not build castles in the air, she reminded herself.
Snatching up the newspaper, she tossed it in the bin. Moment of craziness gone, she assured herself. Never to be seen again.
Except that night she dreamed of Michael.
They were standing on a beach, the sand stretching away on either side of them, endless, limitless, the water in front of them a bright, crystal blue. Michael was crying, a lone tear sliding down his sun-tanned cheek, his arms held before him in bewilderment, as though something had just been taken from him and he couldn’t quite believe it.
She ran to his side, threw her arms around him, welcomed him back. But it was as though he couldn’t hear or see or feel her. He just kept staring at his outstretched, beseeching arms.
“Where is he? I’ve lost him,” he said, and her heart broke at how shattered he sounded.
“Who have you lost, Michael?” she asked, trying to make him acknowledge her. “Tell me.”
But he turned away from her and walked away.
“Where is he?” she heard him yell at the sea, his voice half angry, half fearful.
And then she woke up.
She was damp with perspiration, her face wet with tears. Kicking herself free of her tangled sheets, she staggered into her bathroom and flicked on the light. She looked terrible—puffy-eyed, shaken.
“It’s just a stupid dream,” she told her reflection.
But the memory of it stayed with her and kept her staring at the ceiling until her alarm went off at seven.
She sat up and saw the chef’s whites she’d laid out the night before. Today was the day Ben Cooper came aboard. So much for feeling cool and in control and elegant. She’d had next to no sleep, her hair was a disaster and she was feeling more vulnerable than she’d felt in years.
Great, she thought sourly. Way to go, Tory.
He was going to take one look at her with those cocky, all-seeing eyes of his and know he had her whipped before he even started.
BEN SET OUT HAPPILY enough for his one week sojourn aboard Alexandra’s Dream, flying out of the airport on the neighboring island of St. Maarten early in the morning. His good mood lasted until he spotted Monty Blackman as he disembarked into the airport terminal on St. Bart’s. The man stood out like a sore thumb with his garishly bright shirt in hot-pink and lime-green stripes and his baby-blue golf pants. Was the guy color-blind? And where did he find such ridiculous stuff, anyway? Ben figured he’d have to search every island in the Caribbean chain before he could come up with such a bad-taste ensemble.
The last thing he wanted was to talk to the smug, leathery-skinned bastard. Even though Danique was the one who had perpetuated the fraud that Ben was Eva’s father, it was Monty he resented the most—Monty with his oily smile and his string of cheap tourist motels and his bad taste in fashion. It seemed impossible that a child as sweet and beautiful as Eva could have been fathered by someone so unworthy. For the first few days after he’d found out Ben had toyed with the idea of demanding a DNA test just in case Eva was really his. But in his gut he’d known Danique was telling the truth.
Turning a shoulder, Ben took pains to keep a huddle of tourists between the two of them as he made his way to the exit.
“Cooper! Just the man I’ve been meaning to see!”
Ben closed his eyes in frustration as Monty’s voice echoed along twenty feet of concourse. Forcing a neutral expression onto his face, he turned.
“Monty,” he said, flicking his wrist over to check the time ostentatiously. “Can’t really talk right now, sorry—got a boat to catch.”
“This won’t take a minute. I wanted to talk about Danique and the little one.”
Ben ground his teeth together. Eva, he wanted to say. Her name is Eva. Danique and I named her because you were too busy covering your ass to be bothered.
“I really don’t think now’s the best time—” he tried again, but Monty just talked overtop him.
“I know you’ve been helping Danique out with making ends meet, paying for the little one’s odds and ends, medical bills, whatever. I just wanted to make things square with you now that things have been sorted out.”
Ben was gripped with an icy anger as he saw Monty pull out his checkbook. “Like I told Danique, I don’t care about the money,” he said, turning away.
“Stop being so bloody noble, Cooper. Everyone cares about money. It’s what makes the world go ’round.” Monty laughed loudly at his own joke, and Ben was hard put not to knock the other man’s too-white teeth down his throat.
“I’m not everyone. Forget about it. I did it for Eva and Danique.”
He started to walk off, but Monty stepped in front of him, his smile fading. Suddenly Ben could see the edge that had helped Monty become a multimillionaire by his mid forties.
“I don’t like being beholden to anyone,” Monty said. “You looked after my girls for me, and I appreciate it, but I want to put an end to it now.”
Ben reached for the last shreds of his patience as Monty signed a check with a flourish and tore it free from the book. The check hung in the air between them as Monty offered it and Ben refused to take it. Shaking his head and smiling to himself, Monty folded the check neatly and tucked it into the front pocket of Ben’s white linen shirt.
“You young guys crack me up,” he said.
Ben walked away without comment. It was either that or give in to the frustration coursing through him and land one on Monty’s overtanned face. Not caring if the other man was out of sight or not, he stopped at the nearest garbage can to tear the check into confetti. He didn’t want a cent of Monty’s money. He wanted his daughter back—and that was never going to happen.
The encounter left him raring for a fight. He didn’t consider himself a bad-tempered guy, but the whole situation had left him feeling cheated and angry, and now Monty had pushed all his buttons, offering him money as though that was all it would take to rectify the situation.
By the time he was crossing the gangway onto the Dream he was in a foul frame of mind. Suddenly the prospect of seeing Tory Fournier was a lot less amusing than it had seemed a few days ago. He was in no mood for her cool superiority. In fact, if she gave him one hint of attitude, there was every chance he’d let rip with a few home truths. He smiled grimly to himself as he navigated the corridors toward the cuisine arts center. Perhaps a damned good screaming match with his old school buddy was just what the doctor ordered.
Then he walked in the door of the cuisine center and stopped in his tracks. He hadn’t given it a lot of thought, but somehow he’d figured that time would only have honed Tory’s hard, sharp edges. Back in school, she’d been distant, intense, composed. He’d expected more of the same from the twenty-nine-year-old version of Tory.
But the woman jotting down notes at the counter of the demonstration kitchen looked anything but sharp or hard. She was wearing a pair of stylish, tailored checked chefs pants with a bright red tank top, and he saw that her hips were more softly curved than he remembered, her breasts fuller. Her hair was shorter, a riot of curls that teased at her neck and jawline. Her face in profile was gentler, prettier than he’d sketched it in his memory.
All in all, she was totally unexpected. He frowned, feeling a dart of unease.
Before he could pinpoint the cause of his discomfort, she lifted her head and caught sight of him.
For just a second they stared at each other, taking stock. Then he saw about a million security cordons clang into place behind her eyes as she straightened and swiveled to face him head-on.
“Ben.”
“Tory.”
A small muscle flickered in her jaw as he used the shortened version of her name. She’d invited him to call her Tory on their one and only date, and he waited for her to revoke the privilege and instruct him to call her Victoria. He knew the exact moment she decided that there were bigger battles to fight—she broke eye contact with him and her face smoothed into an unreadable mask.
“You’re early,” she said, reaching for the white chef’s jacket lying on the counter nearby.
“Yep,” he said.
He was aware of her gaze darting up and down his body once, very briefly, as she shrugged into her coat and buttoned the quick-release closures with dexterous hands.
“Probably just as well. We’ve got our first demonstration before lunch. I wasn’t sure what you were planning on cooking, but I’ve prepared a general talk on spices and jerk mixes.”
“I’ll be demonstrating some local recipes,” he said unhelpfully. He wasn’t going to make it easy for her. She didn’t deserve it.
She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked a hip against the counter. “That’s it? You’re not going to tell me any more than that?”
“I’ll jot down the ingredients for you, if that’s what you’re after,” he said, shrugging.
He slung his toolbox up onto the bench and started to unpack his knives. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her straighten.
“If you have a problem working with me, you shouldn’t have said yes,” she said crisply.
Trust her to get straight to the heart of the matter. She never had been one to back away from confrontation.
“I said yes because a friend was in a bind. But beyond that, I don’t have a problem working with you, Tory. In fact, the way I see it, I owe you a debt of gratitude.” He began opening drawers and inspecting their contents.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked, clearly suspicious.
As well she might be.
“If you hadn’t sent me on that wild-goose chase to New York, I would never have met Signor D’Sarro. And I wouldn’t be where I am today,” he said.
That got her. She opened her mouth to ask who Signor D’Sarro was, but she shut it again without saying a word. She hated being behind the eight ball. He remembered that about her very clearly. It was one thing that obviously hadn’t changed.
Spotting the rolling pin, he pulled it out of the bottom drawer and transferred it to the top drawer, along with some wooden spoons, the citrus zester and the garlic crusher.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m setting the kitchen up so I can work.”
She huffed out a breath. “I already had it set up the way I like it,” she said stiffly.
“Tough,” he said, shrugging again.
She reached out and snatched the rolling pin from the top drawer before he could close it. “A little common courtesy wouldn’t go astray,” she said. “I have been working in this kitchen for two days, you know.”
“Who’s the guest chef here, you or me?” he asked, turning to face her.
God, he wanted her to fight back, he suddenly realized. He wanted her to say something so incendiary, so provocative that he’d have every excuse in the world to tap into the bellyful of anger that had been growing inside him ever since Danique dropped her bomb.
“We’re supposed to work together, share this kitchen,” she said, sidestepping his question.
“I repeat, who is the guest chef?” he asked.
She glared at him. He waited for her to pick up the gauntlet that he’d thrown down.
“You always were an arrogant jerk,” she said.
He felt a fierce surge of satisfaction. At last, something he could sink his teeth into.
“I’m arrogant? That’s pretty rich, coming from the Ice Queen,” he said.
The hot retort he’d been expecting from her never came. Instead she paled, and he saw that she clenched her hands into fists.
“Don’t call me that,” she said with quiet intensity, her voice wavering.
It threw him utterly. He wanted to fight, but she’d just thrown him a curveball. He’d been called a lot of things in his time—insensitive, irresponsible, childish—but no one had ever accused him of being deliberately cruel. He had the sudden sense that if he pushed any harder, Tory might burst into tears.
It was so removed from his memories of the self-contained, coolly poised young woman he’d trained with that he was forced to look away.
But it didn’t mean he was going to concede the battle. Tory hadn’t changed that much; if he gave her an inch, she’d take charge and start throwing her weight around as though she owned the place. Working methodically, he began to rearrange the drawers once again. After a few seconds, Tory made a small disgusted sound in the back of her throat, then she elbowed her way past him and pulled open the bottom drawer, dumping the rolling pin back in it. Shoving the drawer shut with her foot, she crossed her arms over her chest and challenged him with her eyes.
“I’ll just move it later,” he said.
“Try it.”
“Oh, I will,” he assured her.
Her eyes narrowed, and her cheeks puffed out as if she were holding in a few choice words of four letters.
He found himself fixating on her mouth, on the full rosebud of her lips. For a long second he couldn’t take his eyes off them.
“If I could have, I would have said no to this—you know that,” she finally said.
“Then I guess we’re both going to have to suck it up.”
She turned away without another word, and he stared at her back for a long beat. It hadn’t been anything like the first meeting he’d anticipated. He’d expected the conflict but not her vulnerability, and he didn’t quite know what to do with it. Frowning, he got down to work.
CHAPTER THREE
THE TERMBUTT-HEADHAD been expressly invented for Ben Cooper, Tory decided as she forced another smile onto her stiff lips. They’d nearly finished their afternoon cooking demonstration, and if she had a voodoo doll made in his image, she’d twist its head off and throw it in the rubbish disposal.
She bristled all over again as she remembered the way he’d walked in as though he owned the place and started rearranging the kitchen. He was exactly the way she’d remembered him, only more so. More confident. More cocky. More charismatic.
God, how she hated admitting that to herself, especially after what he’d said to her. But it was the truth. Age had not wearied him. Age had in fact been damned kind to him. His body was stronger, more muscular, his face more attractive with its laugh lines and the hint of roguish crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes.
The thing that really got her goat—apart from his born-to-rule mentality in their shared kitchen—was that he patently thought he was God’s gift to womankind. It was no wonder, of course, given the way the women in the audience responded to him. It almost made her ashamed of her sex. Word had clearly spread since their morning session, and the number of women seated in the theater had doubled for this afternoon’s lecture. And it wasn’t because they wanted to hear more from Tory. She had no illusions there. They had come to ogle and flirt with Ben—and, worse, he was encouraging it.
For starters, there was his chef’s uniform. Every chef she knew wore a white or black jacket with checked pants. It was traditional, professional. Ben, however, wore a pair of dark indigo wrinkled linen trousers paired with a navy singlet worn beneath his open white chef’s coat, the ensemble casually revealing his well-sculpted chest and long, strong legs to all comers. She’d stared outright when he’d come back into the cuisine center after changing.
“You’re not going to do up your jacket?” she’d asked him incredulously when he’d started preparing food for their demonstration.
“Nope. Cooler this way.”
“No doubt, but I would have thought that safety might rate a little higher than your groove factor,” she’d said.
Chef’s coats were designed to protect the wearer’s torso and arms and be easily removed in case of hot spills. She’d escaped many a burn over the years thanks to her chef’s whites.
He’d laughed briefly to himself. “Man, you are so uptight. I’d forgotten that. I meant it’s less hot this way, not more fashionable. And I won’t be working with hot oil, so the risk factor is low. Unless you think this coconut salad is going to leap up and attack me?”
She’d ignored him, just as she’d tried to ignore everything else about him, from his low laugh to the deep timbre of his voice to the fresh, crisp aftershave he wore. It was hard to ignore his skill in the kitchen, however.
She’d opened both sessions, talking about spices in general in the first, then jerk mixes more specifically in the second, explaining, among other things, how many of the strong spices in Caribbean foods had originally been employed to cover the lack of refrigeration in the region and that jerk pork had been brought to the islands by the Cormantee slaves from West Africa in the 1600s. Once she’d finished her spiel, Ben had stepped up and immediately upstaged her with his humor, his stupid exposed chest and his show-off cooking skills.
The audience had oohed at his speed with a knife. They’d aahed when he’d dramatically flambéed some bananas in the pan. They’d laughed when he’d juggled mangoes for them.
And she’d stood on the sidelines and known that her own presentation had been about as interesting as a stale bottle of beer by comparison. Now, watching him invite the audience up to taste-test the meals he’d just demonstrated, she thought of her carefully prepared lectures, all her local information, all the images she’d sourced and organized for each lecture. She’d have to stay up late tonight to revamp it all if she wasn’t going to wind up looking like a theology lecturer by comparison for the rest of the cruise.
Which brought her back to why Ben Cooper was a butt-head. He was funnier than her. He oozed charisma. And he was sexy. How was she supposed to compete with that?
And it was a competition, she had no doubt about that. She’d caught him watching her out of the corners of his eyes a few times, enjoying her growing awareness that his portion of their dual presentation was a hit and that hers was most definitely a flop.
But the worst thing—the absolute very, very worst thing—was that she wasn’t immune to his flashy charms, either. She’d tried with every ounce of willpower she possessed to keep her gaze from lingering on the well-defined planes of his chest. She’d ordered herself very specifically not to check out his cute, tight rear end when he bent to pull something from a lower drawer. And she absolutely forbade herself to respond to a single one of his charming jokes, quips or witticisms. To no avail. She’d stared, she’d run greedy eyes over his sexy butt and she’d caught herself smiling more than once at something he’d said.
It made her feel so pathetic. Especially after the fight they’d had when he’d first arrived. She had no illusions about the way he felt about her—he’d made it clear that he wasn’t here to make nice. In fact, she’d gotten the distinct feeling earlier that he’d been more than ready and willing to keep battling it out with her until the cows came home. There’d been something intense and almost desperate in his eyes as he’d goaded her. Then he’d called her that old, nasty name from school, and it had taken the wind out of her sails in an instant.
It was stupid to let something so ancient and dusty get to her like that. Before he’d walked in the door this morning, she’d been so sure that she’d come to terms with what had happened between them. But one look into his navy-blue eyes and she’d been awash in memories….
She’d noticed Ben from the first moment she walked into her first class. Along with every other girl, of course. He was tall, dark and handsome, with a cheeky smile and a laconic charm that encompassed everyone and everything—except, it seemed, her. He’d never once given her one of his lazy smiles. And he’d certainly never run his eyes over her in warm appreciation the way he did with the other girls—not until he had an ulterior motive, that is. She’d told herself that she was too busy acing her way through the Cuisine Institute to care. But she’d cared. She’d noticed him and she’d wanted him to notice her back. And then he had, and she’d fallen into his bed as though it was meant to be.
And the next day she’d learned the truth.
“You just going to stand there or are you going to pack up?” Ben asked.
Tory jolted out of her reverie and blinked at him. “Sorry?” She realized too late that the theater had emptied and they were alone again.
He shot her a searching look, and she busied herself disconnecting her notebook computer from the plasma screens and collecting her notes. She could hear the clang and clatter of him tidying the demonstration kitchen, and when she’d finished stowing her own gear, she automatically reached for a bottle of cleaning spray to wipe down the counter.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“I can’t just stand around and watch you work,” she said, spraying cleaner across the counter.
He looked thrown, as if she’d surprised him.
“What? I can’t help out in the kitchen now? You want to do your own cleaning as well as all the prep and cooking work?” She dropped the spray bottle and held her hands in the air as though he’d told her to stick ’em up.
“No. You don’t have to help, that’s all,” he repeated.
She frowned at him, then her hands found her hips and her frown turned into a glare. “I get it—you think I think I’m too good to clean, is that it?” she asked.
“You are Little Miss Haute Cuisine.” He shrugged. “Cleaning up is for the apprentices.”
She flinched, stung by his comment. Was that what he really thought of her? What he’d always thought of her?
“You have no idea who I am,” she said.
He picked up her cookbook, Island Style, and waved it under her nose. “You might be slumming it with us islanders for a little while, but you’ll be back serving up chateaubriand and chausson aux framboises at Le Plat once you’ve finished playing around.”
She was surprised to realize that he didn’t know that her father had closed Le Plat on his retirement rather than pass it on to her. She understood why Andre had made that decision, but she doubted Ben would and she wasn’t about to give him more ammunition. He’d just take enormous satisfaction from learning that she’d apparently missed out.
She made a grab for her cookbook, but he held on tight and she had to put all her weight behind it to tug it from his grasp.
“You know what, you can clean up on your own,” she said, tucking her book under her arm and grabbing her computer bag and notes.
She turned for the door but stopped in her tracks when she saw Patti, the cruise director, standing there.
Hot color stained her cheeks as she wondered how much of her and Ben’s exchange the other woman had heard. To say they were being unprofessional was a gross understatement. Immature, childish—both descriptions were much more accurate.
“Hi, guys. Welcome aboard, Ben. Nice to be offering you hospitality for a change instead of the other way around.” She smiled at Tory, obviously feeling an explanation was in order. “We try to dine at Ben’s restaurant every time we pass through. Best food in the islands.”
“You’re just saying that,” Ben said modestly. “But don’t stop—I like it.”
Patti laughed. “Plus he’s charming, but I’m sure you already know that.”
Definitely the other woman hadn’t overhead their exchange. Tory felt some of the tension leave her shoulders. Somehow she and Ben had to find a way to get through the next few days without sniping at each other. At least not in public, anyway.
“I came to let you know the captain has invited you both to dine with him this evening,” Patti said.
“That sounds great,” Ben said easily. “Tell Dominique I’ll be taking notes on her secret conch sauce.”
Tory rolled her eyes. Dominique Charest was the chef de cuisine on Alexandra’s Dream. Trust Ben to know her personally.
“The captain’s dining room is on the Artemis deck, Victoria,” Patti said. “I’m sure Ben wouldn’t mind showing you the way.”
“Of course,” Ben said politely.
Tory waited until the other woman had gone before letting her smile fade.
“I have a map,” she said shortly as she turned once more for the door. “I can find my own way.”
“Good,” he said.
She gritted her teeth, a dozen pithy insults tingling on the tip of her tongue. But he’d turned his back, and she found herself measuring his broad, well-muscled shoulders with her eyes.
Confused, annoyed, flustered, she headed for the exit. How on earth could she find anything about this man attractive when he had such a low opinion of her? And then there was her opinion of him—also low. Positively subterranean, in fact. Really, it was an insane situation, and she hoped her stupid hormones would snap out of it soon. The last thing she wanted was to have the hots for Ben Cooper all over again. God forbid.
BEN SAT BACK IN HIS chair and took a sip from his champagne cocktail. Nikolas had opted to open the French doors on his private dining room this evening, and the cool night air almost made up for having to wear a suit. The one downside to eating at the captain’s table, he decided as he eased a finger beneath his collar. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so trussed up. The Caribbean wasn’t exactly known for its formal dress code, but he’d suspected the Dream might have different standards and was glad now he’d packed his suit.
His eyes automatically flicked to his watch again, and he felt a curl of annoyance at himself. So what if Tory hadn’t turned up yet? So what if he suspected she was lost? It was no skin off his nose, after all. She was nothing to him. In fact, if anything, rather than being worried, he should be actively hoping she was lost, that she would be forced to make an embarrassingly late arrival. It was the kind of social faux pas that he imagined would send Tory and her blue-blood family screaming for the hills.
Despite himself, he was about to make an excuse to go scout around for her when she swanned in the door. He blinked as he took in the dress she was wearing. Made from some clingy, gauzy fabric in hot-pink and aqua florals, it had a halter neck and a plunging neckline. A single row of soft ruffles ran down the front to the full-length hemline, and the clingy fabric outlined every curve of her breasts and hips faithfully. Patti was on hand to introduce her to Nick and his fiancée Helena, and Ben’s eyes widened involuntarily as Tory turned and he caught sight of the back of her dress. Or, more accurately, the lack of a back. Bar the bow that dangled down the line of her delicate vertebrae from where the halter tied, her back was deliciously, decadently bare. The skirt of the dress kicked in just short of indecently exposing the perky curves of her butt, also showcased to perfection by the figure-hugging fabric.
“Nice,” he heard someone say beside him, and he turned a frown on the blond-haired guy who’d been introduced to him earlier as a travel journalist. The guy shot him a conspiratorial male smile, inviting Ben to comment in return on Tory’s figure. Ben just took another slug of his drink.
He didn’t want to find Tory attractive, but it was useless to pretend he didn’t. He’d been fighting a losing battle against his libido all day. The truth was, he’d always been hot for her. From the first day he’d arrived at the Institute, his gaze had been drawn to her tall, slim figure. There was something about the way she held herself, the beauty of her face combined with her cool composure. His poor-boy’s antennae had told him instantly that she came from money, and straight off he’d understood that she belonged at the Institute in a way that he never would. Then he’d learned who her father was and her grandfather, and his already burgeoning sense of inferiority and insecurity had burst into full bloom. He’d spent half his time at the Institute ignoring her or resenting her, suffering from what he now ruefully acknowledged as a bad dose of small-island syndrome.
Belatedly Ben glanced around and registered that there was only one empty seat at the table—and it was beside him. Before he could do more than swear under his breath, Tory was being ushered toward him.
He inhaled a waft of vanilla and musk as she sat beside him and they exchanged unamused looks at their forced proximity.
“Believe me, I know,” she said fervently.
“Feel free to ignore me,” he said as he drained the last of his cocktail.
“Ditto,” she said.
So saying, they both swiveled away from each other to face the person on their other side. Ben eyed the travel journalist with determination. He despised small talk, but the alternative—tense silence while pretending not to notice how good Tory looked and smelled—was not an option.
“So how are you finding the cruise so far?” he asked.
THE CAPTAIN’S PRIVATE dining room was a revelation. Timber floorboards glowed in soft candlelight, and plantation shutters gave the windows an exotic appeal. The table was a superb slab of honey-colored timber, the linen crisp and white, the table settings divine. The captain himself was a handsome, charismatic man, his fiancée equally attractive and vivacious. That they were wildly in love with each other was ridiculously obvious to Tory. The only fly in the ointment was Ben Cooper. But what was new about that? He’d single-handedly turned her tropical jaunt into a war zone—and they were only on the first day of their enforced collaboration.
Fortunately the middle-aged woman on her right turned out to be good company. Recently retired from the military, Lt. Williams had a host of fascinating stories about her postings throughout Asia, and they chatted easily through the starter and main course. Almost it stopped her from being aware of the man seated beside her. Almost she could ignore the low timbre of his voice, the brush of his shoulder against hers, the sound of his laughter. Almost but not quite. She was feeling just a little edgy as they neared the end of the main course—then she tuned in to Ben’s conversation with his neighbor, a travel writer who’d been introduced to her as David, and nearly dropped her wineglass. The instant she heard the words Cuisine Institute and petty revenge her stomach lurched and she jerked upright in her chair.
He wouldn’t dare. Surely he wouldn’t dare.
“…if it hadn’t happened to me, I probably would have thought it was pretty funny, too,” Ben was saying as she turned to face him.
His head was angled toward the man on his other side, but she glared at him nonetheless. She simply couldn’t believe he was about to do what she suspected he was about to do. Even Ben could not be that brazen. Could he?
“So, what, this guy just turns up at the Institute purporting to be a representative of one of the best, most exclusive restaurants in New York, and you bought it?” David said skeptically.
Tory’s whole body tensed.
“He was a brilliant actor. And it was more subtle than that. This classmate of mine—Victor—had set it all up beautifully.” Ben shot Tory a loaded look before returning his attention to the man on his left. “He started a rumor that a talent scout from Brown’s would be coming to put us through our paces, so when this guy called me out of the Institute’s restaurant kitchen after the meal and offered me a job once I’d graduated, I thought it was all aboveboard. I thought I was the luckiest bastard under the sun. I rang home and told my folks I wouldn’t be coming back to the family business straightaway after graduation, told them this was too good a chance to learn how it was really done to pass up. Then I hocked everything I owned to buy a wreck of a car and get to Manhattan.”
“Then you walked in the door at Brown’s…” David guessed, leaping ahead to the coup de grâce of Tory’s revenge.
“And they’d never heard of me, of course. Every single goddamned person in the kitchen turned around to stare at me when I announced myself, from the pot scrubbers to the chef de cuisine. I could still hear them laughing when I was back out front on the sidewalk.”
“So you had to go home with your tail between your legs?” David asked, shaking his head. “Tough luck, man.”
“Are you kidding? For starters, I’d lost my nonrefundable flight home when I decided to head to New York. Then there was the fact that I had told my parents I was going to be this big-shot New York haute cuisine chef,” Ben explained.
Tory squirmed in her seat as she felt a dull flush running up the back of her neck. She told herself that Ben had deserved every moment of her well-planned and executed revenge, but still her conscience burned.
“So what did you do?”
Tory realized she was holding her breath, wanting to know, too, how Ben had responded.
“I stood out on the street for about ten minutes, putting all the pieces together until I realized Victor had set me up. I swore a bit. Well, a lot, really. Then I finally realized that I had to find some work or starve. Across the road from Brown’s was this dinky little Italian place, Signor Mario’s, although the owner was actually called Luigi. He had a Help Wanted sign in the window, so I just walked across the street and told him I needed a job.”
“From haute cuisine to spaghetti Bolognese in five paces,” David said with an appreciative guffaw.
“Best thing that ever happened to me,” Ben said firmly. “The way he ran that kitchen, the way he loved and respected the food he cooked, the way he treated his staff, his customers—I couldn’t have had a better mentor.”
Tory squirmed again, gripped by an odd mixture of guilt, relief and annoyance. How typical—putting Ben on the spot at Brown’s might have momentarily fazed him, but, as usual, he’d landed on his feet. If only she’d been able to move on from what he’d done to her so easily.
To her dismay, she could feel Lt. Williams leaning forward on her other side to join in the conversation.
“I couldn’t help overhearing—it sounds just like the sort of cruel pranks that cause so many problems in the military academies,” she said, her dark eyes flashing with censure.
“Cruel—I guess I hadn’t thought of it in that context before,” Ben said. “But it was a pretty cruel thing to do. That’s a good word for it, actually.”
He didn’t so much as glance sideways at her, but Tory bristled nonetheless. He was using their dinner-table conversation to put her on trial. Any minute now he was probably going to reveal that she was the one who’d set him up, and she’d become a social pariah for the rest of the evening.
“You were at this Institute with Ben, I understand?” Lt. Williams asked Tory. “Was this sort of thing common?”
“Not precisely, no,” Tory said, hating herself for blushing furiously. She could feel smug satisfaction radiating off Ben in waves. Before she knew it, she was opening her mouth again. “We certainly had our fair share of frat-house bad behavior, though. And some of that was definitely cruel.”
It was Ben’s turn to stiffen in his seat, and she felt a surge of triumph. See how he liked it when the shoe was on the other foot.
“There was one girl in our year level who, through no fault of her own, had gained the reputation for being standoffish. They called her the Ice Queen, didn’t they, Ben?” Tory tilted her head to one side as though she were genuinely asking him to verify her memory of events.
He nodded minutely and avoided her eye. “I believe that was it.”
“Anyway, the guys started a book on who could be the first to get the Ice Queen to melt, if you know what I mean,” Tory explained.
David smirked, but Lt. Williams frowned.
“How charming,” she said. “I hope no one collected.”
“Unfortunately she was a little gullible. I understand she wasn’t very experienced with men, so when this one student turned on the charm, she was pretty much putty in his hands.”
“Let me guess—she found out about the bet, didn’t she?” the lieutenant asked, looking really angry now.
“Yes,” Tory said. “But not until afterward.”
There was a small pause as they all absorbed this.
“How humiliating,” the other woman said in sympathy.
“Yes,” Tory said again, more quietly this time as she remembered the stinging hurt she’d felt when she’d overheard Ben’s friends laughing at her and talking about the bet.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ben shift in his chair and open his mouth as though he was about to defend himself. She waited for him to dare try it, but he obviously thought better of the impulse.
“Wow, and I thought the world of journalism was cutthroat,” David said.
The arrival of dessert distracted both of their dining companions for the next few minutes, and Tory smoothed her napkin in her lap and absolutely refused to look in Ben’s direction. She couldn’t believe he’d brought up their personal history like this in front of everybody. And she couldn’t quite believe that she’d taken a shot back at him, either. She wondered if anyone realized that they’d both been taking veiled jabs at each other beneath their apparently innocuous anecdotes. She’d tried very hard not to react to what he’d been saying, but she wasn’t certain she’d succeeded very well.
At last she risked a sideways glance at Ben. He was looking at her, she realized. They locked eyes for a split second, then broke contact simultaneously.
Concentrating on her dessert, Tory willed the evening to be over.
AFTER DESSERT, COFFEE and liqueurs were served, the captain invited his guests to move away from the formality of the table and take advantage of the couches and occasional chairs nearby. Ben heaved a silent sigh of relief as he at last moved beyond the range of Tory’s perfume.
He’d had worse dinners—but not many. The meal itself had been fine—parts of it excellent—but being trapped next to Tory for two hours had been a new and exquisite form of torture. Every time he’d let his guard down and his gaze wander, he’d found himself studying the swanlike line of her elegant neck or the golden curls teasing at her delicate ears. Several times during dinner he’d heard her low, melodious laugh as she’d talked with the woman on her right, and the hairs on his arms had stood on end.
Then there was the little game of tit for tat they’d played. He was still trying to come to terms with the hurt he’d heard in her voice when she’d talked about their date. And that damned stupid bet…
“More coffee, sir?” a waiter asked, and Ben shook off his preoccupation and held out his cup.
He’d never been the kind of person who dwelled on the past. Besides, she’d gotten her own back. More than gotten her own back, in his opinion.
Glancing up, he saw that Nikolas was crossing the room to join him.
“Captain,” Ben said with a half-assed attempt at a salute.
“Maître d’. Sorry, no, it’s something else, isn’t it?” Nikolas pretended to be confused. “Chef de something or other?”
“Close but no cigar,” Ben said drily.
Nikolas grinned, his teeth very white against his olive skin. “How did you rate Dominique’s efforts tonight?” he asked, his gray eyes intent.
He prided himself on setting a good table, Ben knew.
“Her sauces are excellent. The fish was very fresh and beautifully cooked.”
Nikolas made a low sound of agreement. Neither of them mentioned the slightly soggy berries in the dessert.
“And how are you finding working with Ms. Fournier?”
“Tory is also very good at what she does,” Ben said easily.
“Helena swears by her cookbook. She’s fallen in love with your spicy Caribbean food.”
“If Helena is interested in trying real island food, I’ll give her some local recipes to try,” Ben said.
Ever astute, Nikolas picked up on the reserve in Ben’s tone.
“You don’t like Ms. Fournier’s cookbook?” he asked with the quirk of a dark eyebrow.
“It’s fine. It’s just not authentic, that’s all.”
“What do you mean it’s not authentic?” an all-too-familiar voice demanded.
Ben turned to see Tory standing behind him, Helena at her side.
“I was bringing Tory over to meet you,” Helena said to her fiancée, obviously trying to smooth over the awkward moment.
But Tory wasn’t about to let his comment go. “Well? What’s not authentic about my book?” she asked again.
Her cheeks had flushed a becoming pink, the color flattering against her creamy skin.
“For starters, have you ever visited half the places you’ve written about?” Ben asked.
“No. Have you ever visited France?” she countered.
“No.”
“Yet I bet you dare to serve a bouillabaisse in your restaurant, right? And I bet there are a host of other recipes cherry-picked from half a dozen other countries around the world on your menu.”
He nodded. “That’s true.”
“I researched my book meticulously and I worked with dozens of expat islanders in New York. I may not have the same beach view you have from your restaurant, but I know what I’m talking about.”
“If I’m willing to concede that my bouillabaisse might not hold its own against a local offering in Marseille, will you concede that as a born-and-bred islander I might just have the edge on you?” Ben asked.
Her chin came up and her hand rested her hip. Despite how annoying he found her, a part of him couldn’t help admiring her chutzpah. Did this woman never admit defeat?
“Nope. I’d pit my jerk chicken against yours any day,” she said proudly.
“Sounds like a challenge.” Nikolas was clearly enjoying their sparring.
“Why not?” Tory said.
All eyes turned to Ben. He shrugged nonchalantly. “It’ll be like taking candy from a baby, but if that’s what the lady wants…” he said provocatively.
Tory didn’t rise to the bait. Instead she smiled a secretive, confident smile.
“Done.” She agreed. “My jerk chicken versus your jerk chicken. Time and place of your choosing. And when I win, I’ll expect a quote for the review pages of my next cookbook.”
That nearly made him choke. He’d rather eat her damned cookbook than endorse it. But she was hardly likely to beat him.
“Deal. And if I win…” He couldn’t think of what to say because the only idea that popped into his head was so inappropriate and never-going-to-happen that it made him want to shake his head to knock the thought loose from his mind. “If I win, you give me your father’s famous secret recipe for port wine glaze,” he finally said.
“Still haven’t worked it out, Ben?” she asked mockingly. “It’s very simple, really.”
Very aware of Helena and Nikolas watching their interplay like spectators at a tennis match, Ben stuck out his hand. “Are we agreed or not?”
Her hand was warm and firm as it slid into his. “Agreed.”
Helena cleared her throat. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Ben stared at her blankly and was aware of Tory doing the same.
“Such as?” he asked.
“Who is to decide the winner?” Nikolas asked.
“Oh,” Tory said.
“Of course, Nikolas and I might be available….” Helena hinted with a glint of mischief in her eyes.
“Perfect,” Ben said. “You two are the judges and your decision is final. We’ll use the cuisine center as a base. How does two day’s time sound, after we’ve departed Grenada?”
Tory lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug. “If you need two days to get your act together, by all means,” she drawled.
Ben looked down at her, at the flush in her cheeks and the challenge in her blue, blue eyes.
“It’s a date,” he said.
CHAPTER FOUR
TORY TURNED HER FACE into the cool sea breeze and stared up at the navy-blue sky. Why was it that the stars seemed to sparkle so much more brightly out at sea? She told herself there was probably some incredibly rational scientific explanation, like the fact that there was less ambient light from city streetlights to distract the eye, for example. Not quite as romantic and magical an explanation as a woman might hope for but probably more accurate than putting the spectacular sky show down to there being tropical magic in the air.
Of its own accord, her hand found the silver teardrop pendant hanging from her neck. The precious metal was warm from her skin, and she peered down at it wryly. Perhaps this whole true-love-legend thing was starting to rub off on her after all.
Dinner had been a trial. There was no other word for it. Being forced to sit next to Ben all night, rubbing shoulders with him occasionally, inhaling his crisp aftershave…She’d felt on edge and on her guard through the whole meal. Both before and after his childish attempt to make her squirm.
She dropped the pendant as she forced herself to acknowledge that she’d gotten her own back, which probably made her just as childish as him. She frowned at the inky sea. She really should try to rise above it, tell herself that nothing he did or said mattered.
Turning away from the railing, she reluctantly decided that it was time to turn in for the evening. Tucking a stray curl behind her ear, she started back along the deck, looking for the entrance that would lead her to the elevator bank. Her steps slowed, then halted altogether when she spotted the newspaper folded neatly on one of the sun lounges lining the deck. It had been discarded inside out so that the photograph that had so intrigued her last night was staring straight up at her. She wasn’t a superstitious person, but she couldn’t just ignore it and walk past. She hesitated, then reached for the paper, lifting it to stare into the little boy’s eyes again. Just as she had last night, she felt a resonating sense of recognition. She knew this boy. She recognized the soul staring out at her from those clear blue eyes.
Her fingers tightened around the paper. Last night she’d told herself she was crazy to even contemplate the idea that this might be her brother’s lost son, but tonight she acknowledged that she’d never stopped thinking about this photograph since the moment she’d seen it. Even when she’d been sparring and sniping with Ben today, a part of her mind had been dwelling on this little boy’s face.
Just like that, she made her decision. It might be crazy, it might be a sign that she had more issues around her brother’s death than she’d yet acknowledged, but she was going to pursue this. She was going to do everything in her power to find this little boy and verify for herself that he was not her brother’s son.
Folding the paper more carefully, she turned to head back to her cabin only to almost walk straight into Ben. They both froze, then took a step backward as though being within touching distance might give them cooties or something. He’d taken off his tie and loosened his collar, she noted, and his hair was wind-rumpled. She didn’t need to see the thin line of his lips to know that he was as unthrilled to see her as she was to see him. The air practically vibrated with their mutual antipathy.
“Enjoying the ocean breeze?” he asked after the silence had stretched a little too long.
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Are we making small talk with one another now?”
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Sarah Mayberry
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: It′s been eight years since Tory Sanderson has seen Ben Cooper–eight years since she found out he seduced her to win a bet with some classmates at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, and eight years since she got her revenge. . . . After fulfilling her dream of publishing a cookbook of island recipes, Tory is thrilled when she′s invited on a Caribbean cruise as a guest lecturer. But excitement turns to anxiety when she finds out that Ben, who is now a celebrated restaurateur, will join her as the guest chef. Ben accepted the guest chef gig in order to enjoy a week of Tory sweating it out in the kitchen.But once the heat starts to climb, getting even turns out to be the last thing on his mind. In fact, picturing a future with Tory in his kitchen might add just the right amount of spice to his life. . . .