Remarried In Haste. Sandra Field
a guileless blue. Brant stretched his legs into the comfortable amount of space his executive seat allowed him and gazed out of the window. He was flying due south, nonstop, from Toronto to Antigua; in Antigua he’d board a short hop to Grenada.
Where Rowan should be on hand to meet him.
Among the various documents Rick had given him had been a list of participants; he, Brant, was the only Canadian other than Rowan on the trip. Therefore, he’d presumably be the only one coming in on that particular Hight; the rest of the group would fly via Puerto Rico or Miami.
It should be an interesting meeting.
Which didn’t answer the question of why he was going to Grenada.
His dinner with Gabrielle had been last Sunday. On Monday he’d phoned Rick’s wife Sonia and told her he’d take Rick’s tickets. On Tuesday his boss—that enigmatic figure who owned and managed an international, prestigious and highly influential magazine of political commentary—bad sent a fax requesting him to go to Myanmar, as Burma was now known, and write an article on the heroin trade. Whereupon Brant had almost phoned Sonia back. He liked going to Myanmar, it had that constant miasma of danger on which he flourished. His whole life revolved around places like that.
Grenada wouldn’t make the list of the world’s most dangerous places. Not by a long shot.
So why was he going to Grenada and not Myanmar?
To prove himself right, he thought promptly. To prove he no longer had any feelings for Rowan.
Yeah? He was spending one hell of a lot of money to prove something he’d told Gabrielle didn’t need proving.
And why did he, right now, have that sensation of supervigilance, of every nerve keyed to its highest pitch, the very same feeling that always accompanied him on his assignments?
Don’t try and answer that one, Brant Curtis, he told himself ironically, watching a cloud drift by that had the hooked neck and forked tongue of a prehistoric sea monster. He’d told his boss he had plans for a well-earned vacation; and the only reason he’d phoned Sonia back was to borrow Rick’s high-powered binoculars and a bird book about the West Indies. The book was now sitting in his lap, along with a list of the birds they were likely to see. He hadn’t opened either one.
Why in God’s name was he wasting two weeks of his precious time to go and see a woman who thought he was a liar and a cheat? A sexual cheat. How she’d laugh if she knew that somehow, in the eight months he and Gabrielle had been held for ransom in Colombia, Gabrielle had seemed more like the sister he’d never had, the mother he could only dimly remember, than a potential bed partner. This despite the fact that Gabrielle was a very attractive woman.
He’d never told Gabrielle that, and never would. Nor would he ever tell Rowan.
A man was entitled to his secrets.
Tension had pulled tight the muscles in Brant’s neck and shoulders; he was aware of his heartbeat thin and high in his chest. But those weren’t feelings, of course. They were just physiological reactions caused by adrenaline, fight or flight, a very useful mechanism that had gotten him out of trouble more times than he cared to count. The airplane was looking after the flight part, he thought semihumorously. Which left fight.
Rowan would no doubt take care of that. She’d never been one to bite her tongue if she disagreed with him or disliked what he was doing; it was one of the reasons he’d married her, for the tilt of her chin and the defiant toss of her curly red hair.
Maybe she didn’t care about him enough now to think him worth a good fight.
He didn’t like that conclusion at all. With an impatient sigh Brant spread out the list of bird species and opened the book at page one, forcing himself to concentrate. After all, he didn’t want to disgrace himself by not knowing one end of a bird from the other. Especially in front of his ex-wife.
Rowan could have done without the connecting flight from Antigua being four hours late. Rick Williams from Toronto was the last of her group to arrive: the only other Canadian besides herself on the trip. The delay seemed like a bad omen, because it was the second hitch of the day; she and the rest of the group had had an unexpected five hours of birding in Antigua already today when their Grenada flight had also been late.
Rick’s flight should have landed in Grenada at six-thirty, in time for dinner with everyone else at the hotel. Instead it was now nearly ten forty-five and Rick still hadn’t come through customs.
His luggage, she thought gloomily. They’ve lost his luggage.
She checked with the security guard and was allowed into the customs area. Four people were standing at the desk which dealt with lost bags. The elderly woman she discounted immediately, and ran her eyes over the three men. The gray-haired gentleman was out; Rick Williams was thirty-two years old. Which left...her heart sprang into her throat like a grouse leaping from the undergrowth. The man addressing the clerk was the image of Brant.
She swallowed hard and briefly closed her eyes. She was tired, yes, but not that tired.
But when she looked again, the man had straightened to his full height, his backpack pulling his blue cotton shirt taut across his shoulders. His narrow hips and long legs were clad in well-worn jeans. There was a dusting of gray in the thick dark hair over his ears. That was new, she thought numbly. He’d never had any gray in his hair when they’d been married.
It wasn’t Brant. It couldn’t be.
But then the man turned to say something to the younger man standing beside him, and she saw the imperious line of his jaw, shadowed with a day’s dark beard, and the jut of his nose. It was Brant. Brant Curtis had turned up in the Grenada airport just as she was supposed to meet a member of one of her tours. Bad joke, she thought sickly, lousy coincidence, and dragged her gaze to the younger man. He must be Rick Williams.
Her eyes darted around the room. These was nowhere she could hide in the hopes that Brant would leave before Rick, and therefore wouldn’t see her. She couldn’t very well scuttle back through customs; they’d think she was losing her mind. Anyway, Rick was one of her clients, and she owed him whatever help she could give him if his bags were lost.
At least she’d had a bit of warning. She was exceedingly grateful for that, because she’d hate Brant to have seen all the shock and disbelief that must have been written large on her face in the last few moments; the harsh fluorescent lighting would have hidden none of it. Taking a deep breath, schooling her features to impassivity, Rowan walked toward the desk.
As if he’d sensed her presence Brant turned around, and for the first time in months she saw the piercing blue of his eyes, the blue of a desert sky. As they fastened themselves on her, not even the slightest trace of emotion crossed his face. Of course not, she thought savagely. He’d always been a master at hiding his feelings. It was one of the many things that had driven them apart, although he would never have acknowledged the fact. Rowan forced a smile to her lips and was fiercely proud that she sounded as impassive as he looked, “Well...what a surprise. Hello, Brant.”
“What the devil have you done to your hair?”
Nearly three years since he’d seen her and all he could talk about was her hair? “I had it cut.”
“For Pete’s sake, what for?”
A small part of her was wickedly pleased that she’d managed to disrupt his composure; it had never been easy to knock Brant off balance, his self-control was too formidable for that. Rowan ran her fingers through her short, ruffled curls. “Because I wanted to. And now you must excuse me...I’m supposed to be meeting someone.”
She turned to the younger man and said pleasantly, “You must be Rick Williams?”
The man glanced up from the form he was filling in; he smelled rather strongly of rum. “Nope. Sorry.” Doing a double take, he looked her up and down. “Extremely sorry.”
Rowan gritted her teeth. She rarely bothered with