A Marriage In The Making. Natalie Fox
fists had gripped the rail the same way and the beauty of the small paradise island, set like a precious jewel in a sea of turquoise satin, had gone unregistered by her as it appeared to be by him now. She hadn’t been able to appreciate its loveliness because of trepidation at the thought of the new life ahead of her. To have had to come this far across the world to free herself of a past that had caused her such pain had quashed all but anxiety from her senses.
The stranger had a similar look about him—as if he lived with regrets and was doubtful that coming here was a good idea—and Karis was intrigued.
But it was all supposition, Karis mused as she watched the two of them, with Leroy following under a mountain of luggage, walk along the jetty to the beach and the garden path that led to the main house of the island. She couldn’t be sure what the stranger was thinking or feeling because she didn’t know him, but it was just the overall impression he gave—one of reluctance and withdrawal and not wanting to be here.
Suddenly Josh’s warm, sandy hand slipped into hers and she gripped it reassuringly and gave him her full attention now. The small boy was watching the visitors too, his dark, dark eyes unreadable. It had been one of her greatest joys when she had first broken through his reserve and been able to read those dark eyes. It had become a frequent occurrence recently but now they were closed off from her.
‘More visitors,’ she told him softly. ‘No children this time, though.’ She gave his hand another reassuring squeeze. The diminutive five-year-old in her care needed the company of other children. She grinned to cover a sigh, not wanting him to pick up on her disappointment. ‘You’ll have to put up with baby Tara for a playmate for a little longer.’
But Tara wasn’t enough for Josh. She was only a tot and not able to communicate with him sensibly. He needed children of his own age and older, not that he mixed all that well when they did come to the island. It usually took him a few days to assess any young visitors tentatively, and by the time they were ready to leave Josh was just about relaxed enough to try and make friends. Most of the time Karis felt he was only making the effort to please her anyway. Josh must have been born a loner, she supposed, but she still encouraged him to socialise whenever she had the opportunity.
So, no children this time. If there had been they would have eventually found their way to Karis’s cottage where they would have been made welcome. ‘Nanny Extraordinaire’, was how Fiesta referred to her in her more charitable moments, but most of the time she treated her with indifference. Karis was the hired help, hired to keep Josh out from under her feet.
And Josh was difficult and moody and unresponsive a lot of the time. Like now, as he stared rigidly at the three people coming up the beach towards the plantation house, the male visitor with his hand gently at the woman’s’ elbow in case she stumbled in the deep sand, neither speaking but Leroy making up for it with a cheerful banter of useful and useless information about the island that was apparently falling on deaf ears.
Karis felt stirrings of something she didn’t want to acknowledge—that old feeling of envy and regret she used to feel when the laughing, loving couples came happily ashore. These two were hardly love’s sweet dream but Karis nevertheless felt a pang or two of envy of the woman with such a heart-wrenching good-looking partner. Cool and aloof he might appear, but he was with her all the same, and courteous and attentive too. They were together, a couple, him and her, here to enjoy a vacation in paradise, and it squeezed at Karis’s heart She had no partner any more, not even one to argue with now and then, and at this moment, for some peculiar reason, she felt her loss more poignantly than usual.
Quickly dismissing such irrational thoughts of envy, Karis stepped forward out of the shade of the banyan, intending to walk along the beach to her cottage with the children. Tara was still asleep against her shoulder and Josh was in need of his siesta, but suddenly the boy’s hand tightened in hers and pulled at her, stopping her dead in her tracks. At the same time he let out a peculiar sound from deep in his throat.
The visitors had reached the gardens at the point where they met the beach, and were only twenty metres or so from them when Josh’s small cry had the man stopping and jerking his head in their direction.
For some reason Karis’s stomach tightened as the others strode on and the man stood stock-still, staring at her with baby Tara on her hip and the small, dark-haired boy, barefoot and brown as a nut as she was, now almost hidden behind her crimson sarong. She felt Josh’s fists clawing into the back of her skirt, twisting the cotton print in his anxious small hands.
The man stared and then slowly his hand came up to strip the sunglasses from his face, and in that moment of revelation Karis knew who he was and the muscles of her stomach clenched ever tighter and her heart thundered perilously.
He said not one word. His eyes didn’t speak either. They weren’t blue at all but a dark, indiscriminate colour that looked as if their hue was gauged by mood. The mood now was cold and hostile as they raked Karis up and down, not settling, not appraising, just coldly grazing over her, making prickles of fear shoot across the surface of her skin.
Josh was stiff behind her, still clutching her skirt, and then Karis felt a tremble shudder through his slim little body. Without taking her green eyes from the stranger, she quickly moved her hand behind her to caress the boy’s bare head tenderly and reassure him he was safe with her.
A slight look of puzzlement chased across the man’s eyes and then they narrowed, and the look chilled Karis to the bone. Disapproval entered the eyes then as the gaze once again slid over her skimpy vest-top and the tumble of wild, unkempt jet hair that skimmed her brown shoulders. A soft tropical breeze flattened her skirt against her long legs and she felt the thin cotton clinging to her, outlining her shape and making her feel almost naked under his icy scrutiny. But there was nothing sexual in the way he was looking at her, only a chilling disapproval—which oddly felt worse.
Josh nervously moved then. Karis was aware of his bare feet shifting agitatedly in the sand and then, with another small, throaty whimper, he let go of her skirt and started to run, crashing through the lush vegetation behind them and on towards the cottage.
Karis’s first instinct was to call out to him, but she stemmed the cry in her throat so as not to alarm Tara. Her small daughter stirred in her arms and Karis wrapped her free hand around the back of her head and held her close, soothing the child back to sleep with her fingers stroking her dark, silky hair.
She never took her eyes off the dark stranger because a peculiar thing had happened to the man’s expression. On sight of the defecting child and the sound of his whimper of anguish as he had fled a look of such deep pain had passed over that handsome though rigid face that Karis’s pulses raced in turmoil.
‘Daniel!’
The piercing cry cut through the hot, humid air, jerking Karis’s senses. The stranger didn’t respond, his hard, muscle-bound body didn’t move a centimetre, but then she supposed he wasn’t the sort to jump to such a shrill command from a woman.
Karis stepped back, desperately wanting to break the eye contact between them because it was unnerving her, but it was so hard to do. Curiosity had frozen her at first and then all sorts of emotions had rushed at her and still he stared at her, fixing her to the spot And how he glared now that Josh had fled in such distress. Was he blaming her for the small boy’s terrified reaction? She didn’t know. Deep concern for Josh was what finally broke her eye contact with him. She swung round, turning her back on the man she now knew to be Daniel.
She knew who he was and Josh had known him too and Karis’s heart squeezed painfully. Still balancing the sleeping baby on her hip, she walked straight-backed along the beach towards the cottage, sensing he was still watching her and helpless to do anything but let the shivers prickle her spine till she was safely out of distance. That cold, cold scrutiny of her had shaken her so deeply and darkly, it seemed as if the sunshine had disappeared for ever. Narrowing her eyes, she had to look up into the blue sky to reassure herself it was still there.
Saffron, the West Indian housemaid, took the sleeping baby from Karis’s arms as Karis stepped up onto the wooden verandah of the white coral stone cottage she shared with the two children.