The Pregnancy Discovery. Barbara Hannay
have time for a shower before lunch.’
The Germans, who had their own hired vehicles, were talking animatedly amongst themselves and so the American helped Meg to pile the snorkelling equipment into the back of the resort’s Mini Moke and he sent her another breath-robbing grin. ‘Thanks for a great morning.’
‘My pleasure,’ she murmured.
They both jumped into her Moke and, as she steered the little vehicle up the winding track leading out of the bay, her passenger leaned comfortably back in his seat, turned to her and asked, ‘OK Miss Recreation Officer, what’s planned for this afternoon?’
Surprised, she shot him a calculating glance, but smiled as she said, ‘You Americans are so energetic when you come on holidays, aren’t you? It’s go, go, go the whole time.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘That’s so unusual?’
‘I don’t suppose so,’ she admitted. ‘But we don’t have a huge number of guests here at the moment and most of them seem to be fairly independent, so I didn’t have anything organised for this afternoon.’
‘I was hoping you might be able to take me on a guided tour of one of the island’s walks.’
Meg pursed her lips. Was this fellow making a play for her already? When she’d come to work at the resort just three months ago, she’d discovered that far too many male visitors arrived on the island and assumed the female staff were part of the room service along with the free tea and coffee. She’d developed some pretty useful brush-off tactics.
‘If you have a look in that glove box, you’ll find a pamphlet that outlines all the walks. You’re a big boy. You don’t need a guide. Anyhow…’ she added a white lie as an extra measure of protection ‘…I’m busy all afternoon. There’s a VIP coming soon.’
‘Big deal is it?’
‘Oh, just some hotshot millionaire.’ Meg rolled her eyes.
‘You don’t think much of millionaires?’
Her scowl was automatic. Five years ago, she’d watched her father’s career and health suffer at the hands of a money-hungry tycoon and she’d developed a seriously jaundiced view of wealth. ‘I’m sure those types are so busy counting their money, or protecting it, or making it grow, they don’t have time for the important things in life.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said in a strangely flat voice that made Meg look at him sharply.
They crested the hill and in front of them stretched a magnificent vista—a string of pretty blue bays sparkling in the midday sun like sapphires on a necklace.
As the American admired the view, he said casually, ‘I heard something about a bottle being found on one of those beaches.’
‘Yes.’ A sudden sprinkling of goose bumps broke out on Meg’s arms. ‘I found it,’ she told him.
Sam’s guilty conscience gave him a bad time as he watched Meg’s face grow wistful. He should come clean and confess to her that he was the very millionaire she had been talking about. He should tell her right now.
But an equally strong instinct urged him otherwise. She was already wary of him and a confession like that would make her clam up completely. Then he would miss this heaven-sent opportunity to pick up inside information about the bottle and its message before he tackled her boss.
They reached the resort, Magnetic Rendezvous. She steered the car into a parking bay and, after turning the engine off, leaned forward, linking her arms across the top of the steering wheel. Sam got the distinct impression she was pleased to talk to someone about this bottle.
She turned to look at him and he felt the full impact of her clear grey eyes. Yes, they were definitely grey, he decided—and sweetly framed by long dark lashes. And, he noticed uncomfortably, right now they were shimmering with a suspicious sheen.
‘I don’t know what made me pick the bottle up,’ she said softly. ‘I keep asking myself that and I know it sounds fanciful, but it was almost as if I was meant to find it.’
Her face softened into a sad, dreamy smile and Sam felt a surprising constriction in his throat. In the flesh, Meg was even lovelier than her photo had suggested. The photo hadn’t shown the way she moved, light and graceful, with a sexy little sway of her hips. It couldn’t record the delightful warmth of her voice or capture the way her smile could dissolve into a sweetly serious frown when she was lost in thought.
She was looking serious now when she said, ‘That bottle spent sixty years bobbing around in the ocean. I’m only—well—it’s more than twice my age.’
‘So how old does that make you?’
‘None of your business.’
Sam grinned. At a guess, he’d put her age at around twenty-four or twenty-five. He was thirty-two, so she was a bit young for him—not that he was thinking of her in that way, of course.
Then again…
She was offering him a view of her delicate profile and, as he watched the way she nibbled at her soft bottom lip, a guy couldn’t help contemplating how nice it would be to try that himself sometime.
Meg’s voice broke into his thoughts, dragging them away from highly unsuitable fantasies. ‘I guess I’m looking at this whole bottle business in a hopelessly romantic way.’ She flashed him a sudden smile.
He couldn’t resist smiling back. ‘What’s wrong with romance?’
For a long moment their gazes held. An unspoken, highly charged exchange flashed between them. Sam only just resisted an urge to lean forward and taste her soft, startled mouth.
He couldn’t be sure who looked away first but, eventually, they both stared back out through the windscreen at the stretch of lawn dotted with coconut palms.
He forced himself to remember that his family’s business was at stake. Which was why he was relaxing on a tropical island and deliberately misleading this lovely young woman. He definitely shouldn’t be planning to add seduction to his crime of deception.
He cleared his throat. ‘So this message in the bottle, was it a love letter?’
She nodded. ‘It’s beautiful. That man sure loved the woman he was writing to.’
‘He was writing to his wife, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, but you can’t read her name. There’s some damage—from exposure to light we think.’
He repressed an angry sigh. If Tom Kirby’s wife wasn’t named, sorting out this will could be really messy. It was the worst possible news.
‘You’d better not ask me any more about it,’ Meg said with sudden briskness, ‘I can’t say anything else, not when the grandson of Thomas Kirby, the man who wrote the message, is coming here soon—tomorrow, I think.’
Sam’s stomach tightened guiltily.
Meg added, ‘He’s the American VIP I was telling you about.’
‘You don’t say?’ he murmured, and he switched his attention to a rainbow lorikeet as it settled in a nearby tree. After promising himself, again, to come clean very soon, he asked, ‘So this guy is coming all the way out here just to pick up a sixty-year-old letter? Why couldn’t you have posted it to him special delivery?’
Meg sighed loudly. ‘That would be too easy. My boss wouldn’t hear of it. He wants to get as much publicity mileage as he can out of this incident.’
He stopped studying the bird and turned to frown at her. ‘What kind of publicity?’
‘He sees this as a great opportunity to get media attention for the resort. Magnetic Rendezvous isn’t doing all that well. The competition for the tourist dollar is very stiff.’
So that was what this guy was after! ‘That’s