Serpent in Paradise Read online

  “I know,” he agreed almost wistfully. “But it’s all your fault for being here. You shouldn’t have come wandering through paradise unless you were prepared to meet up with a serpent.” His hand fell away, and at the loss of his touch she felt oddly bereft. “Come on, Amy. We’re almost home.”

  “Home” proved to be a two-story rustic house that overlooked the harbor. It had been built early in the century, Jase explained absently as he switched on lights, and had been the home of a retired sea captain. Later, during World War II, the US military had commandeered it for a while as officers’ quarters. After the war it had been through a variety of owners until Jase had bought it eight years earlier.

  “It’s lovely, Jase.”

  He watched her take in the hardwood floors, the high, beamed ceilings and the arching, open windows that stretched from floor to ceiling “You sound surprised,” he said with suspicious blandness. “Where did you think I lived? Over The Serpent?”

  “Well, frankly, yes. Or in one of the small houses nearby. You seem to spend most of your time at your bar, so I assumed you probably weren’t much interested in having a home like this.”

  He walked over to a liquor cabinet and lifted a bottle of rum. “You tend to make a lot of assumptions about men, don’t you?”

  She swung around, abandoning an examination of a tapa wall hanging, and glared at him. “Meaning?” she challenged.

  His mouth crooked as he poured their drinks. “Never mind. We’ve got too many other topics on the table tonight. We’d better get through them first. Tell me the rest of the story, Amy.’’

  She knew what he wanted, and her resistance suddenly seemed to be very low. Here in the pleasant, airy protection of his home it was too easy to let down the barriers, too easy to unburden herself of the depressing story. Jase had offered aid and comfort, and Amy found herself in need of both.

  Perhaps it was because she was so far from home. Perhaps it was because she had just been through an extremely unpleasant experience. Or perhaps it was because she was beginning to realize she might have taken on more than she could handle in trying to deal with Dirk Haley on her own. Whatever the reasons, Amy found herself sinking down onto the padded wicker sofa and finishing the tale of how she’d wound up on Saint Clair.

  “I met Ty Murdock a little over two years ago,” she began.

  “I knew it,” Jase interrupted heavily. “I knew you were doing more than just running an errand for your sister! You were involved with him!”

  “If you want to hear the rest of this, you had better shut up!”

  “Were you in love with him?” Jase asked coolly, dropping into the seat across from her.

  “Sort of,” she muttered grudgingly.

  “‘Sort of’!” he exclaimed. “What kind of an answer is that?”

  “Well, I suppose I loved him as much as a woman can love a man she doesn’t fully trust,” she explained with an honesty that astonished her. It was the truth, she realized.

  Jase exercised his patience. “Tell me. Everything.”

  Amy lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. “Ty Murdock was an exciting, dashing, glamorous man. He had some mysterious job with the government and he played the polished, sophisticated James Bond role with a nice understatement. It worked very well. Women loved it. And the best part was that it was for real. He was stationed in San Francisco when I first met him. I don’t really know what attracted him to me. For my part, he made an interesting, charming escort. But from the first night I met him at the home of some friends, I knew I would never be able to trust him.”

  “Why not?”

  How could she explain it? Her wariness was so much a part of her now. “I don’t tend to trust men in general, I guess. I don’t think they always know what they want. At any rate I sensed that Ty was restless, searching for an excitement that I knew instinctively I could never provide. I liked him, and Lord knows he was exciting to be with, but some part of me knew that he would never be able to stay very long with any one woman. Eventually I realized that there was no point in the relationship. I would only get hurt if I kept seeing him, and he was starting to ask for more than I wanted to give.”

  “Meaning you wouldn’t sleep with him?” Jase drawled, one brow lifting.

  Amy watched him for a moment through narrowed eyes. “As soon as he felt me withdrawing emotionally from the relationship, all of Ty’s hunting instincts were aroused. Typical masculine attitude,” she explained carelessly. “Men always want what they can’t have. Before I knew what was going on, he was suddenly talking marriage. It was a ridiculous idea. A man like him had no business getting married, and I told him so.”

  “I’ll bet he really appreciated that,” Jase growled.

  Amy winced, remembering the scene. “He, uh, took it as a personal affront. In fact he got furious. The last time we quarreled he had been drinking. He said he would force me into bed, get me pregnant and then see if I would refuse his offer of marriage. I told him I would never sleep with a man I couldn’t trust and that the very last thing on earth I wanted was his child.” Amy sighed. “I was very angry myself. I didn’t like being threatened.”

  Jase eyed her broodingly. “You told him you wouldn’t give him a child? Lady, you’re lucky you came out of that little scene without a black eye or worse. In fact, all things considered, you’re lucky he didn’t carry out his threat!”

  “Oh, he tried,” she tossed back stonily, stifling a shudder at the memory.

  In spite of his own laconic warning, Jase’s fingers tightened visibly around his glass. “He raped you?”

  “No. Fortunately our quarrel was interrupted by the arrival of some friends. I was never so grateful to see anyone in my life as I was the Harrisons that night,” she concluded in a whisper. After a moment she went on with the story. “Ty left in a rage, but I thought it was all over. The next thing I knew, he started seeing my sister. Two months later she was pregnant.”

  Jase groaned. “He got his revenge on you by using her.”

  “Yes. What really made it so bad was that she loved him. Really loved him. She had all along. And he knew it. When I turned him down, he went straight to her arms, looking to salve his ego, I suppose.”

  “And she loved him enough to take the risk of having his child,” Jase concluded softly.

  Amy nodded, her throat very tight. “For a while they seemed relatively happy, much to my surprise. Melissa is very beautiful and very sweet. It would be hard not to love her. If any woman could have changed Ty, settled him down, it would have been her. He married her and I was keeping my fingers crossed, hoping it might work out.”

  “But it didn’t?”

  “Toward the end of the pregnancy there was so much tension between them, Melissa said you could have cut it with a knife. I didn’t see much of either of them during that time. I knew things were deteriorating, and I just couldn’t bear to see my sister so unhappy. When she was in her seventh month, Ty started seeing other women. It wasn’t a surprise. He had cheated on me even during the short time we had been dating. That was one of the reasons I knew I couldn’t trust him. Then one night I got a phone call from her. She was in labor and Ty was nowhere around. I wound up taking her to the hospital. I was the one who waited to find out if it would be a boy or a girl. I was the one who brought her flowers afterward and I was the one who drove her home from the hospital two days later. Ty had spent the weekend in Carmel with a girl friend. I could have killed him for what he did to Melissa.” Desperately Amy blinked back the shimmer of tears, turning her head to glance out over the dark harbor so that Jase wouldn’t see them.

  “Tell me the rest, Amy,” Jase said softly.

  “There’s not much more. Ty told Melissa that he really didn’t care to remain married, that he wasn’t cut out to play father and he was going to do her a favor and get out of her life. He applied for a transfer to an overseas post an
d shortly after that he filed for divorce. For a while he sent a little child-support money and an occasional trinket. The mask was one of those trinkets. My sister kept the gifts, saying they were her son’s legacy from his father. Then, a few months ago, the small trickle of communication between Ty and my sister dried up completely. She’s decided he’s probably dead. His job, we always understood, was a dangerous one, so I suppose it’s a possibility. But for his son’s sake she wants to know for sure what happened to his father. When the request for the mask came from Dirk Haley, we decided there might be a possibility of learning the truth about Ty’s fate.”

  Jase frowned. “Haley contacted her out of the clear blue sky?”

  “He sent her a cable, claiming to be an old friend of Ty’s, and told her that Ty had said he could have the mask. We held a family council and decided that we needed to know if the mask was more valuable than we had thought. If so, it should be preserved for Craig’s future.”

  “Craig is Melissa’s child’?”

  Amy nodded. “In any event Melissa and I thought that this Dirk Haley might be able to tell us what had happened to Ty. The government has been no help at all. They won’t even claim him on their payroll, much less tell her anything about his fate.”

  “So you and Melissa decided to use the mask as leverage to get information out of Haley about it and Murdock.” Jase shook his head in disgust. “A pair of idiots.’’

  “That’s what Adam said,” Amy muttered tightly.

  “Who’s Adam?” he asked sharply.

  “Adam Trembach is a very wonderful, responsible, mature man who has fallen in love with my sister,” Amy explained with a glimmer of a smile. “He’s also very protective of her. He wasn’t about to have her go running off to the South Seas to find out what had happened to her ex-husband!”

  “I can’t blame him for that,” Jase said with feeling. “So you and Melissa decided you should come instead?”

  “Someone had to find out what was so important about that mask. Maybe it’s worth a fortune. If so, that fortune belongs to little Craig. In any event, someday he’s going to start asking questions about his father, and Melissa needs to know the answers for his sake.”

  “So here you are on Saint Clair, looking for those answers.” Jase looked at her as though he was having second thoughts about her intelligence. “Do you know anything about this Haley character, other than the fact that he claims to be an old buddy of Murdock’s?”

  “Not really,” Amy admitted uneasily. “When Melissa responded to his cable, saying she was willing to discuss the matter of the mask with him, he sent her a follow-up cable telling her to come here this week and he would contact her.”

  “He probably picked Saint Clair because he doesn’t feel vulnerable here. We don’t have much in the way of governmental formalities,” Jase decided. “If he wants that mask for something other than legitimate reasons, Saint Clair would make a fairly safe contact point for him. He can slip in and slip back off the island fairly easily. Not like Hawaii.”

  “He’s less vulnerable here, while I’m more so,” Amy noted wryly, hiding a shudder.

  “Not anymore.” Jase got to his feet. “The odds are a bit more even now.”

  “Because you’re on my side?” she whispered.

  “What’s the matter, Amy? Afraid that having a rum-soaked sleazy expatriate tavern owner on your side isn’t going to be much help?” he taunted softly.

  “Don’t give me that routine! It certainly doesn’t make you sound any less dangerous, you know. I’ve seen the way the locals treat you, and I saw you send four brawling sailors on their way this evening. I’m fully aware that out here in a man’s world you don’t gain that kind of respect by being too rum-soaked!”

  “How about sleazy?” he pressed with a flash of amusement.

  “I’ll let you have sleazy,” she agreed too sweetly. “Which room is going to be mine, Jase? I think it’s time I went to bed.”

  “Alone?”

  “Definitely,” she retorted, moving to collect her suitcase. “Don’t get the idea that I might be willing to repay you for your help by warming your bed. If you choose to get yourself involved in this mess, it’s not because I asked for your help!”

  “Have you ever asked any man for help, Amy Shannon?” he demanded softly.

  “No,” she stated proudly, “I haven’t.”

  He hesitated a moment, as if he wanted to say something else. Then he smiled. “Second room at the top of the stairs.”

  Amy grabbed her bag and hurried toward whatever sanctuary awaited at the top of the staircase..

  Chapter Four

  An hour later Amy finally abandoned her efforts to sleep and tossed back the sheet. Soundlessly her bare feet found the hardwood floor, and the French nightgown drifted around her ankles as she padded across to the open arched window.

  The second room at the top of the stairs was clean and pleasantly furnished with bamboo and wicker, but there was a strange emptiness about it. It was as if no one had inhabited the room for a very long time.

  Which was entirely understandable, Amy decided wryly as she stood staring out to sea. Jase’s souvenir-hunting houseguests undoubtedly slept in the master bedroom along with the master!

  She pushed that annoying image aside, gripping the edge of the window lightly. Below her the Navy ship still rocked gently, and a few men came and went in the darkness. But they were quite a distance away from her. Jase’s home was removed from the working docks of the waterfront, unlike The Serpent. Had he needed to have a place where he could get away from his demanding business, even for a short period of time? Was he ever lonely? Did he miss the wife who had left him?

  No, he was probably far too satisfied living out the classic male fantasy, Amy told herself firmly. She mustn’t romanticize such a man, not even for a moment.

  Yet, she trusted him. It was incredible, given everything she knew about him. What in the world was the matter with her? Here she was in his home, more or less agreeing to accept his help. What was it about Jase Lassiter that made her so incautious? It wasn’t like her at all.

  Restlessly she stepped through the open window and out onto the veranda. A night breeze drifting in off the ocean caught the silky fabric of her nightgown, and she found herself remembering how the material had looked draped over Jase’s tanned fist. Sensuous. Exciting. The picture in her mind wouldn’t be banished. It stirred uneasy, dangerous sensations that she knew better than to cultivate.

  The veranda stretched completely around the house. Amy glanced to one side, looking for lights in some of the other rooms that opened onto it. All was in darkness. Was Jase in bed? Or had he stayed downstairs to contemplate his glass of rum? She found herself wondering which bedroom was his.

  Leaning forward, Amy rested her elbows on the railing, her spice-colored hair tumbling around her shoulders.

  “You shouldn’t have come to Saint Clair, Amy. You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time “

  Amy froze at the soft drawl of his voice in the darkness behind her. Then, with a feeling that she was somehow about to face her fate, she turned slowly to find him standing in the shadows of the entrance to the room beside hers. So close. Dear Lord! She hadn’t realized he would be using the room next to hers.

  For a long moment they met each other’s eyes in the shadows. Amy could feel the heavy tension in the air between them and knew that she was now facing a far more dangerous situation than she had faced when she’d gone back to her room to find it ransacked. She couldn’t even move.

  “The wrong place at the wrong time,” Jase repeated huskily, coming slowly toward her. He was still dressed in the khakis he’d had on earlier, the shirt open at the throat and the sleeves rolled up on his forearms. The dark mahogany of his hair was almost black in the dim light, but his brilliant turquoise eyes glittered with masculine decision. There was hard promise in
every line of his body.

  “Is it, Jase?” she got out as he came to a halt a couple of feet away from her. “Is it really the wrong place and the wrong time?”

  He went to stand beside her at the railing, leaning back against it, sipping the rum. Then he set the glass down beside him and nodded. His eyes never left her face. “For you it is.”

  “But not for you?” she whispered. A shiver went through her as she waited for the unbearable tension to burst. All she had to do was turn around and walk back into her room and close the window. Why couldn’t she move?

  “Out here a man learns to make things right. Even if it’s only for a night or two. And especially when he wants a woman as badly as I want you.”

  Amy couldn’t look away from his steady, gleaming gaze now. She felt completely trapped, mesmerized by forces she didn’t even want to try to understand. “Do you...” She stopped and licked her lips nervously. “...do you really want me that badly? Or would any woman...?”

  She never got a chance to finish the question. In her anxiety her right hand swept jerkily to the side and caught the edge of his rum glass, which was sitting on the railing.

  Jase put out his hand almost casually and caught the glass in midair. Only a few drops spilled. He set it on the railing again, a strange smile playing around the edge of his mouth as he watched her stricken expression.

  “Yes, I want you that badly, and no, not just any woman would do. Not tonight. Do I really make you so nervous?” He glanced briefly at the salvaged glass.

  “You make me very nervous,” she confessed throatily.

  “We’re equal then. Because you are playing havoc with my nervous system too!”

  Jase’s mouth came down on hers with an unconcealed, almost desperate hunger.

  The impact of that male hunger was beyond anything Amy had ever experienced or ever expected from a man. Last night when Jase had kissed her, there had been a deliberate seductive quality, a tasting, teasing, testing quality. He had been trying to lure her and tempt her to come home with him.