Anne McAllister - A Baby For Christmas

Bigger and airier than hers, it also had a lovely view across the treetops toward the ocean. But the small back bedroom with the narrow wicker bed and freestanding cupboard in which to hang her clothes suited Carly just fine.

She opened the windows and got a cross-breeze almost at once. But to aid its movement she turned on the overhead fan. Then she put her things away, slipped off her sandals and lay down on the bed.

She only intended to rest her eyes for a moment. Then she would go out and walk on the beach in the waning summer light. She would dig her toes in the sand and wade in the warm Caribbean water. She would savor the moment and appreciate the parts of Conch Cay she had no trouble enjoying. In just a few minutes she would do that…

It was pitch-dark when she woke up.

It took her a moment to remember where she was. Then it came back in a rush.

Des. Diana. The book. Piran. Christmas. The long trip by taxi, plane, taxi, and boat to Conch Cay. Piran’s less than enthusiastic welcome. Her fruitless search for a room. Her return to Blue Moon Cottage. Piran’s reluctant agreement to her staying with him. Piran. Always Piran.

Carly rolled over and tried to forget him, tried to go back to sleep because it was obviously quite late now. But she wasn’t tired enough to go back to sleep, and trying not to think about Piran only insured that she would.

Finally, after she’d tossed and turned for half an hour, she got up and put her sandals on, then padded through the silent house.

The lights were all shut off and the door to Piran’s room was closed. She didn’t know the time, but figured that it must be sometime after midnight.

Quietly she slid open the door to the veranda and padded out. A swath of silvery moonlight spilled across the ocean, lighting her way as she went down the steps. At the bottom she found the narrow path that led through the trees down the hill to the beach.

Before she was more than twenty yards along the path, she heard a rustling sound in the brush and saw a dark, slithering shape. Swallowing a scream, she stopped dead right where she was.

There were snakes on Conch Cay. She remembered Des showing her the marks they made in the sand which had looked to Carly like the imprints from bicycle tires. But she didn’t know what kind they were and she didn’t know if any of them were poisonous.

It wouldn’t do to get herself bitten by a snake the first night she was here. Piran wouldn’t be in the least bit understanding.

The rustling noise stopped and eventually Carly went on. She moved on carefully now, watching her every step, doing her best to make sure she didn’t step on anything alive and capable of objecting.

She didn’t notice when the path curved and the beach came into view. She didn’t see the lean masculine form that slowly rose out of the water and made its way across the narrow sand beach toward the trail.

She didn’t see Piran at all until it was too late, until she ran right into his bare wet chest.

‘Ooof!’

‘Bloody hell!’ Hard fingers came out and grabbed her arms.

‘P-Piran?’

‘Who’d you think it was? The Loch Ness monster?’ His fingers were still biting into her flesh as he snarled at her.

Carly looked up into hard eyes, then down at a shadowed but all too evident masculine nakedness, and finally, desperately, away into the jungle brush.

Snakes seemed suddenly far preferable.

‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ he demanded.

‘G-going for a walk.’

‘In the middle of the night?’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’ She tried twisting away from him. ‘Let me go.’ Finally she managed to pry his fingers off her arms. Then she wrapped her arms against her chest, keeping her eyes firmly averted the whole time. ‘I certainly wasn’t looking for you, if that’s what you think!’

Piran made a sound that could have been a snort of disgust or disbelief. ‘You shouldn’t be out walking now. It’s almost two. It’s dangerous.’

‘You’re out,’ she said. Of course maybe that was why it was dangerous, she thought a little wildly.

‘It’s not dangerous for me.’

‘How’s that for the double standard?’ Carly said bitterly.

‘I don’t make the rules, Carlota. But I can tell you what they are.’

‘I’m sure you can,’ she said. ‘It’s not fair,’ she complained after a moment.

‘Tell me about it,’ Piran muttered under his breath. Then he said, ‘No one ever promised that life would be fair.’

‘Save me the time-worn platitudes.’

He reached for her arm. ‘Come on, Carly. Let’s go.’ She tried to shake him off. ‘I said, I’m going for a walk.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Yes, I am.’ It was sheer stubbornness on her part and she knew it. But she was determined not to let him have the last word, not to allow him to tell her what to do.

She wrenched away from him and started down the path toward the beach at a run.

She’d got perhaps five steps when he caught her. With one hand he spun her round, then grasped her around the waist with both hands and flung her over his shoulder.

‘Piran!’ she shrieked as she pitched head-first, then stopped abruptly as her midriff lodged against his shoulder and she hung flailing upside down. ‘Piran! Damn you! Put me down!’

But Piran only turned and strode back up the path with Carly slung over his shoulder like some bag of old clothes.

‘Piran!’

She twisted and smacked him, her fists coming into contact with hard wet flesh. She opened her eyes and found herself staring down at a pair of lean, hair-roughened thighs and bare, muscular buttocks. She hit them. Hard.

‘Damn!’ He twisted and tried to catch her hands.

Carly kicked her feet, kneed him in the chest, then slapped him again, hoping the blows stung his wet skin.

‘Stop it! Damn it, Carly!’ He made it to the veranda, but he stumbled on the steps, and they both went down, a tangle of arms and legs, cool droplets of water and heated flesh. Carly landed face down between the backs of his thighs. It took only an instant’s exposure to the hard warmth of his body to have her scrambling to her feet.

‘I can’t believe you did that!’ she railed at him. ‘Talk about cavemen!’

He was slower getting up. He winced as he pulled himself up and Carly noticed for the first time the angry scar on his leg. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked him.

‘What do you care?’ He snapped a towel off one of the lounges and knotted it around his waist, but not before she’d had a chance to glimpse definite signs of masculine arousal.

She swallowed and averted her eyes. ‘I—I don’t, actually.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

They stared at each other. Piran’s gaze was hard and angry, and any arousal that he might feel, Carly knew all too well, was unwanted.

So what else was new? He’d wanted her nine years ago, and he’d hated himself for it.

She glanced back at him and saw a muscle in his jaw tick in the moonlight. She thought he looked very pale. She felt a fleeting stab of guilt, then squelched it immediately. He hadn’t had to carry her! He hadn’t had to interfere at all.

She said as much.

‘Just my chivalric nature, I guess,’ he said through his teeth.

Carly remembered when he really had been chivalrous. That memory, sweet as it was, somehow hurt more than all the other painful memories did.

‘Don’t bother,’ she said shortly.

Their eyes met and clashed once more. Piran ran his tongue over his lips.

‘Fine,’ he said harshly after a long moment. ‘Go for a bloody walk if you want. Drown yourself if you want. I don’t care what you do. I don’t know why I bothered.’