Buch lesen: «Caught In A Storm Of Passion»

CHAPTER ONE

Tuamotu Archipelago—South Pacific

DR. EVELYN CARMICHAEL squeezed her eyes shut, dug her fingernails into the armrests either side of her and thanked God for the harness strapped across her chest. The large seaplane slewed sideways in the storm that had appeared out of nowhere, just an hour out of Port Laurent. All she could think was, I’m going to die... I’m going to die in the middle of the South Pacific and I’ve never had a halfway decent...well...that.

A monster gust of wind hit the aircraft broadside, threatening to shake everything loose. Metal screamed under the assault, as though the agony of it was too much to bear in stoic silence. Eve could empathize. She was all too ready to start screaming herself. And she would if she had the presence of mind to do anything but sit wide-eyed with terror as the world around her went to hell.

A good thing too, since being frozen with terror kept her from freaking out. Because, frankly, she’d rather die than give the man beside her—the pilot from hell—the pleasure of seeing her fall apart.

She didn’t look out the cockpit window and she didn’t look sideways at the heathen turning the air blue. He was big and scary enough, without the palpable tension pouring off him between curses.

And, boy, were his curses inventive. Some she’d never heard before...others she never would have thought, let alone uttered. But they rolled off his tongue like they were best buddies.

Fortunately he seemed to have forgotten her in his battle with the aircraft and Mother Nature. Which suited her just fine. It meant he was too busy to witness her mental meltdown.

Again.

A few hours earlier she’d opened her eyes and realized she was lying on a rattan sofa with a big half-naked sea god looming over her. Wide shouldered and long legged, he’d filled the space with a toxic cocktail of masculine superiority and supreme sexual confidence. She’d hated him instantly.

Of course it had absolutely nothing to do with the unwelcome shiver of almost primal awareness his proximity had sent zinging through her veins, but rather the abrupt knowledge that he’d seen her at her most helpless.

And if there was one thing Eve hated it was being helpless.

Fine. It might also have had something to do with the way he’d made her feel—like she was awkward and gawky and thirteen again. Like she had to pretend she wasn’t dressed in charity-shop rejects and the object of pity or derision.

She’d only had to look at him, leaning close and dripping water all over her, to know he’d put the bad in bad boy.

Fortunately for Eve she was no longer shy or geeky, and she’d never had a thing for bad boys. That had been her mother’s weakness and one she’d vowed never to share. Besides, she was a thirty-year-old recently qualified OB-GYN specialist, on the brink of a promising career, and she’d learned early on that a cool look and a raised brow quickly dispelled any unwelcome ideas.

But this...this Neanderthal, with his hard body, cool gray eyes and his soft cargoes worn in interesting places, had found her icy looks amusing. His eyebrow had arched with more mockery than she could ever hope to muster.

He’d promptly sent her blood pressure soaring into the stratosphere—and not just with aggravation. That, as far as Eve was concerned, was reason enough to hate him.

But none of that really mattered. Not when her entire life was flashing before her eyes—which were still squeezed tightly closed, to shut out the vision of her impending death.

“Just stay calm!” her pilot shouted above the roar of the storm and the screech of tortured metal.

“I am calm,” she snarled, snapping her eyes open to glare at him. And she could have promptly kicked herself when he turned those disturbing slate-gray eyes her way and she got a little light-headed.

From jet lag, worry and exhaustion, she assured herself. Or maybe it was from all the testosterone that surrounded him like a thick toxic cloud. She was clearly allergic. All she needed was the antihistamine, hidden somewhere in her luggage, and she’d be fine.

Hopefully immune.

Oh, wait. Her suitcase was MIA. Along with her mind for even starting on this wild goose chase in the first place.

“Is that why you’re whimpering?”

His mouth twitched and she was tempted to snarl at him again, maybe use her teeth. She’d never been a violent person, but she would make an exception with him. Unfortunately he was about as sensitive as a rock, and any biting on her part would in all probability be construed as interest.

“Just keep this flying boat in the air, Slick, and let me handle my own life flashes.”

“We’re going to be okay, I promise,” he said. “Chris has never failed me, and I’ve flown in much worse.”

She didn’t know how that could be possible, but who the heck was she to judge? She could take or leave flying on a good day, and this certainly wasn’t turning out to be one of them. Besides, after a lifetime of disappointments she never put much store in empty promises, and his promise to keep them safe was as about as empty as the sky had been a half-hour earlier.

“You named your seaplane Chris? So what’s it short for? Christine? Crystal?” She smirked. “Christian?”

He sent her a get real look that questioned her intelligence before flicking the Saint Christopher medal hanging overhead with one long tanned finger.

“Saint Chris. We have an understanding.”

She wished he had an understanding with the weather, instead of a piece of metal that had about as much magic as this flying boat.

The thought had only just formed when the world exploded in a blinding flash of blue-white light. She sucked in a terrified squeak and nearly scorched her lungs on white-hot sulfur an instant before sparks shot out of the control panel. They were almost instantly followed by ominous pop-popping sounds.

“Oh, great!”

“What?” Back ramrod straight, she turned huge eyes on her pilot. His face was grimmer than the Grim Reaper and the death grip he had on the joystick didn’t fill her with a lot of confidence. “What?”

“Dammit, don’t just sit there,” he snapped, his hands flying over the instruments. “Grab the fire extinguisher.”

“We’re on fire?” Eve felt her mouth drop open. She stared at him in horror. They were fifteen hundred feet above the sea, for God’s sake. They couldn’t be on fire. She was not going to fry in a flying fireball.

“Flames are coming out the damn control panel, woman,” he barked. “Of course we’re on fire. Now, get the extinguisher.”

“I thought you said we were going to be okay. You promised!” Eve could hear herself, but she was unable to move or keep the abject horror and panic from her voice.

She—who never panicked—was about to lose it.

“Dear God, we’re going to die. I knew this was a bad idea. But did I listen?”

“We are not going to die. And I always keep my promises.”

He caught her horrified gaze with his, and the burning intensity of his eyes was strangely hypnotizing.

“Always,” he growled fervently. “Now, snap out of it and get the damn extinguisher.”

In a daze, Eve fumbled for the buckle and wondered if it was such a good idea to leave her seat. Maybe the fire would go out on its own. Maybe he could smother it with his damn ego. Besides, her hands were shaking so badly it was several seconds before the mechanism gave and her safety harness snapped open.

She hadn’t signed up for this, she told herself, struggling to hang on to her composure. It was all just a bad dream. She was supposed to be in London, sitting in a posh hotel, attending the Women and Birth conference. Actually she had been in London—for all of two hours—before catching the first flight out of Heathrow because her sister had left a message saying she’d met someone and was getting married.

Married! To a guy she’d only just met. In the South Pacific, for crying out loud. Had Amelia lost her mind? Had she learned nothing from their dysfunctional childhood?

There would be no marriage, Eve vowed fervently. At least not yet. Because if her sister had lost her mind, as the older twin it was up to Eve to help her find it again. Besides, Eve had a lifetime’s experience of watching over her sweet, trusting sibling and she wasn’t going to stop now. Especially with the kind of men Amelia seemed to attract. Men quick to take advantage of her naive and generous soul. Like the men parading through their mother’s life.

Clearly being on a tropical island was messing with Amelia’s mind just as it had their mother’s, when she’d met and fallen head over heels in lust with their father. Just another man in a long line of users and abusers. All Eve had to do was fly out there, talk some sense into her twin and fly back to London in time for the last three days of the conference...preferably with her sister in tow. It would be just like their childhood. Just the two of them against the world.

Only now she might not make it to the conference. Or to Tukamumu to stop the wedding. Or was it Moratunga?

Oh, what the heck difference did it make, anyway? She wasn’t going to make either of them because she was headed for a watery grave.

Feeling drunk in the violently pitching craft, she lurched upright and staggered to the fire extinguisher mounted behind the pilot’s seat. Not an easy task in three-inch heels.

“Dammit, woman. Move!”

The words were delivered through clenched teeth, and Eve would have liked to tell him to stuff it. But what if he took her at her word and bailed out with the only working parachute? She didn’t even want to consider what would happen then.

She yanked at the cylinder, shrieking as the plane took a nosedive. Lurching backward, she hit the cockpit wall and sent foam spraying everywhere.

Everywhere but the fire.

“What the seven levels of hell are you doing?” he bellowed, reaching back to grab a fistful of her silk blouse and yanking her upright.

She would have liked to tell him that he was manhandling two hundred dollars’ worth of silk, but staying on her feet was more of a priority.

“The fire,” he snarled, looking more scary than comical with foam in his hair and dripping off his nose and chin. “Aim the nozzle at the damn fire.”

“Maybe you should keep the damn floor from moving,” Eve snapped with extreme provocation, and slapped at the hand dangerously close to her breasts. Only it turned out to be a mistake when the floor abruptly tilted again and she tumbled into his lap—a tangle of arms, legs, nozzle and extinguisher.

Eve shrieked and attempted not to conk him on the head with the canister, because an unconscious pilot was something she wanted to avoid. At all costs. She whacked herself instead, instantly seeing stars and wondering if her life really was flashing before her eyes.

Dammit. It figured that she’d die in the arms of a man more interested in shoving her away than wrapping her close.

Yelping, she let the extinguisher go to slap a hand over the injury and thought, Great—another bruise to go with the one I already have thanks to Mr. I’m-your-pilot, Chase. There was a soft grunt, followed by a vicious oath, and the next thing she was being dumped on her ass. Through tearing eyes she saw him aim the nozzle at the controls with one hand while yanking at the yoke with the other. Within seconds the instruments were covered with a thick layer of foam.

The fire gave one last defiant fizzle before dying.

Kind of like her last relationship, she thought dazedly from her position on the floor. Actually, kind of like all her relationships, if she was being perfectly honest, because watching her mother flit from one man to the next had soured her when it came to love. She snorted. As if whatever her mother had had with her countless men had been love.

Relief, however, was short-lived, because no sooner had Chase tossed the canister aside than he wrapped both white-knuckled hands around the yoke, looked at the instruments now oozing white foam and cursed.

Again.

Eve didn’t like the look on his face.

“Now what?”

His expression was taut and grim, his eyes narrowed in fierce concentration. A muscle twitched in his lean, tanned cheek.

“Don’t you dare tell me we’re going down,” she informed him tightly. “Because you’ll have a hysterical female on your hands. And you do not want to see me hysterical.”

He shot her a look that said she’d sailed past hysterical a half hour ago. She ignored him. They were going down. She knew it. He knew it. He was just too darn stubborn and macho to admit that Saint Chris had abandoned them.

She swallowed a sob.

And here she was in the prime of her life, on the verge of a promising career—the realization of all her dreams after years of hard work.

She had every right to be hysterical, darn it.

Grabbing the seat, she hauled herself up. He was back to ignoring her, wrestling with the controls and trying to bring the plane’s nose up through sheer brute force.

And failing.

Oh, God, he was failing, and the nose was pointing down into what she knew would be a very unpleasant end. They might be in a seaplane, and not at the altitude of a commercial jet, but that would mean nothing when they hit the water at a sixty-degree angle. Besides, she’d watched all those seconds-from-disaster documentaries and knew there’d be no floating gently away from this.

Gulping, Eve watched in terrified fascination as the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunched and strained against his soft polo shirt and smooth, tanned flesh until she thought they’d burst right out of his skin.

“Buckle up,” he snarled through clenched teeth. “It’s going to get rough.”

Eve felt her mouth drop open. More than it was already? A whimper bubbled up her throat and threatened to pop, along with her very tenuous hold on control. She was absolutely certain she could not handle rough.

They were going down.

“We’re going to die.”

“We are not going to die. I’m an excellent pilot,” he said tightly, and the engines protested with an almost human scream.

“In case you haven’t noticed, Slick,” Eve yelped, almost as loudly as the engines as she fought with the safety harness that seemed to have taken on an evil life of its own, “this is not a storm for excellent pilots. It isn’t even for creatures meant to fly. It’s Armageddon. And if I die I’m going to kill you. Very. Very. Slowly.”

“I have no intention of dying,” he snapped, as though she’d insulted his manhood as well as his entire family tree. “And what kind of doctor are you to be threatening the man trying to save your delectable ass, anyway?”

He shook his head at her and reached out to snag his Saint Christopher, kissing it before he looped it around his neck.

Eve watched in fascination as the shiny silver disc disappeared into the neckline of his shirt, wondering at her brief flash of envy that Saint Chris got to be nestled close to his heat and strength.

Dammit. She wanted to be held and protected too.

Just this once.

“What you need is a little faith,” he declared, just as the craft bucked and the engines gave an alarming splutter.

She swallowed another yelp, envy forgotten as she sank her nails into the armrests, wishing it was his hard thigh. She would like to put a few holes in his thick hide, despite the “delectable” quip. Besides, her “delectable ass,” as he’d so gallantly put it, was in real danger of becoming shark bait.

“What I need,” she snarled, “is for you to get us out of this storm. What I need is to find my sister and stop her from making the biggest mistake of her life.” Her voice rose. “What I need is not to be thinking about meeting my maker without ever having had a screaming orgas— Well, never mind.”

“What?” His gaze whipped to hers so fast she half expected his head to fly off his shoulders. After a moment his gaze dropped to her mouth. “A what?”

“Never mind,” she squeaked, losing her famed cool just a little. “I am not discussing the fact that I’m nearly thirty-one years old and have never had an earth-shaking orgasm. Before I kick the bucket I’d like to have just one. One!” Her voice rose. “Is that too much to ask?”

“You... What?” He looked so stunned that if she hadn’t been on the verge of a total meltdown she might have been flattered by his stunned disbelief. Or maybe insulted, since the disbelief was now edged with amusement. It didn’t matter that at any other time she would have been mortified at having admitted anything so private. Especially to this heathen flyboy. But since she was going to die she guessed it didn’t really matter. Dignity was the least of her problems.

“No. And now I’m never going to.”

His answer was drowned out by another ear-splitting explosion and in the next instant the airplane lurched sideways and flipped, throwing her violently against the harness. Lights exploded inside her skull and she knew that this was it. She was going to die and she was never going to have that screaming orgasm.

And to think she could be safely in London, with a hundred eligible men...