And Babies Make Four (6 page)

Sam knew she’d be angry. He just didn’t know
how
angry.

Her eyes widened in shock, flashing with the fire of an erupting volcano. “He’s kidding. He’s
got
to be kidding!”

“Trust me. He’s dead serious,” Donovan promised grimly. “Papa Guinea won’t let an unmarried woman enter the sacred lands. I don’t like it any better than you do, but if you’ll keep quiet a minute you’ll see it’s not that bad—”

“Not bad?” Her voice rose with her fury. “A teenage witch doctor orders me to marry a man I barely know, and you say it’s not
bad?
”

“Keep it down,” he warned, glancing over his shoulder at the curious bystanders. “Some of these folks understand English.”

“Great. Then they can translate
this
to your shaman.
I think you are the lowest, crudest, most despicable creature who ever crawled out of the slime—”

She got no further. Sam yanked her against him and clamped his hand over her mouth—then almost lost his grip when she struggled and tried to take a chunk out of his hand.
Why me, God? What did I ever do to you to deserve this hellcat?
“Listen little … you know how much you don’t want to marry me? Well, trust me, sweetheart, that goes
triple
for me. But Papa Guinea is a spiritual authority, not a legal one. He
can’t
marry people.”

Her eyes still blazed with emerald fury, but she stopped struggling. At least she was willing to listen to him. Or was plotting her next assault. He figured he had about three seconds to convince her, if that. Leaning down, he whispered low into her ear so that only she could hear him. “The priests come here every six months—they travel in a circuit around the small islands of this area. But six months is a long time for hot-blooded young couples to wait, so Papa ‘marries’ them—and the church fathers make it legal on their biannual visits.”

She mumbled something unintelligible against his palm. Giving her a look of warning, he pulled his hand away.

“So we wouldn’t really be married?” she whispered slowly.

“Not unless you wait around for a priest,” he promised. “Use that Ph.D brain of yours. You’d get to do your research. I’d get my money. Everyone’s happy.”

“Except it’s not exactly … honest,” she said hesitantly.

Great. A hellcat with a conscience. “The only thing honest’s gonna get you is a plane ride back to the States. If that’s what you want, fine, but …” His voice trailed off as he looked at the crowd gathering around them. Apparently others had heard about Papa’s judgment and were curious to see what the “crazy foreign woman” had decided. “They’re waiting for you to make the call. It’s up to you, Noel. What’s it gonna be?”

She stared at the crowd, biting her lower lip in indecision. The unconscious gesture robbed the stiffness from her coolly resolute face, revealing the soft, vulnerable woman beneath her rigid exterior. Suddenly Sam found himself wondering about her past, and about what had made her hide her softness below that layer of frosty reserve. It wasn’t his business. It wasn’t likely to become his business, since she was probably going to be on the next plane out of here. But as his gaze riveted on the innocently seductive motion of her teeth worrying her bottom lip, he found himself wondering all the same. Wondering that, and other things …

“Okay,” she said quietly as she lifted her gaze to his, “but I’d still rather sacrifice a chicken.”

Her joke curled around them like voodoo smoke, wrapping them in an enchantment, drawing a hesitant grin from both their unyielding mouths. The shared smile lasted less than a second, but it jarred something deep and rock solid at his core.
A smile like that could
haunt a man’s dreams. It could make him wish for things—impossible, crazy things that could rip his heart out if he let them
—

“Hey! Jolly-mon is getting married!”

The laughing, cheering crowd surged against them like sea foam. One second she was in his arms—the next she was being pulled away by a dozen animated women. Noel looked back at him in panic. “Sam?”

“Don’t worry. They’re just taking you to—” His sentence ended abruptly as Jean Duprey the stonecutter slapped him heartily on the back, driving the air from his lungs.

“You’ll need more stamina than that for tonight, Jolly-mon.” Jean laughed as he thrust a mug of frothing brew into Sam’s hands.

Sam took a taste of the bitter, potent liquor, knowing from experience to stop after a few sips. The drink, known by the innocuous name of “sugar water” had a kick like a rampaging elephant. But he doubted even a barrel of the stuff could quiet the turmoil inside him. Intellectually, he knew that this marriage was just a business partnership, nothing more. They didn’t love each other. Hell, they didn’t even like each other. In two weeks she’d go back to the States, he’d get an “annulment” from Papa Guinea, and they’d go on with their lives as if nothing had happened.

It’s just business, he repeated silently as he lifted the cup to his lips and indulged in a final pull of the powerful, numbing liquor. So why did he feel like
he’d just fallen overboard in the dead center of the Atlantic?

“Hey … don’t do … cut that …” Frustrated, Noel shut her mouth, realizing that no one was listening. Sighing, she raised her arms, and let the women who’d brought her to the church’s small vestry room pull off her soiled shirt and skirt. I’m doing this for science, she reminded herself as the women wadded her expensive designer clothes into a bundle and tossed them into the corner. I’m doing this for the Eden Project. And I’m going to get PINK and Einstein into the central mountains of this island even if it means getting dragged off by a pack of women who can’t understand me, being stripped down to my underwear, and even getting married to a cretin like Donovan.

Married to Donovan
 …

She shivered, an electric jolt shooting down her nearly naked spine.
Get real, Noel. You’re not really marrying the guy.
Yet the thought of marrying Sam Donovan—even a counterfeit marriage—made her feel like a pot of water on high boil.

“Mademoiselle?”

Startled out of her thoughts, Noel looked down at the little girl who stood at her side, and drew in her breath. The child was beautiful beyond words—not just because of her face or features, but because of the love and trust that radiated from her enormous eyes and brilliant smile.

Her sunburst smile still beaming, she held up a cup of what looked like water. “
Pour vous. De l’eau à sucre.
”

Sugar water, Noel translated silently, her high-school French class coming to her rescue. Probably some sort of island bridal tradition—and not a half-bad one considering the humidity and the tension. A cool, sweet drink was just what she needed. “Thanks. I mean,
merci
.”

Nodding, she returned the girl’s smile with genuine appreciation and lifted the cup to her lips—and almost gagged. The stuff was wretched—more like a dose of medicine than sugar water. She started to hand it back, when the little girl spoke again.

“
Pour vous. Pour l’amour de mon ami Jolly-mon
.”

For the sweetheart of my friend Jolly-mon. Noel could see the true affection in the girl’s eyes—she wasn’t just saying this as part of some bridal ritual. Surprised, Noel realized that her “macho-jerk” guide had taken the time and trouble to befriend this child, something she knew Hayward would never have done. She couldn’t help admiring him for it—and the thought of liking Donovan on any level scared the living daylights out of her.

Distracted, she took another drink from the cup, and was surprised to find that the second taste wasn’t nearly as bad as the first. In fact, she found it rather refreshing. She drained the cup and handed it back to the girl, who quickly replaced it with another. Another tradition, Noel thought as she took a sip of the second cup.
Well, it’s not so bad. I could even get to like it
.

The next few minutes were full of hectic activity as the women brought out a length of colorful, silky cloth and began to drape it around her body. They laughed and chatted endlessly in French that was too rapid for Noel to understand. Actually she wasn’t sure if she would have been able to follow the conversation. Her mind was caught like a fly in a spiderweb, wound tight with thoughts of men like her former boyfriend Hayward, marriage, and the way her life was supposed to be.

Though she’d broken it off with the workaholic Hayward, she still suspected she’d eventually end up with someone very much like him. A CPA, he’d plotted out their future with an accountant’s skill, determining the neighborhoods they’d live in, the friendships they’d cultivate, even the schools their two-point-four children would attend. It was a safe and secure future, as different from her mother’s foolish and tragic marriage as night from day. Yet try as she might, Noel couldn’t conjure up a picture of her children looking at Hayward with the love and adoration she’d seen in the little girl’s eyes when she’d spoken of her “Jolly-mon.”

Noel found herself wondering if security was enough. She hadn’t really thought about it before. But now, as she took a sip from her third (or was it her fourth?) cup of sugar water, she couldn’t seem to think of anything else.

All at once the women stopped talking and stepped away. The sudden, unnatural silence unnerved Noel. She started to speak, but found the
words unaccountably hard to form. Thoughts and images began to run together in her mind like a watercolor left in the rain. Yet beneath the confusion was a clarity she’d never experienced before, as if all the muddled everyday concerns of her ordinary life had been swept away, revealing diamonds.

A floor-length mirror appeared in front of her out of what seemed like thin air and the image in the cloudy glass captured her attention—a slim woman with hair as dark as midnight, wrapped in an exotic dress that seemed to be made of spun rainbows. Astonished, she lifted her fingers to touch the cold glass, to prove to herself this was a reflection. Her reflection.
But this can’t be me. This strange, exotic woman has nothing in common with Noel Revere, who’s about as unremarkable as gray Vermont granite.

Confused, she looked around for her companions, but they seemed to have evaporated like smoke in the wind. Nothing made sense on this island—from the myriad plaster gods, to the suddenly appearing mirror and the disappearing women, to the exotic customs, the unfathomable laws, the sweet water with the bitter taste, the macho-jerk guide who took time to befriend a child.…

Nothing made sense. She swallowed, looking again at the woman in the mirror—a woman who had less in common with her than night did with day. The phantom reflection was exotic and passionate, but not unfamiliar. Memories bubbled to the surface of her mind—a flash of a smile, a mischievous wink, the rich, vibrant sound of a man’s deep laughter. She’d kept
the memories locked deep down inside her, jailed beneath the conservative constraints of her starched business suits and Puritan demeanor. She’d thought she was free of her painful past, but in the shadows and silence of the little room she could no longer deny the unsettling, unwanted truth.

It was conservative Dr. Noel Revere who stared at the reflection in the dark glass. But it was the ghost of her reckless, unreliable father who stared back at her.

Where the hell was she?

Donovan stood with his foot propped on the lowest altar step, staring at the half-open vestry door. “The others came out five minutes ago,” he muttered, his frustration growing by the second. “What’s the holdup?”

“Who knows a woman’s mind?” answered Jean Duprey in the breezy cadence of the island. A wide, knowing grin creased his face. “Getting anxious, Jolly-mon?”

Yeah, but not in the way you think.
Donovan glanced over at his friend, the man who had taken him in his first day on the island. Over the years he’d grown to think of the Dupreys as the family he’d never had, and had recently become godfather to Jean’s youngest son. Relying on that friendship again, he’d asked Jean to stand up for him at the wedding.
If
there was going to be a wedding.

As the minutes ticked by, Sam became more and more convinced that Noel had had second thoughts,
and that she’d figured that being married to him—even unofficially—was too high a price to pay for her research project. Not that he blamed her. This whole thing was damned unorthodox, and unorthodox didn’t come easy to by-the-book types like Dr. Noel Revere. Besides, she’d made it painfully clear that she couldn’t stand the sight of him.

Jean slapped him soundly on the back, jarring him back to the present. “You are some lucky fellow. I tell you now that I was worried about you. You been here so long and you take no woman.”

Sam gave a short, humorless laugh. There were shortages on the island, but willing companions wasn’t one of them. “I haven’t exactly been celibate, my friend.”

The older man didn’t return his smile. “Those women feed the hunger of your body, not your heart. You need more, Jolly-mon. You have for a long time.”

You’re dead wrong. I don’t need anyone, he thought, looking away before his friend saw his cynical, self-deprecating grimace. Sure, there were times when he envied men like Jean, who’d found a good, loving woman to settle down with. But that life wasn’t for him. His one sail into the hazardous waters of love had left him alone and stranded on the reef of despair. He’d be a fool to chart a course back into that kind of hell again.

He rubbed his beard-roughened jaw, recalling just enough of the past to make himself remember why he’d left it behind him for the simple, undemanding lifestyle of St. Michelle’s “Jolly-mon.”