the trip that would be leaving on Wednesday. Seven different islands, two nights on each except for the final island of Antigua, where a one-night stopover was scheduled. Hiking in rain forests and mangrove swamps, opportunities for swimming and snorkeling.
Opportunities for being with Rowan.
For two whole weeks.
He was mad to even consider it. Rowan didn’t want anything to do with him, she’d made that abundantly clear. So why set himself up for another rejection when he was doing just fine as he was?
Because he was doing fine. Gabrielle’s imagination was way out of line with all her talk of love and needs and repressions. He didn’t need Rowan any more than Rowan needed him.
He’d hated it when his checks had been returned by that smooth-tongued bastard of a lawyer. Hated not knowing where she was living. Hated it most of all that she’d never wanted to see him again.
But he’d gotten over that. Gotten over it and gone on with his life, the only kind of life he thrived on.
The last thing he needed was to see Rowan again.
What he needed was a cup of strong black coffee and a bowl of tiramisu laden with marscapone. Brant tossed the brochure onto the dining room table and followed Gabrielle into the kitchen.
CHAPTER ONE
AT THIRTY-seven thousand feet the clouds looked solid enough to walk on, and the sky was a guileless blue. Brant stretched his legs into the comfortable amount of space his executive seat allowed him and gazed out of the window. He was flying due south, nonstop, from Toronto to Antigua; in Antigua he’d board a short hop to Grenada.
Where Rowan should be on hand to meet him.
Among the various documents Rick had given him had been a list of participants; he, Brant, was the only Canadian other than Rowan on the trip. Therefore, he’d presumably be the only one coming in on that particular Hight; the rest of the group would fly via Puerto Rico or Miami.
It should be an interesting meeting.
Which didn’t answer the question of why he was going to Grenada.
His dinner with Gabrielle had been last Sunday. On Monday he’d phoned Rick’s wife Sonia and told her he’d take Rick’s tickets. On Tuesday his boss—that enigmatic figure who owned and managed an international, prestigious and highly influential magazine of political commentary—bad sent a fax requesting him to go to Myanmar, as Burma was now known, and write an article on the heroin trade. Whereupon Brant had almost phoned Sonia back. He liked going to Myanmar, it had that constant miasma of danger on which he flourished. His whole life revolved around places like that.
Grenada wouldn’t make the list of the world’s most dangerous places. Not by a long shot.
So why was he going to Grenada and not Myanmar?
To prove himself right, he thought promptly. To prove he no longer had any feelings for Rowan.
Yeah? He was spending one hell of a lot of money to prove something he’d told Gabrielle didn’t need proving.
And why did he, right now, have that sensation of supervigilance, of every nerve keyed to its highest pitch, the very same feeling that always accompanied him on his assignments?
Don’t try and answer that one, Brant Curtis, he told himself ironically, watching a cloud drift by that had the hooked neck and forked tongue of a prehistoric sea monster. He’d told his boss he had plans for a well-earned vacation; and the only reason he’d phoned Sonia back was to borrow Rick’s high-powered binoculars and a bird book about the West Indies. The book was now sitting in his lap, along with a list of the birds they were likely to see. He hadn’t opened either one.
Why in God’s name was he wasting two weeks of his precious time to go and see a woman who thought he was a liar and a cheat? A sexual cheat. How she’d laugh if she knew that somehow, in the eight months he and Gabrielle had been held for ransom in Colombia, Gabrielle had seemed more like the sister he’d never had, the mother he could only dimly remember, than a potential bed partner. This despite the fact that Gabrielle was a very attractive woman.
He’d never told Gabrielle that, and never would. Nor would he ever tell Rowan.
A man was entitled to his secrets.
Tension had pulled tight the muscles in Brant’s neck and shoulders; he was aware of his heartbeat thin and high in his chest. But those weren’t feelings, of course. They were just physiological reactions caused by adrenaline, fight or flight, a very useful mechanism that had gotten him out of trouble more times than he cared to count. The airplane was looking after the flight part, he thought semihumorously. Which left fight.
Rowan would no doubt take care of that. She’d never been one to bite her tongue if she disagreed with him or disliked what he was doing; it was one of the reasons he’d married her, for the tilt of her chin and the defiant toss of her curly red hair.
Maybe she didn’t care about him enough now to think him worth a good fight.
He didn’t like that conclusion at all. With an impatient sigh Brant spread out the list of bird species and opened the book at page one, forcing himself to concentrate. After all, he didn’t want to disgrace himself by not knowing one end of a bird from the other. Especially in front of his ex-wife.
Rowan could have done without the connecting flight from Antigua being four hours late. Rick Williams from Toronto was the last of her group to arrive: the only other Canadian besides herself on the trip. The delay seemed like a bad omen, because it was the second hitch of the day; she and the rest of the group had had an unexpected five hours of birding in Antigua already today when their Grenada flight had also been late.
Rick’s flight should have landed in Grenada at six-thirty, in time for dinner with everyone else at the hotel. Instead it was now nearly ten forty-five and Rick still hadn’t come through customs.
His luggage, she thought gloomily. They’ve lost his luggage.
She checked with the security guard and was allowed into the customs area. Four people were standing at the desk which dealt with lost bags. The elderly woman she discounted immediately, and ran her eyes over the three men. The gray-haired gentleman was out; Rick Williams was thirty-two years old. Which left...her heart sprang into her throat like a grouse leaping from the undergrowth. The man addressing the clerk was the image of Brant.
She swallowed hard and briefly closed her eyes. She was tired, yes, but not that tired.
But when she looked again, the man had straightened to his full height, his backpack pulling his blue cotton shirt taut across his shoulders. His narrow hips and long legs were clad in well-worn jeans. There was a dusting of gray in the thick dark hair over his ears. That was new, she thought numbly. He’d never had any gray in his hair when they’d been married.
It wasn’t Brant. It couldn’t be.
But then the man turned to say something to the younger man standing beside him, and she saw the imperious line of his jaw, shadowed with a day’s dark beard, and the jut of his nose. It was Brant. Brant Curtis had turned up in the Grenada airport just as she was supposed to meet a member of one of her tours. Bad joke, she thought
