the driver’s seat. His long legs were cramped below the steering wheel, his head practically touching the roof.
Jill nodded. She remembered reading that this particular model got exceptionally good gas mileage—but then it should, with an engine only a little bigger than a lawnmower’s.
To prove her right, the car roared to life with a flick of the key.
“Where are we going?” Jill asked once they’d merged with the flow of traffic on the busy thoroughfare by the hotel.
“The airport.”
“The airport?” she repeated, struggling to hide her disappointment. “I thought your flight didn’t leave until eight.”
“Mine doesn’t, but ours takes off in half an hour.”
“Ours?” What about the sugarcane fields and watching the workers harvest pineapple? Surely he didn’t intend for them to miss that. “Where is this plane taking us?”
“Hawaii,” he announced casually. “The island of. Do you know how to scuba dive?”
“No.” Her voice was oddly breathless and high-pitched. She might have spent the past twenty-odd years in Seattle—practically surrounded by water—but she wasn’t all that comfortable under it.
“How about snorkeling?”
“Ah …” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “There are pineapple fields on the other side of this island. I assumed you’d want to see those.”
“Another visit, perhaps. I’d like to try my hand at marlin fishing, too, but we don’t have enough time today.”
“Snorkeling,” Jill said as though she’d never heard the word before. “Well … it might be fun.” In her guidebook Jill remembered reading about green beaches of crushed olivine crystals and black sands of soft lava. These were sights she couldn’t expect to find anywhere else. However, she wasn’t sure she wanted to view them through a rubber mask.
A small private plane was ready for them when they arrived at Honolulu Airport. The pilot, who apparently knew Jordan, greeted them cordially. After brief introductions and a few minutes’ chat, they were on their way.
Another car, considerably larger than the one Jill had rented, was waiting for them on the island of Hawaii. A large, white wicker picnic basket sat in the middle of the backseat.
“I hope you’re hungry.”
“Not yet.”
“You will be,” Jordan promised.
He drove for half an hour or so, until they reached a deserted inlet with a magnificent waterfall. He parked the car, then got out and opened the trunk. Inside was everything they’d need for snorkeling in the crystal-clear aquamarine waters.
Never having done this before, Jill was uncertain of the procedure. Jordan patiently answered her questions and waded into the water with her. He paused when they were waist-deep, gave her detailed instructions, then clasped her hand. His touch lent her confidence, and soon she was investigating an undersea world of breathtaking beauty. Swimming out of the inlet, they came upon a reef, with colorful fish slipping in and out of white coral caverns. After what seemed like only minutes, Jordan steered them back toward the inlet and shore.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful,” she breathed, pushing the mask from her face.
“I don’t think I have, either,” he agreed as they emerged from the water.
While Jill ran a comb through her hair and put on a shirt to protect her shoulders from the sun, Jordan brought out their lunch.
He spread the blanket in the shade of a palm tree. Jill knelt down beside him and opened the basket. Inside were generous crab-salad sandwiches, fresh slices of papaya and pineapple and thick chocolate-chip cookies. She removed two cold cans of soda and handed one to Jordan.
They ate, then napped with a cool, gentle breeze whisking over them.
Jill awoke before Jordan. He was asleep on his back with his hand thrown carelessly across his face, shading his eyes from the glare of the sun. His features were more relaxed than she’d ever seen them. Jill studied him for several minutes, her heart aching for the man she’d loved so long ago. Her father. The man she’d never really had a chance to know. In some ways, Jordan was so much like her father it pained her to be with him, and at the same time it thrilled her. Not only because in learning about Jordan she was discovering a part of her past, of herself, but because she’d rarely felt so alive in anyone’s company.
As she recognized this truth, a heaviness settled over her. She didn’t want to fall in love with him. She was so afraid her life would mirror her mother’s. Elaine Morrison had grown embittered. She’d been a young woman when her husband died, but she’d never remarried; instead she’d closed herself off, not wanting to risk the kind of pain that loving Jill’s father had brought her.
Sitting up, Jill shoved her now-dry hair away from her face. She wrapped her arms around her bent legs and pressed her forehead to her knees, gulping in breath after breath.
“Jill?” His voice was soft. Husky.
“You shouldn’t have left your pager behind, after all,” she told him, her voice tight. “Or your phone.” Without them, he was a handsome, compelling man who appealed to all her senses. Without them, she was defenseless against his charm.
“Why not?”
“Because I like you too much.”
“That’s a problem?”
“Yes!” she cried. “Don’t you understand?”
“Obviously not,” he said with such tenderness she wanted to jump to her feet and yell at him to stop. “Maybe you’d better explain it to me,” he added.
“I can’t,” she whispered, keeping her head lowered. “You’d never believe me. I don’t blame you—I wouldn’t believe me, either.”
Jordan frowned. “Does this have something to do with your reaction the first time I kissed you?”
“The only time!”
“That’s about to change.”
Her head shot up at the casual way in which he said it, as though kissing her was a foregone conclusion.
He was right.
His kiss was gentle. Jill resisted, unwilling to give him her heart, knowing what became of women who loved men like this. Men like Jordan Wilcox.
Their kiss now was much more potent than that first night. His touch somehow transcended the sensual. Jill could think of no other words to describe it. His fingers brushed her temple. His lips moved across her face, grazing her chin, her cheek, her eyes. She moaned, not from pleasure, but from fear, from a pain that reached deep inside her.
“Oh, no …”
“It’s happening again, isn’t it?” he whispered.
She
