dip.
It was ludicrous.
There was her mother’s voice again! But the truth was, Cynthia was not the type of woman who did that kind of thing, though she suddenly found herself pondering the type of woman who did. A rather enticing picture formed in her mind of a woman who was free-spirited, fully engaged in life, adventurous, laughter-filled, not so damned serious, not in the least bit tired or unhappy.
A woman who invited exactly the kind of temptations her mother disapproved of!
Ludicrous, her mother’s voice repeated within Cynthia’s own mind, and it proved to be the deciding factor.
All right. She would be ludicrous, then, and just a tiny bit reckless. She would give herself this small adventure—this break from convention—as a gift. Tonight, for a few minutes, she would be that free-spirited woman instead of Cynthia Forsythe, professional drudge.
Quickly, before she chickened out, squinting nervously into the impenetrable darkness, Cynthia shed her bathing suit. The night air was astonishing on her naked skin, tender and sensual.
She waded waist-deep and then dove. The water was even better than the air against her nakedness. It was warm and textured, as if she was embraced by liquid silk. Her body felt marvelous, as if it was humming. Cynthia laughed out loud. She became that light-spirited woman of her fantasies as she ducked and dove and swam and played amongst the tiny dancing lights of the sea creatures.
Finally, happy, she flipped on her back and floated in the sea of black—shiny black water meeting inky black sky with no boundary between the two. She imagined she was a star blinking brightly in a universe of darkness.
But she became Cynthia Forsythe again—fell back into her own body with dizzying swiftness—when she heard the slightest sound from the beach.
She lost the relaxation of the float, went under and resurfaced sputtering, her eyes stinging from salt water and her mouth full of the bitter taste. Warily, she turned her attention beachward.
She saw the distinctive flaring of a match, and then the glowing red tip of a cigarette. No, a cigar. The pungent aroma floated out over the darkness to her, rich and spicy.
Women didn’t generally smoke cigars, so unless she was mistaken there was a man on that beach! And here she was cavorting around, nude.
Completely vulnerable, her mother’s voice informed her with a little tsk of satisfaction. This was where heeding the call of adventure led: to the unpredictable, to trouble, to danger.
Cynthia forced herself to think. She could swim farther up the shore and get out of the water, but unfortunately her clothes were on the beach. She did not relish a long walk through the privileged enclaves of La Torchere without a stitch of clothing.
Her other option was to wait, and that she did, but the minutes dragged by, and even after the light of the cigar had been extinguished, she could see a dark shape still on the beach. Her eyes had now adjusted enough to the darkness that the outline told her quite a bit about this unexpected intruder. He was definitely masculine, definitely powerful, infinitely formidable.
Did he know she was there? Had he heard her? Had he seen her bathing suit and cover and towel and shoes?
The best-case scenario was that the resolution of this situation was going to be embarrassing, and the worst-case scenario was that it would become very dangerous.
“Cynthia Forsythe,” she chided herself inwardly, her teeth beginning to chatter. “You should have known you were the least likely person to have an adventure!”
Rick Barnett had come to love the night. It protected him from people’s curious stares, but it was more than that.
Almost in compensation for the damage to his left eye, his right one had developed quite amazing nocturnal vision. At night, it felt as though he had a sixth sense that warned him of obstacles before he even saw them. It wasn’t perfect, he still had a tendency to bash himself on his blind left side, but it was better than during the day, when he often felt he was listing crazily, unbalanced and uneasy with his restricted vision.
Tonight, he had come to scout sites for the chapel. Ms. Montrose, that strange old woman with a young woman’s eyes, an astonishing color of blue-violet, had mentioned a number of possible locations to him, but he had checked them all out and none had spoken to him.
Perhaps accepting the commission to design and build a wedding chapel had been a mistake.
He was a cynical man by nature. He had been even before the accident that had blinded him, laid waste to half his face, and crushed his larynx so that his voice was a harsh growl, almost animallike. Now he was more so, particularly given how rapidly the female of the species assessed the damage to his face and ran the other way. Six months since the accident. His calendar was empty; the lights on his message machine did not blink; his phone did not ring. He had been seeing a woman, fairly seriously, at the time of the accident. She had abandoned ship and when he looked at himself in the mirror he did not blame her.
The doctors told him that eventually the scarring would fade and he would learn to compensate for the loss of half his vision.
Eventually.
There would be no repair for his voice.
Meanwhile, the accident had left him even more hardened than he had been before, only now he wasn’t even attractive. So, he certainly did not believe in anything as ethereal as happily-ever-after.
The truth was, Rick Barnett was not sure what he believed in anymore.
As if his life didn’t feel hellish enough, he’d had to spot Cynthia Forsythe at this very resort? What were the chances of that? The gods seemed to be having quite a good chuckle at his expense!
Once he would have loved to run into her, the girl who had scorned his high-school advances because he was from the wrong side of the tracks. Once he would have loved to introduce her to some of the old-money beauties who clung to his arm and stared into his face as if they could not get enough of him.
But now? He did not want to see Cynthia. He hoped she’d be leaving La Torchere soon and their paths would not cross before that happened.
Rick found himself on a bluff, a rocky outcropping west of the beach, and the hair raised suddenly on the back of his neck. This place did not have the manicured feel of the rest of the resort. It had been left natural. A place of rocks and trees, the landscape rugged and untamed.
He was not sure how he knew, but he knew. This was it. This was where the chapel would go. Was it hypocritical for a man who had no belief in romance, nor in the power of love, to build a wedding chapel?
Probably.
And yet, as he stood here, on this piece of ground, he could almost feel the chapel forming around him. The spirit of it, for no vision of the building itself came to him. He just knew he would put it here, on this rock bluff, facing the sea and all its mysteries.
He loved to build. That did not mean he had to believe in love.
A beautiful, carefree feminine laugh floated over the night air. The hackles on the back of his neck rose again. It was almost as though the gods were laughing at his refusal to believe in love.
It
