Eyes of Fire

All the trust that should have been there wasn’t. He still wanted to know about Hank Jennings.

At first she’d been glad that he wondered.

Now she just wanted an exchange of information. Especially since there really was nothing to tell him about Hank Jennings.

Hank had come to the island as a student. He’d pitched in to help with anything any time his help was needed. He had talked about her father for hours on end.

She had even told him some of the stories she knew about the Beldona.

He’d become like a brother to her, always entirely decent, honest, gentle, kind, smart. And he’d fallen in love with Yancy. Yancy had tried hard not to fall in love back—she’d been convinced that interracial marriages didn’t work, and it didn’t matter that she was biracial herself. “You don’t understand, Sam, because you’re like Hank—you don’t want to understand. One drop of black blood and a woman is black.”

“But who cares, if you and Hank don’t?”

“The world cares,” Yancy had insisted. “Eventually, I’d hurt him.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would. I wish I didn’t think it was so.”

“I wish you’d believe enough in Hank.”

Hank asked Yancy daily to marry him. Yancy turned him down daily. Hank persisted, insisting to Sam that he would wear Yancy down eventually. The three of them and Jem did everything together. Picnic, swim, dive. Watch tapes on the VCR, listen to music, dance, discuss the world at large, the sea…

The Beldona.

She hated that ship. He had been so excited listening to her talk about it. She’d given him information and he’d used it.

And then he’d disappeared.

Yancy had had her baby soon after Hank disappeared. They all adored Brian, but Yancy refused to let anyone in Hank’s family know about the baby’s existence. “It’s better that way. It’s the way I want it. He’s my baby. I’ll love him. You’ll love him. Jem will act as his dad. We’ll make it this way, and that’s that.”

It still hurt that Hank was gone. It hurt because she had loved him, though not the way Adam so clearly thought, and because Yancy had been in so much pain, and because Brian didn’t have his father.

It hurt because she blamed the ship. Beldona. And herself, for telling him about it.

It was getting later and later, she reminded herself.

She rose quickly, finding her towel on the floor, slipping it around her. She looked for Adam and came upon him in the living room. He was showered and dressed. She didn’t think that he’d left her alone so he could go get fresh clothing, and the realization that he and Jem had moved him in here so completely without her knowledge was both reassuring and annoying. He was staring at the charts on the wall.

“Adam, it’s late. You should have woken me.”

He glanced at her, smiling, tall, dark, very handsome in his casual suit. “I thought you needed the sleep.”

“I thought you liked to talk to the others at cocktail hour and try to draw out all their secrets.”

He shrugged. “We have to dive alone. That’s our only hope.”

“Our hope of what?”

“Finding the Beldona.”

He was staring pointedly at the chart of the island.

“What if I don’t want to find the Beldona?” she asked him quietly.

He looked from the chart to her. “I figured you didn’t want to find the ship,” he said softly. “Because if you had wanted to find it, you would have.”

She shook her head. “That isn’t true. But it doesn’t matter. She’s a wretched ship. She destroys lives.”

He shook his head firmly. “That ship is an inanimate object. It destroys nothing. Men destroyed your father’s life. And the Beldona may provide the clue to finding out what happened. Besides, even more is at stake now. Remember? Hank Jennings disappeared, too. You were attacked. Unless you want me on your tail night and day for the rest of your life, we’ve got to find out what happened.”

She thought about that, lowering her lashes. It wasn’t actually so bad to have him on her tail.

Telling her that he had been in love with her. That he still loved her. That he wanted her.

Making love to her. Holding her….

But she could feel it just the same—tension was growing on Seafire Isle. Like the pressure that came with a storm. She was in danger. He couldn’t guard her every moment of his life, but she wasn’t equipped to fight off whatever the threat might be by herself. She was strong, she was independent, she could fight—but she was also smart enough to realize that she could be caught unaware.

Drugged.

Taken.

And then what?

She didn’t know.

Emotional involvement aside, she needed Adam right now, and Adam needed her.

But Adam was holding out on her. She knew it, and she didn’t understand it. She couldn’t give herself totally to him when she knew he was still keeping secrets from her.

He could be so damned relentless. Like the others, it seemed he believed that she could find the ship. He saw more clearly than the others, though; he knew she didn’t want to find the ship.

She didn’t want to find her father’s remains.

Adam was staring at the charts again. “What are you looking for?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Something, some little clue that we’re all missing.” He spun around and stared at her. “Sam, you must know something,” he insisted.

“I have to shower and dress,” she told him, going quickly back down the hallway.

In the shower, she felt the water rushing over her. Her head seemed to pound in time with the beat of the water. She leaned against the tile while the water continued to fall.

Okay, so it was true that she had denied knowing anything about the Beldona because she didn’t want to find the ship.

She didn’t want to find her father’s body.

And Hank’s.

Then again, it was also true that she really didn’t know anything. Okay, perhaps that wasn’t quite true. She knew all the theories regarding the ship. She knew the Beldona’s history. The ship had gone down just after her English captain and crew had seized the Spanish ship Yolanda. Captain Reynolds of the Beldona had made prisoners of the Spaniard’s captain, his lieutenants—and the woman Reynolds had loved, a passenger on the Yolanda. So what did this give her?

Sam finished showering. She slipped into a short slinky silver-knit halter dress, then went out to the living room. Adam was still staring at the chart on the wall.

“I think I know why Robert Santino might have sent his son out to look for the Beldona,” she said.

Adam turned to stare at her. She walked into the room. “Captain Reynolds of the Beldona had fallen in love with Theresa-Maria Rodriguez, daughter of Don Jose Martinez-Rodriguez, a high official of the Spanish court. Theresa-Maria’s mother was an Englishwoman, and the young lady had lived in London for quite some time, long enough for her and Reynolds to form a passionate bond. Her father, however, was determined that she have nothing to do with an Englishman. He pulled her out of England and betrothed her to Don Carlos Esperanza, the—”

“The captain of the Yolanda,” Adam said. “Which made it an even greater triumph for Captain Reynolds when he seized the Yolanda. Unfortunately for him, of course, his own ship went down, as well.”

Sam hesitated for a second. “There was a theft of certain Spanish jewels at just around the same time,” she