Eyes of Fire

“It was cool,” Brad insisted.

“Just so long as you both enjoyed it,” Sam said.

“It would have been more fun if I’d had a real dive buddy,” Darlene said.

“I’m the one without the real buddy. Thunder thighs here kept tugging at me the whole trip, squealing every time there was a barracuda within a mile,” Brad said contemptuously.

Darlene shook her head in disgust. “There’ve got to be real men somewhere, don’t you think, Samantha?”

“I’m sure there are a number of them,” Sam murmured. Where was he now? She jiggled Brad’s baseball cap. “There are lots more wrecks out there. We’ll do some different ones tomorrow, huh?”

“Coo—el!” Brad agreed, running happily off, dragging his heavy dive bag along with him. The Walkers had been on Seafire Isle four days, but inclement weather had made this the first time they had been able to dive.

Darlene shook her head again. “It can be so trying, you know. These family vacations…” she murmured.

Her folks came up behind her. Judy and Lew Walker. They were very young for having half-grown kids. Judy had confided in Sam one night that she’d been just a junior in high school when she’d found out that she was going to have a baby. She and Lew had split up, gotten back together, discussed abortion—then run away and had the baby, Darlene. They’d spent the next few years struggling, but they’d been lucky. Both sets of parents had stepped in to help, and they’d both made it through college by working part-time. “The most miraculous thing, really,” Judy had told her, “is that we made it as a couple and that we didn’t totally destroy one another.” Then she had gone on to say, “This vacation means so much to all of us. We struggled for so many years that it’s extra-special now to have the beach, the moon, the sand, the fishing, the swimming. It’s heaven!”

“Sam, a great trip,” Lew told her. He was lean, sandy-haired, still a big kid himself. A big responsible kid, Sam thought. She had liked both him and his wife—and their family—right away.

“Super!” Judy told her. Judy was very tiny and thin to the point of skinny. She had freckles, sandy-red hair and dimples. She was in constant motion, pretty in her vividness, sweet as could be.

“Super!” Sam agreed. She tried to keep smiling, but it was difficult when she didn’t know where he was. “Is that like coo—el?”

“I think. No, I’m certain,” Lew said. He slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. Their dive bags were on wheels. They only needed one hand each to drag them behind them, leaving the other hand free for each other.

Sam doubted she would be seeing the elder Walkers for cocktails, either. “Thanks,” she said.

“Super, cool—and I had the best dive partner,” came a husky male voice.

Jim Santino. Darlene called him “Romeo” and giggled all the time when he was around. He was good-looking, with a charming smile and blond hair that was long enough to fling out of his face frequently, something like a mating ritual. She’d partnered up with him today because Liam Hinnerman had gone with Sukee Pontre, who was right behind Jim now. Sukee was in her early twenties, with short dark hair and eyes and flawless ivory skin. Her father had been French, her mother Vietnamese, and Sukee had benefited from both. She wasn’t just attractive, she was exotic. She had told Sam that she had come to Seafire Isle because she had heard that not just guys but rich guys came here for vacations. She was the kind of woman who would probably have made other women hate her except that she was so blunt and funny and forthright.

“Really, handsome?” Sukee drawled to Jim. “And here I had thought you might consider me to be the perfect partner.”

“Um, er…” Jim stuttered.

“It’s difficult when there’s so damned much perfection around, isn’t it?” another voice cut in.

Sam’s eyes were drawn upward, over Jim’s shoulder.

It was him. The man from the mail boat.

Adam O’Connor.

Smiling below his Ray-Bans, his voice husky, deep, resonant. Somehow mocking.

He lowered his glasses and locked eyes briefly with Sam—an antagonistic look, yet one that somehow warned her that he didn’t intend to acknowledge the fact that he knew her.

Nor did he want her to recognize him.

Jim turned, looking up at the newcomer. He seemed to acknowledge some kind of competition—he had to, the way Sukee was staring at the man—but he was quick to redon his charming manner. “The perfect guest, the perfect hostess.” He smiled at Sam, then at Sukee, then stared at the new addition to their number once again. “You’re right. So much…perfection.” He offered a hand to the man. “Jim Santino,” he said. “Welcome to—”

“Perfection Isle?” Adam drawled. He smiled, accepting the handshake in a friendly manner.

He’s a snake, Jim, Sam longed to say in warning. Yet, somehow, she managed to keep from doing so, despite the fact that each time Adam spoke, she could hear a slight, slight underlying tinge of mockery in his voice.

The others laughed. Sam wasn’t sure Adam had meant to be amusing, even though he kept smiling. A killer smile. He had a dimple. Just one, in his left cheek.

Adam looked at her then, smiling innocently. “You must be the perfect hostess, I imagine?” He stretched his hand out to her.

If only she could bite the damned thing.

“Welcome to Seafire Isle,” Sam said smoothly, offering her own hand. She took note of his when he gripped hers. Large, powerful. The nails were bluntly cut, clean. She had very long fingers. His engulfed hers.

She drew her hand back quickly.

“Thanks,” he told her.

“Have you come to stay, or are you with the dinner party coming in tonight from Freeport?”

He shook his head. “No, I’m staying.”

“Really?” She forced herself to sound interested. “Do you have a reservation?”

Why was she playing this game? she asked herself.

“No, but your agent back at Freeport—Miss Jensen, is that right?—said that it’s slow season and you’d surely have one room left, at the least.”

“Did Miss Jensen say that?” Sam murmured. She could imagine how happy Miss Irma Jensen would have been to say it. Sam had only recently hired her to book newcomers, dinner parties and day trips to Seafire Isle. She was a sixty-year-old spinster who was certain that Sam needed to marry soon—or become a hopeless old maid herself. Irma was always delighted to book single men onto the island. She was convinced she was eventually going to make a match.

Not this time, Irma, Sam thought.

“Are you a diver, Mister, er…” Lew Walker began.

The newcomer nodded his dark head. “O’Connor. Adam O’Connor. And yes, I dive.”

“You’ll love the trips. The reefs are magnificent. And the wrecks are fascinating.”

“Wrecks are always fascinating.”

“Yes, but these are special. Sam entertains us with the history of each wreck before we reach it,” Judy said.

“Sam is always entertaining—I imagine,” Adam said politely.

“Best dive vacation I’ve ever taken,” Sukee offered. She smiled. “Mr. O’Connor. The best,” she ended sibilantly. It had a nice sexy sound to it. She’d come to flirt with all the free males—and maybe a few who were not so free. She’d concentrated on Jim so far, but now it was evident that she’d discovered a new quarry to pursue. “I just know you’ll enjoy Sam.”

Adam stared at Sam, those damned Ray-Bans back in place. “I’ll do my best,” he said politely.

She wanted to slug him.

God, she’d last seen him so long ago….

And the way she felt hadn’t changed a whit. Yes, yes, it had, she assured herself. She still wanted to kill him, still wanted to…

That was it. She simply wanted to throttle him. She was no longer crushed. She wasn’t a young woman barely turned twenty-one who was still madly, hopelessly in love with a slightly older man. A man with whom other women had been in love with as well. She wasn’t broken, desperate, longing for his touch, wanting to be held in his