Stranger In The Night Read online

  Terra laughed, feeling comfortable, cozy and very much at home in the snug cabin. She felt as relaxed and natural as if she’d known him for years, and from what she could tell the feeling was mutual. Underlying it all was irresistible attraction, sexual awareness, ever-heightening anticipation.

  It seemed to her that she’d leapt overboard into the ultimate romantic fantasy, complete with a sexy hero, provocative surroundings and intimate atmosphere. She felt as safe and protected as if she’d been imagining the whole thing.

  Jilly and Fallon would never believe where she was right now or who she was with. The sailor. They’d turn crisp with envy if they could see her now.

  She wondered if they’d noticed her absence yet. Probably not. More likely, they assumed she was finally throwing off her inhibitions with Greg or someone else in a bunk room on the houseboat.

  “So, do you live around here?” the man asked, handing her a mug of steaming, brandy-scented chocolate.

  She took a sip. “California. What about you? Your accent sounds local.”

  “It is. From one of the offshore islands, though, not Charleston. This is my last night in port. Come dawn, I’ll put out to sea for the next few months.”

  His words shifted her imagination into high gear. She pictured him sailing the seven seas in pursuit of dangerous adventure and fabulous fortune. The image fit the fantasy, and led her to feel further and further removed from reality.

  It was starting to seem long ago that she’d almost died. And almost died a virgin!

  She told him, “Tomorrow, I leave, too. Back to the Golden State.”

  He gazed at her through the steam rising from his mug. “It’s the last night for both of us, then.”

  She met his gaze and willingly let it take hold of her. There was no question in her mind what his thoughts were, or what his husky tone implied. His eyes said it all—that he desired her, that he’d be wonderful to her if she would stay with him tonight.

  Terra found herself thinking, Yes, yes, yes. Her gaze dropped to the firm, sensual shape of his lips and prompted a relentless urge to kiss him, touch him, put her whole self in his hands. The man was perfect. So perfect that she wasn’t tense. The mood was ideal, and for the first time in her life she wanted to be swept away.

  If she didn’t respond to him, and the plane crashed tomorrow, she’d die—as she’d almost died tonight— without ever experiencing a man like this.

  “I don’t want to go back to the party,” she said.

  “Good,” he replied in a low, thrumming tone, “because I don’t want you to go.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why, Mermaid. I’m not the only one here feeling, well, romantic.” He paused. “Or am I?”

  “No…not only you. It’s so strong, and so much of a surprise.”

  He nodded. “The best surprise I’ve ever had, no exceptions.”

  “Me, too.” She licked her lips. “Except, we barely know each other.”

  He agreed, “Barely. But it doesn’t seem to matter, yoes it?”

  “No. Nobody like you ever happened to me before.”

  “I feel the same about you. Are we dreaming, or what?”

  “Maybe. If we are…I don’t want to wake up.”

  “Neither do I. Not until morning.” He put his mug down and silently moved toward her.

  She set her own aside, too, and rose from the chair. As naturally as if she’d done it countless times before, she went into his arms, tipped her head back and whispered, “Make love to me, Sailor.”

  “I’ll die if I don’t,” he whispered back.

  “Me, too.”

  “Ahh, Mermaid, you’re a dream come true.”

  She lifted her lips to his kiss and let romantic passion rule her last night of spring break….

  1

  Five years later…

  TERRA CAMDEN FROWNED at the produce basket full of rutabagas on her office desk. They were forcing her to hole up in her office and work late on Friday. All week long they’d been there, frowning back at her in their own, inert, turnipy way. By Wednesday, she’d begun referring to rutabagas as the R-word. Now, she was beyond words with frustration.

  The restaurateur who’d sent them had hired her to redesign and rewrite his menus, which she’d done except for thinking up two tantalizing words—or three at most—that would sell a dinner entrée of roast beef and rutabagas to diners who wanted nothing to do with the undelectable R-word.

  For the first time in her career, she questioned why she’d chosen to be a menu specialist. Someone whose professional aim was to attract, entice and seduce with words that had taste buds, so to speak.

  “You’re a dirt-poor rooting section,” she grumbled under her breath at the rutabagas. “It’s the best I can say for you.”

  Her secretary, Macy, buzzed her on the speaker phone and asked, “Are you inspired yet?”

  “Brain-dead is more like it.” Terra groaned.

  “Want me to keep taking messages on your incoming calls?”

  “It’s time you went home, Macy. Past time.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Macy said, and rang off.

  Terra scrutinized the rutabagas again and concentrated. Words. She needed just the right words of a specialized, suggestive language known as menu-ese in the food-service world. Creative menu copy, paired with an attractive format, could coax and cajole, manipulate and maneuver, titillate and tantalize. Unfortunately, every word and phrase in her professional vocabulary was failing her at the moment.

  Her client ran an upscale Americana-style restaurant; her menu design, if she could solve the final problem it posed, would make the restaurant’s cash register ring to the tune of higher profits.

  Squinting at the basket, she wished its contents would bring a description better than Roasted Root Veggies to mind. She didn’t want to take the problem home for the weekend. She wanted to solve it now. And the client wanted the sample menus first thing Monday morning!

  Stumped for a solution, she stood from the desk and stretched out the kinks m her shoulders. Hearing Macy start up the copy machine, Terra went out to stop her. A skinny, wide-eyed, mop-top redhead, Macy was a gogetter. Too much of one today.

  Terra chided her, “It’s almost six, time for you to call it a week.”

  “I’m waiting for you to hit rutabaga pay dirt,” Macy replied, turning off the copy machine.

  “No chance. I’m not even close to a breakthrough.”

  “Maybe it’ll come to you over the weekend.”

  “Not if the past week is any indicator of success,” Terra said with a sigh. “It’s times like this that I miss Aunt Claire more than ever.”

  Until a year ago, Camden Consulting had been Claire’s business, a one-woman show in downtown San Francisco. Throughout high school and college, Terra had worked part-time for her, learning all that her aunt could teach her about menu design, food merchandising and copywriting. After college she went to work as a consultant with Claire.

  Last year, Claire died in a traffic accident and left Camden Consulting to Terra. Terra had kept it successful, and loved the work, but she always missed Claire’s expertise and guidance.

  “I wish I had known her,” Macy sympathized.

  “She wouldn’t have had any problem making rutabagas sound delicious,” Terra said with a sad smile.

  Macy wrinkled her nose. “They’re the weirdest vegetables, except for gingerroots maybe.”

  “Weird,” Terra agreed, “until you taste what a creative chef can do with them. Then they really do deserve to be served with pride and eaten with relish. But getting that across on a menu is no mean feat.”

  Macy pretended to gag. “They look like something even starving Pilgrims wouldn’t have touched.”

  Terra brightened. “Pilgrims. That’s an idea.” She grabbed a pen and paper from Macy’s desk and started scribbling. “Macy, bring up Synonymous on your computer. What’s under pilgrim?”

  Macy turned to the keyboard and a
ctivated the program. She read off the first few synonyms. “Crusader, devotee, tourist, colonist.”

  Terra jotted down the fourth word. “Keep going.” She chewed thoughtfully on the pencil while Macy continued to the end of the listing.

  “…settler, pioneer, homesteader.”

  “Not colonial enough,” Terra said, shaking her head.

  “Terra, you just said it. Not Colonial Rutabagas, but what about Colonial Pot Roast?”

  “Yes!” With a gleeful smile, Terra wrote it down. “It sounds cozy and comforting. Feel-good food. Bless you, Macy Medford.”

  “Not yet,” Macy demurred. “The roots are still weird and nameless.”

  “True, but now they’ve got a concept going for them. Let’s brainstorm…free-associate. The Pilgrims were colonials and what else?”

  “Founding fathers.”

  “Hmm. Let’s see now, as founding fathers they gave our country its history.”

  “Its past, its yesteryear,” Macy said.

  “Days of old,” Terra responded. “Historical beginnings …” She shut her eyes to concentrate. “I’m on the verge of one, perfect, historical-sounding word.” She popped her eyes open. “That’s it!”

  “What?”

  “Heritage. Heritage Vegetables.” Terra breathed a long sigh of triumph and relief.

  Macy applauded. “Heritage even sounds healthy, for some reason,” she said. “You’re a genius, nothing less.”

  Terra put up a hand. “Without your own genius, I’d still be scraping the bottom of my brain. Thank you more than I can ever say.”

  “No, thank you for hiring me when nobody else would,” said Macy.

  Terra smiled, remembering the day a year ago when Macy had applied for the secretarial job. Five months pregnant, unwed and unemployed, Macy had been desperate for work.

  “My lucky day,” Terra assured her.

  “Ours both,” said Macy. “If I’d known then what I know now about my Venus and Mars, not to mention Saturn and Jupiter.”

  Terra wagged a finger at her. “As if your horoscope has anything to do with anything.”

  Astrology was always a subject of friendly debate between them. Whereas Macy put stock in stargazing, Terra believed that fate was determined by human behavior, not the solar system. Her own life for the past few years had certainly been the outcome of her own weaknesses and strengths, not planetary influences. Nevertheless, she found Macy’s horoscopic forecasts amusing and entertaining.

  “Either way, you gave me a hand up when I was down and out and I’ll never forget it,” Macy said gratefully.

  Terra reflected that there was more that Macy would never forget—the sudden miscarriage that ended her unplanned pregnancy. Macy’s situation, so similar in certain ways to Terra’s own at one time, had forged a deep emotional bond between them.

  A beep sounded from the fax machine and Macy took the message that came out. “Ooh, a love letter. To you from your favorite guy.”

  Taking the sheet of paper Macy handed her, Terra saw that it was covered by a big, lopsided, hand-drawn heart. “To Mommy from Josh,” she read, a lump of happy, loving emotion forming in her throat.

  All day long she’d looked forward to spending a quiet evening with her four-year-old son and her parents at their house. Her mother was both grandma and baby-sitter to Joshua.

  For Terra, dividing time between Josh and Camden Consulting was a constant struggle. As sole provider for Josh and herself, she was always torn between him and her career.

  Her blue-eyed, dark-haired son was a joy, the breath of her life. She found herself thinking wistfully, If he had a father to send drawings to… But that wasn’t anywhere on the horizon. Her child’s biological father would never know of his offspring, would never receive a heart full of love sent to Daddy from Josh.

  Terra held a fading hope that Josh would have a stepfather someday, yet there wasn’t time in her life lately for more than a casual date now and then. Besides that, she feared getting serious, since it would compel her to reveal the sordid secret that she’d conceived Josh during a one-night stand.

  It hadn’t seemed sordid on the night it happened, but shocking, tragic developments soon afterward had kept her silent about how and by whom she’d gotten pregnant. She alone knew the story.

  For Josh’s sake, she’d keep her silence forever about his father’s identity.

  Macy broke into her thoughts. “Where did Josh fax from?”

  “My father’s new machine. Mom gave it to him at Christmas, but Dad had a techno fear attack and put off installing it until last night. He—” The phone rang and she stopped as Macy answered it.

  “Camden Consulting. Oh, hi. Fine, thanks, and you?”

  Terra turned back toward her own office, but Macy motioned her to stay.

  “Terra left just a moment ago,” Macy fibbed. “Hold on a sec while I try to catch her.” She pushed the hold button and told Terra, “It’s Columbia. She’s got a big menu project for you.”

  Columbia Hanes was a celebrity chef, Terra’s top client and also her friend. After gaining great fame in San Francisco, Columbia had returned a few months ago to her birthplace in the South, where her African-American roots ran deep. She was now the executive chef at the luxurious, exclusive Bride’s Bay Resort on Jermain’s Island off the coast of South Carolina.

  Terra had been expecting—and dreading—that Columbia would eventually want her to go there and work up new menus for the resort.

  “Would you rather get back to her on Monday?” Macy asked.

  “No, put her through on my line.”

  “Terra, are you okay?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “You look like Columbia’s project is the worst news in the world.”

  “I’m just root veggie’d out, that’s all.” She returned to her office and picked up the phone.

  “Columbia, hi. What’s happening?”

  “Nothing you can’t handle,” the chef replied in her usual warm, friendly tone. “I need new menus all around—dining rooms, grill, banquets, catering, special events. In addition, there are some big VIP events coming up that I need menus for, too.”

  “Well, I’d love to work on it with you on everything, but—”

  “Terra, please don’t tell me you’re booked too far ahead to help me out on short notice.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Terra told her. “My calendar next week is full and after that I’m taking Josh on vacation for two weeks. When I return I—”

  “Any chance you could make it a working vacation and spend it here?”

  “Not unless I win the lottery. I mean, seriously, two weeks at a luxury resort is beyond my means.”

  “I can easily comp your stay, Terra. Room, meals, you name it, I’ll comp it and pay your full fee, as well.”

  “That’s very generous,” Terra murmured, striving to think of several more reasons why she couldn’t take on the work.

  The truth she couldn’t tell was that she had a connection to Jermain’s Island and Bride’s Bay Resort that no one else knew about. It was too tragic and painful for her to reveal to anyone. She’d never actually been to the island, but had a connection nonetheless, one that had to remain a secret.

  “How is Josh, by the way?” Columbia asked.

  “Oh, just great, having a ball in preschool. And how’s Lalie?”

  “Mama’s going strong, still overjoyed that I’m back on home ground. ‘Where I belong,’ she says.” Columbia chuckled. “She sends her best.”

  Terra and Claire had gotten to know Lalie Hanes quite well from the many times she’d visited her daughter in San Francisco. The four of them had often gotten together for lunch or dinner at those times, and when Claire died, Lalie came out from South Carolina for the funeral.

  “Likewise from here,” Terra said.

  “You can tell her in person when you get here. In fact, come to think of it, Mama can baby-sit Josh for you a few hours each day. How’s that for a bright idea?”


  It was much too bright for Terra’s comfort. “I’d hate to inconvenience Lalie.”

  “Trust me, she’d be thrilled.”

  Terra suppressed a sigh. “Columbia, can I get back to you on this next week?”

  “Of course. First thing, if you can.”

  “Monday morning,” Terra agreed. She hung up and went out to Macy’s desk.

  Macy was preparing to leave. “Anything I can do before I go?” Macy asked. “Like book you the next flight to South Carolina?”

  “I’m not going, Macy.”

  “What?” Macy looked shocked. “Why?”

  Terra reeled off all the reasons she’d given Columbia, adding that the chef had suggested a working vacation. “It’s against my vacation rules, unfortunately. Josh deserves all of me on holiday, not part of me.”

  “What did Columbia say when you declined?”

  “Well, actually, I didn’t tell her no. I stalled her until Monday.”

  “No disrespect, Terra, but you’re not acting any-thing like yourself.”

  “After a week of trying to wring charm out of rutabagas,” Terra replied, faking a weary smile, “it’s no wonder.”

  “Maybe not,” Macy allowed. “But right now, I wouldn’t turn down a big client. Or a working vacation at a posh resort on a romantic island. I’ll bet your aunt would go for it if she could.”

  “True, but Aunt Claire wasn’t a single mom.” Terra shook her head. “I’ll call next week and decline.”

  “Geez, Terra, I don’t get this. You’ve never turned down work in the whole year I’ve been here. Especially not work for Columbia.”

  “Macy, I haven’t taken a vacation since college and I’m not going to let business interfere in the one I’ve got planned.”

  Looking unconvinced and bewildered, Macy gathered up her raincoat and umbrella. “I’d better get going or I’ll be late.”

  “For what?” Terra was eager to change the subject.

  “A date, unbelievably, of the blind variety.” Macy grimaced.

  Terra had a moment of surprise, then gave Macy a thumbs-up. “Good for you.”

  “My social life needs something more than me going for it,” Macy agreed dubiously, “but this?” She trudged to the door.