Night, Sea, And Stars

  NIGHT, SEA, AND STARS

  Heather Graham

  Crash-landing on a remote South Pacific island put fashion executive Skye Delaney at a distinct disadvantage. And when she learned that her arrogant pilot was none other than Kyle Jagger, the mysteriously reclusive international entrepreneur, she knew that survival was the least of her problems.

  Remote and domineering one minute, tender and passionate the next, he was everything she despised—and wanted—in a man. But what of his wife in California? And why was it that whenever she tried to envision her own fiancé, all she could see was Kyle's laughing sea-green eyes? Sensible, independent, had she found the man of her dreams on an idyllic paradise isle? Would rescue and return to reality mean losing him forever?

  PROLOGUE

  June 4, the South Pacific

  A dozen seabirds, splendid as they soared against the ceaseless green and brown backdrop of island foliage, carried on wild squawked conversations. The sun blazed down on the glistening shoreline; a startled crab danced along the sand in a comical side step.

  Suddenly the birds were silent. A light breeze had stirred the trees, and it, too, seemed to stop suddenly.

  A strange droning could be heard in the air. Constant for only seconds, it then coughed, sputtered, and choked—a terrible, terrifying sound. The peaceful paradise came alive with screams, and out of the sky fell a burning, billowing lightning bolt of silver.

  The silver streak met with the ground at a chilling pace, shearing away the treetops before it finally came to rest. A thicket of high grass cushioned the belly of the aircraft before it skidded and careened desperately down the beach.

  The plane held together.

  Kyle Jagger lost several precious seconds of time staring ahead, shaking, beads of perspiration racing down his body, so hot, then turning so clammy cold. His heart thundered painfully against his chest; he had held his breath for so long that now each gulping inhalation sounded like the raging wind of an encroaching storm.

  But he had done it. He had landed the Lear against all odds, against the fickle winds of the South Pacific, against the hydraulic failure that had threatened them with sure death.

  Intelligence and instinct suddenly broke through the haze of his mind. Hydraulic failure… hydraulic fluid. He could smell it. It had to be leaking into the plane…

  Without further thought Kyle jerked off his seat belt and struggled through the small confines of the craft to seek out his single passenger.

  It would be a woman, he thought with a mental groan. An unconscious one at the moment. Or at least he hoped she was only unconscious.

  Her face was hidden by the wide brim of a beige felt hat; her head was slumped forward. Kyle paused briefly with his fingers against her throat to check for a pulse. She was alive. He hastily unbuckled her seat belt and hefted her surprisingly light frame into his arms, vaguely and disparagingly noting her fragility. She couldn't stand more than five four, and her bone structure must be as delicate as fine china.

  He couldn’t waste time worrying about that. He had to get them both off the plane. Only seconds had actually passed since the Lear had shuddered to its final resting place; it felt like a lifetime.

  Suddenly she awakened. Thick golden lashes flew wide open to reveal alarmed, widely dilated topaz eyes. Cat eyes, he thought fleetingly. Ever so slightly tilted at the corners.

  She took one look at him and let loose a piercing scream.

  Balancing her weight quickly, he slapped her sharply and full across the face, fearful her struggles would kill them both.

  “Stop!” he grated harshly. “The plane could explode!”

  Instantly a clarity replaced the dazed panic in her stare and her flailing ceased. “Put me down!” she demanded arrogantly. “I’m fine.”

  “As you say, lady.” Kyle dumped her on her spike-heeled feet and immediately applied his sure hands and ample shoulders to the door. Jammed by the landing, it refused to give. Kyle wasted no time on futile effort, but turned to the emergency exit over the wing, annoyed beyond irritation to see his elegant passenger fumbling around her seat.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, amazed that, threatened by death, she could be scrambling for personal items.

  “My bag,” she told him, looping a long strap over a beige cambric clad shoulder.

  “Leave it to a woman,” he uttered with distaste, now pitting his strength against the emergency exit. It gave, and he crawled out to the wing and leaped to the ground.

  “I've already gotten the thing,” she hissed, her topaz eyes amazingly daggerlike for the delicate creature she appeared as she stood on the wing. “In less time than it took you to bitch, I might add!”

  “Shut up and jump!” Kyle commanded, catching her slender body as she saw fit to obey him. He gripped her wrist. “And now, lady, I suggest we run like hell.”

  They started off down the beach, hand in hand in the simple pursuit of survival. Suddenly she let out an anguished cry and fell to the sand, jerking Kyle back. He glanced down to see that her ankle had twisted.

  “Damned idiot!” he muttered, knowing he could not spare a second on venting his anger. “Stinking heels.” A spatter of crisp curses on his lips, he once more hefted her slim frame—and the offending bag—into his arms.

  “Sorry!” she retorted bitterly, forced to loop her arms around his neck. Her cat gaze, the pain shrouded by indignity, met his briefly. “I didn’t dress for a plane crash.”

  He started to run again. Her hat blew from her head; a cascade of honey-blond hair tangled around his shoulders and arms and frothed a silken fragrance against his cheeks.

  “This damn bag of yours weighs a ton!” he informed her, realizing his words were a waste of breath, but issuing them anyway. Her hair was blinding him, seducing him from his purpose with its fragrance; the bag she was so determined to keep was heavy; his lungs ached with the effort, his legs were heavy. Thank God, she hadn’t decided to salvage the rest of her luggage.

  She didn’t reply, and he wisely chose to waste no more breath, striving to put distance between them and the promised explosion instead. He knew the plane was going to blow. It was almost a sixth sense—he knew from the air, just as he had known that speed was of the essence.

  And when it went, it was as if the ground had been split asunder. Fire raked the sky with blinding brilliance; the boom was deafening. Acrid smoke shut out the day.

  Kyle hadn’t gotten far enough. A wave of hot air assailed his back, reaching down like a massive hand out of the heavens to lift him effortlessly.

  They sailed through the air; the canvas bag wrenched free from them and hurtled ahead on its own.

  Kyle’s reaction was simply instinct. What he held in his arms was light, soft, fragile, and feminine—a woman. He twisted his body with every ounce of effort to protect her.

  Consequently it was he who landed hard against the sand, his head striking the tip of a beached log.

  Her fall was softened by the cushion of his body, yet still the impact robbed her of breath.

  For each of them the world went black.

  And then the earth began her own healing process to cleanse away the smoke and fire.

  It began to rain.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Skye Delaney moaned as the first drops of rain trickled from her hair to trail down her forehead. She lifted her head groggily, blinking to clear her dazed mind. Then the events of the last few minutes—God, it had all happened in less than five!—crowded her mind with panic and a severe trembling shook her body in convulsive spasms.

  The plane had crashed, but oh, sweet God, she was still alive!

  Skye suddenly realized that her fingers were tensely curled into cloth. She blinked again a
nd looked down—onto the double-breasted navy blazer of the man who had saved her. He was rude and domineering, but she was thankful he was strong, agile, and quick thinking. She swallowed and winced, biting into her bottom lip to fight against tears that would vie with the rain to blind her. What was the matter with her? It was thanks to him that she was alive, and her first memory was that of his chauvinism!

  Real panic hit her hard again as she made another realization. She was not only alive, but in sound and functioning shape because he had used his own body to shield hers. His limp arms were still twined around the small of her back and she was sprawled over him. Part of him at least. His length and breadth completely dwarfed hers.

  His eyes were closed. His hair, a burnished copper color, was disheveled over a bronzed forehead gone disturbingly ashen. Ridiculously, Skye registered several aspects of his face without really thinking about them. Somewhere in her mind she stored a memory of high, wide cheekbones, dark, arched, cleanly spaced brows. A long, arrogantly straight nose. Lips that in repose were full and well shaped were clearly outlined in a jaw that even now was ruggedly squared, as if cast in iron—a recently shaved jaw. Of all the infinitesimal things to note, she stared into the face just inches from hers, studying the tiny laugh lines ingrained on the sides of his closed eyes and the full, sensual mouth.

  She shook herself, wondering once again what the hell she was doing. Had she gone into shock to stare into a man’s face when he might be…

  “No!” She said the word aloud. “Oh, God,” she prayed, lifting her face, drenched and hair plastered against it, to the sky in supplication. “Please! Please, let him be okay!”

  Skye rolled from his chest, tears seeping now down her cheeks, unnoticed along with the raindrops. Drawing her feet beneath her in the sand, she slipped her fingers through the blazer opening and felt his chest tentatively, holding her own breath as her prayers continued silently. She exhaled, trembling again with relief as she felt movement through the thin material of his shirt.

  He was breathing. Frantically she felt his wrist for a pulse, fumbling to find the vein. Again she exhaled tremulously, unaware that she had held her breath again until dizzy relief caused automatic expulsion. His lifeblood was pounding with sound regularity.

  But what did she do now? Her first-aid knowledge was pathetically weak, but if he had blacked out from the force of the blast, why wasn’t the rain awakening him as it had her? Maybe it wasn’t enough. She touched his cheek gingerly but received no reaction and cursed herself as a fool. It was agony to be so frustratingly helpless!

  Get a hold of yourself! she commanded silently. The bag she had been determined to get off the plane lay a few feet away. She stretched for it and gently lifted his head, only then noticing the ragged edges of the log beside them. As her fingers gently wound into the nape of his neck, she felt the stickiness of blood.

  Skye groaned aloud, the sound a wail that was lost to the wind and still-spattering rain. Why wasn't she one of those people who was just great in emergencies?

  The rain stopped abruptly. It was as if the air had been washed, and that accomplished, a faucet had been turned off. In the not-too-great distance, twisted fragments that were once the sleek Lear still burned, but the fire no longer reached to the sky. The flames were low, as if sated and content with the destruction.

  Skye gave herself a good mental shake and locked her eye teeth into a corner of her mouth to brace herself. Very carefully she turned the dark auburn head now resting on the bag. She burrowed through a thick wealth of hair until she found the wound, drawing a spot of blood from her own mouth as she bit even harder with another spasm of relief. Although there was a good size bump on his head, the blood came from a comparatively small cut.

  Ice.

  How ridiculous! Where was she going to get ice? All she could see was beach, sand, high grass, and multi-rooted trees. Don’t be such a damned idiot, she chastised herself harshly. Do something!

  Common sense finally won out over the shock of the situation, Skye leaped to her feet and wriggled out of her shoes and slip. She started a quick rush to the shoreline, then groaned as a wave of burning pain shot up from her twisted ankle. Gritting her teeth, she limped to the water, glad to find it cool and refreshing from the rain. She hobbled back to the stricken pilot, then methodically worked on cleansing the wound. Honestly, she told herself with disgust, after all the time she had spent bringing emotional support to Steven in the hospital, she should have assimilated something of the practical work done in a medical emergency.

  But then, in Steven’s case, there had been little practical left to do. She could only hold the hand of one destined to die…

  She shivered and tears trickled down her cheeks in silent rivulets. That tragedy was in the past, but suddenly made acutely aware of life, Skye grieved afresh for the brother who had lost the precious gift.

  But her tears were more than pain; they were an incredible joy, and a tinge of guilt at the incredible joy and gratitude of merely being alive. This morning in Sydney she hadn’t even given life itself a thought. She existed in a whirlwind, always a bevy of activity surrounding her.

  One business trip to another, never realizing to this moment that all else had been secondary, she had been living for and through Delaney Designs. She couldn’t remember a time when she had looked into the blue of the sky for the sheer joy of the experience, walked in the rain to revel in its delightful patter, taken time to glory in the feel of a breeze against her cheeks…

  “But I didn’t realize!” she whispered in a moan of self-excuse.

  Steven had been sick, and then Steven had died, and the business that had belonged to them both had floundered minus its cofounder. The fight to keep it alive, to make it prosper, had been a panacea, a shield to hold against pain, a shield to hold against the world.

  Leaning the pilot’s head back against her canvas bag, Skye hobbled back to the surf and resoaked her makeshift cloth. She took a moment to survey her surroundings. Sand, high grass, water, and tall trees. Were you expecting something to change? she asked herself in wry silence. But surely she was in the known world. Help would come. When the Lear didn’t arrive in Tahiti to refuel, search parties would begin to comb the area. Perhaps rescue was already on the way. The pilot had probably radioed a May Day…

  The pilot! Even if he seemed to be a rude and chauvinistic SOB— the type of man she fought against every business day—he had certainly saved her skin! And good Lord, they were people!

  Skye limped quickly back to the pilot and carefully began to bathe his face with the cool seawater, her fingers absurdly slender and elegant against the rugged planes and chiseled angles of his features, “Live, please, will you?” she whispered desperately. “Please! Come to!”

  Her fervent prayers were answered by a groan; the ashen color was leaving his skin, the natural bronze replacing it. Skye watched as facial muscles twitched; his eyelids flickered, but didn’t quite make it open.

  “Hey!” Skye pleaded, tapping his chin with light strokes. She slipped a hand around his sinewy neck to slide his head as easily as possible back to the sand so that she might rummage through the bag she had been determined to save. The weight he had complained about was mainly that of the bottles she carried among other things. Two quarts of an associate’s homemade rum; several small bottles of Burgundy that were a part of cheese and cracker gift sets. Brandy was supposed to be good in a situation like this—wouldn’t rum serve just as well? Or perhaps the Burgundy. Or was a sip of liquor just for fainting spells? Would she choke him to death rather than save him?

  Rum or Burgundy?

  “Oh, the hell with it!” she muttered. She was an executive who made split-second decisions and she was going into mental trauma over a swallow of rum… or Burgundy. It would be the rum, and he would take a swallow.

  Cradling his head in her arms, she was glad that she hadn’t decided to try to move him. If muscle weighed more than fat, as she had heard, he must be composed of o
ne muscle after another— down to his toes. Carefully straining to hold his head so that there was a clear path down his throat, she fumbled with the screw cap and finally discarded it with her teeth. Sliding the mouth of the bottle against his lips, she angled it so that a slender stream of the potent liquor trickled partially into his mouth and partially onto his chin.

  He coughed, sputtered, and gasped. The muscles in his eyelids twitched briefly and then his eyes flew wide open. Cool, riveting lime-green eyes surveyed her accusingly.

  “You!” he grated in a harsh whisper.

  Skye compressed her lips tightly and blinked, fighting a wave of defensive anger. Of all the nerve! Here she was—solicitous of his needs, after he had crashed the damn plane!—and he was staring at her as if he had been marooned with the beast with two heads.

  “Who were you expecting?” she demanded irritably. “I would have called the Red Cross, but I’m sorry, I didn’t have change for the phone!”

  His quick raking gaze seemed to sear her with a cold scornful reproach. His head was still in her lap; a tendril of sodden blond hair grazed his cheek as she returned his scrutiny with defiance.

  His gaze left her and he abruptly rose to sit, half knocking her out of the way in the process. He groaned deeply at the movement, clutching his head with both hands and bowing it. Skye saw furrows work their way tensely into his brow. “Who was I expecting?” he muttered, more to himself than to her, his voice strangely puzzled.

  “What do you mean?” Skye demanded, her voice rising with bewildered alarm at his confusion.

  He shook his head without glancing her way and very gingerly attempted to stand, pausing for balance on the balls of his feet in a crouch, then rising slowly, one hand assiduously rubbing his temple. He was silent for a long time. His eyes, were sharp and piercing as they lit first upon the surf lapping the beach shoreline, then scanned the trees, the high grass field, the distant horizon, and, way down an interminable length of sand, the burning scattered remains of the Lear.