Halloween Honeymoon Read online

  Some vacation, she thought glumly as he led her to the door. For the next week, she’d have to watch every word she spoke, force every gesture.

  Then Josh patted her hand reassuringly, and Cari’s fingers curled around his arm. Under layers of linen and starched cotton, she could feel hard, smooth muscles.

  Okay, so maybe she wouldn’t have to force every single gesture. Still, this was not her idea of a vacation or a honeymoon.

  Five

  Within five minutes of joining Captain Paxton and the other passengers under the royal-blue awning that shielded the forward half of the sun deck, Cari realized she wouldn’t have to lie. She wouldn’t have to say anything at all, in fact. If she wished, her part in the charade could consist of blushing, smiling and clinging to Josh’s arm, all of which she could do without opening her mouth.

  The groom was the undisputed star of the show. Aside from a few gushing comments to Cari about her luck in snaring such an incredible prize, the women did nothing but fawn all over him. Even silver-haired Evelyn Sanders, grandmother of Cari’s surly teenage dinner partner, simpered at Josh. Clutching her predinner cocktail in fingers ringed with diamonds, she demanded the details of the whirlwind secret courtship and marriage.

  “But when did you meet Cari? I could have sworn I read an article recently that said you and Jessica Hope were…” Her blue eyes widened, and she sent the bride an apologetic glance. “Oh, I’m sorry, dear. How gauche of me. Do forgive me.”

  Cari murmured something unintelligible and tried not to groan. Jessica Hope? Who was going to believe that mousy Caren O’Donnell, unemployed history professor, had snatched the prize of the decade away from sultry redheaded Jessica Hope, TV star?

  Josh stepped smoothly into the breach. He patted Cari’s hand and answered the older woman with a crooked smile that made her blink—several times.

  “You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers, Mrs. Sanders. There hasn’t been any other woman in my life since I met Cari.”

  Cari did a quick mental calculation. She and Josh had met approximately forty-four hours ago. If there hadn’t been another woman in his life since then, it just might be a new record for him.

  “Please, call me Evelyn,” Mrs. Sanders insisted, with a flutter of impossibly long lashes.

  A younger woman in a purple silk jumpsuit and a half ton of gold jewelry picked up the refrain. “Tell us all the details, Josh! How did you two meet?”

  “And when?” a third put in.

  “And where?” Evelyn queried.

  As she listened to the chorus of demands, Cari’s first taste of sharing the spotlight with an honest-to-goodness celebrity left an odd taste in her mouth. Really, these people acted as though Josh were public property. As though he had no right to any personal thoughts or secrets. Their persistence didn’t seem to faze him, though. He fielded their questions with a deftness she could only admire, and answered every query with perfect, if somewhat shaded, truth.

  “We met at a party,” he replied, slanting Cari an intimate, throat-closing glance. “We haven’t known each other long. Just long enough to decide we wanted to get married.”

  Evelyn Sanders sighed. “Love at first sight. How romantic.”

  A noisy slurp at the older woman’s side drew everyone’s attention to the teenager Cari had privately dubbed Eric the Terrible. The gold ring in the boy’s left nostril quivered as he took another swig of his soft drink, then gave his grandmother a pitying look.

  “Get real, Gram. If it’s so romantic, how come they had to sneak aboard separately? And why aren’t they wearing wedding rings? I bet they’re not really married, just fooling around.”

  Cari kept her smile pasted on her face as her nails dug into Josh’s sleeve. Good grief! She hadn’t thought about a ring. Nor had her groom, evidently. She waited to hear how he would tap-dance his way out of that one.

  Fortunately, Paul Sanders preempted Josh’s response by shooting his grandson a stern look. “Eric! Mr. Keegan explained about the need to avoid a fullcourt media press. Of course he couldn’t wear a wedding ring in public. Let’s give him a break here.”

  A beefy, balding man who’d made a fortune in the cement business, Sanders still carried himself with a rugged air of authority that silenced his grandson.

  “Besides,” Sanders, Sr., added, his gray eyes twinkling, “I want to hear what Josh thinks of Trevino’s chances of winning the Senior PGA championship. Lee’s my man,” he confided to the assembled group. “I played a round with him once in a pro-am at Pebble Beach. I used to swing a mean club myself, before arthritis got to me.”

  To Cari’s intense relief, the conversation shifted from romance to golf. The other men all joined in, as did the women. Their knowledge of the game didn’t surprise Cari. Every passenger aboard the Nautilus III except her was a member of the country club set.

  She listened with interest to a lively conversation sprinkled with terminology that was unfamiliar and at times incomprehensible to her. No dummy, she soon grasped that crunching the ball was good, and shanking it wasn’t. She also learned that a drive to the green didn’t necessarily involve a motorized golf cart. But the arm Josh hooked around her waist with seeming casualness destroyed any hope of sorting out the difference between lateral and standing water hazards.

  He was only playing his bridegroom role, Cari reminded herself. He’d rested that hand just above the curve of her hip solely for effect. Unfortunately, its effect on Cari blurred even more the confused lines between reality and make-believe.

  In her wildest dreams, she had never imagined herself standing on the upper deck of a sleek white yacht, her chiffon skirts fluttering in a balmy tropical breeze, while the nineties’ answer to Errol Flynn held her nestled against his side. Every time Josh sent her one of those looks that were somehow public and very, very private at the same time, their fuzzy relationship seemed to haze a bit more around the edges.

  By the time he’d seated her at a candlelit table laden with crystal and silver, Cari was hovering on the dangerous edge of forgetting that she was only a pretend bride. Her groom was so attentive, so considerate, so blasted sexy.

  She dragged in a deep breath and tried to hang on to reality with both hands. Resolutely she ignored the twinkle of lights against the deepening purple of Nassau’s harbor. Firmly, she refused to be seduced by her first melting taste of squab à l’orange stuffed with herbed rice. Deliberately, she tuned out the sensual cadence of Josh’s deep voice.

  She’d walked away from one near disaster with a man who was all wrong for her. She’d darn well better keep her wits about her until she’d walked away from this one. In seven days, she reminded herself sternly, she’d be a divorced woman. In ten, she’d be back in her cluttered, comfortable apartment, buried in research books and facing down a looming deadline. Or she’d be slinging chicken and biscuits during the day while she circulated résumés and tried to salvage what she could of her years of work.

  That sobering thought got Cari through dinner with both feet planted firmly on the teakwood deck. Unreality tugged at her again, however, when the chef rolled out a three-tiered wedding cake and champagne corks started popping.

  Captain Paxton stood, a wide smile on his weathered, whiskered face. “On behalf of the passengers and crew, I’d like to offer a toast to the bride and groom. May your days be filled with sunswept fairways, your nights with long, straight irons, and the years ahead with a whole league of junior golfers.”

  “Hear! Hear!” Paul Sanders echoed, holding up his glass.

  Through the spate of laughter and good wishes that followed, Cari wished fervently that she could sink under the table. She felt like an impostor. Worse than an impostor. A complete and utter fraud.

  Josh slipped a hand under her arm, dragging her up with him as he rose. With unruffled charm, he acknowledged the toast and the passengers’ wishes for a happy future, then picked up a champagne flute. The gold flecks in his hazel eye gleamed as he surveyed her hot face.r />
  “To my blushing bride.”

  He took a long swallow, then held the tall goblet to Cari’s lips. She had the choice of downing the fizzy wine or wearing it. Flashing him a grim warning not to carry this charade too far, she sipped the champagne.

  Josh wasn’t quite sure what made him want to take Cari up on that unspoken challenge. It might be the stern message in her brown eyes. Or the prim way she pursed her lips as she sipped. Or his ingrained habit of grandstanding for the crowd after a tricky shot. Whatever it was, he felt the damnedest urge to replace the cool crystal with his mouth. Hard on the heels of that came the instant and irrational urge to take her back below decks, pull the pins from her upswept hair and tumble her into that fairway-size bed. Which was exactly what he might have done if he hadn’t been married to her. With some effort, Josh forced his thoughts away from the erotic image of Cari’s creamy skin displayed against a background of pale satin.

  Smart, Keegan! Real smart! Confuse the situation even more by seducing the woman you intend to divorce in a few days.

  “Now cut the cake,” Evelyn Sanders urged gaily.

  He’d better keep a tight rein on himself and his wayward thoughts, Josh decided as he escorted his bride to the wheeled cart. And he’d darn well better curb his natural inclination to joke and tease and play to the gallery. Cari had told him bluntly that she wasn’t up to his kind of game. In spite of the fact that Josh didn’t know how to play it any other way, he had enough on his mind right now without the complication of a casual affair.

  As Cari took the long knife the steward handed her, Josh found himself pondering the question of whether a man could have an affair, casual or otherwise, with his wife.

  The flicker of dismay that crossed her face when she surveyed the cake dragged his attention back from the philosophical aspects of their marriage to the immediate realities. She wasn’t enjoying this farce, he realized. At all. The hand holding the knife was wavering, and her smile was growing more ragged by the second.

  “Here, let me help you.”

  Josh reached around her and closed his big hand over hers. It trembled in his hold, like a small, captured bird. Together, they raised the knife over the two-tiered cake.

  “Wait!” Paul Sanders interjected. “You need a picture of this for your wedding album. Eric, run to our cabin and get the camera.”

  The teenager gave his grandfather a disgusted look.

  “Now, son. Move.”

  Eric scraped his chair back and ambled toward the stairs.

  “Hold the pose for a moment,” the senior Sanders requested. “In the meantime, we’ll refill the champagne glasses.”

  Under the clink of glass on glass and convivial conversation, Josh leaned down to put his lips close to Cari’s ear.

  “You okay?”

  “No,” she replied in a low, dejected voice. “This a spice cake. Can you believe it? A spice cake.”

  He believed it. The tangy scent of cinnamon and nutmeg provided ample evidence of the fact.

  “Don’t you like spice cake?”

  “Yes,” she mumbled, blinking furiously. “I do. Especially the kind my neighbor, Mrs. Wilder, bakes.”

  Josh was still trying to figure that one out when Eric sauntered back, carelessly dangling an expensive camera by its strap.

  “Okay, now put both arms around her and get ready to cut the cake,” Sanders, Sr., commanded, squinting through the viewfinder. “Good. Good. Hold it a few seconds while I adjust the shutter speed.”

  A few seconds stretched into long minutes as the amateur photography enthusiast fiddled with lenses and settings and camera angles. Through it all, Josh kept Cari in a loose embrace, breathing in an enticing combination of lemon-scented shampoo and spicy cinnamon.

  The top of her head just brushed the underside of his chin. He refused to think about the way her firm, rounded tush brushed parts lower than his chin. Still, a slow, familiar tightening began to coil low in his body as the feel of her small, delicious body imprinted itself on his senses. To his disgust, he was wire-tight by the time Evelyn Sanders called out in exasperation.

  “For heavens sake, Paul! Take the picture, already.”

  “All right, all right.” The would-be photographer made another minute adjustment, then retreated behind the viewfinder once again. “Smile, you two. This will be one to show your grandkids.”

  By the time they’d cut the cake and rejoined the others at the table, Josh’s smile was getting as ragged around the edges as Cari’s. Fortunately, they had an out. A built-in excuse to go below early. As Evelyn Sanders said with a titter when Josh slid back his chair some time later and made their good-nights, they were on their honeymoon, after all.

  Cari’s face burned when they left to the accompaniment of envious smiles from the women and sly grins from the men. As soon as the cabin door shut behind them, she tossed her beaded bag on the sofa and spun around to face Josh.

  “That was awful!”

  He was inclined to agree. His body’s response every time he got within touching distance of this woman disturbed the hell out of him. The stinging accusation in her brown eyes right now didn’t particularly ease his discomfort, either. She acted as though this whole mess were his fault.

  “I feel like such a fraud!”

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” he replied shortly.

  Too shortly, it appeared. Her chin tilted at an angle he was beginning to recognize.

  “Please do not remind me again we’re married! You know as well I do that silly ceremony we went through doesn’t mean we’re really…” She waved a hand helplessly.

  “Married?” Josh supplied with a nasty smile, shrugging out of his linen sport coat. He tossed it over the back of the sofa and yanked at his tie. “I’m afraid it does, sweetheart.”

  “Not in any way that matters,” she retorted. “Not in the happily-ever-after, till-death-do-us-part way.”

  Josh tossed his tie on top of the jacket. “Do you really believe there is a happily-ever-after? Outside of fairy tales?”

  “I used to,” she replied, hugging her arms. “I’m not so sure anymore.”

  Josh cocked his head, watching as shadows chased across her face. His brief spurt of irritability faded, replaced by a sudden curiosity about this woman who got teary-eyed over spice cake, owned more plants than furniture and was reputed to be brilliant but unreliable. Shoving his hands into his pants pockets, he leaned his hips against the back of the sofa.

  “I take it you owe your growing disillusionment to more than just our imminent divorce. Want to tell me about him?”

  She drew a slow pattern in the carpet with the tip of one shoe. “Not particularly.”

  Josh wanted to probe further, but the closed look on her face told him that subject was out of bounds.

  “Then why don’t you tell me how you lost your job at Billings, and why this grant is so important to you?”

  Her head jerked up. “Who told you I lost it?”

  Surprised at her indignation, Josh searched his memory. “You did. Or maybe Grant did.”

  Her feathery brows snapped together. “Grant? As in Dr. Grant?”

  The sharpness in her voice told Josh he’d hit a nerve. “The same.”

  “You talked to Edward?”

  Edward, was it? Josh guessed he’d just discovered the reason for her disillusionment. He hadn’t thought much of the pompous professor, either.

  “I did.”

  Cari planted her hands on her hips. “He told you I’d been fired?”

  “He may not have said that, exactly, but he implied it.”

  “That…that puling caitiff!”

  “Right,” Josh drawled. “Exactly the way I would have described him.”

  She glared at him a moment longer, and then a reluctant smile pulled at her lips. “Caitiff is an archaic term, meaning, ah, scoundrel.”

  “Scoundrel?” He arched one brow. “Why do I suspect you’re not giving me the exact twentieth-century translation?”


  “Because I don’t use those kinds of four-letter words,” she replied prissily. Then her brown eyes gleamed with a vibrant laughter that zinged through Josh like a runaway laser. “I think them, though.”

  Lord, she was tempting. A half-size bundle of generous curves covered in layers of sunshine yellow, with eyes that held more sparkle than the sea just off the fifth hole at Maui’s spectacular Kapalua Bay resort.

  Josh knew darn well he’d better pull back. Terminate this conversation before his casual interest in Cari O’Donnell…Cari O’Donnell Keegan…crossed the invisible boundary between curiosity and fascination. Instead, he found himself pulling a hand from his pocket and gesturing toward the L-shaped leather sofa.

  “Since we don’t have any more pressing plans for the evening, why don’t you get comfortable and tell me more about ol’ Edward?”

  She hesitated, then sank down onto the air-soft leather. Following his example, she kicked off her shoes, crossed her ankles and rested her stockinged feet on the sturdy oak-and-brass coffee table. She had small feet, he noted. Small and delicately shaped, like the rest of her. When she wiggled her toes under their nylon covering, Josh suddenly understood why men’s locker rooms often sported an array of magazines that touted such things as foot fetishes—among other things. There was something damn sexy about a woman’s foot. About Cari’s foot, anyway.

  “What else did Edward say about me?” she asked.

  Josh ended his contemplation of her curling, wiggling toes. “Not much. Only that you left Billings abruptly, under questionable circumstances.”

  “They weren’t questionable. Not to me, anyway.”

  Josh sensed that talking about what had happened wasn’t easy for her. All too used to hiding his own thoughts and feelings behind a public facade, he didn’t push her.

  “Our fields closely overlapped,” she said at last, leaning her head against the sofa’s high back. “That was what drew me to Billings in the first place. I was thrilled at the chance to work with a recognized expert in Tudor political history. Edward’s treatise on the influence of the weavers’ guild during the reign of Henry VII is a textbook for any student of that period.”