Carolina Isle Read online

  Reaching back, he took her hand. “I want you on my side at the hearing on Monday. As for the kiss, a pretty girl and—”

  “Spare me,” she said, starting to walk again and dropping his hand. She was just one of many women. It was the big complaint of all the women who came weeping to her, saying that R.J. had broken it off with them.

  As they walked, she looked at the back of him and wondered what the truth was. “Do you have a plan about all this?”

  “None whatever. What about you?”

  “None,” she said cheerfully. “Are you sure Nezbit was dead? He wasn’t planted in the bathtub and pretending to be dead, was he?”

  “Very sure. His body was disgustingly cold.”

  “Do you think—?” she began but stopped when R.J. halted. She stopped beside him.

  “Don’t look back, but someone is following us,” he said quickly. “And I think someone is ahead of us too. I think it’s just possible there are a parade of people around us. See those rocks up there?” he asked. “Think you could walk along the edge of them?”

  “Yes,” Sara said, but she wasn’t sure she could. They seemed to go straight up and straight down.

  “Come on then,” he said. “Want me to carry your pack?”

  “No. I put all the heavy stuff in yours so I’m fine.”

  She followed R.J. through tall grass until they emerged on a rocky surface. Above them were sheer rocks, looming high overhead. “I think we can go this way,” R.J. whispered and held out his hand to help her up.

  She couldn’t find a foothold in the stone surface, so R.J. had to pull her up, and she scraped her knee on the rock.

  “All right?” he whispered.

  When she nodded, he turned and started climbing up until he was against the tall rocks, then he reached down for her. Sara was determined to make it on her own. She threw one leg up high, then used all her muscles to follow her leg with the rest of her body. She made it up, and R.J. caught her to him in his arms, his finger to his lips bidding her to be quiet.

  They inched along the rock, their backs to it, feeling their way to the left. Twice R.J. paused and looked out at what they could see of the countryside. Both times Sara was silent, hating the height, hating not having a good foothold, but she said nothing. When R.J. nodded, she started inching along again.

  “Look!” he whispered, but she couldn’t see around him to what he was seeing.

  With her breath held, she watched him remove his pack, then hand it to her. “Too many doughnuts,” he whispered, then he turned sharply left and disappeared from her view. Holding on as best she could, her pack on her back, his on her front, she tried to turn enough so that she could see what had happened to him, but she could see nothing.

  “In here,” she heard R.J. whisper. “Can you hand me the packs?”

  Sara shook her head. Taking off the packs would make her fall.

  He must have been able to see her because he said, “Okay, then, I think you’re skinny enough to come through with them on.”

  “I can’t move,” she whispered back to him.

  In the next second, he grabbed her arm and pulled hard. Sara went flying back into what seemed to be solid rock. The front pack caught but R.J. kept pulling, and she finally slid through the narrow space into a passage about six feet wide. Ahead of them the space widened and she could see light.

  She wanted to cover her fear. “We found Fenny’s gold, didn’t we? Tell me this is the cave where he disappeared and where no one could find him.”

  R.J. kicked something on the rock floor and Sara looked down. It was an old beer can. “I don’t think we’re the first ones to find this place.”

  They walked between the rocks for a few yards until they came out at a pool of water. Above it, the rocks formed a roof with a hole in it. “How beautiful,” Sara breathed. “Breathtaking.”

  “Yet another thing that someone doesn’t want to be found,” R.J. said. “I’ll bet this is the local skinny-dip pool.” He gave her a look from under his lashes. “You wouldn’t want to …”

  She knew he was teasing her, as he always had, but suddenly Sara felt different. Instead of turning up her nose at him, she thought it might be nice to strip off and dive into the pool.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” R.J. growled. “We have work to do. We have—”

  Turning abruptly, he pulled her into his arms and held her. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. I shouldn’t have let you come with me, but I couldn’t bear to think of you with that kid David, then with Gideon. Don’t you understand that they’re just boys?”

  Sara felt anger well up inside her and she pushed him away. “I’m not going to be one of your women,” she said. “I’ve seen what you do to them and I won’t be one of them. I knew why you let me come with you, but it didn’t matter as long as I got to go. I let you kiss me because … I don’t know why I did it. It was the right moment and the right time, but now …”

  She had to push away from him because she was afraid she’d fall against him and give herself to him. She’d worked hard in the last two days to control the fear that was coursing through her, and she’d been closer to R.J. than she ever had before. He was a sexy man. He wasn’t handsome, but there was a charisma about him that drew women to him. But she wasn’t going to be one of many!

  “Sorry,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I mistook what I was seeing. I thought—”

  “You don’t have to tell me what you thought. I know you, remember? You think all women are dying to jump into bed with you. But I’m not!”

  The moment the words were out, Sara wished she hadn’t said them. She knew she had given him a look that was suggestive. She’d thought about jumping in the pretty pond with him and her eyes had said that. But when he reacted, she’d attacked him. “This is my fault,” she said under her breath. “Could we just go wherever it is we’re going?”

  R.J.’s face was cold. “Maybe you should go back to Gideon. Or to Ariel. Help her with her makeovers.”

  “No, I don’t want to,” she said more fiercely than she’d meant to. “Could we just go? Please?”

  He nodded, then turned and started walking, and she could tell by the set of his shoulders that he was angry.

  They managed to climb out of the big room, up the side of the rock, and Sara wished she hadn’t been so adamant when R.J. put his arms around her, for his attitude had changed. Instead of laughing and teasing, flirting, he was now cool and distant, formal and polite. He held out his hand when she needed help, but he withdrew it quickly.

  She followed him across the top of a ridge of rock and when she tripped, he stopped and looked back at her, but he didn’t offer to help her up.

  The first time they stopped to rest and drink water, she asked if she could see the map that Gideon had drawn. She studied it and saw that the trail Gideon had marked was below them. They were heading in the right direction, but they weren’t on the trail that Gideon had marked.

  “You don’t trust him, do you?”

  “I don’t trust anyone on this island.” R.J. took a deep drink of water. “I’m beginning to think that if I get out of here, I’ll tell Charley to buy every inch of land and evict all these people. My gut feeling is that there are some very ugly things going on around here.”

  “Or we’re being lied to,” Sara said idly.

  “Nezbit’s dead body wasn’t a lie.”

  “No, but in a way, murder is sort of normal, isn’t it? Shipwrecks and children being brought home like puppies in a blanket are not normal.”

  R.J. was looking at her with his head cocked to one side. “Do you think we were sent up here to get rid of us? Get us out of the way until the hearing on Monday? Maybe the goal is to keep us quiet for a few days and what better way than to send us up to have a look at the old hot springs?”

  Sara moved away from the rock she was leaning on and looked around her. It was afternoon now and she was hungry. “How about if we get to the hot springs, look at them,