Prologue
He rose from the aquamarine sea in a burst of shimmering radiance. Water streamed from his body, drops glittering like tiny stars in the dark hair that thatched his muscled chest and arrowed down his flat belly.
The tropical sun was hot on his skin, as warm as a woman’s caress. Slowly, deliberately, he lifted his face to it, eyes closed against the white-hot glare, willing himself to let go the accumulated tensions of the week.
After a while he felt his muscles begin to loosen and relax. The combination of sea and sun was an irresistible panacea, but it was not the reason he came to this isolated place time and time again.
He came because there were no intrusions, no harsh reminders of the world that he commanded. Here, no one scurried to do his bidding, no hypocrites smiled at his every joke or hung on his words with an almost laughable obsequiousness.
The silence of this timeless place was a potent luxury. Only the boom and hiss of the surf as it beat against the white sand crescent that marked the seaward perimeter of his island reached his ears. There were no other sounds. No growling powerboats, no blaring music, no flickering television screens. Necessity dictated the presence of his iPhone, but the few people entrusted with its number knew better than to use it except in matters of grave urgency.
This place, this tiny outcropping of rock, sand, and palms that rose from the Caribbean just off the coast of Puerto Rico, was Roarke Campbell’s private domain. It was his and his alone, and it had no rules but those he wished.
Making the island his had not been easy, but he had not expected it to be.
“Si, señor, we understand that you wish to buy Isla de la Pantera,” each successive government official had said patiently. “But it is not for sale.”
Of course, in the end, it had been. Things always were—for a price. If there had been one great lesson in Roarke’s life, it was that.
You could buy anything, if you had enough money.
“Señor Campbell?”
Roarke blinked and turned toward the shore. For a moment the light dazzled him and he shaded his eyes with his hands. A slow smile angled across his lips when he saw the woman standing on the sand, a squirming child in her arms.
“Your daughter is awake,” she said in Spanish. “I told her that her Papa was here, but she wanted to be certain.”
His smile broadened, softening the harsh planes and angles of his face, and he trotted quickly to the beach. The child laughed with joy as she went eagerly into his open arms.
“Daddy here,” she said, and Roarke’s arms tightened around her.
“Always,” he said, and for an instant the dark intensity was back in his eyes. “Always, sweetheart.”
The little girl squealed happily as he hoisted her onto to his shoulders. A bittersweet joy rose within him as her hands clutched at his dark, wet hair.
How could he have forgotten? There was something money couldn’t buy…
The love of this child.
His daughter.
Roarke’s smile fled. Any other kind of love was as much for sale as Isla de la Pantera He knew that first hand. It was a lesson he had learned well.
Chapter One
Jennifer’s flight lifted into the Chicago sky just as a midwinter storm swept in from Canada. She had a last glimpse of a world turned white by snow and then thick clouds rolled across her window. Everything turned gray, as if a giant hand had suddenly wrapped the 737 in cotton batting.
A woman in the seat across from hers laughed nervously as the plane was swallowed up in the weather. “What a day for flying,” she said to nobody in particular.
Jennifer knotted her hands together in her lap. And what a day for your first ever flight, she thought. But at least the plane had gotten away. There’d been delay after delay while the weather built up until finally the only thing that had seemed more frightening than the lowering sky was the possibility that the flight to San Juan might be canceled.
“It’s really rotten out there, isn’t it?”
The pleasant male voice startled her. Jennifer looked up as a man eased into the empty aisle seat beside her. He was young, good-looking, and the smile he flashed was filled with equal parts strong white teeth, male assurance, and charm.
She looked at the seatbelt sign, which was still on, and his smile took on a boyish dazzle.
“I know, I know. I should have stayed put until it went off.” He settled beside her and bent his head toward hers. “But I saw this vacancy and I thought, here I am and there you are, with thousands of miles ahead of us…”
“I know exactly what you thought.” Jennifer’s blue eyes were as cool as her voice. “And I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.”
The man’s smile faltered a little. “Look, I’m not trying to—it’s just that it’s a long flight, and—”
He fell silent as Jennifer opened her paperback and bent over the first page, her dark hair falling forward like a shield around her face. The letters tumbled before her eyes—she might as well have been reading Sanskrit. But she stared at them as if they made sense and finally her unwelcome visitor muttered something under his breath. She felt the seat shift. When she dared look up, he was gone.
She closed the book and folded her hands over it. Her hands were trembling, which was ridiculous. Her heart was racing, too, and that was even crazier. This was a public place, packed with people, and the man had only been trying for an easy pickup.
She knew all that. But when he’d said she looked lonely, sitting all by herself, she’d suddenly been tumbled back in time and instead of being on an airplane, she was sitting inside a Cadillac, parked under the trees at Boulder Hill with Craig Stevens at her side.
A shudder raced through her. No, not at her side. He’d been all over her, his hands everywhere on her body, his mouth slippery on hers…
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. You’ll be happy to hear the weather in San Juan is warm and sunny, with the temperature at eighty-three degrees.” A faint cheer echoed through the cabin. “We’ve a strong tail wind, which means we should be landing twenty minutes ahead of time, and—”
“Twenty minutes!” Someone laughed in the seat behind Jennifer’s. “Well, I suppose that’s something. You can’t sneer at an extra quarter of an hour in the sun, can you?”
An extra quarter of an hour. Jennifer took a deep breath, put her head back, and closed her eyes. No, you couldn’t sneer at that. Not when you had only one hundred and twenty hours to make your life mean something.
One hundred and twenty hou
rs. Only five days in which to find the child you’d given birth to and never seen again.
When that was facing you, every minute counted.
* * *
Four hours later, Jennifer stood under the warmth of the tropical sun, blinking against the glare. It was as if she had stepped from one world into another, and it took a little getting used to.
The travel agent had told her there’d be nothing to adapt to, but she’d been talking about the one-hour time difference and the fact that most islanders spoke English. She hadn’t been referring to the languorous heat or to the scent of flowers that seemed to drift on the air despite the taxis and buses fighting their way past the arrivals terminal at Isla Verde.
“You’ll love Puerto Rico,” the woman had said as she handed over Jennifer’s airline tickets and hotel voucher. “The beaches, the hotels, the shopping—it’s a nonstop party, my dear. I just know you’ll have a lovely time.”