Jamaica Dreaming (Caribbean Heat) (14 page)

John and Simon didn’t have anything earth–shattering to tell her. If there was anything going on in the family they either didn’t know about it or they’d been well–coached on keeping it a secret. Julissa tended to think the family simply didn’t have any dirty secrets. Neither Mr. Parchment nor his wife had shown the slightest anxiety about letting the boys go with her. Of course, they might not have thought she’d try pumping the boys for information. It was also clear that any secrets Joyce might have had were not shared with her brothers. They didn’t know any reason why she might have run away and they hadn’t heard about anybody strange hanging around her, either.

Back at the house, Julissa gave Sebastian a small shrug to indicate that she hadn’t made any big discovery and they said their good–byes to the Parchments soon after. The boys walked them back to their car and threw their arms around Julissa as she opened the car door.

“Do you think she’ll come back?” Simon asked, tears suddenly running down his round face.

“Alive?” John wasn’t crying but he looked close to tears, himself.

“Yes,” Julissa said, hugging them fiercely. “She’ll be back and she’ll be fine.”

“How do you know?” Simon asked, hiccupping.

“I don’t really know,” Julissa admitted. “But, there’s lot of love calling her home and I want to believe it’ll pull her back from wherever she is and lead her to you.”

John didn’t say anything, just stared at her intently as if he were trying to find some trick in what she’d said but Simon looked a bit happier. They stayed outside waving to the car until Julissa, craning to look, could no longer see them.

“They’re great little boys,” she said, turning back to the front. “If Joyce’s anything like them, she’s a real sweetheart.”

“Hey, don’t tell me they’ve stolen your heart already, and I’ve been trying for so long.”

Julissa laughed. “They
have
stolen my heart. Oh, Sebastian.” Her breath caught in her throat. “I really want Joyce to be found, safe and sound.”

“Another girl went missing yesterday.”

“No! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“She lives in Montego Bay. I don’t think they’re connected. An Alert’s gone out.”

“How old is she?”

“Fifteen and it’s not the first time. The police are pretty sure she’s run off with some boyfriend. Which reminds me—” He reached for his phone and punched in a number.

“Jude, how are you? I’m fine. Yes, they’re both fine. They’re planning a cruise to Alaska next month. Mom’s very excited. Listen, the parents with the missing girl, Joyce Dougan. Yes, the Parchments. She had a laptop, but your guys took it and haven’t given it back. Is it being kept for evidence or something? Okay. Good. Thanks. Let me know.” He ended the call and replaced the phone in its holder. “That was the Police Commissioner. He said he’ll look into it.”

“Did they find something on it?”

“Didn’t sound so but, if they haven’t, they should give it back. The Parchments aren’t rich. They would have had to stretch a bit to get her something like that. Jude’s a good guy. You met him at Devon House, remember?”

“Tall, barrel–chested guy with a booming voice?”

Sebastian chuckled. “Yeah, that’s him. He’ll make sure it doesn’t get lost.”

“That was nice of you.”

Sebastian shrugged. “So, have you guessed where we’re going yet?”

“Back to Hellshire?” He’d told her to come ready to go for a swim so she’d worn a dark t–shirt and a pair of cotton pants she’d bought, on sale, at the hotel shop.

“Good guess but, er, no. Guess again.”

“Your house?”

“No,” he said, triumphantly. “You’re a pretty good guesser, though.”

“Thank you. I don’t think anyone’s ever complimented me on that particular skill before.” She laughed. “Well, are you going to tell me?”

“No, I’ll just show you.”

The road they were on looked familiar. Julissa recognized the concrete factory and some of the huge billboards. Signs pointed the way to the Norman Manley Airport.

“We’re going back to Port Royal? But, the beach there wasn’t as nice as Hellshire.”

“Patience, grasshopper, patience.”

Soon they were on the thin strip of land that connected Jamaica to the Palisadoes, but, then, they turned off the highway and drove up to a small group of buildings. A sign announced that they had arrived at the Royal Yacht Club of Jamaica. Sebastian pulled into one of the parking spaces marked Reserved and got out.

Julissa sent him a perplexed glance but he only grinned at her.

“Here we are. Let’s go.”

He led the way through an alley which opened onto a long pier at the end of which was moored a gleaming blue and white motorboat. Julissa dawdled behind trying not to let her mouth hang open or to ogle too obviously. She was not a boat person but the clean, sleek lines of the model in front of her made her catch her breath.

“Is this yours?” she asked.

“I think of it as the family’s, not so much mine, but, yeah, I’m the one who bought it.” On another man, the expression on his face might have come across as insufferably smug or boastful, but, to Julissa, it just spoke of his pride in an awesome machine.

“I’d show you around but it’s a bit late already,” he said. He checked a trunk. “Yep, everything’s here. Look.” She saw goggles, flippers and other equipment.

“The towels are inside. Hang on a minute.” He ducked through the door and re–emerged seconds later. “Okay, the galley’s stocked. We’re good to go.”

He jumped back onto the pier, undid the ropes and then leapt up the steps to the wheelhouse with Julissa at his heels. In minutes, they were cruising through the azure waters of Kingston Harbor. Ahead of them, directly across from the marina, was the city, itself, and, at first, it seemed as if they were headed there but, then, Sebastian pulled on the wheel and the boat began turning in a wide arc.

“Here.” He reached into a compartment in front of him and handed Julissa a small pair of binoculars. His fingers brushed hers as she took it from him sending tingles of electricity racing up her arm.

“Thanks.” She raised the binoculars to her eyes and half–turned away from him, hoping to hide what she was feeling. Why did this man unnerve her so? She needed to find some way to be around him without setting the butterflies in her stomach aflutter.

Get a grip
, Julissa told herself, sternly.
You’re taken
. To distract herself, she sharpened the binocular’s focus and found she could see the island’s coastline quite clearly.

“Is that where Joyce’s parents live? B…Bournemouth Gardens?” She stumbled a little on the pronunciation. She remembered the overturned fishing boats and the way one of the coconut trees sloped to the sky in a gentle curve, instead of straight up like the others around it.

“Yes, that’s Bournemouth.” He smiled at her. “Well done.”

Julissa made a mental note to herself to say nothing that would make the man smile like that again. It was just too much for her heart to handle.

Sebastian’s hands spun the wheel and, soon, the boat had powered out of the harbor to cross a channel where the waves became rougher.

Julissa pushed herself back in the seat.

“It’s all right,” he said. “
Ixora
’s handled much higher waves.”

“I’m not frightened, not really. It’s just, you know, this is my first time on a boat.” She’d boarded without hesitation, without even a flicker of anxiety. Perhaps, she really was, finally, leaving her anxiety attacks behind. The thought that she might be free of the debilitating attacks made her indescribably happy.

“You’ve never been out on Lake Michigan?” He sounded shocked.

“Nope, not even once.” It had never even struck her as something she wanted to do but now, plowing through the waves with him, she wondered at herself. Ever since she was twelve and had decided she wanted to be a singer, her life had revolved mostly around music and the arts. Boating was something she knew of, but it seemed foreign, something other people did. She’d had tunnel vision, she saw that now. Missing children and their families and the people who helped them were outside of the world she’d lived in, a very small world. This visit to Jamaica was opening her eyes in many ways.

“You don’t feel queasy or anything, do you? I’ve got seasick pills.”

“No,” she reassured him. “Actually, I feel fine. I feel great. Thank you for this.” She waved her hand to indicate the expanse of sea and sky.

“It’s nothing.”

It’s something, Julissa wanted to say, something big. Very big. Something was changing inside her. The change had started with The Event, no question about that, but her time on the island was accelerating it. She wasn’t quite sure what it was or what exactly it all meant, but the core of her being was undergoing a seismic shift. He had something to do with it, too, the devastatingly handsome Sebastian Chung. She would only be deceiving herself if she tried to pretend otherwise. But, it wasn’t all because of him.

“Look, we’re almost there.” He jutted his chin in front of them.

There
was an area where the indigo sea gave way to the light blue of shallower waters encircling a tiny cay.

“That’s where we’re going? It’s beautiful.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “It
is
beautiful. You are beautiful, too.” His voice had deepened to a husky rasp but he kept his eyes on the vista in front of them.

Julissa’s cheeks warmed.

“Thank you,” she said, knowing he meant it. He hadn’t seen her scars. God willing, he never would. When she was long gone, she wanted him to remember her like that, beautiful and without a flaw. What she would remember, probably until her dying day, was the admiration and desire in his eyes whenever he looked at her. That she would never forget.

Sebastian pulled back on the throttle and the boat slowed.

“There’s no pier,” he explained. “We’ll anchor here and then, we’ll take the dinghy in.” He threw the anchor and then rose to go back down to the deck.

Julissa followed him into the galley where somebody had packed a picnic hamper full of various food containers, small bottles of mineral water, grapes, oranges and other edibles. Sebastian reached into the fridge and pulled
out a bottle of Krug champagne.

“To celebrate your first time on a boat.”

“Suppose I’d never told you?”

“Then we’d have celebrated your first time on Pigeon Island.” He winked at her.

They got into the dinghy and left the
Ixora
behind. Because Pigeon Island was so flat, Julissa hadn’t been able to see much of it from the boat except the tall coconut trees. Now, as they drew nearer, she saw that the cay was protected by a reef which broke the power of the waves rolling in from the Caribbean Sea. The cay, itself, was fringed by sugar–white sand. Sebastian ran the dinghy right up on the beach and they pulled it up on the grass verge together. Beyond the sparse grass, a thicket of coconut trees rustled in the breeze.

“There weren’t so many trees before, but they’ve had a tree planting programme going on here for more than twenty years,” Sebastian said, pulling out the blanket and the picnic hamper.

“They? Doesn’t the island belong to you?”

“Me?” Sebastian threw his head back and laughed. “No, darling, we might be rich but the Chungs don’t own any islands.”

Julissa tried to feel peeved that he was laughing at her silly assumption, but all she could think about was how good it felt hearing him call her ‘darling.’ Too good. Suddenly she wondered if being on what seemed like a deserted island with this drop–dead gorgeous man who set her pulse racing was such a good idea. It was hard enough ignoring her attraction to him with other people around but, here on this isolated cay, would she be strong enough to remember her values and resist the temptation he posed? She glanced at the misty outline of the main island.

This could be your vacation from your vacation,
a small voice whispered in her head.
It’s just you and him, so why not? Then you go back to the big island and it’s like it never happened. Nobody has to know, nobody on Jamaica and nobody in Chicago. No harm, no foul
.
I’d
know, Julissa argued back, but weakly. Why
should
she hold herself back from something,
somebody
, she wanted so much that it ached to be near him? Earle would never know, and when she was an old woman she could look back and savor the memory of the one time she’d done something merely because she wanted to, not because it was the right thing to do. In
this
case, it would be the wrong thing, very wrong.

“Hey, where have you gone?” Sebastian’s warm touch on her arm jolted her out of her thoughts.

“I’m sorry.” She turned to look at him and almost lost her footing. He had stripped down to a pair of swim trunks, revealing a six–pack so tight she felt sure she could bounce a quarter on his abdomen. The skin on his chest and stomach was a paler shade of gold than on his arms and face. Julissa dragged her gaze away from nipples the color of chocolate milk and looked into his eyes. “Did…did you say something?”