New to e-book, a classic romance from USA Today bestselling author Emilie Richards…

At nearly 30, Matty Stewart answered a birthday dare that took her straight to the Bahamas—and into the arms of a mail-order husband. Damon Quinn was looking for a mother for his infant daughter, and after a career in pediatric nursing, Matty loved holdinga baby she could call her own, but she wanted more. The truth was, she wanted Damon, so now she had to be daring one more time in hopes of making Damon want her, too.

Originally published 1997

Mail-Order Matty
Emilie Richards

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CONTENTS

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

PROLOGUE

Matty Stewart was well educated, mature and unfailingly responsible. She was also a wide-eyed adolescent when it came to resisting the siren call of champagne, particularly when her best friends were in charge of the bottle.

“Come on, Matty. A swallow for every year of your life.” Liza Fitzsimmons crooked a finger sporting a fire-engine-red nail that was longer than the brown hair that spiked her elegant head. “I’ve been counting. That was sixteen. Only sixteen.”

“Sweet sixteen and never been…” Felicity Brown wrinkled her forehead in concentration. “Never been…”

“Never mind what I’ve never been.” Matty giggled, and the sound alarmed her. Matty was not a giggler. Not a giggler, not a whiner, not a woman of extremes. She was just Matty, plain, intelligent, dependable Matty, who had turned twenty-seven that morning and been turned down for promotion that afternoon.

“Here goes…” Liza filled Matty’s glass again. “Seventeen and counting.”

Matty had never developed a tolerance for alcohol. In high school her small circle of friends had been “good girls,” relentlessly dedicated to keeping their heads in the unlikely case any “good boys” lost theirs. By the time she was in college, she was too busy caring for her invalid father to frequent fraternity parties or to sit for hours over pizza and pitchers of beer. And afterward, his comfort and happiness during the final years of his life were far more important than sowing her wild oats. But tonight there was no longer any reason to be good.

Which was why she was fast getting tipsy.

“Drink up now,” Liza insisted. “You’re not nearly done.”

The sensible part of Matty was off duty today or sleeping soundly. The champagne was cheap but effective. It had nearly silenced the memory of her supervisor’s voice regretfully explaining that once again a choice administrative position at Carrollton Community Hospital had gone to someone with less seniority but more guts. “Everyone likes you, Matty,” she had said, without quite meeting Matty’s eyes, “and that’s the problem. You get along too well. You compromise when you should confront. You give too much of yourself and don’t ask enough in return.”

Now Matty wrapped her fingers around the glass, sturdy, capable fingers with blunt trimmed nails and skin scrubbed so clean she sometimes wondered if her fingerprints would survive into middle age. She lifted the glass to swallow the contents, then thrust it out again. “More…”

“Thata girl…”

“You ever been sloshed, Matts?” Felicity, who worked in the hospital’s public relations department, was two years younger than Matty and Liza, with a yard of golden blond hair and eyes as blue as an Oklahoma sky. Coming to Minnesota as a teenager had softened the edges of her Tulsa accent, but the champagne was honing them again.

“To firsts…” Matty shook her head and thrust out her glass at the same time. The simultaneous movements almost un-did her.

“I like the sound of that. Firsts,” Liza said.

“Your firsts are definitely over,” Felicity told her. “S’nuthin’ you haven’t done.”

Liza patted Matty’s knee. “But Matty’s a different story, aren’t you, baby?”

“What first shall I try next?” Matty managed a smile by making sure she wasn’t doing anything else at the same moment. Smiling seemed easier now than it had that afternoon. She could almost pretend away her failures and loneliness. She was with her best friends, in the living room of the brick house she had lived in since her birth, and the champagne seemed to be opening up a world of possibilities.

“Travel? Distant exotic places?” Felicity laid an index finger against her soft pink lips.

“Flashy clothes and fast cars?” Liza closed one eye as if to see her friend better. “Dye your hair?”

“Sex?” Felicity said.

Matty sputtered and set her glass on the coffee table. “With whom?”

Liza wiggled her eyebrows. “Funny you should ask.”

“The question seems rev…rev…relevant.” Matty made a stab at dignity.

Liza drew a scrap of paper from her pocket and reclined regally against a stack of cushions they had removed earlier from the sofa and armchairs. The tiny living room was beginning to resemble the site of an orgy instead of the neat, uncluttered quarters of three of Carrollton Community’s most reliable staff members. White cartons of partially eaten Chinese takeout dotted the floor amidst birthday cake crumbs, discarded champagne bottles and wadded napkins. Soft rock rumbled softly from an outdated stereo system, and candles melted into wax pools on unmatched china saucers.

“I shall acquaint you with his attributes.” Liza waved the sheet of paper.

“Singles ads.” Felicity wrinkled her snub nose.

“Not quite…” Liza snapped her t’s with military precision. “Carrollton Alumni News.”

Matty could feel her eyelids drooping. Sober and wide-eyed, she was nobody’s ideal vision of American womanhood. She had a long, almost rectangular face ungraced by one outstanding feature. Had the beauty mavens of the world united to establish an average by which to judge young women, Matty would have set their standard. Nothing about her was too large or too small, too long or too short, too wide or too thin. Her hair was dark blond—dishwater blond, to be exact—her skin neither rosy nor sallow, her eyes neither clearly green nor brown. Her body was much the same, small-breasted and wider at the hips, with legs Lloyds of London would never have to insure and feet one size too large to look sexy in flirty little sandals.

“Alumni News?” Matty tried to discern a connection between eligible, beddable men and the newsletter of the college she and Liza had attended together.

“It came today. There’s an interview with Damon Quinn.”

Matty’s eyes were wide-open now, and the sudden explosion of pink in her cheeks wasn’t alcohol-induced. “Damon Quinn?”

“I believe you have eight good swallows to go.” Liza gave a vague wave toward the last of the champagne.

Matty held up her glass and let Felicity fill it again. Neither of them was as steady as she should have been, but luckily they wavered in the same rhythm.

When Liza seemed satisfied with Matty’s progress, she began to read. “‘Where Have All the Alumni Gone?’”

Felicity groaned.

Liza looked up. “Your alumni newsletter is better, I suppose?”

When Felicity answered by sticking out her tongue, Liza looked down and began to read. “‘The old newsletter caught up with Damon Quinn this week.’” She paused, obviously skimming before she continued. “‘Quinn, Carrollton’s science wunderkind, is still planning to cure cancer in between his other projects. And he has projects aplenty, including a brand-new daughter he is trying to raise by himself on a remote Caribbean island. When asked what he yearned for more than anything else, Quinn replied,” A wife. “It seems our wunderkind is up to his ears in dirty diapers and the cure for cancer is coming in a distant second. Any Carrollton ladies with fond memories of Damon, a penchant for Goombay smashes, and a deft hand with baby powder just might want to apply for the job. Send Damon a note care of the post office at George Town, the Bahamas. Who knows what might happen?’”

Liza looked up. “You can’t go wrong, Matty. Caribbean cocktails, Damon Quinn and tropical sunsets, with a baby thrown in for good measure. Beats staying around here and getting passed over for promotion again because you’re so good at what you do that none of the pediatricians wants to lose you.”

Matty worked in neonatal intensive care, and Liza and Felicity had been telling her all evening that the only reason she hadn’t gotten the promotion was that the pediatricians who staffed the unit had demanded that Matty stay right where she was. With Matty on staff, they knew their smallest charges had at least a fighting chance for survival. Matty was renowned for her persistence, her compassion and her creative solutions to even the most difficult problems. But Matty wasn’t thinking about that now or weighing the possibility that her friend might be right. She was thinking about Damon Quinn.

“You remember Damon, don’t you?” Liza sat up again.

Matty considered a denial, but the champagne was behaving like truth serum. “Clearly.”

“Who is this Damon person?” Felicity said.

“The dark prince of Carrollton College. The brightest of the bright, with a face for the Bront;aue sisters to write about and a body that…” Liza paused and shrugged, as if she’d run out of superlatives. “A grrr…eat body.”

“Why does a guy like that have to advertise?”

“He’s not,” Matty said. “It sounds like something he tossed up—off—in conversation.” The last word came out in four separated syllables, and she felt proud to have gotten them in the correct order.

“Damon Quinn wouldn’t be anyone’s vision of the perfect husband,” Liza said. “He’s so brilliant he probably can’t concentrate on anything as mundane as earning a living or raising kids. Ask a guy like that to go to the store for a gallon of milk and he’ll stop by the lab on the way home to reformulate its proteins.”

“No. He’s not…he wasn’t that way.” Matty shook her head and wished that she hadn’t.

“What way was…is he?” Felicity asked.

“Kind. Access-ible.”

“Did you really know him that well, Matty?” Liza turned the champagne bottle upside down, but not a drop remained. “He never gave me the time of day.”

“I didn’t really know him.” But Matty had shared one experience with the great Damon Quinn that had convinced her of his integrity. And that day so many years before, she had fallen instantly in love with him, one hundred percent in love, as only a plain young woman with expansive romantic fantasies and a difficult reality could do. She had loved him desperately, completely, as well as from afar, until the day he had walked out of Carrollton and her life into a prestigious Ivy League fellowship.

Felicity’s eyes were glazing over, and her words drifted into whispers. “Well, why is this guy off on some deserted island if he’s so brilliant? I mean, why isn’t he working for a big pharmaceutical company, or the government, or…something?”

“I don’t know,” Liza said. “‘Sa mystery.”

“Whatever the reason, it’s a good one.” Matty closed her eyes.

“Devoted,” Liza said to Felicity. “She’s obviously devoted to this guy.”

“Write him.” Felicity widened her eyes, as if to demand that they stay open. “You can be his wife, Matty.”

Matty had been trying to picture Damon Quinn’s face, and for a moment she didn’t notice the silence. Then her eyes flew open. “What?”

But Liza was already scrambling through the drawers of the old walnut secretary that stood in the nook by the entry hall. “You’ve got to do something. You’re going to live your whole life in Carrollton if you don’t. You’re going to die in this house, Matty. You want adventure, don’t you? A husband? A baby?”

Liza found a box of notecards and held them up victoriously. “Your ticket to a new life.”

“I’m sure this Damon person will want you, Matty,” Felicity said. “We’ll just tell him the truth.”

Liza plopped back into position on the floor. “I’ll write it for you. He won’t know. What’ll I say?”

“‘Dear Damon,’ for starters,” Felicity said, ignoring Matty’s bursts of laughter.

“Got it. How about ‘You don’t remember me,’?” Liza looked to Matty for approval.

Matty managed a small nod. It would be true, of course. “Say I was two years behind him, but we were in Evolutionary Biology together. And Advanced Biochemistry.”

“Matty was studying for medical school,” Liza told Felicity, although the other woman already knew. “She graduated at the top of our class.”

Felicity didn’t ask what had happened to Matty’s dreams. She and Liza had moved into Matty’s house after Frank Stewart’s death two years ago. Both women knew about Matty’s sacrifices. “Be sure you tell him about Matty’s work in neonatal. Tell him how good she is with babies. Nobody’s better.”

Liza scribbled frantically. “‘I have always lived in Carrollton,’” she read as she wrote. “‘I’m ready for new adventures and a warmer climate. I’ve always done the expected and the safe. Now I’m looking forward to taking risks.’”

Matty wondered if that part, at least, was true. The letter to Damon was just a joke, but even her alcohol-fogged brain cells could realize that at their root the things that Liza was writing were no laughing matter. She could spend her entire life in Carrollton, living in this house, working at the hospital taking loving care of newborns someone else would have the joys of raising. She had respect and friendship here, an adequate income. But unless she took some drastic steps, she would never have anything else.

“Say, ‘I’m slender and attractive, with a terrific smile.’” Felicity tapped her lips again. “And say, ‘I’m bright enough to understand at least half of what you talk about.’”

“More than half.” Liza scribbled some more. “Anything else?”

Matty spoke up. “Tell him I’ve never forgotten the way he came to my rescue one day, and now I’d like to return the favor.”

Liza frowned. “What?”

“Just tell him.”

“It’s your proposal, not mine.” Liza finished with a flourish. She reread the letter silently, then slipped it into its envelope, which she addressed with a bold scrawl. “Stamps?”

Matty was suddenly all too aware of how much champagne she had drunk. She watched Liza rise to rummage through the drawers again. “Liza, don’t waste stamps. We’ve gone far enough.”

“Of course we haven’t.” Liza gave a lopsided grin. “Damon Quinn’s not nearly good enough for you. Nobody is. But he’s a start.”

“We’re not mailing that letter….”

“Watch me.” Liza glued a row of stamps in the proximity of the right-hand corner of the envelope, then wove her way to the mail slot in the entry hall and stuck it halfway through. “There!”

Matty began to giggle again, and by the time Liza had rejoined them on the floor, all three women were laughing so hard they were gasping. They fell asleep that way, heads pillowed on cushions, bodies covered by worn afghans they’d thrown over each other, cuddled together like teenagers at a birthday sleepover.

Matty didn’t even bother retrieving the envelope before she fell asleep. The mail always arrived in late afternoon, as it had every day since her childhood. Damon Quinn would never see the letter that had been nothing more than a birthday salute from her best friends. He would never know that Felicity and Liza had used him to try to open her eyes to the world of possibilities that existed beyond the safe, familiar confines of Carrollton, Minnesota.

She fell asleep trying to visualize Damon’s face, and she was still sleeping soundly early the next morning when the mail carrier, following the map of his newly divided route, removed the letter addressed to Damon and stuck it in his pouch.

CHAPTER ONE

Miami International was every bit as crowded and harried as Damon had expected it to be. His flight in from George Town had been uneventful, but as he’d neared Miami, he had asked himself again and again exactly what on earth he was doing. He had made some huge mistakes in his life. He had trusted the wrong people. He had looked at the world through a distorted eye, refusing to see that the ordinary events of everyday life were as important, as earthshaking, as anything he could discover in the laboratory. But never, at any time in his life, had he set out to unfairly use another human being.

Not until now.

An airline official in quasimilitary garb began to announce the arrival of another flight at the nearest gate, and Damon watched idly as people who had been lounging in the chrome-and-imitation-leather chairs began to stand expectantly. He didn’t join them. Matty Stewart’s flight had been rerouted due to a freak blizzard in the Midwest, and nobody seemed to know which alternate flight she had been switched to, because computers had succumbed, as well. She’d had no way to reach him, of course, so he had been forced to meet every potential flight, hoping that she was on board and, more important, that they would recognize each other if she was.

He was about to marry a woman who might pass right by him and never know she’d done it.

A trio of casually dressed young women, one with a baby slung over her shoulder, passed just in front of him to line up outside the roped-off exit. He wondered whom they were meeting, and if the baby had been lugged through the busy airport for a tender reunion or simply because baby-sitters cost too much money.

The first passengers stepped through the jetway, and Damon watched without getting to his feet. He counted four men in business suits, a middle-aged couple with three carryons apiece, a mother and father dragging a screaming blond-haired toddler between them. The parade of passengers continued as he ticked them off mentally. By the time he began to lose interest, the three young women had disappeared with three equally young men.

Unlike the last flight he’d met, there hadn’t even been any near misses on this one. The two unaccompanied women of the right age hadn’t begun to match Matty’s description or resemble the photo she’d sent him. One woman had been short and dark-haired, and the flurry of Spanish she’d uttered when she caught sight of a dark-haired young Romeo behind the rope had confirmed his opinion.

The other woman, a willowy blonde in a pale gold sweater and dark stretch pants, had seemed too self-possessed to match the voice he’d come to know so well. Matty had a sweet voice with an unmistakable flutelike waver that said everything about how unsure she was that she was doing the right thing by becoming his bride.

And how could he blame her? He was asking a total stranger to give up the next year of her life, perhaps much longer, to make his own life more convenient.

There was more to it than that, of course. Heidi’s future was at stake, too, a reality that eclipsed anyone’s convenience. And even though fatherhood was a relatively new experience for Damon, he had already learned that a father did anything for his child. Anything and everything and the entire spectrum in between. A father even begged a stranger to marry him if it meant that his daughter’s future would be safe and secure. And that was exactly what Damon had done.

The flight attendants strolled through the exit, chatting and pulling their black flight bags behind them. Damon glanced at his watch, then back at the gate. But obviously the plane was empty now and Matty was on a different flight. He consulted the list he’d been given at the ticket counter to check what he already knew. The next possibility didn’t arrive for two hours. He was stuck in the Miami airport waiting for a woman he was going to marry, a woman he didn’t know. And when and if she ever arrived, he probably wouldn’t even recognize her.

He was hit with such a wave of self-disgust that for a moment nothing else mattered. Then, as he leaned over to pick up the bouquet of pink and white carnations he had bought at an airport gift shop, he heard his name over the intercom.

“Would Mr. Damon Quinn please come to the airport information booth in front of…”

He listened intently to the entire message and wondered how many times it had been repeated before he had registered the words.

And what would he find when he arrived at the booth to get his message? That Matty had been seized with an attack of good sense and skipped the flight altogether? That something was wrong with Heidi back on Inspiration Cay and no one there knew what to do about it? That Gretchen’s parents had arrived on the island, warrant in hand, to take his daughter to a new home in Ohio?

All disasters. All possible. For a moment he couldn’t move; then, clutching the flowers in an iron grip, he went to find out which calamity had struck.

* * *

Matty tugged at her gold sweater and wished it were a few inches longer to completely hide her hips and rump. Liza had bought it as a going away gift, along with the black leggings, the butter-soft ankle boots and the long gold chain that hung between her breasts. Her suitcases were stuffed with clothes from her other friends, too. The Carrollton female staff had given her a shower unlike any she’d ever witnessed. Liza and Felicity had orchestrated it, first shepherding Matty to a salon to have her colors done, then to have her hair cut and streaked with subtle warm highlights. The shower had come one week later, and all the clothes had mysteriously matched the new colors she was supposed to wear. Soft golds and delicate greens, rust and camel, and a turquoise the color of the ocean that would surround her new home.

When she looked in the mirror now, the Matty peering back at her was altered. Short wisps of hair framed her face and tapered to her shoulders. Long light bangs brushed her eyebrows and emphasized the wide set of her eyes. The effect was pleasant and gave her a surge of confidence when she caught sight of herself. But she was still essentially the same, still the same plain Matty Stewart who was about to sell herself for the promise of adventure and warmth, and the presence of people in her life who might one day come to care about her.

“Miss Stewart?”

She turned to give the young man behind the information booth a wide smile. “He doesn’t seem to be coming, does he?”

“Would you like me to try again?”

“That would be terrific.”

She watched him lift the microphone and start his announcement again. She guessed he was no older than twenty-one, dark and tanned, with a salad bowl haircut she recognized from teenagers on the Carrollton pediatrics ward. Six other people had demanded his attention since she had asked for his help, but the young man still hadn’t forgotten her.

She was always surprised when she heard complaints about how rude people were to each other. True, she had run across difficult people at the hospital, but most of the time they were in pain or immersed in the worst throes of grief. She was drawn to people like that, the healer to the sufferer, and she discounted their rudeness as temporary and in some perverse way therapeutic. But in her experience most people were kind and helpful, willing to go the extra mile on the flimsiest evidence. Despite her work, despite some of the horrors the hospital had dealt with, she had never lost faith in her fellow human beings.

Which might explain why she was willing to marry a man she hadn’t seen in nearly a decade, a man who had probably never even seen her at all, not even when they had stood face-to-face.

“Matty?”

She had been gazing into the throngs hurrying toward gates or ticket counters, so the deep voice behind her left shoulder was a surprise. But she didn’t spin around. She took a deep breath, then another for good measure, before she turned.

For the first time in eight years she was face-to-face with Damon Quinn. And this time he couldn’t fail to see her.

“Damon.” She created a smile from the turmoil within her. “I wondered if we’d ever find each other.”

“I saw you get off the plane, but…” His voice trailed off.

She didn’t want to finish his sentence, but she did. “You didn’t recognize me. I’m not really surprised. There’s no reason why you should have.”

But she recognized him, both with her eyes and the distinctive fluttering inside her that had characterized every glimpse she’d ever had of him.

“You don’t look like your photograph.”

“The hair’s different. I know.” As she spoke, she did not have the self-control to resist examining him. Damon was older, but every bit as beautiful as she remembered. And beautiful was the right word, not because he was in the least bit feminine, but because handsome failed to drive right to the heart of the matter. He had the face of an angel, or at least a tormented poet, wide cheekbones, a rock-solid jaw and dark eyes that burned like smoldering coals, even when he was at his most casual. His black hair was too long, and it curled over his forehead, his nape and ears in a style that more than suited him. It defined him somehow, his perpetual distraction, his flouting of convention, his disdain for the inconsequential.

“More than your hair is different,” he said after he had studied her, too. “You’ve grown up.”

“Then you remember me?”

He smiled a little. “What’s it to be, Matty? Bare-bones truth? Or something a little gentler?”

“I’m totally incapable of telling a lie. And eight years ago you never took the time to try.”

Some internal scorecard seemed to register a point in her favor. “I remember you, but vaguely. And only now that you’re here.”

She was pleased somehow. She hadn’t expected that much. “I did grow up, but I haven’t changed a lot. Carrollton’s pretty much the same as it was when you left, and I’m afraid I am, too.”

“A woman who was too afraid of change wouldn’t find herself in this situation.”

She laughed lightly. “A woman who knew how to hold a few glasses of champagne wouldn’t have, either.”

His smile broadened, a flash of emotional lightning that transformed him into someone more approachable. “Right, the champagne. Soon to become my favorite drink, since it’s brought you here.”

Before she could respond, he took her elbow, as if to guide her through the crowd. “Did you get your luggage? You wouldn’t have had time for that, would you?”

She had been fine—Or nearly fine—until that moment, coasting along on excitement and curiosity. But now she was blindsided by an attack of nerves. “Damon, we’re…uh…not heading right out, are we? I mean the plane—”

“No. I had the good sense to book the last flight of the afternoon to George Town. We can’t take this any way that approaches normal, but I thought we could at least spend the afternoon getting to know each other before we go off to get married.”

“But we can’t get married right away. There’s the license.”

“That’s all a formality, but you’re right. You’ll still have a few days to decide once we’re there.”

“And so will you.”

He looked down at her from his six feet of solid masculinity. “I’m not going to change my mind. I know everything I need to know about you.”

His words weren’t surprising. She knew he had checked her background with a thoroughness usually reserved for top-level security clearances. And she knew why.

As Damon silently guided her through the crowds and toward baggage claim, she thought about everything that had transpired since she had awakened in horror on the morning after her birthday party to find that the letter Liza had penned to Damon was gone.

She remembered how panic had seized her, and she had awakened her friends to demand that they tell her exactly what they had done with the letter. Felicity had been as horrified as she was, but Liza had been philosophical. “He’ll see it was done in good fun,” she’d said. “He’ll have a good laugh and toss it right out.”

But Matty hadn’t been so easygoing about something that had, in its own excessive way, revealed too much of her heart. She had felt wounded and vulnerable, and she had sat down that night to write Damon a real letter apologizing and explaining. “It was my twenty-seventh birthday,” she’d written, “a time to look backward and forward. My friends and I were talking about what I wanted from life by the time I was thirty, then we started in on the first of too many bottles of champagne. I almost never drink, Damon. I shouldn’t have had so much that night. I’m afraid I acted like an idiot. Please forgive me, and if you remember me at all, please try not to include this with the rest of your memories.”

She had wished him the best of luck, sealed the envelope and driven it right down to the post office. Writing the letter had helped a little. At least Damon would know the first one had been a prank and a mistake. She had hated the fact that he would probably think she was immature and featherbrained, with too much time on her hands, but she had realized there was nothing more she could do.

His birthday card had arrived two weeks later, and his first telephone call a week after that. “I wasn’t advertising for a wife, and you weren’t really applying to be one,” he’d said, just minutes into the conversation. “But, Matty, I’m in a desperate situation here, and I don’t know where else to turn.”

And then he had proceeded to outline his dilemma.

“That looks like the right carousel up ahead.” Damon gestured to a baggage carousel that was slowly circulating, although by now there were only a few pieces left on it. “Point out which are yours when they come around and I’ll get them off.”

Matty glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He was wearing dark slacks and an ivory dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck. His sports jacket was loose and casual, a natural open-weave fabric that seemed perfectly suited to tropical living.

“Your hands seem to be full, Damon.”

He looked down at the bouquet of carnations he had been choking since she’d first turned around to face him. Then he looked up at her and grinned. “They’re for you. I’d completely forgotten I had them.” He held them out.

“They’re lovely.” Actually, they might have been lovely once, but the white paper stapled around them was crumpled now from fingers that had gripped it too tightly, and Matty suspected the stems were mangled.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I’m not as calm as I thought.”

“I’m sure if there was a handbook on mail-order marriages that would be on the first page. I guess our palms are supposed to sweat and our hearts are supposed to beat double time.”

“Is yours beating double time?”

“Triple.” She heard her voice waver. She had talked herself into coming here with a bravado she hadn’t even known she possessed. She had marched in to her supervisor at Carrollton Community Hospital to give her resignation, and she hadn’t even considered the immediate promise of a pay raise if she would just rethink her decision. Without a backward glance she had rented her house to Liza and Felicity and said her goodbyes.

And somewhere along that path she had used up all her stores of courage.

Damon took her hand. The gesture so surprised her that she froze. She knew her eyes gave her away. She excelled at warm good cheer, at encouragement and empathy, but right now she needed someone to give all those things back to her.

“Matty…” His voice was kind, even kinder than she remembered. “I’m not going to pressure you. I know I’m asking too much. Let’s just get to know each other today. One step at a time. Okay?”

“Damon, look at you. There have to be a dozen women who would have said yes to marrying you, women you know well, women you’re attracted to. I’m nearly a stranger. Why me?”

He had answered that question before, but he seemed to sense her need to watch his face as he explained once again. He linked his fingers with hers, and her heart skipped erratically.

“Not a dozen. But I do know some women who might have said yes. None of them could offer what I really need. The only question is whether you need Heidi and me enough to take this step. Do you?”

The answer was yes, of course. Perhaps there had been a thousand possibilities for her future, but somehow, after Damon reentered her life, she had only glimpsed two. She could continue at Carrollton Community taking care of other people’s beautiful babies, continue living in the house and town she had lived in all her life, continue wondering what the world was like outside that small frozen speck on the map. Or she could accept Damon’s astounding offer of marriage and motherhood and a new life on a distant tropical island.

In the end the choice had been easy, because the second possibility had come attached to Damon Quinn, a man she had once loved with unrestrained passion. And this gift of Damon in her life once more, even under these strange and unromantic circumstances, had been too tempting to reject.

“I’m here,” she said. She would not reveal more of her heart than that.

He seemed to think it was answer enough. “Let’s get your suitcases, then we’ll go somewhere for lunch.” He squeezed her hand before he dropped it. She felt absolutely alone when he was no longer touching her, but she lifted her chin and managed a smile.

* * *

Matty Stewart was not what Damon had expected. He had done his research, probing, in-depth research that should have distilled the essence of the woman. He knew how she had sacrificed a normal youth to care for her father. He knew that Frank Stewart’s illness had been long and difficult, an illness that had taken his strength and finally his mind, and that Matty had given him tender, unremitting care until his death two years ago.

And he knew that she was regarded by hospital supervisors and colleagues alike as one of the finest nurses ever to walk through Carrollton Community’s doors. If she had faults they tended toward the most admirable. She was too accepting of others’ faults, too giving, too undemanding. Everyone seemed to like and trust Matty, from the man-eating head nurse in maternity to the lowliest emergency-room clerk. They all went to Matty if something special needed to be done, and most of the time she was able to satisfy them.

Her personal life was just as flawless. To make ends meet she had shared her home with two of Carrollton’s most eligible women, and the three seemed to be close and loyal friends. The other two were well liked, but everyone seemed to think it was Matty who glued their friendship together. There were no hints of competition for men or prestige. At home, as at the hospital, Matty seemed determined to believe the best and give her best.

Knowing all that and more, Damon had expected someone subtly different from the woman who had been waiting at the information booth. First, he had been surprised to feel such an instant tug of attraction toward her. She wasn’t really pretty, not in any classical sense of the word, but she had a vibrant, natural smile and smoky hazel eyes that never looked away when she spoke. Her creamy skin was flawless, and her hair was fine and silky. Her best points were subtle but undeniable. She was not a woman a man might pick out in a crowd, but once exposed to her, she would nibble away at his concentration until she had his undivided attention.

Damon knew there was no man in Matty’s life. Caring for her father had made that impossible, and then there had been months of readjustment and, naturally, grief after his death. By the time fate had allowed her to seek a relationship, the pool of eligible men in Carrollton had been small. But now that he’d seen her, no excuses seemed good enough. Why hadn’t some man noticed her anyway? Had she been so busy taking care of everyone around her that no one had seen she could be more, much more, if she was just given the chance?

“All this sunlight!” Matty spread her hands as if to catch sunbeams to store away. “Damon, I’ve never seen light like this. It’s like liquid gold.”

“This will seem overcast compared to the island.” Damon watched Matty examine the restaurant where he had brought her to have lunch. He hadn’t chosen it carefully; in fact, he didn’t even remember its name. But he had been here before with Arthur Sable, the man who owned Inspiration Cay, and he had remembered that the food was good and the location close enough to the airport to make it easy to get back that afternoon.

Now he was glad he had thought of it. Wide windows looked out on a narrow blue inlet adorned with the requisite seagulls and palm trees. Light wood and tropical prints completed the statement indoors, where Latin rhythms competed with rattan-trimmed ceiling fans for dominance of the warm spring air.

Matty loved it. He hadn’t intended to impress her, but clearly he had. She seemed more relaxed here. She had even stopped toying with her iced-tea glass and the wedge of lime perched on its sugared rim. For the last few minutes she had even seemed to forget that the man sitting across from her was her husband-to-be.

“Are those hibiscus blooming against the wall?” Matty pointed to her left.

He nodded. “And the purple flowers behind them are bougainvillea.”

“Paradise.”

“The last man to own Inspiration Cay spent a fortune on landscaping. It’s gone wild, but Arthur prefers to leave it that way.”

“Jungle appeals to me. Things that grow and thrive without restraint, abundant good health…”

“You’ve seen little enough of that, haven’t you?”

She seemed startled, whether at his insight or her own guileless revelations he didn’t know. “Not enough, I guess,” she admitted.

“Was that one of the reasons you said yes to this arrangement? Because you needed to be away from illness and suffering?”

“For a while, maybe.” She folded her hands. “I’m good at what I do, but it’s possible I need to do something else, something I might do even better.”

“So you need some time to think? To reconsider your life?”

“Does that bother you?”

“Absolutely not. It reassures me. I’m not sure I could go through with this if I thought I was the only one of us who was going to benefit.”

“Don’t forget Heidi.”

“I couldn’t possibly. She absorbs every waking minute. You’ll see, once we get to the island.”

“Damon, tell me the whole story. You’ve told me bits and pieces on the telephone, enough to get me here. But I need to know it all. How you feel about Heidi’s mother, why you didn’t marry her. How she feels about you and Heidi, too. Where and how I’ll fit in.”

And that was the other way that Matty didn’t fit with Damon’s picture of her. He had expected a woman so eager to please, so accommodating, that she wouldn’t ask pointed questions or show the wealth of insight that was a part of the real Matty Stewart. He found her perceptions unnerving at the same time that he found them refreshing. She did not suffer from self-absorption, but on the other hand, she was too intelligent not to recognize the problems that might affect her own happiness.

He tried to cull out the things in his past that didn’t matter and cut right to the things that did. “I met Gretchen in Washington, D.C. She had just ended a relationship with another man, and she was looking for someone to take up the slack. She’d be the first to tell you that. She was very clear about it to me.”

He paused as their server brought them steaming bowls of spicy black bean soup and garnished them with a splash of sherry and dollops of sour cream. He watched Matty lift her spoon and begin to eat. Her hands were unadorned, no rings, no polish on her short nails. Just broad strong hands that looked as if they could solve a multitude of problems, hands that probably rarely fluttered or trembled.

“And what was she to you, Damon?” she asked.

“She was a one-night stand that lengthened into weeks,” he said bluntly. “She was in no hurry to move on, and I was in no hurry to get rid of her. We were both new to the city, and lonely. When she finally found an apartment in Arlington, I helped her move. We saw each other less and less as the weeks went by, and finally, when it was time for me to leave D.C., I couldn’t even catch her at home to say goodbye.”

“So you didn’t know she was pregnant?”

“It’s the nineties, Matty. When we had sex I was careful to protect us both.” He read her expression. “Technology is imperfect. It failed us one night. I didn’t think too much about it, since Gretchen seemed to think it was the wrong time in her cycle to matter.”

“Damon…” She returned to playing with the wedge of lime. “Could she be lying about who Heidi’s father really is?”

“No. The timing’s right, and Gretchen swears that Heidi’s mine. I was there when the condom broke. I have to accept responsibility.”

She nodded, and he knew that accepting responsibility was something she would understand completely.

“Gretchen never contacted me until after Heidi’s birth. She says she intended to keep her, that she thought it might be a lark. Gretchen likes to be entertained, and she thought Heidi would be endlessly entertaining. Two weeks of staying up all night with a screaming infant cured her of that. Gretchen can act decisively when she needs to. She realized her maternal instincts were nonexistent, but she felt a responsibility to her daughter. So she sat down and listed the alternatives, and I was at the top.”

“How did you feel when you discovered you were a father?”

“Furious.”

Matty cocked her head, and her eyes searched his. “But you took Heidi anyway? Out of responsibility?”

“I had begun my research on Inspiration Cay.” He drummed his fingers on the table and tried to decide how much of that story to tell her. He settled on only the most salient details. “This work is my whole life, or at least it was then. I was sure that having a baby on the island with me was impossible, unthinkable. So I flew to Arlington to help Gretchen make arrangements to place Heidi in a good adoptive home. You know the kind I mean. Two devoted, educated parents with love and time to give her, both things I was sure I couldn’t manage. And then I saw her and held her.” He looked away and shrugged. He was still embarrassed at the depth of his attachment to the squirming, screaming scrap of humanity who was his umbilical cord into the future.

“And so you brought her back to the island?”

“It seemed the right thing to do. Gretchen wanted it that way. Officially we’ll share custody, but I doubt she’ll ever be much of a presence in Heidi’s life. She’ll breeze in with gifts and kisses, whisk her off to Disney World and back again. But she can’t meet Heidi’s emotional needs, and she knows it.”

“How do you feel about Gretchen, Damon? It sounds like she’s going to be part of your life for a long time.”

“Are you asking if we might take up where we left off?”

She didn’t look away. “This whole situation is strange enough. If another woman is involved, it’s impossible.”

“Gretchen and I were briefly attracted to each other. The attraction was briefer than the relationship, and that was brief enough. I don’t hate her. I have a grudging respect for her willingness to give birth to Heidi instead of the obvious alternative, and then for her willingness to find the best solution for Heidi’s future. But Gretchen will be a part of Heidi’s future, not mine. After I realized I was going to raise Heidi, I asked Gretchen to marry me, and she said no. We were both profoundly relieved that that was out of the way, because our marriage would have been an unqualified disaster.”

He let that dangle a moment before he added the clincher. “But Heidi won’t be a part of my future at all if Gretchen’s parents have their way. And that’s where you come in.”

“I can’t believe they have a prayer of getting custody. You’re her father.”

“I’m a father without a real job, at least the way the court sees it. A father living on a remote island in the Bahamas without a doctor, a grocery store, a church, a school. A father with no experience caring for a baby and no time to do it properly. I can’t hire help. Most older women with good credentials would find life on the island too lonely and harsh. And a younger woman would look suspicious to the courts.”

“Like a live-in lover?”

“Exactly. Not the kind of role model a child would need.”

“Why did Gretchen choose you over her parents? She could have handed Heidi over to them and never even told you that you were a father.”

“In Gretchen’s words, the Otts are rigid and incapable of either love or understanding. They exist to do their duty, and they see Heidi as a duty and nothing more. Gretchen’s childhood was miserable. She’s not much of a mother, but she doesn’t wish that kind of life on Heidi.”

“Would the Otts be content if you just allowed them to visit when they wanted?”

“I’ve spoken to them once. They made it clear that they intend to control Heidi’s upbringing. They see Gretchen as a failure and Heidi as their chance at redemption in the eyes of their church and community.”

“So there’s no compromise in sight?”

“They want all or nothing. If I retain custody, I don’t think they’ll even want to see her. And if they get custody, they’ll throw up every possible roadblock to keep me from visiting.”

Matty was silent as the server took away their soup and plunked down the sandwiches they had ordered. Damon had eaten half of his before she spoke. “You told me during our first phone call that your attorney thinks you’ll have no problem keeping Heidi if you’re married to me.”

He understood that she needed to hear the reasons again. He obliged her. “You’re not a stranger, Matty, or at least the court won’t see it that way. We were friends in college—”

“We weren’t.”

He went on. “We knew each other. A case could easily be made for a friendship that continued through the years and turned into a romance. No one will ask for proof. We stayed in touch, fell in love…” His voice trailed off, and he sipped his tea. Everything tasted like ashes.

“You don’t like this, do you?”

“I like losing my daughter less than I like lying.”

Her eyes were grave. “And I have all the perfect qualifications to be Heidi’s mother.”

“Matty, you have nothing in your past that anyone could object to. And you’re a pediatric nurse, one of the best. No one could question Heidi’s safety or your loving care of her. If we marry, my attorney believes the custody hearing will be a formality and nothing more.”

“How long?”

He wasn’t sure what she was asking, but he was sure how important the answer was to her. She looked as if everything in both their futures depended on it.

“How long before I’ll know if I retain custody?” he asked.

She shook her head slowly. “No. How long before you can safely divorce me?”

There were still half a dozen questions she could be asking, questions he might not even comprehend. The ashes in his throat seemed to sift deeper, layering his heart. “I don’t know.” He leaned forward, but he didn’t touch her. “If you can only make a brief commitment to us, this can’t work. I might be at Inspiration Cay a year, a month, a decade. And as long as I’m there, Heidi’s vulnerable.”

“A decade?” She voiced the question softly. “And then a divorce when you no longer need me?”

Now he understood exactly what the question was, and he was almost giddy with relief. “Matty, have I ever mentioned divorce? I’m not planning to divorce you the minute I don’t need you anymore. Heidi needs a mother, not a baby-sitter. She needs the emotional ties that Gretchen can’t give her. I don’t know how long our marriage will last. Maybe we’ll grow to hate each other despite every effort not to. Maybe you’ll decide you need more than I can give you. I can’t see the future. But I’ve never thought this was going to be less than a real marriage. Maybe we have to pretend about our past, but not about our future.”

Her cheeks flushed a delicate rose. “A real marriage?”

“Were you really ready to settle for less?”

She bit her lip, small even teeth pressing hard enough against the soft tissues to be dangerous. He folded his arms over his chest to keep from covering her hand with his own. “We’re adults, and we’re going to be almost alone in paradise. And we’re going to be married. I don’t work in the lab day and night….”

“Well, that puts things in perspective.”

He smiled, dredging it up from some place deep inside that hadn’t been touched by the cruelties and disappointments of the past years. “We’ll take that part slowly. I’m not expecting you to jump into bed with me. I’m not making demands.” The smile disappeared, and he tasted ashes again, because he knew he was not above using his most foolproof weapon. And he used it now.

“I need you. No one will ever need you more than Heidi and I do, Matty.”

She nodded. If she was aware that he was playing on her greatest vulnerability, she gave no sign. “I’ll go with you to Inspiration Cay.”

“And I’ll do everything in my power to be sure you’re never sorry that you did.”

He told himself it was true, but even as she smiled in answer, he wondered what he could ever give her in return that would be half as important as what she was giving him.

CHAPTER TWO

Matty was used to exhaustion. She had worked graveyard shifts, double shifts and even, during the worst years of her father’s illness, around-the-clock vigils, snatching sleep when she could as she hovered at his bedside. What she wasn’t used to was the muscle-clenching, nerve-pinging meltdown of a body stressed to the limits of its endurance. She had survived the flight to Miami with its delays and rerouting, and the first sight of Damon with its emotional intensity. She had survived their lunch together with its revelations and evaluations. She had survived her own decision to accompany him to Inspiration Cay.

But she wasn’t at all certain she was going to survive the trip there.

“Matty, you’re as white as a ghost.” Damon’s voice vibrated against her ear.

She wanted to smile reassuringly, to explain in a cheery nurse voice that nothing was wrong except that her blood had drained to her feet. But she couldn’t summon a smile or an explanation. She closed her eyes and promised her stomach that the flight to George Town was almost over.

“You’ve never flown in a small plane, have you?” Damon shifted subtly closer in his seat. The heat from his body felt like an electric blanket cranked up to nine.

“Tell me we’re almost there.”

“We promised to be honest with each other.”

Something surprisingly close to a groan rumbled through her throat. His voice was kind. “This wouldn’t be bad if it weren’t stormy. But we’re perfectly safe. We’ll pass through this in no time.”

She wanted to keep him talking. She needed to concentrate on something besides the jolting of the plane and the roiling of her stomach. “Tell me about the island.”

He didn’t answer immediately. “First, I’d better tell you about Kevin. And Nanny.”

She knew that Kevin Garcia and Nanny Rolle were the other two adults who lived on Inspiration Cay. During one of their phone calls, Damon had mentioned that much in passing. He had left her with the impression that they were caretakers, and she had pictured them as a friendly older couple who trimmed hedges and swept verandas in exchange for a small cottage in paradise.

“Kevin first,” he said.

Matty waited, but moments passed before Damon began.

“About six months ago I was in Miami on business, and I’d stayed out later than I’d expected at dinner. My colleagues grabbed cabs back to their hotels somewhere on the other side of town, but I decided to walk to mine because it was less than a mile away. About halfway there I met Kevin.”

She frowned. This didn’t jibe with her notions about who Kevin was. “You mean Kevin was visiting from the Cay?”

“No. He was living in Miami.” He paused. “On the streets.”

Her picture of a smiling old man who would show her shells on the beach and identify tropical shrubs dissolved. “Go on.”

“Kevin ran away when he was fifteen. That was almost two years ago.”

“He’s only seventeen?”

“Not quite.”

“How did you meet him?”

“He tried to rob me.”

The plane lifted, and Matty’s stomach dropped. She squeezed her eyelids shut and pictured herself on the beach with a maniacal teenager who was pelting her with deadly-looking seashells. She forced open her eyes. “I see.”

“He was carrying a knife. A very sharp knife. And I wasn’t carrying anything of interest except a few dollars. I thought I was…” He shrugged.

“Dead?”

“Or thereabouts. Then I noticed the knife was shaking, the kid was shaking. And while I stood there waiting for the right moment to jump him, he collapsed.”

She made a noise low in her throat that was meant to be comforting, but it sounded more like a plea for help.

Damon continued. “He was half starved, crawling with lice, and well on his way to pneumonia. I ended up taking him to the nearest emergency room and telling them he was my nephew, so they would agree to treat him. They shot him full of antibiotics and cleaned him up, then I took him back to my hotel.”

“Minus the knife?” Her voice was faint.

“Definitely. He slept for twenty-four hours straight, and when he finally woke up we had a good long talk. Actually, I did most of the talking, but I found out enough about him to make some decisions. He has no family worth discussion. His mother was an American who died just after he was born. His father’s still living in Cuba. Kevin came to the U.S. with an aunt who moved to California when he was thirteen and didn’t invite him along. His mother’s brother teaches in Peoria, but he doesn’t want a half-Cuban nephew with an attitude. The state stepped in and put him in a group home, which he ran away from three times. The next stop would have been a locked facility, but no one was in hot pursuit. The older a kid is, the less interest the system has in him. At Kevin’s age they’d be only too happy to let him look after himself.”

“But he couldn’t…”

“Of course not.” Damon shifted in his seat so that he could watch her face. “Kevin’s brilliant, Matty. One of the brightest kids I’ve ever met. He’s tough and profane and unpolished, to say the least, but he’s got so much potential. I had to do something to give him a chance to use it.”

As sick as she felt, Matty still noticed the way Damon stepped in through the back door of his own humanity. He hadn’t admitted to compassion or affection for the teenager who had been dealt such a lousy hand by fate. He had rescued Kevin because of his potential. The rational scientist making a decision based solely on logic. Except that there was much more than objectivity in his voice.

“So you brought him to Inspiration Cay?” she said.

“He was too sick to argue. He’s been with me ever since. He works in the lab, helps take care of the place. And he inhales whatever books I give him. He doesn’t know it, but I’m tutoring him. I get books with the information he’ll need for a GED, then we talk about them when we’re working together. Once he gets his diploma and takes the SATs, he’ll be a shoo-in for a good university.”

She digested the fact that in addition to marrying a near stranger, she seemed to be taking on a teenaged boy with a dark past. “And Nanny? She’s not a runaway, too, is she?”

“Of course not.” He paused. “Not exactly.”

Her head was pounding now, in rhythm to the dips and shimmies of the nine-passenger Cessna. She felt for her airsickness bag, just to be certain it was there.

“Nanny is seventy,” Damon said. “She used to cook for a small guest house in George Town. Until everyone refused to work with her anymore. She’s…cranky. And odd. Nanny wants things her way. Her children want her to stop working and enjoy her final years. Nanny won’t have it. She still has moments of genius in the kitchen….”

“And the rest of the time?”

“Her eyesight’s not good, and her sense of smell, or maybe taste, seems to be going. She’s apt to use red pepper as paprika, mix up her herbs, french fry turnips instead of potatoes. Nanny’s meals are an adventure. Her housekeeping is… interesting.”

“Damon, where is Heidi now? She’s not with—”

“Kevin and Nanny have her. But don’t worry. They both adore her. Heidi’ll be perfectly safe, although the things they’ll do for her will be unconventional, to say the least.”

She pictured a sixteen-year-old pirate and a crotchety old woman burying a squalling infant up to her neck in the sand.

“About now you’re wondering what you got yourself into, aren’t you?”

“About now?” She closed her eyes again. The plane seemed to flutter in the air, then it dropped suddenly.

The tone of Damon’s voice changed. “Matty, are you going to be sick?”

She was, but not with Damon sitting beside her. She unsnapped her seat belt and leaped to her feet. The one advantage of a small plane was the short distance to the one and only lavatory. She found her way there with no trouble. And just in time.

* * *

George Town, with its Caribbean rhythms, its vigorous good cheer and unfailing fascination with its own goings-on, had lost its charm by the time Damon helped Matty off the plane. Her skin defined white. In fact, she was so pale she was nearly translucent. He expected to glance at her in a moment and see her bones etched in full display.

“Technically this is Moss Town,” he told her. “But it’s just a short cab ride to George Town and the boat that will take us to the cay.” He paused. “If Samuel’s waiting…”

“Boat?”

He had told her about the boat. He was sure he had. He suspected that she was firmly into denial, the only way to cope under the circumstances. “I wish we could just stay here tonight and go to the cay tomorrow, but I can’t be away from Heidi overnight.”

“I understand.” Her voice seemed to grow fainter every time she used it.

He considered leaving her at a hotel in George Town, where she could rest and recover. He could return for her tomorrow, when she was feeling better. He could bring Heidi with him, dressed in her frilliest sunsuit so that Matty couldn’t resist her. Then he could take Matty back to Inspiration Cay, where Kevin and Nanny, under his strongest threats, would be on their best behavior. There was only one problem.

He might return to find that Matty had flown the coop.

“It’s still hours to sunset….” He couldn’t make himself say that she would enjoy the boat ride. “We’ll probably make good time.”

“What’s…good time?”

He guided her through the easygoing customs ritual and helped her gather her suitcases before he answered. “The trip takes several hours…in good weather.”

“Oh…”

The weather wasn’t going to be good. He knew that from the turbulence on the plane. “I brought something for seasickness, just in case. You probably should take it now, if you think you can manage.”

She gave a brief heroic nod. He took her elbow. “We’ll get you a drink to wash it down and wait a few minutes. Sometimes the taxi rides into town are enough to make me queasy.”

Her breath caught. He was afraid that at this point it was the most forceful protest she could manage.

* * *

Matty took a double dose of motion sickness tablets. They had nearly worn off by the time Samuel arrived two hours late—Bahamian time, Damon called it—to ferry them to the cay. He was a large man, with smooth dark skin and hands as large as shovel blades. He ushered them on board with friendly chatter as the waves slapping at the jetty threatened to toss Matty to the deck. Damon seemed unaffected.

“The crossing, it’ll be a rough one,” Samuel said with a distinctive Caribbean lilt. “The boat go up and the sea go down, not always at the same time. But we’ll make it, no problem. I’ll be staying at the cay tonight for sure. Just don’ want old Nanny makin’ my supper. Bought food for us to eat.” He lifted the lid on a gigantic plastic cooler. The pungent smell of fried seafood, of garlic and a nostril-tingling assortment of herbs and spices, rose to greet her. “Plenty for all.”

Matty glanced wordlessly at Damon. He started forward to slam the lid, apparently all too aware of her reaction. She heard the click as the lid fell back into place, but it was already too late. She was fumbling blindly toward the side of the boat to hang her head over the rail.

* * *

At some point on the boat trip to Inspiration Cay the waves began to seem like allies. Matty knew that if she could just struggle to the side again and this time manage to throw herself overboard, the waves would swallow her and put her out of her misery. Dying that way seemed preferable to dying by inches. And she was sure she was dying. She would not live to see Inspiration Cay, not live to see the baby she was to raise or to marry the baby’s father, a man she had loved silently and passionately so many years ago.

“We’ll be there before the last rays of light fade away.” Damon said. “Are you going to make it?”

“No.”

Something much too close to a chuckle rumbled through his chest. He pulled her a little closer. Sometime during the last hour he had slung his arm over her shoulders to keep her warm. “I really am sorry about this. Do you always get seasick?”

She had never been on waters like these. She had canoed and rowed on placid Minnesota lakes without a qualm. “How often…?” She couldn’t finish.

“How often do we have to make this trip?”

She nodded weakly.

“Only as often as you want. We’ll have to go to Nassau to get our wedding license in a few days. But after that you can stay put if you like. The water’s not usually this rough, and you’ll be rested and ready the next time you brave the waves.”

“Never…”

“It’s been a big day, Matty.”

She wanted to tell him to turn the boat around, that the day had been much too big to absorb, and she had made a terrible mistake. But if he did as she asked, the trip back to George Town would be longer than the trip to Inspiration Cay. And she was a slave to what was left of her stomach.

“There are 365 cays in the Exumas, did you know that?”

She had done her reading. She knew cay was pronounced “key” and that many of the Out Islands of the Bahamas, of which the Exumas were a part, were uninhabited. “One for each day,” she whispered.

“I’ve been to a number of them. Some don’t even exist at high tide. Some, like Inspiration Cay, are high enough above sea level to live on comfortably. The house at Inspiration is on a low rise. It makes for spectacular sunset views.”

She tried to hold on to that thought. The sun was setting right now, and had she not been dying she might have termed it spectacular. As it was, she couldn’t watch the heavenly light show, because every time she focused on the horizon the boat dipped and her head went spinning in protest.

“The house has stood on that rise for almost a hundred years.” Damon seemed to know that she was soothed by the sound of his voice and the warm weight of his arm. Matty knew he was trying to offer his support in the only way he could. Both his voice and arm were impersonal, the comfort anyone might offer. In fact, every time he had touched her—and in their hours together he had touched her five times—he had scarcely seemed to notice what he was doing. She, on the other hand, had noticed every pressure, every movement, every texture.

“It’s a wonderful house,” he said. “Spacious and airy, with sun-filled rooms, and breezes sweeping through that keep it cool enough to bear on the warmest days. You’ll recognize the architecture from pictures of Key West. Double verandas, hipped roof and French windows you can step through into the sunshine. My room—” He broke off abruptly.

She sat very still and waited for him to continue.

“My room’s facing east,” he said, after a moment. “I can see the sunrise, and I’m usually awake to do it with Heidi over my shoulder or on my lap. I don’t expect you to share my room right away. Heidi’s room is beside mine in what was probably a dressing room at one time. And then there’s another room that shares the same balcony. That will be yours until…” He didn’t finish.

He was absolutely right, and she knew she should feel relieved. Instead she felt more dispirited, if that was possible. And what had she hoped? That Damon would be so attracted to a seasick mouse of a woman that he would demand that she crawl into his bed on this, their first night together, and make passionate love to him?

“I’m never going to make any demands on you,” he said. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough for marrying me, and I’m not going to ask you for anything else. When and if you’re ready, you’ll know where my room is.”

“If I’m ever steady enough…on my legs again…to walk that far.”

He laughed, a spontaneous eruption that almost convinced her that he hadn’t given up on her completely. “You’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep. I promise.”

“I’ll hold you…to it.”

“The cay just ahead,” Samuel shouted. “Follow the wide purple streak to the sea, Matty, and look left.”

Damon got to his feet. “Can you stand?”

She really didn’t know. Theoretically it seemed possible. She wanted to see the island that was to be her new home, to get her first glimpse with Damon at her side, his arm around her waist. Surely she could summon up enough physical and emotional reserves to take her in to shore.

He held out his hand, and she took it, letting him pull her to her feet. For a moment she felt fine, as if the mysterious concept of sea legs was a reality in which she shared.

“Rough water here,” Samuel shouted. “Hold on tight. I be takin’ her in to Inspiration slow, and the boat, she gonna shake.”

Samuel’s words were a prophecy. The powerboat began to dance over the water’s surface like a hippo in an out-of-control conga line. Matty had already lost everything she’d eaten. Her stomach was beyond revolt, but her head was not. The world grew black, and just before she lost sight of it, it began to spin. She made one valiant attempt to take her seat again before the deck rushed up to meet her.

* * *

“Matty, this is Kevin,” Damon said.

Matty peered into the near darkness, illuminated by a row of lamps strung along a winding path that rose toward a two-story house set behind palms. Kevin was about ten yards away, nothing more than a hazy man-size shape in the distance.

“Matty’s not feeling well,” Damon continued. “She’s had a rough day. Would you mind helping Samuel with her suitcases, then take him up to the guest house? He’s brought enough food to feed an army, if that’s any incentive.”

Kevin grunted in response, then started toward them, making sure to give Matty a wide berth. She wanted to say something, anything, that might signal good intentions, but she was still trying to cope with ground that didn’t quake and a world that only revolved at its normal speed. “Hello, Kevin,” was the best she could manage to say as he passed.

This time he didn’t even grunt in answer.

“Kevin’s not an easy nut to crack,” Damon said when Kevin was out of earshot. “He liked things the way they were, and until he’s sure you’re not a threat of some kind, he won’t welcome you.”

She nodded, too ill to ask for any pointers on dealing with the teenager.

“Nanny won’t welcome you with open arms, either,” Damon said as they started back up the path. “I’d avoid getting in her way for a while. Don’t make suggestions or changes until she’s sure you’re not trying to get rid of her.”

Despite everything, she was touched that the feelings of two outcasts of such disparate generations mattered this much to Damon. “I’ll be careful.”

“I hope Heidi’s asleep,” he said as they drew closer to the house. “That would be a better introduction for you. She’s tolerable when she’s sleeping.”

She disregarded his attempt at cynicism. She already knew that Damon was head over heels in love with his daughter. Why else would he have orchestrated this amazing situation?

By the time the house loomed just fifty yards in the distance, Matty got her first unimpeded view. It was both grander and shabbier than she had expected, a soft pink twenty-carat jewel trimmed with white latticework along first and second-story porches that wrapped around the house. The roof was metal, a surprisingly homey touch in a house as stately as this one, and the ever-present Bahamian sun had softened the paint into swirling patterns, as if a pricey decorator had hired a crew to sponge it with a dozen different shades of rose. The porch floors were a deep sapphire blue, and so was some of the window trim. The overall effect was of a doll’s mansion, Caribbean-style.

“Like it?” Damon asked.

“Oh yes.”

“It’s called Inspiration. The cay was named for the house. The man who built it wanted this to be a place where artists and creative people of all kinds could come and spend time to gather their thoughts or start work on their next projects. Over the century some very important people spent time here, but no records have been kept. The owner didn’t want people stopping by to ogle Inspiration’s guests. The next owner carried on the tradition, and Arthur is trying to, as well.”

“And that’s why you’re here…”

“Time will tell if Arthur’s made a mistake or not.”

She wanted to ask him more about that, and planned to later. She knew very little about what Damon was doing or why he was doing it on a remote Bahamian island. He had told her that he had needed a place and time to do his research, and Arthur had provided them. But everything else was foggy.

“Can you make it up the steps?” Damon asked.

“I promise…I won’t throw myself at you again.”

“Something tells me that was a new experience for you.”

She apologized, as she had when she had regained consciousness in his arms. “I started out training as a surgical nurse. I never felt dizzy no matter what I had to do.”

“I wasn’t talking about fainting. I was talking about throwing yourself at a man.”

She laughed, embarrassed. “I don’t seem to have much talent for it, do I? I was unconscious during the best part.”

“I don’t know. You made sure I was right there to catch you. That shows some talent. Maybe you just need practice.”

“Not if the aftermath is a pounding headache and total humiliation. I’ll have new sympathy for my patients when I go back to nursing.”

He had been walking beside her without touching her. Now he took her arm, his fingers just barely brushing her skin. “Let’s get the introductions over, then we’ll get you to bed. A couple of aspirin and a good night’s sleep. I bet you won’t even radio for help tomorrow.”

“You’re safe. Getting off the island would be worse than staying.”

“You’ll probably never have to endure another trip in by boat like that one. Normally we can fly in to Staniel Cay and be here by boat in twenty minutes. But I couldn’t charter a flight to Staniel yesterday.”

“Oh…”

“I’ll make this up to you.”

The thought of that sent heat skidding down her spine. She felt suddenly giddy, even without waves tossing the deck beneath her. “I’ll hold you to that.”

He looked down at her and smiled a little. Nothing as wonderful as a promise showed in his eyes, but neither did he seem disgusted with her for all her weaknesses. Their gazes caught and held, and for a moment she couldn’t draw breath. She was standing in paradise with Damon Quinn at her side, a Damon who was set on marrying her. And Minnesota seemed very far away.

He lifted a hand, as if to smooth a lock of her hair back into place. Before she could even smile or breathe, the front door was flung open with a bang and a wizened old woman appeared, silhouetted against the light of a central hallway.

“Your li’l girl, she be crying for an hour, and not a thing Miss Nanny done for her turn the tide.”

“Nanny…” Damon dropped Matty’s arm and started forward. “Did you feed her?”

“What is it you t’ink I do, Damon Quinn?” She said his name as if it were one lyrical word. “You t’ink I stand there, bottle in hand, and tease her with it? You t’ink I wave it in her face? That what you t’ink?”

“I think you’ve taken excellent care of her, as usual. I’m just trying to find out exactly what you’ve done.”

“This your woman?”

Damon turned, as if he’d forgotten Matty. “I’m sorry. Nanny, this is Matty.” He reversed the introduction, clipping off his words. “Where is she?”

“She be in the screen porch, Damon Quinn. I rock her in the hammock. She cries I not rock, so I rock an hour. More.” She lifted narrow bony shoulders almost to her earlobes.

“I’ll get her.”

“You do that. She stop you pick her up. She know I be tired of rocking.”

Damon disappeared into the house and left the two women to confront each other. Nanny folded her arms. She wasn’t much more than four and a half feet tall, although she might have been taller in her youth. She had a wiry body that seemed to have folded and compacted with age. Her dark face was furrowed with deep lines, as if life had plowed that field and harvested what it had sown again and again. She wore a faded cotton print dress and a red kerchief tied at the back of her thin gray curls. Right now the curls bounced as she shook her head.

“Somet’ing wrong with you?”

Matty managed a smile. “More than you’ll ever want to hear about. Let’s just say I’m a terrible sailor.”

“No one in my family ever git sick on the water.”

“No one in my family’s ever even been on the water. At least, nobody who lived to tell about it.” Matty started forward.

“You come here, you don’t like the sea, maybe you don’t like Inspiration, either, or people on Inspiration. Maybe you don’t like coming at all.”

Matty had never felt less like passing tests, but her smile only faltered a little. “Right now I don’t. I’m glad you’re so perceptive. It’ll make getting along that much easier.”

Nanny frowned, but she seemed momentarily at a loss for words.

“The thing is,” Matty continued, “I don’t like anything right now because I’m exhausted and my head feels like someone’s inside it playing kettledrums. I wouldn’t even like my own mother right now. So thanks for understanding.”

“You got drums in your head, I got tea.”

“I would kill for a cup of your tea.”

“You sit in my kitchen.” Nanny pivoted and started through the hallway. Matty climbed the stairs to follow her.

Inside, the screaming of an infant was easily audible. Either Damon hadn’t yet rescued his daughter or Heidi hadn’t succumbed to his charms. Either way, Matty wanted to follow the sounds and at least glimpse her new charge, but she knew she’d better do as Nanny had ordered. The old woman wasn’t going to be won over easily.

She found the kitchen at the rear of the house by following the hall and cutting through lighted rooms. She was too tired to register much. The rooms were spacious, with high ceilings and tall windows. The furnishings were sparse but interesting, as if schooners from all over the world had docked here and traded ornately carved chests, cupboards and tables for whatever Inspiration’s owners had offered them.

The kitchen was huge, crisscrossed by rafters hung with dried flowers and herbs. Nanny was dwarfed by an eight-burner range sporting one lonely teakettle. The room was painted the color of good French vanilla ice cream, and the cupboards, trim and counters were a range of soft sherbets. The effect was charming.

Nanny waved Matty to a long pine table. “Tell me ‘bout your head.”

“It’s pounding. I still feel a little dizzy.”

“It buzz?”

Matty wasn’t sure where this was leading, but for the sake of harmony she was willing to play along. And besides, Nanny was right. “Yes, a little.”

“And your insides moving?”

“Like they’re training for the Olympics.”

“I’ll fix.”

“I’d be grateful.” Matty watched as Nanny eased her way around the room. She moved as if she were underwater, fluidly and in slow motion. She removed dried herbs from glass jars lining a counter, adding a pinch of this and a sprig of that to a brown pottery teapot. The water sizzled on the stove and grew louder until Nanny made her last decision and poured the water over the remedies she had selected.

Matty remembered what Damon had said about Nanny’s eyesight and sense of smell. With a sinking heart she wondered how she could call a halt to this now. She had expected traditional black tea, perhaps Earl Grey, or even something as daring as chamomile or peppermint. She had not realized that Nanny would mix her own.

“Heidi don’t like strangers,” Nanny said, without turning to see how her words affected Matty. “Already she know who her family is….”

Matty refused to disagree, although she thought that kind of perception in an infant was unlikely. “Little babies are much more intelligent than we give them credit for.”

“You pick her up, she probably cry.”

“She might very well,” Matty agreed.

“She probably cry a lot.”

“She’s certainly getting some practice right now.” Matty could still hear Heidi screaming somewhere off in the distance.

“She be mad at Damon Quinn, he go off and leave her so long, go off to git you.”

Matty still refused to take the bait. “It’s amazing how good children are at making their feelings known.” And little old Bahamian ladies, too. But Matty didn’t add that.

Nanny selected a cup from one of the cupboards, one that had obviously seen better days, then she poured Matty’s tea, squinting and lifting the cup so that she could survey its contents before she handed it over.

The cup was chipped along the rim in four different places. The handle had been broken off and glued. Matty hoped the glue held long enough for her to finish the tea. “It smells…” Words failed her. It smelled like an overripe compost pile.

“You drink it, it’ll fix you quick.”

Fix her to do what? Matty considered her options. She could refuse outright on the grounds that the tea might really end her suffering once and for all. Or she could say—quite truthfully—that her stomach was rebelling.

Or she could take up the challenge and show Nanny that she trusted and respected her. The first two wouldn’t help Matty settle into life on Inspiration, but the third might—if it didn’t kill her first.

“It smells a little like my favorite herbal blend at home,” Matty said. “Thank you, Nanny.” She lifted the cup to her lips and swallowed her first sip. The taste was vile, a cross between banana peels and some mutant relative of the cabbage family. She waited for her throat to close or her muscles to clench spasmodically. When nothing happened, she cautiously took another. “It’s so…warm.” She smiled at Nanny. “I guess it was cool out on the water.”

The kitchen door flew open, and Kevin stepped through. She saw he had dark hair down to his shoulders and the faint tracing of a mustache, but a more detailed appraisal would have to wait, since he was obviously in a hurry. He carried one of Matty’s suitcases in each hand. And as he strode past the table he left a trail of water behind.

“You be raining on my floor, Kevin Garcia,” Nanny said.

“Suitcase fell in the water,” he mumbled.

Matty closed her eyes and took another sip of the tea, but not before she had seen the glow of triumph on Kevin’s face. She suspected that fell was not the appropriate word, and that when she opened the suitcase in question she might find anything from dead fish to exotic coral formations in among her new Victoria’s Secret bras and panties.

“You leave it in bathtub, you be sure.” Nanny followed behind him, mopping the water trail with a dishtowel. “You t’ink you can spill water my house, you gotta new t’ink coming.”

“Yeah…yeah…” Kevin disappeared through the doorway.

“Kevin Garcia don’t want new faces on cay,” Nanny said.

“I’ve guessed that much,” Matty said pleasantly. “Do you suppose all my suitcases will be properly baptized, or just that one?” She took another swallow of her tea and discovered it was the last. Somewhere between the first and the final she had developed something like a fondness for it. The taste was truly terrible, but it had spread a warm lethargy through her body, weighting her limbs and even her eyelids. Her stomach was no longer an angry tempest, and the steady beat behind her eyes was slowing to lullaby tempo.

Nanny brought the teapot back to the table and refilled Matty’s cup. Matty didn’t even protest.

“Kevin’s not the onliest person on Inspiration likes t’ings the way they always be,” Nanny said.

“Nothing ever stays the same, does it?” Matty sipped her tea and contemplated how the rhythm of her own words had slowed. “But I can tell you, Nanny, that if life does stay too much the same, it’s not good either. In fact, it’s terrible and lonely. New things aren’t necessarily bad…they’re…just… new.”

Nanny was frowning. In fact, there were now two Nannys frowning at her, identical twin Nannys, who were matched wrinkle for wrinkle, curl for curl. Just as Matty was about to comment on this remarkable phenomenon the tranquility of the kitchen was shattered by a foghorn. Matty tried to remember if she had noticed a lighthouse as they had approached, wondering if even now it was signaling a ship about to enter dangerous waters. The possibility was so romantic, so thrilling, that she wanted to ask, but somehow her lips, curved into a wide smile, refused to move.

“This monster child is my daughter, Heidi,” Damon shouted above the din. “And she refuses to stop screaming.”

Matty heard Damon’s voice, and she even made some sense of what he said. The foghorn was a baby, Damon’s baby, in fact. She was supposed to turn around, acknowledge the child in his arms, perhaps even offer professional advice on calming her. Some part of Matty—a part growing steadily smaller—wanted to do just that. As for the rest…

Her eyelids gave up the fight and closed, screening out everything except Damon’s next words.

“Nanny! What the hell did you put in that tea?”

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