Eden's Spell

  Eden’s Spell

  Heather Graham

  In loving memory of Ellsworth D. “Dan” Graham, my favorite Navy man World War II

  Contents

  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

  Epilogue

  A Biography of Heather Graham

  PROLOGUE

  “MOM! MOM! COME QUICK!”

  Katrina started slightly. Normally, she would have been attuned to the urgency in Jason’s voice and responded instantly to his call.

  But today …

  Something about today had cast her so deeply into her own thoughts that she remained where she was, cocooned in a dream world.

  It might have been the wind; it might have been the lulling dip of the palm fronds, or the slow ripples moving across the surface of the pond. There was a scent of wild orchids in the air today, too, and it might have been that scent that had reminded her so much of James. Or maybe it was just the way she was lying, stretched over the cool sand, the way they had so often done together.

  “This is it, Katrina! The closest thing to Eden this side of heaven! Our Eden, our paradise!”

  James seemed to have materialized before her, tall, slender, very, very tan, his dark hair streaked platinum by the sun. His grin, boyish and mischievous, lit up his face, and his arms embraced the air with enthusiasm.

  And she laughed happily.

  He slid down beside her, idly running his fingers along her bare ribs. “Just like Eve!” He teased her, his sandy eyes twinkling. “Pure trouble, pure temptation!”

  “Trouble! I resent that. And I can’t possibly be temptation! There isn’t an apple tree anywhere on this island!”

  Impatiently he tugged at the tie to her bikini top, frowning as the knot refused to give. “Sea grapes,” he told her absently. “We have sea grapes.”

  “Ugh!” Katrina muttered, smiling at his frustrated attempts to sweep away her top. In a minute, of course, he would give up, asking her if she hadn’t been in the Navy at some point in life, learning to make foolproof knots. Then she would protest demurely that they were in the open, and he would remind her that it was their island, and she would strip away the top with wanton dexterity. But for now …

  “I can’t imagine tempting anyone with sea grapes,” she said sweetly, her voice catching slightly as he continued to tug away.

  “Forget about sea grapes and apples, my love. You’re temptation enough without them.” And then he bent over her and cradled her head between his palms, tenderly, sensually massaging her cheeks with his thumbs as his eyes searched hers. His voice had lost its teasing quality. “I’m the luckiest man in the universe….”

  His lips touched hers, then moved to her throat, and she felt the delicious rush of desire sweep through her that never failed when they touched. “And the sexiest …” she whispered back to him, digging her fingers into his hair as he lightly bit her nipple through the fabric. “And the most—”

  “Mom!”

  This time Jason’s shriek did penetrate the fog of her thoughts. Suddenly panicked at the sound of his voice, she catapulted to her feet, spinning like a dancer on her bare toes for a moment as she desperately tried to locate his position.

  “Jason! Where are you?”

  There was no answer.

  “Jason!”

  Still no answer.

  The island was only two miles long and a mile wide, but at the moment it seemed much bigger. Katrina began to wonder feverishly what could possibly have happened to make Jason cry out so.

  She was already running. Sea grapes and palms ripped at her hair as she tore through the foliage, and straggling mangrove roots threatened to trip her, but this was her island, and she was accustomed to its terrain.

  South … she was certain that the cry had come from the south. She passed the second brackish inland pool, which was almost dry with the lack of rain.

  “Jason!”

  She screamed her son’s name out again. And again, there was no answer. Thoughts tumbled wildly through her mind. She shouldn’t have stayed on here. She’d survived nicely for the last five years, yes, but if something had happened to her son, happened because they lived alone in a subtropical jungle, she would never forgive herself.

  Forgive herself! She wouldn’t want to go on living! Not if she lost Jason too….

  He was all right, she tried to console herself. He could swim like a fish, and he had the sense not to go in the water alone, anyway. He climbed trees, yes, but none of the trees on the island was very high. As for snakes, he knew which were harmless, and so far, they’d never seen a moccasin, or a coral snake.

  She kept running, led by instinct. Past a patch of crotons, wild hibiscus, and bitter cherry, she found the path, which was shaded by a line of palm trees. It was almost dusk, and the sun was casting patterns of red and orange and primitive pink.

  The pool was before her. She was in the dark, cool shade of the palm trees, but it was in light: A mist of pure gold light.

  “Jason!” Katrina shouted, and then fell dead silent.

  She was shocked into stillness by the sight that greeted her. It was a man, she was certain. Or almost certain. He was standing at the far side of the pool, beneath the magic spectrum of sunlight. He was helmeted and uniformed, as if he had prepared for a walk in space. His uniform was silver, catching the sun’s rays, giving off a glowing aura.

  All that was actually visible of him were his eyes. And like his uniform they seemed to be silver. Shimmering, penetrating silver.

  Yet more important than his appearance—far more important!—was the fact that he was holding Jason in his silver-coated arms. Held with what appeared to be care, yet held because he was quite obviously unconscious—or dead.

  “No!” Katrina shrieked, no longer held immobile by the incredible sight. She ran through the pool, heedless of the murky water, of the branches and roots that lay beneath, of anything. But the pool suddenly seemed so large. She was running, but her movement seemed ridiculously slow. And there was a strange ground fog.

  The fog! That was it! The fog was thick and heavy and pinkish. That was what was keeping her from reaching Jason, from wrenching him from the arms of the alien and making sure that he was fine.

  “My son!” she choked out hysterically. She was going to fall; she was losing her grip on consciousness. But she couldn’t, not until she reached Jason.

  “He’ll be all right!” A gruff voice assured her, a voice filled with impatience and aggravation. Silver eyes glared at her piercingly through the glass of the helmet.

  Katrina staggered and fell into the pool. Tears of frustration and fear filled her eyes. She had to get to her feet. Some insane alien spaceman was holding her son and she had to reach him.

  She struggled back up, drenched. Water dripped from her hair, from her flesh, from the tight-fitting material of her strapless teal maillot. The pink fog was all around her.

  She thought she heard the soft tread of footsteps; she tried to follow the sound, but it seemed to echo and reverberate and come from all around her. Her legs were too weak to hold her, and she started falling again, falling until she sat upon her knees in the water, desperately fighting the fog that embraced her body and mind.

  “Jason!” she cried, her fear feeding her anger. “Give me my son!” she shouted. “Give me my son!”

  Footsteps came, sloshing through the knee-high water. Katrina instinctively cringed. He was there, standing before her. Daze
d, she followed his silver-clad legs way, way up to his steel-silver eyes. He was very tall, she realized. No costume could provide such an illusion of height.

  “Who are you?” she screamed. He was reaching for her, and she was terrified. She scrambled to back away, but her muscles would give her no assistance. Her voice rose in its fevered pitch. “Give me my son and—”

  His hands—silver gloved—fell on her shoulders. She tried to hit him, she tried to fight, but she had no strength. Despite her screams and flailing, he drew her up. Silver arms wrapped around her, and she was being carried, just as Jason had been.

  “No! Let me—”

  “What in hell are you doing here?” he demanded curtly. “You agreed to leave!”

  Something he said touched her memory; but what? No. This was a dream, a foggy, misty dream. Why couldn’t she remember?

  Yet he was real. She tried to twist in his arms, but they were as strong as the steel of his eyes.

  “This is my island! My property! What the hell are you—oh, it doesn’t even matter! Just give me my son, and get off!”

  “Shut up, will you? You swore not to be here! Damned woman—stubborn witch!”

  Katrina couldn’t believe it. He was trespassing on her property, dressed in a spacesuit, and he had the nerve—the gall!—to call her names!

  “I’ll throttle you! I’ll see you behind bars for the rest of your life! Oh, God, where in the hell did you escape from? If my son is—hurt—in any way …” It was getting harder and harder to talk. The pink fog surrounding her was becoming thicker. So thick. She couldn’t move; she couldn’t even twist anymore. And now her mind, too, seemed to be filling with the pink fog. She could barely think; she could hardly make out her thoughts.

  And he just kept carrying her, holding her tightly in his silver arms.

  “I’m going to scream. Help will come; they’ll cart you away!”

  “Oh, dear Lord, what did I do to deserve this?”

  His steel-and-silver eyes rolled toward heaven—it was a sincere plea to the Supreme Being. Then those eyes fell on her again, and she knew he was thinking once more that she was a stubborn witch.

  Then there was a glint in those eyes, slightly mischievous. “You’ll be out like a light soon, thank God,” he muttered. “Lord, what a shrew!”

  “Shrew!”

  “Shrew!” he repeated.

  She wanted to say more. She wanted to fight him; she wanted to scratch him bloody right through his silver suit.

  But her hands wouldn’t move. Nor would her lips form words. Pink enveloped everything. She felt very light. Weightless. Even ridiculously glad of the arms that touched her.

  Arms … hands that touched her naked flesh. They were warm against the breeze, against the coming dusk. She wore nothing but the skimpy maillot with the high-cut legs, and his fingers were brushing her there, and it suddenly seemed all right. In the world of swirling pink and misty gray, it felt perfectly all right for him to be holding her, touching her so intimately.

  She opened her eyes. For a moment they fastened on his. And she smiled, because he was so cute and silly in his space suit. She liked him. And he had such nice, nice eyes. Fascinating. Steel and silver, like his touch.

  And steel and silver were taking over from the pink. The world grew darker. Smiling was so easy, so effortless. She didn’t want to fight. She wanted to give into the darkness, to be held, to be comforted.

  To be loved….

  It was her last thought as the pink gave way completely to steel-gray and silver. And then blackness.

  CHAPTER ONE

  WELL, THIS WAS ONE fine hell of a mess, Mike Taylor decided in total frustration as he stared helplessly from the boy he had placed on the ground to the woman he carried in his arms. He was ready to kill someone—or at least shake someone senseless.

  The island was supposed to have been evacuated for his top-secret, classified project, and instead he had unwittingly received two human guinea pigs!

  He sighed, then realized with disgust that the woman had managed to dislodge his helmet—and therefore his breathing apparatus. He’d better start moving; he could already detect the sweet smell of 44DFS seeping into his air supply.

  She was in his arms; might as well take her first.

  Clumsy in his heavy suit, Mike moved carefully through the remaining mangrove terrain of the south side of the island. His dinghy had been pulled onto the only bare ten feet of beach he had been able to find. He carefully set her into it, resting her head against one of the orange Navy-ration life-preservers. With both annoyance and curiosity, he found himself staring at her.

  She was a tiny creature; no more than five two, and maybe a hundred pounds. Her hair was very long and wild and wet as it lay plastered against her bare back. Even wet, though, it gleamed with an undeniable sheen of red. Probably a deep dark red, an auburn. Yes, it had been auburn, shining in the sun like a burst of glory in those first few seconds before she had stumbled into the pool….

  A redhead. Oh hell, it was definitely true that redheads had horrendous tempers! As if matters weren’t bad enough!

  But for a moment, Mike forgot the seriousness of the situation. He smiled a little, recalling again the moment he had first seen her. Her eyes had blazed in the sun. Turquoise eyes, as blue and as green as a changing sea, as crystal clear as the water that moved gently over the reefs.

  And as fury laden as a cyclone.

  Mike shrugged with irritation. Damn it all! Who in God’s name had flubbed up so badly? They had gone through the proper procedure, obtained all the forms….

  The boy, Mike reminded himself. The sooner he went back for the boy, the sooner he could reach the Maggie Mae, and the sooner he could straighten out this mess!

  But he paused again, watching her, reflecting that he had been almost as shocked as she at their confrontation. He’d expected nothing but flora and fauna; but there had been the boy, and then, her. For a second—just a split second—he’d wondered if he hadn’t stumbled into some modern-day Eden. She had just appeared, half naked, that wild hair streaming over the top of her blue bathing suit so that it had seemed as though she was wearing nothing at all. A spitfire of fury and energy, beautiful and pagan, pitching into battle unarmed.

  He turned away from her, irritated all over again. For God’s sake! She had a son; she’d signed the damn papers. She should have been responsible and careful enough to get off the island.

  Mike clumped back through the mangrove roots, unable to shake his aggravation. Logically, it was ridiculous to be so angry at her. It had been someone else’s responsibility to make sure the island was cleared of civilians. There had just been something about her….

  Small, petite, and fragile. She had reminded him of Margo.

  Mike reached the boy, and bent carefully to cradle him into his arms. He smiled then, glancing down at the sleeping form. Nice kid. He’d shown absolute fascination when he’d first discovered Mike—and Mike had discovered him. After he’d stopped screaming for his mother, he’d become very conversational.

  “Oh, boy! A spaceman! Are you from Mars?”

  “No. Sorry, kid.” He’d had to grin. “Originally, I’m from northern Michigan. Of course, there are people who might consider that like being from Mars.”

  “Are you a madman?” the boy asked quite bluntly.

  And Mike had laughed, then grown very somber, reminding himself that there had been one hell of a screw-up.

  “No, son, I’m with the Navy. And I need you to listen, because this is very important. I need you to come to me, very slowly, very carefully, because you’re going to start to fall asleep in a matter of moments. The air will appear to be pink….”

  Ah, yes, pink air. And thanks to the boy’s feisty mother, Mike had breathed some of that pink air himself! He’d better get a move on. He didn’t want to pass out himself, especially not with the three of them adrift in a little dinghy.

  Mike hurried back to the tiny strip of beach. The woman was still
sleeping in the dinghy, as sweetly as a little lamb. Her lips were curved into a tender smile, as if she dreamed sweet things.

  Mike placed the boy against a life preserver with gentle care, then pushed the small boat away from the beach. Out in the water, he started the motor, and turned the tiller toward the Maggie Mae.

  Away from the island, he stripped away his helmet and mask, and deeply inhaled the fresh sea air. It was good: salty, clean, and fragrant.

  And yet he knew he had also inhaled something of his own invention. He had to keep blinking to see clearly, and it felt as if a soft pink blanket were closing in around him. He had to hurry.

  In front of the Maggie Mae he cut the motor and drifted to the stern of the yacht. He caught the towline and stood, balancing carefully. He had to strip away the rest of his quarantine outfit while in the dinghy; he’d never get up the rope ladder with his two casualties in such gear.

  Casualties! Dammit, there shouldn’t have been any casualties!

  He grunted out an unintelligible oath, dropped the silver cloth, and hefted the boy over his shoulders. Once on deck Mike hesitated, then brought the boy to the aft cabin. He laid him down upon the bunk and quickly checked his pulse, respiration, and pupils.

  He was sleeping, soundly, nicely. His pulse was as strong as a young bull’s. Mike pulled the covers over the boy, left him, and returned to the dinghy for the woman.

  It was almost dark now. Only a few pale streaks of red and gold still touched the sky. The breeze had picked up; it had started to dry her hair, and sent it billowing in gentle velvet fans of pure copper. Mike lifted her into his arms. Her soft hair blew and wafted around his bare shoulders like a caress of silk.

  Her eyes opened while he struggled up the ladder. They were brilliant with the sea’s color, fascinated, fascinating.

  “Hi,” she murmured sweetly.

  “Hi, yourself,” he replied briefly.

  She yawned and stretched backward; Mike teetered precariously on the ladder.

  “Hey! Hold on to me!” he commanded curtly.

  She giggled, and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. Mike gasped; she was cutting his windpipe.