Teresa Medeiros - Once An Angel

I was beginning to wonder if you were ever-" As his gaze lit on her, he stopped.

Emily held her breath as he reached up and slowly pulled off his hat. An odd tingle swept up her body

in the smoldering path of his gaze. Their easy banter of the previous night perished in its flame.

Laughing shakily, she spread her arms and spun around for his perusal. "Do I look like a native? Would Trini be pleased? Of course Trini wouldn't be pleased. He would be exultant. Or rhapsodic. Or-"

"You look fine." Justin's tone bordered on surliness.

She caught a tantalizing glimpse of something pained, almost stricken, in his eyes. Then he donned his hat, tilting it forward as an effective veil.

She flitted around the hut, gathering a towel and a wicker basket. "I thought I'd go down to the beach

and dig some clams for supper. I'm weary to death of this dusty old hut." She started for the door.

"No!"

His yell startled her so badly, she dropped the basket.

She felt her jaw drop as he threw his body across the door. "You can't go out there! I absolutely forbid it."

Justin knew he was behaving like a madman, but he was helpless to stop. The same impish demon

who had driven him to return to the hut at midday had taken his little pitchfork and twisted it deep into Justin's heart.

He had opened the door, expecting to find the bedraggled waif he had carried to the pallet after Penfeld had awakened him that morning. But the fairies had come while he was in the fields, leaving in her place one of their own-an ethereal vision of womanhood. Her loveliness pained him, opened up a raw chasm of hunger in his heart and in his arms. He wanted to cover her shy smile with his lips, to ease her back down on the pallet and beg her to adore him with both her woman's body and her child's heart.

She had tried to tell him she was grown, but he had refused to heed her warning. Until he had heard

the teasing whisper of flax against her thighs and traced the exquisite cling of the fabric across her full breasts, it had been less painful to pretend she was just a funny little moppet, a minor annoyance to his well-ordered existence.

But when he walked through that door, his neat existence had crumbled like sand before an irresistible tide, and he had ended up flung across the doorway like a pagan sacrifice.

"You can't go out there," he repeated. "I won't have it."

Emily's brow folded in a stormy frown. Justin knew he had made a mistake. Forbidding Emily anything was like tossing a haunch of beef to a starving lioness.

She crossed her arms and tapped her foot on the dirt floor. "I beg your pardon."

"I'm sorry, but I simply cannot allow it."

"Why not?"

"It's not safe. There are too many-uh-um-"

"Tigers? Cobras? Bears?" she offered.

Bears? He wanted to reply that there were too many other men out there. Maori warriors, undeniably handsome even by English standards. Virile Polynesians whose bronze muscles gleamed with sweat and whose bones never ached, not even after long, hot hours in the sun. Strutting young heroes in the first flush of manhood with not a gray hair among them. Justin searched his mind frantically.

"Cannibals!" he almost shouted. "Too many cannibals. I'm disappointed in you, Emily. How could you have forgotten?"

"And you think they might want to gobble me up?" She swept her tongue across her pearly little teeth.

Justin wadded his hat into a ball. His body was strumming like a piano wire strung to reckless limits.

God, she was luscious. She was in far more danger of being gobbled up in here than out there.

"They might," he replied, refusing to commit himself.

"How odd. I distinctly remember Trini telling me the surrounding tribes were all friendly to whites.

He said they even fought side by side in the recent land wars against the hostile natives."

Luscious and gifted with a good memory, Justin thought. A lethal combination. "There are still hostile Maori to the east of us in Rotorua who have been known to send out marauding parties." Her lower lip inched out, and Justin groaned. "I'm simply asking you not to go out alone. I'll come back and take you out later." Much later. Preferably after it was pitch dark and there was no one to ogle her but him.

She tossed back her curls and struck a long-suffering pose. "So until then I'm to remain your prisoner

in this hut?"

Justin was torn between laughter and painful desire. Her words summoned up some very naughty images of fur rugs and silken chains. Once again he thanked God she had fallen into his hands instead of some less scrupulous man's. His own scruples were wearing thin faster than he cared to admit.

She had worked herself up to a full pout now. Justin decided it best to go before she started throwing things. She was standing dangerously near the skillet, and he didn't want to spend another sleepless night gluing together teacups. He donned his hat, wondering how it had gotten so misshapen. He dared a last glance from beneath the shelter of its brim and caught Emily's expression in a moment of rare honesty. She wasn't angry. She was hurt. As she watched him go, it had become impossible for her to hide the forlorn tilt of her lips.

He crossed to her and nudged her face up with one finger. "I'll be back for you. I promise."

Unable to deny himself, he touched his lips to hers in a brief caress. Her shiver of response rocked his soul. As he turned to go, the look in her fathomless dark eyes made him wonder which of them was

truly the prisoner.

Justin's words haunted the lonely hut.

I'll be back for you. I promise.

Those were the last words Emily's father had ever spoken to her.

They had faced each other in Miss Winters's elegant parlor, awkward and at a loss for words for the

first time in Emily's memory. The fawning headmistress had offered them the room for their farewells. She had assured him she would spare no expense for her cherished new pupil and her doting father, a man they all knew had a healthy investment in the booming New Zealand gold rush. Frost had webbed the windows, but a cheery fire had crackled on the hearth.

Eleven years before, when he'd been only twenty himself, David Scarborough's lovely Irish bride had died, leaving a squalling red-faced infant in her place. He delighted in telling his friends that he and Emily had grown up together. He was more than father and mother to her. He was her dearest friend. They'd never been separated, not even for a night, and now he was going away.

Emily was afraid to look at him. Snowflakes melted on the cape of his greatcoat. His own unruly curls had been tamed by a top hat of polished beaver. She thought he had never looked taller or more handsome. Or less like her daddy. She comforted herself by studying his leather shoes, memorizing

each familiar knick and scuff, ignoring the trickle of the tears down her cheeks.

He folded her face in his kid gloves, his voice choked with a helpless agony that mirrored her own. "Claire. My sweet, my darling . . ."

She had buried her nose in his waistcoat, savoring the scent of pipe tobacco that always clung to him.

He had touched his lips to her hair and whispered, "I'll be back for you. I promise."

Then he had turned and gone, leaving her standing alone in a blast of icy air.

"He would have come back, too," Emily whispered to the silent hut. "If it hadn't been for you."

She curled her lip in a snarl. How dare Justin make a mockery of her father's words! How dare his lips caress hers as if she were still a child to be pacified with a kiss and a promise! Promises were only as good as the men who made them.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "As if your words mean spit to me, Justin Connor!"

She snatched up the basket and threw the towel over her shoulder. Justin had been lying to her. The furtive dart of his eyes had given him away. Being a skilled kisser did not preclude being a bad liar. He probably wanted her safely closeted in the hut so she couldn't discover what dark deeds he accomplished in the glaring light of day. She marched across the hut, fully intending to tell him where both he and his mythical cannibals could go.

She threw open the door. A half-naked savage sprang into her path, swinging his club in a whistling arc. Emily froze. He shoved his face into hers. She recoiled from the fishy stench of his breath. The sunlight shining through her hair seemed to mesmerize him. Muttering under his breath, he wrapped one of her curls around his grubby finger, baring his yellowed teeth in a fearful grimace.

When he released the curl, it sprang back and hit her in the nose. Nodding as if satisfied, his chant

swelled to a wail and he began to roll his eyes and wag his tongue in time to the wild gyration of his hips. Emily didn't know if he wanted to kill her or marry her. A churning throng of natives milled behind him, their gleaming teeth sharpened to menacing points.