Devil and the Deep Sea

DEVIL AND THE

DEEP SEA

Sara Craven

"A year out of your life. What price would you ask?"

Samma supposed that any other woman would surely slap the face

of a man who would pose such a question. But Samma couldn't

afford

that

luxury

with

Roche

Delacroix.

With her stepfather ready to sell her "favors" to clear his gambling

debts, Roche represented Samma's only avenue of escape from an

unthinkable

future

on

Cristoforo

Island.

Only a few hours earlier, the lips that opened the suggestive

negotiation had made Samma so thoroughly aware of being female.

Samma couldn't help feeling that life was doubly unfair.

The breeze from the sea whipped a strand of pale fair hair across

Samma Briant's cheek, and she flicked it back impatiently as she

bent over her drawing-board.

The waterfront at Cristoforo was crowded, as it always was when a

cruise ship was in. Tourists were eagerly exploring the bars and

souvenir shops along the quayside, and stopping to look at the stalls

which sold locally made jewellery, carvings and paintings of island

scenes. And a lot of them lingered where Samma sat on an upturned

crate, amused and fascinated by her talent for capturing an instant

likeness on paper, and willing to pay the modest fee she charged for

her portraits.

She didn't consider herself to be an artist. She possessed a knack,

no more, for fixing on some facial characteristic of each subject,

and subtly exploiting it. But she enjoyed her work, and on days like

this it was even reasonably lucrative.

She had a small crowd around her already, and her day would have

been just about perfect, except for one large, mauve,

chrome-glittering cloud on her horizon—
Sea Anemone,
surely the

most vulgar motor yacht in the Caribbean, currently moored a few

hundred yards away in Porto Cristo's marina. Because
Sea

Anemone's
presence at Cristoforo meant that her owner, the equally

large and garish Mr Hugo Baxter, would be at the hotel tonight,

playing poker with Samma's stepfather, Clyde Lawson.

One glimpse of that monstrous mauve hulk lying at anchor had been

enough to start Samma's stomach churning uneasily. It was only six

weeks since Hugo Baxter's last visit. She'd thought they were safe

for at least another month or two. Yet, here he was again closing in

for the kill, she thought bitterly, as she signed the portrait she'd just

finished with a small flourish, and handed it over to her delighted

sitter with a brief, professional smile.

The fact was they couldn't afford another visit from Hugo Baxter.

Samma had no idea what her stepfather's exact financial position

was—he would never discuss it with her—but she suspected it

might be desperately precarious.

When Clyde had met and married her mother during a visit to

Britain, he had been a moderately affluent businessman, owning a

small but prosperous hotel, and a restaurant on the small Caribbean

island of Cristoforo. The island was just beginning to take off as a

cruise ship stopping-point, and the future should have been

rosy—except for Clyde's predilection for gambling. While Samma's

mother had been alive, he'd kept his proclivities more or less under

control, but since her death two years earlier things had gone from

bad to worse. The restaurant had had to be sold to pay his debts,

and the hotel hadn't had the redecoration and refurbishment it

needed, either.

Clyde seemed to win so seldom, Samma thought broodingly, and

when Hugo Baxter was in the game his losses worsened to a

frightening extent.

She motioned her next customer to the folding chair in front of her,

and began to sketch in the preliminary shape of her head and

shoulders with rapid, confident strokes.

Clyde's only remaining asset was the hotel. And if we lose that, she

thought despondently, I'm never going to get off this island.

Probably the woman she was sketching would have thrown up her

hands in horror at the thought of anyone wanting to leave

Cristoforo. 'Isn't this paradise?' was the usual tourist cry.

Well, it was and it wasn't, Samma thought cynically. During the

years when she'd spent her school holidays here, she'd taken the

romantic view, too. She'd been in the middle of her A-level course

when her mother had collapsed and died from a heart attack. She'd

flown to Cristoforo for the funeral, only to discover when it was

over that the trust which was paying her school fees had Ceased

with her mother's death, and that Clyde had no intention of paying

out for her to complete her education.

'It's time you started working to keep yourself,' he told her

aggressively. 'Besides, I need you here to take your mother's place.'

Sick at heart, confused by her grief for her mother, Samma had

agreed to stay. But it had been a serious mistake. When Clyde had

spoken of her working for her keep, he meant just that, she'd found.

She received no wage for her work at the hotel. The only money

she earned was through her sketches, and although she saved as

much as she could towards her airfare back to the United Kingdom,

it was a wretchedly slow process.

But even if she'd been reasonably affluent, she would still have

been disenchanted with Cristoforo. It was a small island, socially

and culturally limited, with a hideously high cost of living. And,

when the holiday season ended, it was dull.

And working at the hotel, and more particularly in the small

nightclub Clyde had opened in the grounds, Samma had been

shocked when she'd experienced the leering attentions of many of

the male guests. Coming from the comparative shelter of

boarding-school, almost overnight she'd discovered that to most of

the male visitors to the island she was an object, rather than a

person, and she'd been revolted by the blatant sexism of their

attitude to her. She'd soon learned to hide herself in a shell of aloof

reserve which chilled the ardour of the most determined predator.

But she was aware that, by doing so, she was also cutting herself

off from the chance of perhaps forming a real and lasting

relationship. However, this was a risk she had to take, although she

was forced to admit she'd never been even mildly attracted by any

of the men who stayed at the hotel, or hung round the bar at the

Black Grotto club.

One day, she thought, one day, when she got back to England and

found herself a decent job, and a life of her own, she would meet

someone she could be happy with. Until then, she'd stay insulated in

her cocoon of indifference.

Except when Hugo Baxter was around, she reminded herself

uneasily. He seemed impervious to any rebuff, seeking her out,

taking any opportunity to touch her, Samma's skin crawled at the

thought. One thing was certain, she was keeping well away from

the Black Grotto tonight.

She handed over her completed portrait, and glanced at her watch.

It was nearly noon, and people were drifting away in search of

lunch and shade. Time for a break, Samma thought, getting to her

feet and stretching vigorously. As she lifted her arms above her

head, she was suddenly aware she was being watched, and she

looked round.

Startled, her eyes met another gaze, dark, faintly amused and totally

male in its assessment of the thrust of her rounded breasts against

her brief cotton top, Samma realised in the embarrassed moment

before she looked away with icy disdain.

But she was left with a disturbing impression of height and strength,

and sun-bronzed skin revealed by a brief pair of cut-off denims. 'As

well as an absurd feeling of self-consciousness, she thought

resentfully.

She should be used to being looked at. In a community where most

people were dark-haired and dark-skinned, her pale skin and blonde

hair, as straight and shining as rain water, naturally attracted

attention, and usually she could cope with this.

But there had been something so provocatively and

deliberately—masculine about this stranger's regard that it had

flicked her on the raw.

And her antennae told her that he was still looking. She picked up

her sketch-block, and began drawing at random—the neighbouring

stall, where Mindy, its owner, was selling a view of the marina to a

tourist couple who were trying and failing to beat him down over

the price. But her fingers, inexplicably, were all thumbs, fudging the

lines, and she tore the sheet off, crumpling it irritably.

She stole a sideways glance under her lashes, making an

assessment of her own. He was leaning on the rail of one of the

sleekest and glossiest of the many craft in the marina, and looking

totally out of place, she decided critically, although she supposed he

was good-looking, in a disreputable way—that was, if you liked

over-long and untidy black hair, and a great beak of a nose which

looked as if it had been broken at least once in its career.

He was the image, she thought contemptuously, of some old-time

pirate chief, surveying the captive maiden from his quarter-deck. He

only needed a cutlass and a parrot—and she would give them to

him!

Her mouth curving, she drew the preliminary outline, emphasising

the stranger's nose almost to the point of caricature, adding extra

rakishness with earrings, and a bandanna swathed round that shock

of dark hair. She transformed his expression of faint amusement

into an evil leer, gave the parrot on his shoulder a squint, then

pinned the sketch up on the display board behind her with a

flourish.

He would never see it, of course. The boat's owner had clearly left

him on watch, and probably with good reason. Only a thief bent on

suicide would want to tangle with a physique that tough, and

shoulders that broad.

She had a quick, retentive eye for detail, but it annoyed her just the

same to find how deeply his image had impressed itself on her

consciousness. One eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation and a quick

sideways glance, and she'd been able to draw him at once, whereas

she normally allowed herself a much more searching scrutiny before

she began. Yet this sketch had worked, even if it was a shade

vindictive.

And, in its way, it turned out to be a good advertisement. People

strolling past stopped to laugh, and stayed to be drawn themselves.

They seemed to like the element of cartoon she'd incorporated,

although Mindy, loping across with a slice of water melon for her,

raised his brows when he saw it, and murmured, 'Friend of yours,

gal?'

'Figment of my imagination,' she retorted cheerfully.

Another swift glance had revealed, to her relief, that the rail of the

boat was now deserted. Doubtless he'd remembered the owner

didn't pay him for standing about, eyeing up the local talent, she

thought, scooping a handful of hair back from her face with a slim,

suntanned hand.

She was putting the finishing touches to the portrait of a pretty

redhead with amazing dimples, undoubtedly on honeymoon with

the young man who watched her so adoringly, when a shadow fell

across her pad.

Samma glanced up in irritation, the words 'Excuse me' freezing

unspoken on her lips.

Close to, he was even more formidable. Distance had cloaked the