Jed's Sweet Revenge (2 page)

“… and it’s the ghost of Sarah Gregg ridin’ that horse on the beach, ridin’ just like she did forty years ago ’fore she was killed by a hurricane. Your grandma Sarah was a beautiful woman.” Farlo paused for effect as the white dunes and lush forest of Sancia Island began to take specific form in front of them. Jed was surprised to see how large it was. The western beach stretched for at least a couple of miles. “If you see her, you just tell her who you are and she’ll leave you be.”

Jed arched one brown brow. “I don’t believe in ghosts. And if I did, I don’t reckon any Gregg family ghosts would want to talk to me.” He shook his head. Sancia was Latin for “sanctuary,” the lawyers had mentioned. Well, it was sure as hell no sanctuary for him. It was only the relic of an arrogant family that had deserted his mother because she’d married a cowboy with no money. His father. Jed had a score to settle with the past, and Sancia Island was the means to do it.

Jed wasn’t much of a poet, and he struggled to describe what he felt as he watched the sun sink over the ocean in breathtaking mists of magenta and gold.

It makes me feel good, but sad, he thought. Then he drew his mouth into a grimace of self-rebuke. That didn’t make sense. Or maybe it did, and he just felt awkward trying to analyze his emotions. He thought of himself as a simple man with simple reactions, and he didn’t like feeling confused, as he did now. Jed had no love for the island, but its beauty made him ache with a wistful mixture of pain and pleasure.

He shook his head at the softheaded thoughts. Bulldozers. That’s what this place needed. Bulldozers and construction crews and condominiums for slick, silly rich people.

“Hold on, hoss,” he said aloud. “You got fifteen million bucks and an island, so don’t go talkin’ about rich people. And you’re soundin’ pretty damned silly yourself at this particular minute.”

The spoken words whisked away in the wind, and Jed had an odd sense of having been overheard by something or someone. Feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable, he clamped his mouth shut and listened to waves whisper against the sand a hundred yards away. Huge sand dunes hid his sitting place on both
sides, and tall sea oats waved around him like Wyoming range grass. The oats made him feel a little more at home.

Gulls—the noisiest, craziest birds he’d ever seen—swooped and circled against the canopy of the deep, darkening blue sky. A pair of brown pelicans rode the ocean swells like small boats. A breeze caressed Jed’s face with the contented sigh of a happy lover.

He shivered for no good reason except that he suddenly pictured his beautiful society-matron grandmother, Sarah Gregg, riding a horse along the white beach that flattened out beyond the dunes. Jed closed his eyes. Damned place is hypnotic, he thought in new dismay. Ghosts, what foolishness that old fisherman talked.…

The sound of galloping hooves made him open his eyes.

Jed leapt into a crouching position, his sharp reflexes ready for whatever he might encounter. He didn’t know what he’d do if an apparition floated into view beyond the sand dunes, but he’d think of something. Pure craziness, he told himself quickly. There’s no such thing as ghosts. But he felt his heart rhythm echo the approaching hoofbeats.

What galloped into view was indeed an apparition, but a living one. Jed heard the explosion of air that swept out of his lungs in relief.

“What the …” he began, and stopped. Everything stopped—his breath, his thoughts, his awareness of the rest of the world. In all his thirty-two years, he’d never seen anyone as beautiful.

She rode the dainty little mare bareback, controlling her with nothing but body language and the subtle movements of a rope attached to a nylon halter on the mare’s delicate head. A thin white dress, sleeveless and scoop-necked, exposed her slender arms and graceful shoulders. The dress was wrapped haphazardly around a pair of golden, strong legs that clung expertly to the mare’s sides.

A trio of tongue-lolling dogs, one small and two very large, circled the prancing horse. An elegant hawk with dark auburn wings nearly the same color as the woman’s luxuriant hair hung suspended over her for a moment, then swooped down to the sand and calmly curved its wings against its sides.

A dream. I’m having a dream, Jed thought in awe. He didn’t want to wake up.

She slid off the mare and immediately whirled around in an uninhibited show of happiness, her arms spread wide, her head thrown back. The sunset framed her with glowing magic. The dogs barked cheerfully and the mare trotted up and down the beach, shaking her head and snorting. The hawk lazily nudged a periwinkle shell with its beak and fluttered its wings in an attitude of haughty disdain for more boisterous pursuits.

“Thena Sainte-Colbet?” Jed whispered. “Is this my squatter? Great gosh a’mighty.”

He tilted his head to one side, his mouth open, his usual squint-eyed toughness replaced by pure enchantment. A second later he felt tickling goose bumps spread from the back of his neck down his entire body. She was undressing.

The white smock fell at her feet and she stood by the ocean completely, beautifully naked, her back to him. With the freedom of someone accustomed to total privacy, she languidly stroked her hands through the dark brown mane of hair that cascaded between her shoulder blades. Jed’s body’s distinctly male response told him that from this view, at least, she was nearly flawless.

“Thank you, God, for this lovely day!” she yelled toward the blazing sunset. Jed smiled at the sound of her voice—Southern and yet oddly lilting, mixed with some pretty accent he couldn’t place. She walked into the waves like a goddess, and when the water swirled around the tapering indentation of her waist, she dove forward and began to swim.

For fifteen minutes he watched in wonder as she cut through the water just beyond the whitecaps. Something might hurt her, he worried. He didn’t like swimming, not even in swimming pools, and for sure not in this huge tub of green water. Come out of there, he silently ordered.

When she did, the pleasant but disturbing sensations inside him accelerated. Jed was no stranger to the hot, tight feelings of physical need. But the sight of her wet body, the breasts full and high, water streaming down the gentle slopes and curves into the triangle of dark hair between her legs, brought back his earlier feeling of bittersweet spiritual pain. She rivaled the sunset, making him ache. She was even more beautiful than a mountain wildflower.

His brows flattened in a frown as he watched her limp onto the beach, favoring her right knee in a casual way that told him the limp was an old companion. She worked her knee back and forth for a moment, then walked on, the limp less pronounced.

Even after she slipped back into her dress, he thought she looked beautiful. She slung the water out of her hair with the exuberance of a playful child.

“Let’s go home, critters!” she called. Jed shook his head, not believing the quick and loyal way they reacted to her voice. The mare, a unique palomino-roan color with a white mane and tail, waited with absolute stillness as the woman swung up on her back. The hawk rose in the air and led the way back up the beach, and the dogs raced alongside as the mare broke into an easy gallop.

Jed felt as if the light dimmed after the woman and her animals disappeared from view. He sat back weakly and strained his ears to catch every retreating hoofbeat and the slap of the dogs’ feet on wet sand. Then he found himself alone again with the ocean and the sunset. Darkness was falling, and he knew he had to get up and walk back to his campsite,
a mile up the beach. He had to get up. He had to.

But Jed Powers, born poor and raised hard, a ranchhand and rodeo rider who’d had most of the softness worked out of him at an early age, the son of a hell-raising father who’d taught him never to flinch, began to curse when he realized that he was trembling all over.

   “
Ma petites
, there you go. Breakfast.”

Thena spread birdseed on the faded gray wood of the windowsill. She stepped back gingerly and watched as tiny wrens gathered there, peeping and pecking for food. She spoke to them for several minutes, this time completely in French.

She loved her father’s language. He’d wanted his American wife and daughter to speak it as well as they spoke English, and as a child Thena had enjoyed knowing that on the mainland people used English, but on Sancia she and her parents conversed solely in French. They were special.

Now whenever she used French, she thought of Glynnis and Philippe Sainte-Colbet and felt less alone. Today, worried about Beneba’s dream, she needed to have her parents’ spirits around her.

Thena tiptoed across old Oriental rugs to her bedside table and deposited her bag of birdseed on the rosewood surface. Work and don’t worry, she scolded herself. She had gardening to do, then some painting, and it was nearly eleven
A.M
.

Suddenly she heard the bounding arrival of canine feet on the front porch. A chorus of barking and whining began, and Thena hurried out of her bedroom. Cyrano, Rasputin, and Godiva stood at the door looking back at her anxiously.

Whenever someone—a misguided group of tourists or hunters thinking to find a refuge from game wardens—slipped onto Sancia Island, the dogs let
her know. Today, remembering Beneba’s warning, Thena reacted to their alert with a shiver of dread.

“I’ll get the shotgun,” she told them.

   Jed swung his gaze from the trail to the forest around him and back again. With all the savvy of an experienced hunter, he stayed aware of every sound and movement. Squirrels scampered up the pine trees, and he tracked their movements as he walked. Amidst the tall pines and ethereal, twisted oaks, the forest floor was nearly clean here. Where sunlight touched it, he saw a hint of grass growing.

A deer stepped into the sunlight and stopped, watching him without fear. Startled by such unusual behavior, Jed stopped too. They stared at each other for a moment.

Is every living thing here bewitched except me? Jed wondered. He had his wits about him now that sunlight had erased last night’s shadows from his imagination. Even so, he couldn’t deny a feeling of urgency to find the woman from the beach. She couldn’t be as magical as she’d looked. He’d meet her, put that notion to rest quickly, and get on with the business of telling her she had to leave his island.

He walked on, edging deeper into the forest. Sharp-leaved palmetto palms brushed against his jeans, and vines as thick as his muscular forearms twined so low from the trees that he could almost reach up and touch them.

Instinct made him freeze and start to listen a split second before he identified the sound of running hooves and rustling underbrush. Perturbed by the violent speed of the approach, Jed unsnapped the cover on the hip holster that held his small automatic pistol. His hand resting lightly on the gun’s rubber grip, he braced his feet wide apart and waited. Ghost or witch or whatever, he was ready.

Thena wrapped her legs tighter to Cendrillon as
the mare leapt through the last barrier of underbrush and slid to a stop in the sandy forest path. Her heart hammering, Thena gasped with surprise to find a man standing perfectly still and staring calmly up at her from just beyond the range of Cendrillon’s snorting nose.

With a quick tug of the rope, Thena backed the mare a good five feet away from the stranger. He never moved and barely seemed to blink. She dropped the rein and slapped the butt of the shotgun snuggly into the crook of her shoulder, then took aim in the general region of his kneecaps.

“What do you want?” she demanded. The mare quieted, only her head moving to indicate her nervousness. Cyrano, Rasputin, and Godiva flung themselves onto the scene and gathered around Cendrillon’s feet, growling at the man who never took his eyes away from Thena’s.

“What kind of answer’ll make you put that shotgun down?” he asked after what seemed an eternity. His voice had not the slightest bit of fear in it. It drawled in a slow way that made her think of warm molasses and old western movies. She’d never heard a real person talk this way before.

“Don’t play with me,” she ordered. Jed lifted one sturdy brown eyebrow. From any other woman, that choice of words would have been suggestive. From her, it sounded innocent and deadly serious, he thought.

“Well, ma’am, I wouldn’t even give that notion a passin’ thought as long as you got that double-barrel pointed at me.”

“You’re very wise. What do you want?”

“Well, I came here to talk to a lady named Thena Sainte-Colbet.” He paused, and a trace of humor glimmered in his eyes. “The witch woman.” She made a huffing sound of offense. “Is that you, ma’am?” he asked politely.

She hesitated, glaring down at him. “Yes! Go away before I turn you into a newt!”

Jed wasn’t certain what a newt was, but for a second he entertained the notion that she just really might be able to make him into one.

“Put that shotgun down before I have to come take it away from you,” he commanded in his deep, luscious drawl.

“You talk big for a man alone, on foot, in the middle of my island.” The dangerous man would have a voice like low thunder, Beneba had said. Thena shivered. “You’re trespassing on Sancia Island. It’s private.”