Island Heat

“Read your orientation folder,” Patti admonished lightly before ending the call.

Feeling duly chastised, Tory clambered out of bed and grabbed the folder. Propped up against two pillows, she sorted through the folder until she found the flyer Patti had been talking about.

It outlined the legend behind the pendant, detailing how the moon goddess and a handsome shepherd had had to hide their love from the jealous sun god, concealing themselves under an invisible cloak with a diamond clasp. They’d been caught, however, and eventually punished. The moon goddess had been so inconsolable over the loss of her one true love that she’d cried for days and days and days. Her grief was so great and her love so unwavering that her story came to symbolize the power of true love. One of her tears had hardened over the diamond in the lovers cloak and subsequently, tear-shaped pendants became a traditional wedding gift to remind brides of the enduring quality of love.

As Tory read on, she discovered there were more benefits to her wearing the pendant than just being the recipient of good luck in love. Apparently crew members would single her out for special treats and discounts when they noticed her with the pendant, giving her the experience of being a VIP on board. And, of course, she had to hand the pendant back at the end of the cruise in order for the next passenger to play the game all over again.

Tory studied the pendant for a few minutes. She wasn’t even sure if she believed in love, let alone true love. She’d been on the planet twenty-nine years and had never really been in love with anyone. Not enough that she had imagined a shared future, babies, the whole shooting match. Maybe she was just going to be one of those women who poured her passion into her work.

It was a peculiarly depressing thought.

Feeling very self-conscious and stupid, she put the necklace on. The pendant slid down her chest to rest heavily at the very top of her cleavage. Switching the light off, Tory rolled onto her stomach and closed her eyes.

Probably she would hand the pendant back to Patti first thing tomorrow.

But maybe she wouldn’t.

CHAPTER TWO

“OKAY, PEOPLE, THAT’S enough,” Janice called. “We’ll break for lunch. I’ll see you back here at two.”

Like the other dancers around her, Tracy let her shoulders drop and her stomach pop out. Sweat made her leotard stick to her back and chest, and her knee ached from all the high kicks Janice had made them do, over and over. Even though they all knew the routine backward, forward, inside out, their tyrannical leader and choreographer was a stickler for rehearsal and she ensured that they all went over the evening’s routines each day before releasing them for their other onboard duties.

“You’re not on vacation,” Janice said at least once a day to some member or other of the entertainment crew.

Tracy always wanted to respond with a smart-ass quip. They were floating in the middle of the Caribbean on an enormous cruise ship, they lived in crowded crew quarters up to eight berths per cabin and they worked almost constantly. It was highly unlikely that anyone, no matter how optimistic, could kid themselves that this was anything like a vacation. But she never said a word, smart or otherwise. She needed this job. More than ever, she needed this job.

She sighed heavily as she remembered the phone call she’d had from Salvatore last night. He’d let her talk to their son Franco for just a few minutes before getting back on the line.

“He’s fine,” he’d said in his flat, cold voice. His business voice. They were just business to him now, her and Franco. “Do your job. Find the pendant—and get it right this time. Then this’ll all be over and you’ll never see me again.”

Amen to that.

Grabbing a hand towel from her bag, Tracy mopped at her shiny face as she made her way to the elevator and down to the administration level of the Dream, determined to “get it right” this time, as Salvatore had so charmingly put it.

She’d done everything she could to snatch his damned necklace on the cruise before Christmas, but fate or luck or whatever it was that decided these things had been against her.

This time it would be different, she promised herself. This time she would find the pendant and get Sal out of her life once and for all. She was convinced the pendant was the only reason he still had any contact with her and Franco. He’d been absent from their lives for months before he’d suddenly turned up out of nowhere and explained he’d scored an audition for her on Alexandra’s Dream. Straightaway she’d known he wasn’t doing her a favor out of the kindness of his heart; he’d wanted her on the ship very badly for his own reasons. She’d soon learned what they were—one of Sal’s gambling customers, some guy called Giorgio, had run up an enormous debt with Sal’s people and planned to pay it off with a precious antique necklace he’d smuggled on board the ship prior to handing it over to Sal. Great plan, except Giorgio had gotten himself arrested for involvement in the high-level smuggling ring that had been busted on the Dream during its Mediterranean run. Sal had been left holding the debt, and the only chance of satisfying his bosses and securing his own financial future was to grab the pendant off the cruise ship himself. Which was where Tracy was supposed to come in.

Tracy smiled grimly to herself as she remembered Sal’s fury when he’d learned that the pendant had fallen into the hands of the cruise director and the ship’s librarian and promptly been turned into a promotional gimmick for passengers. She’d never heard him swear so much or in so many different languages.

The really great thing was that she was the one stuck with the task of unraveling this mess—or risk losing her boy forever.

It was a depressing thought, and Tracy couldn’t even muster her plastic polite smile for the male passengers she passed who tried to catch her eye, clearly liking the look of her tight leotard and workout leggings. She’d never been falsely modest about her looks. Men liked her, always had. She had long legs, good boobs, long dark hair—and, best of all, she was a dancer, a former Vegas showgirl who could shake it with the best of them. For some men, she was a fantasy brought to life.

But she never encouraged any of them, no matter how built or wealthy-looking. More likely than not, they were married. And even if they weren’t, she wasn’t interested. Being interested was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

She took a deep breath and stepped into the administration offices, smiling at the receptionist and wandering idly over to the notice board that covered one wall. To her left was the doorway to Patti Kennedy’s office. It was slightly open, and Tracy stood staring at the notice board, trying to come up with some excuse to talk to Patti. The cruise director would know where the pendant had been hidden this trip, and if it had been found already. Patti had helped come up with the scheme to use the pendant as part of the onboard entertainment, and she took a personal interest in the person who found it. Tracy just had to get her talking about the damned thing and surely she’d let slip who had it. But as Tracy read the same staff memo over and over, her mind remained resolutely blank as she tried to come up with an opening gambit. Closing her eyes, she swore at herself. This was why she’d left school early—she’d never been good under pressure, and her end-of-year exams had always been a disaster. Her mother used to say her brains were in her feet. Maybe she’d been right, after all.

Checking her watch again, she saw that she’d chewed up ten minutes of her lunch break already. To hell with it—she’d just wing it, pretend she’d come down to ask about the weather or something. Patti would think she was a moron, but no one expected ex-showgirls to be rocket scientists after all.

She almost had a heart attack when she whirled around, all ready to barge into Patti’s office, only to find the other woman standing right behind her.

“Oh!” Tracy gasped stupidly, slapping a hand to her chest.

Patti’s eyebrows lifted in bemusement. “Sorry, Tracy, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said.

“No, you didn’t,” Tracy said automatically.

Patti’s eyebrows arched even higher, and Tracy shrugged ruefully.

“I mean, yeah you did, but it wasn’t your fault.”

“Were you looking for me?” Patti asked pleasantly.

“Um, yeah, I was just talking with the other girls about the special deal we’ve got going on with the teardrop pendant,” Tracy said, her brain just barely keeping two words ahead of her mouth. “We were thinking that it might be cute to kind of incorporate whoever found it this cruise into the end of our routine. You know, pull them out of the audience and make a fuss of them, tell everyone about the legend, that sort of thing.”

Patti looked thoughtful. “That’s a nice idea, and I’m sure Tory would enjoy being made a fuss of, but it might be a little late to incorporate it into the routine this time around. Maybe next cruise we could think about it, though. Thanks for the thought, Tracy.”

Patti smiled, already turning away. Tracy’s palms were sweaty with anxiety. She was so close to knowing who’d found the pendant, but a first name wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Usually the winner of the pendant was announced to the crew at some point during the cruise, but Tracy had no time to lose—she had Sal breathing down her neck, wanting action pronto. She needed to know now.

Patti was about to enter her office. Tracy opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She stared at Patti’s door as it clicked shut.

Damn it, she’d missed her chance again. Feeling sick and angry with herself, Tracy strode out into the corridor, away from the curious eyes of the receptionist. She was hopeless at this sneaking-around stuff, absolutely hopeless. Lying and flirting and stealing—she hadn’t asked for any of it and she wanted it all to be over. Most of all, she wished she’d never met Salvatore Morena and allowed him to con her into his bed.

Instantly she slapped the thought down. No matter how much she hated him, she could never regret what he’d given her—Franco. Her funny, quirky five-year-old son. Even though she was worried sick about him, about what Salvatore might do if she didn’t succeed soon and find his stupid pendant for him, she smiled as she remembered what Franco had said to her on the phone last night.

“I’ve decided I’m going to be an elephant when I grow up,” he’d said confidently.

“An elephant?”

She loved that he hadn’t quite grasped the concept that people and animals and inanimate objects were different. Until recently, he’d wanted to be a motor-cycle when he grew up.

“An elephant. But I want to sleep in a bed. A nice big bed made from grass and pillows,” Franco had said with his habitual lisp.

The smile faded from Tracy’s lips as the reality of her situation hit home once again.

If she didn’t find Salvatore’s necklace, as he wanted, she’d never see her son again. And she’d just blown her one sure-fire chance to find out who had it this cruise. Alexandra’s Dream could accommodate up to a thousand passengers. She had nine days—and counting—to find a needle in a haystack.

She clenched her jaw and lengthened her stride as her long legs ate up the corridor. She’d find out who had it. She had to. She had a first name: Tory. And this time nothing was going to stop her from making her son safe.

THE FIRST TWO DAYS OF the cruise were at-sea days with no port visits. Tory spent her first full day on board experimenting in the demonstration kitchen. The oven was a little hot, she now knew, but the stove top was excellent and she’d fallen in love with the high-end mixer and food processor. As usual, she’d brought her own knives with her, and once she got the measure of the oven and the appliances, she spent some time with her sharpening steel and whetstone ensuring that all her blades were at their best.

She told herself it was because she liked to be prepared, that she’d be doing this no matter who she was sharing the podium with, but she wasn’t in the habit of self-delusion—she wanted everything to be perfect when Ben arrived. She wanted to have put her indelible stamp on the kitchen, marking it as her territory and identifying him as the stranger, the trespasser in her domain. So she arranged her reference books on the handy shelf near the fridge and she reorganized the spice and herb jars and reordered the various contents of the kitchen drawers. By the end of her first day she was confident she knew the kitchen and where everything she might need could be found.

The next day she delivered her first lecture to a bright-eyed audience of two hundred odd guests, the majority of them women. After introducing herself and explaining a little about her cookbook, Tory began to outline the colorful history of the food of the Caribbean islands.

“The Caribbean offers a unique selection of cuisines evolved from the many cultural influences that have touched the islands over the centuries. Today, we can trace recipes and ingredients back to the Arawak Indians, the original inhabitants, as well as the French, English and African immigrants who have all made their homes here. One of the first things you’ll learn is that Caribbean food is party food, because the island people love to party. Even though true Carnival is still a few weeks away, you’ll find pre-Carnival costume parades on every island when we dock.”