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  Half an hour later he rang his house again. This time Parris picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

  Martin’s entire body warmed to the sultry greeting. “Hello back to you too,” he replied. “How are you?”

  “Good. How’s everything going?”

  “Everything’s concluded. I’m coming home in the morning.”

  There was silence. “I’m glad to hear that Martin,” Parris admitted. “I’ve been a little lonely around here by myself.”

  Martin managed an easy smile for the first time in a week. “Are you saying that you miss me?”

  “I miss you a lot,” she confessed.

  He chuckled. “How would you like a vacation?”

  “I’ve been vacationing for five weeks, Martin.”

  “A real vacation.”

  “Where?”

  “Jamaica.”

  “Remember, Martin, I have to go back to work in another week.”

  “I’ll have you back in time for you to return to work. I’ll make the flight arrangements as soon as I hang up.”

  “When do you intend to leave for Jamaica?”

  “Tomorrow. I’ll call you in the morning to let you know the time of our flight.”

  “I have to get my passport and pick up some clothes…”

  “We’ll just have time to pick up your passport, Parris,” he interrupted. “I’ll buy you what you need to wear once we get to Jamaica.”

  “Martin…”

  “I’m sorry to end this call,” he said, cutting her off again, “but I have to make reservations for our flight. Good night, darling. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  What he didn’t say was that not only did he miss her but that he loved her. That was something he would tell her when he saw her again. A week away from her had intensified his feelings to where he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Parris Simmons.

  The weather on Jamaica was warm, soothing and healing, and Martin experienced a feeling of well-being as he sat beside Parris in a well-preserved Land Rover as the hired driver sped across the island.

  Pulling Parris to his side, he pressed a kiss to her temple. “I don’t think you’ll get to wear half of what you bought,” he whispered against her ear.

  She had spent more than two hours browsing in trendy shops in Kingston. Many of the business owners in the Jamaican capital recognized his face and name and Parris was afforded the courteous attention reserved for the wealthy privileged residents of the Caribbean island.

  “Why not, Martin?” Turning her head slightly, she stared up at him.

  “Because we’re going to spend half of our time on the beach and the other half in bed.” He laughed aloud as she lowered her gaze.

  “I don’t intend to spend my vacation in bed,” she countered quietly, staring at the back of the driver’s head.

  “We’ll see about that,” he teased.

  “Do you think we can squeeze in a night of dancing in between the bed and the beach?”

  Lowering his head to her shoulder, Martin held her close. “So you want a little reggae to go along with the salsa? I’ll be more than willing to accommodate you, darling.”

  Parris leaned into his strength, one hand searching and undoing the buttons on his shirt. Her fingers grazed the muscled hardness of his furred chest, eliciting a slight gasp from him.

  “I wasn’t talking about that kind of dancing, darling,” she crooned.

  His fingers caught her wrist, pulling her hand away from his fevered flesh. They hadn’t made love before leaving Florida. There was only enough time after his connecting flight from Miami landed in West Palm Beach to pick up Parris, then drive to her apartment where she picked up her passport before they returned to the airport for their flight to Miami and a connecting one to Kingston.

  His body was on fire, his flesh throbbing. He wanted her with a passion which bordered on hysteria. He wanted to bury himself in her hot, tight body, becoming one with her. He wanted Parris Simmons as his wife and as the mother of his children.

  “Where are we going?” Parris asked after a long comfortable silence.

  “Ocho Rios.”

  “Do you have vacation properties there?”

  “No. We’re going to stay at a friend’s place.”

  “Will this friend be in attendance?”

  Martin chuckled, ruffling her hair. “You’re full of questions, aren’t you?”

  “I just want to know what to expect.”

  “This friend will not be in attendance. He’s in Germany.”

  Tilting her chin, Parris smiled up at him. “So it’s just going to be the two of us.”

  He lowered his head and kissed her awaiting lips. “You, me, the ocean and the sand and all of the tropical fruit we can pick,” he murmured against her moist mouth.

  Nodding, she settled against his chest and closed her eyes, not opening them again until the driver parked the Land Rover in front of a house in Ocho Rios.

  Martin’s friend’s home was a two-storied white stucco structure that was wholly West Indian in character: red Spanish tiled roof, white tiled floors surrounding the house and Creole jalousie shutters. Exotic flowers and trees added to the lushness of the property.

  She walked around to the rear of the house while the driver unloaded Martin’s luggage and her purchases from the roof of the rugged vehicle.

  The fruit trees were pregnant with ripened fruit, bananas, mangoes, oranges and lemons swaying gently from an ocean breeze.

  Turning around and shielding her eyes from the brilliance of the setting sun with a pair of sunglasses, Parris noted that there wasn’t another structure in sight as a stretch of white sand and the blue-green ribbon of the Caribbean in the distance served as the backdrop for the exotic setting.

  She heard footsteps and turned. Martin moved toward her, a smile deepening the dimples in his cheeks.

  “How do you like it?” he asked, his gaze sweeping over her face and body in a single glance. The sea breeze lifted her hair while molding a pale yellow silk blouse to her breasts.

  Winding an arm through his, she returned his smile. “It’s beautiful.”

  “You’re beautiful, Parris.” His compliment seemed to shock her as her jaw dropped slightly. He felt her fingers tighten on his arm. Reaching up, he removed her sunglasses and stared down into her clear brown eyes. There was enough daylight left to see the mysterious, hypnotic green lights in their depths.

  “Don’t,” he urged as she attempted to turn away from him. “Look at me, Parris. That’s it,” Martin crooned when she tilted her chin to stare up at him. “I will never lie to you. Never.”

  Parris inhaled, her chest rising and falling with a delicate shudder. “You think I’m beautiful, Martin.” Her voice held a hint of disbelief.

  He nodded slowly. “Quite beautiful.”

  Her full lips softened with a smile. “Then that makes two of us because I find you to be quite beautiful.”

  Martin laughed, shaking his head. “Men aren’t beautiful.”

  “You are.”

  “I am not beautiful.”

  “If you’re not beautiful, then what are you?”

  “I’m average-looking,” he replied, shrugging broad shoulders. “Let’s go for a walk. We’ll unpack later.”

  Parris fell in step beside him, her arm going around his waist. “Did I embarrass you?”

  “What about?”

  “Your looks.”

  “No,” he replied quickly.

  She glanced up at his distinctive profile. She could tell by the throbbing muscle in his jaw that he was uncomfortable and that she had embarrassed him.

  “I never thought you would be so modest,” she continued, unable to resist teasing him.

  Martin increased the pressure of his arm around her narrow waist. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never modest.”

  “What have you been called?”

  “Names which I won’t repeat.”

  Parris thought of the names Owen ha
d called her that she could never repeat. It was as if he had blamed her for his substance abuse problem. He blamed the differences in their ages, saying he felt more like her father than her fiancé. He claimed he felt like a pedophile each time he kissed her or attempted to touch her body, the groping encounters ending with her trembling in sexual frustration and Owen stalking out enraged because he was unable to make love to her.

  Pushing memories of Owen to the deep recesses of her mind, Parris followed Martin as they headed in the direction of the beach.

  Martin sat down on the sand, pulling her down with him. He slipped out of his loafers, unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it, then pushed off his slacks.

  Parris stared at him. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going swimming.”

  “Aren’t you going to put on bathing trunks?” He’d removed his briefs.

  “No. This is a private beach. No one will see us.”

  Rising to his feet, Martin stood before her dark and powerful as an African fertility totem. He held out his hand and she shook her head.

  “I can’t.”

  Martin stared at her as she sat on back on folded knees, head lowered and both hands clasped tightly together on her lap. Suddenly it hit him. How quickly he had forgotten. It wasn’t modesty that made her unwilling to shed her clothing and swim naked with him, but her near-drowning at the hands of her ex-husband. It was still too soon and too real for her to forget the attempt on her life.

  Hunkering down to the sand beside her, he pulled her to his chest. He felt her trembling.

  “It’s going to be all right, Parris. You’re safe with me. I won’t let anyone or anything hurt you.”

  Parris inhaled the cologne on his chest. She knew she was safe. As long as she was with Martin she would always feel safe.

  “I…I’m sorry, Martin,” she stammered. “It’s just that all of it came back…and…and I could…” She couldn’t continue.

  “If you don’t want to go swimming it’s fine with me.”

  “It’s not you,” she insisted. “It’s me. When you held your hand out to me I saw it as Owen’s. I’d put my hand in his, trusting him when all he wanted was to kill me.”

  “How could I be like him, Parris? I saved your life.”

  “I know,” she said, sighing heavily. “And I’ll never be able to thank you enough for that.”

  You will thank me, Martin thought. You’ll become my wife. Releasing her, he reached for his slacks, but he was momentarily surprised when Parris’s hand stopped him. He tried seeing her expression in the waning light.

  “I’ve got to stop reliving that night, Martin. I have to go forward and forget what Owen did to me. I’ll go swimming with you.”

  Cradling her face between his palms, he brushed a light kiss over her lips. “You don’t have to if…”

  “I have to,” she interrupted.

  Her hands were shaking as she attempted to unbutton her blouse and Martin pushed them gently aside and helped her undress. Her blouse, matching skirt and underwear lay on the sand beside his clothes. He kissed her deeply then swung her up his arms and walked across the pristine white sand and into the warm water. They rode the waves and splashed like little children as the sun dropped below the horizon and stars lit up the tropical sky like diamond dust.

  Parris floated over to Martin and held onto his neck. “I’m turning into a raisin,” she laughed, breathing heavily.

  He nibbled at her neck. “I love raisins.”

  She giggled like a little girl, but all of the teasing stopped when his mouth covered a breast. She gasped and buried her face against his shoulder.

  “I think we’d better go back,” he mumbled against the soft mound of flesh.

  “Please,” Parris pleaded, succumbing to the sensual spell Martin had spun.

  Chapter 9

  Martin waited until their third night in Ocho Rios to reveal the depth of his feelings for Parris. He hadn’t made love to her because he knew she was never responsive after their having made love.

  He sat up in bed, his back pressed against the elaborately carved headboard, holding her as she lay on his chest between his outstretched legs, his large hands caressing the silken skin over her flat belly.

  “Are you enjoying your vacation?” he asked softly.

  “It’s been perfect,” Parris replied, not opening her eyes.

  “Open your eyes.” Martin held Parris’s gaze. “I want you to be my wife.”

  His voice, warm, soft and silky, chilled her to the bone. Her delicate jaw dropped slightly. “You’re not asking me to marry you?”

  “I am.” He cradled her face between his palms. “I’m going to ask a lot of things of you. I want you to live with me, marry me, decorate our home and have my children. These are things I’ve never asked of another woman, Parris.”

  Parris’s eyes widened in surprise before she closed them tightly. “No,” she replied, trying to shake her head.

  Martin tightened his hold on her head. “I love you.”

  “Don’t!”

  “Don’t tell me how to feel, Parris.” Anger was evident in his voice. “Look at me,” he ordered. Her lids fluttered up. “I can’t help the way I feel about you.” His voice was quieter, softer. “I didn’t plan to fall in love with you, but I did. This is all so very new to me, darling. All I know is that I want you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  Parris masked inner turmoil with deceptive calmness. “I can’t give you what you want, Martin.” There was no way she could marry him. She did not want a repeat of her short-lived marriage to Owen.

  She had fallen in love with Owen and agreed to marry him, and despite Owen’s claim that he wanted to wait to marry her before he made love to her she loved him blindly. Everything was so perfect until their wedding night.

  Martin Diaz Cole was everything Owen Lawson wasn’t. He was secure and virile. Yet there was an unknown component in Martin’s personality that frightened her. An unspoken peculiar characteristic which said that if she married him her life would be inexorably changed forever.

  “What can you give me?” he questioned, successfully concealing his disappointment.

  “I will live with you and decorate your home.”

  Dammit, he raged inwardly. He could get any woman to live with him and contract with any design firm to decorate his home. But what he wanted most from Parris she withheld.

  He had to accept what she was willing to give him—for now.

  His gaze dropped from her eyes to her shoulders and finally to her full breasts pressed to his chest. He was certain she could feel the runaway beating of his heart.

  “Do you love me, Parris?”

  Martin’s voice was so soft that Parris barely heard his query. She studied his lean dark-skinned face, her answer radiating from her gaze before she spoke.

  “Yes, Martin, I love you.”

  Anchoring his hands under her arms, he pulled her up higher and fastened his mouth to her breasts, his teeth and tongue wringing spasms of desire from her wet, throbbing core.

  Reversing their positions, he moved over her, his hair swinging forward and brushing her face. She inhaled his cologne and the subtle male scent that was Martin’s and Martin’s alone. She would be able find him in a darkened room filled with a hundred men.

  His hands slipped under her hips, cupping her buttocks as she guided his rigid sex into her hot, inviting body.

  Parris was unmindful that Martin hadn’t stop to reach for the small packets he kept on the bedside table as she gave into the fiery sensations of his thrusting hips. Each thrust was harder and deeper than the one before it and she tried thinking of everything but the rising desire threatening to stop her breath where she would die in Martin’s arms.

  Martin was lost in his own world of sexual hysteria. Each time he made love to Parris he was rewarded with an unselfish offering where she held nothing back.

  She never faked her responses and her slender body demanded w
ordlessly from him what he had never given another woman—all of himself.

  He moved his mouth over hers, caressing her lips before they parted to his searching tongue. His tongue matched the rhythmic cadence of his pounding hips, both moving with a frenzied thrusting motion that left Parris moaning and gasping for air. She whispered his name, the sound of her husky voice penetrating the fog burning his brain.

  “Take all of me,” he pleaded over and over, as her body stretched to accommodate his prodigious size. “Take it. That’s it, baby. “That’s it,” he repeated.

  She took him—every inch of length and width of his blood-engorged sex until she felt him touch her womb.

  She screamed his name, the sound of it floating to the ceiling and it was swallowed up by the whirring sound of the blades from a ceiling fan.

  Martin felt the room spin, the light from the lamp dim and the strong milking suction of Parris’s body as she pulled him in until they ceased to exist as separate entities.

  He loved her and she loved him. That was all that mattered as he exploded, leaving his seed buried deep within her body.

  Chapter 10

  Martin and Parris returned to the States at the end of a week tanned and relaxed. They strolled through the West Palm Beach airport, hand-in-hand, following a red cap pushing a cart filled with their luggage out of the terminal to an awaiting taxi.

  “Martin!”

  He turned in the direction of a feminine voice and was temporarily blinded by the flash of a bulb. He blinked several times to clear his vision, then noted the surprised expression on Parris’s face.

  “Thanks, darling,” crooned the petite woman with the camera.

  Parris stared at the woman’s retreating back, her pulses racing. “Who was that?”

  “She’s a photographer with the West Palm Beach Post.”

  “Why did she take your picture?”

  Martin’s arm circled her waist, pulling her closer to his side. “She took our picture. Natalie’s been trying to get some “dirt” on me for a long time. And if I know Natalie she’ll probably make up something lewd for Renata Baldwin’s gossip column.”