Contract Bridegroom. Sandra Field

and for the next few years she hadn’t seen him at all; she already felt hugely guilty for that long separation. She, tentatively, had been the one to make the first gesture of reconciliation, just two years ago. Ellis had responded with very little grace. But he had responded, and since then they had at least been in touch.

      Now, however, she wanted more than that. Much more.

      If only she could rein in her restless spirit. Be more like her brother, so contented with his conservative job, his country estate, his unassuming wife and obedient children. If only she could marry to please Ellis. To make his last weeks happy.

      “I promise I’ll think about it,” she said.

      Ellis said abruptly and with patent honesty, “I worry about you, Celia. It would set my mind at ease to know you were married to a good man…then I could die in peace.”

      Tears flooded her eyes. “I don’t want you to die….”

      “Yes. Well. I can’t control that, can I?” He looked at his watch. “Hadn’t you better leave for the airport? That’s another thing, piloting your own plane. A lot of nonsense. Far too dangerous.”

      Celia took her courage in her hands. “If my mother hadn’t been killed in a car accident all those years ago, would you be saying that?”

      “That’s an impertinent and unwarranted remark!”

      “We’ve got to talk about the past! We can’t act as if my mother didn’t exist.”

      “I’ll ring for Melcher to bring down your bags.”

      Celia pushed back her chair. She felt like the little girl she’d once been, controlled at every turn, unheard and always a disappointment to her father in ways she could scarcely fathom. He’d never allowed her to talk about her mother. Not once. She trailed after him to the front door, where the limousine was waiting to drive her to the airport, and kissed him dutifully on the cheek.

      The transmitter rasped. With a jerk, Celia came back to the present, to her office and the demands of her job. But as she spoke to a lobster fisherman about the fog patches down the bay, she found she could no longer push her dilemma to the back of her mind. Hadn’t it been sitting on her chest like a lead weight ever since Ellis had mentioned the word marriage?

      It was a dilemma she was no nearer solving now than at the front door of her father’s mansion, where Ellis had offered her a chilly goodbye. She was going to have to refuse his last request—what other choice did she have? —and thereby close another door, one that might have led to a new closeness between father and daughter.

      A closeness she longed for with all her heart.

      With an impatient sigh, Celia began writing up her log. At six-thirty, she washed her face, brushed her chestnut hair smooth and French-braided it. The tangerine lipstick didn’t look its best with her purple sweater. Too bad, she thought, and put on a pair of earrings that she’d found in the bottom of her backpack, dangly copper earrings that, she hoped, would distract from the smudges of tiredness under her eyes.

      Jethro Lathem might not turn up.

      However, at ten to seven, the four-wheel-drive Nissan turned into the yard and parked in the same spot it had the night before. Thirty seconds later, Wayne, her replacement, also drove in. But at five past seven, just as Celia let herself out of the office, she saw Pedro striding down the corridor to meet her. His freighter was moored further down the bay; he must be here to say goodbye.

      And goodbye it would be. No proposals of marriage from her. Smiling at Pedro, she said, “Buenos dias.”

      Two people were coming down the stairs.

      Jethro straightened. One of them was a sea captain in a smart navy-blue uniform with rather a lot of braid: a good-looking man, his head bent to hear what the woman at his side was saying.

      The woman was beautiful.

      She was young, her chestnut hair glowing like a beacon, her body, even in an oversized sweater, slender and lithe. She was talking animatedly to her companion.

      She hadn’t seen him. She wasn’t even looking.

      He moved back, watching as they reached the bottom of the stairs and stood, facing each other, both of them smiling. Then the man raised one of her hands to his lips, kissing it with lingering pleasure. The woman said something else that made him laugh, and then they hugged each other with the ease of long acquaintances. The man, Jethro noticed, was in no great hurry to release her.

      But finally he did. With a last salute, he headed down a corridor away from the main door. For a moment the woman stood watching him go, still smiling.

      So she had a lover, did Celia Scott; because Jethro was quite sure this was Celia Scott. Or perhaps the handsome sea captain was her husband. It would be a logical choice for a Coast Guard operator.

      There was nothing logical about the surge of possessiveness that had rocketed through his body when the captain had kissed her hand. Just as illogical was the way he’d been unable to get the sound of her voice out of his mind, ever since he’d heard it over the radio when he’d sent the Mayday signal. A calm voice, beautifully pitched, as clear and true as a perfectly cast bell. He’d spent the first two days after the rescue in hospital in St. John’s, recovering from exposure and the flu. The third day had been spent in a hotel dealing with various business matters, one of which had been a phone call to the Coast Guard station in Collings Cove to find out the name of the operator who’d taken the Mayday call and when her next shift was.

      He’d asked no further questions. Out of pride? Or out of anger that she should even matter, this woman unknown to him?

      A woman who was partly responsible for saving his life.

      He hated being beholden to a female.

      The woman he was watching so intently squared her shoulders and opened the door, stepping right into the early morning sun. Her smile fading, she blinked a little.

      Her hair caught fire, gleaming in the light. Her eyes, Jethro saw, were a very dark brown, soft and warm as velvet. Her winged brows, her high cheekbones, the seductive curve of her lower lip were all part of her beauty. The rest of it was more elusive and more complex, he thought, depending on the play of expression in her face, the vividness of her emotions.

      He moved forward into the sun himself and said formally, “Are you Celia Scott? I’m Jethro Lathem.”

      Because the sun was right in Celia’s eyes, the man’s body loomed larger than life, a dark silhouette that was obscurely threatening. She raised her hand to shield her vision and took refuge in an equal formality. “Yes, I’m Celia Scott. How do you do, Mr. Lathem?”

      “Jethro, please,” he said unsmilingly. “Why don’t you join me for breakfast? I noticed a restaurant on the way out here.”

      Again Celia had the sense of an order framed as a request. She moved further from the door, taking a moment to assess him.

      Dynamite, she thought blankly. Pure dynamite.

      Six-foot-two or thereabouts. Brown hair. Although a boring word like brown didn’t in any way do justice to thick, dark curls that had the polish of mahogany. Startlingly blue eyes, the deep, steel-blue of a sky at dusk, set in a face with the weathered tan of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. A formidable jaw, now marred with a purpling bruise. As for his body…well, she wasn’t going to go there right now. Much too early in the morning.

      She said pleasantly, hoping she hadn’t been gaping at him like a groupie, “No, I can’t do that. I’m on duty again tonight, so I have to go home and get some sleep or else I’m dead in the water.” Her smile flickered and was gone. “Sorry, bad choice of words.”

      “Dinner before work, then. You have to eat, surely?”

      She bit her lip. “Can’t we say anything that needs saying right here?”

      “I’d rather not.”

      “Then