The Inconvenient Bride - By Anne McAllister Page 0,60
bathing suit, then stepped into a pair of shorts and slapped a broad-brimmed straw hat on her head to protect her hair and her face from the fierce tropical sun. Then she waggled her fingers at him and headed down the stairs to the beach.
Pelican Cay really was the closest thing to paradise she could imagine.
It was the perfect place to have come for a honeymoon. And the honeymoon was everything she’d hoped it would be.
They’d grown closer here. They’d shared stories of their childhoods. He’d told her about the adventures he’d had here and on Long Island with Rhys and Nathan and she’d told him about growing up in Kansas with Mariah. They’d laughed and played and held hands and kissed. They’d walked miles on the pink sand beach and they’d dug tunnels and built sand castles.
“We’ll have to bring Pam and Frankie down here sometime,” he’d said yesterday. “A budding architect should build a few sand castles in his youth.”
And Sierra had smiled at the thought. “Yes, that would be wonderful.” And she’d been pleased, not just because Frankie would love it, but because it meant that Dominic had accepted her friends as his.
Frankie would love it, she thought as she looked around at the nearly deserted beach, at the softly breaking waves, and the lumpy remains of yesterday’s castles. She and Dominic hadn’t brought a camera, but now she thought she would walk along the beach until she came to the road to town, then go to the little island drug store where yesterday she had seen a rack of disposable cameras.
She could send Frankie a postcard and take a few photos, and maybe she could find a souvenir for the apartment, something that would bring back this paradise every time they looked at it.
She could get there and back by lunchtime. If Dominic was done with his calls by then, they could spend the afternoon at the beach—or in bed. As long as they spent it together, it didn’t matter to her.
She started out along the beach, but the weather was so warm and muggy that she decided a quick dip wouldn’t be amiss. She stripped off Dominic’s shirt and her shorts, set the floppy hat on top of them, then plunged into the surf. She didn’t stay in long, just long enough to cool off, then came back out, hair dripping, plastered sleekly to the back of her head.
Three children stood watching her with wide eyes. They were about ten or so, a little older than Frankie, she thought. A girl and two boys. The boys stared at her in wide-eyed speechlessness.
The girl said what they were apparently all thinking. “Are you a mermaid?” she asked. She was staring at Sierra’s purple hair.
“Only half,” Sierra said with a grin. “Just the top. Look—” She did a little hop. “No fin.”
They all laughed then and, realizing that she was as human as everyone else and just a visitor, they looked embarrassed.
“People have called me worse things,” Sierra assured them. “Look, I’m just visiting. My husband—” she faltered a moment over the word, then said it again with pleasure and determination “—my husband and I are spending our honeymoon here. I want to take home a souvenir. Got any suggestions?”
“A T-shirt,” one of the boys said promptly.
The girl and the other boy groaned.
“Everybody takes home T-shirts, Marcus,” the other boy said.
“You got a better idea?” the boy called Marcus challenged.
“You could get a stuffed fish,” the second boy said. “Go fishin’ an’ my grandpa will mount you a fish.”
Sierra smiled. “Maybe another time. I think I want something besides a stuffed fish for this occasion.”
“You could buy one of my mother’s paintings,” the girl suggested.
Now that sounded like a possibility. “Your mother paints scenes of the islands?” she asked the girl.
Long dark braids bobbed as the girl nodded. “Beautiful paintings. Want to see? She has a shop in the village.”
“Why not?” Sierra said. She couldn’t carry a painting back along the beach. But maybe she would find something perfect that they could pick up just before they left or could have mailed—if they were any good.
The girl, whose name was Lacey, was eleven. She had been born on the island. She painted, too, just like her mother. And someday she was going to be famous and go to New York and have a showing in a gallery there. She told Sierra this as they walked up the road toward the village. The boys had dropped out of