Nathan's Child - By Anne McAllister Page 0,21

material. In the wide-open spaces she’d have other things to distract her.

She put on a pair of sandals, grabbed her sketchbook and her sunglasses and set out.

The air was stifling, steamy and hot, like getting slapped in the face with a hot wet towel—minus the towel. There wasn’t a tiny bit of moving air anywhere. The flag hung limp. Even the water in the harbor was flat and still.

Carin headed toward the beach on the far side of the island. If a breeze existed, that’s where it would be. The tarmac road burned through the thin soles of her sandals as she walked up the hill. She wasn’t outside three minutes before the sweat was running down her back and making damp patches on her shirt.

“You crazy, girl? What you doin’ out in the noonday sun?” Carin’s neighbor, Miss Saffron, who was eighty if she was a day, looked up from her rocking chair on her shady front porch and shook her head as Carin passed.

“Just out for a little inspiration.” She lifted her sketchbook in salute.

Miss Saffron chuckled. “If I be you, crazy girl, I’d be gettin’ all the inspiration I need from that man was kissin’ you last night.”

Her blush came hotter even than the beating sun. Carin wished the tarmac would open and swallow her up. Instead she listened to Miss Saffron’s cackling laughter all the way up the road.

She walked past the cemetery and the library, then turned up Bonefish Road, which led round past the cricket ground, over the hill and through the trees, eventually turning into a path that led through the mangroves down to the beach.

There she found a breeze at last. Tiny waves broke against the shore. To her right there were signs of civilization—a half dozen strategically placed beach umbrellas sat in front of the newly refurbished and gentrified Sand Dollar Inn, an island institution recently turned yuppie since Lachlan McGillivray, Hugh’s brother, had added it to his hotel empire.

Carin turned away from it, started to walk, and found no more focus than she’d found trying to paint. The only thing that would help was exertion—making so many demands on her body that she couldn’t think of anything at all.

It wasn’t smart. She could die of sunstroke. But it was better than spending the rest of the afternoon trying not to think of Nathan. So she ran.

She ran. And ran.

She ran until sweat poured down her face. She ran until her breaths came in painful harsh gasps. She ran until she reached the rocks. Two miles. Maybe more. She was exhausted, bent over, gasping for breath. But her mind was clear. She felt calmer, steadier, stronger. Her demon had been exorcized.

Carin shut her eyes and breathed a long, deep cleansing breath. Yes!

Then she straightened, turned and began to amble back the way she’d come—and saw, for the first time, the tall dark-haired man and the slender girl in a lime-green cap coming toward her.

Damn!

So much for steadier, stronger and calmer. All Carin’s sense of emotional well-being vanished as she realized she’d run right past Nathan’s house. Now he would think that she’d come to spy on them!

“Mom! Hi! What’re you doing here?” Lacey waved madly, then came running up to her.

“I finished early,” she said, struggling to breathe easily. It wasn’t really a lie. She had finished. Just because she had nothing to show for it, didn’t mean she hadn’t tried. “So I thought I’d come for a run.”

“In this heat?” One of Nathan’s brows lifted.

“I’m quite used to it.”

“We finished early, too,” Lacey told her. “Dad said we’d caught enough fish to feed an army and he didn’t want to clean them all. He knows a great fishing spot! Better’n the one Thomas took me and Lorenzo to!”

“Really?” Now it was Carin’s turn to raise a brow. It didn’t seem likely that Nathan would know any such thing, just having returned to the island yesterday.

Nathan shrugged modestly.

“We’re goin’ for a swim now,” Lacey went on. “An’ then we’re gonna cook the fish. Dad says he’s good with a grouper.” She grinned. “You can eat with us if you want to, can’t she?” Lacey turned eager eyes on Nathan.

“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Carin said quickly, not looking to see what Nathan’s reaction to Lacey’s impromptu invitation was.

“You wouldn’t be,” Lacey said.

“You’re welcome to eat with us,” Nathan seconded.

But Carin didn’t want to eat with them. “I’m…having a guest for dinner,” she improvised.

Lacey looked surprised. “Who?”

“Hugh.”

She only hoped he was home.