Beware of the Stranger Read online

  Now that Samantha had begun, she wasn’t going to turn back. “I wasn’t sure you were paying attention to what I said,” she commented honestly.

  “That’s not true. You were telling me about a feature article you were going to do on an elderly lady named Jane Bates who’s celebrating her hundredth birthday, and your unique idea about having her discuss how women’s attitudes have changed over the years and how it’s affected her, if at all.” Very concisely he condensed what she had told him.

  “I stand rebuked,” Samantha apologized wryly. “I thought you were thinking about something else.”

  “I never forgot for a minute that you were sitting beside me.” He regarded her steadily for several disturbing seconds.

  Samantha wasn’t certain how she should take that — whether he meant that he wished he could have forgotten about her or that she had made too much of an impression for him to do so. She had the uncomfortable feeling he was indulging her.

  “Do you have a sister?” she asked finally, bracing herself for the words that would sting. She had lost her immunity with him.

  “No.” Amusement gleamed briefly in his eyes. “But if I did, she’d probably look like me and not like you.” Samantha blinked. He pushed his chair away from the table and rose. “The sun’s going down. We’d better get back on the road.”

  Inside the car once more, Samantha didn’t attempt to check her curiosity. Half turning in her seat, she studied the roughly carved profile for a thoughtful second.

  “Why did you say that?” she asked.

  “What?” The headlight beams were slicing through semidarkness of twilight. His gaze didn’t flicker from the road.

  “That I wouldn’t look like your sister if you had one,” Samantha answered evenly.

  “It’s true. But that isn’t what you’re really asking, is it?” He glanced into his rearview mirror before pulling into the other lane to pass the car ahead. “No one who has worked very closely with Reuben could fail to hear the comments made about him and his daughter.”

  “So you’ve heard me described as attractive in a sisterly kind of way,” she concluded.

  “I’ve met a lot of men and none of them had a sister that looked like you.” The mocking glitter of his charcoal eyes held her gaze for an instant. The quiet voice was teasing her and Samantha laughed softly. A pleasant warmth invaded her limbs. The contentment she felt had nothing to do with a full stomach or the refreshing draft of outside air from the vent. She relaxed in the bucket seat and gazed out the window at the first evening star twinkling in the purpling sky.

  The stars were out in force when they finally drove through the quiet streets of Clayton, New York. Unerringly Owen Bradley drove through the town, not stopping until he reached a docking area on the river front.

  No boats were moored there, so Samantha assumed it was a place where boats simply took on or let off passengers. When Owen reached behind the seat for his briefcase and stepped out of the car, she followed suit.

  The night’s darkness had colored the river black, and the rippling current reflected the silvery beams of a crescent moon, creating an effect of silvery lace against black satin. The horizon was an indistinguishable mound of lumpy shapes.

  A strange voice broke the gentle silence, causing Samantha to nearly jump out of her skin. “The boat will be here shortly.”

  Spinning to face it, she saw a man, as tall as Owen Bradley, standing beside him. The shadows of a building concealed his features from her gaze.

  “Thanks, Bert,” said Owen Bradley, who then handed the man something.

  Evidently it was the car keys, since the man opened the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel. He reversed the car and started back the way they had come. Almost instantly the sound of the car’s motor was joined by that of a boat, its navigational lights approaching the dock.

  Samantha’s elbow was taken and Owen led her to the side of the street within the shadows of a building. “Wait here,” he ordered firmly, and walked in long easy strides towards the river’s edge.

  A sailboat came into view, its canvas furled, an empty mast jutting into the darkness. At almost the same instant that the boat cut its power to come into the dock, Samantha heard the car stop at the corner. She glanced at it, seeing a woman step from the sidewalk and climb into the passenger side before it drove off. Bert whoever-he-was obviously had a girl friend, she thought, smiling to herself, and turned back to the dock.

  A line was being tossed to Owen from the boat. With quick expert twists, he had it looped around a mooring pin and was signaling to Samantha to join him. An older, burly-looking man was on deck to offer her a steadying hand aboard. He was built like a football player, muscle-necked and barrel-chested.

  “Thanks,” she murmured, but the man was already disappearing to another part of the boat.

  The line was freed and Owen stepped on deck. “You’d better go below while we get under way.”

  The night air was cool on the water. If Samantha had had a sweater to cover the bareness of her arms below the short sleeves of her blouse, she might have argued that she would rather stay on deck. Instead she went below without protest.

  The boat’s engines throbbed with power as they moved away from the dock. The lights of the town began to recede. Samantha doubted if two minutes had elapsed between the time the car had stopped at the dock and the boat had left.

  There was a brief shake of her head as a bemused smile touched her mouth. Only Reuben Gentry could have organized an operation as efficient as this, with someone waiting to take the car and the boat probably waiting just beyond the dock.

  Settling onto a cushioned seat in the cabin, Samantha rubbed her shivering skin to erase the chilling goosebumps. On deck, footsteps approached the stairwell to the cabin. A few seconds later Owen Bradley’s tall frame appeared above.

  “Comfortable?” he inquired with that lazy movement of his mouth into a smile. His briefcase was set on a nearby cushion.

  “Fine,” Samantha nodded, “although I wish I’d brought a sweater.”

  He glanced sharply at her crossed arms that gave her a faintly huddled pose. “I think there’s a spare windbreaker around here that you can wear.”

  He walked past the galley area and disappeared from her view. She could hear him opening and closing doors in what was probably the sleeping quarters. For an instant, Samantha had thought he might offer her the use of his jacket. She smiled wryly. Such gestures of chivalry were usually confined to the motion picture screens. He certainly was familiar with the boat and its contents, though.

  “Here you go.” He reappeared, offering her a light blue windbreaker. Samantha quickly slipped it on, losing her hands in the long sleeves. It was several sizes too large, but it offered protection, and that was what mattered. “Sorry, but there wasn’t anything smaller.”

  “That’s all right.” She rolled the sleeves back to her wrists and spared a glance out through the narrowed windows. But the glass reflected a dark picture of the interior of the cabin. “How much longer before we arrive at the island?”

  “An hour, more or less,” he shrugged blandly and moved toward the steps leading to the deck. He paused. “There’s some coffee in the thermos. Help yourself.” He gestured toward the galley to indicate its location. Warmth was briefly visible in his smoky gaze. “I can’t guarantee it’s better than Harry’s, but it is hot.”

  “Thanks,” Samantha smiled, and he disappeared up the steps.

  The coffee turned out to be delicious. She curled both hands around the cup to let her cold fingers take advantage of its heat. Relaxing against the cushion, she leaned her head back and listened to the throb of the boat’s engines. It seemed to be the only sound in the entire world, except for the occasional murmur of voices between Owen and the burly boatman above.

  Almost inevitably it seemed, her thoughts became focused on Owen Bradley. In so many ways, he was a contradiction — for instance, his muscular physique and keenly intelligent mind. Not tha
t the two couldn’t go together, but Samantha had difficulty visualizing him as her father’s secretary.

  The position involved limited, nearly nonexistent physical activity. And there was that air of indolence he adopted to disguise his ever constant alertness: The air of idle distraction bordered on aloofness, yet he was aware every second of what was happening around him.

  The quiet, low-pitched voice was always firm with purpose and authority. Something in its tone suggested that whoever decided to cross him should beware of the consequences. Behind the bland expressions and slow smiles lay an unrelenting hardness, a hint of ruthlessness stamped in the rough features.

  It would be interesting and a challenge to find out what made him tick, Samantha decided. Swallowing the last of the coffee, she leaned back again and closed her eyes. His subtle compliment that Samantha didn’t look like the sister of anyone he had known returned. She realized Owen Bradley was very adept at handling women, too.

  One minute she had been irritated because he didn’t seem to be paying any attention to her, and within the space of a few words, he had made her feel important and beautiful without uttering any extravagant compliments she would have doubted. He had to be aware of the impact his virility had on the opposite sex.

  Yet it wasn’t the direct assault that a strikingly handsome man would make. It was a slow undermining that removed the ground from under a girl’s feet and sent her toppling before she realized what was happening. That was the danger Beth had instinctively sensed, Samantha decided. Admittedly, he was a devastatingly potent combination.

  The long drive had tired Samantha more than she had realized. She drifted into a state of haft sleep, aided by the hypnotic throb of the engines. Her head bobbed to one side, waking her. She sat up straight, rubbing the side of her neck and chiding herself for dropping off like an old woman.

  The steady rhythm of the engines altered its tempo. Stifling a yawn, Samantha glanced at her watch, but she couldn’t remember what time they had arrived at the boat. She had the feeling that she had been dozing for much longer than it seemed. As she started to peer out of the narrow windows, footsteps again approached the stairs to the cabin.

  “We’re coming into the island now,” announced Owen, coming halfway down the stairs.

  “I’ll be right there,” Samantha answered.

  Picking up her cup, she carried it to the galley sink and rinsed it out. As she started toward the steps, she noticed the briefcase sitting in the cushion and picked it up, glancing briefly at the initials. Her ascent to the deck was in time to catch a shadowy glimpse of rocks, trees and shrubs before the island was obscured by a solid wall of black that suddenly surrounded three sides of the boat and blocked out the night sky. It took her a full second to realize that they had glided silently into a boathouse. The engines were cut. In the dimness, Samantha could just barely make out the shapes of the two men making the boat fast as it rubbed against the side of the inner dock. A solitary light bulb was switched on when the boathouse doors to the river were shut. It cast more shadows than the darkness it illuminated.

  After the incessant hum of the engines, the silence seemed eerie. Water lapped against the hull and the men’s footsteps echoed hollowly on the boards of the dock. The boathouse seemed like an enormous cavern with its high walls and roof to allow the tall-masted sailboat within.

  “Ready?” Owen Bradley’s voice prompted from the dock.

  Samantha moved toward him, accepting the steadying hand on her arm as she stepped from the boat deck onto the dock. The boat rocked slightly as she pushed off and she stumbled against him, the briefcase making her balance awkward. Immediately, his large hands spanned her waist to hold her upright. The hard length of him was imprinted on her hips and thighs.

  Tipping her head back, Samantha started to make a self-deriding comment about her clumsiness, but the words never left her parted lips. The mesmerizing quality in his gaze stole her voice and breath. Her pulse tripped over itself in rapid succession. When his attention slid to her mouth, she was certain he was going to kiss her, and she held her breath in anticipation.

  The grip on her waist lingered for several more seconds, then he firmly held her steady as he stepped back. Disappointment surged through Samantha. She tried to hide it with a shaky laugh and a change of subject.

  “You should ask Reuben for a raise when he gets here on Saturday,” She jested as if that moment of intimacy had never been about to happen.

  His expression was immediately shuttered, yet there was considering alertness behind the lazy smile. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it doesn’t suit his corporate image to have his secretary running around carrying a briefcase with someone else’s initials,” she answered as she offered the briefcase to him.

  The expensive briefcase carried telltale marks of much use. Near the handle were two gold letters: C.S. Samantha had noticed them briefly when she had picked the case up from the cabin seat.

  “I think Reuben can afford to buy you a briefcase with your own initials, Owen,” she declared.

  She hadn’t placed any significance on the incorrectly initialed briefcase. If she had thought anything about it at all, it had been only an idle assumption that he had purchased it used because it was sturdy and durable, capable of taking the beating of travel and use that his position would demand.

  He took the suitcase, glancing at the initials thoughtfully, before meeting her smiling and unwary look. “I’d forgotten that as a reporter it’s your job to notice things,” he mused aloud. The smoke screen of his gaze made his thoughts unreadable as he paused. “I’m not Owen Bradley.”

  Samantha’s brown eyes widened. “You said —”

  “No, you said I was Owen Bradley,” he corrected lazily. “I simply didn’t bother to deny it. Actually what I had been going to say was that Owen Bradley had told me where I could find you.”

  “Then who are you?” she demanded with an accusing frown.

  “Chris Andrews. The ‘S’ is for Steven, my middle name.” His finger tapped the initials on the briefcase. “The ‘A’ was knocked off sometime or another.”

  “Chris Andrews?” Samantha repeated in disbelief. “The Chris Andrews?”

  “I don’t know how many you know.” A mocking smile played with the corners of his well-shaped and firm mouth.

  As far as Samantha was concerned, there was only one Chris Andrews. He wasn’t exactly a rival of her father’s, but they held competitive interests that often clashed. But Reuben Gentry admired his business and financial skills even when he cursed him. And like her father, he shunned publicity. Samantha couldn’t ever remember seeing a picture of him.

  “Does Reuben know you’ve brought me here?” she demanded, still trying to sort through the astounding revelation and find its true significance.

  “Of course,” Owen Bradley, who now turned out to be Chris Andrews, replied, nodding without hesitation. “I told you, he’ll be here Saturday.”

  “Why?” She tipped her head to the side.

  “Because I invited him,” he returned blandly.

  “This is your home?” confronted Samantha. “Your boat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why am I here? And why is Reuben coming?” All of her reporter instincts rushed to the fore, and she sharply questioned his motives as she drew herself up to her full height of five feet six inches and still had to look up to see his face, raw-boned and unreadable.

  “Reuben owns stock in some companies I have been trying to buy and he has been unwilling to sell. It’s an amicable disagreement. I invited him here for two weeks in hopes of negotiating a compromise. He accepted, but I wouldn’t attempt to guess at his reasons,” the man who had identified himself as Chris Andrews replied.

  “That still doesn’t answer why I’m here,” Samantha reminded him smoothly.

  “You’re here for the same reason I gave you at the newspaper. Reuben wants to spend some time with you before you fly away into the world. He asked if yo
u could come and I agreed.”

  “Why would you agree? Wouldn’t I be disrupting you from your purpose and distracting my father?” she accused.

  “Possibly, but I’m willing to take the risk,” he shrugged diffidently. “Besides, if having you here will put your father in a good mood, it might make the negotiations easier.”

  “What you mean is that my presence might make him less resistant to your persuasions. I’m here to soften his stand, is that it?”

  “And with luck to have a peaceful and relaxing week with your father,” Chris Andrews added.

  His logic was convincing her of the truth in his answers, however selfish the motivation was. But there was one point that Samantha still wanted to have clarified.

  “Why am I here now? Before Reuben comes on Saturday?” she wanted to know, boldly meeting his veiled look.

  “Obviously we’ve never met,” he acknowledged the fact. “I thought it would be prudent to get to know you a bit beforehand to see which way the wind blew.”

  “In case I turned out to be an obstacle.” She completed what he had left unsaid. “You’ll find out, Mr. Andrews, that I don’t even attempt to influence my father one way or the other when it comes to business matters.”

  “Then we all should have a very pleasant vacation. Especially if you started calling me Chris.” The suntanned corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Shall we go to the house?”

  His hand was raised in a gesture that indicated she should precede him to the door leading out of the boathouse. Samantha took an agreeing step and stopped, a question suddenly occurring to her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me who you were in the beginning? Why all this secrecy until now?” she demanded with another faintly defiant tilt of her head.

  “If I told you at the newspaper office, I’m not certain you would have agreed to come with me. You might not have agreed to the vacation at all. When you mistook me for Reuben’s secretary, I took advantage of it to get you here. Once you were here, I thought I would be able to persuade you to stay. Have I?” The dark head was tipped to one side, the glittering light in his eye mockingly asking to be forgiven for the harmless deception.