On Wings of Magic Read Free Page A

America.”
    “South America? I understood you flew into Nassau from Paris.”
    Which would teach her not to be so expansive with bellhops and taxi drivers, Kendall thought ruefully. “Oh, I did. But I spent only a week in Paris; before that I was in South America.” She had
no
intention of telling him why she had given in to her father’s demand that she leave South America after the revolution broke out.
    “What was in South America? Or is that an indelicate question?”
    Kendall couldn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t tell him that—she couldn’t see any reason why she
should
either. “My father,” she heard herself replying. “He’s a mining engineer.”
    “I see.” He leaned forward to brush a hovering insect away from her upper thigh, and Kendall felt an unfamiliar shiver radiating outward from the base of her spine. “What kind of trouble, Kendall?”
    “A revolution.” The answer came without her volition, and sounded stilted even to her own ears. She stared into the curiously intense gray eyes, and felt suddenly that she had stepped into deep water and something—someone—was trying to pull her under.
    It was his eyes, she realized abruptly. This man possessed more power in his eyes than most men could boast of in their entire bodies. Once, some years before, a friend of her father’s had gotten into along, involved discussion with Kendall about what he called a “leadership quality” in men. There were some men, he had insisted, who were born to lead. They were “alpha” males, dominant, powerful. Striding through life with absolute self-knowledge and certainty.
    Kendall hadn’t really been able to grasp the concept—probably because she hadn’t been able to relate it to anyone she knew. But the man had insisted that
she
was a member of that curious group of dominant personalities. He’d told her that it was her “alpha” instincts that allowed her to play the feather-headed innocent with such ease and to such good effect. She was so certain of herself, he’d said, that she felt no need to prove anything to anyone. And he’d expressed a wistful desire to be a fly on the wall when she finally bumped into an “alpha” male.
    He hadn’t warned her what to expect in the unlikely possibility that such an event would occur. But she distinctly remembered him muttering something about the clash of the Titans.
    Now she knew what he meant.
    Hawke Madison was an “alpha” male. For all his charm and amiable conversation, for all his polished, sophisticated manner—probably garnered in his trade as a hotelier—his was a pose just as deft, and just as unreal, as her own.
    Kendall couldn’t help but wonder which of them would abandon the charade first.
    She tore her eyes from his with a silent gasp and thanked heaven for the sunglasses. Trying desperately to get the conversation back to unimportant things, she said lightly, “I didn’t expect this island to be so large. How large is it, by the way? When I flew overfrom Nassau in that little plane, I just closed my eyes.”
    Hawke was still regarding her with that smile that was doing peculiar things to her nervous system. “It’s big,” he murmured, giving Kendall the unsettling impression that his mind was on something else. “There’s a decent-size village a couple of miles away that caters to tourists, half a dozen churches, a nice harbor with sailboats for rent. There’s even another hotel on the other side of the island.”
    “Competition?” she asked innocently.
    “Friendly competition.” He laughed. “They cater more to families. With the casino here, we attract a slightly more sophisticated crowd.”
    Kendall looked toward the shallow end of the pool, where several dark-skinned children were playing noisily, and then looked back at Hawke with a questioning lift of her brows.
    “Kids from the village,” he explained with a slight shrug. “I let them use the pool in the afternoons.” He gestured toward one of the