The House on Flamingo Cay Read Online Free PDF Page B

sat the day before. The trim white launch with Flamingo painted on the bow was still moored to the bollard. So the grey-eyed stranger was still in Nassau, she thought, with an odd thrust of excitement.
    “Looking for a ferry to the beach?”
    With a startled drawing-in of breath, Sara swung round, her eyes widening as she saw who had spoken to her. It was like the genie emerging from the lamp—she had been thinking of him and, suddenly, there he was.
    “The hotel boat service doesn’t start till seven, but I’m just going over for a dip. You can come with me,” he offered.
    “Oh ... thank you very much.”
    He took her beach-bag and, with a hand on the edge of the pier, vaulted easily into the launch. Then, having stowed her bag and his own, he turned to help her down. And, for the second time, as he swung her to the deck beside him, Sara felt those strong warm hands on her waist.
    Twenty minutes later, in the banana yellow bikini which Angela had insisted she should buy in preference to a modest dark one-piece, Sara ran over the sand and into the sparkling green water. She swam for about half an hour, vaguely aware that the man from the Out Islands was quite close by, but absorbed in the physical delight of diving and floating and skimming in the warm clear depths.
    By the time she came out, her companion was sitting on the beach, a flask of hot coffee wedged in the sand beside him.
    “Oh, that was heavenly!” Sara said, pulling off her cap. “No wonder this is called Paradise Beach.”
    He handed her a beaker of coffee and, suddenly conscious of the brief cotton suit clinging wetly to her body, Sara quickly sat down and draped her towel round her shoulders.
    “Why is the sand so pink?” she asked presently, sifting a handful through her fingers.
    “It’s crushed coral.” He lit a cigarette and leaned on his elbow, facing her. “You must have had a mermaid in the family. That’s a pretty powerful crawl for a girl.”
    “I learnt to swim very young and I love it,” Sara said, smiling. “Actually I’m badly out of practice. Since we moved to London, I’ve hardly swum at all.”
    He shared the rest of the coffee between them. “I think it’s about time we introduced ourselves. My name is Stephen Rand.”
    “I’m Sara Gordon.”
    “Sara ... it suits you,” he said thoughtfully. “In spite of the bikini and the nail varnish, you have a rather demure air.”
    Her cheeks warmed, but she tried to sound casual. “Demure sounds positively Victorian.”
    “I meant it as a compliment. In Nassau one tends to get a surfeit of blasé sophistication.”
    “Do you come here often? I thought you lived in the Out Islands?”
    “My home’s on Flamingo Cay, but my livelihood’s here in Nassau.”
    “Flamingo Cay—what a lovely name for an island. I’ve never seen a flamingo, except in films, of course.” A recollection made her smile. “Would you describe them as ‘cute’ birds?”
    His eyebrows went up. “Certainly not. They’re extremely elegant and haughty.”
    Without thinking about discretion, but simply because she felt like sharing her amusement, Sara told him about Mrs. Stuyvesant and some of her droll effusions. It gave her a curiously intense pleasure when he threw back his head to laugh at the description of the Lyford Cay sea-gardens as ‘Neptune’s jewel box’.
    “I don’t mean to sound unkind. She’s really a very good sort,” Sara added quickly. “But I can just imagine her ‘doing’ Europe in three weeks flat and feeling terribly cosmopolitan and knowledgeable.”
    Stephen Rand chuckled. “I know the type—all too well,” he said wryly. “Incidentally, the best way to see the sea-bed is to get right down to it. There are cruises out to the reefs and, with a helmet and an air-pipe, you can wander about half the day. As a matter of fact, there’s a reef-roving boat going out from your hotel this afternoon.”
    “Oh, good. I’ll go.” Then Sara remembered the lunch-date