She now knew why Travis had left the island, and why he hadn't been welcomed home. After the public exposure of his father's labor practices and a stolen heirloom ring it was little wonder his family wasn't embracing him.
But her mind seethed with other images: a tousle-haired boy watching the gulls soar by the cliffs. The same boy exiled to boarding school and not allowed back to his island home for two long years. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes.
Oliver and Bertram, she'd be willing to bet, didn't believe Travis had stolen the family ring. But if he hadn't, who had? Brent?
She gave a heavy sigh. Bed. That's what she needed. Bed and a good night's sleep.
Would she wake in the morning to find that Travis had reconsidered? And once again had left the island?
Eventually Julie did fall asleep. She dreamed about Travis, first that they were driving full speed on a gravel road to an island where they would dig for hidden treasure, gold rings and rusty, iron-studded suits of armor; and then, abruptly, that they were making impassioned love on a blanket of roses called Evangeline. The dream slid into wakefulness, into a flicker of candlelight and a man's hand fumbling for her breast. Travis, she thought in a flood of delight, and turned to face him, opening her eyes.
Travis didn't have blond hair.
It wasn't Travis. It was Brent.
She shoved herself backward in the bed, hit her wrist on one of the four posts and tumbled off the edge in a welter of sheets. Frantically she struggled to extricate herself. "For Pete's sake, Julie," Brent hissed, "what are you trying to do? Wake the entire household?"
She tugged at her nightgown, covering her breasts. "Get out of here-right now."
He rolled off the other side of the bed as she scrambled to her feet; he was bare-chested, she noticed with the small part of her brain that appeared to be working. "How did you get in?" she demanded. "I locked the door."
"Bertram keeps a set of spare keys in the pantry."
"I locked it for a reason," she blazed; after all the stresses of the evening before, it felt very liberating to lose her temper. "I'm not your lover. I never have been and I never will be."
"You're old enough to know the score, Julie. Why do you think I invited you here for the weekend?"
Travis's reasoning exactly. She told the exact truth. "Because I'd told you how homesick I get for the ocean."
"Sure," he jeered, "your little miss naive act."
"It's no act. I don't do casual sex. Maybe you should have checked that out before inviting me out here."
"So you're all come-on and no delivery."
In a cold fury she said, "I haven't encouraged you in any way to think that I'd get into bed with you."
"That dress you had on when you got here, all bare shoulders and cleavage-you don't call that a come-on?"
"It's a perfectly ordinary sundress and why are we standing here in the middle of the night discussing my wardrobe?" She grabbed the nearest marble statue, a particularly nubile Aphrodite. "Get out of here, Brent, or I'll scream the place down. I have very good lungs, believe me."
"So is it Travis you want?"
"I don't want either one of you! Head for the door." For a moment he hesitated, the muscles bunched in his arms. She tensed, wondering if she'd have the nerve to hit him with a solid marble goddess; to her great relief, he took a couple of steps away from the bed.
"What a little Puritan you are."
"Out," she said.
He sauntered over to the chair, picked up his shirt and crossed the room. "Just stay out of my way for the rest of the weekend," he said.
"You haven't got a worry in the world." All she could think of was how he'd entered her room while she was asleep and watched her, leisurely taking off his shirt in the meantime. It made her feel dirty all over.
As the door closed softly behind him, Julie let out her breath in a ragged sigh. There was no point in locking it. Grunting with effort, she dragged the cedar chest from the foot of her bed until it was lodged against the panels, and sat down hard. Now that Brent was gone, she was trembling with delayed reaction.
She'd find Oliver in the morning and go back to the mainland with him on his first crossing. She'd had her fill of the Strathem family! And that included Travis just as much as the rest of them.
She didn't need seducing, even in her dreams.
CHAPTER FOUR
Travis was wide-awake at 5:00 a.m. He hadn't been given his old room up in the tower, but rather one of the guest suites. Another message that he wasn't welcome here, he thought with a wry twist of his lips. And another reason why he'd had one of the worst night's sleep in his life.
But not the main reason. Not if he were honest.
His room was down the hall from Julie's. He'd sat on a rock by the shore for a long time after that scene on the patio, then come up the back stairs to go to bed. In consequence, he'd had a ringside view of Brent leaving Julie's bedroom in the middle of the night. His brother's shirt had been casually looped over his arm, the night-lights gleaming on his bare chest.
Even now, several hours later, Travis's gut clenched at the memory. Julie had been lying to him all along. Swearing that she belonged to herself, not to Brent. It had been an act. An impressively credible one, moreover. Her big green eyes had been so full of sincerity, had met his so unflinchingly … but she'd been deceiving him from the beginning.
He sat up in bed, running his fingers through his hair. Twenty-four hours ago he hadn't even met Julie. Hadn't known she existed. So why did it matter so much that she'd lied to him?
The thought of her in Brent's arms, making love, was more than he could stomach. Jealousy, hot and lethal, surged through his veins. He wanted her for himself. Himself alone.
Not likely. If he didn't believe in casual sex, even less did he believe in sharing his lover with another man.
Particularly when the man was his brother.
Corinne was right, Travis thought sickly. There was no point in him staying here. Charles still resented him for going to the media, an action Travis had regretted as he'd aged and gathered experience; there must have been a better way of dealing with that situation. But he'd been young and hotheaded and deeply angry with the man who'd exiled a little boy from the island he'd loved, and so he'd acted without thought of the consequences.
What really hurt was that Charles still thought him capable of stealing the family ring.
He'd take Corinne's advice, and leave on the first boat this morning. Reconciliation was impossible, a pipe dream. He'd been a fool to come here, stirring up all the old animosities.
Restlessly Travis got up from the bed and stared out the window. The launch wouldn't be leaving for another four hours. He could at least walk along the cliffs to the lighthouse before he left. Feeling minimally better for this decision, Travis hauled on his jeans and a T-shirt, and padded down the corridor in his socked feet, his sneakers in his hand. He let himself out the west door, taking a deep breath of the cool morning air. The grass was wet with dew, the birds singing as though this was the first morning of creation. After doing up his laces, Travis set off.
It took a full five minutes to get clear of the painstakingly tended gardens and lawns, another five to cross the equally artful natural garden, the trees carefully placed, the stream rerouted beneath a whimsical bridge. But finally he reached the edge of the forest, and the track that he'd blazed himself many years ago. Although it had grown over considerably, it was still passable.
When a redstart flitted through the maples, he stopped to admire its black and orange plumage. Next he startled a rabbit, then a red squirrel dropped a pinecone on his head. Laughing, he tossed it back up the tree. The squirrel scolded him indignantly; for the first time in hours, Travis felt like a human being. Shutting his mind to family and Julie alike, he strode on, feeling his muscles loosen and watching the rising sun spear through the thick spruce boughs.
A perfect day for his father's party. Even if he himself wouldn't be in attendance.
Fifteen minutes later Travis emerged at the brink of the granite cliffs on the offshore side of Manatuck. Bear Island, the next island beyond Manatuck, belonged to him, willed to him by his grandfather. It, too, was very beautiful.
He might just build a cabin on it. Use it as a getaway when his job got too much for him. If he placed the cabin carefully, he wouldn't even have to see Castlereigh.
He tramped along, gulls and kittiwakes swirling like tossed white papers over the turquoise sea. At the foot of the lighthouse that warned of the reefs further east, he threw himself down on the wet grass. How often had he lain here as a young boy, listening to the thunder of the surf?