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  She was never quite sure what would have happened then—she did want to commit murder—if the door hadn't finally broken off its hinges. There was a loud, cracking sound, then the door opened from the wrong side and the anxious face of the steward appeared. Profuse apologies were the order of day, with the steward wringing his hands in distress and Samantha assuring him that she was fine and Josh ignoring it all and leaving to get dressed. What finally emerged was that the door would be fixed immediately and that the purser would like to see Josh and Samantha in his office after dinner—at which point, the steward assured her, they would have managed to straighten out this unfortunate mess, that in all the history of the Vulcan Cruise Line there had never been such a slip-up, that he couldn't imagine what had gone wrong, it must be that new computer system, but he could assure her, and he'd stake his professional reputation on it, that it would never happen again and...

  'As long as I have my own room by tonight,' Samantha said soothingly, 'I'll be fine.'

  'Oh, madam, without a doubt. Please don't worry about it. And Mr Sinclair, we'll have him fixed up as well. Please tell him not to be concerned.'

  Samantha turned to the closed bedroom door and waved a hand towards it. From behind it was the sound of cheerful whistling. 'I doubt,' she said with a touch of irony, 'if Mr Sinclair even gives a damn.'

  The dining room of the Princess Marguerita was large and pleasantly appointed. The tables were all set with crisp white linen and cut-glass vases holding red carnations. One wall held a wide window that overlooked one of the ship's pleasure decks and, beyond that, the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean. The other walls were decorated with colourful posters of Greek cities and ports. The waiters and waitresses were efficient, the menu choices were varied and the diners appeared to be having a terrific time. At Samantha's table were two married couples who had immediately got into a conversation about the children they'd left back home, and a woman in her late twenties, who hailed from a small town in South Carolina.

  '... Mariposa, South Carolina, to be precise,' she said. Her name was Marybeth McMullen, she had a soft Southern accent and one of those engaging faces that you can't help liking on sight. It was round with a slightly pointed chin and framed in short, blonde curls. She had a sprinkling of freckles along a narrow, diminutive nose and big blue eyes that reflected every emotion that she was feeling. Right now that emotion was eager curiosity. 'How about you?'

  'New York City,' said Samantha.

  'I would give my right arm to live in New York City,' Marybeth said with a sigh. 'Anything would be better than Mariposa. It has a population of five thousand and most of that's my family. That's why I came on this cruise. I just had to get away and meet some new people or I thought I'd go absolutely batty.' She gave a little laugh. 'Heavens, but I'm running on! What do you do, Samantha?'

  'I'm a lawyer and work for a firm doing mostly real estate law.'

  'A lawyer,' said Marybeth with awe. 'Why, I bet you just whizzed through school. I wish I could have been the intellectual type, but I was just plain hopeless!'

  Samantha smiled. 'Being intellectual isn't everything.'

  'Any boyfriends?'

  'Not right now.'

  'Why, I'd think you'd meet piles of exciting men in a lawyer's office.'

  'Attached, married or senile,' Samantha said drily, thinking of the partners in her firm.

  Marybeth laughed. 'And before?'

  Samantha shrugged. 'Someone from law school— but it didn't last.'

  Marybeth might have loved gossip and secrets and the stories of past intimacies, but she apparently knew better than to press Samantha any further. She just sighed in commiseration as if she too knew all about the agonies and traumas of broken affairs and said gloomily, 'Well, I can tell you all about my love life in two seconds—there's so little of it and I'm so pure, the deacons of our church are thinking of immortalising me in stained glass. Why, I could tell you stories about dull dates and boring men until the cows fly home. That's why I saved my pennies so I could take this cruise.'

  'You think you're going to meet someone on this cruise?'

  Marybeth's blue eyes were dreamy. 'I sure hope so—isn't that why singles go on cruises anyway? I'd just like to have a wild, romantic fling with no holds barred. You know the kind I mean?'

  Samantha didn't know, not really. Her relationships with men had always been very careful, very logical, very organised. And as for her first and last lover—well, what could you expect when two neophyte lawyers decide to have an affair? Their passion had been muted; their caution had been great. On the other hand, she wasn't any different from any other woman who had been brought up on a steady diet of television, movies and novels. In an abstract way, she knew exactly what Marybeth was talking about.

  'Uh-uh,' she said.

  But Marybeth was no longer listening. '... and dance under the stars and take walks under the moonlight and have sexy sweet nothings whispered in my ear. Of course, he'll have to be tall and handsome and sophisticated.' She laughed and came down to earth. 'I don't want too much, do I? Do you know any men like that?'

  'Nope,' Samantha said.

  Marybeth heaved a dramatic sigh. 'Me neither.'

  'Maybe they don't exist.'

  'Gosh, Samantha, you gotta keep on dreaming. If you didn't have your dreams, what would you have?'

  Their dessert arrived at that moment, a concoction whipped up of strawberries and cake and whipped cream. Samantha stared down at it instead of answering Marybeth's question. Once she had dreamed romantic fantasies just like the one Marybeth proposed, but as the years went by, she'd given up on it. She no longer really believed that such dreams could be true; they belonged to the realm of girlish nonsense, to wishful thinking, to an imagination that hadn't yet been stifled by reality. If you didn't have your dreams, what would you have? Nothing, she wanted to say, nothing but work and a certain cynicism that extinguished every little flicker of hope and crushed dreams before they ever had a chance to get started.

  'Well,' said Marybeth gaily, taking a final lick of her whipped cream, 'We can start tonight.'

  'Doing what?'

  'Fulfilling our dreams.'

  Samantha wished she had just the tiniest bit of Marybeth's unquenchable optimism, but it wasn't in her nature to believe that one could fulfil one's dreams on demand. 'And how,' she asked wryly, 'are we going to do that?'

  Marybeth gave her a disbelieving look. 'At the dance, of course.'

  'What dance?'

  'Didn't you read the schedule?'

  'I never saw a schedule. I was locked into my room.'

  'Locked into your room?!'

  'The door wouldn't work.'

  'Good grief, Samantha, that would only be worthwhile if you were stuck in there with a tall, dark and handsome stranger.'

  Samantha took a sip of her coffee. 'I was.'

  Marybeth had been about to drink her own coffee, but now she put the cup down with a clatter. 'You what?' she demanded.

  'I was stuck in the room with a tall, dark and handsome stranger.'

  'Heavens,' said Marybeth admiringly, 'you are a fast worker.'

  Samantha could see that she was going to have to nip Marybeth's over-active imagination in the bud. 'We were put together by mistake. Besides, I didn't like him,' she said. 'And he didn't like me.'

  'That's too bad.' Marybeth looked around the room. 'Is he here?'

  He was, and Samantha knew exactly where. 'Behind me, two tables down, facing us.'

  Marybeth craned her neck and glimpsed down the aisle with a blatant curiosity. 'Does he have dark brown hair?'

  'Yes.'

  'And dark eyes?'

  'Yes.'

  Marybeth straightened up. 'Why, Samantha, he's gorgeous!'

  'Yes,' Samantha said reluctantly.

  'Are you absolutely sure, I mean completely convinced that you don't like him?'

  'Absolutely.'

  'Hmm,' said Marybeth, giving Josh another glance with the appraising
eye of a woman who is looking over a potential acquisition. 'Is he hooked up with a redhead?'

  'Redhead?'

  'Strawberry blonde, elegant, manicured nails, about thirty-five.'

  Samantha couldn't bear it any longer. She turned around to follow Marybeth's glance—and then was sorry she'd done so. There was Josh all right, looking extremely handsome in a blue velour pullover and an open-necked white shirt. Beside him was a woman who was just as Marybeth described her. She had a model's slim elegance, reddish-gold hair that was coiled on her head, and the sort of high-cheekboned face that would launch a thousand ships. And she was obviously fascinated by Josh's conversation. On top of that, she had the rapacious look of a woman who has a good-looking man within her grasp and fully intends to keep him there. Samantha turned back and concentrated with great intensity on her dessert.

  'Well,' said Marybeth, 'I'm not the only one who's out for a shipboard romance, that's for sure.' She glanced once more towards Josh and his dinner companion and then heaved her largest sigh of the evening. 'And the competition's going to be fierce— very, very fierce!'

  Samantha left the dining room soon after that, said goodbye to Marybeth, who planned on taking a long time to put her warpaint on for the dance that night, and took a slow leisurely walk towards the purser's office. It wasn't seven o'clock yet, so she couldn't be sure that the purser would be ready to see her. Besides, he would probably want to talk to Josh as well, and since Josh was busily occupied in the dining room, Samantha figured she had about a half an hour of free time to kill.

  So she wandered around the upper decks of the ship, thinking about shipboard romances and wondering if she really wanted one. Part of her yearned for romance, for love, for all the clichés that movies and novels are made of. Margaret had thought she was too stuffy to accept the gift of the purchased fantasy, but the truth was that, underneath, Samantha was far too romantic. She didn't want a man who'd been paid to court her, nor did she want a man who would woo her, knowing that they'd be parting in two weeks' time. No, Samantha thought, she wasn't like Marybeth who had saved her pennies in the hopes of finding an exotic, short-lived thrill.

  She was so engrossed in this analysis that she walked headlong into a slim and wiry man who was turning the corner at precisely the same moment that she was.

  'Excuse me,' she said breathlessly.

  He smiled at her, and the smile turned a rather plain face into a charming one, crinkling up the corners of the blue eyes and revealing a strong set of white teeth.

  'Excuse me' he said. 'I wasn't watching where I was going.'

  'That's gallant of you to take the blame,' Samantha smiled, 'but it was really my fault.'

  He smiled again.

  'I'm David Burroughs, by the way. And just to make the introductions less tedious—I live in Washington, work for a Senator, have never been married and like swimming, squash, white water rafting, good cooking and a hefty biography. Now it's your turn.'

  Samantha couldn't help laughing. 'Well,' she told him, 'my name is Samantha Lorimer and I live in New York where I practise law and take care of two cats. I've never been married either.'

  'Whew! That solves that,' said David, mopping his forehead in mock-relief. 'Now we can get on to other, more important issues.'

  'Like what?'

  'Political inclinations, sociological aspirations, metaphysical opinions and whether you're going to the dance or not tonight.'

  Samantha had decided that she liked David Burroughs. She liked his smiling blue eyes, his sense of humour, and the way his brown hair fell forward on his forehead. 'The dance, yes,' she said. 'I'm afraid you'll have to repeat the rest. I forgot it.'

  He grinned at her. 'That makes two of us!'

  From there, the conversation was easy and light and pleasant. As they ambled down the ship's corridors, Samantha learned that David had been a political science major in college who was now part of the vast Federal Government, working as an analyst in the Department of Health and Welfare, monitoring medical regulations. This particular holiday was the first time he'd tried a cruise, but work had been so hectic that he'd decided that it would be better to relax than try to hike up another mountain in Nepal or ski down the Swiss Alps.

  'And what about you?' he asked. 'What got you on to the Princess Marguerita?'

  Samantha was about to explain when a deep voice interrupted her. 'So there you are!'

  She whirled around to find Josh approaching her. 'I was. . she began.

  'Darling,' he said, smiling down at her and taking her arm, 'I've been looking for you.'

  Samantha's mouth dropped open in shock. 'Dar...?'

  'Sweetheart,' he purred, 'we have an appointment. Did you forget?'

  Sweetheart? Since when was she his sweetheart? And there was David, looking confused, and she couldn't blame him. After all, he had thought she was a single, unattached woman, and along came a stranger and acted as if the two of them were a well-established couple. What was Josh up to anyway?

  Samantha tried to disengage her arm from his grasp. 'If you don't mind!' she protested.

  But he was ignoring her and offering his other hand to David. 'Josh Sinclair,' he said pleasantly.

  David shook hands with him. 'David Burroughs.'

  'Thanks for keeping Samantha occupied,' Josh said, 'but we have an appointment with the purser.'

  'That's okay,' David said, but he was frowning and he kept looking from Samantha to Josh and then back again in total bewilderment.

  'So, if you'll excuse us...'

  David's frown deepened, but he was too much the gentleman to do anything but acquiesce. 'Sure,' he said.

  'Now, just a minute!' Samantha began hotly, but it was too late. Josh had manoeuvred her away from David and was now propelling her rapidly down the corridor. 'Cut it out!'

  'But, darling, we have an appointment.'

  She struggled to free herself from Josh's grasp, but he was holding on to her with a firm grip. 'Don't darling me,' she retorted. 'And let go!'

  'Samantha, you're letting yourself get hot under the collar again.'

  Was he crazy? Or course she was getting hot under the collar. Who wouldn't be in her position? He'd kidnapped her—that's what he'd done, virtually kidnapped her in broad daylight. Well, amend that— under the fluorescent lamps in the corridor. But still, he'd interrupted her while she was having a very nice discussion with a very nice and perfectly eligible man, talked to her as if they were... well, lovers, for heaven's sake, and then forcibly abducted her.

  'I'd like to know what you're up to,' she said through clenched teeth.

  'Up to?' he asked innocently.

  'All those darlings and sweethearts. You know what that sounded like?'

  'What?'

  'Like we were in the midst of an... affair!'

  Josh slowed down a bit and looked down at her. 'Us? You and me?' He threw his head back and laughed. 'Samantha, you're letting your imagination run away with you.'

  'I am not!'

  'Who would imagine us having an affair? We're totally incompatible.'

  'David doesn't know that.'

  He gave her a quick glance. 'You're interested in David?'

  'I... it's none of your business!'How had Josh managed to manoeuvre her into a discussion of her feelings about David? Samantha's eyes narrowed and she gave one strong final yank of her arm, almost falling over when he let it go.

  'Are you all right?' he asked in what she considered overly solicitous tones.

  'Of course I'm all right,' she said tartly, brushing her bare arm and looking to see if he'd given her bruises. Much to Samantha's annoyance, there wasn't a mark on her which could be used as evidence of Josh's brutality. 'And I would prefer it if you didn't ever treat me that way again.'

  'Treat you how?'

  'As if...' But what could she say? Samantha thought in angry frustration, letting her words die away. From his expression of polite bewilderment, you would have thought that Josh hadn't deviated one single inch f
rom normal correct behaviour.

  'Here we are,' he said, ushering her through an open door. 'The purser's office.'

  The purser, a tall balding man with wire-rimmed spectacles, was even more apologetic than the steward had been. As he had them sit down beside his desk, he said how sorry he'd been for the mix-up, the inconvenience, the upset they must have suffered. He and the captain and the management of Vulcan Cruises begged them to please understand that this was the first time anything so bizarre had ever occurred, and that they would do everything in their power to ensure that both Miss Lorimer and Mr Sinclair were made comfortable and happy.

  Samantha was attempting to soothe her ruffled feathers while this barrage of words poured over her. She was still fuming inside over Josh's high-handed actions, and every once in a while she'd throw him a furious glance. Not that her angry looks made much of an impression on him. He was leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest, nodding slightly and looking for all the world as if he had nothing more important on his mind than the purser's apologies.

  'Now, of course,' he was saying, 'this accident occurred because of an over-booking error. For some reason our computer accepted one more reservation than was available, and one of the secretaries compounded the error by putting the two of you together in a room. The problem is,' he coughed a bit and cleared his throat, 'that the over-booking still exists, however, and at this very moment...'

  By now, Samantha had focused on the purser. 'Are you saying,' she said, leaning forward, 'that we're still going to have to share a stateroom?'

  The purser looked distinctly uncomfortable. 'Miss Lorimer, I'm sure you'll understand our problem. Every available space on board is taken and...'

  'For the entire trip?'

  The purser was a hand-wringer, too. 'Of course, we'll reimburse you for the difference between a single accommodation and a double and throw in something extra for the inconvenience.'

  'But there's only one bed!'

  'No, no, the couch turns into a bed. Miss Lorimer. Heavens, we wouldn't expect...' the purser gave a small, embarrassed laugh, 'that you would...er... sleep together.'