Tigress by Blake Jennifer

Author:Blake, Jennifer [Blake, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Adult, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780759257948
Publisher: Ivy Books
Published: 1996-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Jessica’s first impulse was to keep the news of the explosion from her grandfather at all costs. However, it would be worse still if he heard about it from someone else and discovered he had been kept in the dark. Between treating him like a man or an invalid, there could be only one choice.

She need not have worried. He took the news in stride, once he was sure that she—and Rafael of course—had escaped without injury. That the explosion had been an accident he assumed without question. Jessica did not suggest otherwise, to him or anyone else. For one thing, there was no way to prove that deliberate tampering had caused the slow leak in the gas line that, combined with a loose plug wire, had set off the explosion. Even if there had been, nothing whatever was left to show who had set the trap, much less who was meant to be caught in it.

When she informed her grandfather that she and Rafael had settled their differences, he was elated. He had no objection whatever to the proposed visit to meet her prospective in-laws, saying only that Keil could handle things at Sea Gull in her absence. From the tone of his voice, however, she was left to wonder if he wasn’t also relieved that she was going. It seemed remotely possible that he was glad she would be out of the way for a while, that he was more worried than he wanted her to know.

Keil was flabbergasted at how close Jessica and Rafael had come to being killed. Over and over he insisted that he had checked the engines just a couple of weekends before with no sign of a problem. The boat wasn’t exactly new, he admitted, but it had been maintained in mint condition and had a whistle-clean safety record. A few other people had been on board lately—Nick had hosted a lake party a few weeks back, and Madeleine had slept over one weekend. But Keil himself had been the last person to take the Sea Gull IV out.

He had been waiting on the dock when Jessica and Rafael were brought in by fishermen who had picked them up out of the water. One of the rescue party had been an oil executive escaping his office for the day but carrying his flip-out cellular phone in his pocket. Jessica could have done without the marvels of modern communication. Wet, bedraggled, chilled to the bone, and edgy, the last thing she wanted was to participate in an extended postmortem.

Mercifully Rafael kept his theories to himself. She wasn’t at all sure he really believed someone wanted to kill her, anyway. It might have been no more than the stress of the moment and the need to find something or somebody to blame.

Or perhaps he did, for he had announced their decision to leave at once for Brazil. Demolishing her objections and clearing away all obstacles with ruthless courtesy, he arranged their departure. As soon

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