Keeper of the Singing Bones

By Marilyn Gardiner

Juliet is convinced her brother has been kidnapped .  Mac thinks he is running guns in Jamaica.  Mac is rough-and-tumble.  Juliet is every inch a lady.  He has lied to her at every juncture.  She has zero tolerance for untruthfulness. Forced to work together to avoid the curse of a native medicine man, Juliet and Mac hack their way through the jungle, cope with the mysteries of a groaning statue found deeply underground in a cave grotto, and come to grips with a mutual growing attraction.   The problem is that they are all wrong for each other.  Mac has Rastafari friends, for heaven's sake, and Juliet is convinced that he is not who he says he is.  In a life or death struggle, the stone statue points to the answers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781590880517

Book preview

What They Are Saying About

Keeper Of The Singing Bones

F rom the moment Juliet finds a naked man in the shower, to slogging through the Jamaican bush, exploring a cave and finally escaping via an underground river, Marilyn Gardiner keeps the action sizzling. Can Juliet trust Mac—with or without clothes? Without trust, can she let herself love him? This talented author brings the characters and action to life for a thrilling, must-read story. Keep an eye on her. She gets better and better.

Fran Keighley, Author of

Bed, Breakfast And Beware

Renegade

Monster In The Moat

www.wings-press.com

Keeper Of The Singing Bones

Marilyn Gardiner

A Wings ePress, Inc.

Romantic Suspense Adventure Novel

Edited by: Lorraine Stephens

Copy Edited by: Sara V. Olds

Senior Editor: Lorraine Stephens

Executive Editor: Lorraine Stephens

Cover Artist: Chrissie Poe

All rights reserved

NAMES, CHARACTERS AND incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Copyright © 2002 by Marilyn A. Gardiner

ISBN: 978-1-59088-051-7

Published by Wings ePress, Inc.

Published In the United States Of America

Wings ePress Inc.

3000 N. Rock Road

Newton, KS  67114

Dedication

For my daughters:

Nelda,

who could easily have been Juliet

backpacking over the Appalachian mountains,

and Barbi,

who keeps my characters and their stories honest

and without whom

I could never have mastered E-publishing.

One

Juliet Wynters impatiently jingled the ring of keys in her hand. Almost bouncing on the balls of her feet, she willed the elevator to go faster. Lately, problems seem to come in multiples, and at this given moment, she had about all she could handle.

This morning, before coffee even, she’d had two phone calls she could have done without. That Stevie was in trouble was nothing new. From the moment he could crawl, her younger brother had found trouble. Neither was it news that her mother was hysterical about one of Stevie’s escapades.

Something has happened to him. I haven’t heard from him in over a month. His home phone doesn’t answer and they don’t know where he is at his place of business. Place of business? Mother always chose to put the best spin possible on Stevie’s activities.

He even forgot my birthday, her mother went on, her voice rising. He has never, in all his life, forgotten my birthday. He’s off hunting treasure and I know in my heart that something desperate has happened to him. He’s gone. Just gone. There was a pause. Juliet?

Mother worried, maybe too much, but it did sound as if this time there might be legitimate cause for concern. Disappearing from Mother’s horizon, even a long distance horizon, wasn’t in character. Not for Stevie.

However, the second phone call was another matter. That Mr. Damien, her good-natured, amiable boss and chairman of the board of Damien’s Hotel chain, both demanded to see her Monday morning, and that he sounded extremely upset and pressured, was unprecedented. Granted, he’d had a heart attack and by-pass surgery recently, and was only just beginning to make appointments, so allowances could be made, but even so his tone made her uneasy.

He’d called from his home in San Francisco. Ms. Wynters. Ms. Wynters, when he’d been calling her Juliet for two years! I am enroute to the airport and will land at Dulles mid-afternoon. Expect me at Alexandria Damien’s by dinner time. I intend to rest for the weekend, but make yourself available early Monday morning. There is urgent business to discuss. He’d hung up. Juliet hadn’t a clue.

She nattered away at a possible explanation. Could he have heard of her job offer from Schaeffer Inns? If so, that meant one of two things: promotion or letting her go. Neither was likely. She was doing a damned good job for Damien’s, she thought, stepping out of the elevator.

Lush burgundy carpet stretched down the hall beneath her feet. Mr. Damien’s suite was always kept in readiness, but before she left for the weekend, she preferred to check out the rooms herself. Not that she had time to worry about either the suite or being fired. Since her mother’s frantic telephone call earlier, she’d been able to concentrate on little else.

She told herself it wasn’t probable that anything had actually happened to Stevie, as her mother feared. Her brother couldn’t possibly be missing in Jamaica. Not missing, surely, as in gone. Innocents like Stevie, who played easy-listening piano music in a Kingston bar, didn’t just fall off the end of the earth as her mother implied.

What was more apt to be the case was that he’d wriggled himself into another scrape he couldn’t get out of, and she was going to have to take time off, hunt him down and extricate him from whatever mess he’d gotten himself into. Another rescue mission.

Drat! She gritted her teeth. She didn’t have time for another of Stevie’s wild schemes. Not with Schaeffers waiting for an answer and Mr. Damien enroute to the hotel. Stevie would just have to wait, and so would her mother. She needed this weekend at the cottage to think through the Schaeffer/Damien decision.

As much as she enjoyed working for Mr. Damien, he’d never offered illusions of upper mobility. She’d talk to him, of course, before accepting anything from Schaeffer, but she clearly understood there was a nephew waiting in the wings, ready to step in when the time came. Besides, Schaeffer Inns offered options to Directors of Hotel Management which Damien’s did not and it was only prudent to consider their proposal.

The thing was, with his recent health problems, Mr. D. might decide to retire right now. Depending on the nephew, that might just leave her on the sidewalk, bag in hand. But that was only one scenario. Maybe he had a counter offer of some kind in mind.

Her key slid into the lock of nine-o-seven and the door opened without a sound. Juliet stepped onto an expanse of stark white carpet and glanced around. Chrome and mirrors, swatches of bright teal sofas and oriental black lacquered tables. Everything was in order. But...

Water was running somewhere. A bouquet of fresh flowers sat on a table and the terrace doors were open letting a cool breeze riffle through the grillwork, but incredibly one of the maids had left water running. Making a mental note to find out who was responsible for cleaning the rooms at this end of the hall, she strode determinedly across the carpet.

As she reached the open bathroom door, the water stopped—and so did Juliet. There was a man in the shower. He had opened the glass doors, turned off the water, and now stood completely naked and dripping wet with his eyes squinched shut as he squeegeed water off his body.

The picture seemed emblazoned on her brain for all time. He was deeply tanned except for a triangular area which must have accommodated swim trunks and he seemed, to Juliet’s stunned gaze, to bulge with more muscles than she knew existed on the male body. Broad hands sleeked curling black hair away from his face and then flattened a dark pelt of body hair over a muscular chest that veed downward toward a tight, flat belly.

He grinned suddenly at some secret thought and the motion softened the square set of his jaw. And then he shook his head making the hair spring back, and ran his hands under his arms and down the sides over the narrow, tapering hips and flicked the water off the ends of his fingers.

Juliet simply stood and stared, shocked into paralysis. His hands went down one long powerful leg, as the muscles bunched and rippled, and then the other. There was a perfect molding of football shoulders and narrow waist and healthy, vigorous well-being. She thought she’d never seen anything so thrilling.

And then a swift hot flush of shame shot through her. She should not be seeing this. She should go. But she didn’t move. She had an insane urge to reach out and touch him, to make sure he was real and made of warm, living flesh.

Then, toweling his head, he began to sing some bawdy song about a girl he’d known. His deep voice filled the tiny room and bounced off the walls and echoed violently in Juliet’s head.

"There once was a girl named Kailid.

She swore that she didn’t, but she did.

Her hips how they wiggled,

Her—"

With a gasp, Juliet turned and ran.

She was back in her office, trembling in the swivel chair behind her desk before she was able to think rationally, and then couldn’t remember if she’d closed the door to the suite. Not that it mattered, he hadn’t seen her, whoever he was. And it was dead certain he wasn’t the seventy-year-old Mr. Damien.

Juliet placed her hands flat on the top of her desk and took long deep breaths. He was a man. Just a man. He was in the wrong suite, somehow, and that would have to be taken care of, but it was nothing she couldn’t handle. He was just another man.

And then she slumped in her chair. There was no way in this life she would ever be able to erase the sight of his honey-tanned body, streaming water from the shower, standing as pagan as a Greek statue and offering her a vision of complete and total, overwhelming manhood.

She put her hands to her burning cheeks. Dear heaven, she had to get him out of Mr. Damien’s suite. Why hadn’t she simply stood her ground, faced him down and told him flat out that a mistake had been made and he would have to leave?

But it was another twenty minutes before she was composed enough to call the front desk. Please go up to nine-o-seven, she managed calmly. There’s been an error and someone else has been assigned to Mr. Damien’s suite. Give this gentleman the nicest accommodations we have available, compliments of the house, and apologize for the inconvenience but, and her voice was stiff with control, get him out of there immediately.

THE BELTWAY WAS CONGESTED with Friday night rush hour traffic as Juliet left the city. Grimly, she wove her way through snarls of roaring trucks and darting compact cars until finally the traffic thinned and she was in open country. She was tired and hungry and still faintly unnerved by her encounter with the naked man in Mr. Damien’s suite, but she wanted desperately to get to the cottage before dark so she pressed on.

An hour later, deep in the hills, the air was laced with the first icy breath of winter. There was a nip to the wind, and when she stopped to fill the gas tank she was grateful for the down jacket she had thrown in the back seat.

The terrain became rougher and more heavily forested. Great jagged slashes in hillsides gave way to continuously rolling mountains with tree-studded silhouettes rising against the sky. A riotous tumble of fall colors blanketed the land. And somewhere, back in those hills, with not even a telephone to connect it to civilization, she knew the cottage awaited her. Deliberately, she had not even brought the cell phone. She needed an expanse of uncluttered, uninterrupted time to think, before Monday morning.

She stopped once more, for groceries, and then with a tired little sigh of homecoming turned up a narrow one-track lane. Brush had almost overgrown the drive since the last time she’d been there and the shadows under the trees were deep in twilight. She ducked as a particularly long branch slapped the windshield, and decided that tomorrow she would drive into the village and try to find someone willing to come this far into the hills to blade down the lane and trim trees. She gripped the wheel tighter as she jounced over the rutted track. The lane really was treacherous.

Pulling up in front of the cottage she sat for a minute looking at the peaceful scene. There were black shutters on the natural wood frame house and it was surrounded by colorful foliage and trees on three sides. Bay windows fronted onto a tiny, placid mountain lake. Her bones seemed to soften and her flesh melted against them. This place never failed to speak to her soul.

The cottage had come to her on the death of her beloved grandmother. How could she ever give it up? Yet she knew she might have to sell the cottage and all the land in order to put her hands on the capital to finance a move to the Schaeffer corporation. She’d rather stay where she was, but Juliet knew better than to think a position in upper management would eventually be hers. It just wouldn’t happen.

She got out of the car and stretched. Storm clouds were building in the west and dark shadows lengthened beneath the trees. Dark would be early tonight.

She unloaded the car, built a fire in the fireplace and relaxed in the recliner in front of the bay window. Deliberately, she tried to blot everything from her mind: her job, Mr. Damien, Schaeffer’s, Stevie’s supposed disappearance, her mother’s anxiety, and most difficult of all, the man in the shower. She groaned and gritted her teeth. I will not think of him. I will not remember the way he... And, of course, his naked image flooded back stronger than ever, making her mouth stretch into a smile even as she fought it.

Eventually, the cottage itself brought a measure of calm and for an hour she sat absorbing the tranquility of the tree-shrouded lake, the plaintive call of a loon and gentle lap of waves against the dock. The unraveling process was slow, but eventually the knot at the back of her neck loosened, she drew a long quiet breath and got up to make coffee and scramble eggs. She was almost too tired to eat, but it was now a good tired. She would sleep.

Thunder growled low in the distance as the storm moved closer and spears of lightning illuminated the windows. Not bothering to stifle huge yawns, Juliet put on a long flannel granny gown and comfortable robe she kept in the closet just for chilly nights like this. She was ready for bed when the rain came, pelting the roof and gusting against the windows in solid sheets. She was half out of her robe, with the blankets turned back on the bed, when she heard what sounded like a car approaching the cottage.

She stopped and listened. Yes, below the noise of the storm she heard a motor gunning erratically as it tried to negotiate the narrow, rut-scarred lane. Squinting through the curtains into the rain, she saw headlights swing first one way and then the other. Considering the condition of the lane as seen in broad daylight, whoever was coming was doing so at peril of his life.

And then came the crash. The headlights undulated wildly even before the sound reached her. In a second she had the door open and, shrugging back into her robe, she stood, listening. The scream of metal mutilating and tearing seemed to go on forever, and then there was a solid thunk that reverberated in the clearing with an odd damp smothered sound. And then, nothing.

Heart thudding, Juliet grabbed a slicker from the peg by the door and started down the lane at a run, slipping and sliding in the mud, her arms windmilling frantically. The crash had sounded terrible. Someone might be horribly hurt. She fell twice and at some point, she didn’t remember when, the wind tore the slicker from her shoulders.

The front end of the car, when she got there, was wrapped around a massive oak tree and steam from the hood hissed angrily in the driving rain. Holding on to the car she made her way around to the driver’s side. There was someone there; she could see an outline through the fogged glass. He was slumped over the wheel.

The door was jammed. She tugged and pulled and went down once more, her legs under the car and her hands buried in mud to the wrists. Her hair was plastered down over her face so that she could barely see. She scraped it back with the palm of a muddy hand, scrambled to her feet and tried again. This time she put one foot on the body of the car for leverage and pulled on the door with both hands. It gave with a squall that set her teeth on edge.

There was blood from a small cut on his temple, and his head lolled to one side at an alarming angle. Carefully she reached across him to unfasten the seatbelt, and then to her dismay, the man inside began to fall in slow motion out into the rain.

She grabbed at him, slipped once more and they both collapsed into the mud. She had his head in her arms, but his feet were still in the car. She thought insanely that if his neck wasn’t already broken, she’d probably just done it.

He was an inert weight, out cold or dead, Juliet didn’t know which. She could feel the mud conforming to the shape of her thigh and heard her teeth chattering. She groped for a pulse in his neck, but her hands were too numb to feel or maybe she was looking in the wrong place. For one ghastly moment she thought it was too late, he had died in the car. And then she felt a throbbing artery and knew he was still alive.

Trying to be careful, and yet jerking him unmercifully at every move, Juliet slithered out from under the man. His face was streaked with rain and blood and mud. She tugged and pulled, but couldn’t budge him. He was too big.

She felt like wringing her hands. The nearest neighbor was three miles away and she couldn’t get her own car past the wreckage in the lane. And yet it was unthinkable to let him just lie there in the rain. A blanket! Maybe she could drag him as far as the cottage if she could just roll him onto a blanket.

With one last glance at the man lying face up in the rain, she ran toward the lighted windows. Her slippers had been lost somewhere in the mud and she skated on the slick mountain clay in her bare feet. She flung open the door and hesitated for a second, hanging on to the frame, fighting for