The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) by John R. Maxim

take on a sort of soft, low chill and she'd get mad at herself for being a nag. And for what? What did she really want to know? That he was a real man? Susan never doubted that. She was sure in her own mind that if Paul was ever forced to protect himself, or her, he'd do just fine. But she was also sure that he'd go to almost any length to avoid a confrontation. Which might explain why he'd never been married.
     
Wait a minute. What is this? Something good had happened to you so there has to be something bad about it? The guy's terrific. And this is Thanksgiving, right? Count your blessings.
     
As Christmas approached, Susan took it for granted that Paul would share it with her in the city. Her father, no excuses this time, would come in from Queens on Christmas Eve. It was time he met Paul, she decided, and time for him to know that Paul was someone special in her life. And the prospect of seeing how they'd size each other up was getting more interesting than ever.
     
The three of them could take a long walk along Fifth Avenue, looking at the decorations and the department store windows. Afterward, she'd fix a champagne sup per and drag them both to midnight Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. On Christmas morning they'd exchange gifts, then Paul and her father could spend the rest of the day watching football and getting acquainted. Her father would leave at about five o'clock because her mother would be coming in from New Jersey for Christ mas dinner and there was still too much polite tension between her parents.
     
But this time it was Paul who couldn't make it. He was sick about it, he told her, but he had business in Florida that would keep him away for the holidays. He had booked a large group onto a Christmas cruise and he was expected to go with them as tour guide and host. Speaking of Christmas, however, he might have an early present for her. If he were to give her a first-class ticket to the Bahamas, how would she feel about joining him there for New Year's? There was a place just off Eleuthera called the Windermere Island Club. Very ex clusive, very quiet, very British. Not to try to turn her head, but various members of the royal family owned villas on the club grounds. No telephones or TV, five miles of perfect beach, lots of romantic little coves. The offer, however, would be withdrawn at once if she said Oh, wo w .
     
Her disappointment at not sharing Christmas with him faded quickly amid visions of moonlit strolls along a tropical beach. Susan, after a five-second stammer, managed a simple, explosive yes.
     
    The Windermere Island Club turned out to be one of those insular anachronisms the British had been es tablishing since their early years as a colonial power. Once the earliest visitors were satisfied that the trade or plunder potential of a given place could not be ex hausted in less than a year, the British would set about choosing a likely spot for a club and shooing away any local who happened to live there.
     
    Since a British club was by definition a retreat, it contained very little that was indigenous to the sur rounding area. Native color, to say nothing of colored natives, was specifically excluded. Where possible, a club's ambience and architecture would be distinctly British. If that were not possible due to a lack of suitable building materials, the design of the club would be bor rowed from some other colonial post of fond memory. The Windermere Island Club, from the look of it, seemed to have gotten its inspiration in the British oc cupation of the Massachusetts seacoast. The clubhouse and its outbuildings had a weathered barn look more reminiscent of Cape Cod than of the tropics.
     
Paul met her at Nassau's International Airport. He waited, already tanned   and grinning happily, as she cleared Customs. Taking her bag, hugging her, excited as a schoolboy, he led her through another gate where a Cessna air taxi waited to fly them to Rock Sound Airport on Eleuthera, less than thirty