Castaway Cove (14 page)

The craf
ting room at Memories on Main looked as if a typhoon had hit it. The glass-topped tables were covered with sheets of designer paper, embellishments, ribbons, various punches, inks, stamps, and pens. Papercrafting was often a messy prospect, but fifteen little girls had brought an entirely new chaos to creation.

Still, the love they were putting into their cards was so obvious that Annie knew the recipients would be able to feel it. Which was all that was important.

There was a slight problem when Emma Culhane had plucked a marker from the box and begun signing
Love, your friend, Emma
in Day-Glo pink.

“You can’t use a girlie color like pink for a soldier,” declared Peggy Murray, the birthday girl, who’d already proven to be more than a little bossy.

“Can, too,” Emma said, putting that card away and reaching for another she’d made, this one with a smiling dog sticker on the polka-dot-covered front. “I always sign the pictures I draw for my poppy in pink and he loves them.” She tossed her blond head. “And he was a sailor in a big, big war, so he should know a lot more than
you
do about what soldiers like.”

She looked up at Annie. “Isn’t that right, Ms. Shepherd?”

“Your poppy does love those pictures,” Annie agreed. For a moment she’d considered suggesting that Emma, who obviously loved color, use a red pen for her careful childish printing, but then she decided she wasn’t about to stifle the young artist’s creativity. “I’m sure all you girls’ cards will make our soldiers happy.”

And who wouldn’t smile when they saw that blindingly bright pink ink and think of the little girl who’d made the card for them?

“See?” Emma told Peggy, whose scowl suggested that wasn’t the answer she’d wanted to hear.

“As soon as all the cards are signed, we can move on to the cupcake-and-ice-cream part of the fun,” Annie said.

Her attempt to smooth the troubled waters paid off when there was a loud cheer and everyone started calling out their favorite Take the Cake flavors.

•   •   •

Except for that brief little ripple between Emma and Peggy, the party had gone well.
Better than well,
Annie thought as she cleaned up the paper scraps, scrubbed the glue off the glass-topped tables, and tucked the cards the girls had made into the box where she’d been storing the cards for the schoolchildren to hand out to troops during the Fourth of July parade. Although Shelter Bay didn’t have enough veterans for every child to be able to hand out a card, before the school year had ended a couple weeks ago, two names had been drawn from each class, and—wouldn’t you know it—Emma Culhane had won one of the tickets for her kindergarten class.

Because Emma had rushed out of the store as soon as she’d seen her daddy’s truck pull up in front, Annie had avoided running into Mac Culhane again today. But, since Emma had won that ticket, like it or not, Annie would be forced to come in contact with the man again. Which was why she’d sworn not to listen to his program.

After ten minutes of NPR talk, and another ten of a jazz station from Newport, she’d given up and tuned in to KBAY, where he was talking about the challenges of being a single dad trying to comprehend a daughter’s mind.

“You have to understand, this is a girl who could be the poster girl for pink. Not the singer but the color. Her bedroom looks as if a bottle of Pepto-Bismol exploded all over the walls, and even the red, white, and blue cards she made at a party today at Memories on Main to give away to soldiers during the parade this week were signed in pink ink.”

Annie smiled at the memory

“So, you can imagine the reaction when we returned home to a letter informing her that her new grade school has a uniform code,” Mac was saying. “White blouses and plaid skirts, and no, like I tried to explain to her, neither can be pink.”

The sigh floated over the airways like an arrow straight into Annie’s heart.

The child was not only darling; she was an original.

Just like her father.

Yet another reason Annie was
not
going to call.

“So, a day that began with French toast topped with whipped cream in the Grateful Bread’s bus and was highlighted with a little girl’s card-making birthday party, complete with cupcakes, ended in tears.”

Another long male sigh.

“And speaking of tears, here’s ‘Someone Else’s Star,’ a tearjerker by Bryan White about a guy who’s been spending too many nights alone, wishing for a love of his own, when he finally comes to the conclusion that he must be wishing on someone else’s star because it seems like everyone around him is in love with everyone else. But unlucky him.”

Less than twenty seconds into the perfectly described tearjerker country song, Annie’s phone rang.

Expecting Sedona, she snatched it up.

“I’m not calling him,” she insisted yet again.

“Yeah, I got the idea when you gave me that chilly reception at Still Waters,” the all-too-familiar voice said.

Oh, God.
Why hadn’t she taken that one extra second to check the caller ID?

“I was
not
chilly toward you.”

Okay, so maybe she wasn’t exactly enthusiastic, but she’d certainly been polite to deter Charlie or Emma from picking up on the fact that he was the last man on the planet she wanted to run into.

“Sweetheart, the second you figured out I was the guy Charlie’s been trying to hook you up with, there was enough ice surrounding you to freeze the bay.”

“That’s an exaggeration. And I’m
not
your sweetheart.”

“Point taken. That was admittedly chauvinistic. What can I say? Men are pigs.”

“How did you figure out who I was?”

“Your voice sounded familiar the first time you called. Then I had the same feeling today at Still Waters, though it took a while to sink in that you and Sandy were the same person. . . .

“But here’s the thing. We have less than three minutes and eighteen seconds before I have to pay the bills with a promo spot for Bennington Ford. So I have one question.”

“What?”

“Are you making a basket for the Fourth of July picnic charity deal?”

“Yes. Why?”

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like a basket. The old-fashioned wicker kind.” Perhaps she had embellished it a bit with some stamped flag images, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Is your name on it?”

“No, because it’s supposed to be a blind drawing. And that’s technically three questions and why are you asking?”

“Because I intend to bid on it.”

“Why?”

“Because I figure it’s the only way I’m ever going to get you to go out to eat with me.”

“Even if you did win my basket, the rules clearly state that the maker isn’t required to eat with the winner. The auction isn’t a date fix-up. The idea is to raise money for school arts, creative writing classes, and music education. And given that your daughter is so artistic, you should be all for that.”

“I am. But are you telling me that if I win your basket, you’re going to refuse to eat with my daughter, who couldn’t stop talking about how much fun she had at your store today?”

“That’s playing dirty. And you’ve gone way over your question limit. Plus you’re running out of time.”

“So give me a hint. Not only do I still want to spend time with you, even though you did, for some reason we’ll talk about later, lie about your name, but you’ve got to protect me from Connie Fletcher.”

“Ah.” Annie laughed at that. Connie’s intense quest to snag husband number four was providing a great deal of grist for Shelter Bay’s gossip mill. It only stood to reason that she’d have zeroed in on the way hot midnight deejay as her next target.

“Don’t tell me that after having served multiple tours in war zones, you’re afraid of a mere female.”

“Hey, I’ve seen females capable of wielding automatic weapons better than a lot of guys, so I know exactly how dangerous you people can be. But this particular female’s a barracuda. And I wasn’t fighting while I was deployed. I was just the— “

“Guy on the radio. I know. And I also don’t believe it. Sedona told me that Kara told her that Sax told her that you used to go outside the wire all the time to report on troops stuck out in forward operating bases.”

“The troops didn’t get a lot of visitors out there in no-man’s-land. Those guys were working their tails off, so those of us who’d landed easy duty just wanted to show them we appreciated it.

“But you’re right, the clock’s ticking. So yes or no, and I’m giving you fair warning, if we’re still on the air when this song is over, I’m risking having the entire late-night audience of Shelter Bay hear my manhood crumble when you turn me down on live radio.”

“Somehow I suspect you’d survive.” She also suspected he was unaccustomed to being turned down by a woman. Which made her wonder why his wife had left.

“And how did you figure out who I was?”

“It was partly your voice. And partly because, ever since leaving Still Waters, I’ve been trying to figure out how I could have such a strong response to two different women. “

“You wouldn’t be the first man to have feelings for more than one woman at a time.”

“That’s not me. Not anymore, anyway. Then, driving to the studio tonight, it finally dawned on me that both women were you. . . .

“Say yes, Annie.” His voice deepened seductively. “What could it hurt? We’ll be in a public park with not only most of the town around us, but my daughter, too. I realize you don’t want to spend any time with me because of how we first met, but surely you’re not going to take the fact that I dissed cats out on a six-year-old motherless little girl?”

It was Annie’s turn to sigh. “You really don’t fight fair.”

“Believe me, Annie Shepherd, fighting is the last thing I want to do with you.” Images of tangled sheets and hot female flesh flashed through Mac’s mind. The woman was flat-out driving him insane. “Say yes.”

Mac could feel her debating with herself. Every nerve ending in his body was tingling like they used to whenever he’d leave the supposed safety of an Afghan base.

“All right.” She finally caved. Then she described her basket with its flags.

“Sounds appropriately patriotic.”

“But less than original. Everyone else will probably put flags and a red, white, and blue ribbon on their basket. I’ll go with yellow. For the troops all coming back home again.”

“See? Something we can agree on. Don’t look now, but we’re on a roll.”

She made a sound that could’ve been a snort. Or, better yet, a muffled laugh.

“But just in case someone else gets the same idea, why don’t you put your initials on the bottom?”

“That would be cheating.”

“Twenty seconds, Annie. Please make my daughter the happiest girl in town. Not that she’s the only reason you sharing your basket with me would make my day.”

Mac wasn’t used to begging any woman. But for some weird reason, he was willing to beg this one.

She expelled a short, quick breath. “Okay. For Emma. Because she’s a doll and I know how it is to grow up without a mother.”

He wondered if she realized that she’d just given him a clue to the enigma that was Annie Shepherd, aka Sandy from Shelter Bay. But, damn, now that he was down to less than fifteen seconds, Mac had no time to delve into it. He’d have to come up with a plan to have a more intimate conversation before the Fourth.

“Terrific.” He looked up at the digital countdown clock. “I’ll call you tomorrow. We can work out the details.”

Before she could object or he could say good-bye, the light flashed and he was back on the air, pushing the great deals to be had at Bennington Ford’s Fourth of July Sellathon.

F
ortunately, the next morning was busy, which kept Annie from dwelling too much on having agreed to spend the upcoming Fourth of July celebration with Mac Culhane. Although she knew all the people would be coming downtown for the holiday’s events, after having spent years in D.C. where it seemed the lobbyist lifestyle went on twenty-four/seven, she’d come to realize that there was a great deal more to life than work. Which was why, unlike Sedona, who was staying open and would be baking cupcakes like crazy, Annie had decided that Memories on Main would be closed for the holiday.

“Can you believe this?” Kim Nance, a divorced single mom who worked part-time for Annie while attending Coastal Community College, asked as a busload of senior citizens on their way to the Chinook Winds Casino Resort in Lincoln City swarmed into the store. “It’s like the invasion of the AARP.”

“Don’t knock them,” Annie said as she watched a group of women oohing and aahing over a display rack of sea-themed paper and accompanying embellishments, including, for Shelter Bay, the obligatory whales. “They probably all have grandchildren whose photos need scrapping. By the time they get back on that bus, they’ll have paid our rent for this month.”

“It’s not that I’m ungrateful,” Kim said. “It’s always good to be busy. Though I sure can’t understand why anyone would want to spend a gorgeous summer day inside a casino, pulling a lever on a slot machine.”

“Different strokes,” Annie said. Which was why she also always kept casino-themed kits in stock.

“OMG. Be still, my heart,” Kim said as the bell on the front door jingled and Mac Culhane sauntered in.

Kim wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. One by one, the women all stopped chattering and digging through the sale baskets to stare at the sole male in the shop, who looked every bit as hot as the other times Annie had seen him.

Rather than his usual black T-shirt, he was wearing a blue button-down oxford-cloth shirt a few shades lighter than his eyes, and although he was still in jeans, the crease was sharp enough to cut through the sheets of designer paper covered with seashells that Annie had been in the process of bagging.

Every female eye in the store followed as he walked toward the counter. It was only because Sedona had mentioned it, and Annie was watching him so carefully, that she detected a slight limp.

“Is he not the most gorgeous male animal you’ve ever seen in your life?” Kim said under her breath.

“I could just eat him up with a spoon,” the customer, whose hair was dyed a shade remarkably similar to the fluorescent red that Maureen had shown up with the other day, said. “My late husband had a rock-hard body like that once upon a time. Everyone in Salem thought I was marrying him because he was running for the state senate and I wanted to be a politician’s wife.”

“But they were wrong,” Kim guessed as Annie watched Mac pause to treat a trio of women with varying shades of snowy hair to a dazzling smile that had them giggling like schoolgirls.

“You bet they were. I married my Arnold for the sex.” She sighed again, causing Annie to wonder if she was remembering that sex with her late husband, or imagining indulging in it with the midnight deejay.

Which, as a tsunami of impure thoughts swept over her, Annie found herself imagining as well.

“He’s good-looking,” Annie said, managing to keep her tone cool and composed even as her body flared hot and bothered. She wouldn’t even need the spoon. She had a sudden urge to lick Midnight Mac. All over. “If that’s your type.”

Another woman had just come up to the counter carrying a basket filled with glue runners, a box of metal whale brads, and a wooden-handled rubber stamp of a whimsical flower-spotted whale.

“Since when is tall, dark, and sexy as sin not every woman’s type?” the customer asked. “If I was twenty years younger, I’d be tempted to jump him right here.”

“Make that thirty years,” the first woman said. “Not only do I know exactly when you were born, since I’m your younger sister, but you’ll always be older than me.”

“Like two years makes that much difference at our age.”

“If
I
weren’t wearing this ring”—Kim waggled her left hand to show off the diamond she’d received from her fireman fiancè for Valentine’s Day—“I’d do him in a heartbeat. . . . Which is why we’re all going to have to live vicariously through you,” she said to Annie.

“Me?”

“Well, none of us have called the show under a fake name,” Kim said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Annie had always been a lousy liar. If she’d been testifying under oath in a trial for her life, the blatant lack of truthfulness in her voice would’ve had a jury sending her to the Big House.

“Don’t try to deny it,” Kim said. “It’s all over town. They’re even taking bets at the market on when you’re going to show up together in person.”

“Looks like now,” the late senator’s wife said.

“It’s not ‘showing up together’ to have a customer come into the store,” Annie muttered. “And people call radio stations all the time.”

“I wonder what he’s doing here. He doesn’t look like a scrapper or a cardmaker to me,” the redhead said.

“Nor to me,” her lavender-haired sister agreed.

“Which means,” Kim said, “the hottie deejay is here to see you.”

Which appeared to be the case when he stopped in front of the counter.

“Hi.” How could that one word, consisting of merely a single syllable, have the air between them crackling like heat lightning before a squall?

“Well, hello.” They were now the center of attention. Given the conversation that this encounter would generate once everyone got back on that blue and white bus, Annie felt as if she should be charging admission to the show. “This is a surprise.”

“Emma came home from yesterday’s card-making party with a wish list,” he said in a voice every bit as dark and rich as the chocolate fudge sold along with the saltwater taffy at the candy shop next door.

Every gaze in the place followed his hand as he pulled the notepaper from the front pocket of those jeans, which, though knife-creased, were still worn thin in some very eye-catching places.

“Great marketing ploy.” His grin, which caused the thin white scars beneath his eyes to crinkle, was unreasonably cocky. Even as she warned herself of its dangers, Annie felt her knees weakening. “Holding parties to get people hooked on more supplies.”

Reining in her thoughts, which had wandered into hot and treacherous territory, Annie lifted a sharp gaze to meet his laughing one. “It’s not a ploy. Your daughter’s a very talented artist. If you’d been aware enough to want to help her develop that talent, you would have bought her some decent drawing pens or pencils before she had to make you that list.”

The minute she heard the words escape her lips, Annie wanted to pull them back. Knowing from last night’s show how overwhelmed he seemed to be, suddenly a single father of a six-year-old girl, she shouldn’t have been so uncharacteristically snarky to the guy, who really seemed to be trying.

“I’m sorry,” she said as she led him to the back of the store where the pencils, pens, and inks were displayed. Fortunately it was at the far side of the wooden shelves, out of sight of the counter, where everyone seemed to have gathered to chatter about the invasion of testosterone into the cozy store. “That was uncalled for.”

“But true,” he said. “I have to admit that I’m pretty much on the low end of the single-parent learning curve.”

“You appear to be doing well enough. Emma seems very well adjusted.” Annie believed in giving credit where credit was due. She also suspected that it was natural for a little girl to want a mother. She certainly had. And, if she were to be perfectly honest, there were times she still felt that lifelong loss.

“This is quite a list,” she said, looking at the items printed in pink on the piece of paper. “And these alcohol pens are wonderful. But perhaps pricey for this stage in her coloring. Though putting these on her list suggests she wants to try blending, which would probably be too advanced for most people her age. But from the drawings on Charlie’s wall, I think you ought to just let her go for it.”

“We,” he corrected. At her puzzled look, he clarified. “After yesterday I got the feeling that she views you as a mentor as well as a potential mom candidate.”

“She did suggest I should marry you,” Annie admitted. She hadn’t been going to bring it up because she had no idea what his daughter had been discussing with him.

“That’s another list, and while you were definitely in the mix after your meeting at Gramps’s room, after the party I think you’ve now claimed the top slot.”

That idea, just as it had when Emma had brought it up yesterday, triggered memories and dreams she’d been trying, without success, to forget.

“I’m sorry if she was overly persistent about wanting a new mother,” he said. “I’m discovering a stubborn streak beneath all that girlie pink.”

“Gee, I wonder where she got that from?” Annie asked.

“Unfortunately, from both of her parents, so I suspect the teen years will be interesting. And I didn’t mean to make you unhappy.”

“You didn’t.”

“So you say.” He reached out and rubbed at the lines she hadn’t realized were creasing her forehead. “But your face is telling me something different.”

“I’m just getting a headache.” She brushed away his touch, which was leaving sparks on her skin, and got back to business.

“So . . . what I’d suggest is this basic set of less-expensive watercolor pencils. Along with these colored ones.”

“They both look pretty much the same to me,” he said. “What’s the difference?”

“The colored ones are more waxy and glide more smoothly across the paper.” She handed him one. “Try it on this sketch pad.” She kept the pad hanging on the display so people could try before buying.

He took the red pencil she handed him and drew a stick figure holding out a flower.
Talk about smooth,
she thought as he tore the paper off and handed it to her.

“Apparently while your daughter may have gotten her parents’ stubbornness, she doesn’t seem to have inherited her artistic talent from you.”

The little cloud of depression lifted as she looked down at what, if she’d been Emma’s age and received from a boy, she would have considered a love note.

“True. The drawing sucks. But it’s the thought that counts, right?”

“So they say.” Deciding that she didn’t want to share even a few of the thoughts she’d been having about him, she took one of the watercolor pencils from the bin. “As you can see, this is a harder pencil.”

This time he drew a rectangle with a square on top, then added arms and legs and a smiling face. Then drew a heart in the center of the rectangle and filled it in with a red watercolor. Next he drew a second robot, adding loopy lines that she took to be long curls and lips to its face. Reaching into the bin, he selected a pink pencil, which he used to shade in the ultra-feminine mouth.

Beneath the robots he wrote, in a broad, scrawling script,
Robot Love.

“Very cute.” Which, dammit, was true. It also helped her connect the fun Midnight Mac on the radio with the dangerously dark exterior of the man she’d met at Still Waters. Layers. The man definitely had them.

“Now, you could’ve dipped the tip in water and done the same thing, or brushed it with water, but when I used to keep a spray bottle here, I found that sometimes the kids used it for water fights. So here’s another way to show you the difference.”

She took a blending pen and moved it across the heart of the female robot, which gave a softened watercolor effect.

“Cool,” he said. Taking the pen, he did the same on the lips. “They’re the same color as yours,” he said, pointing out what she’d already noticed. “And here’s where I tell you that they’ve been almost all I’ve been thinking about since yesterday. And wondering if they taste as good as they look.”

Growing up as a nomad, Annie had always tried her best to be the “good girl.” The kid that her foster parents might want to adopt for their very own. Or at least keep for more than a few weeks or months.

She’d stuck with that behavior through college, then into her marriage, being cheerful and acquiescent so as to never make waves.

But as those dark blue eyes settled on her lips, which had suddenly gone desert dry, Annie decided that perhaps there was something to be said for wave making. As Sedona had pointed out, she’d moved to the very edge of the continent.

So why not carry living on the edge just one step further?

After all, lips that firm and chiseled were designed to tempt even the most levelheaded woman. Dragging her gaze from his mouth, she saw a storm brewing in his eyes, his irises darkening until they were nearly as black as his pupils.

A bad girl she hadn’t even known was lurking inside her smiled at him. A slow, you-know-you-want-me smile that was as much dare as temptation.

“Well,” she said, in a husky voice that wasn’t as moonlight-and-magnolias-drenched as the one Connie Fletcher always pulled out when she was flirting with men (which was nearly always, from what Annie had been able to tell) but was a very long way from her usual calm and almost logical tone, “I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”