The Men of Thorne Island (14 page)

When Sara went downstairs later, she passed the mysterious parcel still lying there unopened. She saw Nick’s name on the address label, listing the Happy Angler, in care of Otto Winkleman, Put-in-Bay, Ohio, as his address.

But it was the return address that caught Sara’s attention. The package had been sent from Johannesburg, South Africa. It bore the stamp of a British insurance company, indicating that the sender valued whatever was enclosed.

Having learned her lesson, Sara walked by the counter without further investigation. “It’s none of
your business,” she told herself, and went to fix a light meal she didn’t feel like eating.

She took her plate to the back stoop and ate in the gathering dusk. A few minutes later Ryan came toward her from the vineyard. He smiled when he saw her sitting there.

“How are our grapes tonight?” she asked.

“Doing fine,” he said, propping his foot beside her on the first step. “I think the fertilizer is really working.”

Though she was curious about Nick’s package, Sara held her tongue. Finally Ryan brought up the subject. “I guess I’ll go see if Nick ever took that box up to his room. I’m pretty sure what’s in it, and even though he can trust everyone on the island, he shouldn’t leave it in the lobby.”

A fresh jolt of guilt made a bite of sandwich stick in Sara’s throat. “I’m not so sure he can trust everyone,” she said.

Ryan gave her a puzzled look. Obviously Nick hadn’t told the others what she’d done. “It’s a present from his mother,” Ryan volunteered.

“A present?”

Ryan nodded. “Yeah. Today’s Nick’s birthday.”

Sara remembered the phone call earlier from Nick’s father. And now this from his mother. So the man who chose to be a loner wasn’t truly alone in the world. There were people who cared about him.

“His birthday?” she said. “I guess you guys don’t do much celebrating on these occasions.”

“Nah,” Ryan answered. “Here on Thorne, one day’s pretty much the same as the next.”

His statement revealed no bitterness, yet she sensed an underlying despondency. “Good night, Ryan,” she said.

He stepped around her and entered the inn. “Night, Sara.”

S
ARA SEARCHED
the kitchen cabinets for ingredients she could use. She had no flour or sugar, which made her task nearly impossible. In desperation she took a tub of low-fat chocolate pudding from the refrigerator. It was the one treat she’d ordered for herself from the grocery in Put-in-Bay.

And since it was imperative to have vanilla wafers with pudding, she also had a box of those. She found a small metal pie plate in a cupboard of old utensils and scrubbed it till its surface gleamed. Then she lined the inside of the plate with the wafers and filled the middle with pudding. In the center she stuck an inch-thick utility candle.

It wasn’t a very elegant birthday cake, but she hoped it would at least begin to cement the rift between her and Nick. She remembered seeing a sewing box in the parlor and went to retrieve it. Rummaging through scraps and notions, she found a bit of colorful ribbon. She tied it around the handle of a spoon, picked up her “gift,” and crept up the stairs. Nick’s door was closed, but light seeped from the crack at its base.

Sara placed the pan and spoon on the floor and lit the candle. Then, like a little kid on Halloween, she rapped on Nick’s door and scurried down the hall to
the next room. She waited inside until she heard his door open then close a moment later.

Her heart racing, Sara peeked into the hallway. With her luck, the candle had fallen over and she’d be responsible for burning the inn to the ground! Or even worse, her pudding cake would still be sitting where she’d left it, only now it would have a gigantic footprint smack in the middle of it.

Fortunately neither of those things happened. The pudding was gone. With a grin, Sara returned to her room. Mission accomplished, she thought, as she closed her door.

W
HEN HE FIRST AWOKE
Tuesday morning, Nick’s immediate thoughts were of Sara. His lips curled into a smile, and an indefinable warmth spread to his extremities. Then he forced such reactions from his traitorous body with a sound punch to his pillow.

He wanted to stay mad at Sara. He certainly had a right to. She had totally violated his privacy. He wasn’t ready to think about publishing his novels and joining the mainstream again. For now it was enough simply to write. Why hadn’t she just left him alone?

After the phone call from his father, Nick had gone back to his room, which looked like an explosion in a paper mill. He’d stacked his manuscript pages into a pile and returned them to the box where they belonged. Order. That was what he needed.

He’d worked hard to establish order in his life. Once he’d mastered the task of walking again with Dexter’s help, he’d looked forward to days of plain routine. He didn’t need or want complications in his life. He didn’t want to remember what Nick Romano had been like before that nice guy Ben Crawford of Brewster Falls called him on the telephone with a story about an old lady who’d been swindled by a big corporation, a story that had been manna to the old Nick, the investigative reporter.

And now his carefully regulated days were being
turned inside out by another Crawford. In less than three weeks, Sara had planted herself on his island, painted and patched up what he’d always considered his nearly perfect life and put her sexy little torch to his long-buried emotions. And if that wasn’t bad enough, yesterday she’d pushed her way into his mind and soul. She’d discovered Ivan Banning, the man Nick would never be again.

After the confrontation, he’d gone to the other side of the island, where the waves were hushed and calm. He’d thought about what Sara had done and he’d decided
not
to forgive her.

And then, like a kindergarten kid, she’d rung his doorbell and scurried away, leaving a pudding-and-vanilla-wafer birthday cake on his doorstep. So this morning he faced a whole new battle as he tried without success to tamp his delight at her sweet prank. He’d had to rethink the whole forgiveness idea, and this time, Sara had won. Nick Bass would show mercy.

Her door was still closed when he went downstairs to power up the generator and make coffee. By the time he finished his first cup, he heard the boys come in the front door and head up the stairs. A few minutes later he followed them to one of the guest rooms and discovered Dexter and Brody in a heated argument.

“You can’t drill holes now,” Dexter declared. “You’re going to ruin my paint job.”

Brody snorted. “You and your prissy paint! What’s more important? You brushing over a few minor holes, or this inn being properly wired?”

“You’re doing this job ass-backward,” Dexter retorted. “You should have rewired before I painted.”

“I didn’t know I wanted to then! Besides, who says running a little conduit across the ceiling and replacing a few wires behind the wall is going to ruin the paint? All I need to do is drill so I can get to the old wires.”

Dexter waved his brush in Brody’s face. “You do that and you can darn well replaster and repaint!”

Brody leaned forward until his nose was inches from Dexter’s chest. “Look, you big dummy, I’m bringing this wiring up to code again. I don’t care what you say!”

Nick stood in the doorway and marveled at his friends.
Who could have imagined this? A few days ago neither one of these two buzzards wanted to have anything to do with fixing up Sara’s house, and now they’re hollering at each other over whose contribution is more important.

He walked into the middle of the fray. Putting a hand on each man’s shoulder, he said, “Come on, fellas. Can’t we all get along here?”

They both stared at him as if trying to decide who’d take the first swing at his smug face.

“I’ve got the perfect solution,” Nick said, knowing full well his grin had to be irritating the blazes out of them. But this was too good to pass up. “Dex, you help Brody run the conduit to his ceiling fans and pull out the old wiring. And Brody, you help Dex patch up the little damage you’re likely to do to his walls.”

Brody swatted Nick’s hand from his shoulder. “That’s just great, Nick. You mind telling us what the hell you’ll be doing while we’re up here learning to play fair?”

“That’s a good question,” Dexter said. “Other
than fixing a few shingles and driving that little car all over the place, what
have
you done around here?”

“I’ve done lots of things,” Nick said. “You forget, it was me who came up with this idea.”

When that declaration brought scathing looks from the other two men, Nick went on full alert, ready to duck if either one threw a punch. When none came, he added, “Then I supervised and procured, and now I’m mediating. These are tough jobs.”

Brody waved a screwdriver around like a dagger. “You’ve done pitifully little, Nick, and you know it.” He jabbed the tool into his carpenter’s belt with swashbuckling flair. “Maybe that’s a blessing in disguise. You’d have probably messed up anything you’d taken a hand to. Why don’t you leave us alone and go find Ryan? Maybe you can help him mess up his job.”

Nick gave a mock salute. “I’ll just do that.” He headed for the door but stopped on the threshold and looked around the room. “I’ve got to tell you guys. You’ve done a terrific job. This place is looking good.”

A smile started to spread across Dexter’s face, but was wiped out when Brody snapped, “Go on, Nick, get the hell out.”

“Yeah, go on,” Dexter added. “Brody’s right. We don’t need you here.”

Nick chuckled to himself as he went down the stairs. Maybe this day had possibilities, after all.

He found Ryan perched on a ladder by the front porch. With painstaking precision, he was applying dove-gray paint to the fascia board he’d replaced. He looked down when Nick came onto the porch. “How ya doing?” he asked.

“Okay. Brody and Dex have things pretty well under control upstairs, so they sent me down to help you.”

“Thanks anyway, but we’ve only got one ladder. Winkie’s bringing the house paint later today, and then you can help.”

“You got it,” Nick replied, then headed around the side of the inn thinking he’d find a nice shady spot where he could while away a couple of hours pondering what to say to Sara. He had to make her understand that he wasn’t letting her off the hook completely.

He wandered through the thicket of brush and ended up at the press house. He was surprised to find the oak door unlocked. Either it had been open since the evening he and Sara had gone inside, or else she’d come back to admire the musty old equipment again. It was something she would do. As he looked around at all the things that had delighted Sara that night, an idea hit him.

He went back to the inn and found Ryan a few feet farther along the eaves than he’d been before. Nick pointed to a pile of discarded lumber on the ground. “Will you be needing any of this?” he asked.

“Nope. I’m finished replacing the wood. Help yourself.”

Nick scooped up an armload of lumber and headed back to the press house. He knew what he’d do for Sara.

T
HREE HOURS LATER
Nick stepped into the sunshine of a perfect Ohio spring day and peered over the rolling slopes of the vineyard. He spotted the top of Sara’s head above a shallow dip in the ground and
headed straight for her. Though his mission was uppermost in his mind, he couldn’t help noticing the changes in the vineyard. The grape leaves were broader and greener. Nestled in the foliage, the clusters of fruit, few as they were, appeared larger and rounder. He supposed Sara had a right to feel proud of herself.

She was so intent on shoveling a hole around the base of one of her vines that she didn’t hear him approach. And she was a lousy digger. Each time she stuck the blade of the shovel into the earth and stepped on it, she managed to come up with only a pitiful sprinkling of earth and rock.

Nick stopped several feet away from her and waited for her to notice him. When she didn’t, he finally said, “What are you doing?”

She screamed and spun around toward him, dropping the shovel. “For heaven’s sake, Bass, do you get a kick out of scaring me to death?”

“Not really. I’m sorry.”

“Besides,” she said, “you don’t care what I’m doing.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’m digging a hole,” she said. “I would think that as a Digging Day participant, you would have known that.” She picked up the shovel and leaned on it. “If you’re hoping this is going to be my grave, sorry. It’s not deep enough.”

He scratched his cheek thoughtfully and looked at the pathetic dip in the ground she’d produced. “I don’t know. There’s not much to you.”

“Well, too bad. Now go. I’ve got too much to do this morning to stand here talking to you.” She
jabbed at the hole with the shovel. “I’m aerating. This vine needs major drainage help.”

He took the shovel from her and scooped up a large layer of dirt. “I’m just glad you aren’t digging a grave for me,” he said.

“I’ll leave that to the next hapless person who dares to suggest you might have talent at something!”

Here she goes again, missing the point about what happened yesterday.
He stabbed the blade into the earth hard enough to hear the rend of a root inches below the surface. Now he was in trouble. She snatched the shovel back and glared at him.

He crossed his arms over his chest and glared back. “You know darn well I wasn’t mad about what you
said.
In fact, underneath it all, I was kind of flattered.”

“Then remind me to run for the hills if I ever offer criticism.”

This wasn’t going quite as he’d hoped. The words he’d wanted to avoid were popping out of his mouth, anyway. “It was what you
did,
Sara. If you hadn’t gone into my room—”

She shook her head in frustration. “Haven’t we covered this territory, Bass? I apologized. If you want more than that, I’ll send you a postcard when I’m burning in hell.”

A smile cracked his composure. “Not necessary. And thanks for the birthday thing.”

She picked a strand of silky hair from where it had gotten stuck to her bottom lip and almost smiled back. Her face softened by degrees, while his body temperature spiked. “Consider it a mushy apology—my last one, you understand.”

He took the shovel again and leaned it against a
post. Then he offered his hand. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

She made a fist and put it behind her back. “Will it hurt me?”

“Nope. Promise.”

“Okay.” She motioned for him to lead the way.

Certain she’d just taken a giant leap toward insanity, Sara let Nick guide her to the press house. She’d been back to the old structure several times since going in with Nick, and each time she visited, the comforting atmosphere reminded her why she was working so hard to revitalize the vineyard.

She stepped onto the ancient wood floor and drew a deep breath. Then she whirled around to face Nick. “Okay, we’re here,” she said.

He retrieved a lantern from a hook on the wall and indicated she should follow him. “Come on.”

She walked behind him to the steps leading to the fermenting room, the ones she’d nearly tumbled down. Nick held the lantern over the stairwell so she had a clear view. “Well, what do you think?” he asked.

She bent down and peered into the cellar. What she noticed first was the contrast of wood on the steps. New, light-colored pieces of lumber were interspersed with the old, dark ones. The effect was a checkerboard of natural and aged finishes descending into the near-darkness below.

She straightened and looked at him. “You fixed the stairs.”

“Yep.” He beamed with pride. “You were so set on going down there that I figured you’d eventually do something stupid. I decided to ward off a calamity
by mending the steps and keeping you from breaking your neck.”

She couldn’t hold back a smirk. “Your flattery is exceeded only by your gallantry, Bass.” Not wanting him to see how touched she was, she added, “You really think I’d risk my neck to see what you called a worthless bunch of old bottles and kegs?” she asked.

“Sara, the truth is, I think you’d risk your neck precisely
because
I said that. I think you’d do anything to prove to me that all the old junk down there is a treasure trove.”

He was probably right. She held fast to a stone jutting from the wall and tested the first step, gingerly. When both feet were firmly planted, she glanced back at Nick, who stood behind her with the lantern. “Are you absolutely certain these stairs are safe?”

“I fixed them, didn’t I?”

“That’s not an answer. Are you absolutely certain they’re safe?”

He sighed with exasperation, grabbed her arm and hauled her back to the top. With the lantern swinging from his hand, he stomped down the steps as fast as his limp would allow. In a few seconds he was at the bottom smiling up at her. “Satisfied?”

“I think I’ve got the hang of it,” she responded. “You have to go down so fast that the rotten wood doesn’t have a chance to crack.”

He held his hand up to her. “Just trust me, Sara.”

She descended into a small, rectangular room with walls of cream-colored limestone. It was at least twenty degrees cooler down in the cellar. Sara shivered. “Is it always like this, do you suppose?” she asked.

“I guess so. Must be the limestone,” Nick said. “And the lack of natural light. But you’re the wine maker. Isn’t it meant to be cold?”

“For white wines especially,” she said. “This should be perfect for a good chardonnay.”

He stepped into the center of the room and hung the lantern from a hook in the ceiling. Light spread out around them, illuminating numerous barrels perched on wood block frames. They were of several sizes, up to probably fifty gallons, made of sturdy oak and stamped with names of French barrel makers. Their dark brown color showed striations of deeper hues, evidence of natural aging. Sara wandered among the barrels, touching the smooth, worn slats held together with iron staves.

The walls of the basement were lined with racks of bottles and corks and syphoning tubes. Some of the corks crumbled to dust when Sara held them in her hand.