The Men of Thorne Island (5 page)

A single place setting, consisting of a plate, silverware and one wineglass, was on the kitchen table. Nick almost changed his mind about dinner. The thought of eating on the grime-imbedded dinette was certainly unappetizing. But when he noticed the overhead light reflecting off the polished surface of the table, he recognized that something was different in the Cozy Cove kitchen. It was clean.

Lasagna sat on top of the gleaming stove. Cheese bubbled around the edges of the pan and rippled golden brown on top. Canned sliced pears were in a bowl on the counter. And Sara, oblivious to his entrance, had her head in the refrigerator.

She was wearing a long dress made of some thin material with big splashy flowers all over. Since she was bent at the waist, the hem of the dress was raised well above her feet and showed off a pair of canvas sandals with ties going halfway up her calves. Her very shapely calves.

Nick’s appetite for lasagna plunged. He would have been content to stare at Sara’s backside for another few hours, but she stood up, denying him the privilege. She removed a bottle of White Thorne chardonnay from the refrigerator and set it on the counter. Obviously she’d been snooping again and discovered the secret cache he’d brought up from the cellar and stored at the bottom of the pantry. But it was technically
her
wine now, anyway.

Nick stepped all the way into the room. “Is it a good year?” he asked.

She turned abruptly, causing the flared hem of her dress to swish around her ankles. She’d caught most of her hair up in a white, shell-shaped thing. But straight honey-colored strands trailed down her neck. It looked as if she hadn’t done anything to style it, but the effect was soft and feminine. The word
angelic
came to Nick’s mind, though that was a word that rarely entered his vocabulary.

All similarity to a heavenly entity ended there because Sara’s eyes sparked with animosity that made him stop a good ten feet from her. “What are you doing here?” she said.

“You invited me, remember?” He jerked his thumb at the lone place setting. “Though it looks like you forgot.”

She turned away from him and carried the wine
bottle to the table. “I withdraw my invitation. You’re free to go.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Well, I don’t want you here.”

What the devil was the matter with her now?
He was doing the decent thing, coming down to eat her supper as she wanted and she’d done a complete one-eighty. Nick had no intention of leaving. He’d seen the lasagna, smelled it and had a good long look at the cook. Nope. The kitchen was right where he wanted to stay. He walked over to her, affected a grin that ought to win her over if only she’d look at him, and tapped her on her bare shoulder. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’re mad at me for some reason.”

She didn’t see the grin. She was too busy looking in a drawer, probably for a corkscrew. He debated whether or not to tell her it was in the pantry.

“I don’t play guessing games, Bass,” she said. “I’m only too happy to tell you that I am definitely mad at you.”

“And the reason?” he persisted.

She slammed the drawer shut and spun around. Her expression registered such fury that he couldn’t manage to put the grin back in place.

“The reason is that you are rude and inconsiderate—for starters.”

He tried to look guilty. “That’s true.”

He’d opened the door to a personal attack, and she stormed in. “You have no regard for anyone’s feelings. And your manners are atrocious.”

“True again, but isn’t that just sort of repeating the first reason?”

She crossed her arms under her breasts, pushing soft, womanly flesh above the scooped neckline of the
dress. Nick cleared his throat and raised his eyes to return to the safer territory of her face. Her lips, which he’d just noticed were tinged a glossy pink, parted as she contemplated how to answer him. “Yes, I suppose it is,” she conceded. “But you’re extremely opinionated—and just plain weird.”

He reached around her and picked up the bottle. “Okay, I’m those things, too. But I have knowledge that can add to the success of this meal, and I’m willing to share it with you for a plate of lasagna.”

Her sandy-brown eyebrows arched as she huffed out an impatient breath. “And what might that be?”

“The whereabouts of the corkscrew.”

He resisted the urge to look down at her pink-painted toes tapping a beat of impatience on the floor. He knew she was weighing her options. Should she allow an ill-mannered oaf to sit at her dinner table in return for her first taste of White Thorne nectar? It was a tough one.

“This is really ridiculous,” she finally said in exasperation. “All right, sit down.”

He headed for the table, but she grabbed his elbow. “
After
you get the corkscrew and open the wine.”

T
HE
W
HITE
T
HORNE CHARDONNAY
, a 1991 vintage, was deliciously tangy with a rich, fruity base. And Nick Bass proved to be a tolerable dinner companion. In fact, when Sara asked questions about his life on Thorne Island, he actually answered some of them, though his answers were evasive.

“You haven’t been here every day for six years, have you?” she asked. “You do leave the island once in a while.”

“Just for hours at a time,” he said. “I’ve been to
Put-in-Bay and Sandusky on personal business. But I probably wouldn’t leave at all if I could train Winkie to clean my teeth.” He winked, a simple gesture that somehow seemed ripe with teasing sexuality. “There are some things a guy just can’t do for himself, Sara.”

Then he changed the subject and talked about his Italian grandmother and how she made her own pasta and grew her own tomatoes and spices, and how the idea of expressing an opinion opposite her husband’s was as alien to her as making spaghetti sauce from a can.

But buried somewhere in Nick’s humorous exposition on the parameters for a successful relationship between the sexes was an underlying affection for—and pride in—his past. Sara ended up telling him about her life in Brewster Falls. Nick said he’d been there once. He liked the town, claiming it was typical Americana, in a good, town-square/band-shell kind of a way.

She talked about her father and how he’d done his best to raise his teenage daughter alone. And how he still worried about her and called two or three times a week just to talk and offer advice. And she admitted that leaving Brewster Falls after graduating from college had been a tough decision.

“So why did you go?” Nick asked.

She explained about the charismatic recruiting executive from the Bosch and Lindstrom accounting firm who’d spoken to graduating seniors at Ohio State University. She submitted her résumé, and they’d hired her by phone a week later.

Nick leaned back in his chair and appraised her. “So you must be a pretty darn good tax accountant then, right?”

She made the mistake of thinking he was sincerely interested in her skills and allowed her enthusiasm to guide the discussion in a new direction. “Well, yes, I am,” she admitted. “And I see so much potential for this island.”

His eyebrows came together to form a ripple of worry over the bridge of his nose.

Sara wasn’t deterred. Nick and his buddies might as well know some of the details she’d been considering. “The buildings I’ve noticed on the island are basically sound,” she said. “A few minor structural repairs, a little fixup here and there, a massive cleanup of course, and Thorne Island could be a delightful, exclusive hideaway.”

“It already is a hideaway. For us.” The sharp tone in his voice matched the dangerous narrowing of his eyes.

“I mean for vacationers,” she persisted.

A vision of the improved island had already taken shape in her imagination, and she proceeded to tell him about it. “Nothing expensive of course. A place where families could come for a summer weekend. A nice beach, a modernized harbor, maybe a miniature golf course for children. And this inn—it wouldn’t take much to bring it up to par.”

A muscle worked in Nick’s jaw as he inhaled a deep breath. He drew himself up until his back was as straight as the fence posts in front of the Cozy Cove must have been originally. Then he leaned forward. A threatening glare in his eyes silenced Sara.

“You’re not seriously thinking of doing all this to Thorne Island, are you?” he demanded.

Her determination flared anew. “I’ve been having some thoughts along this line, yes. I can’t see letting
the island fall into ruin, especially when a profit can be realized once a formula for investing a guarded amount of capital is devised…”

She felt the buildup of his anger from across the table. He drummed his fingers, stopping after each four-tap for emphasis. “You can’t do this, Sara,” he said in a voice that trembled with underlying fury. “What about the people who live here and like it the way it is? What about Millie’s promise to them?”

“I don’t intend to fight your leases,” she said. “All of you are free to stay as long as you like. I don’t see what difference it will make to you if civilization slowly encroaches. I’m only trying to make things better—”

“That’s bunk, Sara. You only care about making money.”

She stood up from the table and slammed her chair under it. “So, we’re back to that again. The sin of making money. I don’t happen to think it is a sin, Nick. I think it’s the smart thing to do. If you want to know what I think is a
real
sin, I’ll tell you. It’s four men hiding from life on an isolated island. You’re like turtles drawn inside your shells for reasons that frankly scare me to death when I imagine what they might be.”

He stood up and came around the table. Planting her feet solidly on the brick floor, Sara refused to let him intimidate her into backing away.

“You don’t know anything about us,” he said.

“Then tell me.”

“I’m not telling you anything about these men, but I will tell you one thing—it’s a piece of advice you’d do well to heed. This development thing, it’s been tried before, and it didn’t work.”

“You mean the Golden Isles project?”

His eyes rounded and he drew in a sharp breath. He looked as if she’d physically struck him. “What do you know about that?”

“Only that what I’m proposing is nothing like what that company wanted to do. I’m not even considering selling plots of land.”

Relief softened his features but apparently didn’t lessen his anger. “Right. You only want to turn Thorne Island into a circus.”

Sara shook her head in dismay. This man had the most irritating habit of exaggerating everything she said. “I do not. I only want to—”

“Leave the island alone, Sara. If you want to play accountant, go back to Florida and crunch numbers all you want. We like things the way they are.”

She threw her hands in the air. “Oh, really? You like eating tomato soup and taking naps and watching your world crumble into decay?”

“And not obsessing about where our next dollar is coming from, yes!”

He wrapped his hands around her shoulders the way he’d done that afternoon, but this time his grip was forceful. Sara wasn’t afraid. She stared into his pewter eyes and blasted him with the same words he’d said to her the day before. “If you’re trying to scare me to death, it won’t work.” She let her lips curl into a satisfied grin. “I can outrun you, Bass.”

His fingers flexed just before his hold on her moved to her upper arms and tightened. A tremor ran through his body and shuddered into hers. “God, you are one aggravating pencil pusher,” he ground out.

She thrust her chin at him. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you, Bass?”

He sucked in a breath and held it, his gaze fixed intently on her face. “You want to know what’s bothering me? Okay, I’ll tell you. You’re what’s bothering me. You and your accounting principles, formulas and plans for modernizing things, and you…just you.” He stopped talking, pulled her to him.

Before Sara could make an evasive move, his mouth was on hers. The kiss was hard and hungry, fired with frustration and the indefinable essence of powerful maleness. It tasted of Italian spices and tangy wine and filled her senses with something infinitely dangerous, undeniably provocative.

When he raised his head, she released a warm, drugged breath that ruffled the hair on his forehead. She swallowed hard. “Why did you do that?” she asked.

“Don’t expect any explanation,” he snapped at her. “Because I don’t have one that would satisfy either one of us. Just think of it as my way of saying thanks for dinner.” He strode from the kitchen without looking back.

A simple thank-you might have been more conventional, she thought. But it wouldn’t have left such a lasting impression.

“N
ICK
,
COME ON
! For pity’s sake, time’s wasting!”

The urgent call from outside her window jolted Sara from a light sleep. She sat up in bed and focused on the sound.

“Let’s go, Nickie!”

There was no mistaking that grumpy voice. Sara knew before she even reached the window that it was Brody issuing orders from in front of the inn.

“What is it with men?” she grumbled. “Is it some rite of manhood, this having to prove they can irritate the rest of society before the sun’s even up?”

Next she heard Nick’s irritated response coming from his window. “Keep your shirt on, Brody. For God’s sake, you start this little exercise earlier every time!”

Sara peered out the window at the walkway below.
What the heck are they doing?
She couldn’t see anything of Brody, since he was hidden under the metal canopy of a motorized golf cart. Just as she was getting the courage to widen the shutter opening for a better look, Brody poked his head out the side of the cart and risked a glance at her window.

Apparently satisfied when he didn’t see her, he said in a coarse whisper, “You know how I feel about Digging Day, Nick. Dex and Ryan are already there.”

Digging Day?
What in the world was Brody talking
about? She waited until he was hidden under the cart canopy and then parted the slat again. At the back of the cart, where golf bags were usually stored, was an assortment of digging tools—shovels, spades, a couple of buckets. And flying whimsically over all of it was a yellow plastic flag of the sort kids attach to their bicycles.

“Well, isn’t that cute?” Sara said to herself. “Brody must be afraid of being run over by all the traffic on Thorne Island!”

And yet the flag could prove useful. She could follow it and get to the bottom of this Digging Day thing. She was determined to learn as much as she could about the men of Thorne Island.

“Take your time, Bass,” she muttered, allowing herself one last furtive peek out the window. Drat! He was already stepping off the porch. He backed up slowly toward the golf cart, his gaze intent on her window. Sara grinned to herself. At least he hadn’t forgotten about her in his zeal to meet Brody. Even in the predawn light, his impressive figure sent tiny shockwaves of remembrance through Sara’s system. She definitely hadn’t forgotten his impulsive kiss the night before.

“Why don’t you wake up the whole island, Brody?” Nick grumbled, crooking his thumb at Sara’s window.

“She didn’t hear me,” Brody shot back. “I’ve never known a woman who didn’t sleep past sunrise.”

Sara darted to her wardrobe to pull out shorts and a T-shirt. “A lot you know, Mr. Brody. With your attitude, I’ll bet your research sample has been pretty slim!”

Sara left the inn about two minutes after the golf cart carrying the two men pulled away. She followed the tire tracks until they disappeared around a corner of one of the narrow island paths, and then she cut through a wooded area to save time.

There was enough sun now for her to pick her way through the underbrush. Budding maple and oak trees were still in the early stages of new leaf growth, and parting the lowest branches, Sara spotted the bright yellow flag fluttering over the cart several hundred yards away.

The lush ground cover gave way to flowering plants, wild ferns and sumac the closer Sara got to the opposite side of the island. A cool mist rolled over the shore, bringing with it gentle swells to wash up on the rocky soil and retreat with a repetition that calmed the spirit.

Sara decided she would return to this part of the island some time when she wasn’t on a mission. She would choose one of the tall, straight paper birches that lined the beach, spread out a blanket and spend several hours reading a good book. But she didn’t have time to dwell on that now. The golf cart rounded a bend by a stand of sycamore trees. Two men emerged from the trees and met the cart when it stopped a few feet from the water. What an odd picture the imposing Dexter Sweet made as he walked beside the small, wiry Ryan.

Nick and Brody climbed out of the cart, and each man chose a tool from the bag-storage area. Sara crouched behind a patch of cattails and watched while the men set about doing exactly what the name of the day implied. They dug. Sand and rocks flew in the air with each upward swing of the shovels. When wa
ter seeped into the widening hole, one or more of the diggers jumped back and shouted a mild obscenity about possible damage to his shoes.

Once in a while one of them would stop and fill a mug from a thermos, prompting Sara to remember that she hadn’t yet had her coffee. After more than half an hour, she grew impatient waiting for something to happen.

Fifteen minutes later the men had produced a sizable hole. Results of their labor sat piled up around them in uniform pyramids of dirt, rocks and sand. Apparently the group decided the hole was large enough for their purpose, whatever that was. They stopped digging and stared at the ground.

Finally Brody removed his hat and wiped his brow. He spoke the only full sentence Sara had been able to distinguish from any of them since they’d started their chore. “Nope, nothing here,” he said. “Might as well get the rods.”

With that proclamation, the men walked back to the trees and returned with fishing equipment. They removed necessary supplies from tackle boxes and prepared their lines. The hole, at least for the moment, was forgotten.

“This is ridiculous!” Sara said, swatting for the umpteenth time at a persistent mosquito that obviously didn’t know the sun was now fully risen. “I’m not going to stay here and watch these guys fish!”

She headed back toward the inn. Her expedition had left her more puzzled than ever. What were they looking for? A body? No, surely not. Nevertheless Sara’s mind conjured up images of bleached white bones and grinning skulls. She envisioned the men of Thorne Island as part of some evil conspiracy. The
Erie Islands had a long and colorful history. Perhaps the diggers knew of a heinous murder that had taken place, and they were determined to unearth the grisly evidence of the crime.

By the time she reached the inn, Sara had convinced herself that such a scenario was unlikely. Dexter Sweet, whose goodness overshadowed his size and strength, and who, according to Nick, prompted the nightingales to sing, was not likely to disturb the remains of the dead. Neither was gentle Ryan who cared about flowers and a dying vineyard. And Nick Bass, antisocial hermit and mysterious gunshot victim? Well, anything was possible with him. Then there was Brody. A chill ran down Sara’s spine. She could almost picture him enjoying digging up bones.

Deciding she’d had all she could take of macabre thoughts for one day, she put the matter out of her mind. She entered the inn by the front door, then walked into the parlor and surveyed the nondescript lumps of furniture covered by yards of white cloth—harmless chairs, sofas and tables made to look like ghostly specters.

“Enough of this!” Sara announced to the gloomy room. She yanked back the draperies and opened all the windows. Then she ripped the cover from the lump nearest her to expose a beautiful balloon-backed Victorian chair. Its brocade seat was worn, but its curved mahogany arms could be brought back to their previous splendor with a little polish and some energetic rubbing.

Sara decided upon her project for the rest of the morning. She hoped Bass had left the coffeepot on in
the kitchen. She’d have a cup first, then gather up supplies to dust and sweep. She would coax life back into the parlor of the Cozy Cove Inn.

N
ICK AND
D
EXTER
walked back to the inn after fishing for two hours. Brody had offered to drive them in the cart one at a time, but Nick refused, and not just because Dex had told him the walk would be good for him. The truth was, he’d had about all of Brody he could handle for one day. Also, Nick was getting tired of Brody’s damn Digging Day. Ritual was one thing, but there was no reason this particular ritual couldn’t be carried out at a decent hour. Plus, the guy could really be a cantankerous old coot. Sara was right about that, though Nick would never admit it to her.

Nick thought about Brody’s son, Carl Junior, who hadn’t seen his father in years. The two men had fought over money long ago, but Nick called Junior every few months to give him an update on Brody’s well-being. He’d been making the calls for years, hoping someday the two Brody men would put an end to their feud. But that wasn’t likely to happen very soon. In fact, Brody would have a fit if he knew Nick kept in contact with Junior. But how long could one man hold a grudge? Forever, it seemed, if his name was Carlton Brody, owner of Good Company Hygiene Products.

Nick almost laughed out loud as he approached the steps to the Cozy Cove veranda. To think that slovenly Brody had made his millions by making other people deodorants and bath oils! Yep, someday Nick
was going to call Carl Junior and tell him to get over here. It was time to put that family back together.

Dexter stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Don’t you want to come in?” Nick asked. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

“No thanks,” Dexter said. “I’m working on a couple of end-run plays I think might click. Wanna get them down on paper. But I’ll come back later if you want help with your exercises.”

Nick waved him away. “Nah, I’ll do them myself.” Seeing the skepticism in Dexter’s eyes, he added, “Really. I promise. You don’t need to play nursemaid, Dex.”

The men parted at the porch, and Dexter headed toward his two-room cabin down the lane from Brody’s place. The small accommodations suited the large man just fine, or so he said. Just enough room to catch the sports events on his big-screen TV and analyze the heck out of them when they were over. All the guys had chipped in on the satellite dish, but it was Dexter who dictated what channels they could watch.

They really were an odd bunch, the men of Thorne Island, Nick decided as he stepped into the inn. But they were his family now, and he accepted them with all their faults. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to make them see the error of their ways once in a while.

Nick stopped in the lobby and sniffed the air. What was that smell? Lemon and ammonia. It was strong but not unpleasant. And it sure as hell wasn’t a scent common to the Cozy Cove. The source came to his
mind immediately. Sara Crawford was playing at housekeeping again.

He stepped into the parlor and was bombarded with floral fabrics, needlepoint tapestries and gleaming mahogany. All the furniture he’d covered so carefully years before now basked in the sunlight coming through washed windowpanes.

And Sara Crawford, her pleasing little butt covered by a skimpy pair of cutoffs and her hair wrapped in a bandanna, was crouched over the hearth sweeping old ashes into a dustpan.

“Good morning, Bass,” she said without looking at him.

He stood, legs slightly apart, fists on his hips. It was a strong, manly stance, he thought, but it had little effect on a woman who didn’t bother noticing. So Nick dropped his hands and took two steps closer to her. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Sara?”

She looked up at him. Smudges of soot streaked her face and a gleam of perspiration dotted her upper lip. Strands of blond hair trailed over a shoulder not covered by her knit tank top. God, she looked adorable. Nick had to remind himself that was not the issue.

She set the dustpan on the brick hearth. “Really, Bass, your powers of observation are limited at best. You just asked a woman holding a whisk broom and a pan of ashes what she was doing.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” He waved his arms to indicate the entire room. “I’m talking about all this…this…”

“Cheerfulness?” she suggested with an infuriatingly smug grin.

“Interference! You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Changing things. You’re leaving in a couple of days—”

“I never said that.”

“Okay, a couple of days, a week, whatever. Anyway, you’ll be gone, and I’ll have to go around and cover all this stuff up again.”

She feigned innocence. “Why would you do that?”

“We don’t use this room, Sara. Sometimes in the winter I come down and sit by the fire in this chair.” He walked over and slapped his hand on the back of one of the two pieces of furniture that hadn’t been covered. Dust rose in the air. “This is the only chair that is used in this room—ever.”

She stood up and adjusted the tank top so it covered the tantalizing band of skin revealed at her midsection. Nick felt deprived.

“Until now,” she said. “For your information, I intend to come into this parlor and move from chair to chair and then start all over again. I intend to sit in every blessed seat in the room until I leave Thorne Island.” She marched over to a window and pulled the heavy drapes even farther apart. “And I will do it in brilliant sunlight!”

She was daring him. Did she think he was a vampire and she could kill him with sunshine? “You are one stubborn, bossy lady, you know that, Crawford?”

She muttered something he couldn’t quite make
out, but he thought he detected the word
ghoul
somewhere in her sentence. “What did you say?”

She didn’t back down. Instead, she approached him with a swagger in her step. “I said, ‘At least I’m not a ghoul out digging graves.’”

Oh, so that was it. He should have added
nosy
and
sneaky
to her list of attributes. “I get it,” he said, reaching for her. When he grabbed her hand, she flinched, but it only made him hold on tighter. He ran a finger up her arm, stopping at intervals. “I see you have several mosquito bites. And now I know how you got them.”

“So what?” She pulled her hand free. “It was your buddy who hollered under my window like a foghorn this morning. Besides, it’s a good thing I did follow you. I need to know what manner of degenerates I’m dealing with on this island.”

“Yeah? And what manner are we?”

She scratched absently at one of her bites. “Unfortunately I don’t know…yet.”

“Did you actually think we were digging up a grave?”