The Virgin and the Vengeful Groom (12 page)

“Even swimming lessons?”

She wrinkled her nose. “What about this scenario—bad
guy tries to drown heroine so he won't have to share secret papers with her?”

“Way too obvious. And for your information, I don't
have
to share anything.”

“No? What do you bet the law would side with me? You forfeited your rights when you skipped out on your rent payments.”

“When I
what?
Woman, you are unbelievable. Did anyone ever call you pigheaded?”

“Sure. I took it as a compliment.”

He started to walk away, changed his mind and turned back. He wasn't about to let her have the last word. “Maybe we both need a change of scenery,” he growled.

“Fine. I'll wait in the car.”

“Wait in the truck, I'm driving.”

“How about we both drive?” she countered.

“Lily, don't push me, I'm mean when I don't get enough sleep.”

“Oh? What about the other times? What's your excuse then?” She was all round-eyed innocence.

“You don't want to know.”

“Mean, chauvinistic, stubborn, suspicious—have I left anything out?”

“Check my personnel file, it's all there.”

“Uh-huh.” Lily was on to him now. He might not admit it, but he was beginning to like her. Considering the way he could manipulate her feelings, it was a good thing. She'd come a long way, reinventing herself again and again. She wasn't about to back down now on account of a pair of navy-blue eyes and a crooked smile so rare it was on the endangered list.

She was leaning against the warm metal side of the truck, studying the bleak old house, picturing it surrounded by lush shrubbery, when he came outside and locked the
door behind him. “I don't need you to go with me, you know,” she felt compelled to say. “I'm okay with what happened. It's no big deal.”

He sauntered across to where she was standing. “Did I imply otherwise?” he drawled.

“You don't have to. You're mean and suspicious, and your housekeeping is even worse than mine, but evidently you have this protective streak. I just want you to know that I don't need a caretaker.”

“Honey, if I decide to take care of you, you'll know it.”

The words hung there between them, laden with meaning that neither of them dared explore. She didn't think it had been a deliberate double entendre, but she couldn't be sure.

They drove south in silence. Just north of Little Kinnakeet Lifesaving Station, Curt shoved in a tape. Country western. She should have guessed what type of music he'd like. It could've been worse. A lot worse, she thought, remembering the kind of vicious, heavy metal that used to pummel her for hours at a time while her mother and her friends partied in the next room.

In the supermarket parking lot, Lily pulled a cart from one of the outdoor stands and wheeled it inside. Curt took over, and she let him get away with it. He might think she didn't know when he was hurting, but she wasn't blind. When he was in pain he got a squinty-eyed look, walking in that odd, gliding way that always made her think of dancers and slinking jungle animals.

“Apples, aspirin, ace bandages.”

“You and your alphabet,” she jeered, wanting to tell him to go outside and wait in the truck, that she'd get whatever they needed. She was just as tough as he was, and she had her own protective streak.

The man had to be crazy, the way he jogged across the hot sand to the beach every morning. Showing off, no doubt. Proving what a macho hero he was. He probably collapsed in agony the minute he reached his bed. “Okay, you do the cart, I'll do the picking. Better yet, go sit in the truck and I'll get what we need and join you in a few minutes. Shall I get ice cream?”

“You want ice cream, get it.”

“I only meant are we going to go anywhere else or are we headed directly home?”

“Your choice. You want to procrastinate, why don't we leave the shopping until we're headed north again?”

“I'm not procrastinating, I only thought we could both do with a break.”

It occurred to Lily that she'd called it “home.” He hadn't caught her up on it. All the same, she wouldn't do it again, because it had sounded too good. And she'd learned the hard way to be wary of anything that sounded too good. Powers Point was his home, not hers. Just because she'd bought some old papers at auction—just because she happened to feel a certain affinity for one of his distant relatives, that didn't mean she had a stake in any part of his life. He had accepted her presence for the time being, but that didn't mean he trusted her.

They drove all the way down through Hatteras village to the ferry docks, stopping for sandwiches and drinks along the way. “Truce?” she asked.

“Truce,” he agreed grudgingly. And then he flashed that grin that knocked the wind right out of her sails, as Bess might've said.

They climbed the dunes, sank down on the warm sand and ate in silence, watching a fisherman and a lone surfer. Afterward she tucked the wrappers, napkins and cups into
the bag and lay back. “If I fall asleep, wake me before the tide comes in, will you?”

“Don't count on it, I'll be sleeping with you.”

When she twisted her head around to gape at him, he laughed softly. “I only meant we both missed some sleep last night.”

“Oh.” She let it drop, but after a minute, said drowsily, “Isn't it funny how far away everything seems. Like everything that's happened, happened to somebody else?”

“Hmm?” he murmured without opening his eyes.

“Like, you know—trying to drown me yesterday because you hate having to share your family secrets. Like last night—that creep prowling around outside. Like back at my place in Norfolk—and contracts and proposals and agents and publicists, and wondering if I'll make the bestseller lists, and if so, which ones, and how high and how long—and reviews. Out here, it all sort of…fades away.”

Her voice trailed off, and Curt allowed the words to settle in his mind. “Navy,” he said. “Currently on rehab, considering retirement. How's that for sharing secrets? Now we're even.”

Lily rolled over and faced him, her head resting on her arm. “Thank you. It figures—the Navy part, not the retirement.” They both fell silent, and then she said, “Sooner or later we probably have to go back to the real world, I guess. At least back to where they have food and bathrooms.”

“Did Peter Pan worry about that sort of thing?”

She shrugged. “Beats me. I never met the guy, myself.”

“You never read Peter Pan? Lily O'Malley, the most famous author in the Western Hemisphere?”

“Yes, well…as it happens, I know a lot of stuff most people never thought about. I know about people, for instance, and that's mostly what I write about.” Lily tried
to read his eyes, to tell what he was thinking, but they were narrowed against the glaring sun.

“You know, you could walk away from the heavy stuff if you really wanted to. Simplify your life,” he said softly.

“You mean I could turn into a beach bum? Is that what you did?”

After a moment he nodded. “Yeah, I guess it is,” he said thoughtfully, his smile catching the glint of the sun. White teeth, laughing eyes in a face that was neither young nor old, but definitely used.

Lily sat up, embraced her knees and gazed out over the Atlantic, thinking of how it had felt for those few moments to float over the surface. Was it possible to drown on dry land? It might explain this feeling of tight-chested breathlessness.

With no more than a slight grimace, Curt got to his feet and held out a hand. “You ready to ride?”

“Ready,” she said reluctantly. His eyes were the color of the ocean, way out past the breakers.
Oh, yes, it would be all too easy to drown on dry land.

They were somewhere between the villages of Frisco and Buxton, in the forested section of the island, when a doe and fawn dashed across the highway in front of the truck. Curt slammed on the brakes and swore. Lily caught her breath and stared.

“Sorry,” he said shortly as the pair paused to look back over their upraised tails before dashing into the under-growth.

“Oh, look,” Lily whispered. “It's only a baby…so beautiful…” The deer disappeared, and Lily stared after them, a look of wonder in her eyes. Not until a truck passed illegally on the right hand side of the narrow highway did Curt remember to take his foot off the brake.

“Yeah, well…I never cared much for venison, myself.”

She whacked him on the thigh, which made him mutter another apology. It was these crazy feelings that were beginning to pile up inside him. Feelings he didn't understand and sure as hell didn't need. The urge to get under her skin. The urge to apologize.

Instead of heading directly north again, he turned off onto the lighthouse road. “Thought you might as well see her in her new home before you leave.”

Before she left. It suddenly struck him that the thought of Lily's leaving didn't seem quite as welcome as it had only a few days ago. Already regretting the impulse, he pulled into a parking space, left the engine running and waited. “If you'd rather not—”

“By her, I take it you mean the lighthouse.”

“Yeah. If you're interested. Some people are, some aren't.”

“Was this one here when old Matthew was sailing his
Black Swan?
”

“Yeah, I guess. That is, it was moved a few years ago, but comparing the charts, I'd say it probably stood in approximately the same relative position to the shore back in old Matt's day.” They got out, walked closer and stared up at the silent sentinel.

His great-great-grandfather had gazed on this same lighthouse. Curt couldn't help but wonder what the old man had thought when he'd seen those spiral stripes after weeks or even months at sea. Relief? A sense of home-coming? Nothing?

Curt tried and failed to clamp the lid down on all the new and unsettling feelings that stirred inside him. It was with a great deal of surprise that he realized a few minutes later that Lily was holding his hand.

Or he was holding hers. “Come on, we'd better get on up the beach.”

Back home. Back to Powers Point. Back to the same house where old Matthew had first met Rose, if those damned diaries of Bess's could be believed.

They turned away, Curt striding off in front. Lily took one last look over her shoulder at the towering structure and smiled. He'd rather eat a raw cockroach than admit it, but he was sentimental.
He's coming along nicely, Bess. Blood will tell.

B
y the time they pulled into the driveway, the late-afternoon sun had painted the old house with a flattering glow. Curt had tried not to think of it as home—he wasn't the settling kind—but it was home, all right. It was even beginning to look like a home. Lily had dragged a wooden box, one of the old-style fish boxes, from off the back stoop and set it between the two porch chairs to hold her iced tea and whatever books she was reading. He hadn't noticed when they'd left, but she had set a jar of flowers on it. Those red and yellow things that bloomed all over the beach.

Hell of a note. He might keep the box after she left—it was handy when he wanted to eat or read on the porch, but the flowers would have to go. Next, she'd be wanting to hang curtains and put rugs on his floors.

“I'll bring in the supplies, you put 'em away,” he said.

“Is that an order or a suggestion? Because I don't take orders very well.”

“I'd noticed,” he said, unable to squelch the grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Actually, it's one of my more endearing qualities.” She sparked right back at him, and he shook his head and turned back to the truck for another sack of supplies.

Together they put away the groceries and Lily headed out the back door to take in the linens she'd washed and hung the day before. Neither of them was particularly efficient when it came to household tasks. It wasn't until Curt left the kitchen and turned toward his room that the nerves at the back of his neck came alive.

Lily, her arms piled high with sun-dried laundry, was on her way to the bedroom to dump, sort and fold when she nearly slammed into his back. “What's wrong? Curt, what…?” Her voice trailed off as she peered past his shoulder at the office door. It was a paneled door, like all the others, the unpainted wood aged to a rich, dark brown.

“Did you close it?” he asked so softly she had to strain to hear him.

“The door? Of course not. Maybe the wind blew it shut.”

“What wind?”

“Right,” she echoed, wide-eyed. “What wind?”

He reached for the brown china knob, and she caught his arm. “Fingerprints,” she whispered.

“We're not exactly talking high crimes and misdemeanors here,” he reminded her. All the same, he used a thumb and forefinger to turn the knob, then nudged the door open with his knee.

“My laptop,” she said. When she went to move past him, her arms still full of laundry, he held her back. “But I need to—”

“Wait here. I'll check it out and then see about the rest of the house.” It took only a glance to determine that nothing had been touched in the office. His PC and her laptop were side by side on the makeshift desk. And while he couldn't claim a photographic memory, he was pretty sure nothing in the room had been disturbed.

Which was odd… Used computers were a drug on the market, but the information on the hard drives could be of interest to someone who knew how to use it.

He backed out and nodded toward his bedroom. The door was open. At first glance, the room looked pretty much as he'd left it. A shirt on the back of the chair, shoes under the bed—along with a few rolls of lint that stirred as they moved closer.

Lily was two steps behind him. “Where's your gun?”

“You can stop whispering now. Whoever was here is long gone.”

“How do you know?”

He gave her a telling look. What was he supposed to say—because the back of his neck was no longer itching? Oh, yeah, that would reassure her all right. “Call it a hunch.” It was as close as he would come to admitting to the extrasensory perception that was part training, part experience and part instinct.

“Okay, then where's your gun?”

“Right where I left it, on the closet shelf behind all the junk I had to shift to make room for my diving gear when we converted the toolbox to a mouse-proof storage for all those damned papers.”

“Great. You do know that's the first place a thief would search, don't you? A closet shelf.” She flung down the stack of linens onto his neatly spread bed. Dust balls scattered. Lily sneezed and said, “You need a housekeeper.
Doris, my housekeeper, would have a fit if she saw all this house moss.”

Curt wasn't listening. Dust was the last of his worries. The closet door was one of the few he kept closed—there was no lock, just a hook and eye. It was unhooked. With a sense of growing disquiet, he crossed the room and eased the door open with his left foot.

“What is it? What's wrong? Oh, God, don't tell me—they stole your gun.” She was right behind him, peering past his shoulder into the cluttered closet.

It was all there. Apparently nothing was missing. His shirts were still there, stacked on the shelf, rather than hanging. His dress uniforms still in the bags from the cleaners. Two pairs of dress shoes collecting dust, his uniform hat and the duck-bill cap he'd worn before his hair had grown back.

“I see it. I was afraid…” Lily breathed.

“Yeah, me, too.”

But he'd been more afraid to find his diving gear missing. Not that he'd be needing the stuff anymore—his diving days were over. But his custom-made dry suit, his tanks, regulators and the rest of his gear—those were a part of who he was. Or rather, who he had been.

“What is it, Curt? What's missing?”

“Nothing.”

And that was what was bothering him. Because any thief with half a brain would have cleaned out the dive gear, the gun and both computers. Which left…

“Have you looked in your room? Did you bring any jewelry?”

“Of course I didn't bring any jewelry. My watch…” She held out her wrist, her cuff turned back to reveal an expanse of lightly tanned forearm sporting a small, plain women's wristwatch. It could've been a drugstore quartz—
it could have been one of those five-thousand-dollar jobs. He wouldn't have known the difference.

“Your pearls?”

“In my safe back in Norfolk. Don't worry, I never leave anything lying around.”

He pictured her cluttered apartment, every available surface stacked high with books and potted plants. “Right,” he said absently, his mind still chewing on the problem of why someone would go to the trouble of breaking in for no discernible reason. This wasn't an intelligence deal. There was no vital information here—at least, none that he knew of. But there were some pretty valuable pawnables, which had been left untouched.

Lily edged closer, as if seeking reassurance. Absently he draped his arm over her shoulder. “Maybe somebody spooked him before he could start carting stuff out. There's a lot of traffic today.”

“Is that what you think happened?” She wrapped her arm around his waist. Her head fit nicely in the hollow of his shoulder, and he tried not to think of the subtle wildflower fragrance, currently blended with sun, salt and barbecue sauce. “Curt, shouldn't we call somebody? What kind of law do they have here? Police? Sheriff's department? Park rangers?”

His brain busy running through the possibilities, he didn't bother to answer until she caught a fistful of shirt. “Listen, Curt, I know about this kind of thing. I've had experience.”

“Right. You had some pervert making harassing calls and bringing you gifts.”

She pulled away, making him thoroughly ashamed of himself.

“Sorry, that wasn't fair. Lily, sooner or later the cops
will catch up with your phone stalker.” It would be later, if at all, but he didn't think she needed to hear that.

“Just give me just five minutes alone with him,” she muttered ominously. “He'll never dial another phone, I can promise you that.”

He hugged her to his side again. “Think you're pretty tough, don't you? Honey, leave it to the cops, they know what to look for. There's a lot of really bad stuff on the streets these days. Too many people strung out on drugs. Don't even think of going after this guy by yourself, leave it to the professionals.”

She took a deep breath, started to say something, then stopped. He tipped her face up and said, “Lily? Are you okay? You feeling shaky or something?”

Another deep breath. Then, without looking at him, she said, “My mother was—that is, I was a crack baby. Do you know what that means?”

If she'd slugged him in the gut, she couldn't have done any more damage. “A—you were a what?”

“You heard me. My mother was an addict. She tried—she told me she tried real hard once she knew she was pregnant, but her friends—she had lots of friends—they didn't want her off the stuff. They—she—well, they all did drugs and…and other stuff. Before I was born, I mean. And after…” She was staring a hole in the window screen, as if the broad, placid vista outside could overcome the ugly memories.

Curt was holding her, rocking her in his arms, and she went on talking, her words muffled against his chest. “They couldn't do as much in those days about—you know—the way we were when we were born. Those of us who lived were—we had… But I'm tough. I was born tough, and I learned how to take care of myself.” The utter conviction in her voice nearly finished him off.

Drugs for arms. Arms for drugs. It was a vicious circle, one he'd been battling, along with other special ops, for years.

Now he knew why. “Ah, Lily, Lily—yeah, you're tough.” He wanted to hold her and protect her from every rotten thing that had ever happened to her. Retroactively. How the devil had she managed to get from there to where she was now? A writer of something called romantic suspense.

Romance? And flowers on the table? And pale pearls around a delicate throat, and lace table covers and women lined up to buy her books and hear her voice—that soft, husky, half-shy voice that came as such a surprise?

He was beginning to understand a few of the contradictions that were Lily. The stubborn in-your-face attitude that was so much at odds with the woman he'd first met signing books for a bunch of adoring fans. The woman who put flowers on his front porch. The glimpses of wariness he'd noticed, the childlike wonder and delight over a doe and fawn. All the contradictions that were Lily.

“Shh, stop shaking,” he said, rocking her in his arms as if she were that infant who had come into the world so tragically abused, so fragile. “Annie, don't—”

Annie? Where the devil had that come from?

She lifted her head and stared up at him, her eyes shadowed, but dry. “You called me Annie. Is Annie someone special? There was an Annie in Bess's diaries.”

“I don't even know an Annie. No Anne, no Annabelle, no Annette.” Slowly he shook his head. “I know a Lily, though, and she strikes me as a woman who could do with supper, a drink, a hot bath and bed, in that order.”

“We need to report it.”

“To report what? That we think someone was inside
our house, but nothing was stolen, nothing was disturbed, no sign of forced entry?”

“You haven't even looked to see if there's any sign of forced entry. The back door was open. He could have come in that way.”

“The hell it was,” he said softly. Setting her aside, he wheeled toward the door.

Lily grabbed a fistful of his shirt and matched her stride to his. “You're not going out there alone.”

“I thought you were into ducking for cover. I'll be right back as soon as I check out the padlock.”

“Check it all you want, but I'm going with you in case you need back up.”

He turned to glare her into silence, but then he shook his head, a reluctant smile creasing his lean, weathered face. “Lily, would you let go of my shirt?” By that time they were in the pantry off the kitchen that led out onto the small back stoop.

“We should've brought your gun.”

He started to tell her the last thing he needed was a baby-sitter, then changed his mind. Silently they moved through the small pantry, past empty wooden bins that had once stored flour and meal and beans, past shelves that were empty except for a basket of wooden clothespins and a stack of paper sacks.

The back door hung open. One look was all it took to see that the new padlock had been cut through with bolt cutters. Curt started swearing, but broke off when Lily wedged herself up against his side.

“I didn't even notice,” she said, “I'm so used to seeing it open.”

There was still more than an hour of daylight left, but the shadows were already deepening. Curt scanned the area for footprints. For lug soles in a men's size 9 ½.

“I probably messed up any evidence,” Lily said ruefully. “I wanted to get the clothes off the line so we could make sandwiches.”

“Yeah, well—the sand's too soft around the porch to hold a clear print, anyway.”

“Know what I hate most? Having a stranger break into your home, even if he doesn't actually steal anything. It's a rotten, miserable feeling, as if you've been violated.”

He was beginning to understand on a personal level—a gut level—what he'd understood only intellectually before. No wonder she'd been so spooked she had agreed to go off with a perfect stranger rather than stay in a place where some creep could come and go at will.

And now this.

Lily waited for him to go back inside. She had no intention of letting him out of her sight anytime soon. Not until whoever was moving in and out of his house was hauled off to jail. The fact that nothing had been stolen either this time or the last didn't make her feel any safer—just the opposite, if anything. Stuff could be replaced. She kept her back up disks in her tote, and that never left her side. But she could remember a time not too many years ago when about all she'd had to lose had been her Reeboks and her virginity.

At least she'd managed to hang on to one of the two.

Curt took one last look at the neatly cut padlock. “No point in hoping for fingerprints,” he said. “Anyone who came armed with bolt cutters would know enough to wear gloves.”