Hideaway Cove (A Windfall Island Novel) (3 page)

“Seriously, Jess, are you okay?”

Jessi blinked, looking over at Maggie. “Where’d everyone go?”

“Hold and Dex are back there.” Maggie jerked a thumb toward the little office she’d once used as her own space, but had given over to Hold so they could keep the genealogy locked away from prying eyes.

“Giving us a girl moment?”

“Yeah, probably.”

Jessi smiled. Maggie might be in love, but emotion, any kind of emotion, still made her twitchy enough to set her to pacing.

Being the good friend she was, Maggie didn’t let a little personal discomfort hold her back. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Just the same old stuff?” Maggie smiled faintly. “Want some advice?”

“From you? On my love life?”

“Who said anything about love? Remember, you told me not so long ago, just to take Dex out for a spin, not to get emotionally involved.”

“And you told me to go to hell.”

“Not quite those words.”

Jessi sighed, wishing it could be so easy. “It’s different for you, Mags.”

“Because you have a child to worry about? I’m not suggesting you make Hold a part of the family, Jess.”

“What? Just have meaningless sex? Like you used to before Dex?”

“Well, gee, wasn’t I a slut,” Maggie said dryly.

“No, Mags, I mean, it’s not like you were jumping from bed to bed or anything. Just once in a blue moon. But…I don’t know. It’s been so long.”

“It’s like riding a bike, Jess.”

“I’m pretty sure if I tried to ride a bike after all this time, I’d fall off.”

“Yeah, well, maybe a little pain is worth it.”

Spoken, Jessi thought, like a woman who had no idea how it felt to be deserted by the man she loved.

The main building at the airport consisted of a wide, usually empty lobby, done in seventies black and white tile with seventies chrome and black Naugahyde furniture. Past the lobby was Jessi’s work space, as crowded and full of life as the lobby was empty and soulless. Just off Jessi’s domain was another room, smaller yet, that had once served as Maggie’s office.

Maggie’s desk had been cleaned off, and the walls that had been covered by maps of the world crisscrossed with the most common flight routes instead held long sheets of white paper. Hold had marked the sheets with solid or dotted lines and the names, when known, that it took to create a genealogy for the people of Windfall Island.

Jessi saw wide and notable gaps, one of which included—or rather failed to include—the Randal family.

Windfall Island Airport represented Maggie Solomon’s life’s work. Since Jessi owned a percentage, it was her work as well. But not her life.

Her life was her seven-year-old son. She would cheat, steal, or murder to keep Benji safe. She would lie, too, or at least turn her back on the truth.

Still, none of the three other people currently crammed into that closet of a room pushed Jessi to fill in her part of the genealogy—Jessi or anyone else on the island with children. The enemy had already proved ruthless enough to murder on the mere suspicion of a Stanhope connection; he wouldn’t scruple over the life of a child.

“I’ve been working on ruling out—or in—the families who have moved away from Windfall Island,” Hold said. He moved over to indicate the section of the chart he’d been researching. “So far they’re out. I’ve gone back a hundred years, just to be sure, and I haven’t found anyone among the families that have left the island who fits the requirements for possible relationship to the Stanhope family.”

“Fast work,” Dex put in. “Tracking down almost nine decades of people moving in and out of the community.”

“It was fairly easy, actually. It’s a small community, which keeps it manageable. Eugenia went missing in thirty-one, so I took the census from the year before and compared it with each one after, then searched for the missing families. I’m still tugging on a few strings, tying up a loose end or two.”

“But you don’t believe they’re going to lead anywhere meaningful,” Jessi said. She knew this, as she’d been helping him play out those strings in the hopes that one of them would help unravel the mystery of Eugenia’s fate.

“No,” Hold agreed, “but we have to follow them until we know for sure they don’t take us anywhere.”

“So at this point we’re pretty much left with the families still in residence,” Maggie observed when none of the rest of them chose to voice the obvious. Her vivid blue eyes shifted, met Jessi’s worried green ones.

“Me, you mean,” Jessi said. “I’m the same age as you, Maggie, the same generation. It makes me a possibility. And Benji—”

“No one is taking a shot at Benji, Jess. As long as Dex and I are around—”

“And me,” Hold put in.

“The point is, you and Benji are safe as long as the rest of us are breathing. But we can’t protect everyone, which means we can’t put anyone else in danger, either.”

“We won’t have to if we can find out which one of the Stanhopes is homicidal about keeping the family fortune intact.”

“That’s where I come in,” Dex said, his gaze going to Maggie. They’d both known his investigation into the Stanhope family members would take him away for a time.

And although Jessi knew her best friend well enough to see the unhappiness in her eyes, Maggie’s lips curved into her trademark smart-ass grin. “At long last, peace.”

Dex stepped up to her, ran his hands from her shoulders down her arms, linking his fingers with hers. “You’ll miss me.”

“Not until tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah.” He blew out a breath. “The sooner I go, the sooner I’ll get back.”

“Then I say we stop wasting time.” Maggie headed for the door, tugging him along behind her. Not that Dex objected, or that either of them had eyes for anyone but each other.

Jessi watched them until they disappeared through the door to the lobby. When she looked around, her face heated because she knew Hold had heard the sigh she hadn’t tried to stifle, and saw the longing she couldn’t hide.

He stepped over to her but she jerked away before he could brush the fingers he’d lifted over her face.

Hold didn’t push it. Or rather, he came at her from a different direction. “My invitation for tonight is still good.”

“What about Laureen?”

“Doomed to disappointment.” He exhaled heavily. “As am I, it appears.”

“I’ll be having dinner with Benji, like I do every night.”

“I didn’t take you for a coward.”

“Then you didn’t look close enough.”

He lost his irreverent grin. “I only said that to get a rise out of you.”

“But?”

“How long are you going to hide behind your son?”

“Oh, at least the next ten years, give or take,” she said breezily. But she wasn’t hiding behind Benji; she was standing in front of him, where she belonged.

“Does it ever occur to you that you can protect him too much?”

“He’s seven. There’s no such thing as protecting him too much.”

“Jessi, I don’t want to hurt him. Or you.”

But he could, so easily, and wasn’t that what really frightened her? “What exactly do you want, Hold?”

“A chance to get to know you, and for you to get to know me.”

“It’s not that simple.” She allowed herself to move away from him. Okay, that coward comment had stung, and she’d stayed put if only to show him he hadn’t gotten to her. But he had.

That long, strong body, the smile that seemed to light up the room, the way his eyes met hers and made her want to just let go and believe.

She’d been there before, she reminded herself.

She’d been taken in by a sunny smile and the attention of a handsome man—or boy, as the case had been. She’d believed Lance Proctor when he’d said he loved her, when he’d said he’d marry her. When he’d promised they’d be a family, the two of them and the life they’d created between them.

She’d been devastated after he ran off, those first days when she’d held her pregnancy a secret. When she’d believed he’d come back. He hadn’t; she’d had to stop believing, and eventually she’d gone to her mother.

Doris Randal had cried. And although the memory of it still broke her heart, Jessi had to content herself with the knowledge it had been the only time she’d caused her mother that kind of pain. The tears at Benji’s birth, and all the ones after, had been happy ones.

Her mother had been gone almost two years, and not a day went by that Jessi didn’t miss her in a dozen ways, large and small. Not a day went by that she didn’t remember the example her mother had set, that she didn’t struggle to find that kind of strength within herself. Her mother had become her rock, Jessi remembered—hers and Benji’s.

Now Jessi had to be the rock.

“Jessi?”

She looked over at Hold and thought,
the bigger the temptation
.

“Benji doesn’t ask about his father much,” she said, working her way carefully through her explanation as she gave it. “He used to ask, once he started spending time with the other school-age kids and realized they all had one and he didn’t. I tried to explain to him, you know, that his dad being gone had nothing to do with him.”

“But he doesn’t believe you.”

“He thinks I’m sparing his feelings.”

“And you don’t want to bring another man into his life who’ll leave again. I wish I could tell you I’ll stay, Jessi, but we’ve known each other barely two weeks.”

“I’m not asking for assurances, Hold. I don’t expect you to make lifelong plans that include a ready-made family. But I don’t do anything until I consider how it might affect Benji.”

“I think he’s a stronger kid than you’re giving him credit for. He must be with you for a mother.”

“That’s flattering—”

“And you think I’m just blowing smoke up your skirt.”

“You don’t know me, Hold. Not really.” That was part of what troubled her. She was going on instinct, and she couldn’t trust hers. “Why are you pushing so hard?”

“There’s something about you, Jessi.” And now she could tell he was being careful with what he said. “The minute I saw you, there was something. You felt it, too. Are you going to deny yourself a chance to get to know me, and vice versa, because you don’t know how to explain it to your son?”

“Today? Yes.”

Hold shot her that lightning-quick, sun-bright grin. “That means there’s hope for tomorrow.”

“It’ll still be no tomorrow.”

“Then I’ll just have to keep asking.”

F
riday morning dawned fresh and bright, the early October sky a crisp, clear blue. Jessi greeted the day still wearing her favorite and most tattered sleep shirt, and a robe that had seen better days.

Benji had gone off to school already, ecstatic to be allowed to walk with Bobby Cassidy from next door, ten years old and everything Benji aspired to be, with his skateboard skills and a cute little air of worldliness. Braving thirty-degree weather didn’t seem like such a treat to her, but it was only a few blocks, and really, what could happen on an island where the children were well-known and every adult watched out for them?

It gave her the peace of mind to lounge at her little table, eating a breakfast she’d actually cooked rather than scarfing down a bagel on the way to the airport. A whole weekday off to spend as she liked, she thought blissfully as she sipped her second cup of coffee. Eight glorious hours to herself after a long, stressful week in the company of a man who couldn’t seem to take no for an answer. And that, she allowed, wasn’t really the problem.

No
kept getting harder to say.
That
was the problem.

Worse, she’d actually begun to miss Hold’s harassment when he wasn’t around, to feel as though her world spun with a little bit of a wobble. As if, she thought, the Earth was a carnival ride with one of the stabilizers missing.

Life was certainly that, she decided: a carnival ride. Needing Holden Abbot around to keep her on track? That would be true craziness—

Her front door flew open and Hold burst in.

Jessi jumped out of her chair, dripping coffee cup and all, and scooted around behind the table before he could grab her up. “What? What’s wrong?”

“You didn’t show up for work this morning.”

Jessi could only stare, trying to reconcile the simplicity of his words with the panicked race of her heart.

“What are you talking about?”

“You. Not showing up this morning. You’re always there at precisely seven fifty-seven.”

Jessi plunked her cup down, plucked a napkin from the table holder and wiped her hands. “There’s nothing precise about it.” Actually there was, since she dropped Benji off at school at pretty much the same time each morning, then drove to the other end of the island. But she wasn’t giving him that.

“Are you sick?”

He reached out, and she couldn’t evade the hand he laid on her forehead. Stupid, small table.

She brushed him off. “Jeez, can’t a girl take a day off once in a blue moon?”

“Of course, sugar, I just wish you’d told me.”

“It’s—”

“None of my business. See, I have been listening.”

“Sure. Now you’re just ignoring.”

“I’m only concerned about your welfare, Jessica.”

“Whether or not I want you to be. Some people would call that stalking.”

“What would you call it?”

“Arrogant, high-handed. And annoying, because you’re mostly harmless.”

“Am I?” Hold said softly, and the way he looked at her made her pulse jump.

She gathered the edges of her robe together with one hand. “I said mostly,” she managed, the words weak and thready, not just because the breath had stalled in her lungs, but because her thoughts had scattered, incinerated in the heat flashing through her.

Hold leaned forward to peek over the table. “Nice legs.”

The hand clutching her lapels trembled on the verge of letting go. Giving in. Hold’s knowing grin stopped her. “They’re the same legs I had yesterday.”

“But you always have them covered.”

She edged behind a chair, and when his gaze lifted, pushed at her hair. It had to look like a rat’s nest, she thought, scowling at him because he was enjoying her discomfort. “You can go now.”

“I could use a cup of coffee.”

“They have coffee at the Horizon.”

“Yours is better.”

“Don’t let AJ hear you say that,” she said, ignoring the little pop of foolish pleasure. “Or Helen.”

AJ and Helen Appelman owned and operated the Horizon Inn. Once a tavern dating back to the island’s beginnings, it was a hotel now, and did a heck of a tourist business in the summer. In the winter it was mostly empty. Hold was likely the only guest right now. He was renting one of the efficiencies.

“You have your own kitchen, as I recall.”

“Hot plate, sink, mini fridge.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’m a lousy cook. I usually eat in the dining room.”

And not alone, from what she’d heard.

“Why don’t you get dressed, and we’ll go out to breakfast?”

“I’ve already had breakfast.”

He lifted his nose and sniffed the air like a hound, lifting the newspaper she’d dropped over her plate.

“Omelet.”

Hold put a hand on his stomach. “Any chance I could convince you to make me one?”

“No.” But she wanted to. Not to show off her cooking skills, but because it seemed such a—a couple sort of thing to do. Lazy morning, breakfast together, hands brushing as they traded sections of the paper, which would lead to their gazes meeting. And when her eyes met his, as they did now, she felt it all the way to her toes.

And she wanted.

It was all just a little too tempting, seeing as she’d spun the fantasy in her own mind. Not only tempting, but dangerous, she decided, bracing a hand on the chair in front of her, if only to remind herself she stood in her own home. Where she lived with Benji. Alone, just the two of them.

“Good-bye, Hold,” she said.

“What are you up to today?” he asked, then immediately held up a hand. “I know, none of my business.”

Hold stopped at the end of Jessi’s front walk, looked back as the front door closed smartly behind him, and grinned. Couldn’t help himself. Jessi had asked him to leave, politely at first. Then she’d pulled out her stern voice, and when that didn’t work, she’d planted both her little hands on his back and physically shoved him through the door.

On the one hand, he mused as he put his feet in motion again, she’d kicked him out. On the other, now, he’d gotten her hands on him. Not the way he’d intended but that time would come, he told himself, still grinning as his thoughts ambled with the same Southern leisure as his feet. He could move fast when he wanted. Mostly, though, he took his own sweet time. The getting there, to his mind, was as interesting and entertaining as any destination. Why rush it?

Jessi Randal was turning out to be one of the rare exceptions. If he knew her—and he was beginning to know her—she wouldn’t spend the day shut up indoors. She’d be out and about, her smile as sunny as her coat, brightening up the town and everyone in it. The woman moved like lightning, he mused, plowing through her work with the kind of alacrity that made a Southern boy’s head spin. She talked fast, she walked fast, she moved almost constantly and at a pace that exhausted him just to see it. Except where he was concerned. She had only one speed there, and it was full stop.

Still, there were moments—or more like split seconds in her case—when he could see he was getting to her. A considering glance his way, a flush in her cheeks, and a woman didn’t get irritated by a man—not the way she did anyway—unless she was fighting her own attraction. Hell, she’d as much as admitted it to him, hadn’t she?

The trick was getting her to act on it, turning those seconds into moments. And he was just the man for it, for wearing away at her resistance like water carved a landscape. Inexorable, unstoppable, irresistible, he added with another grin that had the woman across the street staring. He nodded politely, as if he hadn’t just seen her walk into a light pole.

As she hurried away, head down, cheeks red, his cell phone buzzed against his hip. He pulled it out, read the display. He was already smiling when he accepted the call, even before the voice on the other end said gruffly, “Where the hell are you?”

Hold looked around and realized he’d wandered into the main part of the village, more familiar now, but still foreign to someone who’d grown up in the warm, fragrant heart of Dixie. “You’d never believe me if I told you,” he said to his brother, James Abbot.

“You’ve been gone a fair while, bro. Don’t you think it’s time you got back to your real life?”

“I’m busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Stalking a woman.”

“Well, that’s a switch.” Hold could hear the laughter in his brother’s voice. “Usually you’re the fox and some woman is trying to hound-dog you into a corner, hell bent on marriage.”

“Haven’t been caught yet, have I?” And he had no intention of being caught. He liked to keep his relationships short and light.

“Not since your close call.”

Too close, Hold recalled. It had been just days before his wedding when he’d discovered his fiancée was after his money, his family name, and the ease she could buy with both.

“Look, bro, I can only imagine what you went through.”

Not even close. Maybe it had been two years, but he’d had his heart fucking shattered, Hold thought savagely. He’d been made to question everything about himself, most especially how he could be so blind, such a terrible judge of character. How could a man like his brother, with a wife who looked at him like the sun rose and set at his instruction, understand how it felt to have your world so completely overturned?

“Point is,” James continued, “Miriam Burton was one of a kind—the worst kind. There’s got to be a woman out there who might have bad enough taste to love you in spite of your unfortunate looks and ridiculous personality.”

“Only one?”

“It only takes one. ’Sides, I don’t want to scare you when you’re making such good progress. I mean, look at you, venturing away from Abbot House all by yourself.”

His brother’s sarcasm, more than all the motherly hugs and fatherly pep talks, helped remind Hold that the past was the past as long as he had the strength to leave it there.

“Let me know when Alicia comes to her senses and dumps you,” he said to James, “because she realizes it’s me she’s wanted all these years.”

“Sure, that’ll happen right after a mutant virus turns us all into zombies, and she sees you as her next meal.”

“So this is why you called? To insult me?”

“Kids want to know when Uncle Hold is coming back,” James said with a shrug in his voice.

“Wow, and they’re not even zombies yet?”

“No, but they’re young, they have no taste.”

“Maybe you’re the one with no taste.”

“Jimmy,” he said, referring to his son, “eats crayons. Suzy,” his daughter, “drinks air and pretends it’s tea.”

“Maybe you should feed them once in a while.”

“Funny. Mom told me to remind you about the charity ball in Boston.”

“I’m on top of that,” Hold said.

“Your assistant is on top of it, you mean.”

“That’s what assistants are for, son. You ought to trust yours enough to take a day off once in a while.”

“Can’t. The world will grind to a screeching halt.”

“Your ego is a thing of monumental proportions.”

“You only say that because Mom loves me best.”

Hold caught a bright flash of color out of the corner of his eye, and said, “Gotta go,” even before he turned to see Jessi appear out of the cross street leading to her house.

“But—”

“Love to Mom and Dad,” he said, and disconnected.

At the end of the island closest to the mainland, sheltered from the worst blasts of Lady Atlantic’s changeable temper, lay Windfall Village, a conglomeration of buildings cobbled together over the better part of three centuries from whatever building materials came to hand. As some of those building materials were a direct benefit of the ships that had run afoul of the Lady in the midst of a tantrum, the result was an interesting mix of stone and wood, metal and glass, in an architectural style that could best be described as Repurposed Quirk.

In the beginning, the basic mindset had been about making the structures serviceable. Nobody cared what a building looked like as long as the roof kept out the weather. With tourism now the main source of Windfall Island’s income, paint colors ran the gamut from sun- and sea-faded to bright as a button, and in the summer there’d be colorful awnings and umbrella tables. But just now, with the trees bare, the late autumn sky the color of pewter, and no tourists thronging the narrow streets, the village looked forlorn, a little down in the mouth and somewhat shabby at the edges, like a grizzled old uncle who’d seen better days but was nevertheless dear to the heart.

Jessi couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. She’d forwarded Solomon Charters’ phones to her cell, but as it was quiet this time of year, with few visitors to be flown in or out, she felt light and happy. Free.

And then she spotted Hold across the street, shoulders propped against the wall of the apothecary, hands in his pockets, one ankle crossed indolently over the other. He looked like an ad for…It didn’t matter, not with his tall lean body set off by slacks the color of deep, dark chocolate topped by a beautifully worn leather jacket. His burnished hair was uncovered and ruffled slightly in the wind, and even when he straightened, he wore an expression that could best be described as “bring it on.”

Barely an hour had passed since she’d found the strength to kick him out of her house, and there he was, lurking on the edge of her peaceful day, tempting her.

Jessi lifted her chin, focused her eyes ahead, and sailed right by. When he fell into step with her, she said, “Uh-uh, stalkers are supposed to skulk half a block behind so they can hide in doorways and pretend to be innocent.”

“Where’s the fun in being innocent…” Hold trailed off when she glanced at the sign on the door where they’d stopped. “The Clipper Snip.”

“The Clipper Snip,” Jessi repeated with a lot of satisfaction and a little edge of snark. “What better way to spend a morning than being pampered?” Not to mention it was an estrogen-fueled gossip fest Hold wouldn’t want to enter without body armor and a Taser. “Coming?” she said sweetly.

Hold’s eyes wheeled from her to the door Jessi was slowly inching open. “I, um…”