The Trouble with Magic (Loveswept) (5 page)

“Well, I’m sorry, Ms. Wheaton. But I’m not buying it. The story, that is. The island is too good a deal to pass up.”

“And nothing I say will change your mind.”

Honesty is always the best policy, he told himself, a part of him wishing he’d never gotten involved in the first place.
Get tough with her. Tell her about the real world. Don’t let those sad brown eyes get to you.

“I’m afraid not,” he said, making a helpless gesture with his hands. “I understand what you’re going through, but financially—”

“No, Mr. Dunsmore,” she said, interrupting the speech she’d already heard several times before, tears welling in her eyes. “I don’t think you do understand what I’m going through. You couldn’t possibly.” She blinked the tears away. “Would you excuse me for a few minutes, please?”

“Of course,” he said, feeling that weird remorseful feeling again and hating it. He was grateful for the control that kept her from crying in front of him, indebted even.

“Help yourself to more coffee,” she said over her shoulder, pushing her way through a swinging door and into the front foyer, where she ceremoniously removed her glasses, set them on the hall table, and prepared herself to do battle.

She grabbed up her slicker and exited through the door, without looking back and without a second thought until she reached the dock. She stared down at the skiff as it bobbed and lobbed against the rubber bumpers on the dock, and went over her plan one last time.

The worst possible consequence would be that she’d end up back in prison. But having lost everything that ever meant anything to her, would that be such a catastrophe? And if her plan worked,
if it worked,
she’d still have Jovette Island and a chance at a future.

Of course, that would mean that she had forced Payton Dunsmore to fall in love with her, and that wasn’t really fair to him, but if he wouldn’t listen to reason ... well, what choice did she have?

She took a deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips to calm herself. It didn’t help.

She stepped down into the dinghy and reached for the small black bag she’d placed in the boat earlier. With every second of time that passed, her resolve slipped. Maybe she could talk to him a little more. Maybe she hadn’t been clear enough for him. Maybe she could have explained better how important the island was to her. She pulled the bag open with undue force. Maybe she should have cried. She could have pleaded and begged with him. She reached inside the bag and wrapped her fingers around a handle. She could have thrown herself on his mercy. Her index finger curled around a trigger.

Was there any better way she could have handled the situation? She didn’t think so.

Aiming skyward, she pulled the trigger once, then twice, and watched the large three-quarter-inch drill bit spin around at a blinding speed. She tried the deep breaths again to no avail, then took dead aim at the bottom of the dinghy.

The battery-operated drill shot slivers of wood flying until she discovered that a little muscle was required to hold the bit in one place. But after that, the holes in the bottom of the boat became smooth, round, and plentiful.

Payton paced the kitchen with his second cup of coffee cooling in his hands. He felt lower than a doormat, and it irritated him. Why the hell did he care if she was off somewhere crying? He hardly knew the woman. He didn’t even like her very much. She was a pest and a bother despite the fact that she had eyes he could swim in and a mouth that fascinated him like none he’d seen before. And her life was a mess.

She’d been to jail! The woman was a criminal. She was broke. She had no job. She had a never-was chance of keeping the island without money. And was he responsible for any of her problems? Hell, no.

So, why did he feel half-sick inside ? Where was that nice, cold numbness he usually carried around to keep him from feeling this way? Why did he continue to think about going to her? And what would he say if he did? What was taking her so long? he wondered, opening the door that led to the back lawns.

He stepped out onto a flagstone terrace, smaller than the one at the front of the house, and, then onto the dry, lifeless grass beyond. His imagination ran amok with visions of the splendor and beauty that would return to the island in the spring.

Gazing eastward, he took in a better view of the gazebo he’d only glimpsed from the river. It didn’t take a lot of ingenuity to picture women in stylish long dresses with large brimmed hats and parasols or men with slicked-back hair and stiff white collars and ...

Payton put his ears to the wind, like an animal sensing danger. A noise. No. Yes, there it was again. Sea gulls called out to one another, and the noise rose up to join their clamor. A buzzing noise that was distinctly mechanical.

He followed the intermittent sounds to the front of the house, across the great lawns, toward the cove that sheltered the boat house and dock. He stood beside the low rock wall at the top of the bluff. His eyes narrowed in disbelief. A low rumble of expletives escaped him.

“Are you crazy?” he bellowed down at the female lunatic drilling holes in the bottom of the only visible means of transportation off the island. He started down the chiseled steps, muttering, “Just my luck. Stranded on an island with a crazy woman. Oh, jeez. ... I should have checked to see what she went to prison for. ... All that history and stuff about magic and not one word about insanity. ... I should have guessed it when she started with all that talk about magic. ...”

Engrossed in her holes, Harriet didn’t hear or see him until he was nearly upon her. Unfortunately, even with close to two dozen punctures, the water level inside the boat barely covered the tops of her deck shoes. The boat wasn’t sinking fast enough.

Quickly, as if she’d foreseen this slight problem, she cast off from the dock,
slowly
sinking several feet away.

By the time Payton reached her, he was speechless. With his suit jacket open and flapping in the wind, his fists on his hips, he gaped at her.

“I’m really sorry it has to be this way, Mr. Dunsmore,” she called, lifting her voice over the wind, water, and wailing birds. “But you didn’t leave me any choice. I suppose you’re a bit put out with me.”

She was either a wiz at understatement or her understanding of the English language was extraordinarily limited.

“Well, I can’t blame you for that,” she went on, trying to smile reassuringly. “I’d feel the same way. But there’s a reason for this and ... if you’ll just give me a chance to explain ... well, you’ll probably still be angry, but I think you’ll at least understand why I’m doing this.”

“I wouldn’t count on it, Ms. Wheaton,” he said through clenched teeth. “And you’d damn well better have another boat hidden around here somewhere, because I’m not a man you’d want to play games with.”

She had half a hull of water and her feet and ankles were numb with cold. It was only a matter of time now before the little boat sank completely. Still, treading water till she froze to death seemed a much more pleasant experience than what awaited her on the docks.

“We don’t have to call this a game, Mr. Dunsmore,” she said optimistically. “We could call it an experiment.”

“It doesn’t matter what we call it, the police are going to call it kidnapping or hijacking or ... or maybe hostage taking.”

“Oh, I’m sure they’ll call it something,” she said. “But I don’t think they can technically call it any of those things since I’m not asking for a ransom or making any demands. In fact,” she began to steel herself for the plunge, “if I were a good liar, I could probably get away with this. You know, say it was all your idea and that you did this.” Her bottom was getting wet. “But I’m not a good liar, so I’ll confess the whole thing to the police when it’s over. If you want me to.”

“When what’s over?” he asked, as she jumped into the water, swimming to the ladder at the end of the dock. “When what’s over?” he asked again, watching her pull herself up the ladder and step, shivering, onto the dock. Her slicker hung wet and loose from her body but the sweater and jeans beneath it were waterlogged and clinging to her slim figure. “When what’s over?”

“The experiment,” she said, teeth chattering, her charmingly lopsided lips blue tinged.

“What experiment?”

“Your s-skepticism about the magic ...”

“It’s more than skepticism.”

“... is unders-standable. And I’ll be hon-onest with you, M-Mr. Dunsmore, I’m not so sure it’s real either.” She shivered and threw her wet braid back over her shoulder. “I ... I mean, I’m a scientist and m-magic just doesn’t fit into my way of thinking. But the overwhelming frequency of Jovettes falling in l-love on this island can’t be denied either.”

Oh, gawd! She was blithering. Payton wanted to cry.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Well, aside from the f-fact that I love the island, the magic is another re-reason for me not to lose it.”

“Lose what?”

“The island,” she snapped. She was too cold for him to be acting dense all of a sudden. “What if falling in love on this island is my only chance at happily ever a-after? I’m th-thirty years old. I’m the last Jovette, the only Jovette of this generation. I-if the legend is valid and the magic exists, I can’t sell the island until after I fall in love. And then what about my children?”

“What about them?” Oh, Lord! Why had he asked?

“Well, they’d be J-Jovettes by blood. They’d deserve their chance at love too.”

“What does any of this love stuff have to do with me?” Dumb question—he was buying her island. “I’ll tell you what, Harriet,” he said, trying to sound sane and reasonable. “I’ll throw an open reservation into the deal. You can come and stay anytime you like.”

“We-we—” She shivered convulsively. “Well, I had a different deal in mind.”

“Fine. Whatever you want. You name the terms.” He glanced around. “Where’s the other boat?”

“Back at the marina.” Strangely enough, he looked confused. “I ... I misled you about
Enchantment.
I said that I knew I’d live to regret selling it, which is why I haven’t yet. I do still own her, but I couldn’t drill ho-holes in her hull. I’ll miss the skiff, but it’s all f-for a good cause ... I hope,” she added under her shuddering breath.

“Look, Ms. Wheaton,” he said, shifting his weight into a stance of male superiority. “I don’t like games. I don’t like tricks or surprises or practical jokes. I hate being manipulated. I won’t tolerate a manipulating woman, any more than I’d tolerate a whiny woman or a woman who has no self-control. I demand that you tell me what you’re up to and how you plan to get us off this damned island. Right now.”

He seemed to have puffed up several degrees during his tirade, and she was acutely aware of his size in relation to her own small, shivering female form. The fury in his eyes stabbed at her like pointed icicles.

“Would it be safe to say that you don’t like me?” she asked.

He opened and closed his mouth twice before any words came out. “That would be a safe assumption, yes.”

She shivered. “Then here’s the deal,” she said. “There’s a boat coming for us on Sunday, in seven days. If you don’t fall in love with me before that time, I’ll sign the island, the house, and everything in it o-over to you and s-surrender myself to the police.”

“What?”

“If you can’t fall in love with me during the next s-seven days on this island, it’ll mean there is no m-magic, and I’ll have done all of this for nothing. B-but if you can manage to overcome your anger and f-form a fondness for me ... well, that would be some sort of proof, wouldn’t it?”

“It’d prove that I’m crazier than you are,” he said, an incredulous expression on his face. Then he got angry again. “I suppose you think that I’ll fall in love with you and let you keep your island.”

“Oh, no,” she said emphatically. “I wa-want to be fair about this. I won’t forget that I forced you to fall in l-love with me, if you do. And I promise I won’t hold you to it. Come Sunday all ties are s-severed. You go back to your life and I turn myself over to the police so you can press ch-charges, and I’ll confess to anything you want me to. A-And as for the island, well, we’ll have proof of its magic by then, one way or another, and I’ll leave its destiny to your conscience.”

“Are you crazy?” he asked again, sure that she must be, though she didn’t look it. She looked calm and rational, as if she knew what she was doing. “If I don’t check back with my office tonight, as I always do, my staff is going to have every law enforcement agency in this state out looking for me.”

“Maybe not,” she said, stepping around him, heading for a hot bath.

“What does that mean? Maybe not. What have you done?” he asked, following her.

“The fax I asked the desk clerk to send for me before we left the inn was to your office, informing them of your change in plans, that you’d decided to spend the holiday with friends; that you weren’t to be disturbed and that you’d contact them next Monday.”

“Where the hell do you get off—my staff won’t buy that, you know,” he said, almost gleeful that his solitary lifestyle was going to foil her plan.

“Why not?”

He had so few personal attachments, that he usually spent his holidays alone—but he didn’t want her to know that. “Because ... because I lead an an organized and orderly life. I never go off for days at a time without making arrangements ahead of time.”

“In other words, your life lacks spontaneity.” She looked back over her shoulder at him and smiled.

He repaid her with a grimace. “For your information, Ms. Wheaton, my life lacks nothing. I do what I want, when I want, for whatever reason I choose.”

“That
is
pretty much the same st-story I got,” she said, topping the stairs, heading for the house at a brisk pace. He had to jog-walk to keep up with her. “Which is why I assumed that no one would be s-surprised if you suddenly changed your plans.”

“What do you mean, that’s the story you got?”

She stopped short and he tripped over her.

“Well, you don’t think I’d st-strand myself on an island with someone I knew nothing about, do you?”

“I have no idea what you’re capable of.”