The Virgin and the Vengeful Groom (7 page)

“No, thanks, this is fine. I'm pretty sure Bess didn't stay at any motel.”

She had a way of smiling that started in her eyes, then tugged at the corners of her mouth. Curt found himself smiling back before he thought better of it. Quickly switching to a scowl, he led the way to the guest room. “Probably needs airing out. There's some linens in the closet on the shelf. I'll make your bed for you.”

“Thanks, but that won't be necessary.”

Relieved, he nodded. His back didn't take kindly to the thought of any more bending and stretching. But God, the place was a dump. The bed sagged, the ticking was stained, the mattress one of those cotton-filled ones that looked about as comfortable as a bushel bag of potatoes. There was a three-legged dresser against one wall, with all five drawers stuck tight. He'd tried to open them when he'd first moved in. Hadn't bothered since. For the short time he planned to be here, he didn't need the storage, and besides, he didn't particularly care to invade the privacy of any nesting mice.

The room's only chair had once been varnished, but was now blotched with whitish stains. It was ugly. Everything in the house was ugly. Seeing her standing there, in her black slacks and white silk shirt, he suddenly felt like swearing for no real reason except that by contrast, she pointed up the bleakness of his own life.

“Look, you can have the other bedroom. At least it's dry. I'll put on clean sheets, but I'd better warn you in case you're a late sleeper, the morning sun comes barreling in through the window like a five-alarm fire. You might've noticed I don't have shades or curtains.”

“This is fine. The view's nice, and if you have a board I can put between the springs and the mattress, it'll be perfect. I don't care for a soft bed.”

“You mean a sagging bed.”

“That, too,” she admitted with another of those half-shy smiles that came and went almost too fast to register.

Curt slid his hands down his hips, hooked his thumbs under his belt and tried to remember if there was any scrap lumber left over from the roof repairs. If not, he'd rip a few boards off one of the sheds. He really didn't want to give up his own bed—not that he wouldn't be willing to share.

Not that sharing would do him any good.

First thing he'd done when he moved in was to send off for a good, firm mattress. He'd still worn a back brace then. On damp days he had occasionally been forced to resort to using use his crutch, but he'd tossed both items after the first week. The medic had given him pain pills, which he'd refused to take until a nurse had explained that if he truly enjoyed being miserable, that was up to him, but the pills were supposed to reduce the inflammation and speed up the healing process.

Good thing he'd been in peak physical condition when
the SDV had bought it, else his body might not have been able to stand the compression. As it was, he'd got off easy. A few broken ribs, a few burns—a blown eardrum, a compromised lung, along with some nasty bugs he'd picked up from spending all that time buried up to his neck in stinking river mud. He was dealing with it. With that and the guilt that went along with being the lone survivor.

 

With her room aired out, her sagging bed reinforced and spread with clean, if musty-smelling linens, Lily looked around for a place to set up her computer. “All I need is a corner with a small shelf and a chair,” she said. “Maybe a card table? You did say the power here was reliable, didn't you?”

Curt's stomach growled. It had occurred to him that he was probably expected to feed her as long as she was sharing his roof. Hell of a note. “Computer?” he repeated.

“That thing with the screen and the keyboard?” she reminded him.

“Oh. Yeah.” Could her hair possibly be as soft as it looked? The last woman whose hair he had touched had been bleached, curled and sprayed. Definitely not touch tempting.

“I guess you could set up in my office for as long as you'll be here,” he said reluctantly. It was hardly likely they'd both be working at the same time. He worked whenever he couldn't sleep, which was a portion of almost every night.

So he showed her into the room he called an office. “I'll slide this stuff over. You can set up your equipment on this end, plug into the back-up power supply and I'll rig another light.”

The single overhead bulb was hardly sufficient. He used a clip-on with a drop cord, but a hotshot lady novelist
probably had fancier requirements. The room was small. He figured it had once been a back bedroom, but there was no way to know for sure. Not that it mattered.

Even setting up, they were in each other's way. Each time he brushed past, shifting the stacks of papers, files he'd been meaning to organize and back up on disks when he had the time, he was aware all over again of the dangers of getting involved with a woman like Lily O'Malley.

With any woman at all. But O'Malley was particularly dangerous because he had only to look at her body to find himself wanting to know more about it—wanting to explore at leisure every dark, sweet secret she possessed. Had only to look into her eyes to be captured by something he saw there, something he sensed just under the surface. For a lady who had Back Off, Buster, written all over her, she seemed curiously vulnerable.

Oh, yeah, she was a puzzle. She was a challenge, and he'd never been able to resist a challenge, which was why he'd gone into the line of work he had.

But this one he was determined to resist if it killed him. He was in no position to do anything else.

A
slight breeze had stirred sluggishly all day. Just before sunset, it sighed out, leaving the air hot and humid. The kind of air that steals energy and replaces it with temper. Left to himself, Curt would have stripped down, crossed the stretch of burning sand to the ocean and hit the surf. The therapist had recommended water aerobics. He was pretty sure body surfing fell in that category. If it didn't kill him, it would probably cure him…eventually.

“I don't suppose you have an air conditioner,” Lily said wistfully. There was a gleam of sweat on her skin that made him want to lick it off. He put the aberration down to the weather and wondered if it was worth getting the place rewired to handle some heavy-duty cooling for as long as he planned to be here.

“Sorry. No AC, no stereo, no TV.” In other words, no distractions and damned few comforts. At the moment he could have done with a distraction.

“How do you keep up with the news?”

“Shortwave radio. Internet.”

Her mouth formed a silent O. No lipstick, just Lily. Did she realize what a turn-on naked lips were on a woman with skin like hers? He figured there must be some interesting genes in her pool. Italian. Maybe Far Eastern or American Indian.

The name, though, was strictly Irish. If it really was her name. It was probably a pen name. A pseudonym. Honesty was a quality he'd learned not to expect in a woman.

On the other hand, a lily by any other name and all that…

“Hey, it's suppertime, isn't it?” he exclaimed, feigning cheerfulness.

This wasn't going to work. He wasn't interested in food, he was interested in woman. In this woman in particular. He didn't trust her. He didn't know her. He had no idea if he would like her or not if he ever got to know her, because he had no intention of getting to know her any better than he did. They had one thing in common, and one thing only.

Two, if you counted hunger. Her stomach growled, as if on cue.

She looked embarrassed, but carried it off beautifully. “Food would be lovely,” she said politely.

“So…what's your pleasure, madam? Pizza? Seafood?” He knew what his would be under more favorable circumstances, the lady being willing.

“Whatever you like is fine with me. Naturally, I intend to pay my share.”

It was just past five, but he'd skipped lunch. If she'd wanted to stop she could've asked. She hadn't.

“It's not a case of paying your share, it's a case of what kind of takeout do you want, pizza or seafood?”

“That's it?”

“They deliver. Others might. I haven't tried anything else.”

“What about dining out?”

“Help yourself. I'm planning on ordering in, but I'll give you directions if you'd rather explore a few of the local establishments.” Nice going, Powers. Show her what a classy guy you are. “Look, I'm sorry—tomorrow I'll do better, I promise, but for now, can we just make this easy?”

Oh, hell, he was begging.

Trouble was, he was stiff and sore after being cooped up inside the cab of his truck all day and then lugging in those blasted boxes. All he really wanted to do was fill his belly, then stand under a hot shower for about twenty minutes until he'd washed away some of the accumulated stiffness. He felt about a hundred years old.

No way he was going to admit it, though.

“Pizza's fine with me.” She smiled at him. She had the kind of smile that could kick a guy in the gut and cut off his air supply before he realized what had hit him.

He'd already been that route.

“I'll call it in.” He reached for the phone, relieved at the easy victory.

This is not going to work, he told himself again as he sank into one of the room's two chairs and punched in the number of his favorite dining establishment. “What do you like on yours?” he asked.

While he waited for someone to pick up on the other end and waited for her to make up her mind what she wanted, he studied the way her hands moved. Small, graceful gestures. Nothing fluttery. “Hi, Sal, make it two tonight. Yeah, my usual and…” He shot her a questioning look.

Her face took on a dreamy expression. “Hmm…extra cheese? And how about black olives, anchovies and banana peppers?”

He passed it on, listened to Sal's comment on the lousy fishing and hung up. “So what would you like to drink with that—beer?” She had claimed the other chair, a lopsided, leather-covered recliner that had evidently been too heavy to steal. Long legs straight out in front of her, ankles crossed, she rested her hands, palms up, on her thighs and closed her eyes. She looked bushed, but then, neither of them had gotten much sleep lately, what with one thing and another. A miserable motel bed on his part, plus the kind of dreams that left him needy and frustrated.

On her part there'd been the phone calls and someone messing around in her panty drawer. The phone calls alone would be enough to send most women into a full-blown case of hysterics. Ms. O'Malley was pretty cool, if you didn't count deliberately helping herself to someone else's private property and then trying to get away with it on the basis of being a writer.

Maybe it was a celebrity thing. The I'm-somebody, you're-nobody, you-owe-me syndrome. He'd known a few celebrities, mostly sports figures. A minor movie star. The players earned their status. The starlet couldn't act her way out of a paper bag, but she was drop-dead gorgeous. O'Malley would never make it as a starlet.

Funny thing, though—he had a growing sense that underneath all the hoopla, she was a very private person. Or would like to be. He hadn't yet made up his mind whether she was plain or beautiful—it all depended on a man's idea of beauty. Up to now his had been pretty standard. Long legs, big boobs, blond hair, blue eyes.

Lily had the legs, but fell short in all other categories.
Her eyes were gray, her hair was richer than black, darker than brown. As for her breasts…

He cut short the inventory. For the next couple of days they'd be sharing meals, sharing work space and his small, no-frills bathroom. Other than the contents of those six battered cartons, that was
all
they were going to share.

Opening a pair of shadowed gray eyes, Lily said wistfully, “I don't suppose you have any milk.”

“I could drive down and get some.” The thought of climbing back into his truck nearly threw his back into spasms.

“No, don't do that.” Her smile faded and with it, the last hint of color in her wan face.

We're a pair, all right, he thought. Too tired to fight, too proud to admit defeat. Another thing they had in common. If she'd been one of those terminally cheerful types, he'd have walked out the back door and kept on going.

Correction: if she'd been one of those, he'd never have brought her here in the first place. “How about evaporated? I keep a can on hand for emergency use.”

She came at him again with that wisp of a smile. He really wished she wouldn't do it, because it made him forget temporarily that this was strictly a business deal, no more, no less. They weren't friends. If anything, they were competitors. Not even friendly competitors.

 

In spite of his doubts, things went surprisingly smoothly. Curt went out of his way not to invade her personal space, and Lily returned the favor. He should have been satisfied. Instead, he found himself prowling through his house, needing to know where she was in order to avoid her.

Ironically, the more unobtrusive she tried to be, the more impossible she was to ignore. Half the time she was sprawled on the porch with a couple of those old diaries,
a pen behind her ear and a notepad in her lap, staring out over the water, so still he'd thought she was asleep the first few times he'd seen her there. Stillness, not to mention silence, were not qualities he associated with women.

At least not with any of the women he'd ever known—including his mother.

One of the first things she'd done after breakfast that second morning was visit the cemetery. Knelt and tried to read names and dates. Actually took a rubbing off one. He was curious to know why, but refused to ask. He'd walked out there a time or two himself when he'd first moved in, studying the few stones that were still legible. Most of them were worn nearly smooth. Sandblasted. One had fallen over. He'd meant to set it upright when he felt up to digging a base for it, but he'd never got around to it.

He wished now that he had. Whoever they were, they were obviously related to him, the Powers name being predominant. There was one Elizabeth Bagby. As the name hadn't rung any bells, he'd dismissed it. His father's grave was there—the newest stone, looking somehow lonely among all those ancient markers.

Damn. This was getting too close, too personal. He might've done better to toss the deed, the boxes—the whole lot and go somewhere new. Maybe even back to Oklahoma. At least cornfields and oil rigs didn't mess up his mind.

It was on the third day that she asked him if he knew who was who in the graveyard. She'd spent the morning sitting cross-legged out there under a scalding sun, notebook in hand, more often than not staring out over the water. He figured that must be the way writers worked. An hour or so of daydreaming for every line put down on paper.

“All I know is what's carved in stone,” he said, and
immediately regretted the flip answer. He was pretty sure one of them must be old Matthew, his great-great-grandfather. As a professional diver, he'd been more interested in the man's ship than in his mortal remains. It seemed irreverent if not downright callous, now that he'd had time to think about it, but the truth was, the only sense of family he had came from those stories his father had told him back when he was almost too young to remember. Stories about ships and the men who sailed them. It was the adventure that had stuck in his mind, not the family thing. His mother had never talked about the man other than that he was gone a lot, and she wasn't cut out to be a grass widow. Over the years Curt had managed to hang on to a few good memories, but he'd kicked out those that gave him that restless, empty feeling.

“Know what? I'm beginning to think the Elizabeth Bagby buried in your cemetery was our Bess. In her later journals she mentions a man named Horace Bagby often enough to be significant. Maybe by the time I leave I'll have put it all together.”

It was the first reference she'd made to leaving. Curt knew she had some deadline or another—she'd mentioned it before they'd left Norfolk, which was the only reason he'd reluctantly brought her home with him. He could put up with anything for a couple of days. Hell, he'd gone without food, water and sleep for longer than that. A lot longer.

Trouble was, now that she was here, she didn't seem all that eager to wind things up and get back to where she belonged. If he was honest—and he always tried to be, particularly with himself—Curt was no longer quite so eager to get rid of her. In spite of a deep sense of privacy, he was finding it surprisingly easy to share his personal space. She didn't intrude, she was just…around. The oc
casional soft-voiced observation—a hint of wildflowers in his john after she'd showered. Mostly, she read all the time, even while they were eating.

During the day when she was outside, wandering around the graveyard or poking around the sound side, he used the time to organize files, reshuffle a few investments and dig into a few more of old Matthew's logbooks. Whatever else he was, the man had been no great hand at keeping records. Manifests, weather observations, personnel matters and standard log entries were all set down together in a bold hand in no particular order.

They shared the front porch whenever there was a breeze off the ocean. Now and then he would read a passage aloud. Or she would. It didn't mean anything—the sharing. They were both reading about the same people, the same era, after all. Still, it was…pleasant. Which was surprising when he thought about it, so mostly he didn't.

Nights were another matter. Tapering off his medications, he'd been cutting the dosage every third day. Which meant he had even more trouble than usual sleeping, only now he didn't feel quite as free to prowl. Not that she did anything overtly to disturb him. Still, knowing there was a woman in bed only a few feet away was hardly conducive to sound sleep. He told himself it wasn't Lily in particular. Under the circumstances, any woman would have had the same effect. A man had certain basic needs, and he'd gone without sex for too long.

The thing was he was beginning to suspect his problem might be a little more complex than a simple need for sexual release. Which was why he reminded himself several times a day that this was strictly business. Strictly a temporary alliance. He cut short the shared reading, tried to keep conversation to a minimum, avoided touching—hell, he even avoided looking whenever he could.

What he hadn't quite mastered was the ability to switch off his brain on command.

What was it they said about the brain? That it was man's largest erogenous zone? The world's greatest aphrodisiac?

Oh, yeah. That he could vouch for.

 

They'd started out with a plan. That first day, as tired as they'd both been, they had opened all six boxes and made preliminary plans to inventory the contents. The second day Curt had started with the logbooks and miscellaneous loose papers. Each succeeding day had gone more or less the same, with Lily exploring the house and grounds, then settling down with either a diary or one of the travel columns.

Curt waited until she settled and then chose his own spot. If she stayed inside, he went out. If she sat out on the front porch, he kicked back in his living room lounger with a pillow for lumbar support. But then, sooner or later their paths would cross. She would pour iced tea and join him wherever he happened to be. If she'd started chattering, he'd have walked away, but she never did. She spoke now and then in that soft, slightly husky voice of hers with the unidentifiable accent, but mostly she said nothing.