“If you’ve come to kill me, you’ll have to use a gun.”

When the full impact of the man’s statement registered, Sara didn’t know whether to laugh or run from the room. “What a horrible thing to say,” she commented.

His ancient office chair squeaked as he slowly turned to face her. “Not to someone creeping around my house, it isn’t.”

“I wasn’t creeping,” Sara responded. “What would be the point of creeping after riding in that boat with the earsplitting motor? Don’t tell me you didn’t hear us arrive?”

“Of course I heard Winkelman’s boat. I just figured Winkie had forgotten the toilet paper or something and was dropping it off. I sure never thought he was leaving behind a snooping female.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “So now I’m creeping and snooping?”

He raised his hands as if he was stating the obvious. “Look,” he said. “You came into my place without so much as a hoot or a holler and tiptoed up to my room like a typical nosy woman.”

“Let’s get one thing straight. This is my place and I’ll walk around in it any way I please!”

That seemed to get him. His eyes registered the shock of bad news, then narrowed with irritation.

Sara couldn’t help noticing that those eyes were a startling shade of gray.

Dear Reader,

I’ve spent most of my life fixing things. As a teacher, I strove to improve young minds. When I became a licensed auctioneer, and my husband and I bought an auction house, my penchant for mending and refreshing became more tangible. I polished silver until it gleamed, and viewed every old piece of furniture and flea-market find as a potential heirloom.

It was only natural that the heroine of my first contemporary novel would be a fixer, too. But when Sara Crawford inherits a run-down inn and a neglected vineyard on a Lake Erie island and resolves to renovate, she doesn’t know she’ll have to fix the island’s four inhabitants, as well.

I hope you enjoy sharing Sara’s determined and sometimes humorous efforts to bring joy and purpose back to the lives of the men of Thorne Island. And when her persistence clashes with one sexy, stubborn man with a secret, she learns that her own priorities could use a little revamping themselves.

I’d love to hear from you. E-mail me at cynthoma@aol.com. Visit my Web site at www.cynthiathomason.com, or write me at P.O. Box 550068, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33355.

Cynthia Thomason

The Men of Thorne Island
Cynthia Thomason

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my son, John, whose strong opinions matter, and whose artistry with the English language has always made me proud.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER ONE

SARA CRAWFORD entered her office at precisely eight-thirty on Monday morning, walked halfway across the plum-colored carpet and stopped dead. “Whatever that is, it can’t be good,” she muttered. “Especially this close to tax deadline.” The red-and-white Federal Express envelope on top of her desk had all the appeal of a hurricane warning flag on a Fort Lauderdale beach.

Tossing her purse and briefcase on a chair, she headed for the chrome credenza lining one wall. Before she could even think about tackling the contents of the package, she needed to deal with the coffee machine.

A crusty brown stain in the bottom of the glass pot did more to irritate her than her assistant being late again. Sara carried the pot into her bathroom, dribbled a few drops of detergent over the burned-on mess and filled the pot with steaming hot water.

Then she sat at her desk and picked up the cardboard envelope addressed to Sara Crawford, CPA. It wasn’t particularly thick, so maybe it didn’t contain a late-filing client’s tax records. Nor was the return address familiar: Herbert Adams, Attorney, Cleveland, Ohio. Puzzled but relieved, she reached for her letter opener.

“Oh, hell! Look at the time.”

Candy Applebaum’s oath came from the reception room just before the administrative assistant stuck her head in Sara’s office. Her red hair was piled on top of her head, secured by a bright orange elastic band that did nothing to prevent over-moussed strands from sticking out in all directions. “I’m so sorry I’m late, Sara,” Candy said. “I almost made it on time, except I had one catastrophe after another this morning. My cat climbed on the table and swatted at the birdcage. The feed tray fell out of the rungs and all the bird seed went everywhere, and I had to…”

Sara smiled. “It’s all right, Candy. I just got here myself.”

Candy glanced at the credenza and grimaced. “I did it again, didn’t I? Forgot to turn off the coffeepot. Was it really gross?”

“Well, it—”

“No problem. I’ll take care of it.” Candy headed for the bathroom, but stopped at Sara’s desk and dropped a crumpled sack onto the cluttered surface. “Before I forget, this just came for you. Mr. Papalardo delivered it personally.” She sighed as she went into the bathroom. “He’s the sweetest man.”

Sara set down the FedEx envelope and stared in horror at the brown paper bag. He’d done it again. After she’d warned him repeatedly, he pulled the same trick every year. She could just picture the world’s “sweetest man” waiting on the sidewalk until she’d entered the building and then slinking inside. The security guard would greet him cheerfully. The janitor would wave hello. After all, everyone loved Tony Papalardo.

A dull ache centered itself behind Sara’s eyes. She picked up the bag and turned it over, foolishly hoping it would be different this year. It wasn’t. Bundles of paper loosely bound with rubber bands and paper clips scattered onto her desktop. Some scraps were actually identified with official Pappy’s Pizzeria stationery. Most of them were barely legible receipts smudged with tomato sauce or memos scratched on chianti-stained napkins. Sara put her head between her hands.

“Something wrong, Sara?”

A rhetorical question. “Candy, do you think Mr. Papalardo has any idea that he’s not my only client and today is April twelfth? Only three days to the deadline.”

Glancing over her shoulder at the mess on Sara’s desk, Candy said, “Oh, not again. Don’t worry. I’ll help you.”

“Thanks.” Sara glanced toward a pewter mirror across the room. She could almost visualize herself tugging every pin from her French twist and pulling out each strand of blond hair by the root. But she didn’t have time. Instead, she picked up Tony Papalardo’s paper bag and crushed it in her hands. “I’m going on vacation with my friends in five days, Candy,” she said. “Nothing is going to stop me from getting on that plane to Aruba. I’m really leaving.”

Candy grinned with delight. “Well, of course you are, Sara. And you’ll have a wonderful time. Isn’t that new guy you’ve been dating part of the group?”

Sara answered with caution, knowing where the question was leading. Candy was always trying to secure a happily-ever-after for her boss. “Yes, Donald is going, but don’t jump to conclusions. We’ve only had four dates.”

“Okay, but when you two stroll along those moonlit beaches, who knows what will happen?”

Sara shook her head and laughed. “You’re incorrigible.”

The phone rang in the outer office, and Candy scurried to answer it while Sara picked through the pile of pizzeria flotsam. She was interrupted when her intercom buzzed. “Yes, Candy.”

“It’s for you, Sara. A Mr. Herbert Adams from Cleveland. He said you’d be expecting his call.”

Cleveland? Of course, the envelope. Sara reached for the FedEx package with one hand and grabbed the phone with the other. “Hello, Mr. Adams? This is Sara Crawford. I’m sorry. I haven’t had a chance to open what you sent. I have it right here, though.”

The voice on the other end was crisp and competent. “Miss Crawford, I was Millicent Thorne’s attorney.”

It took a moment for the name to register, but when it did, Sara smiled. She hadn’t seen her mother’s Aunt Millie for fifteen years, since the summer she’d turned fourteen—the summer her mother died. But she remembered the disciplined woman with her sensible shoes and pearl-buttoned cardigan sweaters. “Of course,” she said. “How is Aunt Millie?”

There was a pause. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Miss Thorne passed away five days ago.”

Sara had only seen Millicent Thorne a half-dozen times in her life. Millie traveled a great deal, and Sara had been busy with school activities. Still, the news of her death sent a wave of sadness through her. Mr. Adams, a stranger, called to tell her that a member of her family had died, a woman she barely knew. There ought to be a sin covering this kind of situation. The sin of missed opportunities because at this moment Sara did indeed feel as if she’d let some part of her life slip away, and there was no way to get it back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I’m aware that you and Miss Thorne were never close.”

“How did she die, Mr. Adams?”

“Peacefully in her sleep, and she wanted for nothing. Your aunt lived comfortably, thanks to a lawsuit she won a few years ago. Her last years were spent in relative luxury.”

“I’m glad of that, at least.”

“She had a sizable estate,” Mr. Adams said, “and a will that clearly stipulated her wishes. She had a good many friends and helpful neighbors, whom she remembered in her will. And she remembered you, Miss Crawford.”

“Me? Why me? I hardly knew her.” Sara’s headache intensified. “I can’t accept an inheritance, Mr. Adams. If it’s money, perhaps you could arrange for one of Miss Thorne’s charities—”

“It’s not money, Miss Crawford. It’s Thorne-family property, and Miss Thorne very definitely wanted you to have it. She said she remembered you as a levelheaded girl. She thought you could manage it quite well.”

Property? What did Sara know about managing property? Ever since she’d left her father’s cozy bungalow in Brewster Falls, Ohio, she’d lived in college dormitories and rentals until settling a couple of years ago on the sixth floor of a Fort Lauderdale condominium. She’d given up fireplaces and front porches for the efficiency of a one-bedroom dwelling. She didn’t have time to handle more than a few hundred square feet of ceramic tile. “Where is this property, Mr. Adams?” she asked.

“Open the envelope and see for yourself.”

“Oh, of course.” She cradled the phone between her cheek and shoulder and cut through the envelope flap. After removing the contents, she pushed aside a standard legal-looking document and reached for a colorful brochure. “Own a Piece of Paradise,” was written across the top. There was a photograph of a lush green oblong of land in the center of a field of blue water. Underneath it said, “Beautiful, unspoiled Thorne Island.”

“Thorne Island?” Sara said into the phone. “I’ve inherited an island?”

“Indeed you have, Miss Crawford. An island about five miles off the coast of Sandusky, Ohio, in Lake Erie.”

Sara’s jaw dropped. She grabbed the phone before it slipped from her shoulder. “I can’t believe this, Mr. Adams. An island! I lived in Ohio most of my life, yet I’ve never heard of this place. The Bass Islands, yes. The resorts such as Put-in-Bay, of course. But Thorne Island? Where is it exactly?”

“Less than a mile from Put-in-Bay. The island played a role in the Battle of Lake Erie. I’m told Commodore Perry used it as a lookout. It’s a small property, only forty acres total, but if the pictures in the brochure are any indication, it’s quite lovely.”

Sara opened the brochure. A quiver of delight replaced the shock as she gazed at the glossy photos of Thorne Island, her island. One picture showed a small harbor with a narrow dock jutting into the lake. Another was of a charming Colonial-style cottage surrounded by a picket fence. A wooden sign over a gate read Cozy Cove Inn.

The rest of the brochure was sales propaganda written by the Golden Isles Development Corporation. It consisted of glowing reports of the island’s natural beauty, maps and details of how to reach it, various plots for sale and phone numbers of the development-company personnel.

“When was this brochure written, Mr. Adams?” Sara asked. “How long has the island been developed?”

“Actually it never was. I doubt there’s been any change there since the original few buildings were constructed over a hundred years ago. I mentioned a lawsuit a few minutes ago. It was a class-action suit filed by owners of various Great Lakes island properties against the Golden Isles Development Corporation. Company executives purchased several islands under fraudulent circumstances. The corporation was exposed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer a number of years ago. Miss Thorne and her cosuitors reaped an impressive financial award in the judgment. And the chief executives of the corporation are, to my knowledge, still cooling their heels in jail.”

“Wow. So does anyone live on the island now?”

“There were a few residents, people who paid rent to Miss Thorne, although no rental income has been deposited into Miss Thorne’s account recently. I haven’t kept up with the current population of the island. I found the brochure in Miss Thorne’s papers and included it in your package so you would have some idea of the property.”

“Do you know more about the island’s history, Mr. Adams?”

“Miss Thorne once told me it was discovered by a missionary on an expedition paid for by the king of France. The island was originally called Bertrand Island after the missionary. Your aunt changed the name a few years before she died.”

Sara couldn’t help herself. She was falling in love with the old missionary’s discovery. The peace and tranquillity of the island beckoned her like an oasis in the desert. Suddenly she knew she wouldn’t be going to Aruba in five days, after all.

“I’ll arrange to fly into Cleveland on Saturday,” she said, rifling through the papers on her desk and finding the deed to her property. “Is there any reason I should see you before I go to the island?”

“Well, there is the matter of property taxes owed at the present time. I’d be glad to handle that for you if you like.”

Property taxes? “How much is due?”

“I’m afraid Miss Thorne let this matter slide. With penalties and interest, there is a current balance of thirty-eight hundred dollars. Is that a problem?”

Thirty-eight hundred dollars! Sara pictured a huge wedge being lifted from the pie that was her savings account. Still, taxes had to be paid or penalties would escalate rapidly. And surely she would make up the deficit with the rental income. “No, it’s not a problem, Mr. Adams. I’ll send you a check.”

“Very well, then. Enjoy your visit to your island, Miss Crawford, and good luck.”

Sara hung up and buzzed her assistant. “Candy, please change my flight reservations. Arrange for an open-ended ticket to Cleveland for April seventeenth.”

“Cleveland? You’re going to Cleveland now?”

“That’s right.”

Predictably adaptable, Candy relinquished moonlit beaches and embraced the heartland. “Cool. I watch Drew Carey all the time. Cleveland rocks, you know.”

“That’s good to know,” Sara said. She disconnected the intercom and punched in a number on her private line. A familiar voice answered after two rings. “Crawford’s Texaco.”

“Dad, hi.”

“Sarabelle! What’s new?”

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you, which I’m going to do in person. That’s why I called, to let you know I’m planning to stop in Brewster Falls in a week or so.”

“Hey, great! Best news I’ve had all day.”

It was the reaction Sara expected. She leaned back in her chair, drew a deep breath and savored the sound of her father’s voice.

THE FRIENDS with whom Sara had planned the Aruba trip were disappointed when she canceled—and baffled by her decision. She pictured Donald’s expression from his tone of voice when she called him. “Why would anyone want to go to Lake Erie?” he asked. “Isn’t it dead or something?”

“No, it isn’t dead—not anymore.” She told him about the anti-pollution groups that had worked diligently to clean up the water and explained that Lake Erie was now a safe playground for boating and swimming. Donald practically snored over the phone.

Sara ignored his reaction. Her growing enthusiasm for her trip more than compensated for her friends’ pessimism, even though the five days before her flight were the most hectic of her life. She managed to complete all her tax returns, even Tony Papalardo’s, while she tended to details necessary for an extended trip and packed a range of clothes to fit the capricious nature of a Lake Erie spring.

When she arrived at the Cleveland airport, she rented a car and headed west toward Sandusky. She planned to take a ferry to Put-in-Bay on South Bass Island—the largest of the Lake Erie islands. She didn’t know how she would get to Thorne Island, but Herbert Adams had said it was only a mile farther, so she didn’t anticipate a problem.

Leaving her car in the ferry lot, Sara boarded the large passenger boat midafternoon and arrived at South Bass less than an hour later. She was enchanted with the island’s primary village, Put-in-Bay. Quaint, refurbished cottages lined the narrow streets. A small business district boasted ice-cream shops, cafés and specialty stores. Visitors could choose from several inviting hotels. The island’s charm made Sara more anxious to see her own property. She inquired at the harbor about transportation to Thorne Island.

An employee of the ferry company gave her disappointing news. “There isn’t any boat that goes to Thorne,” he said. “Leastways, not a public one.”

“Then how do people get there?” she asked.

“People don’t,” he said. “Not tourists, anyway, though Winkleman goes there two, three times a week.”

“Wonderful. Where do I find Winkleman?”

“At the Happy Angler this time of day. You could set your watch by it.”

Having gotten directions to the local tavern and a description of Winkleman, Sara located the captain she intended to hire. She walked into his boisterous circle of friends and tapped him on the shoulder. “Pardon me. Are you Mr. Winkleman?”

He set a mug of beer on the counter and leaned back on a well-used bar stool. “Guess I could be,” he said.

“I’m looking for someone to take me to Thorne Island. I understand you go there.”

Winkleman removed a sudsy mustache from his upper lip with his index finger and pushed an old naval cap back on a patch of thick gray hair. “Was just there yesterday. Don’t plan to go again for two days.”

A two-day layover—even in charming Put-in-Bay—was not part of Sara’s plan. “I really need to go today, Mr. Winkleman. Is there anyone else who could take me?”

“Nobody else goes.”

The sailor’s succinct answer puzzled Sara. Why wasn’t there regular service to Thorne Island? She recalled the photos of the pretty harbor and the delightful Cozy Cove Inn. Surely these attractions should lure tourists to the island. “I’ll pay you of course,” she said. “More than your regular fee, if that will help to persuade you.”

He squinted at her from beneath scraggly charcoal eyebrows. “It’ll cost you twenty bucks.”

It sounded reasonable. “That’s fine,” she said. “I left my bags at the harbor office. Can we go now?”

“Gotta finish my beer first. Meet you there.”

Fifteen minutes later Sara decided that maybe twenty dollars wasn’t such a bargain, after all. The captain’s boat smelled of fish, and twice during the short ride to Thorne Island, she had to pull her bags clear of a steadily increasing pool of water seeping into the stern.

Conversation with her captain was practically impossible because of the roar of the engine. She tried to ask him about the people who lived on the island. Again he said very little, commenting only that everyone there was a close buddy of his.

When a patch of green became recognizable as a shoreline, Winkleman slowed the boat. Sara tucked her wind-whipped hair into what was left of the French braid she’d fashioned that morning. Then she turned her attention to her island.

She thought she’d recognize the tidy little harbor from the brochure and looked for the bright yellow mooring ropes spanning the length of its pier. Instead, she saw a dilapidated wooden platform jutting into the water on precariously tilted posts. Winkleman maneuvered into position beside one of them.

“Is this the main dock?” she asked.

“This is the only dock,” he said.

She climbed onto rickety boards that creaked under her feet. There was none of the usual activity one expected of a quaint village harbor. There were no shops or boats. The entire area consisted of a one-room clapboard bait house with broken windows.

“Oh, dear,” Sara sighed. “I hadn’t expected things to be quite this way.”

Winkleman tossed her bags onto the dock and grinned up at her. “Nice, ain’t it? Some of these islands have begun to look pretty shabby. The fellows that live here keep Thorne up pretty good.”

Her gaze wandered to the clumps of overgrown plants that skirted the shoreline. A narrow, dirt pathway through a thicket of brush and trees led somewhere. “There is a hotel on the island, isn’t there?” she asked.

Winkleman appeared thoughtful. Finally a light dawned in his eyes. “Right. The Cozy Cove. It’s just up that pathway.”

Thank goodness. Sara’s misgivings were replaced with a glimmer of hope. At least the delightful little bed-and-breakfast was real enough. So what if the dock needed some work? She could manage funds for a few minor repairs. She picked up her suitcases, anticipating her first evening on her island.

Winkleman untied his mooring line, took the twenty she offered and pushed away from the dock. “See ya.”

Apprehension suddenly dampened Sara’s enthusiasm. What if there was no phone on the island? In her rush to pack, she’d left her cell phone in Fort Lauderdale. And now her only link to the mainland was about to roar out of her life. “Wait! Mr. Winkleman, how can I reach you?”

He chugged back to her and took a ragged tablet from the console of his boat. “I’ll be back in two days,” he said while scribbling, “but here’s my number if you need to call. Doubt you will, though. The boys take care of things. Ol’ Brody has a cell phone. He’d probably let you use it.”

She set down a suitcase and took the paper before it could blow out of his hand and into the water. Then she shoved it deep into the pocket of her purse. All at once, that phone number and a cell phone belonging to someone named Ol’ Brody seemed absolutely vital to her existence. Winkleman was a hundred yards from the dock when she finally turned and headed up the pathway.

Following two twists in the lane, Sara came to a wood-sided building that appeared as weary as she suddenly felt. She leaned against the weathered picket fence surrounding the property and tried to associate the structure in front of her with the one in the brochure photo.

It was barely recognizable as the Cozy Cove Inn. Only a sign hanging by one rusty nail from a post at the front gate confirmed its identity. The front-porch roof sagged against the peeling white gingerbread molding of its supports.

Sara stepped onto the porch, dropped her bags by her feet and sank into a drooping wicker chair. She might have sat there indefinitely had she not noticed the baskets of blooming spring flowers hanging from the eaves. They were the only sign that someone still cared about the place.

She stood and paced the length of the veranda. Old wood planks groaned under her feet, but fortunately remained intact. With renewed optimism, she turned the knob on the door and entered her Cozy Cove Inn.

She stepped into a wide hallway furnished with only a guest-registration counter, a wall clock that had stopped at eight-twenty-two and a pair of Windsor chairs scarred with what high-priced decorators might call character.

To her left was a large parlor. It was impossible to determine the style or colors of anything in the room. Every piece of furniture had been covered by a sheet except one wing chair and a small table by the fireplace. The walls were adorned with peaceful country prints and shelves of hardback books.

Feeling more like an intruder than a proprietor, Sara slowly backed out of the room. Unease raised the hair on her neck. The inn appeared empty, yet Sara had the distinct sense that she was not alone.

She’d never believed in the supernatural, yet the presence of another soul in this house was as real to her at this moment as was the newel post at the bottom of the thick banister. She curved her fingers around the post and willed herself to go up the stairs.

A center hallway veered to the left and right of the second-floor landing. Doors stretched the length of the hall. All of them were closed except one at the very end. Weak sunlight mixed with an artificial glow poured into the passage. Sara approached cautiously, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. Logic told her that she wouldn’t find any of course. Mr. Winkleman would have told her if there was something bizarre about the island. Surely he wouldn’t have left her alone…

The first unnatural sounds of Thorne Island floated from the room to Sara’s ears. It was a light tapping, almost like… Yes, that was it. Sara stood outside the open door listening to the harmless sound of someone pecking a computer keyboard.

She stepped over the threshold and had her first look at the other resident of the Cozy Cove Inn. It was a man and his back was to her. Dark, thick curls covered the collar of his knit shirt.

His hands halted above the keyboard. His back straightened and his voice, low and hoarse, reached her across the room. “If you’re trying to scare me to death, it’ll never work. So if you came to kill me, you’d best use a gun.”

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN THE FULL IMPACT of the man’s statement registered in Sara’s brain, she didn’t know whether to laugh or run from the room. She did neither, but instead spoke to the back of his head. “What a horrible thing to say.”

His ancient office chair squeaked as he turned slowly toward her. “Not to someone creeping around your house, it isn’t.”

Though he faced her, he was still in the shadows. She couldn’t detect any details of his features.

“Of course, I didn’t know at first that you were a woman,” he added.

Sara hated being at a disadvantage. The last amber rays of daylight speared through the louvered shutters at his back. He could see her clearly enough, but his form was nothing but an amorphous gray blob to her. “What difference does it make that I’m a woman?” she said. “I could still kill you.”

He stretched one leg, then settled his ankle on the opposite knee, a casual pose for someone who just a moment before had thought he might be taking his last breath. “Yeah, but you won’t. Women don’t like to murder people after they’ve looked into their eyes.”

“Then don’t get too confident,” Sara shot back, “because I haven’t seen your eyes yet.”

He deliberately moved his chair out of the shadow until sunlight fell across his upper body. “There, is that better?”

It was. The shapeless mass had transformed into an exceedingly acceptable-looking human. Except perhaps for his almost black hair, which was unstylishly long and untidy. It curled over his forehead to meet a slightly lighter pair of straight eyebrows. Much of the rest of an interesting face was hidden by at least two days’ growth of beard. He was fairly young, near her own age, Sara assumed, prompting her to conclude that she wasn’t looking at “Ol’ Brody.”

Once Sara had noted these details, the man’s shirt commanded her attention. She’d given her father a similar one at least fifteen years ago when he took up golf, and her sense of humor had been quite different from what it was now. A beige knit background hugged the man’s chest respectably, but it was the eighteen numbered golf flags fluttering around his torso that made Sara choke back her laughter.

Each flag had a different cartoon printed on its surface. Flag number sixteen, the one she could see most clearly, depicted a droopy-eyed fellow with an ice bag on his head and a thermometer sticking out of his mouth. The words “Feeling under par” were printed next to the caricature. Other clichéd golf references decorated the remaining flags. Sara covered her mouth with her hand, but wasn’t successful in stopping a chuckle.

The man plucked a portion of the shirt away from his chest and stared down at it. “What? You don’t like my shirt?”

“It would be all right if it were a cocktail napkin at the nineteenth hole.”

“Hey, it’s got a pocket. That’s why I like it. Try to find shirts with pockets these days.”

Sara’s limited experience with shopping for men’s clothes hadn’t included an awareness of shirt pockets, so she just said, “I know, and it’s a darned shame.”

“It is if you smoke.”

“Do you smoke?”

“Not anymore. But I like knowing I still have a pocket in case I start again. Basically I just hate it when manufacturers mess up a good thing after I get used to it.”

The hint of a smug grin lifted the corners of his mouth. This man obviously liked to have the last word. And once he knew he wasn’t about to be shot, there was no lack of confidence in his manner. “But we’re off the subject here,” he said. “What are you doing creeping around my place?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I wasn’t creeping. What’s the point of trying to remain unnoticed after riding in that boat with the earsplitting engine? Don’t tell me you didn’t hear us arrive.”

“Of course I heard the boat. I just figured Winkie had forgotten the toilet paper or something and was dropping it off. I sure never thought that what he was leaving behind was a snooping female.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “So now I’m snooping and creeping?”

He raised his hands palms up as if his point was obvious. “Look, you came into my place without so much as a hoot or a holler and tiptoed up to my room like a typical nosy woman on your little lady cat’s feet…”

Suddenly his golf flags weren’t amusing anymore. They were just stupid. And his hair wasn’t untidy, it was unkempt. And his attitude belonged way back in an era before golf was even invented. Sara’s index finger poked out at him as if it had a mind of its own, which it must have, since she hated for anyone to do that to her. “Now look,” she said in a voice that quivered with underlying anger, “first of all, this is my place, and I’ll walk around in it any way I please!”

That seemed to get to him. He gave her a dark look. “What do you mean, your place?”

“I mean this hotel is mine, this island is mine. In fact, every single place on this island—if there are any others—belongs to me.” For emphasis, she yanked the deed out of her purse and held it up to the challenge in his eyes. “Would you care to inspect this document?”

He stood up from the chair, all lean six-feet-plus of him, and glared at the paper in her hand with eyes that she saw now were startlingly gray. “What’s happened to Millie?” he demanded.

The mention of her aunt’s name gave him some credibility. At least he wasn’t a squatter. Sara softened her tone. “Millicent Thorne died last week.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his middle finger to the bridge of his nose. “Damn it. Why didn’t somebody tell me?”

His reaction caught her off guard. “You knew my aunt personally?”

“Millicent Thorne is…was your aunt?”

“Actually great-aunt, yes.”

“Well, of course I knew her. I’ve been living on her island for the past six years.”

“And not paying any rent for a good part of it, too.”

His eyes, which had only just registered the shock of bad news, now narrowed with irritation. “Now, hold on a minute. I haven’t missed a single month paying my rent. For your information, Millie stopped collecting my checks. She said she didn’t need the money. Told me to hold on to them and send a bunch all at once when she asked for them.”

“Why would she do that?”

He turned away from her and sat back down in his desk chair. “You’d have to ask Millie about that, which might be difficult at the moment, but I would suspect it had to do with a little something called trust.”

“She trusted you?”

He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a short stack of checks held together with a paper clip. “She did, and for good reason.” He thrust the checks at Sara, holding them at the level of her chest until she took them. “Those are my rent checks, every one of them for the last year, dated by the month. They’re all there in chronological order. Go ahead, see for yourself.”

She flipped through them. They were dated consecutively, made out to Millicent Thorne and signed “N. Bass.” She looked up. “Bass? That’s your name? After the island or the fish?”

“Pick one. It’s only a name.”

Sara returned her attention to the checks. Suddenly Mr. N. Bass’s name wasn’t important. The amount of the rent he paid each month was. “One hundred dollars?” she said. “You only paid my aunt one hundred dollars a month?”

He shrugged. “That’s what she asked for.”

The accountant’s hackles on Sara’s neck prickled. “That’s ridiculous. You live here practically like a king of your own private domain, in a cozy little inn, which, by the way, you’ve allowed to fall into pitiful disrepair, for the sum of one hundred dollars a month?”

He nodded. “I’m not complaining about the deal.”

She thrust the checks and the deed into her shoulder bag. “Obviously not. Then I guess you won’t mind if I raise your rent to help cover the cost of repairs around here.”

He met her self-assurance with cool disdain. “Sorry. You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve got a twenty-five-year lease, with a clause prohibiting rent increases, and I’ve only lived here six of them.”

Mr. N. Bass must have thought he was dealing with an idiot. “That’s absurd,” she said. “My aunt had an attorney, and even if you had tried to talk her into such a financially unsound arrangement, he would never have allowed—”

Mr. Bass leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs at the ankles. “You talking about Herb Adams?”

Herb? “You know Mr. Adams, too?”

“Sure. He was present when I signed the lease. He did, in fact, advise Millie against such generosity, but she insisted.”

N. Bass had the nerve to follow that statement with a short burst of laughter. Sara quickly changed the shocked expression on her face to one of outrage. His cocky smile faded, but his attitude did not.

“Never mind asking a bunch of questions I have no intention of answering,” he added. “I’ll just tell you that Millie and I were friends. I helped her out once, and she repaid me.” That odd little grin, which under other circumstances might have been interpreted as somewhat endearing, twisted his mouth again. “Millicent was a fair woman. But then, you know that.”

Sara spied a chair a few feet from her. She stepped over to it and sank into its plump floral cushion. She had to think rationally. Sara prided herself on her ability to get to the fundamental truth of a situation. Finally she said, “Mr. Bass, this all may be true…”

“It is true.”

“All right. I don’t question your story, but the island belongs to me now, and any agreements you had with my aunt are no longer applicable. If I see fit to raise your rent, I am well within my right to do that.”

He clasped his hands in his lap and shook his head slowly. “Nope. You’re not. Millie assigned all lessee’s rights to her tenants in the event a new landlord took over the property. I’ll let you take a look at my lease. You might be able to fight it, but it would be expensive and time-consuming.”

“And with my luck someone actually would kill you before I won the case,” Sara said. “It wouldn’t be any fun unless I had the satisfaction of seeing your expression when I beat you.”

A genuine grin split his face for the first time, and Sara found herself disliking him a little less. But if she had to accept this man’s living arrangements on Thorne Island, then she and he were still a long way from bridging the gap from dislike to tolerance.

“Cheer up, Mrs….?”

“It’s Miss. Miss Sara Crawford.”

He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “There you see, things could be a lot worse between us.”

“I don’t see how.”

“You could be married or ugly. And you’re neither one of those things. I think we’ve got a future, Miss Crawford.”

She gritted her teeth. “I think we’ve got a problem, Mr. Bass.”

“Nick! Nickie! Everything all right up there?”

A low, booming voice rolled up the staircase and down the hall to Mr. Bass’s room, and Sara nearly jumped out of her skin. “Who’s that?”

“That’s Dexter Sweet, former linebacker for the Cleveland Browns. He’s a big man with thighs the size of tires, but don’t let him scare you. The goodness in his soul could make nightingales sing. And that yelling thing he just did—that’s how you enter someone’s house.”

“Oh, please, will you—”

“Everything’s fine, Dex,” Nick Bass called. “We’ve just got company.”

An African-American male filled the doorway. Sara couldn’t tell anything about his soul, but the rest of Nick’s description was absolutely accurate, though he might have mentioned Dexter Sweet’s height. It was just shy of a California redwood.

Dexter spared her a quick, astonished glance before settling a worried gaze on his friend. “I heard Captain Winkie’s boat and thought something was wrong. He’s not due back till day after tomorrow. Then I couldn’t find Ryan, and Brody was still snoring when I looked in on him.”

Nick extended his hand to indicate Sara. “Dex, meet Miss Sara Crawford, our new landlady. Sara, this is Dexter Sweet.”

Amazingly, despite his size, there was something about the man’s round boyish face that made his last name seem appropriate. She stood up, offered her hand and looked into Mr. Sweet’s perplexed brown eyes. “Did you say ‘Captain Winkie’?”

He nodded.

She couldn’t stop herself. Exhaustion and shock had taken their toll. Laughter bubbled from her throat and she could barely get her next words out. “I’m standing here with Mr. Sweet and Mr. Bass, and we’re all talking about Captain Winkie. Somehow I feel like I’m in the middle of a Saturday-morning cartoon.”

The two men exchanged a look that was part male commiseration and part she’s-a-woman-that-explains-it. Sara wouldn’t have been surprised if they both put a finger to the side of their heads and made circles.

“Tell me something, Mr. Sweet,” she said through a continuing fit of laughter, “do you pay rent on this island?”

“Yeah.” He dragged the word out with caution. “Been here almost six years now.”

“And how much do you pay?”

“A hundred a month.”

“Terrific. And are your checks stored in a drawer somewhere?”

“Yeah, Nick’s.”

Nick Bass opened the desk drawer, withdrew a stack of checks similar to his own and brought them to her. Each one was dated and signed by Dexter Sweet.

It wasn’t even enough to cover the back taxes, but it was a start. “Thank you, gentlemen,” Sara said. “Now I think I’ll go find a room for myself. Do we have any fresh linens?”

“I’ll let you use mine,” Nick said. “The cupboard down the hall that they’re sitting in is yours. But the spare sheets belong to me. Share and share alike I always say. Pick any room you like, Miss Crawford. Make yourself at home.”

“I am at home, Mr. Bass.”

A SHARP PAIN shot up Nick’s leg. He limped back to the desk chair and sat down.

Dexter frowned at him. “Are you doing your exercises, Nick?”

“Sure, I’m doing them, just like you told me,” he said without looking Dexter in the eye. “But I figure after six years a guy’s just got to live with a little discomfort.” He gave his friend a crooked smile. “It beats the alternative, anyway.”

Dexter grunted his agreement and sat in the chair Sara had vacated. “What’s going on here, Nick? Who is this Crawford woman?”

“I told you, Dex. She’s our new landlady and Millicent Thorne’s great-niece. Millie died last week and left the island to her. She showed me the deed, and it looks like everything’s in order.”

“What does that mean for all of us?”

“Actually, Dex, now that I’ve had a few minutes to think about it, Millie did us a favor.”

“But Miss Thorne was the best landlady we could ever have had.”

“True, but we knew she wouldn’t live forever, and when you think about all the possible outcomes for Thorne Island, having Millie’s niece as the owner seems like the best one. Sara Crawford will probably hang around for a couple of days, flex her landlady muscles a bit and then take off. You saw what she was like—nice clothes, educated manners, soft hands.” His mind wandered to Sara’s other obvious attributes, but he refrained from listing them. “She won’t have any interest in staying around here.”

Dexter nodded. “Yeah, why would a woman like that want to hang around a bunch of independent cusses like us?”

“Exactly. I give Miss Crawford three days tops, then she’ll be history.” He grinned at his own private thought. “Though I imagine she’ll make us send in our rent checks on time.”

Dexter’s answering grin curled into his cheeks. “She makes a darned pretty chapter of Thorne Island history, though, doesn’t she, Nick?”

Nick nodded slowly. “Yep. She’s not hard to look at.”

Dexter stood and headed for the door, but stopped before leaving the room. “By the way, Nick, did she see what you had on the computer screen?”

“No. She wasn’t the least interested. I use the name Nicolas Bass in the top margin, so she wouldn’t have suspected anything, anyway. She doesn’t seem like the type who’d be curious about the ramblings of a grumpy, thirty-eight-year-old hermit.”

JUGGLING BED LINENS and her suitcases, Sara chose a room at the opposite end of the hallway from Nick’s. She flicked the light switch beside the door. A single bulb hanging from the ceiling crackled and spit, finally casting a sickly yellow light on more furnishings covered with sheets. Cringing at the potential cost of electrical repairs, Sara dropped her belongings onto the floor.

She snapped open one neatly folded sheet and fluttered it over a gray mattress. A fresh scent—familiar from Sara’s childhood—filled the room. She hadn’t smelled that clean aroma since the days her mother had folded the family’s laundry from the backyard clothesline. Bass must dry his laundry in the open air, she thought. Probably because the inn didn’t have a working electric dryer.

She doubted the island had many modern conveniences. In fact, considering the condition of the Cozy Cove, she’d been dumbfounded to see a computer in Nick Bass’s room. She’d tried to read the screen, and once she’d recognized standard manuscript format, she’d been doubly curious. But she hadn’t gotten close enough to actually read the words.

Strange, she thought now as she tucked a corner of the top sheet between the mattress and box spring, she wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to see a racing form or even a video game on Mr. Bass’s monitor. But a scholarly-looking bit of text—somehow that didn’t fit the picture she’d formed of the man so far.

There’s an old saying, Sara, she said to herself. You can never tell a person by his dopey-looking golf shirt. She was glad she had a full week to devote to this island project. It might take that long to understand her bizarre tenants, especially the aggravating—but oddly appealing—Mr. Bass.

CHAPTER THREE

THE ROOM Sara had selected turned out to be almost cheerful. She removed the sheet that had been thrown over a cedar wardrobe and found dainty floral stenciling on the doors. When she uncovered a pair of colonial arrow-back chairs flanking a fireplace, she discovered bright chintz cushions on the seats. She gave the shutters at the windows a thorough dusting, which gave new life to the well-polished slats.

Yes, she would be quite comfortable in this room, once she solved the immediate problem of food. Since the Cozy Cove obviously wasn’t a working hotel, it probably didn’t have a restaurant or the personnel to run it. A snack breakfast on the airplane and a nonfat yogurt cone in Put-in-Bay wasn’t nearly enough to sustain Sara. Surely the inn had a kitchen. She went downstairs to raid the refrigerator.

Behind the registration counter and opposite the parlor, she located a spacious dining room with sheets hiding what appeared to be a long table and eight chairs. In the near darkness of dusk, she felt her way through that room to a kitchen beyond. She flipped the light switch by the entrance, and another single overhead bulb glared down on a red brick floor.

Sara made a quick inspection of the appliances and decided they had once been used to prepare meals for a large number of people. But they hadn’t been operated in some time. She ran her hand across the porcelain top of a six-burner stove, and years of smeared grease stuck to her fingers. Hardened boil-over remains coated the sides of the oven. When she opened the door of an ancient refrigerator, she grimaced at the streaks of mildew.

The rest of the kitchen was in much the same condition. Pitted kettles hung from brass hooks in the ceiling or lay any which way on the rough wood of the countertop. An old oak worktable surrounded by four simple ladder-back chairs had an assortment of alien substances embedded in its scratched surface. Sara’s stomach, which just moments before had growled to be fed, nearly revolted at the conditions under which its next meal would have to be prepared.

That was until Sara saw a little corner of the kitchen that made her heart—and stomach—rejoice. Sparkling under the unforgiving light, next to a modern apartment-size refrigerator, was a scrupulously clean area of counter. A gleaming-white two-burner stovetop and a microwave oven sat side by side on the varnished pine surface. A cabinet above this miraculously neat oasis held two spotless pans, a pair of matching skillets and assorted clean tableware. If these items existed in this chaos of dirt and grease, could decent food be far away?

She began a search for cans, bottles and jars, checking cabinets in the tidy corner of the kitchen.

“Can I help you, Miss Crawford?”

Like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, Sara slammed a lower cabinet door and stood up. “Mr. Bass, you don’t have to sneak up on me.”

Another of those smug grins tugged at his lips. “Now we’re even, eh?”

He crossed the threshold into the kitchen and came toward her. A pair of brown chinos accentuated his long, lean legs and matched the sand traps on his shirt. Sara detected a slight limp in his gait, though it might have been caused by the uneven old brick flooring. She pulled her gaze away from him and continued her search for food. “I wasn’t aware we were keeping score.”

She sensed his amusement even though she couldn’t see his face and hated the flush of embarrassment it brought to her face. “Oh, yes you were, Sara,” he said. “You’re just miffed because it’s a tie.”

“What nonsense,” she responded, acutely aware that he’d called her by her first name. A chuckle rumbled from his throat and seemed to reverberate down her spine.

“What are you doing in my kitchen—oh, pardon me, your kitchen—going through my things?” he asked.

She banged another cupboard door closed. This one contained various cleaning supplies, and she tucked the information away for later use. “I’m looking for food. And while we’re on the subject, may I say that under your supervision, my kitchen has fallen into a state that isn’t fit for pigs.”

“Then it’s fortunate we don’t have any pigs, or I don’t know where they’d eat.”

She scowled at him, though judging from his teasing grin, her glare had lost its effectiveness. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Mr. Bass, I need something to eat. You’re not going to let me starve, are you?”

“You can buy food on the island.”

“Thank goodness. Where?”

“At Brody’s cottage. He’s an ex-marine and he calls our supply store the commissary. He orders the groceries and we buy them from him. But he’s not there now. He fishes every day at dusk. But no, I won’t let you starve. In fact, you can even use my part of the kitchen, which I maintain for my own use.”

She uncrossed her arms and managed a tight smile. “Thanks.”

“What kind of soup do you like?”

Soup. She could almost feel a steaming mug of delicious broth between her hands, almost taste the savory herbs and spices. “That sounds wonderful,” she said. “I like all kinds—broccoli and cheese, roasted chicken and wild rice, any of the new low-fat soups are delicious….”

“That’s fine, but I meant, do you like Chicken Noodle or Tomato?”

“Those are my choices?”

“Brody volunteered to keep us supplied, but he isn’t particularly imaginative.”

“I see. Tomato, then.”

Nick went to a tall pantry cabinet near the back door and produced the trademark red-and-white can, which he set on his clean counter. Then he went to his small refrigerator. “Now, what kind of meat for your sandwich?”

“Do we really need to go through this again?”

“No. We have salami.”

He took bread and meat slices from the refrigerator. “And to drink?”

“You tell me.”

“Actually I have six different brands of beer—”

She wasn’t surprised.

“—and one Mountain Dew.”

“Shall I fight you for the Mountain Dew?”

He took the can from the refrigerator and tossed it to her. “No. I’ll let you win this one.” He pointed to a stool next to the counter. “Have a seat. I’ll even cook.”

The entire meal process took less than thirty minutes from preparation to cleanup. And during that time the few sentences Sara and Nick spoke to each other involved passing the condiments and a smattering of comments about Millicent Thorne. Sara admitted that she hadn’t known her great-aunt very well and even expressed her guilt about that situation.

“It’s too bad,” he said. “You would have liked her. In fact, I see similarities between the two of you.”

Since he didn’t elaborate, Sara decided to accept his statement as a compliment.

Once the dishes were put away, Nick went out the back door and stood on the stoop. “Will you be needing anything else from the refrigerator tonight?” he asked through the screen door.

“No, I don’t think so. Why?”

“I always turn off the generator before I go to bed. Can’t see wasting fuel. The food stays cold all night if the refrigerator door’s not opened, and I’m an early riser.”

He was turning off the generator? Sara’s stomach did a somersault of alarm. “But does that mean the lights won’t work?”

“Sure does. Take one of the lanterns from the parlor. They’re not just decoration. There should be plenty of oil in the well. You’ll find a flashlight in the pantry, too.”

Resigned to the conventions of Thorne Island, she got the flashlight and watched Bass step down from the back porch. His limp was more obvious now. In fact, a tightening of his facial muscles indicated that he was in pain. Since they’d just shared a few companionable moments, Sara felt comfortable enough to ask, “Are you all right, Mr. Bass?”

He looked up at her from the yard. “What do you mean?”

“Your limp. I couldn’t help noticing.”

“And you want to know why I have it?”

“I don’t mean to pry, but if you’d like to tell me…”

“A few years ago I was shot. The bullet entered at the base of my spine and pretty well screwed things up.”

The flashlight clattered to the floor. “You were shot?”

“Yep. So when I told you earlier that if you meant to kill me, you’d better use a gun, I really wasn’t relishing the idea all that much. Good night, Sara.”

That was obviously all the information she was going to get. She picked up the flashlight and spoke to his dark form as it blended with the angular shadows of the inn. “Good night, Nick.”

THE NEXT MORNING Sara awoke to the sound of voices filtering through her second-story window. She got out of bed and opened the slats of her shutter just enough to peek outside. A cool breeze washed over her, and she breathed in the fresh, heady scent of the flowers in the porch baskets.

Four men stood in the overgrown front yard of the inn just beyond the edge of the porch eaves. Sara could see three of them clearly and just an arm and a foot of the fourth. She recognized Dexter Sweet, his huge arms bulging from the short sleeves of an athletic T-shirt. She heard the low timbre of Nick Bass’s voice coming from under the porch. She didn’t know the other two men, but assumed they were the pair Dexter had mentioned the day before—Brody and Ryan.

One man was short, thin, with brown, shoulder-length hair bound in a leather strap at his nape. The other was medium height, with a middle-aged paunch and slumping shoulders. “Ol’ Brody,” Sara concluded. He wore a canvas fishing hat with an ageless collection of rusty lures pinned to every square inch. Definitely the island’s unimaginative grocer.

Sara tuned in to the conversation when Brody was speaking or, more appropriately, complaining. “Hell-fire! How long is she going to stay?”

Nick answered in a harsh whisper, but Sara couldn’t make out the words.

The small man with the ponytail spoke next. He glanced up several times at the second story. Ducking out of sight, Sara was able to interpret his opinion from the tone of his voice. He didn’t seem any more pleased about her arrival than Brody had.

When she risked a peek through the shutters again, she saw Brody nodding his head, causing the lures to bob up and down. “I agree with Ryan. I don’t cotton to having a woman snooping around our island. Millie Thorne left us alone.”

Dexter raised his hands as if to quiet the complaints of his friends. “Now don’t go borrowing trouble,” he said. “Like Nickie told me last night, she probably—”

Nick stopped Dexter’s words with a sharp warning and stepped away from the porch. He looked up at Sara’s window. She jerked back again. Then the men moved down the crumbling walkway of the inn toward the path to the harbor.

Sara opened the door to her wardrobe, took out underwear, a pair of jeans and a San Francisco T-shirt and tossed them onto her bed. Then she slipped her arms through the sleeves of her terry cloth robe and tied it in front. Walking down the hall to the bathroom, she mumbled to herself, “Thanks for the welcoming committee, boys, and have a nice day!”

THE COZY COVE INN was an interesting blend of two centuries. While the decorative moldings and wooden ceiling planks in every room were clearly from the 1890s, the bath fixtures probably dated from the 1950s. Small black-and-white tiles lined the lavatory walls and the small circular shower, and provided a nice backdrop for white porcelain fixtures. The toilet with its oddly squat shape worked sufficiently well, but the night before, Sara had carefully checked the oak seat for splinters before using it.

The inn had an adequate hot-water heater, though insufficient pressure. It took Sara longer than normal to rinse shampoo from her hair.

It was eight-thirty by the time she’d dressed, dried her hair and secured it in a clip at her nape. Obviously morning activities started early on Thorne Island. With Nick gone, she’d have to scrounge around his kitchen again in search of coffee. A trip to Brody’s grocery store and a thorough cleaning of her own area of the big kitchen were first on her list after she had a jolt of caffeine. She didn’t intend to “borrow” from Nick any more than she had to.

With sunlight streaming in the windows, the clean section of kitchen gleamed even more brightly than it had the night before. Unfortunately the grimy section looked even worse. But Sara’s resolve was bolstered by the sight of the automatic drip coffeemaker on Nick’s counter. Dark brew steamed from the glass pot, and a clean crockery mug and sugar packets sat next to it. Nick had obviously left the supplies where she would find them. Sara smiled to herself. If he didn’t work so hard at being annoying, Sara could almost tolerate Nick for this one friendly gesture.

After her second cup, she took cleaning supplies from the cupboard and set to work on the stove. Layers of grime slowly dissolved under the onslaught of bleach and pine-scented solvent. An hour later she decided to tackle the brick floor and set about finding a mop and a bucket. She spied a wood-paneled door in the middle of an interior kitchen wall and thought it might be a cleaning closet. She grabbed the knob, but Nick’s voice stopped her from turning it.

“I don’t think you should go into the cellar,” he warned through the back screen door. The hinges squeaked as he opened it and came inside. He wore a pair of cargo shorts that showed off muscular, tanned calves. A T-shirt with the faded logo of a Cleveland tavern on the front clung to his broad chest and disappeared into the waistband of the shorts. A Cleveland Indians ball cap sat low on his forehead, but she still had an all-too-intimate look at his silver-flecked eyes and freshly shaven face.

For a brief moment Sara found it difficult to breathe. She covered the dysfunction with a hard swallow. Nick Bass had a certain indefinable appeal in the bright light of day, even if he was telling her she couldn’t do something. “Why not?” she said. “What’s down there?”

He settled onto the bar stool and shoved the hat back. “Spiders. Cobwebs. Some old barrels and a few dusty bottles of wine.”

“I’m not too excited about the spiders, but I’d still like to go down.”

“You can’t see anything because the lightbulb burned out years ago.”

“And you never replaced it?”

He shrugged. “I will…tomorrow.”

A burned out lightbulb was hardly an insurmountable problem. “I’ll use the flashlight,” Sara said.

“Suit yourself, but if it’s wine you’re after, I’ve brought a few bottles upstairs already. You’re welcome to sample those.”

“Thank you. I may take you up on that offer, but if there’s a real wine cellar down those steps, I want to see it.”

He leaned back and studied her face, as if judging the level of her enthusiasm. “How would you feel about seeing six acres of real vineyard?”

Amusement underlined his offer and prevented Sara from taking him seriously. “And just where might this vineyard be?” she asked skeptically.

He hitched his thumb toward the back door. “Out there.”

Amusement or not, he’d hooked her and was reeling her in. “Here? On the island?”

“You don’t know much about your inheritance, do you?”

All commitment to cleaning fled from her mind. She ran to the door and looked out, but all she saw was a row of overgrown box hedges, wild winter cress and the yellow tops of dandelions. “I don’t see any vineyard,” she said.

He’d come up behind her and startled her by taking her elbow. “Then come with me, Miss Sara Crawford, because it’s definitely out there.”

Even with his limp, Nick easily navigated the un-pruned shrubs and prickly pears that poked their stubborn twigs between the flagstones in the pathway behind the Cozy Cove Inn. Sara had a more difficult time and was thankful when they emerged into an area only moderately suffering from nature gone wild. And as far as she could see, the gently rolling terrain before her was lined with rows of equally spaced posts and clinging twisted vines of various thicknesses. Definitely a vineyard!

She knew enough about cultivating grapes to be captivated by the prospect of owning a vineyard. She’d been fascinated by her tour of the California wine country the year before and had listened avidly to experts explaining the wine-making process. The dry acreage of Thorne Island was far different from the lush green carpet of Napa Valley, but it was obvious that there had once been a flourishing wine business on her island.

She wandered among the rows of thick trunks, stopping to examine the cordons and canes that split from mother plants and ran along wires from post to post. She used her thumbnail to scrape the bark off several plants, found green wood underneath and determined that the core trunks were very much alive. She called over her shoulder to Nick, who had stopped trying to keep up with her. “When was wine last made on this island?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s been six years at least. You won’t even get one dried-up old raisin to harvest now.” He spread his arms to encompass the whole six acres. “Look at this mess, Sara. For Pete’s sake, I was kidding about this island having a real vineyard.”

“Then the joke’s on you, Bass,” she hollered back. She plucked a cluster of shriveled fruit from a healthy shoot and ran back to him. “See this, Nick? Once upon a time these determined little ‘raisins’ probably made a fine chardonnay.”

HIS LITTLE JOKE had backfired. Nick had figured if he took Sara out among the arid field that had once been a vineyard, she might see the futility of trying to make something of her flagging inheritance. Thorne Island’s glory days were long over. She simply needed to recognize that and leave the island and its crusty inhabitants to themselves.

He took a beer and a sandwich to Brody’s cottage and joined his companions for lunch. It killed him to have to admit the error in judgment he’d made this morning, especially since the other guys were counting on him to rid them of their interfering landlady.

At first he tried to put the blame on the little guy. “Hell, Ryan,” he said, “this is all your doing. You just had to go out there and pluck and prune and probably baby-talk those plants into staying alive.”

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Ryan argued. “I was just passing time thinking it’s a shame to let anything die in the winter frost. My clipping was just dumb luck.”

Brody scowled at him and ran his hand over his thinning hair. “I told you to leave those plants alone. What do we care about growing a bunch of sissy grapes, anyway? We’re fishermen and fortune hunters.”

“Leave him alone, Brody,” Dexter said. “I think his baskets hanging over at the inn look real pretty. If it weren’t for Ryan here, we wouldn’t have anything nice to look at.”

Nick took a long swallow of beer. “It’s not going to help if we argue among ourselves.”

“Nick’s right,” Brody said. “It’s that darned woman who’s the enemy.”

Nick held up his hand. “That’s kind of a harsh way of putting it, Bro. It’s not like she’s entered our no-fly zone.” He smiled at the image of Sara that suddenly came to mind. “You should have seen her this morning, running all around those dumb vines, scraping and plucking and cooing over them like a mother bird. She brought me a scrawny old cluster of dried-up fruit and presented it as proudly as if she’d grown it herself.”

The image sent a quick spurt of warmth to Nick’s groin, a reaction he hadn’t had in a long time without seeing at least part of a naked breast. “It was kind of sweet, actually.”

All three men stared at Nick as though he’d left his mind baking in the noon sun in the middle of the vineyard. He cleared his throat to knock Sara’s face from his thoughts. “Still, though, we’ve got a problem.”

Brody nodded. “That darned woman’s messed up the chemistry around here. Pretty soon she’ll be telling us to do a whole lot more than just pay the rent. That’s the way women are.”

As the other men uttered similar groans of agreement, the door to Brody’s cottage swung open, admitting the object of their despair. Sara stepped inside and smiled sweetly at each of them. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said. “I assume this is the commissary I’ve heard so much about.”

Nick gave hasty introductions.

“Mr. Brody,” Sara said, “I’d like to buy some food, and if it’s all right with you, I need to use your cell phone.”

He squinted up at her, age lines crinkling the corners of his eyes. “What do you want my phone for?”

“I understand Captain Winkleman will be back tomorrow. I’d like him to bring some fertilizer.”

Ryan jumped down from the up-ended barrel he was sitting on. “There’s a compost pile over by the old press house.”

Sara brightened as if the words compost pile were equal to diamond bracelet. “There is?”

And if looks really could kill, Ryan would have been compost.

CHAPTER FOUR

AFTER SHE MADE her call to Captain Winkleman, Sara gave her grocery list to Brody. He quickly packaged her items and slid two bags across the counter toward her, jerking his hand back as if coming into direct contact with her would endanger his life. She muttered a succinct and insincere thank-you and left his cottage, making sure the screen door slammed loudly behind her.

“What a rude, ignorant, narrow-minded…” She let her voice trail off. There were simply too many adjectives that fit that anachronism with the tattered fishing hat. While she’d been in his presence, Brody had grumbled the whole time about women in general, and “one certain trespasser” specifically.

Nick Bass, thoroughly amused at her expense, watched the whole comedy of manners with a smirk on his face. At least Dexter Sweet had the decency to pick up a sports magazine and pretend he wasn’t aware of his companion’s rudeness. And poor little Ryan—he’d scuttled out the back way after his mention of the compost pile had turned the gathering quite hostile.

It was only a hundred yards on a narrow path through budding maple trees from Brody’s small cottage to the Cozy Cove Inn. Aware that Nick was following her, Sara stomped her feet as loudly as her Nikes allowed. She wanted the determination in her step to let him know she did not desire his company. When she reached the back door of the inn, she swung the screen open wide, stepped into the kitchen and let the door bang shut behind her.

“Damn it, woman!” he hollered. “You know I can’t keep up when you walk this fast.”

She slammed the bags on the clean counter, catching a glimpse of her catlike grin in the side of Nick’s gleaming toaster. “I wasn’t aware we were out on a stroll, Bass,” she said when he came through the door.

He sat on a stool and whipped the Indians cap off his head. Dark curls tumbled onto his forehead. For the first time she noticed coarser strands of gray at his temples. They lent an air of dignity to a man who certainly didn’t deserve it.

“That’s not the only thing you’re not aware of,” he snapped.

She began yanking her purchases out of the sacks. “If you’ve come to spy on me, don’t worry. I won’t take much of your space.”

“Yeah? Starting when?”

She slapped a package of bologna onto the counter, gripped the smooth pine edges and stared at him. “We’re hardly overcrowded here, Bass. We’re five people on forty acres. This isn’t a ghetto.”

He almost smiled, and since she was mad at him, she was glad he didn’t.

“Look,” he said, “if it makes you feel any better, I agree that Brody acted like an ass back there. But you’ve got to give him a break. He’s hard to get along with even on his good days, and he started out grouchy this morning. At times like this, it’s good to give him some space.”

“I’d like to put him on a raft, tug him halfway to Canada and leave him in the middle of the lake. That ought to be enough space even for him.”

Nick got off the stool, picked up the bologna and put it in the refrigerator. “Forget about Brody. I think Ryan’s decided to give you a chance.”

Sara refolded one of the bags and placed it in a lower cabinet. “At least he understands about the vineyard,” she said. “But it won’t be long before Brody turns him against me.”

“Well, you did make him mad with all that special request nonsense.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Sara handed Nick a jar of pickles and he slid it into the refrigerator. “Just because I don’t want to eat Frosted Flakes or Captain Crunch.”

Nick looked up at her, a mock-serious expression on his face. “Tony the Tiger and the captain are American icons.”

She handed him a frozen dinner to put away. “And I don’t mind microwave meals, but do I have to buy every one of them in ‘hungry man’ or ‘family-size’ portions?”

“When you’re living with men, I guess you do. You’re making life different around here already, Sara, and you’ve got to know that’s not easy for any of us.”

She scowled at him before she read the price sticker on a can of tomato soup. Then she read the sticker on a loaf of bread and a half carton of eggs. “All these groceries are from Kroger’s,” she said.

“So?”

“But the marked prices are the same as the ones Brody charged me. He didn’t add anything to the Kroger price.”

Nick didn’t say anything. He indicated another question by raising his eyebrows.

“Well, if he gets the food from Kroger’s…”

“Winkie fills the order at Kroger’s, according to Brody’s list, and delivers it to us,” Nick corrected.

“Okay, but if Brody pays Winkie and doesn’t increase the price to you guys, he’s not making any money.”

“He doesn’t care about that.”

Nick’s offhand statement had just reduced years of accounting principles to insignificance. The idea of being in business, after all, was to make a profit. “He doesn’t care about making money?”

“No. He’s got tons of it already. And the thing about Brody is, he’ll never take a dollar from anyone, but he’ll never give one away, either. I guess that’s how rich guys stay that way.”

She pictured the scowling, ill-tempered old goat and almost laughed out loud. He wore that stupid hat with all the rusty lures. His shorts were held up with a tow rope. His canvas shoes had holes in the toes. He lived in a three-room cottage, which cost him a mere one hundred dollars a month, with a twelve-inch black-and-white TV for entertainment. “So Brody is rich?”

“As Midas.”

“But how…?”

Nick read the label on a can of Vienna sausages and grimaced. “I don’t know how you can eat these things,” he said. “How’d Brody make his money? He invented things. Then, for years he managed the factory that produced his inventions.”

Sara grabbed the can out of his hand and shoved it into the pantry. “What things did he invent?”

“If he wants you to know, he’ll tell you.”

That was a heck of an answer. “Well, at least he should see if there’s a warehouse club around here, in Sandusky maybe, or—”

“Sara.”

She clamped her mouth shut and stared at him.

“Leave it alone.”

“But I could show him how volume buying…”

Nick stepped closer to her and put his hands on her shoulders. Suddenly the cotton fabric of her T-shirt felt warm, as if heated by the pressure of his palms.

For a moment he said nothing. He just kept a tight hold on her and stared into her eyes. “What do you do for a living?” he finally asked.

“I’m a tax accountant.”

The temporary heat became a cold chill. Nick released her and took a step back. “That figures.”

“What’s wrong with being a tax accountant?”

“Nothing. It just figures. All that talk about volume buying. And the concern over the rent we pay. Your comment yesterday about Millie’s ‘unsound financial arrangement.’ I should have guessed.”

The hot blood of indignation surged through her veins. “What’s wrong with caring about money? What’s wrong with making it, tracking it, keeping it, for heaven’s sake?”

“It’s fine, Sara. Be the best accountant you can be. Just let Brody be the kind of grocer he wants to be.” He turned away from her and headed for the door. “I’ve got work to do,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you later.”

An unwelcome press of guilt weighed on Sara’s shoulders, and she tried to shrug it off. Why should she feel guilty for making a few comments meant to help the man who’d treated her abominably just a few minutes ago? And yet she did feel guilty. It was ridiculous. All she was doing was offering a little common-sense advice that anyone with half a brain would recognize as logical and…

Sara’s mind wouldn’t let her continue her rationale. All at once every heightened sense was focused on the man walking out of the kitchen. All she could think about were his strong, broad shoulders and the graceful tapering of his hips under loose-fitting shorts. Such a man could banish all rational thought from any woman’s mind. “Excuse me,” she said.

He stopped in the doorway and looked back at her. “Yeah?”

“About that bottle of wine you promised me. If you bring it, I’d be willing to share my family-size lasagna tonight.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve got a lot to do.” He left her standing there with her temper skyrocketing and her ego plummeting.

She grabbed the cleaning supplies from the cupboard and began scrubbing and scouring everything in sight. And she pictured Nick Bass’s face in every grimy surface.

BANNING CROUCHED in the dark hallway and pulled his service revolver from the shoulder holster. The smells of unwashed bodies and stale beer mingled with the scent of his own fear.

“Come on, come on,” Nick grumbled to the screen. For the last thirty minutes—ever since he’d left Sara—he’d been staring at the words he’d entered into his computer and willing others to follow. These first lines of chapter five of Dead Last had come to him last night just after he’d gotten into bed and turned out his lantern. He’d struck a match and relit the wick so he could scribble the words down on a dog-eared tablet on his nightstand. He often did that—committed the words to paper so his next writing session would start fluidly.

He’d tried to come up with the next line in Detective Ivan Banning’s crisis before extinguishing the light a second time, but nothing else had come to mind. Telling himself a literary lightning bolt would strike him the next morning, Nick had snuffed the lantern flame again and settled down to go to sleep.

Only sleep hadn’t come, and Nick knew why. In the six years he’d lived in the Cozy Cove Inn, never once had a soft, willowy blonde lain between her own sheets—well, his sheets, really—just a few doors away from him.

Nick loved to write about guys whose lives were always in turmoil, men for whom the word norm was synonymous with boredom. But he didn’t like it when his own situation threatened to follow that same path. He’d gotten used to the flawless, undiluted routine of life on Thorne Island, and Sara Crawford was like oil to the pure water of Nick’s existence.

He didn’t like thinking about her sleeping down the hall. He didn’t like not sleeping because he was thinking about her. And he especially didn’t like the hot, sweet jolt of energy that thinking about her brought to parts of his body that had become accustomed to their own special tempo of regularity.

And now there was this new dilemma. He couldn’t figure out how in the world Banning was going to move from that smelly hallway into apartment number seven. Sure as black on a bat, Nick had writer’s block. He rarely suffered from it, but the inability to put words to paper did afflict him every once in a while. Like when he remembered with spine-chilling clarity the cold, gray gutter slush of Prospect Avenue seeping into his clothes and turning red with his blood. Or when he recalled the hands of the medics working over his lump of a body, and the one cheerful guy telling him he would be all right. And Nick knowing full well he was lying.

Now those were good reasons to experience writer’s block, but Sara Crawford? If he had to rate the significant moments of his life, he wouldn’t put meeting her up there with nearly dying. Thinking about it rationally—and telling himself that thoughts about women could be handled this way—Nick knew why Sara’s presence had affected him so adversely.

He’d touched her.

In the kitchen he’d put his hands on her shoulders and looked into those fresh-water-blue eyes and nearly forgotten what he was saying.

That had been a mistake. As long as he remained distant from her, he could be objective. But once he’d felt her soft flesh under his palms, once he’d been close enough to admire the determined thrust of her chin and the spark of indignation in her eyes, she’d become all too real. And that could mean trouble for him. Not the kind of trouble Detective Banning had to face in apartment number seven, but trouble nonetheless.

The last person Nick needed in his life was an accountant. He hadn’t filed a tax return in six years, and he imagined the IRS frowned on people who just disappeared without a forwarding address. He didn’t need a finicky bean counter looking into his private life, probing his secrets, turning him into a computer entry again.

All right, maybe he’d been a little rough on her when she’d asked him to share her stupid lasagna. He conceded that, but she’d get over it. Besides, why would a guy named Nicolas Romano whose paternal ancestors came from Napoli want to eat factory-produced lasagna, anyway?

He pushed away from the computer and stared out the window rather than face the barren monitor screen any longer. But then it was Sara’s face that crept into his mind, and that didn’t make him feel any better. He supposed it wouldn’t hurt him to go down later and eat some of her dinner. It was the decent thing to do, and after all, she wasn’t staying forever. Feeling a surge of pride at his unselfish decision, Nick risked glancing at his monitor again. He rested his hands lightly on the keyboard, then lifted one of them to plow his fingers through his hair.

Stubborn strands coiled onto his forehead. He needed a haircut. It had been more than a month since his last one. It was definitely time for Gina to come over from Put-in-Bay. Now there was a woman who didn’t ask nosy questions. She just gave a damn good haircut to a man who needed some pampering once in a while. He’d be okay after he saw Gina and after he squared things with the accountant. Nick smiled in anticipation of having all his parts back in working order again. He liked an orderly life.

The knob turned slowly, guided by an unseen hand… The door to number seven eased open.

All right! Nick Bass and Ivan Banning were back in business.

AT SEVEN P.M. the first pungent aromas of garlic and tomato sauce wafted up the stairs. Factory-produced or not, the lasagna smelled darned inviting. Maybe Sara Crawford actually knew enough about cooking to add the right ingredients to a store-bought concoction to make it better.

Nick turned off his computer and headed for the bathroom down the hall. After a quick shower and shave, he pulled on a pair of jeans, a Cleveland Cavaliers T-shirt, his favorite worn Docksiders and made his way to the kitchen. He was going to enjoy seeing Sara’s face when she realized he was taking her up on her invitation after all.

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.”

THE WHITE THORNE 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.

CHAPTER FIVE

“NICK, 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 water 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.

NICK AND DEXTER 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.

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