The Water Baby

by Roz Denny Fox

  “I see.” It was Temple’s turn to study his toes.

  Daisy thought about the mess her room was always in. Not dirty, just, well, sort of lived-in. And she wasn’t sure she wanted Wyatt in there making more judgments. But on the other hand, if Becca had been her daughter… Just as quickly she relented. “I’ve been staying up pretty late,” she told him. “At least I did when I bunked at the hospital. I suppose we can work something out.”

  “Anything’s fine. I’m a night owl, too. Say, what time is breakfast? I like my coffee black, my toast wheat. And I prefer egg substitute over real eggs. High cholesterol runs in the family,” he said.

  Daisy’s eyes widened. “Why are you telling me?”

  “Your ad says room and board.”

  “Yes, but I don’t cook your meals.”

  “Excuse me, Miss Sloan. What does ‘board’ mean?”

  “It means you add what you want to my grocery list, and when I shop, I pick up your stuff, too. Within reason,” she added, noting a hint of one of his devilish smiles. “No lobster, no caviar, and no food to feed your friends. Got that?”

  “Ah. What about weekends?”

  “What about them?”

  “Do we dine together on weekends? I assume you don’t shrimp seven days a week.”

  “You assume wrong. When the shrimp run, we do. Which is precisely why I rent rooms to medical students. They keep crazy hours at the hospital, and half the time they eat in the cafeteria.”

  “Well, I’m not a medical student. When I’m not traveling I like home-cooked meals.”

  “So, find a bed-and-breakfast. Anyway, isn’t this entire conversation pointless? I won’t be out shrimping until Becca regains her memory, will I? And the minute that happens, you’ll be out of here. For the time being, Mr. Wyatt, if you want something to eat, fix it. All seven days of the week.”

  “I get the message. But if we’re going to be housemates, don’t you think you should call me Temple? And are there other rules I should know about in this so-called boardinghouse?”

  Daisy took a step back. Taking in boarders had always been something she kept low-key. She didn’t advertise widely, only in the campus paper to get nursing or med students. And she didn’t like his tone of voice. “Yes, Mr. Wyatt, there are other rules. I am not your secretary, so don’t expect me to take your calls. Nor am I your tour guide, your dishwasher or your laundress. In short, do your best to stay out of my way. Understood?”

  “I think that about covers it,” he said. “You didn’t mention mistress, but I suppose that goes without saying.”

  When she drew in a sharp breath, made a strangled noise in her throat and stormed off into the kitchen, he called after her, “Do I get clean towels, at least, or will I need to provide my own? And a key. Don’t forget a key.”

  Daisy stood just inside the kitchen door, grinding her teeth. She rued the day she’d sailed into Rum Row. Damn the man. He was so annoying.

  He was also very good-looking. And sexy.

  She stood there and shredded his copy of the Fair Housing Act, still not believing that she, of all people, had fallen for his razzle-dazzle charm.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DAISY REFUSED to term what she was doing in the kitchen “hiding,” although she had planned to let the dishes soak. Anything that smacked of housework she stored until the mood struck her. Her long-term renovation plans called for a dishwasher, but it wasn’t a high priority. Not like modernizing the one antiquated bathroom had been.

  Tonight, though, on the evening of Temple Wyatt’s unexpected arrival, Daisy felt a curious satisfaction at being up to her elbows in dishwater. She wasn’t giving him a chance to make snide remarks about her stacked dishes. Bad enough to have him correcting her grammar.

  She lifted a handful of soap bubbles, studied their iridescent colors under the light, then idly blew them into the air. Two large bubbles popped instantly. One floated lazily toward the kitchen window that faced the inlet, where, in the moonlight, silvery water lapped a weathered dock. Daisy saw that her favorite deck chair still sat close to the end of the pier. This time last month, she would’ve said to heck with clean dishes and kicked back out there, counting dimples in the moon’s face.

  Not tonight. Now everything about her carefree lifestyle had been altered—which would please at least one person she could think of. Rinsing the last pan, Daisy set it to drain. Her mother would’ve been delighted that something had finally brought some discipline into her youngest daughter’s capricious life. “Bohemian” was how Rose Sloan—now Nettleton—tended to describe her.

  But discipline of any sort was confining. Confinement didn’t suit Daisy. It hadn’t suited her father, either, which was why Rose Sloan had left to become Mrs. Archibald Nettleton when Daisy was a rebellious thirteen.

  Her dad had claimed he understood.

  Daisy never had. Everything she’d ever wanted or needed could be found in Galveston—or not far beyond her shores.

  Daniel Coletti, now, dreamed of winning the Texas lottery and blowing town. His big plans included leaving the sea to conquer worlds not yet conquered. Which was another reason Daisy wasn’t willing to bind herself to him with words that promised forever after.

  Daisy scooped up bubbles with both hands and crushed them together until not an unbroken one remained. Her mind anywhere but on clean dishes, she pulled the plug and let the dishwater gurgle out. The soft sound was punctuated now and again by a solid thump from overhead—a reminder that Temple Wyatt was unpacking and making himself at home.

  Daisy slanted a dark look at the ceiling. Maybe he had his Italian silk tie caught in his model 4790 fax machine. Wouldn’t that be a sight? She smiled. Well, he’d better not wake Becca with all his thumping and bumping, or the great man himself could spend his evening logging in his daughter’s reactions to her new surroundings. Dr. Rankin wanted every nuance, every response to Becca’s change in habitat recorded in a journal.

  A sigh escaped Daisy’s lips. The truth was, there’d been precious little to log in Becca’s diary. The poor mite hadn’t even seemed to care that she’d been moved to new surroundings.

  Shock was an awful thing, Daisy reflected. It held the mind captive. If this was hard for her to accept, it must be doubly hard for Wyatt as a parent. Perhaps she shouldn’t be so resentful of him. Maybe his presence here would succeed in breaking through Becca’s shell where all else had failed.

  Not that Daisy imagined it would be an easy breakthrough. Even she awoke in a cold sweat some nightshearing that speedboat, reliving the horror of the unexpected explosion. Unlike Becca, she hadn’t been hit on the head or tossed about in the ocean. And what had Becca been doing when Daisy hauled anchor to leave? Daisy hadn’t seen anything, but had Becca?

  Suddenly restless, Daisy snatched up a sponge and scrubbed her kitchen counters until they gleamed. She’d bet cleanliness was next to godliness with Temple Wyatt. Wouldn’t her mother adore that man? Wyatt bad discipline enough to counteract a dozen Bohemian Daisy Sloans. He was probably a lot of things Rose’s daughter was not. Neat, stylish and well organized, to mention a few. Come to think of it, frustrated as Daisy was over the changes in her life, a man like Wyatt must be more so. After all, he knew how little the landlady and the tenant had in common.

  Nada. Zero. Zippo.

  Wyatt had to have figured out before he showed up on her doorstep that they wouldn’t get along for five minutes, let alone twenty-four hours a day.

  In a way, though, Daisy admired him for placing his child on, at the very least, a par with his business. She didn’t think either of her sisters’ husbands would do that for their children. With those two, business always came first. Daisy remembered when her nephew, Jasmine’s son, Talbot, was born. Jasmine had developed eclampsia. Her obstetrician put her in the hospital and took the baby early. Everyone in the family was worried sick— except Jasmine’s husband. He was in Memphis closing a big industrial-park deal. Daisy had been the one charged with calling him. When she
’d finally insisted they interrupt his meeting, he informed her that women had been having babies for years without men’s interference. The jerk actually thought the statement made him an enlightened male.

  Ha! Daisy knew then and there that if she’d been the one married to him, it would have been sayonara time.

  Pausing in her cleaning frenzy, she wiggled her bare toes against the cool tile floor. She’d been comparing him with Wyatt. In fact, neither of her spoiled brothers-in-law would give up the easy life to live in a rented room like Wyatt was doing.

  Violet’s husband was never home. He’d never been to any of his kids’ birthday parties. Too busy making money. Things were important to him.

  Was Wyatt any different underneath?

  It was only a guess, but Daisy thought he was. Still, she’d be willing to wager that he’d never lived a day in his life without amenities, either. Lots of amenities. Temple Wyatt had that “born to the manor” look about him.

  She rinsed the sponge, tossed it back in its holder and stripped off her rubber gloves. Was he in for a shock at Sloan House, she mused as she squeezed lotion on her hands—soft hands which were one of her few concessions to femininity.

  Daisy paused and smoothed one of those hands lovingly over the aged wood cabinet. Her family home had been built in the late 1800s. Before the great hurricane of 1900, the event by which everything on the Island was measured. Facilities in these old homes weren’t necessarily up to modern standards. Despite all the work she’d already had done on her house, the pipes sometimes backed up and the electricity wasn’t always reliable.

  But Grandfather Sloan and his twin sister had been born upstairs in the master suite the very night of the hurricane. This house had withstood a storm that virtually leveled Galveston Island. Daisy loved the story. In truth, she loved every nook and cranny of Sloan House. Which meant she was willing to cope with whatever small inconveniences occurred while she earned the money to restore and renovate.

  Why hadn’t she thought of it that way before? She’d simply consider Temple Wyatt another inconvenience. Grinning, Daisy poured herself the last cup of coffee and rinsed out the pot. It was suddenly suspiciously quiet upstairs. She decided to peek in on her new boarder before heading to her room to take a long look at her finances. The shrimp Daniel claimed were running so well weren’t going to come knocking at her door, but maybe she could lease out her boat for the remainder of the season. The idea popped into her head out of nowhere.

  Of course, she wouldn’t let just anyone handle the Lazy Daisy. There were one or two seamen she might consider. Daniel’s younger brother, Sal, for one. He’d been saving up to buy his own craft. Sal was more serious and maybe more responsible than Daniel. Loren Bonner was another possibility. He’d been itching to take her boat out alone for a year now. But Aubrey wouldn’t want his son giving up college to shrimp full-time—which pretty much left her with Sal. Daniel would have a bluecow hissy fit if she stole Sal off his crew.

  Daisy plodded up the curving stairs, careful not to spill her coffee. Leasing out the trawler to anyone would be traumatic. Her dad had bought the boat the summer Rose Sloan walked out on her family. Violet and Jasmine had had their boyfriends and parties. Daisy…well, the trawler had become her refuge, the one place she felt safe from the emotional storms. It was sort of like the role Dr. Rankin said she played for Rebecca. Funny, seen from that perspective, Rebecca’s behavior made more sense.

  Caught up in her thoughts, Daisy paused on the top step. The door to the smaller of the two rooms she’d rented out to Temple Wyatt stood open. A shock wave passed through Daisy like a school of minnows swimming upstream. Her Ivy League boarder was no longer wearing a jacket and tie. He’d changed into soft blue jeans, deck shoes without socks and a short-sleeved pullover.

  It was as if her breath stalled. Gripping the hot coffee cup, Daisy forgot her finances and stared at Wyatt’s tousled sun-streaked hair. She liked him better this way, looking less than perfect, as he struggled to connect a series of extension cords that didn’t quite reach any of the room’s outlets. A sheen of sweat darkened the fine golden hair on his forearms. For some reason, Daisy found that amusing. So the great Temple Wyatt could actually sweat. What a concept.

  “Dammit!” Unaware he had an audience, Temple sat back on his heels and raked a hand through his hair, sending a new lock tumbling across his damp brow. His display of temper made him so much more human. Daisy enjoyed the sideshow so much she didn’t realize he’d attached the cords to a four-way connector plucked from another box and had once again aimed the prongs toward an outlet.

  “Don’t!” she shouted as he plugged in the whole mess. Her warning came a fraction too late. Every light in the house winked out.

  “What in hell?” Wyatt roared.

  She heard him stumbling about in the dark. “Stop!” she yelled. “Let me get a kerosene lamp from my room.” But that word of caution also came too late. Wyatt blundered into the hall, crashed into Daisy and sent hot coffee flying everywhere, including over her arm.

  She couldn’t contain a yelp of pain.

  “What happened? Are you all right?” he asked as he clutched at her and made things worse.

  Daisy didn’t try to mask her irritation. “Besides overloading the circuits and frying all the fuses in the house, you mean?”

  “I know that,” he snapped. “I was asking if I hurt you.”

  “For your information, Wyatt, I was carrying a full cup of coffee when you stampeded out of your room and mowed me down.”

  “I’m sorry. Are you badly burned? Tell me where the circuit-breaker box is and I’ll have the lights on in a jiffy. Then we’ll get you taken care of.”

  “There are no circuit breakers,” she told him. “At least not yet. The fuse box is downstairs in the kitchen closet.” She hesitated. “I hope I still have some spares. Fuses are getting scarce as shrimp’s toes on the Island. After the last hurricane, I had to order them from a hardware store in Houston. Spent two weeks without electricity.”

  “Whoa! Back up a minute,” he said. “What do you mean, no circuit breakers?”

  “Shh. You’ll wake Becca.”

  “Sorry. And I wish you’d call her Rebecca. But, back to our problem. I thought all fuse boxes had been replaced with breakers years ago. Fuses are a fire hazard, you know.”

  “It’s not your problem, bucko. It’s my house.” She made her way unerringly to the bathroom and felt around for the aloe spray. As she doctored her minor burns, she went on, “Fuses are okay if you don’t put pennies behind them when they blow out. It helps,” she drawled scathingly, “if they’re not overloaded, too. What were you setting up in there? NASA Mission Control?”

  “Very funny, Miss Sloan. I’m trying to set up an office so as not to interrupt the flow of my business. By the look of your financial statement, someone in this household had better be earning a living.”

  Daisy didn’t like the underlying implication—that living under one roof made him responsible for her, made them beholden to each other. Her voice was cold. “I’ll go get that lamp.” With sure steps, she turned toward her bedroom.

  “Hold on. There’s greater danger of fire using a kerosene lamp. I have flashlights in my toolbox. Let me get them.” Temple grasped her wrist to stop her.

  Jet streams of heat shot up Daisy’s bare arm. She was startled, and also a little amazed, by the fact that his hands weren’t altogether smooth but slightly call used, as if from manual work. And he didn’t smell all flowery and dandified like the uptown crowd, either. She detected a subtle scent of suede and maybe a hint of sage. To keep from showing that she was affected, she turned to sarcasm. “Is there some reason you’re so hung up on fire, Dogberry?” An avid fan of little theater, Daisy used her pet term for people who made “much ado about nothing.”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact there is,” Temple responded gruffly.

  “Really?” Why had she wasted her breath on a clever theatrical reference? He probably hadn’t r
ecognized the bumbling constable’s name—probably had never even seen the play.

  His tense words cut through the darkness. “My father died pulling me out of a burning hotel in Aruba.”

  The breath slipped from Daisy’s lungs in a hiss.

  He went on, more to himself than her. “Dad intended to tear the old structure down. I thought it would be a lark to sleep in the penthouse that night, where I’d heard kings had slept. Like most dads who spend time on the road and rarely see their kids, mine did his best to indulge my whims.”

  She wanted to stop him; he sounded so anguished, so full of guilt. But she didn’t know what to say.

  “When my father discovered the elevator didn’t work and there was only one usable set of stairs, he tried to talk me into pitching a tent outside. I wouldn’t listen. I was twelve and unfortunately never far from my portable tape player. His warnings about the building being tinder dry didn’t mean a thing to me. I wanted electricity so I could listen to my tapes. Later I heard there was a short in the wiring. It was the first and last trip I ever made with my father….” His voice tapered off into nothingness.

  A knot of sorrow for the boy he’d been twisted in Daisy’s stomach. You could certainly never tell about a man by looking. Temple Wyatt had lost so much. His father. His wife—first through divorce, and now she was gone forever. Goodness, his only child had been kidnapped; now that he finally had her back, she didn’t even know him. No wonder he was suspicious of everyone and slow to trust.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories. Get your flashlights. I’m sure I have enough fuses on hand to change the lot.”

  For a moment he was silent, then she heard him swear under his breath. “Have you ever wondered if you’re a jinx, Miss Sloan? Forget it. I don’t usually unload my life story on strangers.”