A Woman with Secrets

by Inglath Cooper

  He cut the thought off there, leaving the raft in the water for now and telling himself the sooner he got her back to her cabin the better.

  She unbuckled the vest and shrugged out of it. The white cotton gown was now plastered to her skin, the fabric clearly outlining the shape of her body.

  He quickly averted his gaze, the night air noticeably warmer on his face.

  She dropped the vest to the deck and looked up at him, folding her arms across her chest as if just realizing how revealing the gown was. “Thanks for your help,” she said. “I’ll be all right now.”

  She headed across the deck and disappeared beneath the stairs. He gathered up the life jackets and put them away. That woman should come with her own set of warning labels. He’d only known her a matter of hours, and yet something told him she was trouble.

  He didn’t know how he knew.

  He just did.

  * * *

  KATE SLEPT THROUGH most of the next day, waking up around midmorning to realize she had missed her kitchen duty call. She managed to quell her disappointment and went back to sleep.

  At some point during the afternoon, a knock sounded at her door, and Harry stepped inside with a tray.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling. “Cole asked me to bring you this. Potato soup and crackers.”

  She lifted up on one elbow, still not sure she could force anything down. Her stomach was so sore it hurt to move.

  “I know it probably doesn’t sound too good,” he said, “but you really should eat it.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Could you just put it on the nightstand? I’ll give it a try.”

  He set the tray next to the bed. “Cole said you had a rough time of it.”

  “It was pretty awful,” she admitted, dropping back onto the pillow, surprised by her own weakness. “I’m sure I left him with a lasting impression.”

  “Happens to the best of us,” Harry said. “So he threw you overboard, huh?”

  “Something like that.” She managed a half smile. “Sorry I missed out on the breakfast thing this morning.”

  “No problem,” he said. “Margo volunteered. She’s pretty handy with a skillet for someone so…academic.”

  “Is that how you see her?”

  “It’s kinda hard to miss.”

  “I think there’s a lot more there.”

  “Maybe. But women like that make me nervous.”

  “What kind is that?” she asked.

  “The kind who makes you feel like you need to check every other word in the dictionary before you say it.”

  “You think she’s an intellectual snob?”

  “Let’s just say when it comes to words, she uses a lot of the high-dollar kind. I’m of the fifty-cent persuasion.”

  “Book by the cover,” she said.

  “Don’t you find it’s usually an accurate reflection of what’s on the inside?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “We’ll see,” he said. “You get some sleep, and be sure to eat that soup.”

  Once Harry left, Kate forced a few spoonfuls down, but gave up when her stomach balked yet again. She curled up under the covers and closed her eyes, wondering why Cole had sent Harry with the soup instead of bringing it himself.

  * * *

  AFTER DINNER, COLE went down to check on Kate. He’d found reasons throughout the day to send the others, first Harry, then each of the Granger sisters, then Margo Sheldon. But now that everyone else had gone to bed, he decided to go himself. Not wanting to wake her, he cracked the door and peered in, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness.

  She was asleep, her hair spread out on the white pillowcase, the cup of soup barely touched on the nightstand beside her. The moonlight brushed her face. Her lips were slightly parted, her breathing steady and even. The sheet had slipped down to reveal the top of yet another cotton nightgown, this one pink and sleeveless. Somehow, he’d pictured her in silk.

  There was a blanket in here somewhere. He turned abruptly and opened the small closet door behind him. He rummaged through a stack of clothes, lifting the suitcase at the bottom and looking under it. No blanket.

  “What are you doing!”

  The shriek brought his head up with a bang against the closet shelf. He muttered a choice word or two, swung around to find Kate sitting straight up in bed, glaring at him.

  “What are you doing?” she repeated in a panicked voice.

  “Looking for a blanket,” he said, rubbing his head. “I thought you might be cold.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, tilting her head to look past him into the closet. “I don’t need one. Really.”

  He closed the door, trying not to notice that the sheet had fallen down around her waist, her nightgown more than a little transparent.

  She shifted on the bed, looking embarrassed now. “I—I’m sorry about your head.”

  He ignored the apology and said, “How are you feeling?”

  “Better. Much. Thank you.”

  He picked up the bowl of soup and added, “You really should eat something.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “All right then,” he said, glancing at the closet again before backing toward the door. “See you in the morning.”

  * * *

  THE SECOND COLE’S footsteps hit the stairs, Kate flopped back against her pillow, letting out the chest full of air she’d been holding.

  Way to go.

  Nothing like a bloodcurdling scream to waylay suspicion. No telling what he thought she had in there now. Drugs. Stolen jewelry. A bag full of cash.

  Right. He was no doubt making a list of the possibilities at this very moment.

  Being married to Karl had made her paranoid.

  She got out of bed and opened the closet, feeling beneath the clothes stacked on top of the leather case. Still there. Thank goodness.

  Maybe she’d be better off emptying the contents and hiding it elsewhere.

  The mattress. She could put it under the mattress.

  She pulled out the suitcase, opened it and stared down at the neatly stacked rows of cash. A little over one million dollars. More money than most people ever saw in a lifetime. By rights, it was hers. Karl had stolen every cent of it from her. Left her virtually penniless. Admittedly, he could never have managed it without her willing gullibility.

  To her credit, though, she’d been vulnerable after her father died. Guilt did that. Karl simply slid into the empty spot in her life and made her believe he was the one, that here was a place to go from what felt like nowhere.

  So this money had significant meaning for her. It meant she had beaten him at his own game. Greater on the scale of satisfaction—higher even than getting at least some of her inheritance back—was the fact that she had one-upped her ex-husband. In the end, she’d won.

  She should be drinking champagne. Celebrating.

  She went to the sink and stared at herself in the small, semicloudy mirror. But what was there to celebrate really? She’d regained a few tattered strands of her decimated pride. So what? It didn’t change the fact that she was thirty-three years old, had never worked a day in her far-too-cushioned life and had no idea where to go from here.

  * * *

  THE WOMAN WAS a basket case.

  Clearly.

  There was no other explanation for it, Cole told himself as he climbed into bed a few minutes later.

  Why else would she have acted like he was set on robbing her blind?

  Unless she had something to hide.

  He threw his feet over the side of the bed, elbows on his knees. He didn’t need something like this to worry about right now. With the possibility that Sam might actually have a real lead on finding Ginny, he didn’t want anything to interfere with his leaving when that call came. Like having his boat get pulled over and something illegal found on board.

  Something to hide. That was exactly how Kate Winthrop had been acting since the minute she’d boarded. He recalled the way she held on to that suitcase yesterday
, how she’d gotten all prickly when he’d offered to carry it to her room. And then just now, how she’d practically had a heart attack not because he was in her room, but because he’d opened her closet door.

  He jumped up then, yanked on a pair of shorts, not bothering with a shirt. If that woman had brought drugs on his boat, he’d personally toss her and her fancy suitcase overboard.

  Her door still wasn’t locked, so he didn’t bother with a knock, either. He stopped at the side of her bed, his voice clipped and angry when he said, “What’s in the suitcase?”

  She scrambled up against her pillow, her face nearly as white as the case covering it. “What right do you have to barge in and out of here whenever you want?”

  “You’re hiding something.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know what you’ve got in there, but it better not be something illegal.” He went to the closet, pulled the door open and yanked the leather satchel out.

  She stayed where she was, arms folded across her chest. “Go ahead. Open it.”

  “Thank you, I will.” He reached inside, felt around. Pulled out a handful of the sexiest underwear he’d ever laid eyes on. He dropped them as if they were on fire.

  She smiled. “Satisfied?”

  He stared at her for a moment, grudgingly aware that he should apologize. He couldn’t find it within himself to do so.

  Without another word, he put the suitcase back in the closet, then wheeled around and left.

  * * *

  IT WAS AFTER midnight when Harry gave up on the effort of trying to sleep.

  A night owl, he had sufficiently adjusted his body clock so that rising before 11:00 a.m. felt like getting up at sunrise. He headed for the galley, grabbed a bottle of tequila and its accompanying shot glass from the cabinet where he’d discovered Cole’s stash, then groped around in the half dark for a knife and a lime.

  At the top of the stairs, he took one of the chairs, sat for a moment with the unopened bottle on his lap. The night was warm, the sea air salty on his lips. He dropped his head back, stared up at the canvas of sky above, white stars on black velvet.

  Harry wasn’t very good at being by himself. He tried to avoid the possibility as much as he could, keeping his own boat full of guests, most of whom he barely knew. He readily admitted to selfishness over any unjust accusations of generosity. The truth was when other voices were added to the mix, he could easily drown out the one nagging low inside him.

  At one point in his life, he’d thought he was going to have the normal get-married-have-kids kind of existence. When that vision exploded in front of his face one June afternoon in a church filled with four hundred guests, he somehow managed to convince himself he’d never wanted that life, anyway.

  “You know what they say about drinking alone.”

  The voice caught him by surprise, although he already recognized Margo’s dry lilt. “I hadn’t gotten around to that part yet, but now that you’re here, I’m saved. Have a seat. I’ll pour you a shot.”

  She took a step back. “I don’t drink.”

  “Not even a little bitty shot?”

  “I have a feeling that little bitty shot would pack a considerable punch.”

  He shrugged. “Can’t deny that.”

  She looked at him for several moments, making him feel as if he had been whisked under her microscope and found to be a species of unknown origin. “I can sit for a bit though,” she finally said.

  He stood, pulled a nearby chair closer, even though he now thought it would have been a far better idea to let her be on her way. “Have a seat,” he said.

  She sat, unsure, as though he might have wired the chair with some kind of device that could go off at any moment.

  “I don’t bite, you know,” he said, just the slightest bit irritated by her holier-than-thou manner.

  She stared at him solemnly. “That remains to be seen,” she said.

  Amusement tinted her voice. Subtle as it was, it surprised him. He broke open the tequila bottle, poured himself a shot, downed it and then followed up with a wedge of lime. He made a face, then swallowed hard.

  “Aren’t you supposed to have salt with that?” she asked.

  “That’s the preferred method,” he said. “I’m doing the abbreviated version.”

  “The salt and lime not really being the part that’s interesting to you.”

  “You could put it that way,” he said, again surprised by her humor. His first impression of her had offered no clues to this part of her personality. He had to admit, it made him curious about the rest of her.

  “So tell me about yourself, Margo Sheldon.”

  “You’re the second person on this boat to ask me that. But I doubt you’d find the story very interesting,” she said, staring out into the darkness beyond the boat.

  “Shouldn’t I be the judge of that?”

  “I’d rather hear yours first.”

  “Mine,” he said, leaning his head against the back of his chair and propping the tequila bottle against the inside of his knee. “There’s not a lot to tell.”

  “Let’s hear it, anyway,” she said.

  She studied him with the intensity of someone who really did want to hear what he had to say. He thought about his afternoon with Stella and realized it hadn’t mattered to him whether her interest extended beyond the superficial or not. It was a little startling to think he might actually care what Margo Sheldon thought of him. But then it was probably that aura of intelligence she wore like a suit of armor. That in itself could intimidate a man into parading out every A he ever got in school just so she wouldn’t think him a complete idiot. He resisted the impulse and started with the basics. “So let’s see. I grew up in Savannah, Georgia. Although people usually peg me north of New York City with this accent.”

  She smiled, rolled her eyes. “Right. I was guessing Alabama.”

  “Now, now. I went to school in New York. The first few weeks there, I might as well have been speaking Swahili. People actually watched my mouth form the words. For those four years, I squeezed a little of the South out of my voice just so I didn’t have to repeat myself three times to be understood.”

  She laughed. It was a nice sound. “Which school?”

  “Columbia.”

  She raised an eyebrow, obviously surprised.

  “Not what you would have guessed?”

  “Well. I just wouldn’t have—”

  “Put me there.”

  “I—”

  He raised a hand, waved away her explanation. “Truth be told, academics have never been my passion.”

  “So how did you get in a school like that?”

  “I didn’t say I was an idiot.”

  “But you don’t mind if people think you are?”

  “I’m sure there’s a reason why I should be offended by that, but maybe it’s more that I don’t really care what people think.”

  She was quiet for a stretch, and then said, “There’s something liberating in that, I suppose.”

  “Because you obviously do care what other people think?”

  She tipped her head. “I’ve never felt that I could squander my gifts.”

  “And your gift is intelligence?”

  “Everyone has a gift.”

  “Do you consider yours an asset or a liability?”

  The question clearly surprised her. Again, she didn’t answer right away. “On most days, I would say an asset.”

  “I believe Cole said you’re a professor at Harvard?”

  She nodded once, as though not wanting to make a big deal of it.

  “What do you teach?”

  “Physics,” she said.

  “Ah, the fluff stuff.”

  She smiled at this.

  “So where’s the liability?”

  “People make assumptions,” she said.

  “Such as?”

  “Brainy girls don’t like to have fun.”

  Now it was his turn to be
surprised. “And they do?”

  “Sometimes.”

  He looked at her for a few moments. She had a nice face, good cheekbones, despite the glasses. “Far be it from me to make assumptions. So how ’bout that shot of tequila?”

  She glanced at the bottle, then back at him. “Why not?”

  “Indeed,” he agreed and passed her the bottle.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

  —Aristotle

  BY THE NEXT MORNING, KATE felt much better. She woke up early, surprised to find herself feeling almost normal except for the dryness in her mouth, the emptiness in her stomach and the guilt that prevented her from sleeping most of the night.

  She didn’t want to lie to Cole. Nor did she want to answer all the questions he would inevitably have should he find out she had a million dollars hidden under her mattress.

  Raising up on one arm, she peered at the alarm clock beside her bed. A little before six. Fully awake, she got up and headed for the shower, lightheaded at first and then feeling stronger as the water beat down on her.

  She got dressed and climbed the stairs where a warm, salty morning breeze greeted her. The fresh air felt good after a day spent in her cabin. She found Cole on deck, staring out at the morning ocean, a cup of coffee in one hand, the sun a huge pink ball ascending the skyline behind him. There was no one else in sight.

  “Good morning,” she called out, doubtful of her reception.

  He turned around, clearly surprised to see her. “What are you doing up so early?”

  “I slept around the clock. That should last me a while.”

  He started to speak, stopped, then finally said, “Look, I’m sorry about last night, Kate. I had no right to barge into your room like that.”

  She started to agree with him, but her own guilt prevented it. He hadn’t been so off base, after all. She was hiding something. Just nothing illegal. From any logical point of view, of course. “Well, you did save me from a slow death at the hands of seasickness,” she said.