Social Graces

by Dixie Browning

  “I can be out of here in five minutes,” he repeated when the silence stretched to the breaking point. “Ten, if you want me to make a list of what still needs doing.”

  “I thought we were pretty well caught up.”

  “There’s still those boards under your washer that need replacing, and I haven’t done the flashing yet, remember? Dare Building had to order stuff.”

  “I guess I owe you for materials,” she said reluctantly. And for last night’s supper and for all the hours of fascinating conversations that had enabled her to justify putting off what she’d come here to do.

  “No problem. I opened an account at Dare and charged everything to you. They knew your great-grandmother.”

  She gnawed on a ragged nail, then caught herself and slid her hand guiltily under her thigh. She’d like to blame the rapidly changing weather for her inability to focus, but she knew better.

  “You need a new hose for your washer, by the way, but the patch should hold until you can order one. I cleaned out the filter while I was at it. Thing was pretty well clogged with sand. You might want to do that from time to time. I can show you where it’s located.”

  Dammit, why did you kiss me? Did I look like I needed kissing? Like I was desperate for affection? For sex?

  She flung out her hands in surrender. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, stay! It was my mistake after all, not yours.”

  He waited so long she was afraid he was going to insist on leaving. She couldn’t blame him after she’d insulted his integrity…or whatever it was she’d insulted. Certainly not his masculinity, that had never been in question.

  “Speaking of mistakes,” he said in that deep, calm voice that shivered over her skin like the stroke of an ostrich plume, “Next time you rent your rooms, be sure to ask for a deposit up front in case your tenant trashes the place or walks out owing you money.”

  “I knew that,” she snapped. “You already reminded me.”

  “Then I’ll pay you a deposit now. We never got around to discussing how much rent you’re asking.”

  “We never got around to discussing your hourly rate.”

  He nodded, but said nothing. Val lacked the patience to deal with another stalemate. “A thousand?”

  He whistled quietly. “A month? A year? With or without kitchen privileges?”

  She visualized the cramped, poorly furnished room and the barely adequate bath. “Let me ask my friend at the agency. This place was one of her listings until I moved in. She’ll know the local rates.”

  Marian had been surprised and more than a little uneasy when Val had told her about her handy tenant and the agreement they’d struck. By the time they’d finished discussing the matter, Val had been furious, frightened and embarrassed. Not to mention disappointed. “I don’t think he’s a—a beach bum, if that’s what you mean,” she’d said.

  “What about a dangerous escaped convict?” Marian had been joking, but Val had to admit that MacBride was dangerous, if not the kind of threat Marian had had in mind.

  “If a personal check will do, I’ll give you a deposit now,” Mac repeated.

  “You have a bank account?” That indicated a certain degree of stability, didn’t it? Even if the check bounced.

  “Not here—in Mystic. Will that do?”

  Mystic. He’d told her only that he was from New England. She wanted to know everything there was to know about him, but that could wait.

  He was still standing; she was still seated. She wasn’t sure which, in this case, was the dominant position, but she evened the odds by standing. “I’ll let you know what the rent is as soon as I find out. If you’d like to pay a deposit, then I think we should do it properly. References, lease—that sort of thing. I’ll have to get a copy of a lease form from Marian.”

  “Short term lease,” he stipulated.

  “Of course,” she said quickly.

  With a few added clauses: from now on, we’ll stick strictly to business. No more cozy chats by the fireside, no more beach walks in the rain. Definitely no more kisses and accidental-on-purpose touches.

  He nodded. “It might take a few days to get written references from my last residence.”

  “Fine. In the meantime, you know what needs doing.” She turned to go, then added, “Oh, and by the way, I’ll be working, starting tomorrow.”

  “Working. Outside the house, you mean?”

  “I told you I was considering it. I’ll be cleaning cottages on weekends between check-out and check-in. Mostly Saturday and Sunday mornings. So,” she said airily—once again captain of her own ship, CEO of her own affairs. “If you don’t mind hooking up that hose thingy, I’d like to do a load of laundry.”

  Eight

  Later that night Mac, arms crossed under his head, stretched out on the hard bed. It no longer sagged, thanks to a sheet of plywood between mattress and springs. An unseasonably warm wind whistled through the window, rippling the light spread over his boxer-clad body. All that ladder work, not to mention crawling around under the house, hadn’t helped his knee.

  But a stiff knee was the least of his problems. What the devil was he going to do now? Admit that he was here on a mission that had nothing to do with leaky washing machines and clogged drains? That she had something he wanted, and one way or another, he was determined to get it?

  Unfortunately, what he wanted most of all was the woman herself, and that wasn’t going to happen. His conscience alone would prevent it as long as he kept reminding himself that any evidence he might find to clear his stepbrother was bound to condemn her late father.

  Hell, she had to know Bonnard was guilty, even if she didn’t want to believe it. Loyalty was an admirable trait, but occasionally, it was misplaced.

  Probably misplaced, he amended.

  Restlessly, he got out of bed and stood at the window, staring out at the million or so stars that twinkled through a ghostly stand of dead pines, lingering victims of Hurricane Emily, or so he’d been told.

  Recalling his very first dive off Cozumel back in the early seventies, he had to admit that even the evidence of his own eyes could sometimes be misleading. He’d seen what had appeared to be a five-gallon Coke bottle under some fifty feet of crystal-clear water and gone down after it. Green kid, first dive, rented equipment that would probably never have passed inspection. A few minutes later he’d surfaced holding an ordinary six-ounce Coke bottle. Layers of glass-like water had acted as a lens, magnifying its size. That’s when he’d first learned that what you see is not necessarily what you get.

  What if Frank Bonnard hadn’t been guilty, after all? The man had barely had time to profess his innocence, much less to prove it, before he’d died. And without a paying client, his lawyer wasn’t shaking any trees. So far as Mac knew, Val Bonnard was the only one who believed in her father’s innocence.

  Rumor was that he’d died on her thirtieth birthday. If so, that made it doubly rough. Losing a father was never easy, but losing him like that had to have been a staggering blow. According to Will, in only a matter of weeks she’d lost not only her father, but her home, her wealth and her family’s reputation.

  Mac had to admit that under the circumstances, she was doing a pretty fine job of rolling with the punches.

  It wasn’t the sun streaming into the room that awakened her, it was the sound of thumping and hammering. Val glanced at her watch and groaned. She’d meant to get an early start today, so as to go through a few more files before she had to leave for her first day as a cottage-cleaner.

  Still groggy from a restless night, she felt her way downstairs to find that Mac had shoved the washer aside and was already at work ripping out the floor. Before she went to bed last night she’d used the machine. Thanks to the mended hose, it hadn’t over-flowed again.

  Even so she was half tempted to send him packing for the simple reason that every time she looked at him her hormones overruled the few grains of common sense she’d managed to hang on to.

  “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
Down on one knee, he was leaning over a hole in the floor, baring a band of tanned flesh between sweatshirt and jeans.

  She stared, blinked, mumbled “G’morning” and backed out of the small utility room, which was actually little more than a shallow closet off the hallway.

  There was a frying pan on the stove, used dishes stacked neatly in the sink, and two pieces of cold bacon on a paper towel. She nibbled on one while she made toast. Not bothering to make tea, she poured herself a cup of coffee from the carafe on the warming plate, added half-and-half and two spoonfuls of sugar, and took the lot into the living room.

  Reluctantly, she lifted three files from the right side of the box—ones she hadn’t yet searched, as she’d been working from left to right. It had seemed logical for reasons that now escaped her.

  Why not start in the middle and work in both directions? With such a total lack of organizational skills, how on earth had her father managed to pull together a company that, while it hadn’t been among the Fortune 500, might eventually have rated a listing among someone’s top ten thousand?

  It wasn’t enough that he misfiled everything from old brokerage statements to veterinarian’s bills for a cat that had died of old age the year she had moved from Chicago to New York—he had scribbled across the face of half the papers in the file. Sums, initials, odd things like, Check yesterday, and Call Tv. Agnt.

  Television agent? Travel agent? But why? Her father hadn’t taken a vacation in years, which was probably one of the reasons he’d died. The first bit of stress and he’d keeled over.

  “Dammit, dammit,” she muttered. She would not cry, she would not!

  “You say something?” Mac called from the back hallway.

  “No, go back to what you were doing.”

  Her untouched coffee had grown cold by the time she’d gone through each file twice. In the last few she’d examined there’d been several references to BFC, none of which she’d understood and all of which bore those enigmatic notations.

  Dad, I know you didn’t deliberately do anything wrong, but how do you expect me to prove it with the mess I’ve got here? Maybe if you’d done a better job of keeping records….

  Or maybe if she’d turned the lot over to the experts….

  “Or to a fortuneteller,” she said, shaking her head. “Oh, darn.” One glance at her watch and she realized she would have to choose between an early lunch and an early start.

  As this was her first day on the job she chose the early start. Dashing upstairs, she dressed quickly in a Save the Whales sweatshirt, a pair of Diesel jeans that now bagged a full inch around her waistline, and her most comfortable tennis shoes. Chances were fairly good she wouldn’t be playing tennis anytime soon.

  Mac was in the kitchen when she went downstairs. He’d evidently finished the floor, as he’d shoved the washer back in place. “Lunch is ready,” he called out just as she reached for her anorak.

  “Don’t have time.”

  “Take time. You’ll work better with a little energy food.”

  Her stomach reminded her that a slice of toast, a strip of cold bacon and half a cup of coffee were only memories, and not altogether pleasant ones, at that. “Oh, all right. I guess I can spare ten minutes.”

  Lunch was canned ravioli and bagged salad. One whiff of tomato sauce and she was suddenly ravenous. She slid into a chair while Mac set out the plates and handed her a canister of grated cheese.

  “You need any help?” he inquired.

  “Why should I need help? It’s only housecleaning. You think I don’t know how?” Belligerence didn’t come naturally to her, she had to work at it.

  “Just offering,” he said calmly.

  She doused her salad with olive oil and dribbled on balsamic vinegar. “Thanks for lunch,” she said grudgingly.

  “I’ll check the attic again while you’re gone. Any leaks should show up after yesterday’s rain.”

  Oh, great. What next, a new roof? She sighed and stared at the pattern of tomato sauce on her plate, then scratched through it with her fork. “I wonder if ravioli sauce is as accurate as tea leaves.”

  Looking thoughtful, he said, “What counts, I suspect, is the eye of the beholder, not the beheld.”

  Why was it so impossible to hold a grudge against the man, even when a grudge was justified? Her immune system must be seriously compromised. “My dad used to quote this guy who was famous back in his college days for saying the medium was the message.”

  Mac nodded gravely. “At that age, ambiguous phrases often pass for wisdom.”

  “I think I prefer something more concrete, such as, ‘Unless otherwise indicated, start at the top, work toward the bottom, lock the door on your way out.’

  “Your orders of the day?”

  She nodded, wondering for the first time what that “unless otherwise indicated” involved. “Speaking of orders of the day, could you possibly take that air conditioner out of my bedroom window? On days like this, I’d love to be able to open it and get some fresh air inside.”

  “Will do. Want me to take down the plastic on the other window?”

  She drummed her fingers on the table, then shook her head. “Decisions, decisions. Would you mind making that one for me? I can’t worry about too many things at once, and right now I’m thinking about what Marian said about things people leave behind in cottages.”

  He chuckled and said, “Pass the salt.”

  They were both making an effort to patch up their relationship, but it wasn’t easy. Not when her gaze kept straying to his mouth, with its full lower lip and its carved upper. She couldn’t forget how those lips had felt moving over hers—over her throat, her eyes. Couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if they hadn’t been bundled up in layers of clothing, with a cold rain blowing in on them.

  She raked back her chair abruptly. “I need to leave.”

  “You’re really serious about this?”

  She paused in the act of rinsing her plate. “Did you think I wasn’t?”

  “How long is this job of yours supposed to last?”

  “As long as I want it to last. Although if Marian’s regular cleaner comes back from maternity leave, I’ll have to look for something else.” She quickly ran hot water in the sink and squirted lemon-scented liquid detergent. He handed her his plate and cutlery, but held back his cup.

  “I might even apply at another rental agency if I like the work,” she said, making short work of the wash-up.

  “What’s not to like about scrubbing and vacuuming?” He pursed his lips, and she really wished he wouldn’t. “Good luck, then,” he said. “I’ll finish a few odd jobs around here and then catch up on my reading. Handyman’s day off. I brought along a few books I haven’t even unpacked yet.”

  Setting the rinsed dishes in the drainer, she thought about what it would be like to curl up before an open fire—or even an ugly oil heater—and spend a rainy afternoon together. Reading, talking, listening to music—maybe even napping.

  Except that it wasn’t raining and she had too much to do, not to mention having better sense than to put herself in jeopardy deliberately.

  After a quick dash upstairs to grab her purse and the instructions Marian had given her, she was ready to leave. Time was critical during the season, but this time of year most of the cottages weren’t even booked, according to the agent, who’d said, “I’d better warn you, a couple of the places haven’t been cleaned since the last renters checked out two weeks ago. You might want to check the refrigerator first thing. Throw out everything, whether or not it’s got moss on it.”

  Calculating quickly as she pulled out onto Back Road, Val figured that if she got through today’s list she would have earned just over a hundred dollars. Not long ago, before the collapse of BFC, the death of her father and the collapse of all she’d held dear, that would have been pocket change. Now it meant that after this weekend she might be able to pay for her roofing material. Next weekend’s work should probably go toward property ta
xes. After that she could start saving toward having her septic tank pumped.

  If she’d come down here hoping to gain fresh perspective, she’d succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. Now all she had to do was put that perspective to use on those messy, mysterious files, instead of dreaming about yellow clapboards and Cape jasmine bushes, hand-detailed furniture and hand-hooked rugs.

  Mac considered starting on the files again after Val drove off. So far he’d made a cursory search through nearly a dozen, reaching the conclusion that Bonnard had been in desperate need of clerical help. Maybe if they were to tackle the job together, bounce ideas off one another, they might make more headway. She knew her father’s handwriting and would probably recognize most, if not all of the references.

  At least he wouldn’t feel quite so guilty. She’d caught him fair on the handyman thing, but she still didn’t know the worst. He had put his life on hold until he’d cleared Will. Why hadn’t she asked him why he was here? He might even have told her.

  Dammit, he wasn’t cut out to be a double agent, not even in a worthy cause. For a marine archeologist, he was a pretty good plumber, and not a bad carpenter. When and if he ever had to quit diving, instead of trying for a teaching position he just might open his own handyman business.

  Meanwhile, he might check out that maritime museum down in Hatteras village. He’d been intending to all week, but he had an idea that once inside, he might not surface anytime soon. Right now, though, he had a more pressing agenda.

  The question was, did he still consider her a suspect? Remember that five-gallon Coke bottle, he reminded himself.

  The moment he opened her bedroom door, every male hormone in his body went on standby alert. Her scent was a subtle echo, reminding him of a patch of white flowers he’d noticed once when he’d gone down to the University of Miami for a conference. Struck by their fragrance, he’d asked what they were.

  Ginger lilies. She smelled of ginger lilies and something else, something intensely personal.