The Dangerous Protector

by Janet Chapman

  Duncan winced. “Ya’re slaughtering it, lass.”

  “What language is it? French? Latin? Stone Age gibberish? And what does it mean?”

  He placed the pen back in his pocket, his hand returning empty. “You’re an educated woman, counselor. Do what I did when ya wrote troglodyte on my palm two years ago. Look it up.”

  Her eyes glittering in the street light, Willow balled her hand into a fist and spun back to her truck with a muttered curse. She climbed in, slammed the door shut behind her, and tripped the electric locks. Then she reached up, pulled down the visor, and took out a hidden key. She shot him a triumphant smile as she crammed the key into the ignition and started the engine.

  Duncan stepped back with a long-suffering sigh and turned to avoid the parking lot dust and debris shooting out from her screeching tires as Willow exited the parking lot with all the poise of a spoiled brat.

  He was going to have to do something about her recklessness, Duncan decided as he loped to his car. He climbed into the right-hand seat, tucked the Scotch and leather box safely under the left-hand seat, fished his own keys out of his pocket, and started the fifteen-year-old Jaguar.

  The engine rumbled to life with the distinct purr of a jungle beast, and Duncan slowly pulled out of the parking lot. But the moment he turned onto the road, he pushed the powerful engine through the gears, only easing back on the throttle when he caught sight of Willow’s taillights.

  Aye, he thought with another sigh. The game continued.

  Not only was their game continuing, Duncan decided thirty minutes later, it was getting curiouser and curiouser.

  He could have been watching a B movie for all the drama of the scene unfolding through his binoculars: the old fishing pier hugging the shore of the fog-obscured cove, the halo of one weak bulb from the scale house illuminating the two people standing hunched over a wooden crate, and the thick, desolate silence broken only by an occasional, distant foghorn.

  He’d witnessed this sort of scene more times than he cared to remember, and Duncan’s gut tightened at the thought of Willow being in the middle of this one. Cobb’s personal interest in her was no longer a worry; it was the situation the man was getting her into that made Duncan break into a cold sweat. When state’s assistant attorneys general met with men who wanted to show them something on a desolate pier at night, it usually meant trouble.

  Big trouble.

  Usually more trouble than one tiny woman could handle.

  Duncan was back to rethinking his plan of dragging Willow home and tying her to his bed. He straightened from leaning over the roof of his car, tossed the binoculars onto the front seat, softly closed the door, and started down the steep hill toward the clandestine meeting.

  He had no trouble keeping to the shadows as he carefully worked his way out onto the pier, his ears tuned to the silence around him and the soft voices ahead.

  “How long has this been going on, Ray?” Duncan heard Willow whisper.

  “They started turning up about seven weeks ago,” Cobb answered just as softly. “Just a few at first, and only in my traps closest to the island. And it’s not just the lobsters. Even the crabs look like this.”

  Duncan inched forward and peered around the end of the scale house, but he still couldn’t see what Cobb was holding, since the man was standing with his back to him.

  “Why call me?” Willow asked. “You should have contacted Marine Resources.”

  “I did. George White covers this part of the coast, and I told him exactly what I’m telling you. I even gave him some of my catch.”

  “And?”

  “And he said he’d look into it, but that was six weeks ago. I called his office several times and they told me he’s gone on vacation.”

  “That’s a long vacation for a civil servant,” Duncan heard Willow murmur as she looked back at what Cobb was holding. “What about the other lobstermen? Are they turning up the same thing?”

  Cobb dropped what Duncan guessed was a lobster back into the crate and brushed his hands on his pants. “Yes,” Cobb said, closing the crate and picking it up. “There’s about seven other fishermen who usually set traps around the island. But we’ve all had to move them because we can’t afford to keep throwing back our catch.”

  Cobb started walking farther out the pier, and Willow fell into step beside him. Duncan silently followed.

  “And that means we’ve started crowding each other,” Cobb continued, stopping beside the gently bobbing roof of a fishing boat. “We’re on the verge of starting a trap war.”

  “A trap war?”

  Cobb snorted. “You know how territorial fishing gets. And we can’t afford to just pull our traps, so we have to move into other areas,” he explained, setting down the crate. “After I called and asked you to come down, I set some traps around the island so you could see for yourself what I’m talking about.”

  “And the sick lobster are only coming from this one place?” Willow asked. “They’re not turning up anywhere else?”

  “No. Other than an expected mutation and the occasional blue or harlequin lobster, all’s normal.”

  The tide was low, and Cobb stepped onto the ladder that ran down to his boat, slid the crate onto its deck, then turned and faced Willow at eye level. “I run almost nine hundred pots from June to October, and about three hundred in winter. I’ve been fishing for over ten years, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  Duncan could just make out Cobb’s smile as the man held out his hand. “Come on, Willy. It’ll be just like in high school, when I used to steal my old man’s boat and a bunch of us would head out to one of the islands for a party.”

  Dammit, he was not letting Willow get on that boat. Duncan silently moved forward, preparing to rush her, when the beam of a powerful light suddenly cut through the fog, scanning shoreward from the water in a sweeping arc.

  Duncan stepped back into the shadow of several stacked crates and listened to the muted chug of an engine approaching at idle speed. The searchlight stopped on Willow as she stood on the pier, its beam also catching Cobb in silhouette.

  “Hey The Corncobb Lady,” the man in the approaching boat hollered. “That you, Ray Cobb?”

  Duncan watched as Cobb quickly helped Willow down to the deck of his boat and rushed her into its wheelhouse. Then he climbed back up the ladder and moved down the pier to intercept the boat coming in.

  “You’re out late tonight, Gramps,” Cobb said, leaning over to catch the roof of the other boat as it gently edged up to the pier. He took the rope handed to him and tied it off on a large post. “You have engine trouble?” he continued, moving back to help the old man up the ladder.

  “Naw. I anchored myself off Pregnant Island and had a nap,” he said with a chuckle. “Next thing I knew, I woke up and it was dark. Already radioed the missus, so she ain’t worried none.” Gramps leaned around Cobb, eyeing the younger man’s boat. “Who you got there, Ray? I thought I recognized her.”

  Cobb moved into his line of sight. “Just a friend.”

  The old man squinted up at him. “You should be working on winning Patty back, not fishing new waters.” He suddenly stiffened. “Willow Foster,” he said, starting toward Cobb’s boat. “That’s who I recognized, damned if it ain’t.”

  “Go home, Gramps,” Cobb said gently, crowding him away from his boat. “It’s not Willow Foster.”

  “I sure hope to hell not,” the old man said, stopping and looking up at Cobb.

  Duncan slid deeper into the shadows, since the men were only ten feet away now.

  “I hear that huge Scot over to Puffin Harbor already got a claim on her,” Gramps continued. “He owns The Rosach Pub, and I hear he used to be a…what you call them? A fortune soldier or something. Ayuh,” he said with a nod. “Word is he’s trying to take up with that Foster girl, but she ain’t making it easy for him,” he finished with a cackle. He pointed at Cobb’s chest. “You mind whose traps you’re pulling from. That Scot ain’t no one to
mess with. Go back to Patty.”

  “I’m trying,” Cobb growled. “But she’s being stubborn. She says I take her for granted or something.”

  Gramps glanced toward Cobb’s sleek-lined, crisply painted boat, then cocked his head at the young man. “Maybe you should spend more money on your house than you do your boat, boy. Homes are important to women.” He puffed up his chest. “I’ve kept the same missus and the same boat for near forty-six years, ’cause I spent my earnings on whichever one was complaining the loudest at the time.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that,” Cobb said, urging the old man toward land. “And you should get home before Mildred locks you out.”

  That said, Cobb jogged back to his boat, untied the ropes with quick efficiency, jumped onto the deck, and had the engine started before Gramps even got moving.

  Duncan gritted his teeth in frustration, inching around the crates as the old sea salt finally walked by muttering something about the foolishness of horny toads.

  By the time Duncan was able to move down the pier, Cobb’s boat was already disappearing into the fog—and Willow Foster was standing on deck, waving back at Duncan.

  Chapter Three

  Willow sat on a large box under the wheelhouse of The Corncobb Lady, hugging her knees to her chest as she watched the spray of frothing water disappear into the darkness behind.

  “Are you warm enough?” Ray shouted over the roar of the diesel engine, slipping out of his heavy canvas jacket and tossing it to her before she could answer.

  “You’ll freeze.”

  “Naw. I’m used to being damp and cold,” he said, returning his attention to the dark sea ahead.

  Once they’d idled out of the shore-hugging fog, about twenty minutes ago, Ray had given the powerful boat full throttle. Willow wasn’t worried they’d run into anything; she’d made enough trips in speeding boats in high school to know that visibility was actually quite good on the ocean at night. She was only mad at herself for not remembering how raw it could get on the open water. Unlike kayaking, where one worked up a sweat, cruising the Gulf of Maine at twenty-five knots in June was damn cold.

  Willow slipped into Ray’s jacket, and it was as she was pulling the sleeves up to find her hands that she saw the ink on her right palm, though it was too dark to read it.

  She was pretty sure it was Latin.

  And just how did Duncan Ross—the definition of a troglodyte if there ever was one—know enough Latin to write an entire sentence on her hand?

  Willow lowered her chin to her bent knees and wrapped her arms around them again as she remembered two years ago. She’d stopped into the old Drop Anchor where Duncan had been sharing a drink with Kee and Ahab and Jason and Matt and Peter four days after rescuing Willow and Rachel from Raoul Vegas and his henchman. Luke had been in the hospital, recovering from gunshot wounds, and Willow had still had several fading bruises from the frightening ordeal.

  But before heading back to her job in Augusta, she had sought out the men to formally thank them for rescuing her. Especially Duncan, because he’d been the one to burst into the house where she was being held captive—looking like Zeus himself—and save her from one of the bad guys.

  So she had paid for a round of drinks and Duncan had walked her out to her car. But before she could especially thank him again, her hero had hauled her into his arms and kissed her quite passionately—right there in the parking lot, right in front of God and the rest of the world.

  That she had kissed him back, not even realizing what a slippery slope she might be heading down, only proved that intelligence had nothing to do with common sense.

  Because right after that heart-stopping kiss, Willow had unknowingly fired the first salvo of their upcoming war. More mad at herself than at Duncan, she had taken out her pen and written troglodyte on his palm, telling him she’d spelled it out so he could look it up in the dictionary. Then she’d gotten into her car, cursing the fact that he was either too dense or too amused to realize the insult, and driven away.

  And so had started their two-year-long, passionate battle of wills. Every time she would come home for a visit, the maddening Scot somehow managed to get her alone and kiss her until she couldn’t even remember how to spell troglodyte, much less hero for that matter.

  There were a hundred ways to describe Duncan Ross, and only one way Willow could describe her feelings for him: dangerous. What she felt for Duncan was dangerous not only for herself, but for him.

  Men like Duncan had a tendency to think in simple terms, and when something caught their interest they usually went after it with the determination of a hungry tiger.

  Finding herself the prey of such a formidable beast was both frightening and exhilarating. And at times, like tonight, damn frustrating.

  Eighteen months ago she’d made her biggest mistake.

  Going to bed with Duncan had only encouraged his pursuit. It didn’t matter that it had been the most incredible night of her life; she’d awakened a sleeping tiger who up until that point had seemed contented with stolen kisses and kicked shins, laughter and insults, and a bit of mutually enjoyable necking.

  But for the last eighteen months, Willow had felt positively hunted. So instead of coming home one or two weekends a month, she’d thrown herself into her work and simply avoided Puffin Harbor as much as possible.

  Or she had been able to until Ray Cobb had called her office Monday, saying he didn’t know who else to bring his problem to. He knew her personally, he knew she specialized in environmental crimes against the state—high-profile, newsworthy crimes—and he knew he could trust her to quietly discover what was happening in her childhood playground.

  So here she was, spending a Friday night in June racing through the Gulf of Maine in a lobster boat and foolishly wishing she was in Duncan Ross’s bed instead.

  Willow smiled, remembering the picture of him standing on the dock as they’d idled away. His fists had been planted on his hips, his feet had been spread in predatory anger as he’d watched her escape, and the fog had swirled around him in waves of simmering frustration.

  Yes, possessive and protective described Duncan very well; as did passionate, utterly physical, and perfect in all ways but one.

  Duncan wasn’t willing to have a quiet, flaming affair with her—he wanted marriage. A lifetime of passion, he’d told her tonight. And for that reason alone, Willow knew she couldn’t afford to lose this war, simply because she couldn’t make the kind of commitment he was demanding.

  Which also proved that intelligence didn’t have anything to do with irrational fear, either.

  “We’re here,” Ray said, throttling the engine down to an idle and pushing several buttons on one of the navigational instruments over his head.

  Willow stood up and looked at the colorful monitor. “How far are we from Thunder Island?” she asked, trying to orient herself in reference to the map on the screen.

  “Two miles. There,” Ray said, pointing over her shoulder.

  Willow turned and looked toward the black horizon, letting her eyes go out of focus just enough to see the outline of the island as it rose into the starry night.

  “Nobody lives on it?” she asked, turning back to Ray. “It’s still just an abandoned granite quarry? If I remember correctly, it took more courage than brains to even land there, since it was so rocky and the tides were so rough.”

  “Nobody lives there,” he said, shaking his head and smiling at the memories the island held for both of them. “We had some really fun times, didn’t we, the whole gang swimming in that old quarry pond?”

  “It was the only place we could swim,” Willow said, looking back toward the island. “The sun warmed up the pond water enough to make it just barely tolerable. Have you and Patty been there lately?” she asked, still looking at the island.

  “Naw. What for?”

  She turned to him. “To go swimming.”

  She could just make out the dull flush of his cheeks in the light of the instruments. �
�Why would Patty want to go swimming in that old quarry?”

  “Maybe to bring back memories,” Willow asked softly, “of youthful passion and a time when nothing else mattered but living each day to the fullest?”

  Ray snorted, turned back to his screen, and punched several buttons. “I guess you heard what Gramps said. Patty left me.”

  “Has she filed for divorce?”

  “No,” he said softly, pulling the boat out of gear to stop their forward movement. “Not yet.”

  “Have you thought that maybe she doesn’t want a divorce, Ray?” Willow asked. “That she only wants her high school sweetheart back?” She took hold of his sleeve and turned him toward her. “Maybe the Patty I remember wants the carefree young man she remembers.”

  “I have three kids, two mortgages, a sky-high overhead, and not enough days in a fishing season,” he said, waving at the boat they stood in. “I can’t afford to take Patty on trips down memory lane.”

  “You can’t afford not to, Ray. What good is working so hard if there’s no one to come home to at the end of the day?”

  “I don’t see you rushing home to anyone,” he snapped, shoving on a pair of gloves. He picked up a stick with a hook in the end and waved it at the air. “If I remember correctly, you didn’t keep a boyfriend more than four months all through high school. And you’re—what—twenty-eight? And you still haven’t settled down.”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “No, it’s about lobsters,” he said, turning to watch the screen on his Global Positioning System. “And about whatever’s in these waters that’s damn near killing my livelihood.”

  He put the boat in gear and idled forward while watching the monitor. “Look for a blue and pink buoy,” he told her, turning on a floodlight and directing its narrow beam over the water.

  Willow saw nothing but black ocean gently swelling around them. Ray slowly idled The Corncobb Lady in large circles for several more minutes, then turned the wheel sharply, pulled back on the throttle, and took the engine out of gear. He leaned over the side, reached out with his pole, and in one fluid movement dropped the snagged buoy onto the deck and tossed the attached rope over the pulley above his head.