Temptation Bay (A Windfall Island Novel)

by Anna Sullivan

  “I can’t imagine AJ selling the family Bible.”

  “I’ll haunt him if he does, then I’ll haunt you for letting him.”

  “How did I get roped into this?”

  Ma sniffed. “Think of you as a daughter.”

  Touched, Maggie kissed Ma’s cheek again, then went around behind her chair, as much to hide the mist in her eyes as to look over Ma’s shoulder.

  “No, you don’t.” Ma snapped the Bible closed.

  “Spoilsport.”

  “It’s AJ’s sport I’d be spoiling, and he’d have my hide.”

  Maggie huffed out a breath, mostly for effect, although she could already imagine AJ’s expression when she called him by his actual name. Then again, where would be the fun in that?

  “Here I am,” Ma said, turning to a set of gold-edged pages.

  From what little Maggie could see from her frustratingly safe distance, each page held two columns of lines, one for name and one for birth dates.

  Ma pointed to an entry and read, “1 May, Nineteen Hundred Thirty-three.”

  Maggie closed her eyes for a moment, silently grateful.

  “Now I wonder why my birth date should be such a thing of interest to you,” Ma said, “and such a matter of relief.”

  Maggie grinned at her. “Somebody ornery as you could live this long, it gives me hope.”

  “Don’t fool yourself, child. Ornery is what got me here.”

  Mother Appelman’s house was hard to miss. So was Maggie’s car sitting in the driveway. Dex leaned against the driver’s side door. He didn’t have to wait long before Maggie came out, his heart giving an odd little thump when he finally saw her. She wasn’t quite so happy to see him, her steps faltering before she crossed her arms and frowned. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same as you, I’d imagine.”

  “She’s not Eugenia,” Maggie said. “She was born in thirty-three.”

  “That’s one question answered. I have a few dozen more.” He started past her, but Maggie surprised him by laying a hand on his arm.

  He studied her face for a moment. “You don’t want me talking to her.”

  “You really think Eugenia might still be alive?”

  “It’s not likely.”

  “If she is alive, she’s not on the island. Ma is the oldest woman living on Windfall.”

  “Which means she may have known Eugenia Stanhope, and if she moved, Mrs. Appelman may remember where she went.”

  “And how are you going to ask her without giving yourself away?” When Dex had no answer, she said, “Whatever you decide, you’ll have to ask her another time. She may not be eighty years old, but she’s close, and right now she needs her rest.”

  “I can’t argue with that, especially if you agree to have a drink with me.”

  “Deal,” she said, surprising him again.

  And then she walked around to the back of the car, opened the trunk, and took out two bottles of water, flipping one to him.

  “Not exactly what I had in mind.”

  “If you were a lawyer, you’d know better than to leave loopholes a mile wide.”

  Dex opened the water and took a swig. It was lukewarm and tasted like plastic, but it gave him something to focus on, kept his eyes from straying to her subtle curves, and stopped his mind from fogging. Maggie had put him off his stride from the minute she’d walked out of Ma’s house. He didn’t know how, but he had to get his balance back again.

  “I’ll have to talk to her at some point,” he said.

  “Yes, you will. She knows everything about Windfall, kind of the keeper of the spoken lore, which is a good thing when a jackass like Meeker controls the written.”

  “You, uh, haven’t been to see him yet?”

  “I’ll get to him in my own time.”

  “Maggie. I’m sorry. If there was another way…” He stepped closer to her.

  “You’re crowding me again.”

  “It doesn’t seem to be bothering you this time.”

  “Oh, it’s bothering me. I’m just trying to figure your angle.”

  “Ouch.” Dex stepped back, kept it good-natured, but there was a definite sting that she’d think he would use that kind of weapon.

  “Don’t beat yourself up, Keegan,” she said. “You can’t manipulate everyone in the world.”

  “You think you’re such a hard nut to crack?” He grabbed her by the upper arms and jerked her against him, taking her mouth.

  He’d expected her to fight, so it caught him off guard when she fisted her hands in his jacket. She’d had some self-defense training, he remembered, as she used her weight to pull him off balance, twist them both around, and shove him against the car.

  Then he stopped thinking because she poured herself into the kiss, tilted her head, and pulled him into a dark, sweet world filled with heat and intensity and promise. She made a breathless little sound that seemed to arrow straight through him, and even as his blood took fire she slipped her arms around his waist and laid that long, lean body against his, collarbone to knees, and gave him everything she had to give. At least he hoped she hadn’t held anything back, or he’d be in real trouble when they finally got together.

  And they would be getting together.

  If this kiss taught him anything, he thought in the last rational part of his brain, it was to stop deluding himself that he could keep his hands off her for much longer. But just to prove he wasn’t completely helpless, to let her know she wasn’t the one in charge, he broke the kiss.

  He didn’t push her away, wrapping his arms around her and staying all but mouth to mouth with her. And although he could feel her muscles tense, she didn’t test his strength. Or her own.

  “The next time we do this,” he said, “we won’t be outside, where half the village gets a free show. We’ll be somewhere we can finish it.”

  “You keep making threats—”

  “Not a threat, a promise.” This time, when he felt her muscles bunch, when those brilliant blue eyes narrowed on his, he turned her loose. Not because he was afraid his strength wouldn’t be enough. But because he might not let her go.

  She climbed into her car, fired it up, and sped off, but not before she shot him a long stare through her window—not so sure of herself now.

  Dex was still grinning when he pulled out his cell phone and dialed, setting off on foot through the village. “I thought you’d be brow-beating some poor schmuck for one of your high-powered clients,” he said when the call went through.

  “That’s your M.O.,” Alec Barclay said. “I work for the little guy.”

  “Well, I work for you, and since I’m barely getting paid, you can trot your ass up from Boston to help me.”

  “First,” Alec said, “I can’t just drop everything. Those high-powered clients get cranky when I don’t show up for depositions and court appearances.

  “Second, you solve this case and there’s a hefty finder’s fee coming your way, not to mention you’ll have made a name for yourself no amount of money can buy—which is the real reason you agreed to take this on.”

  “It’s not going to get solved at this rate.”

  “Going that well, huh?”

  Dex filled him in—with a little careful editing. It sounded whiny, even to him, that he was raising the white flag after such a short and relatively uneventful time, but his gut was talking, and it was telling him he needed help—outside help.

  “Outnumbered, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Dex said sheepishly.

  “And you’re going to throw me to the she-wolves as a distraction?”

  “I’d date you.”

  Alec laughed, long and hard. “Never thought I’d see the day when you cried Uncle because a few women wanted in your pants.”

  “Paige Walker is one of those she-wolves,” he lied without hesitation.

  “The movie star?” It sounded like Alec had swallowed his tongue. “You’re making that up.”

  “Turns out she grew up here.�
�

  “And now she’s hiding out there.”

  Not yet, Dex allowed, but she might show up, seeing as the rest of the world was so unfriendly just now. “Why wouldn’t she, considering how well these people keep secrets from the outside world? So…”

  “She’s off my list,” Alec said darkly, referring to the list every guy had of his fantasy women.

  “Hell, she is the list in your case.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Since the sex tape.”

  “Since she’s an illusion, and the family is firmly rooted in reality. As long as reality comes with a Mayflower pedigree.”

  Dex just shook his head over the foibles of the wealthy. “Fascinating as I find your family’s pursuit of dynasty, Alec, I have a real problem here.”

  “Kiss my ass, Keegan,” Alec said good-naturedly, adding, “I really do have a heavy caseload at the moment, but I’ll clear some time and come as soon as I can. And in the meanwhile, I’ll do the next best thing.”

  Chapter Eleven

  When Maggie left Ma’s, she kept to the village’s winding back streets, but it wasn’t Dex she couldn’t face. It was herself—weak, filled with needs she couldn’t corral, and cravings she didn’t want to. And now Dex knew it. Hell, the cat wasn’t just out of the bag, it had clawed its way free and was on the prowl.

  She could still feel the heat of Dex’s mouth on hers, still taste him, dark and intoxicating, on her tongue. She knew how his body fit to hers, the way his arms banded around her, and how all of it combined to incinerate her from the inside out. The sound of his deep voice, promising they’d finish what they’d started, seemed to ring in her ears and steal her breath.

  The only defense in her arsenal was anger. So she embraced it.

  She embraced the anger when she parked on the side street where her Mustang wouldn’t be as noticeable. She embraced the anger when she slammed out of her car and strode along the boardwalk to the antique store. And she sure as hell embraced the anger when she shoved her way through the front door and came face to face with Josiah Meeker—and then she didn’t need Dex to put her in a fighting mood.

  Just the look on Meeker’s face was enough.

  “Well, now,” he said with the kind of smile that made her skin crawl and her hands fist, “look what the wind blew in.”

  “The wind had nothing to do with it.”

  He stared at her some more, and this time his lips pursed consideringly before he concluded, “You want something.”

  “So do you,” Maggie shot back. “The status quo. And you’re willing to do just about anything to keep it.”

  “Blackmail, Maggie?”

  “I’m not above blackmail, and it still puts me so far out of your league you have to look up to see the soles of my boots.”

  Meeker lost his sneer. “What do you want?”

  “The Windfall journals.”

  “What—oh, for Keegan.” Which brought back the sneer. “I wonder what all your so-called friends would think if they find out you’re helping him? Working with an outsider.”

  “I’m not doing this for Keegan. But if I were, and it became public knowledge, I imagine it would be almost as bad as everyone learning my father paid you to keep tabs on me for him. An outsider.”

  Meeker spread his hands, pasted on what he must’ve thought was a smile of innocence. “Now, Maggie, you misunderstood—”

  “I knew exactly what you meant when you started unzipping your fly.”

  “I cared for you.”

  “Bullshit. Sex is about power to you. You saw an opportunity and you took it. You thought you could get me to sleep with you by threatening to tell my father lies about me.”

  “He knew how you were. Why else would he have you watched?”

  To safeguard his precious reputation, Maggie answered in the aching silence of her own mind. If she’d believed her safety had meant anything to him, she’d have told Admiral Solomon. But then, she hadn’t needed him, had she? Then or now. “I was sixteen. I doubt the law would have any trouble labeling your intentions.”

  “I’m fairly certain the statute of limitations has run out.”

  “There are many kinds of laws, Meeker. You’ve lived here all your life; you ought to know that.” And since she’d had as much of him as she could take, she held out her hand, palm up.

  “And if I refuse?”

  Maggie stepped sideways and flicked a little glass trinket off the edge of a nearby shelf.

  Meeker lunged forward, just managing to catch it. “Jesus, that’s crystal, about a thousand years old, and nearly priceless.”

  “So is my time.”

  She could hear him grinding his teeth, but he turned on the heel of his Italian loafers and threaded his way through the maze until he arrived at the little, climate-controlled room behind the counter where he kept the most precious of his merchandise.

  The farther she got from the door, the more claustrophobic Maggie felt. She followed him to make sure he handed over all the journals. She stayed in the doorway, though. She’d learned the hard way not to let herself get cornered.

  “They don’t leave your sight,” he said as he gave them to her. “Or you’ll answer to me.”

  “You have my word that I’ll take care of them. And my word actually means something.”

  “I never thought you’d be such a vindictive—”

  “Be careful, Joe. I kept my mouth shut for the sake of your family.”

  “You told Boatwright.”

  “He was my boyfriend, not the sheriff. And he’s kept it to himself all these years because I asked him to.” Maggie kept her eyes on his so she knew he was listening and believing. “But you can bet everything you hold dear that if he ever hears of you putting one finger out of line, he’ll deal with you. And if he doesn’t, I will. I’m a lot stronger and faster than I was at sixteen.” She took a step forward. “Touch me ever again, and it’ll be the last time.”

  “I don’t have to touch you, Maggie. I know you remember me every night when the light goes off and you’re alone in the dark. Alone and afraid.”

  Maggie snorted. “You were just one of the tools my father used in his attempts to bring me to heel, Joe, a far from effective one. On the rare occasion you cross my mind, it’s the picture of you curled into a fetal position on the floor, wheezing and moaning in pain.” She smiled coolly. “Fear is not exactly what I’m feeling in those moments.”

  “Fine words,” Meeker spat. “But you have one fatal flaw, Maggie. You fight fair.”

  After leaving Meeker’s, Maggie picked up burgers and fries from the Horizon and took them to George’s office—part apology to him, part soother for herself. After her previous two run-ins she badly needed to see a friendly face. And, she admitted, she wanted to tell George why Dex Keegan was there. She wanted to dump the whole sorry mess into his lap and pretend she’d never heard Dex Keegan connect Eugenia Stanhope’s kidnapping with Windfall Island.

  It wasn’t, however, something she could scrub from her mind like muddy footprints tracked onto a clean kitchen floor—and not just because she’d given her word. This was her place, her world; she couldn’t protect it with her head in the sand. She didn’t believe Eugenia had survived all these years without the world finding out, but on the off chance she was wrong, she had to know where this thing might lead. Or to whom.

  So when George asked, “What’s new,” she said, “Not a thing, how about you?”

  “Dex Keegan.”

  So much for keeping the conversation neutral. She dropped into the lone chair beside George’s desk. “What’s he up to now?”

  “Causing chaos wherever he goes.”

  Maggie couldn’t have agreed more.

  “He runs five miles every day. You’d think it was the Boston Marathon, the way half the women in town line the streets waiting for him to happen by.”

  Maggie laughed at the disgruntled expression on George’s face.

  “Enjoy yourself now, Chuckles. The nex
t time the Maslow twins start kicking and scratching, I’m sending you in to sort it out.”

  Just the notion of Cindy and Mindy Maslow, forty-something and as round as they were tall, in a catfight made her smile.

  “Why didn’t you just throw Dex to them?”

  George smiled a little, reluctantly. “The thought crossed my mind, but he can run faster than all three of us.”

  “George, you have a gun.”

  “Any particular reason you want me to shoot him?”

  “I barely know he’s still around,” she said, but she didn’t meet George’s eyes.

  “Not for lack of trying on his part, or so I hear. He was out to the airport the other day.”

  “And the whole island is talking about it. Since everybody is busy trying to make a couple of me and Keegan, you might as well know I just ran into him at Ma’s.”

  George sat forward. He didn’t say anything, but unlike when she was with Dex, Maggie felt compelled to fill this silence because George was her friend. That didn’t entitle him to know everything. “I was coming out as he was going in, but I asked him not to bother her because I left her resting.”

  “It’s no wonder what he wants with Ma. She knows everything about Windfall.” George sat back again, steepled his hands. “You’re pretty knowledgeable yourself.”

  “And?”

  “And you’ve made it clear you don’t want anything to do with him.”

  Maggie waited him out, let the silence work for her this time.

  “He came here for a reason, Maggie. If I were in his shoes, with half the population hot to trot and the other half freezing him out, I’d look for somebody like you, tough but fair, somebody fiercely protective of her home.”

  “Somebody you could manipulate?”

  “Nobody gets one over on you, Maggie.”

  That was exactly what she’d told Dex. And she hadn’t completely believed it then. “You getting at something, George?”

  “He had dinner at Jessi’s the other night.”

  “Right. Me, Jessi, and Benji. Just in case your sources didn’t give you the whole picture.”

  George wasn’t fazed by her frosty tone. “One of the neighbors said the two of you had a fairly passionate discussion standing on Jessi’s front walk.”