Temptation Bay (A Windfall Island Novel)

by Anna Sullivan

“I was up before dawn.”

  “On very little sleep,” Dex allowed.

  She held his gaze, but hers was inscrutable. “Nothing stopping you from going back in there and picking more brains.”

  “Being picked up myself, more like.” He dipped his hands into his pockets because he wanted to put them on her. It baffled him, as always, that he should be so drawn to such a prickly, irritating woman, but there it was. “I guess I’ll go back in there.”

  “You do that,” she said. Her expression was placid, but there was enough heat in her tone to tell him she wasn’t all that happy with his decision.

  He nearly grinned over it. She didn’t want him to take it for granted they’d spend every night together, but she didn’t like it when he accepted it. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Oh, goody.”

  He did laugh at that. Her snotty tone put him at ease, but then her contrariness had attracted him from the first.

  Most nights, George Boatwright wandered through the Horizon, keeping a weather eye on the citizens of Windfall Island. He knew who liked to indulge a little too freely, who’d hooked up, who’d broken up, and who was bent over it. Booze, fighting, and sex, the Windfall Island trifecta. And he wouldn’t trade a single one of the drunks, scrappers or lovers for a suburb full of law-abiding nuclear families who tucked themselves in sharply at ten p.m.

  He didn’t often sit down for a meal, not because AJ’s cooking failed to appeal to him, but because he was just as happy with a can of soup or a grilled cheese sandwich thrown together in the comfort of his own tiny kitchen. When he was on duty, he was on duty. And he was always on duty.

  Every now and again, though, he joined Maggie, and shared a meal and a quiet hour or two. Seeing her with Dex Keegan brought him up short.

  They sat in the middle of the room, but they were an island of intimacy in the big, boisterous crowd. Maggie didn’t even notice him, and anybody looking at them could tell they’d been together, even if they didn’t know Keegan had been spending a lot of time out at the airport.

  George moved on, forced himself to put one foot in front of the other. It wasn’t like she hadn’t taken lovers before, he reminded himself. So had he, George allowed. It was that this time she might get hurt.

  Maggie liked to convince herself she had a heart of stone, but George knew better. He’d broken her heart in high school, and sure, that was a long time ago. But he could still remember how it had felt when she’d looked at him, her eyes dry and devastated. He’d never stopped regretting that he’d lost her love.

  In the end, though, he’d gained her friendship, and he’d be damned if he stood by and watched her get hurt.

  She’d slept with Keegan. She’d loaned him a car. The Jag, George thought, his jaw clenching. Even though Maggie would have denied it meant anything, George knew better. She didn’t give herself casually, and she never played fast and loose with her machinery.

  Somehow Keegan had worked his way around her walls. But George had a trick or two up his sleeve.

  He found a quiet corner at the end of the bar farthest from the tables and juke box and pulled out his cell phone, waiting impatiently as it rang a half dozen times before the call connected.

  “He’s been here a couple weeks already,” George said. “Made no progress.” Well, he amended privately, Dex had gotten his hands on Meeker’s journals—or rather Maggie had. But that was immaterial—the journals wouldn’t help Keegan. If there’d been anything useful to be found there, Meeker would have made something out of them. God knew he’d tried hard enough. “It’s time to call this off. Eugenia couldn’t possibly have survived the explosion.”

  The voice on the other end of the call sounded groggy and testy. “I need to be sure.”

  George clenched his jaw once, relaxed it. “The cops and Feds couldn’t find her eighty years ago.”

  He heard a soft, derisive puff of laughter. “The local police botched the investigation, probably on purpose because they were on the payroll of those disgusting rumrunners. And the Federal Agents were no better.”

  “Then send someone else, someone with more experience.”

  “No.”

  “What makes you think Keegan is the right man for this?”

  “He’s gotten under your skin, hasn’t he?”

  Again, George had to take few seconds. “I just don’t like the way he’s doing his job,” he said when he could keep his voice cool and even. “It seems to me he’s stirring the pot more than anything else.”

  “Well, this pot is big and old, and I imagine if it’s stirred long enough all sorts of interesting things will rise to the top.”

  “Someone rifled his room,” George allowed.

  “There you go. Any idea who did it?”

  “Could be just about anybody. And there’s no saying it was connected with Eugenia.”

  “So find the culprit and you’ll have your answer.”

  Maybe so, George thought as he ended the call, but he’d see to it that Keegan didn’t do any more damage than necessary. To any islander.

  He stepped back into the noise and activity, took a long, slow look around, then made his way to the other end of the bar. “Hey, Mort,” he said, taking the stool next to Maggie’s handyman.

  “What?” Mort said sullenly.

  “Let’s talk about Dex Keegan.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Relationship, huh.

  Relations, yes, Maggie mused; relationship, no. That word scared the hell out of her, but nobody in their right mind would call one night in the sack—no matter how good it might have been—a relationship, especially when the rest of her interactions with Dex Keegan consisted of one kind of disagreement or another. So why did she still feel like jumping in her Piper or Twinstar and soaring to a place where there was just her and empty blue sky?

  She hadn’t known how to act around Dex, and that was new to her. It wasn’t like he was her first lover; why the hell did she feel so… shy? She was never shy. And why had she watched him so closely, at least when he wasn’t looking; why had she studied his expressions, parsed his words? What the hell had she been looking for?

  The questions swirled in her mind, spinning around until she realized she didn’t actually want the answers. Best, she decided, to put an end to that part of their—ha, ha—relationship, and go on like nothing had ever happened, or rather like it had meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. He was a man, she was a woman; they’d had sex, end of story.

  But she very much worried it wasn’t the end of the story. And when she wondered just what kind of a story she might be spinning in her head, it gave her a sick feeling in her stomach. She didn’t think there was any outrunning that feeling, but she had to try.

  She pulled open her front door and found Jessi, fist raised to knock.

  “Jeez,” she said, slapping a hand over her heart.

  “Why are you so edgy?”

  Maggie tried to give Jessi a shrug, felt both shoulders go up. And stay up. Edgy was a good word for what she felt—not that she’d admit it. “What are you doing here?”

  “I, uh,” she edged to one side to look past Maggie, into the house. “Where’s Dex’s genealogist?”

  “Sleeping, as far as I know.”

  “What’s the deal with him, anyway?”

  Maggie stepped outside, pulled the door shut behind herself. “Dex hasn’t told me anything about him.”

  Jessi sighed.

  The very fact that she wouldn’t push or pry made Maggie’s mind up for her. She walked over, rested her butt against the railing of her front porch. “Dex is here to solve the Stanhope kidnapping,” she said before she could talk herself down. She felt immediately as if a weight had been lifted from her chest.

  It took a minute to sink in, then Jessi looked over at her. “That’s why he called in a genealogist. You’d better tell me the whole story, Mags.”

  Maggie smiled, gave Jessi a come-along tip of the head and waited for her to settle on the bench cl
ose by. “I shouldn’t have kept it from you.”

  “You had to promise Dex you wouldn’t tell anyone, right?” She nodded a heartbeat after Maggie did. “What choice did you have?”

  “Dex isn’t going to be happy I told you now.”

  “His happiness isn’t the point, is it? I mean, he came here looking for evidence of that poor baby… Jesus.” She reached out, caught Maggie’s wrist in a bruising grip. “I just got the rest of the picture. He thinks the kidnappers came from Windfall Island.”

  “No, Jess, he doesn’t think that. At least he didn’t say that to me. He found a clue that could mean Eugenia Stanhope ended up here somehow.”

  “I thought… Wasn’t she killed when that ship blew up?”

  “There’s no proof of that.”

  “She might have lived.” Jessi sank forward, resting her head on her knees for a moment before lifting it again, eyes wide and swimming with a host of emotions. “There could be someone on Windfall who doesn’t know they’re a member of one of the wealthiest and most important families on the east coast.”

  “It might be you,” Maggie said.

  Jessi covered her mouth, laughing a little. “I could be a millionaire and not even know it. Just think what you could do with that kind of money. Just think what any one of us could do.”

  “You can have it.”

  “Are you saying you’d turn it down?”

  “I’m saying I’m happy with the way things are.” Maggie looked out over the airport, loving every one of its weathered buildings, its landing strips in need of a good repaving, its rocky shores and the choppy gray-blue water of Temptation Bay. A storm had passed through during the night, thunder and lightning and rain that seemed to have washed the sun and the sky clean. “I’ve been thinking of turning over another five percent to you. You deserve it, Jess.”

  “Maggie, no. I just answer the phones and keep the books, and you already pay me too much as it is. Solomon Charters is what it is because of your hard work.”

  “Not entirely.” But she’d started with nothing, and built this place. It might not look like much, but it was hers. She didn’t want some big city folks galloping in on what they’d see as white chargers, thinking they could buy her life away from her just because she had their blood and they had half the money on the planet.

  “Maybe…” Jessi stood, paced a little away, then turned back. “Maybe I could work with this Abbot guy. He won’t be able to do a genealogy of the island without a local’s help, right?”

  Maggie smiled. “That’s a hell of an idea, Jess.”

  “Good.” Jessi exhaled explosively. “That’s good. It won’t seem so, I don’t know, like my life is about to explode, if I can be part of the investigation.”

  “Explode is a good way to put it.” Maggie scrubbed both hands over her face and back through her hair. She considered, seriously considered, telling Jessi to keep her name off the damned thing. Which wouldn’t be fair to Jessi, she decided almost immediately, asking her to lie. “A genealogy will be a big help, and you’re right about Abbot. He won’t accomplish anything on his own.”

  She’d just have to keep an eye on the thing, Maggie told herself, decide how to deal with it when it became necessary. And yeah, that was procrastination at its finest, but hopefully, before then she’d find a way to tell Dex the truth about her own origins. And if not, well, he could hardly have expected her to confide in a stranger who’d been keeping his own secrets.

  “I imagine Dex will be here sometime this morning. We’ll tell him then.”

  “You two have been spending a lot of time together.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve been working.”

  “All night?”

  “Look, the only reason Dex told me the truth about Eugenia Stanhope is that he needed me to get the island journals from Meeker.”

  That wiped the smirk off Jessi’s face, replaced it with sympathy. “He wouldn’t have asked you if he knew, Maggie.”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged it off. Dealing with Meeker was never pleasant, but she knew how to handle it. “We’ve been going through them, trying to find any hint of Eugenia.”

  “And?”

  “I can tell you how many ships were salvaged in 1892, what the cargo was, and how it was awarded, right down to the last ballast stone. We haven’t found a trace of Eugenia yet. Hell, we haven’t even found a journal that dates from the 1930s.”

  “You might not,” Jessi said.

  “We know that, too, but we have to try.”

  And that meant hours spent in very close quarters with Dex Keegan. And this desire for him that she couldn’t seem to shake.

  As soon as Dex saw the last of the village in his rearview, he punched it, screaming down the first straightaway, then working the gears and the clutch as the road climbed and curved around the rocky shoreline. The sky overhead was as brilliant a blue as Maggie’s eyes, the Atlantic to his left a deeper blue, restless as it dashed itself against the shore, foaming over the smooth stones or shooting high in spumes of white.

  Maggie would probably be pissed as hell if she knew he was driving so recklessly, but what Maggie didn’t know, he thought as he came around a low hill—

  And saw the road completely blocked by a jagged pile of rocks.

  He swerved by reflex, fought the wheel, the car going into a spin and slide that left him pointing at the wide ocean, fronted by the jagged rocks that studded practically every inch of the island’s coastline.

  Dex had a split second to make a decision, punch the gas and fly, if he was lucky, over those lethal points of stone. And hope like hell he could get out of the car before it sank. Or he could try to keep the car on the road, and away from yet more lethal rock that would end him just as surely in a vehicle built before airbags were even dreamed of.

  Before he’d finished the thought, he’d already punched the gas and spun the wheel, taking the car out of the spin. Then he jammed on the brakes, all but stood on them, praying Maggie had been as fastidious there as she’d been with the engine. The tires bit into the road’s surface with the shriek and smoke of burning rubber, the car sliding, sliding, and shuddering to a stop barely inches from catastrophe.

  He sat there a second, heart pounding, replaying that split-second, and realizing he’d actually missed the rocks. It wasn’t just wishful thinking. He blew out a breath, felt his mouth curve.

  And then he thought about Maggie. “Shit,” he said, pulling out his cell, hitting speed dial before he could let a single one of the dozen voices crowding his mind—each with a valid excuse—talk him out of the inevitable.

  “Solomon Charters,” the voice—Maggie’s voice—said, sounding just irritated enough to tell him she knew who was calling, even before she added, “You’re late.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m not getting there any time soon,” Dex said, relaying his predicament. The line went dead before he finished, without Maggie having said a word. Dex figured she’d make up for it when they were face to face.

  “You think that was a ride?” he muttered to himself as he climbed out of the Jag. “Just wait until Maggie gets here.”

  Sure enough, barely five minutes passed before he caught the sound of an engine approaching, heard rubber squeal from the other side of the rocks tumbled across the road. Maggie appeared at the lowest point of the rock slide, slipping as she clambered over, but not stopping to see what kind of damage she’d done to the shin she barked on the rocks.

  Her feet hit the pavement, her eyes met his, and for a minute, for one incredible, heart-stopping minute, he thought she was going to throw herself into his arms. Her feet took her to the car instead. And Dex called himself a fool.

  She took a long, hard look at the tiny space between the Jag and the rocks, then bent to run her hands over the front of the hood, down to the bumper.

  She got on her hands and knees, then her belly, swearing long and loud as she stared under the car. “Oil pan’s toast.” She shoved herself up to her knees, sat back on her heel
s, and glared at him.

  “I was there, too,” Dex reminded her, stung.

  “Any fool can see you’re all right.”

  He pretended to wipe away a tear. “Your concern is touching.”

  “Do you know how many hours I’ve put into this car?”

  “A hell of a lot more than you’ve spent with me,” he said, telling himself it was stupid to be jealous of an automobile, even one as amazing as a ’54 Jag Roadster. Then she stroked her hand over the hood again and every muscle in him clenched. “You and the car want to be alone?”

  She rose to her feet, and this time, her focus was all for him. And not in a good way. The heat from that fulminating look was enough to rock him back. He stepped forward instead, moved in on her.

  Maggie slapped both hands on his chest, shoved him back a step. And he let her, because he saw more than anger in her brilliant blue eyes.

  “What the hell were you thinking?”

  Dex stuffed his hands in his pockets because he didn’t know what to do with them, except he was pretty sure putting them on her was a bad idea. She didn’t want to admit she was feeling even a little concern for him, and if he did push her to say it, what the hell was he supposed to say back when he wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about her? Thank you?

  “I rebuilt that engine,” she said. “I know what it can do. Tell me you weren’t trying to find out.”

  She whirled and paced off, not waiting for an answer. She stopped with her eyes on the roadblock, and when she turned back she seemed calmer, marginally. “This happens once in a while. Anyone with half a brain is careful coming around the curves.”

  “You mean like you were the other day when you took this road about ninety miles an hour?”

  “I know where the most likely trouble spots are. We were heading into town, and I didn’t take this road. I took the one on the sheltered side of the island.”

  “It’s straighter,” Dex allowed. And if memory served there weren’t as many outcroppings high enough to spill into the roadway when Mother Nature decided they’d stood long enough. Or maybe Mother Nature was being falsely accused in this particular instance. Maybe Mother Nature had gotten some help.