“Bilge!” He managed to grab the edge of it and lift it just enough to pull his legs free. He dropped the counter to the companionway floor with a bang.
He pulled up his pantlegs, doing his best not to hiss at the pain. Blood. On both shins. He touched the back of his head where he’d clipped the porthole. No blood at least, but a painful bump was already rising.
“Double bilge!”
He lay down on the pilot berth and held his breath until the searing pain subsided a little. Then he pounded his heels against the boards that would be covered with cushions at some later date. He was ten years old and pounding out his frustration in his final-ever temper tantrum. Everything had gone wrong.
“Triple bilge!” He’d really liked the lady despite herself and despite her New York past and her fancy ways. Cassidy was the most attractive woman he’d met since…since he didn’t know when. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, though she certainly was. She was also intelligent, funny, and fantastic to look at. He could close his eyes and see her—every shape of her face fit together into a unified whole. Not the studied and genetic elegance of Melanie, but what beauty really was about.
And her body was womanly rather than model gaunt. That sweater had almost killed him. Every few minutes his attention was dragged down from her face by that deepening fade of russet toward black and the hidden promise of the black turtleneck beneath. He’d give a pretty penny to know why she smiled rather than snarled each time he couldn’t stop his eyes from drifting. She certainly wasn’t a tramp. Angelo had been right about that, a real lady.
Nutcase crawled out of wherever she’d been hiding from all his pounding. Seeing him lying on his back, she leapt onto his chest, settled herself in a little ball, and, now in her favorite position, set into purring like a pint-sized buzzsaw.
“But it isn’t just her beauty that makes her attractive,” he explained to the cat as his shins finally downgraded from excruciating to merely annoying. “See, there’s a difference between pretty and attractive that a lot of guys don’t understand.” Of course, neither had he until he’d started the inevitable comparison of Melanie and Cassidy Knowles.
The cat buzzed a little louder. She loved when he talked and she was curled on his chest.
“Beauty is like stop-you-in-the-street ‘Wow!’ Attractive, that’s something different.” He slid a finger along Nutcase’s jaw and she closed her eyes with pleasure.
“It’s when everything combines in a certain way. She doesn’t have to be a knockout; though she is. But you add that on top of funny, a real brain, and all that other stuff and you get a killer combination.”
Killer.
He pounded the back of his head against the boards, right where he’d hit his head, and he briefly saw stars again.
And then you blow it by going out of your way to insult her.
He reached back to rub his aching head and his fingers caught in papers. The mail. He’d stopped by the post office box and grabbed it on his way home from the hardware store and then tossed it on the bench so he could try out his new sledge.
Bill. Bill. Junk mail. Victoria’s Secret catalog, toss that aside for later. Nah, chuck it. Just more vapid fantasy women. He gave it a quick flip before tossing it aside.
Melanie. She got the center spread, good for her. Wow, she looked really fine with that long body and the red teddy. If she looked this good on the page, she must have been incredible in real life. And those eyes. He’d never captured that emotion on her. If he had, he would have used her face in some of the ads. But he’d never seen in the camera that wealth of calmness with the alluring dash of pity. Mere mortals couldn’t know the joy of wearing scarlet teddies for your man.
But he had seen it on her face once, though not on the camera. It was how she’d looked at him at the airport before turning away and leaving him behind. Calm and pity.
He chucked the catalog toward the garbage bag and missed. It flopped over the open floorboard exposing the bilge where it teetered for a long moment. The corner drooped. It disappeared below with a sodden splat. Yep, he really needed to fix that missing board in the floor.
The last envelope had Angelo’s writing on it. His friend hadn’t come by in a week and Russell couldn’t face going to see him.
Mail, though. That was a bad sign. Angelo had occasionally sent postcards when they’d lived on opposite coasts. Neither of them was much at writing. He tore off the end.
Nutcase appeared to have slipped into another of her mid-afternoon naps.
A newspaper clipping and two, hundred-dollar bills wrapped in a sheet of white paper. One word across the paper.
“Jerk!”
Two hundred dollars. They were for…what? Then he remembered. He’d tossed them on the table, as if paying for…
“Idiot!” He jerked up to a sitting position and banged his head on the low overhead above the pilot berth. He fell back prone as Nutcase growled and dug her claws into his chest at the unannounced change of position. His t-shirt was no defense against her talons. He extracted her claws and tossed her onto the table. He sat up more carefully this time.
Idiot! He’d treated her like…like a babe from 1-900-Dial-a-Babe. “Nice dinner conversation, honey. Here’s a couple of bills for your time.” Stupid! He’d meant to pay for the meal he’d ruined. Well, here it was back in his face once again. He jammed the bills in the pocket of his jeans.
He unfolded the clipping.
A Restaurant for Romance
by Cassidy Knowles
Oh no! Angelo was going to murder him. He’d forgotten that she’d been there to review the restaurant—the good and the bad. Her article would play from New York to San Francisco. She couldn’t break the restaurant, but she could certainly ding it. Ding it bad. He hadn’t told her, but he used to follow her columns when he was looking for the hot new restaurant to charm someone into his bed. Usually worked too. The lady had taste and people listened.
He scanned the article.
A good review. Yay!
No, a great review. It sounded so good, he wouldn’t have credited it except that he’d shared the meal with her. The Baby Scallop Kebob had been incredible. He could feel his mouth water again as he read about it. It had also been the high point of the meal right before he…
The chef made exquisite choices. Even the dessert wine, previously unknown to this reviewer, so complemented the fig-custard, puff pastry that this diner was transported back to the chef’s home town of Monterosso. The narrow beaches, the high cliffs, the home cooking, and the strong wines of the Ligurian region of Italy.
A little side column described the wine exactly as he’d tasted it. Only he hadn’t. He’d been far too grouchy to notice even half that. But she made him think that he had. She was really good at this.
A fine meal can be destroyed as easily by poor company as a poor chef.
Ouch! Okay, here it comes. Here’s where she slaughters Angelo’s. And it was all his fault. Angelo was never going to forgive him. The thin paper was crumpling in his hands.
Whether making a marriage proposal, as was done and joyously accepted by a bride-to-be, or looking to celebrate fifty glorious years together, there can be no better place than Angelo’s Tuscan Hearth. Bring the person you love to this restaurant and you’ll never be forgotten for it. Ever.
There it was. Published. Syndicated into over two hundred markets.
Cassidy Knowles was going to forgive him…never!
Cape Flattery Lighthouse
Cape Flattery, Makah Bay
First lit: 1857
Automated: 1977
48.3717 -124.7366
Cape Flattery was so named by Captain Cook in 1778 when he arrived at the Northwesternmost point of what would eventually become Washington State. “In this very latitude geographers have placed the pretended Strait of Juan de Fuca. Nothing of that kind presented itself to our view.” And so he dubbed the cape a “flatterer.”
Cook erred. The nearby Strait of San Juan de Fuca lead
s to the massive Puget Sound which hosts such cities as Seattle, Tacoma, and Vancouver, British Columbia.
The lighthouse was built with the light tower itself incorporated into the building so that the keepers did not have to risk the hostile natives to maintain the light. The natives were hostile because they had been decimated a few years before by a smallpox epidemic brought in by the light’s construction workers.
MAY 1
According to the GPS, Cassidy was about halfway to the viewpoint for the offshore Tatoosh Island lighthouse. It was such a beautiful day she was practically dancing along the three-quarter-mile long trail. Spring was finally here; the winter rains had eased off and the sun shimmered down from a crystalline sky. These were the moments she was glad she’d returned to the Pacific Northwest. The buds were opening in the vineyards she’d driven past, the flowers edging forth and filling the air with their sweet scent—battling the cherry trees for her nose’s attention.
The trail was a bit rough, but just fine in her hiking boots. Actually, according to the GPS, they were overkill, but she wanted to get some use from them. They made her feel solid, standing square upon the earth.
“Is that what men feel like when they do that thumbs-hooked-in-their-pockets thing?” A passing bumblebee was too busy about her task to answer.
The trail had started in a huge empty parking lot. If that lot were filled in the summer, the trail would be nuts. This weekday mid-morning was a far better time to be here. The dirt path descended down through trees, twisting down to simple, split log foot-bridges over muddy passages.
Despite the groomed trail, it was as wild a place as she’d ever been. Twenty or so miles from the nearest town, at the end of the road, at the end of the country for that matter. She was presently the northwesternmost person in the continental U.S. Possibly by that entire twenty miles.
It reminded her of growing up in the country and how much she’d enjoyed it as a child and not enjoyed it as a teen. When had that change taken place? She shrugged. No reason to care today. Today the world consisted of little Cassidy Knowles, a mucky trail, and a new lighthouse.
She followed a side branch to a small viewing platform. A stout rail was all that separated her from an impossibly long drop. The water lay a hundred or more feet below. Sheer islands thrust upward from the ocean into the air, their heads covered in tall caps of fir trees looking like a teen’s moussed ’do while the Pacific Ocean rolled and splashed unheeded about their rocky bases.
If she raised her arms, she could fly. If she were to sing, her voice could be heard around the world.
Cassidy returned to the trail and headed for the next lookout, taking the exhilarating floatiness down the trail with her.
“Hey! Wait!”
She looked back to see who was calling. Her foot came down hard on a rock, the shock jarred her whole body.
Russell Morgan. She turned away before he could recognize her, but there was nowhere to go. No escape along the open trail.
She could hear his feet pounding as he ran up the trail.
“Hey! You in the red coat. Wait!”
Resigned, she stopped and turned.
Russell stumbled to a halt, a fancy camera banging against his hip. “I’ve been looking for… Oh, it’s you.”
He had the decency to blush bright red at her continued silence.
“Sorry, that came out wrong. Let me start again. Hi, Cassidy. I didn’t expect to see you here.” He looked down the length of her body as if he were inspecting a mannequin.
Glancing down she saw her red leather coat, it was too warm for the parka. Black leggings and her new, barely dirty, hiking boots. They now appeared as ungainly clown feet at the end of overly skinny, pogo-stick legs. Ridiculous with the high-fashion coat, but she liked the way the soft leather felt no matter how inappropriate it was for the setting.
His gaze returned to her face. “Your hair.”
She reached up to check it, but it was still up in the clip that should keep it out of her face even in the wind that every lighthouse apparently cultivated.
“What?”
“It, uh,” he shook himself as if coming awake from a dream, “looks nice.”
“Thanks.” If he thought a lame compliment was going to begin to make up for…
“I’m really sorry for some of the things I said the other night.”
“You mean a month ago?”
His expression blanked for a moment.
“A month ago? Really?”
Just how dense was he?
“Twenty-six days.” Ugh, really really lame, Cassidy Knowles. She sounded like a pining female who counted the days, hours, minutes, and seconds. It was easy. Today was May first and their date, if one could call it that, had been on April fourth. Thirty days hath September, April, June, and…
He flashed one of his killer smiles and she did her best to resist its power. It was a really good smile.
“That makes this a mighty belated apology, doesn’t it? Perhaps if I got down on my knees?”
“How about a kow-tow?”
With the light breeze ruffling his brown hair, a worn denim jacket that outlined his wonderful upper body, he dropped to his knees and pounded his forehead three times against a patch of sand.
“Please forgive me, O Great Goddess of the Wines.”
He rocked back on his heels and grinned up at her. “Better?”
“That’s not fair.”
“What?” He stood once again and she noticed that her eyes were about level with his chin. His shoulder was just the right height to lay her head on if they were slow dancing. Stupid image. She definitely didn’t want to be around Russell Morgan for a moment longer than she had to—absolutely not long enough for a dance. Her brain had clearly taken a holiday.
“Jerks aren’t supposed to make me smile. Especially ones I’m mad at.”
“Cheating, huh?” He hooked his thumbs into his jeans pockets as if he were Harrison Ford and he’d just defeated the entire German Army on his own.
“Definitely.”
“Well, can I walk with you a bit, if I promise to be less jerky?”
“Is that possible?”
He shrugged eloquently, “I can try, but no guarantees.”
It would be tempting to blast him with some witty remark and walk away, but she could never think of them when she most needed them.
“Okay,” as if she had a lot of choice in the matter, there was only the one trail and not another soul to be seen.
He bowed slightly and indicated she should walk ahead. They moved toward the point in silence until one of them had to speak or she’d go stark raving mad.
“Do you—”
“Isn’t it—”
“You first.”
“No, you.”
He looked grumpy, but she waited him out.
“Do you come out here often?”
She shook her head. “My first time.”
“Me, too. Do you, ah, go to many lighthouses?”
Her foot caught on a rock and she stumbled forward. He reached out a hand to steady her, but she didn’t take it.
“Seemed like a nice day for a drive. I wasn’t really going for the lighthouse. I thought the northwest point of the U.S. might be amusing.” She was babbling like an idiot. But there was no way she’d tell him that she’d been collecting lighthouses for the last five months.
“What about Alaska?”
“Continental U.S.” You jerk.
“That always bothered me. ‘Continental U.S.’ Like Alaska is on some other continent.”
“Contiguous U.S. Does that make you happier?”
“Immensely.” He started whistling as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“Is this your first time?”
She glanced over in time to see a wolfish grin cross his face for a moment. That definitely hadn’t come out right, but she was not going to blush. Her cheeks didn’t appear to be paying attention to her orders and were heating up abruptly.
&
nbsp; “I meant—”
“Yes and no,” he saved her with a casual drawl that might still have a bit of the grinning male ego. “First time here.”
She focused on the trail ahead and continued placing one foot in front of the other.
“How about you? Are you a lighthouse virgin?” He said it with every insinuation possible dripping from his tongue. She’d obviously given him too much credit. What were they, in high school?
“Come on! Do you go out of your way to be insulting?”
He stopped his pathetic whistling. Actually, he was no longer beside her and she had to backtrack to where he halted.
“No.” He shook his head, his voice as soft as the breeze wending its way through the green moss. “No. I’d have to say that you bring out the worst in me.”
“I’m honored.”
He bit his upper lip and inspected the sky for a moment.
“Can we try this again?”
“You already started twice.”
“Third time’s the charm?”
If he’d made it a statement, she’d have left him no matter about the ferry ride, the three-hour drive, and the stupid lighthouse. But he looked pitiable. How a handsome, broad-shouldered man over six feet tall could look so lost was a wonder. Did he know that she had a weak spot for lost souls?
She looped her hand through the crook of his arm and tugged him along the trail. Once they were walking together, he unwound a bit. De-stiffened enough to bend his legs in some semblance of normalcy.
“Hi, I’m Cassidy Knowles. Yes, I’m a lighthouse virgin. This is my first one.” She’d be nice to him for Angelo’s sake, but that didn’t mean she was about to let him one single inch into her life.
“Russell Morgan, pleased to— I really was pleased to meet you. You seemed like a nice lady at dinner, no matter how I mangled it.”
“I have rarely been attacked quite so thoroughly.”
The Complete Where Dreams Page 14
