by JoAnn Ross
He was up to something. A wicked gleam had turned his eyes to silver, allowing Claren to realize exactly how Red Riding Hood must have felt facing down the Big Bad Wolf.
She crossed her arms; her back was pressed against the passenger door. “No.”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid?”
“Afraid?” Angry insults rose in her throat; years of reining in her tumultuous nature had her swallowing them. But just barely. “You overestimate yourself, MacKenzie.”
“Perhaps.” Leaving the car, he went around and opened her passenger door. “Perhaps not.” The fire he saw in her eyes rivaled that in her hair. For not the first time in the past four hours, Dash found himself admiring both.
“You’d better get to your shopping,” he suggested. “Before the store closes.”
With an inarticulate murmur that could have meant anything, Claren gathered up her skirts and left the car in a furious rustle of satin. But not before Dash had been treated to an appealing expanse of slender leg, clad in sheer ivory hose.
“Do you need any money?”
Was he actually offering to buy clothing for a woman he’d just met? What kind of man was Dash MacKenzie? If only Darcy were alive, he could answer that question. But if her uncle were alive, this frustrating, dangerously attractive man wouldn’t have come to Washington in the first place.
“Fortunately I have all my credit cards,” she said, reaching back into the car to retrieve her bag. “They’ll do until I can have my bank transfer my account to the local bank.”
“So you’re really going to stay.”
He’d already decided she had spunk. But as the ferry had made its way across the sound, taking her farther and farther away from the comfortable life she’d known, the secure, privileged world she’d grown accustomed to, Dash couldn’t help wondering if she’d changed her mind.
After all, he couldn’t deny that she had built a rather enviable life in Seattle. If a person were interested in a successful conventional existence. Personally Dash had found such a life-style stifling.
“Yes, I am.” Having acted on impulse, Claren had half expected to suffer doubts. But the nearer they’d gotten to Port Vancouver, the more she was convinced that she’d made the right decision.
“What about Darcy’s condition?”
When the attorney had first read her Darcy’s will, Claren had been stunned by her uncle’s autocratic demand that if she wanted to inherit his home, she would have to give up her thriving professional career, move into the house and devote one year to perfecting her talent. Now, given all that had happened in the past few hours, she realized that in his own way Darcy had been providing her with an escape route.
“I still think my uncle was overly optimistic about my talent,” she admitted.
A successful artist himself, Darcy had spent the major part of each of his visits trying to teach Claren to paint. And although she’d steadfastly demonstrated scant talent, he’d been convinced that her stiffly proper upbringing was simply damming up her inspiration.
“But I’m willing to give it the old college try,” she said with a renewed burst of determination, “if it means keeping the house.”
Her earlier irritation with Dash was forgotten as she found herself looking forward to the next twelve months. “I truly love that house,” she said with a soft smile that pulled at Dash.
He felt himself softening and steeled against it. He refused to fall prey to emotions he’d successfully blocked for years. Besides, things could get extremely dirty and dangerous before this was over. He wouldn’t be very much help if he allowed himself to become preoccupied with this attraction that neither of them wanted.
“Well, you have that much in common with your uncle.” Dash was struck with a sudden, irrational urge to run the back of his hand up her cheek. Plunging his fists into the pocket of his jeans, he said, “Have fun shopping. I’ll go upstairs and get us a table.”
“Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear. I am not eating dinner with you.”
“Fine. You can sit and watch me eat.”
Something in her was softening. She tilted her head, as if to study him from a new angle. “You’re a very frustrating man.”
“So I’ve been told.”
The hell with it. Giving in to temptation, as he’d feared all along he would, he allowed his hand to trail up the side of her face. Her skin was as soft as the underside of the hibiscus blossoms that had bloomed in Jamaica. As his fingers stroked their way from her jawline to her temple, the color that bloomed in her cheeks rivaled the crimson hue of those very same tropical flowers.
The intimate touch caused her nerves to hum. A band of tension settled along her shoulders. “Would you please stop touching me?”
“No,” he said pleasantly. “I don’t think I will. Anyone ever tell you that you’re very touchable, Irish?”
It was time to be firm, Claren told herself. Very firm.
“Really, MacKenzie, if you don’t keep your hands off me—”
“I know,” he murmured, intrigued by the touch, the scent of her skin. “The judo.” God help him, he wanted more. Much, much more. “I’ll find myself lying on my back in the gutter.”
The old-fashioned gas streetlight behind him flickered on, casting his face in harsh relief. Claren felt as if her feet were nailed to the sidewalk. She reached up to brush his seductive touch away, but instead found her hand suddenly held captive in his much larger one.
His hand, she noted irrelevantly, was strong. The row of calluses she felt at the base of his fingers suggested that he was a man who was not afraid of hard physical work.
Their eyes met. And then their minds.
Did those turbulent thoughts belong to him? she wondered, dazed by the storm raging inside her. Or were they hers? Either way, they held her absolutely spellbound.
The sky overhead was a darkening purple, studded with weak, stuttering early stars. But it was crystal clear, without a sign of a cloud. So where had the lightning come from? Dash wondered. And why was he hearing thunder?
This wasn’t what he’d planned. It wasn’t what he wanted. Dash knew that if he didn’t back away now, he’d be lost.
Too late. “You’re going to have dinner with me,” he heard himself saying.
It was not a question. Even as Claren told herself she should be irritated by his arrogant belief that he could make a woman jump through hoops for him, she found the lingering heat in his stormy gray eyes impossible to resist.
They were both shaken and both equally determined not to show it. The whistle of the ferry, leaving the Port Vancouver terminal on its way across Discovery Bay, hung on the early-evening air. Neither Claren nor Dash paid any attention to it. The raucous cries of the sea gulls, following in the ferry’s wake in search of fish, also went unnoticed. Claren only heard the wild pounding of her heart; Dash’s ears were still reverberating from that out-of-the-blue thunderclap.
“I suppose I have to eat,” she said with a calm that belied the turmoil battering away inside her.
Dash felt a surge of relief and chose to ignore it. “Good. How’s the food upstairs?” He was still holding her hand. When his thumb brushed against the inside of her wrist, he felt the quick, surprised increase of her pulse.
“It’s very good,” she heard herself say. Her voice sounded far away, as if it was coming from the bottom of the sea. “If you like seafood.”
“Seafood’s fine.” Slowly, reluctantly he released her hand. He found himself not wanting to let her go. Not yet. “There’s one more thing.”
She definitely didn’t trust the gleam in his smoky eyes. “What?”
“Why are you afraid to call me Dash?”
Because it’s too personal, Claren admitted. “I told you,” she insisted, “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Aren’t you?” He took a step closer and cupped the back of her neck with his hand. “I have another name besides MacKenzie. Think you could try using it?”
She took a mome
nt to answer. “I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I can ask,” he said agreeably. Only the tensing of his fingers on her neck revealed his annoyance. “Want some company while you shop?”
No! The idea of taking off her clothes, knowing that this man was waiting right outside the dressing room, was more of a risk than Claren was prepared to take.
“No, thank you,” she said politely.
He wanted to leave. He wanted never to leave. Damn. What he wanted, Dash realized with a great deal of trepidation, was to spend the rest of his life just looking at her. Darcy had been right after all, he decided. The woman was beautiful. It was with a great deal of reluctance that he released her.
“I’ll be waiting upstairs, then.”
“Fine.” Why was it that her feet refused to obey her command to move? “I’ll see you later.”
“Later.”
He leaned against the car and watched her enter the store. It was obvious that she was well known; both silver-haired clerks came rushing up to her. From what he could tell through the display windows, her wedding dress was causing quite a stir.
The women began racing around the store, plucking clothing off racks. All the while, Dash noted, she kept talking, her graceful hands emphasizing her words.
Inside the shop, Claren regarded the owners with amused fondness. She had known Mildred and Maxine Browne for years. Twin sisters, forty-five years ago they’d married Port Vancouver’s other pair of twins, John and Robert Browne. For all those years, they had lived next door to each other, worn their hair the same way and dressed in similar clothing, although Mildred favored navy blue, brown and olive green, while her sister, displaying an independent flair, usually chose scarlet.
Three summers ago Robert Browne had died of a heart attack, leaving Maxine a widow. Which is when she began pursuing Darcy with a single-mindedness the sixty-three-year-old Irish bachelor found absolutely terrifying. The thought of her uncle, whom she’d always regarded as invincible, being afraid of a tiny, ninety-pound widow had amused Claren at the time.
The sisters fluttered about her like eager birds, gathering up clothing from all corners of the room, Mildred plucking earth tones from the racks, Maxine diving into a new arrival of fluorescent sweaters.
“You did the right thing, dear,” Maxine said as she handed Claren a sunshine yellow sweatshirt. A pair of puffins sitting atop a rock had been embossed on the front of the shirt.
“Absolutely,” Mildred agreed, adding a pair of slim gray linen slacks and matching cotton blouse to the pile.
“You know, dear,” Maxine confided, fluffing her cotton candy silver hair, “although neither one of us ever wanted to say anything—”
“For fear of hurting your feelings,” Mildred broke in.
“Sister,” Maxine complained, “I was talking.”
“I realize that, Sister,” Mildred agreed calmly. “But I felt it important that Claren realize that we were only thinking of her.”
“Of course we were. And that’s precisely why we should have spoken up in the first place,” Maxine insisted. “Which is what I’ve been saying from the very beginning.”
It was obviously a sore point. Claren watched Mildred’s spine stiffen, as if someone had slipped a rod of cold steel down the back of her brown-and-black-checked dress.
“Well, it doesn’t matter any longer,” Mildred pointed out haughtily. “Since Claren came to her senses on her own. As I always said she would.” The older woman patted Claren’s arm. “I knew you were an intelligent woman, dear. I had faith in your judgment.”
Realizing that her impending marriage had been the subject of a great deal of local conjecture, Claren managed a murmured “Thank you.”
“You know, dear,” Mildred said, “that Byrd fellow was never right for you.”
“We were both concerned that he wasn’t man enough to make you a proper husband,” Maxine blurted out. She arched a silver brow. “Personally I always thought he was a bit of a sissy, if you get my drift.”
“Sister!” An expression of absolute shock crossed Mildred’s furrowed face. “Remember your manners. Don’t you recall Mother teaching us that there are some subjects that shouldn’t be discussed in polite company?”
She shook her gray head as she turned back to Claren. “Please, dear, don’t pay any attention to Maxine. Ever since she started watching that Oprah Winfrey television program, my sister’s conversation has become increasingly scandalous.”
“It’s important to know what’s going on in the world,” Maxine shot back. “Unlike some of us, who are more than content living in the past.” Undaunted by her sister’s censure, Maxine gave Claren a warm, reassuring smile. “Everyone in town agreed with me about Elliott, but don’t worry, dear. The right man will come along one of these days. And when he does, you’ll know it.”
Claren returned the older woman’s smile, not wanting to get into an argument about Elliott’s manhood, or lack of it. She knew that as wives of lumbermen, Mildred and Maxine Browne had their own definition of masculine. And in their dictionary, a suit-clad stockbroker just didn’t qualify.
“Thank you for the encouragement,” she said. “But believe me, after today I’m in no hurry to get involved with any man.”
“That’s what we always said when we were girls,” Maxine agreed knowingly. “Until we met our own Mr. Rights.”
“Or, in our case, our Mr. Brownes,” Mildred said.
Claren shook her head “Well, the way I feel right now, if Mr. Right did suddenly show up, I’d turn and run the other way.”
That was when she made the mistake of looking out the window. Instead of having gone upstairs to the restaurant, Dash was still standing on the sidewalk, leaning against the fender of the car with his arms crossed, watching her.
Their eyes met only for a brief instant, but in that fleeting moment, Claren knew that her life had inexplicably changed.
Was it possible to fall in love in an instant? Claren had never believed in such a romantic notion. Now she realized she might well have been wrong.
The timing was impossible. After all, this was to have been her wedding day. The day of her marriage to another man. Claren decided that only a very flighty woman would leave her groom at the altar and fall in love with a total stranger the very same day.
A very flighty woman indeed, Claren told herself.
Or a black sheep.
Although she’d spent half her life in the United States, trying to behave in a way that would help her fit into her aunt’s stodgy, socially disapproving set, Claren was still Irish enough to believe in fate. And destiny.
CHAPTER 4
DESIRE MADE HIM EDGY.
Dash sat at a table in the far corner of the Pelican’s Roost, impatiently nursing a drink, waiting for Claren’s arrival. How long did it take a woman to buy a few clothes? Remembering his former wife’s extended shopping sprees in Paris, London and Manhattan, he decided that he could well spend the rest of the night in this chair.
The restaurant was reminiscent of Port Vancouver’s seagoing days. The walls were paneled in pine that had been stained to a light blue-gray, designed to appear that the pine had been weathered by decades of wind and water.
A mural of an ancient whaling expedition covered one wall; on the others were antique signs, two of which read Ladies Present, Watch Your Language, and First Fight, Last Fight, Barred For Life. Over the arched doorway, a carved wooden bust—a female figurehead of Rubenesque proportions, salvaged from the prow of an ancient galleon—stood eternal guard.
The table had been left bare, displaying a rich antique wood that glowed with the patina of time. The lighting was soft, flickering in the shadowy corners. In the center of the table, adding illumination without brightness, a white candle glowed in a brass seaman’s lantern. As he scanned the handwritten menu, Dash saw that the wealth of seafood continued the nautical theme.
Dash ordered another drink and decided that if Claren didn’t show up soon, he’d go ah
ead and order the fried-oyster appetizer. He’d no sooner gotten irritated about her lack of punctuality than another thought occurred to him. One that sent ice up his spine. Perhaps something had happened to her.
That was ridiculous. After all, she was only two flights down the stairs. Remembering how steep and narrow and dark those stairs had been, Dash pushed away from the table, cursing himself for letting down his guard like some damn amateur. Although he’d begun to suspect that St. John was wrong about Claren O’Neill Wainwright’s involvement in her uncle’s dangerous scheme, the fact remained that she was the only lead to the missing treasure. And if he could track her down this easily, others could, too.
He’d just gotten to his feet when he saw her, standing in the doorway beside a brightly colored poster announcing the Hot Jazz and Cool Blues music festival. Her arms were filled with shopping bags. Relief was instantaneous.
Claren’s eyes swept the restaurant slowly, adjusting to the dim light. Then she saw him. The feeling that flooded over her was reminiscent of the feeling she’d experienced when she’d seen him standing outside the store window, watching her. But this time it was stronger. Much, much stronger.
Forcing down her nervousness, Claren handed her packages over to the hostess, exchanged a few words, then walked across the room to join him.
Eschewing the jeans and sweaters worn by the other women in the restaurant, she was wearing a red silk dress that clung in all the right places. From the way she walked toward him, Dash knew that she was aware of garnering the attention of every male in the place. Including his.
He’d been right about her legs, Dash determined. Her skirt stopped midthigh, revealing them to be surprisingly long for a woman of her size. They were also lean and firm. Lust hit like a fist in the solar plexus.
What the hell was the matter with him? Jet lag, Dash determined, conveniently forgetting that he never got jet lag. Or flu. Manners, unused for too long, reasserted themselves just in time for Dash to remember to pull out her chair.
The unexpected act of chivalry pleased Claren, but didn’t surprise her. From what she’d seen of him thus far, she’d suspected that Dash was an old-fashioned man. Having spent the past three years engaged to a modern, egocentric nineties male, she found herself intrigued by the differences she’d already discovered between the two men.
