A Charmed Place

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  "Which is?"

  "Squeezing blood out of a rock," said Norah, laughing.

  She surprised them by adding, "No, seriously, I guess I'm tired of the gallery because it doesn't seem—" She frowned, struggling for the right word. "Significant enough. Maybe it's because I chose not to have kids; but I feel a need to leave something ... I don't know ... of me. I guess that's it. Cheap egotism, isn't it? To want to leave something of me?" She added softly, "But saving the lighthouse would—might—satisfy me that way."

  Coloring again, Norah turned away from them to gaze at the lighthouse. It was so unlike her to sound deep that Maddie and Joan were left exchanging a long, wordless look.

  "But! That's not today's problem," Norah said more cheerfully as she rose to her feet. "Getting the reclusive Dan Hawke to come out and play: that's today's problem."

  Joan smiled and said, "Hey, take a walk on the beach topless. That oughtta do it."

  Norah batted long lashes at Joan and said, "You're warm."

  She peeled off the yellow knit sundress she'd been wearing and revealed an eye-popping yellow bikini underneath.

  Joan said with respect, "You've been working out."

  "Have to," Norah said as she laid the sundress over the back of her chair. She picked up her canvas beach bag, rooted around in it, and came up with a hefty screwdriver.

  "Hide this," she told Maddie, handing her the tool. "It's evidence."

  "What the hell are you planning to do?" blurted Maddie. She was scandalized at every one of the possibilities that had begun lining up in her brain.

  "I'm going windsurfing. And somewhere in shouting distance of the lighthouse, the fin is going to fall off my windsurfer and I'm going to have to call for help. If no one should come out to save me, I'll end up drifting helplessly out to sea. Does that answer your question?'' she asked with a guileless look.

  Joan blanched. "Oh, don't do that, Norah, don't! It's too dangerous. You could be swept out to sea. Oh, Norah, don't. Please don't!"

  "Joanie, I'll be fine," Norah said with a squeeze of her friend's hand. "You know I'm an excellent swimmer; where do you think all this definition comes from?" she said, flexing a slender but tight upper arm for Joan to see. "This'll be fun. You can watch me from here. I guarantee I'll flush the son of a bitch out of his lair. That brooding author routine of his is beginning to get tired."

  "Leave him be, Norah!" said Maddie. She was appalled by the tension in her own voice.

  Surprised, Norah said, "No way, darling. If I'm going to save the lighthouse, I'll need his cooperation. The man doesn't really have a choice. Besides—why should you care?"

  "I don't," said Maddie quickly. "Go right ahead and make a fool of yourself."

  "Thank you. I reserve that right, though I don't usually take advantage of it."

  A light bulb seemed to go on over Joan's head. "Norah! Do you really want to save the lighthouse, or do you just want to get this guy in the sack?"

  "Wouldn't it be nice," said Norah, slinging her beach bag over her shoulder, "if I could do both?"

  They watched Norah cross the lane and head for the beach by ducking down a right of way that ran alongside the shingled cottage opposite Rosedale.

  Joan turned back to Maddie. Her expression, normally open and naive, was pinched with dread. "It's a horrible idea," she said, shaking her head. "She could fall off."

  "Of course she'll fall off," Maddie said with a laugh meant to reassure. "That's the whole point."

  "You know what I mean. She won't be paying attention; her mind will be on trying to get his attention. She could ... anything could—"

  "Nothing will, Joan. Truly."

  "But it's blowing out," Joan said, standing up so that she could monitor Norah's progress better.

  "You're making too much of this, Joannie."

  Joan scarcely heard her. "Where are your binoculars?''

  "Uh, let me think."

  They were sitting on the lowest shelf of the cupboard to the right of the kitchen sink window, from which Maddie had a view of the lighthouse. Could she direct Joan there without drawing down suspicion?

  "I saw an Indigo Bunting feeding on the feeder in the front yard the other day," she lied, "and I've been keeping the binoculars handy in case it comes back. Look around in the cupboards by the sink. I think that's where I left them."

  "I'll see."

  Even without the binoculars, Maddie was able to follow the progress of the bright pink and magenta sail as Norah kept a steady course for the water directly in front of the lighthouse. Norah being Norah, she wouldn't fall until she had to. And even then, she'd probably keep her hair dry.

  Poor Dan Hawke. He didn't stand a chance. For one brief moment, Maddie put aside her resentment and longing and actually felt sorry for him. A genuine siren was about to come calling.

  She has it all. Looks, money, brains, and confidence. Why didn't she ever have children? What an odd, odd thing.

  Maddie thought of her own adored child (she did adore Tracey, despite the widening gulf between them). And she thought of Joan: everyone's favorite aunt, longing to have children of her own.

  A mother's love. Was there anything stronger on earth?

  "They were right where you thought," Joan said, reappearing with the strap of the binoculars looped around her neck. She refocused the lenses and peered in her nearsighted way at the horizon. "Is that her sail? The pink striped one?"

  "Yes. She's fine. Although, why she expects him to realize she's in trouble after she manages to lose the fin is beyond me. He won't be able to see her if he's working at his desk."

  Joan looked back at Maddie. "How do you know where he works?"

  "I... often see a light on, on the side that faces my house. I assume he has an office set up there."

  "Really. That's strange. You'd think he'd want to look out at the sea."

  Maddie had had the same thought herself. Over and over again. "Maybe it's too big a distraction," she mumbled. "Anyway, Norah can sound like a banshee when it suits her. He'll hear her, even if he doesn't see her."

  Maddie watched with her heart bouncing around in her throat. If someone offered her a million dollars to describe her own feelings at that moment, she'd have to pass, because she didn't have a clue.

  Joan gave Maddie a blow-by-blow account of Norah in action. "Okay, she's down. She's just stepped off the board, kind of casually. You wouldn't call it a fall."

  "Her bikini wouldn't take the force of a fall," said Maddie.

  They laughed together. Joan's mood was less tragic now, and Maddie was glad.

  "I wonder if Norah can actually pull it off," Joan mused.

  "If necessary," Maddie deadpanned. They laughed again.

  "Okay, she must've got the fin off. Now she's climbing back on the board. Now she's standing.-The sail's lying flat in the water. What great balance she has. If that were me .... Now she's cupping her hands, yelling at the lighthouse."

  "I think I hear her from here."

  "I wonder if he's even home. Just because the Jeep is there .... And in the meantime, she really is drifting away fast. Oh, why did she pick a day when the wind was blowing offshore?''

  "Joannie, think about it. It wouldn't make sense to pick a day with a sea breeze nudging her gently back onto the beach, would it?"

  Joan sighed and said, "No ... but ... she's getting farther out. He won't be able to hear her, not with the wind blowing her cries away from the lighthouse. Oh, Maddie, we should go! We can knock on his door, point her out to him. Oh, let's," she begged.

  "We'll wait a little longer," said Maddie, but even she was getting nervous. It really was far windier on the water than it was in her sheltered garden.

  "He may not even know how to use the boat that's moored in front of the lighthouse. We're just assuming!"

  "Joan, shh-hh. Just ... wait."

  They watched in silence as Norah, still standing, waved her arms in wide, crossing arcs, her cries for help a mere sigh in the wind. Her image became
smaller ... and smaller ... and smaller, until at last Maddie said, "Damn it! We'll have to find somebody else to tow her back, or she's going to end up on Bermuda. Of all the dumb stunts!"

  She went inside for her car keys, and when she came out again, Joan was grinning. "Look for yourself," she said, handing Maddie the binoculars.

  Maddie held them up and readjusted the lenses. Norah was tiny, even through the glasses. But if a woman in a bikini on a broken windsurfer drifting out to sea could be said to look relaxed, then Norah looked relaxed. Very relaxed. Maddie panned to the left. Oh yes. Now she saw why. There he was in the skiff, full steam ahead for the damsel in distress.

  "She did it," Maddie whispered, almost in awe.

  Joan sighed with relief and said, "She can do anything. They'll be bonded now."

  "Won't they? It's a regular Hallmark moment," said Maddie dryly. Inside her heart was being squeezed. It was like watching the Titanic converging with a certain iceberg.

  Why had he come to Sandy Point at all? Not to see Maddie; that was obvious by now. If he was there to write his memoirs, then Norah Mills would make a darn interesting footnote to them.

  Maddie handed Joan the binoculars. She couldn't bear to watch. "Let me know if we have to call in the Coast Guard," she told Joan briskly. "I've got work to do."

  ****

  Dan Hawke had waited as long as he possibly could for someone else—anyone else—to come to the lady's rescue. But no one had and so here he was, circling like some shark in the water, trying to figure out how the hell to lasso a windsurfer with a missing towing ring.

  No good. He was going to have to wrestle the thing bodily into his skiff.

  After he wrestled her in, of course. She was incredibly voluptuous; he actually had to avoid looking at her while he tried to figure out how to untangle the sail from the mast, the mast from the board, all with her lounging on the board as if it were a Victorian fainting sofa. Hell!

  Flat stomach, firm breasts, limbs that went on forever—she didn't look real and maybe she wasn't; he'd had the impression, when he talked with her in Annie's that day, that she'd been under the knife for cosmetic surgery. She looked no more than thirty, but his sense of her was that she was closer to forty than not. It wasn't so much the way she looked—he was staring at her now in the brutal midday sun and she looked phenomenal—but the way she was. She had an edge. She'd been around. She gave the impression of someone with nothing to lose.

  He held the sailboard in an awkward grip to keep it from drifting away. "Okay, just step from there into the skiff," he commanded.

  Or not. "That looks tricky," she said, demurring. "Why don't I wait in the water for you to load the sailboard, and then you can help me into the boat."

  "Suit yourself." Which one was she, anyway: Joan or Norah? Surely the Norah.

  The board was heavy. He wondered who had launched it for her. With a grunt, he pulled it out of the water and into the skiff, then turned to her.

  "Okay, alley-up." He hooked his hands under her arms, trying not to notice her glistening breasts floating more or less free of the tiny top she wore.

  Gripping the side of the hull, she ducked low in the water for momentum, and then rose up like a goddess, letting him help her, unnecessarily, the rest of the way into the boat.

  "Very nice," he said. Even he didn't know what he meant.

  "I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't come out to get me," she said, flashing him a dazzling grin.

  His own smile was sardonic. "Something tells me you'd have managed."

  "Probably," she agreed, not bothering to seem humble. After he shifted the boat back into gear, she stuck her hand out to him and said, "Thanks. Now tell me why you're avoiding us all."

  He shook her hand and said dryly, "How so? I make a point of nodding to every person I pass."

  "Mr. Hawke, you know what I mean. You have the whole town too intimidated to approach you."

  "Except you, apparently."

  "I'm special."

  "Apparently."

  God, this isn't what he wanted at all. She was some mind-boggling diversion thrown in his path when all he wanted was to get to Maddie.

  Norah shivered and moved her butt closer to his on the center thwart. "It's still so cold this time of year," she said with a much too innocuous smile.

  He'd been nudged meaningfully by women before. She was coming on to him, he couldn't imagine why.

  He was still trying to figure it out when she cut to the chase. "I gather that Mr. Mendoza has told you about our interest in acquiring and moving the lighthouse," she said forthrightly. "Does that present a problem for you?"

  He shrugged. "Not once I'm out of it. My lease is only for four months."

  She shaped her lips into a fetching pout and said, "But that's just it. We can't really get a nonprofit foundation up and running without potential donors being able to go through the property and see its historic value. They'd want to touch the merchandise, so to speak." She smiled under lowered lashes. "You can understand why."

  You betcha, he found himself thinking.

  His glance slid from her to the sweep of horizon, then came to rest on little Rosedale cottage with its knee-high picket fence, just then coming into view. The endearing image, as precious as a picture postcard, was burned into his brain by now. He was as amazed as anyone that it held more allure for him than the seductress at his side.

  The thought of Maddie standing by her roses made him impatient with distractions, no matter how worthy or well shaped. "What is it you want from me, Ms. ... Mills?" he asked as her last name popped into his head.

  If she was put off by the formality, she didn't show it. She nuzzled her hip a little closer into his and said, "What I—we—envisioned is a series of fundraising events. A wine and cheese gathering at the lighthouse with a couple of speeches ... a picnic or two on the beach, each with a tour ... a morning coffee? They're all the rage in Washington—"

  "No. No, no. No series of events. One event. An opener. That's all. Cocktails and a tour and out they go. Anything else would be massively disruptive."

  She didn't ask what they'd be disrupting, and he didn't say. The fact was, he hadn't done shit since he'd arrived. Trixie Roiters had blithely announced in her little chat-rag that he was there to write his memoirs. What a laugh. If he'd had any thought at all of writing, it was to try to pen a novel.

  But he hadn't done that either. All he'd done was obsess over Maddie. He hadn't had the guts so far to confront her, because if she spurned him a second time he'd probably exile himself to Antarctica.

  Amazingly, he hadn't known her father was murdered. Now, after spending a few mornings in the library, he did. The knowledge made everything ten times harder. So, yeah, sure they'd be disrupting him: disrupting his hard-earned paralysis. He couldn't have that, could he?

  "That's quite a sneer on your face, fella," Norah said, giving him a sideways look. "If your writing is that important—"

  "Forget it. All right: two fundraising events. But that's it. Pick a day in July and one in August. Give me plenty of warning."

  She beamed him another dazzling grin and said, "Two events, then. It's a start." She added, "Those don't include the fireworks, naturally."

  "What fireworks?"

  "Come on. You didn't know? Every Fourth of July, the town sets off fireworks by the lighthouse. You're on a peninsula, which makes it a safe spot for launching them. But first we gather on the beach there, and we have an evening cookout for everyone. It's in your lease. You really didn't know?"

  "Who the hell reads leases?" he growled.

  The whole damn town in his front yard! Whose bathroom did they plan to use?

  "Traditionally, the tenants in the lighthouse throw open the downstairs to their neighbors," Norah said, reading his mind. "The fireworks committee pays for a cleaning service to come in afterward, of course."

  "Of course." Damn. Where had he got the notion that lighthouses were isolate, private places? He may as wel
l have taken up residence in a ferris wheel!

  Cursing himself for having let the naked creature beside him con him into opening his door, twice, minimum, to the world, he eased the flat-bottomed skiff into the shallow water of the beach from which Norah had launched her sailboard.

  By the time he hauled her gear out of the boat and onto the beach, she'd disappeared and reappeared again, this time wearing a yellow dress over the yellow bikini. The wet bathing suit left three telltale outlines in the dress. He tried not to see them.

  "Thanks again," she said, extending her hand once more, this time not letting go of it. "Now, come have a drink with my friends and me. Trixie Roiters has just dropped by with one of the town selectmen. The house is right across the street," she said, eyeing him all too speculatively. "And don't worry about not having a shirt on. Dress is casual. Will you come?"

  "I'd like that," he said with a bland smile.

  About as much as boiling in oil. "The thing is, I ... ah ... had something in the oven, which is probably catching on fire right about now."

  It was the best he could do. He backpedaled into the water, yanked up the grapnel, and tossed it into the bow of the boat. Then he mounted the skiff like a cowboy his pony, and he didn't look back until he was out of bullet range.

  Not now. Not with half the town looking on.

  The question was, when?

  Chapter 7

  "We checked with both of the H & R Blocks in Cambridge, Mrs. Regan. They have no record of your father showing up on April 6, either by appointment or as a walk-in."

  Maddie couldn't hide the disappointment in her voice. She wanted the note from the desk blotter to have an innocent explanation. "I was hoping..."

  "I know," said the sympathetic detective at the other end of the line. "I know."

  She slapped at a mosquito parked on the wall above the phone. Blood. Damn.

  "Since my father didn't go to H & R Block, and he wasn't meeting any of his friends that day, as far as we've been able to tell, what should we make of the note I found? Should we take it seriously? Or do you think it could be from some other year altogether?''