by JoAnn Ross
“Does that line work often?”
“See, there’s that attitude again. As for the ‘line’”—he made air quotes with his fingers—“I’ve no idea, because you’re the first woman who ever had me thinking of it. You do realize, of course, that you’re stunningly good-looking.”
As his glance moved down her body from her hair, tied up into a messy mass of curls to keep it from falling into her face while she read, Tess remembered too late that she’d changed into her comfy, at-home clothes. Which tonight consisted of a raggedy Stanford cardinal law school sweatshirt with burgundy wine stains that wouldn’t come out and black watch plaid flannel pajama pants.
“Even when you’re dressed kind of like a bag lady,” he said cheerfully. His gaze drifted down to her fuzzy, blue, purple, and yellow catepillar-striped socks. “A colorful one.”
“These socks were a gift from an elderly woman whose purse had been snatched by a low-life career criminal I prosecuted last month.”
“That’s really sweet.” Appearing unperturbed by her prickly tone, he leaned against the doorjamb and smiled beguilingly down at her.
“I thought so.”
“Along with the rest of the outfit, they make you seem a lot more accessible than those prim and proper suits you wear to court.”
“Some of us believe it’s important to look professional.”
“I totally get that. Which is why I chose a job where I can work in my boxers.”
His eyes sparkled with both humor and danger, as if he knew that seemingly off-the-cuff statement would have her thinking about him in his underwear. Which, dammit, it did.
“Of course, the contrast between those suits and the do-me heels you pair with them does have me wondering what you might be wearing beneath those suits.”
Damn. Now the mental image of a ripped, bare-chested Nate Breslin changed to an even more evocative one of his long fingers cupping her ivory-lace-covered breasts.
“I buy good-looking shoes because I like them,” she said. “Not to attract men.” Especially him. “And are you always this outspoken?” Her tone might be chilly enough to give him frostbite, but her damn nipples, which had hardened hopefully, betrayed her.
“Yeah. I guess I am.” When his eyes zeroed in on the front of her shirt, she doubted he was thinking of stain-removal products. “And while I’m not trying for any hero points you might want to assign me, having watched guys dying all around me during various deployments, especially during Fallujah, I realized exactly how short life can be.
“So”—he shrugged—“I decided that if I managed to make it back alive, I wasn’t going to waste time playing needless games. Am I intrigued by the captain’s plans for us, whatever they might be? Yes. Putting that aside, if you were to ask if I’d wanted to back you up against the marble wall of the courthouse and kiss you hard and deep right out of those sexy high heels earlier today, that would be a hell, yes.
“But right now, my only agenda is that I felt like some shrimp and crab étouffée, and you’re a helluva lot more appealing dinner companion than the captain.”
Tess looked past him into the cold, foggy night. “You drove all the way back here from Shelter Bay to bring me étouffée?”
“Having humped my butt ragged all over Iraq and Afghanistan with more than seventy-five percent of my body weight on my back, driving a few miles on a paved road with no one shooting at me or trying to blow me up isn’t any big deal.”
Her work dealt with enough shootings, and she definitely didn’t want to picture anyone getting blown up. Unfortunately, thinking about Nate Breslin’s very fine butt wasn’t helping, either.
“My dad was a Marine,” she said, reluctantly adding one more thing they sort of had in common. “He never lost that mentality.”
“That’s because there isn’t any past tense in the Marines. Once a Marine, always a Marine. But I’m more than willing to play the guilt card by suggesting that, since I drove all this way, you might let me in…Did I mention I also have bourbon caramel bread pudding?”
Tess found it discomfiting that the unrelenting, failure-is-not-an-option tenacity that she’d found so annoying about the horror novelist was the same trait she admired in her father.
“You just don’t give up, do you?”
“Nope.” He turned around and went bounding down the front steps to the black Mustang GT parked in front of the townhouse. A moment later, he was back, bearing a cooler. “Cody, Sax’s partner, threw in some heat packs.”
He hadn’t expected her to welcome him with open arms. But Nate was enjoying victory as she surrendered, letting him into her home.
Although the exterior of his own cliff house might harken back to Shelter Bay’s early days, Nate was a minimalist. He appreciated Tess’s uncluttered living room, which, he decided, was expected from a woman who cloaked herself in those no-nonsense lawyer suits.
But although he didn’t know anything about interior design, he’d grown up in a bright, tropical-decorated home where family and friends were encouraged to relax and put their feet up and something about Tess’s seemed off. It was too tidy. Too devoid of personality. He had, he thought as he followed her into the kitchen, stayed in hotel rooms that seemed more inviting.
Though the fire-engine-red leather mid-century couch hinted at those contrasts he’d already found intriguing. As he took in the bowl with the eggs in it sitting on a black granite counter, for a fleeting moment, Nate imagined the two of them sharing a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon tomorrow morning.
Too fast, he reluctantly decided. When he opened the cooler, drool-worthy aromas filled the kitchen. Sax Douchett might be a smartass, but the former Navy frogman sure could cook. “Damn.”
“Now what?”
“I forgot to stop and get wine.”
“I have that.”
“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” His smile could have burned off all the fog in the city. “Cody said the heat packs would keep things at a safe temperature, but he suggested it’d be better if we heated it up before we eat.”
“Having eaten Sax’s food, I’d never question instructions on how to heat it,” she said, going over to the undercounter wine cooler that her cousin, Gabriel, had bought her as a housewarming gift when she’d moved in. “Red?” she asked. “Or white?”
“You’re the expert. Which would go better with Cajun food?”
“Pinot Noir goes with almost anything because it’s essentially a white wine in red clothing. It’s also exceptional with braised and stewed dishes.”
“Then that works for me.” As he turned on her oven and put in a foil-topped pan she suspected was the bread pudding, she was surprised that it felt strangely comfortable having him in her kitchen.
“This 2010 is silky smooth with a core of raspberry and spice aromas and flavors. With a caramel edge.”
“Once again, you’ve impressed me.”
“Don’t give me too much credit. My palate isn’t nearly as developed as my cousin’s.” When she reached up to take two glasses down from a shelf, her sweatshirt pulled up, revealing a tantalizing flash of skin. “I can tell when a wine is good and when it’s not. But the descriptions come from him. After he’s described them, I can often taste some of the flavors but not nearly to the extent he can. Which is why Gabriel’s the vintner and I just drink the wine and cosign the checks.”
“Was it his decision to switch from corks to screw caps last year?”
She paused while opening the bottle. “It was.”
“You don’t have to look so surprised. I told you that I spend a lot of royalties on Lombardi wines.”
“I know. But—”
“You thought I was sucking up, pretending to drink your family’s wines to make some sort of personal connection.”
“Perhaps.”
She poured the wine. While Tess might not have Gabriel’s palate, she could definitely appreciate the way it looked like liquid rubies in the glass.
“I told you, I’m not i
nto playing games, and although it gets me in trouble from time to time, I never say anything I don’t mean. So, since I hope this is going to be the first of many evenings we spend together, it’s important that you know that I’d never lie to you.”
“Even about the captain?”
“Especially about the captain. But let’s table him for now, because if I wanted to share the étouffée with him, not that he could actually eat it, I’d be back in Shelter Bay.
“As for knowing about the corks-versus-screw-cap debates, I wrote a zombie killer who collected rare wines. While I was researching vintages, I read that the slow passage of oxygen through cork helped wines age and develop their bouquet.”
“Gabriel insists that myth has been debunked. The New Zealanders were the first to adopt screw caps. Then the Australians got in. Gabriel took a trip down there a few years ago and came back a believer.”
“Though I’d guess that you’d still have American wine snobs less willing to convert,” he suggested. “Where are your plates?”
“In the cupboard to the right of the oven.” He was going to set the table? Wasn’t that a first?
“And you’re right about the American market. Which was why he test marketed it by putting half of one year’s two-hundred-dollar-a-bottle Cabernet in screw caps and the other half corked. The caps sold out first. Which showed that at least some of those so-called snobs actually do know and appreciate good wine. And want a bottle to last as long as possible.”
“It makes sense,” he said as he found the cutlery and put it on the table along with some paper napkins he’d brought with him. “No one ever questions a two-hundred-dollar bottle of Scotch coming in a screw-cap bottle.”
When the timer dinged, he plated the dinner and together they set it onto the table. Which felt oddly domestic but nice, Tess decided. “I still have to work tonight,” she reminded them both.
“Don’t worry, I won’t stay late. The D.A.’s office seems to keep you prosecutors busy.”
“It’s the bad guys who do that,” she said, surprised yet again when he pulled out her own kitchen chair for her. Someone had taught this Marine manners. “If they’d stop committing crimes, I’d work a lot less hours.”
“And what would you do with all that extra time?”
“Sleep. For maybe a year. Then possibly go away where there isn’t any email or cell phones.”
“I have just the place. Ever hear of Orchid Island?”
“That’s where Alexis is going on her honeymoon. Donovan Quinn, who worked with me on the Kagan trials, brought her a brochure.”
“See, there’s another connection we share. Donovan happens to be an old friend of mine. We met when he was a patrolman and I did a citizen drive-along with him while researching a book. He even escaped Oregon’s winter rain one year for a week at my house and met my family. We’re descended from one of the first nonnative settlers who landed on the island after a mutiny at sea and found the living so easy, they decided to stay.”
“Like Pitcairn Island? Where mutineers from The Bounty ended up?”
“Exactly like that. But since they didn’t get a movie made about them, the island isn’t as well known. Also, Pitcairn’s pretty much out there in the ocean by itself and dependent on New Zealand.
“Orchid Island is a principality. Being just a short boat ride from Kauai, its original settlers are thought to be Polynesians. When King Kamehameha began conquering the Hawaiian islands in the 1700s, Kaumualii, the king of Kuari, peacefully surrendered to avoid the terrible bloodshed the other islands had suffered. Which left Orchid Island as the last in Kamehameha’s sights.
“But then a kahuna, which is Hawaiian for shaman, told the king that he’d had a dream vision and that if he attacked the island, it would bring bad luck down and he’d lose his kingdom. Which would also prevent his heirs from ever ruling. And, since, in Hawaii, family is a big deal, and he’d already defeated his cousin in the earlier civil war, which cost a lot of lives, the king wasn’t about to risk his own lineage’s legacy.
“Now, there are some who’d like to point out that all this was happening about the same time the mutineers arrived with a lot of gold and silver. There’s also a belief that perhaps the kahuna ended up with some of that bounty, which might have influenced his advice to the king.
“Whatever, they stayed independent, although Captain Cook, who was also sailing around Oceana at the time, named the island the Anglicized name everyone uses today.”
“That’s a lot of history.”
“It is, indeed,” he agreed.
“The mutineers brought diseases, as happened everywhere in the New World where Europeans landed, but along with being a peaceful people, Orchid Islanders are tough. Enough survived to marry with the mutineers and subsequent immigrants. We hosted a U.S. Navy base back in World War II, which brought in a lot of Americans who fell in love with the place and came back after the war was over. Our most recent invasion was Starbucks.”
Tess laughed as he’d meant her to. “Do you still have family there?”
“A bunch. My folks, grandmother, and sister, Lani, who’s the island librarian and local handyman, or handywoman, if you want to be gender correct—”
“That’s an eclectic mix of career choices.”
“There’s only funding for the library to be open three days a week. So, since she likes working with her hands, it seems to work well for her. And the good thing is, my family gets free repairs.”
“That’s handy. No pun intended.”
“It is. Anyway, getting back to your question, along with my immediate family, I’ve various aunts, uncles, and cousins who are all still there, and I keep a beach house for when I visit. Or just want to get away for a while.”
“From the madness that is Shelter Bay,” Tess suggested. “Where crime, I’m told, consists of barking dogs and mailbox assaults.”
He laughed, pleased at the way she’d loosened up enough to tease him. “Hey, we have our moments. You should see how wild and crazy people get during the annual Dungenesss Days. Last year’s crab-eating contest winner, Lonnie Anderson, took the festival record with an even dozen.”
“I hope paramedics were standing by.”
“Lonnie’s been working up to it for a long time. He came in second for eight years in a row. When people started calling him the Susan Lucci of crabs, he got a mad on and trained like a demon for last year’s competition.”
“Well, crab eating certainly tops our Rose Festival and Christmas Ship Parade,” she said dryly.
“Both of which are worth attending,” Nate allowed. “Along with all the other things the city has to offer. But I guess because I grew up in a small town on an island whose entire population is about fifty thousand, give or take a few births and deaths, I have an affinity for Shelter Bay. Though my heart will always be on the island.”
“That’s nice. The Lombardis have established deep roots here in Oregon, but whenever I go to Italy, it feels like a homecoming.”
“That makes sense,” he agreed. “I suspect there’s something to the notion that heritage is wound into our DNA. Or at least our subconscious.”
“Like Cajun food must be in the Douchett genes.” The spicy étouffée, made with what was obviously fresh shellfish and served over fluffy white rice, was everything comfort food should be on a rainy Portland night. “This definitely beats the scrambled eggs I had in mind.” And the fact that he’d gone to the trouble to make the drive from the coast made it even more special.
“That hurricane that took out Sax’s grandparents’ Louisiana bayou island must have been tragic,” Nate said. “But Shelter Bay lucked out when Bernard traded in his shrimping business for catching crabs and Sax’s mom opened up Bon Temps.”
The conversation flowed easily, from the topic of the weather (which was, no surprise, still rainy), the Trailblazers, and morning commute traffic tangles, which Nate admitted he was grateful not to have to deal with.
“Your great-grandmother L
ucia was the suffragette, wasn’t she?” Nate asked later as they sipped wine in front of the fire. His arm was draped loosely, unthreateningly around her shoulders, and Tess had relaxed enough to actually enjoy sitting close beside him, staring into the flickering yellow and orange flames.
“You’ve been Googling me again.”
“Guilty. Are you saying you didn’t do the same to me?”
“It wasn’t that difficult. You not only have a website, Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest accounts, you also have a Wikipedia page.”
“The website was my publisher’s idea and although I drop in from time to time, the Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest accounts are run by an assistant. As for the Wikipedia page, I’ve no clue who created that. It just popped up one day.”
“Probably one of your fans,” she guessed.
“I suppose. Some of the stuff is wrong, but I figure if I correct it, then I take ownership of it, so I mostly just forget it’s out there. And you were going to tell me about Lucia.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to that.”
“What can it hurt to share family stories? I’ll start…My great-great-grandmother Pearl taught first to eighth grade in a one-room on the island. She ended up marrying the sugarcane farmer who hired her.”
“She married the boss.”
“After teaching him to read. Or so the story goes.”
“They must have had a wonderful relationship.”
“I guess so. They were married seventy years.”
“They were lucky.”
“I’ve always thought so. Great-great-grandfather Hani’s family descended from the Kalākaua dynasty. Kalākaua was a king of Kauai who went on to rule all of Hawaii for a time. Kalākaua’s sister was Queen Lili’uokalani, who ended up being deposed by a pro-U.S.-led overthrow of the kingdom in 1893. Hani was some sort of cousin to the queen, and since his was the only dynastic family on Orchid Island, he reluctantly accepted the crown after his father’s death.”
“So you’re royalty? Seriously?” It hadn’t mentioned anything about that on the author bio at the end of his book or his Wikipedia page.
