More Than Words: Stories of Strength

by Carla Neggers

  Summers started to say something, then changed his mind and stalked out to the dining room. He sat at the smallest of three tables, snatched up a Halifax newspaper and held it up, a none-too-subtle way to cut off conversation. Jess didn’t know if she’d annoyed him or he just wasn’t a morning person.

  She helped herself to a bowl of cut fruit—including raspberries—that Marianne had already put out on a sideboard. The breakfast room was as quirky and cheerful as the rest of the house, done in yellows and blues with raspberry accents. Summers’s grumpiness was out of place.

  Sitting at the farthest table from him, Jess decided to confront him. “Mr. Summers—”

  He sighed audibly, folded his newspaper and set it on the table. “Something’s wrong with Marianne. She’s on edge. She wasn’t like that when I first arrived.”

  Given Marianne’s personal background and her talk of snoops and treasure with O’Malley, Jess was especially interested in Summers’s observation. “How long has she been on edge?”

  “A week or so.” He eyed Jess a moment, as if she were responsible for their hostess’s mood, then sighed again. “I’m sorry. I wanted to blame you and your cop friend, but she’s been jumpy since before you two arrived.”

  Jess could understand his desire to blame her and O’Malley. A cop and a prosecutor could remind an abuse survivor of her past, dredge up fears and insecurities she thought she’d put behind her. It would make Marianne’s uneasiness easier to explain. But it wasn’t the case.

  “You’ve been here a while,” she said. “Any idea what’s going on?”

  Summers didn’t answer at once, then lurched to his feet, muttering, “I hope it’s not me.”

  Not one to let a comment like that go, Jess leaned back in her chair, chose a fat raspberry from the top of her fruit and watched Summers’s stiff back as he grabbed a small glass bowl. “Why would it be you?” she asked.

  He glanced over at her. “I’ve been here too long.”

  “Hiking?”

  “I think of it as exploring.”

  He loaded up his bowl with fruit and took it out to the back porch without a word.

  O’Malley came downstairs and sat across from Jess. He was showered and dressed, but he hadn’t shaved, which didn’t help her already supercharged reaction to him. The dark stubble on his jaw somehow made the scar forming on his forehead from the bullet graze stand out even more.

  She pushed her bowl toward him. “Help yourself. I got too much.”

  “What’s with Summers? Doesn’t like to talk to people in the morning, or did you irritate him?”

  “Perhaps both.” But she told O’Malley about Marianne and Summers’s reaction to her jumpiness, then added, “I wonder if something is going on around here. Do you think the ex-husband could be back? Abusers generally don’t respect law and authority. And they don’t like to give up. He could have got to thinking about her, found out what a success she’s made of this place and decided to come back and resume control over her and her life.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “But you don’t think so.” Jess sighed. “Neither do I.”

  “Maybe Summers and Marianne have a thing for each other and don’t know what to do about it.” His dark eyes lifted to Jess. “Sound familiar?”

  “I don’t have a thing for you, O’Malley.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Don’t give me that dubious tone—and stop with the sexy twitch of the eyebrows.”

  “I had an itch.”

  “Ha.”

  “You just think everything I do is sexy.”

  It was true, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. “We’re friends. We let our friendship get out of hand. Insisting I’m falling for you is just another way for you to avoid dealing with the real issue.”

  “Which is what? That I almost got my head blown off the other day?”

  She bit off a sigh. “Bravado, bravado, bravado.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me more about Summers.”

  “He’s tense, he’s abrupt and he’s more on edge than our hostess.”

  “Who is making up a hell of a breakfast this morning from the smell of it.”

  “Brendan—”

  “I have no authority in Canada. Neither do you. If we have reason to suspect something’s going on, we can call the local police, just like anyone else. That’s it.”

  “You still think the guy’s hiding something?”

  “Yep.” O’Malley held a raspberry up to one eye and examined it as if it were a diamond. “I think there’s a worm in it.”

  “There is not—”

  He popped it into his mouth and grinned at her. “Let’s hope you’re right. What do you want to do today? Go kayaking, or discuss my post-traumatic stress symptoms?”

  “Both.”

  “Can’t do both. What else?”

  Jess lowered her voice. “I thought we might sneak up to the attic—”

  “And search our fellow guest’s room? You’re going to get us arrested.”

  But she could tell he’d already thought of it, too. “Not if we’re right and he’s hiding something.”

  Summers returned from the porch in a moderately better mood, and Marianne set out an enormous breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, grilled tomatoes, corn muffins, streusel muffins and jam. Marianne’s friend Pat, who also did the cleaning, had made the muffins. There was coffee, tea, juice and hot chocolate. Jess figured if she ate even a little of everything, she’d have to do a lot of kayaking to burn up the calories.

  Hiking up the steep stairs to the attic wouldn’t hurt, either.

  When Summers retreated to his room after breakfast, O’Malley and Jess postponed checking out their fellow guest and instead went kayaking. Marianne provided all the equipment they needed—kayaks, paddles, life vests, emergency whistles, dry packs—and suggested several scenic routes that would take the many where from a couple hours to all day. O’Malley picked one that would have him in a restaurant, eating fresh scallops and drinking beer, by lunchtime.

  After watching Jess drop her behind into the cockpit of her kayak and paddle two strokes, he forgot all about the scallops and beer and started looking for a secluded beach.

  She seemed to sense his thoughts as they made their way along the shallow, rocky shoreline. “It’s a romantic spot, isn’t it?”

  “Sure is.”

  “Is that why you picked it?”

  “Jess, I came up here alone. I had lobster and scallops on my mind—a few days on my own, not romance.”

  She gave him one of her mysterious smiles. “I don’t believe you.”

  “You think I had you in mind?”

  But she stroked hard, pushing her boat ahead of him, and he cursed himself for being so obtuse. He held back, noticing the play of muscles in her arms and shoulders. She was strong. She worked hard, she was smart, she was dedicated.

  He was all of those things, too. But that didn’t make them right for each other.

  After an hour paddling into the wind, they slid their kayaks onto a short stretch of beach and climbed out, sitting in the wet sand. Jess leaned back against her elbows. “This couldn’t be any more perfect. What a day.”

  O’Malley gazed out at the sparkling water. “Pretty nice,” he agreed.

  She dug in her daypack and handed him a plastic bottle of water, then settled back into the sand with her own. She unscrewed the top, her eyes still on the view as she took a long drink, letting water drip down her chin and onto her T-shirt.

  “Jess—hell, are you doing your best to torture me?”

  She grinned at him. “This isn’t my best. I can do a lot better.”

  “Try me.”

  Her eyes widened—she hadn’t expected him to throw down the gauntlet—but she sat up straight. “Ah. A challenge. I’m an attorney, O’Malley. I love a good challenge.”

  He swallowed some of his own water. “You’re stalling, buying yourself time while you try to think of something.”
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br />   He’d barely finished his sentence when she was on top of him, straddling his lap, draping her arms over his shoulders, eye to eye with him. “There,” she said. “I’ve thought of something. But we’re exposed here. There’s not much we can do without embarrassing ourselves.”

  “Kiss?”

  “We could do that.” She was a little breathless, and not just from kayaking. “But it might be worse than looking at wet spots on my T-shirt.”

  O’Malley decided not to let her off the hook. “Okay. Up to you. You’re the one who loves a good challenge.”

  “You’re just going to sit there, eh?”

  “That’s right.”

  She shifted on his lap. A provocative move. She leaned toward him and kissed him lightly on the mouth, then pulled back. He thought that would be it, which was a definite problem, but it wasn’t. She kissed his nose, his forehead, then each cheek, until she found his mouth again, and this time, it was anything but a light kiss. He was trying to keep his hands off her, determinedly mashing them in the sand, just to amp up her sense of challenge, but it wasn’t easy. His muscles were straining, his body responding to the play of her mouth on his, the touch of her fingers on his neck, in his hair.

  Jess…

  He didn’t even know if he’d said her name out loud.

  She broke off their kiss and tilted back from him. Her legs, he realized, were wrapped around his waist to anchor herself. “Oh, my.” She took an exaggerated breath. “Wow. I did okay with that kiss, didn’t I?”

  “Jess—”

  “I sort of like being bold like that. So much for the repressed New Englander.”

  O’Malley managed to clear his throat. “Jess—”

  “I wonder if any fishermen saw us.”

  At that, he grabbed her by the hips, lifted her off him and sat her on the ground. He stood up and shook off the sand, resisting the temptation to howl at the ocean. Damn!

  She smiled knowingly. “What, did you strain a muscle or something?”

  “You’re going to want to get your butt back in your kayak, because I’m not as puritanical as you are about who might see us making love on the beach.”

  “We could get arrested for public something-or-other.” But she was scrambling for her kayak, grabbing her water bottle and dry pack. “You wouldn’t want to get arrested in a foreign country.”

  He had her. She thought he’d do it. And it wasn’t that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He would. But Jess wasn’t so sure she could say no, that she wouldn’t just take her chances and make love to him right there on a Canadian beach. For all they knew, a housing development was just over the knoll, or a group of bird-watching retirees was on its way there.

  “You don’t trust yourself to exercise good judgment in my presence,” he said, amused.

  She bent down to pick up her paddle, looking up at him, the sunlight catching those emerald eyes of hers. “You probably think making love on a beach is good judgment.”

  “Depends on the beach.” He glanced around at the wet, fine sand, the protected horseshoe-shaped beach, the rise of sand and squat, gnarled evergreens that offered something of a screen to onlookers. Not that a passing boat wouldn’t see everything. If the passengers were looking, of course. He shrugged. “This one seems fine.”

  But she wasn’t taking any chances—with his power of persuasion or what the kiss had obviously done to her. She eased the kayak into the water and climbed in, shoving off with her paddle. “Coming?” she asked, looking back at him.

  He grinned.

  Then he wondered what her parents would do if he asked her to marry him. It popped into his mind as a joke, but it was like being sucker-punched.

  Marry her.

  His brother Mike had teased him on just that point for the past year, long before Brendan had ended up in bed with his dark-eyed prosecutor. He’d known Jess forever, it seemed. She’d always been there, frank, honest, idealistic, determined. Mike insisted she’d been half in love with Brendan for years.

  “Fresh scallops,” she said, as if she were snapping him out of a trance. “Iced tea. Fries. Coleslaw. Homemade pie. There has to be a place around here that serves homemade pie.”

  “Scallops aren’t even a close second to sex.”

  She pretended not to hear him. Laughing, O’Malley shoved his kayak into the water and climbed in. Jess started paddling in steady, even strokes, and he noticed that her color was better. She didn’t look as stressed out and overworked.

  Must have been the bullet, him thinking about marrying her.

  What he didn’t want to do—never mind that Mike had vowed to flog him if he did—was to break Jess’s heart.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Summers had gone somewhere, but now they had to wait for Pat to finish up in his room.

  Jess had fresh doubts about the wisdom of what she and O’Malley were doing, but, on the other hand, she trusted his instincts—and her own. Something was up with their fellow guest and their spooked hostess. Jess didn’t have the urgent negative reaction to Summers that O’Malley did, but she definitely had the feeling he wasn’t telling the entire truth about his stay at the Wild Raspberry.

  Marianne needed more to take to the police than a throw that was out of place and the suspicion that someone was snooping on her. She wouldn’t want to tarnish the image of her B and B, or offend her guests by overreacting to an incident—even several incidents—that could have innocent explanatons.

  And focusing on Summers was easier than trying to figure out what she was going to do about Brendan O’Malley, Jess thought as she lingered in the second-floor hall.

  He was right about her. She was falling for him.

  She’d fallen for him a long time ago.

  Refusing to admit she was in love with him was just a way of protecting herself. She didn’t want to lose him as a friend. The thought of it made her sick to her stomach. He’d been a part of her life for ten years—why blow it now by telling him she was in love with him?

  “Look at you,” she whispered, “you’re not even sweating.”

  He winked in that deliberately sexy way he had. “I’d have made a good criminal, don’t you think?”

  “Scary thought.”

  “Come on, you’re a lawyer and an ex-cop. You’ve got nerves of steel.”

  She was surprised at how guilt-free and certain she was about what they intended to do. “If Marianne catches us, she’ll probably throw us out.”

  O’Malley was unperturbed. “Then we take the ferry back to Maine together. Preferably the overnight ferry. Make a real night of it.”

  “O’Malley, do you ever think about anything except how to get me back into bed?”

  “You bet. What to do when I’ve got you there.” He pressed a finger to his lips and lowered his voice even more. “Here she comes.”

  They ducked to one side of a glass-fronted bookcase in the hall as Pat, a woman around Marianne’s age, lumbered down the steep stairs with a lightweight vacuum cleaner and a canvas bag of cleaning supplies slung over her shoulder. She was high energy and good-humored—and obviously hard-working. Having already cleaned the second-floor rooms, she continued on down to the first floor without noticing Jess and O’Malley.

  “I can go up by myself,” O’Malley said. “You can stay down here and be the lookout.”

  Jess shook her head. “I’m not going to let you do this by yourself.”

  “Sweetheart, if I go down, you go down. You know the law. The guy driving the getaway car is just as culpable—”

  “Quit arguing,” she whispered, “and go.”

  Nothing about their escapade seemed to faze him. O’Malley was, without a doubt, Jess realized, a man who trusted his own judgment. He wasn’t second-guessing himself now about his actions during the shooting because, fundamentally, he didn’t question his instincts or his decisions that day.

  So what about their night together? He was second-guessing himself all over the place about that.

  He led
the way up the stairs, which, unlike the stairs to the second floor, were carpeted. When they reached Summers’s room, entry was no problem. O’Malley had “borrowed” the master key. If caught, he planned to explain himself to Marianne and ask for her indulgence. She’d probably let him off. Jess remembered Mike O’Malley telling her that his little brother Brendan had always been able to sweet-talk himself out of a tight spot.

  Within thirty seconds, they were in Summers’s room.

  It smelled of cleaning products, and the streaks from the vacuum were still visible on the rug. The decor was quirky country cottage, but the colors were a bit more subdued than in her own room. The view of ocean and endless horizon through the floor-to-ceiling window needed no competition.

  O’Malley immediately set to work, opening up the closet and rifling through their fellow guest’s clothes. Keeping one eye on the door, Jess quickly checked the desk. She noticed a slim laptop computer, a stack of books on the history of Nova Scotia and a novel by an author named Alexander Crane.

  “Well,” Jess said, “nothing sensational in his reading habits.”

  “Hiking books?” O’Malley asked from the closet.

  “Histories of Nova Scotia. Some of them look fairly old.”

  She opened the desk’s center drawer and discovered a small basket of letters. Old letters, bundled together and tied with a grosgrain ribbon. Jess gingerly checked one of the dates.

  August 1902.

  “I think we’re barking up the wrong tree, O’Malley.”

  He joined her at the desk. “Best we can do for loot is a stack of hundred-year-old letters?”

  “They’re not what you’d expect an avid hiker to have in his room,” Jess said. “But this is an historic area. Maybe he’s just interested in Nova Scotia’s past.”

  O’Malley picked up the novel. “Even his reading material looks boring as hell.”

  “Alexander Crane—I’ve heard of him. He’s a Canadian author. He’s better known here than in the U.S., but he had a book a couple of years ago that was some kind of international bestseller. Remember?”

  “No. Did you read it?”