Well, what the hell! A bit of free entertainment on the side would help pass the time.
Letting a smile settle on his mouth, he leaned forward in the chair and waited for scene two to unfold: Goldilocks on a mission of mercy—except with that mane of dark brown hair, the name Goldilocks didn’t exactly suit her.
For the rest of that day and most of the next, Jane turned a deaf ear on the urgings of her guilty conscience. In light of the way Liam McGuire had received her the first time, he was unlikely to welcome another visit anytime soon. It would be best if she gave him time to simmer down before inflicting herself on him again.
But it wasn’t easy staying away, and for all that she managed to keep herself busy around her own house, no amount of self-discipline could prevent her from looking out of her bedroom window last thing at night to make sure lamplight showed between the cracks in the shutters on the cottage next door. Or from checking first thing in the morning for the telltale column of smoke that showed he was up and about.
“It’s absurd that he’s living there alone,” she complained to Bounder. “In fact, it’s unconscionable. He has no right burdening total strangers with responsibility for his welfare.”
But that line of reasoning soon fell by the wayside and it was all the fault of those darned shutters. Well…theirs and the heat wave which struck out of nowhere two days later and showed signs of staying awhile. How, after all, could any woman with an ounce of charity to her name ignore the fact that, with temperatures suddenly soaring to the mid-eighties, Steve’s place, boarded up as it was, would be like an oven by the end of the day?
So, armed with a small crowbar and a hammer, she set off after breakfast on the third morning, determined that nothing Liam McGuire could fling at her in the way of insults would provoke her into leaving before she’d accomplished the task she’d set herself.
Once again, she found his front door open, propped wide this time with an old flat iron acting as a stop, and she could see that he’d made some attempt to clean up the kitchen. A plate, two coffee mugs, a frying pan and a handful of cutlery were stacked neatly in a dish rack next to the sink, and he’d spread a tea towel over the porch railing to dry.
She’d learned her lesson, though, and didn’t repeat the mistake of walking in when he didn’t respond to her polite knock. With both feet planted on the porch, she leaned forward and gave the door a mighty thump with her hammer. “Are you there, Mr. McGuire? It’s Jane Ogilvie from next door.”
Still no reply, nor any movement but Steve’s old hammock strung from the porch rafters and swinging in the hot breeze. Assuming Liam McGuire wasn’t deaf or dead, he must be out again, though where he went, given his condition and the uneven terrain around the cottage, was a mystery not hers to solve.
To do what had to be done, all she needed was the ladder Steve kept in his woodshed, and in all honesty, she was just as glad not to have an audience. Carpentry, even the crude kind she was about to tackle, had never been her forte. She could very well do without the sarcastic running commentary Liam McGuire would no doubt have offered, had he been there to witness her efforts as she wrestled the boards away from the windows and stored them under the porch where they normally spent the summer.
Things went well enough to begin with, though having to move the ladder every few yards used up an astonishing amount of energy, but the real trouble began when she tackled the bedroom windows. All the others opened onto the porch which offered a nice stable platform from which to work. The ground below the bedroom, however, fell away steeply and was knee-deep in grass, stinging nettles and wild honeysuckle.
Doubtfully, she sized up the situation. Finding a firm footing for the ladder was difficult enough, but scaling rungs fully fifteen feet in the air taxed her dwindling courage to the limit. She’d never had a good head for heights. And to make matters worse, the glare from the sun hitting the uncovered glass half blinded her.
“Careful, Bounder!” she exclaimed at one point, clinging to the window frame as he charged past and headed up the slope toward the house with more than usual exuberance. “Up-end this ladder while I’m on it and you and I are going to have a very serious falling out.”
From somewhere on the deck, Liam McGuire’s sardonic tones floated back a reply. “That’s assuming you live to talk about it, Goldilocks. In case you didn’t notice, your dumb dog just disturbed a wasps’ nest and unless you want to risk being badly stung, you’re going to have to stay where you are until it gets dark which, by my reckoning, isn’t going to happen for another eleven hours.”
Given his sour disposition, there was every chance he was lying, just to provoke her. But the buzzing sound which she’d vaguely noticed and attributed to the electric generator gave undeniable credence to his words. “When did you get back?” she said, suddenly and deeply regretting having yielded to the whim to do him a favor.
“More to the point, when did you?” he said. “I don’t recall inviting you, though I do distinctly remember your assuring me you wouldn’t bother me again.”
The buzzing grew ominously closer and she cringed, certain that at any minute she’d feel insect feet crawling up her bare legs. “Do you think,” she said, hanging on by her fingernails, “that we could pursue this discussion after I’ve figured a way out of my present predicament?”
“You?” He gave a bark of contemptuous laughter. “You couldn’t figure your way out of a brown paper bag without help. Face it, honey, you’re the one needing favors from me, this time—unless you think Blunder’s about to come to the rescue.”
“His name’s Bounder,” she said from between clenched teeth. “And if it’s all the same to you, I’d appreciate it if you’d try to keep him away from the foot of this ladder. I don’t want him to get stung.”
“Well, heaven forfend!” He was jeering at her again but, to his credit, he snapped his fingers sharply and, in quite a different voice, ordered, “Blunder, come!”
Amazingly, she heard the faint click of claws on the wooden porch, followed by a thump as Liam McGuire rapped out, “Sit!”
“Pity you don’t have an equally winning way with people,” she couldn’t help observing.
“I’d save the smart-ass remarks until I was safely on firm ground again, if I were you,” he said. “You’re in no position to be passing judgment on anyone, least of all the guy you expect to come to your rescue.”
She ventured a look down and hastily closed her eyes as the ground swam up to meet her. “How are you going to get me down, with all those wasps swarming around?”
“I’m not,” he said. “And if that’s what you’re hoping for, you’re in for a disappointment. Your only choice is to haul the rest of the boards off that window which I’ll then open from the inside so you can crawl through.”
Swing one leg over that narrow sill? Heavenly days, it was all she could do to maintain her balance with both feet planted on the ladder rung! “I…don’t think I can do that, Mr. McGuire.”
“Then I hope you remembered to go pee before you came over here, because you’re stuck up there for the duration,” he said bluntly.
Oh, he was the most vulgar, insensitive man ever to walk the face of the earth and, forgetting to be cautious, she swung her head around to tell him so. But the ladder gave a shudder, as though to remind her that it wouldn’t take much to send it—and her—sliding down the slope.
“All right, we’ll do it your way,” she said faintly.
“Good girl.”
Was it possible that was a hint of sympathy—of kindness even, that she heard in his voice?
“Stay put until I get myself into the bedroom,” he went on. “Then do exactly as I tell you.”
The wheelchair whispered away and a moment later his voice came again, this time on the other side of the shutters. “This is your lucky day, Janie. The window slides open so all you need to do is pry off a couple of boards and make an opening wide enough to get your butt through. I’ll take care of the rest.”
&nbs
p; She had no reason to believe him, at least on the last point. Not only was he wheelchair-bound, he’d shown no inclination to be chivalrous. Yet what choice did she have but to put herself at his mercy?
“Well?” he asked, impatience already eroding his temporary show of kindness. “Make up your mind. Do we have a deal or not?”
“We have a deal,” she said. “Thank you, Mr. McGuire.”
CHAPTER TWO
HOW he managed it, she didn’t know—nor, given her precarious situation, did Jane choose that moment to demand any explanations. It was enough that one minute she was teetering in midair, almost afraid to breathe as she wrestled the first board loose, and the next, he’d reached through six inches of open window to bring the whole operation to a speedy conclusion.
That solidly muscular forearm and the unshakeable strength in his hand reassured her as nothing else could. In no time, the rest of the glass was uncovered. All that remained was for her to gather up what was left of her courage and climb inside the house.
It should have been easy; would have been, if she hadn’t immediately realized that the ladder was positioned too far to the left of the open end of the window. A full two feet of empty space separated her from safety, and the mere idea of launching herself across it was as far-fetched as trying to leap the Grand Canyon.
Liam McGuire saw her hesitation. “You haven’t come this far to chicken out now,” he said. “Quit scaring yourself witless and get on with it.”
Perspiration prickled all over her body.
Perspiration, nothing! It was sweat, pure and simple, imprisoning her in clammy fear. “I can’t do it,” she quavered, eyeing the chasm between them.
“You can’t not do it, woman!” he said flatly. “You got yourself into this mess and since I’m damn near useless in this wheelchair, you’re going to have to get yourself out. So stop the hyperventilating, grab a hold of the top of the window frame, and climb onto the ledge. There’s nothing to it.”
Nothing to it? Her voice rose nearly a full octave. “Are you out of your mind? That ledge is scarcely wide enough to hold a seagull!”
He glared at her from eyes turned brilliant aquamarine in the reflection of sunlight on water. It was the kind of look which, all by itself, probably had subordinates leaping to obey his every command, but when all she did was stare back in frozen terror, he lost his temper and bellowed, “Oh, for crying out loud! Just what the doctor ordered for a full and speedy recovery—a hundred and fifteen pounds of catatonic woman perched on a ladder twenty feet in the air, and expecting Superman to fly to the rescue!”
Letting go of her hand, he abruptly disappeared from view and, for one horrified moment, she thought he was going to resolve matters by abandoning her to the wasps and stinging nettles down below. From somewhere inside the room she heard a shuffling and a string of curses that, even in her panic-stricken state, left the tips of her ears burning.
Then, just as abruptly, he reappeared, except this time there was more of him to see than just his head and shoulders. The entire upper half of his body was visible, too.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s try this again.”
“No,” she said. “I can’t. I’m too scared.”
“I’ll be nice to your dog if you don’t chicken out on me,” he wheedled in what she supposed he considered to be his most winning way. “I won’t use him for target practice the next time I feel like shooting the pellet gun Coffey keeps under the bed. I won’t even tell anyone that I caught you messing around with my underpants.”
What he no doubt perceived to be irresistible bribes struck her as nothing short of blackmail. “You’re a horrible man,” she whimpered.
He wasn’t one to tolerate having his suggestions thwarted. “What the devil is it you want of me?” he roared, immediately reverting to his usual confrontational self. “A pint of blood? A pound of flesh? I can’t maintain this position indefinitely, you know!”
Only then did it fully sink in that he’d hauled himself out of the chair and was propping himself upright by taking all his weight on one arm, while he reached out to her with the other.
The sweat pearling his face attested to what the effort was costing him and shamed her out of her own cowardice. “All right, you win,” she said faintly and quickly, before the foolhardiness of the undertaking had time to impress itself on her brain, she crabbed one foot onto the ledge and literally hurled herself at him.
Her knuckles and knees scraped against the cedar shingles and she managed to clip the side of her head on the ladder in passing, but the pain scarcely registered beside the utter relief of feeling him grasp a fistful of the front of her T-shirt and yank her the rest of the way to safety.
“Aah!” she gasped, landing in a winded heap at his feet. “Thank you so much! I owe you big-time for this.”
He expelled a mighty breath, literally falling like a sack of potatoes into the wheelchair, and swung it toward the living room. “Oh, please, no! The last thing I need is any more of your favors. You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to show a bit of gratitude, as well, you know,” she said, picking herself up and trailing after him. “Most people would be happy to have windows they could open, rather than live in a place as dark as a cave.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Goldilocks, I’m not ‘most people.’ If I were, I’d have taken care of the problem myself, instead of having to fall back on the services of a semi-competent woman with a bad case of acrophobia.” He positioned himself in front of one of the lower kitchen cabinets and hauled out a bottle of Scotch. “I could use a drink and so, I imagine, could you.”
“At this hour of the morning?” she protested. “I hardly think—”
“And you can spare me your homilies on the evils of booze, as well! I’ll get plastered any time I feel like it, and right now, I feel like it.”
She opened her mouth to tell him that drowning his sorrows in alcohol wouldn’t make them go away, then thought better of it when she saw that a grayish pallor undermined the deep tan of his face. Even his hand shook as he unscrewed the cap on the bottle.
Moved by a compassion that had its roots in another time when she’d been equally helpless to alleviate suffering, she covered his hand with hers and took the bottle away. “Let me,” she said quietly, and splashed a scant half inch of whiskey into a glass.
He tossed it down in one gulp, cradled the glass in his hands, then leaned back in the chair with his eyes closed. He had a rather wonderful face, even with that devastatingly direct gaze hidden, she decided, taking advantage of the chance to study him unobserved; a face that revealed far more about the man who owned it than he probably realized.
She saw strength in the line of his jaw, laughter in the fan of lines beside his eyes, passion and discipline in the curve of his mouth. His recent proclamation notwithstanding, he was no drinker. He showed too much pride for such self-indulgence.
“You can leave anytime,” he said, not moving a muscle more than was needed to spit out the words. “I’m not going to do the socially acceptable thing and invite you to stay for coffee.”
“Then I’ll invite myself,” she said, and without waiting for permission, filled the kettle and set it to boil on the stove. “How do you take yours?”
“Alone, thank you very much.”
She shrugged and inspected the contents of the refrigerator. Beyond a block of cheese, a couple of eggs, an open carton of milk, some bread and the remains of something which, under the layer of green mold, might have been meat, the shelves were empty.
She sniffed the milk and immediately wished she hadn’t. “This milk went off about a week ago, Mr. McGuire.”
“I know,” he said, a current of unholy mirth running through his voice, and when she turned back to face him, she saw he was observing her with malicious glee. “I saved it on purpose, just for the pleasure of seeing your expression when you stuck your interfering nose into yet another part of my life. Would you
like to taste the ham, as well, while you’re at it?”
She emptied the milk down the sink drain and tossed the ham into the garbage can. “Whoever does your shopping is falling down on the job, but since I’m planning on going across to Clara’s Cove later on today, I can stop by the general store and pick up a few staples for you, if you like.”
“What is it you don’t understand about ‘Mind Your Own Business’?” The question ricocheted off the walls like machine gun bullets. “What do I have to do to make it clear that I’m perfectly able to shop for myself? How do I let you know that you can take your charity and shove it, because I neither want it nor need it?”
She recognized the insults for what they really were: bitter resentment at only recently finding himself confined to a wheelchair. When the same thing had first happened to Derek, he’d reacted much the same way and it had taken months for him to come to terms with how his life was going to be from then on.
“I know how difficult you must find all this, Mr. McGuire,” she said, “and I certainly didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Unless you’ve been where I am now, you don’t know beans about how I feel!”
She washed and rinsed the plate which had held the ham, placed it in the dish rack, and made the coffee. “Actually, I do,” she said. “My husband—”
“Oh, goodie, you have a husband, you have a husband!” he gibed. “That being the case, why don’t you run along and minister to him, instead of foisting your attentions on me?”
“Because he’s dead,” she said baldly.
Shock, and perhaps even a little shame, wiped the sneer off Liam McGuire’s face. “Oh, cripes,” he muttered, examining his hands. “I’m sorry. That must be tough. You’re kind of young to be a widow.”
She dried her scraped knuckles tenderly, folded the dish towel over the edge of the counter, and turned to leave. “I’m not looking for your sympathy, any more than you’re looking for mine, Mr. McGuire. But take it from me, people can and do adapt—if they’ve a mind to. Of course, if all they’re interested in is wallowing in self-pity, they can do that, too, though why they’d find it an attractive alternative baffles me since it must be a very lonely occupation. Good day.”
Passion's Baby Page 2
