Sandpiper Island (The Bachelors

by Donna Kauffman

  Her employees were family to her and, as such, teased her mercilessly about her kerchiefs, nicknaming her Lucy, after Lucy Ricardo, who also had red, curly hair, and whose kerchief-wearing updo was a well-known part of her iconic legacy. Old-fashioned though they might be, Delia had learned from her grandmother that short of shaving her head, nothing else did quite the same job of keeping curls and sweat out of her eyes when doing dish duty.

  She smiled briefly, memories tripping through her mind of growing up, and all the late nights spent in her grandmother’s restaurant, back in the kitchen, the mingled scents of fresh seafood, crispy bacon, and coffee always lingering, no matter the time of day or night. Delia had happily stood on the old, green, paint-chipped footstool next to her grandmother, both in matching kerchiefs, both with red curls, though she knew Gran’s had come more from a bottle of Miss Clairol at that point than nature. She’d rinse after Gran had scrubbed, then carefully put the dishes in the rack, sorting the silver into the different drain buckets. Delia had just been happy to get to stay up late, after the locals and the crew had all gone for the night, finally having her Gran all to herself. Delia would have happily done any chore for more of those moments.

  “Still would,” she murmured, the smile and memory lingering. “What would you say now, Gran? Four generations of O’Reillys have taken on the care and feeding of the fine citizens of Blueberry Cove, and they all managed to do so through fire, flood, feast, and famine. Now I’m going to be the one to lose my place here—our place here—because I wasn’t paying attention to business like I should have been.” Because I let myself get distracted by a man.

  Maybe even hard lessons had an expiration date, and she’d have to learn them all over again. Well, this is one lesson I could do without repeating. Determined to keep Ford Maddox completely blocked out of her mind, at least while she had the conscious ability to do so, she plunged her hands back in the soapy water and turned her thoughts to the man she should be thinking about.

  “Brooks Winstock,” she muttered, scrubbing as much wool off her steel pad as she was grease off the grill rack she tackled next, putting her elbow into it with perhaps a bit more force than necessary. “Arrogant bastard. Thinks money trumps tradition. Well, Mr. Winstock, not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “I’d put my money on you.”

  The sound of the deep male voice startled a high-pitched squeak out of Delia, who sent the steel pad one way and the suds-covered, half-clean grill rack clanging back into the soapy dishwater, spraying her face and front with a foamy splatter. Not because the intrusion itself had startled her—Blueberry Cove wasn’t a lock-your-doors kind of place—so much as who had done the intruding. Surely it was thinking about those dreams making her hear things. Those oh-so-pulse-pounding, hip-thrusting, headboard-banging sex dreams. She’d just imagined that voice. But the shiver of knowledge—carnal knowledge—that shot straight down her spine and that very specific bit farther, even as she whirled to find him lounging in the open doorway, told her he was very real. And very . . . there.

  “Ford,” she breathed. “You about knocked five years off me. Not that I couldn’t do with losing a few, but if it means not dying of a heart attack, I’ll keep those five years, thanks.”

  He didn’t smile. Ford wasn’t much of one for anything so . . . affable as that. But even though it had been a good while since she’d laid eyes on him, she could still read every nuance of that face. The glimmer that passed through his gunmetal gray eyes was his equivalent of a slow, sexy grin. Or it was in her mind. Her poor, obviously overworked and undersexed mind. That’s all it is, she told herself. You just need to get laid.

  What little tourist season the Cove had was over, which reduced the no-strings list down to zero, and the only other man to show her any interest of late was overseas at the moment. Probably buying a small country. At least he knows how to throw his money around. Normally, the thought of Grace’s famous architect friend, Langston deVry, who’d taken an interest in Delia over the summer while helping Grace convert her newly purchased boathouse into an inn, would make Delia’s lips curve. Theirs had never become a physical relationship, mostly due to lack of time, but the very charismatic Langston knew how to make a woman feel like a million bucks with little more than a wink and a smile. She’d soaked that up like a dried-out sponge left forgotten on the drain rack. Maybe if you’d made some time for more than a wink and a smile, you wouldn’t be fixated on a decades-old one-night stand.

  At the moment, with six-foot-two inches of pure alpha leaning in her doorway, somehow sucking every last molecule of steam-filled air from the room while he did so, she was hard-pressed to even picture the older man’s face.

  “Why are you—” She broke off, her expression changing to one of immediate concern. The hormonal fog finally lifted along with the steam from the sink, allowing rational thought to seep back into her steam- and sex-dream-addled brain. “Oh, no! Is—did something happen to Grace?” Something happening to his sister was the only reason Delia could fathom that would pull him off that damn island of his. “Why didn’t you just call me? Where’s Brodie? Is he with her? What hap—?”

  “Grace is fine,” he broke in calmly, his gaze steady on hers.

  Of course, she was, Delia thought. Grace’s brother would hardly be leaning against the doorjamb, all laconic and leonine in ancient jeans and casually tugged on layers of faded tee, even more faded sweatshirt, and an old lumberjack plaid jacket, if his one and only family member was in trouble.

  How was it he looked even sexier in that ensemble than in a sharply tailored, exquisitely pressed military uniform? And she’d seen him in both. His hair was much longer these days, bordering on shaggy. It matched the two-day-old beard that shadowed his hard jaw. She hadn’t thought his hair would be wavy when it grew out from the military buzz he’d sported when she’d first met him, though she couldn’t have said why. Maybe because he was all hard angles, and even harder edged. Nothing about him would dare to be soft. But the dark mop, streaked heavily by the sun now as summer began closing up shop, tossed about by the sea wind from his boat ride in, hung in unruly clumps that she wouldn’t go so far as to call curls, but begged a woman to run her fingers through and untangle just a bit.

  She wasn’t a woman given to vanity—she ran a diner, for God’s sake—so function won out over form every time. But with Grace not in danger, and him still standing there looking about a hundred times better in the layers-of-clothes flesh than he had in her very unclothed dreams—and he’d been pretty damn amazing in those dreams—she was suddenly acutely aware that while he was all tree-house-dwelling-Crusoe sexy, she, on the other hand, quite probably resembled a stewed tomato. Damp hair plastered to her forehead and cheeks. Splattered with soapsuds.

  “Why are you here then?” she asked, her brisk tone more directed at herself than him, but she couldn’t deny a small part of her would be relieved if he simply turned and sauntered right back to his boat. She might not be vain, but she was still female. Besides, he wouldn’t be the first man she’d sent packing. Eventually, they all sauntered off anyway. That was how she liked it. How she needed it to be.

  “Heard you got yourself some trouble,” he said. “The diner.”

  If he’d gotten down on one knee and proposed, she wouldn’t have been more stunned. He’d come all the way in from Sandpiper . . . because he was worried about her diner? She tried to conceal her shock. There had to be another reason. “The diner is fine,” she lied. And it was. Or it would be. Just as soon as she came up with a plan to save it.

  “That’s not how I heard it.”

  She propped her fists on her hips, which was when she realized she was still sporting those oh-so-sexy bright yellow rubber gloves to go with the steamed hairdo and stewed-tomato face. Fabulous. “Exactly what did you hear? And from whom?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew the answer to that. “Grace. She got you to come, didn’t she?” She waved a rubber-covered hand. “Rhetorical questio
n. No one else could have done the impossible.” He frowned at that last part, but she plowed onward, not wanting to discuss why he’d disappeared from her life or, more to the point, how she felt about him disappearing from her life. From the Cove in general, she understood. He needed sanctuary.

  But she’d thought . . . well, she wasn’t sure what she’d thought, but she guessed, at the very least, she’d thought that she was a part of that sanctuary, and not part of what he needed to get away from. How was it that she hadn’t realized, until that very moment, just how deeply his departure had hurt her feelings? Oh, yeah, you’re bulletproof, all right. Apparently, there wasn’t armor strong enough for some bullets. “Listen, I don’t know what Grace told you, but everything is—”

  “—not fine,” he finished. “Or Grace wouldn’t have contacted me. So let’s cut the crap.”

  Her eyebrows lifted a bit with that, but no one would ever accuse Ford of being a sweet talker. Or any kind of talker. “What crap are we cutting? Whatever is going on with the diner is my problem, not Grace’s, though, of course, I appreciate her being worried about me. Truly. But she doesn’t need to be. Her plate is full to overflowing as it is, what with her inn conversion project and Brodie building a damn full-size, seventeenth-century clipper ship in her backyard.”

  “Schooner.”

  Her eyebrows narrowed. And she could have sworn that glimmer in his eyes reached all the way down to the corners of his mouth. His hard mouth with those finely chiseled lips that had done amazing things to the softest parts of her—“Whatever,” she said, possibly a bit too shortly, but she was scrambling to get a foothold, a toehold, any kind of hold on her reaction to him. “And I know how thrilled Brodie is to have the contract. I know it will be a boon to Monaghan Shipbuilders, to Grace’s new inn when it’s finished, and to the Cove. But, the truth of it is, if it wasn’t for Winstock commissioning that damn boat, none of this would be happening.”

  “And what, exactly, is happening?”

  She folded her arms now, heedless of how soaked her apron was at this point. “I haven’t seen you in . . . I don’t even know how long it’s been. Since you went full-tilt Crusoe, living out on a deserted island in that tree house, playing Dr. Doolittle, no one sees you. But suddenly you’re here and you want to know what’s going on?”

  He stared at her for a beat, and then lifted a shoulder in a slight shrug. “Pretty much.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you need help.”

  Four little words, said so matter-of-factly, shouldn’t have made her knees go the least bit weak. She eased a hip against the edge of the industrial sink, because they had. A little bit. “I—I appreciate that,” she said, humbled now by the offer, especially coming from him. “But, I can handle it.”

  “Story in the paper made it seem otherwise.”

  Delia swallowed a swearword. Grace had obviously sent him a link to it. “Don’t believe everything you read.”

  He shifted a bit straighter, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “For someone who knows the business of everyone on this island, you sure get prickly when folks bring up yours.”

  She eyed him. “Some folks.”

  “You make it this hard for everyone?”

  “Make what hard?”

  She thought he might have sworn a little himself, under his breath, of course. He might have left the military behind a long time ago, but all those years of training were imprinted so deeply they were simply part of his DNA. He was polite, respectful, sometimes to a fault. Of course, she was probably the only one in the Cove who knew what he could be like when he wasn’t feeling the need to be so . . . polite. And her knees might have wobbled a bit more at the thought of how, exactly, that was.

  He gave the appearance of someone who couldn’t care less about what was on anyone else’s agenda because he was too busy keeping his focus on his own. Mostly because that was exactly who he was. And yet, he was here. In her kitchen. Offering, apparently, to help her. She knew it was because Grace had asked him to come, just as Delia knew that, recluse or not, Grace mattered to him. Deeply, in fact. So, of course he’d come. But that didn’t mean he’d wanted to. Quite likely the opposite.

  She let go of some of the rigidity that was holding her up. It also wasn’t his fault that she’d been having ridiculously indulgent sex dreams about him and, if she were being honest, those images were making her more prickly than the fact that he was forcing her to admit she needed help.

  Under his continued silent scrutiny, she loosened her grip around her waist, and then finally let her hands drop to her sides. “Listen, I know you don’t want to be here. And I appreciate—as will Grace, once I get done wringing her neck for telling you—that you came all the way in to the Cove to do . . . whatever it was she asked you to do.” She let go the rest of the breath she was holding, and with it came a surprising dry smile. “You could have just called. Then I could have been a complete, unappreciative bitch over the phone and saved you the boat trip.”

  His lips did twitch then, just the tiniest of bits. “Problem is I’d have let you.”

  She sighed. “But Grace wouldn’t have.”

  He shook his head. “And, tell you the truth, I’m more afraid of her than I am of you.” He straightened fully, but kept his hands in his pockets. “So, here I am.”

  And, God help her, here was exactly where she’d like to have him. And on the counter. The floor. Up against the nearest wall, too.

  She ducked his gaze, pushed at her hair, and the reminder of her stewed-tomato appearance was enough to snap her out of it and back to reality. Sometimes reality sucked. For more than a few reasons. “Well, you’re officially off the hook. I’ll talk to Grace. She’ll understand.”

  His expression said Good luck with that, but he didn’t look relieved. Or as if he was intending to leave anytime soon.

  “It’s something I need to figure out on my own.” When he still didn’t budge, she said, “Listen, if there was something I thought you or Grace could do, I’d tell you. But I got myself into this situation by not following up on the whole lease thing. I mean, it’s been twenty years, so . . .” She trailed off. Twenty years. That should have sounded like a long time. A very long time. And yet, it had seemed like just yesterday when the town council, and Eli Compton, who’d been the mayor back then, had come to her rescue after Gran’s restaurant had burned down, taking everything from them except the house she’d grown up in.

  “The article didn’t explain much. How did Winstock wedge himself in between you and the land bureau? Or whoever oversees the lease deal you made with the town?”

  “That’s just it. No one has really been overseeing it. It wasn’t much more than a handshake deal at the time, with a signed, typed-up sheet I’ve only ever used for tax purposes. I don’t think anyone would have cared if I paid the dollar fee annually or not, that was just to make it legal. I did, of course, but—”

  “Dollar fee? What does that mean?”

  “It means the town more or less gave me the building that became my diner, and the land it sits on, but in a lease arrangement, to save me from paying back taxes, and a bunch of other financial red tape.” She took in a breath and eyed him levelly. She had nothing to be ashamed of, and she wasn’t. It had been an act of charity at the time, yes, one she’d been grateful for then and every day since, but what she’d done with her diner, and brought back to the Cove, had more than evened things up in the ensuing years. That still didn’t make talking about it any easier. “The deal was a dollar a year for twenty years.” When he merely nodded, she let go of some of the awkward tension. “It’s been more or less the honor system ever since; no one has overseen it directly. I’ve offered to buy the property outright more than once, but I kept getting waved off. So once I’d paid off all the loans I took out to get the diner up and going, I took the money I’d been paying the bank, that I’d have put toward real rent, and set up a private thing with the local food bank. It was the best way I knew to give back,
give a hand up to someone else, like they’d given to me. Anyway, no one knows about that and I’d appreciate it staying that way. I always figured I’d just do whatever was mutually agreeable to everyone once the lease finally expired.”

  “And when is that?”

  “Was that,” she corrected, disgusted with herself all over again.

  “Twenty years,” he said. He paused a moment, and then said, “That would have been right about the time O’Reilly’s burned down.”

  Her defenses naturally wanted to kick up, but there was absolutely no pity on his face, merely curiosity and an expectation that she would explain.

  “Yes. Boiler exploded. Mercifully, no one was hurt, because it happened in the middle of the night. Burned straight to the ground before anything could be done. We lost it all.”

  “Insurance didn’t cover enough?”

  “There was no insurance. I didn’t—” She broke off. It had happened a long time ago, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant a memory now. “Gran had let it lapse. I didn’t know.”

  “I thought the place did well.”

  “It did. It wasn’t the money. Gran was . . . well, she was getting forgetful, and I was in denial that she was having problems. I chalked it up to losing Tommy and just . . . a lot of things. But the fact was she was struggling a lot more than I knew, and a number of things had fallen through the cracks. Things I found out after the fire when all the bills and other attendant stuff came due. We managed to keep the house, but only because my grandfather had paid it off before he’d passed away. But we had nothing to rebuild with. I had to mortgage the house just to pay off the multitude of bills and levies involved after the fire. I couldn’t keep the property the building sat on. The bank took it.”

  “Whatever became of it?”

  “Nothing. It’s a gravel lot now that folks use to pull in and look at the water on their way into the harbor. It’s the first place you come to with a decent view.”