Nell. He pulled the fact from the recesses of his brain. Her bone structure was as intriguing as her mother’s, and her smile was enchanting, despite all the expensive hardware affixed to her teeth. It had been Jessie’s smile that first attracted Mark in the stuffy mahogany-panneled offices of Abrahms and Mahoney last fall.
First her smile: friendly, open, just a tad shy; then her face: strong, oval-shaped, with high-angled cheekbones and a willful, determined chin; lastly there had been the photographs she had taken. Several of them hung on the walls of the reception area and in her own small cubbyhole office. They were beautifully composed, sensitively rendered studies of plants, barns, rocks, trees, sea and sky. She captured ordinary, everyday scenes with a skill and compassion that gave them great depth and feeling.
On a whim totally foreign to his cautious nature and lifelong habits, Mark had asked her to free-lance for Meanderings.
Just like that.
And to his surprise she’d accepted.
Just like that.
It was that willingness to explore new avenues, to experiment with new opportunities; her zest and spirit of adventure that came through in her photos and was so at odds with the businesslike facade she tried to project at Abrahms and Mahoney that had given him the courage to broach this latest venture.
Jessie hadn’t disappointed him today, either, although she drove a hard bargain. He recalled ruefully his promise of the bonus money. There was no doubt whatsoever in his mind that she’d stick it out to the end—and her daughters with her.
“There’s no way we can get a ten-mile extension cord, dummy,” Nell’s shrill voice intruded into his thoughts. “Don’t you know there won’t be any electricity where we’re going?” she summed up piously for her sisters.
“That’s enough, Nell,” Jessie cautioned automatically, turning to confront the expedition’s leader. Her face brightened involuntarily from a combination of chagrin and afternoon heat.
Mark Elliot looked every bit as imposing in jeans and a Black Watch plaid shirt with open collar and sleeves rolled to just below the elbow as he did in his conservative three-piece business suits. He had the chameleonlike quality of adapting himself to the environment around him. It fascinated Jessie, being a trait she both admired and envied.
It seemed at times, lately, that without her camera and array of lenses she wasn’t really a person. She was only somebody’s mother, who used to be somebody’s loving wife and friend, but who was now too often a woman alone. It worried her a little—when she had time to consider the situation.
“Hello,” Nell piped up. “All they think about is their hair…and boys.” Her smile was genuinely friendly as she pronounced judgment on her sisters. Jessie refrained from commenting on her rudeness, preferring to let it sink into oblivion. Nell held out a tanned, grubby hand. “I’m Nell Elizabeth Meyer. Are we really going to live on a deserted island and eat weeds and raw fish for a week because your nieces are a couple of spoiled brats?”
“Nell!” Jessie couldn’t let that one pass. She was horrified at her progeny’s lack of manners. Unfortunately, she also recognized her own unguarded words to her mother in the speech. Mark’s nieces might have left him high and dry, but with her luck they had probably managed the feat with impeccable manners.
“I certainly hope not.” Mark chuckled low and deep, accepting Nell’s hand with dignity. His carriage was tall and straight, without any of the stiffness you’d expect from preconceptions of a retired military officer.
Nell’s coltish face fell, mirroring her disappointment. “I mean,” Mark hurried to explain, “I hope we don’t have to eat anything raw that wasn’t meant to be ingested in that form.”
“Gross” came the inelegant reply from both the twins.
“Not if I can help it. You must be Annette and Lynette,” Mark continued without skipping a beat as he turned his riveting, gold-flecked blue gaze on the twins. Jessie wondered fleetingly where he’d learned the girls’ names. His charming, boyish grin seemed to be holding them in thrall. She felt a spurt of momentary annoyance at his easy camaraderie with the three teens.
In all truthfulness, she was genuinely surprised at the twins’ docility, until Nell bounced to her side and said in a stage whisper that carried to the far corners of the parking lot: “They never believed it when I told them you said he looked like Tom Selleck.”
Jessie groaned in silent mortification, catching Mark’s quirking grin of amusement. Perversely, his even temper made her angrier still. He was laughing at them! She slammed the trunk lid closed, missing her finger by a hair breadth. Drat the outspoken child and her devastating candor.
Unfortunately, her observation was true. Mark Elliot was a shade over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, with not even a hint of a paunch—although Jessie knew for a fact that he’s just passed his forty-sixth birthday. She stole a furtive glance at Mark as she pretended to count duffels on the ground beside the car. He was a great deal sexier, in her opinion, than the hearthrob TV sleuth. There were lines fanned out around his eyes that told of years spent out in the wind and weather. His hair was cut a little shorter than Jessie liked, but she guessed it was an attempt to control—without a great deal of success—a decided tendency to curl above his ears and at the nape of his neck. There was only a tiny, attractive hint of gray sprinkled in the sable pelt. He was intelligent, interesting…the kind of man that had always appealed to Jessie.
“Tom Selleck is four inches taller and he has green eyes, I’m sure,” Jessie hissed sotto voce. “I never said that,” she lied, bold-faced and unrepentant. Nell seemed ready to dispute her mother’s word, thought better of it and was distracted from further altercation as the twins broke into speech.
“We’re fraternal twins,” Ann, the eldest by several minutes, said, preening under the masculine attention.
“That’s why I have brown eyes and Mom’s reddish hair,” Lyn offered with a comical moue. She wanted nothing more this summer than to be tall and leggy and blond. At five-seven, she was well on her way to the tall and leggy, already matching Jessie’s height, but blond was out of the question—not while she lived under Jessie’s roof.
“I look like our dad,” Ann supplied. She was an inch or so shorter than her twin and five pounds heavier. Her hair was dark, almost black, as her father’s had been. All three of the girls had inherited Carl Meyer’s straight nose and tip-tilted eyes. Lyn had his even temper, Ann his quick laugh and Nell his love of books as further legacy.
“You all look like your father,” Jessie chimed in, amazed at the ease with which she spoke. Was it true that time did heal all wounds, as corny as the phrase sounded? Carl had been gone seven years. Her life was speeding by so quickly that some moments she wanted to reach out and stop the world as it spun along. It was sad and wonderful all at the same time.
“If you’re ready, ladies.” Mark included them all in his engaging, crooked grin. Did he practice it in front of a mirror, Jessie wondered, annoyed. “There’s our transportation to the staging sight.” He gestured with a wonderful economy of motion toward a lobster boat moored at the end of the concrete pier. “We’d better hurry. It’s a two-hour trip. We don’t want to pitch camp after nightfall.”
Jessie felt her frazzled temper shorten like a snapped rubber band. To her it seemed as if his teasing tone was directed patronizingly at her own lack of organization. Of course they were late getting started. It had been his nieces who had chickened out.
Her own girls stared in patent disbelief at the mode of travel before them. Three mouths opened in collective protest. Not even Nell was taking this development in stride. The trawler did appear to have seen better days, but it looked somewhat sturdy and the brasswork gleamed in the fitful afternoon sun.
Jessie frowned her daughters down, making a gesture of shifting gears with her free hand as she grabbed the nearest tote. She shoved it into Nell’s hand. It was all the hint required. Each taking a duffel, the twins marched to the end of the pier as
though the tumbril waited at the far end.
“They’ll do fine. Don’t worry,” Mark assured, bending to pick up a duffel in each strong, tanned hand.
It was the last straw. He didn’t know how her children would react. “I’m not so sure.” Jessie’s tone was sharp, admonitory. She wasn’t certain herself how the girls would behave when push came to shove. She resented—now that there was no turning back—what she perceived as Mark’s unfair means of getting her to agree to this foolhardy adventure. Jessie felt as though she’d been tricked, that he’d appealed to her baser instincts and won. It suddenly occurred to her that she was no longer in complete control of her life, or those of her daughters. The knowledge gave her a jerky little moment of panic.
They’d been on their own for seven years. She was too long out of practice in a partnership of any kind to immediately recognize Mark’s willingness to work together in the venture. Jessie was aware only that she couldn’t give up command to a man she barely knew.
“Call them back if you want,” Mark directed stiffly, watching the conflicting thoughts flicker across Jessie’s expressive features. Would she? Had he been wrong in thinking Jessie would meet his challenge? He hoped not. Mark held his breath, feet planted firmly on the gravelly sand beach. She wasn’t like the typical, stoic New Hampshirite he’d come to recognize in the two years he’d spent in the state. She was warm, smiling, easy to talk to and to laugh with—until now, when he’d ruffled her maternal feathers.
“I said we’d go and I meant it. But remember this,” Jessie cautioned, a long, clear-tipped finger shaking under his Roman nose, “you asked for it, Mark Elliot. Every minute of the next six days.”
“And you don’t think I’m man enough to handle all of you, is that it?” Jessie blinked. So he’d hit a nerve. A slanting black brow raised toward his hairline. Male arrogance seeped into the statement, try as hard as he would to keep it out. Gut-level instinct told him that wasn’t the best way to deal with Jessie. She wouldn’t be bullied. But it was too late for a retraction. He’d have to be very careful from now on when he confronted this exasperating, intriguing woman.
“I’m not sure you are,” Jessie stated bluntly, meeting his regard with a steady, assessing evaluation of her own. “What do you know about living with children, teenagers yet? They’re a totally different breed. A career officer…” She trailed off, obviously embarrassed at the personal line of attack she’d been about to pursue.
Mark hid a smile. She was no quitter, that was for sure.
“I don’t even know what equipment you’ve packed.” Jessie opened up a new field of fire. “You shanghaied us into this deal so darn fast I didn’t have time to ask how you intend to house us all.” Telltale temper lines appeared between her brows, heightening the resemblance between mother and aggrieved daughters. “Do you have a first-aid kit…a radio for emergency messages?” Jessie sputtered to a halt.
“You’ll just have to take my word for it, won’t you?” Mark summed up gruffly. He seemed to address her resentment without alluding directly to it. Jessie was ashamed she’d stooped to such petty arguments. Mark would certainly have everything they needed. His next words confirmed her thoughts.
“Trust me to know what’s best for all of us. My hide’s on the line in this deal, too. Can you do that, Jess?” He waited patiently, his stance relaxed, his shoulders braced easily against the weight of heavy canvas packs. “We can’t do this experiment by committee vote. If you can’t accept my authority, say so now.”
Was it only her imagination that read a measure of tension in that proud tilt of his head? Trust him. She’d have to. She’d given her word.
“After you, Colonel Elliot,” Jessie snapped, good intentions giving way to purely human pique. “But don’t say later I didn’t warn you.” Lord, what a scathingly brilliant retort. She could have bitten off her tongue once the words were out of her mouth. She was as bad as Nell when it came to having the last word—and not half as witty.
Chapter Two
IN THE END THE EMBARKATION went surprisingly well. They landed on the tiny wave-lapped dot fifteen miles off the northern coast of Massachusetts late in the afternoon. Overhead the halfhearted sun had given up its protest against the thick gray clouds and disappeared altogether. Maybe that accounted for the gloomy atmosphere that seemed to hang over the islet like an invisible fog. A few seabirds called forlornly as they soared above the tidal flats in search of a meal. It felt like rain. Jessie shivered in sympathy with a screeching gull. Rain—just what they needed.
She surveyed the granite and pine-studded landfall glumly, estimating its size to be no more than a square city block or so. It rose to a ragged crest roughly a hundred feet above the sea. Ahead of them a granite ledge jutted out into the water, creating a fairly level plateau. Their campsite? How did Mark expect five people to live off the dubious bounty of such a rockbound speck for a week? It couldn’t be done. She wished she could hop back on the boat and escape, and if the horrified looks on the twins’ faces were any indication, they shared her sentiments.
“Rocks and trees and noisy, dirty birds,” Lyn mourned, leaning over the side of the fishing boat at a precarious angle.
“The birds can’t smell any worse than this tub,” Ann seconded with a fastidious crinkling of her nose.
“It’s not so bad,” Nell defended. She seemed to be reserving judgment, on her best behavior after her one monumental gaffe at the dock only minutes before they sailed.
“We’ll starve to death,” Lyn continued her lament. “Nell probably knocked most of the supplies overboard back on shore.”
“I did not,” Nell maintained. “Mark said it wasn’t anything we had to have to survive, didn’t he, Mom? It was an accident.”
“We know that, honey. But I think you should apologize for your…” Jessie searched for an appropriate word as she watched a tanker, the only visible sign of human life, slide over the edge of the horizon far out to sea. It was a lonely sight. A sigh eased past her lips.
She still didn’t know how the incident in question had occurred. It never did take much to set off an eruption of knobby knees and gangling elbows where Nell was concerned. Before anybody could move quickly enough to save it, one of the heavy canvas duffels had been jostled away from its fellows and lost forever in the murky waters off the pier.
“I’m a klutz,” Nell wailed in a fit of self-pity, infected no doubt by her sisters’ sullen attitudes.
“You’re not a klutz, just overeager,” Jessie soothed. She’d made a supreme effort not to yell at the youngster back on the dock; something she might not have done if they’d been alone. The twins had looked suitably smug, making Jessie’s palm itch to slap them. Nell had promptly burst into tears.
Mark Elliot, to give him credit, had taken it like a man. He bit off a sharp exclamation that Jessie was positive would have added unsuitably to the girls’ vocabulary and interestingly to her own. A hurried inventory didn’t pinpoint the missing objects but ascertained that the lost equipment wasn’t absolutely essential to survival. He’d slanted a quick, icy-blue glance in Jessie’s direction. “What do you think, Jess? Should we call it off?”
Had he been giving her a way out, Jessie considered in retrospect? Perhaps he had, but she’d refused to be drawn, ashamed at her own irritation with the girls and chagrined that he’d been witness to it. She was determined to uphold her end of the deal. “You’re the boss” was all she’d said and stepped onto the boat. With a jaunty salute Mark had followed her.
Jessie hated to admit it, but Mark Elliot was a born leader. From the moment they landed on the rocky spit, the girls seemed to shake off their gloomy lethargy and jumped to obey his slightest wish. He assumed the role of con artist cum Prince Charming as though born to it. Jessie found herself more than a little jealous at the ease with which he handled her brood.
The tents, three two-man nylon affairs with bright yellow-and-blue rain flies, went up like magic. Maybe their vivid color was what tempted the
sun to peek out from behind the tattered clouds. Maybe it was Nell’s delighted giggles floating on thermals over the island that piqued its curiosity. Jessie wasn’t sure, but in any case the whole island took on a different cast in the mellow golden light. Dull gray boulders acquired subtle shading of umber and copper glints; pine trees showed variations in texture and hue that had been hidden in the mist. The sky was so blue in spots it hurt to look at it. Jessie’s innate sense of optimism began to take control of her thoughts. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Nell was drafted to make a circle of stones to house the campfire while Ann and Lyn foraged for driftwood. Jessie was secretly relieved to learn that the actual cooking would be done on a propane camp stove; there was no way on earth her culinary skills would match up to an open fire.
“Quit looking as if it’s the end of the world, Jess,” Mark teased, squatting on his haunches as they unpacked the cooking utensils under a plastic lean-to he’d erected on what Jessie could have sworn was solid rock. “We’re not here to put Outward Bound out of business. Think of it as a week-long clambake.” Jessie made a face to show what she thought of that suggestion. “We’re only trying to show that man can live off the land and eat well if he has to. Nothing more.”
“In this instance I believe it’s more accurate to use the feminine case: ‘to show that woman can live off the land.’ We outnumber you four to one.” How could he be so damned casual about the whole thing? Didn’t he know they were sitting on an adolescent time bomb? The twins could go off at a moment’s notice, taking Nell with them. Yet he sat there, perfectly at ease, as if he had nothing more serious on his mind than continuing his bantering conversation with the mother of three walking booby traps. “You don’t seem to comprehend what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
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