Stryker's Wife (Man of the Month)

by Dixie Browning

  “That’s real nice of you, uh, Ashli, but—”

  “Leonard’s over on that Hatteras-55 that just pulled in this morning. He’ll be playing poker all night, and I just hate card games. They bore me silly.”

  Kurt had a pretty good idea what kind of games she enjoyed. He wasn’t interested. Funny thing—another time he might have taken her up on the challenge. “Thanks, but Frog’s gone out for cheeseburgers. I’ve got to drill him for a math test on Monday.”

  “Gawd,” she said, rolling her eyes. She turned her back on him and jabbed at a shrimp. Kurt had to admit, it was a pretty nice back. He was half-tempted to change his mind, but then, math was important.

  Five days later the rain slacked up just as a yellow 1983 Lincoln with a peeling vinyl top pulled into the marina parking lot. He glanced up from what he was doing.

  Down, boy. There’s got to be at least a couple thousand of those old babies around these parts.

  Carefully, he replaced the snarl of monofilament leader in the tackle locker and stood up. The car door swung open, and a pair of red sneakers dropped into view. Kurt started grinning. He dusted his hands off on the seat of his pants and adjusted the knot of his eye patch.

  “You didn’t have to come all this way for your meter,” he said when she was halfway out the pier, her slicker glistening under the greenish pier light that had come on with the early darkness. “I kept waiting for you to call and tell me where to send it.”

  “I wasn’t sure if I’d even left it here.”

  They were both grinning like it was a big joke or something, running into each other this way. Deke leaned over the boat and Kurt reached up and swung her aboard as easily as if the movement had been choreographed.

  He’d forgotten just how small she was. And how feminine. She wasn’t exactly pretty—hers was more the kind of beauty he’d seen once in an exhibit of black-and-white photographs. The kind of beauty that had nothing to do with age or wrinkles or fancy makeup.

  “Here, get under the overhang, it’s still drizzling. Want some coffee?”

  “No, thanks. How’s Frog?”

  “Fine. He’s off on a basketball trip to Raleigh this weekend. With the weather closing in, he figured he might as well go, since he wasn’t going to be earning any tips. Besides, I think a certain twelfth grader who drives a pink Jeep is going.”

  “Didn’t you say he was only fourteen?”

  “Yeah, well…I didn’t say he had real good sense, did I? He’s learning, but these things take time.”

  “I’d forgotten how awkward it is, growing up.”

  “You’ll make it one of these days. Just hang in there.” He grinned again. Lately he seemed to be doing a lot of that.

  “I’m twenty-seven,” she informed him.

  “You’ve got plenty of time.”

  Kurt was going on thirty-eight. He ought to have better sense than to be thinking what he was thinking. Hell, he was no better than Frog when it came to playing out of his league. Worse, in fact. He was old enough to know better.

  And then neither one of them could think of anything to say. Deke touched the rats’ nest of fishing tackle that was lying in one of the chairs. Kurt adjusted the tie of his eye patch again. Mostly he forgot he even wore the thing, but every once in a while, he became self-conscious about it.

  With his one good eye he studied her the way he would study the surface of the water, searching for signs of fish. For the reddish shadow that indicated a school of drum. The choppy oil slick of feeding blues.

  What had made her drive all the way down from Virginia when a phone call would’ve accomplished the same thing?

  “I was afraid you’d be out with a charter today,” she said, sounding a little shy, a bit embarrassed. He wondered if that self-assertiveness course she had told him about had struck again. This was not exactly a good time to be visiting the coast.

  “A charter? Oh, yeah—we were booked up, but we had a couple of cancellations. Weather doesn’t sound too promising for the next few days.”

  “Don’t the fish bite when it rains? Mercy, how can they tell the difference?”

  Kurt caught a faint drift of soap, shampoo and sun-warmed corn tassels. Perfume or just clean, wholesome woman, the stuff really packed a wallop.

  “Matter of fact, I think we might be in for more than just a few showers. According to the last update, TD-11 just turned into Tropical Storm Irene. She’s headed north-northwest, picking up speed and strength, expected to make landfall somewhere in south Georgia if she holds to her present course.”

  Deke sat down rather suddenly on the fighting chair that wasn’t filled with a tangle of fishing tackle. “I might have known something else would happen.” She managed a bleak little smile. “Once I’m satisfied that things are about as bad as they can get, they get worse. Either that or I screw up. I seem to have a real talent for it.”

  So then she had to explain about the day-care center being shut down until further notice due to an outbreak of E. coli, and about the vacate-premises notice she had received in the mail just yesterday, telling her she had three weeks to find another place to live and move out.

  “Is that legal?” she asked plaintively. “I mean, can they actually do that? I thought a person was entitled to at least six months’ notice.”

  She gazed up at where Kurt, leaning against a stanchion, smiled at her, looking tanned and handsome and slightly piratical except for his remarkably gentle gray eye. “I’m no expert,” he said, “but I think six months’ notice is somewhat excessive. Did you ask your super about it?”

  “He says the lease says six weeks, but that doesn’t count when it has something to do with safety violations. All I know is that I’m going to have to find a place to stay and then pay to get moved, and with one of my jobs gone and the advance on the proposal I just sent in not expected for at least six weeks, I’m just—I’m royally pi—peed!”

  Kurt threw back his head and roared.

  As for Deke, she couldn’t have looked more mortified if she’d wandered into a tea party strip, stark naked.

  “Miffed, is what I meant to say. It’s that blasted course I took that was supposed to teach me to stand up for my rights instead of just lying there like a worn-out doormat. I think I must have missed a few installments.”

  Kurt took out a handkerchief and blotted his good eye. “Why don’t we talk about it over supper? You can’t head back on an empty—” He broke off as a burst of static came over the radio. “Hang on a minute, will you? This might be important.”

  Turning, he fiddled with a coverless radio and frowned. Deke admired the long line of his backside, all the way from his broad shoulders right down to a pair of neat if somewhat hairy ankles. Even in late October, he didn’t wear socks. Gray moccasin-type deck shoes and faded khakis. That was all she’d ever seen him wear, but she could easily imagine him in a pirate’s costume. Or a Coast Guardsman’s uniform.

  Or nothing at all…

  “She’s picked up strength,” he said, adjusting a knob that squelched the roar of static. “They’re expecting her to make hurricane strength by daybreak tomorrow.”

  “Oh, dear,” she murmured.

  “That about says it. Oh, dear.” Then he grinned, and suddenly, the drizzle that had been falling all week, the potential hurricane and her personal problems seemed to fade into the mists. “We’d better get a move on before the last eatery shuts down for the duration. Otherwise, it’ll have to be cornflakes and chocolate milk.”

  Which didn’t sound quite as awful as it might. Deke suddenly realized that she was famished. And as long as it was already dark, what difference would another hour or so make?

  She stood and reached for her purse, and Kurt smiled that lazy, devastating smile of his and said, “Let me get some rain gear. We’ll have to go in your car. Mine’s in a borrowed garage. I got the engine back in, but now she needs a new flywheel.”

  “That’s all right,” she said breathlessly, and truly, it was. If he’d
asked her to swim to the nearest restaurant, she would have peeled off her shoes and jumped in without a second thought. Which didn’t say a whole lot about her ability to learn from experience.

  “I’ll need to start back by nine,” she said, trying to sound firm and levelheaded.

  “No way. You can’t drive all day and then turn around and drive back in the rain after dark. Stay overnight and head back tomorrow.”

  “I wish I could, but I just can’t,” she said wistfully.

  “Why not? The motel’s probably empty. I bet old Montrose would even let you have the presidential suite.”

  “You mean the one with two towels instead of just the one?” She laughed, but it was a halfhearted effort. “Kurt, I just can’t afford it, what with moving and all. The cost of moving my organ alone is horrendous.”

  “Then stay here. Frog’s gone—you can have his bunk.”

  Moving her organ?

  “Tell you what,” he said before she could protest. “Let’s go grab some supper and a few groceries and come back here and hash it out. If you want to use Frog’s bunk, I’ll sleep out here in the cockpit.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t let you—”

  “No problem. I sleep out here a lot. A bedroll, a can of mosquito repellent, and it’s better than a two star hotel.”

  “But it’s raining.”

  He shrugged. He could tell he was wearing her down. “So I’ll sleep under the overhang. If the rain blows in, I’ll improvise.”

  She sighed. “I really should go back tonight. I’m expected to feed thirty-seven baby birds in the morning.”

  “Who did it last weekend?”

  “The owner. Biddy Cummings.”

  “Who’ll do it if you break a leg and can’t get there?”

  “Probably one of the people who come in to play with the birds. There’s lots of bird people who just enjoy being around them, and Biddy doesn’t mind. She says they need to be handled. The birds, not the people.”

  Yes, and more than one of those volunteers had expressed an interest in her job. Jobs weren’t all that plentiful in Church Grove. People who had them tended to hang onto them.

  “Well, then, what’s the big deal?”

  The big deal was that she earned five dollars and twenty-five cents an hour less deductions when she was there. When she wasn’t, she earned zip.

  However, night driving, especially in the rain, had never been her favorite thing. “Are you sure Frog won’t mind?” she asked tentatively.

  So much for assertiveness.

  Kurt couldn’t suppress his grin. “Lady, he’ll be heartbroken that he missed you, but he’ll be honored as all get-out that you slept in his bunk. Believe me, you’ve gone and charmed the kid right out of his size thirteen cross trainers. Up until now he seemed to think women had to be cheerleaders or drive pink Jeeps to be good company.”

  He lifted her carefully onto the pier and then leapt up after her just as nimbly as if he hadn’t lost a chunk of his left thigh to a piece of flying cowling a few years earlier.

  Taking her arm in his, he hurried her down the pier to her car, feeling an edgy kind of excitement that had nothing at all to do with the weather and everything to do with the laughing woman jogging along at his side.

  Five

  To her list of things over which to feel guilty, Deke added the fact that she was as excited as a kid on Christmas morning at the thought of having Kurt all to herself for a few hours. With everything else she had on her mind—her jobs, her next book, finding a new home and then hiring movers who hadn’t herniated themselves trying to carry her monstrous organ up two flights of stairs the first time—you’d think she would had have better sense.

  And it wasn’t because she didn’t like Frog, because she really did, only being alone with Kurt Stryker was…

  It was special. Because he made her feel special. Without even trying, he made her feel like someone she wasn’t. Like a beautiful, exciting woman who had a functioning brain in her head and a few valid opinions to offer.

  Mark had never been interested in her brain. He had liked the way she looked, with her upswept hair and her retro dresses and Granna’s old-fashioned screw-back earrings and cameo. He’d called her his little Gibson Girl, but once the novelty wore off he had tried to change her into someone else. When that hadn’t worked he had simply lost interest.

  Kurt wasn’t like that. At least, she didn’t think he was. He asked questions and actually listened to the answers. He was even more handsome than Mark had been, in a weathered sort of way. But after the first hour or so she had forgotten the way he looked and grown increasingly aware of the quiet strength underneath all that masculine perfection.

  Mercy, they had even laughed together! That was something she had never done with Mark, either. But then, Mark had never had a sense of humor, only she’d been too shy and inexperienced to notice until it was too late.

  Deke told herself there was nothing particularly romantic about a rainy October night on the Carolina coast, but as long as she was there she was determined to savor every minute of it. Imagine, setting out on a three or four hour drive at two o’clock in the afternoon in the face of an impending storm.

  Of course, she hadn’t known about the storm. Or at least, how impending it really was. Nor did she want to know. Like Scarlett, she would think about that tomorrow.

  Now she dutifully creamed her coffee from the can of evaporated milk on the table and found, somewhat to her surprise, that it wasn’t too bad. They had come to the only restaurant that still remained open, the others having already nailed plywood over doors and windows and put out the Closed signs.

  “What will you do?” she asked. “About getting ready, I mean.”

  “Tonight? Nothing much. Tomorrow I’ll move the boat to a more protected mooring, make sure the batteries are charged, double-check the bilge pump and the switches—tighten down the nut on the stuffing box, check the cleats and bit for rusted bolts, check the chaffing gear…”

  She blinked. “Oh. Is that all?”

  Kurt looked thoughtful, and a thoughtful-looking Kurt Stryker was something to see. “Well…I reckon I’ll take the radio and navigational gear out of the locker on the flying bridge—the thing leaks in a hard rain—and stow it below. Then I’d better check the weep holes—”

  “Weep holes?”

  “Drains in the deck hatches. Sometimes they get stopped up with fish scales and gunk.”

  “Oh. Of course.”

  “And then I reckon I’ll go see who needs a hand getting plywood nailed up—the usual. Maybe lay in a few supplies.”

  “What if the storm turns around and goes back where it came from?”

  He shrugged. “Then I guess we’ll all count ourselves lucky.”

  Leaning against the high-backed bench, he looked every bit as relaxed as if both his home and his livelihood weren’t in danger of being lost within the next thirty-six hours. It occurred to Deke that for a man of his background who had spent the last few years flying rescue missions, often under extreme weather conditions, this was probably nothing out of the ordinary.

  She was interrupted in her musings by the proprietor, who stopped by their table with a message for Kurt. “Almost forgot—that woman was in here again today looking for you. Said she’d gone by the boat, but either you weren’t there or you were layin’ low.”

  “Damn.” The word was spoken softly, which made it all the more effective. “She say anything else?”

  “Nope. She’d already checked by the school and found out about the trip to Raleigh. Don’t think she liked that too much, missing the boy and then missing you. Didn’t look none too happy.”

  “Yeah, well—thanks, Joe.”

  “Anything I can do, just let me know.”

  Deke didn’t know what the stuffing box Kurt had mentioned a few moments ago was, but if it had anything to do with human emotions, he had just tightened the nut down on his, real hard. Not a smidge of expression remained to be seen.

>   “Shall we?” he asked, rising and holding out a hand without even looking to see whether or not she was ready.

  A whole swarm of second thoughts descended on her as they hurried out to the car in the blowing rain. “Kurt, I know you have a lot on your mind, so why don’t I just drop you off and head on home tonight? I don’t mind, honestly I don’t.”

  He settled her into the passenger seat, then jogged around the hood and slipped in beside her. It occurred to her that there was more than a small streak of male chauvinism in the man, and yet it didn’t bother her. Not much. Not yet, at least.

  “No way,” he said flatly. She could feel herself beginning to come to a simmer. Kurt started the engine and then just sat there, staring at the swinging sign that advertised Joe’s Place Seafood And Etc.

  Then he turned. In the dim reflected light, she tried hard to make out his expression. “Don’t even think about it,” he said flatly. “This is no time to be on the road, Debranne.” Some of her steam began to evaporate. He was only showing concern. “There’ll be a steady stream trying to beat tomorrow’s evacuation traffic.”

  “Evacuation? Do you really think it will come to that?”

  “Probably. All up and down the Banks, natives generally stay put—locals generally don’t. Tourists never do. I don’t want you on the highway tonight, so just humor me, will you?”

  And then he shot down the last of her defenses by turning that slow grin her way. The warm twinkle in his one gray eye made it seem almost reasonable. He had so much on his mind, after all, and the last thing he needed was to have to worry about her running into trouble alone on the highway on a dark and stormy night. She put it down to all that rescue training.

  Deke could have told him that her being alone, whether on the highway or anywhere else, was none of his business, but deliberate rudeness was not in her repertoire. So now she had one more worry to add to her list. Kurt Stryker. She was rapidly falling under his spell. He affected her physically, and Deke had never even been all that interested in the physical side of a relationship. Unlike several of her friends, she never even went out of her way to ogle the highway construction crew. Not that they were anything special, but boots, hard hats and bare chests seemed to turn some women on.