Jack let his girls enter before him and with a flourish of his scabbard toward the bowl of candy Harley had set out. “Surrender the booty!”
Harley rolled her eyes and the twins giggled.
“Take what—” But Jack was laughing too hard to continue. “Let’s try that again,” he said in an aside. Then, “Take what you can, lassies,” he rumbled in a perfect Jack Sparrow voice, “and give nothing back.”
“Who are you?” Salt asked Harley, eyeing her gown.
“Why, I’m Mae West, darlin’.” She twirled her boa and gave Jack a look. “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.”
“Arrrrr!” He laughed. “’Tis awful harrrrd to be funny when ye have to be clean.”
Salt and Pepper looked at each other and shrugged.
Harley went to the kitchen and came back with a tray of drinks. “Now. Here you are, ladies. There are soft drinks and apple cider. Pick your poison.” Then, with a bow of her head, she handed Jack a glass of wine. “And for you, Cap’n. Sorry, I’m fresh out of rum.”
“What about ye, missus? Aren’t ye going to indulge in some grog?”
“I’m way ahead of you. I generally avoid temptation—” She looked him up and down. This was no longer the boy who had cheated on her and broken her heart. This was an unexpected, sexy marauder. “—unless I can’t resist it.”
“Arrrrr! When yer good, yer verra, verra good, but when yer bad, yer far better!”
“Till now, you’ve spent all your time here outside, with the goats. Would you like to look around?” asked Harley.
The twins looked at each other, and then, having apparently deduced each other’s opinions telepathically, turned to Harley and nodded in unison.
“Right this way.” She swept her arm toward the living room, taffeta skirt rustling.
The girls examined the living room approvingly.
“And over here’s the parlor,” said Harley.
Sipping their drinks, the girls tried out the room’s centerpiece, the gold velvet ottoman, before following Harley to the other rooms.
“And what exactly are you dressed as?” she asked when they got back to the living room.
“I’m supposed to be a salt shaker, but I really wanted to be a dancer, and Freddie’s Pepper, but she wanted to be Wonder Woman.”
“Is that so?” Harley studied Frankie for a moment. “What do you have on under that?”
“Tights and a cami,” they said together.
Harley pressed a finger to her lips. “I have an idea.” She opened a cupboard in the sideboard the Grimskys had left behind and pulled out a couple of old tablecloths. From the kitchen, she grabbed a pair of scissors and some twine. Then she cut a strip off one of the edges of the cloth, then straight into its center.
“Come here,” she told Frankie. “Slip off your costume.”
“What are you doing?” asked Frankie.
Harley tied the tablecloth around Frankie’s waist, securing it with the strip so the ends fell in an uneven, handkerchief hem.
“Wow!” Holding her skirt out, Frankie twirled around. “I’m a dancer!”
“Do me!” begged Freddie impatiently, already slipping out of her pepper outfit.
“Hold on, here. That’s what the twine’s for.” Cutting two even lengths, she attached them to adjacent corners of the other tablecloth and then secured them around Freddie’s neck, creating a cape.
“Cool!”
“And there’s something else I’ve been meaning to give you,” she said. She handed Freddie a shoebox.
“What’s this?”
“I was a big fan of comics, too, when I was you’re age. I’ve been looking for a good home for these.” She cupped her mouth as if telling a secret. “I hear they’re great for making altered books.”
Freddie’s lips formed an O. “Really?” Catching herself, she looked to her father for approval.
“What do you say?” said Jack.
That was all she needed to hear. “Thank you!” she exclaimed.
Jack glowed. “Ye see that, me hearties? What did I tell ye? Not all treasure is silver and gold.”
“We forgot one thing,” said Harley, looking at Fang, wagging his tail. “I’ll be right back.”
She dashed up to her studio and returned with some art supplies. A few snips and folds of black and white paper and in no time, she was perching a paper hat on Fang’s head and stretching some elastic under his chin. “Voilà!”
“He’s a pirate dog!” squealed the girls.
“Yer hands work magic,” said Jack. He set down his glass and glanced at his wrist. “Avast, bilge rats! Drink up! She’s a school night, she is, and it’s high time ye be in yer berths.”
“Oh, Dad,” said Freddie, cider mustache spoiling the effect of her lip gloss. “Do we have to?”
“Do we have to?” Frankie chimed in. “We want to stay here with Harley for a while.”
Harley’s heart swelled.
“Maybe ye’ll get invited back sometime,” Jack said. “It’s scarcely a cable length from the missus’s port to ours.”
“I think that can be arranged,” said Harley, accompanying them to the door, the girls carrying their original costumes and the shoebox. With one last swish of her boa, she said, “Nice meeting you, ladies.” She looked pointedly at Jack. “Anytime you’ve got nothing to do and lots of time to do it, come on back.”
“If ye don’t watch out, wench, I’ll be climbin’ yer riggin’ and wettin’ me pipe.”
“Captain!” Her hand flew to her cleavage in pretend outrage. “How you do run on.”
He winked broadly as he descended the porch steps. “Keep a weather eye open, ye savvy? Ye never know when ye might see me sails again on yer horizon.”
* * *
When Jack and the girls got back to the estate, Mother was waiting for them. “What happened to your costumes?” she asked, hands on hips.
“Harley made them for us. Now I’m a dancer,” said Frankie, pirouetting across the foyer.
“And guess who I am?” asked Freddie, swirling her red cape.
“What’s in the box?” asked Mother, lifting off the lid.
“Comic books! They used to be Harley’s. She gave them to me.”
Jack ignored Mother’s disapproving glare and hurried his daughters upstairs and through their bedtime routines so quickly, he almost felt guilty . . . almost.
He was in such a hurry to get back to Harley’s house, he forgot the condoms he had bought weeks earlier and had to run back up the stairs for them.
“You’re going out again?” asked Mother as he blew past her in the hall.
All he said was, “Later.”
He sped to the Victorian and half ran to her door to find her waiting in the threshold, one hand on her hip, the other holding her fan.
“Why, if it isn’t the swashbuckling Captain Jack.”
“Aye,” he panted, unable to control his grin. “I see ye couldn’t wait.”
“I heard your truck. You know what they say. Love thy neighbor. And if he happens to be tall, debonair, and devastating, it’s all the easi—”
He silenced her by snatching her into his arms, bending her backward, and kissing her senseless, just like in the movies.
She deepened their kiss, arching into him, grabbing a handful of his shirt to pull him closer.
He thrust his tongue into her mouth, sending a current of lust through her, tugging at her core.
The kiss grew, delving, exploring. Their bodies pressed together at every possible point, searching for closure.
“Jack,” she murmured, sliding her hand up the back of his shirt.
How many nights had she longed to be back in his arms, the way they’d been before everything went sideways? Tonight, their costumes were a trigger that took them back to their innocent past. The wine had loosened any lingering inhibitions.
In one smooth movement, he swooped her into his arms, kicked the door shut behind him, and headed up the stairs.
&nb
sp; As he climbed, their lips never parted. He cupped the overflowing swell of her breast, his whole body throbbing with lust. Yes. He was finally on his way to finishing something that had started a decade ago. This was going to be good . . . so good.
He lowered her to the bed, not taking his eyes off her as he stripped off his belt, whipping his shirt over his head, and retrieving the condom from his pocket and tossing it onto the nightstand before swiftly dispensing with his trousers, all the while watching Harley’s body reveal its secrets as she shimmied out of her gown.
“Let me,” he said, working the material down over her hips and casting it aside, then crawling onto the bed. It had been so long since he’d been with a woman—any woman. His need for her was beyond endurance.
“Strike your colors, woman,” he snarled, still wearing his eyepatch. “Prepare to be boarded.”
“Captain!” she huffed. “Don’t you know? Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.”
“Don’t fash yerself,” he said with a wicked grin, stroking his hand up her inner thigh. “Captain Jack knows how to make ye smile.”
But as it turned out, she was even more impatient than he. He hadn’t yet finished his intention when she positioned his hands over her shoulders, took him in hand, and arched against him.
“One sec,” he said, reaching for the condom, ripping it open with his teeth.
“You don’t need that,” she gasped.
With his good eye, he frowned down at her hot cheeks, the rapid rise and fall of her chest tempting him beyond all reason. He had fantasized about this moment a thousand times. Finally, it was here.
And yet, if anyone knew the consequences of unprotected sex, it was he. “You positive?”
“You don’t need it,” she insisted, thighs spread, her hand guiding him firmly toward her center. “Now,” she panted, “take me as you wish, sir. I ask no quarter.”
He flung the condom over his shoulder. Her feather boa draped across the pillow caught his eye, and on an impulse, he deftly hog-tied her wrists and secured them to the headboard, enjoying the look of surprise on her face. Then he lowered himself into position. “Aye, and it’s a jolly good thing,” he growled into her ear, “because no quarter will be given.”
Chapter Thirty
Mother turned on Jack the minute he came in from seeing the girls onto the school bus at the end of the lane. “What were you thinking, staying out all night?”
“I had my cell. All you had to do was call and I’d have been home as fast as if I’d been out in the vineyards. Faster.”
“It’s not the same thing, and you know it. What if one of them went to your room in the middle of the night and saw your bed was empty? Haven’t they been traumatized enough in their young lives?”
“Admit it, Mother. You don’t like that I’m seeing Harley. If I’d been with any other woman, you wouldn’t have cared.”
“The nerve of her—changing the girls’ costumes that I spent time and money on. What right did she have to alter them?”
“She didn’t destroy anything. All she did was create something new. You’re just going to have to make peace with the idea, because I want to be with her. I’m going to be with her, whether you like it or not.”
“That woman is the polar opposite of Emily.”
“Harley. Her name is Harley.”
* * *
As soon as Jack’s truck turned out of the lane, Melinda grabbed a jacket and hurried to the first place she thought Alfred might be, the cellar room.
One of the seasonal workers looked up from where he was extracting wine for sampling.
“Have you seen Alfred?”
“Not today. Anything I can do?”
She fled without answering, scanning first the tasting room and then the lab. Where could he be?
She finally found him behind the winery, in deep conversation with a field hand hired as a temp for the crush who was still trying to figure out how to leave. People did that with surprising frequency. No sense memorizing their names.
She waited some distance away, huddling in her jacket in the early November chill, doing her best to look unobtrusive.
Alfred spotted her, in that psychic connection lovers share. Melinda tried to be patient, but his lack of urgency, one of the very traits that attracted her to him, also drove her crazy. As he stood conversing with his hands jammed into his jacket pockets, rocking to and fro on his heels, it was all she could do not to storm over there. But she couldn’t risk arousing suspicion.
If not for Alfred, she would have been lost after Don’s death. He had patiently explained things to her in that calm way of his, until her heart had stopped racing and her breathing returned to normal.
As they spent more and more time together, she began to notice things about Alfred other than the fact that he had an excellent grasp of profit and loss statements and statistics. People said the secret of winemaking was planting great grapes and then getting out of the way. But Alfred did far more than that. Electrical repair, plumbing, carpentry—there was nothing he couldn’t fix. In addition to having a fine nose, he was a chemist and a botanist. He could easily have been a winemaker himself, but he was happy to leave the notoriety to others. He preferred working in the fields and behind the scenes.
Perhaps most importantly, he knew how to get along with people. Melinda’s occasional temper tantrums didn’t cow him in the least. That only made her respect him more.
But when it came right down to it, indispensable as he was, Alfred was still just an employee. If there was a heaven and Melinda’s mother was looking down on her, seeing how close she was becoming to Alfred, she would be scowling.
“Dammit, Alfred!” Still waiting, Melinda stamped her fine leather boot. She hated that she had come to rely on him so much.
A minute later, Alfred was finally backing up, raising his hand to the worker in a respectful farewell.
About time. She counted his steps, willing him to hurry up.
“What is it?” he asked when he saw her face. “What’s wrong?”
“Jack didn’t come home last night.”
With a backward glance, he took her elbow and led her into the lab and shut the door. “Where is he now? Is he all right?”
Melinda shook her head impatiently. “He’s fine. He went to town, but he’ll be back soon. He spent the night with Harley.”
“I don’t know why you let yourself get so worked up over those two.”
“I’m from the old school. I know how hard it is to run a business and raise a child by myself. Why should I want my son to endure that?”
“Let Jack and Harley do as they please. Start thinking about yourself for a change.”
“Me?”
“You. When was the last time you did something without your son or granddaughters in mind?”
Melinda drew a blank.
“That’s what I thought,” said Alfred. “How about this. What say we go down to the Turning Point Friday night and I’ll buy you dinner.”
At first thought, she welcomed the idea. The last man she’d been out with was Thurston, the owner of a collection agency in Marlborough.
And then she caught a glimpse of Alfred’s baggy corduroys, and she imagined the whispers of her committee members and country club friends when word got out that she was dating her vineyard manager.
“How can I relax when my son’s getting in deeper and deeper with the wrong person? No. I’m determined to find Jack someone better. And I won’t rest until I do.”
She strolled briskly out of the lab before Alfred could stop her.
Chapter Thirty-one
“Can we go play with the goats now?” asked
Freddie.
Jack and the twins had finished the vegetable soup and salad Harley had made them.
“It’s November, you sillies. The goats are snuggled up in the barn,” Harley replied. “But you don’t have to stay at the table.”
“Can we go exploring?” asked Frankie.
�
��Yeah,” said Freddie. “Your house is so cool!”
“Sure.”
The girls bolted from the table and disappeared.
“Don’t get into anything,” called Jack after them. He set down the empty garlic bread basket he’d brought from the table and nuzzled her neck as she was putting the lid on the leftover soup. “You’re good for them, you know that?”
Once the floodgates had opened, there was no closing them. Since Halloween, Jack had appeared at Harley’s door most evenings, after he tucked in his kids. Just thinking of their nights together as she worked on her designs brought a smile to her lips.
Making love in character had had a freeing effect. In sharp contrast to Halloween night, the second time they made love was sweet and tender . . . a poignant homecoming. And the passion the third time . . . her face heated, thinking about it.
At the sound of giggling from the vicinity of the powder room, Harley smiled. “Hear that?”
“Should I tell them to keep it down?”
“No.” She smacked his chest playfully. “I like the sound of happy children.”
“When it comes to compromising with Frankie, my mother has dug in her heels. We’ve always eaten together as a family, and she insists everyone eat a balanced diet. But lately, mealtime has become a contest of wills.” He laid his hand on his abdomen. “It’s enough to give me indigestion.”
She turned the water on in the sink. “I went through my own finicky-eating phase when I was the twins’ age. I remember going for months eating nothing but my dad’s macaroni and cheese.”
Jack’s hands inside her waistband distracted her. She shut off the water, turned around, and draped her arms over his shoulders.
“You know who else you’re good for?” he murmured.
“Who?” she teased.
He craned his neck, looking around to make sure they weren’t being spied on. “Me,” he said, and kissed her.
There was more giggling, this time very nearby.
Harley and Jack looked over to see the girls in the doorway, demure and pink-cheeked.
“What are you little imps up to?” asked Jack.
“Nothing,” they giggled.
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