"I fish,” he said.
"Commercially?"
"No, for myself."
"I see. Anything else?"
"No."
She felt sure he was lying, but let the answer be. “Well, you certainly have a lot of books in this place, Mr. Barnard. You must read by the hour!"
"Most of these books have been here for years. Long before I came."
"So, it's not really your cabin?"
He obviously wished he could terminate the cross-examination. But he knew he couldn't do it without arousing her curiosity even further.
Slowly, he said, “It belongs to my family. I'm just using it for awhile."
"Your family must love the outdoors,” she enthused, starting to stroll away from him. She unpeeled the scarf from around her neck, preparing to make herself at home. “Just look at these photos! I've never seen fish so big! Is that man your father or something? He's got your look—pensive, but don't-mess-around-with-me. And this athletic fellow—why, that's you, isn't it? Nice legs. You ever consider modeling? I've got some good contacts—"
He caught her elbow, and smoothly steered Peggy away from the display of framed family photographs.
"Those are mostly distant relatives. Ones who vacationed up here decades ago."
Then, he switched tactics, too, suddenly making an effort to appear friendly. “Listen, are you hungry? I was going to fix some supper."
"Great! I'm starved. I had a meal in town, but that was hours ago."
"Fine. I'm not accustomed to having guests, though.” Brent released her arm as easily as he'd seized it. “Would you mind lending a hand?"
Peggy saw through the ruse at once. He intended to keep her busy and far away from any clues that might explain who he was and what he was doing. Well, he couldn't keep her busy until morning! She hoped she sounded utterly guileless.
"Sure! Any guest who drops in the way I did should certainly have to work for her supper. What can I do?"
He led her to the kitchen. Peggy took off her jacket and rolled up the sleeves of her pink sweater. He put her to work preparing the last two vegetables in his bin, but it took Peggy a few minutes to remove all her rings and bracelets before she could actually get down to peeling. She planned her attack while he assembled an iron skillet, vegetables, and some oil. She needed to figure a way to get him out of the cabin so she could sweep the place for clues. He reached a long arm past her to snap some leaves off the plants that were lined up along the windowsill.
"Poisonous?” Peggy asked lightly. “Deadly? I know I invited myself rather rudely, Mr. Barnard, but I already apologized—"
"Don't worry,” he said, not cracking a smile. “These are ordinary herbs. Nothing poisonous. Will you do me a favor?"
"Name it."
"Call me Brent."
"Oh. Sure."
He lifted two fish out of the icebox—nasty-looking, strange ones with heads, eyes, tails, and everything. Peggy gulped and averted her gaze. Hoping to keep her mind off the unfamiliar ingredients he was mixing for her consumption, she began to peel the plants with a vengeance.
"Tell me about yourself,” she encouraged.
"Nothing much to tell,” he said, busy with a knife of his own. “I don't get off the island often. You're a reporter, I assume. Where do you work?"
He was hardly subtle about turning the tables on her, and even though Peggy knew he was putting her off, she soon found herself chattering to keep her mind off the fish eyes. She told him about her book contract with a publisher, and her job at the newspaper to make ends meet and gain experience until she found the right subject for her next book. She talked a lot, in fact. He was a good listener. Or perhaps, a sly one.
Silently, he went about preparing the meal, even taking the half-peeled cucumber from Peggy's hands and finishing the job himself when she really got to talking. In fact, he had food on the table in a very short time, and Peggy realized she hadn't really done much to help. He had simply gone about fixing the meal while encouraging her to chatter about subjects he couldn't possibly care about.
Long ago, Peggy had perfected the art of telling amusing anecdotes about the celebrities she often interviewed in order to deflect interest in herself. It was always easier to talk about famous people instead of Peggy. As he carried their plates to the big wooden table, she described for him the night she found a well-known, long-haired television actress misbehaving in a nightclub. And the details of the star's subsequent arrest, including how she whacked the police officer over the head with her purse.
"So, I told the nightclub manager,” Peggy said, “that I'd pay him five hundred dollars anytime he had another scoop for me, and it's been a great investment. That club is one of the best places to find celebrities with their guards down."
"But don't you feel uncomfortable,” Brent said at last, “printing gossip about people who believe you're their friend?"
"It's not gossip. It's fact. It happened, and I was there. Look, I print information about people who have chosen to sell their images to the public. Most of that talk about privacy is just for show. Why, famous people even hawk baby pictures of their own kids to magazines all the time! I'm just helping them reach the public eye."
"Any publicity is good publicity as long as you spell the names right, is that it?"
"That's the name of the game."
"Hmm.” Brent looked unconvinced.
"I'm only doing what they want me to do,” Peggy insisted. “It's all perfectly legal."
He looked her in the eye for the first time all evening.
"But is it right?"
Peggy looked squarely back at him, lifting her chin. “It's a living."
"Hmm,” Brent murmured again.
Not a judgmental syllable, just an acknowledging one.
The subject slid away. With steady hands, he used a match to light the oil lamp on the table, and when the warm glow of the flame grew around them, Peggy realized how thoroughly and completely darkness had fallen outside.
Rain rattled on the windows and made a muffled drone on the roof. Brent studied the table, making sure he had taken care of everything. Then he asked, “Would you like a glass of wine?"
"Yes, that sounds great."
While he went to get the bottle, Peggy sat down in one of the chairs. She examined her plate. The fish had been fried in meal and herbs, and now looked like something edible—crisply golden with a curl of fragrant steam that rose to tease her nose. The vegetables had been sautéed to perfection, which he'd arranged around the edges of the plate.
The effect was simple, but colorful and definitely appetizing. Oddly enough, however, it made Peggy nervous. Having dinner one-on-one with a man wasn't an everyday occurrence for her. She was more the type who grabbed a fast sandwich and ate meals at her desk. And Brent had a dangerous quality that so many women found attractive, but Peggy found just plain unsettling. As usual, her reaction to being so nervous was to talk.
"I had a dinner that looked just like this in Oslo, Norway once,” Peggy called to him from her seat. “It was terrific, let me tell you. Just wonderful! The publisher paid for the whole works—tips for the doorman and everything. I even got reimbursed for the plane ticket!"
Brent returned to the table with a bottle of wine in one hand and two ordinary drinking glasses in the other.
"How was the food?"
"What?"
"Did you enjoy the meal?"
"Of course! We cut a deal on a story that ran in eight major newspapers all over world. I made almost twenty thousand dollars in the end."
Sounding somewhat dry, he said, “Congratulations."
He uncorked the bottle and poured Peggy's glass first, then his own. That done, he folded his lanky frame into the chair across from hers. Everything he did was slow and deliberate, as if he intended to enjoy the food all the more because of the ceremony of preparation.
He didn't put his hands together, bow his head, and recite a childhood prayer, but he took a moment and seemed to
relax, or perhaps stretch out all of his senses.
Without thinking, Peggy said suddenly, “You probably think that I'm rather bizarre."
"Unusual,” he corrected, meeting her eyes unwillingly.
"Do you ever have very many guests?” she asked.
He picked up his fork and began to eat.
"No journalists,” he said after he'd swallowed the first bite of fish. “An occasional fishing boat in the summers, but that's about all the traffic I see."
Peggy dug in, too.
"Your friend, Charlie, though. That's somebody you see now and then, right?"
Brent nodded.
"He owns a store across the lake."
"In the village?"
"No, there's no town where Charlie is."
After a moment, during which he obviously decided what information could be safety divulged, he said, “It's a kind of supply station a few kilometers from here, that's all. Those who are like me buy fuel, food, that sort of thing. That way, we don't have to do any business in the village."
"Why do you say that? You don't like the village?"
He continued to eat his meal, saying briefly, “Too many people."
Mulling that over, Peggy ate also. The fish, which she had not been prepared to enjoy, was excellent. She paid her compliments to the chef. Then, she chattered a bit too long about a famous cook she'd interviewed in the city once to learn all the dietary eccentricities of a handsome movie idol with a penchant for raw meat and aphrodisiacs.
Brent listened to the story while he ate, but didn't comment. After awhile, Peggy began to feel as if she were telling racy jokes to a celibate priest. She concentrated on wolfing down her meal.
The delectable herbal flavors of the food were enhanced by the wine—a dry white with a natural effervescence. The label was in the provincial dialect. Peggy drank half of a glassful and expressed her surprise at the quality of the vintage.
"This is very good vino, if you ask me.” She raised her glass, as if to salute the wine.
"Is your friend, Charlie, a wine connoisseur, too?"
Brent shook his head. “Charlie doesn't drink anything but water, as far as I know."
"Good God!” Peggy laughed. “You locals really believe in clean living, don't you?"
Brent finished eating his meal before pushing his plate away. “Charlie is an alcoholic. He had a problem, and he needed a way to solve it. That's why he lives here."
Peggy felt a stab of discomfort. She'd said the wrong thing and made a fool of herself. Alcoholism was something she'd seen firsthand in New York City, and she'd put that time far behind, along with a few other memories. But she made no apologies for her remark. That wasn't her style.
She simply leaned closer to him. “Why do you live here?"
He picked up his wine. Resting both elbows on the table, Brent looked at her over the rim of the glass. For a moment, Peggy thought she imagined that he might have smiled. His brown eyes seemed fuller of light suddenly.
He said, “I can see why you're such a successful reporter. I've never met anyone as persistent as you are."
Peggy grinned.
"It's one of my best qualities, don't you think?"
"It can be,” he said carefully, “a little exasperating."
She laughed.
"I can't help it. It's instinctive. Even when I was a child, I was the nosiest brat in the public housing units. I knew what was going on in every apartment."
"You grew up in a city?"
"Yes. In New York. In an ‘underprivileged neighborhood’ in Brooklyn. That's what they're called now."
"What did you call it?"
"A slum,” Peggy said matter-of-factly. “But I don't live there anymore, and that's what's important. I learned one important lesson there—if you don't count your change, you deserve to be ripped off. I've come a very long way on that motto."
"It all sounds like an interesting story."
Peggy snorted.
"Interesting? No way. You won't catch me looking back. I learned years ago that the only interesting stories anyone wants to hear are about rich and famous people, nothing about broken homes or fathers who beat their wives, that's why I chose my particular line of work. I know how to make a profit. Give me a stupid starlet any day. Or a woman-chasing politician. That's really interesting reading."
Brent watched her.
"You make it sound like a threat."
"Do I?” Peggy shook her head. “I don't steal anything from anybody. Let's get that straight. I don't suck up to famous people; get them to talk and then run like hell to the nearest newspaper office with their life's secrets. Maybe I have a few scruples about using others. I only write about names in the public domain. Those who are looking for publicity. Politicians on the make. Gold diggers. I don't make friends with my subjects. I just do my job."
"That must make for a lonely life."
Peggy eyed him. “You care to make a comment about loneliness, Brent? The man who doesn't exist anymore? You didn't think I heard that, did you?"
He stood up and began to clear away the dishes. It took a full minute for Peggy to realize he didn't intend to answer the question at all. That was new to her. She wasn't used to people ignoring what she asked. He had simply walked away. And something in his demeanor—Peggy wasn't sure what, exactly—stopped her from demanding a response. He had an almost Zen-like calm about him, so different from the flaring temper he'd displayed when he grabbed her earlier. Which was the real male?
He cut up some fruit and proceeded to eat the slices for dessert as he washed the dishes. He pumped water into the metal sink with the hand pump, then washed each plate and piece of silverware and rinsed them with water he boiled in a kettle on the woodstove. He used the same hot water to make a cup of tea for himself and one for Peggy, and he drank his brew while scrubbing the skillet.
Without being asked, Peggy dried the dishes with a frayed towel. His silence made her uncomfortable. Was he angry? Or just ignoring her? After the dishes were put away, Brent let the dogs in from the porch and fed them from a bin of dry food.
"Well, now what?” Peggy asked when the room had been put back in order.
"Bed,” Brent said.
He felt like laughing when he said the word. Suddenly, the self-assured girl from the big city looked as if he'd suggested something illegal. She even backed up three paces until she collided with the nearest chair.
"B-bed?” she repeated.
"I get up early,” he explained. “It's a waste of wood and fuel to stay up long past sunset. Besides, the fish stop biting as soon as the morning light hits the water. So, if I want to eat, I've got to get out on the lake before sunrise."
She looked as if trying to wipe the look of anxiety off her face. “I see.” She gulped so that her throat made a funny noise.
The subject of sex clearly had not occurred to her until that moment. It had occurred to Brent, however. It had been a surprise, he had to admit, because Peggy wasn't exactly the kind of female who haunted his dreams at night.
She was cute, in spite of the tough-talking image she projected, but she wasn't exactly going to set the planet on fire with her brains or beauty. Still, she had a lovely mouth he couldn't seem to take his eyes off, and the soft pink sweater she wore both revealed and concealed a figure that affected Brent in ways he'd forgotten the human body could react.
Her perfume filled his head. The memory of her soft skin against his hands remained vivid. Her shape, hidden amid the casual sloppy folds of her stylish clothes, intrigued him. She was slim, but not racing lean. Gentle, but not plush. And the sound of her laughter stirred Brent into feeling something close to delight.
In spite of himself, he liked the way she tossed her head and set the flossy brown curls of her hair to dancing when she laughed. He enjoyed the sparkle in her face when she talked, the animation in her hands when she wanted answers. She had a streak of wickedness, a dash of spice.
But it was perhaps the flash of uncertainty th
at crossed her face from time to time that touched Brent most. The expression made him think of a little child who didn't get enough attention at home, a homeless pet who'd been kicked once too often.
She was brave and gritty on the outside, but he thought he could see something softer beneath the prickly armor she pretended to wear.
"Listen,” she said, apparently shaken by the sudden prospect of spending the night with him, “I'm a night owl, so you might as well run along and get a good night's rest. Go ahead. I'll just stay down here with your two wolves."
"The two dogs."
"Right."
Hastily, she went on, “I've got some notes to go through, anyway. For another piece I'm working on. Oh, but you don't want the light on, do you? Well, I—you go to sleep. An early night might be good for me, too."
"There's a perfectly comfortable bed upstairs—"
"It's yours,” she said. “I'll nap on the floor, honest. I've got a bad back, anyway. A strange bed practically puts me in traction."
He had a feeling she was lying, but decided not to press the point.
"How about a blanket, at least?"
"Fine, great,” she said quickly. “That will be terrific."
"And a towel for washing up. You'll want to scrub that mess off your face before you—"
"Mess? This is all Lancome!” Her brows came down in a gloriously angry frown, which assured Brent that he'd coaxed her out of her worried state. He suppressed a smile.
"Anything else you need?"
She shook her head stiffly.
"I always pack supplies for an emergency. Toothbrush and whatnot. I'll be fine. Good night.” Brent pointed out the path to the bathroom facilities, left her alone, and went to bed. Sleep wasn't long in coming, but he had a strange dream as the storm passed—a dream that wasn't entirely unpleasant.
* * * *
Peggy's night was infinitely less enjoyable.
First of all, she hated sleeping on the floor. The blanket wasn't warm enough, but she was afraid to sleep too near the fire for fear an errant spark might fly out and set her ablaze. The floor was horribly uncomfortable, but what was worse were the two dogs. They just wouldn't leave her alone. It seemed they liked having her to sleep with. They curled up on either side of Peggy and took turns licking her face throughout the night.
Isle of Intrigue Page 3
