Dewhurst,” he repeated. Great. He’d come all this way, planning to check out his new half sister-in-law and make up to Stu for all the missed occasions with a belated birthday feast, and now he was stuck here with Ms. Congeniality.
“Actually, it’s Molly,” she said in that quiet, husky voice of hers that kept getting between him and his anger.
Make that frustration. “Well, Molly, whoever you are and whatever you’re doing here, I hope you like turkey. And candied sweet potatoes and spoon bread and whatever green vegetable I can find in Stu’s pantry. It’ll probably be canned peas, but with enough butter and seasoning, they’re not half bad.”
“Balderdash, balderdash, balderda—!”
Moving swiftly, Rafe closed the door between the two rooms, making the kitchen seem smaller than ever. The whole cottage would fit nicely into his suite at his latest acquisition, a small resort hotel on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
“I think we’d better talk,” Ms. Molly Dewhurst said as she shucked off a pair of very wet pink sneakers. “But first I really need a cup of coffee. It might be April, but I’m freezing.” As if to prove her point, she sneezed, begged his pardon and said, “You’re welcome to a cup if you don’t mind reheated.”
Three
The coffee was weak and decaffeinated, but it served to wash down a couple of aspirin. “Okay, so talk.” His company manners were fading fast.
“Talk. All right. What if I pay you for the groceries and you catch the next ferry out?”
He didn’t bother to tell her he’d flown in, and until the weather broke, he wouldn’t be flying out again. “I’ve got a better idea,” he countered. “What if you catch the ferry and I stay here and house-sit until the happy couple gets back?”
Slowly Molly shook her head. A few more lengths of damp brown hair worked free to brush her shoulders. Dry and left to its own devices, it would probably pass as a crowning glory. Thick, red highlights and a tendency to curl.
“What was that?” Distracted, he’d missed her reply.
“I said I’m not going anywhere. I promised Annamarie I’d stay here and look after Shag and the birds, and I always keep my promises.”
“Always?”
“Practically always.”
“Then you’re one woman in a million.”
“I don’t know what to say to that, but I’ll tell you this much—I’m staying. So if you want to hang around until they get back, I hope you’ve secured a room. I know it’s early in the season, but with this tournament thing and all, they’re probably pretty full.”
Rafe never knew what made him dig in his heels. It sure as the devil wasn’t the woman’s personal attractions. She was a frump with pretty hair, a sexy voice, nice eyes and great skin. Period. “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you book a room?”
“Because I can’t afford it,” she said flatly. The last thing he was prepared for was a straight answer. Unless she was angling for a pay-off. “And because I promised I’d take care of things. I’ve never met you before, never even heard of you. That is, I knew Stu had a brother who didn’t bother to show up for the wedding, but for all I know, you could be just another—another beach bum, looking for a place to stay.”
Rafe tipped his chair back and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, she was still there. Obdurate. Yeah, that was a good description. “What if I pay the tab? Would you go then?”
Huffy. Another good description.
“I beg your pardon,” she said loftily.
He had to laugh. Headache and all. “Well, of course you do, honey. What about, How dare you? Want to run that one by me while you’re dishing up indignation?” And then he relented. “Look, you don’t trust me and I don’t particularly trust you.” Actually he was almost beginning to, which came as something of a surprise. “So what do you say we strike a bargain? I’ll check out the room situation, but if I can’t find a vacancy, I’ll bed down in the room with the miserable-looking cot buried under all the junk, and you can have the queen-size bed with a view of the cemetery.”
“Oh, but—”
“I’ll do the cooking, you look after the birds, we’ll both watch to see that nobody steals the family silver, and if the honeymooners aren’t back by the time the weather breaks, I’ll leave.” He might. He might not. “Fair enough? Meanwhile I’ll do my best to stay out of your hair.”
Which was beginning to curl around her face. Half the women he knew had gone red this year. He’d lay odds she was the genuine article. Even her eyebrows were auburn.
Outside, the rain pounded down harder than ever. The trouble with Hatteras Lows was that they had a tendency to hang around too long, flooding highways, cutting new inlets, generally messing things up.
“Well, I guess… I mean, all right, we’ll give it a try. But I’m warning you, if I find out you’re not who you say you are—”
Rafe taught the parrots a new word. “Look, can you think of another reason why any man in his right mind would show up on Ocracoke Island in this kind of weather when he could be down in sunny Florida sharing a pitcher of margaritas with a pretty woman and watching preseason baseball?”
The truce lasted until dinner was served. Molly had already eaten dinner, but that had been hours ago. Since then she had burned up a lot of emotional energy. She had spent the last few hours trying to ignore the tempting smells permeating the whole house while she shifted stacks of books, tapes and taping equipment off the cot and spread it with clean, if musty-smelling, sheets. After that she’d spent an hour or so trying to concentrate on the paperback novel she’d brought to read on the beach while the stranger in her kitchen slammed pots and pans together and muttered under his breath.
He might or might not be Stu’s brother. Men lied. Besides, they didn’t look anything at all alike. Stu had freckles, red-blond hair that fell over his forehead and a jack-o’-lantern grin. He claimed to have three sisters and one brother, but none of them had showed up at the wedding. His mother was supposed to be somewhere in Europe, and he wasn’t quite sure where his father was. According to Annamarie, they weren’t at all close.
As for the volunteer chef, he looked like an advertisement for some tropical resort. Tall, tanned, with sun-bleached hair and a pair of pale gray eyes that were clear as rainwater yet impossible to read. Like a trick mirror. His features were far from perfect—his nose a tad too large, his jaw a bit too strong. His cheekbones were more flat and angular than high and aristocratic.
All of which made it hard to understand why she suddenly found herself redefining everything she had ever considered physically attractive in a man. If she needed to prove how wretched her judgment was when it came to men, she had two perfect examples to refer to. Smooth-talking Kenny and Stallone-look-alike Jeffy. Even their names sounded immature.
Their names sounded immature? Oh, for heaven’s sake, it must be the weather. On a rainy night like this, with nothing to distract her, her mind obviously had a mind of its own.
“Blue cheese okay?”
Molly
