padded into the room. In a hoarse whisper, he ordered, “Nell, get up.”
She had no idea a whisper could sound so adamant “It’s very bad for you to have your own way all the time.”
He advanced on her. “Just because my knee is sore doesn’t mean I’m totally incapacitated.”
In the dim light, her eyes were dancing. “You’ll have to remove me bodily. During which process I shall contrive to drop my water bottle on the floor as noisily as possible. You’d hate for the owners to discover you carrying me into your bedroom at four o’clock in the morning.”
“How bored all those men in Europe must be without you,” Kyle murmured. “You win. Sweet dreams and pleasant awakenings.” He limped into the first room off the hall and closed the door softly behind him. He had made no attempt to kiss her good—night
After pulling a rude face at the blank white—painted panels, Nell deposited her haversack on the carpet, arranged the cushions to suit her and snuggled into her sleeping bag. Within moments, she was asleep.
In her dreams, Kyle was waving a bouquet of bog laurel at her from his seat in Wendell’s truck, and the eagle had stolen her water bottle. Nell buried her face in the stream to get a drink. But the stream was warm and rough and smelled rather peculiar—Her eyes flew open.
Her nose was being thoroughly licked by a very large dog with mournful brown eyes. “Jasses!” Nell exclaimed, and burrowed her face into her elbow. Whereupon the dog licked her ear.
“What does that mean?” Kyle asked with genuine interest
Nell sat up, scrubbing her nose with her sleeve. “It means yuk, ugh, disgusting and gross.”
“Good morning to you, too,” Kyle said.
She scowled at him. “Pleasant awakenings—so that’s what you meant.”
“His name is Sherlock.” The dog was sitting back on its heels. It was a bloodhound, lugubrious of face and drooping of jowl. “He’s quite old, very deaf, and loves all the guests—Oh, good morning, Gladys. This is Nell. Remember I mentioned last night that she was camped by the beach? Well, the party got a little rowdy. So I brought her here.”
“Them young fellas, they only go there once a month or so, but when they take over that beach they make more noise than the gulls on the first day of lobster season. How do you do, dear? I bet you’re hungry. How about some nice pancakes and bacon?”
Gladys was fiftyish, with tight gray curls and matronly hips. “I hope we didn’t disturb you,” Nell said.
“Arthur and me, we’ll sleep through the Second Coming.” Gladys chuckled heartily at her own joke.
“You make yourself right at home, dear. I’ll go put the coffee on.”
Kyle’s hair was damp from the shower and he was clean shaven. Feeling very much at a disadvantage, Nell got to her feet Her hair was tumbling to her shoulders and her clothes were crumpled from having slept in them. She said warily, “Where’s the bathroom?”
“End of the hall.” He thrust his hands deep in his pockets. “Those caribou have a lot to answer for.”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“Without them, we wouldn’t have met.”
Although the look on his face was inscrutable, his gist seemed entirely clear to Nell. He’d rather not have met her. Which, when she was suffering from an almost uncontrollable urge to kiss him good—morning, was a lousy way to begin the day. Nell said, “I have one unbreakable rule—no arguments before I have my first cup of coffee. Excuse me, please.”
She picked up her haversack, edged past him and hurried down the hall toward the bathroom.
A SHOWER did wonders for Nell. Her haversack always contained her toilet articles. She’d borrowed Gladys’s hair dryer and had just finished brushing out her long hair when Kyle tapped on the door. “Pancakes are ready.”
She could braid it later. Nell opened the door. “Lead me to them,” she said.
But Kyle’s big body was blocking the hallway, and there was something in his face that stopped her in her tracks. He reached out one hand, letting his fingers slide the length of her hair, gathering a handful of it and lifting it to his cheek. As though he was paying homage to her, Nell felt, and knew, absurdly, that she wanted to cry.
He said huskily, “You’re so beautiful. So alive. I…”
But as she waited, breathless, his mouth suddenly tightened. A flash of pain, so short-lived that she might have imagined it, banished the tenderness that had suffused his features, and with shocking violence he dropped her hair, wiping his palm down his jeans as though her touch had contaminated him. Turning on his heel, he grated, “Come on. Gladys is waiting for us.”
Numbly, Nell followed him through the living room and into the kitchen, which smelled deliciously of hot coffee and bacon. She carried on a conversation with Gladys that apparently made sense, she avoided looking at Kyle and she drained her coffee mug in record time. During this process, anger slowly began to spread through her, like the heat of the coffee. How dare Kyle treat her as though she were a mechanical doll, something to be turned on and off with the flick of a switch!
But as she munched on apple pancakes drenched in syrup, she remembered the way pain had ripped away his gentleness and stole a glance at him through her lashes. If her past had its demons, so, too, did his; not for the first time she wondered how he had hurt his knee.
“Last night, Kyle said you were all the way from Holland, dear,” Gladys said, passing her the butter. “Now what brought you to Caplin Bay? You can’t even find it on some of the maps.”
In the shower, Nell had had time to think. She didn’t want to camp in Caplin Bay again tonight, even though she was sure the partygoers were all nursing horrendous hangovers and would go nowhere near the beach. Furthermore, her money was limited, and she’d spent the better part of two weeks putting off the meeting that was the real reason for her trip. She said with a modicum of truth, “Ever since I arrived in Newfoundland I’ve been hearing about the outports—the settlements that you can only reach by boat. I’d like to stay in one for a while. So today I plan to take the coastal boat to Mort Harbour.”
Although she had rehearsed this sentence while she was rinsing her hair, somehow it didn’t sound as convincing as she would have liked. However, Gladys apparently noticed nothing amiss. “Well now, that’s nice, dear. You and Kyle can go together.”
Nell’s jaw dropped. “You’re going to Mort Harbour, Kyle?”
“That’s the plan,” he said evenly.
“Why are you going?”
“To visit friends of a good friend of mine.”
His reason sounded no more convincing than her own. Although she couldn’t very well
