Sasha was right and she was seriously deficient when it came to vitamin S.
Mutt was all over her the minute she opened his gate at the kennel. His owners, the Hallets, who lived three streets over in the development that had grown up around Alan’s mother’s old house back in the seventies, were on a two-week cruise out of Norfolk. Marty was being paid to pick Mutt up twice a day for a run, as the space provided by the boarding kennel hardly sufficed for a big, shaggy clown that looked as if he might be part St. Bernard, part Clydesdale.
“Whoa, get off my foot, you big ox.” She managed to snap on his choke collar while he did his best to trip her up. He’d started barking the minute he saw her, and didn’t let up until she opened the front door. Then he nearly pulled her off her feet trying to get outside.
She gave him a full half hour because that was what she’d agreed to do. Not a minute less, but not a minute more this time because she had to have him back by six when the kennel closed for the day. If she missed the deadline she’d have no choice but to take the crazy dog home with her, and that would be disastrous.
There had to be an easier way to earn money. If she were a diver she could drive to Manteo to the aquarium every day and scrub the alligators or maybe floss the sharks’ teeth. Unfortunately, her marketable skills weren’t all that impressive in a town where, other than flipping hamburgers, jobs were practically handed down from father to son. None of Muddy Landing’s farming, fishing and hunting applied to her.
Maybe she and Sasha could start charging for their matchmaking services. Practically everyone in town knew what they were up to, anyway. It was no big secret; they’d been at it too long. They’d been good at it, too—Daisy, Sasha and Marty, with occasional input from Faylene, the housekeeper they’d all shared for years until Marty had gone out of business and Daisy had unexpectedly fallen in love with a good-looking guy who’d come east in search of his roots. A nurse and easily the most sensible of the trio, Daisy had fallen head over heels and ended up marrying Kell and moving to Oklahoma.
Marty and her friends had been good at it, though—all the planning and finagling it took to bring two people together. Three of their most recent matches had actually ended in marriage and two more couples were still involved.
Of course, there’d been a few spectacular failures, too, but it had been great fun. Mostly they’d been forgiven their blunders.
But Sasha was up to her ears in her latest decorating project, so matchmaking was taking a time-out. “And that just leaves me,” Marty panted as she struggled to hang on to the end of the leash. She was wearing out her last pair of cross-trainers trying to keep up with Super Mutt. “Slow down, will you? Let me catch my breath!”
If she hurried, she might get home before he left for the day.
Right. Looking like she’d just finished a five-mile run. That would really impress the heck out of Cole, wouldn’t it?
By the time Cole got back to the small marina with a take-out supper consisting of barbecue, fries, hush puppies and slaw, the last vestige of daylight had faded. And second thoughts were stacking up fast. Not about the work itself, although it had been a while since he’d done any actual construction work. That wasn’t what had him worried.
As he stepped aboard his aged thirty-one-foot cabin cruiser, he waved to Bob Ed, who was outside sorting through a stack of decoys under the mercury-vapor security light.
The friendly guide called across the intervening space, “You see her?”
“I saw her.”
“Ya gonna do it?”
“We’re still negotiating,” Cole called back.
Nodding, Bob Ed went back to checking out his canvasbacks. He was a man of few words. Which was just as well, Cole thought, amused, as Bob Ed’s better half appeared to be a woman of many. Cole had met her only briefly, but she’d made an indelible impression.
What bothered him, Cole admitted to himself once he was inside, the lights on and his small space heater thawing out the damp cold, was the Owens woman. Or rather, his reaction to her. Before meeting her he would have sworn he was permanently immunized. Trouble was, Marty Owens and Paula Weyrich Stevens, his high-maintenance ex-wife, were two different species. If Paula had ever lifted a hand to do anything more strenuous than polish her nails, he’d missed it. Even for that she usually depended on a manicurist. Paula’s idea of a perfect day started at noon with a three-daiquiri lunch at the club, followed by a shopping marathon, followed by dinner out with whatever poor sucker she could reel in to escort her while her poor slob of a husband worked late. Actually, Cole had been consumed those late nights with digging into the mess at Weyrich, Inc.
Marty Owens, on the other hand, varnished bookshelves in her spare time and tried to cover the smell by setting a pan of cinnamon on fire. She walked a friend’s dog—at least, Cole assumed she did it for a friend. If she was hard up enough to do it for money, she probably couldn’t afford the remodeling job she wanted done.
On the other hand, if she didn’t get it done, what would happen to her business? Reading between the lines, he could only conclude that she was pretty close to the edge. And, like a certain ex-builder he could name, looking for the best way to revive a career that had collapsed through no fault of her own.
Not that he could swear to that last, but from what he’d seen so far, Ms. Owens was industrious, intelligent and not afraid to get her hands dirty. The fact that she was also sexy without making a big deal out of it wasn’t a factor in any decision he might make. No way.
Definitely not.
As for the demise of his own career, Cole freely accepted the blame. All he’d had to do was turn a blind eye to what he’d uncovered—the good-old-boy bidding system, the under-the-table payoffs, the shoddy workmanship that had eventually resulted in three deaths and a number of injuries when the second floor of a parking garage collapsed due to insufficient reinforcement.
Oh, yeah, he’d blown the whistle on Joshua Weyrich, but by that time his marriage to Paula was washed up anyway. Looking back, about the only thing he and Paula had ever had in common was a serious case of raging hormones. Once that had died a natural death, there’d been nothing left to sustain a relationship. The only reason they’d stayed together as long as they had was that breaking up required more time and energy than either of them was willing to spend.
But once he’d blown the whistle on her father, détente had ended. He had gladly ceded to Paula the showy house they’d been given as a wedding present, plus all furnishings, including the baby grand piano she didn’t play, the art collection she never bothered to look at and a bunch of custom-made furniture designed not for comfort but to impress.
With the help of a good lawyer, Cole had managed to keep his boat, his old Guild guitar, his fishing gear and roughly half his investments—which was all he really needed. He considered himself damn lucky to walk away with that much.
Now he looked around for a place to set his supper. The fold-down table was covered with fishing tackle. He made room for the take-out plate and a cold beer, shucked off his shoes and slid onto the bench. To say his living quarters were compact was putting it generously, but then, he didn’t need much space. The wet slip, utilities included, cost a lot less than he’d been paying at his old place on the Chesapeake Bay.
He turned on the twelve-inch TV and caught up on the news while he ate. When the talking heads turned to the latest celebrity trial, Cole’s thoughts drifted
