A Little Corner Of Paradise

Watching her leave, Nick pursed his lips in a silent whistle and shook his head in mystified disgust. When the gregarious garage attendant had let slip who lived next door an instant picture had sprung to mind of the sort of woman Nick expected to find. Long, slender legs and sweetly flaring hips had no more place in that picture than eyes the soft gray-green of wild sage, or the dense fluting of lashes half a shade darker than the hair tumbling wildly around a face that belonged in a Renoir painting. Nick had itched to run his fingers through that hair. Any man would.

And the blush! Women today didn’t blush when a man tossed a compliment their way, for Pete’s sake; they smacked him in the mouth. And where was the sober tweed skirt and twin-set, the graduated pearls and prim, horn-rimmed glasses he’d justifiably envisioned? By what right did the local Heritage Society come by a president who was so stunningly desirable?

This was going to throw a monkey wrench in the works and no mistake! She belonged in another era. Hell, another century! How was he supposed to contend with an opponent soft-hearted enough to own a three-legged dog and who, when he had the temerity to touch her, prefaced her request for him not to do so with a softly uttered ‘please’? She didn’t play fair.

On the other hand, neither did he—which was the chief reason he’d earned the reputation among his colleagues for ferreting out world news before it happened.

Frowning, he swung back along the path to where he’d parked the RV next to the lodge, a plan of attack already taking shape in his mind. Wooing the lady next door could conceivably backfire. But, as the old saying went, a man could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar and, as long as he never forgot that the sweet-talk was merely the means to an end—in this case winning the right to do as he saw fit with the Spindrift property-he could circumvent any complications that might arise.

Looked at from that perspective, the fact that his only neighbor should turn out to be young and gorgeous was a distinct advantage, and simply made his task a lot more agreeable than it would have been had she turned out to be old and ugly.

Phase One of Operation Tyler began to take rather tantalizing shape in his mind. Always provided, of course, that good old home-town Andy Latham hadn’t already staked a firm claim on her affections. Because there was a limit to how down and dirty even Nick Hamilton was prepared to act. He drew the line at poaching on another man’s territory.

Madeleine hadn’t expected to see him again but, just after ten on Saturday morning, Nick showed up on her back doorstep. ‘Hope I’m not calling at a bad time,’ he said, ‘but I cut myself trying to open a can of coffee.’ He held up a thumb wrapped in a bloodstained handkerchief. ‘I think I need a Band-Aid.’

‘I think you do, too.’ She opened the door wider and ushered him into the kitchen. ‘Have a seat and I’ll see what I can find. Are you sure you don’t need stitches?’

‘No.’ He slouched in a chair at the table and with his good hand petted Peg Leg, who greeted him like a long-lost friend. ‘It just needs something to bind it closed for a day or two.’

Madeleine found the first aid kit and sorted through it for the package of waterproof dressings and the iodine she always kept handy. “This should do the trick. Let me have a look.’

She reached for his thumb but he drew it back, nursing it gingerly, and regarded the bottle of iodine with fearful suspicion. ‘That’s OK. I can take care of it myself. If I could just rinse it off…?’

Madeleine contained a smile. Strange dogs and un-friendly police officers might not faze him, but threaten him with minor surgery and he was ready to keel over. The god had clay feet, after all. Thank the lord! ‘There’s a powder-room just down the hall. You’ll find clean towels in the cabinet under the sink.’

‘Thanks.’

While he was gone she started a fresh pot of coffee and popped an apricot strudel in the oven. By the time he reappeared, his thumb securely taped, she had set out two mugs and a couple of paper napkins. ‘I thought you might need something to revive you.’

He smiled wanly. ‘Are all men cowards at the sight of blood, or is it just me?’

‘You’re braver than most. You dressed the injury yourself.’ She held the coffee-pot poised over his mug. ‘Cream and sugar?’

‘Just sugar. Three lumps.’ He laughed, a light, rusty snort of amusement. ‘I need a lot of sweetening.’

From what she’d witnessed he seemed plenty sweet enough, but she realized it was an opinion based on very meager evidence. For all she knew, he could possess a foul temper and a wicked tongue, and be a wife-beater to boot—a reflection which raised the rather interesting question of his marital status. Offering him first aid, however, scarcely entitled her to pry into his personal life.

He suffered from no such reticence concerning hers. ‘How was your date?’

‘Date?’ She paused in the act of slicing the strudel.

‘With the knight in navy.’ He grinned unashamedly. ‘I eavesdropped the other day. Are the two of you, as they say in trendy circles, an item?’

‘I…er, no.’

He didn’t miss her hesitation. ‘But he’d like you to be?’

‘When are you going to marry me, Madeleine?’ Andy had asked lightly just before he’d dropped her off after dinner the night before. It wasn’t the first time he’d proposed, nor the first time she’d turned him down with the joking suggestion that he was married already, to his work.

‘Andy’s a good friend,’ she told Nick. ‘We’ve know each other since we were children.’

‘I take it from that that you were born here? Have you always lived in this house?’

She looked around the big country kitchen, scene of so many happy times. In winter, when she’d come home from school, there’d always been a fire glowing in the tiled woodstove in the corner.

Among her earliest memories was one December when she’d come down with bronchitis. Her mother had wrapped her in a quilt in the big rocking-chair that still sat next to the hearth, and she’d fallen asleep to the smell of hot mincemeat, the sound of carols on the radio, and the sight of flames flickering through the heavy glass window on the stove door. The way she remembered it, it had been Christmas when she woke up, and she had been all better again.

‘Except for a few years, right after I graduated from university, I’ve never lived anywhere else.’

Nick frowned. ‘Don’t you find it a bit removed from neighbors? That place next door doesn’t look as if it’s been lived in in years.’

‘It hasn’t, but Edgewater is only five miles down the causeway. I can be in town in no time at all. I’m not really as isolated as you might think.’

‘As long as you’re mobile I don’t suppose you are, but what if you had an accident and couldn’t get to the phone?’

‘I’d be missed around town and someone would come looking for me.’

‘Like the knight in navy?’ he inquired irreverently.

She shot him a reproving glance. ‘Among others, yes. People here tend to look out for each other. It’s one of the more endearing qualities of small-town life.’

He smiled. ‘From the way you say that, I get the feeling that you’ve found it has its drawbacks, too, and I’d love to hear about them—but I’ve taken up enough of your morning.’

He pushed away from the table and stretched. Peg Leg immediately hopped out of her basket by the stove and bounced over to him, tail wagging furiously. Hunkering down before her, he pulled gently on her ears and stroked her muzzle.

‘She’s trying to persuade you that she needs a walk,’ Madeleine said.

‘I wouldn’t take much persuading.’ Eyes shaded by disgracefully long lashes, he leaned forward and practically rubbed noses with Peg. I’ve always liked dogs. What happened to her leg?’

‘She was shot, either by a farmer or a hunter, when she was a puppy, which probably accounts for her fear of loud noises. I found her at the side of the road about four years ago. Her leg was so badly damaged that it had to be amputated.’

‘Are you nuts, or what?’ Martin had scoffed when he’d heard what she’d done. ‘It’ll cost a fortune to get that mutt fixed up, and if you think I’m about to foot the bill—ha-ha, no pun intended!—you’re mistaken.’

But Nick looked up at Madeleine, his eyes quite breathtakingly beautiful in his face. ‘A charming, lovely woman with a heart,’ he murmured. ‘Talk about a dynamite combination!’

‘Thank you.’

‘And you’re certainly well-protected. A person would have to be a fool to mess with you with her around.’

‘You don’t seem too intimidated by her,’ Madeleine said, then blushed at the implied insult in her words.

Nick grinned. ‘Well, of course not, because I don’t intend you any harm and she’s smart enough to know it.’

He was a nice man, an injured man. Furthermore he was right: Peg would tear him apart if he threatened her in any way. ‘Would you like to stay for lunch, Mr Hamilton?’

He stood up and brushed one palm against the other, taking care not to jar his thumb. ‘No, ma’am, thank you very much. I’ve already outstayed my welcome. But I would like to take a rain-check, and I’d very much like to hear more about this lovely old house of yours.’

‘I’d like to show it to you,’ she said, her last faint trace of reservation slipping into oblivion. ‘Come tomorrow instead, if you’re not busy. About one o’clock?’

‘I’m not busy,’ he said, and was almost through the door when he turned back.

Madeleine looked at him inquiringly. ‘Is there something else?’

‘Just one thing,’ he said, his eyes alight with amusement. ‘I don’t want to appear nosy or anything, but do you mind telling me your name?’

‘Madeleine,’ she said, laughing, and thought how silly she’d been ever to have felt that he might not be as trustworthy as he first appeared.

CHAPTER TWO

HOUSED in a dignified turn-of-the-century stone building that was the twin of the Town Hall situated on the opposite side of the Market Square, the Edgewater Memorial Library had somehow managed to survive the passage of time unscathed. Its high-ceilinged rooms were cooled by old-fashioned fans in the summer and heated by a set of clanking old radiators in the winter.

Wire baskets, lined with moss and stuffed with seasonal flowers, hung at precise two-foot distances from each other along the eaves of the front portico. Dilys Steach, the head librarian, measured to make sure they didn’t deviate by so much as an inch either way. ‘I expect certain standards,’ she was fond of pronouncing.

‘Certain standards’ included discouraging gossip. Other people might relish passing along the latest dirt, but Dilys never did. It was the senior librarian’s unbending adherence to this principle that had saved Madeleine after Martin’s chicanery had been exposed before the whole town.

‘This is not a coffee-house, erected for your backbiting pleasure,’ she had declared sourly to those people who, in the aftermath of the scandal, had whispered together behind their hands and flung meaningful glances Madeleine’s way whenever she happened to come across them in the book aisles or the reading-room. As a result, the library had become her retreat, its quiet rooms, with that slightly musty odour of vellum and old leather peculiar to Victorian libraries, a sanctuary of peace and order.

Monday was her day off but on Tuesday following her lunch with Nick, Madeleine showed up for work with a smile on her face that refused to go away. It was still firmly in place when Sadie Brookes, her friend and secretary to the mayor, popped in for her daily visit during her morning coffee-break, even though doing so was guaranteed to elicit Dilys’s frosty disapproval.

‘Thought you’d want to hear the latest,’ Sadie whispered, leaning over Madeleine’s desk. ‘Council has been spared having to expropriate the Tyler Resort. The tax arrears were paid in full yesterday.’

‘How nice.’ Finding it difficult to bring her mind fully to bear on the information, Madeleine continued to smile dreamily. ‘We all know what an unpopular move land seizures are.’

Sadie groped for the glasses that spent most of their time perched on top of her head and propped them on her nose, so that she could take a closer look at Madeleine. ‘You’re not your usual alert self today, my dear. I’ve just told you that your precious lodge won’t be put on the auctioneer’s block and snapped up by some money-grubbing tycoon with no soul. I expected that, as president of our revered Heritage Society, you’d be jumping up and down with glee. What’s the matter? Have you fallen in love or something?’

The absurd question sent Madeleine’s thoughts winging back to Sunday and for one preposterous moment she almost answered ‘yes’.

Nick had shown up on her doorstep precisely on time, with a bottle of wine in his uninjured hand. Memory, she’d quickly discovered, had not played her false. Even allowing for the fact that this time she was half prepared for the impact of him, he still struck her as the most formidably attractive man she’d laid eyes on in all her thirty-two years.

She stood five feet nine in her bare feet, closer to five-ten in the shoes she’d been wearing at that moment. He’d towered over her, lithe, muscular, powerful. His hair gleamed damply from a recent shower, his smile captivated, his eyes seduced. But, more than all those things, she’d experienced again that same muffled detonation inside, that sense of having been poleaxed by the magnetic force surging between them.

Once more overcoming the inclination to stammer and drool like some half-baked teenager, she’d ushered him inside and, after an initial moment or two of awkwardness, conversation had come easily. Lunch was no more than half over before he knew that she was a librarian and had worked at college level for five years prior to resuming her career in her home town. And she knew that he had majored in political science and journalism, and traveled all over the world as a foreign correspondent.

‘Sort of polar opposites, aren’t we?’ he’d remarked later, as she showed him around the house.

‘We don’t seem to have much in common,’ she’d replied, all the while excruciatingly conscious of the attraction arcing between them.

‘Apart from our mutual appreciation of old houses, no.’ He’d run an admiring palm over the satin-smooth mahogany of the stair banister, but his eyes had lingered on her mouth. ‘Sometimes, though, it’s the differences that…weld a relationship.’

She’d heard confusion in his voice, and she’d understood why. It defied logical explanation that two strangers could come face to face for the first time and seem to recognize each other. As if, rational intellect notwithstanding, their hearts had said, ‘You’re home. The searching’s over.’

Yet, rational or not, attraction, awareness—call it what you like—had stretched between them, a fine, indestructible line fraught with sexual repercussions.

But still, in love?

‘Of course not,’ she said, not quite meeting Sadie’s probing gaze.

Never one to be easily put off if she scented romance, Sadie smirked. ‘Got a hot date lined up, then?’

To her chagrin, Madeleine almost smirked back. ‘No,’ she said, deciding that a lie of omission was justified in this case. An invitation to join Nick in a simple dinner cooked over a fire on the beach next Friday hardly qualified as hot, after all—except, perhaps, in the most literal sense. ‘What makes you ask?’

‘You’ve got the same sappy grin on your face that that benighted Peg Leg wears all the time,’ Sadie said.

‘There’s no law against smiling, Sadie.’

’There is in your case.’ Sadie hooted, not in the least deterred by Dilys’s ‘Tsk tsk!’ of censure. ‘You’re a librarian and you’re supposed to look smugly academic—though now that I take a closer look, maybe “smug” does fit your description after all, along with “besotted”, and a few other words I can think of. And I’d bet my last dollar that Andy Latham isn’t the one responsible for the change.’

‘Andy’s a nice man, Sadie.’

‘And about as comfortable as an old boot. There’s no spark between the two of you, Madeleine, so quit trying to fool me into thinking there is.’

‘Andy and I enjoy a mutually rewarding… friendship. He takes me out for dinner at least once a week, and we often catch a movie in Dunesport.’

‘I visit my grandma every Sunday afternoon and have a whale of a time,’ Sadie said scornfully, ‘but it no more sends my blood-pressure soaring than your sitting across from Andy and watching him scoff a steak puts yours into overdrive. You have stars in your eyes, my dear, and roses in your cheeks. In fact—’ she stood back and planted her hands on her hips ‘—you present a disgustingly blithe picture of what my old dad used to call “feminine pulchritude” and I have only one piece of advice for you: make the most of whatever—or whoever—is causing it. You’ve spent enough time lamenting the con-artist’s betrayal, my friend, and if something better’s shown up on the horizon, then “Hallelujah!" I say.’

Andy, however, disagreed, as Madeleine discovered after work that same afternoon. She was in the parking lot behind the library, fishing in her purse for her keys, when his patrol car cruised to a stop beside her. ‘Got time for coffee with an overworked cop before you head home?’ he asked, poking his head out of the window.

She smiled. ‘I’ll make the time, Officer.’

‘That Hamilton man,’ he began, as soon as they were seated in the Primrose Café, ‘is he still hanging around?’

‘As far as I know,’ Madeleine said evasively, un-willing to admit more and give Andy the chance to hold forth on the inadvisability of inviting a total stranger to lunch without a bodyguard in attendance. ‘Why?’

‘Just wondered.’ He stirred his coffee vigorously and tapped the spoon three times on the rim of the cup, a habit of his that usually denoted that he had something on his mind. ‘I checked out his vehicles. He picked up both from a rental outfit in Vancouver last week. He holds a valid California driver’s license, collared two speeding tickets in the last five years, and has no out-standing fines.’

‘So he’s harmless, just as I expected.’

Andy looked at her from under puckered brows. ‘"Harmless" isn’t a word that I’d apply to a man like him, especially not where a woman like you is concerned.’

She bristled with annoyance at that. ‘What do you mean, “a woman like me”?’

Andy stirred his coffee again. ‘Well…’ Tap, tap, tap. ‘You’re different.’

‘Different how?’

‘You’re sort of…’ Tap, tap, tap. ‘Impressionable. You’re not as…well, as hard-boiled as, say, Sadie, and that can make you an easy mark to a certain type of man.’

‘What you’re really saying, Andy,’ Madeleine cut in sharply, ‘is that because I made the mistake of marrying Martin I must be a few bales short of a full load. And I have to tell you I’m beginning to resent your attitude.’

‘Well, heck, Madeleine!’ Andy protested. ‘You’ve got to admit that Martin and this Hamilton guy do seem to be cut from the same cloth.’

‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. Nick Hamilton is nothing like Martin. Nothing at all.’

‘He’s a sight too smooth for my liking. Too damned full of himself. And you—’ Andy’s warm brown gaze had narrowed with suspicion ‘—you seem unusually sure of someone you hardly know. Or have I missed a chapter somewhere between now and last Friday?’

She hoped that he interpreted the flush on her cheeks as anger and not guilt. Because, she assured herself, she’d done nothing to feel guilty about. ‘You missed nothing,’ she said.

‘And it’s none of my concern anyway,’ he finished gloomily.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You didn’t have to. The message came through loud and clear that what you do and who you see when I’m not around is no one’s business but your own.’

‘We have no claim on each other, Andy.’

‘I know.’ He stared morosely into the dregs of his coffee. ‘Has he said how long he’s going to be hanging around?’

‘No, but then I haven’t asked him. I didn’t think it was any of my business.’

Andy sighed. ‘Will you promise me one thing? Will you at least be careful? Just because he doesn’t have a criminal record it doesn’t mean he’s harmless, no matter what you might think. I’m only asking because I care about you, Madeleine.’

His obvious concern softened the edges of her annoyance. ‘I know that, Andy, and I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. But you have to understand that I can’t go through the rest of my life expecting that everyone I meet is a carbon copy of Martin, or that because I made one mistake I’m doomed to repeating it. Give me credit for having some brains.’

‘It’s not your brains I worry about,’ Andy said on another sigh. ‘It’s your heart If you’d give it to me, it’d be safe.’

He was right, Madeleine thought, as she drove the five miles out to Spindrift Island. The trouble was, as Sadie had so accurately observed, it wasn’t ‘safe’ that put ‘spark’ into a relationship between a man and a woman. There had to be an undercurrent of excitement, an edge of danger, of risk, to bring it alive. And, in order for it to survive, there had also to be that sense of having found a soulmate to give it balance.

Even at its best, her marriage to Martin had been lacking in whatever vital ingredient made two separate people into a couple. There had been, at least in the beginning, a semblance of passion and desire, but there had never been much meeting of the minds. Nor, as she had ultimately learned to her cost, a mutual under-standing of values or ethics.

On Sunday, however, as Nick’s visit had stretched from one hour to two, and eventually to three, she’d had a little taste of what she’d missed in matrimony. Over and above the erotic pull, she’d experienced a sense of sympathetic communion with Nick; a sense of sharing such as she’d never known with Martin.

So much insight, she thought, pulling into the driveway leading to the farmhouse, and all because a man she’d known only a few days had wonderful blue eyes and the voice of a fallen angel! A man of whom Andy passionately disapproved—but whom Peg Leg found completely and unconditionally acceptable.

Peg Leg, thank the lord, had impeccable instincts.

At six o’clock on Friday evening Nick collected the papers littering the small table in the main cabin of the RV and shoved them haphazardly into his briefcase. Scraping a hand over the day-old growth of beard on his jaw, he headed for the cramped bathroom to shower and shave.

He had a headache, the sort that aspirins couldn’t cure. The sort inflicted on a man by his conscience—something Nick Hamilton didn’t usually allow to trouble him. But the fact was that the success of Phase Two of Operation Tyler, last weekend, bothered him more than he cared to admit. And Phase Three would shortly get under way.

Within the hour Madeleine would show up on his doorstep, never suspecting that the real reason he was pursuing her so assiduously was to bring a speedy and satisfactory end to his stay in the area. Satisfactory to him, that was. Because enforced visits to small towns half buried in sand and crab-traps, and peopled with dogooders concerned with the faded grandeur of crumbling old houses, weren’t his bailiwick. There was a world of political intrigue and modern warfare being played out on the international stage, and his usual ringside seat was growing cold without him.

But he couldn’t turn his back on family. Edmund couldn’t be blamed for the fact that, at ninety-one, his health was failing and his faculties weren’t as sharp as they’d been when he was seventy. The truth was that he’d declined drastically since his first stroke five years ago and, in all honesty, had been losing his grip for nearly ten years, leaving Flora to manage his affairs by herself.

Flora. Lathering his face, Nick tried to subdue the irritation his step-grandmother always provoked in him. It wasn’t her fault she was ditsy; she’d been born that way and was pretty enough, in a fluff-headed sort of way, for people to let her get away with it. Still and all, if he now found himself in a predicament that was leaving a surprisingly bad taste in his mouth, it was Flora he had to thank for it. Allowing her to handle money without adequate supervision was the same as letting a baby loose to play with fire.