Stryker's Wife

That had hurt her feelings. With all the dignity and empowerment she could summon, she had asked why he had married her if he hadn’t wanted a family.

“Why? God knows. Maybe because you were a virgin and that’s a pretty rare commodity in this day and age.”

“You couldn’t possibly have known that—not then, at least.”

“Ah, come on, honey, you were practically advertising the fact. The way you dressed—the way you talked—even the way you sat there, with your knees together and your feet flat on the floor, like you were scared to death a fly would buzz up your petticoat.”

It wasn’t true. None of it. Oh, it was true enough that she’d been a virgin, but she’d been wearing a sophisticated new outfit, a new hairstyle and a new shade of lipstick in honor of her very first autographing when they’d met.

Besides, things like that didn’t show…did they? “I don’t believe you,” she’d said flatly.

Mark had sneered. There was no other way to describe it. “You were a novelty, darling, but let’s face it—novelties wear off, so be a good little girl and get off my back, will you?”

That was when the mail-order course had kicked in. She’d thrown a vase of roses at him. A Steuben vase. It had been a wedding gift, and Mark had known to the penny how much it had cost, which she’d thought rather crass at the time, but of course, by then, her training had quit cold on her, so she hadn’t told him so.

Never go to bed angry. That, along with that business about turning the other cheek, was one of her great-aunts’ favorite sayings.

So Mark had slammed out, and Deke had waited up, unable to sleep until she had apologized and smoothed things over between them.

He hadn’t come home at all. The next day his partner had called to tell her that Mark had gone out of town on another business trip and wouldn’t be home until the following Tuesday.

Still furious, hurt and determined to get over both, she had applied herself to packing away her great-aunts’ clothing to give to the church’s Helping Hand Society.

And then word came that Mark had been killed in a plane crash.

Deke had run the gamut of emotions. Remorse, regret, anger, denial, grief—although not necessarily in that order. Suddenly, she’d found herself completely alone, without family and dangerously short on resources. In the midst of all that, poor old Mr. Hardcastle, her own family lawyer, had come to inform her that he had finally finished settling her great-aunts’ convoluted estate, and that, my how he wished he had insisted they update their will, but then, the Misses Ellen and Eliza had been a law unto themselves, hadn’t they?

The Kingsly home place, where Deke and her father and his entire family had grown up, was now the property of a distant cousin from Cleveland, who intended to put it on the market immediately because he needed the money.

The furniture was to be auctioned off, all except for one or two personal bequests.

On the heels of dealing with all that had come the news that the house she had shared with Mark had been leased in the name of the jointly owned development firm, of which Mark’s older brother, Hammond, was not only the legal counsel, but senior partner and major shareholder.

Deke had blamed herself for not becoming more informed while there’d still been time. She had blamed that darn course in self-assertiveness for letting her down and for her last quarrel with Mark. She still felt guilty over that. It was the last time she had ever seen him.

However, having no other choice, she had picked up the pieces and got on with her life. Not particularly gracefully, but at least she’d managed to deal with things as they came.

And boy, had they come! The minute word of Mark’s death got out, people she had never even met had swarmed all over her, taking over, talking over her head, going though things, shoving papers under her nose for her to sign. Hammond, who might have been more supportive, had been among the worst.

After all three estates had been finally settled with all the whereases and heretofores and bequeathings—goodness, the process took forever!—Deke had ended up with her husband’s camera and his last name, and her grandmother’s parlor organ, which was seven feet tall and weighed a ton.

Not that she could play a note, because she couldn’t. And even if she could, the bellows wheezed, but all the same, she appreciated the sentiment.

By then, of course, she had been informed that although state law allowed the widow a portion of her late husband’s assets, when those assets were corporate assets, and the corporation was privately held by a partner who was not only a lawyer but a relative, and when her late husband had allowed his life insurance to lapse rather than pay the premiums that had increased dramatically when it was discovered that both his blood pressure and his cholesterol levels were in the stratosphere—why, then, there was really nothing much the state could do.

Deke hadn’t pushed. She’d still been feeling guilty on too many counts, including the fact that once the initial shock had worn off, she’d been more angry than grieved.

It had been the most hectic period in her life, what with everything piling on at once. Tomorrow would be the second anniversary of the day Mark’s plane had gone down off a place called Swan Inlet, killing him and the secretary who’d been traveling with him. The time had come to bid a proper farewell to her late husband and get on with the rest of her life.

Unfortunately, it was easier said than done.

She scanned the two-lane highway ahead for a gas station. Her car was a guzzler, which was probably why it had been so cheap. She blamed her great-aunts for not teaching her such practical things as how to deal with bankers and lawyers and nosy reporters. She blamed Mark for not teaching her practical things like how to shop for a reliable secondhand car. And she blamed herself for trying to blame others for her own shortcomings.

Maybe she should shop for a mail-order course for handling guilt.

It was late in the afternoon by the time she checked into Swan Inlet’s one and only motel. Fortunately, it wasn’t one of the costlier chains. This entire project was beginning to erode her meager savings rather badly.

Before setting out to locate Captain Stryker and his boat, to make sure that everything was on schedule, she washed her face and brushed her straight, shoulder-length hair, tying it back with a narrow black ribbon. Not for the first time she wished she’d been born with black hair. Or red, or platinum blond. Anything but plain old brown. The next time she broke out in a rash of self-assertiveness, she just might march down to Suzzi’s Beauty Boutique and get it cut, bleached and frizzed to a fare-thee-well before she came to her senses.

Kurt was on the flying bridge hanging out laundry because the marina’s dryer was on the blink again when a woman pulled up in a spray of gravel. He noticed her right off because her car obviously needed a ring job. And then he noticed her because of the way she was dressed. Most women around these parts dressed pretty casually. It was that kind of place.

This one was wearing a dress. Not just any dress, but a floaty, flower-printed thing with a lace collar. The kind of dress he could picture his mother wearing to teach Sunday school back when he was a kid.

She had a plain face. Not homely, just plain.

Although she couldn’t be much more than five feet tall, there was nothing at all plain about her body.

She picked her way carefully out along the finger pier, dodging the clutter of lines, buckets and shoes. And the cracks. She was wearing high heels.

“Excuse me, sir, but do you know where I can find a Captain Stryker?”

“You found him.” Kurt dropped the pair of briefs he’d been about to pin to the line and waited. She smiled then, and he decided maybe she wasn’t so plain, after all.

“Oh. Well, I’m Deke Kiley. Debranne Kiley? I wrote you—I sent a check? For tomorrow?”

From the hatch just behind him, Frog said softly, “I thought you said you was taking out some camera guy tomorrow.”

Deke Kiley. D.E.E. Kiley. That had been the name on the check. The stationery had been plain. No letterhead. If she was a Deke, then he was a blooming hibiscus. “Yeah, I got it. You’re on.” And under his breath, he said, “Pipe down, pea brain. She’s a paying customer.”

“Yes, well…I’ll see you tomorrow morning then,” the woman called out in a soft little voice that reminded him of something from the distant past. “I just wanted to be sure which boat was yours,” she went on. “Eight o’clock, is that all right?”

Kurt nodded. It wasn’t all right, but it would have to do. A charter was a charter, and if some lace-trimmed lady photographer wanted to snap pictures of dolphins, he reckoned her money was as green as anyone else’s.

“Hey!” he yelled after her. She stopped and swiveled around and he remembered what it was she reminded him of. The ballerina on a tinkling little music box that used to sit on his mama’s dressing table. “Wear sneakers tomorrow, okay?”

She smiled and nodded, and Kurt watched her swish her shapely little behind down the wharf, climb into a yellow clunker about the size of an aircraft carrier and drive off.

Semper paratus, man. The Coast Guard’s motto was Always Prepared. Kurt had a feeling he just might not be prepared for this one.

Two

The widow wore black. Black slacks and a black silk blouse, bought especially for the occasion. She also wore a faded yellow sweatshirt because it had turned cooler than expected. Her shoes were red high tops, which weren’t exactly proper funeral attire, but she wore them anyway because Captain Stryker had said to. And Deke, while she was no great sailor—had never been on a boat in her life, in fact—was savvy enough to know that a boat was no place for high heels.

She was heading out to the pier carrying the basket, her purse and her camera bag when a lanky, freckle-faced boy emerged from Captain Stryker’s boat and hurried to meet her.

“Gimme that,” he said, and she wondered fleetingly if he was robbing her. “Watch yer step—there’s ropes and stuff.”

Deke let him take the basket. He would hardly be warning her of hazards if he was planning on mugging her. Any mugger worth his salt would have grabbed her purse and camera case first. The camera alone was worth a couple of thousand dollars. It had belonged to Mark. It was one of the two things he had left her, which was just fine, because she hadn’t married him for his money.

Three things, if you counted a nagging sense of disappointment.

The boy handed her down into the boat with an old-world courtliness that Deke found oddly touching.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

He flashed her a grin and leapt onto the pier. “Gotta run,” he said just as someone spoke from behind her.

“Miss that school bus, boy, and you’re road kill.”

“Aye, sir!”

Turning, Deke encountered the man she had seen only from a distance the day before. Tall, tanned, lean and blond, he would have been the handsomest man in captivity without the eye patch. With it, he was quite simply devastating. And not entirely because, as a writer of children’s adventure stories, she was partial to pirates.

“Captain Stryker?”

Kurt nodded. “Ms. Kiley.”

“I’m early.”

“A few minutes.”

The words meant nothing. Kurt sized up his passenger. She was tiny. Looked as if a stiff breeze could capsize her. Good thing he didn’t charge by the pound.

Still, a charter was a charter. Every one added a few more bucks to the house fund. In case the child welfare people wanted to make a federal case about his casual arrangement with the boy, he needed to get them off the R&R and settled in a real house as soon as possible. That ought to weigh in his favor.

“I’ll set your gear below,” he offered, reaching for the basket, from which the neck of a dark green bottle protruded. “You didn’t have to bring your own rations. Sandwiches and drinks are included in the price of the charter.”

She murmured something he didn’t quite catch, mainly because he was too busy checking her out. Yesterday he’d thought she was plain. Just went to show you the dangers of making snap judgments. She was plain the way a sunrise over a frozen bay was plain.

He settled her in one of the three fighting chairs bolted to the deck and headed topside. Frog had cast off before he’d jogged out to meet the school bus. “You need any sunscreen?” he called down over the muffled throb of the wet exhaust.

She twisted around and glanced up at the flying bridge. She had a nice smile. Simple, uncomplicated. She was probably a nice woman, he thought as he eased out into the harbor. Attractive, nice…and already spoken for, if the plain gold band on her third finger, left hand, was anything to go by.

Not that he was interested.

They were well beyond the breakwater, headed for open sea, when he sensed her presence on the ladder behind him. Some passengers weren’t content to stay put and let him get on with his job. That was where Frog came in. For a streetwise kid who was, in the parlance, “known to the authorities” in several states, he was surprisingly good with people.

Kurt wasn’t. He hoped she hadn’t followed him topside looking for conversation.

She was hanging on to the ladder, her eyes wide, her face a little too pale. “Do you know the place where that plane went down a couple of years ago?” She had to raise her voice over the sound of the engines.

“Wreck Rock? Yeah, I know it,” he called over his shoulder.

“Is it very far?”

“About a thirty-minute run on a good day.”

“Is this a good day?”

Kurt was tempted to say it was looking better all the time, which surprised him, because he wasn’t into that sort of thing. “Yeah, this is a pretty good day if you don’t count the tropical depression that spun off the west coast of Africa a few days ago.”

“Africa?” She looked puzzled, faintly worried.

“Forget it. This late in the season, it’ll probably fizzle before it even hits the Leewards.”

She still looked puzzled, making him wish he’d kept his answer brief and to the point. “Oh. Well, could we go there? The plane crash site, I mean—not Africa.”

Ditzy.

Nice. Attractive in a quiet way, but definitely ditzy.

“Sure, but tell me first, are we talking dolphin, as in the fish? Dorado? Mahimahi? Or dolphin, as in the mammal? What we call porpoise. The bottle-nose. Because if it’s the fish you want, I can take you to a place where you’re more apt to find ’em. Wreck Rock’s too new. Takes time to build up a good feeding reef.”

“Oh, but—”

She was a distraction, but he couldn’t very well ignore her. Besides, she looked as if she could do with some distraction herself. She was beginning to turn a bit green about the gills.

The roll up on the bridge was more pronounced. He wanted to suggest that she go below and watch the wake, but she looked so…needy. It was the first word that popped into his mind. So he tried his hand at distraction. “Now, if it’s fish you’re interested in, there might be a few sheepshead around the place where that jerk from Virginia and his mistress went down. Not as much sport as billfish or big blues, but good eating. Real good eating. We might even run into a few tuna, too, speaking of good eating.”

Maybe speaking of eating wasn’t such a hot idea. She was looking sicker by the minute.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, just as if she weren’t fighting to hang on to her breakfast, “but the plane that went down happened to belong to a well-known businessman. The person traveling with him was his secretary, not his—”

He saw her swallow hard, saw a film of sweat break out on her upper lip. He was sympathetic, but never having been seasick, he couldn’t exactly share her misery. “If you say so. I didn’t know ’em personally, you understand—it happened before I moved to Swan Inlet, but folks around here knew ’em both. They used to fly in and hitch a ride out to their private love nest, according to—”

“She was his secretary,” the woman called Deke said firmly, then spoiled the effect by gulping and moaning softly.

Oh, man. He should’ve offered her a patch or a pill when she’d first come aboard. Most fishermen, if they needed an anti-motion potion, brought their own, but this lady didn’t look as if she’d ever set foot on a boat before.

“You want to go below and lie down?”

She took a deep breath, climbed up a couple more rungs, and to his own disgust, Kurt couldn’t help noticing that as small as she was, there were some modest but intriguing curves under that sweatshirt. “No, I’ll be just fine. Tell me about—oh, anything. Just talk to me, take my mind off my stomach and I’ll be all right.” She smiled, but it was a weak effort.

“Frog—he’s my mate—the kid who helped you aboard? He’s also my social director. I’m not much of one for talking.” He made a minor adjustment in their course and then set the squelch on his ship-toshore radio.

“Why did you call it Wreck Rock? I didn’t think there were any rocks along this part of the coast.”

Kurt shrugged. “There’s not, as far as I know. Just a name. Easier than calling it by the coordinates.”

For several minutes she engaged in deep breathing exercises. Kurt hoped it worked. It was too late for Dramamine, and verbal distraction—at least his brand—didn’t seem to be helping much. The wind was picking up, pushing an incoming tide. He quartered the seas as best he could without getting too far off course.

“I’m hoping to see the mammal, not the fish. I want to take a few pictures if we see any. And she was his secretary,” the woman said belligerently. “It said so in all the reports.”

That was fine with him. If she wanted to believe Noah had gone down with all hands and hooves aboard, it was no skin off his back. “Okay, Flipper the mammal it is, and she was his secretary. They spent all those weekends out at his private island, just the two of them, working on quarterly taxes.” He scanned the sky, adjusted the throttle and made another minor course correction.

When she didn’t argue, he cut her a sidelong glance and immediately wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He’d never been good at small talk, especially when his mind was on something else. And anyway, trying to talk a person out of being seasick was about as effective as trying to talk the tide into not rising.

What was going to come up was going to come up.

For a good-looking woman, she didn’t look so good. “You want to go below and lie down?” he offered again.

“Maybe I’d better. Just for a few minutes.”

Kurt set the controls and followed her below, hoping she could hold it down long enough to make it to the head. “Through the sliding door—watch the steps. Hang on and I’ll get you some fresh air.” That done, he deftly flipped down one of the convertible benches that served a dual purpose in the compact salon. “Head’s portside, forward. Uh, that is, it’s on the left, right over there. It’s kind of small, but you’ll find anything you need.” He handed her a plastic bucket, just in case.

She lowered herself carefully, one arm clutching the pale blue bucket. There was a bruised look about her that made him want to comfort her, only he didn’t know how. Wasn’t sure she’d appreciate it, even if he did. The collar of her black silk shirt was rucked up in back, so he smoothed it down and patted her shoulder once, but that didn’t seem like much comfort, not if she was feeling as lousy as she looked.

Kurt wondered whether to head back to port or keep going. His passenger didn’t look up to making the call, so he backed out of the salon and left her there. If it was Wreck Rock she wanted, it was Wreck Rock she would get. The customer was always right.

“Lie on your left side,” he called down from the open companionway. “They say it helps.”

He’d heard it somewhere but didn’t know if it was true or not. He did know that in a case like this, people needed to believe there was someone in charge who knew precisely what they were doing.

Dutifully, Deke turned onto her left side, which gave her a view of a shirt and a baseball cap hanging on a hook on the wall—or whatever the nautical equivalent was. It was swaying. And swaying, and swaying, and swaying.

Oh, mercy.

“‘All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full,’” she whispered. “Ecclesiastes one-seven. Onesix, one-five, one-four, one-three—” As a child, she’d been prone to stomach upsets. Granna Anne used to make her quote Bible verses to keep her mind off her stomach. It hadn’t worked very well. Counting back-ward didn’t work, either. She tried talking to herself. “It’s almost over, Debranne. In a little while you’ll have paid your proper respects to the past and be on your way home.”

Wherever home was. The Victorian house where she’d grown up was gone, the furniture being pawed over by a swarm of antique dealers. The run-down apartment building where she lived now was about to be demolished to make way for new low-cost housing, which she probably wouldn’t be able to afford, as she earned a few too many dollars to qualify. Her fall royalties this year had amounted to a hefty $23.11, but she had two part-time jobs, each of which paid the minimum wage, less deductions.

“Talk, don’t think, you nut! Did you bring your light meter?” Talking was supposed to prevent her from thinking about that awful feeling in her belly. “I hope you brought your meter,” she muttered, “because shooting on water is tricky, and you’re going to have to come up with a few decent pictures if you’re planning to write this whole wacko expedition off on your taxes.”

Because she was going to do it. Guilt or no guilt, she fully intended to write Mark’s memorial service off on her taxes. The whole blooming thing, charter, motel, mileage and all. Caught in the throes of guilt and nausea, she clutched the bucket and moaned.

But then, Mark would have approved, she reminded herself. Hadn’t he written off their entire honeymoon trip because he had spent a few minutes looking over a shopping complex on Maui?

Still, she did feel guilty. Partly about the tax thing, but mostly about the fact that she hadn’t really grieved as much as she should. Not that she knew what she could do about that. Evidently she was one of those people whose feelings didn’t run very deep.

As for this empowerment business, she was beginning to think it was a mixed blessing. So far, all she felt was confused.

“Hey, you all right down there?” the captain called from the open companionway. He had a nice voice. A little like rusty velvet.

Goodness, that didn’t even make sense! Deke managed a wobbly smile. “Fine. I’ll be upstairs in a minute.”

He grinned and saluted her, and she thought, What a nice man. Any other time she might have thought, What a strikingly masculine, stunningly handsome man, but right now, nice was all she craved.

Mark hadn’t been nice. There, she’d admitted it. He’d been suave and sexy and Hollywood handsome, but nice?

No. Not really. At least, not after they’d been married for a few months. She’d put it down to his being so busy, so ambitious to get ahead. There’d been all those late nights at the office. All those business trips. Nearly every weekend.

With his secretary.

With his young, drop-dead-gorgeous secretary who was supposed to be such a whiz on her laptop he couldn’t travel without her.

Or maybe she’d been such a whiz on his laptop.

Deke remembered the night Mark had taken her out to dinner for her birthday. When he’d opened his wallet for his credit card, she’d seen a little silver packet. She’d wondered at the time why he still carried a condom, but she’d been too embarrassed to ask.

All the same, she had wondered. She wondered all over again. Wondered about that and a lot of other things she had tried for too long to ignore because it wasn’t seemly to think ill of the dead.