Two Hearts, Slightly Used

His nose was beautiful. Under the pale, watery sunlight, she could see a fine network of scars on the left side of his face, but before she could even wonder about it, he said, “Ridgeway. What the hell did you think you were doing, stealing a boat when you don’t even have sense enough to check the levels?”

Quite suddenly the headache she’d been ignoring all morning clamped down like a hat that was three sizes too small. Through clenched teeth, she said, “I didn’t steal your boat, Mr. Ridgeway. I borrowed it. I was told on good authority that the boats were for the use of the cottage owners and renters. As for checking levels—I assume you mean the gas tank—you’re right. I should have checked. Next time I will. I seldom make the same mistake twice.”

He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again and looked away. Fortunately the roar of the outboard precluded any further conversation, which gave Frances plenty of time to wonder what the luggage she had left back at the cottage was doing in the boat they were towing.

And then they swerved sharply and headed toward the marina. “Wait!” she yelled above the noise. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“The marina!”

“But I’ve already been there! I want to go back to the cottage!”

“No way, lady. Come back in a few months.”

It was impossible to argue over a roaring outboard. Irked beyond bearing, her head pounding furiously, Frances crawled back to where she could make herself heard. She jammed her face as close as she dared and yelled, “Listen, I don’t know what your position on Coronoke is—head jackass, at a guess—but my uncle owns that cottage, and he gave me the key and told me I could stay there until I’m good and ready to leave! It’s not my fault that this Maudie person I was supposed to check in with is in Utah, but Maudie or no Maudie, I’m here to stay! So you can just damned well take me back to Coronoke right now, or I’ll have you brought up on charges of—of— Well, I’ll think of something!”

If he weren’t so damned ticked off, Brace might have found her amusing. She wasn’t as old as he’d first thought. Nor as unattractive. Although, at the moment she looked as if she’d been drawn through a keyhole backward. Opinionated women were not his favorite species, not even when they had eyes the color of bruised violets and a mouth that looked naked and vulnerable and—

Brace swore silently. Maybe he hadn’t recovered as fully as he’d thought from having his broken carcass plowed into a cornfield along with several million dollars’ worth of twisted metal.

Abruptly he changed direction. The woman, who’d been kneeling at his feet, yelped and would have fallen hard against the gunwale if he hadn’t caught her with one arm.

Against a background of salt water and exhaust, she smelled like cut grass and flowers—sort of spicy and green. She felt like a bag of bones, even in a down-filled parka.

“Sorry,” he muttered, pushing her away. He checked the boat he was towing, more as an excuse to look away from her face, which was entirely too close, than for any other reason.

Even over the roar of the outboard, he could hear the ragged intake of her breath. It occurred to him that his own was none too steady. It was a crazy reaction. He put it down to being celibate too long.

What the bloody hell had happened to all the peace and quiet he’d been promised? This place was supposed to be so far off the beaten track, nobody but duck hunters came near it between January and March. Maudie had warned him he’d be talking to Regina, the resident raccoon, before he’d been there a week. It had sounded like just what the doctor ordered.

And now, thanks to his eagerness to get rid of Ms. Smith Jones, she had about half a dozen loads of gear to haul back up to her cottage, and with his newfound conscience dogging his heels like a blasted shadow, he was going to have to offer to help her haul it.

The only bright spot on the horizon was that she obviously hated like the very devil to accept his help. Pride stuck out all over her, like quills on a porcupine. It nearly killed her to let him carry the biggest box and her overnight bag. Watching her stiff backside as she marched primly up the path before him, he almost smiled.

But not quite.

Brace knew almost as much about women as he knew about planes. During his stunt pilot days he’d been considered something of an expert. On both. It went with the territory. At the time, he’d been young enough to find studhood amusing. Without even trying, he’d collected more groupies than the star of whatever low-budget epic he happened to be stunting for, and as often as not the film’s female lead headed the pack.

It had been during that period in his career that he’d met Pete and Sharon Bing, a brother-sister team who were just getting started as builders and designers of small specialty aircraft. They’d designed those special choppers for the night-fighting scene in Killing Territory. Sharon had let him know then she was interested, but at the time Brace had been too busy sampling what Hollywood had to offer.

After he’d left Hollywood, finished his engineering degree and started testing for a major government contractor, he’d found somewhat to his amusement that neither his bank balance nor his sex appeal had suffered to any great degree. But by then he’d been older and a lot more selective. By then, too, the world had become a more dangerous place.

That was about the time when Sharon Bing had reentered his life. They’d started going out together. After three months he’d asked her to marry him. Or she’d asked him. Later he was never sure which one of them had brought it up. But the sex had been good, which made two vital interests they’d shared.

It wouldn’t have lasted past the honeymoon. They’d already had that. Some men were husband material—some weren’t. Now, thanks to his recently remodeled physiognomy, he no longer had to worry about it. Most women were turned off by his scars, but a few were turned on in a way that made him angry and uncomfortable. It never seemed to occur to either type that in spite of some extensive reconstruction, he was still the same man inside. Not that he’d ever pretended to be any great bargain.

“One more trip,” the tall brunette announced as she set the first load down on the screened front deck. “I can handle the rest, thanks.”

He hadn’t offered. Now, perversely, he insisted. “I’ll get the rest,” he growled. “Go inside and get warm.”

“First, I’m afraid you’ll have to show me how the generator works. I don’t want to risk another disaster so soon. I usually try to hold it down to one a day.”

The generator. “Look, lady—ma’am—Ms. Jones—”

“Frances. Frances Smith Jones.”

“Right. Look, about the generator, you don’t need to bother. The power’s working now.” Actually, there hadn’t been a full power outage since he’d arrived on the island. A few blinks and a brownout or two when the wind kicked up. Tough on compressors, but as everything on the island was rigged with trip-out switches, it was no major deal. “All you have to do, Ms. Jones, is throw the breaker. The box is behind that door. You want me to do it for you?”

His arms were crossed over his chest, and so were hers. It occurred to Brace to wonder if she was as skilled at reading body language as he was, and for some reason the notion amused him.

She stood her ground like a veteran, though. He’d give her full marks for guts.

“I’m perfectly capable of dealing with a switch box, Mr. um... But perhaps you’d better show me about the generator just in case.”

“They’re only used for backup. You won’t be here long enough to need it.”

An arc welder couldn’t have thrown off any more sparks than her eyes did. Blue fire. Lavender blue fire. Unfortunately, to a man who’d made a career of living dangerously, it was a sure turn-on.

Brace took two steps back, his own eyes growing wary. Oh, no. No way was this woman going to get to him, lavender blue eyes, long legs, wide, soft, vulnerable mouth or not. He needed a woman right now like he needed another hole in his head.

Or another plate in his skull.

“Let me know when you’re ready to pack it in, Ms. Jones. I’ll run you over to the marina. That way we’ll both be sure you get there in one piece,” he said, one hand on the doorknob.

Frances smiled sweetly. “You’re too kind,” she said through clenched teeth as he quietly closed the door.

Kind. Yeah. Sure he was.

Three

By evening the clouds had moved in again. The wind howled like a roomful of tomcats, but at least the rain held off. Frances gulped down two more aspirin, eyed the sacks of staples still waiting to be put away and decided that if her sinuses didn’t stop giving her fits, she was going to trade them in on a new set. Evidently, salt air and ocean breezes weren’t quite the panacea they were cracked up to be.

And another thing—she’d always heard that being on the water was a terrific appetizer. One more old wives’ tale shot to blazes. Her stomach kept telling her it was hungry, but when she offered to feed it, it rebelled on her. Nice going for a professional dietician. She couldn’t even tempt her own palate.

Maybe her headache had put her off her feed. The trouble was she needed to get started on proofing the copy she’d brought with her for Fancy’s Kitchen, her monthly cooking column—the last column she would write before her resignation took effect—and she couldn’t even bring herself to do that.

As for working on Fancy’s Fat-Free Favorites, her collection of low-fat recipes, she was already two weeks past her deadline. If she didn’t wrap it up and get it into her editor’s hands soon, the market would be flooded with low-fat cookbooks and her publisher would find a loophole in her contract and make her return her modest advance.

Her extremely modest advance. And she needed the money. She’d received a third on signing the contract, with another third promised once the final manuscript was approved, and the last to be paid on publication. She’d been so thrilled when they’d accepted her proposal—she’d only sent it in because her editor at the magazine had pushed her to do it. He’d liked the idea of having a published author doing his food column, and Frances had liked the idea of anything that would take her mind off her dismal home life.

And now here she was, with nothing but time on her hands—no carping demands, no whining complaints, no dirty dishes, unmade beds and un-run errands waiting for her attention the minute she stepped through the front door. No reason at all not to dig in and get the job done, other than that she felt like the very devil.

Maybe she could sell her publisher on another idea—Fancy’s Recipes From Hell.

By evening she hadn’t seen a single soul. Evidently, she and Flint-Face were the only two people on the island. Not a particularly happy thought. What was his name, anyway? Racetrack? Railway? Bridgeman?

Whatever.

Frances had never been particularly gregarious—actually, she’d never had time to consider whether she was or wasn’t—but she wasn’t exactly a hermit, either. The eldest of five children, she was used to being surrounded by people. Her mother had died when she was seventeen, and Frances had been forced to curtail her own modest social life, postpone her plans to enroll at the university and settle for day classes at the local community college for the first few years.

Not that she’d regretted it for a single moment. At least, not after her initial disappointment. Home had always been a noisy, cheerful place, constantly overrun with family, friends and friends of friends.

Some of them very special friends, she thought in a rare mood of nostalgia as she stirred herself a cup of cocoa, set it aside untouched and drifted across to stare out the dark window. Twice—once when she was eighteen and again when she was twenty-one—she had come that close to getting engaged. By that time, her father, a research scientist involved in a lifelong love affair with the parasitic plants of various tropical regions, had more or less abandoned them.

Oh, financially they’d been secure enough, except for the threat of ever-rising property taxes. The house had been paid for, Frances had always been an excellent manager, and they’d all found after-school jobs as soon as they’d gotten old enough. But as long as her father had remained out of the country—and he’d shown no signs of coming back home—they’d remained her responsibility. A package deal, as she’d laughingly told Paul, a fellow day student who had been on the verge of proposing at the time.

He hadn’t. Instead, he’d started going out with her best friend, Carol, and when Carol had discovered she was pregnant, Paul had suddenly found it necessary to check out a job offer on the West Coast. He had never written, never called, never returned. Frances had been with Carol when her baby was born. She’d done her best to console her after she’d put it up for adoption, still feeling guilty for having introduced her to Paul in the first place, but secretly relieved at having escaped herself.

Three years later she had felt obliged to warn another contender. The children were older by then. She’d finally been able to transfer her few transferable credits to the university, but she was still the acting head of the family. So she’d told Adam about her absentee father and seventeen-year-old Debbie and sixteen-year-old Reba and the twins, Bill and Dennis, because Adam was mature enough to appreciate family responsibility. He was entirely different from Paul. A lawyer with political interests, he was older, more serious, and besides, they were head over heels in love, which was why he’d been able to talk her into moving out of the dormitory and into his apartment.

Duly warned, Adam had decided that, while he was still more than willing to share his apartment—and incidentally, his bed—it would be a bad career move at this point in his life to saddle himself with a family.

Frances remembered smiling until she thought her face would break, furious with herself for being so blind. Twice she had fallen in love. Twice she had given her trust. Both times she’d been dropped at the first hurdle, her confidence in her own judgment badly shaken.

Learning to trust again hadn’t been easy, but four years later, as a newly graduated nutritionist employed at a small private hospital, she had met Kenneth Jones. The first thing that had impressed her was the fact that he seemed so devoted to his parents. Her own family by that time had outgrown the dependent stage, but she’d been forced by circumstances into a position of responsibility for too many years. It had become a habit.

Her father, had he still been alive, would have appreciated Kenneth, she thought with bitter amusement. She hadn’t known until it was far too late how much her late husband had in common with the parasitic plants Dr. Smith had spent the last years of his life studying.

“Oh, this is depressing!” she muttered. Why in the world was she wasting time wallowing in past misery?

Refocusing her mind on her current misery, Frances swallowed a few gulps of the lukewarm cocoa and forced down a slice of toast. Her stomach threatened rebellion. Change of water, she told herself. Or too much greasy junk food on the trip down. There were times when she devoutly wished she didn’t know beans about food. There came a time in every woman’s life when she desperately needed to indulge herself in something utterly wicked, even if it was no more than an overdose of saturated fat, refined sugar, bleached flour and a bushel basketful of assorted chemicals.

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