Temptation Bay (A Windfall Island Novel) (10 page)

“Like I said. Bullshit.”

Dex laughed. It was hard not to. “A lot of people think that about lawyers, and it’s true, there’s a component of bullshit in what I do. But I have a client—”

“By the name of…”

“—to consider, not to mention my reputation,” Dex continued, talking over her.

“Lawyer bullshit.”

Helen kept coming at him; Dex kept putting her off. AJ kept lining up longnecks he hadn’t ordered, but after a half hour it stopped being amusing. He’d expected the sheriff to present a problem, but George Boatwright had nothing on the Appelmans.

Dex finally gave up on manners and got to his feet. “You can charge my room for the meal and the beers, including the ones I didn’t drink,” he said to AJ.

“You aren’t wimping out on me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dex said to Helen, “I certainly am.”

She let loose a string of curses that would have made a sailor blush, peppered with the kind of insults Dex had only ever heard in a locker room. He stared at Helen a minute, then looked at AJ.

AJ threw his head back and laughed. “There’s a reason her name starts with Hell, son.”

George Boatwright, former army sniper and current Sheriff of Windfall Island, sat behind his postage-stamp desk, in his tiny office, in the dollhouse-sized building that served as the island’s police station. The street level also held a cell barely wide enough for a cot, and a rest room with a toilet and a sink.

The cell hadn’t been used in a couple of years, but he routinely changed the sheet and blanket. Just in case. He was a man who believed in being prepared. Just one of the reasons he chose to live upstairs, in an apartment it took fewer than twenty steps to cross from one end to the other. It was a Spartan existence, but it suited him. So did the island. He’d seen the world while he’d served his country, and yeah, most of those locales had involved people shooting at him. But that wasn’t the only reason he was glad to be back.

Windfall was home, and home was where he belonged.

Not long ago, the picture that formed in his mind would have included Maggie Solomon, and while Maggie wasn’t exactly the Donna Reed–like fantasy he had a tendency to spin in his imagination, just about any future that included her as more than a friend would have suited him.

He’d given that up in the years since his return. Funny thing, it had been easier than he would’ve guessed. He still loved her, just in an easier way.

And the fantasy was still intact, he mused as he picked up the phone and dialed. He’d just… recast his leading lady.

“He’s here,” he said as soon as the connection went through. “Claims to be a lawyer.”

“And?”

“Cover story,” George continued, as economical of words as he was with everything else in his life.

“For?”

“Small-time PI, not setting the world on fire. If he’s not already on the dark side, my guess is he could be pushed there without much effort.”

“The dark side?”

“
Star Wars
is a classic.” He grinned a little, sat back,
wrapping the phone cord around his finger as reality pushed him back to solemn. “Fact is, we know who hired him. You chose to let others do the hard work of locating Eugenia Stanhope’s descendants. If any exist.”

“I believe they do.”

“And I’ll step in if, or when, it becomes necessary.” Nobody would think twice about it, George thought, pushing down the guilt. “I’m the law. I can do what needs to be done.”

“Make Eugenia’s descendant disappear.”

“That was the agreement.”

“Don’t underestimate Dexter Keegan.”

No, George mused, he wouldn’t underestimate a man with Keegan’s kind of history. He could respect the man’s service to his country, but what he’d made of his life after, well, mixed emotions. “I’ll handle Keegan, don’t worry,” he said, and hung up the phone. He had a feeling he’d enjoy it.

H
ello, the ladder.”

Maggie pulled her head out of the engine compartment of her Piper Mirage, automatically maintaining her balance as she marked off the items she’d verified on her checklist.

She glanced up long enough to see Dex Keegan striding across the tarmac before she stuck her head back in her engine, if only for appearances’ sake. Maintaining her planes was serious work, the kind of work that took laser focus. Her safety, and the safety of her passengers, depended on it.

Dex Keegan, it seemed, was hell on her concentration.

Take her clothes, she thought, disgusted that seeing him had been followed almost instantaneously with concern over what she was wearing. Grubby work pants and tee, ratty sneakers, and probably a swipe or two of grease on her face. Stupid. She pulled her head out of the compartment again, pretending to make checkmarks on her list without the least qualm. It was better than giving in to the urge to fluff her hair, she decided, snugging her worn ball cap more firmly onto her head in defiance.

Of course, Dex had to look perfect, she mused as she
looked over at him. His jeans and work boots were as worn as hers, but clean, his leather jacket battered and only more appealing because of it. Expensive sunglasses, attractively wind-blown hair—if she’d searched high and low for a picture of the perfect man, this would have been him.

“You didn’t walk all the way out here,” she observed blandly when he stopped next to the ladder.

He took off his glasses, slipping one earpiece into the neck of his t-shirt. “I caught Jessi on her way in and begged a lift.”

That put a bit of a smirk on her face. “How are you getting back?”

“Running,” he said, hooking a thumb in the direction of the small parking lot. “My gear’s in Jessi’s car.”

An image of Dex in running shorts and a t-shirt, arms and legs pumping, muscles flexing, popped into her mind and Maggie tried in vain to banish it. At least she wasn’t drooling, she thought, hoping to hell she’d managed to keep her expression blank.

“You do the maintenance yourself?”

“What, you wouldn’t have flown with me if you knew that?”

“I’d have thought twice,” he admitted, “but I didn’t know you then.”

“You don’t know me now.”

“I’m looking forward to changing that.”

Maggie let her lips curve. “There goes my hope you’re here because you’re ready to leave Windfall.”

“Had an urge to get out of the village.”

“Everyone seemed friendly enough last night.”

“That’s the problem.”

“Coming out here won’t put off your admirers.”

“You could.”

She snorted. “They’re not afraid of me.”

“No, but they respect you.”

Maggie studied his face, not sure what he was getting at. “You don’t strike me as a man who’d run away from a couple of overeager women.” Or anything else, for that matter.

“Maybe I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. And I definitely don’t want to get shot.”

Maggie smiled over that, fondly, and went with her gut. “You didn’t come all the way out here to avoid a close encounter with a jealous husband, either. And you aren’t here to ask me to run interference for you.”

He shrugged. “I was going a little stir crazy at the Horizon. What’s with AJ and the manic cleaning?”

“End of tourist season. And you’re not here to bitch about AJ’s fall routine. What do you really want?”

He gave her a look that had her pulses hammering. Disappointment leapt just as fast when he didn’t act on the heat and intent she saw in his eyes.

His jaw flexed, once, but it was enough to tell her he was fighting a war, too, and not just on the physical front. He wanted something else from her. She could have put him out of his misery, but what would be the fun in that?

“Go away, Keegan. I have this to finish, then I’m off to the mainland.”

“Then I guess I’ll get out of your way.” And he started back the way he’d come, the rear view of him just as mouthwatering as the front.

Maggie didn’t even think twice before letting her curiosity goad her into calling after him. “I didn’t take you for a man who’d give up so easy.”

He turned back, cocked a hip, letting the moment draw out. Damn him.

“You’re busy,” he said when it finally suited him.

“My ears still work, and anyone will tell you I’m a whiz at multi-tasking.” She turned back to her engine, smiling privately when, after what he probably considered a reasonable pause, she heard his footsteps coming closer.

He got right to the point. “I was hoping you could find the time to go with me to Meeker’s.”

“No.”

“That’s it, just no?”

Hell, no
. But Maggie was still curious, and Josiah Meeker was in the past, far enough that whatever reaction she had to hearing his name, it was no longer knee-jerk.

“Suppose you tell me what you want from him.”

Dex didn’t respond, still weighing his options.

Maggie worked in silence for a moment that drew out because she could feel his eyes on her. It made her angry. She’d nearly gotten used to the way her entire system seemed to short out when he was near, short out and then surge back to life so that the pounding of her heart, the singing in her blood, and the buzz along her nerve endings made her feel like she’d never really been alive before she’d laid eyes on him. And then she felt him touch her, feathering the tip of one finger across the line of skin bared just over her waistband. She jerked, the wrench in her hand slipped off the bolt she was trying to turn and barked itself across her knuckles.

“Shit,” she hissed, snatching her hand out of the cramped space of the engine compartment. She stepped down the ladder and moved into the sunlight, pretending to study her knuckles so she could see how much skin she’d peeled off. But it was the distance from Dex she needed.

He didn’t give it to her, crowding close behind to look over her shoulder. “Does it hurt?”

She jammed an elbow into his gut.

His breath whooshed out, and he staggered back a step.

“Does it hurt?” she asked sweetly.

“Not as much as you meant it to.”

“How about I give it another try?”

“Aw, just when I was going to offer to kiss your knuckles and make them all better.”

Maggie fisted her hand, held it up. “Go for it.”

“Wrong knuckles.”

“Well, I can think of a way to scrape them up as well. You have such a nice hard head.”

He grinned over that, not exactly the reaction she’d expected.

Nor was hers, that sharp ache in her center, followed by a longer, sweeter pull. She was attracted to him, and that was all right. What she was feeling wasn’t. She might be a woman who flung herself through life, but this was one area where she wanted to take slow, careful steps—if she took any at all.

She’d known Dex less than a week; she had no business going slack-jawed and hot-wired over a man who was, for all intents and purposes, a complete stranger. Sex was just sex; real intimacy came from the heart, from the mind, and he clearly intended to share neither with her.

“Meeker,” he said, putting them both back on solid footing.

Maggie wasn’t about to ask herself why he seemed to need it as much as she did. “Suppose you tell me what you want from him, and then I’ll decide if it’s worth my time and trouble.” Considerable trouble, she reminded herself.

Dex hesitated, but only for a second or two. “He has some journals I’d be interested in reading.”

“You’d be talking about the Windfall journals.” Maggie mulled that. It didn’t take long. The conclusions were so obvious. “You’re not just after some reading material.”

“No.”

“So I have to wonder why you’re interested in the private goings on of people who’ve been dead three centuries.”

“Maggie—”

“Cut to the chase, Keegan. It has something to do with their descendants.”

Dex had nothing to say to that. Or rather, he chose not to, and when she looked into his eyes, she decided she should be grateful for that. What she was was pissed off.

“Do you think my friends and neighbors are idiots?” Did he think she was an idiot? That it hadn’t taken her all of two seconds to figure his interest wasn’t only about descendants.

Everything came down to money. Lord knew nobody on Windfall had more than two nickels to rub together, or ever had. So, it must be about something of value instead—land, personal property—hell, it could be just about anything, big or little.

“This may be a small, out-of-the-way place, and we may be simple people, but—”

“You’re not simpletons. I don’t think that.”

“But you have secrets to keep.”

“And you and your fellow Windfallers don’t?”

“Maybe so, but this is our place.”

“And I’m the outsider, so that’s it. Case closed, shut me out without even giving me a chance.”

“I am giving you a chance.” Maggie took the steps that put her in his face. “If I was going to shut you down cold, I’d have sent you packing before you dragged me into this asinine conversation.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning if you want my help, you need to convince me that what you find out isn’t going to harm anyone.”

“The only way to do that is tell you what I’m looking for. I can’t.”

“ ‘Can’t’ is an interesting word, Keegan. Won’t is another one. Neither will gain you my cooperation.” She turned toward the Piper.

Dex caught her by the arm and spun her back.

She looked down at his hand. “You want to lose that?”

He slid his fingers down to her wrist, and she knew he felt her pulse scramble before she jerked free. And when she lifted furious eyes to his face, she saw his jaw working.

Not so cool and calm himself, she realized, though she couldn’t quite manage to enjoy his discomfort, not with her heart still galloping in her chest.

Dex shoved a hand back through his hair, stalked off a few steps then spun around and stomped back. This time he kept his distance. “I need those journals. And I think you’re trustworthy, but here’s the thing: so am I.”

“Trust needs to be earned. How do I trust someone who’s keeping secrets?”

“You’re a damn good judge of character.”

Maggie liked to think so, but she wasn’t altogether sure her judgment was unclouded where Dex Keegan was concerned. She found, with very little consideration, that she wanted to believe him. That was dangerous enough to have her treading very carefully.

“I gave my word to my client. I can’t go back on it.”

“You may have to without those journals.”

“They could be completely useless.”

“Or they could tell you exactly what you need to know. These people accepted me when…” Maggie dropped her gaze before he saw too much. “You’re asking me to lie to them.”

“I’m asking you not to say anything.”

“It’s the same thing.” But she sighed. She could imagine
all too well what would happen if news got out that Dex Keegan was there to hand out so much as a twenty-dollar bill.

“If I fail, someone else will be sent, and then you won’t know what’s going on.”

“I don’t know now,” Maggie pointed out.

“But at least this way you can keep an eye on me.”

“I’ve got two eyes, and they’ll both be on you.”

Dex slipped his hands in his pockets, looking uncertain for the first time since he’d swaggered into her life. “So you’ll let me know when you’re done thinking?”

“If I go see Meeker, I go alone. Don’t,” she added when he opened his mouth to argue.

Even thinking about a face-to-face with Josiah Meeker… For just an instant she’d been a sixteen-year-old girl again, a sixteen-year-old girl in an impossible situation. She’d gotten herself out of it, though, and she looked Dex straight in the eye now. “My way or no way.”

His gaze narrowed on hers. “You have history with Meeker.”

“Hello, tiny island, small population. I have history with everyone who lives here.”

“It’s something more than that.”

“He gave me my first part-time job when I moved here,” she explained because withholding it would give Dex Keegan the idea it was more important than it was. She’d even managed to say it without a hint of the anger or, God help her, the shame she always felt when Josiah Meeker crossed her mind. Or so she thought until she saw fury light Dex’s dark eyes.

“It was a long time ago, and Meeker was no real threat to me. I learned to defend myself at an early age. Not all the bases where my father was stationed were kind to spindly little American girls.”

The explanation came with pride—pride that she was well entitled to. She’d taken her share of knocks before that pride had forced her to shed the meekness that had been ground into her. And in striking back, she’d learned valuable lessons about strength and self-respect, about being her own best defense without losing her self-control.