Lucy And The Stone

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Evidently, she’d figured on a bit of privacy to recharge her batteries and work on her story. She wasn’t dressed for an audience. Instead, she was wearing baggy sweats, a pair of shades and, unless he was mistaken, that was an apple she had clutched in her teeth. The symbolism of it suddenly struck him and he began to chuckle. Still grinning at his small private joke, he began paddling toward the shore. The layer of pink on his shoulders, thighs and belly that he’d collected the day before had soaked in overnight, but Stone didn’t kid himself that he was in any condition to stay out through the middle of the day, sunscreen or no sunscreen. From his mother, who’d been Alice Hardisson’s sister, he’d inherited his height and his dark hair. The paternal side of his heritage was pure Highland Scot. Gray eyes, stainless-steel backbone, a taste for Celtic music and a hide that, without some preliminary weathering, tended to burn.

He had lost his weathering, along with a few quarts of blood and more than a few pounds, but he was working on it.

Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look at his quarry. As distasteful as he found the whole business, he had given Alice his word that he’d keep the woman away from the gutter press. Alice had done her part by isolating La Dooley in a place with no phones, no fax, limited mail service and no reporters. The rest was up to him.

The trouble was, he hadn’t even started yet and already he was beginning to feel a little bit foolish. He was a journalist. He’d done his share of investigative journalism, but something about this assignment stuck in his craw.

By the time Stone reached shore, La Dooley had disappeared. He figured she’d probably wanted to scope out the territory—maybe drop in on the Keegans and check on the radio link to the outside world. If she was smart—and most predators were—she’d be wanting to get her bearings before she made her move.

If she made her move. Even steel magnolias like Alice Hardisson had been known to make a mistake.

* * *

Reluctantly, Lucy turned to go back inside. In spite of her dark glasses, the sun was blinding. She’d forgotten just how bright it could be near the water, even with the sky beginning to haze over. At the door to her cottage, she yawned, stretched and marveled all over again that she was actually here instead of back in her own sweltering apartment poring over the help wanteds and listening with one ear for the commode to stop running. It took three jiggles after each flush, and she did it so automatically that she couldn’t always remember whether or not she’d forgotten.

She made a pitcher of iced tea and carried it out onto the screened deck. That and the apple she had consumed earlier constituted breakfast. Maybe tomorrow she would fry up a can of corned-beef hash with onions and catsup for breakfast. That had been Pawpaw’s favorite. Familiar foods and familiar music always gave her a safe, comfortable feeling. Maybe she would write to Lillian and Ollie Mae, for old times’ sake.

Or maybe she’d simply vegetate. This was a vacation. Vacations were for being lazy and indulging whims. No telling when she’d get another one.

The trouble was, she was just too excited to vegetate. After showering, she unpacked a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and set off to explore her new surroundings, luxuriating in the raw-silk feel of pine straw under her bare feet and the total absence of traffic noises.

The only sign of life at any of the other cottages was a lineful of towels and bathing suits. Earlier, she’d heard the sound of an outboard heading over to Hatteras. So be it. She liked privacy.

And really, she wasn’t lonely. There were plenty of other people around if she got tired of her own company. The Keegans, for instance. And the reclusive bird-watcher, who was supposed to be her closest neighbor.

All the same, by early afternoon, having walked around the entire island, pausing to watch birds, distant fishermen, even more distant windsurfers, and to examine a set of footprints in the sand—long, fairly narrow, naked and probably male—she was beginning to feel a bit like Robinson Crusoe.

Her stomach growled. She breathed deeply of the fragrance of sun-warmed cedars and salt marsh as she reluctantly turned back toward Heron’s Rest. Funny—when she had accepted this windfall vacation from her ex-mother-in-law, after the first few minutes of shock, all she’d been able to think about was having an entire summer with no clock to punch and no one to fuss at her for playing her music too loud at night. As guilty as she’d felt for accepting anything at all from a Hardisson, she hadn’t been able to resist the lure of a few lazy, idyllic weeks all to herself. But already she was getting restless.

Not only that, she felt guilty. She despised Billy Hardisson, partly because he was a despicable person, but mostly because, with his courtly manners and his easygoing charm, he had made her feel like a lady. And it had all been a lie.

Alice was a lady. Billy was Nothing dressed up like Something. But for a little while he had made her feel special, made her feel beautiful, made her feel wanted as a person and not just for her body.

Of course, he’d wanted that, too, but when she’d refused to go to bed with him, he hadn’t called her names. Instead, he’d turned up the charm another notch.

The creep. The only decent thing about Billy Hardisson was his mother, and Lucy felt sorry for the poor woman. According to Lucy’s father, a lady was a woman who served his beer in a glass. Lucy had learned from Alice Hardisson that there was a bit more to being a lady than that, which was why she had quietly left town three years ago without telling anyone how she had come to lose her baby. The only other person in the house the day it had happened had been the maid, but she wouldn’t talk. She was Liam and Mellie’s niece. She owed her allegiance to the Hardissons.

Someday poor Alice was going to have her heart broken, but at least Lucy wouldn’t be a part of it.

Yawning, she shucked off unpleasant thoughts of the past. Last night she had read an entire paperback romance, and she intended to read another one tonight. But with the sun shining, the birds singing and all those endless acres of saltwater beckoning, she wasn’t about to spend the daylight hours reading, too.

“Time for a new adventure, li’l sugar.” She could hear Pawpaw now. That ol’ highway wasn’t a-rollin’ out before her, but all that water surely was. So why not take out one of the boats tied up at the pier for the use of the renters? It had been years since she had handled a boat. If she was going to make a fool of herself, she’d just as soon do it without an audience.

Lucy made herself a peanut butter sandwich and ate it as she sauntered down to the pier, where a tall, rugged-looking man with a distinctly military bearing greeted her from the stern of a red inboard.

He introduced himself as Maudie Keegan’s husband, Rich, and told her he was on his way over to Hatteras. “But if you need me to check you out on a boat, that’s what I’m here for.” As good as his word, he took time to show her the basics after clamping an outboard motor on the stern of one of the smaller boats.

Dressed in a pair of paint-stained khakis and little else, Rich Keegan exuded a potent brand of masculinity. Lucy’s instinctive wariness rose up defensively, but so far as she could see, there wasn’t even a hint of speculation in his bright blue eyes as he handed her down into the aluminum skiff. She wished she’d kept on her sweats, but in the heat of the day, they were just too hot. Her shorts and camp shirt were old, loose and deliberately designed to disguise her natural attributes. Even Alice would have approved of their faded modesty. Besides, she wasn’t in purdah. Not even Alice and her blue-haired, old-monied friends would expect her to suffocate.

Forgetting her self-consciousness, Lucy concentrated on Keegan’s instructions. He made her go through the routine until he was satisfied she had it down pat, and then he pointed out the channel markers. “Hang to the left of the red ones if you’re headed over to Hatteras, to the right on the way back out. Watch out for shoals. The tide’s about slack now, but it’ll turn within the half hour. Don’t go out of sight of land in case the weather closes in. And, Ms. Dooley, I understand you’re a certified lifeguard, but do me a favor? Wear this thing, anyway.” He reached past her, and Lucy stepped back suddenly. The boat lurched, and she would have gone over the side if he hadn’t grabbed her.

“Whoops! Sorry,” she said breathlessly when he released her shoulders and handed her an orange life vest. “No sea legs.”

“You’ll get the hang of it. These aluminum boats are durable, but they’re a little like a canoe until you get used to them. Fortunately, the water’s shallow around these parts—you can’t get in a whole lot of trouble if you use some common sense. But we have these rules, so wear the thing for me, will you?”

“Scout’s honor.” When Lucy grinned, Rich grinned back, and she was suddenly glad he was spoken for. With a man like Rich Keegan, she just might be tempted to forget how rotten her judgment was where men were concerned.

Rich had his rules, and well, Lucy had hers, too. And survival rule number one was to avoid anything that even looked like temptation.

After waving him off, she repeated his instructions—or rather, her interpretation of his instructions—until she was certain she had it grooved into her brain. It was pretty much like her father’s instructions for starting the old Dooley Trolley. She had learned to drive that when she was twelve.

“Pull the whoosie halfway out, set the whatsit, push the do-jigger, shove the whoosie back a third and pray.” Wrinkling her nose in concentration, she mumbled the incantation, went through the motions, and miraculously—it worked!

Pulling away from the pier at a sedate three knots, Lucy wished her sixth-graders could see her now. They teased her unmercifully about the clunker she drove. She teased right back by telling them that it took far more skill to drive a real car than it did to operate any one of the sleek new computerized models that were designed by robots for robots.

By the time she had circled the island twice, Lucy was high on the sheer exhilaration of accomplishment. Taking dead aim at a channel marker, she was following the deep green water, steering close to a high shoal that ran along the southwest tip of Hatteras Island, when it occurred to her the sun was no longer blazing down on the back of her neck.

Blazing? It was no longer even visible! While she’d been busy learning to navigate, a thick bank of black clouds had snuck up and swallowed every visible scrap of blue.

Uneasily, Lucy peered at the sky again. She’d been skirting the landward edge of the channel, marveling at the way the water magnified the size of the few shells hugging the side of the steep shoal. Scallop shells looked like dinner plates. That oyster shell was easily a foot long, and—

And then she saw the conch shell. Only a few yards ahead, it was as big as a basketball. She reminded herself that it was only an illusion, but all the same, it was tempting. Half a minute more and she could snare it for her class. They might even make a study of the magnifying powers of water.

Having rationalized the collecting of her souvenir, Lucy adjusted the throttle and idled closer, careful to stay just over into the deep water. The moment she came within reach, she grabbed an oar with one hand, meaning to work the tip of the blade into the opening of the shell and lift it aboard. Carefully balancing, she leaned over the side of the unsteady craft.

Lightning flashed. A split second later there was a blast of thunder. Jerking around to glance over her shoulder, Lucy gasped at the angry mass roiling directly overhead. Cold sweat broke out on her back and she swore under her breath. A single moment’s inattention was all it took. Before she could gather her wits, several things happened at once. The blade of the oar dipped under the water, causing the boat to swerve into the shoal. Before she could shove off again, the outboard sputtered and died.

“Oh, no!” Lucy lunged for the choke, then grabbed the throttle. Too late. “Oh, damn and blast!” she wailed as another burst of lightning split the tarnished sky.

A splash of rain struck the back of her neck and channeled down under her damp shirt. Sweat prickled under the life vest. “All right now, Lucinda, calm down,” she muttered. “First push the— No, pull the whoosie halfway out, then push the whatsit and— Oh, rats!”

On the raw edge of panic, she worked the throttle several times, stabbing the starter button in between. Nothing happened.

Lightning flashed again. The thunder was almost constant now. A bloom of iridescence spread swiftly around the stern of the boat, and Lucy stared at it in resignation.

She had flooded the blasted motor. Which meant she would have to wait for it to cool off before she could even try it again. Which meant she was going to get soaked, at the very least. Possibly fried.

Lightning flickered green against a black sky. Cats’ paws ruffled the dark surface of the water, and she buried her face in her crossed arms and swore softly. Was it just her, or was it something in the Dooley family gene pool that inhibited the development of ordinary common sense?

She should’ve suspected something was wrong when, after growing up like a gypsy, she’d been so eager for a real home and a real family that she’d nearly run off and married a charming rat whose idea of fidelity was never sleeping with more than one woman at the same time.

That had been in Baton Rouge. She’d been seventeen when she had fallen in love with Hamm Sheppard’s family, which had consisted of parents, a grandmother and seven brothers and sisters, all of whom had lived in the same house for three generations.

Fortunately, Pawpaw had loaded up the Dooley Trolley and lit out for Galveston before she could get into too much trouble.

That had been her first near miss, but certainly not her last. How many times had she mistaken lust for something more lasting, more meaningful? Not that she’d ever been promiscuous, but even that had been due more to an innate sense of self-respect than any sense of self-preservation.

When it came to brains, Lucy thought as she attempted to row herself back to Coronoke and safety, hers were about as reliable as a two-dollar watch. At this rate, she might as well just grab a live wire and be done with it.

* * *

Stone had been watching through the binoculars when his neighbor sauntered down the path toward the pier earlier that day, minus the sweats. The woman had legs, all right. The kind of legs a man woke up in the middle of the night dreaming about. Long, golden, silky confections with flawlessly turned ankles and calves designed expressly to fit a man’s palms.

And then there were her thighs....

Slowly, he lowered the binoculars and exhaled in a soft whistle. So that was La Dooley. In the flesh! If the rest of her lived up to those legs at closer inspection, he could easily see how Billy might have lost his perspective. No wonder she’d been able to twist him and a whole damned law firm around her little finger. If Alice hadn’t been off on one of her constant jaunts, it never would have happened. But when the cat was away, all hell usually broke loose.

Stone just hoped she’d been worth it, especially since she was reportedly trying to elbow her way back up to the trough. His worn mocs silent on the sandy, leaf-strewn path, he followed her down to the pier in time to watch her give Keegan the business.

She was good, all right—he had to hand it to her. First the smile. Roughly a thousand watts, he figured. Easily enough to stun a full-grown ox. Somewhere along the line, she had cultivated this way of standing with her toes turned in like a barefoot kid, and scratching her thigh in a way that was obviously designed to call attention to her assets. In a centerfold type like La Dooley, the effect was lethal.

Billy, poor devil, had never stood a chance.

Stone watched as she pretended to trip, forcing Keegan to catch her by the shoulders. A pretty shopworn ploy, but Keegan didn’t seem to mind.

Having known a few women who made a profession of preying on men, Stone felt anger begin to curdle inside him. He’d been too smart to fall into that particular trap, but more than one of his friends had been ripped up pretty badly by women like Lucy Dooley.

As for Stone, he’d once had a shot at a good relationship a long time ago. He’d blown it all by himself, but that didn’t mean he was going to stand by and let La Dooley mess up another life. Keegan and Maudie seemed to be pretty decent people. The first time the ex-Mrs. Hardisson tried anything there, Stone was going to take her aside and quietly drive home a few basic rules.

In fact, he was beginning to look forward to it.

Keegan’s runabout pulled away first, heading east toward Hatteras. La Dooley went next and took a different direction. Stone felt some of the tension bleed away. Then, having nothing better to do with his time, he collected his field guide to Eastern birds from the cottage and, binoculars around his neck, made himself comfortable in the shade of a sprawling live oak.

She circled the island a few times. He followed her by sound. A pelican—a brown pelican, to be more specific—flapped by, lumbering along like a C-130 cargo plane. He followed it out of sight and then picked up La Dooley as she rounded a wooded point on the southwest side of the island. From there she cut a figure eight and then headed toward Hatteras Inlet.

The sun was gone, taking the edge off the heat, but the humidity still hovered in the high nineties. Leaving his book and his glasses behind, Stone loped back up the path and returned a few minutes later with a cold beer and a slab of cheese. A little ways out from shore, a flock of black, white and orange birds were hammering on something just under the surface of the water. Dutifully, he identified them as oyster catchers. At this rate, he could qualify for a whole new area of reporting. In which case he might be bored out of his gourd, but he probably wouldn’t get blown up with any great regularity.

He watched a flock of crows worry the hell out of a sea gull, noticing as he did that the storm was almost overhead. By the time the first jagged streak of lightning sliced across the sky, he was already racing toward the pier. In the preternatural darkness, he could barely make out the low profile of an aluminum boat with a single passenger. It was about a mile out, and the boat wasn’t moving.

Was she crazy? Did she have some kind of a death wish? Leaving her to her fate might solve a few of the Hardisson’s more pressing problems, but Stone didn’t think his aunt Alice would want that on her conscience.

* * *

By the time the second blister had formed and burst on her palm, Lucy was chilled to the bone. She couldn’t remember the last time she had rowed a boat, but she did know it had been a wooden one, not one of these blasted tippy aluminum jobs!

Wasn’t metal an excellent conductor of electricity? Oh, God....

Lightning was almost continuous now, the rain blowing in soft, horizontal sheets. It wasn’t really cold, yet she couldn’t seem to stop shivering. Whoever had designed these blasted life vests ought to have to dance naked in one of the things! She wasn’t in danger of drowning, dammit, she was in danger of being chafed to death! If she didn’t get blown out of the water first.

“Thirty-four—unh!—years old, and—unh!—don’t even have the brains to—unh!—come in out of the—” Clamping one oar between elbow and knee, she shoved her hair out of her eyes. Rain, salt air and naturally curly hair were a disastrous combination. She’d been trying to let her hair grow out so she could braid it, pin it up and thereby achieve some degree of neatness, but the first thing she was going to do when she got in—if she got in—was shave her head!

With rain pounding the surface of the water, drumming on the battered metal boat, Lucy didn’t even hear the outboard until it was right on top of her.

“Hi, there! Ahoy!”

Shoving the tangle of sodden hair from her eyes once more, she looked up to see the man just as he grabbed hold of her boat. “You’re speaking to me?” The look he gave her didn’t bear analysis, but it was not lust she saw in those chilly gray eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t hear you drive up.”

“You didn’t hear me drive up. Right,” Stone repeated, unsure whether she was mocking him or he was mocking her. “Unless you’ve got a death wish, ship your oars, tilt your motor and throw me your towline.”

In the end, Stone boarded her skiff and carried out his own commands. It seemed to be the only way to get them moving. The woman was either brain dead or paralyzed. Her legs were covered with goose bumps, and even that, he noted with disgust, didn’t lessen their impact. His fingers were itching to tangle themselves in that mop of kinky, streaky hair and jerk some sense into her devious little brain, but he was distracted by a streak of lightning, followed almost immediately by a blast of thunder.

“Get into my boat,” he snapped. “Yours’ll tow faster light. Come on, lady, just move it, will you? I’m in no mood to risk my neck just to save yours!”

And despite his surliness, Lucy was in no mood to argue. As stiff as she was from rowing and shivering, one glance at the stern, dripping wet face looming over her was enough to force her reluctant muscles to cooperate.

Stone didn’t waste time. While she huddled on the center thwart, hugging her wet, goose-bumpy knees with equally wet, goose-bumpy arms, he piloted them toward shore. The worst of the storm had already passed overhead and was headed for the northern villages on Hatteras Island.

The rain continued to fall.

And Lucy continued to shiver.

Neither of them spoke. Even if he’d been inclined to yell over all the noise, Stone didn’t think she wanted to hear anything he might have to say at the moment.

Besides, he had come to the island for a purpose. Driving her away wasn’t going to do the job. If she left, he’d feel obligated to follow her, and he wasn’t ready to quit this place yet.

With swift efficiency, he secured both boats and then reached out to help her up onto the pier. Lucy couldn’t repress a gasp when his hard, salty palm grasped hers.

He narrowed those icy gray eyes at her. “You got a problem?”

Lucy shook her head. She had a problem—she had a lot of problems, but she didn’t think he really wanted to hear them. “No, b-b-but thanks for rescuing me. I th-think I must have fl-flooded the c-c-carburator.”

Stone’s wide, mobile mouth turned down at the corners. He didn’t want her thanks. He didn’t want anything to do with her. He sure as hell didn’t want to start feeling sorry for her just because she was wet and cold and maybe a little bit scared—if she had sense enough to be scared. If she had sense enough even to know what might have happened to her out there.

At the moment she looked more like a big-eyed, waterlogged, oversize waif than a man-eating witch with a cash register for a heart. In spite of what he knew about her, Stone felt a growing urge to gather her into his arms and hold her there until her teeth stopped chattering.

He told himself that the concussion he’d suffered back in March must have shaken loose a few too many gray cells. “Better get out of those wet things,” he muttered. “Go have a hot soak and a stiff drink—make you feel better.”