Hideaway Cove (A Windfall Island Novel) (2 page)

“Why?”

“Because Benji is my responsibility.”

“I get that, but why do you have to do it alone? Maggie would do anything for you, no questions asked—Maggie and Dex,” he said, referring to her best friend and majority owner of Solomon airlines, and her fiancé. “So would I.”

“Then it would be Maggie and Dex doing it. And there’s no way I’m asking you for help.”

“Why?”

“Because I hardly know you.”

“And you don’t want to admit you’re attracted to me?”

“Back off, Abbot.” She shot to her feet, did the backing off herself. “Benji is my son, and if he wants to go—whatever he wants, I’ll damn well make it happen without going begging to my friends. Or complete strangers with egos the size of”—she tossed her hands in the air—“something really big,” she finished, clearly at a loss, but so damn gorgeous he wanted to scoop her up and kiss her until all that glorious temper turned to a different kind of heat.

“What are you grinning at?”

“You,” he said, holding himself back with what could only be called an Herculean effort. “You’re beautiful when you’re mad.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You…I…Stop saying things like that.”

“I’d rather show you anyway, sugar.”

She lifted her hands to her cheeks, not just pink now but hot red. “Hold—”

“Why don’t you tell me what Benji wants?” he said because he’d pushed her too far, and he didn’t want to hear her give him a single reason why they couldn’t be together.

“It’s just so”—she dropped her hands, laughing a little—“ridiculous.”

But it had upset her, and it didn’t take much for him to reason out why. “It can’t be easy to raise a kid by yourself, no child support.”

Jessi sat back down, crossed her arms. “Really? Do tell.”

Hold smiled indulgently. “I know you own ten percent of Solomon Charters, but you’re putting most of the profits back into the business if you want to grow it at all, and especially right now, when you’ve just lost the Piper…” He trailed off at the look on her face—a look that had nothing to do with being reminded of Maggie’s near-death just a few days before, resulting in the loss of her first airplane. And when the tone of her voice matched the look, he knew. He’d just made an ass of himself—a supercilious, condescending ass.

“Oh, don’t stop now,” Jessi said. “I find it truly fascinating how you can tell me all about my life without ever asking a single question.”

“Uh…”

“Let me guess. You’ve been asking questions, just not to me.”

“How do I respond to that observation without putting your back up any more than I’ve already done?”

“Apologizing would be a good start,” she said with a perfect mix of disappointment and reproach.

Hold suppressed the urge to hang his head, dig his toe into the carpet, stuff his hands in his pockets, or otherwise give physical presence to the guilt he felt. “I wouldn’t have to apologize if you’d talk to me once in a while.”

“I talk to you all the time.”

“Not about anything personal.”

“That’s because my personal life is none of your business. Which I keep telling you, and you keep ignoring.”

“Doesn’t that tell you how serious I am about getting to know you?”

Jessi just shook her head, turned back to her desk. Dismissed him again, like she always did. “You want to get to know me? Start with my genealogy, Hold.” She shot him a glance, eyes sparkling, a hint of laughter in her voice. “Maybe I’ll turn out to be the long lost Stanhope heir, and all my troubles will be over.”

Money, Hold thought sourly.

He could have told her it didn’t solve every problem, but that would raise questions he wasn’t ready to answer. Jessi believed him to be a simple researcher; he hadn’t told her, or anyone, that he came from one of the wealthiest families in the country.

Because he’d yet to meet anyone it didn’t matter to on some level.

He could honestly say the women he dated didn’t always go into the relationship because of his money, but once they found out, they changed. Every last one of them.

What he felt for Jessi…He didn’t know what he felt for Jessi, or what she felt for him. But he wanted a chance to find out before his money complicated everything.

Jessi sighed. “It’s a nice dream, inheriting a fortune. Not having to live from paycheck to paycheck would certainly make life easier.”

“Money isn’t everything,” Hold murmured, although he couldn’t brush off the ease it put into his life—the freedom, for instance, to be here on Windfall Island for who knew how long, working a job that didn’t even net him a paycheck.

But he understood there were people who would do anything, say anything, be anything, to get it. He had firsthand experience.

T
he day passed in a blur; Jessi made sure it did despite the fact that Solomon Charters had hit its slow season.

There were no daily ferry trips back and forth to the mainland, with their inevitable emergencies, large and small, to be dealt with. There were no tourist flights, in and out, to be scheduled around the commercial airliners, so Solomon Charters could maximize flights to the mainland.

There were, however, private charters, taking Maggie farther afield now that the company’s good reputation had begun to spread. Maggie still picked up the mail a couple times a week; she still flew goods in and out and, in her flight suit, battered leather bomber, and aviators, she put an irresistibly dashing face on the business.

Someone had to keep the lights burning, though. Someone had to pay the phone bill and juggle the budget so they got past the lean winter months without burning through all the money they’d put aside during the summer glut.

“Jessica,” Hold called out in his honey-dripping southern drawl.

And someone, she added to her thoughts, had to pump the island’s residents for information useful in solving Eugenia’s mystery. She glanced over her shoulder, to the small back office where Hold worked—even if that meant she had to work alongside a man who sent her senses haywire just by breathing.

She walked into the little back office. Hold smiled, and it wasn’t just her senses—everything inside her yearned. The need had been growing for weeks, and now it all but overwhelmed her. The idea of giving in to it was so damn tempting—he was so damn tempting.

It had been nearly eight years since she’d vowed Benji would be the only man in her life. She liked to think she’d held steady because she was strong. Truth to be told, she’d yet to meet a man who made her regret that vow.

Hold looked up again from the scatter of books and papers in front of him, smiled again, and for the life of her she couldn’t do anything but smile back.

And what harm could there be in looking, she asked herself? Holden Abbot was a prime specimen of the troublesome male species, and she had eyes, didn’t she? And needs. Even if she’d gotten used to ignoring those needs, it didn’t mean she’d forgotten how it felt to have a man’s hands on her. Hold had such incredible hands, wide palms and long fingers she imagined would be just a little rough at the tips, a little calloused on the palms.

She could still remember the glory of a man’s body against hers, and Hold’s body, well, she liked the planes and angles of him, liked the easy, graceful way he carried himself, and she could imagine—had imagined—

“Jessica,” he said again.

Her gaze snapped to his face, heart-stoppingly handsome even when it wore a lazy, self-satisfied smirk she knew came at her expense. He hadn’t missed the way she’d been ogling him, and he tipped his head, gave her a come-along look. He’d made it clear he’d be only too happy to have her do more than look.

She wouldn’t, and not just because of a promise she’d made herself eight years before.

Because along with everything else, she could still remember how it felt to have her heart broken. And hers wasn’t the only heart she had to protect now.

She squared her shoulders, gave her nerve endings a stern talking to, and promptly put her foot in her mouth. “Was there something you wanted?”

His smirk widened into a full-on grin.

She turned on her heel.

Hold followed her. Of course. And settled his very nice backside on her desk, just by her elbow.

“Does the phrase
personal space
mean anything to you?”

“If I had my way there’d be a whole lot more personal between us, sugar, and a lot less space.”

She didn’t look up at him, just pointed, stiff-armed, to the little office.

“Before you send me back to my cell, I wanted to ask you about the Butler family,” he said, the name coming out as
Butlah
in his drawl, bringing to mind that scene of Rhett carrying Scarlett up a wide sweep of stairs in
Gone with the Wind.

Hold certainly had the muscles for it, she thought, and her house had stairs. Narrow, pokey stairs with a turn in the middle. If he tried to carry her up, she’d hit her head and wind up with a concussion. Which was just what she’d deserve.

“It’s a pretty common name,” Hold said when she failed to respond. “Any idea how we can narrow down the search?”

“My mother told me Mrs. Butler died in the seventies, and Mr. Butler just picked up and moved the family. Here one day, gone the next. They had a son, but word came back that Mr. Butler remarried and had a couple more kids.” And she was babbling, damn it, because as long as she was thinking about the Butlers, she could keep herself from jumping Hold Abbot. “I’ll ask around, see if anyone knows where they landed.”

“We could ask around together,” Hold said.

He set a neat stack of papers down in front of her, and now she noticed how he smelled, too. She closed her eyes, just for a second, and drew him in: soap, man…

“Right here,” he said, pointing to an entry in what turned out to be one of the island journals Maggie and Dex had borrowed from Josiah Meeker’s private collection.

Jessi concentrated almost desperately on the entry, not only old and written in spidery handwriting, but badly smudged as well.

“Can you make it out?”

She glanced up without thinking, and found herself caught in the depths of melted-chocolate eyes. Hold had a way of looking at her that made her feel as if she were the only woman in the world.

And he knew it, damn him.

She picked up the papers, shoved them at him. “Go away.”

“What’s got you all het up?”

“You. And before you smirk at me again, it’s not a good thing.”

“How is it I always manage to put your back up?”

“It’s not—” She huffed out a breath. “It’s the condescending way you talk to me—to women,” she amended hastily. “Might as well just pat me on the head.”

“It’s not your head I want my hands on.”

“All of me is off-limits.”

Hold shoved off her desk and paced away, whipping around to scowl at her. “I just want to get to know you, Jessica. What’s wrong with that?”

Nothing
. But all she said was, “You know as much about me as you need to.”

“And you think you know as much as you need to about me.”

She shrugged.

“Then where’s the harm in having a little supper together?”

“On this island? Are you serious?”

“So folks’ll talk. Flapping jaws’re about as dangerous as a bag full of butterflies, my granddaddy always said.”

“No offense to your granddaddy, but words can hurt as much as sticks and stones.”

“Not if you let them fly right by you. C’mon, darlin’. It’s two people sharing a meal and a conversation. I promise I won’t push you for more than that.”

Jessi looked up, met those warm brown eyes, and accepted that she wanted to believe him.

But she’d been taken in before by a pair of guileless eyes, fooled by a beautiful trust-me smile. She saw those same eyes, that same smile, on her son, every day. Benji didn’t have a dishonest bone in his little body, but it reminded her, every day, of the mistake she’d made—not in having him. No, she’d made her mistake long before Benji had ever been conceived.

Hold Abbot might look like the most honest, most sincere, most straightforward man in the entire world, but how could she trust him when she couldn’t trust her own judgment?

“You’ve been hurt, sugar— Don’t poker up on me,” Hold added when she did just that. “I didn’t ask.”

“But you got the story anyway.” When you lived in gossip central, it was impossible to keep anything private. It didn’t make the sting any less for knowing he’d seen her skeletons. “Gives you kind of an unfair advantage. You knowing about my past while I don’t know the first thing about you.”

He leaned a hip on the corner of her desk. “By all means, let’s even the playing field.”

She didn’t think the playing field would ever be even, not when he looked at her like that.

He gave her one of his disarming smiles, and, God help her, she couldn’t bring herself to open that door.

She just didn’t want to know anything that would lower her opinion of him. Or worse, raise it. He was nearly irresistible as it was; if he got any better she’d be toast.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Unless you’re willing to move to Windfall, settle down, and help me raise someone else’s son.”

“Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you?”

“No. I have a child, Hold. I don’t have the luxury of casual relationships. It’s not fair to Benji to let him get attached to someone, only to lose that person when the relationship ends.”

“So you won’t let anything happen between us unless it could lead somewhere permanent?”

“Yes.”

“Is that supposed to scare me off?”

“Frankly, yes.”

He simply stared at her, his expression slightly…bemused, was the best way she could put it.

“It’s always worked before,” she muttered self-consciously.

Hold narrowed his eyes. “Benji is how old?”

“Seven.”

“And his father left?”

“Before he was born,” she said crankily.

He grinned from ear to ear. “Interesting.”

Jessi felt the blood rise to her cheeks, felt the heat spread until it seemed as if her whole face was flaming.

But when his grin softened, when he brushed his fingers over her cheek, the heat turned to need, the soft kind of need that moved through her and left her empty and aching. She fought back, eased away before she could turn her face into his hand, just so she could feel the warmth of his skin on hers.

When she finally met Hold’s gaze again, she was absolutely steady, absolutely sure the need couldn’t leak through. “I won’t get involved with anyone unless there’s a chance for a real relationship, Hold.”

“We could take it a day at a time, and see what happens.”

For a second, just a second, she wanted it so badly she felt almost desperate to take what he offered. The reality of spending her life alone far outstripped the theory of it.

She had friends she could turn to, but having a partner, a husband, to build a life with, to make memories with: to be a family…She shook her head and stopped torturing herself with what ifs. “This is a ridiculous conversation when we both know you aren’t the marrying kind.”

He straightened away from her, and she could all but feel the anger rising off him. “You don’t know anything about me, but you’ll make me the villain so it’s easier for you—”

“You’re right.” And it shamed her. “I’ll apologize for saying that, Hold.”

“But not for seeing me as a man who can’t commit.”

“It’s not…” she spread her hands, at a loss to make him accept what he simply didn’t want to believe. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be, Jessica, for thinking so little of me after such a short time. And for selling yourself short.”

“I’m not selling myself short.”

“Just one more thing I’ll have to change your mind about,” he said with the kind of steel she’d never heard in his voice.

“I’m not in the habit of changing my mind.”

“Women do, with troubling regularity.”

“Not the ones I know.”

Maggie Solomon breezed in, fresh off a charter to Portland, tall and beautiful, cloaked in the kind of confidence that couldn’t be taught, and that drew people to her like moths to a flame.

It was a testament to her own level of upheaval, Jessi thought, that she hadn’t even heard Maggie’s helicopter set down on the tarmac, let alone noticed the outer door opening.

Hold grinned. “Here’s living proof.”

“No you don’t,” Maggie said, dumping her clipboard on Jessi’s desk. “However I got involved in this discussion, you can take me right back out of it.”

“I was just telling Jessica, here, how much I admire a woman who can admit the error of her ways.”

“Maggie never admits to being wrong.”

“Damn straight. Admit you’re wrong, and a man will never let you forget it.”

“Referring to any man in particular?”

They all turned toward the door, but not before Jessi saw Maggie’s face light. And why not? Jessi asked herself, stifling a sigh as Dex Keegan walked in—tall, ruggedly handsome, and a bona fide hero—and planted a kiss square on Maggie’s mouth. And Maggie, who’d always refused to risk her heart, rested her hand on Dex’s chest—her engagement ring-adorned hand—and leaned into his kiss.

Dexter Keegan, private investigator, had started the search for Eugenia Stanhope, and along the way he’d fallen in love with Maggie. It had taken Maggie longer to let Dex into her life. But she’d finally done it, finally admitted she loved him.

“That could be you,” Hold said in Jessi’s ear.

“I have no intention of kissing Dex,” she said, brushing him away with the back of her hand, “And if I did, Maggie would probably drop me out of a plane at ten thousand feet.”

“I was talking about me.”

“You want to kiss Dex?”

“Ha, funny. Let me know when I’ve won our little bet.”

“We don’t have a bet, and if we did you’d be the last person I’d surrender to.” Just to make her point, she met his eyes. And she was caught. The air between them seemed to ignite—

“So,” Maggie asked, “anything exciting happen today?”

Jessi tore her eyes off Hold, but when she opened her mouth, she couldn’t force words from her dry throat.

“Nothing interesting has happened since Mort tried to kill you,” Hold said glumly.

Just a week ago, Maggie had been identified as a possible descendant of Eugenia’s, and an attempt had been made on her life. Her jack-of-all-trades handyman, Mort Simpkins, had been the actual perpetrator, but they all assumed one of the Stanhopes had pulled the strings.

Since Dex was the PI, he’d be investigating—quietly—the family, with a view to figuring out which one of the Stanhopes didn’t want to share the family fortune. Then he’d be coming back to Windfall, to Maggie, to start their life together.

It made Jessi deliriously happy for Maggie, and unbelievably sad for herself.