Two Weeks in August

ISBN-13: 978-1-59493-173-4

About the Author

Nat Burns retired early from a publishing career in Virginia to relocate to the balmy Rio Grande Valley of Texas with her partner Carol. There, surrounded by palm trees and Spanish tile, three cats tolerate their gales of uncontrolled laughter. And Natty continues to write, compulsively, which the cats and Carol endure with scathing forbearance.
 
www.natalieburns.net

This book is for my life song, Carol, who has always
believed.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks go out to Karin Kallmaker for welcoming me so graciously into the Bella family. And to Katherine V. Forrest: an editor unparalleled. She helped me rethink my dull, aimless words and sharpen them into more effective tools.

I’d also like to thank all the avid Bella readers who make new books possible.

Chapter 1

Several island acquaintances had warned Nina about Hazel Duncan, owner of the rental cottages where Nina would stay while awaiting remodeling on her new home. And, true to their word, Hazel, called Hazy by the locals,
was
an unusual character. In fact, she was the most unusual woman Nina had met in her entire life.

Upon arriving at Channel Haven, a semicircle of bright blue cottages facing into Assateague Channel, Nina found the small rental office deserted. She waited several minutes, tapping her foot impatiently. She vaguely remembered these cottages; had passed them by many times on previous visits to Chincoteague Island, but knew little about them and had never met the owner.

Not thrilled, to begin with, over the prospect of staying in a rental cottage for several weeks, Nina found herself overreacting to the enforced wait. Plus, her stomach was rumbling from hunger, the moist sea air felt clammy on her skin once she was inside the confines of the office, and her back had stiffened from the long drive. She was just not in the mood to be kept waiting. Maybe she
should
have renewed her lease on her old apartment for another year and then sublet it when her island home was ready.
 
Ah well, she thought miserably, at least this way she would be available to consult on the finer points of the remodel. After tolerating a few more minutes, she angrily left the office, allowing the screen door to slap shut, and strode onto the adjoining dock to lean against the railing. She tried to let the magic of the waves, and the accompanying wind, soothe her as she drank deeply of the raw beauty surrounding her. As it was approaching midday, the heat of the August sun had coaxed the cobalt of the sea and the jade of the marsh into brilliant hues.

Turning her face into the wind, savoring it, she was shocked to open her eyes and see a woman’s face no more than twelve inches from hers. A strong metallic fish odor attacked Nina’s nostrils and she backed away reflexively from the woman and the stairway on which the woman stood.

The tall blonde, probably an employee of Channel Haven if not the owner, eyed her with annoyance and brushed past, a string of fish dangling from one hand. Nina watched the retreating back, too surprised to move. The woman walked quickly into the office cottage, disappearing from view. Nina came to her senses and raced after her.

“Excuse me, ma’am, are you…” She paused. The rental office was still empty.

“Damn!” She slapped a palm against the doorframe. What type of game was this? A sound penetrated and she realized that the woman was running water in the back somewhere. Aggression warred with timidity. Aggression won and she moved toward the sound.

Again, she found her nose inches from the woman’s as the woman almost walked into her from the back room. She pulled back and assessed Nina for a long moment.

“Can I help you, miss?” Her blue eyes were cold and her voice sarcastic, the accent decidedly British, typical to the island, but it caught Nina off guard. The woman stirred impatiently as Nina groped for words.
“Are you Hazy? I called…you said you had a cottage…”

The woman nodded, and then sighed as she once more roughly pushed past Nina. This time she took a seat at the large metal desk situated just inside the door.

“Name?” she asked impatiently, pen poised over an open notebook filled with lined paper.

Nina crossed to stand before the desk, feeling like a student about to recite. “Christie, Nina Christie.”

Her lips felt tight. Why was the woman acting so boorishly? She was not her parent and Nina resented the way this scenario made her feel: like an aggravating child.

She tried to calm herself. Deciding to employ an old trick she had learned in a psychology course while at college, she pressed a forefinger to her lips. The exercise was designed to make an antagonist less threatening. It was simple really, best if you had time enough to run through the whole exercise. If time was short, at least concentrating on the procedure was enough to defuse a potentially bad situation. She’d used it several times in the past and it had always worked. It was an easy process: study the threatening person and break him down into manageable parts, into non-threatening morsels.

The unfriendly woman appeared to be fortyish, not
too
tall, perhaps just under six feet, not too heavy or too thin. She was muscular though and filled out her thigh-length denim cutoffs and faded yellow T-shirt nicely.

Nina began the exercise with Hazy’s head. Her hair was light, a blond bleached almost white by the sun. It needed trimming; the sides which may have once been closely cropped now hung more than an inch or so over her ears, giving her a scruffy, small-child air that amused Nina. Her frustration began to fade.

Hazel’s face was unusually square for a female and deeply tanned. When she scowled, as she did now because the pen wouldn’t write, lines showed at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Nina remembered her eyes as very blue and very cold. Nina, nevertheless, pushed on; they hadn’t been
that
cold.The body appeared well toned and fit and was bronzed pale brown by the sun. Nina watched, entranced, the interplay of arm muscles as the woman shook and then cursed the recalcitrant pen.

Moving her eyes downward, Nina noticed that Hazy’s feet were bare, with toes unpolished but well cared for. There, see? Hazy wasn’t so big or so bad.

The woman exploded suddenly, pitching the pen forcibly against a far wall, turning Nina’s thoughts into a lie.

 
“Bloody progress,” she exclaimed, more to herself than to Nina. “We should have stayed with the quill.” Her voice faded as she bent over the desk drawer seeking a replacement.

Nina couldn’t help herself. It really was funny. She giggled and slammed her right palm across her lips but it did little good. The tide would not be stemmed.

The woman’s head rose and she eyed the new guest in confusion. This set Nina off again until she knew her face was red and tears were spurting from pressed together eyelids. Hazy must think her totally insane.

 
“I…I’m sorry,” she gasped finally. “It’s just…”
                                                                                                                                                
How could she explain her amusement?

“I’m afraid I’m tired. It was a long drive,” she finished lamely.

Hazy had been watching Nina giggle, mouth open and eyes wide. She shut her mouth finally, fumbled out a tooth-scarred pencil from the drawer and bent back to the paper.

“Address?” she said curtly.

Chapter 2

Nina was assigned to cottage number eight, situated near the center of the semicircle of cottages. Nicely furnished, it offered a subdued plaid sofa and pine paneling. The living area rug, a deep beige color, perfectly accented furniture that was in rich brown tones. A handy desk, chair and lamp lined one wall. The large kitchen appeared to be fully equipped. All she had to supply was food. Luckily, she had picked up a few items from roadside stands along the Delmarva Peninsula for lunch and could deal with the hunger caused by a too meager breakfast.

The bedroom was larger than she expected, with a double bed and a small closet. A tall, narrow bureau stood just inside the bedroom doorway and she placed her overnight case and briefcase atop it. She stood her larger suitcase at the foot of the bed. She would worry about unpacking later.

The best thing about her cottage was the huge windows in each room. They provided a wealth of lovely scenery which she took a moment to appreciate.
 
Most importantly, the water of the channel was a mere fifty feet from her door, right behind a ground-level concrete embankment that outlined the wide Channel Haven drive and parking area. Seagulls and other waterfowl would be her constant companions during her stay here, as well as the soft language of the waves and the warm channel breezes.Walking outside the cottage, she paused next to her car. She should unpack the rest of her things...she really ought to. She should eat something…

It was no use; the water was irresistible. She strolled across the wide drive that passed before the cabins, berating herself for wasting time when she was on deadline. She simply had to have a manuscript and summary back to Martha by the day after tomorrow.

All that was forgotten as she reached the sloping boat ramp that allowed people to load their boats onto partially submerged trailers and transport them from place to place.

Nina couldn’t have found a better place to stay. Family friend Emma Loreli’s establishment, called Sweeping Pines, though lovely, was situated on the much calmer Little Oyster Bay, which separated mainland Virginia from its nearest island, Chincoteague. The Assateague Channel, the wide band of ocean that separated Chincoteague and the barrier island Assateague, was much livelier, corresponding more with the ocean’s heartbeat. The winds seemed stronger as well, scouring cleanliness into everything they touched.