With that end in mind, he had selected a book from the cottage’s shelves of dog-eared paperbacks and read until he’d fallen asleep on the sofa last night. He’d wakened just before dawn, at which time he had gone to bed to sleep another few hours.
Quiet. It was a luxury he could easily become addicted to.
He’d checked her cottage first thing upon awakening and seen no sign of life. But then, La Dooley was probably the type who played all night and slept until the sun was well over the yardarm. Which meant the mornings, at least, would belong to him.
At nine he had made himself a sandwich and a pot of coffee for breakfast. At 9:37, feeling remarkably fit considering the bloody and broken mess he’d been when they had hauled his carcass out of Africa a few months ago, he strolled down to the water and launched himself on the inner tube.
Approximately half an hour later, Stone got his first good look at the woman he’d been sent down to Coronoke Island to keep under surveillance.
He’d expected her to be attractive. His aunt had prepared him for that. Billy’s taste in women usually ran to showy types, which was why Stone hadn’t expected a little oatmeal-faced debutante.
But La Dooley wasn’t a little anything. What she was, was...well, big. Big frame, narrow waist, full breasts, generous hips. Legs that started at ground level and steepled all the way up to the stratosphere. Las Vegas showgirl big. Triple-dip, sugar-cone big.
A mullet jumped not three feet away and Stone ignored it, still staring at the big blonde who had taken his little cousin for over half a million and was threatening to come back for seconds. It wasn’t going to take a pair of binoculars and any cloak-and-dagger activity to keep up with La Dooley. If there was one thing she was, it was visible!
Her hairstyle, if you could call it a style, was kinky, streaky and blond, looking as if it hadn’t seen a comb in six months. From this distance, it looked almost natural, but then, on what she’d gouged out of Billy, she could afford the best salon treatment. If what Alice Hardisson had told him was even partially true, she could afford to fly to Paris once a week to have her legs waxed!
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