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