Two Hearts, Slightly Used

Auteur

Dixie Browning

Lezers

18,5K

Hoofdstukken

Auteur

Dixie Browning

Lezers

18,5K

Hoofdstukken

Harlequin💕 Romance 🏙️ Contemporary 🥵 Erotica

One

It might as well be the end of the world. There wasn’t a ferry slip, much less a bridge. Frances Smith Jones, surrounded by the bulk of her worldly possessions, stood at the edge of the weathered pier and stared across at the dusky smudge on the horizon that was Coronoke Island, waiting for the boy from the marina to bring around a boat.

Only a few days ago, burning her bridges behind her had seemed like a terrific idea. Now she was beginning to wonder if she hadn’t made one more king-size mistake.

Massaging the pucker between her eyebrows, she pushed back the headache that had been threatening all day, then discreetly rubbed her sore bottom. One thing was certain: if she had to start over again—and she did—it would most definitely not be as a long-haul truck driver!

“I can tote part of that stuff over for you, ma’am, but you’ll have to leave the rest here. All I got in the water right now is the thirteen-footer, and she don’t have a lot of freeboard. Choppy as it is today, we’d take on too much water.”

His name was Jerry. She had caught him just as he was locking the tiny marina office for the day and asked him where the bridge to Coronoke was located. “Bridge to Coronoke? Ma’am, that thing washed out back when I was in sixth grade. There was talk of rebuilding it for a while, but the state wouldn’t spend the money, and the cottagers over there sorta liked the privacy. I can run you over, but you’ll have to wait till tomorrow evening for the rest of your stuff, unless you want to take one of Maudie’s boats and haul ‘em yourself. I got a date tonight and school tomorrow.” He grinned self-consciously, big white teeth gleaming in a perennially tanned face.

Frances put his age at about seventeen, though he looked younger. She herself was thirty-nine, and at the moment she felt every single minute of it.

Indicating her smallest suitcase, the groceries she’d bought in the village and her laptop computer—things she could not do without—she locked the rest in the trunk of her car. She could get through the night on the bare essentials and worry about the rest tomorrow.

Dusk was falling rapidly, thanks in part to the heavy layer of clouds that had moved in late in the afternoon. She hadn’t counted on having to find her uncle’s cottage in the dark. According to him, there were five cottages and a sort of lodge on the island. No street numbers, no street lights, no streets.

“Ask Maudie,” he had told her. “You’ll find her at the Hunt.”

Well, first she had to find Maudie, and to do that she had to find something called a hunt. Or was it a hut? Probably the lodge he’d mentioned.

It had all seemed so simple when she’d handed in her resignation, met with the lawyer to sign over the house to the Joneses, called Uncle Seymore in Philadelphia to ask if he still had that cottage some-where down South and, if so, was it rented and, if not, could she please possibly borrow it for a few weeks, just until she decided what she was going to do with the rest of her life?

She had offered to pay rent and utilities, although it would’ve eaten into her cash reserve, but Uncle Seymore wouldn’t hear of it. “Bake me something tasty for Christmas,” he’d said, and she had promised, without the least notion of where she would be in a year’s time. High on a heady mixture of optimism, outrage and blind determination, she had managed to convince herself that, free at last, she was embarking on the adventure of a lifetime.

But somewhere between Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Coronoke, North Carolina—after two flat tires, numerous wrong turns, half a bottle of aspirin and a near miss from a driver who evidently suffered under the misassumption that the entire Indiana highway system constituted the Indianapolis Speedway—her taste for adventure had begun to dissipate.

And then she’d had to pick up that small-town weekly paper in a fast-food restaurant in Manteo, with the picture of a buck-toothed, hair-ribboned child and the too-cute headline of Lordy, Lordy, Look Who’s Forty!

Who needed reminding?

Clutching her precious laptop computer as they roared across the rough expanse of open water, Frances wondered at what point her brain had begun to atrophy. The eldest of five, she’d always been considered the sensible member of the rowdy Smith brood. Sweet, docile Frances, practical to the core.

For docile, read doormat!

Apprehension grew as they neared the small, wooded island. The only sign of habitation was the pier, and that was deserted. Club Med, this was not!

She settled up the tab, hoping she wouldn’t need to call on Jerry’s services too often. “Where will I find someone named Maudie?” she asked, once she and her belongings had been set off onto the narrow pier. She was shivering with cold, her hair was dripping with salt spray and her poor derriere had been pounded flat on the unpadded aluminum seat.

“Utah. Gone to see her new granddaughter.”

“Utah! Oh, marvelous. Then perhaps you can tell me where to find the Seymore cottage. I think it’s called Blackbeard’s Retreat, or something like that.”

“Hole. Old Teach weren’t one to do much retreatin’, not even when Lieutenant Meynard come at him with a head-remover. Whole thing happened just a little ways down the sound, right abreast—”

Frances was in no mood for a blow-by-blow of some dead pirate’s Waterloo. “Well, whatever it’s called, where do I find it?”

“Sorry, ma’am. Some folks likes hearing about that kind of stuff, some don’t. You take that there path through the woods—” he pointed at an all-but-invisible thinning of the dense, shadowy forest “—and then hang a right. Cottages are all on the other side of the island. Blackbeard’s Hole’s the one on the end. Green striped storm blinds. Can’t miss it.” Mission accomplished, he jumped back into the boat and prepared to cast off.

Standing forlornly on the pier, surrounded by her assorted belongings, Frances was sorely tempted to toss it all into the boat and go back with him. She could spend the night at a motel on Hatteras. Things were bound to look better in the morning. They could hardly look worse.

“Jerry, do you think—” she began, just as he opened the throttle and flipped her a jaunty salute.

“See you later, ma’am! Gotta go pick up my date!”

“Oh, for pity’s sake! If that’s Southern hospitality, they can just—just stuff it!” she muttered as the roar of the outboard diminished in the distance.

The first indication that she was not alone came when she felt the vibration of heavy footsteps on the sturdy wooden pier.

“If you’re looking for the Keegans, they’re not here. If you’re looking for a motel, we don’t have any. If you’re looking for hospitality, Southern or otherwise, we’re fresh out of that, too. Sorry, lady. You got off at the wrong stop.”

Her first impression was of a tall man who could easily have carried another fifteen or twenty pounds on his rangy frame. A nondescript sweatshirt hung from a set of wide, square shoulders. Worn jeans loosely covered lean hips and long legs. His boots, the thick-soled, step-in variety, showed signs of long, hard wear. Even without the extra weight he needed, he was a big man, towering over her own five foot eight, which had recently gone from slender to downright skinny.

A matched pair of Jack Spratts, she thought, with a wild urge to giggle. Frances had never giggled in her life. At least, not since she’d left the third grade. “The Keegans? Would that, by any chance, include a Maudie?”

He was closer now. The light was at his back, but what she could see of his expression was definitely not encouraging. Ignoring her perfectly civil question, he said, “I told you, lady, this place is battened down for the winter. No phones, no power, no people. You want to try again after Memorial Day, you might get a better reception.”

It could hardly be worse. The thought echoed again in her aching head. The raw wind that had followed her all the way down the narrow strip of barrier islands had diminished somewhat with the setting of the sun, but the cold had long since penetrated her layers of spray-damp clothing. Her nose had probably turned blue to match the circles under her eyes. Nothing like making a good first impression.

“And how do you propose I leave?” she inquired sweetly. To anyone who knew her, such a reckless disregard for danger would be a sure tip-off of how near the end of her rope she was. “Perhaps you’d be so kind as to direct me to the nearest bus stop?”

He didn’t know her, and obviously didn’t care to. His response was brief, rude and unhelpful. In the rapidly fading light, Frances couldn’t tell much about his face, except that it reminded her of the chunk of petrified wood her grandmother used to use as a doorstop.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I have no intention of doing any such thing,” she said, her attempt at firmness largely ruined by the chattering of her teeth. “If you’ll just point me in the right direction, I’ll find the place, myself.”

When he continued to stand there, arms crossed over his broad chest, she said, “It’s the Seymore cottage. It’s called Blackbeard’s Hole. It’s the one with the green-striped shutters!”

Exasperated beyond bearing, she reached down and began gathering up her assorted baggage. “Oh, forget it! I’ll just—”

“Storm blinds.”

“What? Oh, never mind, I’ll find it myself!” she snapped. Her head ached, she was cold, hungry, discouraged and bone tired after two and a half days of traveling. It had been a real bitch of a week.

A real bitch of a decade, actually, but she had made up her mind to leave the past behind her and look ahead to the next forty years. They were going to be terrific! She owed herself that much.

Gathering up her computer and her suitcase, Frances eyed the lumpy sacks of groceries, glanced at the sky and prayed for the rain to hold off until she had everything under cover. Her unwelcoming committee obviously had no intention of helping her.

So be it. Brushing past him, she set out up the sloping beach toward the narrow path Jerry had pointed out. If the cottages were on the other side of the island, why the dickens hadn’t he driven his blooming boat around there and parked it closer to her doorstep?

The owners liked their privacy, he’d said. Well, if she had any choice in the matter, they could keep their darned privacy! Not even a decent sidewalk! Her shoes were filled with sand before she’d gone a hundred feet, and there was no telling how much farther she still had to go.

“You really intend to go through with it, huh?”

At the sound of that gravelly voice right behind her, Frances almost walked into a tree. And that was another thing about sand she hated! A body could sneak up on you and you wouldn’t even hear him!

Trudging onward, she made up her mind to ignore him, but the temptation was too great. She stole a glance over her shoulder and then had the grace to feel ashamed when she saw that he was carrying the two largest of her six sacks of groceries. They were heavy, too. Five pounds of this, five pounds of that, not to mention all the canned goods—she’d had to start from scratch and stock up on everything.

He moved up beside her, crowding her between the dark, encroaching bushes. “How do you intend to get in?” he asked.

Frances tried to ignore the feeling of being trapped in the forest with a hungry predator. She refused to be intimidated. She’d come too far for that. “I’ll pick the lock, of course. Or if I can’t find my trusty lock picker, I’ll just toss a brick through a window.” A streak of reckless perversity that was totally out of character kept her from mentioning the key her uncle had mailed her.

“That’s what storm blinds are for.”

“Oh? Then it’ll have to be lock-picking. I always hate picking strange locks in the dark, but at least it’s neater than using explosives.”

Explosives? The closest she’d ever come to using explosives was when she’d microwaved her first egg. She was running on adrenaline, practically begging for trouble from a stranger who looked as if he’d invented trouble and still held the patent.

But anger served to keep her going, and she was afraid if she slowed down for so much as a minute, she might collapse like a punctured balloon.

“Look, I have a key from the owner, all right?” she cried, exasperated. “I’m not trespassing, so you can just knock off the watchdog routine!”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Might as well warn you, though, if you’re looking for a cozy place to crash—the generator tank probably needs filling, and without that, you won’t have lights, heat or running water. You might find a candle or two, but that’s about all.”

“Fine! Just give me the luxuries of life, and I’ll do without the necessities.” The only luxury she wanted at the moment was a bed and a roof over her head, and even the roof was optional as long as it didn’t rain. “I’ll figure it all out tomorrow.” Fumbling in her shoulder bag, she came up with the door key and prayed it was the right one. Knowing Uncle Seymore, it could just as easily be the key to his own basement. Poor Uncle Seymore wasn’t quite as sharp as he used to be.

It was the right key. Frances stepped inside and drew a deep breath of relief. Home at long last! And then she shivered. Home, at the moment, was cold as a tomb, damp as a well and smelled of mice and mildew. “I’ve seen cozier caves,” she muttered. “Do bats smell like mice?”

“I warned you.” He had come in right behind her, and for one crazy moment, she was glad of his nearness. Alone wasn’t quite so intimidating when there was someone there to share it.

“So you did. Did I remember to thank you? No? Then thank you so much for all your help and your warm welcome. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get the rest of my groceries under cover in case it rains tonight.”

“I think that’s pretty well guaranteed. Do you have a flashlight?”

“Of course I have a flashlight!” Digging in her purse, she came up with a small plastic model designed to locate car keys and keyholes. It illuminated a spot roughly the size of a nickel.

“Pretty. By the way, does your keeper know you’ve escaped?”

Frances could have wept—not so much at her own stupidity, but because he was there to gloat over it. Her good flashlight was back in Fort Wayne, along with her books, her mother’s good chesterfield, Aunt Becky’s marble-topped table, her AM-FM radio and all her garden implements. She’d been so blessed eager to escape with a clear conscience that she’d given her in-laws practically everything that could even faintly be considered marital property and stored the rest.

“Oh, yes. I left word at the asylum I’d be leaving. So thanks again for all your kind assistance,” she said with a saccharine smile. It was almost too dark to see inside the house, even with the front door standing wide open. She flicked on a light switch. Nothing happened.

“I warned you.” He was still holding both sacks of groceries, and she caught the gleam of a smile—a malicious smile, she told herself.

“Lucky for me, I’m not afraid of the dark.” She was afraid of three things—snakes, lightning and being made a fool of again. “Just put them anywhere—on that counter over there.”

“I may as well go get—”

“No, thank you. I need the exercise.” She held the door wide, hoping her grimace would pass for a smile in the dim light. In about five seconds she was going to cry, curse or kick something—hard! And she’d just as soon not have any witnesses.

* * *

Back at the Hunt several minutes later, Brace let himself inside and reached automatically for the light switch. His hand fell to his side, closed into a fist and then slid into his pocket. Dammit, his conscience was already giving him flak for all the lies he’d laid on her, and the crazy thing was, he didn’t even possess a conscience!

If she was still here tomorrow, he promised himself he would check out her generator. The tank wasn’t empty. They were kept topped off to prevent condensation.

Of course, he could simply flip the breakers and she wouldn’t need a generator. Unless the power cut out. Keegan had explained how salt buildup could cause transformers to arc, setting off pole fires, but there’d been enough rain lately to wash the salt off the lines.

On the other hand, there was no point in making things too easy for her. The more uncomfortable she was, the sooner she’d head back to wherever she’d come from. If there was one thing Brace didn’t need right now, it was company! Keegan had sworn the place was deserted by all but a few die-hard hunters in the wintertime.

Using his excellent night vision, he made his way to the back part of the restored central section of the lodge called Keegan’s Hunt. It had been built about a hundred years ago as a private hunting club and was on the way to falling into ruins when Rich Keegan, a few generations removed from the original builder, had come down to see if there was anything worth salvaging before the family’s ninety-nine-year lease ran out.

He’d found a squatter named Maudie—a divorcee with a grown daughter—married her and begun the task of rebuilding the elegant old hunt club and establishing a small but thriving air-commuter service between Billy Mitchell Airport on Hatteras and the mainland.

Not until Brace reached his own room, a corridorlike affair with a single oddly placed window, did he switch on a light, confident that it wouldn’t be seen from cottage row. Standing before a bow-fronted, bird’s-eye maple bureau with an ornate, gilt-framed mirror above it, he studied his own face dispassionately for the first time since he’d arrived a week and a half ago to island-sit for the Keegans while they went West.

It had been pretty dark. He figured she couldn’t have gotten a good look at him. Too bad. Stroking his jaw, he told himself that if she’d come a little earlier in the day, he could’ve scared the hell out of her without having to lay on all those lies. The way Brace figured it, in the long run the truth was a lot easier than lies. He’d never been a candidate for sainthood, but at least he drew the line somewhere.

Dispassionately he studied the image in the clouded and speckled old mirror. A few parts of the face that stared back were familiar. The deep-set gray eyes, narrowed from years of squinting against the sun. The hairline that was just beginning to migrate northward—at least, he imagined it was. As for the hair itself, it was still thick, of a nondescript shade of brown that turned paler on top in the summer sun. The gray hardly showed, not that he gave a good damn. He’d earned every last one of those gray hairs the hard way.

Earned the scars, too, he acknowledged ruefully as he studied the network of fine white lines that marred the left side of his face. His left cheekbone was slightly higher than the right one, but his new nose was a decided improvement over the old model. After a few too many walk-away crashes, not to mention more barroom brawls than he cared to recall, the old one had been barely functional. This new version—he fingered the straight slope—in addition to running a true northeast, southwest course, had the added advantage of working.

Switching off the light, Brace smiled bleakly into the darkness. He’d been accused of a lot of things in his long and colorful career—of carrying a chip on his shoulder the size of an old-growth redwood. Of trying to prove something to himself—God knew what. Of running on a mixture of jet fuel, adrenaline and testosterone.

Guilty on all three counts. It had taken a fiery, near-fatal crash in the top-secret ATX-4 he’d been testing to clip his wings permanently. Thirty-two months of intermittent hospitalization for reconstruction and rehabilitation gave a man a little too much time to think.

It was during that same period that he’d met Rich Keegan. Neither man had been into socializing, but they’d had flying in common. Finding themselves alone in the ward, while the others hung out in the rec room watching TV and playing video games, they’d gradually begun to talk. Behind the protective covering of a faceful of bandages, Brace had found himself opening up for the first time since he’d confided in a foster parent some thirty-odd years before that his real father was an Air Force general who was too busy saving the world to take care of him.

Hell, he’d never had a clue as to who his old man was. His mother, either. Once, though, he’d overheard a social worker telling a cop who’d busted him for some petty offense or another that he’d been left in a shopping cart in a department store rest room and was more trouble than any kid they’d ever had to deal with.

To this day Brace could recall how proud he’d been at the distinction. They’d called him John Henry because they’d had to call him something, but he’d never felt like a John Henry. When he was thirteen, he’d taken the name of Bracewell after a local war hero who was being feted about that time. The Ridgeway had come from the department store. He’d rather liked that touch. As soon as he’d been old enough, he’d had the name made legal.

Now he wandered back out to the kitchen and lit the burner under the pot of day-old coffee. With his face in traction for so long, he’d had to give up cigarettes. Alcohol didn’t mix with too many of the drugs he’d been on in the hospital, so he’d cut down on that vice, too. Mostly, he made do with bad coffee. Black as tar and strong enough to float an F-18. Sooner or later the stuff would probably eat a hole in his gut, and he’d wind up back in a hospital bed. He’d sworn never to set foot in another hospital. The day he’d walked out a free man, he’d sworn the only way anyone would ever get him back in another hospital was feetfirst, in a Ziploc bag.

He’d sworn a lot of things when he’d learned that if he so much as pulled a single G, his whole carcass would probably self-destruct.

His flying days were over, but what the hell—he’d survive. If there was one thing Brace had learned about himself over some forty-three years, it was that he was too damn mean to die young.

In the Hunt’s main living room, paneled in pickled cypress and decorated with an eye more to comfort than style, he turned on the TV and slid a video in the VCR. He poured himself a pint-size mug of thick coffee and settled down to watch an old World War II training film.

The P-51. Now there was one sweet plane! Yawning, he slipped farther down into the deep leather-covered chair. The furnace cut in as the temperature fell. Outside, rain rattled against the tall windows as wind gusted against the northeast side of the house.

Half-asleep, he wondered if the woman had ever found the switch box. Probably hadn’t even thought to look. Most women wouldn’t know a switch box from a sushi bar. Keegan’s Maudie, of course, would’ve had everything ticking over in two minutes flat. But then, Keegan’s Maudie was one in a million.

His thoughts drifted aimlessly back to some of the women who had figured briefly in his own life over the years. By mutual choice they’d been strictly temporary diversions. Decorative, entertaining and willing.

And then, unbidden, his thoughts vectored onto a new heading, and he heard again Sharon’s voice saying to someone just outside the door of his hospital room, “Oh, God, I can’t stand to look at him! He can’t even talk! How do they know his brain still works? What if he never looks any better than he does now? He’ll have to wear a mask— Oh, God, what am I going to tell everybody? What am I going to do? No one can expect me to marry that!”

Sharon Bing. The sister of a man who’d been trying off and on for years to lure him into a business partnership, Sharon had been one of Pete’s most effective inducements. What had started out as a casual acquaintance had unexpectedly escalated into a high-octane affair. With a background in the airline industry—old P. G. Bing had once owned a small regional airline, giving young Pete and Sharon a leg-up in the business—Sharon had liked the idea of being married to the man who had tested and helped develop one of the Navy’s hottest flying machines. And Brace had thought, why not? He’d tried about everything else. Other men had taken the plunge and lived to tell the tale, so why not give it a try?

And then had come the crash. Hanging on to the ability to breathe had taken top priority for the first few weeks, but he was tougher than he’d been given credit for.

Eventually, Brace had discovered that appearances mattered a lot more to Sharon than he’d thought. She was a beautiful, brainy woman, and beautiful, brainy women could pretty much write their own ticket. He couldn’t begrudge her that. He sure as hell couldn’t blame her for wanting out once he no longer fit her specifications.

She’d let him down gently, he’d have to hand her that. About as gently as he’d let down the ATX-4. It had probably been the best thing that could’ve happened to him, he’d rationalized later. What did a guy who’d been flying solo all his life need with a wife, anyhow?

He still kept a picture of her—one of those glamour things, all heavy eyelids, pouting lips and plunging neckline, shot through a soft-focus lens. It helped to remind him, in case he was ever tempted to forget, of what could happen when a guy started taking himself too seriously.

It would’ve hurt a lot worse if he hadn’t been groggy from all those painkillers. An unexpected side benefit of having his face ripped off and then reconstructed—getting dumped hadn’t seemed all that important at the time.

Deliberately Brace pulled his thoughts out of the power dive and steered them back to the present. Which, at the moment, included a tall, skinny woman with stringy black hair, a gritty voice and the sweet disposition of a hornet with PMS.

Of course, he hadn’t been all that sweet himself. But dammit, Keegan had guaranteed him complete privacy in return for keeping an eye on things for a few weeks! All he needed was a quiet, private place to hole up while he weighed his options and made his decision. How the devil could a man concentrate with a bunch of nosy strangers dropping in out of the blue, staring at his face and asking stupid questions?

Dammit, he was not oversensitive! He didn’t give a damn what she thought, as long as she did her thinking somewhere else!

He’d give her a day, he decided. Two days, tops, but he doubted if she’d even last that long. A deserted island in late January, with the nearest shopping mall several islands away?

No way. If he knew women—and to his sorrow, he did—she’d be out of here before noon.

The old training film video droned on. Brace had watched it at least a hundred times. Yawning, he told himself he should’ve plugged in her phone, at least. That way she could call the marina and be out of his hair before she dug in too deeply.

First thing in the morning, just to be on the safe side, he mused drowsily, he’d run Keegan’s boat around to the other side of the island, out of sight. Just in case she took it in her head not to wait for Jerry to get out of school.

“Yeah. You should be so lucky,” he muttered. Yawning, he watched as the pilot of the P-51 taxied in for a perfect three-point landing, confident that no woman whose idea of a serviceable flashlight was a pink plastic gizmo the size of a lipstick tube was going to tackle a forty-horse outboard in unfamiliar waters.

Feeling the last of the tension seep out of the muscles at the back of his neck, he yawned again and told himself he might even offer to run her over himself.

Sure! Why not? And to prove what a sweetheart he was, he wouldn’t even make her beg.