A Little Corner Of Paradise

She stood five feet nine in her bare feet, closer to five-ten in the shoes she’d been wearing at that moment. He’d towered over her, lithe, muscular, powerful. His hair gleamed damply from a recent shower, his smile captivated, his eyes seduced. But, more than all those things, she’d experienced again that same muffled detonation inside, that sense of having been poleaxed by the magnetic force surging between them.

Once more overcoming the inclination to stammer and drool like some half-baked teenager, she’d ushered him inside and, after an initial moment or two of awkwardness, conversation had come easily. Lunch was no more than half over before he knew that she was a librarian and had worked at college level for five years prior to resuming her career in her home town. And she knew that he had majored in political science and journalism, and traveled all over the world as a foreign correspondent.

‘Sort of polar opposites, aren’t we?’ he’d remarked later, as she showed him around the house.

‘We don’t seem to have much in common,’ she’d replied, all the while excruciatingly conscious of the attraction arcing between them.

‘Apart from our mutual appreciation of old houses, no.’ He’d run an admiring palm over the satin-smooth mahogany of the stair banister, but his eyes had lingered on her mouth. ‘Sometimes, though, it’s the differences that…weld a relationship.’

She’d heard confusion in his voice, and she’d understood why. It defied logical explanation that two strangers could come face to face for the first time and seem to recognize each other. As if, rational intellect notwithstanding, their hearts had said, ‘You’re home. The searching’s over.’

Yet, rational or not, attraction, awareness—call it what you like—had stretched between them, a fine, indestructible line fraught with sexual repercussions.

But still, in love?

‘Of course not,’ she said, not quite meeting Sadie’s probing gaze.

Never one to be easily put off if she scented romance, Sadie smirked. ‘Got a hot date lined up, then?’

To her chagrin, Madeleine almost smirked back. ‘No,’ she said, deciding that a lie of omission was justified in this case. An invitation to join Nick in a simple dinner cooked over a fire on the beach next Friday hardly qualified as hot, after all—except, perhaps, in the most literal sense. ‘What makes you ask?’

‘You’ve got the same sappy grin on your face that that benighted Peg Leg wears all the time,’ Sadie said.

‘There’s no law against smiling, Sadie.’

’There is in your case.’ Sadie hooted, not in the least deterred by Dilys’s ‘Tsk tsk!’ of censure. ‘You’re a librarian and you’re supposed to look smugly academic—though now that I take a closer look, maybe “smug” does fit your description after all, along with “besotted”, and a few other words I can think of. And I’d bet my last dollar that Andy Latham isn’t the one responsible for the change.’

‘Andy’s a nice man, Sadie.’

‘And about as comfortable as an old boot. There’s no spark between the two of you, Madeleine, so quit trying to fool me into thinking there is.’

‘Andy and I enjoy a mutually rewarding… friendship. He takes me out for dinner at least once a week, and we often catch a movie in Dunesport.’

‘I visit my grandma every Sunday afternoon and have a whale of a time,’ Sadie said scornfully, ‘but it no more sends my blood-pressure soaring than your sitting across from Andy and watching him scoff a steak puts yours into overdrive. You have stars in your eyes, my dear, and roses in your cheeks. In fact—’ she stood back and planted her hands on her hips ‘—you present a disgustingly blithe picture of what my old dad used to call “feminine pulchritude” and I have only one piece of advice for you: make the most of whatever—or whoever—is causing it. You’ve spent enough time lamenting the con-artist’s betrayal, my friend, and if something better’s shown up on the horizon, then “Hallelujah!" I say.’

Andy, however, disagreed, as Madeleine discovered after work that same afternoon. She was in the parking lot behind the library, fishing in her purse for her keys, when his patrol car cruised to a stop beside her. ‘Got time for coffee with an overworked cop before you head home?’ he asked, poking his head out of the window.

She smiled. ‘I’ll make the time, Officer.’

‘That Hamilton man,’ he began, as soon as they were seated in the Primrose Café, ‘is he still hanging around?’

‘As far as I know,’ Madeleine said evasively, un-willing to admit more and give Andy the chance to hold forth on the inadvisability of inviting a total stranger to lunch without a bodyguard in attendance. ‘Why?’

‘Just wondered.’ He stirred his coffee vigorously and tapped the spoon three times on the rim of the cup, a habit of his that usually denoted that he had something on his mind. ‘I checked out his vehicles. He picked up both from a rental outfit in Vancouver last week. He holds a valid California driver’s license, collared two speeding tickets in the last five years, and has no out-standing fines.’

‘So he’s harmless, just as I expected.’

Andy looked at her from under puckered brows. ‘"Harmless" isn’t a word that I’d apply to a man like him, especially not where a woman like you is concerned.’

She bristled with annoyance at that. ‘What do you mean, “a woman like me”?’

Andy stirred his coffee again. ‘Well…’ Tap, tap, tap. ‘You’re different.’

‘Different how?’

‘You’re sort of…’ Tap, tap, tap. ‘Impressionable. You’re not as…well, as hard-boiled as, say, Sadie, and that can make you an easy mark to a certain type of man.’

‘What you’re really saying, Andy,’ Madeleine cut in sharply, ‘is that because I made the mistake of marrying Martin I must be a few bales short of a full load. And I have to tell you I’m beginning to resent your attitude.’

‘Well, heck, Madeleine!’ Andy protested. ‘You’ve got to admit that Martin and this Hamilton guy do seem to be cut from the same cloth.’

‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. Nick Hamilton is nothing like Martin. Nothing at all.’

‘He’s a sight too smooth for my liking. Too damned full of himself. And you—’ Andy’s warm brown gaze had narrowed with suspicion ‘—you seem unusually sure of someone you hardly know. Or have I missed a chapter somewhere between now and last Friday?’

She hoped that he interpreted the flush on her cheeks as anger and not guilt. Because, she assured herself, she’d done nothing to feel guilty about. ‘You missed nothing,’ she said.

‘And it’s none of my concern anyway,’ he finished gloomily.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You didn’t have to. The message came through loud and clear that what you do and who you see when I’m not around is no one’s business but your own.’

‘We have no claim on each other, Andy.’

‘I know.’ He stared morosely into the dregs of his coffee. ‘Has he said how long he’s going to be hanging around?’

‘No, but then I haven’t asked him. I didn’t think it was any of my business.’

Andy sighed. ‘Will you promise me one thing? Will you at least be careful? Just because he doesn’t have a criminal record it doesn’t mean he’s harmless, no matter what you might think. I’m only asking because I care about you, Madeleine.’

His obvious concern softened the edges of her annoyance. ‘I know that, Andy, and I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. But you have to understand that I can’t go through the rest of my life expecting that everyone I meet is a carbon copy of Martin, or that because I made one mistake I’m doomed to repeating it. Give me credit for having some brains.’

‘It’s not your brains I worry about,’ Andy said on another sigh. ‘It’s your heart If you’d give it to me, it’d be safe.’

He was right, Madeleine thought, as she drove the five miles out to Spindrift Island. The trouble was, as Sadie had so accurately observed, it wasn’t ‘safe’ that put ‘spark’ into a relationship between a man and a woman. There had to be an undercurrent of excitement, an edge of danger, of risk, to bring it alive. And, in order for it to survive, there had also to be that sense of having found a soulmate to give it balance.

Even at its best, her marriage to Martin had been lacking in whatever vital ingredient made two separate people into a couple. There had been, at least in the beginning, a semblance of passion and desire, but there had never been much meeting of the minds. Nor, as she had ultimately learned to her cost, a mutual under-standing of values or ethics.

On Sunday, however, as Nick’s visit had stretched from one hour to two, and eventually to three, she’d had a little taste of what she’d missed in matrimony. Over and above the erotic pull, she’d experienced a sense of sympathetic communion with Nick; a sense of sharing such as she’d never known with Martin.

So much insight, she thought, pulling into the driveway leading to the farmhouse, and all because a man she’d known only a few days had wonderful blue eyes and the voice of a fallen angel! A man of whom Andy passionately disapproved—but whom Peg Leg found completely and unconditionally acceptable.

Peg Leg, thank the lord, had impeccable instincts.

At six o’clock on Friday evening Nick collected the papers littering the small table in the main cabin of the RV and shoved them haphazardly into his briefcase. Scraping a hand over the day-old growth of beard on his jaw, he headed for the cramped bathroom to shower and shave.

He had a headache, the sort that aspirins couldn’t cure. The sort inflicted on a man by his conscience—something Nick Hamilton didn’t usually allow to trouble him. But the fact was that the success of Phase Two of Operation Tyler, last weekend, bothered him more than he cared to admit. And Phase Three would shortly get under way.