The Men of Thorne Island

That had been a mistake. As long as he remained distant from her, he could be objective. But once he’d felt her soft flesh under his palms, once he’d been close enough to admire the determined thrust of her chin and the spark of indignation in her eyes, she’d become all too real. And that could mean trouble for him. Not the kind of trouble Detective Banning had to face in apartment number seven, but trouble nonetheless.

The last person Nick needed in his life was an accountant. He hadn’t filed a tax return in six years, and he imagined the IRS frowned on people who just disappeared without a forwarding address. He didn’t need a finicky bean counter looking into his private life, probing his secrets, turning him into a computer entry again.

All right, maybe he’d been a little rough on her when she’d asked him to share her stupid lasagna. He conceded that, but she’d get over it. Besides, why would a guy named Nicolas Romano whose paternal ancestors came from Napoli want to eat factory-produced lasagna, anyway?

He pushed away from the computer and stared out the window rather than face the barren monitor screen any longer. But then it was Sara’s face that crept into his mind, and that didn’t make him feel any better. He supposed it wouldn’t hurt him to go down later and eat some of her dinner. It was the decent thing to do, and after all, she wasn’t staying forever. Feeling a surge of pride at his unselfish decision, Nick risked glancing at his monitor again. He rested his hands lightly on the keyboard, then lifted one of them to plow his fingers through his hair.

Stubborn strands coiled onto his forehead. He needed a haircut. It had been more than a month since his last one. It was definitely time for Gina to come over from Put-in-Bay. Now there was a woman who didn’t ask nosy questions. She just gave a damn good haircut to a man who needed some pampering once in a while. He’d be okay after he saw Gina and after he squared things with the accountant. Nick smiled in anticipation of having all his parts back in working order again. He liked an orderly life.

The knob turned slowly, guided by an unseen hand… The door to number seven eased open.

All right! Nick Bass and Ivan Banning were back in business.

AT SEVEN P.M. the first pungent aromas of garlic and tomato sauce wafted up the stairs. Factory-produced or not, the lasagna smelled darned inviting. Maybe Sara Crawford actually knew enough about cooking to add the right ingredients to a store-bought concoction to make it better.

Nick turned off his computer and headed for the bathroom down the hall. After a quick shower and shave, he pulled on a pair of jeans, a Cleveland Cavaliers T-shirt, his favorite worn Docksiders and made his way to the kitchen. He was going to enjoy seeing Sara’s face when she realized he was taking her up on her invitation after all.

A single place setting, consisting of a plate, silverware and one wineglass, was on the kitchen table. Nick almost changed his mind about dinner. The thought of eating on the grime-imbedded dinette was certainly unappetizing. But when he noticed the overhead light reflecting off the polished surface of the table, he recognized that something was different in the Cozy Cove kitchen. It was clean.

Lasagna sat on top of the gleaming stove. Cheese bubbled around the edges of the pan and rippled golden brown on top. Canned sliced pears were in a bowl on the counter. And Sara, oblivious to his entrance, had her head in the refrigerator.

She was wearing a long dress made of some thin material with big splashy flowers all over. Since she was bent at the waist, the hem of the dress was raised well above her feet and showed off a pair of canvas sandals with ties going halfway up her calves. Her very shapely calves.

Nick’s appetite for lasagna plunged. He would have been content to stare at Sara’s backside for another few hours, but she stood up, denying him the privilege. She removed a bottle of White Thorne chardonnay from the refrigerator and set it on the counter. Obviously she’d been snooping again and discovered the secret cache he’d brought up from the cellar and stored at the bottom of the pantry. But it was technically her wine now, anyway.

Nick stepped all the way into the room. “Is it a good year?” he asked.

She turned abruptly, causing the flared hem of her dress to swish around her ankles. She’d caught most of her hair up in a white, shell-shaped thing. But straight honey-colored strands trailed down her neck. It looked as if she hadn’t done anything to style it, but the effect was soft and feminine. The word angelic came to Nick’s mind, though that was a word that rarely entered his vocabulary.

All similarity to a heavenly entity ended there because Sara’s eyes sparked with animosity that made him stop a good ten feet from her. “What are you doing here?” she said.

“You invited me, remember?” He jerked his thumb at the lone place setting. “Though it looks like you forgot.”

She turned away from him and carried the wine bottle to the table. “I withdraw my invitation. You’re free to go.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Well, I don’t want you here.”

What the devil was the matter with her now? He was doing the decent thing, coming down to eat her supper as she wanted and she’d done a complete one-eighty. Nick had no intention of leaving. He’d seen the lasagna, smelled it and had a good long look at the cook. Nope. The kitchen was right where he wanted to stay. He walked over to her, affected a grin that ought to win her over if only she’d look at him, and tapped her on her bare shoulder. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’re mad at me for some reason.”

She didn’t see the grin. She was too busy looking in a drawer, probably for a corkscrew. He debated whether or not to tell her it was in the pantry.

“I don’t play guessing games, Bass,” she said. “I’m only too happy to tell you that I am definitely mad at you.”

“And the reason?” he persisted.

She slammed the drawer shut and spun around. Her expression registered such fury that he couldn’t manage to put the grin back in place.

“The reason is that you are rude and inconsiderate—for starters.”

He tried to look guilty. “That’s true.”

He’d opened the door to a personal attack, and she stormed in. “You have no regard for anyone’s feelings. And your manners are atrocious.”

“True again, but isn’t that just sort of repeating the first reason?”

She crossed her arms under her breasts, pushing soft, womanly flesh above the scooped neckline of the dress. Nick cleared his throat and raised his eyes to return to the safer territory of her face. Her lips, which he’d just noticed were tinged a glossy pink, parted as she contemplated how to answer him. “Yes, I suppose it is,” she conceded. “But you’re extremely opinionated—and just plain weird.”

He reached around her and picked up the bottle. “Okay, I’m those things, too. But I have knowledge that can add to the success of this meal, and I’m willing to share it with you for a plate of lasagna.”

Her sandy-brown eyebrows arched as she huffed out an impatient breath. “And what might that be?”

“The whereabouts of the corkscrew.”

He resisted the urge to look down at her pink-painted toes tapping a beat of impatience on the floor. He knew she was weighing her options. Should she allow an ill-mannered oaf to sit at her dinner table in return for her first taste of White Thorne nectar? It was a tough one.

“This is really ridiculous,” she finally said in exasperation. “All right, sit down.”

He headed for the table, but she grabbed his elbow. “After you get the corkscrew and open the wine.”

THE WHITE THORNE CHARDONNAY, a 1991 vintage, was deliciously tangy with a rich, fruity base. And Nick Bass proved to be a tolerable dinner companion. In fact, when Sara asked questions about his life on Thorne Island, he actually answered some of them, though his answers were evasive.

“You haven’t been here every day for six years, have you?” she asked. “You do leave the island once in a while.”

“Just for hours at a time,” he said. “I’ve been to Put-in-Bay and Sandusky on personal business. But I probably wouldn’t leave at all if I could train Winkie to clean my teeth.” He winked, a simple gesture that somehow seemed ripe with teasing sexuality. “There are some things a guy just can’t do for himself, Sara.”

Then he changed the subject and talked about his Italian grandmother and how she made her own pasta and grew her own tomatoes and spices, and how the idea of expressing an opinion opposite her husband’s was as alien to her as making spaghetti sauce from a can.

But buried somewhere in Nick’s humorous exposition on the parameters for a successful relationship between the sexes was an underlying affection for—and pride in—his past. Sara ended up telling him about her life in Brewster Falls. Nick said he’d been there once. He liked the town, claiming it was typical Americana, in a good, town-square/band-shell kind of a way.

She talked about her father and how he’d done his best to raise his teenage daughter alone. And how he still worried about her and called two or three times a week just to talk and offer advice. And she admitted that leaving Brewster Falls after graduating from college had been a tough decision.

“So why did you go?” Nick asked.

She explained about the charismatic recruiting executive from the Bosch and Lindstrom accounting firm who’d spoken to graduating seniors at Ohio State University. She submitted her résumé, and they’d hired her by phone a week later.

Nick leaned back in his chair and appraised her. “So you must be a pretty darn good tax accountant then, right?”

She made the mistake of thinking he was sincerely interested in her skills and allowed her enthusiasm to guide the discussion in a new direction. “Well, yes, I am,” she admitted. “And I see so much potential for this island.”

His eyebrows came together to form a ripple of worry over the bridge of his nose.

Sara wasn’t deterred. Nick and his buddies might as well know some of the details she’d been considering. “The buildings I’ve noticed on the island are basically sound,” she said. “A few minor structural repairs, a little fixup here and there, a massive cleanup of course, and Thorne Island could be a delightful, exclusive hideaway.”

“It already is a hideaway. For us.” The sharp tone in his voice matched the dangerous narrowing of his eyes.

“I mean for vacationers,” she persisted.