The Men of Thorne Island

It was barely recognizable as the Cozy Cove Inn. Only a sign hanging by one rusty nail from a post at the front gate confirmed its identity. The front-porch roof sagged against the peeling white gingerbread molding of its supports.

Sara stepped onto the porch, dropped her bags by her feet and sank into a drooping wicker chair. She might have sat there indefinitely had she not noticed the baskets of blooming spring flowers hanging from the eaves. They were the only sign that someone still cared about the place.

She stood and paced the length of the veranda. Old wood planks groaned under her feet, but fortunately remained intact. With renewed optimism, she turned the knob on the door and entered her Cozy Cove Inn.

She stepped into a wide hallway furnished with only a guest-registration counter, a wall clock that had stopped at eight-twenty-two and a pair of Windsor chairs scarred with what high-priced decorators might call character.

To her left was a large parlor. It was impossible to determine the style or colors of anything in the room. Every piece of furniture had been covered by a sheet except one wing chair and a small table by the fireplace. The walls were adorned with peaceful country prints and shelves of hardback books.

Feeling more like an intruder than a proprietor, Sara slowly backed out of the room. Unease raised the hair on her neck. The inn appeared empty, yet Sara had the distinct sense that she was not alone.

She’d never believed in the supernatural, yet the presence of another soul in this house was as real to her at this moment as was the newel post at the bottom of the thick banister. She curved her fingers around the post and willed herself to go up the stairs.

A center hallway veered to the left and right of the second-floor landing. Doors stretched the length of the hall. All of them were closed except one at the very end. Weak sunlight mixed with an artificial glow poured into the passage. Sara approached cautiously, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. Logic told her that she wouldn’t find any of course. Mr. Winkleman would have told her if there was something bizarre about the island. Surely he wouldn’t have left her alone…

The first unnatural sounds of Thorne Island floated from the room to Sara’s ears. It was a light tapping, almost like… Yes, that was it. Sara stood outside the open door listening to the harmless sound of someone pecking a computer keyboard.

She stepped over the threshold and had her first look at the other resident of the Cozy Cove Inn. It was a man and his back was to her. Dark, thick curls covered the collar of his knit shirt.

His hands halted above the keyboard. His back straightened and his voice, low and hoarse, reached her across the room. “If you’re trying to scare me to death, it’ll never work. So if you came to kill me, you’d best use a gun.”

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN THE FULL IMPACT of the man’s statement registered in Sara’s brain, she didn’t know whether to laugh or run from the room. She did neither, but instead spoke to the back of his head. “What a horrible thing to say.”

His ancient office chair squeaked as he turned slowly toward her. “Not to someone creeping around your house, it isn’t.”

Though he faced her, he was still in the shadows. She couldn’t detect any details of his features.

“Of course, I didn’t know at first that you were a woman,” he added.

Sara hated being at a disadvantage. The last amber rays of daylight speared through the louvered shutters at his back. He could see her clearly enough, but his form was nothing but an amorphous gray blob to her. “What difference does it make that I’m a woman?” she said. “I could still kill you.”

He stretched one leg, then settled his ankle on the opposite knee, a casual pose for someone who just a moment before had thought he might be taking his last breath. “Yeah, but you won’t. Women don’t like to murder people after they’ve looked into their eyes.”

“Then don’t get too confident,” Sara shot back, “because I haven’t seen your eyes yet.”

He deliberately moved his chair out of the shadow until sunlight fell across his upper body. “There, is that better?”

It was. The shapeless mass had transformed into an exceedingly acceptable-looking human. Except perhaps for his almost black hair, which was unstylishly long and untidy. It curled over his forehead to meet a slightly lighter pair of straight eyebrows. Much of the rest of an interesting face was hidden by at least two days’ growth of beard. He was fairly young, near her own age, Sara assumed, prompting her to conclude that she wasn’t looking at “Ol’ Brody.”

Once Sara had noted these details, the man’s shirt commanded her attention. She’d given her father a similar one at least fifteen years ago when he took up golf, and her sense of humor had been quite different from what it was now. A beige knit background hugged the man’s chest respectably, but it was the eighteen numbered golf flags fluttering around his torso that made Sara choke back her laughter.

Each flag had a different cartoon printed on its surface. Flag number sixteen, the one she could see most clearly, depicted a droopy-eyed fellow with an ice bag on his head and a thermometer sticking out of his mouth. The words “Feeling under par” were printed next to the caricature. Other clichéd golf references decorated the remaining flags. Sara covered her mouth with her hand, but wasn’t successful in stopping a chuckle.

The man plucked a portion of the shirt away from his chest and stared down at it. “What? You don’t like my shirt?”

“It would be all right if it were a cocktail napkin at the nineteenth hole.”

“Hey, it’s got a pocket. That’s why I like it. Try to find shirts with pockets these days.”

Sara’s limited experience with shopping for men’s clothes hadn’t included an awareness of shirt pockets, so she just said, “I know, and it’s a darned shame.”

“It is if you smoke.”

“Do you smoke?”

“Not anymore. But I like knowing I still have a pocket in case I start again. Basically I just hate it when manufacturers mess up a good thing after I get used to it.”

The hint of a smug grin lifted the corners of his mouth. This man obviously liked to have the last word. And once he knew he wasn’t about to be shot, there was no lack of confidence in his manner. “But we’re off the subject here,” he said. “What are you doing creeping around my place?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I wasn’t creeping. What’s the point of trying to remain unnoticed after riding in that boat with the earsplitting engine? Don’t tell me you didn’t hear us arrive.”

“Of course I heard the boat. I just figured Winkie had forgotten the toilet paper or something and was dropping it off. I sure never thought that what he was leaving behind was a snooping female.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “So now I’m snooping and creeping?”

He raised his hands palms up as if his point was obvious. “Look, you came into my place without so much as a hoot or a holler and tiptoed up to my room like a typical nosy woman on your little lady cat’s feet…”

Suddenly his golf flags weren’t amusing anymore. They were just stupid. And his hair wasn’t untidy, it was unkempt. And his attitude belonged way back in an era before golf was even invented. Sara’s index finger poked out at him as if it had a mind of its own, which it must have, since she hated for anyone to do that to her. “Now look,” she said in a voice that quivered with underlying anger, “first of all, this is my place, and I’ll walk around in it any way I please!”

That seemed to get to him. He gave her a dark look. “What do you mean, your place?”

“I mean this hotel is mine, this island is mine. In fact, every single place on this island—if there are any others—belongs to me.” For emphasis, she yanked the deed out of her purse and held it up to the challenge in his eyes. “Would you care to inspect this document?”

He stood up from the chair, all lean six-feet-plus of him, and glared at the paper in her hand with eyes that she saw now were startlingly gray. “What’s happened to Millie?” he demanded.

The mention of her aunt’s name gave him some credibility. At least he wasn’t a squatter. Sara softened her tone. “Millicent Thorne died last week.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his middle finger to the bridge of his nose. “Damn it. Why didn’t somebody tell me?”

His reaction caught her off guard. “You knew my aunt personally?”

“Millicent Thorne is…was your aunt?”

“Actually great-aunt, yes.”

“Well, of course I knew her. I’ve been living on her island for the past six years.”

“And not paying any rent for a good part of it, too.”

His eyes, which had only just registered the shock of bad news, now narrowed with irritation. “Now, hold on a minute. I haven’t missed a single month paying my rent. For your information, Millie stopped collecting my checks. She said she didn’t need the money. Told me to hold on to them and send a bunch all at once when she asked for them.”

“Why would she do that?”

He turned away from her and sat back down in his desk chair. “You’d have to ask Millie about that, which might be difficult at the moment, but I would suspect it had to do with a little something called trust.”

“She trusted you?”