An Unlikely Match

She slid her sunglasses from the top of her head to the bridge of her nose. “There’s more than one way to get it,” she said.

“Probably, but what way is easier than going with me to Dolphin Run? Plus, I could use a little information myself.” He glanced over his shoulder in the general direction of the abandoned resort. “Have you ever seen the place?”

She admitted she hadn’t.

“Aren’t you the least bit curious about it? Don’t you want to know what’s on the other side of that big iron fence?”

She shrugged, attempting to minimize her recent desperate desire to know everything about Dolphin Run and the people involved in its purchase. “I can wait till another time.”

“Suit yourself, Claire,” he said. The use of her first name was no doubt a tactic of his to topple a barrier between them so he could get her cooperation. Oddly, it almost worked. When he added, “But I’d sure appreciate the company,” Claire found herself wanting to say yes.

Then he opened the driver’s side door of his SUV and said, “Big old spooky places scare me.”

She watched him slide into the seat and pull his door shut. When he zipped down the passenger window and leaned down to look at her, she was still staring at the car. “What do you say?”

She released the breath she’d been holding in a long, exasperated sigh. “Oh, all right, I’ll go.” She gave a quick look into the window of Heron Point Realty, saw Patty and Lucy staring at her, and got into the car. “But I have a feeling I’m going to regret this.”

Hogan jerked his thumb toward the back seat. “Have a doughnut.” He indicated the paper bag. “I went grocery shopping this morning. Got the essentials.”

Claire stole a peek over the top of the sack. Doughnuts, a jar of coffee, a bag of spicy jalapeño chips and beer. Those were Jack Hogan’s food essentials. Claire’s stomach turned over in a gesture of self-preservation. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

JACK RAN HIS WINDOW DOWN as he drove out of town. As the wind rushed into the car, he looked at Claire. “Do you mind?” Since the passenger window had already been lowered, strands of her thick blond hair had come loose from the clip that had held it together at the nape of her neck. And Claire Betancourt didn’t look like the kind of woman who appreciated having her sleek hairdo whipped around her face like she was on an amusement ride. Jack thought he’d better see if she wanted the windows up and the air-conditioning on.

She raised her glasses to the top of her head, holding the windblown strands away from her forehead. “No, it feels good actually.”

He pushed a few errant spikes of hair off his brow and mentally added a trip to a barbershop to his growing list of priorities. Normally he kept his lightly peppered dark hair close-cropped and maintenance-free, but he’d put off his monthly visit to his hair cutter while he was preparing to leave for Heron Point. He hoped he wouldn’t have to drive the thirty miles back to civilization just to find a barber.

“So, how long have you been mayor?” he said after a moment.

“Almost a year. I’d only lived in Heron Point a year and a half when I was persuaded to run.”

“Looks like you impressed the populace pretty quickly.”

Keeping her gaze focused on the road, she smiled. “Not really. I ran unopposed. I heard after I was elected in a landslide of five hundred and twenty-three votes that the mayor before me was also a newcomer and also ran unopposed. I’m starting to believe the office is a rite of initiation for new residents.”

“But, hey, you must have got all the votes.”

“You’d think so, but no, I didn’t. There were six write-ins. Hester Poole got two of them.”

“My landlady with the phobia about big cars?”

“Yes, and an obvious affinity for pink.” She gave him a sideways glance. “By the way, how do you like your accommodations?”

He pretended nonchalance. “What’s not to like? Except that I feel like Ken when he finally got lucky and was invited to Barbie’s house. Only Barbie’s not there.”

“Maybe you can move to Dolphin Run after it’s cleaned up a bit,” she suggested.

He turned onto Gulfview Drive, which would take them to the spit of land where the resort was located. “I don’t know. I have a hunch it’s going to take more than a broom and dustpan to make the place livable. And I can’t fault Mrs. Poole for her housekeeping skills.”

Truthfully, though Jack had been kidding about being afraid of going into Dolphin Run alone, he wasn’t looking forward to what he might find there. According to Archie, the original owners had left the place virtually deserted in the early sixties. Jack figured there had to be a story behind their sudden departure. Maybe someday when he and Archie shared that bottle of scotch, he’d learn what it was.

The next owners, the Holcombs, had intended to keep the place running. But apparently they’d lost interest rather quickly and had given up any thoughts of managing the establishment. To Jack’s knowledge, no one had stayed in Dolphin Run since the late sixties. Perhaps it had even been that long since anyone had stepped inside the place. Who knew what creatures had taken up residence without humans to shoo them away.

“There it is,” Claire said, pointing to an overgrown thicket of shrubs and trees gone wild from lack of attention.

Jack slowed and stared at majestic cedars, live oaks dripping with moss and more varieties of palms than he’d known existed. He couldn’t detect either a building or an iron fence through the blanket of dense limbs and drooping fronds. “Looks like my first order of business is to hire a new gardener for this place,” he said.

“Hmmm…” Claire leaned forward to get a better perspective. “I think the main gate is just ahead about a hundred yards.”

Jack turned into what was left of a concrete drive and steered over cracked cement and washed-out roadbed until he reached the gate, which was obscured by forces of nature determined to undermine its existence. He stopped the car.

Claire looked up through the windshield at branches sweeping the Escalade’s pristine paint job. “I know it’s none of my business,” she said. “And I know I asked you this before, but now that I’m here, I can’t help wondering again why a man like Archie Anderson, who could buy any glamorous property on the planet, would want Dolphin Run.”

Jack reached into his pocket for the ring of keys Lucy had given him at the realty office. “Believe me,” he said, “I wondered that very thing myself.” He draped his arm over the steering wheel and tried to determine where the lock might be hidden in the thick greenery draping the fence. “He vaguely told me he wants it for both business purposes and personal reasons. I suppose he’ll tell me more when he thinks I need to know. But right now my job is to make this place like a mini fortress, and that’s what I intend to do.”

Claire swatted at an insect that had flown in the window. “As you know, Mr. Hogan, that’s what bothers me. I hope you’re not thinking you can make changes in Heron Point to suit the whims of one man. Tell me. What is your boss so afraid of?”

Jack spared her a quick glance as he pulled on the door handle and then let his gaze linger. The prim and proper mayor sure looked sexy raking her slim fingers through a tangled mass of sunstruck hair. And then he forced his mind to his mission. He doubted that she would appreciate knowing he was evaluating her sex appeal, especially when she was so busy expressing how serious she was about protecting her town’s status quo. He smiled to himself. In their own ways, both he and the mayor were in the protection business.

“People, Claire,” he said, responding to her question. “Archie Anderson is afraid of everybody he doesn’t know and half of those he does. I suppose it’s a curse of being excessively wealthy. If you don’t watch your back all the time, you’d better have someone around who watches it for you.” He got out of the car but leaned back in the window. “That’s what he hired me to do.”

She got out, walked to the gate and began helping him clear away vegetation so they could locate the lock. “Well, I think that’s sad,” she said. “A man lives his whole life being afraid of his own shadow for no reason—”

“Oh, he’s got reason,” Jack interrupted her. Having uncovered the rusted lock, he stuck the key into the hole. “On average, Anderson gets a half-dozen credible threats a month. All it takes is for one of them to be real and successful, like when Archie’s ten-year-old son was kidnapped twenty-two years ago.”

He heard her gasp as he turned the key. The giant gate swung inward, pulling twisted vines from their tenuous strongholds. Jack swept his arm toward the car as if he were a maître d’at one of New York’s finest restaurants. “Shall we drive in, Claire?”

CHAPTER FOUR

CLAIRE DIDN’T REMEMBER walking back to Jack’s vehicle, but somehow she ended up in the passenger seat again. Kidnapped! Just the mention of the word was enough to send any mother into an emotional nosedive. And, in Claire’s case, to make her feel like a fool. What right did she have to criticize Archie Anderson for the way he chose to live his life? She, the mayor of one of the most liberal-thinking communities in the state, if not the country, ought to have known better than to prejudge anyone. What had her father always said? “You can’t know a man until you walk a mile in his shoes.” That old axiom had never made more sense to Claire than it did now.

Hogan got behind the wheel and looked over at her. “Are you all right?”

She turned to him. “I had no idea.”

“What? The kidnapping? Of course you didn’t. How could you?”

She fumbled for words. “It must have been in the papers. I mean, Archie Anderson. Everybody’s heard of him. Something like this must have been big news.”

“It was twenty-two years ago. How old were you then, Claire? Ten?”

Actually she had been thirteen, and Hogan had a point. She had been more interested in ballet slippers than newspapers at that time in her life, and anyway, she would never have noticed a news article about a Manhattan man whose son had been kidnapped.

“Besides,” Hogan continued, “Archie wasn’t the headliner he is today. And he used his influence to keep the story out of the press. He didn’t want to give another crazed opportunist any ideas.”

“I can understand that,” Claire said.

“And maybe now you can understand Anderson’s motives a little better, too. Like you said, everybody’s heard of him, and that’s a big part of the reason he needs protection.” Hogan steered the big vehicle through the gate. “You’d be surprised how many celebrities and corporate bigwigs have people just like me on the payroll.”