Lucy And The Stone

Evidently, she’d figured on a bit of privacy to recharge her batteries and work on her story. She wasn’t dressed for an audience. Instead, she was wearing baggy sweats, a pair of shades and, unless he was mistaken, that was an apple she had clutched in her teeth. The symbolism of it suddenly struck him and he began to chuckle. Still grinning at his small private joke, he began paddling toward the shore. The layer of pink on his shoulders, thighs and belly that he’d collected the day before had soaked in overnight, but Stone didn’t kid himself that he was in any condition to stay out through the middle of the day, sunscreen or no sunscreen. From his mother, who’d been Alice Hardisson’s sister, he’d inherited his height and his dark hair. The paternal side of his heritage was pure Highland Scot. Gray eyes, stainless-steel backbone, a taste for Celtic music and a hide that, without some preliminary weathering, tended to burn.

He had lost his weathering, along with a few quarts of blood and more than a few pounds, but he was working on it.

Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look at his quarry. As distasteful as he found the whole business, he had given Alice his word that he’d keep the woman away from the gutter press. Alice had done her part by isolating La Dooley in a place with no phones, no fax, limited mail service and no reporters. The rest was up to him.

The trouble was, he hadn’t even started yet and already he was beginning to feel a little bit foolish. He was a journalist. He’d done his share of investigative journalism, but something about this assignment stuck in his craw.

By the time Stone reached shore, La Dooley had disappeared. He figured she’d probably wanted to scope out the territory—maybe drop in on the Keegans and check on the radio link to the outside world. If she was smart—and most predators were—she’d be wanting to get her bearings before she made her move.

If she made her move. Even steel magnolias like Alice Hardisson had been known to make a mistake.

* * *

Reluctantly, Lucy turned to go back inside. In spite of her dark glasses, the sun was blinding. She’d forgotten just how bright it could be near the water, even with the sky beginning to haze over. At the door to her cottage, she yawned, stretched and marveled all over again that she was actually here instead of back in her own sweltering apartment poring over the help wanteds and listening with one ear for the commode to stop running. It took three jiggles after each flush, and she did it so automatically that she couldn’t always remember whether or not she’d forgotten.

She made a pitcher of iced tea and carried it out onto the screened deck. That and the apple she had consumed earlier constituted breakfast. Maybe tomorrow she would fry up a can of corned-beef hash with onions and catsup for breakfast. That had been Pawpaw’s favorite. Familiar foods and familiar music always gave her a safe, comfortable feeling. Maybe she would write to Lillian and Ollie Mae, for old times’ sake.

Or maybe she’d simply vegetate. This was a vacation. Vacations were for being lazy and indulging whims. No telling when she’d get another one.

The trouble was, she was just too excited to vegetate. After showering, she unpacked a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and set off to explore her new surroundings, luxuriating in the raw-silk feel of pine straw under her bare feet and the total absence of traffic noises.

The only sign of life at any of the other cottages was a lineful of towels and bathing suits. Earlier, she’d heard the sound of an outboard heading over to Hatteras. So be it. She liked privacy.

And really, she wasn’t lonely. There were plenty of other people around if she got tired of her own company. The Keegans, for instance. And the reclusive bird-watcher, who was supposed to be her closest neighbor.

All the same, by early afternoon, having walked around the entire island, pausing to watch birds, distant fishermen, even more distant windsurfers, and to examine a set of footprints in the sand—long, fairly narrow, naked and probably male—she was beginning to feel a bit like Robinson Crusoe.

Her stomach growled. She breathed deeply of the fragrance of sun-warmed cedars and salt marsh as she reluctantly turned back toward Heron’s Rest. Funny—when she had accepted this windfall vacation from her ex-mother-in-law, after the first few minutes of shock, all she’d been able to think about was having an entire summer with no clock to punch and no one to fuss at her for playing her music too loud at night. As guilty as she’d felt for accepting anything at all from a Hardisson, she hadn’t been able to resist the lure of a few lazy, idyllic weeks all to herself. But already she was getting restless.

Not only that, she felt guilty. She despised Billy Hardisson, partly because he was a despicable person, but mostly because, with his courtly manners and his easygoing charm, he had made her feel like a lady. And it had all been a lie.

Alice was a lady. Billy was Nothing dressed up like Something. But for a little while he had made her feel special, made her feel beautiful, made her feel wanted as a person and not just for her body.

Of course, he’d wanted that, too, but when she’d refused to go to bed with him, he hadn’t called her names. Instead, he’d turned up the charm another notch.

The creep. The only decent thing about Billy Hardisson was his mother, and Lucy felt sorry for the poor woman. According to Lucy’s father, a lady was a woman who served his beer in a glass. Lucy had learned from Alice Hardisson that there was a bit more to being a lady than that, which was why she had quietly left town three years ago without telling anyone how she had come to lose her baby. The only other person in the house the day it had happened had been the maid, but she wouldn’t talk. She was Liam and Mellie’s niece. She owed her allegiance to the Hardissons.

Someday poor Alice was going to have her heart broken, but at least Lucy wouldn’t be a part of it.

Yawning, she shucked off unpleasant thoughts of the past. Last night she had read an entire paperback romance, and she intended to read another one tonight. But with the sun shining, the birds singing and all those endless acres of saltwater beckoning, she wasn’t about to spend the daylight hours reading, too.

“Time for a new adventure, li’l sugar.” She could hear Pawpaw now. That ol’ highway wasn’t a-rollin’ out before her, but all that water surely was. So why not take out one of the boats tied up at the pier for the use of the renters? It had been years since she had handled a boat. If she was going to make a fool of herself, she’d just as soon do it without an audience.

Lucy made herself a peanut butter sandwich and ate it as she sauntered down to the pier, where a tall, rugged-looking man with a distinctly military bearing greeted her from the stern of a red inboard.

He introduced himself as Maudie Keegan’s husband, Rich, and told her he was on his way over to Hatteras. “But if you need me to check you out on a boat, that’s what I’m here for.” As good as his word, he took time to show her the basics after clamping an outboard motor on the stern of one of the smaller boats.

Dressed in a pair of paint-stained khakis and little else, Rich Keegan exuded a potent brand of masculinity. Lucy’s instinctive wariness rose up defensively, but so far as she could see, there wasn’t even a hint of speculation in his bright blue eyes as he handed her down into the aluminum skiff. She wished she’d kept on her sweats, but in the heat of the day, they were just too hot. Her shorts and camp shirt were old, loose and deliberately designed to disguise her natural attributes. Even Alice would have approved of their faded modesty. Besides, she wasn’t in purdah. Not even Alice and her blue-haired, old-monied friends would expect her to suffocate.

Forgetting her self-consciousness, Lucy concentrated on Keegan’s instructions. He made her go through the routine until he was satisfied she had it down pat, and then he pointed out the channel markers. “Hang to the left of the red ones if you’re headed over to Hatteras, to the right on the way back out. Watch out for shoals. The tide’s about slack now, but it’ll turn within the half hour. Don’t go out of sight of land in case the weather closes in. And, Ms. Dooley, I understand you’re a certified lifeguard, but do me a favor? Wear this thing, anyway.” He reached past her, and Lucy stepped back suddenly. The boat lurched, and she would have gone over the side if he hadn’t grabbed her.

“Whoops! Sorry,” she said breathlessly when he released her shoulders and handed her an orange life vest. “No sea legs.”

“You’ll get the hang of it. These aluminum boats are durable, but they’re a little like a canoe until you get used to them. Fortunately, the water’s shallow around these parts—you can’t get in a whole lot of trouble if you use some common sense. But we have these rules, so wear the thing for me, will you?”

“Scout’s honor.” When Lucy grinned, Rich grinned back, and she was suddenly glad he was spoken for. With a man like Rich Keegan, she just might be tempted to forget how rotten her judgment was where men were concerned.

Rich had his rules, and well, Lucy had hers, too. And survival rule number one was to avoid anything that even looked like temptation.

After waving him off, she repeated his instructions—or rather, her interpretation of his instructions—until she was certain she had it grooved into her brain. It was pretty much like her father’s instructions for starting the old Dooley Trolley. She had learned to drive that when she was twelve.

“Pull the whoosie halfway out, set the whatsit, push the do-jigger, shove the whoosie back a third and pray.” Wrinkling her nose in concentration, she mumbled the incantation, went through the motions, and miraculously—it worked!

Pulling away from the pier at a sedate three knots, Lucy wished her sixth-graders could see her now. They teased her unmercifully about the clunker she drove. She teased right back by telling them that it took far more skill to drive a real car than it did to operate any one of the sleek new computerized models that were designed by robots for robots.

By the time she had circled the island twice, Lucy was high on the sheer exhilaration of accomplishment. Taking dead aim at a channel marker, she was following the deep green water, steering close to a high shoal that ran along the southwest tip of Hatteras Island, when it occurred to her the sun was no longer blazing down on the back of her neck.

Blazing? It was no longer even visible! While she’d been busy learning to navigate, a thick bank of black clouds had snuck up and swallowed every visible scrap of blue.

Uneasily, Lucy peered at the sky again. She’d been skirting the landward edge of the channel, marveling at the way the water magnified the size of the few shells hugging the side of the steep shoal. Scallop shells looked like dinner plates. That oyster shell was easily a foot long, and—

And then she saw the conch shell. Only a few yards ahead, it was as big as a basketball. She reminded herself that it was only an illusion, but all the same, it was tempting. Half a minute more and she could snare it for her class. They might even make a study of the magnifying powers of water.

Having rationalized the collecting of her souvenir, Lucy adjusted the throttle and idled closer, careful to stay just over into the deep water. The moment she came within reach, she grabbed an oar with one hand, meaning to work the tip of the blade into the opening of the shell and lift it aboard. Carefully balancing, she leaned over the side of the unsteady craft.

Lightning flashed. A split second later there was a blast of thunder. Jerking around to glance over her shoulder, Lucy gasped at the angry mass roiling directly overhead. Cold sweat broke out on her back and she swore under her breath. A single moment’s inattention was all it took. Before she could gather her wits, several things happened at once. The blade of the oar dipped under the water, causing the boat to swerve into the shoal. Before she could shove off again, the outboard sputtered and died.

“Oh, no!” Lucy lunged for the choke, then grabbed the throttle. Too late. “Oh, damn and blast!” she wailed as another burst of lightning split the tarnished sky.

A splash of rain struck the back of her neck and channeled down under her damp shirt. Sweat prickled under the life vest. “All right now, Lucinda, calm down,” she muttered. “First push the— No, pull the whoosie halfway out, then push the whatsit and— Oh, rats!”

On the raw edge of panic, she worked the throttle several times, stabbing the starter button in between. Nothing happened.

Lightning flashed again. The thunder was almost constant now. A bloom of iridescence spread swiftly around the stern of the boat, and Lucy stared at it in resignation.

She had flooded the blasted motor. Which meant she would have to wait for it to cool off before she could even try it again. Which meant she was going to get soaked, at the very least. Possibly fried.

Lightning flickered green against a black sky. Cats’ paws ruffled the dark surface of the water, and she buried her face in her crossed arms and swore softly. Was it just her, or was it something in the Dooley family gene pool that inhibited the development of ordinary common sense?

She should’ve suspected something was wrong when, after growing up like a gypsy, she’d been so eager for a real home and a real family that she’d nearly run off and married a charming rat whose idea of fidelity was never sleeping with more than one woman at the same time.

That had been in Baton Rouge. She’d been seventeen when she had fallen in love with Hamm Sheppard’s family, which had consisted of parents, a grandmother and seven brothers and sisters, all of whom had lived in the same house for three generations.

Fortunately, Pawpaw had loaded up the Dooley Trolley and lit out for Galveston before she could get into too much trouble.

That had been her first near miss, but certainly not her last. How many times had she mistaken lust for something more lasting, more meaningful? Not that she’d ever been promiscuous, but even that had been due more to an innate sense of self-respect than any sense of self-preservation.

When it came to brains, Lucy thought as she attempted to row herself back to Coronoke and safety, hers were about as reliable as a two-dollar watch. At this rate, she might as well just grab a live wire and be done with it.