The Harbor

Fifteen

Zoe sat on the porch with a pot of hot peppermint-lic-orice tea and wrapped herself in a red wool blanket that still smelled faintly of the rosemary-scented powder her aunt preferred. She listened to the ocean and the shorebirds and tried to stop shivering after her dunking in the harbor. It had been a good half hour, and she was still frozen.

The sun was behind the house now, off the water, the porch cool and shadowy, hinting at the short, dark winter days that were just around the corner.

"You Mainers." J.B. came around from the side porch, the floorboards creaking under his weight. He looked dark and warm, not as if he'd had to climb out of the freezing ocean. "Most people would sit by the fire after they took a spill in cold water."

"Frigid water. I'm out of practice." She held her mug with both hands, absorbing its heat. "You saw me?"

"All of Goose Harbor saw you."

"I'll never live it down. I was preoccupied, and the pilot of the speedboat was an idiot-" She sighed, vividly recalling the exact moment when she realized she was broadside to an enormous swell and going over. She glanced up at J.B. "Were you ready to come to my rescue?"

"Me and a couple of old ladies on a bus tour."

"I'd have blown my whistle if I were in real trouble."

"No, you wouldn't." He dropped onto a wooden rocker painted a dark green. "You'd have drowned or died of hypothermia before you admitted you needed help."

"Are you implying I'm stubborn?"

"Self-reliant to a fault, maybe. Proud, stubborn. Possibly overconfident." He rocked back, shrugging. "But that's only a guess. I'd have to be around you for an hour or two more before I could say for sure."

He looked windburned and rugged, as if he'd been going out to sea for years, as if he were born to it. But Zoe pushed back her attraction to him, her curiosity about him, as if they were something she could control.

"Still mad at me for talking to Teddy Shelton without your say-so?" She smiled. "I don't know if I'm insulted or amused."

"I ran into Bruce on the docks. He said he was hoping he'd get a chance to fish you out of the water, just to have something to hold over you for the rest of your lives. He blamed the speedboat. That was decent of him."

"It was accurate."

J.B. obviously had no intention of letting her off the hook. "Your mind wasn't on what you were doing. You know it wasn't."

There was no point arguing with him. He was already convinced he was right. Zoe drank more of her tea and finally felt a bit warmer. She wondered if her lips were still purple. She was shivering uncontrollably and still cursing her inattention when she got to the rocks below her aunt's house, then dragged herself and her kayak up the steep trail. She'd left her boat in the yard and made it upstairs to her room without collapsing from hypothermia, then peeled off her wet clothes and found an old bathrobe in her bedroom closet to put on.

J.B. couldn't see her bathrobe under her blanket. It was one of Olivia's, or perhaps had been left by a former guest. It looked like something Lucy Ricardo might have worn.

She decided to change the subject. "Kyle called while I was making tea. He wanted to know if I'd thought about his request."

"Have you?"

"No. I went kayaking to avoid thinking about anything."

"Didn't work, did it?"

She ignored him. "Periodically for about three years before she died, Aunt Olivia would have me burn stuff she didn't want to leave behind after she was gone. I protested, but she was adamant. She'd have done it herself if I'd refused."

"Sounds like a character."

"She didn't want anyone-family, scholars, gossip hounds-pawing through her private thoughts and possessions after she was dead. She knew she was famous. Kyle knows all this, you realize."

"So no big surprises in the attic."

"I doubt it."

"Did she know you wanted to write?"

Zoe was so startled by his question, she ended up spilling her tea over her hand. She yelled out, but he was there, taking the cup from her, setting it back on its saucer.

"Did you burn yourself?" he asked.

She nodded, feeling flushed and exposed, as if he could see not just through her, but into her, which she knew was all in her head-a result of being off balance. She sucked on her burned knuckle. "I didn't want to write. I don't want to write. I was just…scribbling. I don't know. It wasn't anything."

J.B. stood back and sat on the porch railing, the lawn and beach roses, the bluff and the ocean behind him. "You resurrected Jen Periwinkle."

She lifted her gaze to him. "I thought you couldn't read my handwriting."

He shrugged. "I could read that much. Did you start writing before your father was killed and your aunt died?"

Zoe slipped both hands under her blanket and tightened it around her, her fingers stiff from the cold and nerves. "No, after. I stayed here by myself. I made the nook up in the attic, but if it was warm enough, I'd write out here on the porch sometimes. It was a way to get my mind off everything."

"Funny that your aunt left you the rights to Jen Periwinkle." J.B. placed his hands on the porch railing on either side of him, and she noticed several scars, not that old. "If most of the books are out of print, maybe she wanted you to keep her going, reinvent her for the next century."

"I don't even know if there'd be an audience. And in her will, Olivia made it clear that I was under no pressure from her from the grave-she'd tried to kill off Jen herself but couldn't."

J.B. laughed. "And here I've been thinking your aunt was a practical old Mainer-sounds like she could be loosey-goosey."

For a moment, Zoe felt as if Olivia was out here with them, her wisps of white hair in her face as she enjoyed the fresh air and the incomparable view. Her throat caught. "She was something, J.B."

"Tell me about that last day," he said. "When you told her about your father."

"There's nothing to say. I barreled into the kitchen like a crazy woman and blurted that Dad had been murdered."

"Was anyone else here?"

"Betsy O'Keefe."

"The woman living with Luke Castellane?"

"Not then. She was my aunt's caregiver. She's an R.N., but she also served as a companion and personal assistant. They worked out the arrangements. Olivia was prickly at first, but Betsy was so patient with her, always willing to compromise. She had just the right mix of spine and kindness for the job."

"Ever imagine her with Luke?" Zoe shook her head. "Betsy never seemed interested in romantic relationships, or even friendships. She's always struck me as a solitary sort. Nice, not someone who needs a lot of people in her life. I suppose that makes her good for the kind of work she does."

J.B. said nothing for a moment, and Zoe thoughtabout how little she knew about him-a powder keg according to Stick, yet he hadn't done anything out of control or nuts as far as she could see. Unless she counted helping himself to a room in her house.

"How'd she end up with Luke?" he asked.

"I don't really know. Aunt Olivia always liked him. She said he was an abused and neglected little boy and that made him a self-absorbed and often not very pleasant man, but she held out hope for him. He was devastated when she died."

J.B. eased off the rail. "I've seen Luke Castellane around town a few times. He strikes me as an arrogant son of a bitch." He smiled. "But maybe your aunt was more tolerant than I am."

"I'd call her observant more than tolerant." Zoe fought off a sudden wave of nostalgia, regret, sense of loss. "She always expected the good in people to triumph."

"That's not a bad way to live."

"You think so? I'd have expected you to say it's naive."

"One kiss and she thinks she knows me." He moved toward her, deliberately, dominating her view, and smiled. "That brought some heat to your cold cheeks, didn't it, Detective Zoe? Still shivering?"

Not anymore, she thought. "It was staying in my wet clothes that did me in. If I could have gotten out of them sooner-" She stopped, aware of a darkening of his eyes. She warned herself not to read anything into it, but she could feel how scantily clad she was under her wool blanket. She'd at least pulled on dry, warm socks. Hiking socks and a silky bathrobe. Very sexy. "I'm much warmer now."

J.B. stood directly in front of her, his toes almost touching hers, and seemed to hesitate a moment, as if he thought she might jump up and run back into the house-or giving her the chance to.

Then he skimmed a crooked finger over her cheek and caught the damp ends of her hair. "You got soaked, didn't you?"

"Head to toe," she managed to say.

He let his finger slide under her jaw and tilted her face up toward him, then slowly lowered his mouth to hers. He gave her another chance to scoot inside, to back him off, if she'd wanted to. But she didn't, and instead she parted her lips slightly, taking in a small breath as his mouth touched hers. He pulled back a little, and she thought that'd be the end of it, but she was wrong. He cupped his hand at the back of her head and kissed her for a long time, letting his mouth play against hers.

Her blanket slipped off her shoulders, and her flimsy bathrobe fell open, exposing the swell of her breasts but, mercifully, not her nipples. Her skin was overheated now; the contrast to the chilly air seemed erotic.

He trailed one hand down her throat, let his fingertip skim over the curve of one breast before he took in a sharp breath and whispered into her mouth, "I need to stop now or I won't." He stood up straight, but his gaze shot straight to her breasts, his jaw tightening as he raked one hand through his hair. "Hell, Zoe."

"I don't know." Her voice was hoarse, and she quickly tugged her blanket back over her shoulders. "At least my kiss this morning wasn't a toe-curler."

"Oh, you don't think so?"

"It was spur-of-the-moment."

"Ah-ha."

"It was."

"So you think I walked out here with the specific intention of kissing you?"

She swallowed. "I didn't say that."

"Where'd you get the robe?"

Her throat was tight, dry, and she could feel her skin tingling under her blanket, wondered what she'd have done if he hadn't pulled back. Made love to him out here on the porch? Let him carry her inside? She shook off the images. "Bedroom closet. It reminds me of Lucy Ricardo, except I don't have red hair."

He went to the porch door and pulled it open with more force than was necessary, and she realized he was on edge, fighting for self-control. His muscles seemed tensed, his back rigid. He glanced back at her. "Your sis-ter's invited us to dinner tonight."

His clenched teeth undermined the normality of his words. Zoe took a quick breath, remembered Stick's warning about him. An undercover agent who'd killed a man in front of his children. Who'd almost been killed himself. A potentially dangerous man who was supposed to be in Maine cooling his heels, not getting mixed up in a year-old murder investigation.

She took a breath and followed his lead, keeping her words mundane. "Both of us?"

"Yes, ma'am." His eyes sparkled, his humor back as abruptly as it had vanished. "Probably the whole town saw you kiss me this morning. We're an item."

"McGrath!" Zoe almost jumped out of her chair but saw his quirk of a smile and stopped herself. "You're kidding, right?"

"You need to be kidded more, Detective. Life's been damn serious for you for too long."

"For you, too, don't you think?"

"Absolutely. That's why I picked Goose Harbor for my vacation."

She leaned back, wiggling her toes inside her heavy socks. "Is it? I don't know, Special Agent McGrath. I don't think Teddy Shelton's told me the whole story about why he's here. But neither have you."

"I haven't known you two whole days," he said. "I haven't told you the whole story about anything."

And he smiled, winked and headed back inside.

Zoe flopped back against her chair, sighed at the porch ceiling, then made herself pour another cup of tea. An erotic, toe-curling kiss, a dunk in the harbor and a million questions had her reeling. Her peppermint-lic-orice tea would calm her down. She didn't need warming up, not anymore.

What could J. B. McGrath possibly be hiding?

She shook her head at the simplicity of her question, because she had a feeling there was nothing simple about her houseguest.

And she knew how insidious the aftereffects of a traumatic experience could be. Her former colleagues in the state police and her father's small, shattered police force in town had all been more than patient with her in the first weeks after his murder. They understood she'd just wanted to find out who'd shot him on an isolated stretch of Goose Harbor coast and why.

It wasn't the wanting that got her into trouble-it was pushing herself, and them, beyond all reason. She'd made a pain of herself, complained about the lack of progress in the investigation, demanded answers to questions she knew they weren't going to answer. She meddled. She didn't believe she was somehow magically better than her former colleagues because her father was the victim, or because the FBI had accepted her as a new trainee-she simply couldn't stop herself.

The last straw was when her criticism of the slow progress of the investigation ended up in the Goose Harbor News. The Boston media picked up the story.

Finally, Stick Monroe had called her over for a visit.

They'd stood in his garden as he'd stirred his compost and read her the riot act. If the FBI found out she was handling this crisis this badly, they'd boot her. She could forget the academy. Kiss her career goodbye. "We all understand," he said. "Zoe, I know it's hard, but it's not your case. If you keep this up, you're going to end up on the wrong side of a jail cell, never mind get dis-invited to the academy and lose friends."

She hadn't cared, not then. It wasn't that she didn't want to-she couldn't step back from the brink of her own need to keep acting, doing, not thinking. She remembered thrusting her chin out at her old friend. "I found him, Stick. I saw his blood mixing with the sand and saltwater. I felt for his pulse. His skin was cool, mot-tled-you know, that bluish-purple marbled effect bodies get-"

"Stop it, Zoe."

"I can't!"

"That's why you need to let CID do their job."

She'd fought tears, felt so out of control, more than she'd ever experienced in her life, even when her mother died-because both her father and her aunt had been there then, anchoring her, absorbing some of her trauma. "Aunt Olivia-if I hadn't told her-"

"She still would have died, Zoe." Stick was patient, firm. "You know that. She knew it. She'd been working on revising her obituary that morning before you arrived."

"I feel so terrible. I've made such an ass of myself."

"No, you haven't. Patrick was a good man. We all miss him. We all hate what happened to him. But it's time to back off."

All the rage and fight had gone out of her as she watched Stick use his pitchfork to turn over rich, black dirt made from scraps from his yard and kitchen, his special worms, his care and time-most of all, time. She didn't say a word. She just stared at that new soil and listened to the birds overhead, felt the warm autumn sun on her back contrasting with the cool breeze coming up from the water. No wonder he'd retired to Goose Harbor. No wonder her father and her great-aunt and her sister had stayed.

Then, still saying nothing, she'd turned on her heel and left. She packed up her car that afternoon and headed south. She stayed in Boston for a few days and bowed out of the FBI Academy. Forget it. She wasn't coming. She contacted people she knew who didn't live in Maine, and within two weeks, she was offered the job as the sole detective in Bluefield, Connecticut.

And now here she was, back again. Her problems hadn't changed. Her father was still dead, her aunt was still dead, and a murderer was still on the loose.