The Harbor

Twenty-Seven

Zoe slipped up to the attic and sat on her thick chenille rug among her pillows and scribblings. She picked up one of her yellow pads and sighed at how awful her writing was. She didn't have Olivia's zest for adventure, her accessible style, her insight into Jen Periwinkle.

At least it didn't seem so at that moment.

Last year, sitting up here with her feet propped up on pillows and the window cracked so that she could feel the breeze and smell the ocean, she'd thought she was brilliant. The words flowed, the scenes developed one after another in her head, and she couldn't stop writing.

She hadn't written a word since she'd left Goose Harbor, not even after she was fired and living with Charlie and Bea Jericho, canning vegetables and milking goats and learning to knit. She'd meant to pretend that she'd never written at all.

Probably still a good idea. She could burn this mess and go find a job.

"Zoe?"

It was J.B. She'd left him in the kitchen to scrounge up dinner now that their evening on the Castellane yacht was off. She figured he'd drag her to Perry's for fried shrimp, beer and a game of darts.

"I'm here," she said. "Come on up. You've read this garbage, so it's not like it's a secret."

He seemed even taller as he made his way toward her under the slanted ceilings. "I told you-"

"Yeah, right, you can't read my handwriting. I don't need to polygraph you on that one-I know it's not true."

He smiled. "I take it I'm not disturbing you?"

She shook her head. "No, it's not like I'm writing." She sighed at a curling yellow page. She'd thought about writing with a fountain pen, the way her aunt had started in her early twenties, but decided on pencil. "This was just a catharsis or something."

J.B. stepped over her discarded drapery rod from what seemed like a thousand years ago. "Do you believe Kyle's story that he didn't get all the way up here?"

"That part. He wouldn't have been able to resist if he knew I'd played around with Jen Periwinkle. It seems like an invasion into Aunt Olivia's imagination, don't you think? Jen and Mr. Lester McGrath were her creations, not mine."

"Then make them yours. She left you the rights to her Periwinkle novels for a reason. Maybe that was it. So they could live through you-"

"Trust me, I was a better cop than I ever will be a writer."

He stood in front of the bureau at her feet. "Except for that little incident with the gun and the Texas Ranger."

"Did the governor's murder get solved or did it not? And without too much damage to the good guys." She leaned back against a fat pillow, eyeing him. "You'd have fired me, too, wouldn't you?"

"I'd have fired you the first time I caught you without a weapon while you were on duty." His presence made her writing space seem even smaller, more intimate. "You disengaged from the work, didn't you?"

"Over time. It didn't happen all at once."

He sat on the chenille rug and stretched his legs out straight, crossing his ankles an inch from her hip. "I can understand how Stick Monroe and Luke Castellane could see themselves as your protector-Luke because of his loyalty to Olivia, Stick because of his loyalty to you."

"Luke's protecting himself. Anyway, I can take care of myself."

"That's not the question. It's not about you. It's about them and their relationship to you, to your father, to your aunt. It's a tough position to be in. For all of you." He watched her a moment, then the corners of his mouth quirked. "Especially for them. You're noncompliant."

"Not me." She smiled. "I'm good at taking orders."

But he'd gone serious on her. "You're more out of control than I am."

Her throat caught at the quiet truth of his words, and she looked away, staring out at the harbor. It was dusk, the water still, glasslike, reflecting the moored boats and the bright leaves of trees on the shoreline.

"If Teddy Shelton knows anything about who killed my father, why-"

"Let the state and local police figure it out. If they choose to, they can bring in the bureau. Zoe, you have to stand down. You have to let people do their jobs, let them help you. You ran last year because you knew you couldn't keep it up, you had to back off."

She shook her head. "I ran because I knew the answers to my father's murder are here in town, not outside. That's what people want to believe. That's why they're all so nervous around me." She shut her eyes and inhaled, then exhaled slowly. "I just want to know why he was killed, J.B. Who did it."

"I know."

"And then I want a normal life." She tried to concentrate on her breathing and not to relive the image of Kyle Castellane flying toward her, Teddy Shelton shooting at her. She'd had no idea he was armed, hadn't even considered it. Law Enforcement 101. "All this past year I told myself coming home was a normal thing to do and nothing would happen. I could make my peace with Dad's death and figure out what comes next in my life. I could live here. I could eat blueberry pancakes every morning."

"Everything you've just said makes sense."

She managed a halfhearted smile. "Not the blueberry pancakes."

"Zoe-"

"I knew it wasn't true. I knew I couldn't just come back here and it'd all be normal again."

She looked down at her bandaged wrist. He'd helped her put on a fresh bandage, but since she wasn't hurting as much when he did it, she'd responded to even his slightest touch. Another reason she'd bolted up to the attic. That was what it was, she thought. A place to hide. Her writing, too, was a place to hide.

"Well," she said, "I guess I anticipated dodging bullets and having my car stolen, but I sure as hell never expected to go kayaking with an undercover FBI agent."

J.B. moved his legs closer to her. "It's not the kayaking that's got you off balance."

"You're not going to give me an inch?"

"Honey, I'm not giving you a millimeter. And no more undercover work for me. They won't put me back in. I've done my bit. Nearly didn't make it back this last time."

"Won't you go stir-crazy at a desk?"

"I'll learn yoga. Get exercise." He smiled. "Have a proper sex life." Zoe tried not to let him get to her. Stick was right.

J. B. McGrath was a powder keg. "What about emotional commitment to others?" she asked lightly. "That was something you could avoid undercover. If you're just a regular FBI agent-"

"I'll never be that." "Do you talk to your superiors that way?" "I've got a place in Washington, and there's talk of having me put together a UCA training course." "UCA means undercover agent. The FBI and its acronyms." "You'd have been an NT. New Trainee."

"I'd have made it through the academy, you know. I didn't drop out because I was afraid of failure. I dropped out because-"

"Because you had Jen Periwinkle in your head."

Maybe he had a point. Maybe she'd gone into a tailspin not just because of her father and Aunt Olivia, but because she wasn't meant to stay on the course she was on.

He stared out the attic window, and she wondered what he saw when he looked at the harbor, the docks, the boats. He wouldn't see her father lumbering along the waterfront, her aunt with her cane as she set out on a bright morning to borrow books from the library. It'd be like if she were in Montana. She'd see an unfamiliar landscape, beautiful, but one that didn't conjure up images and memories. He'd never known his grandmother. Posey Sutherland wasn't real to him the way the best friend she'd left behind in Goose Harbor was real to Zoe.

"You know when it's time to stand down," he went on quietly. "You don't think you'll know when you're so into the work that's all you can think about, but when the time comes, you know." He leaned his crossed ankles closer to her, touching her thighs with his toes. "As for emotional commitment to others-right now I'm committed to keeping you from doing something stupid."

"That's not emotional."

"Oh, but it is."

She scowled at him, but couldn't sustain it and smiled. "You have no sense of romance."

"Look who's talking, the hard-bitten Mainer."

"I'm not hard-bitten. I know how to knit."

"And you have a tattoo of a rose on your left hip."

She gasped in spite of herself. She could see he knew he'd get to her with that remark. He smiled, cocky, pleased with himself, and pushed aside a half-dozen pillows and crawled over the rug to her.

"Right about here," he said, slipping the waistband of her pants down over her hip. "A beach rose. Pink."

"It's my own design." Her voice seemed disembodied, her mouth suddenly gone parched. "I had it done a couple weeks ago. It hurt like hell. One hot little needle prick at a time."

"Did it take long to heal?"

"It's healed now. It itched, and I had to beat it with a rolled-up newspaper-"

"Zoe."

He skimmed his fingers over her tattoo. She inhaled. "What?"

"You don't have to say anything. Just relax." He kissed the edges of the rose, flicked his tongue over her skin, whispered, "Trust me," and eased her shirt up, trailing his mouth up her hot skin.

He reached her bra, and she fell back into the pillows, not protesting when he undid the front clasp and exposed her breasts, took first one nipple, then the other, between his lips. Finally, he found her mouth, kissing her deeply, saying more words of comfort, desire, assurance, words she absorbed but couldn't quite make out, aware only of her own overwhelming desire and urgency. He eased her shirt up over her head, her bra off her arms, and held her close as he drew her pants over her hips.

"Tell me if you want me to stop," he said.

But the feel of his hands against her bare skin had her head spinning, her body aching. She held him, his sweater soft, his chest warm and hard against her breasts. "Don't stop."

He dispensed with her pants, laid her back against the pillows and gazed down at her with a frankness that made her self-conscious. But she didn't pull away, didn't grab a pillow and cover herself. He positioned himself alongside her, stroking her gently, boldly, until she was unaware of anything else, just his touch, her response.

"I want…"

But she didn't finish, instead rolling onto her side so she could slip her hands under his sweater. She felt his hot skin, then probed lower, immediately seeing, feeling, that he wasn't immune to what was happening between them.

He pulled off his sweater first, then his pants, and he came to her, taking her hand and placing it on him, letting her stroke him, touch him. He was thick, hard, sleek, and when she lay back onto the soft rug, he came with her, onto her.

"I'm not asking for anything," she whispered. "Just this."

"It's enough." He entered her slowly, as if he knew she hadn't made love in a long time, like this, never. "It's more than enough for right now."

But his gentleness didn't last, his need matching hers, then overtaking it, forcing her to stop thinking, to lose herself in the feel of his thrusts, of one moment after another that she wanted to etch forever in her mind.

He came in a series of hard, fast, deep thrusts that completely undid her, had her crying out with her own release.

They held each other for a long time, and he laughed softly, stroking her left hip. "I only meant to check out your tattoo."

"Ha."

"Zoe…" He kissed her hair. "Ah, Zoe."

She touched two fingers to his lips. "Don't talk. We can talk another time."

And they made love again, just as wildly this time, without words, and when they finished, the harbor was dark except for the glitter of lights from some of the boats and the gleam of the moon on the water.

J.B. pulled a blanket over her, then managed to crawl into his pants. "Come downstairs whenever you're ready. I'll find something for dinner. It just won't involve flax seed."

Zoe smiled at him. "I have a feeling this sort of thing never happened when Aunt Olivia lived here."

"I don't know, Zoe. I've read dozens of your auntie's letters to my granny. She knew the score."

"She didn't-she didn't mention a lover, did she?"

He laughed. "That revived you, the idea of old Olivia having a lover in her youth. No, she didn't say she did or she didn't, but she comes to life in those letters. She knew what went on between my grandparents. She understood the physical attraction."

"Jesse Benjamin swept Posey off her feet, didn't he?" "He did."

"You're a chip off the old block, then. A bad-boy lawman, and you swept me right off my feet."

"You were already lying among your pillows. The rest was easy." He smiled down at her. "And I'm not your evil nemesis."

He left, and Zoe rolled onto her back and stared at the slanted ceiling, but without J.B.'s warm body there next to her, she soon realized it was cold up in the attic. She scrambled into her clothes, her body aching. She'd kayaked, she'd been shot at, she'd been cut and she'd been made love to not once but twice, all in one day.

She glanced around at her tousled pillows and her scrunched-up chenille rug, and she had her doubts if she'd ever be able to write up here again.