And then an impossible mirage moved across from the shadowed kitchen, holding a baby bottle.
Tiffany, clothed only in her hair, reached into the pen, lifted out the goat, and then sat on the floor with the kid cradled in her lap as it suckled eagerly on the baby bottle. He could only watch in wonder as she fed, soothed, and coddled the tiny creature. Her fair skin was warmed by the small light, or perhaps it was by the love that shone out of her.
The newborn was falling asleep in her lap by the time Tiffany was done, then she gently returned her to the pen. She rose in a fluid motion, her hair floating behind her as she returned the half-empty bottle to the refrigerator.
There was a lithe strength to her movements and a breathtaking beauty to her form. She didn’t have the trainer-toned and balanced perfection that Rebecca Monash had achieved. Instead she had a natural reality that could only come from healthy living and hard work.
“Who are you?” Devin asked in wonder as she slid back between the covers.
“Why? Does it matter?” Tiffany’s voice was oddly defensive, a tone he hadn’t heard from her before.
“No. I mean. Well it does, but that isn’t what I was asking.”
“Then what were you asking?” She was keeping her distance beneath the covers and he wondered if she could disappear from her own bed as mysteriously as she could when visiting Eagle Cove.
“I barely know you, yet it’s like you’ve hypnotized me. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen something more beautiful than watching you sit there feeding that goat. Your kindness pours out of you. And this farm. Do you really do all this alone?”
“I hired help to set up here, but that was three years ago. You’re the first person ever to trespass on my property.”
“Trespass?”
He could see her wince. “That didn’t come out right.”
“Okay,” he’d let that go because he supposed he had been trespassing. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, you’re one impressive woman.”
“Really?”
He laughed at the surprise in her voice. “Really. All this and the best time of my lifetime, for all of it being over way too fast. I—” but he’d keep those other thoughts to himself. He’d wondered if the joy and the need of for a woman had been burned out of him by Rebecca’s betrayal, but Tiffany had just proven that completely wrong.
“Time.” Her voice was flat when she said it.
Devin could have kicked himself. It had been great “time,” or certainly the most powerful ever. But that’s what you had when it held no meaning. And impossibly, though he’d known her only a week, this had been so much more.
“This was just—”
Unable to stand the flat tone, Devin cut her off with a frustrated growl. “Let me show you what I meant,” and he kissed her. She didn’t protest, but it was a long and oddly fear-filled moment for him before she gave in and returned it.
This time it wasn’t over too fast, except that he never wanted it to end. The goat had woken them well before dawn. It was well after before he was done showing Tiffany how he felt about her.
Because it was more than just a good time. In fact, he was a little unnerved by how much more.
Chapter 5
Tiffany missed Devin even more than she missed Flo, which didn’t seem right. Flo had been one of her very first kids, born of Meg. Tiffany had stayed awake for days, sitting in the pen with the goat care books in her lap. She fussed more over the newborn than Meg had, and now Tiffany had buried her.
She could see the other adults looking for their friend, especially Annie who’d been so close to Flo. Her orphaned kid needed such constant care and feeding, that Tiffany slipped her into a sling and carried her through the day. Maybe when Annie finally birthed, she could rub some of the birth matter on the first kid and convince her that she’d delivered two.
But it wasn’t to her goats or her garden that her thoughts kept drifting so often.
It was to Devin Robison. The way he’d looked down at her afterward. He might have called it “a good time,” but she could see in his eyes that it was something more even if he wasn’t willing to say it. She wasn’t sure that she was either, but had been unable to look away as he searched her face for answers she didn’t have.
They’d barely spoken over a breakfast, not out of awkwardness but because there had been no need to chink words into gaps of feeling. The yurt’s air had been thick with feeling and it had been enough to keep them trading smiles as they ate scrambled eggs with a sprinkling of reconstituted dried diced ham that she’d put up last year and early asparagus from her garden. His horror that the eggs had arrived chicken-warm and covered in poo had set her to giggling. Again the hysteria had threatened. She was so out of her element. A beautiful man had twice made love to her, had helped her bury her goat, and had left her with such a sweet kiss before heading back down the trail.
How was she not supposed to think about him and that confident male stride as he’d headed off across her land? In the distance she’d seen him stop at the very edge of her property. He spent a few minutes there, then she heard the soft banging sound on the breeze as he drove a branch into the ground to mark Flo’s grave, using his abandoned crowbar as a hammer.
Or not think about his invitation to go sailing tomorrow morning. The only time she left the farm other than for knitting had been the weddings of Jessica, Becky, and now Natalya and Gina. Going to town on a Sunday felt wild, even a little dangerous, but perhaps in a good way.
That was the most intrusive thought that Devin had left behind. Had she spent too much time alone up on her mountain? Too used to only her own company?
The odd thing was that in Eagle Cove she was a far more social person than she’d ever been in her life. For three years, the women of Eagle Cove had welcomed her, let her sit with them, be with them, all without making any demands upon her.
Devin had intruded on her property, her thoughts, and was now starting to slip his way into her heart. Her heart was hers, it belonged to no one. That was a lesson hard learned.
But Jessica was happy with her Greg, despite her whining complaints about her pregnancy. And Becky’s and Natalya’s happiness was unmistakable as well. They didn’t just stand by their men, they gave their hearts to them.
“I don’t know if I can ever do that,” she told Tall Guy.
He rolled his eyes at her without even bothering to raise his head off his forepaws.
“Come on, you.” She let him out of the goat pen and led him off into the woods to help check the rabbit snares.
“Maybe I’ll just skip tomorrow’s sailing.” Though she’d never been out on a boat despite growing up in San Francisco. It would be a new experience. As if Devin Robison wasn’t enough new experience.
And there he was again, back in the center of her thoughts, making her body tingle at just the memory of his touch.
“Or maybe I will go.”
Tall Guy didn’t look at all surprised as she changed her mind for the hundredth time this morning.
He still didn’t look surprised when she petted him the next morning before heading down the trail with little Shprintze riding in a sling under her arm.
Devin had been at the trailhead by seven-thirty because he was pitiful. He’d said eight-thirty, but he’d thought that it would be more decent if he hiked up and called for her at her door.
But would that be trespassing? She’d said it that way, You’re the first person to ever trespass on my property. Maybe he shouldn’t go without an invitation.
Which had left him cooling his heels in the lighthouse meadow for half an hour and wondering if instead he might have offended her for not returning after work the previous night and now she wouldn’t come. Again he stood at the trailhead.
No, he decided again. Too pushy.
Then he wondered if he’d been too high pressure by even inviting her out. It sounded suspiciously like a date. To kill time, he couldn’t go to work on the cottage; it would just make him all dir
ty again. Instead he pulled out the half-finished plans and unrolled them on the hood of the truck.
It took him forever to shift his thoughts from the full-body sendoff he’d received yesterday morning to the cottage’s redesign, but he finally managed.
He’d add a porch, one big enough to sit under on a warm day and stay dry under while unlocking the door on a wet one. But it also had to be small enough and the right form to fit in without breaking the cottage’s exterior charm.
The inside…was still puzzling him. He couldn’t yet see what direction he wanted to take the décor yet. The room layout was easy. Because it would be changing from a lighthouse keeper’s family into private rooms, he’d have to add several baths. Gina had cleared the idea to make a larger suite out of two of the upstairs rooms, which had saved him finding somewhere for a second staircase. There would be a small kitchenette on the ground floor, but breakfast would still be down at the big Victorian, which simplified that. It would allow him to convert the old dining and kitchen area into an additional cozy room which offset the doubled room upstairs.
A week to finish the teardown and muck out. Two weeks upgrading wiring and plumbing. Another to inspect, insulate, sheetrock. That would leave two months to refloor and do all of the detailed finish and trim work. If everything went according to plan, he could be back in Chicago by September for the tail end of the building season.
Maybe if he…
And there she was. One of her inevitable flowy shirts, this one a russet orange, a light jacket carried loosely in one hand and a tiny goat head peering at him from a sling under her other arm.
“Are you planning to say hello?”
Tiffany was so beautiful, the sun shining upon her hair as if she had indeed been manifested anew right at this moment. Star Trek transportered into place. Unable to speak, he circled the truck.
“Your plans!”
He heard them curl back up, roll off the truck’s hood, and plop into the dirt. He couldn’t care less about his plans.
Careful of the tiny goat, but nothing else, he scooped Tiffany against him and kissed her hard. She tasted like heaven. Her soft sigh of pleasure had him considering how she’d feel lying naked beneath him on his truck bed, if he cleared all of the scrap lath out of it.
Something hard fisted him in the ribs. Hard enough to make him break the kiss though Tiffany had tipped her head back and wrapped her arms about his neck.
The baby goat butted him again.
“Hey!” He blocked the third blow with the palm of his hand.
“I don’t think that Shprintze likes you much,” Tiffany had loosened her arms enough to look down between them without letting go.
“Tevye’s fourth daughter?”
“How did you know that?”
“I played Perchik in a high school production back in Chicago.” Back in happier, simpler times.
“Do you like acting?”
“No, but Hodel was awfully hot.” Then he felt stupid for saying it.
“And did Perchik get his Hodel?” Her smile was forgiving of his own clumsiness.
“He did,” he admitted and couldn’t stop the smile. They’d ended up going to the junior prom together, a night that had cost them both their virginity. An event they’d commemorated thoroughly and much less awkwardly at their senior prom. “She’s now a high-end entertainment attorney in Los Angeles married to one of her superstar clients.”
“Is she the one who got away?”
“What? Her? No! I— We— The one—” He sighed. “No! It wasn’t like that. It was a high school thing. Awesome but nothing permanent. How about you? Tell me about the one who slipped away.”
And he felt her freeze. Felt her, for just an instant, become as frozen as she’d been when she’d gone fetal on the ground beside her goat’s grave.
He did the only thing he knew how to do: he held her tight—as tightly as he could while keeping a protective palm against the kid’s forehead.
“Okay. Bad question. Just ignore it. Okay? Just pretend I’m asking about Shprintze. Please?”
She nodded against his shoulder, her face planted in the same spot it had been yesterday. He hoped she didn’t start crying again—he didn’t know if he could stand to hear the heartrending pain of it again.
“Just know,” he told the top of her head. “If I ever meet the low-life who did whatever he did to you, I’m going to kill him. No questions asked.”
Tiffany pulled back enough to look at him. Her eyes were swimming, but they weren’t spilling over.
Devin met her gaze as it shifted from pain to assessment.
“You would, wouldn’t you?”
“In a heartbeat.” He’d never so much as punched a man before. But he also didn’t doubt that if confronted with the jerk who had so hurt this beautiful woman, he wouldn’t hesitate.
“Then you’ll be glad…no, wrong word. You’ll…want to know that you’ll never have to worry about that. Someone else already got to him.” She met his gaze levelly despite whatever horror-memory he’d just dug up twice in two days.
“Whoa,” he barely managed a whisper.
“Sorry you missed your chance?”
“No. Busy wondering what it is about Eagle Cove that makes their women so spectacularly strong.”
Her smile went radiant.
But he forgot one thing as he leaned back in to renew their kiss.
The next moment he was on his knees in the dirt. Shprintze the goat had head-butted him squarely in the solar plexus.
Tiffany didn’t need to be familiar with the docks on Eagle Bay to know which boat belonged to Hector Jackson because there weren’t that many to choose from. The McCall and Baxter fishing boats both had large charter signs on them. And both were busy loading up with whale watch charters as the big grays were busy migrating north along the Pacific Coast.
There were also a half dozen small fishing skiffs and one big sailboat.
She wished she hadn’t said anything to Devin about her past, but she had. To make matters worse, she hadn’t been able to think of a thing to say on the drive to the marina and had left Devin to fill in the silences. It didn’t take him long to understand. Then he quieted and simply reached out to take her hand in his. He held it as he drove one-handed into and through town.
She’d read the literature. Some men were repulsed by knowing a woman had been molested. Other, creepier ones, were attracted by the idea. Not wishing to experience either reaction, she had never told anyone a single word of her past after escaping high school. She’d been re-born at eighteen…until today.
Devin’s reaction, she should have known in advance but she hadn’t, was completely different. He simply took her hand and held it as if nothing had happened. No, that wasn’t right either. He did it as if…it didn’t matter. That was quite different. It made all the difference in the world and she held on tighter as he drove.
He’s going to leave eventually, she reminded herself. But the inner Tiffany didn’t care. She’d seen the truth of his fury and was touched by the simple tenderness with which he held her hand. It was enough.
The sailboat was huge. Devin had said it was a Pearson 42 and she’d spent quite a bit of time online looking up sailboats last night. At first she’d wanted to see what she’d foolishly agreed to, but had soon become fascinated. She had a satellite connection for her Internet and a sat-phone for emergencies…a device she never used except for her twice yearly check-ins that her attorney in California had insisted on. “Want to know you’re alive, Ms. Mills. Hear your voice, make sure you’re okay.” The calls were consistently brief and relatively painless. In retrospect, even appreciated.
Her study had started with the Pearson 42, but she hadn’t been able to understand a word of it. That led her into basic sailboat diagrams with all the parts labeled, which had led her into a vast glossary of nautical terms she’d only been able to partly absorb. She’d eventually backtracked to the Pearson 42 and was able to make some sense of it. First of all, 42 m
eant forty-two feet long.
She also knew that it was often in the top-ten lists for cruising sailboats as distinct from racers and daysailers—the three primary classifications of sailboats. Cruiser meant comfort over long distances and the boat appeared as if it had done a lot of travel. It was neat and appeared to be in good repair, but it looked very…lived in.
At the boat, Hector waved a cheerful greeting.
“Have you sailed before, Tiffany? No? Well, your young man thinks he has. What say we prove him wrong?”
Tiffany stood uncertainly on the dock. Nothing in her research had said how to board a sailboat. The deck rose three feet above the dock, white with a hand-wide red line by the water and a blue one just below the—she couldn’t remember the word, perhaps she hadn’t found one—the place where deck met hull, built as separate pieces then bonded together. She didn’t see a place to crawl between the wires, there was netting attached to the inside of the long safety lines.
Nor had any of her history told her how to respond to Hector’s “your young man.” She eyed the length of the dock leading toward town, but Devin still held her hand—which she supposed made the “your young man” assumption more valid than she was prepared for.
Using it, Devin led her back—aft—to a short set of stairs at an opening through the boat’s lifelines. He helped her up and then stepped up beside her. She almost lost her balance at the unexpected shift in the deck when he boarded. There were some things she couldn’t learn online.
“You can put your coats down below, Devin. It’s a warm morning, though it may be cooler out on the water.”
Devin took hers and headed below. Tiffany set the sling gently down on the knee-high doghouse—no, that was for oversized cabins—cabin roof.
“Is that a goat?” Hector inspected the bundle.
Tiffany opened the sling further for Hector to look inside. “She’s newborn and lost her mother. I couldn’t leave Shprintze for a whole day. I hope that’s okay.”
Keepsake for Eagle Cove Page 11