Lighthouse Cottage (A Pajaro Bay Mystery Book 3)

by Lee, Barbara Cool

She rubbed her leg where he'd last gripped her with that killer hand of his. "You already did."

  "I did?" He looked really stricken. "Why did I do that?"

  "I have no idea why you do anything. Why'd you come out right before a bad storm? Why'd you destroy the radio?"

  "You keep saying that. Why would I do that?"

  "I'm asking you."

  He put his head in his hands. He seemed to be almost consciously willing himself to get better. He rested his head on his knees as if the weight of it was just too much to bear.

  The dog set his long nose on the man's arm. In the dimness, the black dog's muzzle showed flecks of white. He'd called it a "nice old dog." Did dogs get gray hair when they aged? She knew so little about them. Maybe it wasn't as scary as she'd assumed. It seemed more sad than anything, and kept looking at its master as if worried about him. Funny. She hadn't expected a dog to have an actual personality of its own. She was struck again by how little she knew of the world outside the shelter of her family.

  The thunder finally grew more distant as they sat silently in the cold tower. It was hard to believe she was here, alone on an island with a stranger across from her, so far from everything she'd ever known. The tick of the light overhead continued endlessly, almost silently, as it had for a century. The foghorn was off, so the storm must be letting up at least a bit.

  They were alone in the world, surrounded by ocean and rain and wind. But the foot-thick stone walls felt solid against her back, and while the wind whistled outside, they were safe in here, out of the storm.

  Lori got to her feet. She went over and knelt down in front of the man. With one hand she felt his wrist, and with the other on his forehead she felt how cold and damp his skin was. He was in terrible shape. The pulse under her fingers was all jumbled and erratic.

  "Come on," she said. "We've got to get you warmed up and put you to bed."

  Without a word he got up and started down.

  She and the dog were behind him, and they had to take one step and then pause to give him time to catch his breath and hop down to the next one.

  The dog clung to her side, no matter how much she glared at it. By the time they'd made it all the way down the stairs she'd gotten used to it and didn't flinch when the big furry beast bumped into her. He was actually kind of sweet the way he gallumphed down each stair, patiently waiting for his master to continue. Every once in a while the dog would glance up at her with a big toothy grin as if to say, "he's kind of slow, but I like him."

  In the hallway he hesitated. She was going to put him in her bedroom, but he headed back toward the kitchen and she was too tired to argue, so she just followed him.

  Once there, he just lay down in front of the stove, and that was that. The dog curled up next to him with another one of its huge sighs.

  The man still wore the wetsuit, but didn't seem interested in changing clothes, and she didn't really have anything suitable for him to put on. So she just grabbed the blanket she'd dropped by the Aga and laid it over him. He was already asleep, so she let him lie there and sat down in a wicker rocking chair in the corner of the kitchen to wait.

  For what, she didn't know.

  Chapter Six

  He must have slept for hours. When he awoke, at first he thought he was back in his childhood bedroom at Wharf Flats, in the hard little bed with the race car sheets and the sound of the sea nearby.

  But he knew that wasn't right. He put a hand up to his forehead and realized he was wearing his wetsuit. That was odd.

  Then he saw her. She sat curled up in a faded wicker chair in the corner of the kitchen, blonde hair over her face, knees tucked up to her chin.

  Then her head came up and he realized she was awake. "At last," she said.

  "At last?"

  "You slept for hours."

  It all came back then. He was surprised she hadn't thrown him out after he destroyed her radio. So nobody had found them yet. "How long?"

  She shrugged. "I slept, too. At least ten hours."

  His shock must have shown, because she added, "we both had a rough time, so I guess we needed it." She hesitated, then uncurled her body and padded over to him, "In fact...," she said as her hand reached down for his forehead. "You still look pretty pale. I think you're suffering from exposure."

  The small hand brushed his head. It felt hot. She frowned down at him. Hypothermia would explain his inability to pull himself together. But he couldn't just lie here on the floor.

  He started to get up but she held him down with one hand. The fact that she could do that told him how bad off he really was. "Okay," he said, "I give in, you brute." It was clear he couldn't go anywhere at the moment. But he had to come up with a plan. He lay back and closed his eyes, trying to figure out what to do.

  She cleared her throat and he opened his eyes. She was standing, arms crossed, watching him. He tried a faint smile.

  "So...," she said. Again that hesitation, but he was beginning to see that though she was shy, there was a deep intelligence at work behind those innocent eyes. And that was dangerous, for her and for him.

  "My name's Lori—Lori York. But I guess you already know that?" It was a question. He'd evaded it once before, could he make it two for two?

  "Somebody in town mentioned it...?" he said, putting just a touch of confusion in his expression, in preparation for the inevitable follow-up question. He felt a sense of relief as his instincts clicked into place and he settled into the familiar analytical pattern. Be a Shadow. Observe the target, see what she wants you to be, and become that person while always aiming toward your own goal. Worked every time. He waited for the question.

  "And you're from Pajaro Bay." It wasn't a question, so no response was required. Good. He kept the slightly confused, I'm-just-a-harmless-lost-sailor expression on his face and waited.

  "So what's your name?"

  His name.

  Now was not the time to turn her into his enemy. Just a few more hours in this warm, quiet sanctuary and he'd be fine. The storm would pass, and then he'd get them both out of here, and he could get back to his life, such as it was.

  And she could get back to her life, somewhere far away from here.

  He just had to stall for a little longer before he could pull himself together. She'd be none the wiser.

  Matt closed his eyes, covering his thoughts with the expression of someone too tired to answer a difficult question like what his name was.

  She gave him a gentle pat on his shoulder. "You need to rest here some more."

  Then she asked, "How about the dog?"

  He looked over and saw Shadowfax was lying on an old-fashioned braided rug next to the wicker chair, presumably covering it in globs of fur.

  She rubbed the dog on the head. Apparently she was over her fear of him. "Has he got a name?"

  Matt said nothing, simply watching through half-closed eyelids as she felt around the dog's neck until she found his collar.

  "Shadowfax?" she read from the tag. He wondered if she knew where the name came from. It was possible. She'd named her cat after a Shakespearean character, so she wasn't the type to be intimidated by a thick book. He wished he could talk to her, about literature, and philosophy, and life out here in the cradle of the sea—and about how she got that one blonde curl to fall down over her forehead so adorably.

  But he could see the questions in her eyes—who was he? what was he doing out here?—so he closed his eyes again.

  He sank into the warmth of the nest by the stove—and the warmth of the gentle woman humming to herself as she bustled around looking for a pan to heat a can of soup for him. The fuzzy blanket, the fluffy cat glaring at him with its rhinestone collar twinkling every time it moved, the scent of flowers still wafting from some soap she'd washed with—if he closed his eyes he could imagine this was his house, and the woman with the blonde curls was his woman, someone who actually knew him but loved him anyway—not "fell for him," or "was seduced by him," but loved him, the real him.


  He sighed. There was no real him. He wasn't home. He was working, and he'd made a mess of this job. Now he had to get back on his feet and see if the damage could be repaired so he could get back in control of the situation.

  She was still talking to him while he lay there. He listened while she told him about her life, rambling on to fill the silence in the room.

  He closed his eyes again and let her words wash over him as she talked about herself and about her family.

  There were gaps there. She wasn't talking about her epilepsy, which he supposed wasn't something she wanted to mention to a stranger.

  And she hadn't explained why a pretty young woman with a wealthy family and a successful fiancé would run off to live at a lighthouse thousands of miles from home.

  And what about that fiancé: why hadn't she mentioned the dude, who from all reports was rich, good looking and madly in love with her? The guy's driver's license photo had shown a clean-cut man with a kind face, obviously the perfect type for someone like her. Someone exactly the opposite of Matteo DiPietro.

  For some reason Matt felt himself hating the jerk, but that was beside the point. Mister Right should have been one of the first things little Lori mentioned to a strange man lying on her kitchen floor.

  But that wasn't really important, not to him anyway. He didn't need to know about the woman's personal affairs. He was just here for the soup.

  So why did that feel like a lie?

  Omissions aside, her chattering had confirmed all the essential information he had on her. Father a successful attorney in Chicago. Old money family. Mansion in Gold Coast neighborhood with all the bells and whistles, from servants to a conservatory. (He'd had to look up what a conservatory was when he read the report. Who knew there were greenhouses that cost more than the average house? Learn something new every day.) Home schooled until high school, then went to a very snooty private school. No hint of scandal. No addictions, no parking tickets, no arrests for nude sunbathing. As clean and innocent as she looked.

  And she had no connections here in Pajaro Bay. Except Zelda Potter, of course. She still hadn't mentioned Ms. Zelda, or why a young woman with a life somewhere else would come to stay in a small town where her only relative was an elderly retired movie star.

  Or why she'd choose to come to an island lighthouse and be all alone, where any outlaw could just land on her doorstep without warning.

  "You don't know anyone around here?" he prompted her at the next lull in the monologue.

  "My aunt's president of the lighthouse preservation committee. I found out about the temporary job here from Aunt Zee—that's what I call her. She's my great aunt, actually. I suppose she'd be a bit old to be my aunt. She's Zelda Potter, or, well, she was—or I guess she is again?" She smiled. "Zelda Potter-Smith-Valentine-McCabe-Potter, that is. Do you know her? If you're from around here, I imagine she's hard to miss."

  "Ah," he said, as if this were news to him. "Our resident movie star." He relaxed as she confirmed all the info he'd been briefed about. Zelda Potter was her only local connection. It was all perfectly innocent. She'd had a fight with her fiancé or something, and she'd come out to California to cool off, or escape, or take a vacation. It was just his suspicious nature that had made him think she must have some other agenda in coming here to this isolated place at this particular time. "So you've never been to California before?"

  "No. Aunt Zee visits the family at holidays, and she and I used to talk a lot when I was a kid. She thinks the rest of my family's a bit too much. So do I," she added, then looked surprised at herself for admitting it.

  No reason for surprise. You'll tell me everything before I'm done.

  "So, you seem to be feeling better," she said, and he realized he'd gotten smug too soon, and this was her attempt to turn the tables on him. Those wide blue eyes looked him up and down, assessing his condition in a way that was too astute for comfort. "Now that you've had a chance to catch your breath, do you feel like talking a bit?"

  About who he was, and how he got here. No, he didn't feel like it. He tried to look tired, which wasn't too difficult to do under the circumstances.

  "I don't even know what to call you...," she said. She waited for his response.

  He hesitated just a fraction. He could make something up. But the mind behind those big blue eyes was too clever for a flippant lie. He had the disconcerting feeling that those innocent eyes might actually see through him to the truth if she stared long enough.

  Besides, the truth was always safer, wherever possible. Lies have to be remembered, they have to be consistent. And she was from the midwest. No connections to town except Zelda Potter, who had easily won the role of official town eccentric against Pajaro Bay's rather stiff competition. That settled it.

  "Matt," he said, hesitating about whether to be Matt Smith or Matt Jones, and then realized that wouldn't work if he ran into 'Aunt Zee' in town. "Matt DiPietro."

  "Nice to meet you, Matt DiPietro," she said. Her smile took his breath away, and he had to remind himself not to care how sweet and kissable she looked with her gold hair all rumpled and her eyes sparkling like that.

  He spoke quickly, covering his thoughts: "I never did thank you for rescuing me. I had taken Shadowfax out kayaking and we got knocked into the water when the storm hit." There. That ought to fill in all the blanks for her.

  She looked appalled. "You could've gotten killed."

  No kidding. He put on a contrite expression, and added in his best surfer-dude voice: "The waves are sick in this weather—I couldn't resist the chance to ride some big ones." Or the chance to come see her....

  "You could've bled to death."

  Getting grazed by a bullet will do that. "Yup. I was dumb. I promise I won't do it again." He smiled winsomely at her. "Is the soup ready?"

  By nightfall Lori was convinced her patient was almost as good as new. After they had both rested for a while, she managed to help him down the hall to the bedroom. He lay on his back on her brass bed, a situation saved from sexy overtones only by the sight of his injured leg resting on a stack of pillows, with the swollen but healthily pink toes sticking out from the end of the bandage.

  There were dark circles under his eyes, but Matt—now at last she knew what to call him—finished the entire bowl of chicken soup she brought him, along with one-and-a-half toasted bagels. The remaining bagel half went to Shadowfax, who added doggy drool and bagel crumbs to the ocean of black hair he was happily spreading on Aunt Zee's white chenille bedspread.

  "You get some sleep, pup," she said, hesitantly patting the dog on the head.

  "And you too, Matt," she added softly to the man dozing with one arm resting protectively across the dog's body.

  Some memory tickled at the edge of her consciousness. "Matt DiPietro. Why is that name familiar?"

  Matt's body tensed up as he jerked to alertness, and she instantly felt sorry for speaking and pulling him back to consciousness when he had been almost asleep. The leg must be really bothering him, but he was being macho again and trying not to admit that he was in pain.

  "DiPietro?" The name rolled off her tongue as she tried to say it with the soft Italian-flavored lilt his voice had when he pronounced it.

  He said nothing, but his eyes were wide open now.

  "Where have I heard that name?" she asked again. "Your family's from Pajaro Bay, isn't it?"

  He nodded. He was trying to look nonchalant, but he was so tense. She adjusted the pillow under his leg, hoping that would ease the pain.

  Finally it came to her. "I remember! Matteo's Oceanside Pizzeria. On the Wharf. Aunt Zee took me there. Best Pizza in Town—"

  "—Only Pizza in Town," he finished the phrase, quoting the saying etched on the front door.

  "So the restaurant was named after you?"

  Again that tenseness. "My grandfather," he said. "The restaurant and I were both named after him."

  "He must be proud."

  "He's dead."

  "Oh."

&
nbsp; "It's okay. A land mine in World War II. Not exactly recent history." It did seem to bother him, though. But he brushed it off, and instead asked: "So what did you have for dinner?"

  "Abalone pasta. With those soft breadsticks—to die for. I thought abalone always tasted like rubber, but this was...," she paused, trying to describe it. "It melted in my mouth. You're lucky; you must have had great dinners at home when you were growing up."

  Matt smiled that devastating grin at her, the tenseness going out of his shoulders as he relaxed back against the pillows. Whatever part of his battered body had been hurting him, the pain had passed. "Yeah. You should try the Anguilla Alla Griglia some time. Now that's to die for." He grinned at her like a mischievous little boy.

  "I will," she promised. "What the heck is it?"

  "Grilled eels," he said.

  She gave him a suitably disgusted look and he laughed, little crinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. What fortune had dropped this man into her life? He was smart, and funny, and considerate, and he was handsome beyond all reason. She almost wished he was staying here for more than a night.

  She gathered up the dishes and bed tray.

  Her pirate lay back and closed his eyes. In the lamplight he looked haggard.

  She tiptoed toward the door, trying not to jostle the dishes and wake him up.

  She'd saved him. The reality of it finally sunk in. She had saved a man's life. Little Lori. Helpless Lori. The one who couldn't even take care of herself.

  Well, she had not only taken care of herself but she'd taken care of someone else. She was grinning like an idiot. For the first time she'd done something on her own, without anyone's help, and she'd succeeded at it. She was free. She had proven that she could do it, and when her family heard about this they would have to take her seriously. She didn't need anyone's help.

  She pictured Mom's expression when she explained how she had saved a man's life all by herself. And even Aunt Zee would be in shock hearing all about her mysterious pirate, and how she had swept him off his feet. Well, sort of.