Return to Magnolia Harbor

by Hope Ramsay

  As she approached, memories tumbled into place. Damn. He remembered now. She’d been a lifeguard one year at the yacht club pool. She’d even saved a kid who’d hit his head on the diving board.

  She hadn’t been his type at all, and yet he remembered that summer, finding her attractive in spite of the fact that she wasn’t stacked or blonde, but because of her heroism that day, hauling that kid out of the pool and giving him mouth-to-mouth until he coughed up a bunch of water.

  He’d become fascinated with her for a time—enough to wonder why she hung out with Colton St. Pierre. He vaguely remembered telling her that Colton was bad news.

  And he’d been right about that. Colton had ended up in jail. And Jessica had been sent away. Well, everyone made mistakes. Clearly, she’d straightened her life out.

  And she still wasn’t his type. But then, no woman in her right mind wanted him now, except maybe for his money. He certainly had enough to buy companionship. But who the hell wanted that?

  As she approached, he swiveled on the captain’s chair, the morning sun hot against his scarred face, a trickle of sweat inching down his back between his shoulder blades. He braced for the stare, but she was wearing sunglasses.

  He didn’t know whether to curse or praise God. Being not very religious and consigned to a body that no longer worked right, he chose not to thank God.

  “Good morning,” she said in a falsely bright voice that conveyed her disgust. Damn those sunglasses—he would bet his fortune that she was looking over his shoulder. He turned his head to the left so she would only have to see his good side.

  “You’re late,” he growled.

  “I’m sorry, but it was a long—”

  “Untie the mooring lines,” he interrupted. He hoped to hell she knew what that meant because he’d be damned if he had to do it himself. Climbing up to the dock and back would hurt. And, of course, it would display his weakness.

  She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. “I’m not your crew, you know.”

  Great. She didn’t know what a mooring line was. “Fine. I’ll do it—”

  “No. All you have to do is ask nicely,” she said with another big, phony smile.

  “Please,” he muttered, semi-embarrassed. What the hell? He didn’t want to scare this architect away. She was the only one who hadn’t laughed at him when he’d said the words “Lookout Island.”

  She dropped her big tote into the cockpit and scampered down the dock to the big cleat where the mooring line was tied. She moved like a sprite, light on her feet. She was fun to watch.

  Clearly she knew something about sailboats because she handled the mooring lines like a pro and even hopped from the pier to the gunwales without looking intimidated or out of her element.

  “So you know your way around a sailboat,” he said as he fired up the diesel engines.

  “My grandfather was once a member of the yacht club. He had a J-22 we used to sail when I was a kid,” she said as she stepped down into the cockpit and then perched on the portside bench.

  He studied her as she looked up at the mast where the wind vane indicated a good breeze blowing from the southwest. Topher judged it at maybe eight knots or so.

  “So we’re not sailing?” she asked as he guided the boat into the channel.

  “No,” he growled, annoyed by her question.

  He’d been sailing all his life, and the yacht had all the technology money could buy. It might be forty feet long, but it was rigged to be single-handed. Topher could manage it even without his good health.

  But he didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of this woman. He didn’t want to display his disabilities; otherwise she might join the chorus of people in his life who thought he was crazy to want to live alone on a deserted island.

  * * *

  Topher turned his head so that only the unmarred side of his face was visible. It was as handsome as ever. But Jessica was hard-pressed to recognize the man sitting behind the ship’s wheel.

  He wasn’t the same clean-cut, letter-jacket all-American she remembered. He’d lost the roundness of youth and now had a tough, sinewy look to him. He was dressed like a beach bum, in a garish purple Hawaiian shirt featuring palm trees and bright-orange sunsets, faded jeans with holes in the knees, and a pair of dirty Vans.

  The late-August sun highlighted strands of blond and gray in his shoulder-length hair. A bushy beard hid a tracery of scars on his left side, which he tried to keep hidden from her view. The way he turned his head might have broken her heart if she’d had any pity for him.

  But it was the eye patch over his left eye that gave him the appearance of an anti-hero from an action movie. Looking into the endless blue of his right eye was more unnerving than the lack of symmetry in his face or his incredibly rude manner.

  She settled back into the cushion and waited. Last Friday, when he’d set up this meeting, he’d been so insistent about her dropping everything, including her bid for the new City Hall project, in order to do this site visit. She expected him to have a lot to say as they sailed out to the island.

  Clients usually had more ideas than could ever be incorporated into a single design. It was her job to winnow out the important things at initial meetings like this.

  But minutes rolled by and he remained silent. Evidently, he expected her to get the ball rolling. “So, about this house,” she said, “are you planning to restore the lighthouse, or did you want to build additional structures?”

  Instead of answering the question, he turned that blue eye on her and asked, “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a simple question. Do you think I’m crazy to build on a remote island?”

  Oh boy. Obviously the man knew what the gossips were saying about him. She could stop this right now. But she suddenly didn’t want to. If the man wanted to hang himself, she was happy to supply the rope.

  But she wasn’t rude, either. She simply sidestepped his query. “Building on an island will be difficult,” she said.

  “That didn’t answer my question.”

  He was no fool, was he? “Well,” she said, leaning back on the bench and looking away from his too-intense gaze, “you have to be a little crazy to want to build off the grid.”

  He barked a laugh. “So you think I’m crazy.”

  “Yes,” she said as irritation mounted. The man obviously didn’t know one thing about polite conversation.

  “Maybe we should turn around,” he said through his teeth. His gaze pinned her.

  “Maybe we should. We’re only here because you insisted.” She forced herself to stare right at him, daring him to come about.

  His mouth twitched, and he looked to the left, hiding his scars. He didn’t turn the boat around, but he didn’t say anything, either. The silence stretched out, punctuated by the wind whipping against the ties on the furled mainsail. She pressed her lips together, determined not to smooth over what had just been said, and watched the seabirds above them.

  Ten minutes later, he spoke again. “My grandfather talked about building a big house on the island. I think he wanted to oust the Martin family get-togethers from Aunt Mary’s. It galled him to have the Martin family reunion at Howland House. There was once a time when the Martins were as important as the Howlands.”

  So this was about family ego? Really? She wanted to hurl over the sides, but she continued her silence. She had nothing nice to say about his vision.

  “What’s going on in that head of yours?” He barked the question into the wind.

  That did it. If he wanted the truth, she’d give it to him. “So basically you want to build a monument to your family’s name, then.”

  He laughed without any mirth. “Yes.” And then a moment later. “I loved my grandfather.”

  The longing in his voice yanked her back and reminded her that she was here for the purpose of moving on. Maybe she should quit being so angry and try accepting that he was a human capable of loving someone.
/>   And she could understand loving a grandfather. She’d adored PopPop.

  “I understand,” she said, fighting to maintain emotional distance from the man who had ruined her life.

  Chapter Two

  Did she understand?

  No way. She was whole, and beautiful, and…He didn’t know what the hell word to use to describe her. She wasn’t intimidated by his anger, and the way she pointed her face at him suggested that she wasn’t giving him the stare.

  He wanted her to understand about Granddad. But what the hell. It didn’t matter if she understood. What he wanted was impossible. The dream of a family compound had died with his grandfather. His cousins were scattered around the country these days, and besides, who would want to bring their kids to visit a man whose face made babies cry?

  No, he was alone, and likely to be that way for the rest of his life. So what he needed was a place to hide. But saying it out loud wasn’t easy.

  He tore his gaze away from Jessica and focused on the compass heading. Not that he needed the direction. He could see Lookout Island off the port bow, the old lighthouse rising up, seemingly from out of the bay itself.

  “Maybe I should just restore the lighthouse,” he muttered, feeling the need to say something.

  “Well, that’s an option. But are you ready for tiny-house living? A lighthouse usually doesn’t have much square footage.”

  “Are you trying to talk me out of everything I want?” he asked in a disgruntled tone. He turned back toward her, irritated that she seemed so carelessly calm, with one leg tucked up under the other.

  She shook her head. “No. I’m just doing my job. You haven’t given me much to work with.”

  “No. I told you what I wanted and—”

  “Not really. You told me what your grandfather wanted, and then you told me what you were willing to settle for. What is it you want, Topher?”

  I want my old life back. That was what he wanted, but she was powerless to give him that. So instead, he asked, “What would be involved in turning the lighthouse into a residence?”

  She leaned forward, pulling her cap down on her head against the breeze. “Well, I’ve never done a lighthouse restoration, so I’ll need to do some research. But from what I’ve seen in photographs, it will be vertical living. You know, a room on each level. So lots of stairs to get from one place to another.”

  She pushed her sunglasses up her nose and looked in his direction. Damnation. He wanted to see her eyes when she said stuff like that. Did she have enough courage to look him in the eye and point out his obvious disability?

  “I think maybe I want a little more room,” he said.

  “Is there a lightkeeper’s cottage on the island?”

  “There was once, but I don’t remember it. Hurricane Hugo blew it down in 1989.”

  “Too bad. We could have restored it.”

  “I guess. I don’t think it was very big.”

  “So you want something big, then?”

  He shrugged.

  “Are you planning to live there year-round?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh. Okay, that’s important to know. We have to worry about winter storms in addition to the occasional tropical disturbance. I don’t think we’ll be able to build a sea wall, but we can—”

  “I like the idea of walls,” he said because he didn’t know what else to say. “You know, to keep the storms at bay.” And to keep people out. Then he added, “The lighthouse is made of brick, so maybe we should think about some stone to complement it.” God, he sounded like an idiot. He knew nothing about architecture.

  “Hmmm,” she said on a long breath. “So basically you’re telling me you want a castle with a tower.”

  “What? I didn’t say—”

  “Okay, I know that’s not what you said, but a stone building with a wall and a lighthouse tower says castle to me.”

  A flash of anger hit him like a rogue wave. “Are you laughing at me?” he snarled.

  “Not at all. I’m trying to understand what you want.”

  “Well, clearly I want something substantial, maybe built of stone, with a wall to protect it. And it needs to withstand the most ferocious storm, with a big enough freezer to lay in food for months at a time. I don’t plan to make a lot of trips back and forth to the grocery store.”

  * * *

  Finally. She had something to work with, and it wasn’t far from what Aunt Donna had talked about last Saturday. He wanted a hideaway.

  It made sense, seeing the way he would turn away from her, exposing only his unscarred side. It almost irked her that she could feel empathy for him. It was probably hard for him. People probably stared at him.

  So she got the picture. He wanted a place to haunt like some brooding, injured hero in a Gothic novel. She’d never designed anything like that, and she’d hate living in a place like that. But it wasn’t her vision or her house.

  That was the point. And she took pride in the fact that she was good at her job because she could translate her clients’ visions into reality.

  So she gave him a businesslike smile. “I can design something like that,” she said, standing up to make herself taller and maybe a bit more serious-looking. But the swaying motion of the boat almost knocked her sideways. She had to grab the back of the bench to keep from falling over. How humiliating.

  She found him watching her out of his cobalt-blue eye, studying her as if he could see right through to her insecurities. She needed a moment to regroup.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to use the head.”

  “Sure. It’s down the ship’s ladder and to the left.”

  She headed forward and took the ladder down into the yacht’s main salon, which had been decorated in a style that fit the boat’s name.

  And really, who names their boat Bachelor’s Delight? But then, she already knew that Topher Martin had an ego the size of Alaska. Clearly, the whole #MeToo thing had completely escaped his attention.

  As she snooped around his yacht, she got a real good sense of his design style, which could be summed up as early–American Playboy Mansion. She wanted to barf all over the gold trim in the yacht’s head. The whole thing was beyond tacky.

  When she returned above deck, desperately in need of fresh air, Delight was nearing the iconic lighthouse. It stood on its lonely island at the mouth of the inlet, its red and white stripes faded to brown and gray. A cast-iron gallery and catwalk topped the tower and had left rust streaks down the faded paint of the brickwork.

  The tower was solid and utterly isolated. A perfect place for an off-the-grid hideaway for a brooding bachelor.

  Topher guided the yacht alongside a floating aluminum dock that appeared to be brand-new. She hopped out and secured the mooring lines as Topher cut the engines.

  She had expected him to take care of the aft lines, but when he stood up from the captain’s chair, she realized the truth. Aunt Donna had said something about his injured leg, and now she realized that it was, by far, the most significant of his challenges.

  A few misgivings settled uncomfortably into her mind. Maybe it was cruel to do this—to make it possible for him to retire from the world.

  She stomped on the thought. Who was she to tell him what he should and shouldn’t do? The man was willing to pay her well. So she wasn’t going to get all softhearted or worried. The man had money, he wanted a house, and she was an architect.

  She headed down the dock and caught the mooring line when he tossed it to her. When she’d secured it to the cleat, she stood and turned, gazing up at the lighthouse.

  “Tell me about the light?” she asked.

  “It was built in 1870,” he said as they made their way up a flagstone walk. Topher had produced one of those folding aluminum canes with a rubber tip, which he leaned heavily on as they climbed the hill where the light stood looking over the inlet.

  “It was decommissioned in the late 1960s,” Topher continued, “and my grandfather bought the island back in
1973, years before I was born.”

  When they reached the steel door set into the masonry, he pulled out an old-fashioned key and slipped it into the lock. The mechanism squealed as he turned it. So did the hinges as he pulled the door open.

  They stepped into the tower, a dim light filtering down from above. The porthole windows circling the building revealed a slightly rusty cast-iron stairway spiraling up around the building’s interior perimeter. Jessica took off her sunglasses and hung them from the neckline of her T-shirt as she gazed upward. The helix of the stairway was a thing of beauty.

  “There are one hundred and sixty-seven steps to the watch room. A ladder leads up from there to the lantern room,” Topher said.

  She turned, finally, meeting and holding his gaze. His cobalt eye gleamed in the dim light with a spark that welded her to the floor. She couldn’t look away, as the memory of the boy in the letter jacket was cauterized forever from her memory, leaving this much more intimidating version.

  He looked away first, and she yanked her gaze up toward the spiraling stairs and spoke the first words that entered her brain. “You can’t make it up to the top, can you?”

  The words were cruel in a way, but they were also true. And necessary. She’d need to incorporate an elevator into her design.

  “No, I can’t,” he growled.

  Chapter Three

  It was after four o’clock by the time Bachelor’s Delight returned to its berth at the Magnolia Harbor Marina. During the afternoon, Jessica had taken hundreds of photos and measurements, filling a notebook with ideas, facts, figures, and even a few drawings.

  She also had a signed agreement in hand to produce a house design. Topher Martin was willing to pay her twice her going rate.

  Which was great, except that her new client seemed to know that she was overcharging him because the last thing he said, right before she left him at the pier, was that he wanted to see design concepts in a week.

  A week!

  Yikes. She was going to have to burn some serious midnight oil to make that happen because she needed to finish her submission to the review committee for the new City Hall project before she could even start work on his house.