One of the Boys

by Merline Lovelace

  “It wasn’t easy to get into this condo,” Pete confided. Pouring margaritas from a frosty pitcher, he passed them to his guests before settling his lanky frame onto a lounge chair. “The pittance we poor civil servants earn barely covers the maintenance fees. I thought we’d have to hock Carol’s jewelry for the down payment.”

  “Oh, come on, Pete.” His wife’s voice carried a hint of annoyance. “You know it’s not that bad.”

  “Well, I hope you saved enough for insurance,” Jake put in, and deftly steered the conversation away from the apparently rocky shoals of domestic finances to the upcoming hurricane season. Maura had already participated in one hurricane watch since her arrival. Weather was a favorite topic of conversation on this part of the coast, she’d discovered, right after Miami Dolphins football.

  She tried to warm up to her hostess over dinner. Carol had obviously gone to considerable effort on her guests’ behalf. Heavy gleaming silver and sparkling crystal decorated the table, with an exquisite bird-of-paradise blossom in a Lalique holder at each place setting.

  “Pete’s right,” Maura offered sincerely. “You have a wonderful flair for decorating.”

  “Thank you.” Her long, manicured fingers stroked her crystal goblet sensuously. “I think a beautifully ordered setting helps create an inner serenity, don’t you?”

  Amusement flickered in the gray eyes directly across the table from Maura. She could see Jake waiting expectantly for her response.

  “Yes, I do.” She gave her hostess a polite smile. “Of course, we all find beauty in different ways. I, for one, like lots of splashy color.”

  “I know Jake appreciates clean, pure lines,” Carol purred. “He’s got a fabulous place across the bay.” The look she sent him from under lowered lashes suggested an intimate knowledge of his home—among other things.

  A tinge of red crept up Jake’s cheekbones as he gave a light answer and changed the subject.

  Sooo, Maura thought. Our hostess has the hots for the dashing Colonel McAllister. Repressing a twinge of something she couldn’t quite analyze, she glanced at her host. Pete was energetically tossing the Caesar salad, but the faint crease between his brows told her he hadn’t missed his wife’s provocative remark.

  Maura stepped in to cover the awkward moment. “You’ll have to tell me where to shop around here. I’ve been so busy at work I haven’t had time to hit the malls.”

  “Sandestin has some nice little shops,” her hostess replied with a polite smile. “Although I doubt they’ll have anything quite as stylish as the boutiques in L.A.”

  “Or as expensive,” Maura agreed, laughing.

  Pete gave her a grateful glance and kept the ball rolling by pumping her about L.A. Allowing her natural liveliness full rein, Maura exhausted her store of anecdotes about traffic tangles, star sightings and mail carriers on in-line skates. By the time Carol brought in the coffee, she couldn’t wait for the awful evening to be over.

  Riding home through the soft, starry night, she fought the beginnings of a headache. Her gushing chatter had drained both her energy and her enthusiasm. With a small sigh, she leaned her head back against the soft leather seat.

  “Would you mind telling me what that was all about?”

  The deep, gravelly voice coming at her out of the darkness made Maura jump. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean your performance tonight. You played the breathless California girl to perfection.”

  Maura’s eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. She forgot that she’d been late and kept this man waiting. She forgot that she’d deliberately dressed like a refugee from a floating rummage sale. She even ignored the fact that she’d prattled inanely for most of the evening, giving even herself a headache with her chatter.

  “I’m not sure what qualifies you as an expert on California girls,” she responded with soft, deadly sweetness, “but I’m surprised you wanted to go out with me if you have such a low opinion of the species.”

  He shot her a cool look. “Let’s keep the record straight. This wasn’t a date. When and if we do go out, we won’t spend the evening dueling over everything from sports to how we should have finished the job in Iraq.”

  “I stand corrected,” Maura said icily. “This wasn’t a date. And for the record, there won’t be any ‘when’ or ‘if.’”

  Her temper was still simmering when they pulled into the crushed-shell driveway beside her house. She had the passenger door open before the car rolled to a stop.

  “Thanks for the ride, Colonel. I won’t say it’s been fun. You don’t need to walk me to the door.”

  With another cool glance, McAllister levered himself out of the low-slung sports car. Following in her wake, he waited while she fit her key in the lock.

  Determined to end this fiasco, Maura turned. Too quickly, as it turned out. The ridiculously high platforms wobbled. She teetered on the small stoop and pitched forward.

  McAllister moved fast. Whipping out an arm, he snagged her against his chest. She looked up, totally embarrassed, to see a wicked glint come into his eyes.

  “You’re right,” he drawled. “This evening hasn’t been fun. Until now.”

  It was that damned grin that threw her. Maura was still trying to figure out how the man could go from cool and remote to rogue male in the blink of an eye when he swooped in for a kiss.

  The kiss stunned her. It was the last thing she’d expected after the disaster of the evening. While her mind struggled to deal with his impulsive act, her body cataloged the sensations he was bringing to it.

  The man could kiss. She’d give him that. His mouth moved over hers with a skill that sent tingles rippling down her spine. She was almost disappointed when he set her back on her feet and tipped her a casual salute.

  “See you around.”

  “Not if I see you first,” she muttered as he headed back to his car.

  Confused and irritated at her body’s reaction to the man, she let herself into the house, wandered into the living room and tossed her bag at the closest chair. When the chair let out a yowl, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Sorry, Bea!”

  Scooping up the indignant cat, she dropped into the chair and leaned her head against the high cushions.

  “I was right. The man is everything I don’t like. Stuffy, conservative, judgmental. I should have taken my own car tonight. I should have avoided the darned dinner altogether when Pete told me he’d invited McAllister, too. And I sure as heck should have been the one to break off that kiss!”

  Maura rubbed the cat’s fur and tried to relax, but the night had left her with a jumble of contradictory feelings that wouldn’t go away.

  That’s what she got for letting a long, lean body and sexy grin overcome her better judgment. She and take-charge, in-control types just didn’t mix. She ought to know. She’d left one just like him behind in L.A. Shaking her head, she kneaded the cat’s spine.

  “When am I going to learn?”

  Bea’s heavy body rumbled in a purr, but otherwise she ignored the question. Scooping her up, Maura marched them both off to bed.

  A frown creased Jake’s forehead as he drove through the soft Florida night. He couldn’t believe he’d given in to the impulse to kiss the woman who’d tumbled so conveniently into his arms. She was a mass of contradictions, as prickly as she was outspoken. He couldn’t figure her out, and his neat, orderly mind hated that kind of ambiguity.

  One thing was clear, though. His body wasn’t experiencing the least ambiguity. Just the memory of her mouth under his put a kink in his gut that wouldn’t quit.

  He shifted in the bucket seat, trying to erase the discomfort with a healthy dose of common sense. The scars from his divorce had pretty much healed, but he’d learned his lesson. He intended to look long and hard before he took another leap into the pool. Particularly with a woman as confusing as Maura Phillips.

  With a distinct twinge of regret, Jake decided he’d best avoid her in the future. Eglin was a big base,
the largest in the world. It had more than five hundred square miles of test range and ate up half of the Florida panhandle. Surely that was enough room to keep some distance between him and this particular female.

  Chapter 2

  “Hi.”

  The tentative greeting drifted through the brim of the floppy straw hat shading Maura’s brow. Angling her head, she squinted into the late-afternoon sun at the silhouette standing ankle deep in the water just a few yards away. The hazy figure gradually resolved itself into a smiling, dark-haired teen.

  “Hi, yourself.”

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” the girl offered as she waded closer to Maura’s lawn chair. The chair was set in two feet of warm, shallow water with the seat just inches above the lapping wavelets.

  “Don’t let the closed eyes and snoring fool you,” Maura responded, shifting Bea’s dead weight to a more comfortable spot on her stomach. “I wasn’t sleeping, just soaking up some rays.”

  The girl giggled. “I was just surprised to see anyone in this cove. I come here just about every afternoon, and it’s always deserted. It’s my special place.”

  Intrigued, Maura studied the gangly teen. She guessed her age at about fifteen or so and wondered why the girl would spend her summer afternoons in a deserted cove. Her own experience with half a dozen nieces and nephews made her think trips to the mall and beach parties with hordes of noisy friends were more usual pursuits.

  “I just discovered the cove myself,” Maura confided. “It’s only a short walk from the cottage I’ve rented. It’s so quiet and peaceful, I thought it would be a good spot to contemplate nature, even with eyes closed.”

  Actually, she’d thought it was a good spot to let her tired body rest in the sun. Still trying to get a handle on her new job, she’d worked late every night last week and all day Saturday. This morning she’d woken late and toyed briefly with the idea of unpacking a box or two. Instead, she’d lingered over coffee until the unnatural urge went away, then decided to go exploring. The vast Choctawhatchee Bay called to her.

  Pulling on a bathing suit and a pair of sneakers that had passed their prime years ago, she dug through the boxes for the straw hat one of her nephews had won at a county fair and wouldn’t be caught dead in. With a lightweight folding chair under one arm and Bea under the other, she’d set off along the narrow beach that edged the bay.

  Following the shoreline from the cluster of cottages surrounding her own, she’d soon left all traces of civilization behind. Minutes later, she’d rounded a curve and found herself in this picturesque, deserted cove. Fallen tree stumps littered its bank, and shells washed up onto the ribbon of sand that constituted its tiny shore.

  With a sigh of contentment, Maura had unfolded her lounger in the shallow, lapping waves, settled Bea atop her stomach, and let the sun soak into her tired bones. The sunlight dancing on the waves had soon lulled her into a light doze.

  All thoughts of sleep were gone now, though. Wide-awake, she surveyed the engaging young woman facing her. Well, not really a woman, she amended. Halfway between girlhood and budding femininity, she showed promise of real beauty. Her cutoffs and tank top revealed slight breasts and long, slender legs. Short, feathery dark curls brought out the glow of her tanned skin and blue eyes. Maura felt herself drawn to the girl’s smile. It was both charming and tentative, as if she wanted to talk but wasn’t sure of her welcome.

  “Here.” Scooting up, she swung her legs off the lounge to dangle in the shallow water. “Have a seat and tell me why you think this cove is so special. My name’s Maura, by the way.”

  The girl perched precariously on the end of the lounger and folded her legs under her with coltish grace. “I’m Lisa. I live just around the bend. Didn’t you know this stretch of shore is an old Indian camping ground?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “It’s a historic site. Registered and everything.”

  “So that why no one’s built along here.”

  “They can’t. It’s protected by the government.” The girl’s blue eyes gleamed as she warmed to a topic that obviously fascinated her. “There’s an Indian museum in downtown Fort Walton Beach that has artifacts found around this cove. Pots and utensils and stuff. Even bones.”

  “Bones?”

  Nodding, Lisa grinned ghoulishly. “Real bones. Skulls and leg pieces and teeth. Some of them have been carbon-dated from prehistoric times.”

  “How in the world do you know so much about it?”

  “My dad’s best friend is married to a woman who works here on base. Maggie’s an environmental engineer.”

  “Dr. Maggie Wescott. Yes, I know her.”

  Mostly by reputation, although they had attended one or two meetings together. Maura had felt an instant rapport with the leggy, green-eyed blonde, but so far she hadn’t had time to follow up on her friendly offer of a personal tour of Eglin’s Natural Resource Management operation.

  “Maggie got me interested in archaeology,” Lisa explained with engaging enthusiasm. “That’s what I’m going to study in college. I got to spend a month last summer on a dig in Utah, sponsored by my school. It was really fun. I mean, we lived in tents and cooked our food over campfires and shifted about a ton and a half of dirt a day. I even found a dinosaur bone.” She smiled mischievously. “Or at least I thought it was a dinosaur, until the instructor said it was actually a coyote’s left foreleg.”

  Maura laughed at the droll recital. “Well, coyote or tyrannosaur, I’m impressed. The only remains I’ve ever found belonged to a bird Bea dragged in.”

  At the mention of her name, the cat twitched one slightly ragged ear, but otherwise declined to stir enough to be properly introduced.

  Lisa reached out to stroke the mottled orange fur. “What a strange-looking cat. She reminds me of the fat Cheshire in Alice in Wonderland, except she’s the wrong color and she’s not grinning.”

  “No, that would take too much energy. Bea saves her strength for the important things, like sleeping.”

  Lisa’s strokes drew rumbles of pleasure from the cat’s massive chest. “How old is she?”

  “I don’t have any idea. I found her asleep in the front seat of my car one afternoon a few years ago, with no tag and a bleeding paw. She objected to being dislodged, so we sort of adopted each other.”

  For a few moments they sat contentedly, letting the sun warm them and the lapping waves tickle their ankles. Lisa glanced around her special place with a proprietary look, then pointed to a dark opening in the bank just a few yards away.

  “See that small indentation in the cove? Either the tide or a storm washed out part of the bank. Lots of times buried artifacts are uncovered that way. You can find them easily in the shallow bay water.”

  At Maura’s skeptical look, she crossed her heart.

  “Honest!” Untangling her legs, she jumped off the lounger. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  “I believe you.”

  “No, seriously, come on. I bet we can find all kinds of stuff here.”

  Unable to resist such eager enthusiasm, Maura got to her feet. Bea observed with an inscrutable expression from the safety of the lounge as the two humans began a slow, slogging shuffle.

  Following Lisa’s example, Maura peered down at the water and stared intently into the muddy swirls her sneakered feet stirred up. She found a couple of pieces of dark stone, which Lisa laughingly dismissed, and was ready to call it quits when the girl called out excitedly.

  “Come look!”

  Lisa knelt in the shallow water to wash dirt from what looked like a small brown rock. Crouching down beside her, Maura watched as a symmetrical pattern slowly emerged from the mud.

  “I’ve seen a design just like this on a pot in the museum,” Lisa said breathlessly. “The Indians used to arrange pieces of straw around the pots before they fired them. Each tribe had its own special pattern, sort of like a designer’s signature. See how this one weaves over and under.”

  Despite herself, Maura felt
a thrill as she ran her fingers over the surface of the shard. Her mother was an amateur potter, happily shutting herself away from her noisy brood in a converted garage. Having zero artistic talent of her own, Maura was convinced that observing her parent create such beauty from natural materials had influenced her own decision to specialize in ceramics.

  “Yes, I can see the design.” She was almost as excited as the girl. “I can’t believe we actually found this here.”

  Lisa clambered to her feet with an excited splash. “Let’s see if we can find some more.”

  An hour later, a dripping but triumphant pair knelt in the shallow water and spread their cache out on the lounge.

  Bea gave a disgusted twitch of her tail and moved to the end of the lounge. Eyeing the sandy bits disdainfully, she settled herself on the pillow.

  Their largest find was only about six inches square, but it was definitely part of a pot. It had a round lip and curved in, then out, with a delicate line. Rows of slanted markings filled its entire surface.

  “I didn’t really think we’d find anything,” Maura admitted, “but I’m a believer now. This is really exciting. I can’t wait to tell my mother about these. Are we supposed to turn these pieces in to the museum or something?”

  “I’m not sure. I know the shore is a protected area, but we found these pieces in the water. I’ll ask my dad,” the girl said after a moment. “He knows everything.”

  “Thanks for the endorsement.”

  Both woman and girl jumped as the deep voice penetrated their absorption.

  “Dad!”

  The teenager’s pretty face lit up. Splashing through water, she jumped up on the bank and laid her pieces in his hand.

  “Look what we found.”

  Maura straightened slowly and barely suppressed a groan. Of all the people this engaging child could have picked for a parent, she had to choose Jake McAllister.

  “This is Maura, Dad. She found some really super pieces, but we’re not sure if we can keep them. Can we? I told her you would know.”