"Paige, Paige," he said urgently, grasping her by the shoulders. She, fully awake now, realized that it was Chad, and her fear subsided, but slowly. He knelt and held her in the circle of his arms, stunned by her unreasoning fear.
"I didn't mean to frighten you," he soothed, his voice calm, steady, and free of the brusqueness that she had learned to expect from him.
The sherry had left her feeling dizzy.
"I—I—" She tried to speak, but her fright, along with the sherry, had left her tongue incapable of wrapping itself around words.
"Do you know where the flashlight is?"
"I—I'm not sure," Paige said indistinctly, still shaking uncontrollably. "I've left it somewhere."
Chad sat down beside her, his brow wrinkling in sudden concern. "Is anything wrong? You didn't get an electric shock, did you?"
She shook her head, trying to ignore her rapid heartbeat. "Help me up and I'll look for the flashlight."
"No, wait. You're still trembling," he said. "I can't imagine how I managed to scare you so. Look, I'm not a werewolf." He held his hands toward her. "See? No hair on my palms." He smiled, trying to cheer her.
"It's only that I was nervous about being alone in the Manse," she managed to say. "Then when I saw you standing above me—"
"You thought I was a burglar. Or worse." The expression on his face softened. Then he had a sudden thought. "Say, you're not getting sick, are you?"
He scrutinized her closely, taking in her pale face, seeing that she was still shivering. He lifted his hand up and put it to her forehead, letting it linger. "You don't seem to have a fever," he said, relieved.
"Too much sherry," she murmured. "It took a very long time for you to get back."
"You're a little tipsy?" He chuckled, shaking his head. The hand that had been assessing her for fever drifted lower, caressing her cheek.
Her skin tingled at his touch, and from the startled look in his eyes she could tell that he felt it too. Here they were, alone again, in a situation that she'd sworn to herself would never recur. Chad, suddenly serious, ran a forefinger down the line of her cheekbone to her lips, traced their fullness, gently touched her chin, inclined her head toward his.
She couldn't believe that it was happening in spite of all her good intentions, but Chad's lips were upon hers, drinking in her kisses. And, as before, she felt herself responding with a lack of inhibition that only a few weeks ago would have been out of the question. And still would be, with anyone else.
All at once the idea of kissing anyone else seemed offensive. How had she come to this point? Now here she was thinking that she never wanted to kiss anyone but Chad Smith—and come to think of it, she knew no more about him, really, than she had in the beginning.
It was impossible to ignore his lips, nipping softly at her neck, his arms, strong and muscular and holding her close. She felt her breathing speed up, her heart beating wildly. She lifted her head and felt his tongue against the tender skin of her throat. She heard herself moan lightly with the sheer exquisite pleasure of it.
His expert hands slid beneath her loose shirt, and their heat suffused her and mingled with the glow from the sherry. Her breasts swelled with the sensation of warmth, their nipples rising to meet his eager fingers.
It wasn't possible, given the height of her arousal, for Chad to be unaware of it. As from a far distance, she saw his fingers working at the shirt buttons and allowed him to lay back the folds of fabric to expose one perfect breast, its nipple firm and ready for his touch.
"Paige," he said softly, and his pronunciation of her name expressed his wonder at her beauty, limned as she was in the glow from the candle on the mantel.
She was lost, and she knew it. Her lips parted of their own volition, seeking to be conquered by his. Gentle hands stroked her breasts, applying careful rhythmic pressure to achieve the most excruciating pleasure. Paige's back arched slowly in gentle invitation, an invitation that Chad seemed willing to accept. Her hands slipped around him and under his shirt, reciprocating the delightful play of his own hands on her fevered flesh.
A victim of her own smoldering passion, she barely knew it when she shrugged her shoulders lightly to relieve herself of cumbersome clothing. Then she was bare to his gaze, ready to begin the lovemaking that she wanted, no, needed, in order to free herself from the gnawing tension that Chad Smith had so readily aroused.
He allowed himself to touch her for only a moment, then, seeming to come to his senses, he leaned back and looked at her as she gazed back at him from under heavy lids.
"Talk about electricity," he said, keeping his tone light, but with obvious effort. "When we're together, the sparks fly." He straightened, sat up, smoothed his hair.
"You mean—?"
"I mean I'm going to short-circuit this love scene right now—nothing's going to happen. I know what your conditions are, and I can't take advantage of you in your aunts' home. It wouldn't be right to repay their hospitality that way." He stared at her for a moment, his eyes burning with raw emotion. Then, quickly, so that she was not entirely sure what she had seen in them, he turned away.
Wearily Paige pulled on her shirt, ignoring the clamoring of her senses. She desired him, and that was the blunt truth of it. Chad wanted her as much as she wanted him. That he respected her and her aunts was an encouraging mark of his character.
She needed to bring their relationship back to a more casual footing immediately. "I may have left the flashlight in the dining room," she said, her words falling out in a rush. She stood a bit unsteadily, although her shakiness was not from fear or the lingering effect of the sherry. She was stone-cold sober now, and passion had driven out fear.
Chad slid an arm around her shoulders and led the way to the dining room, carrying the candle. The flashlight was there. His subsequent inspection of the electric range was slow and deliberate. Finally he unplugged it from the electric outlet and went down into the basement for several minutes.
"I don't think you should use the range until I can find a qualified appliance repair man to come out here and look at it," he said when he returned. "We'll just leave it unplugged. But as far as I can tell, the electrical problem is confined to the range. The Manse's wiring seems all right." He threw the master electric switch and the Manse blazed into light, which revealed them standing in the middle of the kitchen blinking at one another.
"I have a microwave in the Sea House. We can use that for cooking until the range is repaired."
"Fine," said Paige. They stared at each other, his eyes hot upon her, then Chad switched off the flashlight and turned to leave by the kitchen door. He paused and looked back at her.
For a brief moment an unnamed emotion flickered over Chad's features and he looked as if he had something he wanted to say. But whatever it was, he didn't shape it into words. Instead he pivoted on his heel and walked out, and Paige, feeling suddenly, discouragingly, bereft, heard his footsteps retreating down the path as he disappeared into the forest.
Chapter 6
Chad was up and away from St. Albans soon after dawn. He left a note tacked to the back door of the Manse. It was terse, almost abrupt. No salutation, no signature.
"Have gone to Brunswick to find repair man. Feel free to use the microwave in the Sea House whenever." That was all.
Oddly enough, she wasn't hungry in spite of skipping dinner last night. She toasted two slices of bread and ate them with butter and muscadine jelly.
At lunchtime, seeing no sign of Chad, she wandered down to the dock and looked out across the green and blue expanse of the salt marsh. A cormorant, his feathers iridescent in the bright sunlight, paddled past, looking for a meal. He must have spotted a fish because he dived quickly, submerging, then rose to the surface several feet from the dock. He flew away, soaring toward the shore where he would eat his catch.
Paige saw no sign of Chad approaching in the Marsh Mallow, so after lingering for a few more moments she made her way back up the hill to the Manse. A methodical
search of the refrigerator turned up only the oyster stew. Chad's note had said to use his microwave, so she might as well walk down to the Sea House, maybe even eat the stew outside on the Sea House's front porch. She picked up the container and set out, this time along the beach.
She opened the door to the Sea House carefully, curiously, feeling inhibited by an overwhelming feeling that she didn't belong here. She quelled the feeling the best she could and looked around the room with interest. Last night the atmosphere had been so strained that she hadn't had a chance to see how Chad lived.
Chad's occupancy of the Sea House had transformed it from a simple rustic cottage with a magnificent view of the sea into a statement that revealed his own individuality. The rag rug above the fireplace, the stoneware jug on the mantel, the rough texture of the wool serape that covered the bed—all combined to give an impression of a rugged man who traveled and who loved the natural tones and textures of the outdoors.
The room looked extremely neat, everything squarely in its place. The papers which had been scattered and stacked on the table last night were gone, maybe stored in the low filing cabinet beside the table. Out of curiosity Paige tried one of the drawers, but it refused to budge. Perhaps Chad had foreseen her inclination to snoop.
Chad owned books of all kinds, but most of them concerned sailing. She recalled his annoyance when she'd asked him about his sailboat. His annoyance seemed misplaced when she considered what she now deduced, from the contents of the bookshelves, as an avid interest in the sport. The calluses on his hands could very well have been caused by handling rigging, she supposed, and then she chided herself for being a poor detective. Calluses could be caused by any number of occupations—ditch digger, to name one. But Chad Smith did not look like the type to be digging ditches.
Idly Paige picked up a large illustrated guidebook to France. Whenever her job required her to spend extra time there, she rented a car and roamed the beautiful countryside. This book had excellent pictures, and to her surprise, it was written in French. Did Chad speak the language, then, and could he read this book?
Nothing he had ever said or done had led her to believe that he was bilingual.
As she was thoughtfully closing the covers of the book, photo slipped from between its pages. Paige caught it as it fell and moved closer to the window to look at it. It was a very bad picture of a trophy of some sort.
She turned the picture over, expecting to find a date or a name or an explanation. Nothing. She looked at it again and noted that the object on top of the trophy was definitely a sailboat. The writing engraved on the base of the trophy was almost indecipherable due to the poor quality of the photo itself. She couldn't make out the year or much of anything else except, very faintly, the name Smith.
Carefully she replaced the photo in the guidebook. The few things she had discovered about Chad at least gave her something to think about, she thought as she went to the kitchen area and heated the stew. It seemed clear that Chad was avidly interested in sailboats. Why, then, would he refuse to talk about his boat?
When the stew was hot, she carried it outside to sit on the stone steps and mull Chad Smith over in her mind. Unfortunately, she hadn't really turned up enough information to reach any definite conclusion about either Chad's origins or his intentions.
After she ate, she washed up in the tiny bathroom and glanced around the main room of the cottage once more, preparing to leave. Her gaze fell briefly on a sheaf of papers behind the sea grass basket beside the door. She bent over to pick them up, noticed that they had become wrinkled, and started to flatten the top sheet with her hand. She could hardly help noticing the subject matter.
The top paper had to do with boats, something about rigging and sails. Sailboats, again. The second paper was a sketch of a racing yacht, complete down to the last detail. The third paper seemed to be a comparison of racing times. The others appeared to concern technical sailing data, all in Chad's handwriting.
Paige had just finished straightening the stack of papers when she dropped them. They scattered across the polished wood floor, and she had to get down on her hands and knees to pick them up.
She was in the process of retrieving one sheet that had fallen between the bed and the table beside it when she saw an envelope that had slipped down into the same crevice. She picked that up, too, when she saw that the logo in the top left-hand corner was that of the aunts' bank in Brunswick.
Turning the envelope over in her hand, she saw the note scribbled in pencil in Aunt Biz's sprawling hand. It only said, "Chad—please handle," but it filled her with alarm. Here was a clue of some sort, if only she could figure it out. It was a link between the aunts and Chad, a financial one.
Aunt Biz and Aunt Sophie and her late Uncle John had been left financially independent through a trust set up by their father before his death many years ago. Paige well remembered visits to Brunswick in the Marsh Mallow several times every summer with Aunt Biz, when they would walk to the bank and Aunt Biz would disappear into old Mr. Lingfelt's office for a long consultation.
Afterward, Mr. Lingfelt's secretary would give Paige a red lollipop and Mr. Lingfelt would pat Paige on the head, and Aunt Biz would take Paige to the nearby Dairy Freeze for a chocolate milkshake.
Aunt Biz had always handled the business angles of their trust for the aunts and, when he was alive, Uncle John. She said that she enjoyed the adding and subtracting and determining where the money should go. In fact, that was why she had always been called Aunt Biz—Biz for her fine head for business, Uncle John had said.
So why was Aunt Biz turning over anything from her bank to Chad with a hastily scribbled note asking him to handle it?
She scrutinized the envelope carefully. It held nothing inside. It was the kind of envelope that might have once held a check or a bank statement, however. The return address in the top left corner had been torn off when the envelope was opened. She sank down on Chad's bed, the wool serape rough against her bare legs, and wrinkled her forehead in thought. She could think of nothing that Aunt Biz could be turning over to Chad, unless perhaps it was a pay check, and Aunt Biz herself had told Paige that Chad received only room and board in exchange for his work on St. Albans.
Finally, unable to make any sense out of it, she rose from Chad's bed and put the papers where he would see them in the middle of the long table. She held the envelope in her hand for a few minutes, puzzling over it. Then, walking quickly back to the bed, she bent over and shoved it back in the crevice between the bed and the table. At the moment, she would just as soon not let Chad know that she'd seen it.
She walked back through the woods, immersed in thought. As she approached the Manse, she heard the hum of a high-powered boat, and it sounded as though it were approaching the St. Albans dock.
It couldn't possibly be Chad, not in a boat so powerful. Paige knew all too well the tinny chug-chug of the Marsh Mallow. Wondering, she ran down the path to the dock and saw a sleek powerboat being tied to a piling by a nice-looking dark-haired man who appeared to be a few years younger than Chad.
"Hi," he said, before she could greet him. He jumped out on the dock and held out his hand. "I'm Lee Tracy from Golden Isles Boating Center. How do you like your aunts' new boat?"
Paige was speechless. "Their new boat? There must be some mistake." The boat was a low-lying Chris Craft with an inboard motor, long and sleek and white. The name lettered across the stern was Paige One.
"No mistake. Chad Smith said to tell you to sign for its delivery."
"I can't do that!" Paige was incredulous. "My aunts told me nothing about a new boat, and I certainly can't guarantee that they'll pay for it."
"You don't have to. The boat was bought in their name—see, it's right here—but it's already paid for."
"And who paid for it?"
"Why, Chad Smith, of course. He had to go pick up an appliance repair man, that's why he's late, but he'll be here soon. He's going to give me a ride back to the mainland."
&nb
sp; Paige was flabbergasted, but she looked over the papers that Lee Tracy wanted her to sign and they didn't appear to obligate her or the aunts to anything. They merely stated that she had received delivery of the boat. With a shrug, she signed. Chad would have some explaining to do.
There was an awkward silence after she handed signed papers back to Lee. Obviously he expected to be invited to the Manse. Steeped in her aunts' teachings of southern hospitality, Paige could hardly leave him waiting alone on the dock for Chad, who might arrive in five minutes or in an hour.
"Would you like a glass of iced tea?" she said.
"I thought you'd never ask," he replied with a smile.
Although he wasn't as tall as Chad, Lee was attractive, Paige decided as he turned to follow her up the path. He was trim, deeply tan, and his hair was dark and windblown. She wondered fleetingly if he had a girlfriend.
When they reached the Manse, Paige indicated a settee and two chairs grouped around a table in the side yard beside a palmetto tree. "Do make yourself comfortable," she said. "I'll be back in just a minute."
When she returned with sweet iced tea garnished with a sprig of mint from Aunt Biz's garden, Lee was stretched out on the settee, looking relaxed and comfortable. He accepted the glass and regarded her with an admiring expression.
"So you're Biz and Sophie's niece."
"Yes, here for a short visit."
"How long will you stay?"
"A bit longer. My aunts are visiting in Macon, and I'll stay on for a while after their return. Do you live in Brunswick?"
Lee shook his head. "St. Simons. I commute across the causeway to Brunswick to work every day. A fifteen-minute drive. How about you—what do you do for a living?"
The Beach Bachelors Boxset (Three Complete Contemporary Romance Novels in One) (The Beach Bachelors Series) Page 25