by JoAnn Ross
Ignoring her scathing look, he reached out and wound a long strand of hair around his finger. “You’re losing your pins.”
Her pulse accelerated; her skin, despite the cold wind, heated. Claren suddenly felt as if she’d taken a long step backward, right off the slanting deck into the icy water.
Jerking free, she grasped the wayward curl from his hand, tucked it under the others atop her head and jabbed the pin painfully into her scalp. “I’m warning you—”
“I know.” Unable to recall the last time he’d enjoyed himself more, Dash held up both hands, palms outward, in a gesture of self-defense. “The judo.” His mocking grin suggested that he was a great deal less than terrified by Claren’s threat. “Tell me, Irish,” he said, “how tall are you? Five feet? Five feet one?”
Claren drew herself up to her full height. Even so, she had to tilt her head back to look into his face. “I’ll have you know, I’m five foot two inches tall.”
“That tall,” Dash murmured. A hint of amusement touched his mouth. “Imagine. And you weigh, what, a hundred pounds?”
Claren hated the way he seemed to be enjoying himself at her expense. Her fingers were practically itching to hit something. Or someone. She curled them into a fist.
“One hundred and nine pounds. And a half.”
“Without all those satin petticoats.”
Damn the man. He had her there. “One hundred and three,” she acknowledged reluctantly. “But size doesn’t matter one little whit in judo. It’s all a matter of technique.”
He could challenge her. Even if Claren did know jujitsu, which he strongly doubted, she’d be no match for either his size or his skill. At the thought of her lying on her back on that worn wooden deck, surrounded by yards of satin and lace, vulnerable, yet with those incredible eyes shooting furious sparks, desire slammed into him.
Frowning, Dash forced it down. The woman, as intriguing as she seemed, was simply a job. Just like any other. It took an effort, but he almost made his head believe that. Unfortunately his rebellious body wasn’t listening.
“For such a little thing, you sure as hell don’t give anything away,” he said. “Darcy always said that you were a spitfire.”
Claren wanted to stay angry with him. But at the mention of her uncle, her fury melted away. “Uncle Darcy always brought out the worst in me.” Her soft smile warmed with tender reminiscence. “He was, of course, a rascal. Aunt Winifred always called him a black sheep.”
Curious, she leaned back against the railing again and looked up at Dash, her eyes filled with questions. “How did you meet Darcy?”
He’d been waiting for that one and had his story ready. “I was living in Jamaica when he arrived chasing his ghost galleon. We ran into one another in a beachfront bar and hit it off right away.”
That much, so far as it went, was the absolute truth. “You know how your uncle is. Was,” Dash corrected, wondering how long it would take him to get used to the idea that Darcy was dead.
“Uncle Darcy never met a stranger,” Claren agreed.
She thought of all the questions she wanted to ask. Things about Darcy, about his life, his dreams. She wanted to ask if her beloved uncle had still been a racing addict; she wanted to know if he had continued to drink two fingers, neat, of Irish every night before retiring. And most of all, she wanted to know if he’d been happy. At the end.
“You said you were living in Jamaica,” she said instead.
Dash’s antennae went up. “That’s right.”
“What do you do?”
“Do?”
“For a living.”
“Oh.” Dash’s shoulders moved in a careless shrug. “A little of this. A little of that.”
He was surprised when his vague answer earned another smile. “Another black sheep.” For some reason Claren found that idea vaguely appealing.
“Yeah. I guess you could say that.”
Her smile wavered, then turned a little sad. A shadow moved across her eyes. “I always wanted to be a black sheep.”
“Don’t look now,” Dash suggested, “but I think you’ve just accomplished your wish.”
Claren glanced down at the billowy skirt of her pearl-encrusted wedding dress, as if surprised to find herself still wearing it. She felt simultaneous feelings of annoyance and admiration; she did not like the idea of Dash MacKenzie reading her so well and so fast. But on the other hand, she couldn’t help admiring his perception.
“I think you’re right.”
She looked back over her shoulder, where the sleek glass towers of the Seattle skyline were fading in the distance. And although she knew that she was being outrageously fanciful, Claren imagined that she could see all her burned bridges smoldering in ruins behind her.
CHAPTER 3
PORT VANCOUVER, LOCATED on the far northeast corner of the Olympic Peninsula, resembled a small Victorian seaport. At the center of the town stood a tall clock tower that could be seen for miles.
Turreted, gingerbread-encrusted Victorian buildings, revealing the opulence and optimism of a bygone era, perched atop the tall bluff overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The broad, blue-green channel of water, separating the United States from Canada, flowed from Puget Sound to the Pacific. It was, Dash knew from his research, both wide enough—fourteen miles at the mouth—and deep enough to allow the navy’s Trident submarines easy access to their base on the Hood Canal.
“It reminds me of New England,” he said.
“Port Vancouver was settled by sea captains and merchants from back east,” Claren told him.
She took a deep breath, drawing in the vigorous fresh air, the scent of saltwater, a distant biting aroma of fir and another scent she could not quite identify.
“At the end of the last century, the people all believed Port Vancouver was going to become the New York of the West,” she said, watching a brown pelican winging its way along the coastline in search of fish. The awkward-looking bird was surprisingly graceful in flight.
The ferry was approaching the pier. When the docking call sounded, Claren and Dash returned to the car parked below deck.
“During its heyday, it was a port for merchant ships, whalers and even warships,” Claren continued with the town’s history as they waited in the car. “The old-timers, who can still remember the stories told by their parents and grandparents, love to tell tales about sailors being forcefully, or unknowingly, recruited from the local saloons and bordellos.”
“Thanks to the ubiquitous Mickey Finn.”
“I suppose so. When I first arrived in this country, fresh from my family’s wee horse farm in County Clare, those stories seemed wonderfully romantic.”
Dash kept his eyes on her face. “So you like romance. I should have guessed.”
There was an accusatory edge to his deep, husky voice. The smile Claren had been about to give him never formed.
The ferry had docked; passengers and cars began to disembark.
“Guessed what?” she asked coolly.
“That a woman like you would be a sucker for sweet talk, flowers and candlelight.”
Claren muttered a low sound of frustration. “You don’t know what kind of woman I am.”
“You’re right about that, Irish.” He gave her a bland smile that did nothing to lessen her annoyance. “But I will.” Before she could give him a scathing answer, he said, “You were telling me about the town.”
A thousand curses came to Claren’s mind, including some in Gaelic that she’d been unaware of remembering. Refusing to let him know exactly how easily he could throw her off balance, Claren forced her mind back to her earlier subject.
“At any rate,” she said, her words clipped with a lingering frustration she couldn’t conceal, “when the word got out that there was going to be a railroad spur from Port Vancouver to the Union Pacific in Portland, which would make the town the premier port of the Northwest, all the citizens built warehouses and banks and those big, fine houses you can see up on the bluff.�
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Home, she realized suddenly as Dash drove the car off the ferry. That brisk, comforting aroma represented home.
“It was a remarkable boom,” she continued. “The town’s population doubled and redoubled.”
“So what happened?”
Dash knew that, too. Her uncle had told him a lot about the town, and what Darcy hadn’t mentioned, his research had revealed. But he liked the way her remarkable eyes lit up when she talked about the town. And, he admitted, he just liked hearing her talk, period.
Twelve years of living in the States had not entirely succeeded in ridding her speech of its soft Irish brogue. The sound of her voice brought up images of blue rivers curling like ribbons on the mottled green carpet of Irish fields, farmhouses dotting the vales like tiny boats on a deep green sea, legendary Celtic swans floating on sapphire lakes, Viking fortresses and castles belonging to ancient Irish kings. And rosy-cheeked lasses with hair of flame, running through fields of wildflowers, arms outstretched to greet their lovers.
When his uncharacteristically fanciful mind went on to imagine Claren lying in a field of poppies, the smile on her face directed at him in such a way to make him burn, Dash tried, without success, to force the provocative image back into his mutinous subconscious.
The sun had set beyond the horizon. Although it was not yet dark, dusk had turned the sky a soft, silvery blue. No longer needing the sunglasses, Dash took them off and tossed them onto the dashboard.
Claren had been wanting to see the man’s eyes for the past four hours. Now that she had, she almost wished he’d kept the glasses on. They were smoky gray. Dark, intense. They were, she decided, the kind of eyes a wolf would have. His slate lashes were long and full enough to belong to a woman, but there was nothing womanly in his gaze. Her mind went blank.
“You were telling me what happened to the town,” Dash reminded her after a long pause.
Directing her gaze out the windshield, Claren shrugged and pretended a sudden interest in a family of tourists coming out of the ice-cream parlor. A father, mother and two children—one boy, one girl. They were laughing, obviously enjoying the scenery, the day and each other.
The engaging sight stirred Claren’s longings for a family of her own. A family she’d believed she was going to have with Elliott. She sighed.
“The deal fell through.” Renewed anger toward her former fiancé added an acid edge to her voice. Clearing her throat, she struggled against her rising temper. “And the line linking Seattle and Tacoma on the east side of Puget Sound got all the traffic. The town died.”
Dash, who’d been watching her carefully, took note of both her sigh and her anger. Claren O’Neill was not a simple woman. He’d do well to remember that.
“Obviously the rumors of its death were exaggerated,” he said.
Although not large, the town appeared to be a thriving little center of commerce, based mainly, from what Dash could tell of the shops lining the street, on tourism. Antique shops, their windows crowded with heirlooms and undoubtedly overpriced memorabilia, stores offering new-age crystals, an amazing number of galleries catering to Northwestern art, bookstores and restaurants appeared to provide the major source of employment.
“It’s a special place,” Claren said simply. “The people who live here now are here because they’ve chosen not to be anywhere else.”
Dash couldn’t understand such a sentimental attraction to a place. The longest he’d ever stayed in any one place—other than his childhood, which had been spent in Guthrie, Oklahoma—was New York City. He’d managed to live in Manhattan for three long years.
The first year, he had admittedly found the city an exciting change from the historic Oklahoma frontier town he’d grown up in. But, unaccustomed to staying in one place very long, and finding the social customs so alien that he might as well be living on Jupiter, he’d come to feel like a prisoner in his Fifth Avenue apartment. He’d stayed two more years, only because his wife refused to leave.
Their relationship had continued to disintegrate until eventually both admitted that a marriage between two such dissimilar persons had been a mistake. When he’d packed his things and walked out the door for the last time, Dash had had the feeling that his wife was every bit as relieved to see him go as he was to escape.
“So where now?” he asked as he drove through what appeared to be the business district. There was only one traffic light the entire length of the street. And it was flashing.
“You can park over there,” Claren pointed. “I just need to pop into a store and pick up some jeans.”
Dash pulled the car up in front of a three-story redbrick building that looked as if it had once served as a warehouse. The first floor housed a women’s clothing shop. The calligraphic sign on the second-floor window pronounced it to be the home of the Olympic Gallery, featuring Indian and Eskimo art.
The third floor, whose wide bank of windows offered a spectacular view of the strait, was a café, named Pelican’s Roost. The fragrant charcoal aroma rising from the restaurant’s smokestack reminded Dash that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
“After you get your clothes, we’ll have dinner.”
Arrogant ox, Claren considered silently. “After I get my clothes, I intend to go to my uncle’s house.”
Rather than being irritated by her behavior, Dash liked the way Claren was constantly challenging him. Her prickly attitude was a refreshing change from the accommodating behavior he usually insisted upon from his women.
His women? Dash frowned and cut the thought off before it had time to take root. Claren O’Neill Wainwright was nothing more than his current assignment, he reminded himself firmly.
All right, perhaps she represented more than just a job. But that was only because he’d liked her uncle. Having been Darcy’s friend, he felt an obligation to make certain that no harm came to the woman.
And no harm would, he vowed, not for the first time since he’d received Darcy’s letter. Unless, of course, St. John was right and Claren was in on the caper that had gotten her uncle killed. In that case, the matter would be out of his hands. There would be little he could do to protect her.
Claren watched the blistering scowl move across his face and wondered at its cause. If it hadn’t been for her uncle’s reassuring words that she could trust Dash MacKenzie, she would have thought him dangerous. As it was, Claren had more than her share of reservations about spending any more time than necessary with the man.
“When was the last time you ate?” Dash asked.
“Why?”
Did she have to question every little thing? Dash wondered how in the hell that weak-spined Elliott Byrd had ever believed he was going to handle such a woman. That thought was followed by the unwilling idea that if he didn’t wrap things up fast, those incredible sharp eyes might see through his subterfuge. It had been a long time since he’d lied for a living, and Dash didn’t like discovering that he was out of practice.
“Because, as an accomplice to your rather dramatic escape, I feel responsible for you,” he said. “And I’m damned if I’m going to have you fainting from hunger.”
“I never faint.”
“There’s always a first time.” Reaching out, he cupped her chin. “You know, if you keep sticking that chin out like that, Irish, some day someone’s going to take you up on the challenge and pop you one.”
“Someone like you?”
Dash decided that hauteur suited her every bit as well as her temper. There was no fear in those green eyes, rather a cool, maddening disdain.
“Don’t tempt me.” Unable to resist, he stroked his thumb along her jawline. His eyes brushed over her mouth, and in that brief moment, Dash knew that, as dangerous an act as it would be, before this was over he was going to taste those full, pouting lips.
“Don’t touch me like that.”
“How would you like me to touch you?”
He smiled, allowing his gaze to roam her tense body with a masculine insolence that she s
uspected was inherent. As she watched the heat rise in those smoky eyes, Claren felt a quick, breathless pressure in her chest. No, she warned herself. Not now. And especially not him.
She’d barely escaped one disastrous relationship. Getting involved in yet another the very same day would be the height of folly. Like jumping out of the frying pan right into the fire. Some deep-seated feminine instinct told Claren that this man could make the flames very hot indeed.
“Mr. MacKenzie—”
“It’s Dash.” He had watched the awareness rise in her eyes and damned himself for encouraging an involvement he couldn’t afford.
Claren ignored his murmured correction. “Mr. MacKenzie,” she repeated firmly, “just because you happened to come along at a convenient time and gave me a ride doesn’t mean you have any business telling me what to do.”
“I don’t know,” Dash countered. “Haven’t you ever heard that old proverb about once you save a life, it’s yours?”
“I’d hardly call driving a person to the ferry saving a life.”
“You’re right. I could have just left you out on the road and let your fiancé and your relatives catch up with you.”
She’d never thought of that. Claren wondered if Elliott would run after her. No, she decided, he never would have risked getting his cutaway sweaty. Aunt Winifred undoubtedly had taken to her bed with one of her convenient migraines, leaving the embarrassing explanations to her long-suffering husband.
“Well, as much as I appreciate your help, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself from now on.”
“The light’ll be gone soon. Don’t tell me you intend to walk all the way to Darcy’s house in the dark?”
Having already considered that, Claren was ready for him. “Anyone in town would be more than happy to give me a ride.”
From what Darcy had told him about Port Vancouver, Dash decided that was undoubtedly true. Frustrated, but not accustomed to letting a woman win the upper hand, he tried another tack. “So you really don’t want to eat with me?”