Even so, the glass knob on Nick’s door tempted her, and before she could stop herself, she grasped the knob, gave it a quick twist and opened the door. She’d lain awake for hours, wondering what Nick did in this room. She knew the clues to his background lay just across this threshold. If she was ever to discover them, she’d have to take advantage of the opportunity Digging Day presented.
“Sara Louise Crawford, what are you doing?” she chided herself as she stepped into the room. She ought to turn back. She ought to feel guiltier than she did. At that moment, she primarily experienced a jolt of pure adrenaline.
The room was uncharacteristically messy. Clothes were strewn about, the bed had not been made, Nick’s empty coffee mug had been left to form a brown ring on top of his dresser. But his desk was meticulous. The computer beckoned her to power it up and learn the innermost secrets of Nick Bass’s life.
Sara walked to the desk, her fingers flexing with nervousness at her side. “You know you shouldn’t do this,” her conscience told her. She paused, waiting for the devil on her shoulder to offer a counterargument. She reached for the power button and jerked her hand back. “No, Sara! You’re not a snoop. You have no right to poke your nose into Nick’s private life.”
Seconds passed while she debated her course of action. And finally the pesky devil spoke. Was it fair that Nick knew practically everything about her and she knew almost nothing about him? He knew where she was raised, what she did for a living. He’d even eavesdropped on her phone conversation with Candy. Nick, despite all his claims to support a person’s right to privacy, wasn’t above a little snooping himself!
The devil didn’t stop with that argument. If Sara was going to reinvent Thorne Island, didn’t she owe it to herself to know as much as possible about the men who, by virtue of a totally unfair stipulation in her aunt’s lease agreement, would continue to oppose every suggestion she made?
“There are answers in that hard drive,” she said. “Now is your chance to know the real Nick Bass.”
She reached for the power button again. Her finger trembled above it and fell to her side. She couldn’t do it. She was about to back away from the desk when she noticed several 9" by 12" postal mailing boxes stacked on the floor. Black printing on the spines caught her eye. Promise of Fear. Double Dealings. Prospect Murder. Blood Money. All but the top box had been sealed with clear tape.
“They sound like titles,” she said. “Gruesome ones.” She picked up the top box and turned it over. The heavy contents shifted. Before her conscience could speak again, she opened the box and took out several pages. The same three pieces of information were at the top of each—the words Dead Last, a page number and Nick Bass’s name.
She recalled her first day on the island, when she’d gotten a glimpse of Nick’s computer screen. She’d thought then that the image looked like manuscript format.
So Nick Bass was a writer! The sealed boxes probably contained finished manuscripts, and Sara was holding the pages of his current project. Nothing could have surprised her more. And nothing could have made her more curious.
“How does a writer, a person who lives in self-imposed isolation, end up with a bullet in his spine?” she asked the empty room. “And why are these novels—” she stopped and counted seven boxes “—sealed in packages and yet appear to have never been mailed?”
“And—” she scanned the titles again “—just exactly what creepy things does Nick Bass write about?”
Sara walked to the window and looked out. A gentle breeze stirred the budding leaves in the trees. She went to the door of Nick’s room and opened it all the way so even if she missed the sound of the golf cart, she would hear Nick’s heavy footsteps when he arrived back at the inn.
The vines would have to wait. Sara sat cross-legged on the floor, settled the two hundred pages on her lap and began to read.
ONCE SHE WAS well into the manuscript, Sara realized she didn’t know a whole lot more about Nick Bass, but she had a clear picture of Ivan Banning. She knew what made the detective stand firm and what made him run. What angered and emboldened him, and what, in his own terms, “scared the shit out of him.”
She knew that he had principles, which he ignored if the situation demanded it, and that he made rash decisions he couldn’t afford to regret later. He was sensitive to the problems of the downtrodden but abhorred weakness. At the same time, he felt nothing but contempt for the oppressors no matter what their motives were.
All in all, Ivan Banning was not an especially nice man, yet Sara couldn’t help liking him.
So maybe she did know a bit more about Nick Bass, after all.
It was midmorning before Sara stood and stretched her leg muscles. Then she moved to the wicker chair by the side of the door, sat comfortably and resumed reading. As she finished each page, she let it drift to the pile collecting at her feet.
And another hour passed. An hour in which, for Sara, the birds outside ceased to sing, the breeze no longer rustled through the trees, and the waves no longer washed on shore a couple of hundred yards away.
And a man in his stocking feet made no sound entering a silent building.
Sara’s heart leaped in her chest when she realized she was not alone. She responded to the intake of a deep breath, looked to her right at the open door and stared into the menacing gray eyes of Nick Bass. He stood as though carved of marble, his shoes dangling from his hands.
Sara followed his gaze from the stack of boxes by his desk to the pile of papers haphazardly strewn on the floor. And then to Sara herself, her face no doubt brilliant with mortification, sitting in his wicker chair with the few remaining pages of his manuscript in her lap.
Sara gulped back a hysterical shriek. “Oh, Nick…I didn’t hear… Your shoes…”
He threw his Docksiders onto the floor and they landed with a dull thump. “They’re wet,” he said. “If you meant them to be your warning device, perhaps the next time you trespass you should equip me with a bell.”
Oh God, oh God… Sara pressed the heel of her palm against her forehead and closed her eyes against Nick’s accusatory glare. Then she summoned her courage and looked back at him. “Nick, I can explain.”
He leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms over his chest. “Go ahead.”
What the devil did she mean, she could explain? The situation was obvious. “Well, I could explain, but I don’t think what I’d say would put me in a very favorable light. In fact, I can’t think of any way for me to come out looking good here.”
For an interminably torturous moment, the only part of Nick that moved was a muscle in his jaw. “Then why don’t we start with a simple interrogation,” he finally said. “What the blazes are you doing in here?” A finger darted out from his crossed arms and aimed at the papers in her lap. “And what are you doing with that?”
She picked up the pages from her lap, wishing they would disappear. “I found these,” she said weakly.
“They were lost?”
“No, of course not. I didn’t mean it that way. I was standing by your desk and I found the boxes.”
“Standing? Snooping? Spying?”
She sucked in her guilt in one long, agonized breath but didn’t speak. His words pretty much summed it up.
Nick pushed himself away from the door frame, came into the room and slammed the door shut with the flat of his hand. Sara jumped to her feet. The rest of the pages fluttered to the floor and fanned around the chair, becoming even more conspicuous.
She backed away from him. His eyes glittered with dark rage.
“You’re not going to…hurt me, are you?” she managed to croak out.
His cold voice matched the threat in his eyes. “I haven’t decided yet, but it’s an option.”
An unexpected and uncontrollable giggle bubbled up from her throat. “You’re kidding, right? You wouldn’t.”
His facial expression remained carved of stone. “Why did you pry, Sara? What were you hoping to find?”
A sound came from his throat—a roar of disbelief and anger. “It never occurred to you that you don’t have the right to come into my room, or the authority to go through my things, or my permission to snoop for evidence about my past?”
“Of course it occurred to me. In fact, I almost didn’t do it.”
“Wonderful!” He turned away from her and faced the window. “That’s some consolation. Miss Pure-of-Heart almost didn’t do it! Almost didn’t violate the sanctity of my life!”
Sara took two steps toward him. “Nick, I’m so sorry. Of course you’re right—”
His shoulders tensed. His spine straightened. “Don’t come any closer, Sara.”
She stopped. “Okay, I won’t. I’m just trying to tell you that I can’t argue with you. I shouldn’t have come in here.”
He snorted at the obvious concession.
“But if you’ll just listen a minute, I have something to say. I think we’re missing a very important point here.”
He turned back to face her. His features had not gentled. “You mean the point isn’t that you are a conniving, sneaky little—”
“Well, yes,” she interrupted. “That is one point. And I believe you’ve made it satisfactorily. But I have a point, also, and it’s at least as significant as yours.”
His eyes widened with obvious skepticism, but she had his attention. “And that would be?”
She bent down and scooped up a handful of manuscript pages. “That this is good. It’s excellent, as a matter of fact.” She waved the papers in front of his eyes. “Nick, you are a writer! All morning I’ve been completely absorbed by this story, even to the point of ignoring my surroundings and not hearing you come in.” She pointed to the boxes. “Why haven’t you sent these to a publisher?”
The muscle in his jaw worked again. “I think we’re back to my point again, Sara. What I do in here is none of your damned business!”
“But it’s such a shame…”
He strode to the desk and glared at her. “Don’t you get it yet?” He pointed his index finger to the floor and drew an imaginary line across the front of his toes. “There’s a line here. Maybe you can’t see it, but it’s here, believe me. And you can’t cross it. Understand that? And don’t think for a minute that I’m going to step over that line and bring you to my side so you can get a little peek at the real me, because I’m not.”
“Nick, I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant. You think you can somehow control my actions—that you can turn me into something you believe I am.”
“But you are a writer!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t turn you into one, and—”
He held up a finger. “A couple of days ago we made a deal, Sara. In spite of what happened here, I intend to honor that commitment. We’ll get this little dollhouse of yours prettied up so you can go back to Florida where you belong, and I can start packing, if it comes to that!”
The combination of his words and his narrowed eyes made Sara reach behind her for the doorknob.
He wasn’t finished. “And for the time this job takes, stay out of my room, Sara, and stay out—”
“Nick! Come down here!”
It was Brody’s voice, and for once Sara was glad to hear it. Nick walked around her and flung open the door. “What is it, Brody?”
“It’s your father. He’s on the phone.”
Nick rushed out the door to the stairs without looking back. As she made her escape to her room, Sara saw Nick at the bottom of the stairs reaching for the receiver.
His voice carried up to her. “Dad? What’s wrong? Oh, God, I’d forgotten all about it—”
SARA DIDN’T SEE Nick for the rest of that day. When Brody’s ceiling fans and conduit arrived, Nick didn’t appear to help unload. When Winkie came with groceries and a FedEx package from Candy, Nick was nowhere to be seen. But the captain handed a long, narrow parcel wrapped in plain brown paper with Nick’s name on it to Ryan.
Later that afternoon, Sara heard Nick return from wherever he’d been hiding. Ryan met him at the door and gave him the package. Nick’s reaction was abrupt and detached. “Just put it on the counter.” Then he closeted himself in his room.
When Sara went downstairs later, she passed the mysterious parcel still lying there unopened. She saw Nick’s name on the address label, listing the Happy Angler, in care of Otto Winkleman, Put-in-Bay, Ohio, as his address.
But it was the return address that caught Sara’s attention. The package had been sent from Johannesburg, South Africa. It bore the stamp of a British insurance company, indicating that the sender valued whatever was enclosed.
Having learned her lesson, Sara walked by the counter without further investigation. “It’s none of your business,” she told herself, and went to fix a light meal she didn’t feel like eating.
She took her plate to the back stoop and ate in the gathering dusk. A few minutes later Ryan came toward her from the vineyard. He smiled when he saw her sitting there.
“How are our grapes tonight?” she asked.
“Doing fine,” he said, propping his foot beside her on the first step. “I think the fertilizer is really working.”
Though she was curious about Nick’s package, Sara held her tongue. Finally Ryan brought up the subject. “I guess I’ll go see if Nick ever took that box up to his room. I’m pretty sure what’s in it, and even though he can trust everyone on the island, he shouldn’t leave it in the lobby.”
A fresh jolt of guilt made a bite of sandwich stick in Sara’s throat. “I’m not so sure he can trust everyone,” she said.
Ryan gave her a puzzled look. Obviously Nick hadn’t told the others what she’d done. “It’s a present from his mother,” Ryan volunteered.
“A present?”
Ryan nodded. “Yeah. Today’s Nick’s birthday.”
Sara remembered the phone call earlier from Nick’s father. And now this from his mother. So the man who chose to be a loner wasn’t truly alone in the world. There were people who cared about him.
“His birthday?” she said. “I guess you guys don’t do much celebrating on these occasions.”
“Nah,” Ryan answered. “Here on Thorne, one day’s pretty much the same as the next.”
His statement revealed no bitterness, yet she sensed an underlying despondency. “Good night, Ryan,” she said.
He stepped around her and entered the inn. “Night, Sara.”
SARA SEARCHED the kitchen cabinets for ingredients she could use. She had no flour or sugar, which made her task nearly impossible. In desperation she took a tub of low-fat chocolate pudding from the refrigerator. It was the one treat she’d ordered for herself from the grocery in Put-in-Bay.
And since it was imperative to have vanilla wafers with pudding, she also had a box of those. She found a small metal pie plate in a cupboard of old utensils and scrubbed it till its surface gleamed. Then she lined the inside of the plate with the wafers and filled the middle with pudding. In the center she stuck an inch-thick utility candle.
It wasn’t a very elegant birthday cake, but she hoped it would at least begin to cement the rift between her and Nick. She remembered seeing a sewing box in the parlor and went to retrieve it. Rummaging through scraps and notions, she found a bit of colorful ribbon. She tied it around the handle of a spoon, picked up her “gift,” and crept up the stairs. Nick’s door was closed, but light seeped from the crack at its base.
Sara placed the pan and spoon on the floor and lit the candle. Then, like a little kid on Halloween, she rapped on Nick’s door and scurried down the hall to the next room. She waited inside until she heard his door open then close a moment later.
Her heart racing, Sara peeked into the hallway. With her luck, the candle had fallen over and she’d be responsible for burning the inn to the ground! Or even worse, her pudding cake would still be sitting where she’d left it, only now it would have a gigantic footprint smack in the middle of it.
Fortunately neither of those things happened. The pudding was gone. With a grin, Sara returned to her room. Mission accomplished, she thought, as she closed her door.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WHEN HE FIRST AWOKE Tuesday morning, Nick’s immediate thoughts were of Sara. His lips curled into a smile, and an indefinable warmth spread to his extremities. Then he forced such reactions from his traitorous body with a sound punch to his pillow.
He wanted to stay mad at Sara. He certainly had a right to. She had totally violated his privacy. He wasn’t ready to think about publishing his novels and joining the mainstream again. For now it was enough simply to write. Why hadn’t she just left him alone?
After the phone call from his father, Nick had gone back to his room, which looked like an explosion in a paper mill. He’d stacked his manuscript pages into a pile and returned them to the box where they belonged. Order. That was what he needed.
He’d worked hard to establish order in his life. Once he’d mastered the task of walking again with Dexter’s help, he’d looked forward to days of plain routine. He didn’t need or want complications in his life. He didn’t want to remember what Nick Romano had been like before that nice guy Ben Crawford of Brewster Falls called him on the telephone with a story about an old lady who’d been swindled by a big corporation, a story that had been manna to the old Nick, the investigative reporter.
And now his carefully regulated days were being turned inside out by another Crawford. In less than three weeks, Sara had planted herself on his island, painted and patched up what he’d always considered his nearly perfect life and put her sexy little torch to his long-buried emotions. And if that wasn’t bad enough, yesterday she’d pushed her way into his mind and soul. She’d discovered Ivan Banning, the man Nick would never be again.
The Men of Thorne Island Page 15