by J. R. Ward
What a difference a month made, she thought. His body was getting back into fighting shape and he seemed so much healthier.
When he bent down and grabbed a T-shirt out of a line of duffels on the floor, she didn’t watch as he pulled it on.
“Your sister said the plans to White Caps are somewhere in here.” She glanced around.
How did he fit on that twin bed? she wondered.
When she heard his footsteps, she brought her head up. He was coming over to her.
No, he was heading for the little refrigerator that was under a wooden table in the corner by the door.
God, she wished he’d say something.
He took out three small cans and lined them up in a row. One by one, he cracked them open.
She was about to start doing cartwheels to get his attention when he broke the silence.
“You’re early. I thought you weren’t coming until next week.”
“I wanted to get started. Which is why I’m looking for the plans.”
“I haven’t seen any around here,” he said, picking up the first can and downing it in one shot. He pitched the empty into the trash and went for number two. “But I’ll help you look after I finish getting through these.”
As if the consumption were a workout in and of itself.
“What’s that you’re drinking?” she asked.
“Ensure. Good source of vitamins and calories. Tastes like vanilla-flavored wallpaper paste.”
“Um, you’re looking much better.” Actually, he was looking out-of-this-world good. His coloring was back. His strength, too, clearly.
But he had yet to meet her eyes, so she couldn’t get a read on his emotions.
No, that wasn’t true. His mood was easy to read. He was tolerating her.
When he’d polished off the third can, he nodded over his shoulder. “If the drawings are anywhere, they’ll be in the back.”
Alex went slowly over to a door. When he opened it, a cold draft shot into the room.
He flipped on a light switch. “I’ll be right back.”
“I want to help.”
“Then wait here.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Fine, but you’re going to end up on your ass in those shoes.”
Cass went over and got a gander at the rest of the barn. Her eyes widened. “And you’re going to be better-off with a cast in there?”
The place stretched out for some sixty feet and it was filled to capacity. Snowblowers and lawnmowers and an old truck and…was that an anti-tank gun? The barn aisle was a graveyard for half-dead machines and the menagerie was in total disorder. There wasn’t even a pathway through the jungle of jagged edges.
She felt as if she needed a tetanus shot just to sniff the air.
With Alex in the lead, they picked their way over to a fireproof safe the size of a love seat. The cast-iron big boy was probably from the thirties or forties and made her think of old-fashioned bankers with visors sitting under little green-shaded lamps.
Alex twisted the dial a couple of times and then pushed down on the brass handle. She peered over his shoulder. The inside was crammed with documents that were catalogued with the same precision as the stuff in the barn’s belly. Alex reached fearlessly into the mess and put it all into order while reviewing the papers.
Funny, for all his brute manliness, he was a tidy kind of guy. Back in the shop where he lived, all of his things were neat and in a place that made sense.
The legacy of years spent on boats, she thought.
“Not in there?” she asked as he shut the safe.
“No.”
He got to his feet more quickly than she’d expected. As she jerked back, her heel caught on a tangle of thick rope, and gravity did its job, pulling her off balance. She grabbed the first thing that came into range.
Alex’s arm.
As he absorbed her weight, he didn’t shift his position in the slightest. His shoulders tightened and his biceps thickened, but other than that he was perfectly still.
This was the Alex she had always known. Powerful. Immovable.
His forearm was so hard. Warm. Strong.
“I warned you about those shoes,” he said gruffly.
She let go and rubbed her hands on her skirt. “Shoes weren’t the problem. Not having eyes in the back of my head was.”
Unexpectedly, the corner of his mouth lifted.
“There’s another place we can look.” He nodded toward the door they’d come through. “You first. And don’t worry, my eyes will be on your back.”
As she turned, she sensed his height looming behind her. And felt him looking at her, watching her move.
Yeah, well, if he was staring, it was because he thought she was going to fall on her butt again.
When they returned to the shop, he went over to a roll-top desk and peeled back its cover. Dozens of drafting plans popped out, the blue paper lengths curled up and tied with little white strings.
“This looks like my desk at the office,” she said, catching a few. “Who was the architect in your family?”
“They’re boat construction documents.” He gathered up some and put them aside.
She unrolled one of them. The skeleton of a yacht was rendered with architectural precision, all the measurements and angles noted with a careful hand.
“This is beautiful. Who—”
“My father.” Alex pulled open a drawer and took out a key, then limped over to a closet. He slid out a three-by-five-foot lockbox. After he lifted the lid, he said, “Here they are.”
He handed her a leather document roll.
She started to open it.
“I’m sure they’re in there.”
Read: You can look at them somewhere else, she thought.
Cass took the hint and went for the door.
“If you’re staying through the weekend,” he said, “you should know there’s a storm coming. Going to be hard to get out on Sunday.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “I’m not leaving on Sunday.”
“Good.”
“I’ll be here up until the holidays.”
He frowned. “For the whole month? Doing what?”
“The job you and your sisters hired me for.”
Alex’s eyes went over her body. He lingered for a split second on the gold chain at her waist.
“Is there a problem?” she said.
“Don’t get me wrong here. One of my best crew members is a woman and she’s tougher than most of my men. But it’s hard to imagine you with a hammer.”
Wait until you get a load of me tomorrow morning, she thought, reaching for the door.
She paused. “The subcontractors I’ve hired show up early. I’ll tell them to be quiet so they won’t disturb you.”
“Don’t bother. I’m an early riser.” His eyes narrowed, as if a thought had just occurred to him. “Gray and Joy are gone, right? They’re back in Manhattan.”
“Yes, they said we’d have the house to ourselves.”
“We?”
She nodded, glad that Libby, the housekeeper, and Ernest, the golden retriever, were going to be at the mansion with her. When she’d talked to the other woman on the phone, Libby had cheerfully agreed to split the KP duties. With Ernest on cleanup.
As Alex’s face darkened, Cass turned away, thinking it was definitely time to go.
But at least she’d gotten through their first meeting in one piece.
“See you tomorrow,” she murmured while going out the door.
* * *
Alex watched the Range Rover disappear down the drive.
He had not been prepared, he thought.
He had not been prepared to look up and see her standing before him. Had not been prepared to have her eyes on his naked chest. Had not been prepared for his body’s reaction.
He’d…oh, man, he’d hardened for her. It had happened in a split second. Her eyes on his skin, and suddenly all he could feel was that dream.
Al
ex rubbed his eyes, trying not to picture O’Banyon and Cassandra in that big house alone. With all those beds. Surely Mr. Slick had things to keep him in the city, though. If he was some kind of big-deal investment banker, he had to be going back. Soon.
Oh, this was going to be such fun.
Alex went over to his father’s desk and stared at the rolled tubes of sailboat renderings. He picked up the one Cassandra had unraveled and flattened it out.
The lines were beautifully drawn and the design was good, stability and speed assured by the shape of the hull.
Alex frowned. The stern was wrong. The stern needed to be narrower.
He sank down into the chair. Studied the plans more closely. Used them as a way to get his mind off Cassandra.
Before he knew it, he’d grabbed a pencil and was very lightly sketching in a change here and there. The Mead #2 felt good in his hand. And the buzz in his head, the concentration, the parallel processing as his analytical skills met his instincts for wind and current, made him feel…
He put the pencil down. Rolled the drawing up tightly. Put the thing back and closed the desk up tight.
Resting his hand on the wood, he thought about his father.
The two of them had had little in common.
Ted had been an easygoing man. Uncomplicated. Content. He’d loved his wife and three children and been satisfied living on the lakeshore and running the B&B. He’d enjoyed refurbishing boats and dabbling with yacht designs but not enough to really break into the business. Still, he’d been happy. Period.
Alex had been born with a fire in his belly. His mother had said his terrible twos lasted until he was twelve and then he’d embraced teenage rebellion as if it were a religion. He’d missed curfews, skipped school, slacked off in his classes. He’d been a varsity letterman in football and basketball, his only successes, and he’d tolerated the practices and the theatrics of the coaches because it was the only way he could compete.
Then he’d found sailing.
Saranac Lake had a very rich summer community, and competitive yachting was a very rich kind of sport. He’d been introduced to it through the guys he snuck long-necks and coffin nails with in July and August, and soon enough, he was crewing on their families’ boats off Newport, Rhode Island.
His reputation as a hotheaded, never-say-die, ocean-faring psycho didn’t take long to get established. He’d started by winning singles races and then graduated to the bigger boats because, even though he was young, he was good with teams of men. He dominated them, controlled them, motivated them. Made them win.
Before he knew it, he’d blown off a football scholarship to Duke and taken to yachting all year round. Family holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, they’d all been lost to his relentless schedule. Without him even realizing it, a couple of years passed before he returned to Saranac. Even then he came home only because his parents had been killed in an accident on the lake.
Thinking back to the decade before the tragedy, he could hardly recognize his younger self. Which made sense because after his parents died, Alex had turned into someone else.
In the wake of losing them, he’d had no frame of reference for his grief and guilt, so he shut down. He could remember exactly where he’d stood when the change had come over him.
He’d needed a suit for the funeral, because it was the respectful thing to wear. He’d gone to his father’s closet and gently rifled through the clothes as if they were made of tissue paper. There had been so many things he’d never seen the man wear, so many seasons lost. He had wanted to cry, had been on the verge of it, but then Frankie had come into the room. When he’d told her what he was looking for, she’d said that the only suit their father owned was the one he was getting buried in.
As Alex had turned to leave, he’d seen a hanger on the bed. It had been one of those wooden ones with an arm you could slip the slacks through and clip into place. He’d been staring at it when Frankie picked the thing up and carried it back to the closet, inserting it between a flannel shirt and a sweater that was sagging out of shape at the shoulders.
“I suppose I’ll have to…empty this all out,” she’d said in a dull voice.
At that moment something had clicked off in him. Or maybe just…got up and left.
He’d worn khakis and a black sweater to the service. And he’d left a half hour after his parents had been put into the ground.
It was the pinnacle of his selfishness. The absolute zenith of his egocentric nature. To cut and run at that moment was not only cowardly, but cruel. He’d suspected it then. He knew it for a fact now.
Thereafter, Frankie had raised Joy and kept White Caps alive. She’d also lost a fiancé in the process. Lost her life, in a way.
Alex had gone back to racing, but he was different at the helm. What had once been reckless passion got turned into an icy, focused control that left him utterly unflappable. In the shutting off, the cooling down, he was transformed from a good sailor into one of the greats.
So many America’s Cup trophies had been brought home because of his leadership. So many laudations, so much awe, until he was worshiped as The Warrior. Meanwhile, Frankie and Joy had been here. Fending for themselves, unsupported by him. They must have assumed he’d forgotten about them, but he never had. He’d thought of them always.
Just done jack about it.
Even now, with him here at home, his sisters haunted him. They were ghosts just as Cassandra was, born out of his failings as a brother, a friend. A man.
Alex took his hand off the desk.
There was a time when he had disdained his father for wanting to live such a simple life. Now, he was fairly certain that when Ted died, he’d shaken St. Peter’s hand with few regrets.
For a man to have been a good father and husband, to have taken care of his own, to have loved his community and had the quiet respect of neighbors and friends, that was a life led well, led with honor.
Far better than what Alex had to show for himself.
All those trophies and plaques he’d won were in a storage unit in Newport.
Unlike his father, the culmination of his life’s accomplishments was nothing more than a ragged landing pad for dust.
Chapter Six
The following day Cassandra met the crew she’d hired at the site and took them through the house. She’d culled the men’s names from Frankie who had used each one in some capacity or another over the years. They were middle-aged, strong and grateful for the winter work because by definition construction was seasonal this far north. After November, with all the snowstorms and cold temperatures, it was difficult to do much outdoors beyond ice fishing or hurrying home.
Plus, White Caps was a cush job. With the windows and the doorways sealed with plastic, and a propane heater blaring like a jet engine, the place was warm and out of the wind. The only possible determent was having a woman for a boss, but none of them seemed to have a problem with that. At least not on their first morning together.
If any of them did develop an attitude, she’d handle the problem the way she always did. She knew houses from their concrete basement slabs to their roofing nails and all the wall studs and floorboards in between. After having discussed the project thoroughly with Frankie, studied the plans until midnight last evening and been at White Caps since six this morning, she also knew this particular building. She understood exactly what had to be done and in what order.
So there was no question that she couldn’t answer. No problem that she couldn’t reason out logically. No obstacle to progress that she couldn’t surmount. That knowledge, coupled with how hard she was going to work, would cure any testosterone-laden God complex that might crop up.
And lunch brought in with some frequency wouldn’t hurt morale, either.
She glanced down at her clothes, thinking of Alex’s comment the day before. The blue jeans, fleece and parka she was wearing were from Freeport, Maine, not Madison Avenue. Dressed in all this L.L. Bean, she wondered whether he could see he
r with a hammer now.
Cass looked at the men and gestured around the decimated kitchen.
“We’re starting here. The counters and cabinets need to be stripped out. Appliances, too. Sheetrock goes. Do not remove any of the joists in the ceiling, even though they’re burned out. I need to do a structure eval on the second story before I decide whether we’ll replace all of them or some of them.” She pointed to the floor. “The hardwood is strong enough to support you, but it’s all got to go. We’ll wait until the space is clean before we take it up. Dumpster is arriving at ten.”
Tim, a squat, dark-haired guy with an easy smile, nodded. “You want the electrics capped?”
She nodded. “Fuse box is shut down in the cellar. Gas and water are off, as well. At nine, a generator’s coming so we can run the power tools and lights. Lunch is on me today and it’s coming at eleven-thirty.”
“What are we eating?” he asked.
“Subs.”
“Nice.”
She returned his smile and looked at the other three. Lee, Greg and Bobbie were nodding with approval.
“Any questions?”
“Do the subs come with chips?” Lee said with mock gravity.
She smirked. “Yes. Frito’s or Ruffles, your choice. How about any questions on the house?”
They shook their heads.
“Let’s get to work. I’ll be upstairs checking the floor stability.”
* * *
Alex fished around the duffel bag, holding a towel at his waist.
No boxers.
He eyed his laundry pile. He didn’t mind going bareback in his jeans and he’d work out buck naked if he had to, provided Spike wore a blindfold. But socks were an issue. His feet were always cold, and there was no way he could sleep in dirty socks.
It looked as if he would have to go to Gray’s.
And if he happened to run into O’Banyon and had to tread on the guy’s toes a little? Well, that would just be a flaming pity, wouldn’t it?