Stryker's Wife (Man of the Month)

by Dixie Browning

  Khakis, deck shoes and an eye patch—now that was something else again.

  So…some woman was running around town, leaving messages for him. A wife? An ex-wife or girlfriend? What if he was one of those deadbeat dads?

  Not Kurt Stryker, she told herself, and then she told herself it was none of her business.

  And then she heard herself ask, “Is there a problem?”

  Kurt started to deny it, but then he shook his head. “Yeah. There’s a problem.”

  “Can I help?”

  They’d pulled onto the highway. In the dark interior of the car, she couldn’t even make out his features, but when he reached over and laid one hand on her thigh she knew there was nothing the least bit sexual about it. “No, honey, this is my problem, but thanks for offering.”

  So that was that. They were casual friends, no more. Friends who were about to spend the night together in the cramped confines of a forty-eight-foot cabin cruiser, but that didn’t give her any right to intrude on his personal life. He’d as good as said so.

  Kurt pulled up as close to the pier as possible, and Deke reached into the back for her umbrella. She hadn’t brought an overnight bag because she hadn’t planned to stay overnight.

  “Wind’s picked up,” Kurt observed as he hurried her along the pier. She was soaked from the knees down by the time he lifted her and swung her aboard.

  Under the protection of the canopy, she shoved back the hood of her slicker. “At least it’s not cold. I hate a cold rain, don’t you?”

  Although there’d been a time when she’d thought a cold rainy night would be wildly romantic. Two people curled up together in front of an open fire, listening to music, drinking wine, making sweet, leisurely love…

  But rain, as it turned out, only made Mark impatient. It spoiled his plans. Rain or not, he’d been a gointo-Norfolk-and-do-the-towner, not a stay-homeand-make-lover.

  Kurt followed her down into the salon that had been called, until the boat’s recent reincarnation as a charter, a cabin. He took a clean T-shirt and a pair of white socks from a locker and held them out to her. “Will these do to sleep in?”

  They would do wonderfully well, and she told him so, and then, to her delight, he produced one of those miniature toilet kits airlines offer when they’ve just canceled the last flight of the day and you find yourself stashed in a cheap hotel, sans luggage. It had happened to her only once, but she’d sworn to carry a toothbrush in her purse from that day forth, but of course, she hadn’t.

  “Semper paratus,” he said with that crinkly smile that had such a crazy effect on her metabolism.

  “Which means?”

  “Always prepared. Coast Guard motto. Blankets and clean linens in the locker under your bunk. If you need anything else, just give a shout. I’ll be right outside.”

  With the rain drumming down on the water, she doubted if he’d hear her if she shouted her head off, but she nodded and turned away, feeling both relieved and disappointed.

  So. This is it, she thought.

  Well, what did you expect, silly? A storybook romance? The pirate and the princess? The captain and the widow?

  “Grow up,” she muttered. Stepping into the compact bathroom that Stryker called a head, she sucked in her breath and managed to shut the sliding door.

  Sometime before daylight, Deke woke up suddenly, aware of being in a strange place, hearing strange sounds and being practically paralyzed from sleeping on a mattress that was evidently stuffed with broken chunks of concrete. She had never been one of those hardy souls who insisted that sleeping on a miserable mattress was good for your body, your character and your spiritual well-being. As far as she was concerned, soft was good. Softer was even better.

  “Wha’sa matter?” someone mumbled from a few feet away.

  It took less than a minute to get her head together. She’d always been quick that way.

  If in no other way.

  She was aboard the R&R, and Kurt was in the other bunk. He was supposed to be sleeping outside on a bedroll in the rain.

  Merciful heavens, she hadn’t slept this close to Mark on the king-size bed they had shared—or at least, they’d shared it when he wasn’t sharing his weekends with someone else.

  “Something woke me up,” she whispered.

  “Prob’ly the halyard slapping the flagpole outside the marina office. Does that in a high wind. Sorry.”

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I woke you up. Go back to sleep.”

  “‘S all right. Almost time to get up anyway.”

  She heard the sound of a yawn and it struck her as incredibly intimate, which was just one small sign that she’d better hit the road before she lost her perspective entirely. “I expect I’d better…”

  “Yeah. Me, too. Why don’t I start by making us a pot of coffee and checking out the latest weather bulletin?”

  It was still drizzling. Deke had never really minded rain, but there was something unsettling about this particular rain. For one thing, it was doing weird things to her imagination. While Kurt was making coffee a few feet away, she slipped into the head and splashed water on her face, hoping to clear away the cobwebs.

  Her eyes were puffy. They were always puffy when she didn’t sleep well. That had been something else about her that had disgusted Mark. He’d told her there were creams for that sort of thing, and she’d bought one that had cost a fortune, only it had made her face break out.

  “Hey, I found Frog’s stash of cinnamon buns. They’re probably no more than a week old,” Kurt called through the thin door.

  “Great! We can dunk them,” she called back.

  “Good girl,” he said, and she felt as if she’d just been awarded a medal.

  By ten o’clock that morning the rain had let up, but there was a different sound to the wind. A sort of keening whine that made Deke feel not quite apprehensive, but certainly edgy. Kurt said it was only the wind blowing through the outriggers, but she had her own opinion. It was God, and he was trying to warn her that she was asking for trouble again.

  Besides, there weren’t that many boats left in the harbor with outriggers. Most of them had already sailed.

  “Wherever all the other boats went, shouldn’t you be going, too?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, then, shouldn’t you go ashore, or at least start doing all those things with weeping batteries and stuffing nuts?”

  “Yep.”

  “I need to get on the road,” she said, and found that she didn’t want to leave at all.

  “Wait’ll traffic thins out some. Most folks left first thing this morning. It’ll take a few hours to get her ready to leave.”

  “Will you evacuate then?”

  “Nope. Truck’s laid up.”

  She felt like screaming at him. There was a hurricane coming, for heaven’s sake! What did it take to shake him up? What if the boat sank with him on it?

  Kurt lifted a bench seat and she saw several gallon jugs. “Water,” he said. And then he showed her a supply of canned food, spare batteries, candles and a first-aid kit that would have done credit to a small clinic.

  Deke was impressed. She knew he was trying to reassure her, not to impress her, but she’d been impressed the first time she’d ever laid eyes on the man, and now that she knew him better, she was impressed by more than his striking looks. As impressive as those were.

  She had no choice. She couldn’t just drive off and leave him here alone. Getting him to agree, however, might be another matter. “Kurt, I want to take you home with me.”

  Bent over a hatch in the floor—the deck, that was—he glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “Sure your mama’ll let you keep me?”

  “I’m not joking! I don’t think you ought to stay around here. What if there’s a tidal wave?”

  “Storm surge? They say a rising tide lifts all boats.”

  “I’m serious! If the R&R sinks and you’re on it, then what?”

  “Honey, I do know how to sw
im. Believe it or not, guys with one eye don’t really swim in circles.”

  He was touched by her concern, and he knew she was probably going to talk him into it. Hell, maybe that was what he’d had in mind all along. Not going home with her. He had no intention of getting all that cozy. But a weekend evacuation—a night or two spent together in an impersonal hotel room in a strange town where neither of them knew anyone else…

  He wouldn’t be the first man to take advantage of an evacuation notice. With all the excitement in the air, the situation had definite possibilities.

  “What about Frog?” she asked.

  “He’s fine. I called while you were getting dressed. The game was last night, and they lost, but they’re in high spirits, anyway. Coach said they’ll stay put until they get an all clear.”

  They argued over a breakfast of hot coffee and stale buns. Kurt said that with half the population of the Banks evacuating, the route up the coast would be a mess, which was all the more reason for her not to tackle the trip home. It was pure malarkey, and Kurt had never been given to malarkey, but then he was in an unusually reckless mood.

  “It’ll take time to batten down,” he said, as if he might be considering leaving with her.

  “I’ll help,” she said promptly, making him feel like a real heel.

  Kurt insisted on gassing up her car before the town’s only service station closed down. Deke protested that she’d have had to buy gas anyway, but she might as well have saved her breath. Gentle the captain may be, but arguing with him was like trying to convince the tide not to rise.

  She told him so, and then wondered why he laughed.

  By noon, the rain had started again. The water had risen steadily until it was only a few inches below the top of the pier. Working as a team, they made ready to cast off. Kurt told her what to do and she stepped up onto the pier, untied the ropes—the lines, as he called them—as neatly as any sailor, then jumped back aboard.

  “Hey, I’d make a pretty good mate, wouldn’t I?” she called cheerfully over the noise of the rain, the wind and the muffled exhaust.

  He sent her another one of those mystifying looks. Deke didn’t even try to interpret it. Nothing at all that had happened since she had missed her light meter yesterday and come looking for it was turning out the way she’d expected it to. All she knew was that she had once more acted on impulse, and even though she might regret it tomorrow, for today she meant to savor every moment.

  With the engines barely idling, Kurt positioned the R&R well behind one arm of the breakwater, away from the pier, between four free-standing mooring posts. He checked the chaffing gear on his lines and then tied her off, leaving enough slack to ride out the tide but not enough to knock against one of the pilings, patiently explaining it all just as if Deke might actually be considering a career as a mate.

  Deke appreciated his patience. She appreciated his apparent unconcern as time passed and he calmly went about taking down the outriggers, moving his valuable instruments inside and checking to be sure his automatic bailer was working properly. She found out what a weep hole was and was not particularly impressed.

  But as the sound of the nearby surf grew increasingly loud, she found herself wishing rather desperately that some of Kurt’s sangfroid would rub off on her. Church Grove had been drenched by its share of passing hurricanes even though it was miles from the coast, but riding out a storm in a three-story house was one thing. Experiencing one aboard a small boat that was separated from the ocean by only a breakwater and a teensy little spit of land was another thing altogether.

  “That about does it,” Kurt said, casting a knowing eye around him and then hauling the dinghy up alongside.

  Deke nodded just as calmly as if she couldn’t practically feel the hurricane breathing down her neck. If there was one thing she was determined never again to be, it was a wimp.

  Which was probably why she found herself agreeing, some five hours later, to sharing a motel room with him.

  Didn’t bat an eye.

  But then, it was the eleventh one they’d tried. Hotels and motels. The first forty or so had had signs out saying they were all filled up, so they hadn’t even stopped. She was almost sure Kurt had planned to stay with the boat, and she was so glad she had been able to talk him into coming with her, she didn’t much care where they stayed. She, who couldn’t swim worth a toot, would have stayed aboard the boat with him rather than leave him there alone, and she’d never been famous for her courage.

  At least, not until she’d sent off for that dratted mail order course.

  On the way out of town Kurt had driven her out to show her the house he was hoping to buy. In far worse shape than her own apartment house, which had recently been condemned, the poor old place looked so forlorn and exposed, perched on a marshy point of land, that she could only wonder at his judgment. Funny, he seemed so sensible, but then, everyone, she supposed, had a few hidden quirks.

  They had to drive inland all the way to 1-95 before they’d found a single vacancy, and then that was all it was—a single vacancy. In one of those fancy, Mediterranean-style places that was bound to cost a mint.

  “Heavens, we could have been at my apartment before now if we’d driven north instead of west. Why on earth doesn’t everyone simply go home?”

  “Probably because most of them have rented cottages for the week, and they’re not willing to forfeit the money on account of a couple of days’ bad weather.”

  Once they secured a room, they drove to the nearest mall to shop for a few essentials. Pajamas for Kurt, who claimed he’d never before owned a pair, and toilet articles and a change of clothes for Deke, including a flannel nightgown because she was inclined to be cold natured and she’d already discovered that Kurt was a fresh-air fiend.

  “Guess what I forgot to bring,” she said when they’d dumped out their purchases on one of the room’s two beds.

  Busy adjusting the temperature controls, Kurt glanced over his shoulder. “Make a list of what else you need, and we can pick it up when we go out to eat.”

  “My light meter,” she said.

  He stared at her for a second. “Your light meter?”

  Deke started to smile. Kurt started to chuckle, and then they were both laughing. Deke would be the first to admit that it wasn’t all that funny, but laughter offered a safe relief valve for the tension that had been growing between them since shortly after they’d left Swan Inlet. Nor was it all on her side, although Kurt’s tension, she told herself, was probably due more to worry than to sexual awareness.

  “Kurt, do you think you ought to call Frog and let him know where we are?”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  He prowled, examining everything in the room as if he were a tiger exploring a new cage. It occurred to Deke that this was just a cage of a different type. No bars, but certainly every bit as confining to a man who was essentially an outdoorsman.

  His leg was bothering him, she could tell. After all the work involved in securing the R&R, he had driven the whole way. Claimed it helped him to think.

  Deke hadn’t especially wanted to think. Still didn’t. Feeling ill at ease and determined to hide it, she sat on the foot of a bed, bounced to test the mattress, and said brightly, “Well. So far, so good. Now what?”

  Kurt saw her grimace, watched the color rise to stain her cheeks. He knew she was uncomfortable with the situation—probably wondering just how she had come to be in this mess.

  Well, hell—so was he. And not just because everything he owned stood to be wiped out before another day ended. And not just because social services was on his trail again. The woman had been on his case ever since she’d found out that Frog was only fourteen and was living under extremely unauthorized conditions.

  He thought about Deke’s careless words earlier that day, about being a good mate. Thought about them in a way he was pretty sure she hadn’t intended.

  Thought about them in a way that had nothing to do with the boy’s nee
ds and everything to do with his own. The truth was, he had been aware of her physically almost from the first. Not that that was any great surprise. He was male, after all, and she was an attractive woman. And when a man had gone without sex for as long as he had, it was only natural that he would be affected by certain things.

  Like the scent of a woman’s skin. The sound of her voice. The way the wind snatched up her hair and blew it across her face, and the way she laughed and tried to brush it back.

  I mean, hell, he thought, watching her as she bent over to untie her sneakers, what’s a guy supposed to do when he’s forced to spend two nights in a row with a beautiful woman? Study navigational charts?

  “Do you want to shower and change before we go out and hunt up some dinner?” he growled. He hadn’t meant to growl, it just came out that way. Maybe because he was feeling predatory.

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather get the going out done and then come back, shower, fall into bed and sleep for a week. I’m so tired I could drop where I stand, but then I’d wake up hungry in the middle of the night.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “To what?”

  “I mean, yeah, me, too. About being hungry, that is. And tired.”

  But not the kind of hunger she was talking about. And not too tired to explore a few other possibilities before he fell asleep.

  Maybe if he leveled with her. Maybe if he told her right up front that he was really attracted to her, and that, by the way, the county’s child welfare agency had a thing against men taking in young boys to live with them, especially when they didn’t live in a legitimate house, and that it had just occurred to him that if he had a wife, he might be able to make them back off.

  He would never have considered marriage otherwise, not in a million years. Some lessons a man learned for keeps.