Man Trouble

by Melanie Craft

  As they drew closer, the young man took off his sunglasses and handed them to Jake. It was obvious from Jake's body language that he was about to leave, and Molly's anxiety increased. She couldn't go out on a windsurfing board. Looking like a fool was bad enough, but she was not a strong swimmer, and encumbered by the too-tight wet suit, the padding, the surgical tape, the wig, and the contacts, she was likely to drown.

  “Now what?” she asked Carter in an urgent whisper. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Go say hello to him,” Carter said.

  “Say hello? That's your burst of divine inspiration?”

  “No,” Carter said, scrunching up his face. “I'm still waiting for that. Stall him. I'll think of something.”

  Molly steeled herself and straightened her spine, lifting her chest and throwing a little hip into her walk as she approached the men. “Well,” she said breathlessly, attempting a sultry voice. “Hello there, Jake. Are you heading out? I was looking for Rico. For my lesson.”

  “You found him,” Jake said, indicating the young man. “Sandra St. Claire, this is Rico Martinez, our waterfront director. Rico was the 1997 world windsurfing champion. He's also an Olympic bronze medalist. You'll be in good hands.”

  “Lucky me,” Molly said. She hoped Carter was thinking fast. It was a good sign that Jake had remembered her name. He had recalled it instantly, in fact. Surely he didn't remember every guest he met…

  “Nice to meet you, Sandra,” Rico said, and shook her hand. “Welcome. You're obviously serious about windsurfing.”

  Obviously? Molly blinked at him, wondering what would make such a thing seem obvious. Was it the wet suit? It certainly wasn't the sandals. She smiled cautiously. “Uh,” she said. “Yes. Of course. How did you know?”

  Rico gave her an odd look. “You're signed up for a lesson every morning this week,” he said.

  “What?” Molly exclaimed in horror. Rico and Jake both looked surprised, and she cleared her throat. “I mean, is it only mornings? I thought I'd booked an hour in the afternoons, too.”

  “I don't think so. And the schedule's already full,” Rico said. “Sorry. I'll let you know if I get any cancellations, but an hour a day should be enough to improve your skill level pretty significantly by Sunday.”

  Molly barely heard him. She had just realized that Jake was looking at her. Or, more specifically, that Jake was looking at her in a way that men never looked at the Respectable Professor Shaw. His eyes, slightly narrowed, were moving up her body in a slow assessment that made her skin prickle. It had begun at her feet, slid slowly up her bare legs, moved over the curves of her waist, then lingered on the area of the lowered wet suit zipper and the globulous thrust of her cleavage. His eyebrows quirked suddenly, and Molly tensed, holding her breath. Was this the moment when Carter's magic formula started to work? Maybe Jake really had been distracted last night, and he simply hadn't noticed that she was, in fact, his ideal woman. See? she said silently to him. Blonde! Busty! Pink! You can't resist me. It's scientific.

  She glanced over to see if Carter was watching, but he was pretending to be deeply absorbed in examining the various types of kayak paddles.

  “Do you have eyes, Sandra St. Claire?” Jake asked suddenly, and to Molly's shock, he reached out and lifted off her sunglasses. Her startled gaze met his, and in the sunlight, she could see that his dark irises had flecks of gold in them.

  “Yes,” she said nervously, blinking at him.

  He nodded, and handed the glasses back to her. “I wondered. Here. Don't take these out on the bay, or you'll lose them.”

  He turned away.

  “Thank…you,” Molly said to his back. He was leaving. What was she supposed to do? It had all looked so promising just a moment ago, but now he was about to disappear, and her only method of pursuing him was liable to kill her. Helplessly, she turned to look at Carter, who was widening his eyes in a meaningful way and jerking his head spastically toward Jake's retreating form. Molly took this to mean that she should follow him.

  “One minute,” she said to Rico, and clunked quickly down the boardwalk after Jake, hoping that Carter's urgency meant that divine inspiration had finally arrived.

  “Jake,” she called, “wait.”

  At that moment, something very strange happened. As Molly hurried forward, she suddenly felt a large, flat object thrust between her knees. Surprised, she stumbled against it, then lost her balance on the platform shoes. She toppled forward, letting out an involuntary shriek of panic.

  Jake, only steps ahead of her, turned to see what had happened. As if she were watching the scene in slow motion, Molly saw his face register surprise, and then alarm as she pitched, flailing frantically, toward him.

  He caught her against his chest, stumbled backward with the force of her momentum, and then sat down hard on the boardwalk with Molly sprawled over him.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Oh, my God,” said Sandra St. Claire in a tone of absolute mortification.

  She smelled good, Jake thought, slightly disoriented. The scent of suntan cream and warm female skin surrounded him, heady as an opiate. She felt good, too. One of her hands was clutching his thigh, and the other was clamped onto his shoulder. She was lying across his lap and between his legs, and aside from a sharp pain in his tailbone, he found the position very agreeable. He wasn't sure how they had ended up like this. It had happened very fast, and he had only a flash of memory of turning and seeing Sandra careening toward him, her mouth and eyes round with shock. He recalled her slight stumble at the cocktail party last night. She was not a very good candidate for the high heels that she seemed to favor.

  “Oh, my God,” Sandra said again, pushing against him as she struggled to disengage herself and sit up.

  “You've lost your shoes,” he said. She had fallen entirely out of them, and they were lying several feet away on the boardwalk.

  “Good,” she said under her breath, and then gasped, and quickly raised a hand to her hair. She touched it tentatively, as if afraid that something terrible had happened to it on the way down.

  “Still there,” Jake remarked dryly. Every gleaming blond strand had somehow remained perfectly in place.

  “What?” She looked alarmed, and then anxious. “What do you mean? Why wouldn't it still be there?”

  Strange woman, Jake thought. Sexy, in a klutzy and neurotic sort of way, but she had “trouble” written all over her. And she took her hair a bit too seriously for his taste. “A joke,” he said, getting to his feet. He offered her his hand. “Never mind. Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “I think so. I—”

  “Sandra! Sandra, are you hurt? I saw what happened.”

  It was her friend, the little man in the bad suit who had accompanied her to the party last night. He had appeared out of nowhere, and was now hovering over her like a worried hen. For some reason, he was holding a kayak paddle. Sandra looked at him, and for just a moment, Jake thought that he saw fury on her face.

  She ignored the man, took Jake's outstretched hand, and began to stand up.

  “Are you hurt?” the man repeated.

  She shook her head. “No, I—”

  “Are you sure? Because that fall might have done something terrible to your weak ankle.”

  With startling suddenness, Sandra collapsed back onto the ground. “Oh, dear,” she said woodenly. “Yes. I think I may have sprained my ankle.”

  “I was afraid of that,” her friend said.

  “Which ankle?” Jake asked, frowning. They both looked fine to him, although the expression on Sandra's face suggested that she was in pain. She pointed to her right foot, and he knelt to examine it. There was no sign of bruising or swelling, but it was possible that she had pulled a tendon when she flew out of her shoes. It was also possible that something very strange was going on. Was this some kind of setup for a lawsuit? The scene had taken on a theatrical quality, and it made him suspicious.

  “She'll need a doctor,” the little man s
aid to Jake. “You wait here. I'll get help.”

  “Hold it,” Jake said. “Who are you?”

  “You remember Carter,” Sandra said, from the ground. “Carter McKee. He was at your party last night.”

  “Yes,” Jake said, although he hadn't remembered the man's name. “And you're Sandra's…?” Don't tell me you're her lawyer.

  “Cousin,” Sandra said at the same moment that Carter McKee said, “Brother.”

  Sandra narrowed her eyes at Carter. “He's my cousin,” she said. “First cousin, so he's been like a brother to me. He's a writer, too. He specializes in biographies.”

  “I'll get help,” Carter said again. “Don't leave Sandra alone. She's prone to fainting spells.”

  He rushed off. He was headed for the pool terrace, but Jake knew that the closest phone was just behind them, in the boathouse.

  “I'll call the infirmary,” he said. “It'll be just a minute.”

  Sandra sighed. “No, wait,” she said. She sounded embarrassed and annoyed. “Don't bother. I'm fine.”

  Jake watched curiously as she rose to her feet and brushed herself off. “It's not as bad as I thought,” she said, demonstrating by standing on the foot in question. “See? Carter overreacted.”

  “That's good,” Jake said. “Still, you should have it checked.”

  “I will. But I'm perfectly able to go and find the doctor on my own. You don't need to worry about me—you'd rather be out there on the water, wouldn't you?”

  “Not at all,” Jake said automatically. She was right, but only a cad would have admitted it. This hour—now swiftly disappearing—was his only free time for the rest of the day.

  “You're very gracious,” Sandra said. He could see that she didn't believe him. “I'm sorry that I fell on you.”

  “No problem,” Jake said. He hadn't really minded that part. “But you might want to rethink your shoe strategy.”

  She laughed, unexpectedly. It was a quick gleam of a grin that crinkled the corners of her eyes and gave her face a sudden wry humor that contrasted with her flashy clothes and makeup. She was pretty, he thought, surprised. He had found her physically attractive when he first saw her, but this was something more subtle, and more interesting.

  “You were running after me,” he said, remembering. “Why? What were you going to say?”

  Sandra gazed at him for a moment. “Would you believe,” she said, “I have no idea.”

  “You belong to me, Angeline,” said Lord Percy. “Never forget that.” The softness of his voice was belied by the coldness in his eyes, and Angeline shivered, remembering the tortured screams of the horse thief echoing within the crumbling walls of the abbey. “You are my wife, and that pirate will never soil you with his filthy hands. I'll see both of you dead first.”

  Molly had come right back to the cottage after saying good-bye to Jake, without waiting for Carter to return with the doctor. She had ordered lunch from room service: fresh fish cooked in spiced coconut milk, served with tropical fruit salad and champagne. The butler had brought it on a tray, and she had eaten it in this very chair, on the deck outside the cottage, and then spent the next hour napping in the sun.

  She was not actually writing a sequel to Pirate Gold, of course, and had no intention of doing so, despite the frantic pleas of her agent. She didn't have time. In the past two years, her only academic output had been two journal articles and a textbook chapter adapted from her book about eighteenth-century seafaring women. That wasn't enough to earn tenure at Belden, where “publish or perish” was an imperative. If she wanted to survive, she needed to focus her thoughts and her energy on a real project.

  Unfortunately, her thoughts had not been cooperating. Pirate Gold had begun as a movielike daydream that ran through her head whenever she was tired, bored, or in a faculty meeting, and merely typing the words “THE END” at the bottom of page 642 had not stopped the flow of the story.

  It wasn't her fault. She had gotten attached to her characters, and the idea of cutting them off and not thinking about them anymore made her feel like a murderer. Anyway, she enjoyed the daydream. It relaxed her. Just because she allowed herself to indulge in the story—and occasionally wrote down some of the better passages—didn't mean that she was writing another novel. She had no intention of making this kind of thing a way of life. It could be somebody else's life, certainly, but it wasn't hers.

  She dozed off again and woke to the sound of Carter's voice.

  “There you are,” he said. He sounded petulant. “Where have you been? I looked everywhere for you. I even came back to the cottage, but I didn't see you out here, so I left again. Where's Jake? Why didn't you wait for me to come back?”

  Molly kept her eyes closed, hoping that he would think she was still asleep and go away. After the excitement of the morning, she just wanted to be left alone.

  “Molly! It was a brilliant plan. It was divine inspiration. What happened?”

  He was not going to go away. Molly opened her eyes. “Let me get this straight,” she said, sitting up. “Your idea of divine inspiration is sticking a kayak paddle between my knees and tripping me? I could have broken my leg! Or was that also part of your plan?”

  “I knew you'd be fine,” Carter said hastily. “And it worked, didn't it? It was perfect! It was genius. We had Jake right where we wanted him, on day two. Do you know what this means? We're ahead of schedule!”

  “You're out of control, Carter,” Molly said. But despite her irritation, she had to admit that the morning had not turned out to be the disaster she'd feared. Amazingly, she was sure that she'd seen a spark of interest in Jake Berenger's eyes when he looked at her. It was far from the instant magic that Carter had predicted, but it was enough to boost her confidence. He may not have fallen madly in love with her, but he hadn't ignored her, either. It was possible that she was not a complete loser at the flirting game. Of course, the Sandra suit had had everything to do with it, but still…

  “Why didn't you wait for me to come with the doctor?” Carter repeated. “Jake would have waited with you. He wouldn't abandon a woman in distress. It was a perfect plan.”

  “No, it wasn't,” Molly said. “Maybe your own personal fantasy is to have a pneumatic blonde landing on you like a leopard out of a tree, but I'm sure that Jake is used to being chased, and he's probably very tired of fending off women. Did you see the look he gave me when you started fussing about my ankle? He was suspicious. It was the wrong strategy. We need to slow down.”

  “Slow down!” Carter exclaimed. “We can't slow down. This is my only chance, and we have less than a week.”

  “I know,” Molly said. “But if you make this look too obvious, it's not going to work. You don't want to ruin your only chance, do you?”

  Carter stared at her. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Instinct,” Molly said.

  “You told me that your feminine wiles dried up and blew away while you were in grad school.”

  Molly smiled. “It seems,” she said, “that I have a few left.”

  Molly took the rest of the afternoon off of being Sandra, and ended up in the Gold Bay gift shop, looking for something to read. She was also—though she would never have admitted it to anyone—curious to know if the shop carried the recently released paperback version of Pirate Gold.

  It did. She sidled over to the book rack, feeling as self-conscious as a teenager buying pornography. She lifted one of the hefty paperbacks, running her finger over the raised gold lettering of the title, and stared down at it. It was very thick, she thought, oddly pleased. The size and weight of the book made it seem like a tiny brick. And the cover art was really much better than the other books on the rack…

  “Excuse me, Professor Shaw?” said a female voice behind her. Molly jumped and dropped the paperback. It thudded to the floor, landing on its spine with the pages fanning out.

  “Oh! I'm so sorry,” said the owner of the voice, a young woman in a Gold Bay uniform. “I didn't mean to scare yo
u. I'm Jennifer Martin, the assistant activities director. I've been hoping for a chance to say hello. I wanted to tell you that I totally enjoyed your book!”

  Molly's mouth dropped open in horror. She stared at the young woman, unable to speak. It was happening, just as she'd feared. There was no way to keep this kind of secret from the resort staff. They were everywhere! The butler had figured it out, or else one of the housekeepers had found the Sandra wig hidden in her closet. If Jennifer Martin knew the truth, then surely everyone knew. It was only a matter of time until the media heard about it, and her whole life was ruined.

  Molly tried to take a breath, but her throat had closed up. It was just like the recurring nightmare that she'd had right after the publication of Pirate Gold—the one where she walked into her freshman lecture class and found every seat occupied by the trustees of Belden College, all wearing British judicial wigs, and pointing accusingly at her. In the dream, her father had been in the crowd, and he had refused to acknowledge her.

  “Here, let me get that,” Jennifer Martin said, bending to pick up the copy of Pirate Gold. She handed it back to Molly. “Well, it's good to see that even professors do a little light reading on vacation.”

  “What?” Molly croaked.

  Jennifer pointed to the paperback. “I thought it was good, but I don't know if you'll like it.” She widened her eyes. “Did you know that Sandra St. Claire is here this week? I've been looking for her, but I haven't seen her yet.”

  Molly was having a very hard time processing the conversation. “I'm sorry,” she said weakly. “I thought you said that you read…my book?”

  Jennifer nodded enthusiastically. “In my senior seminar at Vassar. The class was called Heroines of Herstory. You know, herstory, instead of history? It was a feminist class. The professor was Linda Titlebaum, do you know her?”

  “Yes,” Molly said. She and Linda had gone to graduate school together. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and felt the mantle of doom lifting, miraculously, from her shoulders. A silly smile crept over her face. “You read my book,” she said, and the smile became a grin. “My book. You read Maritime Wives. In school. That's wonderful.”