Passion's Baby. Catherine Spencer

tin bath tub in from the back porch to the middle of the kitchen floor, filled it with water heated in a pail on the stove, and soaked luxuriously. She shampooed the sea salt out of her hair, then rinsed it in cool water from the rain barrel outside. She creamed perfumed lotion all over her sun-dried skin and fished out the meager supply of cosmetics which hadn’t seen the light of day since she’d arrived on the island. She ironed one of the few dresses she’d brought with her, a sleeveless, delphinium blue cotton affair with a full skirt and fitted waist.

      After all that, when seven o’clock rolled around, she knew the most frightful attack of nerves, wiped the lipstick off her mouth, threw the dress to the back of the closet, and put on a clean pair of red shorts and a matching top.

      “As if it matters what I wear,” she told Bounder. “I could show up stark naked and he probably wouldn’t care, as long as I don’t presume too much on his hospitality.”

      He’d acted against his better judgment and was living to regret it. Had regretted it, if truth be known, ever since he’d slunk away from her front step after leaving the note. Cabin fever must have taken hold without his realizing it. Why else would he deliberately sabotage his well-ordered life by inviting her and her demented dog to intrude on it? And why would he waste the better of the afternoon trying to tart the place up to look more than it really was? The picnic table on the grass below the porch had seen better days, and paper towels hardly qualified as fine linen.

      He poured himself a glass of wine from the ice chest at his side and wheeled himself over to the railing overlooking the beach. It was almost a quarter after seven and she struck him as the punctual type, so the odds were she’d changed her mind about joining him for dinner, which was fine by him. It wasn’t as if her share of the food would go to waste. The energy it had taken for him to organize the meal had left him ravenous.

      Funny thing, though, how a man’s mood could shift. That afternoon, while he’d readied the outdoor fire pit for action, he’d found himself whistling under his breath. He’d believed he was looking forward to the evening, to watching her face break into a smile, to hearing her laughter.

      After a while, a guy got sick of the sound of his own voice, and sicker still of the same old thoughts chasing around inside his head. Was he ever going to walk under his own steam again? Was he finished as the expert everyone called on to design a new offshore project?

      He needed distraction and under normal circumstances, he’d have found it with other people. With women—though not with a particular woman because that usually led to complications.

      No, Jane Ogilvie had done him a favor by canceling out, no doubt about it. Start feeding her, and she’d be moving in before he had time to bolt the door. She had a thoroughly domesticated look about her, and if proof was what he needed to back up the opinion, she’d provided it with all that home baking. So what if she’d never actually produced bran muffins? She managed to make just about everything else, which amounted to the same thing.

      He took another swig of the wine and rubbed his newly shaven jaw irritably. Scraping off several days’ growth of beard had left his skin tender as a newborn baby’s backside—and that was all her fault, too. If she hadn’t moved in next door, he’d have remained a contented, unkempt slob of a hermit, instead of jumping through hoops trying to make himself look half decent when the only facilities at his disposal were a cold-water shower and a pint-size mirror hanging over the kitchen sink.

      From the corner of his eye, he caught a movement to the left of the porch, a flutter of red and a blur of black, followed shortly thereafter by the thud of paws galloping up the wooden ramp to the porch, and the unmistakable whiff of ripe berries.

      To counteract the completely absurd rush of satisfaction threatening to wipe out his ill humor, he shuffled lower in the wheelchair and glowered determinedly at the sun sliding down in the west. Why the devil couldn’t she have stayed at home where she belonged?

      CHAPTER THREE

      “SORRY we’re late,” she said, balancing the raspberry tart on one hand and trying to control Bounder with the other.

      “I didn’t notice you were,” Liam said, apparently too mesmerized by the ribbons of lavender and rose strung across the western horizon to notice the time, let alone her. “Is it seven already?”

      “Almost half past, actually. I was afraid you’d have given up on me.”

      “The thought never crossed my mind.” Rousing himself to a less supine position, he inspected the contents of his glass and said sullenly, “I was too busy enjoying my solitude.”

      So it was to be like that, was it? Pressing her lips together in annoyance, Jane gave silent thanks to whatever minor god had urged her not to overdress for her role in what promised to be nothing short of a dinner farce. “I hope my coming here hasn’t put you out too much.”

      “Not a bit. We’ve both got to eat, and it’s not as if we plan to make a habit of joining forces.” He slewed a glance her way and gave an exaggerated start of surprise at the sight of the tart. “Oh, gee, you baked a pie! Why doesn’t that surprise me? Stick it in the cooler over there, why don’t you? And while you’re at it, pour yourself a glass of wine. I’d get up and do the honors myself but—”

      “Oh, please! I wouldn’t dream of expecting you to bestir yourself.”

      Obtuse as he was, even he caught the edge in her tone. “Exactly what are you expecting, Jane? That I’m going to treat you as if you’re a date? Because if so, you’re in for a disappointment. I happened to catch enough crab for two and since you’re my nearest neighbor, I invited you to share the feast. The fact that you’re reasonably young and not too ugly has no relevance. I’d have done the same if you’d been seventy-nine and toothless.”

      “I’m more relieved to hear that than you can possibly begin to guess,” she cooed, the “not too ugly” label stinging worse than anything a wasp could inflict. “Because, loath though I am to damage your massive ego, if a date had been what you had in mind, I’d have been obliged to turn you down. You’re not my kind of man.”

      “And what kind of man is that?” he asked offhandedly. “Someone with two good legs who can chase you all over the island, then throw you over his shoulder and carry you off to his lair to have his wicked way with you?”

      “No,” she said shortly. “But a working brain is a definite must and yours, I begin to suspect, has yet to be taken out of the box it came in.”

      Her observation caught him squarely as he drained his glass, turning the chuckle he couldn’t quite smother into a coughing fit as the wine went down the wrong way. “Okay,” he croaked, when at last he managed to regain his breath, “you win this round. I admit I was ticked off when it seemed you were a no-show and I acted like an idiot. Can we start over, if I promise to polish my skills as a host?”

      “I’m not sure,” she said, even though trying to hang on to her annoyance in the face of such a disarming confession was a lost cause, particularly with Bounder fawning shamelessly all over the object of her displeasure. “I can’t say I was flattered by your description of me.”

      Steering his chair around the hammock to where Steve’s old kerosene storm lantern sat on a shelf on the wall, Liam put a match to the wick. Just briefly, before he swung around to face her again, the aura of light limned his features in gold and revealed the smile lurking at the corner of his mouth. “You mean the bit about your being not bad-looking?”

      “That’s not quite how you worded it, but since we’re aiming for a fresh start, I won’t quibble over semantics.”

      “In that case,” he said, heading down the ramp to the grassy area below, “if you wouldn’t mind pouring the wine, I’ll get the fire started, and we can engage in idle gossip and watch the sun go down while we wait for the water to boil.”

      Somehow, she doubted Liam McGuire was the kind of man who ever wasted time being idle about anything. He was too full of a restless energy turned inward by the physical