In Shining Whatever (Three Magic Words Trilogy #2)(56)

He caught a catfish next, and she followed it with another bass. The sun was straight up when she caught a catfish and declared that was enough for dinner and supper.

"I might be hungrier than that. Those two dried-up toaster things you gave me didn't do much to keep body and soul together," he said.

"Then you can eat lots of beans and rice. You want to fish some more, you can do it after we have dinner," she told him. "Just remember that what you catch you eat that day, because there is no refrigerator and we don't waste"

"Bossy, ain't you?"

"It's been said by experts. You any good at cleaning fish?"

"I can do a fair job, I expect. You want steaks or fillets?"

"Fillets," she said.

"What do I do with the leftovers?"

"Toss them out into the swamp down by the boat dock. There's alligators that will appreciate agood meal"

He turned his head and studied her face. She wasn't teasing. Twenty-pound rats and alligators-how did anyone ever live there and raise kids?

"I'm going to start a fire in the cookstove and put on the rice. That'll take the better part of an hour. You think you can have these ready by then?" she asked.

He nodded. A fire in the cookstove meant they really were living primitive. No gas. No electricity. Showers from a cistern. Outdoor bathroom. Maw Maw must think she had a mansion in that little two-bedroom house on the bayou.

They stopped at the bottom of the steps up to the house, and she pointed to the right. "Over there, you'll find a shelf attached to two support pilings with a dishpan on it. That's the fish-cleaning table. Get some water from the shower. I'll bring you the fillet knife and a bowl to put the meat into"

He hauled the stringer with the flopping fish to the side of the house and laid them on the ground, picked up the white metal dishpan, and looked around for the shower. It was under a cypress tree, with the cistern located a few feet up in the branches. The pipe ran from the bottom of the oversize plastic tub to a fairly modern-looking shower head with a switch on the side to turn the stream loose. He held the pan up and turned. It filled so fast that it ran over before he could get it turned off. He quickly looked around to be sure Kate didn't see him wasting water, and then frowned.

He cared what she thought, or he wouldn't have checked the house over a quart of spilled water. That was not a comforting thought. Not when she'd already declared that she was going back to her old job as soon as they were rescued.

Kate pulled a small box made from a wooden crate more than eighty years before out from under the cabinet and set it on the table. It held mismatched spoons, forks, and an assortment of knives. She carefully moved pieces aside until she found the fillet knife with a long, slender, tapered blade with a sharp edge and a perfectly maintained point. She chose an enameled blue metal bowl from the cabinet and was on her way to take them to Hart, when she could have sworn she heard her father's voice.

Katy, don't slam the door in the face of opportunity. This is the time to listen to your heart and make decisions that will affect your whole life.

It was what he'd said when she got the scholarship to go to college. What on earth would that have to do with being stranded on an island with Hart Ducaine?

Hart was carefully toting an overfull basin of water from the shower to the table, when she rounded the corner of the house.

"You wastin' water?" she asked sternly.

"No, ma'am. What I spilled only went to water the grass," he answered.

She held up the things she'd brought. "Smarty-pants! Knife. Bowl."

"Water. Fish," he said right back at her.

"We've got days out here. Don't use up all your cuteness the first day," she said.

"Chere, I wouldn't use them all up if we were out here for a year."

"And don't call me chere. It's an endearment that you don't use if you don't mean it," she said.

"You are lyin' to me, Kate. Your grandmother called me that the whole time she was planning to put me on this place with you. It's not an endearment. It's a curse. No one would put someone they loved out here on this island with you for a whole week"

"Just clean the fish and don't cut your finger off. I'd have to stitch you up, and I've never been real good with embroidery." She flounced back into the house.

Until that moment, Hart hadn't considered what they'd do if one of them got hurt or sick. What if Kate fell down the stairs and broke her arm? What if that woodstove blew up in her face and she was burned badly?

Kate lit a few handfuls of kindling in the stove and waited for it to catch before she threw in several sticks of wood. The house would be hotter 'n blue blazes in a few minutes, but to boil water for rice, the stove had to be hot. She'd cook enough for two meals and hope that the place cooled off by night. If not, they'd be taking the mattress off the bed and moving it to the screened-in porch.

She groaned, not at the idea of sleeping on the porch, but that there was only one mattress. That meant one of them had to sleep on the hard floor.

What she'd give for a cell phone to talk to Fancy or Sophie right then couldn't be measured in dollars and cents. During Thanksgiving a few months before, Fancy had gotten stranded in a cabin with Theron and his daughter, Tina. She hadn't taken her cell-phone charger with her, and she was only able to make one call. Kate had thought the whole thing was hilarious.