Heroes Are My Weakness(34)

She shoved the broom in the cupboard. “I’m out.”

“How about some eggs?”

“Out.”

“Bread?”

“Gone.”

“Leftovers?”

“I wish.”

“Tell me my coffee’s still here.”

“Only a little, and I’m not sharing.”

He began opening cupboards, looking for it. “You obviously haven’t gotten used to island grocery shopping.”

“Stay out of my stuff.”

He found what was left of his bag of ground coffee on top of the refrigerator. She made a lunge for it, but he held it over her head. “Be nice.”

Nice. A rubbish word. One he hardly ever used. The word had no moral weight. A person didn’t need courage for “nice.” “Nice” called for no sacrifice, no strength of character. If only all he’d ever had to do was be nice . . .

He dropped his arm, and with his free hand tugged at the sash on her robe. As the sides separated, he pressed his palm to the skin exposed by the open V at the neck of her flannel pajama top. Her eyes grew wide and startled. “Forget the coffee,” he said. “Take this off so I can see if what’s underneath has gotten any bigger.”

Not nice. Not nice at all.

But instead of slapping him as he deserved, she regarded him with an unsettling disgust. “You’re demented.” With a scowl, she stomped away.

You got that right, he thought. And don’t forget it.





Chapter Eight


ANNIE STOOD OFF TO THE side of the kitchen window, watching as the cat jumped willingly into Theo’s car and the two of them drove off together. Don’t turn your back, Hannibal, she thought.

There was nothing sexy about Theo pulling her robe open. A bastard’s nature was to act like a bastard, and he’d done what came naturally. But as she turned away from the window, she thought about the calculation she’d seen in his eyes when he’d done it. He’d deliberately tried to unhinge her, but it hadn’t worked. He was a devious jerk, but was he a dangerous one? Her instincts said no, but her reliable brain was flashing enough warning signals to stop a freight train.

She headed for her bedroom. His so-called rental of her cottage was supposed to start today, and she needed to get out of here before he came back. She pulled on what had become her standard island uniform—jeans and wool socks with a long-sleeved top and heavy sweater. She missed the floaty fabrics and colorful prints of her summer boho dresses. She missed her vintage 1950s frocks with their fitted bodices and full skirts. One of her favorites was printed with ripe summer cherries. Another had a border of dancing martini glasses. Unlike Mariah, Annie loved colorful clothes with whimsical trims and decorative buttons. None of which enlivened the jeans and ratty sweaters she’d brought with her.

She returned to the living room and glanced out the window but saw no sign of Theo’s car. She dressed quickly, grabbed her inventory notebook, and began going through the cottage room by room to see if anything was missing. She’d wanted to do this last night, but she wasn’t letting Theo know anything about the legacy or her suspicion that the breakin was tied to it.

Everything on her list was still in place, but for all she knew, what she was looking for could be tucked in the back of a drawer or in one of the closets she hadn’t yet thoroughly investigated. Had her housebreaker found what Annie couldn’t locate?

Theo worried her. As she zipped up her coat, she made herself reexamine the possibility that the breakin had nothing to do with Mariah’s legacy and everything to do with Theo trying to pay her back for spooking him. She’d thought she’d gotten away with the clock incident, but what if she hadn’t? What if he’d seen through her and this was his payback? Should she follow her head or her instincts?

Definitely her head. Trusting Theo Harp was like trusting a poisonous snake not to bite.

She circled the cottage. Theo had done the same before he’d left, ostensibly to look for tracks . . . or maybe to wipe out any evidence he might have left himself. He’d told her the lack of fresh snow and the confusion from her footprints made it impossible to see anything unusual. She didn’t quite believe him, but as she searched the same area, she couldn’t find anything suspicious either. She turned toward the ocean. The morning tide was going out. If Theo had made it along the beach path last night, she should be able to make it in daylight.

Wet, jagged rocks guarded the shoreline near the cottage, and the icy ocean wind carried the smell of salt and seaweed. In warmer weather, she could have walked right along the water’s edge, but now she stayed farther back, carefully picking her way along a narrow path that was sandy during the summer but was now icy with hard-packed snow.

The path wasn’t as well defined as it had once been, and she had to climb over a few of the boulders that used to serve as her reading perches. She’d spent hours here daydreaming about the characters in whichever novel she was reading. The heroines were fueled only by strength of character as they faced down these forbidding men with their noble lineages, savage moods, and aquiline noses. Not unlike a certain Theo Harp. Although Theo’s nose wasn’t aquiline. She remembered how disappointed she’d been when she’d looked up that romantic-sounding word and seen what it really meant.

A pair of seagulls battled the cut of the wind. She stopped for a moment to take in the fierce beauty of the ocean as it pounded toward the shoreline, the foamy gray crests plunging into roiling dark valleys. She’d lived in the city so long that she’d forgotten this sense of being absolutely alone in the universe. It was a pleasant, dreamy sensation in the summer, but unsettling in the winter.