Mesmerizing Stranger

Chapter 5

The instant the boat docked at Tennehee Springs late that afternoon, the men charged off as if their feet were spring-loaded.

“You get the feeling the whole group needs a little stress relief?” Cate murmured to Harm.

They were bringing up the rear. He naturally cupped her arm when she took the leap to the dock. She felt the bolt of awareness-so did he, judging from the wry glance he shot her. Still, they followed the others, walking side by side.

“We all might need a few hours’ rest, but we’re not the only ones. Cate, you’re funnier than hell and full of the devil. I really want to say-thanks.”

“Thanks for what?” she asked in surprise.

“For taking care of trouble. Which you’ve been doing solid since we all got onboard. You didn’t sign on for these kinds of problems…much less for the trauma of finding Fiske. For someone who could use some sympathy, you’re not getting any, but you’re damned good at giving it out.”

“You’ve completely misunderstood,” she assured him. “I don’t know any of you, so don’t give me credit for sensitivity. I’m not one of those touchy-feely caretaking kind of women.”

“Ah.”

“I’m not.”

“Okay, slugger. I’m sorry I said something nice about you. I’ll try not to do it again.”

She considered punching him, figured that likely a rich hotshot like him hadn’t been punched in a good long time-but she didn’t. She was far too mature, she told herself righteously. Besides, she couldn’t very well fight with him and stick closer than glue for this outing. Just because she wasn’t a maternal or nurturing type didn’t mean she couldn’t feel sympathy. Harm had had a god-awful morning. A god-awful month, it sounded like. And he was the lone ranger, stuck with all the repercussions.

“Hey,” Ivan yelled from the leader dog role in the head of the straggly line. “If anyone strays off the road, that’s fine. Go walkabout wherever you want. It’s not as if anyone could get lost here. We’re here three hours, then back to the ship.”

“As if anyone needed those instructions,” Cate said drily, but she was as taken by Tennehee Springs as Harm seemed to be. Just the exercise of walking in the brisk air seemed to shake off the gloomy mood on the boat, and the unexpectedly different world offshore seemed to capture all their attentions.

From the dock-where a hefty number of fishing vessels were already tied off-began an ambling gravel road. She never saw or heard a car, although mud-covered ATVs were parked here and there. The houses lining the road looked more like cottages than structures that could regularly survive an Alaskan winter. Cats and dogs snoozed on every porch step. “Incredibly majestic woods and hills, and then screen doors with holes,” Harm said.

It was a contrast. Eventually, they came to a café-Ivan’s goal was to get the local flavor of a drink and dinner here. Next door, a hand-painted sign read: Is There Life After Death? Trespass Here And Find Out.

And at the door to the café was another sign-Leave Guns Outside. Clearly, the customers were into obeying, because a whole teepee of rifles and long guns were perched against the window. Cate couldn’t believe the number, and when she stepped inside ahead of Harm, she couldn’t believe the place.

“Holy kamoly. We’re sure not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Cate mentioned, making Harm smile-for the first time all day.

“We’re supposed to eat dinner here, huh?”

“Yup. I get a night off whenever we’re onshore. More to the point, I do believe I’ll be able to serve you guys anything after this and you’ll love it.”

She almost ran into Yale and Purdue, who’d stopped dead to gape for a moment when they walked in, too. The café was decorated early-box. All supplies were in boxes, unstacked and unopened until needed. A splash of rickety tables took up the rest of the space. A swinging blackboard announced the cook’s menu for the day-which was chili, either hot as hell or the sissy version. Another sign forbade spitting on the floor.

The group filed around the big round table in the corner. Cate gingerly took a seat between Harm and Ivan and mentally lectured herself against galloping into the kitchen to find a rag and soap and some way to scour the table. For darn sure, it hadn’t been washed in recent history. On the other hand, an exuberantly friendly lady with a mighty chest and rambunctious smile immediately came over to take their liquor order.

Beer was the poison of choice. The waitress/owner put enough longnecks in the center of the table to last three weeks and then some, Cate thought. Initially, their table was silent. Listening to the chatter between the other customers was more engrossing than anything they could possibly say. The longest discussion involved a “little” domestic abuse the week before that included a fire, blown-out windows, screaming matches and the husband finally giving up and calling in the law.

Apparently, calling in the law meant that someone literally had to either boat or fly in, because there wasn’t any law here. Once the chili was served-Cate chose the hell-hot version-Ivan said to Harm, “You beginning to get it?”

“Get what?” Harm asked.

“The complications of your man dying here. This just isn’t like the Lower 48. No place is more beautiful than here. No better place to be independent, be your own man, make your own way. But trying to get bureaucratic things done on a fast timetable-it just doesn’t happen.”

“Different values here,” Harm said.

“Ask me, they’re better values. But I’m sure I’d feel different if I had an employee die on my watch, and had all your kind of responsibilities.”

Harm didn’t respond-but then everyone was guzzling beer in gulping heaps by then. The chili was that hot. Locals eventually left until only one other table was occupied, filled by a pair of hunched-over bearded men who were stargazing into their beer. Cate wasn’t about to touch Harm, but someone should. Where the others loosened up after the food and alcohol, he sat tough and dark-eyed, obviously unable to relax with the weight of monster-size problems on his shoulders.

When the smoke from the chili cleared, Yale put down his beer, which was probably his fourth. “Something just occurred to me. We’re all gonna know.”

“You’re slurring your words,” Arthur said impatiently. “We’re all going to know what?”

“We got a thief in our company,” Yale told Ivan brazenly. “Somebody took a formula. Worth millions. Maybe billions. Maybe worth nothing, too, because the data disappeared…but that’s just what occurred to me. The data’s gonna reshow up. In someone else’s company. Then whoever sold us out is gonna be very, very rich. And then we’ll know who it really was.”

“You’re drunk, Yale.” Purdue moved his colleague’s beer away. “This isn’t anybody’s business but ours.”

“But that’s the thing, you see? What would be the point of anyone stealing if they didn’t get rich from it? But the minute the money shows up, the minute somebody gets rich, then we’ll know who it is.”

Cate saw the men all looking at Harm, as if they all expected him to put a lid on Yale-to stop the whole conversation. Instead, he eased back in his chair, and she remembered what he’d said-that he’d brought his team on this trip, to a place where they’d be isolated, out of their normal realm. He wanted to see if his staff could, or would, unravel-so he could discover what happened if they did.

When no one picked up Yale’s conversational lead, he reached over the table and grabbed another longneck. “The thing that really messes with my head,” he said, “is that all this time, I thought it was Fiske. You know. Because it had to be the financial guy, because it’s always the financial guys who know how much money is really involved-and who know how to get to it.”

“I don’t see how it could ever have been Fiske,” Purdue said. “Fiske had a heart of gold.”

“So do whores, they say.”

“Watch your mouth,” Arthur scolded, but then quietly, “I think anyone can be tempted to do anything…if the stakes are high enough.”

“And maybe the stakes weren’t money. Maybe it was something more important than money,” Purdue offered.

“That’s stupid. There’s nothing more important than money-at least when it’s big money.” Yale sighed, then let out a gigantic hiccup. “The thing is, if it was Fiske, then it’s almost the worst thing. Because the money might never show up. The formula might never show up. We not only won’t have the money or the data, but the world won’t have the damned cure. We’ll all be under a cloud of suspicion forever. You still suspicion us all, don’t you, Harm?”

“Suspicion isn’t a verb,” Purdue said with disgust, and hauled him to his feet. “That’s why I went to Purdue and you went to Yale. I wanted an education. You never got one. You don’t even know what you’re saying.” To the others, “I’m taking him back to the boat. Although I might have to roll him there.”

“I’ll go, too.” Hans stood, followed by Ivan. All of them ended up hiking back at the same time. As if reflecting the group’s mood, the clouds bunched up and produced another version of Alaska’s “summer rain”-drenching them in a downpour as they climbed aboard.

Cate retreated to the galley, where she cleaned and fussed and rearranged-and then did it all over again. Over the next hour, voices and sounds gradually faded away. She assumed everyone had caved below deck, needing rest after the long day, but there was no chance of her sleeping yet. She wandered through the empty salon, pushed open the doors to the aft deck. The deluge had stopped, the skies were just barely dripping, and the lightning had faded to a luminescent pearl-gray.

Her pulse jolted when she saw Harm, leaning over the rail. The shadowed overhang concealed his expression, but his posture was both tense and exhausted. He was staring at the black-silver waters as if his worries were as impossibly deep as those seas.

Before Harm realized she was there, Cate figured she should back up and back off, head below. It was easy to guess he didn’t want company-much less hers.

Since she never seemed to make the wisest choices, she edged closer instead. She didn’t say anything, just leaned over the rail right next to him. She felt his startled stiffening. Ignored it. He was as alone as a man could be, had no one to turn to. Maybe that wasn’t her problem…but she was the only one who seemed to be able to do something about it.

“I’m not good company right now,” he said.

He didn’t say go away, but he might as well have. “I can’t imagine you would be. After everything that happened today, I figured you might be in a mood to kick someone around. I’m not a bad kickee. You don’t owe me anything. I’m not in your company radar. And I’m tough as nails.”

“You’re not remotely tough as nails. And quit looking at me that way.”

“What way?”

He turned, just far enough so she could see his glower. “You think I won’t bite your head off-I will.”

“Go for it,” she urged him. “Bite.”

The conversation didn’t make much sense, but when he suddenly grabbed her…that made sense, she thought. He was pretty angry. Not at her, but at life. And at himself, she suspected, because he couldn’t solve unsolvable problems and find answers out of thin air-which he apparently expected himself to do.

So his hands were rough on her shoulders. He yanked her closer. His mouth slapped on hers, communicating pressure and dominance, and probably he intended to arouse fear in her. He was one pissed-off kahuna, all right.

Still, she didn’t back off and she didn’t kick back. She did what any other lunatic of a woman would do.

She melted. Right into him. Closing her eyes, feeling herself going soft and pliant all over. Feeling the rush of sensation when his kiss darkened, deepened, took.

Thrilling. Hells bells, it was a word out of her grandmother’s time, out of old movies in the forties in black-and-white. Real women weren’t thrilled by a guy’s kisses today. The whole idea was romantic and stupid.

Yet thrills kept shivering through her bloodstream, making her heart pound, making her knees feel weak. Making need shoot through her body with cat claws, sharp and real. It was just desire, she told herself. Nothing important. Just hormones.

But it didn’t feel like “just hormones.” His mouth felt like an answer to a question she’d never asked, the taste of him a spice and flavor she’d never known, the heat and power of him something her heart had craved her whole life-even if she’d never known it.

Her hands walked around him, closing around his waist, inviting the glue of his brick-hard chest against her soft breasts, his tense abdomen against her cushioning pelvis. Oh, yeah, she thought. This was worth dying for. Who knew?

When he suddenly jerked his head up, she just might have fallen if he wasn’t still holding on to her. She had to intake a good gulp of air, and even then, her head still felt foggy. His expression, she noted, was still glowering. But the anxiety and exhaustion and world of worry was gone. He was still mad.

But now, he was only mad at her.

“My God, you’re trouble,” he grumped.

“Watch it. Compliments go straight to my head.”

There. After that whole impossibly terrible day, she got a real smile out of him. Not that half-eaten grin he’d unwillingly let through in the café, but a real chuckle, a sign he’d thrown off a pound of that unbearable heaviness he’d been carrying around. But he removed his hands from her shoulders as if suddenly realizing his palms had been cooking on a hot stove, and immediately leaned back against the rail.

“I was married twice,” he said abruptly.

Now there was a conversation starter. “Yeah? That’s good.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Good? Most women run like hell when they hear that.”

She suspected they did. She suspected that was exactly why he’d mentioned that little bit of biographical information out of the blue. “My theory is that pretty much all men run from commitment after they’ve been burned twice. Even if they were to blame for doing a good share of the burning. Divorces are no fun for either side, or so I hear. Anyway, I appreciate your telling me. Now I know you’re safe.”

“Safe.” He rolled the word on his tongue, as if he’d never heard anyone, much less a woman, call him safe.

“Hey, I’m footloose. Not looking for a commitment. So it wouldn’t do for me to fall in love or you to fall in love with me. I don’t like hurting people-or being hurt. And you know what, Harm? I think you’ve been hurt enough.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you kiss like you mean it. That’s all I have to know.” She pushed off the railing. “The next time, though…”

He rolled his eyes. “I hear the warning in your voice. The next time, what?”

“The next time, don’t start something you don’t intend to finish.”

There now, she’d shocked him again. She walked away, thinking she’d done what she wanted to do-which was remove that exhaustion and stress from his face for a few minutes.

Of course, she’d also the same as dared him to make love to her.

As she locked the door to her cabin, already chafing at the claustrophobic space, she told herself it was about time she learned to curb her impulsive tongue. But the internal scolding didn’t last after she turned off the light. Yeah, she’d dared him. Yeah, it was a foolish and risky thing to suggest to a man of his power and virility, with a life so alien to hers.

But she didn’t regret it. She figured she should. That maybe she could talk herself into believing she didn’t want to make love with him. But her heart…just didn’t seem to swallow that good sense.

The next morning, when Cate heard the first sounds of voices in the dining room, she poked her head around the galley archway. “Just pour yourself some coffee, guys. And start with the fruit. I’ll be bringing in breakfast in two shakes.”

Her galley, she knew, looked as if a cyclone had hit. Outside, a blazing sun seemed to wash away all the gloom and troubles from yesterday-which unfortunately didn’t improve her own mood. She hadn’t slept well.

As anyone with a brain knew, mess with the cook’s sleep and everybody paid. She was grumpier than a porcupine with a tummy ache.

“One-minute warning. Y’all better be sitting down,” she called out. The Ebelskivers pan on the stovetop was hers. It took a unique pan to create the dish. The recipe for Danish pancakes was lighter than air, each one filled with a treat-like blueberries or cherries or a little orange marmalade or a scoop of wild honey. A few she filled with ham and cheese to make them more substantial. The boys could pick them up with their hands if they wanted. They didn’t even have to use silverware. “Need help?”

There. Her heart slammed like mad out of the complete blue, even before she whirled around and saw Harm. The circles under his eyes were bigger than whales, a testimony that he hadn’t slept any better than she had. But when a man looked that rough around the edges, how could he still exude so much virility and sexiness?

“No,” she said with no fanfare and no apology. As she’d reminded herself fifty million times in the middle of the night, she barely knew the man.

So she’d made a major judgment mistake and tried him. No one could be hopelessly addicted that fast. No one. “Out,” she said, and immediately turned around.

It wasn’t tricky to make Ebelskivers. It was just tricky to make them exquisitely perfect, and Cate wanted them better than even exquisite. When she had a free second-and she only had a single free second because the Ebelskivers couldn’t be left-she dashed into the dining room and put a glazed flowerpot of monkey bread on the table.

“You just pull it apart with your hands, guys. Eat it like that. The Ebelskivers are on their way in, but I’ve only got one pan, so they have to come out in shifts.”

She’d just dashed back into the galley when Ivan showed up. “Out,” she said.

At least he knew enough to obey by now.

They started diving in. She heard the first round of marriage proposals and vows of eternal love while she plopped in the second batch. In spite of the blinding sun, a stiff wind seemed determined to push the boat around. Since the stove was perfectly gimballed, the surface was automatically made level-and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t cooked in far worse conditions than this-but the pitch and roll still made cooking a wee bit more challenging.

She ran in with the next batch. By then, the men were hovering over the table, looking like kin to pigs at a trough. No one was drooling, but they’d all turned into obedient children-no hair combed, no shaved chins, but all with the same expressions.

“Each of you has that angelic look men get when they want sex. I’m not fooled,” she said. “And you can’t have sweets and carbohydrates like this all the time, so don’t beg.”

“We just want you to cook forever for us, Cate.”

Harm said, “Have you had even a bite?”

Actually, she hadn’t. Who had time? She’d share coffee with them when the last batch was done and on the table. For now, she had one more platter to go…and she was thinking, really, it wasn’t like today could be good for any of them. Fiske’s death was still fresh. So maybe she’d put together another round of comfort foods later. Like strawberry pie? Fresh? And maybe one more batch of peppermint cookies.

She opened the cupboard, watching her Ebelskivers, glanced in to check her spices, reached for the peppermint extract…and stopped dead.

The peppermint extract bottle had no top.

In her lifetime, Cate had never put away a spice without securing the lid. Spices aged too fast as it was.

Confused, she reached for the small container, and stopped dead again. The bottle was completely empty.

It couldn’t be. True peppermint extract was so strong that she never used more than a drop at a time. And she’d just opened it days before to make the first batch of her original cookies. The bottle should have been full, just short a couple of drops. She’d bought fresh from her favorite supplier before the trip.

“Cate?”

A sudden vision of Fiske filled her mind. The way he’d been lying on the galley floor, the oddness of his hands cupped around his neck as if he’d been choking.

A wisp of smoke startled her, made her realize her pancakes were burning. She grabbed the handle, saved the cakes in the nick of time, scooped that last round onto a plate and carted them into the dining room.

At a glance, she could see the men were filling up. Hands were going on tummies. The guys were getting that glazed-eye look testifying that they’d been sugared-up and filled-up for now…except for Harm.

His gaze found hers across the table, shrewd and sharp as one of her Wüsthof-Trident knives. “You all right?”

“Sure,” she said. But she wasn’t. She wasn’t remotely all right. She wasn’t sure if she was ever going to be all right again. Maybe it was crazy-she had to hope she was crazy-but the thought in her mind was as indelible as lead ink. Fiske had been murdered. And not just murdered, but killed by someone on the boat.

Once she set down the platter, she poured herself a mug of coffee and held it with both hands so she could keep the darned thing from shaking as she sat down. She was sitting with a murderer, her mind kept telling her-which was probably why her heart was pounding louder than a freight train.

The craziest thing of all was that she was the only one who knew what had happened. And even if she told, she couldn't imagine anyone would believe her.