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THE BAY WAS plump and placid at high tide, infinitely easier to swim in than the Atlantic Ocean a short distance away right across the Cape. To Quinn’s way of thinking, the only drawback to being on the bay side was the distinctive aroma at low tide, but after the first day or two, he no longer noticed it.
He’d been doing the crawl for about forty-five minutes and could feel it in his shoulders. If this were a pool, he’d be able to calculate distance. As it was, he could only guess, which was mildly irksome.
He changed direction and headed for shore. If his buddies could read his thoughts right now, they’d write him off as hopelessly rigid. Or analytical—wasn’t that how Molly had put it? According to his laid-back housemate and his pals back home, he was supposed to be using this time to relax, to find his inner beach bum or some such garbage.
Meanwhile he was itching to get back to the city and set the job-hunting wheels in motion. One thing he’d never been good at was wasting time.
Quinn waded onto the hot sand and headed for his towel, where he’d left his keys, sunglasses, and flip-flops. With the house so near the beach, there was no need to bring more. Molly was right. It was a phenomenal location.
Today only a few wisps of cloud scudded across the azure sky, and the temperature was a comfortable mid-eighties. The strip of beach was narrow, backed by a clifflike dune, and he shared it with a couple of dozen other folks, mainly couples and families with young children.
He toweled off, slipped on his shades, and made his way down the beach and up a gentle incline to the tiny parking lot where an ice-cream truck now sat, surrounded by sand-encrusted kids waving dollar bills. He dropped the flip-flops and slipped them on, having learned his first day there what happened when the tender soles of one’s feet met black asphalt that had been baking in the sun for a few hours.
Quinn crossed the little parking lot, nodding politely to the attendant sitting on a lawn chair, dutifully collecting five bucks from those not fortunate enough to live within walking distance. The house was right there on the left, and as always, Quinn scanned the grounds and the second-floor deck for signs of Molly.
As requested, she’d left him alone during the past week, though she was unfailingly cheerful and animated whenever their paths crossed. He hadn’t enjoyed telling her to keep her distance. He knew he’d embarrassed her, but he also knew that a preemptive strike would be the least painful in the long run. For both of them.
Quinn was honest enough with himself to admit he was physically attracted to Molly Lamb—to a garrulous, relentlessly cheerful, unrepentant heartbreaker. This was, after all, the woman who’d bolted from her wedding four months earlier, making a fool out of one of the most powerful men in the advertising business.
Quinn had seen her on the beach every day, of course, dog-paddling around the bay, soaking up the rays in her sexy little swimsuits, chatting with the other beachgoers. While he himself hadn’t exchanged two words with any of the people he saw there day after day, Molly had apparently become fast friends with each and every one of them. Her treks down the beach took forever. With all that glad-handing and baby kissing, one would think she was running for office.
She exchanged snacks with these people, kept an eye on their kids, and just that morning had even let some guy in a blond ponytail and lime-green banana hammock rub sunscreen on her!
Molly’s innate friendliness and too-trusting nature were going to get her into trouble one of these days. Quinn found himself keeping an eye on her—for her own good. He’d tried to reconcile her ingenuous charm with her horrendous treatment of Phil Owen, and came up empty. Then again, you never knew what lay beneath the surface until you really got to know someone. Undoubtedly Phil was better off without her.
Charging her that exorbitant rent had to have been some kind of vindictive parting shot. True, the house was in a great location, but Phil had let it go to hell. The decks were rotting through in places, half the windows and sliding doors wouldn’t budge, the plumbing was unreliable, the tile floors were buckling, the yard was overrun with poison ivy, and some of the weathered cedar shakes needed to be replaced. And that yard-sale furniture! Phil could do a decent upgrade for a minimal investment. Quinn couldn’t believe his paying tenants didn’t complain.
He also couldn’t believe anyone else paid what Phil was charging Molly. Given the house’s present condition, Quinn doubted Phil could get more than seven hundred a week for each apartment at the peak of tourist season—eight hundred, tops.
This petty act of revenge lowered Quinn’s opinion of his former boss. What kind of man would take such blatant advantage of his broke and ridiculously gullible ex-fiancée? Meanwhile he’d given Quinn, who could easily afford to buy the place outright, a free ride. Quinn had seen no point in letting Molly know that. He had no desire to get in the middle of something messy.
He cut across the street and front yard to the deck, where he flung his damp towel over a ratty lawn chair. The outdoor shower was located in back of the house at the far end of the wraparound deck, out of sight of the street. Quinn hadn’t actually seen Molly use it since that first day, but he’d heard the water go on a couple of times when he was inside. He’d heard her belting out Donna Summers’s “Last Dance” and the Bee Gees’ “Staying Alive.” For a guy with an admittedly feeble imagination, he’d had no trouble picturing her in painstaking detail, soaping up, rinsing off, dancing her little heart out.
He shuffled out of his flip-flops and bent to toss them onto the deck when a tinny brrring-brrring brought his head up. A bicycle bell. Molly was approaching the house on her rented bike. Two overstuffed plastic grocery sacks were crammed into the wire basket, with two more bags hanging off the handlebars. Another full sack dangled from her forearm. Her hair was secured in a long, thick braid that snaked out from under a bright blue bike helmet.
She spied him and raised her free arm to wave just as she turned off the road onto the crushed-shell driveway. The bike wobbled violently and she grabbed the handlebar, too late. The tires skidded out from under her, sending her sprawling into the shell shards as bags split and groceries tumbled out around her.
Quinn reached her before the wheels stopped spinning. “Don’t move,” he said. “Just stay there.” She lay on her side looking a little dazed. Thank goodness for the helmet. He tossed the bike aside and quickly checked for broken bones, grateful when he didn’t find any. Still, her skimpy yellow tank top and cutoffs had provided scant protection and she was badly scraped up.
“Wow,” she breathed, reaching for the helmet straps, fumbling with the release catch, her fingers trembling. He brushed her hands away and gently removed the helmet. She struggled up onto her elbow, wincing, and he helped her to sit.
She looked at the broken eggs scattered about, the leaking milk container and crushed grapes. “My groceries.”
“What were you thinking, carrying all that stuff on a bike?”
She gazed up at him with a look of such heartbreaking vulnerability that he felt instantly ashamed. “Never mind,” he said, carefully brushing shell gravel from her abraded chin. “It’s okay. Let’s get you cleaned up. Think you can walk?”
“My groceries...” She stared at her scraped-up left knee, which was beginning to ooze blood in earnest, as were her chin, shoulder, and elbow.
“I’ll get your groceries, don’t worry. First let’s get you into the house.”
He fished his keys from the pocket of his board shorts and unlocked the doors, then came back and scooped her into his arms. She opened her mouth as if to protest, but then relaxed against his bare chest.
Quinn felt something rip loose inside—an unaccustomed surge of protectiveness, as foreign and frightening as it was exhilarating. In his nearly thirty years on the planet, he’d never been responsible for anyone but himself.
He settled her in his arms and carried her into the house, past the living room with its scratchy sofa to the relative comfort of his bedroom. On the way he lowered his head a fraction, teasing his lips with the gossamer-fine wisps of hair that had escaped her braid. He inhaled the fragrance of sun and shampoo and the clean, humid warmth of her exertions. He’d thought her hair was brown, but now he saw it was shot through with golden strands.
Carefully he set her on the double bed, stacking the pillows behind her so she could recline comfortably. She looked at the crisply tucked bedcovers, the soft cotton blanket stretched tight and smooth beneath her. “You make your bed?”
“So?”
“So who’s going to see it?”
“Today? You.”
That earned a weak smile. “I’m going to get blood on your nice clean blanket, Quinn.”
“Let me worry about my blanket. I have a first-aid kit in the car. Sit tight.”
Quinn went outside and retrieved the kit from the trunk of his Mercedes. On the way back he grabbed Molly’s groceries, as well, at least those that could be salvaged. No point in giving the seagulls too extravagant a feast.
When he reentered the bedroom she looked a little pale, leaning on her right side, taking care not to let her messy abrasions come into contact with his blanket.
“Will you relax?” He sat next to her on the bed and urged her onto her back. “You know, you’re really uptight, Molly. You should do something about that. Take a vacation or something.”
He wondered if he’d ever seen anything as bewitching as her smirky little smile, knowing he’d put it there. Quinn opened the compact first aid kit and pawed through the various sealed packets. “Let’s see... alcohol cleansing pads. I don’t think so.”
She leaned toward him to look. “What else do you have in there?”
“Iodine infection-control pads.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Iodine? Doesn’t that sting?”
He hated to break the news to her, but no matter what they used to clean those scrapes, it was bound to be a real attention getter. “Here we go.” He lifted out a handful of packets. “Antiseptic cleansing wipes.”
“That sounds promising.”
Quinn tore open a packet and looked her over, trying to decide where to start. She tipped her head, indicating her chin. He unfolded the saturated wipe and touched it to the raw red abrasion.
She screamed and jumped back, slamming her skull into the wooden headboard.
“Okay.” He grasped her forearm. “Okay, I know, but we have to clean these places. You know that, Molly. They’ll get infected otherwise.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and muttered a lot of words he wouldn’t have thought she knew. Not Mellow Molly. He almost smiled.
“Okay. Ready?” he asked.
She nodded. Gingerly he started cleaning her chin. She sucked in her breath and tensed, but didn’t move.
“Next customer.” Quinn eased the narrow strap of her tank top down over her scraped shoulder, knowing he wouldn’t find a bra strap under it. In seven days of conscientious observation, he had yet to detect a bra on Molly. She probably didn’t own one. He opened another packet and applied it to the bloody open skin of her shoulder. A groan squeezed past her clamped jaw.
Distract her, he commanded himself. Before he could think of something to say, she asked, “How’s the bike? I don’t want to lose my deposit.”
“You won’t. I’ll put the chain back on, realign the handlebars. No one’ll notice another scratch or two.”
Molly didn’t own a car. Someone had given her a ride to the Cape, and she’d rented the bicycle for local transportation.
He said, “I didn’t know you were going grocery shopping with that thing. Why didn’t you ask me for a lift?”
The instant the words were out of his mouth, he wanted to lop off his tongue. Molly avoided his eyes. They both knew the answer to that one. No obligations, no distractions.
“What I mean is, I have to go myself, anyway, right?” he said. “No reason you can’t tag along. I’ll, uh, tell you next time I’m going to the supermarket.”
He moved on to her abraded elbow. She looked away and, after an initial flinch, sat still and let him clean it. He admired her control. This had to hurt like hell.
“It’s okay, Quinn,” she said. “You don’t have to take me shopping. I know you value your privacy. I do fine on the bike, I just got kind of carried away and tried to schlepp too much stuff home.”
He fumbled for a response but came up empty. How could anyone be so damn easygoing? She ought to hate his guts for giving her the cold shoulder, for treating her friendly overtures like the onslaught of the Mongol hordes. Anyone else would have told him to take a flying leap the very first day, but not Molly.
Suddenly he knew why Phil had been attracted to her. Here was a woman he could lord it over, a woman who wouldn’t challenge him or try to call the shots. He probably found her appealingly spineless.
Which wasn’t a fair assessment of Molly. Quinn didn’t think of her as spineless so much as serene. There was something to be said for not letting things get to you. He wondered how she’d react in a crisis.
And what did his analysis say about Phil? Or rather, about his opinion of Phil? He’d be kidding himself if he said he actually liked the guy, and Quinn wasn’t one to kid himself. But he didn’t have to be pals with a man to respect him in business, to admire him even.
The bottom line was, something told Quinn that his former boss would appreciate a woman like Molly. More perplexing was what she’d seen in Phil.
Quinn wanted to ask her but didn’t dare. How could he demand that his housemate respect his privacy if he didn’t respect hers?
She asked, “Did my chicken cutlets survive?”
“Afraid not. The package split open. You lost the coleslaw, too. The hot dogs are okay, though. And the potato chip bag is flat but intact. Diet chips—you can eat just as many, but you won’t get fat because they are now very, very tiny.”
She watched him open one last packet to clean her knee, but again she averted her eyes just before he got down to business. He found that endearing somehow.
“I’m not up to grilling tonight anyway,” she said. “I think I’ll just open a can of tuna.”
Carefully Quinn dabbed the blood from her knee, chagrined at the internal battle he was waging. A battle between good common sense and... what? He didn’t think he wanted to know. In the end the what won out.
“Well, if you don’t mind lobster, you’re welcome to eat down here,” he said, his eyes still on his task. “With me.”
She stared at him for long, agonizing moments. “Quinn, I know you don’t want—”
“Just say yes, damn it!” He felt his face heat. “It’s not like I’m some damn hermit.”
Her lips twitched. To her credit, she refrained from saying something like Well, yeah, Quinn, it is like you’re some damn hermit.
Instead she said, “Real lobster?”
“The fake ones are hell on the nutcrackers.”
“I haven’t had lobster in so long. Those chicken cutlets were my big splurge for the week.”
“You can’t leave the Cape without eating a lobster, Molly. There’s some law on the books about it if I’m not mistaken.” He retrieved gauze pads, antibiotic ointment, and a roll of adhesive tape from the first-aid kit, uncomfortable with the sudden realization that if Molly didn’t say yes, he wouldn’t bother getting a lobster just for himself.
“What did I tell you?” she said, with a knowing look. “It’s happening already. You’re beginning to get it.”
“Get what? You mean the whole beach-bumming, sunset-watching, bike-riding, lobster-sucking Cape Cod thing?”
“Exactly.”
He peeled the paper wrapper from a gauze pad, squirted ointment on it, and gently placed it on the scraped-up side of her chin. “Hold that for me.” She did and he taped it in position. “You know, you’re pretty cocky for someone angling for a free crustacean.”
“With corn on the cob.”
“Now she wants corn on the cob!” He unwrapped another piece of gauze.
“And steamers. A whole bucketful. You like clams?”
“No, but something tells me I won’t want to miss a chance to watch you eat them.”
“Lobster!” Molly squealed gleefully and bounced on the bed, derailing his attempt to bandage her elbow. She gave his thigh a brisk pat. “And after, we watch the sunset. The whole sunset.”