Dark Memories (The DARK Files Book 1) (9 page)

Laura’s gaze skittered away. “Did you … come in contact with many children? Orphans?”

“People are so poor in Colombia that some abandon children they can’t feed. My unit picked up a baby in a field and took her to an orphanage just north of Medellín.” The children’s sad souls had reached right into his chest. He’d wanted to offer the attention denied him as a child.

“Thank God. But most of them aren’t so lucky?”

“I wouldn’t want to guess how many.” Best not to get into that. “Anyway, the little kids at the orphanage liked my hokey coin tricks.”

She tilted her head as if she wanted to ask more, but only smiled. She dropped her sail bags beside the life vests and turned toward the students. “Okay, swabbies, this is Mr. Stratton. He’s going to watch today.”

Saying their names, she tapped each child on the shoulder by way of introduction. Besides Kay and her brother, there were dark-haired twin girls. One peeked at him shyly from behind her sister. The last four were freckle-faced brothers sporting transfer tattoos of wrestling stars, a Chinese-American boy with the unlikely name of Butch and a Mohawk-haired boy who eyed Cole with suspicion.

“Someone needs to bring out the rest of the sail bags,” Laura continued. “First captain ready gets choice of crew.”

The mad scramble for equipment had Cole’s head whirling.

She waved at someone beyond the beach. It was the cocky young handyman. He waved back. Cole’s friendly grin for the children warped into a scowl.

Hefting a sail bag, the older girl Kay called, “Hey, Burt, how about a ride on your sailboard sometime?”

Burt’s reply would remain a mystery. When he spotted his employer and the play director sauntering along the path, he roared away on the mower.

Kay shrugged and continued rigging her sails.

Good riddance. The guy was too old for her.

When he turned back, Laura was checking the sailing dinghies bobbing on the calm water. The water mirrored their slender masts along with the few wispy clouds.

Mohawk-top remained standing there, gaze fixed solemnly on Cole. He stuffed a small camera in his pocket. “Are you a spy?”

Cole gaped at the boy. What the hell? How in blazes could this kid— But the boy probably had his own agenda. “Um, what do you mean?”

“The East Pond kids want to beat us bad enough to send spies. Are you here to scout for them?”

Cole laughed. “Nope. I’m a Passabec fan all the way. I’m just here to pick up a few pointers about sailing.” And to keep an eye on the teacher.

But no hands. No touching.

“Pointers, huh? You keep your eyes on my boat. Me and Butch are the best. We skunk ’em every time.” With a swagger, the wiry boy ambled down the dock, where his partner was finishing rigging the sails.

“Hey, mister,” yelled one of the twins, paired with the older girl Kay. “Come watch us. We can come up into the wind better than yucky old Zach.”

Cole strolled along the dock, commenting as kids vied for his attention. He lost track of Laura momentarily until he heard the putt-putt of an outboard. She was scudding away from the dock in a white skiff.

Damn. He hadn’t realized she’d be alone in the middle of the lake, not a staked-out goat but a damn sitting duck. How could you protect a woman like that?

A few minutes later, the sailing dinghies, little bigger than Laura’s skiff, glided toward the triangular course she was setting up with orange buoys.

The practice race came off smoothly. Two boats dunked their occupants, but the kids righted them and sailed away.

Hearing only snatches of Laura’s instructions, Cole liked the gentle way she guided and encouraged the kids. He watched the shore for suspicious activity, but kept returning to her sunlit hair as she zipped around in the little outboard.

Sailing. Another sport too rich for him. Like the horseback riding. That last summer, Laura was the only rider who’d spoken to him. Maybe she shouldn’t have.

When the morning’s races and practice ended and the kids left, he helped her stow the sail bags and life vests.
They were alone. Now was a good time to bring up reducing risk. Like eliminating solo jaunts on the lake.

Before he could speak, a small whirlwind blew into the shed. “Sailing is awesome, Laura! I’ve never had so much fun.” One of the twin girls. The child’s voice was chirpy, like words popping out of a bubble machine. She threw her arms around Laura’s waist.

Laura knelt to return the bear hug. “I’m so glad, kiddo, but I knew you’d have a good time.”

“I didn’t even mind falling in the water. It didn’t matter.” She pantomimed lifting the mast out of the water. “Me ’n my sister can’t wait ’til the race!” She shoved her team’s sail bag at Laura, then dashed away.

Her cheeks flushed, Laura rose and swiped moisture from her eyes.

He cleared his throat. “I watched that little girl out there on the lake. She had a blast. Her shy sister too.”

Blowing her nose into a tissue, she shook her head. “That
was
the shy sister. When she came in, I was afraid she wanted to quit. She’s so timid, I didn’t know how she felt. Talking to me like that must have taken all her courage.”

He picked up his mug and helped her stack the sails.

These kids were middle-class, comfortable, rich compared to the San Sebastiano orphans in Rio Placido. But they needed nurturing every bit as much.

So many facets to her. She kept him guessing. Elegance and painstaking control in the face of danger. Slicing him to ribbons with her tongue one minute, nurturing and caring with her students the next.

She dusted her hands together. Placing them on her hips, she cocked her head at him. “Now are you ready for
your
sailing lesson?”

LAURA FUMED AS she entered the inn dining room on Friday morning. Cole had proposed they spend her day off together, which would foster the illusion of their intimacy. He gave her no choice in the matter, but she would protect her heart and her secrets.
When this trap or whatever it was ended, when it was clear she’d never see him again, she’d tell him no more than what she owed him. She couldn’t bear to rip the rest from her soul.

They’d strolled over together from her cabin, but she drew the line at holding hands. When Stan waylaid Cole with a request about the play, she welcomed the chance for respite from his intimidating maleness and take-charge competence.

Or was it her susceptibility putting her to flight?

Like a kid, he’d enjoyed their sail in one of the larger rental sloops. At first, nerves brought out his temper. The quintessential engine guy didn’t like having no motor for backup. Then in spite of his fuming about privilege and leisure sports, he turned his face to the wind and took a turn at the tiller.

Anxiety about how he’d deal with the sailing class had aroused the butterfly colony in her stomach. But he charmed them. And her. He listened seriously to their shameless bragging, asked questions, cheered them on and coaxed a giggle from the shy twin by producing a quarter from her ear.

The wistful hunger in his blue eyes had wrenched her heart. Hunger for children of his own to go boating with.

“Yoo-hoo, Laura,” a high-pitched voice called from one of the tables by the window. “Come join us.”

Laura smiled as she wove between tables toward the two elderly ladies in flounced, gauzy dresses and draped scarves. The Van Tassel sisters enjoyed to the fullest their stature as doyennes of the resort theater.

“Thank you.” She chose her next words with care, “but I’m with someone.”

Bea patted her shiny black curls. “Oh, is it that nice young man you introduced me to last evening?”

“Oh, dearie, what a hunk.” Her sister Doris’s teacup hovered in midair. Her wispy teased hairdo matched her apricot-blushed cheeks. Neon-blue eye shadow completed the theatrical effect. “We observed the sailing class from beneath our beach umbrella. He is most attentive.”

“Well, yes, he … that is, he and I …” Her tongue simply could not cope. Laura Markham Rossiter, two courses and a dissertation away from a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology, couldn’t put words together to say she was having breakfast with a man.

With that particular man.

Bea fluttered the fringed edge of her paisley shawl at Laura. “And here he is.”

“Good morning, ladies.” Cole nodded to the beaming women as he placed both hands on Laura’s shoulders.

Her cheeks as hot as toast, she at last found her voice and introduced him to Doris.

He bowed over the ladies’ hands as he inquired what breakfast delights they recommended. In his charcoal polo shirt and khakis, he looked for all the world as if he belonged in the proper inn dining room with its white linen and polished wood. Only the scars on his face hinted at his rough edges.

How could he be so rested and look so gorgeous after two nights on the lumpy couch?

Tittering and blushing like the ingénues they’d once been, the Van Tassels sent them off with a recommendation for the blueberry pancakes.

Laura allowed Cole to usher her to a table in a private corner. Usher wasn’t quite the right word. The warm hand at the small of her back felt like an electric prod. She scurried ahead of his touch.

“Put a smile on that pretty mouth, babe, or no one will believe we’re a pair of lovebirds.”

“And why should they?” As she sat opposite him, she stretched her lips into a facsimile of a smile. She hated being so bitchy, but she had little defense against her feelings. “I don’t see what this … arrangement has to do with catching Markos’s man. Won’t he just back off?”

He covered and held her hand as she clutched at the flimsy anchor of her linen napkin. His heat and scent invaded her senses.

The elderly Van Tassels gaped at them. Teacups clattered and tea sloshed onto saucers.

“Maybe, but that would give us time to check employees and guests’ identities,” he said. “A call last night gave me more info. An FBI informant reported seeing a man known only as Janus meeting with Markos in Boston. He’s a paid assassin the Bureau would like to nail.”

“Two for the price of one.” When he nodded, she said, “So do you have a description?”

“Not enough to go on. Average height, average build. Fits half the men in America.”

“I see.” She perused the menu as the waitress headed toward them with coffee.

Other diners entering glanced their way. She forced herself to smile and wave at Rudy Damon. The man’s bristly white eyebrows shot up into his hairline.

Apparently their appearing together at play rehearsals hadn’t cemented the relationship in people’s minds the way having breakfast together would. Drat Cole for being right.
Word of her liaison would spread like jam on the scones she planned to order.

After they’d placed their orders — his the blueberry pancakes, hers a crabmeat omelet — she searched for something
im
personal to talk about. “What did Stan want?”

He smiled. The crinkling of the creases in his cheeks sent a surge of heat through her. “He wants to use my Bad Boy in the play.”

“Your motorcycle? You call it Bad Boy.” She grinned.

He shrugged, as if the irony of it hadn’t occurred to him before. “I didn’t name the damn thing. Bad Boy’s the Harley model. A classic. They don’t make them anymore.”

A sudden thought pleated her forehead. “Were you planning to drive me to a safe house God knows where on your motorcycle?”

“I’d stow it in the truck bed. Figured we’d look more like tourists.”

“I don’t buy it. You just like having the motorcycle.” Drat, he was charming her in spite of her resolve. She retrieved her hand and held her coffee with both hands. “They must need the bike for Cliff Trigger.”

“Cliff Trigger? The part the kid plays?” A sneer quirked his hard mouth. “The playwright’s a fan of old Westerns, or the name’s a sexual reference. Either way, our young stud isn’t up to the challenge.”

“I agree he’s not much of an actor. He wanted the role because of the motorcycle.” She narrowed her eyes, remembering the teenaged Cole. “The character is a disaffected biker, the ultimate outsider who wants no involvement. He’s a rogue, a—”

“Cowboy?” His eyes mocked her, and his rumble of a laugh flickered her pulse. “I get the feeling we’re no longer talking about a character in the play.”

“Old resentments die hard.” The waitress arriving with their orders saved her from further blunders.

Feeling the glow in her face, she attacked her omelet as if the crab in it had menaced her with its claws. She buttered the lightly toasted scone. If she couldn’t sleep, at least her precarious situation wasn’t affecting her appetite.

“Stan had some other news” He poured maple syrup on his pancakes. “Even our genial host can get angry. Guests have reported things missing from their cabins.”

“Missing? Like stolen? What kinds of things?”

“Cameras, binoculars, CDs, small electronics. Easy-to-hock items.” His cynical expression told her what he thought of the rural Maine custom of unlocked doors.

Distressed, she put down her fork. “How terrible. Has he called the police?”

He nodded. “I hope having the local boys in blue here won’t interfere with our operation.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to that, although talking to him was easy, even after her embarrassing outburst.
Talking to him was always easy, as were shared silences. How safe she’d felt — how safe she still felt — in his arms, how different he was from everyone else. He was so complex, his subtle sense of humor, his quiet strength, his sensuality. Even that hint of danger, of controlled power excited her.

But recapturing past magic was impossible. Dangerous. They had no future because she had nothing to offer him but disappointment. She couldn’t let down her guard.

Later when they strolled out into the clear, sunny day, a sailing-class parent stopped Laura to chat.

Cole shook his head. She was doing it to him again. She knew how to make him crazy, certifiable. With her innuendos about contempt for commitment. With the total absorption in eating her eggs. Seeing her pink tongue lick the jam off the edge of her scone nearly had him climbing over the table.

Hell, she made him nuts just standing there in her buttoned-up green shirt and flowered pants that ended inches below the knee. He didn’t see the point of revealing only part of a shapely, athletic calf.