Читать книгу Father Of The Brood - Elizabeth Bevarly - Страница 10

“Annieee!”

Annie sighed with much frustration and growled under her breath. Now what? she wondered.

The cry had come from Mickey, that much she could determine immediately. But the little guy had a six-year-old’s propensity for wanting just about everything, and right away at that, and his cry of terror at the sight of blood was virtually identical to his urgent plea for just one more cookie. Whatever the problem was, Mickey, at least, would consider it of global importance.

Annie dropped her favorite pair of blue jeans on top of the meager wardrobe selections she was packing for the weekend and went in search of Mickey. She found him with his head caught between the rungs of the stairway banister and rolled her eyes hopelessly as she bent to help him free himself.

“I told you not to do this, didn’t I?” she asked him calmly as she twisted his head carefully to the side.

“Yes,” he whimpered, clearly frightened by his predicament but determined not to show it.

“The last time this happened, what did I say?”

Mickey sniffled. “I don’t remember.”

Annie’s voice softened. “I said, ‘Mickey, if you put your head in the banister railing this way, it’s going to get stuck.’ Isn’t that what I said?”

“I guess so.”

“So why did you do it again?”

He hesitated, biting his lip as Annie carefully extracted his head from the rungs. He remained silent as he stood rubbing his hands furiously over his forehead and through his pale blond hair. His blue eyes were resolute and adorably menacing.

“Well?” Annie prodded.

Mickey thrust his stomach forward, a gesture he probably thought she would find intimidating. Annie only smiled.

“I’m waiting,” she said.

Mickey relaxed and looked down at his feet. “I don’t know.”

She nodded her understanding. “Okay, hotshot. Just try not to do it again, okay?”

He nodded back. “Are you still going away this weekend?” he asked as he followed her to her room.

“Yes.” Annie went back to her packing, resigned to the Spanish Inquisition that she knew would follow. Mickey asked a lot of questions. And she’d discovered long ago that she had no alternative but to answer every one of them if she ever hoped to maintain any kind of balance in her life.

Mickey scrambled up onto her bed and began to remove things from her duffel bag, inspecting each item as if it were the most fascinating scientific specimen he’d ever had the good fortune to encounter. “Where are you going?” he asked.

They’d been through this a million times already, so Annie had the routine down pat. She continued to pack as she obediently replied, “Cape May.”

“That’s in New Jersey, isn’t it?”

She nodded again. “Yes.”

“And New Jersey is across the river, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

He grinned, clearly pleased to be able to show her just how much he knew of the world. Then he plucked a pair of her socks out of the duffel, unrolled them and asked, “How long will you be gone?”

“I’ll be back Sunday night.”

“When will you be leaving?”

“Saturday morning.”

“That’s tomorrow, right?”

“Right.”

“Who are you going with?”

“A friend.”

“His name is Ike, right?”

“Right.”

“And he lives in Philadelphia, like we do, right?”

“Right.”

“Are you going to marry him?”

Annie stopped packing and gaped at Mickey. Well, that was a question that hadn’t cropped up in their earlier interviews. Where on earth had he picked up an interest in marriage?

“Why would you think I was going to marry him?” she asked cautiously.

“Cause that’s what grown-ups do, isn’t it? Molly says when you grow up and become an adult you have to get married. It’s the law.”

“Molly said that, did she?”

Mickey nodded furiously. “And she’s older than me, so she knows what she’s talking about.”

Annie bit her lip. “Um, Molly’s only seven, Mickey. She’s not that much older than you.”

“But she said grown-ups—”

“Not all grown-ups get married,” Annie interrupted him gently. “Only the ones who fall in love.”

The little boy thought about that for a moment, then asked, “Are you going to fall in love with Ike?”

She chuckled. “I can safely say no to that.”

“Why not?”

She ruffled his hair. “Because he’s not my type, kiddo.”

“What’s your type?”

Annie thought about her husband. She recalled Mark’s unruly black hair and bittersweet chocolate eyes, his tattered jeans and sweatshirts, and how much he loved coaching little league baseball. She remembered how he had always talked back to the network news and secretly devoured true-crime books. She smiled as she reminisced about his expertise in bandaging scraped knees so the BandAid wouldn’t pull, and about how he could bake absolutely perfect Toll-House cookies. And she realized she would never, not in a million years, meet another man like him.

“I don’t have a type, Mickey,” she said wistfully, “Not anymore.”

Mickey nodded his approval. “Good. Because when I grow up, I’m going to marry you.”

She smiled and bent to place a quick peck on his forehead. “Okay, palomino. I’ll wait for you.”

As quickly as he had taken an interest in her activities, the little boy’s fascination abated. “I’m going outside,” he announced as he launched himself off the bed. “See ya.”

Annie watched him leave, marveling that such a sweet kid had come out of such a crummy situation. She knew she had no business picking favorites when she had ten kids ranging in age from six to sixteen living under her roof. But Mickey Reeser was Annie’s favorite. No question about it.

She stuffed the last of her toiletries into the well-worn, army green duffel bag that had belonged to her husband, then placed it by her bedroom door. It was going to be a lousy weekend, she thought. Not only was she going to be spending it with someone she had no desire to get to know better, but she always became anxious when she had to leave her kids for any length of time.

True, she had two graduate students from local universities who volunteered part-time to help her out. But Annie was the one responsible for the children at Homestead House. She was the only human being in the world who was there for them twenty-four hours a day. She didn’t like being gone overnight, even if Nancy and Jamal, her two volunteers, would be staying at the house with the kids. She just didn’t feel right being away. She didn’t feel as if she were being a good mother.

And although she reminded herself over and over again that she wasn’t anyone’s mother, she couldn’t help but to have fallen into the role. The children of Homestead House had no parents or families, either because they had been orphaned or abandoned or worse. Annie was it for them. She was their mother, father, sister and brother. She was their role model, their caretaker, their rock. She was all they had in a world that had turned its back on them. And she didn’t like leaving them alone.

Nevertheless, she reassured herself, it was only a weekend. Two days and one night that were of no consequence whatever in the scheme of things. And what could one simple weekend possibly do to screw up her very satisfying life-style?

Annie hummed as she closed her door behind her and headed down the stairs, an old Cat Stevens tune about the wild world. She decided not to dwell on the couple of days she’d be spending with Isaac Guthrie, prominent architect and indecent bachelor. Instead, she thought, she’d just look forward to Monday morning.

When her life would return to normal.

Ike glanced down at the piece of paper he had tossed onto the passenger seat when he’d climbed into his car that morning, then looked up at the red brick building again. Yep, this was the correct address all right. Though the place hardly looked habitable to him. There were bars on all the first story windows and a security door that was, at the moment, thrown open in welcome. The paint on the front shutters and door frame was stained and peeling, and what was left of the front stoop was a cracked, crumbling mass of concrete. A simple metal plaque affixed to the brick beside the front door read, Homestead House. And like everything else about the place, it looked old, tired and overused.

In contrast to the decay of the building—or perhaps in spite of it, Ike thought wryly—a bright cache of well-tended marigolds, petunias and geraniums had sprouted along the walkway that led to the sidewalk and street. They bestowed a certain humanity on the building it wouldn’t have claimed otherwise, and he couldn’t help but smile. The sky providing a backdrop for the place was blue and flawless, the warm spring afternoon balmy and full of promise.

If it wasn’t for the fact that this was a remarkably bad neighborhood that no one in his right mind would choose to visit if he didn’t have to, Ike might have seen some potential for the place. As it was, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what someone like Annie Malone was doing living here.

He had spoken to her briefly on the phone—once—since meeting her backstage the weekend before. The conversation had consisted of a few dozen words and lasted about a minute and a half. Mostly, they had just settled on what time Ike would pick Annie up and bring her home. And with that obligatory exchange out of the way, there had seemed nothing more to say.

Ike sighed. Man, he was dreading this.

He climbed out of his bright red sports car, eyed his surroundings and surreptitiously activated the car’s alarm. He didn’t plan on being here any longer than he had to, but in this neighborhood, his car could be stripped professionally in a matter of minutes. He scrubbed his palms over his khaki-clad thighs as he walked toward the front door of Annie’s house, then checked his navy polo for any potential smudges of filth. He was beginning to feel dirty just being in the vicinity.

He was about to knock when the front door was thrown open wide and he was nearly overrun by children and hockey sticks. Without a notice or care of him, the kids went blustering into the street, shouting and prancing and scrambling for position. Ike was left shaking his head in wonder that children felt so utterly immortal that they didn’t even watch for traffic. Then again, this street didn’t look particularly well traveled, either, he thought as he glanced down one way and then the other. The realization was just something else that put him on edge.

“Hi.”

He turned at the sound of a soft, husky, voice—a voice he’d heard on only two occasions, but one he was coming to find oddly familiar and comfortable nonetheless. Annie Malone stood at her front door wearing a white peasant blouse with roomy sleeves, very faded, hip-hugging blue jeans, and huge Birkenstocks on her otherwise bare feet. Her hair was parted in the middle and fell in two braids over her shoulders, and thanks to the thin, gauzy fabric of her shirt, he could clearly see that she was wearing an undershirt instead of a bra.

Ike didn’t know why no one had bothered to inform Annie that the sixties had ended more than two decades ago, and he had to force himself not to impart the information to her himself. Instead, he decided he may have been a bit rash in dismissing her upper regions so easily last weekend. Although small, Annie had good form. Then he noted the exhausted-looking duffel bag at her feet that appeared to be more empty than full. Annie, it seemed, traveled even more lightly than he.

“I saw you from my window and decided to come down to meet you,” she said. “I was hoping to make it before the kids trampled you, but…”

Ike glanced up when her voice trailed off, only to realize that she had once again been observing him as he ogled her. She had arched her left brow in that maddeningly challenging way, as if she were waiting for him to either assault her or offer an explanation for his rudeness. Ike did neither. He just tried to tamp down his irritation before it could become impropriety.

Hoping to defuse her anger, he glanced over his shoulder at the hastily scrambling children. “Do they all belong to you?” he asked. When Annie’s gaze skittered past him to fall on the children, every ounce of animosity left her eyes, and her lips formed a fond smile. Ike knew then that inquiring about her children had been exactly the right thing to dissolve her exasperation.

“Yeah, they’re all mine,” she told him.

“Funny,” he said dryly, “a couple of them look like they’re in high school. You must have been about eight when you gave birth.” Ike wanted to offer the further-wry observation that Annie was in remarkably good shape for someone who had spent most of her adult life pregnant. But he refrained, fearing the comment just might put them back where they started—with him ogling, and her being ogled, and neither of them any too comfortable with the knowledge of it.

Her smile was still wistful when she said, “I may not have carried them inside me, but they still belong to me.”

“So then you don’t have any kids of your own?” Ike ventured.

She looked at him strangely for a moment. “Why do you ask? For some reason, you strike me as the kind of person who doesn’t care much for children.”

“That’s because I am the kind of person who doesn’t care much for children.”

She sounded almost disappointed when she replied, “That doesn’t surprise me. And no, I don’t have any kids that are the product of any personal biological workings. But I do have kids. Lots of kids.” Before be could ask anything more, she met his gaze again. “I’m ready to head out whenever you are.”

Ike nodded. “Good. I didn’t want to leave my car parked out here any longer than I had to.”

She glanced past him at the bright red convertible and frowned.

“What?” he asked when he saw her disapproval of the sleek car he’d coveted for years before being able to afford it. “You don’t want to drive to the coast with the top down?”

She shook her head. “Oh, I love the feel of the wind when I’m driving.”

“Then why the sour look?”

“I was just thinking you probably paid more for that car than I spent buying and refinishing and outfitting this whole building.”

This time it was Ike who frowned, wondering why he felt so damned defensive around this woman. “Yeah, I probably did. Real estate in this area isn’t exactly prime—” He eyed her building deliberately before adding, “—or safe— for commercial or residential use. You know, my partner and I are working with the city on a beautification project that’s leveling neighborhoods like this one and turning them into something useful.”

She glared at him. “Neighborhoods like this one used to be the backbone of the city.”

He smiled acidly. “Soon they’ll be parking garages.”

“And that’s supposed to beautify the city?”

Ike looked around him again. “A nice, clean parking garage will be a damned sight more attractive than this… this…”

“Look,” Annie interrupted him, “maybe you don’t see much use for neighborhoods like this, but I see it in a way you obviously don’t. Granted, the area isn’t what it used to be, and yes, a bad element has begun to thrive. But there are still a lot of good people here. Besides that, it’s affordable and suits my needs just fine.”

Ike wanted to counter that if that was the case, then she was obviously and sadly neglecting her needs. But he kept his mouth shut. For the time being, he decided, he’d just as soon not wonder about Annie Malone’s needs. She probably had way too many of them for any man to be able to satisfy her. And why he should suddenly feel a tingling— and not unpleasant—sexual awareness of her at the idea of such, Ike couldn’t begin to imagine. So he pushed the thought away and bent to retrieve her duffel.

But someone else had beaten him to it, he realized before completing the action. Clutching the bag that would be nearly as big as he was if it were full, was a young boy with hair the mixed pale yellows of chicken noodle soup and eyes so blue and large and guileless, they almost stopped Ike’s breath.

“I got it,” the boy said as he stepped past Annie. “I can carry it. Where do you want it?”

So transfixed was he still by the child’s round-eyed expression that Ike could only thrust a thumb over his shoulder. The boy looked past him at the car parked at the curb, and his huge eyes grew even larger with admiration.

“Cool!”

He slapped down the steps and stumbled down the walk, weaving first one way and then the other under the weight of the duffel. He dropped the bag by the trunk and, before Ike could stop him, hauled himself over the side of the car and into the driver’s seat. Immediately the alarm erupted, as loud and raucous as an air raid siren. And the little boy’s expression—the one that had been so utterly open and carefree—transformed into a grimace of unadulterated terror. When his gaze met Ike’s, the boy actually began to cower as if he were about to be sucked down into hell’s darkest core. Ike had never seen anyone look so scared before in his life.

“Hey, kid, it’s okay,” Ike tried to reassure him over the noise.

He started down the walk toward the car, watching in amazement as the little boy’s fear grew more tangible with every step he took. And when he rounded the front of the car toward the driver’s side and reached in to deactivate the alarm, the little boy covered his head with his hands, curled into a tiny ball and screamed.

Screamed as if his lungs were about to burst.

Ike could do nothing but stare dumbfounded as Annie calmly came up behind him, reached into the car instead and effortlessly plucked the boy out of the driver’s seat and into her arms. He curled himself over her body as if he wanted to crawl inside her forever, then buried his face in her neck and began to cry with all his might. Annie patted his back and murmured soothing sounds until the boy’s sobs abated some.

Then she looked at Ike with a perfectly normal expression and stated in matter-of-fact terms, “Mickey was badly beaten by both of his parents before he came to live with me. He thought you were going to hurt him for setting off the alarm.”

Ike shook his head dumbly and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. So he watched in silence as Annie carried the boy back up the steps and sat down on the front stoop beside him. Ike didn’t know what she said to the boy to calm him down, but within a matter of minutes, the little guy was nodding and scrubbing a finger under his nose. Not long after that, he was smiling shyly again. Ike watched as Annie kissed the crown of his head with much gusto and hugged him close one final time. Then Mickey jumped up from the stoop and raced past Ike without looking at him, and joined the other kids in their completely disorganized and unorchestrated game of street hockey.

Annie, too, stood and ambled after him, stopping to pick up her duffel bag and toss it into the back seat. “I’m ready when you are,” she said again as she opened the passenger side door and climbed inside.

Ike nodded and joined her in the car, then eased his way into the street at about a half a mile an hour to avoid the wildly scattering kids. When he braked for a stop sign at the corner, Annie looked over at him with a broad smile and asked, “If you could be any vegetable in the world, what would you be?”

As questions went, it wasn’t one Ike heard often in his line of work. “I beg your pardon?”

“If you could be any vegetable in the world,” she repeated, “what would you be?”

He turned right and headed toward the Schuylkill Expressway. “Why?”

Annie’s smile broadened. “Because it occurs to me that we know absolutely nothing about each other, other than the fact that we were both gullible enough to be sucked into going to that bachelor auction. We’ve got a long drive to the shore ahead of us, so why not use the opportunity to find out a little bit more about each other, right?”

Sounded reasonable, Ike thought. But… vegetables?

“I’d be an eggplant, myself,” she volunteered without being asked. “Eggplants seem to have it so together, don’t you think? Not to mention having a sleek design and gorgeous coloring.”

Ike drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and said nothing.

“Now you I see as more of a cauliflower kind of guy.”

He flicked his right turn signal, veered onto the entrance ramp and melded smoothly with traffic before glancing over at Annie and repeating blandly, “Cauliflower.”

She nodded. “Cauliflowers are pretty moody.” She offered the observation as if that explained everything.

Ike sighed again, slipped on his Ray·Bans and settled back in the driver’s seat. As Annie had just pointed out, it was going to be a long drive to the shore.

It was also, he admitted grudgingly some time later, a rather enjoyable drive, one that allowed him to discover a great many surprising things about his companion. In addition to wanting to be an eggplant, if Annie could be any fruit in the world, she wanted to be a kiwi. If given the choice of any animal in-the world, she would be an ocelot. Any color, she would be green. Any musical instrument, she would be a banjo. Any supermarket product, a box of Velveeta. Any mode of transportation, a streetcar.

And so it had gone across the entire width of the great state of New Jersey. Whether he’d wanted to or not, Ike had learned more about Annie Malone than he had about any other human being he’d ever met. He knew she was thirty-two years old, a Virgo, and the youngest of two children. He knew she had two degrees in social work and one in child development, and that she had kicked the smoking habit three years ago, but still craved a cigarette now and then. On the few occasions when she indulged in alcohol, she always drank vodka martinis, very dry, no olive. She had gone to her senior prom stag and had received six stitches in her knee when she was seven years old.

Oh, yeah. And she was a widow.

That bit of information, when she’d offered it, had nearly sent Ike driving off the side of the road. She was too young to have experienced such a loss. Too fresh-looking. Too nice. She hadn’t mentioned how her husband died, only that he had five years ago. And even having known her a short while, Ike could tell that Annie hadn’t surrendered the information easily. Her husband’s death was simply a part of her, like everything else she had told him, and therefore worthy of mention.

In turn, Ike had spoken little of himself, other than to oblige her with one- or two-word responses like “grapes,” “wolf,” “black,” “tenor saxophone,” “top sirloin” and “steam locomotive.” He didn’t like to talk about himself, preferred to keep private things private. He hadn’t pried into Annie’s life or asked many questions of her. She was just the type of person who revealed herself freely. Ike liked that about her. But it didn’t mean he had to unburden himself in the process.

Now as he tossed his leather weekend bag on the bed in his room, he couldn’t quite put thoughts of Annie to rest. She was, to say the least, an enigma. She was bright, attractive, and capable of doing just about anything she wanted to do. She smiled freely and spoke without inhibition. She was the kind of person one would expect to find living in sunshine and wide open spaces, amid nature’s bounty, if not an actual part of it. Yet Annie Malone had buried herself in a decaying urban landscape, and had surrounded herself with damaged children who were the victims of life’s darkest secrets.

It made no sense to Ike. He was the kind of man who put unpleasant thoughts as far from himself as he could. He’d had the most ordinary of upbringings and a very happy childhood—middle middle-class suburbs, public schools, a bicycle for Christmas when he was ten, twenty-five cents from the Tooth Fairy on a pretty regular basis, a craving for marshmallow cream on graham crackers that he’d never quite outgrown. He’d never had a reason or opportunity to suspect that other people had grown up any differently.

And although as an adult, he did know better, he still couldn’t begin to understand the drive or motivation behind people who purposely put themselves into ugly situations when they didn’t have to. Why would someone like Annie choose to live the way she did? What could she possibly be getting out of it?

Unable to answer the questions, he unzipped his bag and began to halfheartedly unpack. The early afternoon sun hung high in the sky, its rays tumbling through the open window to spill over the hardwood floor in streaks of white and gold. Across the street from the Hanson House Bed and Breakfast, the mighty Atlantic roared and crashed against the beach like a hungry beast. A warm breeze danced with the lacy curtains, redolent with the fresh scent of salt and the far-off fragrance of a barbecue grill warming up for lunch.

Ike paused in his activity to move to the window, inhaling deeply as he pushed it open more. He loved the ocean. Even with Craggedy Annie along for the ride—who, was growing less craggedy, he had to confess—it was going to be nice to get away for the weekend. His work had become so demanding since he’d joined his company with his partner’s some years ago. The merger had come at an ideal time and had suited well both men’s needs. Ike had wanted more business, more opportunity. His partner, Chase Buchanan, had wanted more time to spend with his family. Both men had gotten exactly what they wanted from the deal, and the business had grown by leaps and bounds as a result.

Buchanan-Guthrie Designs, Inc. was now enormously successful, and Ike had more work than he had ever imagined he would. He ate, drank, breathed, slept…he absolutely lived his career, and liked it that way just fine. Working was what Ike did best. Maybe Chase was a family man, the perfect father. But Ike couldn’t imagine living his life that way. He was too full of ambition to ever settle down. What would he do with kids?

Kids. He couldn’t stop thinking about that kid.

That kid at Annie’s. The one with the eyes so big and blue, they seemed to peer right into his soul. The one who had screamed in terror that Ike was going to hurt him. The one who had been so badly abused by his parents he didn’t know any other way of being treated. Even a guy like Ike, who had no desire to have children, couldn’t begin to understand how anyone could do that to a kid.

A soft rap on the door connecting his room to Annie’s pulled him away from his thoughts, and back into his room. The Hanson House was a Victorian wonder, the owners clearly having cared for it as if it were a much-loved relative. Outside, the looming structure was trimmed in yellow and green, and it soared three stories high in a seemingly unplanned zigzag of angles and corners. Inside, the rooms were furnished with period pieces and accessories, painted soft colors suited to ocean living, and filled with sunlight. Ike and Annie had been placed in rooms on the third floor, rooms that had apparently been assigned to the servants way back when the Hanson House had been a private residence. And although his room was a bit small, the ceiling slanted on one side, it was cozy and welcoming and surprisingly accommodating.

“Nice place,” Annie said when Ike opened the door. “Must be setting you back a bundle.”

“Yeah, it is a nice place,” he agreed, deciding it might be best to just avoid commenting on the second, more acerbic, half of her observation. “I guess Hanson House is a world away from Homestead House, isn’t it? Which reminds me,” he added quickly when he saw her frown. “Just exactly what is Homestead House, anyway?”

She rotated one shoulder in what he decided was a defensive gesture. “It’s a house in town,” she told him evenly. “It’s a place where people live. It’s a home.”

Ike nodded. “A home for unwanted kids, you mean.”

Annie shook her head. “No, I mean it’s a home. Period. Exactly like your place—whatever that place may be—is a home.” She straightened as she added, “And just for the record, every one of those kids is wanted. Wanted by me and my staff. They just have nowhere else to go for the time being.”

Ike eyed her thoughtfully. “You don’t like me much, do you?”

“No,” she replied quickly, clearly not at all surprised by the question or quick change of subject. “I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re the kind of person who’s in the best position to help other people, but you don’t make a single effort to do so.”

“Because I have money?”

Annie shook her head again. “Not because you have money, but because of the way you use it. And because you have prestige and a position in the community you let go to waste, too.”

Ike took a step forward to lean against the doorjamb, a gesture that brought him close enough to Annie to detect just a hint of her perfume. It was a spicy scent, vaguely familiar. But he couldn’t quite identify what it was. “What do you mean?” he asked softly.

Relentlessly, Annie continued, “People like you run around in an impressive social circle and have a lot of clout. You have the ear of government officials, society leaders and corporate bigwigs. You’re high profile. You could do a lot to improve the situation of other people who don’t have such opportunities. But the only benefits and profits you reap from your status are strictly of a personal nature.”

“Is that so?”

She nodded. “Yup.”

“And that’s why you don’t like me.”

“That’s why I don’t like you.”

“Then I guess we’re even,” he muttered as he pushed himself away from the doorjamb again. “Because I don’t like you, either.”

His blunt statement appeared to surprise her, in spite of the fact that she’d spoken so frankly to him herself. “You don’t?” Her voice was quiet and timid when she uttered the question, and she seemed to be genuinely distressed that he would find her unappealing. “Why not?”

“Because you’re full of anger and resentment, you make snap judgments about people, and you’re completely unrealistic. And dammit, Annie, nobody dresses the way you do nowadays. The Age of Aquarius ended twenty-five years ago. People found out they couldn’t change the world with love-ins and protests. Nobody cared then. Nobody cares now. Deal with it.”

He hadn’t meant to go off like that, and, too late, Ike realized how awful he must have sounded. There was just something about Annie Malone that put him on edge and made him feel defensive. Something that made him quick to overreact. But before he could apologize and try to explain himself—no easy feat, since he didn’t understand his behavior himself—Annie withdrew, both literally and figuratively.

She narrowed her eyes and clamped her mouth shut, then reached past Ike to curl her fingers over the doorknob, clearly intending to close the door tight, too. But she could only pull it closed a few inches before it hit his big body and stopped. Instead of moving away, he circled her wrist with loose fingers.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “That was out of line.”

“Yeah, it was,” she agreed every bit as quietly. She glanced up and met his gaze, then looked past him into his room. “But you’re right. I did make a snap judgment about you. And for that, I apologize, too.”

Neither seemed to know what to say after that, and as much as Ike wished Annie would look into his eyes again, her gaze ricocheted everywhere but there. She did have nice eyes, he thought. Pale green irises ringed by a darker circle of color, and thick, dark lashes that were so perfect, they almost looked false. But if there was one thing Ike was certain about in Annie, it was that there was absolutely nothing false about her.

The silence between them stretched until it became even more uncomfortable than their-angry exchange had been. Finally, he released her wrist and stepped away from the door. Without a word, she began to tug it toward herself again.

“I guess I’ll just have to prove to you that you’re wrong about me,” he said when the door was nearly closed, wondering why it was so important that Annie Malone not misjudge him.

The door paused in its slow movement for only a moment, and he heard her reply softly, “I guess you will.”

“How about grabbing some lunch?” he rushed on before she could close the door completely. “I know a great little place that most of the tourists overlook.”

For one long moment, when she didn’t reply right away, Ike thought Annie was going to tell him to take a flying leap. Not for the first time, he wondered why she had come along on this jaunt when she clearly would have preferred to be anywhere but alone with him in romantic surroundings. Then she surprised him by pushing the door open again.

She surveyed him slowly, literally from head to toe, then lifted her shoulders in a quick shrug. “Okay,” she said. “I guess I am pretty hungry. And I wouldn’t mind doing a little shopping. I promised the kids a couple of souvenirs. Just give me a few more minutes to get unpacked.”

Ike nodded, oddly pleased to discover that he wouldn’t be spending the entire weekend alone after all. He decided it might be best if he didn’t think about how curious a realization that was when he’d awakened that morning wanting nothing more in the world than simply to be left alone. He hadn’t wanted to leave Philadelphia, hadn’t wanted to go anywhere with Annie Malone. But now that he was here in Cape May, alone with the woman he had been so sure would annoy him, he felt anything but annoyed.

What exactly he was feeling, he wasn’t quite certain. But Annie’s presence was doing something to him—something rather weird and wonderful—of that he was sure.

While he was mulling the revelation over, however, the door connecting his room to Annie’s—and to her—closed with a quiet, but resolute, click.