“How old are you?” she asked just as abruptly.
“Thirty-two. Why?”
She pursed her lips in exasperation. “Just asking. You look older than that. It’s all those cowboy squint lines.” Thena tossed the cloth onto the countertop above him. “There.” She sighed with deep fatigue. “I’m afraid you’ll live.”
“You hate me,” he said evenly. “And I reckon I don’t blame you.”
They shared a long look and both of them blushed. The word “hate” provoked a confusing intensity, Thena thought. Her mouth tightened into a straight line. “Give me any reason why I shouldn’t hate you. I’m going to fight this plan of yours. I’m going to go to the state conservation people and ask them to get some sort of legal order against you.”
“Fair enough. Fight, then. But when you talk to those folks, do me one favor, huh? Don’t say I’m sellin’ the island just to make money. I’m not, ’cause I’ve got more money now than I know what to do with. So don’t make me out to be a hog. I’m sellin’ this place because I don’t intend for it to be some sort of do-goodin’ monument to my old hypocrite grandpa. He was spiteful and mean.”
“You’re spiteful too, cowboy. That’s a sad way to live your life.”
“You want me to feel different, you give me good reason.”
“All right,” she answered tautly. “I’ll give you a tour of the island that will knock your boots off.”
Jed nodded, accepting her challenge. “I have to leave late tomorrow afternoon, but between now and then you show me around and I might keep an open mind.” It wasn’t a lie, he assured himself. He might. “Whatever I decide, I want you to know I sure hate that you’re takin’ this so personal.”
She fended off that disturbing comment with an impatient wave of one hand. “So tell me where hardheaded cowboys such as you are born and raised.”
“Wyoming.”
Thena looked at him as if he’d said “the moon.” “Ah, now I see. You couldn’t possibly understand what this island or any other island is all about.”
Jed nodded. “Never saw an ocean or an island, before yesterday. Don’t care to see one again. You ever been West?”
“I visited New Orleans once, when I was a little girl.”
Jed looked at her from under his brows, the look conveying deep worry.
“That’s not West,” he noted dryly. He mimicked her. “You couldn’t possibly understand what I’m all about.”
“New Orleans is west of here. It qualifies.”
He chuckled. Thena tilted her head and absorbed the gentle, warm sound. It invaded her body and loosened all her muscles with disturbing ease. Certain parts of her body enjoyed the experience even more than others.
Jed abruptly stopped chuckling when she leapt up, frowning at him.
“Get on your feet and go back to your campsite,” she demanded. “I have painting to do. I’ll see you at dawn.”
“I’m camped—”
“I know where you’re camped. Cendrillon and I watched you all morning from the forest.”
Startled, he retorted, “See anything interestin’?”
Thena nearly blushed again. She’d seen him strip his shirt off, and the sight of his hairy, muscular chest had been very interesting.
“No. How can you stand to wear those hot jeans?”
Jed stood up slowly. Now he towered over her, his body only inches away from hers. “I can take the heat,” he said in a provocative way.
Thena stepped back from him, her heart pumping too hard, her facial muscles rigid with her determination not to show the confusion she felt. Why was he staring at her lips? Was he actually contemplating a kiss?
“I have a lot of questions to ask you,” she told him.
“I’ll try to answer ’em, if you’ll answer mine.”
“Tomorrow.” Thena replied. She was suddenly frantic to get him out of her house. He was using what Nate had somberly called “primitive sexual innuendo,” and she was shocked. For years she’d tried to provoke such a display from Nate, until she’d finally admitted that she just wasn’t sexy enough.
She hadn’t attempted to provoke Jed Powers at all, yet he was standing here singeing her with a look that was about as primitive as an innuendo could get. Her breath seemed to have trouble finding its way into her lungs. Very slowly, he leaned towards her.
“Tomorrow,” he echoed. He tipped a finger to his forehead in a gesture of good-bye that was old-fashioned and oddly gallant, then turned on his bootheel and strode out, swinging the screen door shut behind him with a jaunty slap of his hand.
Thena sank weakly into a chair. She wasn’t going to let Jed Powers sell her island. She’d capture him one way or another—if he didn’t capture her first.
Three
Uhmmmm. When had he ever felt this languid? When had waking up been so slow and so full of pleasant dreams? Jed smiled, then rolled over in the sleeping bag so that the cushion of sand was under his back. He took a deep breath and inhaled a sensual feast of sea air mixed with food cooking over a driftwood fire.
Cooking? Fire? Instincts honed by years of light sleeping—mostly listening for his father to stagger drunkenly up to the door of their tiny trailer—brought Jed instantly awake. He stared up at the canvas canopy that protected his eyes from the sunlight, then jerked his head to one side and found the source of his dreams. Thena.
She sat cross-legged a few feet away, tending a skillet over his rekindled campfire. The morning light tinted her pink, and the constant ocean breeze lifted strands of her untamed hair. The ripe swell of her breasts was just visible under her white T-shirt, and short white shorts emphasized the golden tautness of her legs.
Jed felt an ache of physical desire, and greedily took the secret moment to memorize her face feature by feature. She had a delicate nose that could have belonged to a fancy debutante with cool blue blood and white-gloved hands, Jed thought. Her cheekbones were just as haughty, high and well-defined. She reminded him of all the rodeo queens who’d sought him out when their daddys weren’t looking.
But her mouth and eyes, Lord, they took away any hint of snobbery and turned her into an earth mother, a pirate’s woman, warm as hot cider and twice as sweet. Her nature was quicksilver expressions and animated movements, and she made him feel even quieter than he was. But it felt good to be her opposite; it felt right.
Jed became aware of the texture of his lips, wind-hardened and tight from too few smiles, and he wondered how her gentle, full mouth would feel against them. She made him think of roses, of their softness and sweet smell. Thena began to sing some silly old movie song very softly, and Jed succumbed to pure reverence. He watched the tiny movements of her dark lashes, now half-lowered to protect her eyes from the brightening dawn light. The woman had magic in those eyes, and he needed magic in his empty life. He lay there without moving, transfixed by the simple beauty of her silhouetted against the dusky pink sky and white sand.
Then she saw him watching her. Her song stopped and her lips remained parted, curved in an oval of embarrassment.
“Good morning,” she said finally. “I hope you like fried whiting and wheat biscuits.”
Thena’s strained nerves produced a flood of odd and vaguely pleasant reactions in her body as he lay perfectly still without answering and kept his disconcerting gaze trained on her. Do cowboys dislike fish? she wondered. Or is he angry about yesterday?
She forced herself to remain immobile under the quiet, dreamy gaze he gave her. She’d never watched a man wake up before, and now she wondered if other men besides Jed Powers had such dark, sexy eyes in the morning. How could a man with a rumpled face and disheveled hair be so attractive?
“Thena, is this breakfast a bribe?” His voice was rumpled too. It teased her with mellow good humor and dispelled her fears.
“Yes.” Smiling, she nodded vigorously and looked back at the pan of floured whiting filets sizzling in oil. “I went through your food supply. Crackers and Spam are no diet for a day of islan
d exploring.”
“Might nosy, aren’t you, gal?”
Gal. What a strange, likable word, she thought. “Your backpack was open. And I still consider this my island. I’ll do what I want.”
They traded challenging looks. Abruptly, still teasing, he smiled at her. Abruptly, she smiled back. Fingers of golden light poured over the treetops, and Jed shivered with emotion as the whole world seemed to light with Thena’s smile and the morning sun.
“Great gosh a’mighty,” he said softly.
“What’s wrong?” She cocked her head to one side and looked bewildered.
Jed fumbled to hide his emotions. “It’s … is it always so durned bright here in the mornin’?”
She laughed, to his delight. “Isn’t it bright in Wyoming?”
“Not like this. Here it’s like everything’s sharper and clearer than I’ve ever seen it before.”
“That’s not just from the sunlight.” She smiled mysteriously. “That’s from inside you.” She reached over and pointed to his heart, then quickly brought her hand back to her lap. “Sancia has a way of making your heart open up to everything around you.”
Jed chuckled. Now she was talking nonsense. “Why, I thought I was just havin’ a spell of indigestion.”
She held a spatula in her other hand, and after a moment she shook it at him. “You’ll see,” she warned tartly.
Thena turned back to her cooking and tried to ignore the rapt attention his eyes still lavished on her. “Last night I looked up articles about Wyoming in my National Geographics. No wonder you feel out of place here. What part of Wyoming are you from?”
“Little town called Hard Chance Creek. Up in the mountains.”
Thena nodded, recalling photographs of craggy peaks and swirling blizzards. “You’ll just have to give yourself time to adjust.” She offered a kind smile, as if he were a heathen she would convert for his own good.
“So you think I just need to be brainwashed?”
“No. You need your consciousness raised.”
“It rises by itself, thank you, ma’am.” Chuckling, Jed unzipped his sleeping bag and slid from under the canopy so he could sit up. Thena was aware of her pulse hesitating as she got a close-up view of a prime male body covered by nothing but snug jeans. Why, he’s beautiful, she thought.
His chest had a thick covering of curly hair, and the hair remained thick as it flowed across a stomach terraced with small muscles. Nothing was soft about him but that dark brown hair, and she imagined how silky it would feel to her fingers if she touched it.
Which, of course, she had no intention of doing. Not just because of the conflict between them, but because she didn’t ever again intend to touch a man in a sexual way. Any man. With that thought came embarrassing memories of Nate’s rejections.
Jed felt her scrutiny as if her fingertips were tracing every inch of him. He grabbed a T-shirt from the backpack near his feet and hurriedly slipped it over his head. She could burn a man up with those eyes, he thought. How many men had she turned to ashes before him?
“I’ll take your breakfast bribe,” he said gruffly. “It puts cowboy food to shame.”
“Good. Here’s another bribe.” She reached for something hidden on the other side of her and handed him a pair of scuffed leather sandals. “Wear these today and leave those hot boots behind.”
“These look like somethin’ an old hippy would own.”
“They belonged to my father, and he most certainly wasn’t an old hippy,” she retorted. “He was a member of the French Olympic equestrian team when he was young. And he was a well-respected marine biologist. My mother was a biologist too, by the way. So you’d better wear those sandals with pride.”
He made himself look very chastised. “Yes, ma’am.” His firm mouth crooked up at one corner. “I just thought maybe they belonged to your last boyfriend.”
She looked at him for a moment, and the shaming memories of Nate rose in her mind again. Oh, yes, she had no doubt that she’d best ignore her sexual feelings. Nate had said many times that she was an intellectual being not suited for intimacy. Her fumbling, unsuccessful attempts to change their platonic relationship over the years had done nothing but make him more certain they both should remain celibate, and finally she’d had to agree. She was a thinker, not a lover.
“Now that … friend,” she said slowly, “was an old hippy. But he wore tennis shoes, not sandals.”
Jed trained his eyes on his feet as he slid them into the strange-looking shoes, which were a little too big. He kept his voice and his expression poker-playing neutral. “What happened? Did you blast your old hippy boyfriend with the shotgun for some reason and chase him off?”
“He wasn’t just an old hippy. Before he came to the coast to live, he was a university literature professor. He was also a philosopher. Very brilliant. He died in the car wreck, with my parents.”
Jed raised apologetic eyes. She gazed back at him without rebuke, but after a minute he murmured, “Sometimes I can put both of my big feet into my big mouth. Forgive me?”
Thena nodded, and her eyes filled with puzzlement. He sounded so kind and sad. It was getting difficult not to be fascinated with him, even if he were here to cause her nothing but trouble.
Jed absorbed the flicker of affection in her expression and felt as if she’d kissed him. Goose bumps ran down his arms.
“Were you in that accident too?”
She nodded and pointed to her knee. His eyes roamed over the network of surgery scars, and he remembered her limp. “It happened on the mainland,” she explained calmly. “That’s one reason I love my island. No cars except an old truck I use to haul supplies. No drunk drivers.” She paused, and her gaze turned bitter. “Your island,” she corrected.
Guilt surged through him. “I wanted to tell you yesterday, but you never gave me a chance, gal. You can keep your house and the land around it. Looks like you don’t have enough money to move anywhere else.”
“Thank you,” she said coldly. “But I do have money. My parents left me a little and I paint watercolor seascapes that bring in enough for most expenses. Money’s not the issue.”
Jed frowned, his generous gesture shot down. She put several golden whiting filets on a china plate she’d brought with her and unwrapped a dozen biscuits bundled in aluminum foil at the edge of the fire. She put three biscuits on the plate and handed it to him. Jed accepted the hot dish without looking at it.
“You can’t expect me to keep this place,” he protested. “What does a cowboy need with an island?”
“You’ll change your mind.” She nodded with an attitude of profound wisdom. There were beautiful spirits here—Sarah Gregg’s chief among them—and good powers of love and serenity that would capture his heart no matter how much he resisted. “This place is special.” She pointed to his plate. “Eat, and I’ll try to explain why.”
Jed nodded. His thoughts completely distracted from food, he took a bite of the wheat biscuit and noted dimly that it was buttery and hot and wonderful. His woman was beautiful and very smart—he could tell that by the educated insults she had flung at him in the past two days—and a fantastic cook. Oh, yes, and she read National Geographic.
His woman? Great gosh a’mighty. He mentally kicked himself back to the real world, where scruffy cowboys, even rich ones, didn’t win the affections of island princesses.
“Sancia Island,” she began, “is nearly thirty square miles in size.” Thena wrapped her arms around her updrawn knees and looked out over the ocean. “It has ten miles of virgin beaches. Loggerhead turtles come here to lay their eggs. The forest is full of wildlife.” She leaned forward and touched his arm, her eyes gleaming with almost maternal pride. “I have indigo snakes here.” When he didn’t register recognition—he couldn’t think about much else other than the pressure of her warm fingers on his skin—she looked dismayed. “Those aren’t found anywhere in the world except on these barrier islands, Jed.”
Jed. He liked his name
for the first time in his life, because she made it sound lyrical.
“All that’d still be here,” he told her blankly. “We’d work it out.” Something had softened his vengeful desire for bulldozers and condominiums, he realized in the back of his mind. Jed knew as soon as he got away from here and her that he’d set his revenge on course again.
She released his arm and shook her head a second time. “No development. None at all. That’s what you’re going to have to concede.” Thena thought for a moment, then looked at him with renewed enthusiasm. “Horses! That’s what you need to see! Did you know that your grandmother kept Arabians here?”
“No, I never cared to learn what she did. I’m a quarter horse man, myself. Arabians are a might too dainty for my tastes,” Jed muttered. Her enthusiasm wilted. “But pretty,” he quickly added.
“Magnificent,” she corrected. “Your grandfather left them after Sarah was killed. When he went back to New York, he took his little girl—your mother—with him and left the horses and everything else. My grandfather told me all about it. And we always wondered what became of the little girl.”
“She fell in love with a dirt-poor cowboy named Roarke Powers. She married him and they had a son. A few years later she died an ugly death.” Jed held up a warning hand to stop the flow of shock and curiosity into Thena’s eyes. “Tell me more about the horses.”
Shaken, Thena assessed the old resentment and deep pain that simmered underneath his hard exterior, and she felt sorry for him. This man hadn’t had an easy life.
“The Arabians,” she continued softly, “bred with our island horses. The island horses are the descendants of horses left here by the Spanish, back in the sixteen hundreds. They bred with the Arabians over the past fifty years, and the combination produced some wonderful foals. The herd numbers about twenty-five head. My parents sold horses to the mainlanders, occasionally.”
“Tell me about Cendrillon. I’ve never seen a horse that reddish palomino color in my life.”