Love Overboard - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,44

all three women blushed and turned their undivided attention to the muffins.

Ivan stood in the middle of the room with his hands in his jeans pockets. “Am I interrupting something?”

Melody pushed a strawlike strand of orange hair away from her face. “Lucy and I were just wondering if you and Stephanie are sleeping together now.”

Ivan went to the stove and filled a mug with hot coffee. If anyone else had asked that question, he would have explained about tact and privacy, but Melody was hopeless, so he sipped his coffee, looked at Stephanie, and grinned. “The ball’s in your court. You want to serve?”

“Not me,” Stephanie said. “I wouldn’t touch it.”

Later that afternoon Ivan came up from the harbor and stopped short at the sidewalk in front of Haben. A large woman wrapped in a red-and-blue shawl was sitting on a folding chair on the widow’s walk. She waved at him and smiled, and Ivan forced himself to smile back.

Stephanie met him at the door. “Did you see Mrs. Kowalsky?” Yes, by the look on his face, she could tell he had. “It turns out Mrs. Platz made national news, and we’re swamped with room reservations. Ghost groupies. I moved Lucy in with Melody on the third floor.”

She discovered that her palms were damp, and she silently cursed herself. She’d had sweaty palms too many times in her life. This time her life wasn’t on the line—only her dignity. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

“And I’d like to move you in with me. If that’s okay with you. I’d adjust your rent,” she added, faltering under his scrutiny.

He looked around and hated what he saw. Wall-to-wall people hoping to find a ghost, waiting for their turn on the widow’s walk. Poor Tess.

Stephanie sighed. “I don’t like it either,” she admitted. “But I need the money.”

“You need money this bad?”

“Ivan, I’ve invested every cent I own in this house. This is my sole source of income. Next September when you move your furniture out, I’ll need to be able to buy furniture of my own.”

“Why didn’t you think of that before you bought the house?”

“I did. I had money set aside for a down payment on furniture, and I had to sink it into repairs on this relic.”

Ivan didn’t give a damn about the furniture or her mismanaging, but he was infuriated that she’d assume he’d be long gone by September.

“Move me anywhere you want,” he said, keeping his voice tightly controlled.

He strode into the kitchen and took a cold beer from the refrigerator. He didn’t want to say something in anger that he’d regret later. She was looking out for herself, and he couldn’t blame her for that, but didn’t she know how he felt about her? How could she possibly think he’d be gone in September?

Lucy stopped stirring a pot of chowder, fished in the junk drawer for a bottle opener, and handed it to Ivan. “That’s imported lager. You need an opener. Although at second glance, you look mad enough to open that with your teeth.”

He tipped the bottle back and took a long swallow. “Your cousin is driving me nuts.”

Lucy made a sympathetic murmur, but she felt the laughter bubbling inside her. She’d always suspected when he finally fell in love it was going to be a real headfirst crash. Ivan didn’t do things halfway. “Want to talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about. I sold Haben. She bought it, and she’s turned it into a loony bin.”

Lucy sighed. “Yeah. This hasn’t worked out exactly as I’d expected. I think this ghost stuff has gotten out of hand.”

“I think my feelings for Stephanie have gotten out of hand.” He finished off his beer and looked in the chowder pot. “Smells good.” A smile creased his face. “The first day out Stephanie made the worst chowder.”

“I heard. She said you were great.”

“She said that?”

“Um-hmm. She said you even ate some of it.”

Ivan laughed. “I was hungry. Really hungry.” Mostly hungry for Stephanie, he remembered. There was something about her, right from the start, that was so damn attractive. He liked the way she’d rolled down the hill and landed on her back with a good healthy expletive on her lips. She wasn’t fragile. For some inexplicable reason that made him feel all the more protective of her.

The sound of loud laughter and breaking glass carried into the kitchen. “I’m hating this more all the time,” Lucy said.

Melody stomped in with a dustpan filled with glass shards. “These people