“So you know your way around a sailboat,” he said as he fired up the diesel engines.
“My grandfather was once a member of the yacht club. He had a J-22 we used to sail when I was a kid,” she said as she stepped down into the cockpit and then perched on the portside bench.
He studied her as she looked up at the mast where the wind vane indicated a good breeze blowing from the southwest. Topher judged it at maybe eight knots or so.
“So we’re not sailing?” she asked as he guided the boat into the channel.
“No,” he growled, annoyed by her question.
He’d been sailing all his life, and the yacht had all the technology money could buy. It might be forty feet long, but it was rigged to be single-handed. Topher could manage it even without his good health.
But he didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of this woman. He didn’t want to display his disabilities; otherwise she might join the chorus of people in his life who thought he was crazy to want to live alone on a deserted island.
* * *
Topher turned his head so that only the unmarred side of his face was visible. It was as handsome as ever. But Jessica was hard-pressed to recognize the man sitting behind the ship’s wheel.
He wasn’t the same clean-cut, letter-jacket all-American she remembered. He’d lost the roundness of youth and now had a tough, sinewy look to him. He was dressed like a beach bum, in a garish purple Hawaiian shirt featuring palm trees and bright-orange sunsets, faded jeans with holes in the knees, and a pair of dirty Vans.
The late-August sun highlighted strands of blond and gray in his shoulder-length hair. A bushy beard hid a tracery of scars on his left side, which he tried to keep hidden from her view. The way he turned his head might have broken her heart if she’d had any pity for him.
But it was the eye patch over his left eye that gave him the appearance of an anti-hero from an action movie. Looking into the endless blue of his right eye was more unnerving than the lack of symmetry in his face or his incredibly rude manner.
She settled back into the cushion and waited. Last Friday, when he’d set up this meeting, he’d been so insistent about her dropping everything, including her bid for the new City Hall project, in order to do this site visit. She expected him to have a lot to say as they sailed out to the island.
Clients usually had more ideas than could ever be incorporated into a single design. It was her job to winnow out the important things at initial meetings like this.
But minutes rolled by and he remained silent. Evidently, he expected her to get the ball rolling. “So, about this house,” she said, “are you planning to restore the lighthouse, or did you want to build additional structures?”
Instead of answering the question, he turned that blue eye on her and asked, “Do you think I’m crazy?”
“What?”
“It’s a simple question. Do you think I’m crazy to build on a remote island?”
Oh boy. Obviously the man knew what the gossips were saying about him. She could stop this right now. But she suddenly didn’t want to. If the man wanted to hang himself, she was happy to supply the rope.
But she wasn’t rude, either. She simply sidestepped his query. “Building on an island will be difficult,” she said.
“That didn’t answer my question.”
He was no fool, was he? “Well,” she said, leaning back on the bench and looking away from his too-intense gaze, “you have to be a little crazy to want to build off the grid.”
He barked a laugh. “So you think I’m crazy.”
“Yes,” she said as irritation mounted. The man obviously didn’t know one thing about polite conversation.
“Maybe we should turn around,” he said through his teeth. His gaze pinned her.
“Maybe we should. We’re only here because you insisted.” She forced herself to stare right at him, daring him to come about.
His mouth twitched, and he looked to the left, hiding his scars. He didn’t turn the boat around, but he didn’t say anything, either. The silence stretched out, punctuated by the wind whipping against the ties on the furled mainsail. She pressed her lips together, determined not to smooth over what had just been said, and watched the seabirds above them.
Ten minutes later, he spoke again. “My grandfather talked about building a big house on the