executed the last tack, putting Lookout Island directly on his lay line, he glanced back at her and asked a safe question. “Tell me about the house you’ve been working on.”
She shook her head, trying to get the hair out of her eyes, but the wind was having none of that. A little curl formed at the corner of her lips as she started talking about her new ideas. This time she wasn’t nervous or defensive.
Her words sparked his imagination. As he sailed his yacht toward the island, he could almost see it there: The big veranda, the low, hipped roof, the cupolas. And the other things she talked about: the swimming area off the western side of the island, the breezeway to the lighthouse, the technical details for the electric, septic, and fresh-water systems.
They discussed the house as he made the final approach to the island. Once they had Bachelor’s Delight moored at the dock, Jessica clambered out of the boat with the grace of a gazelle, and he followed like a clumsy rhino.
“Let’s go up to the light,” he said, unfolding his aluminum cane.
She turned with a frown. “Don’t you want me to pace out the house for you?”
“Later.” He headed up the flagstone path toward the lighthouse as fast as his bad leg would allow him. The cane improved his speed, even though he hated using it.
“You’re going to try the stairs, aren’t you?” she asked from behind.
“Am I that transparent?”
“Yes. Is that why we’re here, so you can prove something to me?”
He turned around. “How about proving something to myself?”
She gave him a direct and unsettling stare. The sky was filling with high clouds, and she’d pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head. Her hair was a windblown mess, which gave her that fresh, girl-next-door vibe that he loved so much.
“Do you need to prove something to yourself?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Why?”
He stood there blinking at her, the question so simple and so impossible at the same time. What was it about this woman?
Was she his tormentor or an angel come in answer to an unspoken prayer? Having no answer for her question or the deeper one plaguing him, he turned around and redoubled his pace to the lighthouse’s iron door, which he unlocked and pulled open.
He didn’t wait for her as he limped across the slate floor and took the first few stairs spiraling up to the light room at the top, his boat shoes ringing on the cast-iron treads.
The first fifty steps were hard. The last one hundred and seventeen took the better part of half an hour, with frequent rest stops along the way. Thank God Jessica had the good sense to keep her mouth shut during this ordeal.
When he finally climbed the ladder from the keeping room up to the gallery, the muscles of his left thigh and calf twitched and threatened another leg cramp. He stretched his Achilles tendon and then leaned into the masonry windowsill and gazed westward toward the mainland.
In the time they’d been climbing, the clouds had closed in. Off to the west, a front was approaching.
“Did you check the weather this morning?” she asked.
He nodded. “They were calling for a slight chance of rain.”
“That doesn’t look slight to me,” she said, coming up beside him, her body heat warming his skin. He wanted to reach over and cover her hand with his. Instead, he gripped the masonry a little tighter.
“Are you telling me we need to hurry back down?” He tried to invest his voice with a hint of humor. He wasn’t terribly successful.
Silence welled between them for a long moment. “You don’t have to prove anything to me,” she finally said.
He turned, leaning his left side on the windowsill. Her eyes had gone the color of the clouds scudding in from the west—a gray, stormy color.
“Don’t I?” he said, his mouth dry from the slow climb. Gravity was a bitch.
“No. I’m your architect. I’m here to give you your dream house.”
Was that it? Probably. They should climb back down and pace off the dimensions of the house. They should talk about wastewater systems and all that. But that wasn’t what he wanted.
No surprise there. He was never satisfied. He’d always been striving for something. First it had been the NFL, then it had been a business, then it had been wealth, and then…
It had been speed, in the leather cockpit of a Ferrari on a curvy road.