The Husband She Never Knew

“It’s official,” Jamie said. “Luther’s not letting anyone on or off now.”

The deputy swept his arm in a huge arc over his head, and Jamie waved back. Then Luther Blackwell, the man who’d just decided Vicki’s fate for the next several hours at least, climbed in his patrol car and headed on down Sandy Ridge Road.

“I can’t miss my flight home,” Vicki said.

“Maybe you won’t,” Jamie said. “When is it?”

“Tomorrow at noon.”

He squinted at the darkening horizon. The first fat drops of rain pelted them, driven by a sudden gust of wind. “On the other hand, maybe you will.”

She was trapped on a virtual island with a man who was practically a stranger! Vicki couldn’t imagine a worse outcome to what was supposed to have been an uncomplicated mission. She knew nothing about Jamie. He could be half-crazy living out here in the middle of nowhere. Or worse.

“Let’s get down to ground level,” he said. “This roof’s as secure as she’s going to get, but we humans are tempting the elements.”

She tried to control a trembling that began in her legs and was working its way up. And I’m tempting fate, she thought.

Jamie helped her to the ladder. “Are you cold, Vicki?”

“No, I’m fine.” She scurried down and retrieved her briefcase while Jamie stowed his tools in the metal box. He whistled for his dog, who still lay in unperturbed comfort under the picnic table. By the time Jamie opened the door to the houseboat, the rain was hard and steady. Since escape was impossible, Vicki went inside. Jamie took her jacket, hung it on a hook by the door and handed her a towel. She dried off as best she could while watching the darkening sky through a large window over the kitchen sink.

“Maybe I should turn on CNN,” Jamie said. “We can get an update on the storm.”

Vicki stepped over Beasley, who was now sprawled in the middle of the floor and followed Jamie from the kitchen to a living area furnished with a beige leather sofa and two matching leather chairs. It certainly didn’t look like the accommodations of a psychopath—not that she knew how psychopaths lived. He picked up a remote control from a glass coffee table with a ship’s steering wheel as its base. The brass trim on the spokes shone as if they were polished regularly.

The rest of the room showed similar attention. A pine dining set occupied one corner of the room. Its top was clear of clutter, prompting Vicki to remember her own dining table, which was currently layered with unopened mail and magazines. Nautical paintings hung in groups around the walls of the houseboat. Remembering her surprise at hearing Jamie was an artist, Vicki wondered if he’d painted the canvases himself.

He pulled the chain on a dark metal lamp with a leaded-glass shade. The outside gloom was transformed into a soft amber glow. While Jamie selected the channel for CNN, Vicki surreptitiously inspected two of the paintings in hopes of discovering something about the man she was stuck with. Jamie Malone was not the artist of either.

When a reporter’s voice caught her attention, Vicki looked at a twenty-five-inch television screen. The set had a built-in VHS and DVD player. Since the old Jamie hadn’t been a TV watcher, at least according to the information they’d exchanged in order to fool the immigration officer, she wondered when this later version of the man had become inspired to buy a state-of-the-art model.

Within minutes the focus of a news story was a radar screen splattered with colorful images in blues, reds and yellows. A meteorologist was saying, “This one caught us by surprise, folks. Imogene is now a category-one hurricane. Residents along the North Carolina coast should hunker down. The eye will pass near the Carolina/Virginia border by nightfall.”

Vicki stopped patting her hair dry and draped the towel over her shoulders. She gawked at the swirling mass in the center of the screen that had suddenly become even more terrifying than her runaway suspicions of Jamie. “My God, a hurricane. And we’re sitting on this narrow little spit of land in a houseboat! We might as well be a weathervane on top of a barn in a tornado.”

“We’ll be all right,” he said. “It’ll be a blow, and likely will claim some shingles.” He patted the wall nearest him. “But the Bucket o’ Luck is a sturdy tub. She’s withstood a good many storms in her thirty-five years.”

“Thirty-five years! This boat is that old?” Vicki cringed at the thought. Certain that the Bucket’s luck had run out, she pictured herself clinging to forest-green flotsam in twenty-foot waves.

“I’m just now getting her broken in,” Jamie said. “It took us a few years to get used to each other. But trust me. She’ll come through this storm in fine style.”

“You speak of your boat as if it were a flesh-and-blood person,” Vicki said. A wife, for instance, she added to herself, remembering Bobbi Lee’s words.

He chuckled. “I suppose there was that same sort of period of adjustment for the Bucket, and me, as there is for a pair of new roommates.”

The masculine furnishings of the houseboat did not suggest a woman’s influence. But if Jamie had taken another wife at some time in his past, and if Vicki was going to weather a storm with him in this confined space, she had to know it now. “May I ask you something?” she said.

“Anything at all. There should be no secrets between husband and wife.”

She shook her head. “Right. Are you married?”

Jamie’s initial response was a bark of laughter, a most inappropriate reaction to a serious question. Vicki opened her mouth to tell him so, but his phone rang, prohibiting her from expressing her opinion.

Jamie picked up the receiver. “Yeah, Ma,” he said. “I just heard it on CNN. Now don’t you go worrying about me.”

Vicki relaxed a little. A man whose mother called to show her concern was probably not a homicidal maniac.

“Do you have everything you need in case you’re holed for a day or two?” he asked.

He sat back on the sofa. After a minute he looked at Vicki and touched his fingers to his thumb repeatedly in that gesture men use when a woman is talking too much. “Sure, I’ll be fine, Ma. Got plastic on the roof, and I’ll be putting shutters at the windows just as soon as I can get off the phone.”

A long pause. “Yes, plenty of food. I was at the supermarket yesterday.” He moved his head up and down in time to his mother’s conversation. “I can’t do that, Ma. Luther’s already blockaded the road. I’ll call you when it’s over.”

He set the receiver back on its cradle and looked at Vicki. “That was my mother,” he offered unnecessarily. “She lives in Bayberry Cove—another result of our wedding vows for which I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

“Me? Why?”

“When you married me, you cleared the way for me to bring my mother over from Ireland. I was able to get her an immigrant visa and apply for her permanent residence once she got here. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t become a citizen first.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “So, does that answer your question about my state of wedded bliss?”

“No, it doesn’t. I meant, are you married to anyone besides me?”

For a second he looked truly shocked. “Where would you get an idea like that?”

“From a waitress in town. When I asked directions to Pintail Point, she made sure I knew that you were married.”

“Was she a blonde with an hourglass figure that might require more room at the bottom for the sand?”

Vicki nodded.

“A good woman, Bobbi Lee is. But she has it in her mind that every little detail of my life should be her concern.”

Vicki wasn’t fooled. She’d seen Bobbi Lee’s disapproval firsthand. Plus, when a man made a statement like that, he was obviously hiding something, and what Jamie was probably hiding was that he and Bobbi Lee shared more than a casual relationship.

“But back to your question,” Jamie continued. “Yes, indeed I have a wife, and by some miracle I’ve yet to understand, I’m looking at her now for the first time in thirteen years.”

“Do you tell people that you’re married and I’m your wife?” If he did, then the honesty of such a declaration was ironic in light of Vicki’s own deception.

“Not exactly. I tell people I’m married is all, and that’s the God’s truth. And for what it’s worth, Vicki, you’ve been nearly the ideal mate.”

She sank into one of the leather chairs. “That’s silly. We don’t even know each other.”

“Not so silly when you compare our marriage to others you know of. You never nag me. I can leave my socks in the middle of the floor. And if I want to watch a football game, you never utter a complaining word.”

He flashed her a crooked grin that under other circumstances might have been charming. And Vicki decided that Jamie Malone was not at all sinister. A man with an indolent dog, a caring mother and an ancient houseboat he lovingly tended, was strange perhaps, but not evil.

“’Course I can’t really say that the lovemaking has been very satisfying over the years,” he added.

He was, however, something of a smart-ass. Vicki’s cheeks flushed as she remembered again that she and Jamie had told an INS interviewer that they made love every day. Then she pictured Bobbi Lee with the wide smile and lavender-shaded eyes. And the tapping pencil. “I’m sure you’ve compensated in other ways,” she said.