Seducing Nell

“I couldn’t agree more,” Nell retorted. Which was a lie if ever there was one. Until she’d met Kyle, she’d always considered herself a truthful person.

From directly above their heads, the boat’s horn blasted its signal of arrival. Kyle flinched, his fingers digging into her arm as the shock ran through his body.

His reaction seemed all out of proportion to Nell. She asked uncertainly, “Are you okay?”

The engines had gone into reverse. Under cover of the noise, Kyle grated, “You want it both ways, don’t you? The sweet, womanly concern and the barefaced lies. I don’t need either one, do you hear me?”

Because she couldn’t possibly have told the truth about the purpose of her visit, Nell had done the opposite and lied. In the process, she’d lost something irretrievably precious: Kyle’s trust What more did she have to lose? “You’re not just visiting friends—I saw your face.”

“What I’m doing is my own goddamned business and not yours. From now on, stay out of my life, will you?”

“I don’t care what you’re doing!” she cried, adding one more lie to the total. “Just leave me alone!”

Unfortunately, the captain cut the engines on her last four words. Heads turned, and there was a titter of laughter from the other passengers.

“I will never again go anywhere near a caribou,” Nell seethed, turned on her heel and seized her pack out of the shed. As the gangplank was lowered, she hung back, watching them unload the freight, steadfastly refusing to even look for Kyle. Not until the crowd had thinned on the wharf did she ask directions for Mary Beattie’s house.

Long wooden boardwalks had been built across the rocks, linking the houses, the fish shacks and the general store. Nell tramped along, wondering where Conrad lived. She was only a few hundred feet from the square blue house that was Mary Beattie’s when she saw Kyle emerge from the side door and start climbing the grassy slope behind the house. He had not, she was almost sure, seen her. At least she was spared making artificial conversation with him in front of her unknown landlady.

The blue house had bright pink trim, orange daylilies swarming around the side door, and scarlet geraniums lining a path outlined with white—painted rocks. Before she was even in the door, Nell felt her mouth lift in a smile; nothing could be further from the house where she had grown up. Mary Beattie was also a delight: young, pregnant and friendly. The only catch was that the two guest rooms shared a bathroom and were cut off from the kitchen and living room by a door that was kept firmly shut.