Twilight Man. Karen Leabo
had stuck in her mind. Mostly, though, she remembered the gentleness.
He sounded far from gentle now.
Well accustomed to the sometimes ornery resistance she encountered from the people around here when they were confronted by an outsider, she flashed her most winning smile. “I’m Faith Kimball, Mr. Larabee. I came to give you this.” She held out a brand-new, bright green bandanna. “I bought it to replace the one you used to bandage my leg. The paramedic had to cut it off—the bandanna, not my leg,” she said with a nervous laugh as she realized she was babbling.
The man continued to stare at her with undisguised hostility. “Lady, have you lost your mind?”
For the first time she wondered if she might possibly be mistaken. “You’re Jones Larabee, aren’t you?”
“No.”
The response was quick, defensive—and a lie. Faith had studied human behavior enough that she was very good at spotting lies. She briefly studied his face. He looked about right—the dark brown hair that reached almost to his shoulders, deep-set hazel eyes, a long, straight nose and a square chin with a cleft.
And a gorgeous torso. Naturally she hadn’t noticed that when she’d thought she was dying, but she sure noticed it now.
“Then you’re not the man who pulled me from my car after a truck hit it down on FM 23?” she asked carefully. “I could swear you’re the same man.”
His gaze flickered lower, then back up. He’d seen the scar on her leg, she was sure. “You’re mistaken,” he said coolly. “Now would you mind leaving?”
Pushing Hoady’s warnings to the back of her mind, she persisted. She pulled the genuine item—the ragged, faded bandanna—still stained slightly with her blood—from her pocket. “You don’t recognize this?”
“Lady, if you don’t get off my property—”
“Oh, I get it. You’re afraid I’ll sue you or something. You don’t have to worry about that. The doctor who patched me up said you undoubtedly saved my life with the tourniquet and the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
Finally he showed her something besides anger. As if remembering those tense moments when he had breathed life back into her body, his expression turned pensive, and he moistened his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. Still, he didn’t admit that he was her rescuer.
Discouraged, she decided she had no choice but to retreat gracefully. The man had his right to privacy. She thrust the new bandanna into his hand. “Take this, anyway,” she said. “The color brings out the green in your eyes.” Before he could object, she turned and descended the stairs. As she returned to her boat, she felt the heat of his glare on the back of her neck.
Strange man, she thought as she pushed the dinghy into the water and climbed in. Her overdeveloped sense of curiosity made her wonder what set of circumstances led to his forsaking society to live alone in the swamp. Or perhaps she was awarding more melodrama to the situation than it warranted. Maybe this was the only society he knew.
She grabbed the outboard motor’s starter cord and gave it a pull. The engine growled weakly but didn’t start. She gripped the handle for another pull, this one with more muscle. The results weren’t encouraging.
Determined, she knelt on the plank seat in the back of the boat, put both hands on the starter, and yanked for all she was worth. This time the rope broke and she tumbled over the edge of the dinghy onto her rear in two feet of muddy water.
It wouldn’t have been so bad, if she hadn’t had an audience. But as she sat there in the muck, she could see Jones Larabee, all six-foot-plus of him, standing at the bottom of the stairs watching her with undeniable amusement on his face.
“Problems?” he asked innocently.
She almost let her temper get the best of her. But before she could make a rude retort, one he richly deserved, her common sense intervened. Maybe the Fates were giving her a second chance with the moody Mr. Larabee.
“It appears the motor isn’t working,” she said as she stood and tried to wipe the mud off her shorts and her legs with the remnants of his old bandanna. “Guess I’ll have to paddle back. Unless... Do you know how to fix it?”
He shook his head, but he did come closer. “Other than adding gas, I don’t know anything about boat motors.”
That was odd, she thought. Any man who’d grown up on these waters would surely know all there was to know about boats.
“Where’d you get this piece of junk, anyway?” he asked.
“I rented it from the Black Cypress Campgrounds.”
He nodded his understanding. “Hoady. That explains it.” He didn’t elaborate.
“Any suggestions?” she asked.
After a moment of consideration, he seemed to make a decision. “I was on my way out fishing. I’ll find Hoady and send him in. He can either fix the motor or tow you out.”
That wasn’t the solution Faith was hoping for. “Couldn’t you tow me out?”
His expression told her just how distasteful he found that suggestion. “My boat’s too big to handle that narrow channel you came through. There’s another waterway I use, but it comes out on a completely different part of the lake. You’d be miles from your campground.”
“Then could I call Hoady from your phone?”
“You could, if I had a phone.”
Now she was desperate. She didn’t want to spend her whole day waiting all alone for Hoady Fromme to rescue her. She had work to do, and besides, she didn’t entirely trust the shifty-eyed little man.
“Let me come with you,” she said. “You can dump me off at the first opportunity, wherever there’s a road nearby or a house with a phone. I’ll handle it from there.”
He sighed, defeated. “Okay. But you’re not getting in my boat like that.” His eyes raked up and down her body, clearly disapproving of the mud still clinging to her.
“I don’t suppose you’d let me use your shower.”
“There’s a hose in back of the house. Water’s cold, but it’s clean.” Dismissing her, he turned.
“Wait a minute. Say that again.”
He stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. “Say what?”
“About the hose.”
“It’s in back of the house. I said the water’s cold but it’s—”
“That’s it! You’re not even from this area, are you?” she declared triumphantly, pleased with her deduction but disappointed nonetheless. Jones Larabee wouldn’t be part of her dissertation.
“Lady, what are you talking about?”
“The name’s Faith. And I’m talking about the fact that you didn’t grow up here.”
The look in his eye was as close to sheer panic as she’d ever seen. “Where in the hell did you get an idea like that?”
“Your accent, your diction,” she replied, her conviction unshakable. “A casual listener wouldn’t pick it up, but I’ve made a study of the subtle nuances among the various dialects of Texas. It’s a dying art, actually. In our mobile society, the dialects are blending more and more. But I’m intimately familiar with the Caddo Lake pronunciations. It’s most notable in the way you say water.”
His eyes narrowed. “Think what you like.” With that he continued toward the stairs, where he’d left his fishing gear, then headed for a small boat house to one side of the cabin.
I’m right, she thought. And you’re hiding from something, Mr. Jones Larabee. What better place to hide than here