Alice Sharpe - Wife On His Doorstep

“I borrowed your jacket,” she told him as she brushed her hands down the front.

“It looks good on you.”

“I just had to change. I hope you don’t mind—”

“Not at all, Miss Morison. Fact is, I think it looks better on you than that fancy dress...”

He stopped talking because her eyes had suddenly filled with tears. Obviously he’d said the wrong thing.

“I—I’m sorry,” he said as he pushed the plate forward. “Here, I brought lobster, have some.”

“I hate lobster,” she said as she wiped tears off her cheeks with the cuff of her—his—jacket.

“But it’s from your wedding...well, almost wedding...”

His voice trailed off because what he’d said had brought forth more waterworks. He handed her a napkin, which she used to mop at her face, and then she sat opposite him.

“It was Robert’s idea to have it. I wanted chicken. Where is everybody?”

“They’re gone.”

“All of them?”

“I dropped them off at the loading pier before bringing the boat down here to her permanent berth. I’m afraid I took it upon myself to persuade your family to leave you alone. I guess you want to hear that your fiancé was very hard to convince—”

“No,” she interrupted.

John shrugged. “Your mother said to remind you that you don’t have an apartment anymore so to come to her house. I promised her you’d get home okay.”

More tears as Megan stared at the hated crustaceans. When she’d recovered from the new onslaught, she added, “I forgot...I gave up my place so that after the honeymoon I could...I could move in with...with...Robert.”

“Well, maybe you two will patch things up.”

She shook her head in a desultory fashion.

John fished a piece of lobster out of the shell and held it low to the ground. Foggy Dew stared at it for a second, apparently decided it was worth the effort of moving, and jumped down from the bunk. He set the morsel on the floor and turned his attention back to Megan, wondering how he could politely ask her to leave. The half-naked beauty was intended for another man, but she was starting to make him want things he had no business wanting.

He said, “Well, it’s getting late—”

She glanced at the clock that hung on a bulkhead next to the barometer, but said nothing.

“I sent a crew member down to the bridal dressing room and she retrieved the clothing you arrived in. It’s across the hall.” To himself he added that it was a damn shame she had to get out of his jacket. He liked the way the navy blue looked next to her cap of yellow hair, the way different parts of her anatomy filled out the cloth in ways the tailor hadn’t intended.

“That was very kind of you,” she said.

Looking into her eyes was like glimpsing two blue gems buried in the depths of a mountain spring. He had to make himself turn away and liberate more lobster for the cat. “I can call you a cab—”

“I have nowhere to go,” she said.

John delivered the lobster, took a long swallow of champagne and eyed her above the rim of the glass. Then he said, “But your mother—”

“You don’t understand,” she said as she pushed herself away from the table and began pacing. “My mother is crazy about Robert Winslow. She thinks the sun rises and sets on his bank account. All she ever talks about is how much he’s like my late father.”

“Is he?” John heard himself ask.

She shrugged. “Yes. Oh, I don’t know. Dad was strong-willed and blustery, but he was also kind. I can’t even imagine him attacking a harmless animal like that. Anyway, he died when I was just a little kid.” She blinked away the past and added, “Mom will spend the entire night trying to get me to see the stupidity of my ways. I can’t face her.”

John’s gaze had dropped to her smooth, shapely legs. Looking up, he said, “Then that uncle of yours—”

“If anything, he loves Robert even more than Mom does. Robert has given Uncle Adrian money for bailing out a sick business. My uncle’s first thought is going to be that I’m jeopardizing the business by jilting Robert. I can’t go to him, I just can’t.”

“Friends?”

“Don’t you see? Everyone likes Robert Winslow. He throws money around like there’s no tomorrow. He buys people’s affections.”

John surprised himself by asking, “Did he buy yours, too?”

She stopped pacing and stared at him. More tears filled her eyes as she said, “No, of course not.” But she ruined the validity of her denial by immediately adding, “At least I don’t think he did.”

Right... John thought. She kind of reminded him of Betsy, his first love, his ex-wife, who had married him on a whim, intrigued by his wealth. Within six months she’d grown bored with his work ethic and taken up extracurricular activities of her own. It had cost him a hefty one-time payment to rid his life of Betsy, and though she’d cheated and lied to him, he’d still felt like the world had been torn asunder when she closed the door behind her. That had been two years ago, and it was only within the past eight or nine months that he’d begun to see that her leaving was really him escaping. Who needed women? They were fickle and hard on the old heart—a man was better off without them.

“I wish you’d say something,” Megan said uneasily.

“I don’t know what to say,” he told her.

Grasping the back of a chair with both hands and leaning slightly forward, she fixed him with an intent stare. “Do you think I was silly today? Do you think I acted irrationally?”

He grinned. “Let’s just say that if you hadn’t pushed that idiot off my boat, I would have.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“Wait, did you say this was your boat? Does that mean you won’t lose your job because of me?” The relief in her voice touched John. She’d been worried about his fate in this mess—that was kind of sweet.

He laughed and said, “No such luck. Now, like I said, it’s getting late—”

“I don’t have a job,” she said suddenly, as though just realizing that even that part of her life was screwed up.

“You quit your job?”

Though her voice grew husky and her chin trembled, she held her head high, apparently straining for control. “I quit it as of two weeks ago. After all, I was marrying Robert Winslow, what did I need to work at a hospital for? I was going to work with him—at least, that was my plan. I found out this morning that that wasn’t his plan, however. He didn’t want me anywhere near his business or his precious money.”

John remained silent. He suspected her shattered life had derailed her tongue.

“I don’t know where to go or what to do,” she said softly.

John rubbed his jaw as he thought. Heck, where she went wasn’t his problem, was it? He was a skipper of a stern-wheeler, not director of a lonely heart’s club. What did she expect of him? He said, “Maybe a hotel?”

A brief look of hope was extinguished by a frown that tugged on the corners of her lips. Sighing heavily, she shook her head. “I might as well go to Mom’s house. I’ll have to face her sooner or later. Maybe she’ll take pity and let me be for one night.”

“I’m sure that’s the logical thing to do,” he told her, relieved she’d come to her senses. He’d been afraid of what might have happened if she’d insisted on staying the night.

“Is there a phone on board so I can call a cab?”

“Better than that,” he said, generosity filling his heart. “I’ll give you a lift on my way home.”

She looked startled. Gesturing at the table and the sideboard, the bed and the console that held a stereo and TV-VCR combination, she said, “Don’t you live here, in this room, on this boat?”