Carrie Alexander - Three Little Words

Either he kept up with current events on his own via the television news or he’d been told about Connor’s troubles. Tess thought it was cute how the old man had presumed she was “comforting” his grandson.

Wrong, but cute.

Although, if ever a man had looked in need of comforting…

She shifted around in her chair. Connor gave her a glance, but he kept talking with his grandfather, telling him about the trip back to Alouette and checking in to Bay House.

Sonny shook his head over the idea that the once grand house had become a bed-and-breakfast inn. “Shame. The Whitakers still there?”

“Yes, they are,” Tess said. “Emmie and Toivo. Sister and brother,” she explained to Connor, in case he didn’t realize. She’d been halfway positive he’d back out of the decision to stay at Bay House once he’d been introduced to its homey comforts and familiar hosts. He didn’t seem like a homey and familiar guy.

“Bossy and goofy, them two,” said Sonny with a scowl that was mostly for show.

Tess smiled. “You make them sound like the eighth and ninth dwarfs.” She’d have called them energetic and endearing. But then she’d only had long-distance grandparents, so that was a soft spot for her. Soft, sore…same thing.

“What about the lighthouse?” Sonny asked.

Connor made an apologetic sound. “It’s not looking so good, Grandpa. Really run-down.”

Sonny huffed. “That’s the government for you. I’da stayed if they’d have let me. Instead, I’m wasting away, good for goddamn nothing.” He deliberately turned his head to stare out the window, exuding a deep dissatisfaction.

Tess was uneasy, even more so when suddenly the old man glared at her. “I ever run you off Gull Rock?” he accused.

She gritted her teeth. When she was a child, it had been a prank among the older kids to dare each other to sneak onto the lighthouse grounds. They would make bets of how far they’d get before the lighthouse keeper caught sight of them. One boy had been famous for getting swatted in the behind by the old man’s broom.

“No, sir,” she said.

Sonny squinted skeptically.

“When you were still the light keeper, I was only—” she calculated “—about six or seven.” And frightened silly by the other kids’ stories of the legendary lighthouse hermit. No one had ever mentioned that Old Man Mitchell’s grandson had been visiting only several years back. It was probably more fun to scare each other.

“Buncha brats,” Sonny said. “Always screaming like a pack of gulls.”

“They were just being kids, Grandpa,” Connor said. “I made friends with a few of them, my summers up here.”

“Hooligans, the lot of you,” the old man groused. “Came to no good, I betcha.”

Conner smiled, though his expression remained somber. “Yeah.” He sighed. “You could be right about that.”

“HE LIKED YOU,” Connor said, glancing at Tess over the top of his menu.

“The whitefish is good—” She stopped and wrinkled her nose, giving a little laugh at Connor’s faulty assessment. “Sonny liked me? How could you tell?”

They’d spent less than a half hour in the elderly man’s room, with the conversation progressing in fits and starts. Sonny Mitchell had seemed bent on being disagreeable, although Tess had detected signs of grudging approval whenever she refused to be bullied by his gruff treatment.

He had a fighting spirit, she’d decided. Sonny sought out kindred souls, and very few passed muster. Tess wasn’t sure she qualified, having grown up with the example of a mother who had no fight in her at all, and leading the uneventful life that she did.

Connor set aside the menu. “He let you stay, right?”

“Yes…”

“And he didn’t object when you mentioned visiting again in a few days.”

“No…”

“So you got further with him than anyone else has. Sonny’s always been cantankerous. Even antisocial.”

“I can’t imagine what he’s going to say when I announce that I’m there to teach him to read.”

Connor made a face. “Uh, about that…”

“You’ve changed your mind?”

He grinned at her hopefulness. “Not so fast. It’s just that I want you to go slowly with the reading lessons. Ease into it. Because I haven’t exactly told him—”

“Terrific, Connor!” She tossed her menu on top of his. “I don’t see how I’m supposed to teach him to read without his knowing that’s what I’m there for.”

A waitress arrived with their drinks. Tess took a sip of her white wine while Connor ordered the whitefish for both of them. When they’d emerged from Three Pines to a dusky sky, he’d told her to be the leader. In their separate vehicles, he’d followed her to a restaurant in downtown Marquette, a cozy place in one of the historic sandstone-and-brick buildings that overlooked the Lake Superior harbor. The view was of the marina, a redbrick bell tower and a slope of lawn that led to the harbor park, nearly empty at this hour. A rusty ore dock loomed to one side, long abandoned. They faced east, so the sky was leached of light, layered in cobalt and indigo over the lake.

“I realize the subject will have to come up.” Connor’s voice was deep and soft, but slightly rough. Mesmerizing, especially when she shut out the sounds around them and focused only on him. “Let’s just take it slowly….”

Mmm, she thought, going soft herself before she realized what was happening. She sat up straighter, blinking her eyes back to alert.

He continued. “After Sonny has accepted you, I’ll explain to him exactly why you’re visiting.”

“I think he already knows.”

“Ah. Yes, perhaps. But he won’t admit it out loud.”

“Pride?”

“And independence. He doesn’t like to ask for help, even now.”

“Runs in the family,” she said.

Connor was looking out the tall arched window to the lake. “Why would you say that? You don’t know me—except what you’ve read in newspapers and magazines.”

She chuckled. “I can draw my own conclusions, thank you.”

He turned his intense gaze on her. It was a physical thing. She felt it on her skin, in her stomach, even deep in her bones.

Oh, but she was out of practice. There’d been no provocative strangers in her life for years, aside from the ones she invented. And it wasn’t easy turning a middle-aged library guest wearing flip-flops into an international man of mystery. Most of the time, it wasn’t even worth the attempt.

“Which conclusions?” Connor’s gaze held steady and she couldn’t tell if he was teasing. “That I’m a smuggler?”

Heat shot into her face. Her cheeks must be glowing like a neon bulb. “Pardon?” she croaked, not sure that she wanted the answer. There was no way Connor should know of her nutty mental meanderings. “How…?”

“I didn’t read your mind,” he said. “You muttered it as I was leaving.”

“Ohhh.”

He studied her face, awaiting an explanation. There was a glint in his eye. So he was teasing…but she was still on the spot.

“You have to admit you looked scruffy and suspect.” She shrugged. “I didn’t really believe you were a smuggler. That was just my…” She slid a finger along the stem of the wineglass. Might as well admit it. “My crazy imagination.”

“I guess you weren’t completely wrong. According to some, I am disreputable. But not a lawbreaker, I assure you.”

“Don’t mind me. I make up these stories in my head—” She tilted it. “Nothing to do with you.”

His lips compressed on a smile. “Stories?”

“Fancies. Pure silliness. It’s nothing.”

“And I starred as a smuggler?”

“It was the lighthouse books,” she explained, amazed she was doing so, but that was the effect he had on her. Her usual caution had come unhinged. “I made up a scenario where you were a bear-organ smuggler looking for a drop point.” She skipped the part about him also being a libidinous ex-professor. “You were meeting a Chinese man at midnight to transfer the illegal cargo.”