Inglath Cooper - A Woman With Secrets

“It’ll be interesting to see what comes of that,” Margo said, nodding in the direction of the grill and the string of fish now waiting to be cooked.

Her voice was at odds with her looks. It had a nice husky quality to it. Kate twisted the cap off the bottle and took a sip. “Yes, it will.”

Margo sent a covert glance at the two men huddled over the grill like two cowpokes over a campfire. “Interesting duo, don’t you think?”

Kate rubbed her thumb across the side of her water bottle. “That word would apply, yes.”

“My father arranged this trip, so I really had no idea what to expect, but—”

“It’s not exactly what you thought it would be?” Kate finished for her. “Me, either.”

They were silent for a minute or so, neither of them elaborating on what it was they had expected.

Margo’s gaze rested on Harry’s shoulders, and Kate wondered at the hint of longing on the woman’s face. There was no ring on her left hand, so Kate assumed she wasn’t married. She was on vacation with her father, who from all appearances, might fail to be the life of the party in most social settings. She had smooth, pretty skin, and her eyes, now and then visible above her glasses, were a soft blue. Her clothes and hairstyle made her look older than she probably was. Kate sensed a loneliness in her that made her want to reach out to her, even though she didn’t know her. “Tell me about your work,” she said.

Margo looked up in surprise, as if it wasn’t often that anyone wanted to hear her talk about herself. But she began to speak. And Kate listened.

IT WAS AN unusual turn of events. Margo was much more accustomed to being the listener than the one listened to.

She could not recall the last time she’d felt comfortable enough with a stranger to pass along personal information more relevant than “Yes, the bus stop is a quarter block away.” She once overheard one of her physics students say that she would have made a perfect Jane Austen character, buttoned-up as she was. She was fairly certain there was no compliment to be found in the assessment, although she didn’t mind the reference. She loved Pride and Prejudice and would have switched places with Elizabeth Bennet in a heartbeat.

But her life was in the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth, and therein lay the difficulty. She was an odd fit.

This was something that could not be said of Kate Winthrop.

She fit. In this century. This Caribbean movie set backdrop. The cover of InStyle magazine would not be a stretch.

It was this that made her wonder then why they’d spent the past forty-five minutes talking as if they had a bevy of shared interests to unearth. Most amazing was the fact that she really listened. Margo was far more used to the glazed-eye response she normally got from strangers. Admittedly, the finer points of quantum physics didn’t exactly make for mainstream conversation. But it was what she knew.

When she began to get a little too detailed about the specifics of what she did every day, Kate—unlike most people who simply looked at their watches, announced they had some to that point forgotten emergency and flew off to take care of it—steered her toward the personal. What was it like to be a woman in a field once monopolized by men? Did she ever want to do something different? Were there any cute guys who taught at Harvard?

This was the question that tripped her up, caused her to sputter her last sip of iced tea.

“Are you all right?” Kate asked, sitting up and patting her on the back with several resounding thwacks.

“I—yes,” she said, coughing again and clearing her throat.

“Was it something I said?”

“Ah, no. It’s just not a question I’ve been asked before.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” she said, stalling. “I’m not exactly an expert on the subject.”

“Because?” Kate posed, raising an eyebrow as if Margo had just thrown her an impossible to process piece of information.

“That’s just not my area of expertise,” she managed, wiping the spattered tea from her white shorts.

“Is there anyone who can claim to be an expert on the subject?” she asked. “Men are shape-shifters. No sooner do you think you have one variety nailed, than they morph to something different altogether.”

Margo laughed, surprising herself. “I wouldn’t know,” she admitted. “I’m not much for dating.”

“The pickings are slim in Cambridge then?”

“For someone like me, I guess so,” she said, adjusting her tone toward unconcerned and falling a notch or two short.

Kate studied her for a long moment. “So tell me. Who are you, Margo Sheldon?”

She’d been asked this question before. By teachers. Career counselors. But never in this situation. Never with what would make her interesting to a man as the subtext. “I have no idea,” she said in a moment of brutal honesty.

“Well,” Kate said. “Doesn’t this trip just seem like a perfect opportunity to find out?”

“HEY, SORRY I was late this afternoon,” Harry said, pulling a spatula from beneath the grill on deck.

Cole turned on the gas, then backed up a step as it poofed to life. “Didn’t have anything to do with that blonde who walked you to the boat, did it?”

“Maybe a little something,” Harry said, somehow managing not to gloat.

“And what’d you promise her?”

“There’s the beauty of it. I didn’t promise her anything. And she was okay with that.”

“You don’t think she was a little young for you?”

“I didn’t notice,” Harry said.

“Was that a Barbie backpack she was carrying?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “She wasn’t that young.”

“So what do you talk about with someone her age?”

“Actually, some subjects are intergenerational.”

“Even when you’re two or three ahead?”

“Ah, come on now. I’m not that far a stretch.”

“Let’s put it this way. If you two were an Abercrombie & Fitch ad, you’d be the dad and she’d be the daughter.”

“Ouch.”

“Those arrows of truth have sharp points, don’t they?”

“Yeah, and here’s one for you,” he said. “I’d rather be living out my time on this planet than enduring it.”

“I guess that’s where our points of view differ,” Cole said, putting a fillet of fish on the grill.

Harry’s gaze snagged on Kate Winthrop and Margo Sheldon where they sat talking at the far side of the deck. “I’m beginning to think you did me a favor asking me to come along on this trip,” he said. “Two attractive gals. And we just happen to be two single, available males. Couldn’t have set it up better myself. ’Course I’m starting to think the studious one is more your style.”

From the table next to the grill, Cole picked up a knife and began to slice a loaf of bread, hitting the cutting board with even, forceful strokes. “Nix the assumptions of commingling. You’re not Hugh Hefner, and they’re not Playmates.”

“You’d let an opportunity like this pass you by?” Harry asked, amazement widening his eyes.

“How good a swimmer are you, Harry?”

“Pretty good,” he said, “but—”

“If you don’t want to prove it by doing the breast stroke back to Miami, I suggest you drop the subject.”

Harry opened his mouth to protest, then wisely shut it.

IT WAS ALMOST dark by the time Harry Smith called out across the deck, “This way for the feast of your lives!”

The long, family-style table had been set up complete with a checkered cloth, real dishes and silverware. The two men had prepared quite a spread of food, platters of red snapper flanked by colorful grilled vegetables and several baskets of what smelled like fresh, home-baked yeast bread.