"You Mainers." J.B. came around from the side porch, the floorboards creaking under his weight. He looked dark and warm, not as if he'd had to climb out of the freezing ocean. "Most people would sit by the fire after they took a spill in cold water."
"Frigid water. I'm out of practice." She held her mug with both hands, absorbing its heat. "You saw me?"
"All of Goose Harbor saw you."
"I'll never live it down. I was preoccupied, and the pilot of the speedboat was an idiot-" She sighed, vividly recalling the exact moment when she realized she was broadside to an enormous swell and going over. She glanced up at J.B. "Were you ready to come to my rescue?"
"Me and a couple of old ladies on a bus tour."
"I'd have blown my whistle if I were in real trouble."
"No, you wouldn't." He dropped onto a wooden rocker painted a dark green. "You'd have drowned or died of hypothermia before you admitted you needed help."
"Are you implying I'm stubborn?"
"Self-reliant to a fault, maybe. Proud, stubborn. Possibly overconfident." He rocked back, shrugging. "But that's only a guess. I'd have to be around you for an hour or two more before I could say for sure."
He looked windburned and rugged, as if he'd been going out to sea for years, as if he were born to it. But Zoe pushed back her attraction to him, her curiosity about him, as if they were something she could control.
"Still mad at me for talking to Teddy Shelton without your say-so?" She smiled. "I don't know if I'm insulted or amused."
"I ran into Bruce on the docks. He said he was hoping he'd get a chance to fish you out of the water, just to have something to hold over you for the rest of your lives. He blamed the speedboat. That was decent of him."
"It was accurate."
J.B. obviously had no intention of letting her off the hook. "Your mind wasn't on what you were doing. You know it wasn't."
There was no point arguing with him. He was already convinced he was right. Zoe drank more of her tea and finally felt a bit warmer. She wondered if her lips were still purple. She was shivering uncontrollably and still cursing her inattention when she got to the rocks below her aunt's house, then dragged herself and her kayak up the steep trail. She'd left her boat in the yard and made it upstairs to her room without collapsing from hypothermia, then peeled off her wet clothes and found an old bathrobe in her bedroom closet to put on.
J.B. couldn't see her bathrobe under her blanket. It was one of Olivia's, or perhaps had been left by a former guest. It looked like something Lucy Ricardo might have worn.
She decided to change the subject. "Kyle called while I was making tea. He wanted to know if I'd thought about his request."
"Have you?"
"No. I went kayaking to avoid thinking about anything."
"Didn't work, did it?"
She ignored him. "Periodically for about three years before she died, Aunt Olivia would have me burn stuff she didn't want to leave behind after she was gone. I protested, but she was adamant. She'd have done it herself if I'd refused."
"Sounds like a character."
"She didn't want anyone-family, scholars, gossip hounds-pawing through her private thoughts and possessions after she was dead. She knew she was famous. Kyle knows all this, you realize."
"So no big surprises in the attic."
"I doubt it."
"Did she know you wanted to write?"
Zoe was so startled by his question, she ended up spilling her tea over her hand. She yelled out, but he was there, taking the cup from her, setting it back on its saucer.
"Did you burn yourself?" he asked.
She nodded, feeling flushed and exposed, as if he could see not just through her, but into her, which she knew was all in her head-a result of being off balance. She sucked on her burned knuckle. "I didn't want to write. I don't want to write. I was just…scribbling. I don't know. It wasn't anything."
J.B. stood back and sat on the porch railing, the lawn and beach roses, the bluff and the ocean behind him. "You resurrected Jen Periwinkle."
She lifted her gaze to him. "I thought you couldn't read my handwriting."
He shrugged. "I could read that much. Did you start writing before your father was killed and your aunt died?"
Zoe slipped both hands under her blanket and tightened it around her, her fingers stiff from the cold and nerves. "No, after. I stayed here by myself. I made the nook up in the attic, but if it was warm enough, I'd write out here on the porch sometimes. It was a way to get my mind off everything."
"Funny that your aunt left you the rights to Jen Periwinkle." J.B. placed his hands on the porch railing on either side of him, and she noticed several scars, not that old. "If most of the books are out of print, maybe she wanted you to keep her going, reinvent her for the next century."
"I don't even know if there'd be an audience. And in her will, Olivia made it clear that I was under no pressure from her from the grave-she'd tried to kill off Jen herself but couldn't."
J.B. laughed. "And here I've been thinking your aunt was a practical old Mainer-sounds like she could be loosey-goosey."
For a moment, Zoe felt as if Olivia was out here with them, her wisps of white hair in her face as she enjoyed the fresh air and the incomparable view. Her throat caught. "She was something, J.B."
"Tell me about that last day," he said. "When you told her about your father."
"There's nothing to say. I barreled into the kitchen like a crazy woman and blurted that Dad had been murdered."
"Was anyone else here?"
"Betsy O'Keefe."
"The woman living with Luke Castellane?"
"Not then. She was my aunt's caregiver. She's an R.N., but she also served as a companion and personal assistant. They worked out the arrangements. Olivia was prickly at first, but Betsy was so patient with her, always willing to compromise. She had just the right mix of spine and kindness for the job."
"Ever imagine her with Luke?" Zoe shook her head. "Betsy never seemed interested in romantic relationships, or even friendships. She's always struck me as a solitary sort. Nice, not someone who needs a lot of people in her life. I suppose that makes her good for the kind of work she does."
J.B. said nothing for a moment, and Zoe thoughtabout how little she knew about him-a powder keg according to Stick, yet he hadn't done anything out of control or nuts as far as she could see. Unless she counted helping himself to a room in her house.
"How'd she end up with Luke?" he asked.
"I don't really know. Aunt Olivia always liked him. She said he was an abused and neglected little boy and that made him a self-absorbed and often not very pleasant man, but she held out hope for him. He was devastated when she died."
J.B. eased off the rail. "I've seen Luke Castellane around town a few times. He strikes me as an arrogant son of a bitch." He smiled. "But maybe your aunt was more tolerant than I am."
"I'd call her observant more than tolerant." Zoe fought off a sudden wave of nostalgia, regret, sense of loss. "She always expected the good in people to triumph."
"That's not a bad way to live."
"You think so? I'd have expected you to say it's naive."
"One kiss and she thinks she knows me." He moved toward her, deliberately, dominating her view, and smiled. "That brought some heat to your cold cheeks, didn't it, Detective Zoe? Still shivering?"
Not anymore, she thought. "It was staying in my wet clothes that did me in. If I could have gotten out of them sooner-" She stopped, aware of a darkening of his eyes. She warned herself not to read anything into it, but she could feel how scantily clad she was under her wool blanket. She'd at least pulled on dry, warm socks. Hiking socks and a silky bathrobe. Very sexy. "I'm much warmer now."
J.B. stood directly in front of her, his toes almost touching hers, and seemed to hesitate a moment, as if he thought she might jump up and run back into the house-or giving her the chance to.