“I bet you’re just full of them.” She dipped her head and slicked the hair back from her face. “Look, I want to get in my laps and go. It’s a big pool. You stay on that side, I’ll stay on this one.”
“Let’s not call it an idea, let’s call it a proposition.”
“Booke, you’re going to piss me off.”
“I didn’t mean—”
He did flush now, a perfectly gorgeous combination with that manly stubble. The little twist of lust in her belly really put her off.
“I didn’t mean to imply—” He took two careful breaths, knowing he would stutter otherwise. “I meant a race.”
He knew he’d caught her competitive streak by the way her eyes glinted just before she turned in the water and swam to the side. “Not interested.”
“I’ll give you a quarter-length handicap.”
“Yeah, no question, you’re going to piss me off.”
“Four lengths,” he continued, clamping onto the idea like a hound onto a bone. “If you win, I don’t bother you again. If I win, I get one hour of your time. One hour, against three months. Those are pretty favorable odds for you.”
She started to brush him off. Wanted to brush him off. He couldn’t bother her if she didn’t let him bother her. There was only one slight hitch. She couldn’t resist a dare.
“Four lengths, head to head.” She pulled swim goggles over her head, adjusted them. “When I win, you keep your distance, you don’t mention your project or whatever you call it to me again, and you don’t try hitting on me on a personal level.”
“Now that last part stings, Deputy, but agreed. If I win, you come to the cottage, assist me in some tests. One hour’s work, with your full cooperation.”
“Deal.” When he held out a hand, she simply stared at it blandly. “Forget it.”
She waited for him to join her at the wall, prepared herself with long, slow breaths. “Freestyle?”
“Okay. On three?”
She nodded. “One, two . . .”
They pushed off together on three, cut through the water. She didn’t intend to lose, didn’t even consider it a possibility. She swam nearly every day of her life, and she was the home team.
She noted his form as they paced each other on the first lap. It wasn’t bad, but hers was better.
They slapped the far wall, pushed off for the second lap.
She was beautiful to watch, and he hoped he had the opportunity to do more of it. Under less intense circumstances. It wasn’t just strength, he noted. She had the fluid, disciplined grace of the true athlete.
He’d never deluded himself that he qualified in that area. But if there was one thing he could do, it was swim. He had to admit he hadn’t expected them to be so evenly matched. He had a longer reach and a good seven inches on her in body length, but the woman had a powerful kick.
He picked up the pace, testingly, on the third length. She matched it. He found himself both challenged and amused. She was toying with him. He put on more speed and admitted it was a damn good thing she’d tossed his handicap back in his face.
The sonofabitch was like an eel, Ripley thought. When they shoved off for the final lap in tandem, she realized she’d seriously misjudged his abilities. Gathering herself, she poured it on, nipped past him by a quarter of a body length, felt her adrenaline kick in for that final push.
And was struck with shock and dazed admiration when he streamed by her and slapped the wall two strokes ahead.
Chest heaving, she surfaced, shoved back her goggles. No one, not even Zack, could beat her at four lengths. It was demoralizing.
“So.” He panted, shoved his hair back. “Any time today good for you?”
The bastard hadn’teven had the courtesy to rub it in. It only made the taste of defeat more sour. He’d been so, so damn pleasant about the whole thing. She began to wonder if he was on drugs. Surely no one could stay so even-tempered without chemical assistance.
She worked off part of her mad shoveling snow, soothed her bruised ego with some of Nell’s famous cinnamon buns. But it picked at her, a restless fingernail at a scab, throughout the day.
There were a number of calls to keep her busy: cars sliding off the road, a smashed window due to a poorly aimed snowball, and the usual variety of mischief that liberated kids could create on a snow day.
Still, it worried her mind and spoiled her mood.
In the station house, Zack listened to her muttered curses, watched her pour yet another cup of coffee. He was a patient man, and he knew his sister. He’d crossed paths with her several times that day on patrol and had recognized the signs of her temper brewing.
But since it hadn’t passed, he was going to have to poke it out of her.
Now seemed like a good time.
He was enjoying a coffee break of his own, with his feet propped up on the desk.
“Are you going to keep chewing on whatever’s got your goat, or spit it out?”
“Nothing’s got my goat.” She slurped at coffee, burned her tongue, cursed.
“You’ve been in a stew since you got back from the gym this morning.”
“I don’t stew. You stew.”
“I brood,” he corrected. “Which is a solitary and thoughtful process involving finding the solution to a conflict or situation. Stewing is stirring a bubbling pot until it boils over and spills on someone. As I’m the only one currently in harm’s way, I have a vested interest about the contents of this particular pot.”
She turned back to him with a dangerous sneer. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
“See.” He wagged his finger at her. “You’re trying to figure out how to take it out on me. Tell me who pissed you off, and we’ll go whip their asses together.”
He had a way about him, Ripley admitted, that could make her laugh in the worst of times. She walked over to the desk, sat on the edge. “Have you met this Booke character?”
“The big brain from New York? Yeah, I met him yesterday when he was out walking the village, getting his bearings. Seems nice enough.”
“Nice.” She snorted. “Do you know what he’s here for?”
Zack grunted an assent. She only had to mention MacAllister Booke for Zack to clue in to the source of her mad. “Rip, we deal with variations of this theme off and on all the time. We can’t live on Sisters and avoid it.”
“This is different.”
“Maybe it is.” He was frowning himself when he got up to replenish his coffee. “What happened with Nell last fall raises eyebrows. And not just because she came back, figuratively, from the dead, or that that bastard Remington was exposed as someone who got his rocks off knocking her around during their marriage. Not even because he threatened to kill her once he tracked her here.”
“And stabbed you.” She said it quietly because she could still see the blood on his shirt, the way it had gleamed dark in the shadows of the forest.
“All of that made good press copy,” Zack continued. “A big, juicy scandal. But you add how it all went down—”
“We kept a lid on that.”
“As best we could,” he agreed.
He stopped beside her, touched her face. He knew she’d broken a promise to herself that night. Linking hands with Mia, using what she had inside her to save Nell, to save him.
“Enough got out,” he said quietly. “Rumor and speculation, and the babblings of a madman. Enough to build more, to spark interest. You had to expect something along these lines.”
“I expected the weirdos,” she admitted. “Maybe an increase in the gawking tourists, that sort of thing. This Booke is different. He’s the serious article, a kind of, I don’t know, crusader. And he’s got credentials. A lot of people may think he’s just another nutcase, but a lot won’t. Added to all that, Mia might get it into her head to talk to him. To cooperate with him.”
“Yeah, she might.” He didn’t want to add that he was all but sure Nell would as well. They’d already had a discussion about it. “It’s her choice, Rip. It doesn’t have to weigh on yours.”
She gave her coffee a disgusted look. “He won an hour from me.”
“What?”
“Sneaky sonofabitch conned me into a bet this morning. I lost, so I have to give him an hour with his voodoo crap.”
“Ouch. How’d you lose?”
“Don’t wanna talk about it,” she muttered.
But he was already trying to work it out. “You didn’t go anywhere but the gym this morning, did you? I heard he picked up a membership there. Is that where you ran into him?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She pushed off the desk, paced. “Who’d have thought he couldmove like that? At a sprint, okay, I could see it because of his height advantage. But not at a hundred sixty foot freestyle.”
“A swim race?” Zack voiced his surprise. “He took you in a swim race?”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it. I was off my rhythm, that’s all.” She whirled back with a slanted look. “Was that a laugh I heard?”
“You bet. No wonder you’re stewing.”
“Just shut up. I don’t know what he thinks he can prove in an hour anyway. With his energy detectors and spirit sensors. It’s a waste of time.”
“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about. How much he take you by?”
“Shut up, Zack.”
She decided toget it over with, the way you would a root canal. And she’d decided to walk, leaving Zack with the cruiser, because that postponed the getting-it-over-with stage just a little longer.
It was full dark when she made the turn to the yellow cottage, and the moon was new and black. Another three inches of snow had fallen since morning, but the