Then she seemed to gather herself.
"Okay," she squeaked. Clearing her throat, she started over. "Okay, so maybe I was wrong about the control-freak thing. If so, I apologize. But I'm not wrong about Glynnis's financial ignorance." She sat up straighten "She didn't know how to balance a checkbook until I showed her, and she didn't have the vaguest idea about managing her allowance "
Zach's hand dropped. "That doesn't make sense. She's an extravagant shopper, sure, but Grandfather must have taught her something about handling her finances. He was sure as hell all over me to learn financial responsibility so I'd be in position to take over the family corporation. When I refused to fall in with his plans and joined the Marines instead, I just figured he'd eventually start grooming Glynnis for the position." Surreptitiously adjusting himself, he gazed across the seat at her. "Now he was a controlling son of a bitch."
Then he stilled. "He was a control freak," he reiterated slowly. "And I wouldn't put it past the old bastard to have set it up to keep Glynnis ignorant on purpose."
A pucker formed between Lily's slender brows. "Why would he do such a thing?"
"Hell, I don't know. It pissed him off when I refused to toe the line—maybe he thought when I saw what he was doing it would bring me home to take care of her, and by extension, the business, just the way he wanted. God, that man was cold. He detested not getting his way, and if it hadn't been for Grandmama, life in that frigging mausoleum would have been unbearable." But warmth stole through him at the memory of his grandmother, and he felt a soft smile tug at his lips. "She was the best, though—that's where Glynnie gets her sweetness."
"Glynnis said your grandmother died when you both were still quite young."
"Yeah, the same year as my folks, just days after I graduated prep school. Then it was just me and Grandfather, since Glynnis had been sent to a year-round boarding school in Geneva when Grandmama got sick. She hated that, but that was the old man for you. He didn't give a shit what we wanted. He wanted Glynnie out of the way, so Glynnie was sent off. And he decided that I would be trained to take over the family corporation." Feeling the weight of those suffocating expectations all over again, he tugged at the neckline of his thermal T.
"So you ran away and joined the Marines?"
He frowned at her. "I didn't run away. I was eighteen years old; I simply exercised my right to choose my own career path. And it sure as hell wasn't gonna be one that left me sitting in an office day after day."
Her lips curled up in a small, empathetic smile. "No," she agreed solemnly. "I can't envision that at all. I have no doubt an office job would have driven you straight up the wall."
Her comment caught him by surprise. He would have thought she'd be all for a guy taking whatever job brought in the most money. A vagrant thought that she might not fit so handily into the role he'd assigned her crawled uneasily through his mind, but he shoved it away. Don't go there , he told himself.
And didn't allow himself to question why not.
The sun had set behind the mountains to the west a few hours later when a tap on the window jerked Miguel out of the light doze he'd fallen into. He sat upright, adrenaline pumping through his veins as he half expected to see the sergeant major on the other side of the glass furiously demanding to know what Miguel was doing here. But the young woman who bent down to peer in his window was a stranger. Miguel cracked the window.
"I need your ticket, sir."
It took a second to change mental gears; then he blinked, yawned, and plucked the ticket from the dashboard. He handed it to the woman.
She looked at it and frowned. "You're in the wrong line."
"Que?"
"This ticket is for San Juan Island. You're in line for Orcas."
Swearing to himself, he nodded emphatically at the young woman. " Si . Orcas."
"Your ticket is for San Juan. You spent more on it than you had to for passage to Orcas."
He pretended not to understand, hoping she'd go away.
She sighed. "You paid too much," she said loudly, as if he were deaf instead of a foreign national, and tried to hand the ticket back to him. "If you take it up to the booth you can exchange it and get some money back."
People were starting to look this way, and Miguel wanted her gone before one of them was Taylor. " Si ," he said again. "Orcas."
"Oh, for crying out loud," she said. "Whatever. You can't say I didn't try." Then, adding the ticket to the stack in her hand, she shrugged and moved on to the next car.
She obviously thought he was an idiot, and Miguel glared first at her retreating back in the side-view mirror, then at the Jeep three cars forward. For this indignity, too, Taylor would pay. He was going to pay, and pay, and pay.
Chapter 8
FULL NIGHT HAD FALLEN AND CLOUDS OBSCURED THE moon by the time they debarked the ferry at Orcas Island. Once past the lights of the landing's tiny village, the darkness was absolute, and Lily's first impression of the island was of a great mass of trees. Deciduous hard-and softwoods crowded the spaces between towering evergreens, which in turn soared overhead, their tangled branches meeting to form a tunnel over the road. Within the sweep of the Jeep's headlights, their dark shapes gained color and texture, only to fade back into sooty shadows against the night sky like a multidimensional tone-on-tone onyx frieze.
She turned from the window and looked at Zach. His eyes were impenetrable pools in the glow from the dash, and his face was ail harsh angles. "We really should see if there are rooms available in Eastsound. It's too late to just show up unannounced on David's doorstep."
He didn't even take his gaze off the road, but merely said tersely, "Let it go, Morrisette. We've had this conversation before."
And they had. They'd had it while he'd pored over the map of the island as they'd eaten Ivar's clam chowder in the dining area on the boat's upper deck. They'd had it while facing each other across bench seats as the ferry glided through narrow passages between dark islands. And they'd had it again while standing at the rail in the brisk early April breeze watching cars debark and load onto the boat at Lopez Island. When Lily had insisted one didn't simply barge in on people at eleven o'clock at night, Zach had said watch me .
"Yes we have." she agreed now. "And you're still wrong."
He didn't flick so much as a glance her way, and her shoulders twitched irritably. She blew out an exasperated breath. "You are the stubbornest man I have ever met. And probably the rudest, too. I should have waited until tomorrow to give you the address."
His mouth tightened. His voice was cool and uninvolved, though when he said, "But you didn't. And I didn't invite you on this junket, lady; I'd be more than happy to head over to Eastsound and dump you off."
She made a rude noise. "Oh, right. Like I came all this way because I'm so fond of your jolly company." She stared at him, willing him at least to glance at her, but not surprised when he didn't. He'd been aloof since shortly after he'd caught her staring at his mouth in that brief moment of madness on the Anacortes ferry dock. Man , but she'd wanted to know what it would taste like—a momentary mania that was so far from smart she couldn't believe it. Her face burned as it belatedly occurred to her that he might be acting this way to keep her from getting any funny ideas. She cleared her throat.
"Nice try. But I plan to be right by your side to lend whatever damage control I can when you start throwing your weight around."
"Good.I'll let you pass the tissues when Glynnie throws herself on my chest in gratitude for rescuing her from Trailer Town Tommy."