“Will the Dragonfly be ready by Wednesday?”
“Otis said tomorrow at noon.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, Allie, I know you don’t owe me, but I need to ask you a favor. When Derek and Sylvia get here, could you…could you maybe not mention Johnny’s other will?”
“How will you explain my presence?” She wanted to know. Clearly she wasn’t prepared to disappear for two days. Not that he could ask her to do that. He wasn’t ready to run the boat by himself yet.
He didn’t suppose she would pretend to be his girlfriend. “You could be my navigator.”
She laughed at that. “Navigator?”
“Derek knows nothing about fishing. We could tell him you’re my official fish-finder, and he probably wouldn’t question it.”
Cooper held his breath. If Allie was looking for a weakness she could exploit, this was it. One word to his brother about the Dragonfly’s disputed ownership, and Derek would probably throw every resource he had toward helping Allie win. Not that the elderly lawyer she’d hired wasn’t doing a decent job, but neither he nor Allie had the resources of the Remingtons.
“You’re asking me to lie,” she said.
He could have tried to sugarcoat it, but with Allie it was no use. “Yes.” He resisted adding that he could make it worth her while. His tendency to break everything down to dollars and cents was one reason Allie mistrusted him.
“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll decide after I meet him how much he ought to know.”
“Fair enough.” Cooper felt a sliver of optimism. He could predict with ninety-nine percent certainty that Allie would dislike and distrust Derek on sight. He was arrogant, controlling, and wore a sense of entitlement like a crown prince wore ermine-all of which were qualities Cooper shared, though Cooper liked to think his were balanced by a sense of humor and a shred of compassion for his fellow human beings.
Seeing that Allie had softened her angry stance toward him-and he’d mellowed a bit, too-he almost tried to talk to her again about their weekend together. If he could convince her he hadn’t cooked up some plot to defraud her, would she let him get close again?
Fortunately, the timely arrival of the UPS man prevented him from opening his mouth and doing something stupid.
“Two packages for Cooper Remington,” the deliveryman said.
“That’s me.” Cooper signed for the packages, one small, one very large. As he brought them inside, he saw Allie watching him with undisguised curiosity. “What’s that?”
“Find a box cutter, and you can open it yourself,” he said with a hint of teasing in his voice. He couldn’t wait to see what she thought.
Allie disappeared, but a few moments later she came back with a butcher knife.
Cooper took a step back from the box and held up his hands. “I’ll do better, I promise. Just don’t hurt me with the knife.”
“Ha ha. I couldn’t find a box cutter.” She sliced into the carton. Piles of packing peanuts overflowed onto the carpet as she pulled back the lid, and she yanked more of the messy stuff out by the handful until she saw the contents. “A telescope?”
“For the Champagne Stargazer cruises.”
“Stargazer?”
“I got a brainstorm, and Max changed it on the brochure at the last minute.”
“Ah. No wonder so many families have been interested. I’ve never seen a telescope this big before.” She struggled to lift it out of the box.
He grabbed on to it and she pulled the box and the rest of the clinging foam peanuts off the gleaming black instrument. It was a thing of beauty.
“Will it work on a boat?” she asked. “I mean, it’s not like we can hold the boat still, even in calm water.”
“It’s equipped with an image stabilizer,” Cooper explained. “But I’ve also ordered some smaller, handheld telescopes-since only one person at a time can look through the big one. And check these out.” He used the knife to open the smaller package, extracting the contents and holding them out for Allie’s inspection.
“Glow-in-the-dark star charts. Cool. I think I had one of these when I was a kid.”
“I’ve still got mine.” The thing was in tatters, he’d used it so much. Not that he could see all that much from the roof of the apartment building where he’d grown up in Manhattan. The stars were a lot more visible here in Port Clara, away from air and light pollution.
“You like stargazing?” she asked cautiously.
“I did when I was younger,” he answered just as cautiously. “I majored in astronomy my first semester in college, but my father convinced me it wasn’t that practical so I switched to prelaw.”
“That’s sad.”
“It is?”
“If astronomy was your passion, you should have been encouraged to pursue it. Like me and fishing,” she added pointedly.
He shrugged. “I had lots of passions-don’t most kids? I don’t regret going into law. It was a good, solid career and it provided a comfortable income for a lot of years.”
“That sounds like your father talking to me.”
Cooper hated that she was right.
“Do you know enough about the night sky to be our resident expert?” she asked. “If you’ve been advertising a stargazer cruise, people are going to want a knowledgeable guide.”
“With a little bit of study, sure.”
A yelp caused them both to turn toward the doorway, where Sara stood looking horrified. “I just vacuumed that carpet an hour ago, and guests are due to arrive any minute.”
“We’ll clean it up,” Allie said hastily as she dropped to her knees and scooped up the debris, stuffing it into the now-empty box.
Cooper knelt down beside her to help. “Sorry, Sara.”
Their hands brushed as they both reached for the same pile of peanuts, and they both pulled back self-consciously.
“Hey, Cooper,” Allie said.
“Yes?”
“Can we try the telescope out tonight? Miss Greer’s patio has a pretty good view of the sky.”
Cooper’s chest ached looking at her face, flushed and excited, reminding him of the way she’d looked when they’d made love.
“Sure. We can make a party of it, and I can try out my tour-guide-to-the-galaxy skills.” He wasn’t sure why Allie was acting more friendly, but he wanted to encourage it. Not that he dared take it any further than friends; they’d already proved that romance and business formed a volatile mixture. But he didn’t want her as an enemy.
His cell phone rang, breaking the spell that had briefly descended over them. He broke eye contact with Allie and went to answer it.
At almost the same moment, Allie’s phone, lying next to his, sang out that she had a call. With a mutual shrug, they picked up at the same time.
“Cooper Remington.”
“Remington Charters, Allie Bateman.”
“This is Agnes Simms,” a woman’s voice spoke into Cooper’s ear, “Clerk of District Court 3. You requested that we schedule your hearing as soon as possible, and we’ve had an unexpected opening in Judge Isaacs’s schedule on Friday at two p.m. Will that work?”
Cooper’s heart lurched. In New York it took weeks, sometimes months, to get anything scheduled in court. He’d had no idea matters could move so swiftly. Still, he saw no real reason to delay.
“Yes,” he said, his voice only slightly ragged. “That works for me.”
As he disconnected, Allie concluded her call and looked up at him. The look in her eyes startled him-part fear, part resignation, and a little bit of sadness.
“You agreed to Friday?” she asked.
He nodded. “But if you need more time-”
“No. It’s a simple enough case. Let’s just get it over with. The uncertainty is killing me.”
AFTER HER DUTIES WERE FINISHED for the day, Allie walked down to the marina for an early dinner of fish and chips. She sat on a bench on the short boardwalk and stared out at the ocean. Usually the sight of the waves, ceaselessly chasing each other and washing up on the beach with a roar, soothed her and allowed her to gather her thoughts.