Love Overboard Part 2

"Aunt Tess wouldn't do a thing like that."

"Oh! A lot you know about your aunt Tess. Suddenly it all makes perfect sense. The woman is vicious! She probably broke my toilet. I'd bet money on it."

"Ghosts don't go around breaking toilets.

They moan and drag chains and walk through walls."

"Then how else would you explain my house problems?"

"If you're trying to get me to admit to negligence, it isn't working. It's an old house, and things break. Although I have to admit it is strange. That porch was in good condition when I moved out. Wood just doesn't rot that fast. Tell you what, as soon as we get back to Camden, I'll have a talk with Aunt Tess. See if I can calm her down."

Stephanie gave him a black look. "You're just humoring me. You don't really think she broke my toilet, do you?"

The grin widened. "She was the wife of a pirate. She could be capable of anything."

"You think I need Ghostbusters?"

"I think you need to go below and make sure Ace doesn't have a woman stowed in his bunk."

An hour later Stephanie was up to her elbows in chocolate chip cookie batter. "You mean to tell me Lucy bakes cookies like this every day?"

Ace picked a handful of chocolate morsels out of the huge bowl and popped them into his mouth.

"Yup. She gets up about five and starts the stove. By six o'clock she's made hot coffee, and she starts chucking trays of cookies in. Lucy just keeps the cookies going all day while she bakes other stuff. Usually she makes the dough the night before."

Stephanie dropped a glob of dough onto a cookie sheet. "Don't these poor people ever get any real cookies? You know, like Oreos and Fig Newtons?"

"Nope. We force them to eat homemade," Ace said, reaching for more chocolate.

Stephanie opened the oven door and felt her mind go momentarily slack at the sight of wall-to-wall ham. Hot air rushed out at her, carrying the spicy smell of cloves and Lucy's special honey glaze. There was just enough room at the top for one tray of cookies, so she slid it in.

Stephanie closed the door on the ham and cookies and threw a skeptical glance at Ace. "You think this is going to work?"

"Sure. Just watch the little temperature gauge on the front of the stove."

Stephanie squinted at the gauge. Five hundred degrees. You could probably bake a brick at that temperature, she thought. She stared at the stove for five minutes, then opened the door and took out a tray of charred cookies. "How do we get this sucker cooled off? Fast."

Ace pulled a stack of paper shopping bags from a cubbyhole under the sink. "Lucy wets these and puts them in the oven. She says it brings the temperature down."

Stephanie soaked the bags and stuffed them in around the ham. She added another tray of cookies, closed the door, and secretly tried to bribe G.o.d into lowering the heat. If you just do this one thing for me, she promised, I'll never say another curseword, I'll eat all my vegetables, I'll drive at the speed limit.

Mr. and Mrs. Pease carefully lowered themselves down the fo'c'sle stairs. "Isn't this cozy?" Mrs. Pease said. "And it smells wonderful down here."

Mr. Pease poured two mugs of coffee and peered into the bowl of cookie dough. "Did you use oat flour?" he asked Stephanie.

"Nope. Just plain old flour flour."

He shook his head. "Oat flour's the secret to a chewy cookie. You have to use some oat flour, and you can't bake them too long."

Mrs. Pease took a mug from her husband. "He's a wonderful cookie baker," she told Stephanie. "You'd never know they were homemade."

Stephanie sniffed and rubbed her eyes. "Is it always this smoky in here?" she asked Ace.

"Smoky?" Ace removed his dark gla.s.ses. "You're right. It's smoky." He checked the flue and shook his head. "I don't know what's wrong. The flue is okay."

"Maybe something's burning in the oven," Mrs. Pease suggested.

Stephanie opened the door and jumped back as a wall of smoke and flame rolled out at her.

"Jeez," Ace said, "looks like the bags caught fire. That never happened when Lucy did it."

Stephanie stuck her hand into a thick potholder mitt, pulled the flaming bags out of the oven, and hurled them into the sink.

Mrs. Pease put her hand to her heart. "We're gonna die. The s.h.i.+p's gonna burn to a cinder, and we're gonna drown."

Stephanie fanned the air with a hand towel. "This is how we lower the temperature in the woodstove," she said. "Nothing to worry about. We do this all the time."

Mr. Pease came over to take a closer look at the oven. "I didn't realize being a s.h.i.+p's cook was so complicated."

Ace removed the tray of smoking cookies and set them on the counter. "Man, look at these mothers. They've been cremated. And the ham! Looks like a meteor I saw once in the Smithsonian."

Stephanie squinted at the smoldering ham. "It is sort of black. Maybe it just needs basting," she said hopefully. She poked at it with a long-handled fork. "Probably we should pick the ashes off it first." She closed the oven door and checked the gauge. Five hundred degrees. She gave it a whack with the fork to make sure it was working. "Darn." She turned to Ace. "Any other ideas?"

Ace put his dark gla.s.ses back on. "It looks better this way."

The first mate looked in at them. "Stephanie here? Captain wants to see her."

Stephanie handed the fork over to Ace. "Does he make people walk the plank?"

Ivan unconsciously gripped the wheel a little tighter when he saw Stephanie. She had a sweat stain running down the center of her tank top, her hair was plastered against her damp forehead, her face was flushed under a layer of soot and flour, and cookie dough clung to her s.h.i.+rt and shorts. She caught sight of a pelican fis.h.i.+ng the sh.o.r.eline and stopped in her tracks. A wondrous smile lit her face, leaving no doubt in Ivan's mind that this was the first time she'd seen a pelican in flight.

She turned and waved at Ivan. "It's a pelican!" she shouted.

Ivan took a quick breath as emotion knifed through him. It was unnatural, he thought- the way she could knock the wind out of him with a simple wave and smile. Maybe unnatural wasn't precisely right, maybe supernatural was a better choice. What else would explain the instant attraction, the surge of joy at sharing a pelican sighting? h.e.l.l, he didn't even like pelicans. They were big, dumb, ugly, brown birds. He shook his head. He was losing it. Stephanie Lowe was making him crazy. She had him blaming a rise in his testosterone level on a defenseless three-hundred-year-old ghost.

"Did you see it?" she asked wide-eyed as she approached the helm. "I never realized they were so big."

He reached out with one hand and drew her beside him, feeling a rush of tenderness. "You really are something," he said, plucking dried cookie batter from her hair. "I'm almost afraid to ask why you're head-to-foot soot. Could it have something to do with the black smoke that came billowing out of the galley five minutes ago?"

"A minor setback in my cookie making," Stephanie told him, trying to sound casual, almost swooning every time his fingertips touched her temple.

"How bad was the fire?"

"It was just some bags burning in the oven. I think we might even be able to eat the ham."

He did a fast mental a.s.sessment of their course, searching his mind for a night harbor that had a restaurant. "Was that Mrs. Pease I heard saying she was going to be burned to a crisp and drown?"

"She got a little excited." Stephanie put her hand on the wheel, feeling the polished wood slide under her fingertips.

"I guess I can relate to that," Ivan said, watching to see if she caught his implication. "Stephanie Lowe," he whispered, his voice a s.e.xy growl, "you stir up the pirate blood in me."

"OmiG.o.d."

Ivan tipped his head back and laughed. It had been the perfect response. It said it all. He motioned for Stephanie to take the wheel and stood behind her. "Now, my fair pirate's wench, time for thee to learn the ways of the s.h.i.+p."

"Are you kidding me? You mean I really get to drive?"

"No, you don't get to 'drive.' You get to steer. And while you steer, we can talk."

"If I'm the one steering, why are you still hanging on to the wheel?"

Ivan pressed himself lightly into her back and murmured into her hair, brus.h.i.+ng his lips against the sh.e.l.l of her ear. "Because it's a sneaky way of getting you where I want you."

Stephanie closed her eyes and swallowed as a combination of panic and desire rushed through her. He was good. She had to give him that. He'd made sure everything was right up front in a voice that sounded like rustling sheets. So what's next? She wanted new experiences. How about a roll in the hay with a scoundrel? She cringed at the word scoundrel. Six months ago she would have said jerk. Now here she was thinking about ghosts and pirates and scoundrels. And romance.

She supposed those were the things her move to Maine was all about. She needed some fun and some whimsy in her life. She needed to make friends. And maybe she needed to have a real honest-to-goodness love affair. She was pretty sure a romance with Ivan Rasmussen wasn't a good idea-but nature seemed to be taking its course in spite of her misgivings.

Ivan tugged at Stephanie's hair. "Do you feel it, Steph?" he asked. "What do you suppose this is between us? l.u.s.t? Love? Magic?"

The huge sails rattled, and Ivan spun the wheel to change direction and catch the wind.

Stephanie licked her lips, tasting the salt spray that bathed her face when the boat bit into the sea. "It's too soon for love, I hardly know you!"

"What about love at first sight?"

"Love at first sight is l.u.s.t."

"Okay," he said. "What about l.u.s.t at first sight? Are you in l.u.s.t?"

"Definitely not!"

He grinned down at her. "Liar."

He liked her bravado and her ability to go forward, and for the first time in two months he felt at ease with his decision to sell Haben. Somehow, he knew it had fallen into the right hands. Whether Aunt Tess thought so was another issue.

Stephanie turned to face him. "We haven't touched on magic."

"Magic is a definite possibility. Any ghost who would stoop to s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up a toilet wouldn't hesitate to mess with people's lives."

He looked dangerous when he smiled like that, Stephanie thought. He was teasing-on many levels. It was darned unnerving, and the beard served as the perfect foil for a smile that would have been a definite tip-off to Little Red Riding Hood. Worst of all, she couldn't tell where the teasing ended, but she suspected he actually did believe in ghosts.

Chapter 3.

Stephanie sprawled on the polished fo'c'sle roof and stared at the black sky and bright stars. There aren't stars like this over Jersey City, she thought. Jersey City had too many lights of its own to be bothered with stars. And if you did see stars, they weren't close like Maine stars. Jersey City stars were remote, because nature was remote in Jersey City. Jersey City was loud and vital and had great pizza parlors, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a stand of virgin pine. Stephanie closed her eyes and admitted to herself that she definitely missed the pizza. You didn't just wipe away your old life and start over without a few misgivings, and there had been times in the past two months when she thought she might have made too drastic a change in her lifestyle. Probably she should have moved to Connecticut for a couple of years, bought a few things fromL. L. Bean, then moved to Maine.

It was the house that had pushed her into it, she decided. When she was nine years old she'd spent the summer with Lucy in Camden and had carried the fascination with the big white house with her ever since. It was one of those bits of baggage that forever floated loose in the mind, surfacing during moments of boredom, triggering fits of fantasy and vague discontent.

Even though she hadn't known the history of the house, it had conjured up images of black-frocked, bearded sea captains and their patient wives. She'd recently learned that it had been built in 1805 on the foundation of Red Rasmussen's lair. It was a magnificent huge box of a house, with a handsome cupola surrounded by a picket-fenced widow's walk. It had high ceilings with elaborate plaster medallions, black marble fireplaces, elegant moldings, and woodwork that had been carried by schooner from the mahogany forests of South America.

It sat on a hill overlooking Camden Harbor and was frequently wreathed in fog. It was a house that had weathered hurricane winds, sleet, and snow and had not succ.u.mbed to aluminum siding. To a nine-year-old from New Jersey, it had seemed very romantic and exciting. When Stephanie reconsidered it at twenty- nine, it was Haben's endurance that impressed her the most. Haben was a survivor. It had been built with quality and pride. It felt stable to her at a time when her life was looking shaky.

Ivan stood watching Stephanie. She has secrets, he thought. She could be disarmingly candid, and yet he had the feeling she was guarding something. She reminded him of a cat that was always listening. Behind the good humor was a constant wariness. It wasn't cynical, he decided, but rather a kind of mental and physical alertness, as if she continually waited for something to happen. He had a fleeting thought that he might be the cause of all that tension, but quickly discarded it. Don't flatter yourself, Rasmussen, he mused, this woman's been up against something a lot more dangerous than your pirate routine.

She was lying flat out on the deckhouse roof, but she wasn't relaxed. Ivan felt his heart constrict with the suspicion that she probably hadn't relaxed in so long she'd lost the ability to do so.

Ivan saw her eyelids flutter open and knew he'd been detected even though he hadn't made a move or uttered a sound. The woman had radar. The man who married her would never get away with anything. It was a disconcerting thought. He'd known her for approximately ten hours, and he was thinking about marriage. It was Aunt Tess, he decided. She was getting even with him for selling the house. "I'm a bachelor," he mumbled under his breath. "I like being a bachelor. Get off my back!"

Stephanie propped herself on one elbow and looked at Ivan. "Were you mumbling at me?"

"I was talking to Aunt Tess."

"She always sails with you?"

"Never."

Stephanie raised her eyebrows. "This is a special occasion, huh?"

"I'm beginning to think so."

She sat up and swung her legs onto the deck. "This conversation is making me nervous. Is it leading up to something?"

"Not if I can help it."

"Hmmm," she said, throwing him the cool, appraising look she'd cultivated for teenage con men and twelve-year-old drug dealers. "Okay, then we have an understanding."

"Yup." He eyed her with a critical squint. "Just exactly what are the terms of this understanding?"

Stephanie fidgeted. Darned if she knew. She just wanted to steer the conversation away from ghosts and s.e.x. She didn't feel especially brave or knowledgeable about either of those subjects. "I thought the terms were obvious."

"No involvement?"

"Right," Stephanie said, "no involvement. Physical or otherwise." Then she smiled at him. It was too late. They were up to their armpits in involvement.

Ivan smiled back at her. "As the blood relative of Red Rasmussen, I feel it my cavalier obligation to lie once in a while to a pretty woman. What's your excuse?"

"My father's grandmother was a Hungarian Gypsy. My great-uncle Fred defected from the army. My great-grandfather's brother was hanged for rustling."

"That explains it."