Another Macintosh. Was everyone in town related? Clate decided not to ask who had provided the description of him. Frye's Cove, he was coming to discover, was the sort of town where talk of newcomers spread fast. He shook hands with Andrew Macintosh, who appeared to be a few years older than he was; his hands were thick and callused, as Clate's had been when he'd worked construction. "Pleased to meet you. Is Piper Macintosh—"
"My sister. She has another brother and a father in town, too." Deep green eyes assessed Clate with remarkable frankness; Andrew Macintosh didn't smile. "We look after her."
So, he was serving notice that his little sister wasn't just out on her isolated road all by herself; she had meaty men folk checking up on her. Clate didn't blame the man. In Andrew Macintosh's place, he'd do the same. "Tight family?"
"Very."
"That's nice. I doubt if I'll be seeing much of your sister. I'll be in and out of town. I have no intention of becoming a permanent resident."
That seemed to sit well with Andrew. "You've met Piper?"
"Briefly." Prudence kept him from going into detail about where, when, and how, although he suspected Andrew Macintosh was less likely than his little sister to skin the newcomer in town alive.
Andrew grunted something about welcoming Clate to town and departed. Message delivered, message received. He didn't like it that his sister no longer had an eighty-seven-year-old woman as her only neighbor, but Clate was to have no illusions that Piper was on her own, unwatched and unprotected.
As he pushed on into the old-fashioned pharmacy, he wondered what Piper herself might make of her big brother's warning. This, after all, was a woman who'd gone toe-to-toe with a stranger before sunup over some damned stinky hunk of root.
Leave it alone, Clate warned himself as he soaked in the atmosphere of the turn-of-the-century pharmacy and found his way to a bottle of simple, no-nonsense aspirin. His gaze traveled to the prophylactic section, then darted back to the aspirin. Hell. If Andrew Macintosh saw that, he'd jump to all the wrong conclusions and there'd be fur flying in Frye's Cove. Clate had no designs on anyone's little sister.
None.
Not even when he thought of her trim body marching off with her smelly root.
He swore to himself, viciously, and grabbed the bottle of aspirin before he drove himself mad. Quiet, isolation, solitude, rest. They were what he needed, what he wanted, and why, ultimately, his instincts had drawn him to Cape Cod.
* * *
Chapter 3
Piper stared out across a narrow strip of sandy beach, her bicycle parked next to her on the side of the road. She tried to concentrate on the scenery. A few people were out surf fishing, a half dozen children were racing across the wet sand. The tide was out, the water in the bay as blue as the sky, sparkling in the early afternoon sun. There was almost no wind. It was still early in the season. After the Fourth of July, even Frye's Cove would be crowded with tourists, sightseers, summer residents.
She heard a car on the road behind her, but didn't bother turning around. She wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone. Then the car stopped next to her bicycle, and finally she turned.
Clate Jackson had his window rolled down, his eyes on her. He drove a BMW, probably rented or leased if he'd flown up from Tennessee. "Must be your day off."
"I'm self-employed. I can make my own hours."
"What do you do?"
"A bunch of stuff." She took a breath, calming herself. He couldn't read minds. He wouldn't know what she and Hannah had discussed that morning. Her bike ride and her aunt's bizarre talk about buried treasure had her hot and jittery; she could feel sweat trickling between her breasts. "I'm sort of an expert on traditional early-American crafts. I teach, consult, write. I sell some of my own stuff, mostly just breads and open-kettle jams."
"You work out of your house?" His question was matter-of-fact, but his eyes were a dark, deep blue, unreadable, as if he were still gauging just how big a pest his only neighbor would prove to be.
"I converted a shed on my property into a small studio and I have an office in my house."
He didn't seem too pleased by that idea. She could see him calculating her opportunities to get in his way if she didn't go off to work.
"I stay very busy," she added, then grinned. Or tried to. She felt stiff and self-conscious. She was rattled and tired, and a day of bike riding and Hannah had taken its toll. She wished she'd worn one of her own shirts, at least, instead of her brother's. "Just not today. I'm teaching a class tonight in yarn dyeing. Actually, valerian makes a decent yellow dye." She was deliberately goading him and had no idea why. "But I'm using chamomile flowers tonight."
"From your own garden, I trust."
"And one of my student's." Her tone cooled. "Chamomile's a relatively common herb."
"Harmless?"
His drawl rolled up her spine. "Quite."
He shifted, and the light caught a two-inch white scar along his jaw. She'd missed that one last night. She didn't know how. With the nick of a scar at the corner of his left eye, he looked tough, masculine, not a man she would want even to attempt to deceive.