"Sure. No problem."

Zoe felt his eyes on her as she turned, her back to him as she and her lime-green kayak scooted over the calm water. Her strokes were even, rhythmic, with more energy than before she'd talked to him. She paddled past the lobster pound and started to move in closer to the rockbound point, but an ancient, battered lobster boat was in her way, motionless in the water about twenty feet from shore. Approaching it on its nonworking side was a good way to get run over-the pilot could easily swing his boat around before he realized she was there.

She paused in the water, debating her options.

Then she squinted at the faded buoy atop the pilothouse and recognized Bruce's colors.

It was the old boat he'd rented to McGrath.

"Ah, hell."

He must have seen her talking to Teddy Shelton. He'd positioned his boat so that she'd have to paddle in a wide arc out into choppier water or cut between him and the shoreline, where she'd be within just a few feet of him. Working or nonworking side didn't matter, because J.B. wasn't on the water to catch lobsters.

Zoe was too tired and sore even to try sneaking around him the long way. Straightening her spine, she took powerful strokes and maneuvered her kayak toward shore, debating whether she should just land here on the rocks, hoist her kayak on her shoulder and walk the rest of the way. But then she'd be acting as if she'd done something stupid, and she hadn't.

The stern of J.B.'s boat was pointed at her. She could see him in the pilothouse and decided just to paddle along the shore as if she didn't have a care in the world.

J.B. sauntered out and leaned over the gouged working side of his boat, where Bruce and before him his father had checked and rebaited their traps, day after day, in every manner of weather. "Want a ride?" he asked as if he just happened to be there.

"I'm fine. Thanks."

"Long way back across the harbor."

She kept paddling. "Wind's at my back."

"I saw you have a little chat with Shelton." His tone was unreadable. "Thought I'd have to jump in the water and come to your rescue."

Zoe narrowed her eyes up at him, and all she could think was-damn, he really did look like he'd jumped off a Winslow Homer seascape. He was tight-lipped, stoic-looking, sexy, so at ease in his boat he might have grown up on the water.

But he also wasn't happy with her at all. Not that she let it bother her. "What if Teddy is what he says he is and you're just on his case because he thinks you're a jerk?"

"Did he tell you I was a jerk?"

"Actually, he referred to you as ‘that FBI asshole.'"

"That's what you two talked about? Me?"

"We didn't talk about anything." She was beginning to feel restless, exposed. "I have to get going. If I stop paddling, my shoulders are going to seize up on me, and then you will have to rescue me."

He stood up straight and smiled at her. "Could be fun."

She ignored him and the unsettling picture in her mind of the two of them in the cold Atlantic. "I'll see you later?"

"Most definitely."

He'd been kissed and called an asshole. J.B. figured that provided a certain balance to his day. He puttered on back to the town docks and tied up his boat, then walked over to Christina West's café for her incomparable Maine crab cakes and coffee. It was cold out on the water. He could see Zoe still making her way across the harbor. Her cheeks were red from the wind and cold when he'd cornered her.

Just as well she didn't trust him. Who knew what would have happened if she'd climbed into his boat with him.

The café was packed with tourists. He had to wait, then settle for a table by the door. But the crab cakes and coffee were hot, and that was fine with him.

Christina slipped out from behind her counter to join him for "thirty seconds." She looked calmer than she had at breakfast. "Did you see my lunatic sister on her kayak?"

J.B. dipped a chunk of crab cake into a red-pepper coulis. "Looks like she's having a good time." "That's Zoe. If she's sweating, she's having a good time."

For no reason at all, at least none that he wanted to contemplate, J.B. thought of slim, blond-haired, blue-eyed, very female ex-cop Zoe sweating in bed with him. He said nothing to her little sister, and, mercifully, Christina slipped back behind the counter.

It was going to be that kind of day, and he couldn't blame the little nothing of a kiss, never mind that it had been a lit match to a fuse. He'd been thinking about Zoe in bed with him even before she gave in to impulse.

Almost as if on cue, the café crowd gave out a collective gasp. At one of the window tables, an older woman said, "Oh, my! That kayak turned right over, didn't it?" The woman across from her nodded. "She got caught in the wake of that speedboat."

J.B. rose, and Christina shot back around the counterand joined him. "Is she okay?" Zoe had almost made it to her aunt's house on its rocky point before she went ass over teakettle into the water. Her kayak was still upright, and she was trying to climb back in.

Christina touched his arm. "Don't go after her. You won't get there in time to do any good. If she needs help, she'll blow her whistle." She gestured at the offending speedboat. "Most of the boaters look out for kayakers, but that guy's a menace."

J.B. spotted Bruce Young's lobster boat coming back into the harbor from the northeast. "Bruce can get to her if she's in trouble."

Christina rolled her eyes. "He's probably laughing his ass off."

"Is anyone besides you happy your sister's back?"

She smiled. "You are. You were looking kind of bored before Zoe showed up."

He said nothing and watched Zoe flop into her kayak. She reached back into the water and grabbed her paddle, and in another few seconds was paddling again, making good time.

A cheer erupted from the café.

"I've got to get back to work," Christina said. "Why don't you and Zoe come over for dinner tonight? I'll cook. Zoe tends to throw things into dishes that don't belong there. Like her flax seed and Toaster Strudels."

She retreated, and J.B., resisting the image of Zoe in cold, wet, tight-fitting clothes, returned to his coffee and crab cakes before they could get cold.

Fourteen

At high tide, like it was now, Bruce's cabin wasn't too bad. At low tide, it smelled like dead fish. The wet, gray sand developed pinprick holes that made tiny sucking sounds, like something was alive down there. Probably was. Teddy didn't want to know what. He'd worked at the lobster pound, but he just did what he was told. He was out of his element on the ocean. If he had any sense, he'd quit this job and head back to New York.

He'd never have come to Goose Harbor in the first place if he had half a brain.

He flipped a card onto the red-and-white-checked oilcloth that was duct-taped to the table. He was playing solitaire with a limp, grimy deck of cards with a picture of a lobster on the back, hoping some kind of plan of action would materialize in his head.

There was nothing for him in New York. An ex-wife who'd dumped him over the guns, long before he'd ended up in prison. No kids. His parents were dead. He had a brother somewhere.

He'd decided in prison that his family had something wrong with them. They had bad luck. In his early days behind bars, he read a bunch of Stephen King novels and concluded his family was cursed. Made sense to him. His father had been angry and abusive. His mother had been a mouse when he was around and a tiger when he wasn't. They had no other family-there were vague references to other Sheltons upstate, but who knew? His parents were also liars. Teddy hated liars.