A Bride For Jackson Powers. Dixie Browning

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      Three

      Stress. His doctor had told him four years ago, when he’d gone in for his last annual physical, that stress was a silent killer. Since then Jax had concentrated on relaxing whenever he could find time. It worked pretty well as long as nothing happened to blow his orderly routine, which could accommodate any number of international maritime disputes, ship disasters, oil spills and the like.

      It was what happened outside his professional life that tended to screw up the works. A couple of impulsive acts and his whole life had suddenly lost steerage. Impulse one had been buying an old relic of a schooner last fall. For nearly a century the Lizzie-Linda had worked the waterways from Maryland to North Carolina, first as an oyster boat, then as a freighter. There wasn’t a lick of paint left on her anywhere. Five inches of her eight-inch log bottom were rotten, yet something about her graceful lines and proud bearing had struck an unsuspected lode of romanticism buried deep inside him. For the cost of hauling and back storage he’d bought her and eventually found a place where he could keep her. Since then he’d spent most of his spare time and a considerable portion of his funds trying to patch her up.