The Men of Thorne Island. Cynthia Thomason

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СКАЧАТЬ centuries. While the decorative moldings and wooden ceiling planks in every room were clearly from the 1890s, the bath fixtures probably dated from the 1950s. Small black-and-white tiles lined the lavatory walls and the small circular shower, and provided a nice backdrop for white porcelain fixtures. The toilet with its oddly squat shape worked sufficiently well, but the night before, Sara had carefully checked the oak seat for splinters before using it.

      The inn had an adequate hot-water heater, though insufficient pressure. It took Sara longer than normal to rinse shampoo from her hair.

      It was eight-thirty by the time she’d dressed, dried her hair and secured it in a clip at her nape. Obviously morning activities started early on Thorne Island. With Nick gone, she’d have to scrounge around his kitchen again in search of coffee. A trip to Brody’s grocery store and a thorough cleaning of her own area of the big kitchen were first on her list after she had a jolt of caffeine. She didn’t intend to “borrow” from Nick any more than she had to.

      With sunlight streaming in the windows, the clean section of kitchen gleamed even more brightly than it had the night before. Unfortunately the grimy section looked even worse. But Sara’s resolve was bolstered by the sight of the automatic drip coffeemaker on Nick’s counter. Dark brew steamed from the glass pot, and a clean crockery mug and sugar packets sat next to it. Nick had obviously left the supplies where she would find them. Sara smiled to herself. If he didn’t work so hard at being annoying, Sara could almost tolerate Nick for this one friendly gesture.

      After her second cup, she took cleaning supplies from the cupboard and set to work on the stove. Layers of grime slowly dissolved under the onslaught of bleach and pine-scented solvent. An hour later she decided to tackle the brick floor and set about finding a mop and a bucket. She spied a wood-paneled door in the middle of an interior kitchen wall and thought it might be a cleaning closet. She grabbed the knob, but Nick’s voice stopped her from turning it.

      “I don’t think you should go into the cellar,” he warned through the back screen door. The hinges squeaked as he opened it and came inside. He wore a pair of cargo shorts that showed off muscular, tanned calves. A T-shirt with the faded logo of a Cleveland tavern on the front clung to his broad chest and disappeared into the waistband of the shorts. A Cleveland Indians ball cap sat low on his forehead, but she still had an all-too-intimate look at his silver-flecked eyes and freshly shaven face.

      For a brief moment Sara found it difficult to breathe. She covered the dysfunction with a hard swallow. Nick Bass had a certain indefinable appeal in the bright light of day, even if he was telling her she couldn’t do something. “Why not?” she said. “What’s down there?”

      He settled onto the bar stool and shoved the hat back. “Spiders. Cobwebs. Some old barrels and a few dusty bottles of wine.”

      “I’m not too excited about the spiders, but I’d still like to go down.”

      “You can’t see anything because the lightbulb burned out years ago.”

      “And you never replaced it?”

      He shrugged. “I will…tomorrow.”

      A burned out lightbulb was hardly an insurmountable problem. “I’ll use the flashlight,” Sara said.

      “Suit yourself, but if it’s wine you’re after, I’ve brought a few bottles upstairs already. You’re welcome to sample those.”

      “Thank you. I may take you up on that offer, but if there’s a real wine cellar down those steps, I want to see it.”

      He leaned back and studied her face, as if judging the level of her enthusiasm. “How would you feel about seeing six acres of real vineyard?”

      Amusement underlined his offer and prevented Sara from taking him seriously. “And just where might this vineyard be?” she asked skeptically.

      He hitched his thumb toward the back door. “Out there.”

      Amusement or not, he’d hooked her and was reeling her in. “Here? On the island?”

      “You don’t know much about your inheritance, do you?”

      All commitment to cleaning fled from her mind. She ran to the door and looked out, but all she saw was a row of overgrown box hedges, wild winter cress and the yellow tops of dandelions. “I don’t see any vineyard,” she said.

      He’d come up behind her and startled her by taking her elbow. “Then come with me, Miss Sara Crawford, because it’s definitely out there.”

      Even with his limp, Nick easily navigated the un-pruned shrubs and prickly pears that poked their stubborn twigs between the flagstones in the pathway behind the Cozy Cove Inn. Sara had a more difficult time and was thankful when they emerged into an area only moderately suffering from nature gone wild. And as far as she could see, the gently rolling terrain before her was lined with rows of equally spaced posts and clinging twisted vines of various thicknesses. Definitely a vineyard!

      She knew enough about cultivating grapes to be captivated by the prospect of owning a vineyard. She’d been fascinated by her tour of the California wine country the year before and had listened avidly to experts explaining the wine-making process. The dry acreage of Thorne Island was far different from the lush green carpet of Napa Valley, but it was obvious that there had once been a flourishing wine business on her island.

      She wandered among the rows of thick trunks, stopping to examine the cordons and canes that split from mother plants and ran along wires from post to post. She used her thumbnail to scrape the bark off several plants, found green wood underneath and determined that the core trunks were very much alive. She called over her shoulder to Nick, who had stopped trying to keep up with her. “When was wine last made on this island?”

      “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s been six years at least. You won’t even get one dried-up old raisin to harvest now.” He spread his arms to encompass the whole six acres. “Look at this mess, Sara. For Pete’s sake, I was kidding about this island having a real vineyard.”

      “Then the joke’s on you, Bass,” she hollered back. She plucked a cluster of shriveled fruit from a healthy shoot and ran back to him. “See this, Nick? Once upon a time these determined little ‘raisins’ probably made a fine chardonnay.”

      HIS LITTLE JOKE had backfired. Nick had figured if he took Sara out among the arid field that had once been a vineyard, she might see the futility of trying to make something of her flagging inheritance. Thorne Island’s glory days were long over. She simply needed to recognize that and leave the island and its crusty inhabitants to themselves.

      He took a beer and a sandwich to Brody’s cottage and joined his companions for lunch. It killed him to have to admit the error in judgment he’d made this morning, especially since the other guys were counting on him to rid them of their interfering landlady.

      At first he tried to put the blame on the little guy. “Hell, Ryan,” he said, “this is all your doing. You just had to go out there and pluck and prune and probably baby-talk those plants into staying alive.”

      “I didn’t know what I was doing,” Ryan argued. “I was just passing time thinking it’s a shame to let anything die in the winter frost. My clipping was just dumb luck.”

      Brody scowled at him and ran his hand over his thinning hair. “I told you to leave those plants alone. What do we care about growing a bunch of sissy grapes, anyway? We’re fishermen and fortune СКАЧАТЬ