Read Online The Wishing Tide by Barbara Davis - Free Book Online Page A

trucks are allowed through, so I expect the pickings will be slim. Hot meals from now on, though. I promise.”
    “As far as I’m concerned you can just keep making these. Most bachelors are good with eggs in any form.”
    Single—or at least not married. It was more than he’d volunteered about himself in three days. But then, she’d guessed as much. No ring, and on his own for the entire winter. Not that he couldn’t have a girlfriend or fiancée tucked away somewhere. She had a momentary flash of a twentysomething sorority brunette in a twinset and tasseled loafers. Or maybe she was thinking of Melinda Bingham, the Pilates-sculpted wife of Bruce’s college roommate, with her Volvo and her perfect twins. Lane shook off the thought with a mental shudder. The last thing she wanted to think about was Bruce’s friends—especially the lofty Professor Bingham.
    Looking down at her hand, she realized she was still stirring her coffee and had been for a very long time, her spoon clinking absently against the side of her mug. Setting the spoon on the edge of her plate, she cast about for something to say. She ended up settling for the obvious.
    “How’s the research going?”
    If Michael heard her he gave no sign, his eyes busy wandering the kitchen as if he were trying to remember where he’d left something. Eventually he must have felt her gaze on him.
    “Sorry, did you say something?”
    “I asked how the research was going.”
    He rolled his eyes and waved the question away. “It’s going. Let’s leave it at that. How about you? How are the . . . unimportant . . . articles coming along?”
    Lane felt her cheeks go warm. There was a teasing flavor to his words, and something else, too, that bordered on censure. It made her uncomfortable.
    “It’s going fine, actually, in light of all the distractions. That’s the thing about writing the unimportant stuff. You know a month after it hits the stands, no one’s going to remember a word of it, so there’s very little pressure. Today, I’m putting the final touches on an article about vintage soap makers. Tomorrow I’ll be starting a piece on microbreweries.” She forced a lighthearted grin. “No deep thought required.”
    “Is that how you want it, or just how it is?”
    “How I want it?”
    “Is it that you don’t have any deep thoughts? Or that you just don’t feel like doing the work?”
    He was using his professor voice, and Lane didn’t appreciate it one bit. She didn’t need a lecture from a stranger, especially one for whom she’d grudgingly agreed to inconvenience herself.
    “It fills the time during the off-season,” she replied coolly before pivoting to a safer subject. “I was thinking, since it looks like you’re going to be here awhile, we could fix up an office for you. There are some old desks in storage on the third floor. We could haul one down to your suite and set you up in the turret room. The view—”
    “I’d rather use the library off the front parlor,” he said, cutting her off. “The desk is huge, which means I’d have plenty of room to spread out. I figure as long as the inn is empty I won’t be in anyone’s way. And it’s full of old books. I’m comfortable with books.”
    Lane couldn’t help frowning. What kind of person passed up an ocean view for a dark, windowless room, even if it was lined with oldbooks? The literary kind, she supposed, who chose to spend his sabbaticals researching dead Victorian writers.
    “I don’t have a problem with it,” she answered with a shrug. “But are you sure? The view is spectacular. You can see all the way to the lighthouse. It really is quite breathtaking.”
    Michael paused, his coffee mug halfway to his lips. “One man’s breathtaking is another man’s distraction, Ms. Kramer.”
    Once again she stared at him, not sure if he was teasing or in earnest. He’d delivered the line as if it were from some dark Shakespearian play.
It wasn’t, was it?
In the end,