Hale's Point Read Free Page B

relieved that I’m leaving. I’m very messy and very unexpected, and
you’re not entirely sure what the old man would think about my staying in the
house. God knows, you don’t want to displease R.H. Everyone who knows my father craves his approval. I’ve been there.” He looked
up at the enormous, whitewashed brick house, each window fitted with its own
crisp, green-and-white-striped summer awning. “But I can’t go back.”
    He descended another step and turned to face her, their
heights almost level now. “He’s lucky to have found you. You’re orderly and
right-thinking and good at giving commands. You’re him! You’re Raleigh Hale,
only— How old are you?”
    “Twenty-three,” she replied woodenly.
    “Only forty-five years younger, and…” He hesitated, then
lifted a hand to her face, trailed his fingertips lightly along her jawline , and traced her lower lip with his thumb. “You have
a much, much nicer mouth.”
    With a gentle pressure under her chin, he tilted her face
toward his. He was suddenly very close to her. When he closed his eyes, so did
she. Then she felt his warm mouth on hers, the rough sandpaper of his stubble
grazing the soft skin around her lips.
    In a moment, the kiss was over. It had been fleeting,
scratchy-sweet. A goodbye kiss between two people who had only known each other
for ten strange minutes in the middle of the night and would never meet again.
Harley was breathless, and her legs felt weak.
    “Goodbye.” He shrugged. “Whatever your name is.”
    She took a steadying breath. “Harley.”
    He smiled. “Harley. Thanks.”
    He turned and made his awkward way down the porch steps, then
disappeared into the darkness without once looking back.
    ***
    Harley raced up and down halls and in and out of rooms,
slamming windows shut against the sudden, torrential rain. It was like a living
thing, a monster, rattling the sashes and soaking her with its spray as she
struggled to keep it out of Raleigh Hale’s home. She grabbed a pile of towels
from the linen closet and went from window to window, drying off woodwork,
varnished floors, and the furniture she had so painstakingly polished the day
before. She saved her own room for last.
    Tucker is out in this . According to the clock on
her night table, it was 3:17 a.m. He had left two hours ago. During most of
that time, the rain had been no worse than a light drizzle, yet even then, she
had worried about him. And now…
    Through the closed windows she could hear the crashing of
storm waves on the beach below the house and the scraping of wind-whipped
branches against the roof. And, of course, the driving rain. She thought about
his limp, about the obvious pain he was in, pain made all the worse by her
attack with the baseball bat. A wave of guilt overcame her. How far had he
gotten? Had he gotten a ride? The only logical road for him to have taken didn’t
see a lot of traffic at night. And on a night like this… She pictured the
road, bleak and deserted. No gas stations, no convenience stores, no shelter of
any kind.
    Harley took her rain-dampened robe off and threw on the
clothes she’d worn the day before. She looked in the mirror, at her mouth. The
skin surrounding it still felt raw from the contact with his prickly stubble.
She ran a finger over the sensitive skin, her mind unfocused. When she snapped
out of it and saw herself in the mirror, she suddenly realized why she had
gotten dressed.
    ***
    Tucker Hale leaned back against a chain-link fence, hunched
over, and pulled up the collar of his denim jacket. He smiled ruefully. He had
just left a dry house that he had traveled thousands of miles to get to—and the
most attractive woman he had seen in a long time—so that he could stand out
here in this hellish rainstorm in the middle of the night and get soaked to the
bone. It was as if the rain were beating on him with a thousand little fists.
Harley and her baseball bat couldn’t have done any worse.
    Harley. Until he’d