The Trouble with Magic (Loveswept) Read Free

close reach, across the wind at a right angle. Instinctively, he felt the change in the wind, knew when to bow to the boom and when to shift his weight for balance. He watched her closely for a while before visibly beginning to relax and seeming almost to enjoy the ride. Almost.
    She lowered her gaze, too amused to look at him. Were his earlier qualms due to the size of the dinghy? Or because her sailing skills were an unknown to him? Or to the simple fact that he was about to lose control of the situation?
    She had a feeling that Payton Dunsmore was a man who made a point of always being in control—of his business, of his life, of his emotions. Part of her giggled while the rest of her shuddered to think of his reaction when he discovered exactly how much control he’d relinquished to her when he’d stepped into her boat.
    An affable silence settled over them. Both were introspective; both were aware of the other—though Payton’s attention was divided by the profuse amount of water and the way it rolled and pitched and tossed the tiny boat. Harriet would direct his attention to prominent points of interest and relate a bit of the history of each. He would nod and take note.
    It was a piece of good fortune that he was better looking—more human looking than he’d looked in his pictures, she mused, admiring his strong profile as he watched Cedar Island growing small in the distance behind them. If push came to shove, and she was forced to carry out her plan, his good looks were going to make everything so much easier.
    She liked his thick dark hair. And she liked that he was due for a haircut. A small riot of curls behind his ears was in dire need of being clipped back into perfection—to match the impeccable fit of his suit and the shine of his shoes. She was warming to the idea that he wasn’t the immaculate, flawless man he appeared to be.
    A wave broke and a sudden gust of wind sent a spray of water into his face. She shrugged and grimaced apologetically. He was oblivious to the smile he sent her in return.
    It wasn’t half bad, sailing open waters in something the size of a standard bathtub. As a matter of fact, the ride was so smooth that if he didn’t think about it, he could think of other things.
    For example, he couldn’t get over his impression that she was perhaps the most beautiful woman he’d ever come across. It was ludicrous. His women were generally of the ravishing variety—strikingly attractive faces, luscious bodies, benign personalities. The nicest thing he could say about Harriet Wheaton was that she was a troublemaker with an ordinary body and an interesting face.
    Still, his fingers were itching to touch her. When their eyes met there was a peculiar clutching in his belly that he couldn’t remember experiencing since his high school days. There was even a strange euphoric sensation in his chest when he’d catch glimpses of her with the wind in her face and the excitement of sailing in her dark, dark eyes. It was very queer.
    “Jovette Island is up ahead there,” she called to him over the sound of rushing wind and lapping waves. He turned to look. “When we’re close enough, we’ll come about to get a better view of the house.”
    The island was almost a mile long at its furthest points and forty acres at its widest. Like most of the other one thousand eight hundred-odd islands in the strait, its slopes were thickly quilled with pines and hardwoods. And along with so many of its neighbors, it had become part of a playground for the rich in the late eighteen hundreds.
    Payton had all the data. Jovette Island boasted a soaring Victorian manor with twenty-three rooms, eight bathrooms, jutting towers and turrets, a veranda and a gazebo. But its history went back further than the house’s architecture for it also had a small log cabin preserved on the northeastern, the Canadian, side of the island.
    The house had a two-color slate roof and was dark olive-green, trimmed in gold and