“Hey, Avery!” Arch shouted.
He jerked up his head. The boat, the sails, the course. He hadn’t been paying attention. “Yeah?”
“Ready about?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” He stood, his legs wobbly. “Ready, Mary?”
At Arch’s command, she swung the helm and switched tack, smooth as maple syrup.
“Well done,” Jim said, glad to change the topic.
Mary looked up at him with a liquid gaze. “Do you blame yourself?”
Every single day. “If I hadn’t intervened, she wouldn’t have been hurt.”
“Does she blame you?”
He smashed his lips together. Three months out of pharmacy school, with excellent grades, in a booming economy, and she still didn’t have a job. Only one reason stood out—no one wanted to hire a woman they’d label a cripple. “If she does, she’s forgiven me, or at least acts like she has.”
“You were both so young. It was an accident.”
Jim had heard that countless times, but hearing it on Mary’s pretty lips—somehow he believed it for the first time.
20
Mary stretched flat on her stomach, the sun dissolving her bones, the waves rocking her. Only Jim’s voice kept her awake, his deep cheerful voice, laughing and talking to Arch as they tied the yacht to the pier.
His behavior was more mysterious than that of the sabotage suspects. One minute open and friendly as usual, then the next he’d replace his smile with blank apathy. Yet he’d stayed at her side most of the afternoon, and he’d touched her far more than necessary to teach her to sail, touches that sent warmth vibrating through her.
If she couldn’t figure out Jim Avery, what made her think she could solve a complicated mystery? If only she could discuss the latest developments with Jim, but the silly moratorium on talking about war and sabotage stifled her. She blew out a breath, cooling her forehead.
Beside her on the deck, Gloria Washburn heaved a sigh and sat up, leaning over her bent legs and stroking them. “I can’t believe the government seized the entire supply of silk. Whatever shall we wear for stockings?” Her voice drifted well past Mary.
Yet Arch laughed at something else and tossed a line down to Jim on the pier.
To relieve Gloria’s embarrassment at being ignored, Mary pretended Gloria had intended to converse with her instead. “We’ll have to make do. I have a pair of those new nylon stockings, and I like them. The government needs silk for parachutes for all the planes we’re building, and Jim says silk is used in powder bags for the large guns on battleships and—”
“Oh, the war. I’m so tired of it, and we haven’t fired a shot.” Gloria leaned back and rested on her palms. She frowned in her boyfriend’s direction. “He hasn’t paid me any attention all day.”
Mary laid her cheek on her crossed forearms and gave Gloria a sympathetic smile. Gloria certainly flaunted herself, with her tiny light green two-piece swimsuit and many provocative looks and poses. In comparison, Mary felt dowdy in her modest one-piece.
Gloria glanced over to the pier. “Well, Jim’s paying attention to you. What’d I tell you? All you had to do was show off your figure.”
Mary winced. She flipped to see the pier, see if Jim had heard, but he was chatting with Arch and tying a line to a cleat. Relief poured out in a sigh. She faced Gloria again. “I’m not trying to show off.”
“Maybe not, but he’s noticing.”
“Do you think so?” Mary kept her voice low. Maybe that would encourage Gloria to do likewise.
She laughed. “Oh, honey, I know so. He likes you.”
Hope fluttered in her chest, and she ventured another glance at him. He looked so good in his swim trunks as he climbed back onto the boat with long muscular legs. More than hope fluttered inside her, but her common sense squelched it.
She raised herself on her elbows. “I don’t think so. Not like that. In high school, he was madly in love with my best friend. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, practically drooled over her. He doesn’t act that way with me. Not at all.”
Gloria tapped Mary’s elbow with her toes. “He isn’t a schoolboy anymore. He’s a grown man.”
Grown nicely too. As he lashed down a sail, the muscles of his chest and arms worked. Once when she’d stood at the helm, he’d squeezed behind her, his chest hair brushing the back of her arm. Her cheeks heated at the remembered intimacy.
