Either one sounded interesting, now that he considered the matter. Very interesting, in fact. He was hard as a rock.
Logic told him that a few kisses shouldn’t have rattled him this much. He wasn’t a teenager, after all. It took more than a sexy tussle on the sofa to throw him.
Right.
Chapter 8
He awoke at dawn when a cold nose was thrust against the bottom of his bare foot. The shock brought him to a sitting position in a hurry.
“Sonofa—” He broke off when he saw Winston. “No point in calling you that particular name, is there? You are a son of a bitch. And don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me that the big dramatic act last night at the door might have been just your deliberate attempt to disrupt the mood of the evening.”
Winston gave him a meaningful look.
“Things were going pretty damn good until you showed up and made like Mr. Macho Watchdog.”
Winston turned and trotted to the door. There he sat down and stared intently at Rafe.
“Okay, okay. I get the point.”
Rafe shoved aside the blankets and got to his feet. He found his trousers and reached for his shirt. After a short search he discovered his low-cut boots fooling around with some dust bunnies under the bed.
“All right, let’s go.”
He opened the door to a damp, fog-bound morning. Winston stepped smartly outside and headed for the bushes at the edge of the porch. Rafe went down the steps and followed the little path that led to the storage locker used to house the garbage cans. There were no signs of animal tracks in the vicinity and no claw marks on the wooden lid.
Having concluded his personal business, Winston hurried over to see what was going on at the garbage can locker. Rafe watched him closely.
Winston sniffed a bit, but his interest in the locker appeared casual at best. After only a couple of minutes he headed on down the long drive toward the trees that veiled the house and gardens from the narrow road.
Rafe followed, watching to see if the dog paid any unusual attention to any particular point along the way. Winston’s progress was slowed by numerous pauses, but none appeared to be any more intriguing to him than another. When he got close to the edge of the property, Rafe decided it was time to call him back.
“Hannah will chew me out but good if she finds out I let you play in traffic.” Not that there was much on this quiet road, especially at this hour of the morning.
Winston ignored him, displaying a breathtaking disdain for a clear and reasonable command. Rafe concluded that the attitude was either the result of generations of fine breeding or something that had rubbed off from Hannah. He was inclined to credit the latter.
“Come back here.” Rafe walked more quickly toward Winston, intending to grab him before he reached the road.
But Winston stopped of his own accord before he got as far as the pavement. He veered left toward a stand of dripping trees and began to sniff the ground with great authority.
“Just like you knew what you were doing,” Rafe said quietly.
Winston flitted briskly from one tree trunk to another, pausing to sniff intently in several places. Eventually he lifted his leg. When he was finished he turned to Rafe as if to say that he was satisfied.
Rafe walked into the stand and took a close look at the tree Winston had marked. He knew that his human senses were abysmally inadequate for the task at hand.
He crouched to get a closer look at the ground at the base of the tree. Unfortunately the pebbles that covered the earth made it impossible to detect any footprints. Always assuming that there were any there to detect, Rafe thought.
He looked at Winston, who was watching him with an inquiring expression. “You know, if one of us had gotten both your nose and my brain, we’d be in great shape.”
Winston gave the equivalent of a canine shrug, then turned and went quickly along the drive toward the house.
Rafe straightened. He was about to set off after the dog when he caught a glint of silver foil out of the corner of his eye. A closer look revealed a tightly wadded candy wrapper lying on the ground near the point Winston had marked.
Not exactly a major discovery. A stray breeze could have blown it into the stand of trees. It might have been tossed from a passing car or fallen off the garbage truck.
Or it might have been dropped by someone standing in this very spot about midnight last night.
He picked up the discarded wrapper and went back down the drive to where he had parked the Porsche. He unlocked the door, opened the glove compartment, and rummaged briefly inside. No luck. He looked at Winston, who was waiting, head cocked, on the porch.
“Used to be a time when I carried a spare razor and a few other basic necessities with me for just this sort of occasion,” he explained. He shut the door and pocketed the keys. “But I got out of the habit.”
His social life had never really picked up again after his divorce, he reflected. Probably because he had not worked very hard to get it up and running. He’d had other interests to occupy him.
He stopped once before he went up the steps and plucked a few sprigs of the mint that were growing beneath the garden’s water faucet.
Back inside the house he spent a few minutes in the downstairs bathroom, where he discovered that none of the Harte males had left a razor behind.
“Thoughtless,” he told Winston. “But, then, what do you expect from a Harte?”
He listened to the silence upstairs for a moment before he wandered into the kitchen and started opening cupboard doors. He found the usual assortment of aging condiments and spices that tended to get left behind in a vacation cottage. Salt, pepper, sugar, a half-empty bottle of vanilla extract, and an unopened jar of maple syrup. The last item was the real thing, not caramel-colored sugar water, he noted.
He took the vanilla extract and the syrup out of the cupboard and went to check the contents of the refrigerator. The eggs and milk were fresh. The loaf of dense, rustic-style bread baked by the New Age crowd who had taken over the old bakery near the pier was a day old.
Perfect.
The bride’s gown was three sizes too big. She tried desperately to pin it into place, but it was hopeless. She knew that no matter what she did the dress would never look right. The client was in tears. The groom kept looking at his watch.
She glanced at the clock and saw that the reception was supposed to start in a few minutes. But the caterers had not yet arrived. None of the tables had been set up. The flowers were limp. She opened a case of the premium-quality champagne that she had ordered and discovered bottles of mouthwash inside. She looked around and realized that the musicians had not yet appeared