“When one studies an opponent’s reflection in a pool of water, one should take care to ensure that the water is very, very clear.”
Charity eyed him uneasily. “That sounds like more of Hayden Stone’s old sayings. Were you a very close friend of his?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose that’s why you got Charms & Virtues?”
“Yes.” Elias’s eyes were unreadable. “It was his legacy to me. I also got his cottage.”
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Mr. Winters, but you won’t hang on to your legacy for long if we don’t get those leases renegotiated with Far Seas. We’ve got to move fast now that you’re here. There’s a strong possibility that someone on the town council or Leighton Pitt, a local realtor, will contact Far Seas directly.”
“Elias.”
“What? Oh, Elias.” She hesitated. “Please call me Charity.”
“Charity.” He repeated her name the way he sipped tea, as if he were tasting it. “Unusual name these days.”
“You don’t meet a lot of people named Elias, either,” she retorted. “Now, then, if you’ll just give me a few minutes to explain our plans for dealing with Far Seas, I’m sure you’ll see how important it is for you to join with us.”
“Yes.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Elias raised one shoulder in a lethally graceful movement. “As the new owner of Charms & Virtues, I see the importance of joining with you in your—what did you call it? Ah, yes. Your united front. I’ve never been part of a united front before. How does it work?”
She smiled with satisfaction. “It’s quite simple, really. I’m the president of the shopkeepers association, so I’ll do the actual negotiating with Far Seas.”
“Have you had much experience with this kind of thing?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I have. I was in the corporate world before I moved here to Whispering Waters Cove.”
“Charity Truitt.” Recognition gleamed in the depths of Elias’s eyes. “I thought the name sounded familiar. Would that be the department-store Truitts of Seattle?”
“Yes.” Charity’s spine stiffened in automatic reflex. “And before you say anything else, let me answer all your questions in three sentences. Yes, I’m the former president of the company. Yes, my stepbrother and stepsister are now running the business. And, yes, I intend to remain here in Whispering Waters Cove.”
“I see.”
“While I am no longer involved in the operation of Truitt department stores, I haven’t forgotten everything I learned during the years I ran the company. If your résumé is stronger than mine, I’ll be glad to turn the job of confronting Far Seas over to you.”
“I’m satisfied that you’re the best person for the task,” he said gently.
Chagrined, Charity set the clipboard down on the counter. “Sorry to sound so belligerent. It’s just that my decision to leave Truitt last summer was, uh, complicated and difficult.”
“I see.”
She studied him closely, but she could not tell if he had heard the rumors of a broken engagement and a nervous breakdown. She concluded that he had not. He showed no signs of curiosity or concern. But, then, he showed no real emotion of any kind, she thought. She decided to plunge ahead.
“The pier is prime property,” she said. “We’re going to have to fight to keep our shops.”
“Something tells me that you will be successful in renegotiating your leases.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Charity glanced at Crazy Otis. “If I’m not successful, we’re all going to be looking for new locations. And that includes you, Otis.”
“Heh, heh, heh.” Otis slithered along the perch until he reached the far end. He stepped off the fake branch onto Elias’s shoulder.
Charity winced, recalling the occasions when Otis had climbed onto her arm. Elias did not seem to notice the heavy claws sinking into his dark green pullover.
“Another cup of tea?” Elias asked.
“No, thanks.” Charity glanced at her watch. “I’m going to call Far Seas this afternoon and see if I can get the lease negotiations started today. Wish me luck.”
“I don’t believe in luck.” He looked thoughtful. “The stream flows inevitably into the river and then on into the sea. The water may take on different aspects at various points in its journey, but it is, nevertheless, the same water.”
Newlin was right, Charity thought. Elias Winters was kind of strange. She smiled politely. “Fine. Wish me good karma or something. We’re all in this together, remember. If I don’t pull this off, everyone on this pier is going to be in trouble.”
“You’ll pull it off.”
“That’s the spirit.” Charity turned to go. Belatedly she recalled the other item on her agenda. “I almost forgot. The shopkeepers are having a potluck here on the pier Monday night after we close for the day. You’re invited, naturally.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ll come?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Hayden never came to the potlucks.” Charity glanced at the notes on her clipboard. “We still need hot dishes. Can you manage an entrée?”
“As long as no one minds if it doesn’t contain meat.”
Charity laughed. “I was just about to tell you that a couple of us here on the pier are vegetarians. I think you’re going to fit in nicely.”
“That would be a novel experience,” Elias said.
Charity decided not to ask him to elaborate. Something told her she would not like the answer. Her comment had only been a polite, offhand remark. She doubted that Elias made those kinds of comments. She had the feeling that everything he said was laced with several layers of cryptic meaning. She’d had the same sensation whenever she talked to Hayden Stone. It did not make for a lot of comfortable, casual conversation.
Charity experienced a surge of relief as she walked quickly out of the dark confines of Charms & Virtue into the sunlight. She hurried down the wide corridor between the shops and entered the airy, well-lit premises of Whispers.
Newlin Odell looked up from a bundle of weekly news magazines that he was placing on a rack. His thin features were pinched in the expression of someone who had just recently returned from a funeral. For Newlin, that was normal.
He was a skinny young man of twenty-four. His narrow face was partially obscured by a scruffy goatee and a pair of wire-framed glasses. Charity was almost certain that he trimmed his lanky brown hair himself. It hung in uneven hunks around his ears.
“How’d it go?” Newlin asked in his blunt, economical fashion.
Charity paused in the doorway of her small office, aware of a familiar wave of sympathy for Newlin. She had hired him a month ago when he had shown up out of nowhere to ask for a job. He had come to Whispering Waters Cove to be near his girlfriend, a young woman named Arlene Fenton, who had joined the Voyagers. He spent the time that he was not working at Whispers trying to coax Arlene away from the influence of the cult.
Having thus far failed in his mission to talk sense into Arlene, Newlin had stoically determined to wait out the situation. He hoped that on the fifteenth of August Arlene would finally understand that she had been taken in by a scam.
Charity sincerely hoped that he was right. She found his devotion to Arlene heartwarming and quixotic in an old-fashioned, heroic sense. But she secretly worried about what would happen if Arlene did not come to her senses at midnight that night. Having nursed a depressed parrot for two months, she was not eager to deal with a stricken Newlin Odell.
“You were right, Newlin,” Charity said. “Elias Winters is kind of strange. He was a friend of Hayden Stone’s, so I guess that explains it. But the good news is that he’s willing to go along with the rest of the shopkeepers in order to negotiate the new leases.”
“You gonna call Far Seas?”
“Right away. Cross your fingers.”
“It’s gonna take more than luck to talk Far Seas into giving you a break on t
he leases if Pitt or the town council has already gotten to ’em and convinced ’em that the pier is valuable real estate.”
“Don’t be so negative, Newlin. I’m banking on the fact that the town council doesn’t yet know who owns Crazy Otis Landing. We only found out ourselves a couple of weeks ago. I told everyone on the pier to keep quiet.”
“I don’t think anyone’s blabbed.”
“I hope not.” Charity pushed open the door of the back room and wound her way through stacks of boxes to her desk.
She sat down and reached for the phone. Quickly she punched in the number for Far Seas, Inc., which had been included in the letter Hayden Stone’s attorney had sent to the shopkeepers.
There were some odd noises on the line, a click, and then the phone finally rang on the other end. Charity wondered if the call had been forwarded. She waited impatiently until the receiver was lifted.
A newly familiar voice answered.
“Charms & Virtues,” Elias said.
2
Shallow water sometimes reveals shallow answers. But deep water holds deep questions.
—“On the Way of Water,” from the journal of Hayden Stone
The riptide rush of fate swept through Elias a second time in less than five minutes when Charity stormed back through the front door of Charms & Virtues.
So the strange sense of anticipation that he had experienced the first time he saw her had not been a fluke.
He watched, fascinated, as she bore down on him via an aisle formed by display counters. He had deliberately subjected himself to this second experiment in order to verify the initial results. No question about it. He felt as if he were being swept out into very deep water.
Not good. Not good at all.
But oddly beguiling.
“Who are you, Elias Winters, and what kind of a game are you playing?” Charity demanded.
Elias did not look at his wrist to check the time. He hadn’t worn a watch since he was sixteen. But he needed to regain some sense of control. He forced himself to look away from the red fire buried deep in the curving wings of her heavy, dark hair. The battered old cuckoo clock on the wall provided a convenient distraction.
“I’d estimate that took approximately one minute, forty-five seconds, give or take a couple of seconds. You’re fast, Ms. Truitt. Very fast. Did you run the whole length of the pier?”
“You timed me?”
Crazy Otis, who was back on his perch nibbling on a large seed, chortled.
“Quiet, Otis,” Elias commanded gently.
Otis subsided, but there was a cheerfully malicious gleam in his eyes. He cracked the seed that he gripped in one claw with a particularly loud crunch.
Elias noticed that there was a distinctive gleam in Charity’s vivid hazel eyes, too, but it was neither cheerful nor malicious. She was simply outraged.
She was several inches shorter than he was, but she somehow managed to glare at him down the length of her very straight nose. Her full, soft mouth was compressed into an uncompromising line. There was unmistakable warmth just beneath her delicate cheekbones.
Elias felt his insides tighten. He did not understand his own reaction. Something indefinable in her drew his whole attention.
“Mr. Winters—”
“Elias.”
“Mr. Winters, I want an explanation, and I want it now. You’re up to something, that’s obvious.”
“Is it?”
“Don’t you dare start answering questions with questions. That’s manipulative, sneaky, and downright passive-aggressive.”
“If there’s one thing you can be sure of when you deal with me, Charity, it’s that when I’m feeling aggressive, there’s nothing passive about it.”
“You know something? I believe you. That still leaves manipulative and sneaky. And I warn you, Mr. Winters, I know everything there is to know about manipulative and sneaky. I grew up in the corporate world.”
“I appreciate the warning,” Elias said softly.
He liked the way the skirts of her gauzy, white cotton dress billowed and snapped around her gently rounded calves. Only a short while ago when she had arrived to introduce herself, those same skirts had floated discreetly, even protectively about her legs. Now she was angry, and she and her skirts had both thrown discretion to the winds.
The deep sensual hunger rising within him made him uneasy. An attractive, strong-minded woman in a summer dress and strappy little sandals was always an appealing sight, but his reaction today was definitely over the top. What was wrong with him?
Perhaps he shouldn’t be too hard on himself, he thought glumly. It had been a long time since he had been involved with a woman. His long-planned vengeance had become an all-consuming passion during the past few months as his grand scheme moved into its final phase. It had become so strong that it had temporarily blotted out even the desire for sex.
And then Hayden Stone had died, and everything had changed forever. Ever since Hayden’s death he had felt as if he had been cut adrift on a dark, roiling sea. None of his reactions seemed quite normal. He had lost his sense of internal balance. This intense response to Charity Truitt was a good example.
She was not the sort of woman who normally aroused his interest. For years he had been drawn to the cool types found in film noir movies. Savvy, sophisticated women who wore a lot of black. Women who moved in the high-stakes world of the Pacific Rim trade, either as power brokers or as powers behind thrones. Some had been attracted to him because of the contacts and connections he could offer. Some had simply wanted the satisfaction of being seen with a man who was as powerful as themselves. Others had been intrigued by the perception of danger. Whatever the terms of the sexual bargain, Elias had always made certain that the exchange of favors had been equal.
But Charity was different. He sensed intuitively that if he pursued the relationship, there would be no simple, straightforward arrangement with her. She would be demanding and difficult in ways that he had always avoided.
“Are you or are you not connected to Far Seas?” Charity fumed.
Elias flattened his hands on the glass counter in front of him. “I am Far Seas.”
“Is this a joke?”
“No.” He considered briefly. “I don’t think I know any jokes.”
“Well? Where’s the rest of the company?”
“The rest of it?”
She threw up her hands. “Secretaries, clerks, managers, and assorted flunkies.”
“My secretary took another job a few months ago. I didn’t bother to replace her. There are no clerks or managers, and I never could get any reliable flunkies.”
“That is not funny.”
“I told you, I don’t do jokes.”
“Assuming you’re telling me the truth, why were you so secretive about the fact that you now own the pier?”
“I learned a long time ago never to initiate a business discussion. The clear spring waters of open dealing and plain-speaking are too often mistaken as evidence of weakness. I was taught to let others come to me.”
Charity came to a halt in front of the counter. “You mean you prefer to hold the advantage. I get the point. But for the record, I never took any of those expensive seminars from rip-off management consultants on how to do business according to the principles of the Tao. I prefer to do business the old-fashioned way. Level with me, Winters. Do you really own Crazy Otis Landing?”
“Yes.” Elias looked into her huge hazel eyes and wondered at the deep wariness he saw beneath the anger. He recalled vague gossip about the chaos that had followed a failed merger between Truitt and a company called Loftus Athletic Gear. There had been an abrupt resignation of Truitt’s CEO. Rumors of a problem with said CEO’s nerves. He had paid little attention because neither Truitt nor Loftus were involved in Pacific Rim trade.
“Well?”
“Hayden Stone did not leave only Charms & Virtues to me,” Elias said. “He left me the whole pier.”
“Plus the cottage on t
he bluff.” She narrowed her eyes. “That’s a lot of real estate. Why would he leave so much to you?”
Elias chose his words carefully. “I told you, Hayden was my friend and my teacher. He helped me establish Far Seas.”
“I see. Just what kind of company is Far Seas?”
“A consulting firm.”
Charity crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “What kind of consulting?”
“I provide contacts, connections, and advice for business people who deal in Rim trade.” He probably should have made that past tense, he thought. He wondered if he would ever again return to his former line of work. For some reason, he doubted it. Along with everything else in his life these days, it seemed to be drifting farther and farther away from him.
“Whispering Waters Cove is not exactly a thriving outpost of Pacific Rim business.”
He smiled slightly. “No, it’s not.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“You’re a very suspicious woman, Charity.”
“I think I have reason to be suspicious under the circumstances. A short while ago, I made the mistake of assuming that you were one of us here on the pier and that we would all be going up against Far Seas together.”
“I warned you that when one studies an opponent’s reflection in a pool of water, one should take care to ensure that the water is very, very clear.”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time. Forget the double-talk. When I want philosophy, I’ll go to Ted.”
“Ted?”
“Ted Jenner. He has that little shop called Ted’s Instant Philosophy T-Shirts next to the carousel. You must have seen it.”
Elias recalled the racks of T-shirts billowing in the breeze at the end of the pier. The shirts all bore various legends and slogans that ranged from the clever to the crude. “I’ve noticed it.”
“I should hope so. You walk by it every day. The least you could do, by the way, is drop in and introduce yourself to your fellow shopkeepers.”
I’ve just met you,” he pointed out.
She raised her eyes toward the ceiling in an expression of acute disgust. “Never mind. Let’s get back to more pressing issues. What’s your excuse for failing to tell me the truth about yourself while I was explaining the lease situation here at the pier?”