"I can probably choke some down, just to be polite. Let me give you a hand."

"No." She waved him down before he could rise. "I've got it. It'll just take me…" She glanced down as she cleared his plate, saw Diego sprawled belly-up in apparent ecstasy in his lap. "Have you been sneaking that cat food from the table?"

"Me?" All innocence, Zack picked up his wineglass. "I don't know what makes you think that."

"You'll spoil him, and make him sick." She started to reach down, scoop up the kitten, then realized that considering Diego's location, the move was just a tad too personal. "Put him down a while so he can run around and work off that tuna before I take him inside."

"Yes, ma'am."

She had the coffee on and was about to slice the cake when he came through the door with the serving bowl.

"Thanks. But guests don't clear."

"They did in my house." He looked at the cake, all fluffy white and succulent red. And back at her. "Honey, I've got to tell you, that's a work of art."

"Presentation's half the battle," she said, pleased. She went still when he laid his hand over the back of hers. Nearly relaxed again when he simply moved hers to widen the size of the slice.

"I'm a big patron of the arts."

"At this rate Diego's not the only one who's going to be sick." But she cut him a piece twice the size of her own. "I'll bring the coffee."

"I should tell you something else," he began as he picked up the plates, then held the door for her again. "I plan on touching you. A lot. Maybe you could work on getting used to it."

"I don't like being handled."

"I didn't plan to start out that way." He walked to the table, set down the cake plates, and sat. "Though handling, on both sides, can have some satisfying results. I don't put marks on women, Nell. I don't use my hands that way."

"I'm not going to talk about that," she answered curtly.

"I'm not asking you to. I'm talking about me, and you, and the way things are now."

"Things aren't any way now-like that."

"They're going to be." He scooped up some cake, sampled it. "God, woman, you sell this on the open market, you'd be a millionaire inside of six months."

"I don't need to be rich."

"Got your back up again," he observed and kept right on eating. "I don't mind that. Some men look for a woman who'll buckle under, tow the line, whatever." He shrugged, speared a fat strawberry. "Now, me, I wonder why. It seems that would get boring fast for both parties involved. No spark there, if you know what I mean."

"I don't need sparks either."

"Everybody does. People who set them off each other every time they turn around, though, well, that would just wear you out." Something told her he didn't wear out-or wear down-easily.

"But if you don't light a spark now and again," he went on, "you miss the sizzle that comes with it. If you cooked without spice or seasoning, you'd come up with something you could eat, but it wouldn't satisfy."

"That's very clever. But there are some of us who stay healthier on a bland diet."

"My great-uncle Frank." Zack gestured with his fork before he dived into the cake again. "Ulcers. Some said it came from pure meanness, and it's hard to argue. He was a hardheaded, miserly Yankee. Never married. He preferred curling up in bed with his ledgers rather than a woman. Lived to be ninety-eight."

"And the moral of the story?"

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of morals. Just Great-uncle Frank. We'd go to dinner at my grandmother's the third Sunday of every month when I was a boy. She made the best damn pot roast-you know, the kind circled around with the little potatoes and carrots? My mother didn't inherit Gran's talent with a pot roast. But, anyway, Great-uncle Frank would come and eat rice pudding while the rest of us gorged. The man scared the hell out of me. I can't look at a bowl of rice pudding to this day without getting the shakes."

It must be some kind of magic, she decided, that made it so impossible not to relax around him. "I think you're making half that up."

"Not a single word. You can look him up in the registry at the Island Methodist Church. Francis Morris Bigelow. Gran, she married a Ripley, but was a Bigelow by birth and older sister to Frank. She lived to just past her hundredth birthday herself. We tend to be long-lived in my family, which is why most of us don't settle down to marriage and family until into our thirties."

"I see." Since he'd polished off his cake, Nell nudged hers toward him and wasn't the least bit surprised when he took a forkful. "I'd always thought New England Yankees were a taciturn breed. You know-ayah, nope, maybe."

"We like to talk in my family. Ripley can be short-winded, but then she isn't overly fond of people as a species. This is the best meal I've had since Sunday dinner at my gran's."

"That is the ultimate compliment."

"We'd finish it off exactly right if we were to take a walk on the beach."

She couldn't chink of a reason to say no. Maybe she didn't want to.

The light was fading, going deep at the edges. A needle-thin and needle-bright swath of light swept over the horizon, and a blush of pink gleamed in the west. The tide had gone out, leaving a wide avenue of dark, damp sand that was cool underfoot. The surf teased it, foaming out in ribbons while narrow-bodied birds with legs like stilts pecked for their supper.

Others strolled the beach. Almost all couples now, Nell noted. Hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm. As a precaution, she'd tucked her own hands in her pockets after she'd pried off her shoes and rolled up her jeans.

Here and there were stockpiles of driftwood that would be bonfires when full dark fell. She wondered what it would be like to sit by the flames with a group of friends. To laugh and talk of nothing important.

"Haven't seen you go in yet."

"In?"

"The water," Zack explained.

She didn't own a bathing suit, but saw no reason to say so. "I've waded in a couple of times."

"Don't swim?"

"Of course I can swim."

"Let's go."

He scooped her up so fast her heart stuck between her chest and her throat. She could barely manage to breathe, much less scream. Before full panic had a chance to bloom, she was in the water.

Zack was laughing, spinning her away from an oncoming wave to take the brunt of it himself. She was sliding, rolling, fighting to gain her feet when he simply nipped her at the waist and righted her.

"Can't live on Three Sisters without being baptized." Tossing his wet hair back, he pulled her farther out.

"It's freezing."

"Balmy," he corrected. "Your blood's just thin yet. Here comes a good-size one. You'd better hold on to me."

"I don't want to-" Whatever she did or didn't want, the sea had its own ideas. The wave hit, knocked her off her feet, and had her legs tangling with his.

"You idiot." But she was laughing as she surfaced. When the air hit her skin, she quickly dunked neck-deep again. "The sheriff's supposed to have more sense than to jump in the ocean fully dressed."

"I'd've stripped down, but we haven't known each other long enough." He rolled over on his back, floating lazily. "The first stars are coming out. There's nothing like it. Nothing in the world like it. Come on."

The sea rocked her, made her feel weightless as she watched the color of the sky change. As the tone deepened bit by bit, stars winked to life.

"You're right, there's nothing like it. But it's still freezing."

"You just need a winter on the island to thicken your blood up." He took her hand, a quiet connection as they drifted an armspan apart. "I've never spent more than three months at a time off-island, and that was for college. Had three years of that, and couldn't take it anymore. I knew what I wanted anyway. And that's what I've got."