A Woman's Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

impatiently toward the hatch. "Now where's Alexander? I want to see him."
    "He's asleep. Why don't you come back tomorrow?"
    "I will be back tomorrow, and the next day too. But I'm not leaving here today without seeing my nephew." Then he looked around more slowly, making a visible effort to quell his impatience. "Nice little boat," he commented, reaching out to touch a stay.
    The glow of pleasure his words brought unnerved Jann. This man was her enemy. If she cared what he thought, she'd be handing him power.
    "Though it's no place for a child," Peter went on.
    "It's thirty-seven feet long!" Jann exclaimed, her glow fading as fast as it had bloomed. "I've seen families of four living on boats no larger."
    "But not my nephew."
    She sucked in a breath, willing calmness to return. She would not let this man get to her, would not let him win.
    "Would you like a cup of herbal tea?" she offered, forcing her voice steady.
    "A cup of coffee would be nice if you've got it. Or—" He glanced at her hopefully. "—do you have anything cold?"
    "Lemonade?" she offered, starting for the cabin door.
    "Fine."
    "I'll be back in a moment." She slipped down the companionway swiftly, not wanting him to accompany her. Better that he stay on deck and keep his cat's-eyes to himself.
    A quick glance around the main cabin reassured her all was ship-shape. Alex's things, especially, had a habit of spreading across a room like barnacles on a ship's hull. With a sigh of relief she moved into the tiny galley, opened the refrigerator door, and groped at the back for the jug of lemonade.
    "Need any help?"
    Jann jerked back her hand and whirled around.
    Peter's long, lean form dwarfed the inside of her cabin as thoroughly as it had the cockpit. He stood by the companionway, toying with the heart-shaped paperweight he must have picked up from her desk.
    "No," she gulped, watching uneasily as his gaze drifted around the cabin, pausing first on her collection of glazed pottery bowls, whose scarlet color and heart shapes made them pulse with life, then moving on to the miniature, heart-shaped clock her grandmother had given her on her sixth birthday. To celebrate learning to tell the time, her granny had said.
    It felt, at this moment, as though time had stopped.
    "You must believe in love," Peter said, looking next at the heart-shaped twig wreath Ruby had given her last Christmas.
    "Not particularly," she replied, "though some people manage it." Her parents had. Capt'n and Ruby, too.
    But it wasn't for her.
    "Do you believe in it?" she asked.
    Ignoring her question, he turned his attention to the framed photographs papering one wall.
    Jann's shoulders tensed. She'd won an award for the first picture, a photo of a homeless woman squinting up into the afternoon sun. But next to it were photos of Alex. Pictures she'd prefer this man not see. She'd captured her baby's innocence in all his moods, whether crying or smiling or staring solemnly around with his old man's eyes. When Peter reached them, she ceased to breathe.
    He slowly reached for the photo in the middle, the one of Claire, her face glistening with perspiration and joy as she held out her arms for Alex the very first time.
    "Who took this?" Peter demanded softly. He took hold of the frame with knuckle-whitened fingers and lifted the photo from its hook.
    "I did," Jann said, the sheer unfairness of Claire's death, as always, overwhelming her.
    "All of them?" His sharp gaze swept the walls.
    "Yes."
    "Who taught you to take pictures like these?" He looked at her then in a clear, glittering glance, before shifting his attention to a photo of an aged Hawaiian woman gazing off into the distance, her face creased into a multitude of wrinkles. Her husband stood behind her, one hand resting on her shoulder in a timeless gesture of solidarity and love.
    "Nobody, exactly," Jann said, but she remembered her father at his easel, his brush strokes capturing the precise curve of her mother's smile. She had inherited