Lisa Jackson's the Abandoned Box Set by Lisa Jackson Page B

been no other explanation,” she said, hedging.
    â€œI was cleared, damn it!” In two swift strides he was so close to her that she noticed the gold flecks in his brown eyes. His nostrils flared in outrage.
    â€œYou weren’t cleared,” she said evenly, “there just wasn’t enough evidence to indict you.”
    He drew in his breath sharply; the air whistled through his teeth. “Well, Miss Montgomery, I guess I was wrong about you. I thought you might be the one person in the entire Montgomery Inns empire that realized I’d been set up. But you’re just like the rest, aren’t you?”
    â€œNo, I’m different. I ended up with you as a stowaway. I didn’t ask you to come on board, did I? As far as I’m concerned you should get off my boat.” She considered telling him that she’d stood up to her father and the board, declaring him innocent, but decided the truth, right now, was pointless.
    Adam’s gaze raked down her. “What do you want me to do? Walk the plank?”
    â€œIf only I had one.” He could joke at a time like this? The man was incorrigible! There was a slight chance that he was a thief, and now he’d stowed away on the boat, proving that he obviously had no scruples whatsoever. And yet there had been a time when Marnie had relied upon his judgment, had trusted his interpretation of the facts. She had sat through many meetings with Adam in attendance. He always spoke his mind, arguing with her father when necessary. Unlike Kent, who worked diligently to have no mind of his own and think exactly like her father. The proverbial yes-man. She shivered at the thought that she’d once believed she loved him. She’d been a blind fool, a rich girl caught up in the fantasy of love.
    The Marnie Lee groaned against the weight of a wave, and a tremor passed through the hull. The wheel slid through Marnie’s fingers, and Adam grabbed hold of the helm, his arms imprisoning her as he strained against the wheel. “Only an idiot would sail in a storm like this,” he muttered.
    An idiot or someone hell-bent to have a life of her own, she thought angrily, surrounded by the smell of him. The scent of after-shave was nearly obscured by the fresh odor of water and ocean that clung to his skin. His hair gleamed under the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling and his features were set into a hard mask as unforgiving as the sea.
    â€œDo I have to remind you that you’ve shown up uninvited twice in one night? That must be some kind of record, don’t you think?”
    â€œI don’t know what to think right now,” he admitted, his eyebrows thrust together and deep lines of concentration etching his forehead, “but I sure as hell can come up with a hundred places I’d rather be.”
    â€œThat makes two of us,” she snapped, as his armsrelaxed and he stepped back, giving her control of the vessel again. “We’ll put into port at Chinook Harbor.”
    â€œThat’s where you’re going?”
    â€œIt’s a little out of the way.” But worth it, to get rid of you, she thought unkindly. She didn’t need any complications on this trip, and any way she looked at it, Adam Drake was a complication. He stepped away from her, and she commanded the boat again, glad for the feel of the polished wheel in her hands. A hundred questions plagued her. What did he want with Kent? Why had he stowed away? How involved in the embezzling was he? And why, oh Lord, why, did she find him the least bit attractive? The man was trouble—pure and simple.
    The storm didn’t slow down for a minute. Harsh winds screamed across the deck and waves curled high to batter the hull repeatedly. Marnie’s stomach spent most of the trip in her throat, and she didn’t have time to consider Adam again. He made himself useful, helping read the charts and maps as they headed into the cluster of San Juan