Free Upon a Mystic Tide by Vicki Hinze Page A

two on John. At times, she’d wanted to, but her rigid upbringing had kicked in, and she just hadn’t been able to lose her composure and feel comfortable about it. Now what was Fred scribbling on that bulletin board?
    The phone rang.
    Lucy answered it, then yelled out: “Bess, it’s for you.”
    “Me?” She frowned at Miss Hattie. “Here?”
    “I forwarded the calls from the inn, dear. Tuesday is my errand day and Lucy takes calls for me.”
    “Ah.” Bess slid back her chair, walked over to the end of the bar, then took the receiver from Lucy’s outstretched hand. The sheriff, Bess noted, was actually backing out of the cafe with tiny Beaulah Favish right on the toes of his boots, still bending his ear and demanding respect.
    “Hello,” Bess said into the receiver.
    “Bess, come home. I miss you.”
    Miguel. Bess internally groaned. This week’s redhead evidently had dumped him. “You miss Silk.” If he’d choose his women on something more than hair color  . . .
    “Her, too.” He confessed. “Is she liking Maine?”
    “Loving it. So am I, in case you’re wondering.” He often used Silk as a go-between, for some reason feeling more at ease asking about her reactions to things than Bess’s. “Coming here was the best idea I’ve had in a long time.”
    “Wonderful, even if it does cramp my nefarious plans to seduce you.”
    Bess laughed aloud. Miguel seducing her was about as likely as her seducing John Mystic. “And I thought you loved challenges.”
    “Only in regattas, Angel. I prefer eager women.”
    “Ah, the redhead escapes. What happened this time?”
    “A true friend wouldn’t ask such indelicate questions, Angel.” He cleared his throat. “Tell me, what must I do to make this woman  . . . eager?”
    “I’m standing in the middle of a crowded cafe at the moment.” And receiving far too many interested looks for her liking. “Could I put on my shrink hat and see what’s gotten your synapses misfiring later?”
    He laughed. “You’re supposed to console me. I’m nursing a broken heart.”
    “Sorry. Condolences, of course.” With a broken heart once a week, sympathy waned.
    “A true friend would stop this unnecessary exodus, come home, and sail the world with me on Daybreak until I’d recovered.”
    She twisted the phone cord. “Friends don’t sail around the world together when one of those friends has a job to get back to in a few weeks—namely me.” Provided Sal fast-talked Millicent into not dropping the ax. “And if I left here now, I’m wagering that before I could get home, you’d have a new redhead in tow.”
    He laughed, then turned serious. “It’d make me feel better if you’d be reasonable and let me buy the station. Then you’d be free to do exactly as you pleased.”
    “No.” Bess wiped at a nag of an ache in her forehead. This, she did not need. “It isn’t that I don’t appreciate your offer, it’s that—”
    “You don’t want the support of a friend,” he finished for her.
    “I don’t want your money.” How many times had they been through this?
    “But—”
    “Don’t push on this, okay, Miguel? Please.” She paused to bury the tremor in her voice. “I’m a little shaky right now.”
    “I don’t wish to make you shakier but, when I tell you the news, you might change your mind.”
    That the news wasn’t good came as no surprise. Was good news possible anymore?
    “I saw Millicent Fairgate at a charity ball at the Clarion last night. She’d only just heard about you divorcing your John. Need I say she was less than pleased?”
    “No.” Bess’s stomach coiled into a nest of knots. “I can imagine well enough, I think.” Raging, most likely.
    “Hmmm, I suggest you double your worst expectations. Then you’ll be close.”
    Bess grimaced. At least the wait for the ax to rise before it fell on her head was over. Millicent would fire her; it wasn’t a question of if but of when. “I’m expecting her to can me. She