Free The Spy I Loved by Dusty Miller

course of development being
what they were, wasn’t too far off. It was the second one in on the
beach side of the road. The lights were still on inside, and just
as the thought came, she saw his head and shoulders in the kitchen
window. He was face down slightly, probably washing up at the
kitchen sink.
    She bit
her lip.
    The
aurora borealis didn’t often come in summer, and the display,
stretching from horizon to horizon, was totally
spectacular.
    She had
nothing to lose.
    With the
resolve to at least give it a try, she put her head down. Marching
up the gravel road, around the corner and onto his front porch, she
raised her hand. Looking right and left, her uncle Dale or Mark
were nowhere in sight. This was a good thing, although one or two
guests were visible strolling along on their little road. They
didn’t matter nearly so much.
    Taking a
breath, Lindsey thought of her first line, and then gave a couple
of gentle raps.
    “ Frank? Can I call you back later?” His words came, dimly
caught through the thin walls of the cabin.
    She could
hear Liam moving around in there. He most likely took a quick look
through the peephole. The front light came on above her. The latch
snapped and then her eyes were flooded with warm amber light and he
was right there.
    He wore the earpiece and the thin extension microphone of a
hands-off telephone system. It occurred to her that he might have
been working. She had no real idea of what he did for a living.
    After all… they barely knew each
other.
    Like the
proper fool she was, in spite of some initial planning, she blurted
out the first thing that came into her head.
    “ What’s that wonderful smell?”
    Liam
Kimball grinned. Shirtless, his hair was slightly disheveled and he
was barefoot. His hand came up and he pushed his hair down,
somewhat at least. There were one or two tufts still running
rampant.
    He didn’t often have this kind of effect on women, but it was
something she had been unable to hide. Crikey, she couldn’t have
been a day over eighteen or nineteen. It was making him feel
distinctly old, possibly even grubby. Maybe even a little bit
dirty.
    All of
this at the age of twenty-seven.
    All of
this before he’d even really had a drink.
    With this
one, you were sort of cautious about taking a real good
look.
    “ Ah. What a wonderful question. I admire enthusiasm,
incidentally.” Reaching out, he took her hand.
    Liam
Kimball pulled a slightly-bemused and unresisting Lindsey into his
comfortable, albeit temporary new lair. He closed the door behind
her, trying not over-linger on her protuberant nipples or the pert
belly-button revealed below her cut-off, hot pink tank
top.
    Lindsey
had very nice shoulders, he observed.
    “ I’m glad you asked that. It’s my own concoction. Not three,
not four, nor even five peppercorns. Mine is what I call six peppercorn gravy …”
    He wasn’t
kidding either.
    “ Man does not live by fish alone.” He’d done something with
beef, judging by the lingering aroma.
    She stood
there with an odd look on her face as he beamed paternally, face a
little flushed. She caught the smell of alcohol. It was discernable
although he was far from out of control. A man like Liam would
rarely be out of control, she thought, chin up and looking on that
cautiously optimistic male face.
    A man like Liam would be very much in control.
    She
couldn’t help but look around.
    Her eyes
widened slightly. She did her best to ignore a small automatic
pistol on the kitchen table, in the middle of being stripped down
to its constituent parts for cleaning and re-oiling…she closed her
mouth firmly. There was a computer, screen glowing blue, and
various bits of electronic equipment, of a kind she wasn’t
immediately familiar with but it might have been a fish-finder…???
There was something forbidding about the black glass eye on the
front end of it. The side was open, and it was trailing coloured
cables and wires all over the table top.
    This was
probably