Safe Harbor Read Online Free Page A

and realized, for the first time, the difference between a job and a career.
    Although his record as a human being remained spotty for the next few years, he kept up his interest in photography, and eventually he traded his Instamatic for a Canon, the Canon for a Nikon. Awards followed, and pretty good money, too, and all because Sam liked to hang out by the sea.
    The sea. He inhaled deep—for the moment, content.
    A pair of lovers strolled by, hand in hand, and that brought Sam to thoughts of Eden . He had first met her on the waterfront. Friends had introduced them at a harbor fair in Boston , and they had hit it off immediately. Both of them, it turned out, liked fried clams, French rum, and calypso. It was only later that he learned that if it suited her purposes, Eden could feign an appetite for a plate of rotting goat innards.
    Fool, fool, fool.
    The strolling couple stopped a few steps away to embrace; Sam studiously ignored them and tried to concentrate on the task at hand. Eden had stolen his parents' engraving, and he was going to get it back no matter what. It was as simple as that. He turned his back on the lovers, the sun, and the sea and retraced his steps to the confinement of the cabin, where he had left his duffel. There was a book in his bag on German artists. He wanted to give it one more look.
    ****
    The Flying Horses Gallery seemed too upscale for the honky-tonk atmosphere of Oak Bluffs, the most souvenir-ridden of the Vineyard's small towns. Sam stood across the street from the gallery and pondered his next move as a stream of tourists ebbed and flowed around him.
    He hated the thought of lying—he was as bad at it as Eden was good—but he had little choice. He needed an excuse for being on her trail. After shrugging into the cotton blazer that he'd slung over his shoulders, Sam snugged his tie and crossed the narrow, car-clogged street. The window displays that flanked the gallery's black door were minimal. A seascape in a heavy, gilded frame was perched on an easel in one of them, and a grouping of carved, painted whirligigs was sparely arranged in the other.
    Sam paused on his way inside to check out the whirligigs: a scarecrow with arms that would circle in the wind, a seagull with wings that would do the same—and a winged pig. He read the label in front of the last: Pigasus. Despite his grim mood, Sam smiled at the whimsy, then turned to go inside.
    He was just in time to see, leaving the gallery in the other direction, a woman he'd know anywhere on earth. Her back was to him, but the curve of the hip, the way her hair bounced as she walked ... .
    "Hey! Eden ! Hold it," he snarled, grabbing her arm before she got away again.
    He whirled her around and faced, not Eden Walker Steadman, but—well, not Eden Walker Steadman.
    The woman was around Eden 's age, but her eyes were wide with apprehension as she looked, not at Sam, but desperately aro und her. Presumably for a cop.
    "Oh, geez, I am so sorry" Sam said, aghast. "I, ah ... whoa. Really. I'm sorry. You look just like someone else."
    "No, I don't," she said with brisk hostility. "Please let go of me. Do I look like a blonde to you?"
    "Uh, no. Brunette, washed in shades of auburn. Definitely not a blonde. Sorry. Here. Um ..." He let her go, then patted smooth the sleeve of her pale blue sundress. He was behaving, of course, like an idiot, but he didn't know how to assuage this innocent victim whose face bore absolutely no resemblance to Eden 's.
    Her eyes w ere green, very green, for one thing, whereas Eden 's were a startling blue. "I was told that I might find Eden , uh, Walker here, at the gallery," he said, winging it.
    "You might have. Once."
    Yes!
    And her nose had a bridge to it. An interesting nose, a Debra Winger nose, but nothing like Eden 's, which was straight and aristocratic. "I don't know what this Eden looks like," he went on, "so naturally I thought—"
    "You just said that I looked like her," the woman pointed out.
    Not at