Body Search

Tansy thought it strange to find parallels between an island off Maine and the shattered Third World villages they so often visited for HFH. But the island, like the man, was a surprise. She’d envisioned a quaint old New England fishing village with a healthy tourist trade. This poor, dispirited place was anything but. It might have been charming once, might have been picturesque.

Now, it was just dreary. Dale’s cousin, Mickey, had mentioned a recent stretch of bad lobstering. She bet it had been going on longer than that.

Automatically, she scanned the area, registering the details of the outbreak location. The familiar action soothed her, distanced her from the feel of the man wrapped around her and the memory of the roughest landing of her piloting career.

Why the hell had the landing gear snapped? As soon as she dried off, she’d call the FAA. There would be an investigation, and an answer.

A sudden lurch of the jeep threw her against Dale’s arm and she felt the brush of his thumb along one breast like wildfire. She stifled a gasp as her flesh tightened, and she cursed the flood of wet warmth that swirled at his touch. Her body, it appeared, hadn’t forgotten Dale any more than her heart had.

“Sorry.” He moved his hand and shifted in his seat, and she became aware that hers wasn’t the only body with a memory. She could feel him, hard and ready, against her buttocks. And, God help her, she wanted him with a deep, insistent pulse she hadn’t managed to conquer in the time they’d been apart.

She was no better than her mother, willing to accept so much less than she deserved because of an illusion of love.

They bumped past a low collection of cottages with a No Vacancy sign and a few cars in the lot. “Turn in here,” Dale snapped, his voice rough with a tone that sent a ripple of memory through her. “I left a message reserving rooms.”

Rooms, plural. Tansy hated the flash of disappointment. Of course they weren’t staying together. They were broken up. Finished. She was only on the island because HFH management had insisted Dale take his partner. Tansy thought she might strangle her boss when she got home, which would be sooner than later, if Dale got his way.

Home. It was tempting. She was out of her depth, not in control of the situation. But at the same time, it was clear the outbreak wasn’t as small an issue as she’d thought. If patients were dying, if people needed her, she’d stay.

Especially since her plane was at the bottom of the ocean.

Chilled, she leaned back against Dale. His arm tightened across her waist as Mickey passed the motel and said, “Sorry, there aren’t any vacancies.” He turned onto a dirt track, barely visible in the thin headlight beams. Stunted island trees closed in, reaching soggy branches toward the travelers. “The clinic is too small for all the patients. We’re using the motel as a hospital, and the only available room is being rented by a big-shot real estate developer named Roberts.”

She felt Dale’s body tense. “Where are we sleeping, then?”

In Tehru they had picked the dying up off the streets, carried them into the crumbling hotel rooms and treated them on the beds. The HFH doctors had slept on the floors when they’d slept at all. The lodgings weren’t important. The patients were.

So why did Dale sound upset? Why was his body tense beneath hers? She looked back over her shoulder and saw his eyes dart from the road to the passing land, as though he wanted to look around but couldn’t bear to.

“Your uncle kept the place up,” Mickey said, turning into a narrow drive, toward a sprawling house that looked a few degrees better maintained than the cottages near the water. “Painted it every few years and kept the utilities going, just in case.”

Just in case what? Tansy wanted to ask, but she choked it down.

Fear and curiosity battled with a growing sense of disillusionment as she realized how much of himself Dale had kept hidden. How little he’d really trusted her.

How little he had loved her.

“I couldn’t care less what Trask has or hasn’t done.” The chill in Dale’s tone reminded Tansy of the times she’d pushed him for more and he’d given her less. Cold. He could be so cold.

And she was so confused. What the hell was going on here?

She slid from the jeep and stumbled in a muddy rut. Dale caught her elbow and propped her up. When her feet were steady, he stepped away, attention focused on the cousin, who could have been his weather-beaten twin.

Mickey shook his head. “Your uncle has changed, Dale. I swear it. He’s sorry for what he did back then. You should talk to him.”

“Not if my life depended on it.” The uncivilized spark crackled in Dale’s eyes and his voice heated a degree. “Not even if he was dying.”

Mickey stared at him for a long moment before nodding. “If you say so.” He touched Dale’s shoulder briefly, and something akin to regret flickered in Mickey’s faded blue eyes. “There’s no agenda here, Cousin. I wouldn’t have asked you to come back if I had another choice. And I wouldn’t make you stay in this house if there was someplace better. But there isn’t, unless you want to stay at Churchill’s mansion.”

“No,” Dale said flatly, staring up at the house. “No, this is fine.” He dipped a hand into his pocket, and Tansy saw his fingers work. It was a habit he never seemed aware of. She’d come close to searching his pockets once, to find out what sort of talisman he carried, but she’d stopped herself. That was her mother’s game, not hers.

Mickey glanced at his watch and jerked his head toward the sagging porch. “Go on in and get showered and changed. My wife, Libby, left you some basics—towels, clothes, a few odds and ends. Our doctor, Dr. Hazel, will meet you at the motel to go over the patients when you’re ready.”

As Mickey backed the jeep down the narrow trail, Tansy’s confusion and anger tumbled together in a righteous buzz. Still feeling Dale’s touch on her flesh, and hating the frigid control he used like a shield, she rounded on him. “What the hell is—”

“Later,” he interrupted with a short, chopping motion of his hand and a hard look in his eye that sent her back a step. “I’ll explain later.” He paused, and his eyes softened into something more familiar. Something she almost understood. Something that tugged at her and made her wish things were different. “Let’s go inside and get warmed up. I want to have a look at that bump on your head, too. You may need a stitch.”

“It’s fine. And if I needed a stitch, I’d do it myself,” she replied, feeling the adrenaline and the fear, the cold and the confusion, all catching up to her at once. “Your sutures are lousy. And don’t think you’re getting out of an explanation, Metcalf.”

His eyes softened further, though something dangerous still lurked at the back. “Atta girl. Come on.”

He led her up the porch. A hollowed-out shingle near the scratched brass mailbox yielded a key that slipped easily into the simple lock. The faded plaque beside the door contained a single word.

Metcalf.

As she passed through the door into a bare hallway, she murmured, “Welcome home, Dale.”

She got a pithy curse in reply. For some reason, it made her smile. But when she turned, she found him watching her with cold, angry eyes.

“This isn’t a joke, Tansy. You don’t belong here. There are things going on that you have no part of, and I don’t want you hurt.”

Though his words and expression were hard, she couldn’t help the quick lift of her heart. He cared what happened to her. The hot, wanting pulse returned. “Oh? I assumed you didn’t want me along because of what happened between us.”

Emotion, or maybe desire, flared hot in his eyes, then iced as quickly as it had sparked. “Don’t fool yourself. There is no ‘us’ anymore.” He turned away and toed a pile of towels and clothes near the staircase. “The shower’s the second door on the right. The water takes a few minutes to warm up.”

Then he walked away, leaving only an echo of footsteps on dry floorboards to mark his presence. Tansy dropped her salty, aching face into her hands.

That was what she’d wanted. No regrets, no hard feelings. Nothing between them. He hadn’t been able to give her what she needed, and they’d parted ways. Simple, right?

But there was nothing simple about the ache in her heart. There was nothing simple about the landing gear ripping off, or about an outbreak that was too deadly, too virulent to be shellfish poisoning.

And worst of all, there was nothing simple about the man she’d once thought herself in love with. The playboy doctor who’d looked like a leading actor among extras in the Tehru clinics, and instead had turned out to be…what? A lobsterman’s son? The prodigal returned?

She had no idea.

Let me inside, she had pleaded during one of their last real fights. Don’t keep shutting me out. I can’t help you if you won’t let me in.

Now, she glanced around the cold, bare entryway, noting where squares of darker wood on the walls suggested pictures long gone. If this was the inside of Dale, she might be better off back in Boston. At least there, she understood the rules.

Here, she understood nothing.

WHEN HE FINALLY HEARD the shower thump to life, Dale pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the kitchen window and closed his eyes. If she had followed him and demanded answers, he wasn’t sure what would have come out of his mouth. There is no

“us” anymore. It was the truth. It had to be the truth. Everything that had happened between them was based on a lie.

He wasn’t the son of a wealthy Boston shipper. His family’s single boat had gone down one night amidst a ferocious spring storm. Or so he’d been told. Nobody, not even the uncle who’d lost his wife in the accident, had wanted to hear Dale’s suspicions. The day a drunken Trask had tried to beat the questions out of him was the day seventeen-year-old Dale had fled the island with Walter Churchill’s help.

Make yourself into someone else, Churchill had demanded, and sent him off with enough money to do it. You’re better than Lobster Island. You don’t be long here.