Home For A Hero

He had a phone up at the main house, but it wasn’t in service—it could call 911 in an emergency, though.

“I’ll make the call for you,” he said, hoping that she’d agree to stay right there while he made the call. But she didn’t.

“I’ll make the call myself,” she said, then looked past him to the steps. “Is that the way to the phone?”

Her eyes were back on him. He didn’t want her going up to the house with him, but short of telling her to stay put, he didn’t have much of a choice. So he gave her the only excuse he could think of at the moment. “You can’t go up there barefoot. Those stones are rough and the landscape is pretty wild.”

“I made it this far, so I can make it up some steps,” she said without hesitation.

He gave up. Without another word, he went back to the staircase and climbed easily to the top. She was right behind him, but stepped gingerly onto the tangle of grass and ferns that had, at one time, he suspected, been a rather attractive landscape. The large trees that towered high in the dusky sky had been untrimmed for so long they almost shut out the views of the mainland across the sound and closed in the main house. The area looked wild and untamed; he liked it that way. Luke liked it more when some woman wasn’t invading his world. Luke didn’t want to be anyone’s Good Samaritan. He didn’t qualify for that on any level.

SHAY DONOVAN wasn’t an impulsive person. She never had been. Measured and sure, she’d spent her twenty-eight years in a calm quietness that matched her choice of career. As a marine biologist, she studied facts. She searched and tested absolutes. Then, in one moment, one day before New Year’s Eve, she acted recklessly and foolishly and ended up on a beach, half-drowned, freezing to death, with a tall stranger who had saved her.

She was cold and shaky, and her feet hurt from the rocky beach and the steps that led to the top of the towering bluffs. Fog was everywhere, blocking anything beyond five feet away from her, and the man grudgingly leading her was a mere blur in the night when she looked up at him.

“The house is over there,” he said when they reached the top. He pointed off into the fog ahead of them, then took off in that direction.

She hurried to keep up, trying to avoid the errant rocks or branches that had fallen off the trees that grew with abandon all around.

“How’d you manage to get out there at this time of night and go overboard?” he asked without looking back at her.

How indeed? she thought and tried to give him a condensed version of her craziness as she followed him. “I work at the Sound Preservation Agency in Seattle, and I was doing a study on the coastline of the island. I went out to take a look around. When I left, it wasn’t dark, there wasn’t any fog and I didn’t plan on going overboard.”

He didn’t respond, and she found herself adding more details to the story as they kept walking. “I took a boat that had just been serviced, but something went wrong and it died. I couldn’t start it.” She wouldn’t tell him that today would have been her second wedding anniversary, or that she still missed Graham so much that the only way she could feel closer to him was to be on the water.

He’d loved the water. They’d met on the water, and they’d actually married on a small boat off the shore of Mexico.

She kept that to herself and added, “I contacted the coast guard, but they had a major emergency north of here, so they told me to sit tight and wait.”

“Good advice,” he murmured, and she felt the ground under her feet change. Stones. They were cold and damp but even. To her sore feet, they felt like silk.

She looked up and thought they must be on a terrace of sorts, and through the fog, she could barely make out the looming shadow that had to be the house.

The man led the way to the left, and gradually she could make out the rough stone and heavy timber walls that soared up two or three stories to a steeply pitched roof.

Brick steps in a sweeping half circle led up to a heavy door, which the man opened. A light flashed on, and she found herself in a large utility room lined with cupboards on one side, shelves on the other and a very modern-looking washer and drier in an alcove.

“In here.” He took her into a larger room. When he turned on the light, she was taken aback to see a kitchen that looked like something out of a turn-of-the-century hotel, with its stone walls and coved ceiling, except for the very modern appliances and slate countertops. A central island the size of a small car held a multiburner cooktop and a three-door refrigerator was directly across from where she stood and looked large enough to hold a person. Under a row of high windows on the far side of the room were three apron sinks that could have been used to bathe in if a person were desperate.

“Over there,” the man said, and she glanced at a wall phone that hung in an arched nook by the refrigerator. “It’s not in service, but I was told you can call 911.”

She hesitated, then said, “I’m Shay Donovan by the way. Thank you so much for your help.”

He nodded, then moved through a large archway to his right and out of sight. Shay shook her head. Nice to meet you, too. She picked up the phone, heard a dial tone and punched in 911. Once she was connected to the coast guard, she explained that she’d called earlier. They knew right away who she was, and the man on the other end of the line told her that her predicament wasn’t exactly a code red—until she told him she’d fallen overboard.

“What’s your status?” he asked abruptly.

She explained what had happened and that she didn’t think she needed medical help.

“Thank goodness you’re safe. Just wait there, and we’ll do a search for the GPS signal from your craft. Give me a callback number.”

“I can’t. This phone isn’t in service. I can call 911, but I don’t think anyone can call in.”

“Roger that,” he said, then added. “Call us in three hours and ask for extension twenty-three.”

“Thanks,” she said and hung up.

When she turned her host had returned, and she got her first good look at him. She couldn’t tell how old he was, maybe his early forties. She’d originally thought his hair dark, but now she could see it was a deep chestnut shot with gray. The cut was shaggy at best, combed straight back from a face that seemed to be all sharp angles where shadows cut under his jawline, at his high cheekbones and his throat.

The stubble of a new beard darkened his jaw, and a faded scar cut through his left eyebrow and across his temple to stand out against his tanned skin. He’d taken off the heavy peacoat he’d been wearing along with his boots. He stood there in his stocking feet and a plain chambray shirt with short sleeves. Dark eyes that looked almost black were narrowed on her. “What did they say?” he asked, staying in the doorway.

That I’m a fool, she thought. “They’re doing a GPS tracking on the boat and asked me call them back in three hours or so.” She rubbed her arms as cold water ran down her neck. “I can’t believe I got myself into this mess,” she said.

He shrugged as if he could believe it, even though he didn’t know her, then he made an offer. “I’ll drive you into town. You can find a place there to stay in until the coast guard does whatever the coast guard does.”

“That would be great,” she said. “How far are we from town?”

“A ways.”

That was when she realized she had no idea where she’d landed when she’d managed to get to the beach. She remembered going overboard, reaching for the rope that ran along the side of the boat and missing it. Then the rip current wound around her, pulling her away from the boat, farther and farther, the fog being the only thing she could see. “Where am I?” she asked.

“On Shelter Island.”

She’d figured out that one. “No I mean, I was at the northern end of the island when I went overboard, near a place called Lost Point, but by the time I was able to swim for it, I’d lost my bearings.”

“You’re still at the northern end,” he said. “This is Lost Point.”

She knew her jaw must have dropped, but managed to say, “This place, the house, that beach…?”

“Lost Point,” he said.

When she’d come to the agency, they’d hired her to run tests on the waters around the island. Marine life was dying at an increasingly alarming rate, being washed up on the beaches with no obvious signs of trauma. Toxicology tests had shown nothing, so she’d been working to find an answer, with the cooperation of the islanders. They were as concerned as the agency was and had been very nice about granting access to the properties along the shore.

All but one—the owner of Lost Point and the sprawling acres on the northern tip of the island.

No amount of letters and calls to ask for access to Lost Point, a mass of rugged property on the extreme northwestern corner of the island, got any response, not even a refusal. Nothing. She’d been forced to do any work in that area from the water, and it was frustrating her, but she didn’t give up trying to get access to the land, even if it was limited.

“You’re about the most stubborn person I’ve ever met,” Graham had told her. And he’d been right.

She’d dug around and tried to find out about the owner, but the name on the deed was Maurice Evans, who, it was noted, represented “the legal owner.” She’d tracked down Maurice Evans to a very prestigious law firm in New York, but any calls to his offices resulted in a dead end.

One of the islanders had told her that the property had been vacant for years, then a little over two years ago, someone had bought it. No one had ever seen or met the owner, and even the crew who cleaned it once a month wasn’t local.

The only person with regular access to the land was a caretaker who seldom went into town. His name was Luke—last name unknown, and he obviously didn’t answer mail for the owner. He also never answered the security buzzer Shay had tried when she’d driven to the huge gates that barred all entry to Lost Point.

Thanks to her near drowning, she had struck gold. She was not only on Lost Point, she was in it! “You own this property?” she asked, having a hard time seeing this man as a top-level attorney.

“No,” he said. Shay was disappointed momentarily, but even though Maurice Evans was still missing, she could talk to this man. At least she thought so until he added, “Call them back and tell them I’ll get you to town, to the police station if you want. I’ll get my jacket and boots.”