Home For A Hero

“I really want to thank you for doing this for me,” she said.

He glanced up, his eyes shaded by partially lowered lids. “Sure.”

“You’re a man of few words, aren’t you?” she asked as she curled her legs under her.

“I speak when I have something to say,” he murmured and took a sip of his coffee.

She was taken aback to see his hand that held the mug was unsteady. She wondered if it was from the chill outside. He didn’t say anything else, but stared into the coffee. Graham had been a talker. She had always teased him that he could have had a conversation with a doorknob, but she was sure even Graham couldn’t get Luke to say more than a few words.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“Wait.”

“Until?”

“The fog lifts and I walk into town.”

If the fog lingered, she would have a lot of time to figure out how to make contact with Mr. Evans.

She looked away from Luke to the room they were in. “You’ve lived on the estate for a while?”

“A while,” he echoed.

“Where did you come from?”

He rested his mug on his thigh and countered her question with his own. “Where did you come from?”

Okay, he was going to do it his way, and she went along with it since she was totally dependent on his generosity at the moment. And maybe if she spoke about mundane things, he’d let something slip about his boss.

“I was born in San Diego and lived there until I was eighteen. Then I moved to Houston, then Maine, spent a bit of time in San Francisco, then went back to San Diego again. Now I’m up here on a temporary assignment at the Sound Preservation Agency.”

He studied her. “Thanks for that rundown and insight, but I actually meant, where did you come from tonight?”

She thought he was making a joke and started to smile, but he was dead serious. “I told you, I’m a marine biologist at the agency. They’re having problems with the marine life dying with no apparent cause. I’ve done research on a bay for them at an extension near San Diego, and they asked me to visit for a couple of months to look into the problem here. Anyway, I was at work and decided to take a look up this way before I signed out for the day to check on a few things I’ve been uncertain about.”

“Alone?”

“I was about the only one left at the office.” She wouldn’t mention how she realized she was the only one there, the only one without someone to go home to. That she was heading back to the small hotel room where she’d stayed for the past month. Or that she was having trouble getting past today, past the anniversary, and in some way, being on the water seemed to help. She’d been a fool, and she’d been reckless when she shouldn’t have been.

“I didn’t have anywhere to go,” she said, giving a partial truth. “Then I saw the island and thought a trip over would be a good idea. I got lost in thought, and before I knew it, the fog was coming in, the motor quit and I couldn’t start it.”

He listened without comment now, sipped more coffee, then looked at her as if waiting for her to say something that might interest him. He wouldn’t want to hear about how she’d sat on the deck of the boat, wishing Graham were there, that he’d never died, that the life she’d thought two years ago that she’d have now hadn’t disappeared completely. “I called the coast guard, was waiting, turned and…I tripped. I fell over the railing and got caught in a current. I don’t remember much more, until you found me on the beach.”

She really was babbling now, and thankfully he spoke and stopped her. “You said you were alone on the boat?”

Very alone, she thought. “Yes. Most everyone else at the agency has been gone all week for the holidays.”

“Why weren’t you?” he asked, hitting the mark with his words.

She bit her lip, not at all comfortable telling this man so much about herself. Here she was, hoping to learn more about him and his boss, and she was practically spilling her life story. “I’m in Seattle temporarily, and celebrating just…” She shrugged, truly at a loss to explain how the holidays had come to mean little to her recently. “I had work to do, so I was doing it and ignoring the new year that’s coming.”

He sipped more coffee. “It’s overrated.”

“What is? Celebrating?”

“No, the concept of a new year making everything fresh.”

There weren’t any Christmas decorations in this space or anywhere she’d looked around the house. “So, I guess that means you ignore the holidays?”

He studied her, then said more at one time than he’d said since he’d found her on the beach. “A new year is just a new year. Nothing changes. There’s no magic at midnight. It’s just time passing the way it always does. People tend to make a hell of a lot more out of it than makes sense to me.”

There was little emotion in his voice, yet his words made her almost shiver. She more or less agreed with him, not just at the new year, but day in and day out. Time passed. Life went on. Things didn’t change. But hearing it from him filled her with a sharp sadness. “You’re here alone?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“No family?”

“No. How about your family? Are they here?”

She felt herself sinking back, putting an arm around her middle and pressing hard across her stomach. Family? She hadn’t had family since Graham. With Luke asking her about family, it drove home that family for her didn’t exist and wouldn’t again. “No,” she said, adopting his less-than-chatty attitude.

“No one’s looking for you?”

The pain stabbed at her again. The man was suddenly making her feel more alone than she had for a long time. “No one will until someone shows up at the center, finds the boat gone and sees that I put in the security code to get the keys for it.”

“When’s that?”

“I guess after New Year’s, maybe a day or so after.”

Luke studied her and, for a moment, he frowned as his eyes flicked to the simple gold band she still wore on her left hand. “What about your husband?”

She covered the ring with her other hand and found herself biting her lip so hard she was surprised she wasn’t tasting blood in her mouth. “He…” She cleared her throat. “He’s gone.”

Luke didn’t push. She didn’t have to say the words she hated, but she did, as if voicing them to this stranger would make them more real somehow. “He’s dead.” She looked down, easing her grip on her hand.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice.

She didn’t want his sympathy or really to think about Graham right then, so she thanked him and changed the subject. “I wonder if the coast guard was able to find the boat.”

He nodded toward another phone on the table by the tray that had held her food. “Call 911 again, and find out. Maybe you should tell them you aren’t going to make it to the police tonight, either.”

She reached for the receiver and once she was transferred to the coast guard, dialed extension twenty-three. Another man said they’d picked up the GPS signal from Shay’s boat and they’d have it within the hour. The problem was they would have to impound the boat at their facility in Seattle for two working days. She just had to come in, show the ownership papers and pay the fees.

She hung up and muttered, “Just great,” as she sank back on the couch.

“What’s wrong?” Luke asked.

“They’re impounding the boat when they get to it, and I’ll have to pay to ransom it.”

He didn’t respond to that, but stood abruptly and came to collect her dishes. He took them out to the kitchen, and she heard running water, then the clank of china on china.

Money was tight, but she could manage the fines or fees or whatever they’d call them. The agency might be upset, but then again, she was a temporary employee. The worst they could do was cut short her contract and she’d go back to San Diego.

Luke came back, but didn’t enter the room fully. “You can have the bed in the guest room. There’s plenty of blankets in the closet.”

She scrambled to her feet. “Oh, no, I can sleep on the couch, right here. No problem.”

“There’s no heat going—the furnace was never turned on, and it can get cold in there.”

“What about a fire? I’m great at building one.”

He glanced at the empty hearth, then back at her. “Not overnight.”

“Where do you sleep?” she asked.

He motioned vaguely to the room they were in. “I’ll be in here.”

If he was going to sleep on the couch, the room he’d offered her had to be his. “I really will be just fine on the couch,” she said. “There’s no reason for you to give up your bed.”

He sighed. “Take it.”

She almost flinched at the abruptness of his command, but decided not to fight it. “Okay, okay,” she said. “Thanks.” She looked around for a clock, but the only one she could see had stopped at either midnight or noon. “I lost my watch during the swim. What time is it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, probably around ten.”

“How about a television or a radio?”

“No TV. Oh, there’s a television, but there’s no signal. And there’s probably a radio, but I’m not sure where you’d find it.”

No TV, no radio. “When I get back to the mainland, I’ll send you a nice TV-radio-clock combination as a thank-you gift.”

“I don’t have any use for them,” he said.

“Everyone needs—”

“The sun comes up. The sun goes down. No need for a watch. The world does what the world does, whether I know about it or not.”

“Then a nice box of chocolates it is.” Lord, the man was exasperating!

With that, she left him and went to the guest room, closing the door behind her. She washed up quickly, especially her tender feet, before getting ready to slide into bed. Suddenly she realized she had only her clothes to sleep in. She slipped off her jeans, then had second thoughts about sleeping in her shirt. She had to wear it tomorrow and it was already worse for wear.

Maybe there was a T-shirt around she could wear. She looked about, ready to go and ask Luke if she could borrow something to wear, but stopped. A door slammed deep in the house, then there was no sound at all. She waited, but heard nothing. He must have gone outside again for some reason. She could wait for Luke to come back or just try to find a T-shirt on her own. She was bone-weary from everything that had happened to her and decided just to sleep in her bra and panties.

She climbed into the bed, turned off the side light, then snuggled down in the smooth sheets. She lay back, staring up at the shadows over her and marveled that she’d started her day alone in a hotel room, then alone at the agency. She’d never dreamed that she’d more or less be a castaway, washed up on Luke’s beach. Now she was in his bed. Life never ceased to amaze her at its twists and turns.

If Graham had been with her he would’ve asked her if she’d planned on falling into the sound and getting rescued on the land she so desperately wanted to have access to. She would’ve laughed and told him that was his way of doing things. He hadn’t been a man who saw limits on what he could do. If it meant protecting something or someone, or finding the truth, all rules were off. But she’d never been that bold. Or maybe that crazy. Was that was why she’d been so attracted to Graham at first?

She was startled to realize that the memories of her husband were coming softly now, slipping into her mind. She remembered falling in love with Graham. They’d met when Graham had been hired as a guest lecturer on marine studies at the university in San Diego where she’d been working as a department assistant. She’d heard his lecture and later had approached him. They had coffee, talked some more and before she knew it, they’d become good friends.

Then the love had come, sneaking up on her. At the thought of how she’d loved him, her stomach clenched, and she rolled onto her side, the sensations as familiar to her as the sense of loss that never seemed to leave her since Graham’s death. At the beginning she had tried to fight the emotions, hoping to make them go away. But they’d never stopped completely, and after a time, she’d given up. She’d learned to let the feelings come and leave on their own.

But for the first time, the aching loss of her husband was dissolving almost as soon as it began. She shifted and felt for the slim gold band on her finger, rubbing the smooth metal the way she had for so long. But rather than looking for comfort, she was almost scared to think things were changing.

If the pain went away, did that mean she’d forget Graham? She wasn’t sure that was a deal she wanted to make, exchanging the pain for forgetfulness. She didn’t ever want not to remember Graham. But the pain was easing and that sense of loss she’d lived with for two years was less defined. She suddenly found herself having to concentrate to conjure up Graham’s image.

She wanted to remember the way his gray eyes had narrowed with intense interest on everything from his charts and maps to the way a soft-serve ice cream swirled in its cone. To remember his rusty hair that was always too long and mussed from him constantly running his hands over it when he was deep in thought. His long fingers rapping on the desktop when he spoke on the phone. He hated the business end of his career in marine biology. He loved spending time on the water, the discoveries he’d make, and he’d loved her.

But it had been for such a short time—barely seven months. One minute he’d been telling her that he’d been invited on a lecture tour in Europe, and they could take a side trip to visit a preservation park on the African shore. The next moment he’d keeled over. There’d been no warning, no clues of the aneurysm. He was gone before she could even reach for him. She’d held on to him until they’d forced her to let him go.

Now, when she thought about him, his image blurred and was undefined as if a mist were falling between them. She couldn’t see the details and started to panic. As she pushed herself up in the bed, a loud knocking on the bedroom door startled her. “Y-yes?” she managed to say around a tightness in her throat.

“Sorry, I need to get a few things,” Luke said through the wooden barrier.

“Oh, sure, of course,” she called. “Just a minute.” She got out of bed, turned on the side light, grabbed her shirt and pulled it on, then pushed her legs into her jeans. As she zipped them, she padded barefoot to the door.

She stood to one side to let Luke in. “Just be a minute,” he murmured as he made his way to the dresser. He opened a middle drawer, took out some socks and then reached to the far side of the large dresser and picked up something that looked like a sleeping bag. When he turned, she saw that his chambray shirt was open and untucked. She caught a glimpse of a strong, smooth chest and a flat stomach before her eyes jerked up to his face. She felt herself blush, and was embarrassed by where her thoughts had started to go.

Her stomach flipped, but for an entirely different reason this time. How could she be looking at this stranger with anything but polite interest, especially right now? She clasped her hands together in front of her, feeling the cool metal of her ring.

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” he said, flicking his eyes over her jeans and shirt.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” she said, keeping her eyes determinedly on his face.

“Well, then, good night.” He pulled the door shut behind him.

She hurried to undress and got back into bed before turning off the light and pulling the blankets over her. She took several deep breaths, blocking out what had just happened, then finally closed her eyes. She just wanted to sleep—she was bone-tired—but couldn’t.

The minute she shut her eyes, she could see Luke on the shore, a blurred figure in the fog and night. Then the man who had just left the room, his feet bare, his shirt undone, his chest naked, took his place. She tried to push the image away, but found she couldn’t. She missed feeling warmth at her back, arms around her.

Suddenly she heard a thud from another part of the house, then silence.

She rolled on her side, thinking about Luke’s isolation, and she realized she was just as isolated, only not on an island but in a crowded world.

Closing her eyes more tightly, Shay told herself she was safe and warm here. She wasn’t in the water—or worse. Finally she let herself fall into the coming sleep, past dreams that flitted in and out of her consciousness but made little sense.

“No! Don’t!”

Shay was jarred from a deep sleep by muffled screams. At least she thought that was what had awakened her. “No, stop! Dammit, stop!”

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