Body Search
Jessica Andersen
THE PRODIGAL SON HAD RETURNEDDale Metcalf had spent fifteen years running from his past. Then a string of suspicious deaths linked to a fierce epidemic forced the outbreak specialist to return to his boyhood home on Lobster Island with Dr. Tansy Whitmore–the one woman he'd never stopped loving.But the sinister incidents that coincided with their arrival on the windswept coastal island–a mysterious plane crash, a raging fire and a near-fatal attack–proved that someone desperately wanted them dead…. And now, in a race against time, could the two stormy lovers combat danger–and desire–before it was too late?
Fire! Dale thought in a quick moment of sleep-dulled panic
Tansy. The half-formed thought dissolved in a fit of coughing as Dale lunged for the floor, instincts taking over. Tansy was down the hall. In danger. He yelled over the serpent’s hiss of smoke and the lion’s roar of fire beneath.
“Tansy, get back from the door, I’m coming in!” Dale shouted, hoping she could hear him. Hoping he wasn’t too late. There was no response over the rush of dry, burning wood and the voice of the fire. He ducked below the waist-high smoke and gulped in a breath before testing the knob. Blazing air surrounded him, and he yanked open the door and bolted inside.
Through watering eyes and the eerie red radiance that bathed the entire house, he saw that the bed was empty, and his heart stuttered. Then he saw Tansy….
She was lying on the floor. Out cold…
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! And we have six breathtaking books this month that will make the season even brighter….
THE LANDRY BROTHERS are back! We can’t think of a better way to kick off our December lineup than with this long-anticipated new installment in Kelsey Roberts’s popular series about seven rascally brothers, born and bred in Montana. In Bedside Manner, chaos rips through the town of Jasper when Dr. Chance Landry finds himself framed for murder…and targeted for love! Check back this April for the next title, Chasing Secrets. Also this month, watch for Protector S.O.S. by Susan Kearney. This HEROES INC. story spotlights an elite operative and his ex-lover who maneuver stormy waters—and a smoldering attraction—as they race to neutralize a dangerous hostage situation.
The adrenaline keeps on pumping with Agent-in-Charge by Leigh Riker, a fast-paced mystery. You’ll be bewitched by this month’s ECLIPSE selection—Eden’s Shadow by veteran author Jenna Ryan. This tantalizing gothic unravels a shadowy mystery and casts a magical spell over an enamored duo. And the excitement doesn’t stop there! Jessica Andersen returns to the lineup with her riveting new medical thriller, Body Search, about two hot-blooded doctors who are stranded together in a windswept coastal town and work around the clock to combat a deadly outbreak.
Finally this month, watch for Secret Defender by Debbi Rawlins—a provocative woman-in-jeopardy tale featuring an iron-willed hero who will stop at nothing to protect a headstrong heiress…even kidnap her for her own good.
Best wishes for a joyous holiday season from all of us at Harlequin Intrigue.
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Senior Editor, Harlequin Intrigue
Body Search
Jessica Andersen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, Jessica is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say “hi”!
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Dr. Tansy Whitmore— After this latest assignment, she plans to request a transfer away from the pain of working side by side with her ex-lover. If she lives that long.
Dr. Dale Metcalf— The outbreak specialist is a brooding loner. Will an assignment on the island of his birth break through his carefully tended walls before a deadly past catches up with him…and threatens the one woman he cares about?
Walter Churchill— Dale’s father figure helped him escape the poor island and become a doctor after Dale’s parents died at sea. He made Dale promise never to return. What will happen when that promise is broken?
Dr. Hazel Bronte— The island’s dedicated doctor is overwhelmed by the deadly outbreak, which isn’t playing by the rules.
Mickey Lowe— Dale’s distant cousin and boyhood friend is the only one with the power to call him back to the island.
Nathaniel Roberts— The real-estate developer says he wants to help the islanders, but he may have a more deadly agenda.
Trask Metcalf— Dale’s uncle drove him away fifteen years earlier. Is he looking to get rid of Dale again, this time permanently?
To Marley Gibson, for seeing this book through from beginning to end. Thanks, friend.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter One
People were dying on Lobster Island. Again.
Dale Metcalf read the brief message for the hundredth time and told himself he should walk away. Let the islanders save themselves—they certainly hadn’t saved him fifteen years ago. They hadn’t saved his parents. His aunt.
“Can I get you something else?” The heavily made-up waitress leaned over Dale, giving him a look down her shirt and a whiff of cheap perfume. She brushed her breast against his arm when she stood, leaving no doubt as to what something else could entail. Though the strippers were off duty, the Slippery Pole still reeked of sex and anonymity.
He lifted the nearly empty bottle. “Another beer, please.”
Her pink-caked lips pursed and her tired eyes flashed, stuck-up doctor thinks he’s too good for the likes of me. Bastard. She flounced off with a twitch of her too-generous hips, and Dale leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket without looking, but the words pounded in his brain. Lobster Island. Death.
“Dr. Metcalf.”
Dale jolted at the voice, then cursed when his boss, Zachary Cage, slid into the dark booth. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Ripley said you were looking for me.”
Hospitals were incestuously small by nature. Boston General had become even more so when Cage married Dr. Ripley Davis, who was best friends with Dale’s ex. Awkward didn’t even begin to cover it.
Dale frowned. He’d wanted to have this conversation at the hospital, wanted it official. “Yeah, I need to talk to you. But I didn’t expect you to track me down in an off-hours titty bar.”
“And I didn’t expect to find you in one, knocking back cheap beer,” Cage countered. “So what’s the problem?”
Dale tilted the bottle to buy a moment. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but the memories crowding his head deserved to be toasted with beer. The cheaper the better. He set the bottle down. “I need time off.”
“No problem.” Cage waved at the waitress and ordered an import. “Between Boston General and HFH, you’ve done the work of two average doctors. You deserve a vacation. Maybe it’ll help you clear your head of…things.”
Dale was tempted to let his boss think he needed distance from the breakup. But Cage was the local administrator for HFH— Hospitals for Humanity—a group that sent doctors into unstable situations. War. Natural disasters. Outbreaks. He needed to know where Dale was going, and why.
At least some of the why. Nobody at Boston General needed to know all of it.
“I’ll need HFH field equipment.” Dale touched his pocket, where Mickey’s message rested near his heart. Distant cousins, the boys had grown up together. Mick was the only one Dale had kept in touch with. The only one who had the power to call him back to that godforsaken place. “There’s an outbreak of shellfish poisoning on a chunk of rock called Lobster Island. The Maine fisheries people shut the area down, but I’d like to investigate.”
Cage’s eyebrows lifted. “Why HFH?”
The subtext read, why bother? The group focused on major disasters and massive outbreaks. Not a few people sick with paralytic shellfish poisoning— PSP—and not when the locals already had the necessary quarantines in place.
But this was different. Resisting the urge to tug at his imported cotton shirt, Dale muttered, “I was born on the island.”
Oddly enough, he wasn’t struck by lightning. He glanced at his beer. It was his third. Maybe fourth. And it was the only way he’d been able to make himself say the words.
Cage raised his eyebrows. “Well, hell. I always thought—”
“Yeah, I know,” Dale interrupted. That’s what everyone at Boston General thought, because that’s what he’d wanted them to think. “I need a week, some field kits and lab support back at BoGen.” He paused. “Please.”
Cage studied him a moment, then nodded. “You can have all the equipment you need. But I don’t let my team members go Lone Ranger, even on a quick island hop. You’re bringing a partner.”
Dale hid the wince, knowing Cage was bound by HFH policy. Nobody went into the field alone. Period. But he didn’t want anyone else at Boston General to know about his past. Not even his usual HFH partner, though he trusted her as much as he trusted anyone.
Unfortunately, Dr. Tansy Whitmore wasn’t an option. Not anymore. He scowled as the cheap beer soured in his stomach. That was the only reason he felt a twinge of pain that they’d gone from “let’s just be friends,” straight to “I hope you choke on your stethoscope and die, you miserable—”
“Slimy toad!”
Yeah, that was it. Dale looked up. The knot in his stomach grew tighter and he felt the familiar sizzle when he saw her striding through the disreputable bar without a sideways glance. Grown out from the short crop she’d given it during their last tropical assignment, her golden hair was caught mid-curl. It stuck out around her head like a nimbus of flame, matching the fire in her blue eyes. Her unpainted lips drew a tense line across her face, and energy crackled around her as she beat a path to Dale’s table.
As always, the sight of Tansy was like a punch to his chest. But now, that first thrust of sexual awareness was tangled with other things. Anger. Disappointment.
Regret, though she’d never know it.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered, rising to his feet more from self-preservation than manners.
Cage stood, as well. “Dr. Whitmore.”
Hospital hierarchy didn’t save Cage from Tansy’s anger. She snapped, “Don’t you ‘Dr. Whitmore’ me, Zachary Cage. You said you didn’t know where he was.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned on Dale and shook a piece of paper at him. “And you! What the hell is this?”
Her scent touched his nostrils, earthy and sensual like the woman herself. The dirty overhead light glinted off diamonds and gold at her wrist, neck and ears. Dale thought of the dull rock in his pocket, the only thing he’d kept from the island he’d once called home, and knew he’d been right to push her away before things got complicated between them. Like diamonds and ugly rocks, he and Tansy were too different to complement each other. Too different for a future, if he’d been looking for such a thing.
He glanced at the paper and forced detachment, though her anger raised an answering flare in his chest. She’d once called him cold, unemotional. Well, let her think that. Then maybe she’d go away and leave him to his beer. “It looks like my resignation,” he observed, lifting one eyebrow. “I thought I left it on my desk, not yours.”
“It’s bull, that’s what it is,” she fired back. “You’re the best outbreak specialist in HFH. How dare you quit?” The temper in her voice was familiar, but the glint of tears unsettled him. Voice lower, she continued, “If it’s because you don’t want to work with me anymore, I’ll ask to be reassigned.”
“Tansy—” he began, then stalled. He’d never known how to handle her emotions.
“Sit down, both of you,” Cage ordered, waving them both to their seats. “Nobody’s quitting or being reassigned. I’ve had enough of this.”
Dale sat cautiously. Damn. He’d been writing his resignation when the message from Mickey arrived. In the flurry of memory that had driven him to the bar, he’d forgotten to hide the draft. Now there was no reason for Cage to loan him equipment or an assistant. Double damn.
Tansy passed the letter to Cage. “He’s leaving. This was on his desk.”
And what the hell was Tansy doing in his office, anyway? Since their breakup, he’d barely seen her.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d watched her with her patients at Boston General, and he’d slipped into the back of her lectures and cursed himself for needing to see her. His only salvation was that she’d never noticed him.
Cage passed the paper to Dale and frowned. “Dr. Whitmore, I’m surprised at you. This is an invasion of Dr. Metcalf’s privacy.”
“I’m sorry,” she said without a hint of remorse, “but I’m not going to sit by and let him do something as stupid as this. HFH needs him, and—”
“And it’s none of your business,” Dale growled. “You have no right to try to get inside my head anymore.”
She sucked in a breath. The quick hurt in her eyes made him feel like slime, though they’d had this conversation before. A hundred times, it seemed. Naturally open and giving, she’d wanted to know his every thought, his every feeling. But he had things he wanted to keep private. His emotions. His fears.
His past.
She rallied quickly. “We may not be in a relationship, but as far as HFH is concerned, we’re still partners. That gives me some say.”
“We’re not partners anymore. I quit.” Damn, he hadn’t wanted it to come to this. But he couldn’t keep Tansy in a relationship based on a lie, and he’d been surprised to discover that he didn’t want to stay at Boston General without her.
“No, you’re not quitting. I won’t have it.” She turned to Cage. “Reassign me to another HFH hospital and a different partner.” Her voice was steady, but Dale saw through to the hurt beneath, and his chest ached.
“Shut up, both of you,” Cage snapped, banging his half-empty bottle on the table. He waited until they subsided. “Okay. Here’s the deal. I’m not accepting Metcalf’s resignation or Tansy’s request. But I am fed up with two of my best people ghosting around Boston General because they’re letting personal problems interfere with their work.” When they protested, he cut them off. “Just listen. Dale is leaving tomorrow to investigate a PSP outbreak off Maine. Tansy, you’re going with him. Take the small plane, you can leave in the morning.”
Tansy’s startled, “But—” was drowned out by Dale’s bellow of, “No way in hell!”
It was panic, pure and simple, that cranked his volume. He didn’t want her anywhere near Lobster Island. He didn’t want her to see where he’d come from. Who he was.
Diamonds and purple rocks didn’t mix.
“You’re going to the island together,” Cage said in a steely, unforgiving tone, “or I’ll fire both of you with prejudice.”
Tansy gasped at the threat and Dale scowled. He was resigned to leaving HFH, but he couldn’t get Tansy fired. The patients needed her. The group couldn’t lose her. Damn.
Cage’s expression softened. “Go to Lobster Island. Remember how to work together. You’re the best team I’ve got, and it’d be a shame to let that go to waste.”
“And if I still want to be reassigned after it’s over?” she asked quietly, not looking at Dale.
“Then I’ll reassign you.” Cage sighed and stood. “But I hope it won’t come to that. HFH needs you both. Together. Do we have a deal?”
His exit left a hollow gap in the conversation.
“Fine,” Tansy said after a moment. She stared at one of the empty strippers’ cages rather than at Dale. “E-mail me a list of equipment you want loaded on the plane. I’ll meet you at the hangar tomorrow afternoon.”
They’d had the same conversation a hundred times before, in a dozen different countries, but there was no sense of impending adventure now. There was only a sense of impending doom.
Tansy on Lobster Island. It was the last thing Dale wanted, but if he didn’t agree, she could lose her job. And really, what did it matter if she found out about his past?
She already hated him.
On that thought, he drained the last of his beer and felt none of the alcohol’s punch. “I don’t want you with me.”
She jerked her chin down. “Yeah, you’ve made that clear. Don’t worry, the feeling is mutual. Too bad we don’t get a vote.”
She slipped from the booth and marched out on Cage’s heels, leaving an aching hole in Dale’s gut. “Damn.” He pressed the empty beer bottle to the center of his forehead, wishing he’d chartered a plane and gone on his own. He hadn’t been back to the island in fifteen years, since his parents were lost at sea and he’d run away from his Uncle Trask’s brutal grief. He didn’t want to go back now. And he certainly didn’t want to bring Tansy with him.
Scowling, he reread Mickey’s message. Six people were sick. Three had already died from respiratory failure, though the disease shouldn’t be fatal. And although she was one of the best investigators in the business, Dale wished he could leave Tansy safe on the mainland.
Because people were dying on Lobster Island. Again.
HEADPHONES CLAMPED OVER her ears, Tansy slapped the throttle open and braced herself as the little prop plane surged down the runway, eager to be on its way. She’d gotten her pilot’s license when she first joined HFH, nearly three years earlier. God, she loved to fly.
But not today. Today, the man brooding in the copilot’s seat kept her from enjoying the sky. Arms folded across his broad chest, Dale made no move to touch the second set of controls. He merely sat there, sullen and angry.
Well, the hell with him. The breakup hadn’t been her idea. She’d wanted to work on their relationship. He’d bailed.
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and tried to ignore the way the afternoon sunlight gilded his white-blond hair and accentuated his pale skin, which never tanned, even when they’d spent a month in the Serengeti. Long-legged and powerfully built, he had the hard body of a laborer and the graceful hands of a surgeon. His very presence filled the small cockpit, almost suffocating Tansy with the memories she’d tried so hard to avoid.
Both fair and blue-eyed, fit and wellborn, she and Dale resembled each other on the surface. But underneath, they were polar opposites, and those differences had been the problem. He wouldn’t let her into his guarded, private corners, and she hadn’t wanted to settle for less.
She glanced over again, and their eyes met. Heat flared in her midsection. After almost three months, she still woke up reaching for him, and despised herself for it. She was no better than her mother.
When they reached the shallow cruising altitude that would take them to a lobster-shaped speck off the Maine coast, she slid the headphones off one ear and broke the silence. “Want to tell me why we’re investigating a tiny outbreak of PSP?”
Paralytic shellfish poisoning was a serious, though rarely fatal, condition that was usually handled on the local level. From what little Cage had told her, there was no reason for HFH intervention. But she knew Dale well enough to realize he wasn’t going to volunteer any information. He was too committed to his bad mood.
After a long moment he sighed and uncrossed his arms. “It doesn’t look like typical shellfish poisoning. The reactions are too severe, and there hasn’t been a red tide in the area. Besides, the islanders fish for lobsters, not mollusks.”
“And lobsters, being scavengers, don’t usually absorb enough of the toxin to be a problem.” Tansy nodded, glad he had at least answered her. Though it hurt to sit near him and know there was no hope for their relationship, she would be okay if she focused on the job. Always the job. Her work had gotten her through the last three months. It would get her through the next few days.
Besides, they usually got along fine when they were in the field. It was his behavior in Boston that had driven her crazy. When they were at home base, he withdrew, became unavailable. Toward the end, she’d wondered whether he had another woman in the city.
Know your man inside and out, and you’ll never be surprised, baby. Her mother’s words came to her across the years, along with the memory of sitting in the car while Eva Whitmore cruised their ritzy neighborhood in search of her husband’s vehicle.
Feeling the familiar tightness in her stomach, Tansy clenched her teeth and concentrated on flying, as the sun sank towards twilight. She’d make it through this one last assignment with Dale, and then she’d leave. She couldn’t stand seeing him every day. Not like this. Though in the end she’d been the one to walk away from their relationship, he had pushed her there.
He simply hadn’t cared as much as she did.
“We’re almost there.” The voice was thick from the silence. The rough timbre heated the back of her neck with memory, and she stared harder out the cockpit window. The shadow of an island appeared, black against the gray sea. The granite claws arced around a central harbor at one end. The subtle curve of tail at the other end completed the illusion and created a second harbor.
She craned her neck to follow the rocky contours as she flew past and came around to face the northernmost claw. “Damn. It does look like a lobster.”
“That’s why they call it Lobster Island,” Dale muttered as they began their descent.
Frustrated by his mood and his nearness, she snapped, “This trip wasn’t my idea, you know.”
“Wasn’t mine either,” he growled in return. “I tried to leave you home.”
Tansy compressed her lips and concentrated on flying. Maybe she should’ve refused the assignment and risked her job. But part of her had wanted this one last trip with Dale. Away from Boston General, she knew she would see the man beneath the brittle upper-crust charm. The man she’d fallen for. In the field, Dale Metcalf was a bit loud and a bit rough. Exciting. Almost uncivilized. More at home in the slums of the small, hot country of Tehru than the Theater District of Boston.
But the moment they returned to the city, that man disappeared and was replaced by someone else. She didn’t like the other Dale much, nor did she trust him. There was something…false about him in the city.
She darted a glance at the pale, perfect features of Boston General’s most eligible bachelor. His square jaw was tight with tension, the lines beside his mouth deeper than she remembered. Though they were headed into the field, he had avoided his usual attire of bush pants and a cotton shirt. Instead, he wore a monogrammed shirt from England and lightweight wool trousers.
He was wearing his Boston clothes, Tansy realized. Not his field clothes. She felt a strange, unexpected stir of fear. Her mother had taught her that if she knew everything and understood everything, she’d never be out of control. That had made medicine a perfect career choice. Tansy understood illness, understood health. But as the little plane dropped through a scattering of clouds and shimmied in a slap of crosswind, she realized she didn’t know everything about this assignment.
And she knew even less about the man sitting beside her.
Worried now, though for no good reason, she side-slipped the plane to lose altitude and radioed her approach to the Lobster Island tower. The response was slow in coming, and informal, but the parallel row of lights sparkled in the near distance, outlining a runway that was much longer than the blasted dirt strips she was used to.
“Almost there,” she murmured, more to herself than Dale.
“Great.” He bit off a curse and she felt another flash of annoyance.
“If you’re going to snarl at me every time I open my mouth, this is going to be a very long investigation, Metcalf.”
“This from the woman who’s called me a ‘slimy toad’ whenever she’s seen me for the past three months?” His knuckles whitened. “You wanted happily ever after. I wanted to be friends. The two don’t mix, Tansy.”
It still hurt that their breakup hadn’t crushed him like it had crushed her. Then again, that was part of the problem. “Never mind,” she snapped. “Forget I was about to suggest a truce. Let’s just keep biting each other’s heads off and hope the patients don’t notice.”
The little plane dropped down through the last fifty feet of air and the rocky bulk of the island flashed beneath them. Their airspeed bled from a hundred miles per hour to eighty, then slower.
Dale sighed heavily and reached out a hand as though to touch her, but he didn’t. “Tansy, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to fight with you. But this is…awkward for me.”
The first of the runway lights glinted below the plane and Tansy brought it down expertly, letting the wheels kiss the smooth, shadowed tarmac. “It’s awkward because of me. Because of us.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Or at least, not entirely. It’s the island. You see, I was born—”
Crack! A horrendous jolt yanked the control yoke from Tansy’s fingers. Her body slammed against the shoulder harness and the plane bottomed out, hard, on the runway.
“Christ!” Dale yelled, grabbing for a handhold. “Hang on!”
No time. There was no time for hanging on. Sparks flashed by the windows, brighter than the sunset. Metal screamed.
“Dale! The landing gear’s collapsed!” Fear grabbed Tansy by the throat. Control. She was out of control.
The little plane slid sideways down the runway at almost fifty miles per hour. Metal ground against asphalt, and sparks spewed higher against the dusky sky. She fought the useless yoke for a few seconds before letting it go. She glanced out the cockpit window. There weren’t any buildings to hit at the end of the runway, thank God.
Then her stomach dropped. “The runway ends!” she shrieked. “Dale! The ocean!”
“Hang on, baby. Hang on!” Somehow, their hands twined together. Their eyes caught and held as the plane slid over the end of the runway and tilted down.
Metal howled. The plane slammed against something. It twisted and fell, bounced, and continued to fall until they hit bottom, hard.
Tansy’s head smacked into the side window.
First, she saw watery stars.
Then she saw nothing.
Chapter Two
The endless moment of freefall was sickening. Dale’s stomach lodged in his throat, then dropped when they hit bottom and Tansy’s head cracked into the side window. She sagged against her safety belt.
“Tansy! Tansy, stay with me. I need you to stay with me!” The words were rote, the feeling beneath them anything but. Panic roared in Dale’s ears. Then he realized it wasn’t just panic.
It was the sound of waves breaking on the plane. They’d fallen into the bay. And Tansy was unconscious.
“Damn!” He yanked free of his belt and struggled to his feet, hunching down in the small cockpit space. The cold, salty water of Lobster Bay splashed around his ankles. God, he hated the ocean.
The floor tilted by degrees as the weight of the engine pulled the front of the plane down. Heart pounding, hands shaking, he glanced out the forward window. In the crimson of twilight, he could see wavelets and greasy, gray water edging up the nose of the plane.
How long until the tower sent help? How long would the little plane float?
Working quickly, he checked Tansy’s vitals. “Tansy! Tansy, sweetheart, wake up. We need to get out of here, baby.” The endearments slipped out, though he’d rarely used them when they had been a couple. At least not out loud.
How deep was the water just past the landing strip? He didn’t remember. He hoped it was shallow. Lobster Bay was tricky that way. But even four feet of water would be too much if he couldn’t get them out of the plane before it flooded.
Tansy stirred, and relief rattled through him. He could get her out. He had to get her out.
“Flotation,” he muttered, knowing that HFH stocked their planes with life jackets as well as the standard cushions. He bypassed the field equipment crammed in the back and yanked the jackets from their compartment. His hands were still shaking. What was wrong with him?
“You’ve worked outbreaks in Tehru and terrorist bombings in the Middle East,” he reprimanded himself. “Two people in a sinking plane should be a piece of cake.” He stilled his hands by force of will, but he couldn’t stop the lurch of his heart when he returned to Tansy’s side and she opened her eyes.
The knowledge hit him like a fist to the gut. This wasn’t a stranger in Tehru or the Middle East. This was Tansy.
And that made all the difference.
“Dale? What—?” Pain and sudden comprehension clouded her eyes. “We crashed. The landing gear broke.” She turned her head towards the storage space and winced. “We’ve got to grab the field kits and get out of here.”
“Put this on first,” he ordered, helping her into the jacket over her protests. “We’re in the water and I don’t know how long we’ll float. Forget about the equipment.”
“The hell I will. We have an outbreak to work.” Listing to one side as the plane sagged beneath her, Tansy stumbled to the cargo area. She fumbled with the straps securing their instruments. “The cases are shockproof and rigged to float. We’ll get as many as we can out the door before we jump.”
The floor tilted even further and water surged up to cover most of the cockpit window, blocking out the bloody light of dusk. Dale cursed under his breath. “There’s no time for the equipment, Tansy! Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“We’ve got time. Help me with this,” she demanded.
He clenched his teeth. Stubborn. She’d always been stubborn, and more concerned with the patients’ safety than her own. At times it scared him and drove him crazy. Other times it made him proud.
This was one of those crazy times.
“We’re getting out. Now.” In the near-blackness, he looped an arm around her waist and dragged her to the door, grimacing when the floor tilted beneath his feet and metal groaned sickeningly.
The plane was rolling in the water.
“Get the door!” she yelled, finally ready to abandon the equipment. “We’re going down!”
“Hurry!” Dale yanked his jacket over his head and tried to help her crank the door release. In a flash, he imagined sinking to the bottom of the ocean with Tansy, trapped in the half-open cockpit. Drowned. Like his parents. “No!” he shouted, and jammed his shoulder against the door.
It cracked open, followed by a gush of water.
“Dale!” Tansy grabbed for him when he lost his footing and went down between the angled seats.
He bobbed up and spat a mouthful of cold, salty water. “Go! Get the hell out of here.”
“Not without you,” she yelled back. “Come on, we’ll jump together and swim away.”
Dale knew there’d be suction when the plane went down. They had to get away, and fast. He scrambled to the door, kicking a pair of floating equipment cases out of the way, and boosted Tansy out the door as a wave crested over the plane and swamped the cockpit.
He choked, spitting more seawater. God, he hated the taste.
“Dale, come on. Hurry! I don’t think it’ll float much longer.”
He hauled himself through and jumped. His foot slipped on wet metal and he landed almost in the plane’s shadow. The water was cold and harsh.
Like coming home.
Striking out hard, he saw Tansy paddling for all she was worth. Not fast enough.
He was a strong swimmer. He’d had to be, growing up on an island with one of the highest lost-at-sea rates in the Northeast. He grabbed Tansy’s jacket and struck out for the beach, hauling her along over her feeble protests. The lights on shore slowly grew closer, though part of him wished they wouldn’t.
Halfway there, he heard the unforgettable hiss-chug sound of a lobster boat’s engine. He tamped down the memories and lifted an arm to the shabby-looking vessel that slowly approached out of the twilight. “Over here!”
“’Hoy there, did everyone make it out?” The man’s voice was muffled by wind and wave, but it sounded familiar.
If he weren’t already freezing wet, Dale might have shivered as childhood ghosts crammed his brain in a sudden rush. He blinked against them and focused on the cold, hard water and the woman beside him. He raised his voice and called, “Yes. Everyone’s out.”
It was a lucky thing, too, he thought as the last slice of wing disappeared into the oily, black sea. The water just beyond the runway must be deeper than he remembered, or else the tide was running high. He felt a twinge of remorse for the field kits that had seen them through so many tough assignments, so many exotic locales. The cases were waterproof, but he doubted they were that waterproof.
“Hang tight,” the helmsman shouted over the noise of the waves and the motor, “we’ll have you out of there in a jiffy.” The near-derelict boat lurched through the surf and Dale could just read the faded name on its bow. Churchill IV.
The name brought a twist of guilt. Dale had promised his parents’ friend, Walter Churchill, that once he left the island he’d make a new life for himself and never look back. Well, he was back, and so far it had been a hell of a homecoming.
“Climb aboard, you two. What the heck happened to your plane?” The helmsman steered the Churchill IV in close, and another rain-suited figure leaned over and tossed a thick, greasy rope.
“We crashed,” Dale answered shortly, though he wanted to know the same thing. One moment, Tansy had been landing as deftly as ever, and the next, the plane was sliding down the runway on its belly.
It made no sense.
He helped her aboard, then scrambled into the boat in a motion that came back easily after all these years. He checked on Tansy. She was pale and shivering, though the men had wrapped her in a coarse, soggy wool blanket. “You okay?”
“Never better,” she answered with a crooked smile that squeezed his chest.
Her aplomb was ruined by a thin trickle of blood from a cut on her temple, and the fine tremble of her lower lip. He took a step towards her. “Tansy—”
“I’m fine, Dale. Really.” She leaned away.
He knelt down in front of her and took her chilled hands in his own. “Tans—”
She pulled free and stood as the helmsman gestured his companion to the wheel and strode over. The boat’s running lights picked out the glittering tracks of salt spray that trickled down his yellow rain suit. A billed hood cast the man’s face in deep shadow, but there was something familiar about the rolling walk, the wide, powerful shoulders. A chill skittered through Dale.
Letters and a phone call hadn’t prepared him for this. Not really.
The slickered figure lifted a hand and pushed back his hood to reveal a shock of white-blond hair above a weather-beaten face that might once have been pale. The man’s tired blue eyes were clear, but dulled with worry. Dale steeled himself to shake the proffered hand. “Mickey.” He saw the face of a boy beneath that of the man. “It’s been a long time.”
“Welcome home, Cousin Dale.” Mick nodded and glanced down at Tansy, who sagged against the railing. “And you’d be Dr. Whitmore. Welcome to Lobster Island. I’m sorry for your plane, but thank God you’re both all right.”
Dale let the voice wash over him as he tried to fit Mickey’s image to the memories he’d carried for fifteen years. They’d been as close as brothers until the day Dale’s family had gone down in a ferocious spring storm, leaving the seventeen-year-old at the mercy of his grief-maddened uncle.
Trask. Even the memory of the name brought impotent rage.
“I see some debris. I’ll bring her around to it,” the other slickered man called, interrupting the memory, though not the anger.
“Some of the cases may have washed out of the plane,” Dale said harshly, trying to find his doctor’s focus. The job, he thought. Focus on the job. “Pick up as much of the equipment as you can. We’ll need it to investigate your shellfish poisoning.”
At his elbow, Tansy was ghost-white. Guilt seared through him, layered atop the anger. He should have told her about the island. He should have prepared her better for the shock of learning that this poor, wretched place had once been his home. That these people were his family, such as it was.
Mick muttered a dark curse at the mention of the outbreak. “It’s bad, or I wouldn’t have asked you to come. We’ve had three deaths since I called, and another two sick, including the mayor and the sheriff.”
Dread curled through Dale, though he hid it deep down with all the other emotions.
“That’s impossible,” Tansy said after a moment. “PSP isn’t fatal, and certainly not in those numbers.” Dale could see her mind working.
Personal problems, plane crashes, the cold and the wet faded to the background as his mind clicked over to field mode alongside hers. “You’ve had more cases?” he asked. “I thought the fisheries people locked down all your lobster traps.”
Mickey cursed and jerked his chin toward the dock, dark in the gathering twilight. Black, boat-shaped shadows bobbed gently at their moorings. “The fleet hasn’t put to sea in over a week. The catches were bad after the spring storms, but this is a disaster. If we don’t get the docks open, the whole island will be hungry by winter. That’s why I asked you to come.” He glanced out to the end of the marked runway. The landing lights shone bright in the darkness. “Though you almost didn’t make it. What the hell happened?”
Tansy answered with a tiny quiver in her voice. “It was like the landing gear…collapsed. Or maybe it fell off. But that doesn’t make sense. Landing gear doesn’t just fall off.”
A shiver started deep in Dale’s gut. No, landing gear didn’t just fall off.
Not unless it had help.
IT WAS RIDICULOUS, TANSY knew, to think the crash had been anything but an accident. Accidents happened. A pothole in the runway could have snapped a weakened strut. She might have missed a loose nut in her preflight check, or a bolt could have sheared.
But that didn’t explain why both wheels failed at once.
She glanced over at Dale, deep in conversation with his cousin, and she felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. She didn’t understand what was happening. Chillier than a corpse, she pulled the wet wool blanket tighter. Control. She wasn’t in control of the situation. Knowledge is power. She knew nothing. And her head hurt like hell.
When they reached the dock, Dale jumped from the wet, unsteady boat with a practiced motion that made him look like someone other than the man she’d known for so long, the man she’d once thought herself in love with. He took her hand and helped her stumble onto the dock with a good deal less grace than he’d shown.
“Come on. We’ll go to the motel and scrounge some dry clothes.” His voice was almost the same, but she knew the man beside her even less than she’d known him when they had been lovers. Now, his perfectly groomed hair was plastered to his skull with salt water. The fine linen shirt, monogrammed at the cuff and collar, was ripped askew, and she could see the shadowy old tattoo she’d always assumed was a scorpion. She’d had to assume. He’d refused to answer questions about the tattoo. But the scorpion-shadow had never quite meshed with the urbane polish of his Boston self.
In the glare of the lobster boat’s running lights, something flickered in the back of his blue eyes. Something uncivilized.
Without really meaning to, Tansy took a step back. “Dale?”
This time it was irritation that sparked in his eyes. “I told you to stay in Boston, Tansy. You don’t belong here.”
“Neither do you,” she countered. “We’re here to do a job.” But she wasn’t sure which of them she was trying to convince. She shivered from the cold, and from the strangeness of it all.
The poised, elegant Dale Metcalf she knew from Boston would have slid an arm around her shoulders and shared his warmth—though not his heart. The stranger he’d become the moment he set foot on Lobster Island merely turned away and walked toward shore, calling over his shoulder, “Come on. Let’s get dry. Then we’ll figure out how to get you home.”
“I’m not going home,” she yelled back through chattering teeth. “We have a job to do.”
“You’re going back to Boston and that’s final. I don’t want you here.”
Tansy flinched. They’d been broken up for three months now. The thought that he didn’t want her shouldn’t hurt anymore.
She heard the crinkle of a rubber rain suit and felt a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, Dr. Whitmore. Let’s get you inside and dried off. That cut on your head should be seen to, as well.”
Miserable from the cold, sick with fear and plagued by an otherworldly feeling, Tansy nodded mutely and followed Dale’s cousin to a windowless old jeep.
The men loaded eight salvaged equipment cases into the vehicle, completely filling the back. Dale climbed in the front and held out a hand. “Come on. You can ride with me.” He patted one knee, though his eyes told her he wished there was another way.
Tansy stalled. They’d ridden sandwiched together in a hundred military vehicles, before and after becoming lovers. With only one or two transports for the HFH equipment and crew, there was rarely room for comfort. It had never bothered her before. It shouldn’t bother her now.
But it did.
Dale saw her hesitation and snapped, “Don’t be foolish. You’re freezing. Get in. I won’t touch you.”
But it was a hard promise to keep when the jeep rocked along the bumpy dirt road and jostled them against each other. After a few minutes, his arms encircled her and pulled her back against his chest.
“Relax,” he whispered. “It’s nothing personal. We’ll be at the motel soon.”
It’s nothing personal. Tansy cursed the surge of hurt, and hated him for not understanding that it was personal. Everything between them was too personal, and not personal enough. It had been personal when they’d become lovers on a thin pallet in Tehru. It had been personal when they’d moved in together on assignment. And it had been very personal when he’d drawn away from her every time they returned to home base.
Eventually, she’d realized he wasn’t letting her in any deeper. Then she’d seen the signs her mother had warned her about. The frequent, unexplained absences. The furtive phone calls. The emotional withdrawal.
When she’d accused him of finding someone else, he hadn’t denied it. He’d let her walk out and he hadn’t come after her. That alone had proven Eva Whitmore’s point. Either you knew a man inside and out or you didn’t. And if you didn’t, you were in for a nasty surprise.
The jeep bumped along, and Tansy realized she’d unconsciously relaxed against Dale, sinking into the familiar spots where they fit together so well. Not strong enough to pull away, she sighed and turned her attention to the view. They passed a row of small cottages that might have been pretty once upon a time. Now, paint peeled from the clapboards and fell into weed-choked planting beds. An empty swing dangled from a tree. The whole area was deserted. Depressed.
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.
But he’d never felt like he belonged where he’d ended up, either. Boston, and the wealthy doctor’s life, hadn’t sat easily on his shoulders. He’d worked hard to make it fit, even harder when Tansy had come into his life, but the more he tried, the worse the role had pinched.
The shower rumbled overhead, shifting his attention. When he was a child, the noise had made him think of monsters. Now it made him think of Tansy, naked, slick and pink beneath the water. Suddenly, his clothes were more irritating than cold, sticking to the sensitive places. Dale pulled off his ruined shirt and winced as his bumps and bruises throbbed. His quick arousal faded with the memory of those last moments on the runway.
They could have died in the plane crash. They could have sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Dead. Like his parents. And it would have been his fault for bringing Tansy along.
The pipes rattled again, making him think of the shower again. Of Tansy. Without trying, he could imagine steam wreathing her soft, rosy body. Briefly, he let himself remember their time together, let the memory beat back the shadows and the ghosts. The fear.
They had first made love on a pallet in Tehru, barely taking the time to loosen the clothing they wore to bed, to be ready for the next emergency. They had come together in need and despair, wanting to forget the dead and the dying at a time when the outbreak had seemed unbeatable. Then, they’d wanted to feel alive. Later, they’d just wanted to feel. After that first time, they’d stolen moments for quick, furtive couplings when they were too tired to save lives but too wired to sleep.
With the outbreak’s source discovered and the disease leveled, they’d headed home, stopping halfway to rent a room with lush plants, marble, brass and silk. And a shower… God, what a shower.
They’d made love in that shower, naked together for the first time, as perfect for each other as two people could possibly be.
Except that she was perfect for the man Dale had created—wealthy and pedigreed. And that man was nothing more than fiction. If Tansy ever met the real Dale Metcalf, she’d be horrified.
Worse, she’d be disappointed.
And maybe that was why he hadn’t fought harder against bringing her. Maybe Lobster Island would do what he had failed to do. Maybe it would kill the attraction between them. Kill the want, and the desperate kick of his heart every time he saw her.
He stepped out of his ruined shoes and eyed the pile of clothes Mickey’s wife had left beside a flashlight and a small box of staples. He scowled at the worn jeans and the rough Irish-knit sweater. Dr. Metcalf, infectious disease specialist, didn’t own jeans or bulky sweaters. But he’d grown up in them. Shrugging, he scooped the warm clothes off the floor near the stairs and set his foot on the lowest tread.
With the motion, his blood buzzed, and emotions, those things he so often avoided, threatened to swamp him. He’d never needed Tansy’s quiet strength more than he did right now. And he had no right to it.
Did he dare go up? If he paused outside the bathroom door and heard her singing in the low contralto that never failed to set his body afire, would he have the strength to keep walking?
Dr. Metcalf would have the strength to walk by, just as he’d had the nobility to push her away. But Dale Metcalf, lobsterman’s brat, knew nothing of nobility. He knew nothing of honor or civility, but he knew about desire. About the want that had chased through his veins ever since he’d held Tansy in his lap on the drive over and remembered how she smelled. How she tasted.
How she felt wrapped around him. Needing him. Loving him.
Oh, yes. He knew about those things. And the memory burned in his lungs. Fighting for strength, for sanity, he turned away from temptation.
And heard Tansy scream.
Chapter Three
“Dale! Dale, get up here! Hurry!” The terror in her voice kicked him up the stairs at a dead run. He’d never heard Tansy scream before. Ever.
Moving fast, he shouldered open the door and slid to a halt at the sight of her perfect, round derriere. She was leaning out the bathroom window, dripping on the floor.
“Tans?” He plunged into the small, steamy room, slapped the shower off and heard rustling thumps down below.
There was someone outside.
“Dale!” She turned, clutching a towel to her chest. “There was a man looking in the window. He was watching me! What the hell is going on here?”
The tree.
“Damn it!” He brushed her aside and threw a leg out the window. It had been fifteen years since the last time he’d snuck away from Trask and broken into his old house, but the tree still stood outside the bathroom window. And the sounds of running footsteps below told him it was still strong enough for climbing.
“Omigod, what are you doing?” Her voice bordered on shrill, but he didn’t pause.
He grabbed the gutter and swung a leg over to the thickest limb. The motions came back easily, and within seconds he was halfway down the tree. A shadow of movement from the garden gate caught his eye. “Stay put,” he yelled to her. “I’ll be right back.” He dropped to the ground and sprinted for the lane that ran behind his mother’s overgrown garden.
There were two sets of footsteps and a frantic shout of, “Hurry! Jeez, here he comes!” from the running shadows.
Dale chose the one on the left and made a leaping tackle. He and his quarry went down in the lane amidst a flurry of arms and legs. A pointy elbow cracked Dale under the chin and he swore, realizing he’d landed on maybe fifty pounds of skinny kid.
“Quit!” he barked, and the squirming subsided. A nearby rustle told him the other boy hadn’t gone far, so he rolled off his captive. Sitting in the dirt, Dale shook his head. “What do you think you’re doing, looking in while a lady’s showering? Does your ma know about this?”
Blue eyes widened beneath tousled white-blond hair. Moonlight washed the kid to ghost-pale. “You’re not going to tell her, are you, mister? I swear we didn’t mean nothing by it. We climb up that old tree sometimes and peek in the window of the haunted house. We didn’t think there was anyone in there, honest!”
“And the lights didn’t give you a clue?” Dale asked sternly, wondering when his boyhood home had gained a ghost.
The blond head shook vigorously. “It’s haunted. I told you. Sometimes there are lights in there but nobody’s home. We thought it was the ghosts, and I dared Eddie to go look and he dared me right back, and…” He trailed off and finally shrugged. “We thought the lady might be a ghost. Then she screamed and you came running… Hey, what’re you doing in there, anyway? That house belongs to my daddy’s cousin!”
Mickey. Dale’s throat closed. Mick’s infrequent letters had mentioned his sons, but the boys hadn’t seemed real when Dale had been sitting in his cubbyhole office in Boston General, reading the piles of mail that gathered dust while he was on assignment. But this boy was so much more than words on a piece of paper. He was a little person who looked like Mickey.
At a second furtive rustle, Dale said, “You can come on out. I might not even tell your ma.”
The second boy, a smaller version of the first, crept from a shadowy beach plum and crouched at his brother’s side. “Sorry, mister. We didn’t mean to scare the lady. DJ thought she was a ghost.”
DJ. The elder of the two was named Dale John. Mickey had mentioned it in passing, but Dale hadn’t given it much thought.
Now, he sat stunned. He had family. How had he forgotten that? Or had he known it all along and not wanted to deal with the responsibilities that went with it? Trask had taught him that connections meant loss. Hurt. Anger.
Life in Boston was easier without all of those things.
A loud rustle and a series of thumps startled the boys, who squeaked in alarm and backpedaled on their skinny butts. A circle of yellow light slipped through the garden gate, followed by the shape of a woman.
“Dale?”
“Over here, Tans,” he called. “I caught your Peeping Toms.”
“Toms?” The flashlight beam bounced toward them. “As in, more than one?”
Dale stood and hauled the boys to their feet, feeling the adrenaline level out, leaving confusion behind. “Yeah. But they didn’t mean any harm. They thought you were a ghost.”
She’d changed into jeans and a hand-knit sweater like the one he was wearing. Dale felt the boys relax at his side when she flicked the beam of light to her own face. “Nope,” she said, “no ghost, though they did almost scare me to death.” She leaned down and offered a hand. “I’m Tansy.”
In the yellow light, the boys’ hair shone brighter, their eyes seemed bluer. The younger one shook Tansy’s hand. “I’m Eddie and my stomach feels funny.”
The older boy frowned. “I’m DJ, and don’t listen to him, his stomach always feels funny.” Then he scuffed the dirt with his toe. “Sorry we scared you, lady. We didn’t think there was anyone in the house, honest. Don’t tell Ma, okay?”
Dale had often heard similar words from Mickey when they’d been caught committing some boyhood crime or another.
He swallowed. “Run on home now, boys. Miss Tansy and I have work to do.” His voice cracked but he didn’t care. “I’ll be by to talk to your pa later, but don’t worry. This’ll be our secret.”
When they were gone, Tansy clicked off the flashlight. They stood awkwardly in the darkness until she finally said the words he’d been dreading. “I thought you were a rich kid from Boston.”
He’d known it would hurt her to learn he was a fraud. He’d imagined how the disappointment would cross her face, and how she would rally quickly and try to pretend his past didn’t matter when they both knew it did. He’d known all that.
What he hadn’t known was how hard it would be to admit that it had all been a lie.
He sighed and tried to make the first cut a clean, lethal one. “That’s what you were supposed to think, Tansy. That’s what everyone thought.” When she didn’t answer, he took the flashlight, clicked it on and gestured back to the house. “Let’s go inside.”
But as they walked in silence, Dale realized he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t know what to say. They entered the kitchen and Tansy returned the flashlight to the box Libby had left.
After a moment, she turned to him. “Just tell me this, Dale. Who the hell are you?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. At Boston General, he knew who he was. On assignment, he knew. But on Lobster Island?
He had no idea.
THE SILENCE STRETCHED until Tansy began to doubt Dale was going to speak at all. Then she saw his eyes flickering the way they did when he was mentally flipping through diagnoses and treatment options. He was trying to choose an answer.
“Never mind.” She held up a hand to stop the lie. It would be one of many, she now realized, just as she now understood that the man she’d fallen in love with was nothing more than a figment of her imagination. Like mother, like daughter. Whitmore women fell for the schemers. She took a hurting breath that barely moved the stone-heavy pressure on her chest. “Tell me the truth or nothing, okay, Dale? You owe me that much.”
When he remained silent, she nodded and hid the disappointment down deep, alongside most of the memories of her father. “Fine. I’ll check the lab equipment and see what’s salvageable. You shower, and then we can head for the motel clinic. The sooner we solve this outbreak, the sooner we can get out of here.” The sooner she could request to be transferred away from Boston. Away from Dale.
She would not repeat her mother’s mistakes.
When he didn’t answer, she turned toward the salt-encrusted cases piled in the hallway.
“Tansy.” His quiet word brought her up short, but she didn’t look back. She didn’t want to see his gleaming blue eyes. Didn’t want to remember how his features had been mirrored in the faces of those two boys out in the lane.
Didn’t want to think that she’d once imagined their sons looking just like that.
“It’s okay, Dale,” she finally said. “I can handle it.” She crouched down near the pile of equipment and waved at the stairs, hiding her face so he wouldn’t see the hurt. “Go shower. We need to see our patients.”
The job. Concentrate on the job. Medicine gave her control. Research told her the truth.
Dale didn’t.
He headed for the stairs, pulling the bulky sweater off over his head as he walked. He stopped near her in the narrow hallway, and Tansy was enveloped in familiar warmth. Only this time, it was laced with something new. Something hotter and harder than the pull she’d felt toward Dale Metcalf, playboy, or even Dr. Metcalf, field researcher.
Her whole relationship with Dale had been based on a lie, yet she still wanted him.
Afraid if she looked into his eyes he’d see the hunger, she stared straight ahead at the place where the sinew and bone of his shoulder gave way to the hard planes of his chest. The scorpion tattoo, blurred with time, dominated her view.
Only it wasn’t a scorpion.
She reached out a finger and traced the curve of a tail, the pair of wicked hooked claws. “It’s a lobster.”
Dale sucked in a breath when she touched him, and his body went rigid. “Aye. It’s a lobstah.”
And his voice was pure Island.
Startled, she looked up at him. Trapped in the potent blue of his eyes, she didn’t move when he stepped closer, crowding her. Tempting her.
“You want to know who I am, Tansy?” He leaned close so he was almost whispering in her ear. “I’ll tell you who I’m not. I’m not a prep-school boy, and I’m not a gentleman.” She quivered as his words ran across her bare neck and heat coiled in her stomach.
She could turn her head just a fraction, and their lips would touch. She could run and never look back.
In the instant before she made the decision, he made it for her. He stepped away. His muscles were corded with tension and he gripped the banister like a lifeline. “Check the equipment, we leave in ten minutes. And remember, I’m not the Dale Metcalf you thought you knew. The next time I have you up against a wall, I’m not going to back away.”
Though the image churned her stomach into sharp, sizzling knots, Tansy rounded on him as he climbed the stairs. “Don’t even think you’re calling the shots here, Dale. I won’t stand for it. I could have died in that plane crash. Don’t you think that entitles me to know what the hell is going on?”
“No,” he snapped back from the second floor. “I think it entitles you to a one-way ticket home the second I can arrange it. I knew I shouldn’t have let you come with me.”
“Let me?” Her voice climbed several octaves, though she wasn’t sure why she was fighting the idea. She should want to escape the island. To escape Dale and the insane pull he exerted on her. “Let me? Nobody let me do anything, Dale. This is my job, and—”
The slam of the bathroom door cut her off.
“Oooh,” she said, popping the first of the cases open. “Jerk.”
All her life it had been this way. Her father had shared his wealth freely with his only child—as well as his mistresses—but he’d expected her to marry well and bring her husband into the family business. Her mother had nodded and smiled in public, then gone through his pockets at night, weeping over the matchbooks and hotel receipts.
For all Tansy knew, she still did.
They’d been horrified when Tansy had used part of her trust fund to pay for med school and donated the rest to HFH. She’d met Dale on her first assignment. He’d shoved a field pack at her and said, “Dale Metcalf. Glad to have you here. There are two little girls trapped under a beam in the second house on the right. Don’t slow me down.”
And though she’d later learned—or thought she had—that he came from the same social stratum as her parents, Dale had never coddled her, never expected any less of her than he did from the male doctors. At first, it had been a relief. Then an annoyance when she realized it was because he never let anyone past the brittle outer shell of false charm.
Never let anyone inside.
“Well,” she muttered, glancing again at the dark squares of wood on the walls, wondering what story the missing pictures might have told. “I’m inside. Sort of. Now what the hell do I do?”
“Is this a private conversation, or may I intrude?”
Tansy screeched and spun toward the voice, jerking her hands into the attack position she’d been taught before her first overseas assignment. Go for the eyes and the crotch, the instructor’s voice shouted in her head. Use any weapon you can find!
The stranger stumbled back a pace and held his hands up. “Whoa, whoa! Easy there.”
She froze, vibrating with a tension she hadn’t consciously recognized. Then again, her reaction was understandable. Alice had fallen down the rabbit hole, into the ocean, and come out somewhere on an island populated by Dale Metcalf clones. It hadn’t been a banner day up to this point. Considering their next stop was a makeshift clinic where people were dying of a nonfatal disease, she had little hope of it improving.
Especially not with a stranger standing in the kitchen.
She glared at the tall, silver-haired man, and was almost surprised to see that his eyes were brown, not blue. She relaxed a fraction, though she kept her weight on the balls of her feet as she’d been taught. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
The water cut off upstairs. She raised her voice and called, “Dale? We have company.”
The stranger’s eyes glinted with approval. “Smart of you, though not necessary. I know you’re not alone. I’ve come to give you and Dale a ride to the clinic.” He held out a hand. “I’m Walter Churchill.”
Of all the characters she’d met so far in this not-quite-Wonderland, Churchill was the biggest surprise. Cultured, elegant, and turned out in a charcoal suit and burgundy tie, he would have been right at home in one of the chichi clubs in the Theater District near Boston General. He also acted as though she should know him.
Then again, she probably would know him if Dale had told her the truth about his past.
Stifling the flash of resentment, she shook the proffered hand. “Dr. Tansy Whitmore. Pleased to meet you.” I think.
Then she heard movement on the stairs behind her and Dale’s quiet, level voice. “Churchill.”
She glanced back and her mouth dried to dust when the sight of Dale dressed in jeans and a homespun sweater drove home just how strange a situation she was in. The borrowed denim clung to his long thighs and lean calves, and rode low at his flat waist. He cocked a hip against the stair handrail and fixed the older man with a look. “How did you get in here?”
A parade of emotions passed across Churchill’s face, too quick, too deep for Tansy to read. Finally, he sighed and said, “The kitchen door was open, so I let myself in. I’ve never needed an invitation before.”
Dale flushed and rubbed his unshaven jaw. “Sorry. I’m in a mood. It’s good to see you, Churchill.”
Tansy had thought herself beyond shock. She was wrong. “Dale? You know this man?” That was a foolish question. Of course Dale knew the stranger, it was becoming clear that he knew everyone on the island.
“Yeah.” He glanced down at her. “I promised you an explanation. Well, here’s the short version. I was born here. My parents and my aunt died in a boating accident when I was seventeen, and my uncle Trask took it out on me. Churchill was a friend of my parents. He helped me escape to the mainland and put me through college and med school, for which I am eternally grateful.”
Yet Tansy noticed little warmth on Dale’s face when he scowled down at the older man. She waited a heartbeat. Then another. Tell me, she wanted to scream, tell me more. Let me in! But the words had never worked before. They weren’t likely to now.
Finally, she turned back to the medical instruments. “Fine. Nice to meet you, Mr. Churchill.” She slapped the cases shut. “Come on. Let’s get over to the clinic.”
Ignoring the men, she grabbed two equipment cases at random and hauled them to the front door. She paused at the sight of the shiny new black SUV in the driveway.
Someone on this island had money, it appeared.
“Frankie will get the rest of your boxes,” Churchill murmured behind her as the driver’s door opened and an enormous woman in chauffeur’s livery emerged to tower over the vehicle. She didn’t say a word as she brushed past Tansy and picked up the remainder of the equipment cases in a single load.
The word Amazon came to mind. So did bodyguard.
Who the hell was this Churchill? Tansy shot Dale a look, but he avoided her silent question by bending to shift one of the cases in the trunk. She scowled and ducked into the SUV when Frankie held the door open. The black interior smelled of new leather and money. A lethal-looking Doberman sat in the front, between the seats. It faced the passengers and curled a tan lip when Tansy slid inside.
She would have preferred a white VW Rabbit with plates that read I’m late. That, at least, she would have understood. The feeling that she was headed to the worst sort of tea party intensified, as did the nagging fear and her headache, though the cut on her head had scabbed without needing stitches.
As the vehicle bumped back the way they’d come, Churchill spoke as though resuming an interrupted conversation. “This outbreak business is bad, Dale. Bad. The docks are losing money every day we’re closed, and my customers on the mainland are finding other places to buy their lobsters.”
Tansy remembered the name Churchill on the bow of the lobster boat. Though it surprised her that Mickey and Churchill both seemed more concerned with the lobstering than the patients, she supposed the inhabitants of Lobster Island must live—and die—by their catches.
“That’s why I’m here, Walter. The outbreak isn’t typical. There shouldn’t be new cases, or as many fatalities. But I’m curious.” Dale leaned forward to address the man in the front. As he did so, his hard thigh brushed against Tansy’s leg and she moved away, hating the flush of contact. “Why did I hear about this from Mickey? You knew where to find me, and you know I’m a doctor. An outbreak specialist. Why didn’t you call me for help?”
Churchill glanced back. “Because until three people died this morning, I thought it was under control. And because I didn’t want you coming back here.”
Dale cursed. “Because of Trask.”
The older man shook his head. “Because of you, Dale. You don’t belong here. You never did.”
The SUV pulled into the motel parking lot. Anticipation, and perhaps relief, surged through Tansy when she saw an agitated, gesturing crowd gathered around a windowless Jeep. An older woman in wrinkled scrubs dashed out of a motel door and hurried to the crowd.
The scene screamed medical emergency! Tansy’s pulse jolted. Medicine. Knowledge. She could do this.
Here, she could be in control.
She had the door open before the vehicle stopped rolling, HFH training kicking in when nothing else made sense. “Come on, Dale. We have work to do!” Feeling naked without her field rucksack, which had gone down with the plane, she sprinted across the parking lot to the growing crowd.
Behind her, Churchill yelled a question and Dale called back, “Yeah. Call the FAA about the crash and call Zachary Cage at Boston General. Tell him I need more field equipment, clothes and another plane. Pronto.”
Intent on the patient, Tansy ignored her partner and pressed through the crowd. When she saw the man at its center, she stopped dead.
Mickey.
She held up a hand to stop Dale, but she was too late to spare him the sight of his cousin cradling a small child to his chest. Tears ran down the lobsterman’s wrinkled, wind-burned cheeks.
“Mick, you have to give Eddie to me now.” The older woman in the scrubs— Tansy guessed she was Dr. Hazel—pried at the lobsterman’s fingers. “He’s in respiratory arrest. You have to let me help him breathe.”
Dale made a low sound, almost that of an animal in pain. Hurting for him, hoping it wasn’t too late, Tansy stepped forward. Hands outstretched, she waited until Dale’s cousin focused on her. “Mickey, remember me? I’m Dr. Whitmore. We’re here to help. You need to let us help Eddie now. He needs to be on a respirator.” She refused to admit it might already be too late for the little boy who’d complained of stomach pains not an hour earlier.
She’d missed it. How had she missed it?
The torture in Mickey’s face clawed at her heart. The lobsterman shook his head. “I’ve got to protect him. He’s mine.”
Then Dale nudged her aside. “I’ve got him, Mick. I’ll fix him for you. I promise. Trust me.” He reached for the limp body and Mickey finally handed the boy over.
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