Carolina Dreaming: A Dare Island Novel (4 page)

“What bum?” she said, knowing she was being evasive. Also cowardly.

“Murphy. Inmate from North Dakota. Killed some guy in a bar fight.”

“He was acquitted, Dad.” She had overhead that much.

“That just means there wasn’t enough evidence to put him away,” Hank said with the cynicism of almost forty years in law enforcement.

“Luke seems to trust him.”

“Because they served together. He could’ve changed. And if he wasn’t changed before he was locked up, he is now. Nine months in jail? Guy’s a hardened criminal by now.”

“Since I didn’t know him before—and I don’t know him now—I couldn’t say.”

“He planning on sticking around?”

If you need me to spot you a couple nights
, Luke had said,
just until you find something
 . . .

“How would I know? He didn’t talk to me,” Jane said, her voice even. “Ask Luke.”

Hank’s scowl deepened, his gaze still fixed on the TV. “Guy like that . . . he’s trouble. He bothers you, you let me know.”

Under his gruff tone, she heard his affection and his fear. She leaned over his recliner to kiss his rough cheek, surprising them both. He smelled of bay rum and tobacco, safe and familiar.

“I’m fine, Daddy.” She had Aidan to think of now. She couldn’t let herself be anything but fine.

She thought of the stranger, Gabe Murphy, fresh out of jail for killing a man, and of her ex, Travis, doing time for assault. And she wished with all her heart that just once she could be attracted to a good man, a gentle man, a guy who was no danger to her heart or her bones, a man who didn’t leave scars.

But then she wouldn’t have had Aidan.

And Aidan was all that mattered.

H
E
HAD
COMPANY
.

Gabe’s senses, honed by nine months in a cellblock and six tours in the sandbox, went on alert. He raised his head from the sandwich in his hands, scanning the perimeter of his campsite.

He’d considered spending the night under one of the big empty houses on stilts that stood along the beach. The oceanfront rentals provided benches, shelter, even outdoor showers, some of them. But the police were paid to patrol and protect private property. Gabe could tolerate being moved along, but he didn’t want to give that son-of-a-bitch Clark an excuse to arrest him. Things with Luke were awkward enough already.

So he’d made camp instead under a dense thicket at the edge of a trailer park. PARADISE SHOALS, according to the sign.

Gabe surveyed the junkyard cars, held together with hope and Bondo, and the mildewed plastic garden furniture under the trees.
Paradise, my ass
. But at least no anxious homeowners or merchants were likely to see him and call the cops.

The bushes rustled.

His muscles bunched. Silently, he set down the sandwich, prepared for action.

A blunt black nose poked through the bushes.

Not a terrorist looking for an ambush. Not a prisoner seeking out a victim.

A dog.

A big dog. Gabe eyed it warily as its body followed its nose out of the shadows: broad head, heavy shoulders, dirty tail close to the ground. Cautiously, it eyed him back before fixing its gaze on his sandwich.

“Oh, hell, no,” Gabe said.

Probably belonged to one of the trailers. It looked like a trailer park dog, a lean, mean, scruffy bastard. Some kind of pit bull–shepherd mix, maybe, smart and aggressive.

Except it hadn’t growled at him. Or barked.

Its black-and-tan coat was gray with grime. Its shoulders stuck up, its belly caved in. No collar.

“Go home,” Gabe said.

The dog stared at him, nose quivering at the scent of ham sandwich. It had cartoon-dog eyes, big and brown, with tan patches like eyebrows, giving its face a hopeful, quizzical expression.

“Seriously. Go away. I don’t have anything for you.”

The dog sat, watching him. Its tail brushed the ground slowly, sweeping pine needles from side to side.

Gabe had never had a pet growing up. Even if animals had been allowed in their apartment, his home life wasn’t fit for a dog. But he’d seen plenty of strays before, abandoned along the highway or traveling in feral packs in Helmand Province. There were always dogs hanging around the forward operating base, adopted by successive combat rotations of Marines. And Gabe had always fed them, even when the brass cracked down and ordered him not to.

Shit
. “Fine.”

His stomach growled as he pulled a piece of ham from his sandwich and tossed it to the dog.

The dog caught the meat with a neat snap of its massive jaws and then settled back on its haunches, those brown, expectant eyes on Gabe.

He shook his head. “That’s it.”

The cute blonde had packed the sandwich for him, not some dog. He was hungry, damn it.

The dog cocked its head, trying to understand. Because, shit, it was probably hungry, too, and it wasn’t whining.

Gabe hefted the paper sack. When he’d opened it, he’d discovered the sandwich, thick with ham, and not one but two giant chocolate chip cookies. His throat tightened. He didn’t have words to describe what that meant to him, that the coffee stayed hot until he was ready to drink it, that he had a second cookie to eat whenever he felt like it. The little blonde’s kindness got under his skin, burrowing deeper, toward his heart.

The dog swallowed and watched him, panting gently.

“Stupid mutt,” Gabe said, and put half the sandwich on the ground.

He watched the dog bolt the food, trying to ignore the satisfied feeling around his heart.

“But no cookies,” he said firmly.

One of his buddies—Luke, probably—had told him chocolate was bad for dogs.

*   *   *

G
ABE
HAD
LEARNED
to sleep lightly in jail. Sleeping outdoors wasn’t much better. If the sun didn’t wake you, the bugs would. Or the cold. Or the rain.

But when he woke the next morning he was warmer than usual. Also covered in dog hair.

“Fleas, too, probably,” he told the dog as he shook out his bedroll.

The dog yawned, unconcerned.

Dew silvered the dark bushes. The air smelled of earth and sea, of rotting marsh and sprouting leaves. Gabe took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the smell of spring.

And bacon. Somebody in the trailer park cooking breakfast.

Gabe’s stomach growled.

The dog sniffed at the bushes and lifted a leg before trotting back to sit at Gabe’s feet.

“Sorry, pal. I got nothing.”

God, he was hungry. Served him right for feeding half his dinner to a dog.

The dog cocked its cement-block head. Looking for another handout, probably.

Gabe scratched behind its battered ears. “You don’t want to stick with me. Go bother the family with the bacon.”

The mutt didn’t move.

Gabe removed his fingers from the warmth of its thick ruff. “Go on. Get out of here. Find somebody who can take care of you. Get.”

Those big, brown, Disney-dog eyes regarded him reproachfully from its ugly mug before the dog heaved itself to its feet and wandered off through the trees.

Gabe set his jaw against the urge to call it back. It was for the best, he told himself. For the dog’s own good. He had to get his own life in order. He couldn’t take responsibility for a dog.

He shouldered his pack. The street had no sidewalk, only a grassy verge spilling sand onto the asphalt. Above the peaked roofs, the sky was tinged with pink and gold. The sea, caught in glimpses between the houses and the trees, was the color of the sky.

His spirits lifted, an unexpected, welcome rush. He liked this place, the smell of salt, the birds’ early-morning racket. Maybe his instincts and his memories had been right after all.
Go back to the beginning
. Not all the way back to his crappy childhood, but here, where he’d first experienced what a family could be, where he’d caught a glimpse of what his future could look like.

He lengthened his stride purposefully. He didn’t need to grab on to Luke like a baby clutching the hand of the nearest adult. He could walk on his own. Make a fresh start. Find
work somewhere, someplace warm, within sight and smell of the sea. He’d heard they were hiring construction workers down in Florida.

The bakery’s lights glowed in welcome. OPEN, proclaimed the neon sign in the window. But he saw only two vehicles in the parking lot, an old sedan with North Carolina plates—
Jane’s?
—and a white, even older-model van like a painter’s van with a vent on top. JANE’S SWEET TEA HOUSE, read a small magnetic sign on the side. Both Jane’s, then. She must be alone inside.

He could see her through the plate glass window, her hair as yellow as butter under the light as she filled the sleek display cases with pastries. Beneath the square white apron she looked pink and round and soft.

Hunger hit him, sharp as a cramp.

She was so pretty. Kind, too, despite her caution. Gabe saw her kindness as a strength.

His mom had not been strong. Peggy Murphy had been too busy placating her husband to have much attention left over for their son. Everything she did was with an eye on big Scott Murphy’s moods, on his fists. Tess Fletcher had always been kind to Luke’s friends, but Gabe had known he wasn’t really entitled to her affection. It was borrowed, secondhand, like the clothes he’d worn to school.

His entire life, he had craved someone of his own who would care for him, who would pack him cookies or fuss over whether he stayed warm, who would do the small favors a woman does for the people she loves.

He wanted to thank Jane for the cookies and the thermos.

But he didn’t want her looking at him the way she had last night, startled and wary, like he was some creepy thug in a dark alley. Yeah, okay, he wasn’t the Marine he had been. But he had never hurt a woman in his life.

See?
he told the gibing voice in his head. Not his pop, after all.

Fishing the thermos from his pack, he set it on a table near the door.

She had a nice setup here, he thought, looking around. Picnic tables and big wooden chairs scattered over the short, tough grass. Some kind of purple flower, flat-faced and bright, bloomed in planters by the porch, and daffodils—he recognized the sharp spears and yellow trumpets—pushed up under the trees.

So, yeah, okay, the place could use some work. Minor repairs to the porch and furniture, some paint, some stain. Not that he was criticizing. He was looking a little weather-worn himself. But it wouldn’t take much to put the yard in order, just a rake and some time.

He spotted the rake, leaning up against the cedar shake siding. And God knew he had the time.

Maybe he’d found a way to thank her after all.

*   *   *

J
ANE
ARRAN
GED
THE
glistening pastries in the bakery case, rows of cheese Danish and chocolate brioche, cinnamon buns and lemon-glazed scones, muffins studded with chocolate chips and bursting with berries.

She loved baking, all the scents and textures. The smell of vanilla, the squish of dough between her fingers, satisfied something deep inside her. She loved the way you could take a few simple fixings, flour, sugar, butter, and make something satisfying and sustaining—a wedding cake, a loaf of bread, a life.

Who would have guessed that after Travis left her
broken
flat, she would turn her line cook experience and a few community college classes in cake decorating and small business management into running her own bakery?

In her kitchen, she was in control. She could trust her taste and her judgment. When she was baking, she had the confidence to be creative, to take risks, to add chilis to chocolate in a cupcake or combine lemon and thyme in a scone. As long as she kept the right balance of ingredients, everything would turn out fine.

Because baking never let you down. Even if you screwed up, you could always throw everything out and start again.

Unlike life.

The silver bells over the door chimed, signaling her first morning customer.

Lauren Patterson entered the bakery, her dark hair bundled in a messy knot, a silver cuff twining around one ear. “God, it smells good in here. I’ll take one of everything.”

Jane smiled and pulled out a bakery box. “Do you have a staff meeting or are you just really hungry?”

Lauren laughed. “I thought I’d sprinkle muffins around the faculty break room. Buy a little goodwill.”

“In that case, I’d get a dozen blueberry mini muffins, a dozen caramel mocha mini cupcakes, and a half-dozen brownies.”

“Brownies? At seven in the morning?”

“Everybody loves chocolate,” Jane said.

“So true. Oh, maybe one of those big cheese Danish for Lois Howell?”

School boards and principals came and went, but Lois Howell, the raspy-voiced, orange-haired school secretary, had run the place since before Jane was born.

“How about a red velvet cupcake?” Jane suggested. “Those are her favorite.”

“Perfect. Thanks. She’s been filling me in on everything I need to know about the island families.” Lauren smiled lopsidedly. “Which is pretty much everything.”

Uh-oh
. Jane’s gaze flickered to Lauren’s face, trying to see beyond the bright tone, the crooked smile. Lauren was always so outgoing, so optimistic. She was two years older than Jane, but her cheerful energy always made Jane feel ancient—or at least very, very tired. It was hard to imagine Lauren needing Jane’s reassurance.

But then, Jane couldn’t imagine doing what Lauren had done, leaving everything safe and familiar behind to make a new life among strangers. That kind of courage deserved a deeper response than a cookie.

“You’ll catch on quick enough,” she said reassuringly. “Everybody talks to everybody here.”

“Within limits. I’m still a dingbatter.”
Dingbatter
being the downeasterners’ term for Yankees, vacationers, or anyone from Away.

“They’ll come around. The kids like you.” Aidan liked her. She really should talk to Lauren about Aidan.

Lauren’s face lit up. “I love working with the kids. One of the things that’s so great in a community like this is the age range of the students I see. I’m dealing with everything from gum in girls’ hair to college applications.”

“What about fighting?” Jane asked.

Lauren grinned. “You mean developing communication and conflict resolution skills? Yeah, we see some of that.”

Her look, her tone, invited Jane to smile back. But the image of Aidan’s bloody lip, the defensive hunch of his shoulders, got in the way.