The Men of Thorne Island (19 page)

“It does matter, Nick. Why can’t you see that? Don’t you think I care how or why you got shot? For God’s sake, I was fall… I was beginning to have feelings for you, despite the fact that you are the most difficult man I’ve ever known.”

He lifted his hands, then let them fall again, obviously still weighing his words. “Look, Sara, over the years I’ve gotten used to not telling anyone my troubles. As time went on, I realized there were three reasons for that. The first one is that I needed to protect everyone around me. The less people knew, the less danger they’d be in.”

She stared at his profile, noting the lines of anxiety at the corners of his eyes. “What do you mean, Nick? Was someone besides you hurt by the men from Golden Isles?”

“No, thank God. But I received threats against my family while I was in the hospital. When the plan to bump me off didn’t work, the boys at Golden Isles had to stop me from testifying somehow. Their threats
came in all sorts of disguises—letters, packages, even notes on flowers. But they were clear, and they were aimed at my mother and father.

“I sent my parents into hiding until the trial was over because I knew I was going to testify. And I did. On closed-circuit TV with armed guards posted at the door of my hospital room.”

Sara’s stomach churned at the image. What would she have done if someone had threatened her father? Would she have followed her conscience and testified? She only knew one thing for certain—she would have been scared out of her wits. And she was scared now, for Nick, just thinking about it. “How awful for you,” she said. “For your family.”

“It’s over. Forget it. I don’t want your sympathy, Sara.” He arched his back and frowned. “What I want is to get out of this vat. It stinks in here, despite what you think of all this romantic old crap.” He stood up. “I’m talking, just like you want, so promise me you won’t dump me back in here.”

She took his hand to steady his climb to the outside. “I won’t throw you in again.”

When he was safely on the floor, he said, “You’re sorry, then?”

“No.”

A semblance of a grin lifted one corner of his mouth. “Didn’t think so.” He sat on the steps again.

“And reason number two for keeping all this to yourself?” she reminded him.

“Self-preservation. Even when those guys were convicted of everything from grand larceny to attempted murder, even after they went to jail, I was still scared to death.”

He looked at her and shrugged one shoulder, al
most as if he was relieved to have admitted it. “You happy now? How’s that for honesty? A big guy like me confessing that the idea of facing another bullet was enough to turn my insides to mush.”

He raised his thumb and index finger and held them an inch apart. “That little piece of steel only this long, that bullet, has taught me not to trust anybody unless I know them almost as well as I know myself. And that’s a hard habit to break—” he stared intently into her eyes “—even with someone you grow to care about a whole lot. So I figured that keeping my mouth shut about my past for, say, the rest of my life, and assuming an alias wasn’t such a bad plan. And once you start living a lie, Sara, it’s no easy thing to start living the truth again, even when you begin to trust.”

Sara’s anger became almost a liquid thing as it slowly ebbed from her body. In its place was hurt and sorrow for both of them. And the sad realization that Nick might never again experience the confidence the bullet had taken from him. But there was still one little detail that didn’t make sense, and she had to ask him about it. “Nick, you’re living
here,
on the island that started this whole mess. Didn’t you think the Golden Isles guys would look for you here? Didn’t you think they’d want revenge?”

“Yeah, I thought about it. But this place is like Alcatraz. Nobody gets on or off without us knowing it. And Winkie wouldn’t bring anybody he didn’t trust.” He flashed her a bona fide grin. “You should feel good. For some reason Winkie trusted you right off. That’s never happened before.”

She allowed herself a slight smile. “And the third reason you’ve never told anyone your story?”

“That’s simple. Nobody likes a whiner. And be
lieve me, for years that’s what I was. Ask Brody. He had to pay a nurse a fortune to keep coming here day after day to put up with me—and him. The days when it was too cold and Winkie couldn’t cut through the ice, Brody, and eventually Dexter, played nursemaid.”

Sara nodded. She was beginning to understand the men of Thorne Island and the bond that held them together. “That explains a lot, especially about your connection to Brody.”

“Yeah. I owe him.”

She went to the steps and patted Nick’s side. He took the hint and slid over to make room for her. “I guess I can see why it was hard for you to tell me the truth,” she said. “And why you’ve stayed here so long. But what happens now? It’s been six long years, Nick. What are you going to do?”

He looked at her as if those questions had never occurred to him. “Why do I have to do anything?” he finally asked. “I like it here. I’ll probably never hear from anyone associated with Golden Isles. But there’s no need to change the way I live.”

That simple, direct assessment of Nick’s future knocked Sara right off her shaky axis. “So even if you’re not afraid anymore, you’ll still stay on Thorne Island?”

“It’s my home, as long as you let me live here. If a few visitors traipse over here once in a while, I guess I’ll just have to put up with them. I can still write my books.”

“But what about…” She almost said “us” but stopped in time. What she couldn’t stop were the tears burning behind her eyes. She looked away from him.

“What about what?” he asked.

She swallowed, searching for something safe to say. “The books. What will you do with them?”

“I don’t know. Keep writing them, I guess.”

“And storing them in boxes?”

He shrugged and put a hand on her arm. His touched ripped through her and settled as a violent trembling in her abdomen.

“Were you serious?” he asked. “Are you really leaving Tuesday?”

She nodded.

“I hadn’t thought about that. I knew that someday…but Tuesday. That’s soon.”

The first fat, sloppy tear rolled down Sara’s cheek. She quickly brushed it away, thankful for the deepening darkness enveloping them. And thankful, too, for the voice she heard coming from the back of the inn.

“Sara! Sara, where are you?”

“That’s my dad,” she said. “I have to go.” She slipped her arm from Nick’s hand and stood up.

“Wait a minute,” he said.

“No.” She ran from the press house and didn’t look back. What would have been the point? He wasn’t coming after her, anyway.

N
ICK LOOKED AROUND
for something to bust. Unfortunately the logical breakables—the bottles—were in the fermenting room downstairs, and after his tumble into the vat, he didn’t think his protesting muscles could take the steps. He could bash a press basket or two against the wood floor, but as angry as he was, he couldn’t bring himself to destroy one of Sara’s precious artifacts.

Damn! What did the woman expect of him? She’d wanted him to talk, and by golly, he had. She’d wanted honesty, and he’d given it to her. And what did she do? Just when he had this communication thing down pat, when he was about to rattle on about the most important issue yet, the two of them, she’d left him sitting here feeling like an idiot.

He leaned back against the vat and stared at the ceiling. “So much for honesty,” he said, knowing only the ghosts of the Krauses were listening to him. “People are basically just a big stinkin’ disappointment. If they don’t shoot you, they expect too much.”

Sara had expected miracles from him since the day she arrived. She’d poked around until she’d gotten him to spill his guts. And for what? So she could run off just when he wanted
her
to utter a few meaningful syllables.

Enough was enough. And Nick Romano had had
enough emotional turmoil in the past few years to last him a lifetime. When you spend nearly half a decade just learning to put one foot in front of the other, you can’t very well cater to the demands of everyone you meet. Let Sara Crawford go back to her calculators and sharp pencils and men who probably weren’t fit to cork her wine bottles. Nick would go back to the way things were, the way they ought to be.

He stood up and headed for the door, cursing the muscles and joints that creaked like old bedsprings, reminding him that he wasn’t the man he wanted to be. He walked into the gray dusk and shook his head. If he was so sure of himself and so ready to let Sara go, why did he feel so damn awful?

S
ARA TRIED
not to think about Nick through the weekend, but that was as impossible as believing he would change. He would never give an inch. She knew that now, and there was nothing for her to do but go back to Florida. She should have anticipated this outcome from the beginning. All the clues had been there, and if she was suffering a broken heart, she had no one to blame but herself. But that didn’t make it any easier to bear.

She kept busy working on the guest rooms with Candy. They replaced bed linens and curtains, and fluffed and primped little details into cozy perfection. She made certain the kitchen was in order and the pots and pans gleamed.

Ryan was a constant companion to the two women. Most of the time, he and Candy hardly seemed to know Sara was in the room. A thousand “Find Your Perfect Mate” magazine quizzes couldn’t have produced a more ideal pairing.

By Saturday afternoon Sara had received two phone calls in response to her advertisement in the Sandusky paper. They came from pleasant-sounding Put-in-Bay women who seemed eager to manage Sara’s little empire, didn’t mind the daily ride with Winkie and weren’t opposed to light housekeeping and cooking. She took their phone numbers but postponed the decision to hire one of them knowing that the most obvious manager for the Cozy Cove Inn was right now falling for Eliot Ryan. Candy would fly back to Fort Lauderdale on Monday, but Sara believed it was only a matter of time before she returned to Thorne Island.

Ben Crawford added his own personal touches to the island. Using lumber scraps left over from repairs to the roof and porch, he mended the dilapidated dock and painted it the same dove-gray as the house. He drilled huge holes in the pilings and strung bright yellow mooring rope from one end to the other, fashioning a cheerful handrail. Nick helped him, probably because the harbor was far enough away from the inn that he wouldn’t have to see Sara.

When the men came for meals, Nick took his sandwich and beer outside. At dusk he retreated to his room. That was when Sara went to the harbor and saw for herself the remarkable improvements. And in spite of the deepening ache in her heart, she experienced a quiver of delight. Thorne Island was finally beginning to resemble the image she’d had ever since she’d first heard about her inheritance.

And soon, Sara would have to leave it all behind.

Then it was Sunday, the day Carlton Brody Junior announced he would come to Thorne Island. And
Nick and Sara spoke to each other again because in the midst of a tempest, even wounded souls come together.

W
HEN HE SAW
Winkie’s boat carrying Junior approach the island, Nick suggested that Ben wait at the dock to meet them. Then he jumped into the bee and raced down the pathway to the inn. Scrambling up the porch steps, he hollered in the front door of the Cozy Cove. “Sara! Sara, where are you?”

No answer. He hurried through the inn and down the back steps as fast as old hurts and current panic would let him. He spotted Sara a hundred yards beyond the back shrubs in the midst of a row of grapevines. When he called her name, she looked up, interpreted the wild flailing of his arms and ran to meet him.

“He’s here?” she asked breathlessly. For a moment Nick wished the anticipation in her eyes was for him. It had been once.

“Yep.”

The corners of her mouth showed fine lines of anxiety. “Brody still doesn’t know?”

Nick shook his head. “I wonder now if we should have warned him. When a volcano is about to blow, at least you see the smoke first.”

Sara smiled, and Nick realized how much he’d missed the sight of it.

“Too late now. There he goes.” She pointed toward Brody’s cottage where he’d just come out the front door. “I’ve never known him not to hurry down to the dock when Winkie pulls in, unless he’s fishing or digging.”

Nick nodded. Everything Brody did was regulated by the comings and goings of Winkie’s boat. “Yeah.
You’d think the old geezer was expecting more than a bag of groceries and his latest bank statement!”

With the flat of her hand, Sara nudged Nick ahead of her. It was a casual touch, yet Nick felt it deep inside.

“Let’s go,” she said. “We’ve got to circle around him so we get there first. Dad can’t handle two Brodys.”

Nick reached around and grabbed her hand. She let him thread his fingers through hers. It felt as natural as the moon rising over Thorne Island. Her fingers were slightly gritty from vineyard dirt and warm from the sun. Suddenly Nick didn’t want to go anywhere. But he had no choice. Thanks to him, a life was possibly at stake. They cut around the side of the inn, pierced a thicket of trees and reached the dock just as Brody appeared at the end of the pathway.

“Now who the hell’s here?” Brody grumbled. “We might as well be on Coney Island for the crowds we get lately!”

Nick strode down the dock and took the line Winkie tossed to him. Sara stayed on shore with Brody, monitoring his reaction to the unexpected arrival.

Nick had only seen Junior a couple of times at the racetrack where Nick and Brody used to meet. But because of his phone calls to him over the years, he knew that Junior was a nice kid. Kid, heck. He was only eight years younger than Nick. The man who stepped out of the boat and extended his hand was a familiar, yet polished version of the boy Nick remembered from the track. “It’s been a long time, Nick,” Junior said. “I
think
I’m glad you invited me here.”

Nick shook his hand. “How ya doing, Carl?”

“Okay, I guess.” He glanced at the shore where
Brody was squinting into the sun. “So there he is,” Carl said matter-of-factly. “Why doesn’t he come down here? Did he send you to test the waters?”

Nick rubbed the back of his neck. “Truth is, Carl, I didn’t tell the old man you were coming.”

Carl’s hands shot to his chest in a defensive gesture. “You didn’t tell him? That’s just great.” He turned back to the boat. “Fire up the engine, Winkleman. I’m outta here.”

Footsteps pounded like a jackhammer on the dock. “Damn it to hell, Carl, is that you?”

Nick and Carl stood rooted to the dock, gazes riveted on the menacing presence coming toward them. Short and squat and churning like a Sherman tank, Brody came closer. Nick grasped Carl’s upper arm and leaned in to him. “There, you see, Carl? I think your dad’s glad to see you.”

“Yeah. I expect him to put on a party hat any minute.”

Carl’s shoulders sagged as he faced the approaching figure. “Yes, Dad, it’s me.”

Brody stopped within a few feet of his son and planted his fists on his hips. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Nick stepped between the two men. “I called Junior, Brody, so if you’ve got the urge to kill somebody, it’ll have to be me.” For a minute Nick thought he might.

“Why would you do something so—”

“Lay off Nick, Dad,” Junior said. “Yes, he called me, but I agreed with him that it was about time I came. I’ve known about this place for years.”

Brody’s eyes became narrow slits. “So Nick told you where I was?”

“Not just Nick,” Junior said. “Vernon Russell at the bank told me, too. I kept the information just in case you ever wanted to see me. And then Nick said you’d had a change of heart, so I came.”

Brody uttered a few indecipherable mutters.

“I was wrong,” Nick said. “Your father’s heart can’t change, unless it’s just to grow blacker.”

Brody directed his anger at Nick. “If my heart’s black, it’s turncoats like you that made it that way.” Jerking his thumb at Carl, he added, “And a greedy son who never amounted to a hill of beans and only saw his father as a dollar sign he could tap in to whenever he needed a few thousand.”

Carl shoved at Brody’s shoulder, forcing his father to face him. “You pulled that dollar sign out from under me quick enough,
Dad.
And I guess I should thank you, though it’s hard to get past the resentment to say the words. But I sure as hell don’t need your money now.”

Brody sneered. “You marry rich, Carl?”

“No, sir. I married right.”

Sara advanced down the dock. Nick waved her back, trying to spare her the unpleasantness, but she walked right into the fray. “All right,” she said with forced cheerfulness. “I see this is going well. You’re talking.”

Here she goes with that talking-is-the-cure-for-everything baloney.

“Why don’t we all go up to the inn and have some iced tea?” she said. “Winkie, you come, too. And Dad.”

Winkie and Ben had been watching from a safe distance, but at Sara’s urging they joined the group. Most everyone meandered down the dock toward
shore. Most, but not all. Brody planted his feet and glared at Sara. “This is all
your
fault, you know,” he said, shaking his finger at her nose.

“Yes, I do know that,” she said sweetly. “That’s why I offered to make the iced tea.”

Moments passed while Sara and Brody remained locked in a staring contest. Nick waited and watched, not knowing which one he’d put a dollar on if he could find someone to bet with. It was Brody who finally caved in. He pounded a fist into his palm, turned on his heel and clomped away from her. “Damn it to hell,” he said, and followed the others toward the inn.

Sara walked behind him, passed Nick and said with a beatific smile, “I love family reunions.”

Nick caught up and fell into step beside her. “I guess we’re going to live through round one. Now we just have to see how Dexter does tomorrow.”

Because Nick and Sara hadn’t talked since the meeting in the press house, she hadn’t heard the result of Nick’s call to the Cleveland Browns organization. “Someone else is coming?” she asked.

“Yeah, someone’s coming all right. Two someones. The owner and the manager. When I mentioned Dexter Sweet’s name, you’d have thought I’d brought Vince Lombardi back from the dead.”

Sara giggled like a kid who’d just gotten her wildest birthday wish granted. “They’re going to offer him a position. I just know it.”

“I’d say that’s pretty obvious,” Nick grumbled. “Things are changing, Sara, whether I want them to or not. Ryan’s been walking around gaga-eyed ever since that dizzy assistant of yours showed up. And
now we might be turning Brody into a creature resembling a human being.”

Sara gave him a sly smile. “Just don’t blame it all on me, Nick. I wasn’t the one who called Carl Junior.”

“Only because you didn’t know he existed.”

She touched his arm, a gesture that seemed to make all his problems disappear into the minuscule compartments where they belonged. Except for his biggest problem of all—Sara was leaving in two days. That one weighed him down like a pair of cement galoshes.

She walked ahead of him up the steps of the Cozy Cove veranda. “It’s a test, Nick,” she said over her shoulder. “To see if you can rejoice in someone else’s happiness. I think you’re up to the challenge.”

Nick wasn’t sure. He watched her go into the hotel to brew the tea she’d promised to serve at the Brody peace talks. There was no denying there was a lot of fierce determination in her. The woman who swore from day one that she wasn’t going to change anything had succeeded in changing just about everything.

But it wasn’t Sara’s iced tea that produced the peace between Brody and Junior. It was Nick’s mediating skills—and a bottle of Kentucky bourbon. By Sunday night Carl had admitted that at one time in his life, he’d been an irresponsible son who’d expected his father to pay for his mistakes. And Brody had confessed that his military and corporate background might have made him a judgmental parent who never tried to understand his only son.

The two men still had a long journey toward forgiveness and acceptance, but when Carl agreed to stay over Sunday night in the Cozy Cove, Nick knew
they’d at least made the first steps. And he was more confident of a permanent reconciliation Monday morning when Brody canceled Digging Day so he could take Junior fishing.

Yes, things were changing on Thorne. So did Nick wish Sara Crawford had never come to the island? Did he wish he’d never seen the first strand of silky hair blow across her cheek, or heard the first moan of sexual satisfaction from her pink mouth, or felt the first tremors of passionate anticipation in the parts of her body he’d come to know so well?