Room at Heron's Inn

by Ginger Chambers

  “He talks to her.”

  Benjamin lifted an eyebrow. “A regular paragon of virtue.”

  “Law school is making you too skeptical.”

  “And who taught me to be skeptical in the first place? That’s why it blows my mind that you hired her without knowing the first thing about her.”

  “Sometimes a person just has to take another person on trust. Why should her reason for being here be anything but innocent? This isn’t exactly a hellhole. People do pay good money to vacation here. Maybe she just needed to get away from her regular routine for a while. Maybe she needed a change of scenery.”

  “Maybe she’s running away from something…or someone.”

  “I’ve thought of that, too.”

  “I’m surprised she didn’t at least offer any references.”

  “Oh, she did. I told her I didn’t want to see them.”

  “Hmm,” Benjamin breathed.

  Eric smiled. “Come on. Let’s go get that exercise you talked about earlier. We both need to walk off dessert.”

  Benjamin rose slowly from the chair. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Eric.”

  “Does anyone in love ever know what they’re doing?”

  All Benjamin could do was shake his head.

  ROBIN WAS IN THE KITCHEN, starting to clear away the remnants of breakfast, when Allison stepped purposefully to her side and began to help. She emptied the leftover coffee from the two carafes, put away the butter and milk and added several plates to the dishwasher.

  When Robin was ready to start hand-washing the knives and the baking pans that didn’t fit easily into the dishwasher, Allison procured a tea towel.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” Robin said. “There’s not really that much left.”

  Allison, who was just as nicely turned out today in a pair of sleek black slacks and a white eyelet blouse as she had been the day before, responded, “Nonsense. I always try to lend a hand. Bridget would chide me for getting lazy if I didn’t.”

  “I won’t tell, if you’d like to take this morning off.”

  “Would you rather I didn’t help you?” Allison asked, pausing.

  “No, not at all. I enjoy having company in the kitchen.” Robin plunged her hands into the hot soapy water. A certain uneasiness had descended upon the room with Allison’s arrival. It was apparent to Robin that she was suspicious of her.

  “Those rolls you made for breakfast were delicious,” Allison said.

  “Thank you.” Robin placed a rinsed knife in the dish rack.

  “Samantha tells me everything you make is wonderful.”

  “Samantha sometimes exaggerates.”

  A smile played about Allison’s lips as she dried the knife and put it away. “That’s true, but she meant it this time. Eric backs her up.”

  “I enjoy cooking,” Robin said simply.

  “It seems that we’re very lucky to have found you.”

  Robin made no comment. Her nerves had started to tighten. This conversation was taking on the feel of a third degree. She washed another knife before submerging a baking pan.

  “I understand that you’re a student,” Allison said. “Which college do you attend?”

  “Saint Mary’s, outside San Francisco in the East Bay.”

  “What are you majoring in?”

  Robin searched quickly for a subject. “Business management.”

  “Do you have plans to open your own restaurant?”

  “I don’t—I’m not sure. I…”

  Allison paused, holding the pan in front of her. “I’m being very rude, aren’t I?”

  Robin couldn’t think of a suitable answer.

  Allison laughed. “Go ahead. Tell me. Even my best friends say I have an inquisitive mind. They phrase it that way to try to keep from hurting my feelings.”

  “Well…”

  “My ex complained I was too suspicious of people, but then I caught him cheating on me, so I had grounds.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Allison shrugged. “It happened too many years ago to worry about now. He’s married to someone else, I have a great boyfriend and the kids have managed to get on with their lives without having to carry too many scars. Kids are remarkably resilient, though. And if anyone should know that, it’s us. You’re aware of our family history, aren’t you?”

  Robin nodded.

  “We even had the press to contend with,” Allison continued. “It was horrible. They were like vultures. Dad’s body wasn’t even cold yet, and they were at the door wanting a story. One of our neighbors, supposedly over to help, let a reporter talk her way inside. She lined us up on the couch and started filming, when we’d barely registered the fact that he was dead. I’m sure we all looked completely stunned. In the end, Eric threw them out, including the neighbor.”

  Robin automatically scrubbed the same section of pan as that particular snippet of film played in her mind: the offspring of Martin Marshall sitting on and around the couch as the reporter, Jade Patrick—she remembered her name!—callously pressed for an interview.

  “After everyone left,” Allison went on quietly, “we just sat there and cried. Then we had to face facts. I don’t know what I’d have done without Eric. I was sixteen. I kept trying to act like an adult, but I felt like a very young child. I wanted my dad back. I wanted my mother.”

  All pretense of washing dishes stopped. Robin stood in place, frozen.

  “Eric kept us together. He didn’t let us shatter. He didn’t let the state come in and put us in separate homes. I tried to help him, but I was having such a hard time myself…” She was silent a moment, then she pulled herself from the past to look levelly at Robin. “I’m telling you this so you’ll see how much Eric means to us, to me. I don’t want to see him hurt anymore. He lost out on enough when he chose us over himself—over what he’d planned to do, what he wanted. I love him. I love him fiercely. And, if necessary, I’ll protect him like a she-wolf!”

  From the steadfastness of Allison’s pale eyes, from the tenseness of her stance, Robin knew she meant every word.

  “So, if you’re just playing with him, don’t,” Allison stated.

  Robin moved jerkily to rinse her hands. She drew an unsteady breath.

  Allison seemed to know when to back off. She mused curiously, “I wonder what the twins are up to. Maybe I’d better find out. That is, if you don’t mind…” She motioned to the pan in the soapy water.

  “N-no,” Robin stammered.

  Allison’s smile was easy, back on track with her earlier friendliness. “Bridget would order me to finish what I started. She’d say that if I’d raised the twins with any sense of decorum, they wouldn’t be so apt to get into trouble. Bridget’s a dear, but she’s never had children. She doesn’t understand how the little darlings develop minds of their own. We seem to be in a continual battle of wills.” With an airy wave, she left the kitchen.

  The room felt unnaturally quiet after Allison’s departure. Robin could hear the refrigerator’s motor humming. She could hear the slow drip of water from the faucet she must have neglected to shut off properly. She could hear someone walking across the floor in the guest room above.

  The trap she’d made for herself was drawing tighter. No matter which way she turned, she faced trouble. She wasn’t playing with Eric! Yet if she loved him, as she strongly suspected she did, was there a future in that love? Even if he came to love her, too, could she tell him who she was? And if she did, would he still love her?

  Her questions seemed to have no easy answers.

  THE TWINS RAN INTO THE kitchen. “Uncle Eric! We need Uncle Eric! There’s a bird—have you seen him?” Their voices were on the same pitch. It was hard to tell one from the other.

  “He isn’t upstairs?” Robin asked.

  “We’ve been there!” Gwen cried, distraught.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” Robin squatted down to comfort the little girl.

  “A bird! There’s a bird all caugh
t up in something! It’s jumping around, trying to fly, but it can’t!” Colin shuddered as he imparted the information.

  Robin offered comfort to him, as well.

  “We have to find Uncle Eric,” Gwen repeated.

  The front door closed and the twins jerked out of Robin’s arms. “Uncle Eric! Uncle Eric!” they screeched as their feet pounded down the hall.

  Robin heard Eric’s quick, concerned reply, then the twins’ agitated explanation. The door instantly closed behind them.

  It was impossible for her to stay behind. After a quick check to see that what she was working on could be left, she hurried after them.

  They were half a block ahead of her, running toward the beach. Gwen had hold of Eric’s hand, leading him to the spot. Finally, they stopped near the line where the dune grass grew.

  “There!” Colin’s high-pitched voice carried on the breeze. “It’s right there! See, Uncle Eric! See?”

  Eric dropped to his knees just as Robin caught up with them.

  Both children were chewing their bottom lips, staring at the young sea gull who had become enmeshed in a set of plastic drink rings. Alarmed by their arrival, the bird struggled to get away, looking pathetically frail. Several of the thin plastic circles had gotten twisted around its body, and one wing and a leg were hoisted in the air.

  If the twins hadn’t found it, Robin doubted if the bird would have survived much longer. She made a small sound of distress.

  Eric withdrew a folding knife from his jeans pocket and handed it to her. Then he leaned forward, wrapping his capable hands gently around the bird to halt its struggles and keep it from injuring itself further.

  “Is it hurt bad, Uncle Eric? Is it going to be all right?” the twins demanded.

  Eric brought the bird close to his body, using his flat stomach as a brace. “Open the second blade and give the knife to me,” he directed Robin. Then, very carefully, he slit the pieces of plastic until the bird was free.

  “Are we going to let him go?” Colin asked, still agitated.

  “Not right now,” Eric said. “He’s too weak. And he could be hurt.”

  “What are we going to do with him, then?” Gwen questioned.

  Eric glanced at Robin, at the oversize white shirt she wore over a pair of black leggings. “First, we need to get him warm. Robin, can you hold him for a second while I…”

  “Of course,” Robin answered swiftly. She reached for the bird, who fluttered weakly in her hands.

  Eric stood up, shed his blue denim shirt, then pulled the black T-shirt he wore underneath over his head.

  It was an odd feeling for Robin to watch him partially disrobe. She’d suspected that his body was well muscled; she’d already experienced his strength. But this was the first time she’d seen him with so little on. A smooth line of sinew and bone curved with masculine grace from his trim midsection to his powerful shoulders. A fine sprinkling of chest hair, only a little darker than the hair on his head, glistened in the sunlight.

  Then her gaze was drawn to something else. Around his neck he wore a chain, and from the chain hung a tiny gold medal.

  Robin blinked, her appreciation of his body interrupted. The medal. She had seen one like it somewhere before….

  Eric slipped back into his shirt and reached for the bird with the T-shirt spread open between his hands. Before the bird quite knew what was happening, it had been wrapped in the material still warm from Eric’s body. “Now we need to find an empty box,” he said. “Run to the house, look in the utility room off the kitchen. There should be one on the bottom shelf.”

  The twins sped into action, their legs flashing as they hurried back to the inn.

  Robin stared at the bird. She still felt all wobbly inside. From the sight of the injured bird? From seeing Eric so intimately? From noticing the medal? She couldn’t settle on one reason. “Will it be all right?” she asked after a moment.

  “I hope so.”

  “What will you do with it? Can you—I mean, you wanted to be a vet. Can you do something to save it?”

  “Luckily for the bird, there’s a lady down the coast who treats wildlife. She’s the expert. I’ve brought animals with worse injuries than this to her. The vet in Vista Point even refers to her.”

  “You’ve brought other animals to her?”

  “A bird or two like this, one that was all tangled up in fishing line. A sick sea otter, a sea lion someone had shot.”

  “Shot?” she echoed.

  “It happens once in a while. People either do it for fun or because the sea lions are infringing on their fishing territory.”

  “But don’t the sea lions have first right?”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But then you’d also think that people would be a little more conscientious about their waste. All it takes is a few seconds to cut these plastic drink rings apart, or for fishermen to collect their used fishing line. It would save a number of birds and animals a tremendous amount of suffering, even death.”

  Robin could only stare at him. “This means a great deal to you, doesn’t it?”

  “I care about animals.”

  “And birds.”

  He smiled, then he checked the bird. “Where are those kids?” he said, starting to frown.

  “They’re coming,” Robin answered. She’d seen them burst through the inn’s front gate.

  Eric punched holes in the top of the box the children brought, then settled the bird in the nest made by his T-shirt.

  “All right. Let’s get going,” he said. “The quicker we do this the better.”

  Robin walked with them to the Jeep Cherokee. Eric saw the children into the back seat and placed the bird on the floor between them.

  “Keep the lid closed,” he cautioned them. Two pairs of earnest blue eyes signaled agreement. Then he opened the passenger door for Robin. “Hop in,” he invited her.

  Robin shook her head. “Unless you need me, I’d better not. I was in the middle of something in the kitchen.”

  A moment passed. “There’s absolutely no question about my needing you,” he said quietly.

  Robin knew that he wasn’t talking about needing her help with the bird. For some silly reason—it wasn’t in her nature to blush easily—she felt her cheeks grow hot. And because it was so out of character, she felt all the more embarrassed.

  He tipped up her chin and held it between his forefinger and thumb while he studied her flushed face. Then he gave her a short, hard kiss that rocked her to her toes.

  “Remember that,” he ordered, before he closed the passenger door and circled around to the driver’s seat.

  If she hadn’t thought she loved him before, it would be impossible not to think it now. He was a good man, a caring man, the kind of man she had always dreamed of meeting.

  Only why, oh why, did he have to be Martin Marshall’s eldest son?

  WHEN ROBIN RETURNED to the kitchen, she found David hard at work cutting the vegetables she’d left out on the counter.

  “I thought, since you weren’t here…” he murmured. “The twins said something about a hurt bird?”

  David acted slightly embarrassed that he had thought to assist her, but proud at the same time that he was getting along so well. He’d already finished the two onions and started on the carrots.

  “Eric’s taking them to some woman down the coast.”

  “Mrs. Carter,” he said, then changed subjects. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want me to do the carrots, but I thought, ‘Why not?’”

  Robin washed her hands before handling any food. It was a habit she never actually remembered learning but something she had done all her life—probably at the insistence of her mother, who had started her cooking shortly after she could walk. Robin remembered clearly helping to make sugar cookies for her third birthday party.

  She inspected David’s efforts. “You’re doing very well,” she said. “But you’ll find it easier to hold the knife this way.” She adjusted his grip. “See how that works.
”

  David made a few cuts, then grinned broadly. “Works great!” he approved.

  “I’ll turn you into a cook yet,” she teased.

  His smile slowly disappeared. “Do you think you could?” he asked seriously.

  Robin held his gaze. “Is that what you want?” she asked.

  He sighed and made a few more cuts. Finally, he shrugged. “Sounds as good as anything else I’ve heard lately. Eric says I don’t think about tomorrow, but I do. Maybe it’s because I do think about it that I get so depressed. Is it going to be any better tomorrow than it is today? One thing I know for sure—if I go to college, it won’t. I’ll hate that, just like I hate it here.”

  “Why do you hate it here so much?” Robin asked, pulling up a chair. “It’s so beautiful.”

  “I was never consulted.”

  “How old were you when all of you moved here?” Robin asked.

  “Ten.”

  “The same age as the twins.”

  David was very still. “Yeah.”

  “Do you think they’re old enough to make decisions like that? I mean, if Allison thought it would be beneficial for them to move up here—”

  “It’s not the same thing. Anyway, I still think they should be asked their opinion. Kids aren’t dumb.”

  “Do you believe Eric thinks you’re dumb?” She used the same word as he did, even though she thought it harsh.

  “The reason we came here is because they were getting ready to put me into a special school for dumb kids. So I must be dumb, right?”

  “Is that what Eric told you?”

  “It’s what I heard a teacher say.”

  “You aren’t dumb.”

  “I failed two classes last semester.”

  “Did you study?”

  “No.”

  “Well then?” Robin sent him a cajoling smile.

  He started to smile himself. “The counselor at my high school said I’m troubled.”

  “People do like to apply labels to you, don’t they?”

  “But I’m not the only one troubled in this family. Eric blames the girl who he thinks killed our dad and he blames our dad because he left us. Allison is suspicious of everyone, to the point of driving her husband away. Barbara puts up with Timothy’s mother because she’s afraid of losing Timothy. Samantha can’t settle at anything. She was going to be a forest ranger, then she decided to be a travel agent. Now she’s talking about becoming a flight attendant. But she’s still here. Benjamin…I don’t know what Benjamin’s problem is, but I’m sure he has one. I told you a long time ago that we’re all crazy.”