Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady)

by Vanessa Grant

  “Neither do I,” agreed Lyle. She wondered how he’d managed to have such dark, thick eyebrows when his hair was such a fair blondish-red. The brows flattened as he said, “I can’t imagine what good it does anyone to dwell on the depressing things in life. I’ll see what I can find you to read.”

  He came back with his arms filled with paperbacks.

  She shifted to a sitting position, twisting to look eagerly at the covers as the books tumbled to the bed. “You’ve raided a book store!”

  “We keep a good stock out here.” He moved some of the books closer to her, then sat down on the edge of the bed. “I raided my sister-in-law’s shelves for the romances.”

  George was sorting through the books enthusiastically. “Nevil Shute! Oh, this one is a favorite of mine! I haven’t read it in years.”

  He sorted through the books. “There are more of his here – I’m sort of a collector of them. Because of the airplanes, I suppose.”

  “Airplanes? Do you fly?”

  He nodded, smiling. “I’ve got a Cessna float plane. It’s in Prince Rupert right now. I’ll be bringing it back for the summer when I go out on holidays.”

  “You like flying?”

  Of course he did. She could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice as he surprised her by saying, “I used to fly helicopters commercially.”

  “And now—” She was curious and it showed in her voice, but he didn’t respond. He found another Nevil Shute and handed it her. “Does the plane help to make it less isolated out here?”

  “Yes,” he agreed, handing her yet another book.

  George shifted in the bed. Some of the books slid off her legs and Lyle rescued them. She stopped more from sliding with a hand, saying eagerly, “I’ve always wanted to learn to fly myself. Why did you stop flying commercially? How could you leave flying to sit on an island in the middle of nowhere?”

  “There were reasons.” He stood up, towering over the bed, staring down at her. The smile was gone and his eyes were cold. She wished she hadn’t said something to drive away the warmth, but she had, and somehow his memories had hurt him, though he wasn’t talking about it. “Enjoy the books. Just call if you need anything else.”

  So he didn’t like answering questions about his past. Well, she should understand that. She had enough painful memories of her own.

  She picked up a book.

  Why had Lyle left a career as a pilot to come out to this place? Had he lost his job?

  No. He would be a good pilot, sure and skillful, inspiring confidence in his passengers.

  What about his wife? Had she left him, refusing to live in such isolation? George could understand a woman not wanting to live on a lighthouse. But what about Robyn? How could a mother leave her child?

  Was she dead?

  While she read, a brown and white cat came into the room and up onto the bed, curling itself into a warm ball on George’s stomach.

  “Are you Dixie?” she asked, scratching under the furry chin.

  “Two cats and a dog,” Robyn had told her. “The cats were Tom and Dick, but Dick turned into a girl, so she’s Dixie now.”

  It was a long time since George had lounged in bed reading. It wasn’t the same in a hotel, and she’d spent most of her time in hotels since Scott died.

  She hadn’t been able to bring herself to sell the house, but she’d rented it out almost immediately. What was the point in staying there, remembering? If there had been a child—

  Most mornings Scott had bent to kiss her sleepy face, saying, “Don’t get up, Georgina. You look so contented sleeping there.”

  She would twist her arms around his neck and he would murmur, “Just go back to sleep. Come down to the office later and I’ll take you out to lunch.”

  When he was gone, she’d stretch out a lazy arm for her book. It had gotten to be a habit, a lazy luxurious habit that went with all the other ways in which Scott had pampered and spoiled her.

  She could even remember the name of the book she had been reading that last morning.

  Oh, God! Please, no more memories!

  She pushed the quilt back with determination, then swung her legs around and slid her bare feet onto the floor.

  When she got to her feet, the shirt she was wearing came only to the top of her thighs. She was wearing no panties underneath.

  How could she have let Lyle carry her about these last few days, her bare legs drawn up against his chest?

  What about her clothes?

  She turned towards the empty dresser, lurched as the painful leg refused to support her, then found Robyn at her side.

  “Are you all right, George?” The girl’s pale blue eyes looked up at her, worried. “I’ll help you back to bed.”

  “I’m okay, Robyn.”

  “Do you want me to get my dad?” the girl asked. “He’s over talking to Uncle Russ. I can go and—”

  “It’s all right.” How could she be so weak that she needed a small child to nurse her? She collapsed back onto the bed.

  Robyn seemed more than equal to the chore, bringing a hot water bottle to tuck in beside George, then gently fitting the headphones over her curls. Music seemed to be Robyn’s idea of a cure-all.

  “You’re a girl after my own heart,” murmured George as she drifted away to the sounds of a bass guitar. Tomorrow she would get up for sure, she promised herself as she let the sleepiness overtake her. But she didn’t.

  “Not yet,” said Lyle firmly.

  What was wrong with her? She didn’t even protest his decree.

  Robyn brought her schoolwork with her this morning. George helped her with a math problem, then with a reading assignment, trying to help Robyn answer a question on why Porgy was afraid to go down the path beside the old hen house.

  “That’s all I have to do,” said Robyn as she carefully wrote the last few words of her answer. “I’ll put my books away. Daddy and I have a snack this time every day. Are you hungry?”

  “A little,” George agreed, mainly to please Robyn.

  Robyn carefully picked the two books up together. “We’ve run out of strawberries, so Daddy said we could have some more of the ice cream.”

  “I love ice cream. I haven’t had it in— have you hurt your leg, Robyn? You’re limping!”

  “I always limp.” She clutched the books tightly. “My leg doesn’t work right. I was born with it wrong.”

  She was so desperately tense, George wanted to put her arms around her. “It’s only a little limp. Does it hurt?”

  Robyn shifted the books, her eyes clouded. “Not now. Just when I go to the doctors. They do things, and sometimes they put me to sleep and cut it open and straighten it up a bit.” She glared down at the leg as if it didn’t belong to her. “Daddy says it will get all better in the end.”

  George didn’t know what she should say.

  “Don’t you think it’s ugly?” demanded Robyn. “People aren’t supposed to limp, you know.”

  George said, “I limp. Do you think it makes me ugly?”

  Robyn shook her head, the long fine hair swirling around her shoulders. “You’re too pretty to look ugly, even if you limp. And yours will get better.”

  George touched the healing abrasion on her face. “Pretty? With this mess on my face? You’re far prettier than I am. You’ve got beautiful eyes and lovely long hair. And your leg’s going to get better too.”

  After a tense, silent moment, Robyn whispered, “Do you really think I’m pretty?”

  “Really. Very pretty.”

  “My mother didn’t think so.” Robyn stared down at her own hand as it clenched over her thigh.

  George said nothing, waiting.

  A dog barked outside. Robyn looked up and said tonelessly, “That’s Scruff. He’s always barking.”

  “Scruff? How did Scruff get his name?”

  What had Robyn’s mother done to her daughter?

  “Daddy said we had to name him.” She kept her eyes firmly on the foot of the bed, as she s
aid, “We got him from a fisherman.” She shifted her gaze to the window, anywhere but at George.

  “He was put up for ‘doption ‘cause he got seasick. The man just called him dog, an’ he was no sailor. Daddy said we should name him Harry – then we’d have Tom, Dick and Harry. But I said Dick was Dixie anyway, and we should call him Scruff. ‘Cause he is. Daddy says he looks like he just crawled out of a back alley… My mummy ran away because she didn’t want to be my mummy anymore.”

  Robyn was staring at her, eyes filled with hurt defiance. George shifted in the bed, pushing herself up on the pillows. “Robyn— honey, I can’t— I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to be your mummy.”

  The girl bit her lip. She was trying hard to keep the tears back, but losing the battle. Her pale blue eyes were filled with moisture, her face rigid with the effort of holding back.

  In a moment Robyn would draw away and the vulnerability would disappear. George was tempted to let that happen, because sharing Robyn’s hurt came too close to touching her own loneliness.

  Then she found herself reaching out, touching the hands that were clenched together so tightly. Robyn’s hand jerked away, then her fingers were clutching at George’s.

  George pulled gently, bringing Robyn into her arms. A massive shudder went through the girl. She hurled herself against George’s injured ribs and the tears started to flow freely.

  George managed to shift herself enough to ease the pain against her ribs without disturbing Robyn. If there were any words to say to the crying young girl, she didn’t know them. She just held her and let the tears come, taking a strange comfort herself from Robyn’s warm body in her arms.

  When Lyle came into the room, she shook her head silently. He stared down at them for a moment, the young girl curled hard against the woman in the bed, her arms thrown around George’s neck. He moved half a step into the room, then stopped.

  When he left, she closed her eyes and told herself that her own tears were only for Robyn.

  It wasn’t true. Wherever Robyn’s mother was, she had left her daughter just as surely as Scott had left George.

  Chapter 3

  Lying in bed, inactive, it was too easy to start thinking, and George didn’t want to think.

  It was a relief the day Lyle came to collect her empty breakfast plate and announced, “I’d like to have another look at that gash on your leg to be sure it’s healing. Then, if the leg looks okay, you could get up.”

  His hands were gentle, pressing on the soft skin of her outer thigh. She hoped he didn’t realize how oddly his touch made her tremble.

  “It looks all right.”

  She couldn’t see the leg, only Lyle’s head, his hair wildly styled by the wind. She’d smelled the tang of the salt air on him when he came into the room.

  He put out a hand for balance, his thigh pressing against hers as he probed gently around the bandage. “Hurt?” he asked suddenly.

  She started to shake her head, then yelped as he yanked the tape off in one swift, painful motion. “Ouch! Yes, that hurts!”

  “Sorry. I always hate that part myself, but the tape had to come off.”

  “I suppose so,” she admitted unwillingly, her leg still stinging. She felt nervous, too aware of him. “How does it look?” She sat up abruptly, breaking contact with his disturbing blue eyes. “Can I see?”

  “It’s healing well – I guess you’ll have a scar.“

  “I can live with a scar.” She could see gold flecks in the deep blue of his eyes. Feeling the heat from his body, she added nervously, “It doesn’t look as bad as I thought.”

  “The scar doesn’t bother you?” Could his eyes see things she kept secret even from herself?

  “I’ve been collecting scars all my life,” she said absently. “I fell out of my first tree when I was five years old.”

  “Most of them don’t show,” he said gently, as if he could see the scar on her heart. Scott, she thought, and the pain was fresh and strong inside her.

  She leaned back against the pillows, but he was still close enough to make her breathless. Three years, she thought. Three years of being a woman alone.

  Surely he couldn’t see the thoughts in her mind? Did he know how conscious she was of him? She dropped her eyes. Perhaps he did. Why else would he look at her like that?

  Not long ago, in Mexico, she’d tried to relieve her loneliness with a casual affair in the mistaken hope that she could diminish the loneliness without intimacy.

  The Mexican man had been intelligent, cultured, and attractive. He’d kissed warmly, and it should have been good.

  But he wasn’t Scott.

  George had left Mexico quickly, without explanation, escaping for the solitude of Lady Harriet, sailing north too early in the season, riding the spring winds towards Alaska.

  Now she was on this rocky island, and it must be her hormones telling her that Lyle could give her the loving she needed.

  She knew better. It was Scott she needed. No one else could take that place in her life. She didn’t want anyone else.

  She broke the long silence abruptly, blinking and tossing her curls back. “So I can get up? I’d love a shower.”

  His eyes dropped to the swelling of her breasts beneath the big sweat shirt, telling her without words that he could visualize her naked under the spray. He looked up, and saw the flush growing on her cheeks.

  He knew! Somehow he knew the thoughts she’d been thinking.

  “I think a shower would be all right. Then, afterwards, we’d better bandage the leg again. You won’t overdo it, will you?” He stood up, hooked his thumbs in the belt of his jeans, a frown growing on his face. “I have a feeling you’re inclined to throw caution to the winds, and it wouldn’t be a good idea with that leg.”

  She started to contradict him, but found herself saying instead, “I won’t. At least—”

  He covered her lips with light fingers that tingled against her mouth. “Leave it at that, George. I know you’re a wild girl, but be tame for a couple of days, anyway. How are the ribs? Okay?”

  A wild girl. She winced at that, but it was true. She’d always been the wild one, driving her mother to distraction, worrying Scott. She wouldn’t change now, at the age of thirty.

  “I’m mending,” she told him. “I hurt, but I deserve that for going sailing in a storm.”

  “I won’t argue that.” For a moment she thought he was about to give her a lecture on water safety, then he met her eyes with his own and she saw worry deep beneath the blue.

  “George, yesterday, you and Robyn— if she tells you anything you feel I should know…”

  George smoothed the quilt with her hands. She tried to imagine the woman who was Robyn’s mother. What had the marriage been like? Had Lyle looked at his wife the way he sometimes looked at her?

  Had they slept together in the bed across the hall? George pushed away that strangely disturbing thought, and said, “Robyn told me that her mother left because she didn’t want her.” Lyle’s hands clenched in an involuntary spasm. She broke out, “That’s a terrible thing for a girl to believe!”

  He swung away from her and went to stare out of the window. “Unfortunately, it’s partly true.”

  She pushed herself up, her voice rising, “How could anyone—” What was it about his eyes? They held none of the overt sexual challenge that she’d learned to ignore in men’s eyes, and yet… “How could Robyn’s mother leave? Because— Robyn’s such a sweetheart!”

  He held out a large bathrobe for her to step into, saying, “I don’t imagine it was all her fault.”

  She climbed out of the bed, letting his hands tie the knot at her waist. Against her will, she found pleasure in the sensation of his hands brushing her midriff through the robe. “What do you mean?”

  “She didn’t want motherhood, or marriage, for that matter.” He walked away from her to the window, his voice muffled. “I suppose they were all my idea, the marriage and the baby and— well, she just reached the point wh
ere she couldn’t handle it.”

  George pulled the robe more tightly around her, frowning, trying to see this nameless woman, trying not to wish his hands had remained at her waist. She couldn’t help wondering about the irony of Lyle’s wife not wanting children when she, who was childless, had wanted them so badly. “When— what was her name?”

  She hoped he wouldn’t answer. His life was coming too close. If she started hurting for Lyle and Robyn, the other feelings might all come back.

  “Hazel,” he said, turning back towards her. She thought he was looking right through her. “She left five years ago. Robyn was three, and she’s never talked about it. I haven’t asked, because—” He spread his hands, his face showing an uncomfortable vulnerability. “I haven’t asked, because I didn’t want to make her think about it, and also— it wasn’t nice.” He laughed bitterly. “God! That’s the understatement of the year! There were fights, and I would imagine Robyn heard at least some of them, however hard I tried to— well, it seemed better to leave it and hope it would become part of a forgotten past, a bad dream.”

  George whispered, “She hasn’t forgotten anything. She thinks the only reason her mother left was to get away from her, and she thinks it was mainly because of her leg.”

  Lyle replied bitterly, “Marriage and motherhood were bad enough from Hazel’s point of view, but she didn’t know how to begin to cope with specialists and surgery and— and a daughter who wasn’t physically perfect. George, I wouldn’t know how to start trying to tell Robyn that, and I can’t lie to her about it!”

  She searched his face.

  He had a cheerful mongrel dog that had been cast off by a fisherman, two cats that had been rescued from the SPCA, and a daughter unwanted by her mother. As far as George could see, he loved them all.

  She said softly, “I think Robyn will be all right. After all, she knows you love her… and a girl’s father is the most important thing.”