Some Kind of Wonderful

by Sarah Morgan

  She felt a rush of affection for them. True, they occasionally drove her crazy with their interfering ways, but there was no doubting the strength of the community.

  Suddenly eager to get home, she hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder, dragged her single suitcase behind her and strolled the last few steps towards the plane, thinking that she wasn’t dressed for such an upmarket mode of transport.

  The pilot was probably more used to matching Louis Vuitton luggage than the tough outdoor gear she hauled around the world on her archaeological digs and she was pretty sure Manolo Blahnick would have cried if he’d seen her favored footwear. Her boots were scuffed and sturdy, built for hiking across rough, unforgiving terrain, although even they hadn’t been able to prevent her falling in Greece.

  Thanks to her carelessness she was facing a summer of inactivity. She had regular appointments at the hospital scheduled, all of which would require a tedious trip to the mainland. To be sure of regaining full mobility in her right wrist, they’d told her she needed to be patient.

  As she walked up to the Cessna, the pilot appeared at the top of the steps.

  Dark glasses shielded his eyes, but she felt a jolt of instant recognition followed by a strange flutter in her stomach and an alarming shake of her knees.

  It had been ten years, but she would have known him anywhere.

  The shoulders under the crisp white shirt were broader and thickened with hard muscle, the glossy black hair cropped shorter, but he had that same “don’t fuck with me” attitude that had drawn her adventure-seeking eighteen-year-old self all those years before. A million times since then she’d wished she’d looked for another way of enjoying an adrenaline rush, like bungee jumping or white-water rafting.

  Instead she’d gone after bad boy Zachary Flynn. On an island bursting with fresh fruit, he’d been the one bad apple.

  In the first dizzying weeks of their relationship she’d thought there could be no bigger adventure than love. Her feelings for him had overwhelmed her and made her vulnerable, open and exposed. She’d spent the entire summer walking around the island on legs the consistency of jelly, her stomach clenched in nervous knots. Her ability to sleep had vanished along with her appetite. Overnight, her vision for her future had changed.

  She’d had plans and ambitions, but for Zachary Flynn she’d thrown them all away. Her life and her future had taken a different shape. Faced with a choice, she’d chosen him. And when she’d given him everything, all of herself, he’d walked away with a shattering disregard for her and she’d crashed so hard she still had the bruises. She’d often thought the damage would have been less had she jumped from a plane without a parachute.

  “One female passenger, and it’s you.” His handsome face was inscrutable. “What are the chances.”

  “Given that I live here, I’d say the chances are pretty high.” She held herself together, whipped up the control and calm she’d mastered over the years. Despite the turmoil inside she refused to give him any clues about her emotions, nor did she need to study his face for clues as to how he was feeling. She already knew he felt nothing.

  “I thought you were living in Greece. Rumor has it you’re the female Indiana Jones.”

  She’d heard it all before, all the jokes about whips, hats, snakes and rolling boulders. Usually she made a flippant response, but not today.

  He strolled onto the tarmac and lifted her case before she could stop him. The luggage label flipped over and caught his eye. “Dr. Forrest?” He studied it, and then her. “So you lived up to everyone’s expectations.”

  His statement made her feel dull and boring, as if her whole life had been mapped out in front of her. Which of course it had, apart from a brief diversion when she’d met him.

  “I studied archaeology because it was what I wanted to do. My choice was my own. And Puffin Island is my home. Always has been.” And it had been her relationship with him that had driven her from it. She couldn’t stand the sympathy, the pitying glances, the I told you sos every time she’d ventured into town. Stewing in her own mistake, it had been impossible to forget and move on while she was living on the island. “What are you doing here, Zach? Last thing I heard you were flying in the wilds of Alaska.” And from time to time she’d hoped he had developed frostbite in certain vital parts of his anatomy.

  Irritation and a touch of outrage merged with something that felt disturbingly close to panic.

  He had no right to be here in her space, her part of the world.

  She’d moved on, built a life. She had no wish to be forced to confront the path she hadn’t taken.

  “I’m flying people with more money than sense to the islands. Today that seems to be you.”

  “Would you have refused if you’d known?”

  The corners of his beautiful mouth hinted at a smile. “I’d fly the devil if he paid me. I don’t care who’s in the passenger seat as long as the money is in my account.” His drawl was deep and dark with hints of sophistication that disguised the truth about his background.

  When she’d first met him he’d been damaged, bitter and rebellious. He’d cared for no one. Trusted no one.

  She’d thought she could change all that. She’d made that classic mistake of thinking she could be the one to tame the wild in him.

  Her brain had gone missing in action the day she’d decided to go after Zachary Flynn. To someone who had spent her life on a small island where she knew almost every face she saw in the street, he’d proved fascinating. She’d always striven to exceed people’s expectations. Zach, it seemed, had lived to smash them into the ground.

  He’d been the forbidden fruit. The boy every good girl avoided.

  He was black to her white, dark to her light, hard to her soft.

  Her one big mistake.

  In a wild attempt to prove everyone wrong, she’d proved them right.

  They’d warned that he’d break her heart and he had. And he’d done it in the most humiliating way possible.

  She transferred her attention to the plane. “So this is what you do now?”

  “If you mean I target people with too much money and help myself to some of it then yeah, this is what I do. And it seems I’m your ride.” He removed his sunglasses and stood to one side. “Climb aboard, princess.”

  She didn’t want to climb aboard. She wanted to run.

  Panic nailed her feet to the ground, but pride drove her forward. If she turned away now he’d know it was because of him. And anyway, if she did that, how was she going to get to the island? In this case practicality had to take precedence over emotions. Alternative transport would be expensive and uncomfortable. Her wrist was already hurting and her head was fuzzy from a combination of lack of sleep and the long flight. The hospital had suggested she remain in Greece for another week to recuperate before traveling. Lily had insisted that private travel would make the journey a thousand times easier and Brittany had agreed.

  The one thing she hadn’t done was ask questions about her onward transfer to the island.

  Why would she? It would never have crossed her mind the pilot could be Zach.

  And how pathetic would she be if she let a joke marriage that had lasted barely five minutes affect her after a whole decade? She was bigger than that.

  Telling herself it was only a twenty-minute hop at most and that Zach was going to be too busy flying the plane to take any notice of her, Brittany walked up the steps. She was careful to avoid eye contact. He was strikingly good-looking, but it was those eyes that had been her downfall. They were so dark they seemed black, the hard gleam radiating his deep suspicion of mankind. He’d had a way of watching her, his hooded gaze brooding and dangerous, as if daring her to stop wondering and fantasizing, and take the leap.

  Never one to turn down a challenge, she’d taken the dare.

  It had been like trying to tame a feral beast that was inevitably going to turn on her.

  She brushed past him and felt the hard swell of his biceps brush again
st her bare arm. She jerked back, but not before a rush of awareness had burned through her body.

  Her gaze slid to his shadowed jaw and from there to the hard lines of his mouth.

  She still remembered how it had felt to be kissed by him, and remembering kicked her heart rate up a notch.

  “Nice plane.” Her voice was as cold as a Maine winter. “Did you steal it?”

  Her question drew a flicker of a smile. “No, this time I was the one who was robbed. You have no idea what price they pin on this baby.”

  She wanted to ask how he could afford it, but didn’t want to show that much interest, so instead she slid into one of the large leather seats. She wished now she’d chosen to wear something less casual than shorts. They were the practical choice for the life she led, and her favorite product was high-factor sunscreen. She’d learned that any makeup she applied was quickly sweated off in the heat, so she restricted herself to a lip balm that protected against the sun.

  As a result, her selection of cosmetics remained mostly unused, but she was woman enough that if she’d known she was going to meet Zachary Flynn after a gap of ten years, she would have raided the makeup counter. Maybe even worn a dress and heels, though her wardrobe contained few examples of either. With enough advance warning she would have called Skylar, who had a talent for color and dressing people.

  With the help of her friends, she would have planned the meeting carefully, deciding how she was going to handle it and what she was going to say so that she controlled every moment of the reunion. And she wouldn’t have chosen to do it this way.

  Knowing that he was studying her, Brittany resisted the temptation to shift in her seat.

  Yeah, that’s right, take a good look at what you gave up. Are you sorry now?

  Finally she looked at him, looked into those flinty eyes framed by lashes as dark as coal. Her heart started to pound and her head spun. Tired, she thought. I’m tired, that’s all. But she knew it wasn’t the long flight or the time change that was responsible for the shift in her heart rate. It was seeing him. Panic ripped through her because she didn’t want to feel anything and she was feeling—everything.

  Damn him.

  Damn every supersexy inch of him.

  Maybe flying private wasn’t so great after all. Right now she would even have embraced a bunch of screaming toddlers. Anything to dilute the tension. “So who are we waiting for? Am I your only passenger?”

  “The rich don’t share. I’m exclusively yours.”

  He’d never been exclusively hers, not even when he’d slid that cheap, hastily purchased gift-store ring onto her finger and spoken words that had almost jammed in his throat. Their marriage had been the shortest exclusive deal on record. He’d lasted ten days before walking out of her life. Brittany had been raised to believe that people kept their promises but had learned that words, at least when they were uttered by Zachary Flynn, were meaningless. It had been a devastating betrayal of her trust. Hadn’t she believed in him when no one else had? Hadn’t she defended and excused him? He’s had a bad childhood, it’s not surprising he doesn’t trust people when they’ve always let him down. She’d said those things to anyone and everyone who would listen and ignored warnings and dire prophecies. She’d been a true friend to him and he’d cast that friendship aside as if it were nothing.

  “Let’s go. If I’m the only passenger, then there’s nothing keeping us from taking off.”

  “Sit down and strap in. There’s a strong crosswind today. You’re going to be shaken up some.”

  She was already shaken up, and it had nothing to do with the crosswind.

  Relieved it was a short flight, Brittany reached for the seat belt but he was there before her. Those strong fingers tangled with hers and she flattened herself to the seat.

  “I can do it.” Being helpless brought out the worst in her and she snatched her good hand away just as he eased back, a gleam in his eyes.

  “Still the same old Brittany. So who did you punch?”

  “What do you mean?” She wasn’t the same Brittany. The girl who had danced willingly into that reckless, short-lived marriage wasn’t the same girl who had limped out.

  “Unless you’re wearing that cast for show, you’ve broken your wrist.” He straightened his shoulders. Shoulders she’d once explored with her fingers and mouth. She knew he had a scar at the top of his right shoulder blade and another under his ribs on the left. He’d refused to discuss either. To her knowledge, apart from the social workers who had removed him from his abusive home, the only person who knew the details of his past was Philip Law and she suspected even he only knew a small part of the story. The rest Zach buried deep inside, allowing no one access. “Just wondered what happened to the other person. Knowing you, they came off worse.”

  “You don’t know me.” And she didn’t want to think about how well he’d once known her. She didn’t want to think about the way he’d touched her, kissed her and made her feel alive. “So why are you back in the area?” Brittany tried to remember what Nik had said about his friend. “You’re living in Bar Harbor?”

  “No. I have a client who has a place at Bar Harbor. I’m living on Puffin Island.”

  It was the worst news possible. “You’re living here now?”

  “Is that going to give you a problem?”

  It was going to give her a big problem.

  After their relationship had gone south, she’d retreated to Castaway Cottage and watched the sun rise and set over beautiful Shell Bay. With the help of her grandmother, and later her friends, she’d pieced herself back together. She’d traveled the world, but still regarded Puffin Island as her home.

  Her home, not his.

  Finding him here was like discovering a fly on your food. It felt contaminated.

  “We haven’t seen each other in ten years, Zach. You’re not part of my life and I’m not part of yours. I don’t give a damn where you live.”

  As long as it’s not on my island.

  “You’re sure?” His gaze was steady on hers. “Plenty of women would be bearing a grudge.”

  “Because you walked out on me ten days after our wedding?” She managed a laugh. “You did us both a favor by ending it when you did. Instead of throwing my whole life away, I threw away a few weeks. I don’t begrudge you a few weeks, Zach.”

  “It was a whole summer.”

  “I wasn’t counting.” She’d counted every day. Every hour. “And talking of counting, my friend is paying you big bucks to fly me to the island so let’s do it. I’d hate for him to fire you.”

  “I don’t work for him, I work for myself. I decide when I fly. I pick the jobs and the people.” Something flickered in his eyes. “Taking orders isn’t one of my strengths. You should know that.”

  She did know that. And she no longer cared enough to make excuses for his bad behavior.

  The details of his past were hazy, and that haze had succeeded in fueling the rumors. Rumors of an abusive childhood, of a life where the law turned up at the door more often than the mailman, of a boy who had moved from one place to another, never sticking. Those rumors had flown around the island and a few people who had never before locked their doors had started locking them whenever Zach had shown up as part of the scholarship program at Camp Puffin.

  He’d come back every summer and stayed the whole time. As a result he became a familiar figure on the island.

  His background had made him a suspect for every crime committed, something that had outraged teenage Brittany, who had a strong sense of justice and believed everyone was innocent until proven guilty. It had frustrated her that he’d been indifferent to people’s unflattering assumptions.

  Even when he’d finally moved in with Philip and Celia Law, he still hadn’t been entirely free of suspicion.

  “I’m tired,” she croaked. “It’s been a long journey, so why don’t you do whatever it is you do to make this thing fly and take me to Puffin Island.”

  For a brief, unsettling
moment she thought he was going to say something else. Then he handed her a headset, turned and strolled to the pilot’s seat, casual and relaxed.

  Brittany tried to relax, too.

  The sooner he took the controls, the sooner this whole awkward encounter would be over.

  Except that now her life was in his hands. As someone who liked to be in control of her own destiny, it didn’t feel good. It was hard to forget what he’d done with her heart when she’d trusted him with that.

  She remembered overhearing Philip telling her grandmother that Zach was the most gifted pilot he’d ever taught, but that his brilliance could easily slip over the line into reckless and wild. He was fearless, or maybe it was just that an unspeakable childhood had set his bar for fear higher than most people’s.

  Exhausted, her wrist throbbing, Brittany swallowed. She knew all about reckless and wild. She’d been both those things when she’d been with him.

  Watching him slide into the pilot’s seat, she felt her heart bump hard against her ribs.

  He’d said he’d fly the devil as long as he was paid, but she knew the devil was already in the plane.

  And he had his hands on the controls.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I SHOULD HAVE warned you.” Emily hauled Brittany’s suitcase into the cottage, maneuvering it over the blue-and-white-striped rug that welcomed visitors to the beach hideaway. The colors had faded over the years but the familiarity of it was as soothing as hot soup on a cold day.

  “How could you have warned me?”

  “Sky and I saw him a few weeks ago. We decided as you weren’t here you didn’t need to know. We assumed he’d be long gone before you came home. If you hadn’t broken your wrist, you wouldn’t have known.”

  “Don’t you believe it. This is Puffin Island. I would have heard about it the moment I stepped off the ferry. There are no secrets in this place. Although somehow I missed the fact you’ve moved out of the cottage. Tell me the details.”