by Lily Everett
While they were in Hackley’s Hardware, the sky had clouded over with dark, forbidding gray. The humidity, always intense in the summer, had thickened until every breath felt like a gulp of tepid water.
“This is the town square. That’s the pavilion. All the core businesses on the island have storefronts along Main Street on this side, and all the big, old houses are along Island Road on that side of the park.”
“Interesting,” Miles said, never taking his eyes off her face.
Greta fought the urge to squirm under the laser intensity of his scrutiny. “The high school marching band plays concerts on the steps of the pavilion sometimes,” she said breathlessly.
Grabbing her hand, Miles turned and pulled her into the park. “Great. Let’s see this pavilion up close.”
The heat of his rough fingers on hers sent chills up her arms, even in the moist thickness of the still noonday air. “It’s nothing special,” Greta tried to tell him, almost tripping over her own booted feet in her hurry to keep up with his ground-eating strides.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
The pavilion squatted in the center of the town square, paved pathways leading out from it like rays of light from a star. Miles hustled them up the steps and into the hexagonal, open-sided building just as the sky opened up and poured rain down on the island.
Gasping, Greta leaned on the white wooden railing and stuck her hand out to feel the cooling sting of fat raindrops on her bare skin. “How did you know it was about to start raining?”
“I didn’t.”
He sounded genuinely aggravated, as if he hated admitting that he didn’t have perfect foreknowledge of everything that would happen.
Greta laughed over her shoulder at him, then turned to prop her hips on the low railing and stretch her legs out in front of her. “Well, we’re stuck here now until the rain lets up. Shouldn’t be too long. These summer storms blow over in a heartbeat.”
Another sheet of rain fountained over the gazebo’s roof, loud enough to drown out her last few words. The rain formed an impenetrable veil around the pavilion, enclosing Greta and Miles in their own private world made of white noise and fine mist.
Absently wringing water from the sodden hem of her tank top, Greta felt her breath catch at the soft, rough sound that rumbled from deep in Miles’s chest. She dropped her hands, tugging the shirt down self-consciously, but it was too late.
Miles had already seen it.
Without even meaning to, Greta pressed her hand defensively over the short scar that curved over her left hip. No longer than three inches, pale with age, she knew intellectually that it wasn’t a hideous, deforming mark.
But try telling that to the weak, scared, seventeen-year-old who still lived somewhere inside Greta.
She tensed against the inevitable question. All through high school, and after, if she ever encountered the rare person on Sanctuary Island who didn’t already know everything that happened to Greta Hackley when she was a kid, one look at her scar was all it took for that person to feel they had a right to ask.
Sometimes people would reach out and touch it, almost unconsciously, as if the fact that there was visible proof of her past pain made it public property.
But Miles didn’t move one inch closer to her. Instead, he lowered himself to sit on the bench that ran along the back of the gazebo, hooking his elbows over the railing. He said not a word, asked no questions, didn’t imply in any way that she was obligated to spill her entire life history to explain the scar on her abdomen.
The very fact that he didn’t push made her want to tell him. And why not? It wasn’t some horrible secret. Everyone on the island already knew, anyway. What was one more person who looked at her and saw an invalid, a victim, a weakling to protect?
If Miles Harrington was going to look at her that way, with that horrid, soft pity she hated so much … better to find out now.
“I was sick a lot, as a kid.” Greta pitched her voice to be heard over the rain, but it still came out low and private. Clearing her throat, she pressed on. “In and out of the hospital, lots of different doctors. They finally figured out it was chronic kidney disease, which would have meant lifelong dialysis just to manage the symptoms—but my mom gave me one of her kidneys when I was seventeen. And now we’re both fine.”
For a long moment, there was no sound but the incessant roar of raindrops hitting the gazebo roof. Greta searched Miles’s expression for any change, any hint of pity, but other than a slight tightening of his jaw, he didn’t react at all.
“I see. Thank you for telling me. It explains a lot.”
Greta bristled, straightening up from her slouch against the railing. “What do you mean? What does it explain?”
Apparently oblivious to Greta’s rising tension, Miles tipped his head back until droplets of rain misted his hairline. “That disagreement with your mother, about how careful you need to be.”
Even though he hadn’t actually criticized her mother, Greta found herself leaping to Esther’s defense. “She can be a little overprotective, but it comes from a place of love.”
“Of course.” Miles shook water from his hair like a dog surfacing from a lake, blinking furiously. “I would never dream of implying otherwise. I can only imagine how it felt to come so close to losing you.”
Perversely, Miles’s easy acceptance of her mother’s struggle made Greta want to argue the other side. Stomach in knots from the roller coaster of her emotions, she pressed a fist to her belly button. “It was hard for her, I know. My dad died when I was a baby, so it was just Mama on her own, with this passel of boys and me. The lone, sickly girl. The whole island helped out, babysitting and holding pancake breakfasts to raise money for treatments, but still—I know she felt very alone.”
But does that justify the way she keeps me close to her, never wants to let me far enough out of her sight to actually live my life?
Her voice dried up around the words, too disloyal to think, much less to say. But from the barely leashed power of Miles’s body as he surged to his feet and paced across the pavilion toward her, Greta had the insane feeling that he could read her mind.
His words, spoken softly against her cheek as he lifted his fingers to burrow into the damp tendrils of hair behind her ear, confirmed it. “Have you ever been off this island, Greta?”
The ache of longing that rose up her throat stole her voice for a moment. Swallowing it down, Greta looked away, out into the rain. “Sure. I was such a frequent visitor to Harbor General, the big hospital on the mainland, that the nurses joked about naming a room after me.”
A strange tone came into his voice. “And that’s it. You’ve never been farther from home than the podunk town at the other end of Sanctuary Island’s ferry line.”
“Hey, don’t knock Winter Harbor! That’s the metropolis to us. They have a grocery store there that sells packs of sushi in the deli department!”
“Well, if you can get grocery store sushi, what more do you need from life?” Miles stood to pace the confines of the gazebo, the motorcycle boots he must have borrowed from Dylan striking hard and loud against the wooden boards. “There’s a whole world out there, Greta. You must have wanted to see it. What about college?”
“Mama … I mean, I decided it was better to take courses online through the EVCC. Eastern Virginia Community College.”
“Right, you decided.”
The skepticism in his heavy-lidded blue eyes got Greta’s back up. Tilting her chin, she glared at him. “Yes, I decided. My brothers all left the island for school, and there was no one else to help Mama with the store. She needed me. And after everything she’s done for me, the sacrifices she’s made—how could I do anything else? So yeah, I stuck around. And for the most part, I have no regrets. It was the right thing to do.”
“Doing the right thing for your family.” Understanding smoothed the ragged edges of Miles’s tone. He shook his head, and the light brown hair he usually swept back fell forward over his f
orehead to give him a sudden boyishness that made her want to hug him. “It’s amazing how little comfort that is, at times.”
Greta licked her lips, tasting clean, fresh rain. Drawn like a magnet to her true north, she moved to sit sideways on the bench beside him, drawing her feet up to rest on the seat by his hips. She leaned back against one of the pillars holding up the pavilion roof and watched Miles. “You get it. I know you do. I’ve seen the way you are with your brothers.”
Sighing, Miles settled deeper into the bench. He didn’t turn his head to face her, and the stark lines of his profile stood out against the silvery air like a marble statue. “According to Dylan and Logan, how I am with my brothers is domineering, overbearing, demanding, hypercritical.”
“Some people might say that about my mother,” Greta pointed out. “From the outside, she may seem that way. But that’s not her at all. She wants what’s best for me. She loves me, and she wants me to be safe. She was willing to let a doctor practically break her in half to rip out a vital organ, so she could give it to me. I’m alive right now only because of her.”
A muscle clenched visibly behind Miles’s jaw. He dropped his insouciant, lounging pose, bringing his arms down from the railing to rest in his lap. His right hand landed on the bench right beside her foot, and in the next breath, Miles had wrapped that hot hand around her bare, chilled ankle.
“Don’t say that,” he rasped, his eyes a wild, chaotic blue that almost glowed in the stormy light. “I hate the idea that I might never have met you, that the world could have missed out on you. That we came so close to never…”
He broke off, his fingers tightening until she felt the imprint of his fingerprints on her anklebone.
“But we did meet,” Greta said, her heart beating like the wings of a hummingbird. She felt as if they were poised at the top of Wanderer’s Point, on the edge of the cliff staring down at the churning waves and fixing to jump.
“And we have the chance to get to know each other,” Greta went on. “All because you’re as protective of your family as my mother is. Personally, I don’t think it’s a fault. I have to admit, I actually admire the way you look out for your brothers. It’s how you show love; I get that.”
Going still as an ice sculpture, Miles darted a probing stare to her face. “So you’re saying I’m right to be concerned about Dylan? Penny Little is after his money.”
Chapter 6
“What? Oh, my God. No.” Greta pulled her legs out of his grasp and planted her boots on the floor. “Way to ruin the moment.”
Miles flexed his suddenly stiff fingers, tightening them into fists to keep from reaching for her. He’d jumped the gun badly, he realized while cursing himself silently. But this conversation, this entire scheme to get Greta to trust him and turn on her friend—it was getting completely out of hand.
He needed to move things along, or he was going to find himself falling for his own stratagem.
Rubbing a hand over his face, he grimaced at the bristle of whiskers to hide the instinctive flinch of remembering how it had felt to hear Greta Hackley—a woman he barely knew—describe how close she’d come to death as a child.
The raw, instinctive rasp of terror over his nerves, the urge to spring to his feet to do battle with whatever threatened her—Miles was out of his depth and sinking fast.
After years of burying his emotions under the drive to succeed, the need to keep the family company going as a tribute to his dead parents and a way to be sure his younger brothers were always provided for, Miles was way, way out of practice at handling conversations like this.
“I’m sorry.” His throat clicked when he swallowed, dry and tight. “Forget I said that.”
“I can’t just forget,” Greta protested, pushing to her feet as if she needed some distance. “Is that what you’ve been thinking about, this whole time?”
He ought to let her go, he knew. Tactically, it was the right move—not to push, to let Greta come to him.
Screw tactics, Miles decided, standing and wrapping his arms around Greta from behind in one swift motion.
If she struggled at all, he told himself he’d release her … but she didn’t. Though her tall, willowy body was rigid in his embrace, she didn’t shove him away. Instead, she breathed through her nose for a taut, unending moment, then softened against him as if she couldn’t help herself.
When her head tipped back to his shoulder and she turned her face into his neck, a dark surge of triumph flared to life inside Miles. “To be completely honest, I had forgotten about my brother and your friend until that moment. And I am sorry,” he growled, truth in every syllable.
He deeply regretted letting his impatience get the better of him—even though it freaked him right the hell out that the first part of his confession was true, too.
That he’d allowed himself to forget, even for a moment, that he was only here with Greta to keep his brother from making a painful mistake … that was terrifying.
Miles held the solution to his brother’s problems in his arms and struggled against the bone-deep yearning to let the rest of the world go to hell.
“Okay. I believe you.” The words were almost a sigh, a kiss of warm breath to the side of his neck, and Miles went hard in a violent rush.
He savored the feel of Greta in his arms and let the sturdy strength of her long limbs and lean muscles help him beat back the darkness of knowing exactly how quickly and easily her life could be snuffed out. Miles held himself inflexibly still and breathed in the maddening, rain-washed scent of her hair.
He needed a distraction, for both of them, in the worst possible way. Something to get Greta to forget his poorly timed question about her friend’s motives, and something to keep Miles from taking them both down to the floor of the pavilion and chasing every stray raindrop over her skin with his tongue.
The steady drip, drip, drip that filtered through the drumbeat of blood rushing south told Miles the shower had finally slowed to a drizzle. He opened eyes he hadn’t even been aware of closing and stopped nuzzling Greta’s temple long enough to confirm that the brief summer storm had blown itself out.
Just as the sun pierced the clouds to bring the sparkling, wet leaves and grass into brilliant green relief, Miles heard the unmistakable sound of the best distraction he could ever have devised.
And to think, he hadn’t even realized how brilliant this next move was when he planned it. Confidence restored and mood leveling out, Miles maneuvered Greta over to the gazebo steps while managing to keep her close.
“Oh, look, the rain stopped. Where are we going?” she asked.
Miles didn’t bother to reply, merely tucked his fingers under her chin and directed her gaze skyward. Her eyes went round with shock. Over the loud whirring hum of rotating blades, Miles said into her ear, “You showed me your family’s legacy. Let me show you mine.”
Turning in his arms, Greta pushed up on her toes like an overexcited child. “You mean…”
“We’re getting on that helicopter, and I’m taking you to New York. Right now.”
“But.” She blinked hard, as if the emerging sunlight glinting off the white sides of the helicopter had struck her blind. “That’s insane. I can’t run off to New York City on a whim.”
“Why not?” Miles trailed his fingers down her arm and took her hand in his. Lifting it to his mouth in the smooth, practiced gesture that regularly made rival CEO’s wives titter and blush, he pressed a kiss to the back of her knuckles and gave her a slow smile from under his lashes. “You’re an adult, taking a bit of rare time off from an all-consuming job. You deserve a break.”
“This is more than a break.” Greta stared at him, her fingers stiff in his grasp. “This is like something out of a fairy tale, the handsome prince swooping in to carry me off on his white steed, to his castle in the clouds.”
“Only in this case, the steed is a Eurocopter EC135 with interior design by Hermès, and the castle in the clouds is my penthouse on Central Park South. But bas
ically, yes.”
“This can’t be happening for real.” Greta’s eyes were round and dark as she watched the branches whip sparkling fans of rainwater in all directions as the wind from the rotor shook them.
Alert to any signs of disbelief, Miles was quick to say, “Greta. Have you ever been farther away from Sanctuary Island than the transplant hospital in Winter Harbor?”
She shook her head mutely, terrible longing and nervous excitement sending a flush to her face.
“There’s a big world out there. And the thought that you’ve never experienced any of it—let me have that first experience with you. Please.”
Reaching up a hand to touch one of those hot, fever-bright cheeks, Miles tilted her head to the perfect angle for a kiss. Just to seal the deal, he promised himself.
But from the first touch of his lips to hers, he was lost. When she kissed him back, her mouth opening under his and meeting him hunger for hunger, Miles’s brain was washed clean of everything but Greta.
His last clear thought before the whir of the helicopter and the overwhelming pleasure of the kiss obliterated sanity was, This is a dangerous game we’re playing.
And for the first time in a long time, Miles wasn’t sure he even knew what winning would look like.
*
Riding in a helicopter was everything Greta had always imagined it would be. Partly because even her wildest imaginings could never have dreamed up a helicopter as comfortable and luxurious as the spacious four-seater cabin of Miles’s EC135, with its buttery leather seats and burled-wood accents.
It was too noisy to talk, and Miles spent most of the three-hour flight working on the laptop the pilot had produced when they boarded, along with a bottle of chilled champagne and a pair of flutes.
Greta had never been more sorry to have to turn down alcohol in her life. Sinking back into the deep cushions of her seat and staring around at the opulence of the interior, she said, “Kidney transplant, remember? I try to stay away from anything that puts stress on my body.”
