“The hell you will!” She jabbed an elbow into his ribs and spun to face him. “I’m not leaving here with out you. Got that, Metcalf? I didn’t desert you in Tehru, and I’m not going to leave you now.”
Worry shifted to anger born of fear. She had to leave. He couldn’t be responsible for what would happen if she stayed.
“There’s a big difference between the two situations, Tansy.” He kept his voice calm, knowing coldness would annoy her more than a shout. “We were lovers in Tehru. Don’t think that just because I kissed you in there, it means I want you back. Don’t you get it? I don’t want you here.”
The lie stuck between his teeth, so much more difficult than the casual falsities that had defined his life for so long now. It was different because this was different.
This was Tansy.
Temper hissed from her lips, but before she could reply, Hazel stepped in. “Well, you two seem unharmed, at the very least. I’ll be getting back to the motel then. Eddie isn’t doing well. His kidneys are struggling.”
To Dale, the reminder was a colder dose of reality than the salty spray coming from the tanker truck. There were sick people on the island, and it was his job to keep them alive and figure out what was making them sick. He could do it alone. He had to do it alone. So he nodded. “We’ll come with you. We’ve slept long enough.”
He’d keep Tansy close to his side until the plane came to take her away. Anyone who wanted to get to her would have to go through him first.
“Nonsense.” Walter Churchill stepped from the shadows, making Dale wonder how long he’d been there. “You’ll both come home with me. You should have stayed at my house in the first place. Your parents’ house was drier than a pile of kindling and the wiring was older than me. It was an accident waiting to happen.”
Dale shrugged, but didn’t mention the footsteps he’d heard. That information would stay between him and Tansy. For now. As soon as she was gone, the investigation could begin in earnest.
“Churchill is right,” Hazel agreed. “You’re both exhausted, and probably in shock. Go clean yourselves up and sleep at the mansion. I’ll see you in the morning.” She shooed them in the direction of Churchill’s dark SUV, which was parked beside the now empty tanker truck. “We’ll trade shifts then.”
Tansy balked. “But if Eddie needs us—”
“Eddie needs a miracle,” Hazel replied flatly. “He’s not clearing the toxin out of his system. If he doesn’t wake up in the next twelve hours or so, I don’t think he’s going to make it.”
Dale flinched. He’d thought the same, but hearing it out loud made it real. “There has to be something we can do,” he grated, aware of a fragmentary thought that hovered just out of reach. Something about another island? He wasn’t sure. But the memory smelled like rum and baked desserts.
That, or the smoke had gotten to him.
“Come on,” Tansy whispered, tugging at his arm. “She’s right. Let’s go with Churchill and get some sleep.”
But still he hung back. It wasn’t that he wanted to stay and watch his boyhood home smolder. It wasn’t that he really felt his presence mattered to Eddie one way or the other. It was…
The thought fled and Dale ground his teeth in frustration. He wasn’t sure what it was. Tansy was right. He needed some downtime, or he’d be no use to her or the patients. “Okay. We’ll crash at Walter’s.”
Besides, he needed to talk to Churchill about the plane. He wanted it here fast, and he wanted Tansy on it.
As the black SUV backed down the vehicle-choked driveway, there was a splintering crash from the burning house. Dale turned back in time to see the tree list sideways and fall. Roots silhouetted against a bloodred pile of coals, the old friend that had saved his life died a fiery death and lay still.
He turned his face away and heard Churchill murmur, “Drive on, Frankie.”
Yes, thought Dale. Drive on and keep driving. Maybe we can reach the mainland by morning.
At least there, Tansy would be safe.
Chapter Six
In Churchill’s guest quarters an hour later, Tansy should have felt pampered and relaxed as she floated in the waist-deep bath. The water was scented with rose oil, a hundred tiny jets feathered across her body and a new robe lay neatly folded beside a pile of thick towels. But she was tense and teary. Her throat stung, her eyes hurt…
And someone had tried to kill her and Dale.
What the hell had they gotten themselves into? She was beginning to think she should have swum home the moment she discovered Dale’s history on Lobster Island.
“Yeah, right.” She scrubbed at a soot stain on her arm, avoiding the raw, burned patch beside it. “Like you’d leave him here alone. Face it, you’re hopeless when it comes to Dale Metcalf.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop on your conversation with…yourself.”
She swallowed a gasp and twisted toward the sound of his voice, lifting her hands to shield her bare breasts. “Damn it, Dale! What are you doing here?”
He was leaning against the elaborately carved doorframe, wearing a masculine robe that gaped open at the chest and thigh. His smoke-reddened eyes were intent, though the emotions behind them were cloaked. “I thought I’d use the bath, but it seems otherwise occupied.”
The water, which had been comfortably warm moments before, suddenly sizzled around her. How many times had they played out this same scene in the past? Bathrooms had always been a favorite play place for them. It was symbolic, she supposed, an antithesis of the filth, sickness and desperation of their normal assignments. In this way, they came to each other clean. Or at least they used to.
She swallowed hard, found her voice and willed it to stay steady when she said, “I’m sure you have a bath in your own guest suite. I recall Walter saying it was down the hall.”
“Not anymore. I told him we’d share.”
She shot to her feet. “What?” Ignoring his raised eyebrows and her nudity, she climbed out of the bath and stalked over to her robe, yanked it on. “What do you mean, you told him we’d share? What happened to ‘I don’t want you here’? Damn it, Dale. What sort of a game are you playing?”
He didn’t move, but his eyes flared, reminding her that she didn’t know Dale Metcalf as well as she’d once thought. Didn’t know what he was capable of.
The idea was a little thrilling and more than a bit frightening.
But why was he insisting they stay together? Before, it had seemed that he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.
Tansy walked over to him and poked him in the chest. Her finger speared through the loosened flaps of his robe and glanced off hard flesh, right above the lobster tattoo. She ignored the low buzz of her blood and demanded, “Why the sudden need for togetherness? What do you know that I don’t?”
He caught her hand and held it hard, and the warmth of his skin reminded her of their earlier kiss. “Someone tried to kill us tonight. I don’t know who it was, or why. Until I do, I’m not letting you out of my sight. Got it?”
Though the harsh possessiveness of his tone called to something deep within her, Tansy held herself away from temptation and fired back, “We’re perfectly safe here. Didn’t you see the security system? And the…” The look in his eye stalled her. “You don’t think Walter has anything to do with this, do you? What possible reason would he have to want us dead? He was your parents’ friend!”
Dale shook his head and cursed. “No. I don’t think it’s Churchill. I don’t know what to think, if you want the honest truth. But I know I’m tired and I won’t sleep unless I know you’re safe, so be a pal, okay, Tansy? Let me stay here.”
Be a pal. The words were sexless, and because of it, they stung. Tansy grimaced. “A pal, sure. We’ll just share a bed, nothing to it. We’re both grown-ups, right?”
Grown-ups and ex-lovers. But if he could ignore the pull of the past, and the brief, desperate flare they’d felt during the fire, so could she. Besides, he was right. They w
ere in danger, and better off together than apart.
There was a short daybed beside the airy window, and enough blankets and fluffy pillows to make a nest four times the size of their pallet in Tehru. But by unspoken accord, they walked to the big bed together. The clothes Mickey had lent them were smoky and torn beyond repair. Churchill had promised replacements in the morning. Until then, it was robes or nothing.
They both kept their robes on.
“You still sleep on the left?” he asked politely.
Tansy smothered a snort. “Dale, it’s only been three months. You think I’ve changed that much?” She slid beneath the covers and stayed close to the left edge of the springy mattress.
He turned out the last light and she felt the bed dip beneath his weight. “I don’t know,” he answered, finally. “It seems like a lot longer. I guess I figured that maybe you’d found another…arrangement you liked better.”
He was right. The months had felt like years, for many reasons. Tears crowded Tansy’s eyes when she replied, “No, Dale. No other arrangements. Nothing’s changed.”
He didn’t answer for so long she thought he’d fallen asleep. Then he sighed and said, “Yeah. Nothing’s changed.” The mattress swayed as he rolled over, facing away from her. “Try to get some rest, okay? In the morning, we’ll figure out how to get you home.”
Too tired to argue about it, Tansy merely murmured, “’Night,” and closed her eyes. Though she was still shaky from the fire, and her throat hurt like hell, she drifted off quickly, warmed by the man at her back and the stealthy feeling of safety that snuck up on her when she was in that vulnerable place between asleep and awake.
SHE DREAMED OF TEHRU, of the bombs and the screams, and of the love that she’d found there, in the ugliest place on earth. Strange, that she’d found something so beautiful amid so much awfulness. She dreamed of the weekend she and Dale had taken for themselves later that year, on the way home from yet another disaster area.
The shabby old hotel in the Philippines had once been glorious, but the architecture had held little fascination. They’d been content to stay in bed for forty-eight hours of no responsibility except to each other. Leave, the HFH head honchos had called it, but by the end of the weekend, it had felt more like love.
Tangled together, not sure where one left off and the other began, they’d eaten little and slept even less, always waking to reach for each other once more. He would prop himself on one elbow and gaze down at her with those glorious blue eyes. She would reach up and trace a finger along his dear, stubbled cheek. In that last moment before their lips touched, their breaths would mingle and become one. Their hearts would beat in tandem, and—
And this was no dream, Tansy realized. Her eyes fluttered open, registering the gray light of pre-dawn and the shadow of a man above her. Then he closed the distance between them, or she did. It didn’t matter, because in the next instant their lips touched and all rational thought fled.
Never familiar, always new and potent, Dale’s flavor slid across her tongue like an old friend and Tansy, half-awake and needy after so many months, arched into the contact. The kiss deepened immediately, like a continued conversation without beginning or end, existing only in the now.
She opened to him with a murmur, not knowing whether he was awake and not caring, only grateful, so grateful to taste him again. To feel him wrap around her and draw her in, to the one place where she felt safe. And warm. So warm.
He smelled of smoke, or maybe she did, and she pressed closer to him beneath the fine sheets, feeling the robe bunch behind her, leaving her legs bare to tangle with his.
The rough hair against her skin was shocking. It chased the last of the sleep from Tansy’s brain, which fired an urgent message of Wrong! This was wrong. She started to pull away just as Dale jerked back.
“Damn!” He leapt off the bed and stood, tugging his robe closed, though not before she glimpsed the hard, jutting flesh that had once been hers for the taking. “I’m sorry.”
Tansy closed her eyes against the sight and the memory. A hot blush flooded her face, and she was glad he couldn’t see it in the gray half light. “I’m sorry, too. I was…sleeping.” Dreaming. Wishing. “I didn’t mean it.”
When had lying become easy?
“Yeah.” Dale cleared his throat and took another step away from the bed. “Me neither. Sorry.” He pulled a blanket off the daybed, snagged a pillow and tossed them both on the floor. “I guess sharing the bed was a bad idea.”
“Guess so.” Tansy rolled onto her side so she wouldn’t have to watch him wrap himself in the blanket and stretch out on the floor. Tears stung her eyes. She was too proud to let them fall, though her pride was growing brittle and thin.
A tear broke free. Impatiently, she scrubbed at it with the corner of the sheet. The absence of the other pillow echoed hollowly against her back, making the empty side of the bed feel lonelier than it had in the past three months.
“Tans?” His voice rose from the floor, accompanied by a rustle of movement. “I really am sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you like that.”
I shouldn’t have kissed you at all, was the unspoken meaning. It galled her that he had so easily walked away from what they’d had together. Then again, that just went to show how one-sided their relationship had been. She’d been hurt. He hadn’t.
She swiped at her face again, then willed her voice not to tremble when she answered, “It was my fault. I was dreaming about the Philippines.”
There was a long pause, and she felt even stupider than before. There was nothing more pitiful than admitting she’d been dreaming about him. And since they hadn’t done anything besides make love on the island, he’d instantly know what she had been—
“That’s it!” Dale surged up from the floor, a strange, robed figure with wild eyes. “You’ve got it!”
Her traitorous heart sped to match his excitement and she sat up. “What? Dale, what is it?”
“The Philippines! Tansy, you’re a genius.” He strode to the door, opened it and called down the hall, “Frankie? Churchill? We need those clothes, stat. We’ve got to get to the general store, then over to the motel.”
“Dale,” she snapped, confusion and excitement battling within her, “what the hell are you talking about?”
He stopped in the middle of the room, a figure of sculpted beauty in a terry cloth robe. He lifted both hands as if to say, It’s so simple. His smile reminded her of the day they’d found the source of the Tehruvian outbreak, a villager who’d been selling turtles caught in an infected pond. He said, “The Philippines, Tans. Coconut and brown sugar.”
She felt the jolt all the way down to her toes. But it wasn’t a sexual jolt this time. It was a lightning bolt of understanding.
Coconut and brown sugar. It was the Philippines’ native cure for paralytic shellfish poisoning.
“YOU SURE THIS’LL WORK?” Churchill eyed the packages in Dale’s lap as the SUV bumped towards the motel.
“It’ll work.” It had to, or Eddie wasn’t going to make it, Dale thought as they pulled into the motel parking lot. The boy’s body wasn’t clearing the toxin fast enough, and his other systems were failing.
Then Dale’s thoughts stuttered to a halt and his doctor’s focus shattered at the sight of Mickey sitting outside the motel room with his wife cradled against his chest.
Oh, God. They were too late.
He was out of the SUV before it stopped rolling, and across the parking lot in three long strides. “Mickey, I’m so—”
“Shh.” Dale’s cousin lifted a finger to his lips. “Libby’s finally sleeping. It’s been days.” Then, apparently seeing Dale’s panic, Mickey smiled sadly. “No, Dale. There’s been no change. Our Eddie’s still…waiting.” He sighed and shifted his wife in his arms. “And so are we.”
When Mickey touched his lips to Libby’s temple, where her wheat-blond hair gave way to pale skin, Dale felt something shift inside his chest. Family. That’s what Trask had taken
away from him. Family, and love. Why hadn’t he seen it before?
Or had he seen it and just not cared?
“You ready to try this?” Tansy touched his hand, and it was all Dale could do not to reach for her, to take from her the same comfort Mickey was sharing with his Libby.
He could still taste Tansy on his lips, still feel her beneath him. She’d been dreaming of the Philippines. Well, he’d been wide-awake and had known exactly what he was doing.
And still hadn’t been able to stop himself. Tansy was his weakness, an aching, poignant reminder of everything he’d lost.
Everything he couldn’t afford.
“Try what?” Mick whispered. His faded blue eyes lit on the package in Tansy’s arms. “Do you have a cure for Eddie?”
Dale willed away the memory of Tansy rising up from Churchill’s guest bath like a mermaid emerging from the sea. Focus. He had to focus on the patients.
And the fact that someone wanted him and Tansy dead.
“We have something that might help,” Tansy answered. “Maybe.”
She shifted the package in her arms and Dale thought of the few things they’d found on the shelves of the unlocked general store. He wasn’t sure a five-pound bag of shaved, processed coconut and a six-pack of expired coconut milk would have the same effect as the fresh stuff the islanders used, but it would have to do. He was just grateful the store had stocked that much, along with three boxes of dark brown sugar.
It was a relatively untested cure, but a single journal article had claimed the islanders’ remedy helped buffer the patient’s liver and kidneys from shellfish toxins, and helped the body clear the poisons.
Besides, Eddie and the others would die if they didn’t do something soon. So Dale found a reassuring smile, dropped a hand on his cousin’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll try our best, Mick.”
“Come on,” Tansy urged him, “let’s do this.”
Even before they pushed open the door to Eddie’s room, they heard the raised voices. Dale instantly recognized Hazel’s normally calm tones being overridden by a familiar bellow. He shouldered his way into the room, coconut and brown sugar forgotten on a surge of anger.
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