Lighthouse Beach

by Shelley Noble

  He opened the front door.

  Diana pushed him inside and followed before he could lock her out. “Aren’t you being just a little melodramatic?”

  He walked across the wooden floor into a modern kitchen with a massive wooden table, and Diana lost her train of thought for a second. He opened a modern fridge and took out two beers. “Okay, I’ll give it to you, then will you leave?” He opened the beers and handed her one.

  “Maybe.” She followed him into the living room.

  “I don’t have a lot of furniture.”

  An understatement. The room was huge, the ceilings were high. It had a beautiful stone fireplace and wood paneling, like an old lodge house. Then she remembered that Lillo had lived here when her parents owned the camp.

  Diana couldn’t imagine it filled with overstuffed furniture and game tables, crowded with campers and their parents. Now there was one big couch, two stuffed chairs, and a couple of floor lamps.

  She sat on the couch.

  He stood at the fireplace. Took a long drink of beer. Pushed his fingers through his hair.

  “How’s your head, by the way?”

  “Huh? Fine.”

  “Okay, you killed these people and …”

  He put his beer on the mantel, scrubbed his face with both hands, picked up his beer again. “I was a part of this organization that worked with third-world villages to turn them into sustainable communities.”

  “Like planting crops and stuff?”

  “That. And irrigation. We helped them set up filtration sites so they had clean water to drink, taught them how to build structures, take care of livestock, start a school.”

  “Got it. Sustainable. Hope for the future and everything.”

  “So sometimes it worked out; sometimes shit happened.”

  Diana decided not to ask.

  “Some of these places are constantly at war. Tribal or terrorist. You either live in fear or live in hate. Or both. They hate anyone who has anything. Fear that what they have will be taken away. So they fight, tear down, destroy, kill.”

  “But you were there to change all that.”

  “Yeah. There were successes, but as often as not, when we left, some warring tribe would come in and attack and kill and destroy.” He laughed bitterly. “The circle of life.”

  He drank some beer. Stared into the cold grate of the fireplace.

  Diana braced herself.

  “On my last project we were working in a little village in Somalia. These people were so enthusiastic, so ready to learn, could actually imagine their future. Then we got word that fighting was heading our way.

  “We started evacuating as many as we could on the few vehicles we had. Trying to fortify as much of the village as possible. I released as many of the animals as I could get to, knowing they would all be slaughtered and they might have a chance of survival in the jungle.

  “But they were on us before we could get everyone out. There was one jeep left and too many people. We were pushing as many children and women onto that jeep as we could, when the firing started. Those who were left tried to flee into the countryside; most of them didn’t make it. The jeep had to pull out.”

  Diana held her breath. Please don’t be the story of the Titanic and you got on the jeep and left children behind. Please.

  “I was lifting a toddler up to his mother as the jeep pulled away and they shot the kid right out of my hands. I just snapped. I turned around, picked up the heaviest thing I could find, and started to fight back.

  “I killed men that day. Men. Hell, half of them were hardly more than boys. The same age as Tommy Clayton, maybe younger. I killed them willingly, with hatred. At first with whatever came to hand and then with rifles I stole off the attackers’ bodies.

  “I’d sworn to do no harm. I was a committed pacifist, but I killed, out of sheer anger, all day long. I just kept killing. It was hopeless. And I just kept killing.”

  “But you survived.”

  He laughed bitterly, a heartbreaking sound even to Diana, who thought of herself as a hardened case.

  “Did I?”

  And there it was, and Diana’s heart broke for this man she barely knew, but loved.

  “We held them off until reinforcements arrived from the fighting someplace else. They drove them away finally, but everything was destroyed—the irrigation system, the crops, the huts, the cistern, half the population lay dead or dying.

  “We had one doctor on staff; I helped where I could. But we treated our own tribe first. Left whoever belonged to the attacking tribe for last. Some died while they lay there ignored, crying out for help.”

  “Well, not to sound uncaring, but they should have thought of that before they attacked you.”

  He tried to smile, shook his head. “It’s the way they live, always so close to the edge of extinction, natural, man-made, it’s what they do.”

  He breathed, a painful rattling sound that made Diana’s own chest hurt.

  “So now you know. So I want you to go, get away, leave me alone.”

  But she couldn’t move; she just sat there forming words that wouldn’t be spoken. She knew she should step away, leave this man to his overwhelming guilt and disappointment in himself. At least give them both time; her to assimilate what he told her and try to make some sense of it, and him to find his way back to the place where he could live in peace.

  Strangely, nothing he’d said had changed her feelings for him. She wasn’t repulsed, she wasn’t drawn any closer to him. Didn’t condemn or condone. She wasn’t really comfortable not taking a stand, whether it was for a just cause or against a bad app. She was a businesswoman first and foremost, but she knew how to care for people, and she cared for Ian Lachlan.

  She stood, but she didn’t leave. She went to the fireplace, stood facing him, stood there until he was forced to look at her. “What happened to the village?”

  He looked at her as if she’d sprouted horns.

  “We returned, salvaged what we could, the higher-ups decided it was in too volatile an area to rebuild, so we said good-bye, left them with nothing, with less than they’d had before, and we were sent to the next project. That was the worst of all. I’d rather kill again than see those people’s faces in my dreams.”

  “You gave them hope.”

  “And it was killed.”

  “Maybe this time they’ll have the tools to rebuild themselves.”

  “You? An optimist?” He huffed out a painful laugh. “They were attacked again. This time both sides had automatic weapons supplied by some first-world nation—Russia, the U.S., maybe both. The village was totally destroyed. Those who managed to escape walked fifty miles to the refugee camp just across the border. Those who made it, I guess, are still there, will probably die there.”

  She stepped closer, crowding his space, looking for an emotional opening into that defeated spirit.

  He looked away. “For a moment they had a future. Hope. And then it was gone.” He turned back to her and the bleakness in his face made her want to cry. “Losing hope is worse than never having any hope at all. Now please, if you have any feelings for me at all, go away.”

  She touched his cheek. “No.”

  He flinched away. “I’m broken, Diana, I can’t be fixed.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Believe it; nobody can fix me, not even you. There just isn’t an app for that.”

  Her hand slipped around his neck, pulled him closer. “That’s a challenge I can’t refuse.” And she kissed him.

  Chapter 27

  It was actually going to be a perfect beach day, Lillo thought. She pushed the comforter away and sat up on the couch. Someone had opened the sliding glass doors to the deck to let in fresh warm air. Yep, a perfect beach day.

  Too bad she felt like she’d been hit by oncoming traffic. She rested her elbows on her knees and lowered her head to her hands as reality began to seep in. Bobby in the lighthouse. Mac being shot.

  She reached fo
r her phone. Nothing had come in during the night. Not since Clancy had called to say the surgery went great, and Mac was awake and demanding to be brought home. That was a good sign. It had been close. Oh God, how close.

  Jess sat at the breakfast bar, yawning and squinting at the screen of the new, doubly protected, unlisted-number, waterproof cell phone she’d bought on their sightseeing excursion.

  “I defy anyone to try to hack into my phone,” she said as Lillo padded over to the counter to pour herself a cup of coffee. “Did you hear from Clancy this morning?”

  “No. But I’m sure he would call me if things weren’t going well. I’ll give him a call when I’m fully awake.”

  “Allie and Diana are awfully quiet this morning.”

  “I’m not sure Diana came home at all last night,” Lillo said, joining Jess at the counter.

  “She didn’t,” Allie called through the bedroom door.

  “Sorry; didn’t mean to wake you,” Jess called back. She looked at Lillo. “You think Diana and Ian …”

  Lillo shrugged. “Stranger things have happened. Maybe this is just what needed to happen. The immovable meets the unstoppable.”

  “Diana can be persistent, in business and in matters of the heart.”

  Lillo put down her mug. “You don’t think her heart is involved? Already?” She wasn’t worried about Diana. She wasn’t sure Ian could withstand the siege.

  And where the hell would it lead, except to disaster?

  “Well, it’s after ten,” Jess said. “Do you think we should be worried? I mean what if she didn’t stay over and she’s lying hurt somewhere in the woods?”

  Allie padded into the room. She was wearing boy boxers and a Bob the Builder T-shirt. Her hair was about as crazy as long hair could get. “She called. It was late. She said she was fine, and she’d be back someday.”

  “Aw, crap,” Lillo said. “I don’t guess she mentioned how Ian was.”

  “Nope. I started to ask, but she hung up.”

  “Do you think he left a necktie on his doorknob so Doc would know he had company?” Jess asked.

  Lillo sputtered coffee. She hadn’t considered that Ned would be there to witness the seduction, maybe not firsthand, but … would he intervene? “Really, Jess? I don’t think he owns a tie.”

  “I can hardly wait to hear all about it.”

  “Huh,” Allie said, and zombie-walked to the coffeepot.

  “Why don’t you go back to sleep? We’ve got nothing on the agenda,” Lillo said.

  Lillo’s cell rang.

  “Hopefully,” Jess added, and Lillo ran outside to take the call.

  She was back two minutes later. “That was Clancy. He’s going to try to get Mac released this afternoon, since she’s giving everybody hell. He said the duty nurses were bribing him to bring her home.”

  “Oh dear.” Allie poured herself a cup of coffee. “Though that’s good; she must be okay or they’d never release her even if they wanted to. I was hoping to see her before I leave. And I really have to leave tomorrow.”

  “Then this will be perfect,” Jess said. “Wish you didn’t have to go, but a girl has to do what a girl has to do.”

  “Right.” Allie parked herself on the third stool and they all looked forward into the kitchen.

  “It feels like we’re sitting at a diner counter,” Jess said. “Too bad the old luncheonette burned down. You would have liked it.”

  The front door blew open and Diana appeared in the doorway.

  “Too early for dramatic entrances,” Allie said.

  Diana softly closed the door. “Okay, I’m a little embarrassed. I have a confession to make.”

  “I need another cup of coffee,” Lillo said. “I’ll bring the pot.”

  “So it’s like this. I seduced your vet. I wouldn’t take no for an answer. He took a while to convince that hell wouldn’t freeze over, or maybe that hell wouldn’t devour us in one fell swoop. He’s a complicated man.”

  “Did—” Jess began.

  “It was exhausting. I mean, getting him to say yes. Though now that I think about it, he may not have consented. I don’t think he’ll take me to court.” She smiled a canary-eating smile.

  Lillo thought boardrooms must quail before that smile. She knew she felt a frisson of unease just watching. She wasn’t sure she even liked Diana very much at this moment. “I hope you were gentle with him,” she said in her most sardonic voice.

  Diana gave her a tight one-shoulder shrug. “Totally out of my hands. Well, not totally, but you know what I mean. Coffee, yeah, that would be good.”

  Lillo waited for her to pour herself a cup. “So what now?”

  Diana was no dummy. She knew she was in unknown territory with Ian. Why had she acted on her feelings if she was leaving?

  Diana held the cup in both hands but didn’t drink. “That … is an unknown.”

  “That’s pretty damn selfish.”

  She gave Lillo a questioning look. “Afraid I’ll use him and spit him out when I’m done?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, actually, I don’t blame you. It certainly is my MO, but I may be in big trouble here. Somewhere during the night my seduction shifted to something much scarier.”

  “He didn’t get dangerous,” Allie said.

  “Not in the way you mean.”

  “Then what? I don’t get it.”

  “Me neither, girlfriend. Me neither.” Diana wandered out onto the deck and sat down on a deck chair. The other three looked at each other, then followed her out and sat in the remaining chairs.

  The sun was warm, like their first day in Lighthouse Beach.

  “Ah,” said Allie, “a perfect ending to a week that has been totally wonderful … crazy.”

  And upending and frightening and almost tragic, Lillo thought, and closed her eyes to the sun.

  “I’m not walking away,” Diana said.

  Lillo turned her head to look at her. “Was that directed to me or are you trying to convince yourself?”

  “What? For someone whose life is so totally fucked up, you’re judging me?”

  Lillo thought about it. She wanted to be offended, but Diana was right. “Guess it takes one to know one.”

  “Touché.”

  “I guess we’re a little overprotective of each other.”

  “He’s a grown man; he can take care of himself.”

  “I know, but—”

  “But none of us can really take care of ourselves by ourselves. It helps to have friends.” Diana batted the air with one hand. “God, listen to me. Next thing you know, I’ll be having us all holding hands and singing ‘Circle of Life.’”

  “I doubt it,” Jess said. “So are you going to ride today?”

  “I don’t know. It may be too much of a good thing.”

  “Ha!” Jess jumped from her chair. “You’re scared.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  “Dee-Two.”

  They both started laughing.

  Lillo just watched in stupefaction and a kind of admiration. Friends. Their little rituals. Their private silliness. She missed that. She had Mac and Ian, and Doc when she wasn’t fighting with him, Sada, and even Barbara. She loved them and trusted them, but it wasn’t the same.

  But she hadn’t realized it until this week.

  Part of her wanted life to go back to BRT, Before Road Trip. A road trip that lasted one night before settling in here at her sanctuary, disturbing her life—a lot of lives. But would she really go back if given the chance? For the first time in a long time she’d laughed, had gotten close to women near her own age. Reminisced, told secrets. Felt human for a few minutes.

  What was Lillo going to do when they were gone? Sit out another winter while she waited for spring planting? Eat stew with Mac while they listened for trespassers?

  Jess sat up, frowning at Diana. “How serious is this? You can’t stay here. I mean, can you?”

  “Let’s not get overexci
ted here. We just had sex between consenting adults.”

  “Diana—”

  “Let me rephrase that. We had a … an interesting … amazing night together. I can’t believe I’m saying this shit. We’re getting to know each other. There’s bound to be a learning curve. We’ll work it out. Now let’s leave it.”

  “What?” Now all three of them were looking at her.

  “‘Work it out’? He’s not a glitchy new operating system.” Lillo didn’t know why she was so mad. She should be glad for Ian if this was what he wanted.

  “She didn’t mean it that way,” Jess said.

  “Sorry,” Lillo said. “It’s none of my business.”

  Diana laughed. “Well, that’s a first. Everything seems to be everybody’s business around here. First it was Doc.”

  “Doc?” Allie asked. “When did you see him?”

  “He’s staying with Ian. I tried to sneak out while Ian was still asleep.” She cut a look at Lillo. “I needed time to think. But no such luck. I thought for sure I heard Doc leave for the clinic before I crept downstairs, but no. He was in the kitchen waiting for me.

  “Let me tell you. I was ready for awkward with Ian. Those first mornings-after usually are. This was much worse.”

  “Yeah, he can be a bit of a buttinsky.” A trait that Lillo was beginning to appreciate.

  “At least he’d made coffee. Then he gave me holy shit. Jeez, I don’t know why everybody is so protective of Ian. He’s drowning in … in … kindness and protection. It’s so enervating. He freaking talks to horses instead of people.” Diana held up her hand; it was the one holding her mug and coffee flew into the air. “I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but hell. Let him try to get out of his comfort zone before it suffocates him.”

  “You’re suddenly an expert.”

  “No. I’m not. And I realize it might be a pretty scary experiment.”

  “You’re planning on conducting some kind of long-distance relationship after one night?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh shit,” Jess said. “You really are.”

  “’Fraid so.”

  “It’s kind of amazing.” Allie had been pretty quiet until now. Everyone’s focus switched to her.