Sandpiper Island (The Bachelors

by Donna Kauffman

  “I didn’t do this for Grace. Come here, I mean. Tonight. This is just between me and you.” He thought he saw her shake a little, or tremble, and that set off all kinds of alarms, the kind that had put him out on Sandpiper Island in the first place. He didn’t know why she was reacting like she was, or what she was feeling, or what he’d done or said to make her so uncomfortable. Delia was always so supremely confident, so sure, so certain.

  Flashes of that long-ago night stormed into his mind. She hadn’t been confident that night, or sure, or certain of anything. Neither had he. She’d never once mentioned that night, not in all the years that had followed, not even now, so neither did he. Maybe she was afraid he would, afraid that he knew a side of her that no one else did, when quite clearly she wanted to pretend otherwise.

  I’m a friend. Those were the words she’d used. He’d do well to remember that was all she would be to him. And that was fine, because he wasn’t even sure how to be a friend to her in return. He wasn’t looking to complicate things any further.

  He curled his fingers into his palms to keep from reaching for her, to pull her in close, to offer her comfort, a little shocked to find how badly he wanted to do that. He didn’t know what he’d done, what he’d said, or simply what was wrong, or how he could help fix it. He kept from reaching for her, though, because, in that moment, staring down at her bowed head, he understood why he’d stayed out on that island well past the time when his battered soul needed to be exiled. Because she mattered to him, too. In ways he didn’t understand, and ways he understood all too well. Ways he didn’t think he could trust himself to live up to.

  “I’m your friend, too, Dee. At least I’m trying to figure out how to be that.”

  “You don’t owe me—”

  “Stop,” he said again, gruffly again, though without the impatience it had had before. “Look at me.”

  She lifted her gaze to his, and he wished like hell he could decipher all of the emotions he saw swimming in those pretty blue eyes of hers. He was trained to do a lot of things, to rely on his instincts, go with his gut, and that had saved his life, and the lives of others, on more occasions than he could count. But on this kind of playing field? He had no idea how to operate, no idea how to read the opposition. For that matter, he had no idea how to not look at the person—any person—standing in front of him as anything other than “my side” or “their side.” He had no tools, no training, for when “my” and “theirs” became “ours.”

  “Friends, Dee. We are that. But I’m rusty at it. Or maybe I always sucked at it. Maybe I always will. But I’m trying. We share a bond. You say I matter. Well, the truth is, you matter. You always have. I shouldn’t have forgotten that, or pretended otherwise.”

  She just continued to stare at him, and suddenly she didn’t seem so all-knowing, the confident, ballsy, smart-assy, outspoken woman who had single-handedly taken on the care and feeding of an entire community, with the caring part just as important as the feeding part, and made it look like it was just another thing she did. No biggie.

  And then he was doing instead of thinking, acting instead of analyzing. Maybe that was the only way it worked. He reached for her, pulled her into his arms, and hugged her, held her. “I’m sorry,” he said, lips pressed against her hair. “Grace shouldn’t have had to call me. I should have already been here.”

  She let him hold her, but kept her arms folded between them.

  “I’m here now,” he said. “I hope it’s not too late.” He rested his forehead against the top of her head. “You helped me, Dee,” he said quietly. “I’m not sure how I would have transitioned from my life before to this life, without you. That’s why I came back here. I . . . I didn’t know where else to go. Who else to turn to. There wasn’t anyone else.” He paused, felt his heart racing in his chest; the rush of adrenaline punching into his system almost made him feel sick. None of this was easy, far from it. He wondered whether she understood that. And, if she did, whether she cared. “You were my lifeline,” he said past the knotted ball in his gut. Every one of his instincts screamed at him to shut up, curl up, pack up, to head home. Lowering guards, allowing anyone to look in went against everything he’d been trained to be, to do, to feel.

  But, goddammit, this wasn’t war, this wasn’t a battlefield. No one was trying to kill him, or anyone whose care had been put in his charge. What the hell did he have to lose? If his life was the most important asset he needed to protect, well, that wasn’t in danger here. So why was this so fucking hard?

  He lifted his head slowly, and then tipped her chin up when she didn’t look up at him. His fingers weren’t steady. Nothing about him was steady. Unsteady got you dead, so he instinctively fought to control the fine tremor, mostly because he couldn’t seem to control anything else. He stared down into her eyes, and willed his heart to slow, to return to that place he’d left behind a long time ago, that place where he could retreat inside himself, where he could focus, aim, and pull the trigger. Only he couldn’t seem to find his way in. He was in uncharted territory, with no clear path through the minefield surrounding him.

  “I don’t know how to help you,” he said. “Like you helped me. You need to tell me what I can do.” He slipped a hand to her cheek, pressed the flat of his palm to the warmth, the softness of the skin there, and realized how very long it had been since he’d allowed himself even the simple pleasure of touching someone else.

  “I don’t need you to help me, Ford,” she said in a shaky whisper, her eyes searching his, boring into his. “I can’t need you.”

  If she’d unsheathed a hidden knife and plunged it deep into his belly, he couldn’t have been more surprised, or more stunned by the sharp, hot pain her words caused. An excellent reminder that well-constructed walls existed for a reason, and should never be lowered in the first place. Because there was more than one kind of dying.

  In tandem with the pain came blinding understanding. Of course, she didn’t need him, couldn’t need him. He wasn’t to be blithely given something so precious as her trust simply because he asked for it. What in the hell had he done to deserve that gift? Nothing, that was what. Not a damn thing. Words were empty, hollow things when not backed up by deeds. She might respect him, she might even call him friend, she might care about his well-being, because of who he’d been to her brother, but that didn’t mean she’d trust him with anything having to do with her own self. And why should she? Why the goddamn hell should she?

  He let her go and abruptly stepped back. “Right. And smart,” he added. The desire to turn away once more, to escape the look in her beautiful, sad eyes, was thwarted by the echo of Eula’s words. “You may not want my help, I get that. But you want to save your diner, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “As much as you might want to do that alone, I don’t think it’s possible. You’re going to need help, somehow, from someone. Maybe a lot of someones. I understand why you don’t trust me to be that someone for you. You’re probably wise to avoid leaning on me. But I do know how to get things done. And I was never handed a mission that I didn’t complete. So if I say I’m going to find a way to help you keep your place, then that’s what I will do.”

  Her eyes widened at the intensity, the force of his words. “Ford, this is not your problem—”

  “Delia O’Reilly, you don’t have to trust me, you don’t have to need my help, or even want my help, but you’ve got it all the same. All you have to do is take it.”

  She straightened and her arms unfolded as her hands dropped to her sides. He saw defensiveness and pride flash across her expressive face.

  So, he cut that off, too. That’s what a good mission commander did. “If it makes you feel any better, let’s just say I’m doing this for Tommy. He’d want me to help his sister out, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. I owe him my life.”

  Chapter 6

  “Don’t start,” Ford said when Grace burst through the door of his office without knocking. “I’m already working on
it.” He dragged a big text on Maine property law on top of his stack of research on business licensing. There had to be some kind of loophole. He wasn’t a lawyer or an accountant, but after cramming eight years of college into slightly less than five, he knew a thing or two about studying and research. “Did you talk to your friend in DC about getting Delia some local legal help? I think we’re going to need it. Some of these laws haven’t been changed since the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes ruled the area.” It occurred to him then that maybe that’s why she’d come bursting in, and he looked up. “Did they find something out we can use?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know. Delia won’t talk to them. But you can stop.” Grace braced her hands on the desk, leaning over, as if she’d run all the way there.

  There being his office on the second floor of the small shop space the Project Sandpiper foundation used as its local, open-to-the public headquarters, located not too far from the diner up on High Street, which ran along the hill above Half Moon Harbor. He’d been bunking on the couch in his office.

  The shop space below was open daily from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day and on weekends the month before and after, weather depending. He staffed it with interns and volunteers who helped coordinate various fund-raisers, set up the intern schedule for the summer, and basically got the word out about the work being done on Sandpiper to encourage folks to donate to the cause. The whole enterprise was funded by grants, donations, and the dedication, blood, sweat, and interest-free tears of the interns and Ford himself.

  With nesting season over and tourist season pretty much done this far north, there was just one intern and a few volunteers running the shop now, and he was on the island alone. The bulk of the off-season work would be on Ford’s shoulders, so with Labor Day less than a week off, he’d gone ahead and sent the last remaining intern home early and kept the volunteers on a will-call basis for the following few weekends before they closed up for good for the winter. The office had a big, old leather couch that doubled nicely as a bed. God knew he’d slept on far worse. He looked at it now and thought a nice long nap, possibly a weeklong one, was looking mighty appealing.

  Instead, taking in the anxious look on Grace’s face, he slid off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and then ran a wide palm over his weary face. “Why?” he asked simply, holding her gaze.

  “I—I don’t know if Delia wants to save the diner.”

  He had no idea what had sent Grace racing up the stairs and bursting through his door like a banshee, but that was definitely not on any list he might have come up with. “Say again?”

  Grace turned around, hefted the stack of folders and binders off one of the two leather seats facing Ford’s desk, and then slumped into it. “Delia stopped by the inn today. George—Havens, my lawyer friend from DC—did come through. He sent me two recommendations for lawyers who might represent Delia in her fight to save the diner. Only . . . when I told her, she changed the subject, and so I asked her why she wasn’t fighting harder. And . . . well, we had this conversation that was . . .” She trailed off, lifted a hand and waved it helplessly, before letting it drop back to her lap.

  “Was . . . what?” Ford demanded.

  “Odd.” She shrugged. “And kind of sad. I—she’s been ducking me, and I thought maybe it had something to do with you being back in the Cove—”

  “Why would that matter?”

  Grace gave him that Seriously? eyebrow, but didn’t bother trying to explain and since he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know, he didn’t push. “Turns out it wasn’t you, or well, not only about you. Anyway, as we talked, I realized that my other suspicion, which was that she was too proud to accept help from anyone, or was just in some kind of denial, wasn’t it, either. I told her she struck me as the kind of person who would be mad as hell, storming city hall, or something of that magnitude, and how surprised I was that she wasn’t doing that and, well, she is definitely mad about the whole thing, and she thinks it’s every kind of wrong. So I was brainstorming possible options, and sort of pushed her to think about a real, workable solution, and—Ford, her eyes welled up, and she said she didn’t know if she really wanted to fight, just that she felt she had to. I asked what it was she did want and—”

  Ford lifted a hand and Grace fell silent, looking relieved to not have to explain any further.

  “I feel awful,” she said in a hushed whisper. “It’s none of my business—our business—really, but I barged in anyway. She knows I’d do anything for her, but I shouldn’t have pushed when she made it clear she didn’t want the help. I should have respected that. I know she didn’t want to talk about it, but I kept pushing. . . .” She propped her elbow on the arm of the chair and dropped her forehead into her open palm. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you. I feel like I’m breaking a confidence.” She looked up again, clearly miserable. “But she is my friend—our friend—and I just . . . we have to do something, Ford. She’s really upset, and confused, and . . . I don’t even know. You’ve known her longer, a lot longer. And the two of you share this . . . thing.” She let that drift off. “I just think she’d listen to you, or maybe you could just let her know you’re there for her. Be an ear, and a shoulder. You give really great shoulder.”

  He’d squeezed his eyes shut as he rubbed his hand over his face, trying to figure out what the hell she was talking about, but opened them again when she said that.

  “What?” Grace said. “Don’t look so surprised. You’re not much in the way of advice, but you listen like no other. Because you do really listen. I just think she could use that right about now. I’m not so sure she’d let anyone else get close enough to do that.”

  What the fresh hell? was all that kept going through his mind. The crick at the base of his neck that had settled in from sitting hunched over the desk for hours on end expanded to include a dull throb in his temples.

  “Has she . . . said anything to you like that?” Grace asked, when he didn’t respond to her emotional outburst.

  He shook his head. But Grace had made a very good point. Delia was a fighter by nature, and it didn’t make any sense that she wasn’t doing whatever she had to in order to save her livelihood. He’d chalked it up to pride and stubbornness, but he’d seen the emotions simmering close to the surface, too. He’d put that off to his own overactive imagination and the memories of their past . . . activities, which had been regularly besieging him during his waking hours, and the sleeping ones, too.

  “What exactly did she say?” Ford asked. Maybe Grace was confused, or had read the situation wrong. Although her ability to read people, himself most disconcertingly included, was uncanny. She’d just proven that with her concise little synopsis of the connection he had with Dee. “Did she come out and say she didn’t want to run the diner any longer?”

  “She said she wasn’t sure she wanted to fight to save it, but she got real emotional when I asked her what she did want to do. She said she didn’t know. She sounds . . . I don’t know. As I said, I haven’t known her as long as you have, but she doesn’t sound like the Delia I’ve come to know over the past summer. Not even close. Has something else happened to her recently?”

  You mean other than me showing up in her life again? He shook his head. “I’ve been out on the island more than not, for a long time now. So Dee and I . . . we haven’t really been in touch. I don’t know what might have happened in her personal life.” He paused, not because he had any reservations about mentioning it, but because the next part bothered him more than it should. “I understand she’s been seeing your architect friend. Socially, I mean. Maybe you should ask him. Seems she’d confide in him, if anyone.”

  “Langston?” Grace laughed and waved the suggestion off as if it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.

  The fact that that pleased him as much as it did made him scowl. He had no claim, none whatsoever, on Delia O’Reilly, and wasn’t looking to stake one. Never had before and certainly didn’t intend to now. Som
eone’s sure protesting a whole hell of a lot. He ignored his inner voice. Annoying little bastard. “If she’s dating him, she’d talk to him. I know he’s like some kind of uncle to you, but that doesn’t mean she sees him that way.”

  Grace had explained how her unusual friendship with the exceedingly wealthy, world-renowned architect had developed when she’d represented his estate after the death of his wife. Ford was grateful Grace had such a solid, wise, and well-connected mentor. He was also grateful, given the guy was decades his sister’s senior, that their friendship had always been just that. Maybe she couldn’t fathom that Delia felt differently about the older man.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. Langston is like the guru of getting people to tell them their deepest, darkest secrets. He’s just got this way about him. You trust him, you can’t help it.”

  Ford slid his hands to his lap, and forced his fingers to remain relaxed on his thighs. He’d seen pictures of the flamboyant deVry and the very last thing he wanted to imagine was Delia with—he closed his eyes briefly against that very thing. Only that just made it worse.

  “So, if he’s God’s gift to confessionals,” he managed, proud that he’d done so without gnashing his teeth, “why the laugh?”

  “Because, while Langston is a dear, and he’d do anything for anyone he cares about, he’s been in Tokyo for the past month.”

  “They have phones there, too.”

  “It’s not that, it’s just—well, Langston loved his late wife very much, and he hasn’t been really . . . focused, since she passed away. He has the biggest heart in the world for everyone else, but for himself, well . . . he’s been very guarded. Anyway, he was only supposed to be in Japan for a weekend, on business, but that was ages ago, and he’s still there. He doesn’t have the kind of schedule that comes close to allowing that, so I got curious, and I finally pried it out of him. He’s met someone. And he’s smitten. Very smitten. So much so he’s still in Tokyo. And since all this happened with Delia just in the past week or so, I doubt seriously they’ve talked.”