The Drifter

by Susan Wiggs

  As Bowie and Jackson paddled toward the dock, she fetched a blanket from the wheelchair. Jackson hoisted himself onto the dock with Bowie in his arms, surrendering the boy to his mother, who quickly wrapped him up, then glared at Jackson.

  “This is all your fault,” she said. “If Bowie hadn’t been following you around all morning, he never would have gotten into danger. He could have died, I tell you. He might catch his death of cold—”

  “Ma’am,” Jackson said quietly, dripping a pool of water onto the dock. He was wearing only jeans; his chest and feet were bare. The denim clung to him, outlining a physique that gave Leah’s insides a strange little twist.

  It was getting harder and harder to pretend her interest in him was limited to anatomical curiosity. The truth was, she harbored a shameful lust for this man. She wanted to touch him, to feel the texture of smooth skin over hard muscle, to feel his warmth and the beating of his heart. Good God. The man had just lost his wife. What sort of unprincipled woman was she to want him in this way?

  A lonely woman, her heart answered. A woman whose needs were brought to the surface by the presence of this mysterious man.

  “Well, what have you to say for yourself?” Perpetua glared up at Jackson, clearly feeling none of Leah’s sensibilities.

  He gestured at the Sound, clear blue and sparkling in the sun. “The kid’s got to live around water all his life. I figure he’d best learn to swim.”

  “What about what I figure? I’m his mother after all.”

  “Then you should have taught him a long time ago.” Jackson ruffled the boy’s damp hair, eliciting a worshipful grin from him. “He’s a strong little fellow. He did just fine. He was perfectly safe every second, I swear it. I didn’t get more than a foot away from him the whole time.”

  Leah stood blinking incredulously. This was Jackson Underhill, the dangerous outlaw?

  “Reckon no one ever taught Carrie to swim,” he added more quietly. He spoke half to himself, gazing out to sea as he rubbed the gooseflesh on his arms.

  Leah’s heart lurched as she suddenly understood.

  Perpetua wasn’t listening. “Have you no regard at all for Bowie’s infirmity?” she demanded.

  Jackson tucked a corner of the blanket under Bowie’s quivering chin. “Ma’am, when he’s in the water, he’s just like any other boy.”

  Leaving a wet trail in his wake, he walked down the dock and disappeared into the main cabin of his boat.

  Perpetua settled Bowie into his chair and layered on another blanket, then added the ever-present muffler and hat. Each layer, Leah knew, represented Perpetua’s love and her need to protect. She hadn’t yet realized what was obvious to everyone else. The extra clothing smothered him.

  Her heart in her throat, Leah watched Perpetua close her eyes, a reverent look on her thin face as she bent and pressed her lips to the boy’s brow.

  Bowie was Leah’s patient, but he was so much more than that. She had watched him toddle his first steps—from Leah to his mother’s waiting arms. Leah had been there when the boy sang his first song, took his first taste of watermelon, held a kitten for the first time. And she had been the first to see his little cheeks unnaturally flushed with fever, the first to know the nature of his illness. She had been charged with the responsibility of telling Perpetua that Bowie would never walk again.

  “He’s right, you know,” Leah said before she had time to talk herself out of it.

  “Whatever do you mean?” Perpetua dried Bowie’s ears with painstaking care.

  “Mr. Underhill. Swimming is a fine activity for Bowie.”

  “See, Mama?” the boy said from his pile of blankets. “Dr. Leah says it’s all right.”

  “Yes indeed,” Leah said quickly. “As Bowie’s physician, I should advise you to let him swim since he’s shown he has the stamina. It will be good for him. It’s bound to increase his strength and his health, not to mention his self-confidence.”

  “No.” Perpetua moved behind the chair and gripped the handles. “You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother, to worry about your child—”

  “With proper supervision, of course.”

  Perpetua stopped, looked over her shoulder. “And does Jackson Underhill provide proper supervision?” Without waiting for an answer, she walked briskly toward the boardinghouse, pushing the chair in front of her.

  Leah stayed at the landing for a long time. She turned to face the water, taking in the towering sweep of clouds that gathered on the distant horizon, the sunlight glistening on the far-off mountain peaks. No one lingered at the dock. They had all gone back to work, back home, back to their families.

  You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother.... Perpetua’s words stuck in Leah’s mind. She was seized by a familiar feeling—loneliness. This was her town, her world, yet like every other place she’d been in her life, she didn’t quite fit in. She used to think she simply hadn’t found the right place, but now she was beginning to understand. She didn’t fit in anywhere because of a lack inside her. At her father’s knee, she had learned the harsh lesson of her own inadequacies. Even though, as an adult, she recognized his faults, she could never quite banish the pain of her childhood. He had been so cold he’d damaged her capacity to be loved—and possibly to love.

  Why couldn’t she change, just barge into the community and become one of them? She was pathetic. She couldn’t even join her own boarders for a game of cribbage at night.

  The McAfees had moved to the island only eight months before, and already Mr. McAfee was a church deacon, his wife a key member of the Ladies’ Aid Society, the quilting circle and the garden club. Their children raced with the rest of the schoolhouse pack. Some people just knew how to “fit.”

  Others drifted...forever, it seemed.

  Or until they drowned.

  Lost in thought, she turned away from the spectacular panorama and started down the dock.

  “Care for a cup of grog, Doc?” Clad in a fresh plaid shirt and dry jeans, Jackson emerged onto the deck of the Teatime. He held out a tin cup of amber liquid.

  Leah couldn’t think why she felt so relieved to see him. Why she felt as if he was rescuing her. “Just what exactly is grog anyway?” she inquired, taking the cup. “That’s something I’ve always wondered.”

  “Take a sip and wonder no more.”

  She obeyed, recognizing the sweet burn of rum. “It’s a bit early in the day for this, isn’t it?” She tasted it again. “I feel as if I should start singing sea chanteys.”

  “Do you know any?”

  “Not a one. And you?”

  “Plenty, but you’d need to drink a lot more rum before you could tolerate my singing voice.”

  Leah smiled. “Thank you. For the grog.”

  “You looked as if you could use it. Actually, true grog is diluted with water. But I don’t have to dilute it. Did all right at the card table in Seattle.” He held out his hand to her.

  She hesitated, studying that hand. The long, strong fingers, hands of a sailor, callused by hard work and hard weather. The nails scoured clean from his recent swim. An outlaw’s hand, one that had held a gun pointed at her head. How could it be the same hand that had taken a boy from a wheelchair and taught him to swim?

  Because he wasn’t an outlaw, not really. Maybe he was a drifter like her, looking for a place to belong.

  Aware of the impropriety of it, she put her hand in his and felt the pleasant shock of touching him. This was madness, she thought. Sheer madness, and yet she could no more resist it—or him—than she could resist the seductive warmth of a few sips of rum.

  “I moved some things out of your house,” he said, leaning against a newly varnished hatch cover.

  She took another drink of her grog. “Oh?”

  “Carrie’s clothes and such.”

&n
bsp; The name hung like a gray shadow between them. Leah took her hand away from his and forced herself to speak up, to fill the silence. “I’m so sorry. So very, very sorry.”

  “I just don’t know how I’m supposed to feel, Doc. Don’t quite know what to do when folks offer their condolences. Don’t know what to do with myself next.”

  She nodded, painfully familiar with the feeling. “Yes, well, I see you’ve been hard at work on the boat.”

  “I’ve gotten a lot done.” He brought her down into the cockpit. He gave her a tour, pointing out the work he’d done on the inner hull and the galley, the pumps and presses. “I spent half the morning underwater with the rudder. She’ll be ready to sail before too long, I reckon.”

  Leah told herself she should feel relieved. He was a stranger, a drifter. After he left, her life could return to normal.

  She inspected the schooner with interest, murmuring approval at all the improvements. It occurred to her that he worked as hard on his boat as she did at her medical practice. There was little one couldn’t accomplish, she reflected, if one was determined.

  She leaned out over the stern to see that the first T and the I were still missing from the escutcheon. “You’ve not fixed that, I see.”

  He shrugged. “She’s not pretty, but she’s almost seaworthy. That’s all I need.”

  “Is it?” She drank more grog, feeling vaguely wicked for imbibing in the middle of the day. She watched him lash a neat backsplice around the tail end of a rope. He was so lean and graceful in his movements. Had Jackson Underhill ever suffered an awkward moment in his life? “I wonder,” she said before she lost her nerve, “which of us will be the first to mention it.”

  His movements with the rope slowed, but didn’t stop. “Mention what?”

  “What just happened.”

  “Oh, the swimming? I kept telling the kid no, but he hounded me until I decided to give it a try. He took to the water like a regular guppy—you saw.”

  “I didn’t mean Bowie. I meant...before.”

  This time he did stop. He froze in midmotion like a stag sensing danger. Then he seemed to come back to himself. With elaborate care and patience, he cheesed down the rope, arranging it into precise concentric circles on the deck. Unhurried, his expression unreadable, he turned to her. “Just say it, Doc. Say you’re curious about how I feel now that Carrie threw me over for a rich timber baron and they died in a boating accident.”

  Leah already regretted broaching the subject. But she wanted to comfort him, wanted to penetrate his inscrutable veneer and let him know she cared. His chilly expression made her wince. “Mr. Underhill, if it’s painful to talk about—”

  “If it’s painful?” He lifted an eyebrow. One hand still held the end of the rope, and the knuckles shone stark white. “Honey, if it’s not, then I’m made of stone.”

  She swallowed hard, set her cup on the galley table. “I apologize. I just thought perhaps—”

  “Perhaps what?”

  “I could somehow be a comfort to you now that—”

  “A comfort. Right.” He picked up a belaying pin and stabbed it into place along the rail, then turned and went down a companionway leading to the galley belowdecks. “That’s you, Dr. Mundy,” he said over his shoulder. “A comfort to the afflicted.”

  “I understand you must feel bitter—”

  “No, Doc, you don’t understand. I was supposed to protect her, and I let her drown.”

  “You didn’t let her,” Leah countered, following him. “She chose to go off with Adam. What would you have done if the boat hadn’t exploded? Gone after them?”

  He furrowed a hand through his long, damp hair. “When Carrie gets her mind set on something, there’s no stopping her.” He scowled. “So why all the concern? I’m not sick.”

  She told herself she should shrink from the darkness that seemed to surround him. Instead, she wanted to dive into it, to succumb to the lure of his danger. “You may not be ill, but you’re in pain. The shock of losing Carrie—”

  “She was never mine to begin with,” he said quietly. “I figure a doctor of your talent would’ve been able to tell. But that’s not your strong point, is it?”

  Her cheeks caught fire. “I do my best, Mr. Underhill. I treat the sick of this community. And if my bedside manner is not always as saintly as your own, then I more than make up for it in skill and competence.”

  “I wasn’t attacking your bedside manner, Doc.”

  “That’s good, because your bedside manner consists of holding a gun on a sleeping woman,” she burst out, then caught herself. “That wasn’t fair. I apologize. You were acting out of fear for Carrie.”

  “No offense taken. Being here, watching you, I see what you’re up against with these people.”

  “I shouldn’t get so defensive.”

  “Have some more grog.” He refilled her cup, and she didn’t object. He swept a hand toward the stern windows that framed a spectacular view from the harbor. “It’s nice here, Doc. If you’re unhappy, it’s your fault.”

  “It’s not my fault they think I’m harsh,” she said, taking a healthy swallow. “It’s not my fault they judge me out of ignorance and whisper about me behind my back.” Setting down the empty cup, she clutched the opposite rail and looked away so she wouldn’t have to face him. Drinking rum on an empty stomach made her give vent to an unforgivable wave of self-pity. “It’s not my fault they consider me good enough to deliver their babies and lance their boils, but they wouldn’t suffer me to sit at their tables for Sunday dinner. It’s not my—”

  She broke off as a pair of strong hands gripped her shoulders, spun her around. She had no time to think, to speak, even to breathe. One moment, her shocked gaze was fastened on Jackson Underhill’s grim, furious face; the next moment, his mouth was crushing down on hers, his lips shaping themselves over and around hers, and she could taste him, could press herself against the warm wall of his chest, could feel the oddly welcome strain in her neck as she angled her head up to his.

  Regrets and protests whirled through her mind and disappeared unformed, like the mist off the water. He left no room for thought, for objections, because his blunt hunger consumed her. The firmness of his lips, the sweet-rum taste of him intoxicated her. She savored the fresh scent of wind and water that clung to him, the harsh but welcome movement of his big hands over her shoulders and down her back, bringing her close, holding her as if he would never let her go.

  It was the grog. It must be the grog. Otherwise she would have had the sense to resist, to pull back. It was forbidden, yes. It was improper, yes, and it meant nothing but trouble for them both.

  So why didn’t she care? Why didn’t she protest? Why didn’t she wrench herself out of his arms, run and hide until he disappeared forever?

  Because, with all her heart, she wanted him to stay.

  The thought gripped her like a cold iron fist, giving her the strength to break away from him at last. She made a formless sound in her throat and flattened her hands against his chest, pushing hard, pushing back with such force that she stumbled, catching herself on a bolted-down table behind her.

  “Mr. Underhill.” Her voice was rough and harsh with shock.

  He subjected her to a long, lazy perusal, his gaze moving over her like his caressing hands had just done. “I reckon after that you should call me Jackson.”

  Her throat prickled with heat; then the blush moved upward until it felt as if her cheeks had been seared by flames. “I’m supposed to be comforting you.”

  He stuck his thumb into the top of his jeans. “It’s working, Doc. I’m starting to feel real comfortable.”

  “That was—you were—we—you must apologize,” she managed to choke out. Her blush burned hotter, for she sounded as awkward and missish as a country girl.

  “Apologize?” Amu
sement flowed like honey through his voice. “For doing something you’ve wanted—something we’ve both wanted—for weeks?”

  She clenched her hands into fists. “Sir, if I ever gave you the impression I wanted you to k—” She couldn’t say it. She took a deep breath and said, “If I gave you the impression I wanted you to take liberties with me without so much as a by-your-leave—”

  “You forgot what I told you the night I broke into your bedroom,” he said, dark amusement in his eyes. “I never ask leave to do anything.”

  She bowed her head, doing her best to speak as Dr. Mundy, calm and professional physician. “Perhaps the fault is mine, then. For anything in my manner or conduct that invited this intimacy, I most humbly apologize.”

  He was silent for a long time, so long that she finally dared to look at him. And immediately wished she hadn’t, for he was convulsed with silent mirth. Laughter rocked his long, lanky frame, and the smile on his face shone with infuriating brilliance.

  It was too much. To Leah’s horror, she tasted tears in her throat, felt them burning her eyes.

  “Good day, Mr. Underhill,” she managed to say through gritted teeth. Then she headed for the gangway.

  He blocked her exit casually, leaning against the accommodation ladder. “Not so fast there, Leah.”

  It was the first time he’d called her Leah rather than Doc. That in itself was a forbidden intimacy, but not nearly so forbidden as his kiss.

  “Please step out of my way.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  She forced herself to look at him, tilting her chin at a defiant angle. “Why not?”

  “Because I made you cry. Now I have to make you stop.”

  With a violent swipe of her hand, she wiped the tears from her cheeks, hating herself for losing control, hating herself for all she was feeling, and hating him for making her feel this way. “There,” she said. “I’ve stopped.”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  In silent betrayal, a fresh tear rolled down her cheek.

  “Aw, for Pete’s sake.” He took her wrists, ignoring her resistance. “Sit down with me.”