"What about her?"
"Doggone it, Christa, she's like a sister to me. I don't want Noah to hurt her again."
Christabel trailed her finger over the desk and laughed, a sound full of womanly wisdom. "Honey, how do you know she won't hurt him?"
* * *
"Christabel told you, I know she did," Noah said, an exaggerated drawl lengthening each word.
Zach tugged the spread as high as he could while keeping his brother's feet covered, although they dangled off the end of the bed. He nudged a wooden bucket across the pine floor, banging it against the frame. "If you feel sick, all you have to do is lean over." A trick he had learned from Rory.
Noah laughed, thin and worn. "I told you, I didn't... eat dinner. There's nothing." He patted his stomach. "Nothing."
Zach frowned. No dinner. He glanced at his brother's wrist, angled high on his flat belly. Sun-buffed skin covered muscle but bones protruded where muscle was scarce. "I put a pitcher of water on the table. A glass beside it," he said, tucking the blanket around Noah's shoulders, amazed, again, by how much Rory resembled him.
"She did, she told you. Don't try... to deny. Always a meddler, that one. I remember what she carved in those tree trunks."
"Yes, she did tell me." He unbuttoned Noah's collar and dropped it to the table. The cuffs followed, rasping against skin as Zach tugged them free. Thank goodness, Rory had gone fishing with Jason and his father. He didn't need to find his beloved uncle like this.
Noah's fingers fluttered, tangling in his black brace, the bones in his hand dancing. "I'm not sure why I kissed her. It's fuzzy... the reason."
"I'm sure everything is fuzzy right now." Zach grabbed the chair he had shoved from their path when they stumbled into the room. Straddling it, he leaned his arms on the back. Contradictory emotions tugged at him. He wanted Noah to sleep, knew he needed to sleep. Already, morning light colored the end of the bed; birds twittered and darted outside the window.
Another part, the part that had grieved—wondering if he would ever see his little brother again—rejoiced at the chance to talk to him without a wall standing between them. Zach had fought hard to destroy it. Two dinners at Christabel's. Unplanned visits in the guise of dropping off Rory at Widow Wynne's. Heck, he had even sailed on the Nellie Dey. The first shad run he'd been on since the year he turned twenty. Observing Noah—feet planted wide, body swaying with the roll and pitch of the ocean, recording figures in a book as thick as his arm, eyes faithfully scanning the horizon—had brought home how much his brother had matured. Drifted away. Become a stranger. A marine biologist who lived in Chicago. A man Zach often wondered if he would ever know again.
"Why do you suppose she does this to me?" The scar on his eyelid showed white against his tanned skin as he blinked. "Makes me all confused and wobbly. Never gotten wobbly before."
"The whiskey's making you wobbly." Zach tapped his palms against the slats of the chair and rocked forward on the front legs.
"Oh, no, she's more potent than liquor. Too beautiful. More than any woman I've ever seen. Intelligent. Fascinating."
Zach smiled. What the heck, he decided, Noah probably wouldn't remember the conversation anyway. "You're the scientist. What's your hypothesis?"
"Lust."
"Hmm, could be." He paused a beat. "Or, maybe you love her. Maybe you always have."
Noah's eyes opened, watery and bloodshot. He raised an inch off the mattress. "I don't love her. Impulsive, headstrong woman." He scowled and sank back.
"Be so bad if you did?"
His hand popped up on his stomach. "Disaster... a disaster. Like everything Elle involves herself in. Schools that don't make money and leaking roofs. Watch pockets and pocket watches. A nymph's body. Thanks, but I'll take a rational... judicious woman if I ever marry. No power over me. Disrupt my well-organized life. A proper wife."
"Rational and judicious? Proper? Sounds like a judge to me."
Noah waved this away. "You don't understand. I have a precise plan."
"For what?"
"Everything."
Zach banged the chair legs to the floor. "You have a plan for love?"
Noah nodded. "Since university."
"Then what are you doing kissing Ellie? Is she part of your plan?"
His smile dimmed, one eye slit open. "Course not. Unexpected bit of, rather... a circumstance I wasn't expecting. Except, she has lips made for kissing. So, I decided to conduct an experiment, a kissing experiment. Which failed horribly."
"A kissing experiment? You think you can control falling in love with a women like you can control one of your fish experiments?"
"When I have time to devote to marriage, I'll find the perfect woman."
"Perfect?"
"Someone sensible. Someone who doesn't expect me to lasso the moon. Who doesn't gaze at me with big green eyes full of emotion."
"What about not being able to take your eyes off her when she enters a room? What about cherishing the sound of her laughter, the way she whispers your name in her sleep? When you love someone, you'll want those things, you'll crave them as much as you crave the air you breathe."
"When I said I had a plan for love"—Noah jammed his thumb under his brace and jerked it clumsily past his elbow—"I guess I meant she would love me."
"Elle would love you, if you'd let her."
Noah's fingers clenched around the brace. "I don't want her kind of love."
"What other kind is there?"
"The kind I'm not tempted to return."
Zach gripped the chair, Noah's pain hurting him as badly as his own would. "That's not love at all, then. Noah, you have to let what happened fade into the past. You can't live your life watching over your shoulder, afraid to feel something in your heart. Afraid of what love will cost you."
Noah dropped his arm across his eyes; Zach wondered what he sought to hide. "I loved you, both of you, more than anyone could love his brothers." He swallowed, his throat doing a long draw. "I never wanted—I never wanted to hurt Cale. I couldn't think rationally when I left here. And I hated that. I made too many mistakes, following my heart instead of my mind. I lost both of you. I won't... can't risk that again. Ever again."
"You didn't lose anybody." Zach lowered the other brace from Noah's shoulder and slipped the top button loose on his shirt. As usual with this brother, he felt helpless. He didn't know what to say, what to do. Before the night they stumbled upon their mother's diary, the only emotion Caleb had ever shown Noah was love. Protective, fierce love. Zach imagined how Caleb's hostility—and it could be brutal—must have hurt him.
Zach waited until Noah's brow smoothed and his lashes lay motionless against his skin, then he rose from the chair, stretched.
"Home. I should be home," Noah murmured.
"You are home."
Zach turned at the sound of the softly spoken words. Caleb stood in the doorway, shoulder propped against the frame, legs crossed at the ankle. The wretched expression on his face belied his indifferent stance. He watched the bed for a sign of movement, twisting a worn hat in his hands.
Zach held a finger to his lips. "Not here."
Their boots thumped on the carpeted staircase, echoing off the sun-streaked kitchen walls as the door swung shut behind them. Zach poured coffee into two cups and sat with a fragile facade of composure.
Caleb slumped into a chair and dropped his hat on the floor. "Is he drunk?" he asked, gazing into his cup as he spooned in sugar.
Zach released a short beat of laughter. "You should recognize the signs of that well enough."
The spoon hit the table with a crack. Coffee splashed over the sides of Caleb's cup, staining the white tablecloth. "Holy Mother Mary, Zach, give me a chance."
"Give you a chance to what?" He pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth and counted to ten.
Caleb plunged his fingers into his hair, cradling his skull. His skin looked as filthy as the tangled strands. "You bastard. Do you think guilt doesn't eat at me every
day? How can you do this?"
How could he do it? Caleb had mourned Noah's disappearance until Zach believed he'd lost both of them. "I'm sorry. I had no right."
Caleb stared into his coffee. "Don't apologize for speaking the truth."
"Let's cut the self-pity. Past time this family set things straight."
"Dammit, Zach! I've been to that old crone's back house, or whatever the hell you call it, three times. I talked to the fisherman and got him on the boats. What more do you want me to do? Kidnap him?"
"You don't have to kidnap him. I've done that for you."
Caleb's head lifted, his eyes shining like polished silver. "I guess you've got more courage than I do, brother." Pushing from the table, he dropped his cup in the sink and paced to the window. He shoved the curtain aside, his broad shoulders as unyielding as his pride.
Zach looked closely at the curtains for the first time in years. Yellow with little daisy things sewn around the edges. Funny, he remembered Hannah saying she liked them. Must be why they still hung there. "Where have you been?" he finally asked, skimming his cup in a gradual circle.
"The warehouse. A delayed shipment of sails. Fisherman coming down from New England for a boat next week." Caleb's gaze sliced toward Zach, a half smile twisting his lips. "Where'd you think?"
Zach shrugged, chagrined to admit he usually thought the worst.
"Obviously, Noah was keeping my space warm at the Nook." Caleb thumped his knuckle against the windowpane. "At least two of the Garrett men enjoy the entertainment Christa's has to offer. Remember those lovely creatures, Zachariah old boy? Called women?"
Zach ignored the familiar jibe. "I'm working this afternoon. Will you stay, talk to him after he wakes up? I'm not sure he's going to remember walking home."
Caleb stiffened. "How do you know he'll want to talk to me?"
"I don't."
"You'd love it if he blew outta here after telling me to go to hell, wouldn't you?"
"Oh, for pity's sake, Cale, don't be ridiculous." Zach's hand flexed around his cup. "For once in your life, just think before you charge in like a wild bull. That's all the advice I can offer."
"What went on last night? Something happen to upset him?"
"Start with that question. Should get the ball rolling."
"Not going to make it any easier on me, are you, Constable?"
"Nope."
"I saw him yesterday, on the boardwalk with Ellie. They were fussing, if I had to make a guess. I considered going on up to them, but the look on her face stopped me. She loved Noah so much. You remember. Heck, the whole town remembers, she made such a goose of herself." He tugged his hand through his hair, sending it into further disarray. "And you know tough-hide Professor. If he did feel anything for her, he never let it show. I always reckoned he just found it irritating, like a nagging rock in his shoe. We were only kids but"—he shrugged—"if the drinking spell has to do with her, I think I'm too much of a coward to ask."
"Just talk to him, Cale. Nothing more, nothing less."
Caleb braced his hands on either side of the window frame and propped his brow against the pane, a long sigh his only reply.
* * *
Noah reached for her.
He managed to grasp a lock of hair between his fingers, a cinnamon streak sliding across his skin. Elle laughed and kicked her feet, sailing higher. She smiled, and he felt a catch in his chest that could easily be called an ache.
In a slow backward arch, the wooden swing whizzed by him. He grabbed the rope and jerked it to his side, trailing his fingers along the empty seat.
Empty.
Noah blinked, squinted.
Where was he?
He reared from the mattress and groaned, a headache nearly splitting his head in two. His shoulders quivered as he struggled to sit, cradling his face in his hands. That didn't halt the crew building a modest structure in his brain.
He'd been dreaming of Elle, he realized, noting the effect the dream had had on his body. The blanket was puffed like a tent. Cursing, he flung the scratchy cover away and swung his feet to the floor. He touched his nose. No spectacles. Not on the table, either. Or in his shirt pocket. He squinted and glanced down. Maybe they had fallen.
Sliding to his knees, he searched the smooth pine. He jerked to a halt, fingering a six-inch gash running as deep as his knuckle.
"Mama, what's that chip in the floor?" A sugary smell from the cookies she had made earlier in the day scented the fingers she brushed across his cheek.
"A Union soldier thought to chop wood in this room. My mother set him straight after one swing of his ax," she said and pressed her lips to his brow.
Noah swiped at the gash, an ineffectual erasure of the past. Had he gotten so drunk he had come here? He searched, trying to remember. Elle... the alley... sailing... the Nook... a woman's hand on his knee... Christabel pulling him into her parlor.
Zach, she must have called Zach.
Noah slumped against the bed frame, his head pounding with every beat of his heart. Damn you, Elle, you wanted me to face them, and here I am, doing just that.
Even at this moment, when he was likely dying, he could taste her, as if he had pressed a kiss to her mouth before rolling from the sheets. The tormenting image that had prompted him to guzzle an entire bottle of Christabel's rotgut whiskey returned, vivid and tangible. His hands propelling Elle's body across his thigh until the very core of her scorched him through his trousers. Blessit, he must have been out of his mind. Never, never in his life, had he handled a woman in a reckless, improper manner.
And they had been standing in an alley.
The images were so vivid that he questioned—feeling a faint twinge of desperation and a strong dose of fear—how he could erase them. He dropped his head to the mattress and groaned. Why had he bothered getting drunk for the first time in years if it left everything intact like a damned painting?
Glancing toward the window, he struggled to his feet. Late-afternoon sunlight flooded the room. Had he slept all day? With an oath, he straightened his braces and smoothed the wrinkles from his shirt. He had missed his morning meeting with Tyre Mcintosh, and he certainly couldn't go to the lab site stinking of whiskey. He brought his sleeve to his nose and sniffed, the action throwing him off-balance and into the bedside table.
God, he was a mess.
Feeling his way, he shuffled along the hallway and down the staircase. Familiarity eliminated the need for spectacles. He knew the house as well as he knew his face in a mirror. Luckily, his blurred vision kept the memories from burying him alive.
He entered the kitchen hesitantly. The smell of coffee and sausage greeted him, but no brothers. Swallowing hard, he rushed outside and inhaled a clear breath. I'll never drink again, he vowed.
It hadn't done any good, anyway. Elle still lingered.
What was he doing, stumbling around his family's house, waiting for a confrontation he didn't want? Or maybe he did want to face them... oh, hell, face Caleb.
Gathering his courage, he took a halting step. The shed, vague but tangible, sat in the back corner of the yard, sheltered from direct sunlight by a snarl of pine branches. Noah had always wondered if Caleb had chopped it to bits with the ax he'd used to destroy their models. The door creaked when he put his elbow to it, a harsh, forsaken sound.
A bird screeched and darted through a hole as he ducked inside. He mopped a cobweb from his face and turned in a slow circle. The smell of glue and raw wood had been replaced by the stale scent of abandonment. Smoothing his hand across the pine workbench Zach had made for them one Christmas, he found a tiny paintbrush tucked into a split and rolled it out with the pad of his finger.
A grinding sound fractured the silence. Noah turned more swiftly than his body could adjust to, and he bumped against the bench.
"Noah?"
He shaded his eyes. A muscular shape outlined by a thin halo of light, shoulders stretching the width of the doorway. Could be a hundred different men. But the voice c
alled to him in his dreams.
"Caleb," he said, sounding as rusty as the shed's hinges.
"What the heck are you doing out here?"
He searched for an even tone. "Call me a sentimental fool, but I just had to see the place you redecorated with an ax. You've done a lot with it since then."
"Dammit, Noah." Caleb stalked into the weak stream of sunlight.
Noah rolled the paintbrush in his hands, his palms warming. He bent his head, shielding his expression from clumsy inspection. Beside his knee, a spider hunkered in a web spread between the bench legs. A hapless deerfly struggled in the lower corner. He watched the spider crawl toward its prey, experiencing a strange kinship with the luckless insect. "I was just looking for my spectacles. Have you seen them?"
"You and Zach are both heartless. Fine, if you want to be that way." Caleb drove his fingers through his hair, leaving it sticking up in a half dozen places. The face in Noah's memory altered to the one before him. It was the first time he had been this close to his brother in ten years.
He inhaled deeply to return his breathing to normal. "I hate to tell you this, Cale, but there's a big black spider spinning a dazzling web right next to me. Probably babies scurrying across the floor. You know they hatch thousands at a time."
Caleb gingerly lifted one booted foot, then the other. He glanced into each corner of the shed. A shudder shook his shoulders and rippled down his arms. Uttering a growl and a curse, he curled his hands into fists and turned on his heel. The door slapped against the inside wall, flooding the enclosure with light.
Noah hung his head and laughed, gasping for breath, his head pounding until he feared he would be sick. The barrier he had erected in a blind panic years before crumbled beneath him.
"Get out here, you skinny bastard!"
Strangely, the jagged slivers scattered beneath his feet—fragments of models he and Caleb had constructed, their knees scraping the underside of the bench, glue coating their fingertips—flooded him with tender emotion. Devotion and security, hope and concern. He regretted the past, profoundly, but for the first time in years, he did not fear the future.
Tides of Love (Seaswept Seduction Series) Page 13