The Return of Caine O'Halloran: Hard Choices

by JoAnn Ross

  The sleeping girl didn’t stir and Annie quietly left the room again. She picked up the water and headed back outside.

  Only when she stopped shaking a long while later did she get around to the task of bathing. She spread one towel on the wide concrete edge surrounding the pit and slid out of her clothes, working in shifts, because it was simply too cold to completely disrobe all at once.

  She wasn’t afraid of being seen. There were only stars to see whatever she did on this little stretch of beach and she knew she could dance naked under the moon if she chose without anyone knowing. A bath was her only intention, though, and she made quick work of it.

  The water in the pot was too hot and the water in the jug was too cold for the process to be enjoyable. Within minutes, she had her damp body wrapped in her robe and she set about the task of washing her hair. By the time she poured the last of the jug’s contents over her head to finish rinsing her hair, she was shivering so badly she ached from it.

  She wrapped her head in the towel and left everything but the bottle of her lavender cream right there on the sand as she jogged back toward the house, leaving the glowing embers of the flame to burn themselves out.

  But the glow of another ember stopped her in her tracks as she made it to the deck. “Logan? Is that you?”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” He sat on the edge of the deck, and he leaned forward into the thin gleam of moonlight to snuff out his cigarette in the sand.

  Embarrassment joined her shivering, increasing her discomfort tenfold. She’d expected him to take longer, if he’d return that night at all.

  How long had he been sitting there?

  It didn’t matter how long, she assured herself. The fire pit was too far from the house to see anything. Even if he’d been in the house, or on the deck, he couldn’t have seen her hasty, hunched-against-the-cold nudity.

  Are you sure, Annie? Or had you hoped he would? You knew he’d eventually come back to the house. He’d promised to bring by more supplies. You’re still the same as you always were, aren’t you?

  The voice in her head had always been colored with her mother’s judgmental tone.

  “Annie?” Logan’s voice seemed to come at her through a fog. “Are you okay?”

  Chapter 10

  Logan started to stand. Annie looked as if she was ready to collapse. But she blinked. Waved her hand a little and tugged the lapels of her robe closer together. “I’m fine. You just...surprised me. I, um, I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “I try not to.” Smoking was one of those things that tended to give away your presence.

  “Oh. Well. I was just washing my hair.”

  “So I see.”

  She stepped up on the deck and edged closer to the door, wiping sand from her feet as she did so.

  “I brought the candles and batteries.”

  “Good.” Her response was a little too quick. “Riley will be relieved. She has one of those portable CD players.”

  “I know. She told me earlier.”

  “Right.” She smiled weakly and tugged on her belt again.

  She was obviously uncomfortable.

  “I also brought more fuel for the stove,” he said. “The store’s nearly out; you’ll probably want to save it for necessities.”

  “Which probably doesn’t include using it all to heat water so Riley can have a warm bath.”

  “Probably not,” he agreed, knowing full well that was what she’d already done. “I would have brought you a lantern, but there aren’t any mantles left in the store. I would’ve gotten you a gas grill for cooking, but propane’s all sold out, too.”

  “How much did you spend? I’ll pay you—”

  “Forget about it. You’re shivering. Go inside.”

  She reached for the door and slid it open. “Are you...where are you...Riley’s asleep in her room. I think she’s dead to the world for once.”

  “Glad to hear it. Chasing after her yesterday was more than enough for me.”

  Annie still didn’t go inside. “What I meant is that her bedroom isn’t available tonight. But the couch is. If you need a place to sleep that is. It’s pretty comfortable. I’m not sure it’s long enough for you. And you’d probably be warmer over at the community center. Or there might be someone else’s house where you’d prefer to stay.” She pressed her lips together, seeming to realize she was babbling.

  “Are you trying to talk me into or out of using your couch?”

  “Good question.” She hesitated for a moment. “I, um, I don’t want a repeat of what happened this morning.”

  It was an unpalatable nugget, but not an unexpected one. “Neither do I.” He didn’t think he could stand seeing her scramble away from him again the way she had.

  “Okay then. Well, it’s up to you. About the couch, I mean.” She went inside and closed the door. She didn’t lock it, though.

  He let out a rough breath and pulled another cigarette from the pack he’d picked up along with the candles, the batteries, the fuel.

  He bent his head against the breeze to light it, then sat there on the edge of the deck, his feet planted in the sand. Behind him, the plastic covering the window over her sink rippled, shifting and sighing with the wind.

  In front of him, not quite out of his line of sight, was the glow from Annie’s dying fire and beyond that, miles of night-dark ocean. Always there. Never silent. Never the same, yet never different.

  He’d been on the island for two days. Long enough for the expected urge to leave it again to grab hold of him.

  Yet behind him, inside a small beach cottage that had been built so long ago he remembered it from his own childhood, lived a woman who had got under his skin as easily as she ever had.

  It wasn’t the island that was causing his restlessness now, he knew. It was Annie.

  Maybe—as unlikely as it might seem to him—she didn’t remember what had happened between them all those years ago. But he sure as hell did. And of all the things he’d done in his life that he regretted, that night was the worst.

  He sat there until his cigarette burned down into one long ash, until clouds rolled in and obliterated the thin moonlight, until the only noise coming from the house behind him was the hissing ripple of thick plastic.

  Sam had offered him a bed for as long as he needed it. Given Annie’s obvious discomfort and his own state of mind, taking him up on the offer was the wise choice.

  He snuffed and stripped the cigarette out of habit, then pushed to his feet and silently slid open the glass door.

  “I wasn’t putting on a show out there at the fire pit for you.” Her voice came out of the darkness the moment he stepped inside, and he went still.

  “I thought you’d be in bed by now.”

  “Obviously, I’m not.” He heard the scrape of a match, then watched her light the candle sitting on the coffee table in front of her. “I don’t know what you saw, or think you saw, but I thought I was alone,” she said. “So, if you want someone to strip for you, I suggest you look elsewhere.”

  Even in the minimal light cast by the candle, he could see the stiffness in her posture. The protective way she clutched her robe around her.

  The fact was, he’d seen every furtive movement she’d made down there by the fire pit. He’d seen the way sparks had danced up from the fire when she’d stoked it. He’d seen the way she’d revealed one leg, then the other in the orange fire glow. Washing. Drying. Quickly. He’d seen the graceful arch of her back when she’d tugged off her sweater.

  There’d been nothing seductive in her actions. Only simple practicality against the conditions in which they’d found themselves.

  The sight had nevertheless grabbed him by the throat and yanked all the way down to his gut.

  “Well?” Tension vibrated
in her voice.

  “I didn’t see a thing,” he lied.

  The release of her tension was palpable. She cleared her throat. “Well...that’s good. I, um, I’ll get you a sheet and blanket for the couch, then. You...are planning to sleep here?”

  “Yeah.”

  She quickly left the room. Returned a moment later with a neatly folded stack of bedding. “I hope you’ll be warm enough.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.” Fortunately, his self-directed irony escaped her.

  “Okay.”

  She hovered close enough that he could smell the soft scent of her. And Annie seemed to have no clue as she stood there, unknowingly driving nails into his coffin of want. “Well. Good night, Logan.”

  If she didn’t leave he was going to touch her, regardless of what they’d both said.

  “I plan to wash up, myself, Annie,” he said evenly. “With hot water. Right there in the kitchen next to the stove. So unless you want to see something you don’t want to see, I suggest you stay in your room once you go there.”

  Her lips parted. She ran her hand down the hair she’d obviously braided while he’d sat out on the deck, as if she were actually contemplating his words.

  She was killing him.

  “Annie—”

  She fled.

  * * *

  Another storm hit the island before morning.

  An awesome crack of thunder jerked Annie upright in her bed. Before the second round finished rattling the windows, she’d thrown back the covers and left her room at a run.

  Riley was sitting up in her bed when Annie darted into her room. “Great.” The girl flopped back down. “I thought I was dreaming.”

  “Maybe it won’t be as severe,” Annie said hopefully. The window next to Riley’s bed had no curtains. Lightning flickered outside, but not long enough to really illuminate anything.

  “Good, ’cause I don’t want to sleep in the bathtub.” Riley yanked the quilt over her head.

  “The resilience of youth.”

  Annie whirled around at Logan’s soft comment. He stood near the door. A flash of lightning revealed enough of him to assure he hadn’t been caught midbath. She knew that he’d had plenty of time to accomplish his ablutions, but that hadn’t kept her from lying awake in her bed for the past few hours thinking about it.

  “More resilient than I am,” she murmured, moving past him into the hallway. He started to pull Riley’s door closed, but she touched his arm, staying his movement.

  He looked at her and she snatched back her hand. Curled her fingers safely against her palm. “I think we should leave it open.”

  “Not if you’re gonna stand there talking about it all night.” Riley’s voice was muffled by the quilt, but still clear.

  It was too dark to see for certain, but Annie felt sure that Logan smiled. She headed back to the kitchen where she felt around—aided by the flickering lightning—for the matches she’d left near the candle. But Logan’s hand covered the book of matches first and she heard the soft scrape, saw the bright flare, and in the glow of it found his gaze on her face.

  She swallowed. In a blink, the moment passed. He lit the candle. Another crack of thunder had her wincing.

  “I know it’s the lightning that causes the damage, but I really hate that thunder.” She kept her voice low, striving for normalcy. “Do you think we should stay here?”

  “I don’t particularly want to walk to town in the rain unless we have to.”

  “Too bad you gave back Leo’s golf cart.” Annie rubbed her arms. She’d jumped from bed too rapidly to think about grabbing her robe to cover her thick flannel pajamas, and she was excruciatingly aware of the fact that he wore only a pair of dark jeans.

  She moved to the glass door and peered out. “It doesn’t seem as windy, at least.”

  “Small mercies.”

  She looked back to see him moving to the couch, flexing his arm, as if it pained him, before he stretched out with a deep sigh. “Go back to sleep, Annie. I’ll wake you up if the storm gets worse.”

  “I wasn’t asleep.”

  “Go to bed anyway.”

  Still, she hesitated. “Your arm is hurting, isn’t it? From that piece of roof that hit you from the shack.”

  “I’ll live.”

  “Did the skin break?”

  “It’s fine, Annie. Go to bed.”

  “But I have some ointment that might help.” It bothered her that she hadn’t thought to ask before now. If it hadn’t been for her and Riley, he would never have been near that decrepit shack in the first place. He wasn’t indestructible. Of course he could have gotten hurt. “I just need to know if the skin is broken or not. Some remedies—”

  “If I agree to use your goop will you go to bed?” He sounded exasperated.

  “Yes.”

  “Fine.” He hardly sounded agreeable.

  Annie hurried into the bathroom and fumbled around in the dark cupboard beneath the sink until she found her plastic box of first-aid supplies. She carried it, along with a washcloth she wet under the faucet, out to the living room and sat down on the hassock in front of the couch, then flipped off the lid. “Sit up.”

  “I can do it.”

  She looked at him, the tube in her hand. “You took the hit on the back side of your shoulder.”

  “You still like to get your way, don’t you?” He sat up and twisted around so she could reach the spot where he’d taken the brunt of the blow from the shack’s roof.

  She squirted out the ointment on her fingers and carefully spread it over his arm and the hard bulge of his shoulder. It heated gently as she worked it in, and she heard him sigh.

  “Feel better?”

  “That you’re probably spreading pig placenta all over me?”

  “Eye of newt,” she corrected blandly.

  He turned his head and looked at her.

  “Cayenne,” she relented. “And a few other things, but trust me. You don’t want to get it near your eyes, or use this on broken skin. It’d burn like fury.”

  “Pepper.” He shook his head. “Damnedest thing.”

  “It’ll help, though. I promise. I could also make you an herbal tea. Healing from the inside is as critical—more so—than healing from the outside. A little valerian and passion flower, or maybe black willow and—”

  “No thanks. Do you do chants, too? Maybe under your soft skin you’re a Turn, after all. The original Castillos were supposedly into voodoo.”

  “Ergo, the curse.”

  “Right.”

  “Western medicine is the new kid on the block, Logan. Natural remedies have been around far longer.”

  “Well, my herbalist friend, for tonight we’ll make do with the pepper goop on my arm.” Amusement had replaced his exasperation.

  It was ridiculous. Their conditions were not quite miserable, but another few days without utilities or the ability to reach the mainland, and they would be. Yet, Annie found herself smiling.

  Mostly because Logan was smiling. A true smile. One that wasn’t underlaid with that sense of grimness he carried around with him.

  She capped the ointment tube and wiped her fingers on the damp washcloth. Then she rose and left everything on the breakfast counter.

  She still doubted that she’d sleep. But she had agreed. “Good night, Logan.”

  “Good night, Annie.”

  She padded down the dark hall to her room and climbed back into bed. Outside, thunder still crackled.

  She pulled the blankets up to her neck and closed her eyes.

  And finally slept.

  Chapter 11

  Three days on the island.

  Logan stood in the road and eyed the colorful house. It had been converted in
to an office for Dr. Hugo Drake so long ago that he couldn’t remember it ever being used as a house. The place hardly looked professional. Wind chimes hung from the eaves on the porch. How they’d managed to survive the storm, he didn’t know. But then maybe his old man kept a bushel of wind chimes stored inside and he just hung up more of the infernal things when he wanted.

  The front door was wide open. He went up the steps, ducking under the chimes, and went inside.

  His father was with a patient.

  Logan didn’t learn that from the receptionist who sat at the battered desk in the front room. He knew it because he could hear the murmur of voices through the thin walls. Logan headed for a chair in the hall near Hugo’s examining rooms. An upturned barrel was beside the chair. The barrel had sat there as long as he could remember, too.

  There’d been a time when he’d sat on Hugo’s knee while they played solitaire on top of the barrel.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked out the door that was open at the rear of the building. He could see the rooftop of Maisy’s Place, the tall spires of palm trees clustered around it. And beyond that, the glitter of water.

  His gaze went back to the barrel. So many things were just the way he remembered, the way he expected.

  Unexpected, though, was the small, inexpertly carved box that sat on top of the barrel.

  The carvings on the sides and top weren’t perfect. But the wood was smooth as he ran his thumb back and forth over it, and the lid—when he pushed experimentally on it—still fitted securely.

  He’d made the thing in the sixth grade. During wood shop. Back when his mother was still alive. He lifted the lid. A thumb-worn deck of playing cards was stored inside.

  He closed the box and left it on the barrel, and then headed back to the reception area.

  Hugo stood near the now-vacant desk in conversation with his patient. Other than a glance, he gave no indication what he thought about Logan’s appearance, until his business was concluded and he had been paid by his elderly female patient with a batch of her homemade plum preserves. He sat the jars of preserves on the desk, then studied his cold cigar for a moment before tucking it between his teeth. “Hear you’ve taken up with young Annie.”