“Yes. She wants you to stop calling her.”
Damien laughed as if Evan had just passed along his ex-wife’s affectionate regards. “She’d be heartbroken if I did.”
Evan shook his head. What a conceited old bastard. The fact that it was true made it even worse.
His father looked at his Rolex. “It’s only noon. Don’t tell me you plan to hang around here until the end of the workday. Don’t you have sailboats to build or cabinets to fix or some such other thing?”
“No. I’m all out of manual-labor projects at the moment. I’m just hanging out—”
He was about to say “waiting to get laid again”, but something held him back. Respect for Andrea’s frosty reputation or a knee-jerk reaction to not giving the old man too many details on his life. He didn’t know which.
“So how’s the island?” his father asked.
“Fine.”
“I should try to make it out there sometime.”
Evan nodded absently.
“You know, I think there’s going to be a family wedding soon.”
“So I gathered.”
“Do you think you could manage to make this one?”
Evan had missed his sister Samantha’s wedding. “I’ll try,” he said halfheartedly.
“Maybe we should just hold it on your little island. Then you’d have to come.”
“Planning Michael’s wedding for him, Dad? That’s a bizarre piece of male bonding.”
“No, of course not. I was kidding.”
“Oh.”
His father shuffled papers on his desk and muttered, “I don’t actually have anything to do. I’m just…antsy, I guess. I know Michael’s going to be all right, but…” He looked up and Evan thought he might have even detected a little moisture in the usually clear blue eyes. “Well, when you almost lose a child…again…it’s frightening.”
“Yeah, and your two best ones too. The favored son and the baby girl.” He finished the scotch.
“I love all my children, Evan. When you have children someday, you’ll understand that.”
He stood up. “I don’t plan on having any. That’s another good thing about paying for it.”
“Life can deal you some funny curves, Evan,” his father said as he came over to shake his hand.
When Evan would have turned away, Damien unexpectedly went to hug him, hard, and Evan let him.
“Bye, Dad.” He pulled away and went to the door, intending to breeze past Miss Prentiss—and come back later in the day—but she wasn’t at her desk.
The other girl leapt to her feet. “Miss Prentiss went out on some errands.”
Evan nodded and left as if it didn’t matter. It wasn’t until he came back later in the day that he realized Andrea hadn’t come back to the office.
That in fact she was gone.
And it mattered quite a bit.
Chapter Four
Six Months Later
The first time Evan saw his lighthouse it was love. Pure, true love, blind to surface imperfections. Such as no electricity, running water or functioning toilet. Not to mention windows or stairways that weren’t rotten through to the core. The lighthouse loomed, weathered and discarded, on a cliff overlooking the pounding cold surf a half mile from the northern coast of Maine. The island it had rested on for more than a hundred years was no bigger than one of his father’s numerous estates. Just a rock in the ocean with a beacon too old and outmoded to be of use in the modern age of sonar and satellite feeds.
But Evan had never seen anything more beautiful. When he stumbled upon it, he tied his sailboat up to the rickety dock, only half caring whether it was swept away by the fierce tide, and camped on the island. Pitching his sleeping bag in the room with, or rather without, the top light, which had long since been shattered and blown away, he decided after a few days to buy the lighthouse and the island that went with it. It was a year and a half before it was renovated to his satisfaction, though.
“You could buy up half of Hawaii with what you’re spending on that godforsaken hulk,” his mother chided. An exaggeration. It was more like a few expensive beaches in Hawaii maybe. Most of the cost was in the materials and getting them to the island. He did the work himself, self-taught in everything from woodwork to plumbing, although no one in the past five generations of either of his parents’ families had ever lifted a wrench or hammer. But the manual labor was satisfying to Evan, enjoyable, and when he was done and his lighthouse was to his personal specifications, there was nowhere he would rather be. His mother was one of the few who had even ventured out to see him there, which was fine with him. Maybe no man was an island. But some men didn’t mind living on one.
He had his books. He had his music. He had his projects. He was content.
So what the hell was wrong with him lately?
He moodily watched the storm outside his window from his favorite stuffed chair in what he liked to think of as the “lighthouse room” of his lighthouse. It was the top of the structure where the actual light should have been. He had gutted the space and transformed it into a circular living room with 360 degrees of windows, hardwood floors, liberal throw rugs and comfortable furniture. He’d even installed a wood-burning fireplace in the center to warm the room on nights like these.
But he was still feeling distinctly cold.
A loud snore at his feet reminded him that he’d also resorted to the ultimate cliché of getting a dog to combat the blues he couldn’t shake. The golden retriever puppy seemed happy with the arrangement, although Evan hadn’t noticed that the presence of the dog—who he had yet to name despite that the puppy had been performing his “man’s best friend” duties for a month now—lifted his own spirits any. At least the little guy, well actually big guy by now, didn’t bark. He leaned down to pet him absently.
The private detective Michael hired had found no trace of Andrea Prentiss. A search of her apartment revealed she had taken nothing with her, although she had sent an email, or someone had, saying she was resigning and regretting that she could not give the customary two weeks’ notice.
It was as if she had fallen off the face of the earth. Even more disturbingly, it was as if she hadn’t existed at all before she showed up as Michael’s assistant. It turned out Michael’s previous assistant wasn’t as careful on her way out at screening possible replacements as she might have been. A more alert perusal would have caught that all of Andrea Prentiss’ résumé and background had been fabricated. And Michael hadn’t known her father, as the old man had so casually tossed out that one day, although maybe Andrea herself had started that rumor.
But Andrea had been so perfect for the job that no one had ever questioned her credentials. She was perfect for every day of eight years until the one day—the day she had definitively blown him off, as a matter of fact—she walked away and didn’t come back. Even perfect on that day, as she had somehow managed to have the ideal replacement trained and ready to go right away. Miss Colleen Grady’s credentials were certainly examined with a fine-tooth comb before Michael would let her assume Miss Prentiss’ chair, though.
Damien Reynolds had been apoplectic at the emerging mystery of Miss Prentiss’ disappearance, sure there was some industrial plot or other at play. But eight years was very long for an evil plot to hatch and no harm seemed to have been done. Besides, despite the abrupt departure and fake résumé, both Michael and Vanny still trusted Andrea Prentiss. They even followed up on that old guy Tottingham’s offhand remark that she looked like some long-gone Greek heiress, which had turned out to be a dead end, as that woman had no living close relatives. Michael and Vanny had finally given up, blissfully in love with each other and planning their wedding. But whenever the subject came up, it was clear they were still worried about her.
Evan’s feelings were a little more complicated. He didn’t know how the hell he felt about Andrea’s disappearing act, but he sure as hell knew he’d been in a foul mood ever since.
He thought for the hundredth t
ime that all he needed was to get laid. But somehow he couldn’t manage to do even that. He’d gone to New York a few times, but when it came right down to it there were no calls to high-class escort services or to friends-with-benefits from college. He hadn’t touched a woman since he’d touched Andrea Prentiss.
So of course he was a little cranky.
“Come on, boy,” he instructed the dog. “Let’s call it a night.” He trudged down the winding stairs in the base of the lighthouse, the click of eager paws behind him, until he got down to the main floor. The lighthouse had originally been attached to small living quarters for the lighthouse keeper, no more than a kitchen, a bedroom and a privy. Evan had taken his own brand of wrecking ball to the structure—a sledgehammer and a great deal of enthusiasm—and out of the dust and some satisfying sweat had emerged a sprawling ranch-style house with a large master bedroom, guest room, library, two full baths and a kitchen a gourmet chef would be proud to cook in. An experiment in different materials and natural insulations, the house had been a good prototype of what he had in mind for utilitarian environmental architecture. It was much bigger than he needed, of course, but compared to anyplace he’d ever lived before it was equivalent to a broom closet and he figured he should ease into anything smaller for now.
He stripped, looking distractedly out at the rain, so dark it was almost a purple black. The island itself had no streetlights, as that would be the height of non-utilitarian—it had no streets either. So when he walked at night, he brought an industrial-sized flashlight. But even he would be reluctant to venture out in something like this. The cliffs and paths, or lack thereof, were treacherous enough in the dark. No need to add gallons of driving rain to the effort.
Still he felt restless.
He wished it wasn’t raining so hard for another reason too. He preferred to sleep with a window or even the sliding-glass door open. But that wasn’t possible tonight unless he wanted to drown.
The dog’s ears perked up as Evan climbed into bed naked, flicking off the bedside lamp. He was just about to drift off when fierce barking snapped him to attention. Great time for this dog to remember he had a voice, using it to woof steadily out at the storm.
“Hey. Settle down.” He got out of bed and crouched down by the dog’s side, petting the silky gold hair until the barks died down to whimpers. “That’s better. You see a squirrel or something?”
The dog gave him a baleful stare and then lay down in front of the sliding-glass door, looking out.
“Okay now. No more of that.”
He climbed back into bed and had barely closed his eyes when a sharp bark and a thud brought him bolt upright in bed again and a flash of lightning from the storm illuminated the sliding-glass door and showed Evan what the dog was barking at.
A ghost.
He scrambled out of bed toward the figure standing in the pouring rain, white-faced and ethereal, with two palms pressed to the glass, as if she could drift through it if she pushed a little harder. With the dog yapping and the sudden black in the absence of the lightning strike, Evan felt unusually clumsy, tripping over a stool he knew was there and banging his knee against the corner of the dresser on the way to the door. By the time he got there and fumbled it open with a curse, the figure had vanished. Not quite into thin air, since the air was thick with the driving rain, but she was gone. Though Evan had only seen the face for a few seconds, he knew it was a woman. More specifically, he knew what woman. Andrea Prentiss.
Shit. He must be going nuts.
Evan clutched the collar of the dog panting at his side to keep him from lunging out into the rain. All he needed to make this night worse would be a muddy wet dog. At the dog’s insistent whimper, Evan looked down at him, about to close the door again until he realized it wasn’t the dog whimpering.
He turned sharply toward the sound and saw her.
Crumpled up against the side of the house, she was clutching herself against the force of the rain, her long dark hair wild around her, wet and thick.
Evan shot out into the darkness and he didn’t know what he felt first, or strongest—whether it was the rain so cold and hard that it might have morphed into hail, or whether it was the painful panic he felt when he recognized that something was wrong, very wrong.
“Jesus, Andrea. What the fuck?”
Something was wrong, and wrong way worse than the sheer impossibility of the phantom woman of his dreams, or his fantasies anyway, showing up out of nowhere at his door in the middle of the night—especially when his door was on an island in the middle of the ocean. Wrong in the way of wrong with her. She was whimpering, not the dog, and when he crouched down to her level she didn’t even look up, her arms tightly clasped around her knees.
“Andrea,” he shouted again over the sound of the rain and, not waiting for an answer, picked her up, cradling her, as he covered the few steps back into the house. She felt impossibly light and fragile and her arms hung from her body. He pulled her tighter to him for a moment before he lay her down on his bed and went back to close the sliding-glass door, blocking out the cacophonous fury of the storm at least a little bit. The dog had apparently followed him out into the rain, although Evan had not noticed, and once back into the warm dry house, he shook himself furiously to dry off as best he could, pelting Evan with it as he did so.
But Evan couldn’t care less. He was focused only on the body on the bed. Shit, not a body. She wasn’t dead, thank God, but she was breathing heavily, her head slack, her eyes still closed. Not bothering to dry off as the dog had or with a towel, he sat next to her, leaning down.
“Andrea,” he whispered and she stirred, but again with that whimper, this time her arms coming up to clutch her stomach.
She was in jeans and a light jacket, thoroughly drenched, and the good sturdy boots she wore looked as if they had climbed too many cliffs. He reached down and slipped them off, along with two pair of very wet socks, baring her icy feet beneath.
“Andrea,” he tried again. His fingers went to the snaps on her jacket, brushing her arms and her whimper turned to a groan. He stilled. “What is it? Are you ill?”
She didn’t answer, but in the light he suddenly thought to switch on, she didn’t need to. She was desperately ill, or injured. One look at the pallor of her white face, lined with what he could see now was pain, told him as clearly as her voice could have. She was delirious with it.
He needed to get her out of these wet clothes and warm and dry. He no more than had the clinical thought than his spirit leaped at the mere thought of undressing Andrea Prentiss, whatever the reason. God, he was a sick fuck. He ignored both the spark of excitement and the immediate self-loathing that followed in favor of getting down to it before the poor girl froze to death.
But when he went to take her jacket off in earnest, she roused herself to try to push him away, going back to shielding her chest when he automatically retreated.
“We need to get you dry, Andrea,” he soothed, accompanying his words with quick action so the jacket was off her in seconds. Unfortunately, it was at the cost of a sharp howl of anguish from her. From the way she was trying to protect her chest, he guessed cracked ribs perhaps. The sea was brutal in a storm like this and God knew how she had gotten here anyway. Perhaps she had been dashed against the rocky cliffs that lined a good portion of the circumference of this island.
He slipped his hand underneath the plaid shirt she wore, trying to determine the source of her pain, and she cried out as his fingers gently probed the delicate skin below her left breast and encountered wetness too thick to be remnants of the rain. Oh Christ, it wasn’t cracked ribs. It was worse. He pulled the shirt up farther to see blood. A lot of it. She, or somebody, had tried to stanch the flow with a rag of some kind and whatever color the cloth had once been, it was now completely deep red. He peeled the rag back slowly and saw to his shock that it wasn’t a jagged cut caused by battering against a rocky cliff. It was a knife wound.
“God, Andrea, where have you be
en?” he muttered.
He knew what he needed to do. Rushing into the adjoining bathroom, he got a clean towel and held a portion of it under hot water and then got his first-aid kit from the cupboard. At the last minute, he went out to the bar and grabbed a bottle of whiskey.
Living in virtual isolation brought a number of perks, but expert medical attention wasn’t one of them. Evan had learned the basics for emergencies and he was healthy. But he knew the time would come when he would regret not having a hospital within traveling distance. If not for the storm, he might have chanced trying to get Andrea off the island and to the nearest hospital, but on a night like this that was out of the question. He hoped like hell she didn’t have any internal injuries.
Turning the bedside lamp up brighter, he used the towel to rub the sticky blood from her skin to clean the wound so he could get a better look. She had been lying quietly, but at his touch she roused herself with a moan. And not the good kind.
“No,” she muttered sharply, suddenly opening her eyes, the blue of them startling him.
“This is going to need stitches.” He held the bottle of whiskey up to her lips. “Drink. It’s the best I can do.”
Her head fell back and her eyes closed again. He half hoped she had fainted since he had nothing but the hard liquor to dull the pain for her and she hadn’t drunk any.
Quickly taking what he needed out of the first-aid kit, he doused the wound with disinfectant, earning not a single sound from her—she had fainted, thank God—and got down to it. The wound was just a slash of red against the white of her skin and he stitched quickly as she lay without moving.
After he finished, he removed the rest of her clothes, her limp body malleable, and bundled her in blankets, then switched the light off, listening for a minute to the sound of her troubled breathing in the dark.
He’d take a hot shower now and try to shake off this heavy sense of disorientation and incredulity and…shit…unadulterated joy at having Andrea Prentiss here.
But when she came to, he wanted answers.
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