They could have died in the plane crash. They could have sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Dead. Like his parents. And it would have been his fault for bringing Tansy along.
The pipes rattled again, making him think of the shower again. Of Tansy. Without trying, he could imagine steam wreathing her soft, rosy body. Briefly, he let himself remember their time together, let the memory beat back the shadows and the ghosts. The fear.
They had first made love on a pallet in Tehru, barely taking the time to loosen the clothing they wore to bed, to be ready for the next emergency. They had come together in need and despair, wanting to forget the dead and the dying at a time when the outbreak had seemed unbeatable. Then, they’d wanted to feel alive. Later, they’d just wanted to feel. After that first time, they’d stolen moments for quick, furtive couplings when they were too tired to save lives but too wired to sleep.
With the outbreak’s source discovered and the disease leveled, they’d headed home, stopping halfway to rent a room with lush plants, marble, brass and silk. And a shower… God, what a shower.
They’d made love in that shower, naked together for the first time, as perfect for each other as two people could possibly be.
Except that she was perfect for the man Dale had created—wealthy and pedigreed. And that man was nothing more than fiction. If Tansy ever met the real Dale Metcalf, she’d be horrified.
Worse, she’d be disappointed.
And maybe that was why he hadn’t fought harder against bringing her. Maybe Lobster Island would do what he had failed to do. Maybe it would kill the attraction between them. Kill the want, and the desperate kick of his heart every time he saw her.
He stepped out of his ruined shoes and eyed the pile of clothes Mickey’s wife had left beside a flashlight and a small box of staples. He scowled at the worn jeans and the rough Irish-knit sweater. Dr. Metcalf, infectious disease specialist, didn’t own jeans or bulky sweaters. But he’d grown up in them. Shrugging, he scooped the warm clothes off the floor near the stairs and set his foot on the lowest tread.
With the motion, his blood buzzed, and emotions, those things he so often avoided, threatened to swamp him. He’d never needed Tansy’s quiet strength more than he did right now. And he had no right to it.
Did he dare go up? If he paused outside the bathroom door and heard her singing in the low contralto that never failed to set his body afire, would he have the strength to keep walking?
Dr. Metcalf would have the strength to walk by, just as he’d had the nobility to push her away. But Dale Metcalf, lobsterman’s brat, knew nothing of nobility. He knew nothing of honor or civility, but he knew about desire. About the want that had chased through his veins ever since he’d held Tansy in his lap on the drive over and remembered how she smelled. How she tasted.
How she felt wrapped around him. Needing him. Loving him.
Oh, yes. He knew about those things. And the memory burned in his lungs. Fighting for strength, for sanity, he turned away from temptation.
And heard Tansy scream.
Chapter Three
“Dale! Dale, get up here! Hurry!” The terror in her voice kicked him up the stairs at a dead run. He’d never heard Tansy scream before. Ever.
Moving fast, he shouldered open the door and slid to a halt at the sight of her perfect, round derriere. She was leaning out the bathroom window, dripping on the floor.
“Tans?” He plunged into the small, steamy room, slapped the shower off and heard rustling thumps down below.
There was someone outside.
“Dale!” She turned, clutching a towel to her chest. “There was a man looking in the window. He was watching me! What the hell is going on here?”
The tree.
“Damn it!” He brushed her aside and threw a leg out the window. It had been fifteen years since the last time he’d snuck away from Trask and broken into his old house, but the tree still stood outside the bathroom window. And the sounds of running foot steps below told him it was still strong enough for climbing.
“Omigod, what are you doing?” Her voice bordered on shrill, but he didn’t pause.
He grabbed the gutter and swung a leg over to the thickest limb. The motions came back easily, and within seconds he was halfway down the tree. A shadow of movement from the garden gate caught his eye. “Stay put,” he yelled to her. “I’ll be right back.” He dropped to the ground and sprinted for the lane that ran behind his mother’s overgrown garden.
There were two sets of footsteps and a frantic shout of, “Hurry! Jeez, here he comes!” from the running shadows.
Dale chose the one on the left and made a leaping tackle. He and his quarry went down in the lane amidst a flurry of arms and legs. A pointy elbow cracked Dale under the chin and he swore, realizing he’d landed on maybe fifty pounds of skinny kid.
“Quit!” he barked, and the squirming subsided. A nearby rustle told him the other boy hadn’t gone far, so he rolled off his captive. Sitting in the dirt, Dale shook his head. “What do you think you’re doing, looking in while a lady’s showering? Does your ma know about this?”
Blue eyes widened beneath tousled white-blond hair. Moonlight washed the kid to ghost-pale. “You’re not going to tell her, are you, mister? I swear we didn’t mean nothing by it. We climb up that old tree sometimes and peek in the window of the haunted house. We didn’t think there was anyone in there, honest!”
“And the lights didn’t give you a clue?” Dale asked sternly, wondering when his boyhood home had gained a ghost.
The blond head shook vigorously. “It’s haunted. I told you. Sometimes there are lights in there but nobody’s home. We thought it was the ghosts, and I dared Eddie to go look and he dared me right back, and…” He trailed off and finally shrugged. “We thought the lady might be a ghost. Then she screamed and you came running… Hey, what’re you doing in there, anyway? That house belongs to my daddy’s cousin!”
Mickey. Dale’s throat closed. Mick’s infrequent letters had mentioned his sons, but the boys hadn’t seemed real when Dale had been sitting in his cubbyhole office in Boston General, reading the piles of mail that gathered dust while he was on assignment. But this boy was so much more than words on a piece of paper. He was a little person who looked like Mickey.
At a second furtive rustle, Dale said, “You can come on out. I might not even tell your ma.”
The second boy, a smaller version of the first, crept from a shadowy beach plum and crouched at his brother’s side. “Sorry, mister. We didn’t mean to scare the lady. DJ thought she was a ghost.”
DJ. The elder of the two was named Dale John. Mickey had mentioned it in passing, but Dale hadn’t given it much thought.
Now, he sat stunned. He had family. How had he forgotten that? Or had he known it all along and not wanted to deal with the responsibilities that went with it? Trask had taught him that connections meant loss. Hurt. Anger.
Life in Boston was easier without all of those things.
A loud rustle and a series of thumps startled the boys, who squeaked in alarm and backpedaled on their skinny butts. A circle of yellow light slipped through the garden gate, followed by the shape of a woman.
“Dale?”
“Over here, Tans,” he called. “I caught your Peeping Toms.”
“Toms?” The flashlight beam bounced toward them. “As in, more than one?”
Dale stood and hauled the boys to their feet, feeling the adrenaline level out, leaving confusion behind. “Yeah. But they didn’t mean any harm. They thought you were a ghost.”
She’d changed into jeans and a hand-knit sweater like the one he was wearing. Dale felt the boys relax at his side when she flicked the beam of light to her own face. “Nope,” she said, “no ghost, though they did almost scare me to death.” She leaned down and offered a hand. “I’m Tansy.”
In the yellow light, the boys’ hair shone brighter, their eyes seemed bluer. The younger one shook Tansy’s hand. “I’m Eddie and my stomach feels funny.”
The older boy frowned. “I’m DJ, and don’t listen to him, his stomach always feels funny.” Then he scuffed the dirt with his toe. “Sorry we scared you, lady. We didn’t think there was anyone in the house, honest. Don’t tell Ma, okay?”
Dale had often heard similar words from Mickey when they’d been caught committing some boyhood crime or another.
He swallowed. “Run on home now, boys. Miss Tansy and I have work to do.” His voice cracked but he didn’t care. “I’ll be by to talk to your pa later, but don’t worry. This’ll be our secret.”
When they were gone, Tansy clicked off the flashlight. They stood awkwardly in the darkness until she finally said the words he’d been dreading. “I thought you were a rich kid from Boston.”
He’d known it would hurt her to learn he was a fraud. He’d imagined how the disappointment would cross her face, and how she would rally quickly and try to pretend his past didn’t matter when they both knew it did. He’d known all that.
What he hadn’t known was how hard it would be to admit that it had all been a lie.
He sighed and tried to make the first cut a clean, lethal one. “That’s what you were supposed to think, Tansy. That’s what everyone thought.” When she didn’t answer, he took the flashlight, clicked it on and gestured back to the house. “Let’s go inside.”
But as they walked in silence, Dale realized he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t know what to say. They entered the kitchen and Tansy returned the flashlight to the box Libby had left.
After a moment, she turned to him. “Just tell me this, Dale. Who the hell are you?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. At Boston General, he knew who he was. On assignment, he knew. But on Lobster Island?
He had no idea.
THE SILENCE STRETCHED until Tansy began to doubt Dale was going to speak at all. Then she saw his eyes flickering the way they did when he was mentally flipping through diagnoses and treatment options. He was trying to choose an answer.
“Never mind.” She held up a hand to stop the lie. It would be one of many, she now realized, just as she now understood that the man she’d fallen in love with was nothing more than a figment of her imagination. Like mother, like daughter. Whitmore women fell for the schemers. She took a hurting breath that barely moved the stone-heavy pressure on her chest. “Tell me the truth or nothing, okay, Dale? You owe me that much.”
When he remained silent, she nodded and hid the disappointment down deep, alongside most of the memories of her father. “Fine. I’ll check the lab equipment and see what’s salvageable. You shower, and then we can head for the motel clinic. The sooner we solve this outbreak, the sooner we can get out of here.” The sooner she could request to be transferred away from Boston. Away from Dale.
She would not repeat her mother’s mistakes.
When he didn’t answer, she turned toward the salt-encrusted cases piled in the hallway.
“Tansy.” His quiet word brought her up short, but she didn’t look back. She didn’t want to see his gleaming blue eyes. Didn’t want to remember how his features had been mirrored in the faces of those two boys out in the lane.
Didn’t want to think that she’d once imagined their sons looking just like that.
“It’s okay, Dale,” she finally said. “I can handle it.” She crouched down near the pile of equipment and waved at the stairs, hiding her face so he wouldn’t see the hurt. “Go shower. We need to see our patients.”
The job. Concentrate on the job. Medicine gave her control. Research told her the truth.
Dale didn’t.
He headed for the stairs, pulling the bulky sweater off over his head as he walked. He stopped near her in the narrow hallway, and Tansy was enveloped in familiar warmth. Only this time, it was laced with something new. Something hotter and harder than the pull she’d felt toward Dale Metcalf, playboy, or even Dr. Metcalf, field researcher.
Her whole relationship with Dale had been based on a lie, yet she still wanted him.
Afraid if she looked into his eyes he’d see the hunger, she stared straight ahead at the place where the sinew and bone of his shoulder gave way to the hard planes of his chest. The scorpion tattoo, blurred with time, dominated her view.
Only it wasn’t a scorpion.
She reached out a finger and traced the curve of a tail, the pair of wicked hooked claws. “It’s a lobster.”
Dale sucked in a breath when she touched him, and his body went rigid. “Aye. It’s a lobstah.”
And his voice was pure Island.
Startled, she looked up at him. Trapped in the potent blue of his eyes, she didn’t move when he stepped closer, crowding her. Tempting her.
“You want to know who I am, Tansy?” He leaned close so he was almost whispering in her ear. “I’ll tell you who I’m not. I’m not a prep-school boy, and I’m not a gentleman.” She quivered as his words ran across her bare neck and heat coiled in her stomach.
She could turn her head just a fraction, and their lips would touch. She could run and never look back.
In the instant before she made the decision, he made it for her. He stepped away. His muscles were corded with tension and he gripped the banister like a lifeline. “Check the equipment, we leave in ten minutes. And remember, I’m not the Dale Metcalf you thought you knew. The next time I have you up against a wall, I’m not going to back away.”
Though the image churned her stomach into sharp, sizzling knots, Tansy rounded on him as he climbed the stairs. “Don’t even think you’re calling the shots here, Dale. I won’t stand for it. I could have died in that plane crash. Don’t you think that entitles me to know what the hell is going on?”
“No,” he snapped back from the second floor. “I think it entitles you to a one-way ticket home the second I can arrange it. I knew I shouldn’t have let you come with me.”
“Let me?” Her voice climbed several octaves, though she wasn’t sure why she was fighting the idea. She should want to escape the island. To escape Dale and the insane pull he exerted on her. “Let me? Nobody let me do anything, Dale. This is my job, and—”
The slam of the bathroom door cut her off.
“Oooh,” she said, popping the first of the cases open. “Jerk.”
All her life it had been this way. Her father had shared his wealth freely with his only child—as well as his mistresses—but he’d expected her to marry well and bring her husband into the family business. Her mother had nodded and smiled in public, then gone through his pockets at night, weeping over the matchbooks and hotel receipts.
For all Tansy knew, she still did.
They’d been horrified when Tansy had used part of her trust fund to pay for med school and donated the rest to HFH. She’d met Dale on her first assignment. He’d shoved a field pack at her and said, “Dale Metcalf. Glad to have you here. There are two little girls trapped under a beam in the second house on the right. Don’t slow me down.”
And though she’d later learned—or thought she had—that he came from the same social stratum as her parents, Dale had never coddled her, never expected any less of her than he did from the male doc tors. At first, it had been a relief. Then an annoyance when she realized it was because he never let anyone past the brittle outer shell of false charm.
Never let anyone inside.
“Well,” she muttered, glancing again at the dark squares of wood on the walls, wondering what story the missing pictures might have told. “I’m inside. Sort of. Now what the hell do I do?”
“Is this a private conversation, or may I intrude?”
Tansy screeched and spun toward the voice, jerking her hands into the attack position she’d been taught before her first overseas assignment. Go for the eyes and the crotch, the instructor’s voice shouted in her head. Use any weapon you can find!
The stranger stumbled back a pace and held his hands up. “Whoa, whoa! Easy there.”
She froze, vibrating with a tension she hadn’t cons
ciously recognized. Then again, her reaction was understandable. Alice had fallen down the rabbit hole, into the ocean, and come out somewhere on an island populated by Dale Metcalf clones. It hadn’t been a banner day up to this point. Considering their next stop was a makeshift clinic where people were dying of a nonfatal disease, she had little hope of it improving.
Especially not with a stranger standing in the kitchen.
She glared at the tall, silver-haired man, and was almost surprised to see that his eyes were brown, not blue. She relaxed a fraction, though she kept her weight on the balls of her feet as she’d been taught. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
The water cut off upstairs. She raised her voice and called, “Dale? We have company.”
The stranger’s eyes glinted with approval. “Smart of you, though not necessary. I know you’re not alone. I’ve come to give you and Dale a ride to the clinic.” He held out a hand. “I’m Walter Churchill.”
Of all the characters she’d met so far in this not-quite-Wonderland, Churchill was the biggest surprise. Cultured, elegant, and turned out in a charcoal suit and burgundy tie, he would have been right at home in one of the chichi clubs in the Theater District near Boston General. He also acted as though she should know him.
Then again, she probably would know him if Dale had told her the truth about his past.
Stifling the flash of resentment, she shook the proffered hand. “Dr. Tansy Whitmore. Pleased to meet you.” I think.
Then she heard movement on the stairs behind her and Dale’s quiet, level voice. “Churchill.”
She glanced back and her mouth dried to dust when the sight of Dale dressed in jeans and a homespun sweater drove home just how strange a situation she was in. The borrowed denim clung to his long thighs and lean calves, and rode low at his flat waist. He cocked a hip against the stair handrail and fixed the older man with a look. “How did you get in here?”
A parade of emotions passed across Churchill’s face, too quick, too deep for Tansy to read. Finally, he sighed and said, “The kitchen door was open, so I let myself in. I’ve never needed an invitation before.”
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