Castaway Cove

by JoAnn Ross

  And, as Sedona so succinctly put it, get herself laid.

  36

  Mac had never had sex with a friend before. It wasn’t that he didn’t have female friends. Despite radio being a male-dominated business, especially at the deejay level, which was essentially a boys’ club, he’d become friends with women he worked with. But he’d always drawn a line in the sand. On one side were friends. On the other were lovers.

  So now he was the one pushing to rub out that line with Annie. And, from the kisses they’d shared and the fact that she’d invited him over to her house, in the middle of the day, it suggested she was down with that.

  He wasn’t real sure it was the best idea he’d ever had. That line had always served him well. Kept his life from getting messy.

  “Yeah, nothing messy about your life,” he muttered as he whisked eggs in a bowl.

  His dad, who usually made breakfast, had gotten a call from the trauma center at the Oregon Health and Science Univeristy, where he had practiced and taught for years, that they’d received three pediatric trauma cases, two with multiple internal injuries, from a tractor-trailer/minivan collision. If the legendary Dr. Buchanan would only agree to scrub in, they’d send a helicopter to fly him to Portland.

  Needless to say, he’d left like a shot, making Mac wonder if there were times his father missed the pace of life-and-death surgery, the same way Mac occasionally found himself missing the adrenaline rush of going outside the wire to play deejay for troops out there in no-man’s-land at remote Forward Operating Bases.

  Although he was glad that those children would have a better chance at life with his father wielding the trauma room scalpel, it did leave Mac with a dilemma about how to take his grandfather to the memorial service for Ollie, and have a late lunch, or hopefully more, with Annie, while taking care of Emma.

  He was still pondering that problem, whisking Emma’s scrambled eggs in the pan while the toast was browning, when a blood-chilling cry came from outside.

  He raced out the front door, toward the sound, and saw Emma, still in her nightgown, at the bottom of the inclined driveway with a metallic pink bike lying on top of her. Although he was running as fast as he could, time took on a slow-motion aspect that had him feeling as if he was slogging through knee-deep quicksand while his heart was beating as fast as it had that time his Humvee had come under fire on the road to Kandahar.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?”

  Cool move, Culhane. The harsh tone, born from sheer fear at seeing her arm twisted in a way no one’s arm should be bent, started the tears flowing. It also sent a vision of another blue-uniformed bent arm that he didn’t want to think about flashing through his mind.

  “I’m sorry, baby.” He carefully lifted the bike off her, then crouched down beside her. “I didn’t mean to yell. Don’t worry. Daddy’s here.” Looking at her arm, he wished his dad was here, too. Of all the damn days for him to be away . . .

  “I fell off my bike,” she whimpered, the screams having stopped the minute he’d shot through the door like a rocket.

  “I see that. But it’s going to be okay.”

  “My arm hurts.”

  “We’re going to get that fixed.” Fortunately, from what he could see, there were no bones sticking through the skin. Which was a good sign. Right?

  “Did you hit your head?”

  She nodded. Then began crying. “It hurts. But not like Poppy’s.”

  Christ. What was he going to do about Charlie?

  First things first.

  By now, Jackie Chamberlain, Mac’s next-door neighbor, who’d been on her way to her law office, had come out, seen the situation, and crossed their adjoining lawns.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she said, lifting her pencil skirt to crouch down beside Mac. As she took a tissue out of her bag and wiped at his daughter’s wet cheeks, a guy part of him, on some distant level, noticed her attractive legs. The dad part of him was too focused on Emma to feel anything but relief that a woman was on hand to help with the tears. “Looks like you took a tumble.”

  “I f-f-fell,” Emma said.

  “I can see that.” She brushed Emma’s blond bangs from her forehead. “I’m going to stay here with you while your daddy goes and gets a pillow for your head, and calls an ambulance,” she said with a look toward Mac.

  “Nine-one-one,” he agreed as the fear fog cleared from his head. “I’ll be right back, baby.”

  He grabbed the pillow from his bed even as he dialed.

  “They’re going to be here in a sec,” he assured Emma as he slipped the pillow carefully beneath her head. He’d witnessed neck trauma before, and since she’d lifted her head when he’d come rushing out the door, he was pretty sure that part of her was okay.

  “I’m going to get to ride in an ambulance?” she asked, her sobs decreasing to hitched breaths.

  “Yeah. But it’ll be okay,” he assured her. “Even fun. And I’ll be right there with you.”

  “Okay,” she said, and promptly threw up on his cross-trainers.

  Another advantage of living in a town the size of Shelter Bay was that the ambulance showed up in less than three minutes, lights flashing.

  “That was fast,” Jackie Chamberlain said.

  “We ran the red light.” The EMT jumped from the driver’s seat and joined Mac and the lawyer next to Emma. “Isn’t that the cutest nightgown?” she said. “My daughter Dani has the very same one. She loves that movie.”

  “M-M-Merida’s the bravest princess of all,” Emma said, still stuttering with a combination of what Mac figured was fear and pain as she wiped her runny nose with the sleeve of her good arm.

  Damn. He should’ve thought to grab a handful of Kleenex. Or at least a roll of toilet paper. Yet more Dad fail.

  “I know. And today, I think you’re probably the bravest girl in all of Shelter Bay,” the woman soothed as she ran her purple-gloved fingers over Emma’s head, and down her neck, across her shoulders, frowning as she took in the awkward bend to the right arm. “Let’s just put a splint on your arm, okay? Then we’ll give you a ride to the hospital.”

  “O-k-kay.”

  Not wanting to get in the way, although it took every bit of restraint he possessed, Mac stood back, letting the two EMTs lift his daughter onto the gurney and slide her into the ambulance.

  He was about to climb in with her, when Emma lifted her head, and said, “I need you to take a picture.”

  “What?”

  “Ms. Shepherd says that scrapbooks are a good way for being able to look back on your life. So I want this picture for the book I’m going to make.”

  He knew that telling her that it was more important to get the hell to the hospital would only waste more time, so he pulled out his iPhone and snapped the shot.

  “Let me see,” she insisted, sounding, he thought, a bit like the royal princess of Shelter Bay.

  He showed her the photo.

  “Okay. That’s a good one.” Despite the pain Emma had to be feeling, her lips curved upward in a smile. “Peggy is going to be so jealous.”

  37

  Annie was getting ready to leave for Memories on Main when Mac called.

  “I’m at the hospital and need some help,” he said. “And you’re the first person I thought to call, but if you can’t do it, I’ll understand, so don’t feel obligated—”

  His voice was stressed, ragged, and harried. Which meant he sounded nothing like himself.

  “Just tell me,” she said, her concern escalating to alarm. “Are you all right?”

  “Other than about to go insane, I’m fine. Emma fell and maybe broke her arm. Or maybe just her wrist. Hell, I don’t know.” She could picture him thrusting his hand through his dark hair.

  “Oh, no!” Which was bad, but not as bad as she’d first thought from his voice.

  “And
she might have a concussion.”

  “Poor little thing. What can I do?”

  “Just like that? You’re not going to ask what I’m going to ask?”

  “Friends don’t have to ask,” she said. “What do you need? Do you want me to come to the hospital?”

  “No. I need you to go over to the house. My dad’s house. Well, I guess it’s mine and Emma’s now, too, but it used to be Pops’—”

  “Mac.” He was coming as close to babbling as a guy with as much testosterone as he had could get. Which was, again, as far from the cool, easygoing Mac Culhane as she’d witnessed thus far. “I know the house. Is your father there?”

  “No. That’s the damn thing. He’s off doing emergency surgery in Portland. So”—he took a deep, ragged breath—“I need you to go get Charlie’s uniform, which is hanging on the closet door in my bedroom. I ironed it this morning. Then take it to Still Waters. I’ll call Analise and let her know you’re coming and she can help him get dressed.”

  “No problem. How will I get in?”

  “I left my key under the mat.”

  “That’s the first place thieves look,” she said before thinking. Obviously burglary was not his main concern at the moment.

  “If someone breaks in and empties the place out, I’ll just have Kara arrest them and shoot them. And I hate to ask, but I need something else.”

  “Anything.”

  “I have to take Pops to Ollie’s memorial service by one. Fortunately, it’s looking like they’re going to be done with X-ray pretty soon; then, because the doctor who’ll put the cast on is a veteran, he’s going to move her to the head of the line. I think if nothing else goes wrong, I can take Emma home, then make it to Still Waters in time to get him to Genarro’s for the service, but—”

  “I’ll go back to the house and wait for you to get home with Emma,” Annie offered without hesitation. “Then I’ll stay with her while you take Charlie to Ollie’s memorial.”

  “Thanks.” The single word was said with a huge rush of relief. “I owe you. Big time.”

  “You don’t owe me anything. As I said, that’s what friends are for. Now, go be with your daughter.”

  As she drove over to the Buchanan house, Annie thought how, although she dreaded the idea of the little girl in pain, Mac’s daughter’s injury had just shifted her relationship with him yet again. It had also deepened it. Which could be a problem, but she decided to take Sedona’s advice about living in the now and worry about that later.

  She found both the key and the uniform, just where he’d told her they would be. The house, while tidy, showed none of the warmth of a woman’s touch. As she walked to and from the bedroom, she mentally added some pillows on the oversized leather couch, hung some pictures on the bare walls, set a few decorative pieces on the fireplace mantel, and put a jar of wildflowers on the heavy wooden kitchen table that she could see from the family room.

  After calling Kim to tell her that she was taking the entire day off, not just the afternoon, Annie drove to Still Waters and dropped off the uniform with the nurse, who assured her that Charlie would be ready when Mac arrived to pick him up.

  Since Emma, whose X-rays showed a broken wrist and a wrenched, but not dislocated shoulder, still hadn’t begun to get her cast made, Annie took a quick detour to the shop, where she picked up some stickers, an empty scrapbook, and papers for the little girl to record her misadventure.

  Although she’d offered to give them a ride home from the hospital, Mac had told her that a nurse he was friends with had offered to drive them.

  Tamping down an unexpected and decidedly unwanted twinge of jealousy at that news, and trying not to wonder exactly how friendly Mac and the nurse happened to be, Annie managed to get back to the house five minutes before they arrived in an SUV driven by a thirtysomething guy sporting a Marine haircut. Annie knew that many former medics were working as nurses these days, so when Mac’s nurse friend turned out to be male, she felt a little foolish for having jumped to the wrong conclusion. It also brought home the point that she cared about this man more than she’d wanted to admit. Even to herself.

  Emma, despite sporting a cast on her wrist, which was in a sling, and bandages on both knees and elbows, seemed to be taking the accident in stride.

  “I was riding my bike with no hands, like Trey Douchett was doing the other day when he rode past the park, and I fell and broke my wrist,” she said as Mac carried her into the house. Her voice was slurred, as if she’d been on a bender. “And it hurt a lot.”

  “I can imagine it does,” Annie said, thinking that Trey, being all boy, had probably been showing off for the girls at the park.

  Mac had decided that his daughter would stay in his room, because it had a flat-screen TV. Since he had his arms full, Annie pulled back the charcoal gray sheets.

  “The doctor gave me a shot,” Emma said. “So it wasn’t too bad. And I was really brave, wasn’t I, Daddy?” She looked up at him as he laid her on the bed, treating her as if she were a piece of delicate crystal that he was afraid of breaking.

  His face was still an ashen shade of gray, revealing that although Emma seemed to be doing amazingly well, Mac obviously hadn’t entirely recovered from the experience.

  “You sure did, sweetie,” he said. When his lips curved in what appeared to be more grimace than smile, Annie’s heart turned as gooey as a chocolate-filled truffle. “You were like a super-heroine.”

  “Like Merida,” Emma said. “She’s a princess,” she told Annie.

  “I know. And, as it happens, I just happen to have a stamp and some Merida stickers I thought you might like on your cast. To let everyone know how brave you are.”

  “Really?” The resiliency of children was remarkable. “Can we decorate it now?”

  “You need to rest,” Mac said, shooting Annie a look of desperation.

  “Your daddy’s right.” Annie leaned down and brushed the little girl’s blond bangs back, revealing the Barbie Band-Aid adorning her forehead. “Why don’t you take a little nap, and—”

  “I’m not sleepy,” she insisted, fighting it even as her eyelids were trying to drift shut. “It’s not nighttime yet.”

  “I can read you a story,” Annie suggested.

  “Or I could watch Brave,” she said.

  Mac briefly closed his eyes. Annie had the feeling he was counting to ten.

  “That’s a good idea,” he said when he opened them again. “There may still be a line in it you haven’t memorized.”

  “Daddy was just joking,” Emma informed Annie. “I know all the lines by heart.”

  “I’m not a bit surprised. But I haven’t seen it, so this will be a treat for me.”

  Emma scooted over. “You can sit with me and we’ll watch it together.” She looked up at Mac, who still looked miserable. “Daddy, would you get Angus from my bed?” she asked. “That’s Merida’s faithful horse,” she told Annie. “I think it would be fun to have a horse, but Grandpa said it would be impractical to keep one in the backyard.”

  “I think it would,” Annie agreed as she sat on the edge of the bed. “Because horses need room to run.”

  “That’s what Grandpa said. But I don’t really want a horse. What I really, really want is a dog.”

  Her eyes, glazed from whatever medication they had given to her in the hospital, were limpid pools of blue as she looked up at her father. Then she whimpered, causing panic to flood into his dark eyes.

  “As soon as you get your cast off, we’ll go to Dr. Tiernan’s shelter and you can have any dog you want,” Mac said.

  “Really?” The little girl’s eyelids were getting heavier by the moment.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Not just someday, like you always say?”

  “As soon as you get your cast off,” he repeated. “The doctor said, since it’s just a crack, you s
hould be able to get it off in three to four weeks. Then you’ll be able to throw balls for a dog to fetch, and play tug-of-war.”

  “A dog.” She sighed happily. “When I fell down I thought that this was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. But I got to ride in an ambulance and the nice lady even turned on the siren,” she told Annie.

  “Cool,” Annie said.

  “It was.” Her eyes drifted all the way closed, but apparently her mouth hadn’t yet gotten the message that her brain was turning off for a while. “And everyone at the hospital was so nice. I got a lollipop and the man who took my X-ray printed out a copy for me.”

  Her blue eyes popped open again and she looked up at Mac. “Where is it?” Her voice held the first hint of panic Annie had heard.

  “I dropped the envelope on the couch on the way in,” he said. “I’ll go get it. “

  “Okay.”

  “We can put it in the scrapbook I brought you,” Annie said as Mac left the room, presumably to get the DVD and X-ray.

  “You brought a scrapbook, too? With papers and stuff?”

  “All kinds of papers and stuff.” Although she knew she was just getting in deeper, Annie brushed a kiss onto Emma’s satiny cheek. “We can look at it together later.”

  Emma wiggled into the sheets, as if barely able to keep from dancing. “This is my bestest day ever,” she said on a happy sigh.

  Then immediately fell asleep.

  The phone rang as Annie heard Mac come back toward the stairs.

  “What the hell?” His voice was loud enough to hear over Emma’s soft breathing.

  Moving as gingerly as she could, Annie climbed out of the bed and crept into the living room.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said.

  After hanging up without bothering to say good-bye, he scrubbed both hands down his already haggard face. “Fuck.” His broad shoulders slumped, as if suddenly weary of carrying the weight of both his grandfather and his injured daughter.

  “What’s happened?”