Spirit Lake

by Christine DeSmet

  “No. I'm afraid Stephanie was what I wasn't."

  “A responsible, upstanding citizen?"

  “Sounds like your daddy's words."

  Laurel shuddered, but turned to him, sighing when recalling her father railing at her about Cole back then. “What's wrong in wanting, no, expecting more than just hearing you'd called a couple of times? Then nothing?"

  He rose and hobbled over to her until he blocked out the sun. “Whenever I made those phone calls your father got on the line,” he muttered, “and told me to quit bothering you."

  She stood in his shadow, shivering, angry, stricken by all the news, the flashbacks bursting like bombs in her head ... and a man standing before her she didn't recognize except for those deep, dark eyes.

  With a finger, he tipped her chin up. A bolt of heat shocked her from head to toe and back again. When had he gotten so tall, and even more dangerous looking? The year after he left? Or yesterday, just to niggle her with a giant ruse, another prank?

  “Hey,” he said, his voice husky, “I never wanted to hurt you."

  Finding it impossible to breathe with him touching her, she pulled away. “What you didn't want was me. Why can't you say it instead of talking about ‘what was best for me’ as if I were your child? I was your ... lover."

  She wanted to swallow back the word. A knot had its way in her stomach. Because of him, she'd made choices to avoid putting her heart in vulnerable situations. And here he stood again.

  He looked different, standing there patiently. Could she pretend he wasn't the same old trouble?

  Could she believe anything he'd just told her?

  She picked up her supplies again and headed toward her boat, weary, wanting to escape to the safety of her cabin across the bay. “Excuse me, but I have things to do."

  “Laurel?"

  The languid way her name rolled off his tongue in a husky whisper halted her in her tracks. Hearing him call to her had once signaled joy. Now, he offered nothing but confusion. She kept her back to him, afraid of looking into his mesmerizing eyes, afraid he might read the secrets of her new life and be disappointed in her. Maybe angry with her own betrayal of him. “I can't get involved in whatever you're doing here."

  “I could use your help."

  Anger sparked within her again. She faced him, throwing her shoulders back. “No. You're not going to use me. Not anymore."

  When she began walking away, she heard him shuffling through the weeds after her. “Laurel, wait."

  She picked up her pace, fear riddling her.

  Then she heard him stumble. He spilled out a string of expletives that echoed across the clearing.

  “Cole?” She swung around, saw the genuine pain wrinkling his whiskery face and brow, and went to him. His injuries worried her all over again, despite her resolve. Worry and tend—a reflex.

  He lay in a heap, face contorted, smile now a grimace. Her makeshift bandage—her undershirt—had worked loose under his pant's leg, exposing his calf. All her experience with animals didn't prepare her for the fiery red and mottled skin swollen with infection. Cole was a strong man; he couldn't be this vulnerable. The realization stole her breath.

  Gulping, she asked, “What happened to you?"

  “Mike was murdered,” he grunted, closing his dark eyes against pain.

  “Murdered?” It lanced a shiver up and down her spine. Or was this one of his acts?

  He opened one eye against the relentless sunshine, and she couldn't mistake the tortured look. “I buried Mike, Laurel. My brother is gone.” She watched him torturing a hand into a fist. “Now I'm the prey."

  His eyes took on the soulful, instinctual desperation she'd seen in the yellow-tinged eyes of a live wolf caught in a trap, a powerful animal rendered helpless. Needy. She believed him, but that didn't help her nerves. They turned to ice with fear.

  She felt herself being sucked in here, too. Her heart flailed against him as if she were thrashing to save herself from drowning in the lake. “You? The prey? How do you know?"

  “The killer's my boss."

  “What?!"

  “Unique downsizing concept. Instead of firing me, he decided to fire at me."

  When she glowered at him, he added, “Help me, Laurel Lee."

  A hitch in her heartbeat gave her pause.

  Nobody had called her that since he had, long ago. Laurel Lee. In the meadow. Their meadow. The shrine to so much. Too much.

  Against her better judgment, she lowered a plank across the moat of their history. “Let me see that leg. And then I want you to get the hell out of here and never come back."

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  AFTER LAUREL finished ripping away the T-shirt bandage, she split the seam of Cole's pant's leg up to his knee to gain easier access to the raw flesh of his calf. A huge, festering wound threaded from the front to the back, threatening her with nausea.

  “Cole, you need hospital treatment."

  A hand snaked up and gripped her upper arm. “I can't risk being found out. I mean it, Laurel. Some bum with a ripped up leg with a bullet in it sounds like local front-page news to me."

  Her pulse quickened under his grip. “Then I'll bring a doctor here."

  “All it takes is one slip, and I'm dead. My son will never see me again. You hear me?"

  Like talons his fingers dug into her, frightening her more. A shudder thundered through her. His son. How could he be involved in such danger?

  “Don't, Cole. You're scaring me."

  “I mean to. The man after me doesn't care who gets in his way. Listen to me or you'll get hurt."

  “I don't take orders from the likes of you.” All she wanted, was to run from him. Staring him down, she attempted to quell her ragged breathing, to no avail.

  But something in his dark eyes twitched, and he let go of her to lay back in the grass, groaning. “Just take out the damn bullet. Now."

  “I told you, I don't know if I can. You need to be in a hospital."

  “You told me you doctor animals."

  “All I have in the kit is a short scalpel and a tweezers. I can lance it, but I can't go digging around for a bullet—"

  “You're stalling, Laurel Lee. Give me the thing."

  Laurel Lee. Her heartbeat pulsated wildly. How dare he call her the endearment that used to make her giggle when he shouted silly limericks and rhymes. Laurel Lee, come with me. How dare he use it to attempt to get his way now, to make her stay by him.

  He lunged for the first-aid kit, terrifying her. Shoving it out of his reach, she suffered the threat of his narrowing eyes, and snapped, “Don't force your danger on me, not after all these years of nothing between us."

  He didn't flinch. “I have no choice."

  Their gazes locked, nerves fraying, the breeze rattling the tops of the brown, dried grass against his shoulders. A crow cawed, as if to warn her to send him away. Soon. Before his gaze saw what lay in the bottom of the well inside her soul. Her own secrets. “I'll see what I can do."

  He nodded, a grin of relief nudging the wide, firm mouth. “I never would have thought you the doctoring kind."

  “Why not?” Her fingers quaked when she considered her task of cutting into Cole. Her Cole.

  “You could never sit still for long."

  “Neither could you,” she said, pushing her palm against his chest. To her surprise, he obeyed and laid back in the grass.

  “You used to fidget when I took you to the drive-in."

  “It's long closed.” She grimaced at the sore leg.

  “Too bad. I would have liked to do that again—"

  “You're not staying that long,” she said, her heart racing. He couldn't stay. He just could not.

  “And you drummed your fingers on the restaurant table because I ate too slowly."

  The small talk was getting on her nerves. She reached for her scalpel and huddled over his leg. “I did it to bug you. You always ordered two desserts. No girl in her right mind could eat that much and not beco
me wide as a barn."

  “Not you, Laurel Lee. You had those skinny long legs—"

  “Will you shut up, please.” Now she was the one with the fever, her fingers trembling as she gently explored the mottled flesh, trying to find the entry point of the bullet. But the thought niggled her: He remembered those little things about them back then. A feathery warmth tugged at her.

  “This is bad, Cole. I shouldn't try this. And you shouldn't want me to. Grab some courage and common sense and get to a hospital."

  Popping up to his elbows, he spat through gritted teeth, “I don't give a damn about courage. Mike's play at being captain courageous got him killed. Just do it. All I want is justice."

  Justice? It stunned her. It's what she'd dreamed of getting from him for years. The same reckless Cole still lurked under this almost unrecognizable taller, more muscular version of the man she'd fallen in love with once. Now he called recklessness, justice? Maybe he deserved the pain she was about to inflict, at his own insistence.

  Sucking in a steadying breath, she poised the scalpel, her other hand gripping his cool, tanned calf muscle.

  To his credit, he barely flinched when she lanced the wound. But when she wiped away festering pus and blood with a towel, making him roll over slightly to slosh disinfectant quickly behind, he howled like a dog hit by a car. “Yeoooowww, woman! Have mercy!"

  “I was beginning to think you weren't human."

  “Got the bullet yet?"

  A sickly chill trickled through her. “Still in there."

  “Get it, Laurel Lee."

  She needed him fixed up and out of her life before the bad memories—and pain—began to thunder back. She knew they would, given time.

  She plunged deep into the cut with a tweezers.

  “Woman, what the—"

  With a great sense of relief, and with the breeze cooling her perspiring forehead, she pried open one of his fists and plunked a ragged, bloody pellet into his palm.

  He lolled back on the grass, still wincing. “Thank you. I think."

  “You're welcome,” she said, relief crawling through her.

  She couldn't take her eyes off his whiskery jawline, or the firm muscles of his neck leading like steel bands to the juncture with his shoulders. Her lips parted, tingling, remembering how tentatively she'd kissed him once upon a time in the hollow of his neck. How they'd lay in grass just like this, pointing out faces in the clouds. She realized, deep down, she longed to taste his skin, his firm mouth, to lay there beside him. To compare the sensations. Then and now.

  When she picked up her only needle and began poking at his flesh to suture, he cursed, “Nurse Nightmare, what tool is that? A pitchfork?"

  “I usually use these on raccoons, possums and dogs. Of course, they're laid on the bench in the animal shed and knocked out with medication or tied down."

  “Sounds positively comfy."

  “I'll only take a couple of necessary stitches here. You need major human antibiotics and another go at those stitches with more appropriate equipment."

  “Your equipment's fine, doc."

  Heat flashed like last night's storm across her cheeks. “Your equipment could find itself out of order if blood poisoning sets in. You might do well to listen to me."

  “Thanks, doc. Your bedside manner's improving. I'll write a letter recommending you get a raise."

  His mirth and cockeyed smile pierced a part of her heart she'd closed years ago. But she refused to trust anything about him. Quickly grabbing the T-shirt and what little tape she had left in her kit, she began securing the T-shirt and a towel over the wound by winding the tape over it and around his calf.

  “It'll hurt for a few days, even a week or two,” she said, her fingers trembling under his watchful gaze.

  “You've got a tender touch,” he mused. “Always had."

  The tape slipped from her hands, and she had to retrieve it from the grass. Her heartbeat sped up. “I have to go into town today. Want me to pick up anything for you? Food to replenish that pack before you move on?"

  “Don't bother. I've got some dried soups."

  “That's all? You expect to heal this thing on the strength of dried soup? You're pitiful, Cole, definitely no common sense."

  Pushing her hands away, he finished the taping job himself. “So I'm a loser. Isn't that what your daddy predicted of me? He'd love to see me finally get that shotgun blast he was thinking about. To protect his lovely daughter."

  The derision stilled the breeze.

  Struggling up to one knee, he reached for his socks hanging on the nearby weeds. When he writhed in pain, her instincts made her snatch them from his fumbling hands.

  She thrust him unceremoniously back onto the grass, and plunged to her knees at his feet, already readying the sock, her stomach knotting. “Damn you, Cole. If I have to dress you to get you away from me for good, I will!"

  His sharp whistle stopped her as he sat up. “That's almost like the old Laurel Lee! Even had a cuss word in there."

  Breathless, flushed with embarrassment, she didn't dare look him in the eye. She started nudging the sock over the first row of toes. “I'm sorry for raising my voice again."

  “Hey, don't think of it. You're right. I come back like some ghost. You have a right to be upset and raise a voice at me."

  There he went again, getting all polite after the storm, tossing her emotions all over the place. And she was buying into it! She yearned to push him away, to pay him back for leaving her. Pulling the sock over his ankle, her fingers grazed his steely calf muscles with their springy hair. Oh, he was real, all right. The raw maleness of him sent sparks right up her arms.

  His chuckle caught her off guard.

  “What's so amusing now?” she charged.

  “Remember how we'd dress each other after a good swim in the pond?"

  With heat scissoring through her again, she handed him his other sock. “Don't go down memory lane with me."

  He shoved the sock right back. “Please? My leg's throbbing. I don't want to wrestle to reach down to my ugly toes."

  Against her better judgment, she grabbed the sock, then slipped it on him. “They're not so ugly."

  “You always called my big toe Mr. Potato Head."

  “Did not,” she said, smiling, despite herself.

  “Didn't you stub yours on the new sidewalk outside the hardware store one day? The owner came out and yelled at us—"

  “At you, for writing dirty words in the dust on his window."

  “And your bare foot slipped off the bike pedal."

  “At least we escaped."

  “Blood all over the sidewalk. You put mud on your toe to stop the bleeding. A doctor in the making."

  Her eyes found his and that warm summer's day. Her throat constricted. “The new owner is a guy about our age, in his 30s, Gary Christianson. Keeps his windows clean."

  Groping for a safer subject, she sat back in the grass and asked, “Who'd want to harm Mike? He was always so quiet and polite, knew what he wanted out of life, even as a teenager."

  “Nothing like me?"

  Shrugging, she drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around her knees to set her chin there, following his pained gaze to Spirit Lake, seeing the anger darken him.

  After a shudder, she asked, “Who's this man, Cole? The murderer?"

  “My brother and I worked for Marco Rojas, an entrepreneur from Venezuela.” He spelled out the name. “He hated it when people didn't know enough about Spanish to know the ‘J’ is pronounced silently like an ‘h.’ ‘Ro-hoss the boss’ became our mantra."

  “So you worked for an egomaniac, but a very rich one."

  “Always suspicious and jealous of people with the same kind of money."

  “Afraid perhaps, that they'd find out he was a fraud?"

  He harumphed. “I hadn't thought of it that way, but perhaps."

  “Which makes him very dangerous. Like a rabid animal pushed into a corner,” she offered. “Where'd ‘Ro-Hoss’ get h
is big bucks?"

  “We've been lucky, hauling up a lot of pieces that museums and collectors pay big for."

  Laurel couldn't deny the thrilling sense of awe threading through her. “You're a modern day explorer. A Cousteau, a Titanic raiser."

  “Don't make it sound too romantic. The flip side of that was our racing. Mike lost an eye a few years back. Got hit by another boat when his split apart. I was ahead of them, and didn't see it happen. And now this."

  Her insides lurched for him.

  He continued, “Mike began running a Miami marina for Rojas while I continued racing the hydroboats. Mike managed all the books. He knew everything."

  “Too much?"

  “Enough to make Mike come up here and hide something about Rojas's operations."

  Shivering, she glanced over her shoulder at the old place. The idea of someone lurking about inside the clapboard hulk without her knowledge spooked her. Then a new thought struck: what if she'd razed the place already, destroying Cole's precious evidence? She shuddered to think how that would have left things for Cole.

  “When was your brother here?"

  “Almost two weeks ago now. When he returned, he and Rojas didn't see eye to eye on anything anymore. That's when..."

  When Cole's tanned face turned ashen, she hurried to him, feeling his forehead, her heart pounding. “You should be lying down and resting. I just put you through a lot with that scalpel."

  Cole swiped up her hands, clutching them for dear life in his fists, stilling her breathing again.

  His gaze scorched her. “Forget about my health. Listen to me,” he hissed, shaking her captured wrists to punctuate his words. “He's dead because of me. I was so damn angry that Mike wasn't telling me what was going on. He even warned me, said he thought Rojas was involved in something no good, that he was going to prove it.

  “We argued, right there on the dock before a race. I insisted on knowing right there what he'd found out. Mike told me to shut up. I'd never seen him like that. We always shared everything. But not this for some reason."

  “Maybe he didn't have all the evidence he thought he needed,” she offered.

  “But I kept badgering him. Made a scene.” His chest heaved up and down, his breathing so fiercely charged it felt as if he'd suck her in. “And to shut me up he took off in the speedboat I was about to warm up. He never did things like that. Nothing careless in his whole life. He was a good man. A good father, too."