“A fawn?” he asked, though the deer didn’t have a white-spotted back like all the fawns he had ever seen.
She shook her head. “It’s a full-grown doe. See how rounded her belly looks? She’ll probably give birth in June or July. She’s part of a herd of key deer that comes to this end of the island to feed.”
Stuart had read about key deer in the in-flight magazine on the plane from Miami to Key West. They were a subspecies of the white-tailed deer and lived only in the lower Florida Keys. They were known to be rare, so he’d never thought he’d be lucky enough to see one.
The little doe, ethereal in the moonlight, lifted her delicate head and pricked her ears up, perhaps listening for their voices. She moved slightly, swaying along with the leaves. Transfixed by her beauty, neither Angel nor Stuart spoke. Soon the deer faded quietly into the shadows, leaving Angel and Stuart feeling calm and centered and bathed in a cool, comforting peace.
Angel turned to Stuart. “The scenery is one of the many benefits of living on this island,” she said, sliding her arms around him.
“It certainly is,” he said, looking only at her.
It seemed natural to kiss her, and so right. When he released her lips, thinking that this was the time to have a serious talk, to tell her that this had been a mistake that they could soon rectify, she shifted in his arms and drew him down on top of her in the bed. Her hair slid across his forearms like molten silk, and her eyes were lustrous and lit from within.
“All the bad things that happened to us before we met are behind us now, Stuart, can’t you see?” she said, and in that moment, he did see. But overlying it was his sense of shame at making her a part of his past when what he had been looking for was a future.
He started to shake his head no, but her hands came up to frame his face, capturing him, and she said urgently, “Make love to me, Stuart. Please?”
How could he refuse her anything when she had been so understanding and so kind? How could he refuse her when her body was naked beneath his and when all his senses, already primed by the fragile beauty of the little doe, were opening to take her in? Angel’s heart beat against his chest, he could feel it quickening, and before he knew it he had crushed his mouth against hers, had settled himself between her legs. He felt her hands pressing against the hard ridges of his back to urge him closer, and he reveled in her greediness for him. His own palpitating need rose within his chest, transmuting his mood into one in which nothing mattered but making her totally and completely his once again.
She was his wife. She was not some casual liaison. Even if they had decided to make a baby for all the wrong reasons, they were making love for reasons that were absolutely right. During his short time on Halos Island, their sense of mutual respect had blossomed and grown. Their lovemaking had to do not only with the powerful chemistry between them, but also with increasing tenderness and understanding, caring and friendship. It had to do with the fact that Angel McCabe was his wife and he had every right to comfort her in this way, as she did to comfort him. It had to do with love.
His heart shuddered against hers as he entered her. One thought emerged as his flesh welded to hers: love. He had been thinking that he loved his wife. How could he?
He couldn’t love anyone. He had killed the two people he’d loved most in the world.
No. He hadn’t. Fitz had killed them. Did that leave him free to love again? Did he dare to love anyone?
“Yes!” he cried as he poured himself into her, making himself part of her now and... Not forever. Would that be fair? He’d decided only minutes ago to leave before he created even more of a problem.
Leave? No way. Feeling her body throbbing beneath him, listening to the music of her breathing in his ear, feeling her moist lips pressed into his shoulder, knowing he was still a part of her even now when his body was subsiding, he knew he couldn’t leave her anytime soon. And if she became pregnant?
She would make him leave. It was in the contract. Why would she want to keep him around, him with his emotional baggage, when she could go back to being the way she was before, free to be herself on her lonely island?
He suddenly didn’t want Angel to get pregnant. And tonight, which was the height of her most fertile period, he had spilled himself into her without regard for what might happen.
He clutched her to him, thinking that he’d better get a grip on himself, both physically and emotionally. Even as they lay in each other’s arms, heart-to-heart, he knew he could not, in his present state of mind, allow himself to fall in love with Angel McCabe.
Chapter Eleven
In the morning, Angel was pale but determined.
“How would you feel about going to see your brother?” she asked after breakfast as they were cleaning up the kitchen.
“It isn’t even a remote possibility,” he said. “Unless I get an uncontrollable urge to bash his head in.”
“We know all about your uncontrollable urges,” Angel said slyly, swinging the dish towel at his legs. He sidestepped, hardly in the mood for her antics. She didn’t take the hint, swatting him with the towel anyway.
“I can’t go to see Fitz,” he said. “He’s avoided me ever since the sentencing. He has a wife I’ve never met and a child whose name I don’t even know.”
“All the more reason to go see him,” Angel said.
“Easy for you to say,” Stuart said sourly. “What do you propose I do, appear on his doorstep with a wedding present and a silver baby spoon? Monogrammed, perhaps, with the Adams family crest?”
Angel looked troubled. “If that’s standard procedure when visiting a new Adams niece or nephew, that’s what you should do,” she said.
“Standard procedure is notifying members of the family when a new niece or nephew is born. I didn’t receive any birth announcement from Fitz and his wife, whose name, as I recall from the story in the Boston Globe, might possibly be Jeanne,” he said, heavy on the sarcasm.
“So why do you think Fitz was ignoring you all the time you were teaching kids how to build boats?”
“Because he felt guilty, okay? As he should.”
“You’re going to be eaten up by hate, Stuart, you know that? Fitz has already destroyed a couple of years of your life. Are you going to allow him to destroy the rest of it?” Her hands were on her hips, her eyes flashing fire.
“Oh, you’re one to talk, all right,” he said. “You ran away to this godforsaken island to get away from your wrecked life, and you’re telling me how to live mine? Get real, Angel.” He started to walk out onto the screened porch to cool off, but she caught him by the shoulder and wrenched him around.
“Maybe I learned something by coming here, Stuart. Maybe you have something to learn, too.” Her voice was dangerously low.
He looked at her more closely. “Are you sure you feel all right? You look more tired than usual.”
She tipped her head back and looked at him. “I’m not the one who was hit on the head yesterday. You were. Are you sure it didn’t do more than bring back your memories of the accident? You’re acting awfully touchy.”
“I’m touchy,” he said. “Coming from you, that’s pretty good. What’s really bugging you, Angel?”
She stared at him. “You want a baby to replace the one you and Valerie were going to have. All that garbage about carrying on your family name was a bunch of baloney.”
“So isn’t that why you want a baby? To replace the one you lost?” He glared at her.
“I want a baby to mother,” she said. “I want the experience of rearing a child.”
“I suppose that sounds a hell of a lot more noble than replacing the baby you conceived when you were with another man.”
Her face fell, and her expression became somber. “We shouldn’t say these things to each other. No good can come of it,” she said.
“Maybe the things you’re saying are what you think I need to learn,” he said.
“No. The learning has to come from within yourself,” she said.
<
br /> “Great. And how does that happen?”
She inhaled deeply. “I don’t know how it will happen for you, Stuart. I only know that I figured out a lot of things by being by myself for a long time. What I learned, in case you’re interested, is that you can’t run away from your feelings. You can bury them, but they surface when you least want to think about them. I learned to be self-reliant. I decided that I have what it takes to rear a child by myself and that I didn’t want to wait to be a mother. That’s a lot of learning and growing, Stuart.”
He stared down at her, hearing her words but momentarily distracted by the thought that she looked as if she’d lost weight lately. There were hollows in her cheeks that he had never noticed before, and there were deep circles under her eyes. Well, neither of them had gone to sleep until late last night, and he probably looked pretty rugged himself.
“No one can minimize your accomplishments,” he said, because that was certainly true.
“Thanks for that, anyway,” she replied.
For an instant he wanted to reach out and caress the silky soft skin of her cheek. But he was still too angry with her for bringing up the things he didn’t want to think about.
“I’m out of here. I think I’ll go fishing,” he said tightly. He stomped across the porch and went out, slamming the screen door behind him.
On his way down the path, he thought that he might tell Angel that he was going to see Fitz, and then leave the island and do whatever he pleased. Go to New Zealand. Hop on a freighter to nowhere. But he didn’t want to leave the island. He wanted to stay near Angel. But, so far, she’d given no indication that she wanted him around permanently.
Nothing in life is permanent, buddy, he told himself as he swung a hand line off the dock. Especially when you keep screwing things up.
He sat staring down into the dark water lapping at the dock pilings. Was there a chance that Angel was right? That he should go see his brother?
His heart contracted at the thought. He couldn’t imagine seeing his brother face to face; it had been so long since he’d been cut out of the lives of everyone who was important to him—friends, family, colleagues and clients...and Fitz, who had deserted him when he most needed someone in his corner.
It wasn’t long before something tugged at his line, cutting his thoughts short. He pulled the fish in, cleaned it and took it back to the house. Angel wasn’t there. At loose ends, he sat down with his drafting supplies to look over his preliminary sketches of his friend Tom’s cabin cruiser. The design of a cabin cruiser, at least, was one thing that he was unlikely to botch. Which was more than he could say about other aspects of his life.
* * *
IN THE MEANTIME, Angel was hiding out in the west meadow, vomiting behind a palmetto tree.
She hated having morning sickness, hated the heaving of her stomach, hated the sour taste in her mouth afterward. She couldn’t imagine how she had so far succeeded in hiding her nausea from Stuart, who, despite being keyed into pregnancy in a way that few men were, didn’t recognize a pregnant woman when she was right under his nose.
After a while, Angel lay back in the tall grass, listening to bees buzzing in the flowers and the not-too-distant roar of the sea. The tiff with Stuart made her anxious, and she tried to forget it. All couples argued now and then. It didn’t mean anything. Or did it? Was he growing tired of her? Last night he had brought her to extraordinary peaks, again and again. Based on past experience, she thought it was probably the pregnancy that made her so sensitive, made her feel as if she wanted to make love over and over again, day and night. But she’d rather think it was Stuart.
She closed her eyes, picturing this husband of hers who was supposed to be a mere convenience. Stuart Adams had turned out to be more—much more—than that. As the days went by, she had learned what he was really like, and now she knew that he had brought a new and worthwhile dimension to her life.
He had made her try things she’d never done before, like sailing, which she could definitely learn to like a lot if given half a chance. He had made her experience sex in a different way, had given her a new and precious knowledge of herself. Yet she knew better than to think he would stay with her; she wasn’t part of his privileged world. She was only a humble scientist, happiest when she was with her bees.
She heard a rustle in the grass and, thinking it was Caloosa, kept her eyes closed and held out her hand. “Come here, you,” she said.
She was surprised when Stuart’s large hand enveloped hers. Her eyes flew open to see his face above her, and she struggled to a sitting position. Her stomach turned over, and she pressed against it with her other hand. Stuart didn’t notice.
He looked as if he were over their earlier misunderstanding. “I thought you were going to go fishing. Aren’t the fish biting today?” she said.
“I caught a nice big one.”
“Good. We’ll grill it for dinner.”
He hunkered down beside her. “Would you mind if I built a tree house in the branches of that low pine tree over there? For the baby?”
“It will be years, Stuart, before our baby will be able to climb a tree,” she said, touched nevertheless.
“I know I shouldn’t build the tree house until I at least know you’re pregnant. But until the baby is big enough to play in it, you could sit in it when you eat lunch out here. Later, you could put a cradle in it, where the baby could sleep while you’re working.”
“That’s a sweet idea, Stuart,” she said.
“I’ll build the tree house in the shape of a ship. Your view of the beach and the ocean beyond should be magnificent,” he said.
He had said nothing about being part of the scene. Why should he? He was probably more than ready to move on. At the thought of his leaving, her throat caught and she couldn’t speak.
“Angel, I’ve been thinking,” he said. He looked thoughtful and contrite.
Her heart almost stopped. He must be more upset than she had realized. He had been thinking...about leaving? She only looked at him, expecting the worst.
“I do want to go see Fitz. I have to confront him about what he did, or I’ll never get the anger out of my system. But I don’t want to go alone. I need moral support.”
Angel’s relief was so great that, for a moment, the world dimmed. He was only talking about his brother! He wasn’t going to tell her that he had decided to leave! But suddenly she knew what was coming next.
“Will you go with me to see Fitz, Angel?” he said, his eyes anxious.
She would do anything, anything at all, for him. And all he wanted was for her to accompany him to see Fitz.
“When?” She barely managed to get the word out.
“As soon as we can. I know he’ll be on Nantucket now. For as long as I can remember, we always went in June.”
Angel focused on a bee burrowing into a red flower in the distance. Overhead, the palmetto fronds rustled in the breeze.
“I’ll go,” she said, and Stuart squeezed her hand.
He stood up. “I’ll ask Toby to arrange for the tickets. Thank you, Angel.” He stood staring down at her for a long moment, taking in the way she was lying spread out in the sun.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, almost to himself.
She didn’t even deny it, as she once would have. She was glad he found her beautiful. She was glad she was his wife.
“Thank you, Angel,” he said. “For everything.”
She only smiled, wishing he would kiss her, but he was so preoccupied that he started back toward the path without even touching her.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that he wanted her with him when he went to see his brother. Her heart sang with the knowledge that he needed her.
Stuart showed no signs of a similar euphoria as he walked away. Even though his newly regained memory had absolved him of the crime he’d never committed, he looked as if he carried the world on his shoulders.
While she, she thought unhappily as she sat up and felt
her stomach churn, probably carried the world in her stomach. Or at least it felt like it these days.
* * *
ANGEL held Stuart’s hand throughout the bumpy flight. Immediately after takeoff, she reached for the barf bag in the pocket on the seat in front of them.
“Does the turbulence bother you?” he asked, and she nodded as if she didn’t trust herself to speak.
He reached up to adjust the air nozzle so that cool air blew on her face, and after that she gripped his hand less tightly. Before long, they had passed the long hooked arm of Cape Cod curving into the Atlantic Ocean and were swooping in for a landing at the little airport on the island of Nantucket.
As they rode through the quaint narrow streets, he was surprised to find that Nantucket, although as charming as ever, had lost its attraction for him. The houses with their steep roofs seemed harsh and unwelcoming; the sand was an unattractive flat beige after the shimmering pink sand of Halos Island. He stared out the window, feeling increasingly apprehensive as the taxi conveyed them to the old beach house where Adamses had summered for generations.
He had almost forgotten that Angel was with him. “What if Fitz isn’t there?” she asked. They were the first words she’d uttered since they’d entered the taxi.
“He will be,” Stuart said.
“He doesn’t know we’re going to pay him a visit.”
Stuart shrugged. He didn’t want Fitz to know they were coming; he wanted to take him by surprise.
Angel subsided into an uneasy silence as the group of houses that included the Adams place loomed in the distance. Stuart tried smiling at her for reassurance, and she smiled back, but not with much enthusiasm. For a moment, he saw her through new eyes: She looked lovely. She had worn a soft, swingy dress in a golden shade of yellow, and she had caught her hair at the nape of her neck with a neat tortoiseshell clip. With her profusion of pale hair smoothed back from her face, her eyes took on new importance. They were enormous, the pupils large with...what? Worry? Fear? If so, it was all on his account. His heart warmed to her. He could never thank her enough for accompanying him on this unpleasant errand and for letting him know that whatever happened, she was on his side.
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