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“Cutthroat. I know. But I don’t give a rat’s ass. These people deserve every damn thing we can throw at them.”
Johnny studied him. “Is that why you bailed on Matteo and Matteo? Because you thought we were getting too ruthless?”
“I didn’t bail. I wanted something different, with a different outlook.” One that offered a slower pace of life, and saw the heart of a client’s problems, not the size of his wallet.
“And you’ll be paid in peanuts for your effort,” Johnny grumbled. “I’ve done some checking of my own. That island is inhabited by a bunch of hippie offspring.”
Rogan thought of Lee, the most structured person he’d met in years. “They’re not all loosey-goosey, John,” he said in defense of her. “However, that’s not the issue here.” Spinning on his heel, he paced the length of the windows. “These SOBs are hiding something. I want to know what it is, and I want to know yesterday.”
Johnny’s eyes were grim—and sad. “We may never know why that plane went down, Ro. Let’s take the deal and put an end to this.”
Rogan clenched his fists. “There’ll never be an end because the other half of my family will never come back.”
“Okay. Okay.” Elbows to knees, Johnny pushed both hands into his dark hair and gusted a sigh. “I may have a lead on another avenue, anyway. But let me sort through it first.”
“Fine. Keep me posted.”
“Always.” His brother’s mouth curved. “Now, tell me, how’s life down on the farm?”
Rogan returned to the sofa, stretched his legs. The mere mention of his new property calmed him. “House should be finished by the end of next week.”
“Dan’s excited?”
“Oh, yeah. We take daily treks to see the foal.”
“Still can’t believe you’re doing this. An island for God’s sake, never mind a farm.”
“It’s what Daniel needs.” Truth was, he’d checked out Firewood Island because Sophie had adored the classic story, Misty of Chincoteague. Sophie who, after reading the book, had asked at dinner one night, Can we live on an island, Daddy, and have a pony? and he’d replied, Only dreamers live on islands.
Could he have been any more obtuse to his little girl? Well, he would be that dreamer now, be what Sophie had yearned for in the purity of her heart. Most of all, he’d be a father Danny could count on.
“Whatever the case,” he went on, thinking of the homey little office he hoped to rent above the coffee shop in Burnt Bend. “We’re where we want to be. It’s quiet, laid-back, and the people are friendly.”
“And you don’t have to walk the rooms where they lived,” Johnny said quietly.
Rogan closed his eyes. A headache stitched into his temple. “Let it go, all right? Just make Abner Air pay.”
“I’ll do my best.” Abruptly, his brother stood. “Come on. Breakfast’s on me.”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
At the door, Johnny shouldered into a dark designer jacket. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, R.B.”
Words he’d heard a hundred-fold. “Yeah. Me, too.”
At one and on her second flight to the mainland that day, Lee again skimmed the seaplane across Lake Washington. A tall, charcoal-suited figure stood on the dock, briefcase in hand, black hair tousled by the breeze.
Rogan.
The sight of him sent a pang into her belly. She wouldn’t consider herself an empathetic woman—not like her sisters Addie and Kat whose hearts rode their sleeves most of the time—yet something about Rogan Matteo dug deep.
Standing there as she taxied in he seemed almost forlorn and a little…lost.
“That your fare back?” her brother-in-law asked from the co-pilot’s seat. Skip Dalton had married Addie last Thanksgiving, following a thirteen-year separation incited by their fathers because Addie had become pregnant in high school. When Lee thought of the despair her baby sister endured through those years, it made her chest hurt. Thank goodness for Skip’s return to Firewood Island. Today, Addie’s joy spilled from every glance, word and smile.
Maneuvering the plane gently into the dock’s bay, Lee said, “That’s him.” She wasn’t looking forward to another angsty trip, and planned on advising Matteo to use Duvall’s foot ferry in the future.
Skip gathered up a battered attaché case from the rear seat. “Yep, looks like an ambulance chaser, all right,” he wisecracked.
She unbuckled her safety belt and felt a pang for the man on the pier. “Truth is, lawyer jokes aside,” she said, “he’s been a decent guy so far.”
“Huh. What I can’t figure is why he bought a farm.” Skip pursed his lips. “Wouldn’t surprise me if he plans to put up a string of beach houses.”
She glanced out the window. The man stared back at her as though he eavesdropped on their discussion. Surely, he wasn’t hoping to rezone the Riley place into a cluster of grandiose properties?
Skip shot her a wicked grin. “Let’s ask him. If he says yes, you can dump him in the Sound on the way home.”
Lee rolled her eyes. “Oh, that makes so much sense.”
At Skip’s laughter, she threw open the door and climbed from the plane. For all her huff and puff, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from Rogan as he walked toward them. Those big shoulders, that wind-messed hair, those deep-set gray eyes…The man was a walking, talking GQ cover.
Her brother-in-law stepped forward to introduce himself. “Skip Dalton. I hear you’ll be flying with Lee for a while.”
Rogan’s gaze flicked to her. “Guess news really does fly.”
Eyes narrowing, Skip observed the man waiting to board—and watching Lee. “For the record,” her brother-in-law said, “we’re a close family.” With that, he headed down the dock, whistling.
Lee stared after him. Talk about a testosterone standoff.
“Well,” Rogan drawled. “That was enlightening.”
She took his briefcase, set it on the seat behind the co-pilot’s chair. “Don’t mind him. As the only adult male in a family of females, he’s a little territorial. Especially now that my youngest sister is seven months pregnant. Why don’t you get in and we’ll head back?”
When they both settled in the cockpit, she reignited the engine. “You okay?” The color had left his face once more and his hands gripped his knees.
“I’m fine.”
He didn’t look fine. “Concentrate on my voice.” She steered the plane toward open water, went through her checklist. Rudders, flaps, fuel, wind velocity…. “If you’re this uncomfortable flying,” she advised when she saw him clench his fists, “you should seriously consider traveling by water, regardless of the schedule.”
“I won’t do that to my son. Schools can be terrifying for the new kid.”
Then maybe you shouldn’t have moved to our island.
As if their minds were linked, he said, “I don’t plan to do this much longer, anyway.”
“Oh?” Did he mean lawyering?
“I can’t explain—” He released a gut-deep groan as the plane lifted off the water and arrowed into the sky.
Issuing the coordinates to the tower, Lee kept vigil on her passenger. His mouth was a pale, stark line; his eyes focused on his knees jutting in the confines of the cockpit. Single prop planes were not vessels of comfort for a man with a lumberjack’s frame. Or, one with an apparent phobia.
“I’ll get you home safe,” she offered. “Weather’s clear. Great day for flying.”
Maybe if he talked about the root of his problems, he’d realize planes weren’t all bad.
“What happened to you to make you this nervous, Mr. Matteo?”
They were almost across the Sound when he finally pried his tongue loose. “I lost half my family when their plane used a forest as a landing strip.”
Ah, geez. “Rogan…” Lee felt sick at heart for what he must have suffered. “I don’t know what to say.”
For the first time he looked at her. An ocean of pain glimmered in his eyes. “It’s been three years and, hell, I don’t know what to say. I’m still trying to figure it out, still trying to fix what’s left of my family.”
Turning away, he focused on his knees again. “All night I kept thinking, What if something goes wrong? What’ll happen to my boy? He’s seven, just a baby. He needs me to stick around, be there until he can take care of himself. I also know the probability of dying in a car crash exceeds that of dying in a plane, and that my apprehension is all out of whack. But there you have it.”
Except he had experienced tragedy-by-plane. “I’m so sorry.”
He blew a long sigh, scraped at his hair. “Hell, it’s me who should be sorry, dumping on you like this.”
“No,” she said. “You have a right to feel the way you do.” And she meant it. Losing half a family…She shook her head, unable to imagine the horror, the grief.
“A defective fuel line is what they’re claiming,” he went on. “More like poor maintenance on the part of Abner Air.”
Abner Air? Oh. My. God. He’d lost his family in that plane?
Now it all came to her, the niggle in the back of her mind when he’d said his name. Matteo. Four months after she walked out of her marriage and Stuart’s company, news about her ex’s plane going down had filtered back to Lee.
She had recognized the pilot’s name, Bill Norton. But the names of the passengers had been unfamiliar…forgotten.
Yes, she’d sympathized from afar but by then, Stuart Hershel was already someone else’s husband—and an almost daddy. Because of the latter, because of the way she’d discovered Stuart’s betrayal, Lee had put the past, including the crash, wholly out of her mind.
Now she remembered snippets. A woman and child—with Rogan’s last name.
His family.
“Look,” he said, unaware her heart struggled like a wounded animal. “Can we start over?” This time his gaze was soft and gray as the morning mist.
With a nod, Lee forced her throat to open. “Sure.” For two elongated seconds their eyes held, and her heart emitted a solid thump against her breastbone. Start something with this man? No and no.
Quickly turning her concentration on navigating her seaplane—previously of Stuart’s fleet, oh, God—she forwarded her status to the tower and began reducing her elevation.
Minutes later, she taxied shoreward to her portion of pier extending from Burnt Bend’s boardwalk.
She couldn’t wait to leave again, make the run to pick up Skip. Anything to get away from Rogan and the pain she now knew hovered behind his eyes.
While she tied the plane to the wooden deck, he stood facing the shoreline meandering westward. A forest of hemlocks, cedars and willows traveled the land’s slope to the water, but Lee knew what lay on the other side of the natural buffer a mile from town. The Riley property, now his land.
He slanted a look over his shoulder toward the boardwalk’s shops and restaurants. “I hope to buy some office space there.”
A lawyer in Burnt Bend? Except…What had he said before takeoff? I don’t plan to do this for long.
“Are you changing careers?” she asked.
Again he viewed the trees hiding his future address. “In a way.”
A crooked smile that displayed one front tooth edging a millimeter below its twin, stalled her breath. The man didn’t know his own potency.
She had to avoid him. At all costs. Her past meshed too closely with his.
“Same time next week?” he asked.
Make a decision, Lee. Her mouth refused to open. Grateful she hadn’t removed her aviators—she was certain he’d be able to read her misgivings—she nodded once. “Right.”
With a clip of his head, he started for his blue truck, parked in the graveled lot nearby. Not until his dark-suited form disappeared from sight did she grab the wingtip of her plane to support her shaky legs.
Half his family had died in a tragedy that might have been averted had she not been so focused on saving her splintering marriage.
Two days later, Lee lay on an examination table in a Seattle medical clinic, still worrying over her link to Rogan Matteo, a link of which he was unaware, but that she understood clearly.
Why hadn’t she followed her gut instincts three years ago? Why had she trusted her ex to inform the authorities. Why, why, why?
Her worry knotted her throat and propelled her nausea—until she was forced to seek out her friend Dr. Lily Ramirez. Just to talk, Lee told herself. Lily would know what to do. Because a hundred years ago, she’d been Lee and Oliver’s classmate and, later, as an ob-gyn, Lily had seen Lee through a horde of fertility tests during Lee’s nine-year marriage to Stuart.
Staring at the ceiling, Lee shivered at a thought. Was it worry causing the nausea or was it something else?
Once, years ago, she had experienced similar symptoms; periodic queasiness after the evening meal, a craving for raspberry jam and the distaste of her beloved morning coffee.
She couldn’t be pregnant. It had to be the stress of the past two days.
But the longer she waited for Lily to arrive, the more Lee questioned the possibility. The first sign of nausea had begun two weeks before Rogan’s disclosure.
The door opened and Lily entered. “Hey, friend.” The doctor’s lips curved in a genuine smile.
“Lily,” Lee greeted her, relieved. “Am I glad to see you.”
The doctor scanned the nurse’s information on the file she held. “You’ve been nauseous for a couple of weeks?”
“I might be in trouble—big trouble.”
“Okay, don’t panic.” Lily took Lee’s hand. “Tell me.”
Lee did. She explained the wooziness and her worries.
“First,” Lily said after Lee quieted, “let’s see if you are pregnant. Then we’ll talk.”
Several minutes later, the internal exam completed, the doctor removed her gloves. “Your uterus is slightly swollen, but we’ll do a blood and urine test to verify.” Tossing the soiled toweling into the trash, she asked, “Do you have an idea of when you might have gotten pregnant?”
“February. The night before Oliver Duvall shipped out, a little over eight weeks ago.” For the last time. The paper pillow rustled as she turned her head. “But we were careful.”
“Doesn’t matter how careful you are,” Lily replied gently, washing her hands in the sink. “Accidents happen, Lee. I’ll get the nurse in for the tests, then we’ll talk.” She left the room, the door whooshing closed behind her.
Lee stared at the counter with its sink and shelves and medical supplies, at the stirrups protruding from the end of the table. Could things get any worse?
And dare she hope? Dare she hope for a baby after all the barren years?
Ten minutes later, dressed again, she sat on the exam bed and observed Lily jot notes on her clipboard. “Well?” Lee asked, her heart pounding.
“You are pregnant.”
Lee closed her eyes. What a mess. What a wonderful, scary, couldn’t-come-at-a worse-time mess.
She was having Oliver’s baby. Oliver, a man she’d known and trusted since forever. A man who had made soldiering his life—until it killed him.
Gazing at the woman, whose fuchsia-colored stethoscope draped her neck like a trendy piece of bling, Lee’s mind whirled with future scenarios. The baby’s health, due to Lee’s age. The birth process, another health worry. Her fledgling company. No question, she’d have to sell Sky Dash. A single mother operating a plane and raising a baby? Impossible feat.
“God, I can’t believe this happened, Lily. You know my periods are always so unpredictable, and since the divorce I didn’t bother with the pill. What was the point of regulating them, right? And, in case you’re wondering, he wasn’t blasé and I wasn’t stupid. We used condoms.”
“Condoms can tear,” Lily said gently.
Lee stared at the floor. “It wasn’t supposed to happen,” she whispered. “You know how close we were as kids, right? You, me, him. Best friends forever. But on this furlough…”
“Things changed,” Lily filled in.
“Yeah.” Lee remembered Oliver’s face that last day. She’d flown him to the naval air base on Whidbey Island, where they’d held each other for an eternity. She realized then that walking away from her marriage to Stuart had been a relief; but walking away from her lifelong friend had put a dent in her heart.
A tear slid down her cheek. “I want this baby to live, Lil.”
“First and foremost—no stress. And no negative thoughts.” The doctor’s hand gripped Lee’s. “Do what you have to do because this may be your last chance. You’re thirty-seven, Lee. And that means—”
“I know, I know. My eggs are petrifying.”
Lily chuckled. “Well, not quite.”
“But close. Funny, isn’t it? Stuart and I tried for eight years and when it finally happened I miscarried after the first month. Oliver and I do it once, and…” Abashment warmed her skin. Lord. She didn’t know whether to hope, pray or wish. “Do you think it’ll make a difference because it’s his?”
Lily dabbed Lee’s tears with a tissue. “I can’t answer that. However, I can outline a strict and careful routine for you. I’ll also prescribe an antinausea medication. Don’t worry,” she said with a smile. “It’s been on the market for years, for just these conditions.”
“That’s good, because I still have a plane to fly.”
“Today it moves into second place,” Lily said firmly. “From this point on, baby comes first.”
If he lived. Yes, Lee thought, hoping. It’s a boy. With Oliver’s smile, Oliver’s eyes. Eyes that offered the same gentleness she recognized the night Rogan Matteo had chased the cold away with his warm vest.
Oh, Lee. How much worse can it get? Here you are, pregnant with the baby of one man while lusting after another.
Who would’ve guessed that she, still a virgin on her twenty-third birthday, would shuffle through men quick as a cardplayer fourteen years later?
At nine o’clock Friday morning, Rogan stood on the boardwalk facing a narrow door that led up to the apartment above Coffee Sense, a shop that brewed some of the best java he’d tasted in a long while. Last weekend, when he noticed the For Rent sign in the upstairs window, he had immediately called the number listed. Apparently, the owners of the coffee shop and its top floor recently lost their tenant to Bremerton and they’d needed another lessee. After a quick tour, Rogan signed the agreement.
Jingling the keys in his hand, he looked toward the cove. The boardwalk arced in a horseshoe at the conclusion of Main Street. The right annex of the shoe consisted of ferry docks, a few craft shops and a seafood pub; the left extension hosted several local clothing stores, the Tuscany Grill, Art Smarts, Coffee Sense—and Lee’s pier.
He admired the quaint maritime architecture of each building: wood siding in a variety of bold colors, weathered cabled roofs, storefronts circa 1930 with scripted or printed signs.
Most of all, he liked that Coffee Sense was the last shop on the boardwalk’s left curve—and a few dozen yards from where Lee moored her seaplane. That detail had him smiling as he surveyed the spot where, within the hour, her red-and-white Cessna would once again rock lazily on the sun-dappled water.
After signing the lease yesterday, he’d stood with Danny at the upstairs window and watched Lee lift easily into the air on her afternoon mail run.
“There’s the lady’s plane,” his son pointed out. “Are you gonna see her all the time?”
An innocent question with conflicting connotations. Yes, in a sense, he would see her “all the time” but not for the reasons he craved, like the heart he believed hidden behind her quick tongue and clever mind. And then there were those flashing green eyes. Reasons that were all about Lee Tait, the woman—Jeez, Rogan. Forget it already.
Inserting the key, he unlocked the door and took the steep, narrow stairs to the four-by-four landing where a pair of doors faced each other. With a squeak, the one on the right swung open and he stepped into his new office. The hardwood floors creaked beneath his boat shoes and the musty scent of wood and age filled his nostrils. Yesterday there had been a sense of rightness about the place, which he felt again today as he reassessed the main room, the side kitchen, the five-foot hallway branching into a washroom, bedroom—or second office space—and the rear entry to an outside stairway.
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