Passion's Baby

She opened her mouth to tell him that drowning his sorrows in alcohol wouldn’t make them go away, then thought better of it when she saw that a grayish pallor undermined the deep tan of his face. Even his hand shook as he unscrewed the cap on the bottle.

Moved by a compassion that had its roots in another time when she’d been equally helpless to alleviate suffering, she covered his hand with hers and took the bottle away. “Let me,” she said quietly, and splashed a scant half inch of whiskey into a glass.

He tossed it down in one gulp, cradled the glass in his hands, then leaned back in the chair with his eyes closed. He had a rather wonderful face, even with that devastatingly direct gaze hidden, she decided, taking advantage of the chance to study him unobserved; a face that revealed far more about the man who owned it than he probably realized.

She saw strength in the line of his jaw, laughter in the fan of lines beside his eyes, passion and discipline in the curve of his mouth. His recent proclamation notwithstanding, he was no drinker. He showed too much pride for such self-indulgence.

“You can leave anytime,” he said, not moving a muscle more than was needed to spit out the words. “I’m not going to do the socially acceptable thing and invite you to stay for coffee.”

“Then I’ll invite myself,” she said, and without waiting for permission, filled the kettle and set it to boil on the stove. “How do you take yours?”

“Alone, thank you very much.”

She shrugged and inspected the contents of the refrigerator. Beyond a block of cheese, a couple of eggs, an open carton of milk, some bread and the remains of something which, under the layer of green mold, might have been meat, the shelves were empty.

She sniffed the milk and immediately wished she hadn’t. “This milk went off about a week ago, Mr. McGuire.”

“I know,” he said, a current of unholy mirth running through his voice, and when she turned back to face him, she saw he was observing her with malicious glee. “I saved it on purpose, just for the pleasure of seeing your expression when you stuck your interfering nose into yet another part of my life. Would you like to taste the ham, as well, while you’re at it?”

She emptied the milk down the sink drain and tossed the ham into the garbage can. “Whoever does your shopping is falling down on the job, but since I’m planning on going across to Clara’s Cove later on today, I can stop by the general store and pick up a few staples for you, if you like.”

“What is it you don’t understand about ‘Mind Your Own Business’?” The question ricocheted off the walls like machine gun bullets. “What do I have to do to make it clear that I’m perfectly able to shop for myself? How do I let you know that you can take your charity and shove it, because I neither want it nor need it?”

She recognized the insults for what they really were: bitter resentment at only recently finding himself confined to a wheelchair. When the same thing had first happened to Derek, he’d reacted much the same way and it had taken months for him to come to terms with how his life was going to be from then on.

“I know how difficult you must find all this, Mr. McGuire,” she said, “and I certainly didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Unless you’ve been where I am now, you don’t know beans about how I feel!”

She washed and rinsed the plate which had held the ham, placed it in the dish rack, and made the coffee. “Actually, I do,” she said. “My husband—”

“Oh, goodie, you have a husband, you have a husband!” he gibed. “That being the case, why don’t you run along and minister to him, instead of foisting your attentions on me?”

“Because he’s dead,” she said baldly.

Shock, and perhaps even a little shame, wiped the sneer off Liam McGuire’s face. “Oh, cripes,” he muttered, examining his hands. “I’m sorry. That must be tough. You’re kind of young to be a widow.”

She dried her scraped knuckles tenderly, folded the dish towel over the edge of the counter, and turned to leave. “I’m not looking for your sympathy, any more than you’re looking for mine, Mr. McGuire. But take it from me, people can and do adapt—if they’ve a mind to. Of course, if all they’re interested in is wallowing in self-pity, they can do that, too, though why they’d find it an attractive alternative baffles me since it must be a very lonely occupation. Good day.”

“Hey!”

She was almost at the door when he stopped her. “You called?” she inquired sweetly, not bothering to turn around.

“Are you by any chance a schoolteacher?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but no. Why do you ask?”

“Because you talk like one.”

“I see. Is there anything else, Mr. McGuire?”

“Yes,” he said irritably. “You can stop calling me Mister McGuire in that snotty way. My name’s Liam.”

“How nice! Will that be all, Liam?”

He thumped the flat of one hand on the armrest of his chair and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling as though calling on divine intervention to save him from himself. “I’m going to regret this later,” he announced morosely, then swung his gaze back to her. “Since you’ve made the damn coffee anyway, you might as well stay and have a cup. There’s canned milk in the cupboard, if you want it.”

“That’s very kind of you, I’m sure, but I just remembered that Bounder’s outside and I don’t want him running loose all over the island.”

“Bring the benighted hound inside, then. It won’t be the first time he’s made himself at home here.”

“My goodness!” she said, unable to quell the mean-spirited pleasure of having finally wrung a concession from him. “How can I refuse such a gracious offer?”

He waited until the coffee was served, she had taken a seat on the couch, and Bounder was snoozing beside the wheelchair, before he spoke again. “Have you been…by yourself for very long?”

“Just over two years.”

He stared into his mug. “What you said, about understanding how I feel in this chair, was your husband…?”

“Yes, for the better part of the last three years of his life.”

He averted his gaze, but not before she saw the grimace he couldn’t control. “I’d go mad if I was facing that length of time,” he said.

“It’s amazing what people come to accept when they don’t have any other choices.”

“Not me,” he said. “I’m not handing over control of my life to anything or anyone else, especially not a bunch of doctors who don’t know what they’re talking about. According to them, I should settle for being alive with both legs still attached, and never mind expecting to walk again. But I’ll show them! It’ll take more structural failure at the bottom of an offshore oil rig to keep me tied to a wheelchair for the rest of my life.”

Good grief, the man lived dangerously! She’d seen news reports and documentaries about offshore drilling for oil. The rigs had struck her as frighteningly inhospitable, even those parts above the water. She couldn’t imagine how much worse they’d be fathoms deep in the ocean. “I gather,” she said, treading delicately, “that you had an accident of some kind?”

“You could put it like that, yeah. I found myself pinned under a steel beam and had a bit of trouble getting free.”

Since he was so determined to dismiss what had clearly been a life-threatening incident as something of no great consequence, she deemed it wise to respond in like fashion. Tilting one shoulder in a faint shrug, she said, “Well, there’s no doubt that, given the will and a reasonable amount of luck, some people do make remarkable recoveries. May I pour you more coffee before I leave?”

“You’re leaving already? Why? Where’s the fire?”

If he hadn’t already gone to such lengths to try to get rid of her, she’d have thought he wanted her to stay a bit longer. But, Wishful thinking, Jane, she told herself. You’re just dazzled by those beautiful sea-green eyes.

“No fire,” she said, as much to refute her own foolishness as to answer his remark. “Just the opposite, in fact. I want to take Bounder down for a swim before the tide turns.”

At the mention of his name, the dog reared up in excitement, a running shoe clamped in his mouth.

“He needs a few lessons in obedience, if you ask me,” Liam said, grabbing the shoe and flinging it under the table, then seizing his coffee cup before it was swept on the floor by Bounder’s thrashing tail. “He’s out of control. Settle down, idiot!”

“He’s not much more than a puppy,” Jane said defensively. “He’s still learning and I have to be patient.”

“Patient, my eye! He’s already mastered one lesson and that’s how to control you! If you were as dedicated to making him behave and keeping his teeth off other people’s property, as you are to nosing around in business that doesn’t concern you, you’d be a sight better off and so would he. He’s too damned big to be galumphing around like this.”

She swallowed a laugh. “Well, the truce was nice while it lasted, but it’s clearly over so I’ll get us both out of your hair before you start tearing it out by the roots. Thanks for the coffee. Come on, Bounder.”