First Time in Forever

“Nothing. I like children. I just don’t want to be responsible for one.”

“A bit of responsibility would do you good. Who is she, anyway?”

He knew all about responsibility, the sort that made you sweat and kept you awake at night. But Kirsti wasn’t an islander, so she wouldn’t know the details of his past.

“Friend of Brittany’s. She’s staying in Castaway Cottage.”

“I love that place. The garden is like something from a fairy tale.” Her eyes narrowed. “I think you might marry her.”

“Jesus, Kirsti, keep your voice down.” He was torn between exasperation and amusement. “For all you know, she’s already married.”

“She isn’t. And the child isn’t hers.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“The way she behaves. She isn’t comfortable. It’s as if this whole thing is new to her, as if they barely know each other and she isn’t quite sure what her role is.”

Ryan thought about the text Brittany had sent.

She’s in trouble.

He wanted to know what the trouble was.

“There’s no such thing as The One. Love is like Russian roulette. You have no idea what the outcome is going to be.”

“You’re such a cynic. Why do I work for you?”

“Because I pay better than anyone else on Puffin Island, and I don’t fire you when you try to run a dating business on the side.” Having successfully diverted the conversation, he strolled toward Emily. Kirsti was right. She looked uncomfortable. No, he corrected himself. Not uncomfortable. Shell-shocked. Dazed. Gazing at her, he had the sense she was on the verge of snapping.

He tried to avoid women with baggage, and he suspected she had more baggage than an airline.

The baggage that really put the brakes on his libido was sitting with her legs swinging, waiting for chocolate milk.

He wove his way through crowded tables, noticing with satisfaction that very few were empty. He’d settled them at a table overlooking the beach, knowing that the view was the best on the island. From here you could watch the boats sailing between the island and the mainland. If you were lucky, you caught the occasional glimpse of seals on the rocky headland in the distance. So far they’d had three proposals on this deck, and one sunset wedding.

Almost everyone he knew chose a seat facing the water. He’d had to mediate between couples arguing with other couples over the tables with the best waterfront view.

Emily sat with her back to the water and her eyes on Lizzy as if she were afraid she might disappear in front of her. It only took a glance to see she was fiercely protective.

Keep an eye on her, Brittany had said.

He intended to do just that. Not just because a friend had asked him to, or because it was part of island culture to watch out for each other, but because he wanted to know the story. Kirsti was right that Lizzy and Emily didn’t have the easy relationship of people who knew each other, and yet Lizzy had called her “aunt.”

He wondered where Lizzy’s mother was.

Was there a family crisis and she was filling in?

“One chocolate milk, extra large, two of the best-tasting coffees you’ll find anywhere and a plate of our homemade waffles. They look so good I want to sit down and eat them with you.” Kirsti placed everything on the table with a flourish and the smile that guaranteed her large tips and endless inappropriate invitations. “Enjoy. If you need anything else, let me know.”

“Nothing else for me, thank you.” Emily sent her a grateful glance. She had the air of someone who was improvising madly, feeling her way in the dark with no idea what she was meant to do next.

The breeze lifted a strand of her hair and blew it across her face. And her face fascinated him. Her eyes were the same green as the child’s, her mouth soft and full, hinting at a sensuality hidden behind the tailored clothes. His mind leaped ahead, and he imagined her hair tumbling loose after a night of crazy sex. Given a couple of hours and a babysitter, he was fairly sure he could do something about her tension. Disturbed by how badly he wanted to put that thought into action, he lifted his hand to brush the strand of hair away at the same time as she did, and their fingers tangled. Heat ripped through his body.

“Sorry.” He murmured the word and let his hand drop, watching while she anchored the offending locks with slender fingers. It was a blur of rich caramel and sunshine gold. He wanted to toss that damn clip into the water where she wouldn’t be able to find it.

Because he didn’t trust himself not to do that, he turned his attention to the child. The waffles had gone, the only evidence of their existence a pale smear of maple syrup over the center of the plate. “How is your chocolate milk?”

Lizzy sat on the chair, legs dangling, as she watched the boats glide across the bay, their sails curved by the wind. She’d needed two hands to manage the tall glass, so she’d put the bear down on the seat next to her. “It was good, thank you.” She was stiff and polite, and it occurred to him he’d never seen a more uncomfortable pair.

He remembered Rachel at the same age, lighthearted and playful. She, too, had refused to be separated from her favorite toy, only in her case, the toy had been a puffin and she’d had a habit of leaving it everywhere.

He’d chased around the island more times than he cared to remember hunting for that damn puffin. On one occasion Scott Rowland, the island fire chief, had delivered it to the house after someone in the library had found it and recognized it as belonging to Rachel. Anticipating the day the puffin would be found by a tourist, not a local, Ryan had persuaded his grandmother to buy a spare, and he’d hidden it in his room as a precaution. His closest friend, Zach, had found it when they’d been sprawled in his room one day playing video games. It had taken Ryan six months to live down the fact he’d had a stuffed puffin in his room. Every week when he’d played football there had been a puffin in his locker. He’d dragged his skateboard out of the garage one morning only to find someone had painted a puffin on it. That had been the summer Ryan had given up skateboarding and taken up basketball. For one whole semester, the team had adopted the puffin as their mascot. By the time Zach had gotten bored with the joke, Ryan had enough stuffed puffins to give Rachel a whole colony of the things.

He’d gone to bed at night dreaming of living somewhere that didn’t have Puffin in the name.

“So, Brittany is in Greece.” He kept the conversation neutral, avoiding any topics that were likely to make her jumpy. Since he didn’t know what those were, he figured it was best to stick to talking about her friend. “I remember when she was ten years old, she was playing at being an archaeologist, and she dug a deep hole in Kathleen’s garden. When Kathleen asked what had happened to her flowers, Brit told her it was what was underneath the soil that was important.”

Emily reached for her coffee. “You knew Kathleen well?”

“Very well. There is a group of women on the island, including Hilda, who you met earlier, who have been friends forever. They grew up here, went to school together and then married and had their children around the same time. They’ve seen each other through triumph and tragedy. Island life fosters friendships. They were as close as family.” He saw her expression change. “You don’t believe friends can be like family?”

“Oh, yes.” There was a faraway look in her eyes. “I do believe that. Sometimes they can be better than family.”

So, her own family had let her down.

He filed that fact away. “Over the years their meetings changed. When they had young children, it was a toddler group, a way of getting out of the house and breaking up the Maine winter. When the children were older, they turned it into a hiking club for a short time, and there was one summer when they took up kayaking. In the winter there was yoga, art—that was when the episode of the nude life drawing happened—and right now it’s a book group.” After he’d left home he’d stopped reading for a while. He put it down to all the times he’d read Green Eggs and Ham to Rachel.

“Where do they meet?”

“They used to meet in each other’s houses, but now that’s too much work for one person to cope with, so I let them use one of our function rooms, and provide the food.”

“You own this place?” Curious, she glanced around. “It’s busy. You’re obviously doing something right.”

“Took a lot of effort to design something that satisfied everyone. We needed it to work for the community.” And he’d needed it to work for him. “The buildings and the marina were already here, but we made improvements, increased the number of member moorings and guest moorings, offered boat maintenance and a valet service. The first thing I did was employ a club manager. We had this huge building that was basically unused, so I converted it into apartments and kept the top one for myself. Then we developed this place and called the whole thing the Ocean Club. I worked on the principle that people who have just spent time at sea are happy to crash at the first decent place they find. We’re full most nights in the summer.”

“You’ve lived here all your life?”

“No. Like most people, I moved away, just to check there wasn’t anything better out there.”

“And was there?”

He thought about what he’d seen. The life he’d led. His shoulder throbbed, and he forced himself to relax because tension made it worse. “It was different. I grew up on this island. My grandfather was a lobsterman. My father took a different route. He spent time in the merchant marine and then joined the crew of the schooner Alice Rose, sailing around the coast.”

“I don’t know anything about boats.”

Ryan wondered once again what she was doing on this island, where sailing was the main preoccupation. “That’s a schooner.” He pointed, and she turned her head reluctantly, leaving him with the feeling that if she could have found somewhere else to look she would have done so. “See the two masts? Some have more, but two is common. They have shallower drafts, perfect for coastal waters, and the way they’re rigged makes them easier to handle in the changing winds along the coast, so they need a smaller crew.”

Lizzy craned her neck. “It looks like a pirate ship.”