Okay, his bent was selfish. He couldn’t help that. He needed a motive to get up every day, an objective to mull over at night, to dream about—and Kaitlin’s old trawler fit the bill.
He didn’t need to ask why she had locked the vessel away, why she hadn’t sold this part of her late husband’s life. Selling, he knew, would mean goodbye…forever. Something he’d had to do in an instant with his medical career, with Zaakir. And then there was his marriage—although that goodbye had happened in stages. Still, the sorrow and regret he’d felt when Phoebe left Iraq to live stateside had sometimes overwhelmed him. He’d let her down in so many ways. Sure, she’d remarried, but that didn’t negate the fact he’d been a lousy husband.
The briny-scented wind filled his lungs as he skirted the light along the rear window frame. Had he been a less decent man, he would break the pane, reach in, unlatch the window. Except, he wasn’t a burglar, or a destroyer of property. He was a healer. Or had been.
Damn it to hell. Quit letting those memories hound you. Quit letting them rule your life.
Wheeling around, he strode past the boatshed and down to the shore where a wooden pier thumbed forty feet into Admiralty Inlet. Against the planks his boots thudded like hollow shots as he walked to the end of the quay. An icy wind whipped drops of seawater against his face. He jacked his collar up to protect his ears. His hands found the carryall pockets of his jacket.
He shouldn’t care about her boat. He shouldn’t speculate about her reasons for leaving it to decay in that cavernous shed.
Tomorrow he’d knock on her door, ask if he could fix the vessel.
And if she tells you to go to hell?
If the shoe were on the other foot, wouldn’t he be tempted to tell her exactly that?
Restless, Dane strode off the pier and headed for the cluster of boulders a short distance away. Settling on top of the largest rock, he gazed at the night sea tossing its whitecaps ashore.
He tried not to think of the way she’d looked when she brought him that armful of flowers, or why he’d left a note on her doorstep. He tried not to remember Iraq, and the reason he was no longer a doctor. That his hands, his surgeon’s hands, were scarred and disfigured from a war which shattered the life he’d worked his guts out to attain. The life—when all was said and done—he’d loved more than his marriage. And he tried not to mull over his own skewed logic for ignoring his parents and sister.
In the end, he thought of them all. And when he finally returned to the cabin, his brain was in a worse muddle than before.
Until he spotted the flash and color of the bouquet on his table and recognized Kat O’Brien as the one quiet element in his mind.
His lifeline.
Three nights later, he heard the creak of a twig to the right of the porch where he sat in a wicker chair enjoying the evening quiet. Something stole through the forest. Ears straining for the slightest sound, Dane remained motionless, two traits he’d learned in Iraq when darkness closed in and rebels prowled villages, on the hunt for drugs brought along by medical teams.
These days on Firewood Island, night fell around five p.m., obliterating shadows and outlines and things that moved in the trees.
Several silent moments passed. Then…a soft crunch, as though someone stepped on a thick carpet of dead leaves.
Dane’s body tensed. Had the person noticed him on the porch?
His gaze zeroed in on the large cabin in the trees across Kaitlin’s backyard. Last night, Dane had observed lights in two windows. A second guest? He didn’t care, as long as they kept to their side of the property and left him alone.
Without making a sound, he got to his feet—and waited. The rustling had stopped. Creeping down the steps, he went around to the side facing the wooded hill. His eyes narrowed against the forest’s obscurity.
Someone panted softly.
Dane stepped into the block of light shining from the window of the eating nook.
“Holy crap,” a boy’s voice muttered, before the kid scrambled like a wild animal back up the slope.
Dane leaped toward the escapee, entering the trees like a predatory animal, silent, quick. Without a word, he sprang over moldering logs, and ducked grasping branches. Ten feet ahead the kid dodged right and left. Suddenly, he turned and scrambled farther up the hill, and then—abruptly—twenty feet ahead, Dane saw arms, legs and branches whip like miniature windmills. Thunk.
“Ow!” the boy yelped. Gasping and wheezing and clutching his leg, he writhed on a wet bed of leaves.
Dane approached slowly.
“Please,” the boy whispered. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Easy, son.” Dane frowned at the slashed denim along the boy’s left leg. Crouching on one knee, he shrugged from his jacket and laid the garment across the boy’s chest. “Got a name?”
“Y-Yes sir. Blake.” The winded words came out Yea seer bake.
Kaitlin’s son?
The wheezing accelerated. Blake’s face altered, faded, and for an instant Zaakir stared up at Dane.
He swiped a hand across his eyes. He was losing it, and this kid was showing every sign of an asthma attack. “Where’s your inhaler, son?”
“Home.”
Sure, it was. Damn kid, creeping through the woods in the dark and forgetting his lifeline. Dane squashed the urge to give Blake a good shaking. Instead, he scooped the boy into his arms. “Hang on.” Careful of wayward limbs, he trotted through the trees, crossed Kaitlin’s back deck and, while the boy clung to his neck, yanked open the mudroom door.
“Inhaler,” he hollered, storming into the kitchen with Blake wheezing against his chest. “Now.”
Kat didn’t have time to think or ask questions.
The second Dane set her son next to the plate of hard-boiled eggs she’d been slicing for the spinach salad on her big worktable, Kat ran to the dining cabinet and grabbed the emergency inhaler.
“Darn it, Blake,” she said, shoving the tool into his hands. “What have I told you about keeping this with you at all times?” Heart pounding, she forced herself to watch calmly as he tilted back his head and put the instrument to his mouth. Still, she couldn’t help advising, “Breathe deep.”
He rolled his eyes.
She released a shaky sigh. Okay. Not as bad as she’d first thought when Dane banged into her house. Already the first healing puff had altered her child’s skin from pale and sweaty to pink and dry as added oxygen rushed into his blood.
Relieved, she turned to Dane. He stood in a white T-shirt, dog tags dangling from his neck, gloved hands clutching the end corners of the worktable. His dark eyes were fastened on Blake, his expression harsh. Kat’s stomach looped at the man’s scrutiny. Had she misread him after all? “What happened?”
“It was my fault,” Blake interjected before her guest could reply. “I was trying to look into Mr. Rainhart’s window and—and he caught me, and then I ran into the woods and fell and…” When he straightened his leg, she noticed the bloody damage for the first time.
Kat’s pulse bounced. “Oh, baby.” She bent over the torn skin. Deep and raw, the gash measured about four inches along her son’s bony shin.
Removing the desert jacket from Blake, Dane said, “He needs stitches. If you have gauze to wrap the wound, I can ready him for transport to the clinic.”
Ready him for transport? Disregarding the odd turn of phrase, Kat hurried to the cupboard with its stored First Aid supplies. Had Blake told her the truth, or had Dane Rainhart hurt