“So am I.” Ryan shrugged. “In my experience women don’t forget. They nurture the mad and then produce it when you least expect it. Either way, you’re doomed, Zach.”
“She wasn’t mad,” Zach said flatly. “She was indifferent.”
She’d sat with casual poise, those endless legs bronzed from the Greek sun, her response to seeing him again approaching boredom.
Why should that bother him?
Alec finished his beer. “Last time I checked, archaeologists didn’t earn enough to fly private. How could she afford your services?”
Zach thought about the phone call from the Greek offices of ZervaCo. “Seems she’s keeping rich company these days.”
Ryan gestured across the bar for Tom to bring them more drinks. “You’re not exactly struggling yourself.”
“My bank account is healthy enough, although I’m a long way off from owning a Gulfstream.”
“Would you want to?”
“No.” Zach took a mouthful of beer. “It has to be landed on a strip of tarmac.”
“Whereas you’d rather land where no sane man would ever venture. So if the reunion was civilized, what’s stopping you from delivering the backpack yourself?”
Evading the question, Zach looked across the crowded bar and caught the eye of a young woman who’d been watching him since he’d walked in.
She gave him a shy smile and he immediately looked away.
All his relationships were short-term but he couldn’t contemplate even short-term while his ex-wife was jammed in his head.
And shy didn’t work for him. He made it a rule not to let himself touch anything breakable or vulnerable.
“I haven’t set foot in Castaway Cottage for over a decade.” Not since that day Kathleen Forrest had gone to the mainland with her knitting friends, leaving her granddaughter alone in the secluded house on the beach.
The first thing Brittany had done was phone Zach and invite him over.
He’d figured that if the good girl wanted to try her hand at being bad it wasn’t his business to talk her out of it.
Remembering what had happened next brought sweat to his forehead. It had been the beginning of a long vacation for his judgment.
He was doing better these days, but barely a day passed without him encountering someone who wanted to punch him for past offenses.
He’d assumed today was Brittany’s turn and no one, least of all himself, would argue that he didn’t deserve a hell of a punch for what he’d done to her.
He’d weighed that fact carefully before returning to the island, then decided that since she mostly spent her time traveling and had all the support of the islanders, he was the one who would suffer. Despite his relationship with Philip and his friendship with Ryan, most of the locals still viewed him with suspicion. He figured he’d earned that and anyway, he was used to being on the receiving end of disappointment and disapproval. It didn’t bother him. He didn’t live his life to please others. He did what felt right to him. Made choices that felt right to him. As long as he could live with himself, that was all that mattered.
But in the end it hadn’t been hatred or anger he’d seen in her eyes.
It had been—nothing.
His ex-wife really didn’t give a damn that he was occupying her space.
In which case he should just return the bag and have done with it.
She needed it. He had it. It was as simple as that.
Maybe then the two of them could make a go of living side by side.
With a rough curse he snatched up the backpack, ignoring Ryan’s curious look.
“I’ll take it over there in the morning.”
“Why not now?”
“Long flight. She’ll be asleep.” And there was no way he wanted to risk seeing her in her pajamas or, worse, naked.
He’d knock on the door, hand it over and leave. No words needed to be exchanged. No emotions, although if she wanted to yell at him he would stand there and take it. He wouldn’t even defend himself because how did you defend the indefensible? But in any case, it was clear Brittany no longer had any feelings she wanted to express.
She wasn’t looking for closure.
The door between them had been closed a long time.
CASTAWAY COTTAGE HAD stood at the edge of the curve of sand known as Shell Bay for over half a century. Built of clapboard and surrounded by a pretty coastal garden, it had been purchased by Brittany’s grandparents just after their marriage.
Brittany’s mother, Linda, had been born there and spent the next twenty years longing to escape the confines of island life. At that time the sole economy of the island, like so many in the area, had been fishing. It wasn’t until years later that a wealthy Bostonian had discovered the island by chance on a sailing trip and proceeded to build a home. Others had followed and, together with tax breaks encouraging people to live and work there, the fortunes and population of the island had been boosted. But for Linda, life had been all about the lobster and the never-ending cycle of worry that went with the business.
Marriage had been a way out. Brittany’s father had worked as an engineer for an oil company and was often away, leaving Linda alone on an island she couldn’t wait to escape.
Brittany was ten when her parents had divorced. Her mother had immediately remarried and moved south to Florida. Brittany, settled on the island, had stayed with her grandmother.
Occasionally her mother would visit, more to confirm her life choices than to spend time with her daughter. Her father she’d rarely seen. Wrapped in the warm cocoon of her grandmother’s love, Brittany had barely noticed their absence. She’d grown up knowing that families came in different shapes and sizes, and the island community was so small and close-knit, she’d taken for granted the support of a wider group of people who knew and loved her. She’d been taught to swim by Kathleen, her grandmother, but it had been John Harris, the harbormaster, who had settled her down on the edge of the quay one day and shown her how to tie a bowline. John was the first to take her sailing and Dave Brown, who had lobstered the waters around Puffin Island for three decades, had been the one to teach her about the business that had been a mainstay of the island’s economy for longer than anyone could remember. Along with other islanders, she’d spent time helping him get ready for the season. She’d scraped the buoys, pressure washed the hull of his boat and painted the side where the surface had chipped from hauling traps. In return he’d taken her out on the water. From him she’d learned about hydraulic haulers and bottom sounders, that the temperature of the water changes with the seasons and that lobsters migrate from shallow waters to deeper ones. And from her grandmother she’d learned how to cook the lobster in a fish kettle and eat it fresh, dripping with butter. Raising a child on Puffin Island was a communal activity, especially during the long winters when so much of the time was spent indoors, often without power. Brittany had understood that the fortunes of the island were linked with the waters that surrounded it, and she also understood why people were working to change that.
A thriving island needed people, and people needed work.
Some of the older islanders resented the large influx of visitors that swelled the population over the summer months, many of them wealthy Northeasterners from Boston, New York and Philadelphia, but most accepted them as necessary for the survival of the community.
It wasn’t