The shabby old hotel in the Philippines had once been glorious, but the architecture had held little fascination. They’d been content to stay in bed for forty-eight hours of no responsibility except to each other. Leave, the HFH head honchos had called it, but by the end of the weekend, it had felt more like love.
Tangled together, not sure where one left off and the other began, they’d eaten little and slept even less, always waking to reach for each other once more. He would prop himself on one elbow and gaze
down at her with those glorious blue eyes. She would reach up and trace a finger along his dear, stubbled cheek. In that last moment before their lips touched, their breaths would mingle and become one. Their hearts would beat in tandem, and—
And this was no dream, Tansy realized. Her eyes fluttered open, registering the gray light of pre-dawn and the shadow of a man above her. Then he closed the distance between them, or she did. It didn’t matter, because in the next instant their lips touched and all rational thought fled.
Never familiar, always new and potent, Dale’s flavor slid across her tongue like an old friend and Tansy, half-awake and needy after so many months, arched into the contact. The kiss deepened immediately, like a continued conversation without beginning or end, existing only in the now.
She opened to him with a murmur, not knowing whether he was awake and not caring, only grateful, so grateful to taste him again. To feel him wrap around her and draw her in, to the one place where she felt safe. And warm. So warm.
He smelled of smoke, or maybe she did, and she pressed closer to him beneath the fine sheets, feeling the robe bunch behind her, leaving her legs bare to tangle with his.
The rough hair against her skin was shocking. It chased the last of the sleep from Tansy’s brain, which fired an urgent message of
Wrong!
This was wrong. She started to pull away just as Dale jerked back.
“Damn!” He leapt off the bed and stood, tugging his robe closed, though not before she glimpsed the hard, jutting flesh that had once been hers for the taking. “I’m sorry.”
Tansy closed her eyes against the sight and the memory. A hot blush flooded her face, and she was glad he couldn’t see it in the gray half light. “I’m sorry, too. I was…sleeping.” Dreaming. Wishing. “I didn’t mean it.”
When had lying become easy?
“Yeah.” Dale cleared his throat and took another step away from the bed. “Me neither. Sorry.” He pulled a blanket off the daybed, snagged a pillow and tossed them both on the floor. “I guess sharing the bed was a bad idea.”
“Guess so.” Tansy rolled onto her side so she wouldn’t have to watch him wrap himself in the blanket and stretch out on the floor. Tears stung her eyes. She was too proud to let them fall, though her pride was growing brittle and thin.
A tear broke free. Impatiently, she scrubbed at it with the corner of the sheet. The absence of the other pillow echoed hollowly against her back, making the empty side of the bed feel lonelier than it had in the past three months.
“Tans?” His voice rose from the floor, accompanied by a rustle of movement. “I really am sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you like that.”
I shouldn’t have kissed you at all,
was the unspoken meaning. It galled her that he had so easily
walked away from what they’d had together. Then again, that just went to show how one-sided their relationship had been. She’d been hurt. He hadn’t.
She swiped at her face again, then willed her voice not to tremble when she answered, “It was my fault. I was dreaming about the Philippines.”
There was a long pause, and she felt even stupider than before. There was nothing more pitiful than admitting she’d been dreaming about him. And since they hadn’t done anything
besides
make love on the island, he’d instantly know what she had been—
“That’s it!” Dale surged up from the floor, a strange, robed figure with wild eyes. “You’ve got it!”
Her traitorous heart sped to match his excitement and she sat up. “What? Dale, what is it?”
“The Philippines! Tansy, you’re a genius.” He strode to the door, opened it and called down the hall, “Frankie? Churchill? We need those clothes, stat. We’ve got to get to the general store, then over to the motel.”
“Dale,” she snapped, confusion and excitement battling within her, “what the hell are you talking about?”
He stopped in the middle of the room, a figure of sculpted beauty in a terry cloth robe. He lifted both hands as if to say,
It’s so simple
. His smile reminded her of the day they’d found the source of the Tehruvian outbreak, a villager who’d been selling turtles caught in an infected pond. He said, “The Philippines, Tans. Coconut and brown sugar.”
She felt the jolt all the way down to her toes. But it wasn’t a sexual jolt this time. It was a lightning bolt of understanding.
Coconut and brown sugar. It was the Philippines’ native cure for paralytic shellfish poisoning.
“YOU SURE THIS’LL WORK?” Churchill eyed the packages in Dale’s lap as the SUV bumped towards the motel.
“It’ll work.” It had to, or Eddie wasn’t going to make it, Dale thought as they pulled into the motel parking lot. The boy’s body wasn’t clearing the toxin fast enough, and his other systems were failing.
Then Dale’s thoughts stuttered to a halt and his doctor’s focus shattered at the sight of Mickey sitting outside the motel room with his wife cradled against his chest.
Oh, God. They were too late.
He was out of the SUV before it stopped rolling, and across the parking lot in three long strides. “Mickey, I’m so—”
“Shh.” Dale’s cousin lifted a finger to his lips. “Libby’s finally sleeping. It’s been days.” Then, apparently seeing Dale’s panic, Mickey smiled sadly. “No, Dale. There’s been no change. Our Eddie’s still…waiting.” He sighed and shifted his wife in his arms. “And so are we.”
When Mickey touched his lips to Libby’s temple, where her wheat-blond hair gave way to pale skin, Dale felt something shift inside his chest. Family.
That’s what Trask had taken away from him. Family, and love. Why hadn’t he seen it before?
Or had he seen it and just not cared?
“You ready to try this?” Tansy touched his hand, and it was all Dale could do not to reach for her, to take from her the same comfort Mickey was sharing with his Libby.
He could still taste Tansy on his lips, still feel her beneath him. She’d been dreaming of the Philippines. Well, he’d been wide-awake and had known exactly what he was doing.
And still hadn’t been able to stop himself. Tansy was his weakness, an aching, poignant reminder of everything he’d lost.
Everything he couldn’t afford.
“Try what?” Mick whispered. His faded blue eyes lit on the package in Tansy’s arms. “Do you have a cure for Eddie?”
Dale willed away the memory of Tansy rising up from Churchill’s guest bath like a mermaid emerging from the sea. Focus. He had to focus on the patients.
And the fact that someone wanted him and Tansy dead.
“We have something that might help,” Tansy answered. “Maybe.”
She shifted the package in her arms and Dale thought of the few things they’d found on the shelves of the unlocked general store. He wasn’t sure a five-pound bag of shaved, processed coconut and a six-pack of expired coconut milk would have the same
effect as the fresh stuff the islanders used, but it would have to do. He was just grateful the store had stocked that much, along with three boxes of dark brown sugar.
It was a relatively untested cure, but a single journal article had claimed the islanders’ remedy helped buffer the patient’s liver and kidneys from shellfish toxins, and helped the body clear the poisons.
Besides, Eddie and the others would die if they didn’t do something soon. So Dale found a reassuring smile, dropped a hand on his cousin’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll try our best, Mick.”
“Come on,” Tansy urged him, “let’s do this.”
Even before they pushed open the door to Eddie’s room, they heard the raised voices. Dale instantly recognized Hazel’s normally calm tones being overridden by a familiar bellow. He shouldered his way into the room, coconut and brown sugar forgotten on a surge of anger.
“Leave her alone, Trask.” Blood roaring in his ears, Dale took a menacing step towards his uncle before belatedly realizing something other than violence was thrumming through the room. He didn’t need Tansy’s touch on his arm to suggest he back down. The snap of temper in Hazel’s eyes and the dull red flush climbing his uncle’s neck was enough to drive Dale back a step. “I…uh—”
“We’ve brought something for Eddie.” Tansy calmly stepped into the room. “It’s a homeopathic remedy for PSP, but there’s evidence that it works.”
“Thank God. If we don’t do something for him soon…” Hazel glanced down at the boy in the bed. He seemed smaller than he had before, as though the toxin was sucking him dry, ounce by ounce. Then she looked from Dale to Trask and back. Her lips firmed with decision. “Tansy and I will deal with this. Dale, I want you to go with your uncle.”
“I’m not leaving Tansy,” he said quickly. She would only be on the island a few more hours. He planned on sticking with her until then, keeping her safe from the faceless enemy that wanted them dead.
And once she was gone? He’d face the questions alone, as it was meant to be.
“Mickey is outside to keep watch, and it’s almost daylight. We’re safe.” Hazel’s voice hardened. “Go with Trask. You owe it to Kristin and Thomas to see what he’s found.”
Kristin. Thomas.
Dale hadn’t consciously thought of his parents’ names in many years, but there they were, hovering at the edges of his mind. Along with the words
I think your parents were murdered
and
I have proof.
Dale looked at Trask, saw that his eyes were clear of drink, though bloodshot from the night before. For a moment, it seemed that he could see the hero he’d once loved in the face of the man Trask had become.
Tansy touched Dale’s shoulder before she moved to the boy’s bedside. “I’ll be okay with Hazel. We’ll take care of Eddie and the others. You go ahead.”
A part of him was surprised by Tansy’s urging. He’d expected her to be put off by his roots, and to be ashamed of his drunken uncle and the questions surrounding his parents’ deaths. By the fact that he’d run rather than stand up for them.
Or maybe, Dale thought as he watched Tansy brush a wisp of hair from Eddie’s brow, maybe he’d been wrong all along.
Maybe
he
was the one that was ashamed.
He looked from Trask to Hazel and back again, conscious of the way the two stood shoulder-to-shoulder, united against him. Or maybe for him. Finally, he nodded. “Okay. Show me your ‘proof.’”
“I have something else you’ll need to see first,” Trask grunted, laconic even in victory. He turned away and strode out the door to the parking lot.
Before he followed, Dale crossed to Tansy and briefly touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Be careful.”
She nodded but didn’t speak, and the wariness at the back of her eyes tore at him. He knew he was sending mixed signals, but he couldn’t help himself. The danger to her was breaking through the layers of self-defense and laying him bare. He wanted her, but he didn’t want to need her. In caring lay pain.
He stepped away and repeated, “Be careful.”
Outside, he glanced at the sky. Clouds were gathering above the island, and a low, sullen sky glow
ered from the west, cutting them off from the mainland. A dank-smelling breeze touched his face.
The storm was coming. And it was going to be a bad one.
WHEN DALE WAS GONE, TANSY felt his absence like an ache. Or maybe that was the rawness from the burned places and the bruises from the airplane crash. She couldn’t even tell anymore. She was in the midst of the Mad Hatter’s tea party and wasn’t sure where she was supposed to sit anymore.
Patients were dying. Someone had tried to kill her and Dale. Someone, it seemed, might have killed his parents a long time ago. Was it the same someone? Who knew?
Certainly not Tansy. She knew nothing.
Knowledge is power.
She had no power here.
What sort of a place was this Lobster Island? What sort of a man grew up here, then spent half his life trying to pretend he hadn’t?
“Come on. Help me with this stomach tube.” Hazel stood beside Eddie’s bed holding a bottle filled with a slurry of coconut and brown sugar. “Then we’ll sit and wait.”
“And pray,” Tansy added. Pray for the little boy, and for Mickey and Libby, who were sitting outside holding hands. Pray for Dale, who was looking more anguished each moment, though he hid those emotions almost as well as he hid all the others. Pray for their safety against the faceless danger that seemed
to have targeted two doctors who only wanted to help. And pray for an island that was sick at its soul, an island that saw more deaths than it should, and would see hunger come wintertime.
“Yes, pray,” Hazel agreed. The women worked together to dose the little boy. Though neither mentioned it, both were hoping for an instant recovery, for Eddie’s eyes to open and his mouth to turn up in a smile. But of course that didn’t happen. The respirator continued its
whoosh-chug,
and little Eddie didn’t move. Not even his eyelids flickered.
“Damn it,” Tansy murmured after a moment. “Just damn it.”
“It’s too soon. Give it time to work.” Hazel handed her an alcohol-soaked wipe. “Let’s clean up the mess and dose the other patients. He’ll be back for you soon.”
“I wasn’t thinking about Dale,” Tansy answered too quickly, then turned away on the pretext of wiping up a spot of sugar.
After a moment, Hazel said, “You’re good for him, you know.”
Tansy’s throat closed and the words backed up in her chest. No, she wasn’t good for him. Wasn’t good enough for him. Just wasn’t enough.
When there was no reply, Hazel continued, “He wrote to Mickey, maybe once or twice a year, and Mick passed the letters around. The last few mentioned you.”
“Oh.” Tansy told herself it shouldn’t still hurt after all these months. She’d had plenty of practice telling
her colleagues about the breakup, since Dale hadn’t told anyone. He’d pretended as though the affair had never happened. Had never ended. And that had hurt just as much as it tore at Tansy now to say, “We broke up. Three months ago.”