“Hey, that was my highest compliment. People suck, which is why my patients are animals, and I’m amazing at treating them. Come to think of it, you should be swooning. Only don’t, because then I’d have to catch you and maybe mess up my hands—and these are the hands of a certified genius.”
Merry narrowed her eyes. “How about your face. What happens if someone messes that up?”
Ben’s jaw ticked once before he let out a short, sharp bark of a laugh. Merry had managed to surprise him. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to White Lightning, so long as you promise to be sweet to her. She could use a little extra TLC today.”
Even the knowledge that Harrison was getting out of his SUV behind her, his solid, looming presence like a second sun at her back, couldn’t get Jo to tear her eyes off the interaction in front of her.
“I’ll be sweet to White Lightning,” Merry said, color high and eyes bright. “But I make no promises when it comes to arrogant, jerkface veterinarians.”
She marched up the hill toward the barn, with her head up and her hair whipping in the breeze like a flag. Ben’s gaze followed her for a long moment before he turned to Jo and said, “Damn you to hell, Jo Ellen Hollister.”
He looked as if someone had set him on fire, his face a mask of agonized disbelief. It was only in this moment of seeing him so alive and electrified that Jo realized she’d known this young man for years, and had never seen any emotion in his expression beyond sardonic humor, boredom, or disgust when talking to another person.
When he talked to his furry, four-legged patients … well, that was something else entirely. The gentleness she knew Ben had buried deep inside was what made Jo say, “You’re welcome.”
With an incoherent snarl, Ben stormed after Merry. Mind whirling, Jo felt an almost irresistible compulsion to follow them and watch them strike more sparks off each other. But Harrison cleared his throat meaningfully, and Jo turned to face him instead.
Her heart sank. He didn’t have his casual-conversation face on. No, this one was more like the we-need-to-talk face.
Harrison raised a brow. “That one of your girls?”
A pang of guilt splintered through Jo’s rib cage. “Merry. My younger daughter.”
There was a look in his eyes that Jo could barely stand to read, and not for the first time, she wished this man knew just a little bit less about the sins of her past and her hopes for the future.
“Pretty girl,” he said, his gaze never leaving Jo’s. “When’s she due?”
“About six weeks, she tells me.”
“Think she’ll still be here then?”
If Jo’s fervent prayers were answered, Merry and Ella would both still be on Sanctuary when Baby showed up. And since Jo believed wholeheartedly in the power of positive affirmations, she smiled and tossed her long ponytail over her shoulder. “Yes. That’s not the plan, as of now, but plans change.”
“They sure do,” he agreed, tone drier than the sawdust blanketing the barn floor, and Jo grimaced.
She’d kind of stepped in that one.
There was a moment of heavy silence before Harrison took pity on her. “I spoke with Dabney Leeds’s representative, a lawyer over in Winter Harbor.”
Jo’s mouth went dry. “And?”
The sympathy in Harrison’s deep-set eyes tipped her off before he spoke. “Given that you didn’t know about the debt until after Miz Dottie passed, I talked them into giving you a monthlong grace period. But if you can’t come up with the full amount to cover the debt within thirty days, the house will belong to Mr. Leeds.”
The blow made Jo want to stagger, her knees weak with horror. “I can’t be the Hollister who loses Windy Corner. What about the stables?” She was grasping at straws and she knew it.
“They haven’t turned a profit.”
“Not yet, but by the end of the year…”
“You don’t have until the end of the year.” Harrison crossed his arms over his chest, his brawny biceps straining at the material of his gray suit coat. He’d loosened the knot of his striped tie on the drive out from town, and Jo’s gaze caught on the triangle of sunbaked skin exposed by the open top button of his crisp white shirt. “But I may have a solution.”
A ray of hope broke through the nausea and panic swirling through Jo’s brain. “What? I’ll do anything, whatever it takes to save Windy Corner.”
The corner of his lip quirked up sardonically, as if he knew already that she was going to regret saying that.
His steady gaze had Jo’s heart rate picking up. “Then marry me.”
There went her knees again. “What?”
He took a step forward, close enough to enfold one of her limp, bloodless hands in his big, warm clasp. “Be my wife, and all of this goes away. I’ll pay off the lien, we’ll save Windy Corner, and everything else will work itself out.”
Jo’s mind went blank, as if every thought and emotion had been washed away by a torrential flood of disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. The answer to her money problems couldn’t be so simple … so impossible.
She stared down at their joined hands, his long, deft, dear fingers as familiar to her as her own, and she knew exactly what she had to say.
CHAPTER 12
“I may not have the best sense of direction,” Ella said, curling nervous fingers around the roll bar stretched under the canvas roof of Grady’s green Jeep, “but I’m pretty sure the town of Sanctuary is back the other way.”
“We’re not going into town.”
The Jeep bounced and shuddered over the rough, backcountry road, but Grady made no concessions to the terrain. Pedal to the metal and barely slowing down for curves, the line of his body was entirely relaxed and confident. He could’ve been kicked back in his recliner in front of his flatscreen.
Her gaze dropped to the loose grip of his gloved hand around the gearshift. She was supposed to be looking at the island, the beautiful scenery flashing past the car in a blur, but all she could see was Grady.
Needing to distract herself from errant thoughts about what it would feel like to be touched by a man wearing leather gloves, she said, “This is not the plan. You’re supposed to be showing me around the island. Surely any good tour starts in the ‘Heart of Sanctuary.’”
He smiled a little at her air quotes. “I hate plans. And trust me. The town square is not the heart of Sanctuary Island.”
The Jeep churned its way up a sandy hill and shuddered to a stop at the top. Ella had to blink furiously to clear her vision of the dazzle of sunlight on water as the never-ending vastness of the ocean stretched beneath them.
A snowy white egret lifted its beak from the shallow tidal pool at the bottom of the hill and stared up at the Jeep. As if finding them boring, it went back to grooming its feathers. Ella’s breath went ragged, her ribs squeezing hard around the beauty of the wide, open meadow, the tall grass waving down the shore to meet the lapping of the waves.
“This, on the other hand.” Grady’s voice was quiet, almost reverent. “This is where I feel the heartbeat of the island.”
The look on his face was one she’d seen before, she realized with a shiver.
He looked like someone who’d just made a breakthrough in therapy—emotional and almost overwhelmed, but somehow at peace.
Ella had seen that expression in the mirror, once or twice, after a particularly difficult session—one of the few times she’d managed to push herself to open up and be really honest about how she felt.
Amazing that for Grady, all it took was a glimpse of this serene, breeze-ruffled meadow.
Shaking himself free of his reverie, Grady smiled over at her, the wide, carefree grin of a little kid. “Want to get a closer look?”
Ella regretted her choice of shoes almost immediately. Her brown ankle boots were eminently sensible in the city, low-heeled and comfortable for walking, but they were no match for the soft, sucking ground or the razor sharpness of the salt-marsh cordgrass.
She picked her way after him, reluctant to say anything to break the spell of contentment this place had woven around Grady. He moved through the thigh-high grass as if following some path only he could see. Every few steps, he’d glance over his shoulder to check on her progress, and if she fell too far behind, he’d grin and wait for her to catch up.
To her surprise, Ella couldn’t help grinning back at him even as sweat began to prickle at her hairline and dampen the spot at the base of her spine. Sure, her tender ankle gave her a twinge or two, and she was pretty sure this field was crawling with ticks, but there was also something indefinably exhilarating about being out here.
In the middle of nature—practically covered in it, in fact, she mused as she swatted at a mosquito—bushwhacking through soggy patches and heading steadily for the coastline.
“I don’t know why I’m having such a hard time keeping up,” Ella panted apologetically, scurrying the last few steps to where Grady stood watching her patiently. “It’s not the ankle, I swear. And I walk everywhere in the city. I don’t even own a car!”
He shrugged easily. “City walking is different. But don’t worry your head, pretty city mouse.” Grady’s mouth kicked up in a teasing smile. “We’re not in a hurry to catch a train or something. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
She blinked. “I guess you’re right.”
“Been a while since you took some time off, I bet.”
She was watching where she put her feet, hoping to avoid another patch of sticky mud. The fact that she was also avoiding Grady’s too perceptive gaze was just a bonus.
“I’m not big on downtime.” She smiled, trying to keep it breezy and light. “I like to work.”
“What is it you do, exactly?”
Ella cast him a searching glance, but he seemed sincerely interested. Most men who asked that question, on a first date or at a bar, tended to glaze over the minute she started answering.
Keeping tabs on his reaction from the corner of her eye, Ella said, “I’m in commercial real estate development, hotels and office buildings, mostly. Lots of wheeling and dealing, contract negotiations, scouting potential properties…”
Nothing about that description conveyed the excitement of pitting herself against other developers or talking indecisive buyers into signing on the dotted line. It also, she admitted to herself, didn’t describe quite how exhausting the whole process could be, how easy it was to get lost in the minutiae of contract details. How easy it was to start making mistakes.
“So, basically, your life is a giant, never-ending game of Monopoly.”
That surprised a laugh out of her. “More or less.”
Of course, one bad roll of the dice hadn’t landed her on Free Parking—it had gotten her banished to this tiny island.
There was a pause where Grady paced her, slowing his loose, long-limbed stride to match her more cautious steps. The line of his body along her side radiated warmth more intensely than the morning sun reflecting off the water.
For the last few years, Ella had brought in more business than anyone else in her firm. That wasn’t an accident. She knew an opening when she saw it, and she never hesitated to press an advantage.
Out here in the sunlight, with Grady in an open, sharing mood, was her best chance at getting more information about Jo’s financial situation.
“Actually,” she began, deliberately casual. “I know how you feel about the whole idea of a bed-and-breakfast bringing tourism to this island, but I have to tell you—in my professional opinion, Jo is sitting on a potential gold mine.”
He stiffened, his movements losing that easy, loping grace and going jerky. “Leave it alone,” he growled.
The intensity in his tone brought Ella’s head up to study his face. But his expression had closed down, the ease of the morning shuttered away as he gazed off into the distance. He looked like a stranger all of a sudden, hard-faced and wary.
Ella was surprised to find herself wanting to tailor her questions to draw him back out into the sun—even if that wasn’t really necessary for her goal of getting information.
“It could be a wonderful thing for the island,” she said, as if she hadn’t noticed his shutdown. “But even more than that, it could be great for Jo Ellen.”
She watched him closely as he stomped along at her side, but he didn’t appear to be moved. “Jo will be fine. We take care of our own here on Sanctuary.”
His words had a conviction that told Ella she’d butted up against one of his unshakable beliefs. Every person in a negotiation had at least one or two ideas that they couldn’t be talked out of—beliefs so strong that they were considered capital
T
Truth.
It was pointless to continue a line of discussion that would entail contradicting one of those Truths. Ella veered around it.
“Must be nice to live in a community like that. Especially if something unexpected happens—when something unexpected happens, I should say.” She forced a laugh. “Goodness knows, into each life a little surprise catastrophe must fall, right?”
He rolled his shoulders as if trying to warm up to lift something heavy and unwieldy. “I told you already that your mom helped me a lot, when I first moved here after the accident.”
The accident. His injuries were the result of some sort of accident.
Ella’s brain greedily snatched at the crumb of information, adding it to her hoard of facts about Grady Wilkes.
“But it wasn’t just Jo,” he went on, his jaw like iron. “It was the whole island, the horses, the peace. How much it felt like nothing could touch me here, like the outside world stopped mattering and I could finally stop running. All the things that a B and B, or anything that brings tourists to the island, would ruin.”
“I understand all that, but what if Jo truly needed the money?”
He gave her a look that bordered on pity. “Not everyone cares about money as much as you do.”
The slap of shame rocked her back on her heels, the sensation of being seen through, and found lacking, almost enough to distract her from the fact that she’d achieved her goal.
Grady didn’t know about Jo’s money troubles.
The success of her plan wasn’t enough to dull Ella’s urgent, immediate, foolish need to slap Grady back with one of her own personal Truths.
Raising her chin, Ella gathered the scraps of her dignity like spare change dropped on the street. “You’re probably right. But then, not everyone has been working since they were sixteen to help support their family because their divorced single dad couldn’t make enough to cover rent and food at the same time. And trust me, when you get home from double-bagging groceries and stocking shelves only to dig into a mountain of homework so you can get a desperately needed scholarship, well. It gives you a strong appreciation for what money can do.”