Heroes are My Weakness (34 page)

She wrinkled her nose, going for cute. “I can’t help it. I have crazy-mad skills.”

His eyebrows slammed together. He advanced ominously into the room. “I swear . . . If you pull that on me one more time . . .”

“I won’t. At least I don’t think I will. Probably not.”
Unless I have to,
she thought.

“Just to ease my mind . . .” he said, through gritted teeth. “Where is my cat?”

“I’m not completely sure. Probably asleep under the studio bed. You know how he likes it there.”

Theo seemed to realize that—as much as he might want to do her just a little bodily harm, it wasn’t in his nature. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”

She went on the attack. “I’ll tell you what you’re not going to do. You’re not going to knock yourself out trying to take care of me. I appreciate the thought, but I’m able-bodied, relatively sane—at least in comparison—and I take care of myself. The way I’m doing it might not be pretty, but I’m doing it, and I’m going to keep on doing it. No heroics are necessary on your part.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

And maybe he didn’t. He seemed to view himself as the villain instead of the protector, but if she pointed that out to him, he’d likely dismiss it.

She plopped down into his writing chair. “I’m hungry. Let’s get this over with.”

Chapter Nineteen

G
ET THIS OVER WITH
?” O
NCE
again his eyebrows went on a collision course. “You want to know if I killed Regan.”

The only way she could get Theo to tell her the rest was to goad it out of him. “Don’t play games with me. You didn’t kill her.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know you, O master builder of fairy houses.” And she did. In so many ways she hadn’t until now.

He blinked. She cut him off before he could deny what he’d done for Livia. “You put your horror on the page. Now stop trying to distract me with all your phony menace, and tell me what happened.”

“Maybe I’ve told you as much as I want to.”

He sneered just like Leo, but she wasn’t put off. “You and Regan had both just graduated from college,” she said. “And not the same college. How did you manage to pull that off?”

“I threatened to ditch college altogether if she didn’t agree that we’d split up. I said I’d backpack around the world without telling anyone where I was going.”

She loved that he’d been able to do that much to protect himself. “So you went to different schools . . .” It didn’t take a crystal ball to figure out what happened next. “And you met a girl.”

“More than one. Don’t you have something better to do?”

“Not a thing. Keep going.”

He grabbed his coat from the ottoman and tossed it on a hook by the door, tidying up—not because he was a neat freak, but because he didn’t want to look at her. “I was like a starving man in a supermarket, but even though our campuses were a hundred miles apart, I was still secretive. Right up until senior year when I fell hard for a girl in one of my classes . . .”

Annie leaned back in the chair, trying to appear relaxed so he wouldn’t clam up. “Let me guess. She was beautiful, smart, and crazy.”

He managed a vapor of a smile. “Two out of three. She’s now the CFO of a Denver tech firm. Married with three kids. Definitely not crazy.”

“But you had a big problem . . .”

He shifted a yellow pad on his desk a few inches to the left. “I’d been visiting Regan on her campus as often as I could, and she seemed okay. Normal. By her senior year, she’d even started to date. I thought she’d outgrown her problems.” He moved away from the desk. “The family was getting together on the island for the Fourth of July. Deborah couldn’t make it, but she wanted to see Peregrine, so I brought her over the week before everyone else was scheduled to arrive.” He wandered toward a back window, one that looked out onto the water. “I planned to tell Regan about her the next weekend, but Regan showed up early.”

Annie tightened her fingers over the chair arms, not wanting to hear what came next, but knowing she had to.

“Deborah and I were walking on the beach. Regan saw us from the top of the cliff. We were holding hands. That’s all.” He splayed his hands on either side of the window frame, staring out. “It had rained earlier, and the rocks were slippery, so I still don’t know how she made it down the steps so fast. I didn’t even see her coming, but the next thing I knew, she’d thrown herself at Deborah. I grabbed her and pulled her off. Deborah ran up to the house to get away.”

He turned away from the window but still didn’t look at her. “I was furious. I told Regan I needed to live my own life, and she needed to see a shrink. It got vicious.” He pointed to the scar by his eyebrow. “Regan’s the one who gave me this, not you.” He indicated just below the scar a much smaller mark that Annie had barely noticed. “This is yours.”

She had felt so good about giving him a scar. Now the sight of it made her sick.

“Regan went wild,” he continued. “She threatened me, threatened Deborah. I exploded. Told her I hated her. She looked me straight in the eye and said she was going to kill herself.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I was so angry that I told her I didn’t care.”

Pity overwhelmed her.

He wandered toward the window with the telescope, not looking at her, not seeing anything. “A storm was coming in. By the time I got to the house, I’d calmed down enough to know I had to go back and tell her I didn’t mean it, even though part of me did. But it was too late. She’d already run down the beach to our dock, and she was climbing into the sailboat. I yelled at her from the steps to come back. I’m not sure she heard. Before I could get to her, she had the sails up.”

Annie could see it as if she’d been there, and she wanted to wipe away the image.

“The powerboat was out of the water for repairs,” he said, “so I jumped in the water, somehow thinking I could catch her. The surf was strong. She saw me and yelled at me to go back. I kept swimming. The waves were breaking over me, but I could still catch glimpses of her face. She looked so sorry, so apologetic. So fricking apologetic. Then she trimmed the sails and raced out into the storm.” He unclenched his fist. “That was the last time I saw her alive.”

Annie clenched her fists. It was wrong to hate someone with a mental illness, but Regan had not only destroyed herself and nearly killed Annie; she’d done her best to destroy Theo, too. “Regan got you good, didn’t she? The perfect revenge.”

“You don’t understand,” he said with a bitter laugh. “Regan didn’t kill herself to punish me. She did it to set me free.”

Annie came out of her chair. “You don’t know that!”

“Yeah, I do.” He finally looked at her. “Sometimes we could read each other’s minds, and that moment was one of them.”

She remembered Regan’s tears over a gull with a broken wing. In her sane moments, she must have hated this part of herself.

Annie knew not to let any of the pity she felt show in her face, but what he’d done to himself was wrong. “Regan’s plan didn’t work. You still think you’re responsible for her death.”

He dismissed her sympathy with a harsh slash of his hand. “Regan. Kenley. Look for the common element, and you’ll find me.”

“What you’ll find are two mentally ill women and a man with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. You couldn’t have saved Regan. Sooner or later, she would have destroyed herself. The more troublesome question is Kenley. You say you were attracted to her because she was the opposite of Regan, but is that true?”

“You don’t understand. She was brilliant. She seemed so independent.”

“I get that, but you must have sensed her neediness underneath all that.”

“I didn’t.”

Now he was angry, but Annie plowed on. “Is it possible you saw your relationship with her as a way to make up for what had happened to Regan? You hadn’t been able to save your sister, but maybe you could save Kenley?”

His lip curled. “That psych degree you got off the Internet sure does come in handy.”

She’d gotten her insights into human psychology in acting workshops dedicated to understanding a character’s deepest motivations. “You’re a natural caretaker, Theo. Have you ever thought that writing might be your rebellion against whatever it is inside you that makes you feel responsible for other people?”

“You’re digging way too deep,” he said harshly.

“Just think about it, okay? If you’re right about Regan, imagine how much she’d hate the way you keep punishing yourself.”

His barely concealed hostility told her she couldn’t push him any further. She’d planted the seeds. Now she had to step back and see if any of them would grow. She walked toward the door. “In case you start to wonder . . . You’re a great guy and a halfway decent lover, but no way would I ever kill myself over you.”

“Comforting.”

“Or lose even a minute’s sleep.”

“Vaguely insulting, but . . . thanks for the clarity.”

“This is the way sane women behave. Tuck that away for future reference.”

“I’ll be sure to do that.”

The sudden constriction in her chest contradicted her glibness. Her heart ached for him. He hadn’t come to the island to write. He’d come here to do penance for two deaths he believed were his responsibility. Harp House wasn’t his refuge. It was his punishment.

T
HE NEXT MORNING AS SHE
pulled a cereal box from the cupboard, she glanced at the calendar she’d hung on the wall. Thirty-four days down, twenty-six to go. Theo came into the kitchen and told her he had to go to the mainland. “My publisher is driving up from Portland. I’m going to meet with her in Camden and take care of some business. Ed Compton is bringing me back on his boat tomorrow evening.”

She grabbed a bowl. “Lucky you. Streetlights, paved roads, Starbucks—not that I could actually afford Starbucks.”

“I’ll go there for you.” He held up one hand as if he knew she’d object to whatever he was about to say. “I know you’re armed and dangerous, but I’m asking you to stay at Harp House while I’m gone. This is a polite request, not an order.”

He’d tried to take care of Regan and of Kenley, and now he was trying to take care of her. “You’re such a girl,” she said.

He answered that by leaning back on his heels and glaring at her, every inch of him the embodiment of pissed-off masculinity.

“That was a compliment,” she said. “Sort of. The whole nurturing thing you have going . . . ? As much as I appreciate your watchdog attitude, I’m not one of those needy females you tend to collect.”

He gave her his baddest badass sneer. “That whip idea you had . . . I’m liking it more and more.”

She wanted to rip off his clothes and devour him right there. Instead, she sniffed, “I’ll stay at Harp House, girlfriend, just to keep you from worrying.”

Her taunt had its desired effect. He took her right there on the kitchen floor. And it was exhilarating.

A
S MUCH AS
A
NNIE DIDN
’
T
like the idea of sleeping at Harp House, she agreed to appease him. On her way, she stopped to inspect the fairy house. Using sticks, Theo had built a cantilevered balcony over the doorway. He’d also turned a few clamshells on their sides and scattered some of the paving stones, evidence of a late-night fairy frolic. She turned to face the sun. After enduring so much cold weather, she’d never again take a bright winter day for granted.

The fragrance of freshly baked banana bread met her as she stepped into the kitchen. Jaycie was a better baker than cook, and she’d been making these small treats ever since Annie had confronted her about her husband’s death. It was her way of making amends for not confiding her past.

Remnants of construction paper from one of Livia’s art projects lay on the table next to the bread. Annie had spent hours on the Internet delving into articles about deep childhood trauma. When she’d come across information about puppet therapy, she’d been especially intrigued. But it was a specialized field with trained therapists, and the articles had made her even more aware of how much she didn’t know.

Jaycie came into the kitchen. She’d been on crutches for weeks, but she still moved as awkwardly as ever. “I got a text from Theo,” she said. “He’s on his way to the mainland.” Her voice developed an uncharacteristic edge. “I bet you’re going to miss him.”

Annie had criticized Jaycie for not being forthcoming, yet Annie was being equally withholding. But she couldn’t imagine announcing they were lovers. Nothing had changed the fact that she owed Jaycie her life. She thought about the day Regan had pushed her into the marsh. Jaycie had been there, but she’d lagged far enough behind that she must not have seen the actual push.

As the afternoon wore on, Annie’s mood dipped. She’d grown to look forward to being with Theo at the end of the day. And not just for the incredible sex. She simply liked being with him.

Get used to it,
Dilly said, in her normal straightforward manner.
Your ill-advised love affair is going to be over soon.

Sex
affair,
Annie corrected her.
And do you think I don’t understand that?

You tell me,
Dilly said.

Whether Annie liked it or not, this ache she felt at his absence was a wake-up call. She made herself focus on the evening ahead, one she was determined to enjoy. The articles on puppet therapy had been fascinating. She did some more research, then settled down with the ancient gothic paperback she’d brought with her. What better place to read one of her spooky old favorites than at Harp House?

By midnight, however, the story of the cynical duke and virginal lady’s companion hadn’t worked its magic, and she still couldn’t fall asleep. Dinner had been sparse, and there was banana bread in the kitchen. She slipped out of bed and stuffed her feet in her sneakers.

The lamp in the upstairs hallway cast a long yellow shadow up the wall, and the stairs creaked as she made her way into the foyer. A full moon threw blades of silver light through the panes of glass above the front door—not enough to illuminate the area, only enough to emphasize its gloom. The house had never felt more forbidding. She rounded the corner into the back hallway . . . And froze.