Safe Harbor (32 page)

Oddly, her first—no doubt least painful—thought was for the engraving. "So it's not on the boat, after all."

"No, the engraving's gone."

"That's too bad; I would have liked to have seen it," she admitted,
sitting back on the narrow sill.
A few heartbeats later, she added, "So he's serious about her."

"He appears to be."

"And she's willing to have him, of course."

"He seems to think so."

"Do the police know she's alive and well?"

"I got that impression."

Holly nodded. "Someone should tell Stefan and get him off our backs."

"Consider it done."

She pushed herself off the sill and walked back over to him, then laid her cheek against his still-damp shirt and wrapped her arms around his waist. "I should be thankful that
Eden
's alive—but I'm not," she murmured. "She's caused so much pain around here."

Her sigh ripped Sam in two. "More to come, I'm afraid."

"
I
know," she said, and she began a long ramble. "I'm going to have to break this to my mother
... and my sister
... and who knows where Eden and my dad will want to live
... more scandal
...
as if there hasn't been enough already. I hope my mother doesn't decide to
move off the island
... but it's such a small place
..."

Mute in his guilt, Sam was stroking her hair, touching her with reassurances that he could not speak. He had waited too long, for too many reasons, to tell her about his short-lived but somehow unending marriage to
Eden
. And now that the stakes were higher than ever, he was less able than ever to make a clean breast of it.

"Holly
... sweet
... do you remember Percy Billings?"

"Do I!" she said, laughing softly. "He was really cute, but not very forthright. I like honest Sam Steadman a lot more. A whole lot more."

"Well
... good," he said, kissing the top of her head. "But getting back to Percy Billings—"

"Hey, I just realized," she said, looking up at him. "When did you see my father, anyway?"

"Just now. Ten minutes ago."

She gasped and said, "
He
was the dufus you fought with? My
father?"

"Yeah, but don't worry about him," Sam said, brushing aside the distraction. "He's fine. Maybe a black eye, that's all. Some cuts and scrapes. Will you listen to me?"

"But—what were you fighting about? Not politics, surely!"

"It was my fault; he rubbed me the wrong way. Holly—"

"No, you don't understand, Sam. My father's not the least bit violent. He's the kind of person who catches spiders in the house and sets them free. Really, he is
so
non-violent. It's almost a thing with him. He gives to causes against abuse and aggression. He'd
never
have—how did you get him to fight? What on earth did you say?"

"I don't remember. It's not important.
Holly
.
Will you let me get this out?"

"Get what out? What are you talking about?"

"
Eden
! What the hell are we
ever
talking about?
Eden
! God, I'm so sick of her name!" He took Holly by the shoulders and held her at arm's length, forcing himself to look her square in the eye. "Stop interrupting. Just
... for one minute
listen
to me, or I'll never get this out," he said in a voice thick with agony. "Eden Walker is still my wife."

Nothing.

Then: "Oh."

Then: "Still?"

Then: "Oh" again.

And then a heartwrenching, shuddering sigh. "Did you say 'still'?"

"Yes. We never divorced."

Her cheeks burned red; her eyes welled with emotion. "Oh. Okay. Because somehow I must not have been listening when you told me you were married to her in the first place."

Her irony cut him down much more effectively than any display of hysteria could. He said in a hoarse whisper, "I'm sorry, Holly. My God
... I am sorry."

He closed his eyes, shutting out the vision of her hurt, but when he opened them again, she was still hurt. Her look was blank; her breast was lifting and falling rapidly. She reminded him of a bird that's just flown into a window and dropped to the ground. He was afraid to let her go, afraid that, wounded o
r not, she would fly off, just
to get away from him.

She wiggled out of his grasp just the same; but she was too wounded to fly very far.

"Is that why you came to the island?" she asked in the faintest of whispers. "For her?"

Sam started to shake his head in denial. But he wanted Holly's mercy, and there could be no mercy without a full confession. "That was part of it, yes. I'd be lying if—"

"Lying? You?" she said softly.

He felt his own cheek smart from the words so gently lashed. "I deserve that. My only defense—and it stinks—is that I didn't know you then."

"Ah. Now I feel better: you only lie to strangers."

"No, I only withhold information from strangers. Miss Manners says that's permissible," he said with a wan smile.

"Does she? Then I suppose she says it's permissible to abduct a stranger into a waiting seaplane," Holly said with a lift of her chin.

"You weren't a stranger by then," he said, and immediately he wished he hadn't, because he could see where she was leading him.

"And Miss Manners wouldn't have any problem with your making wild, passionate love all night to a stranger, either, would she?"

When he refused to answer, she goaded him. "She wouldn't, would she?"

He wanted her mercy; he said softly, "Obviously by then you weren't—"

"A stranger?" Her eyes blazed, her voice rose. "Then why the
hell
didn't you tell me you were married? To
Eden
Walker
! My God—to
Eden
Walker
! I can't even
begin
to take this in."

She began to pace, but there was no room for that luxury, so she stopped and laid her hands on the corners of a low dresser, probably trying to decide whether she could lift it and hurl it at him.

He took a kind of wild comfort from the fact that she hadn't turned and walked straight out of the barn and out of his life.
"It was a long time ago, Holly
," he pleaded. "I was young; I was a fool."

"And now you're not?" she cried, whirling around. "Who but a fool would make love to me when he was married to someone else?"

"We aren't married—not in anything but name. She didn't even
take
my name. I had no idea if she was dead or alive. We couldn't have been more separated!"

"Oh, where have I heard
that
one before?"

"It's the truth. I know you don't want to believe a thing I say, but it's the truth."

His mind wasn't thinking straight; he was succumbing to panic at the thought of losing her. He had expected it, dreaded it, deserved it—and yet now that it was happening, he was shutting down completely in denial.

He went scrambling after his wits like a kid with a runaway skateboard. Trying to be scrupulously honest, he said, "Eden and I were whatever it's called when the woman takes off, never to be heard from again."

"Oh, what, you had a tiff a few months ago and I'm supposed to believe it's over between you?"

"Seven years, Holly! She disappeared seven
years
ago!"

It slowed her down, but only just. "Seven years, seven decades, seven centuries! What difference does it make? You never divorced her!"

"True," he agreed. "And here's my politically incorrect response: Up until I met you, I didn't know whether I loved her or not. So shoot me. I didn't know."

"You
still
don't know. You haven't seen her. You still don't know! She's going to walk back into your life with an armful of cash for your parents, and you're going to fall in love all over again! I know it!"

"You're wrong! You couldn't be more wrong!"

He wanted to take her in his arms and reassure her, but when he took a step closer she threw her hands up in front of her as if he were a vampire bat. "No! One woman at a time, please! I've never been keen on the concept of harems."

"Holly, for pity's sake, you're being melodramatic.
Eden
doesn't mean anything to me."

"Oh? Are you willing to look me in the eye and tell me that during the whole time you were coming on to me, you had no feelings—no feelings at all—for
Eden
?"

"I—" He took a deep breath and blew it out in massive frus
tration. "No. I can't do that."

"Oh—damn you," she cried, equally frustrated. "You lie at all the wrong times, you know that?"

Confused now, he said, "You wanted the truth, Holly. Do you know how hard this is for me?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," she shot back. "You've been tight-lipped about e
verything from the start
. It's the kind of man you are. I should have known. I
did
know, and yet
.
..."

She closed her eyes against the tears, and when she opened them, her look was unmistakable: complete disdain. Even worse was the unconscious gesture that accompanied it. She wiped her fingertips across the cuffs of her paint-smeared shorts as if she were wiping herself clean of paint stains. Of Sam stains. Wiping herself clean of him.

"You're right," he said, unmanned by the innocence of that gesture. "I should have told you. I have no excuse."

He had plenty of them, but none that mattered. Bottom line, she wasn't inclined to grant him mercy, and he had no right to beg for it.

But, for the first time in his life, beg for it he did. "I'm sorry, Holly," he whispered abjectly. "Will you forgive me?"

She stared at him for a long, long time—trying, he thought, to see into his soul. He studied her face as he had never studied a face before, memorizing it. She was so beautiful. Her dark brows, her deep-sea-green eyes, the smudge of blue paint on her cheekbone, pink on her chin... all of it was heartbreakingly endearing. Her eyes as she gazed at him seemed fathomless. And then, just when he felt sure that she recognized the love that he had for her, she sighed, and pressed her lips tightly together, and shook her head.

"No, Sam. I won't forgive you."

She turned away from him and walked out.

H
olly stumbled in blind anguish down the footpath that cut through the trees between her cottage and the barn.

It must be me. I fought with Ivy, and now I've fought with Sam. It must be me. I'm making mountains out of molehills. Sam didn't do anything. What did he do? Nothing. He didn't lie; he just didn't say. Ivy and Sam in one night, that's impossible. Something is wrong with me. It's my fault.

What had he said exactly?

Eden
Walker
is still my wife
.

Holly tried to brush away a stream of tears. How could it possibly be her fault that Eden Walker was still Sam
's
wife? It was
his
fault, that bastard, that bastard, it
was
his fault. She let out a moan: she so much wanted it all to be hers.

Blindly, she staggered on. She caught a fallen branch with the toe of her sandal and went sprawling onto the mulched path. Surprised, she lay there picking off pieces of pine bark that were sticking to her right leg and arm;
she was numb with shock, completely out of it. Behind her she heard a twig snap. It got her scrambling to her feet again: she had no desire to repeat the agony with him in the barn. Her barn. Her wonderful red barn. Her studio, her refuge, her art. Ruined. Ruined by a stupid, stupid man. Two stupid men.

They tell you what they think you want to hear. They don't want to hurt you but they don't want to make hard choices, either. They want it all. Pigs, pigs, all of them. They're all alike, not to be trusted. Ever.

She ran inside her house and locked both doors, spooked not by the fear of
a
bogeym
a
n or
a Koloman
, but by the thought of
a
Steadman
.

I have to talk about this with someone.
But Sam was her someone of choice. Who instead?

Not her father, that was for sure. He knew—surely that's what the fight on the beach had been about—and he didn't care. The only choice, the obvious choice, was for Holly to confide in her mother.