Sanctuary Island (32 page)

Not enough bars for a phone call, she saw as soon as she pulled the phone out. But a couple of text messages had gotten through. They were both from Jo.

Merry in labor. Had cramps all day, thought it was just braxton hicks but no, real deal! Ben is here, says everything will be fine, but she needs you.

And then, from a few seconds later,
We both do. Come home.

Everything in her body went taut. Rushing to the radio, she picked it up and started mashing buttons, trying to get the stupid thing to power on so she could hail someone, anyone, to get her off this bucket right the hell now.

After a long minute of frantic switch-flicking, all she could hear was the raspy sound of her own panicked breaths, punctuated by the occasional roll of thunder.

This wasn’t getting her anywhere. Even with the rational voice in her head cautioning her that the smart thing would be to wait for the Coast Guard to show up, Ella ducked out of the cockpit and into the driving rain to search the upper deck for something, anything, that might help her.

At the first sign of trouble, Buddy had hauled out the flotation devices, so she was already wearing a bulky orange life vest. She found the rest of them in a plastic box under one of the bench seats and briefly, hysterically, considered lashing twenty or so together to make a raft.

She slid the bin of orange vests back under the bench and kept looking. Heaven help her if she found a lifeboat, because Ella was afraid she’d have a really hard time talking herself out of that one.

Mind filled with images of her sister crying through contractions, asking where Ella was, she slid on the slippery deck as the ferry lurched precariously atop the waves. Adrenaline spurting, lungs squeezing, hands shaking, she clung to the railing for dear life and shook her head to dispel the odd ringing in her ears.

If this is what a panic attack feels like,
she thought dazedly,
no wonder it stops Grady from leaving the island.

Rain pelted her already chilled flesh, stinging like a shower of pebbles, but she couldn’t give up. Merry needed her.

She could almost hear her sister calling out for her,
Ella,
over and over and over.

Wait. That wasn’t just in her head. Someone was yelling her name.

Blinking water out of her eyes, Ella leaned over the railing and stared. That was it, she’d gone nuts. There was no way she was seeing that.

Grady Wilkes, soaked to the skin and battling a huge ocean swell in a tiny powerboat.

Joy, relief, and pure terror collided in a dizzying rush. “Grady!” she yelled down to him, her shout nothing but a thready whimper against the fury of the storm. “Oh dear God, be careful!”

At any moment, he could be dashed against the side of the ferry, his boat shattered into shards of fiberglass, and Grady tossed down into the depths. But he didn’t seem afraid—his grim concentration never wavered while he carefully pulled alongside the ferry and did something complicated with a rope and his other hand.

The maneuver ended with his boat attached to the back of the ferry somehow, and with one burning look up at Ella, Grady disappeared behind the corner of the bigger boat.

Rushing to the back of the ferry as fast as she could—which wasn’t all that fast, since she was working against the pitch and sway of the boat—Ella arrived just in time to reach out and grab Grady’s wet, straining arm as he hooked it over the top rung of the safety ladder.

Heart in her mouth, Ella gasped in a strangled breath and wrapped both her arms around his broad chest in a desperate embrace.

“Ella.” His voice was a guttural growl so low, it rumbled through her like the thunder overhead. Slinging one leg over the top railing and planting his booted foot on the deck, he crushed her closer, his mouth hot against her chilled cheek.

His lips moved up her cheekbone to her temple as his hands swept over her shoulders, mapping the curve of her waist and the flare of her hips as if checking for injuries. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she all but sobbed, overwhelmed. “What are you doing out here? I thought you couldn’t take your boat out, that you’d panic…”

Grady pulled back far enough for his eyes to devour every inch of her no-doubt pale face framed by stringy, bedraggled hair. He didn’t seem to notice that she must look like a drowned cat.

One of those impossibly warm, broad-palmed hands came up to thread through her hair and push it back from her forehead. “Guess I never had the right motivation before.”

Everything inside her thrilled toward him for one glorious moment, before reality came crashing back in.

Remembering the way they’d parted, Ella was abruptly aware of how tightly she was hanging on to this man who’d basically called her a money-grubbing opportunist.

She jerked out of his arms and stood on her own, ignoring the reflexive tightening of his grip. “Come on, get all the way onto the deck. Not that it’s so much safer up here than you were down there. In fact, let me get you a life vest and then we should probably head straight back down the ladder.”

“The situation here doesn’t look too bad,” he said, scanning the deck. “You’re probably better off waiting for the Coast Guard—I sent up the distress call as soon as I saw the ferry had lost power.”

“Thanks,” Ella said. “But unless your boat has sprung a leak, it’s definitely safer than this ferry.”

CHAPTER 31

It turned out that the ferry was, in fact, sinking … but very slowly. Buddy, who’d come back up to the cockpit to report on their status to the Coast Guard, nearly threw a fit when the Coasties radioed saying they expected not to have a rescue boat free for another hour, but to keep them apprised of any changes in the situation.

Shivering even while wrapped in the silvery survival blanket from Grady’s kit, Ella sat in the copilot seat with a dangerously pigheaded look on her pretty, chalk-white face.

“I’m not waiting another hour,” she announced firmly. She didn’t look at Grady.

After that first, ecstatic moment, Ella hadn’t met his eyes once.

Trying his best to be the calm, sane voice of reason even though he’d never felt less sane in his life, Grady said, “Ella, I know you want to get to Merry, but you’re not going to do her any good if you manage to get yourself injured making the trip back to Windy Corner. The Coast Guard is the most capable, safest option right now. They’ll be here in…” He checked his watch. “Less than an hour, now.”

“And then what?” Ella said, staring out at the still-raging storm. “They’ll mess around trying to get the ferry’s power back on? Who knows how long that will take. And then they’ll tow the ferry back to Sanctuary, which probably won’t be a fast process, either.”

Buddy took the pipe out of his mouth and pointed the stem at the windshield. “Nope. They won’t be towing us to Sanctuary.”

Ella’s head swiveled to him so fast, it made Grady’s neck hurt. “What? I have to go back to Sanctuary! My sister is in labor, about to have a baby with a freaking veterinarian as her attending physician!”

Buddy’s brow wrinkles creased even deeper than usual. “That sounds like a made-for-TV movie.”

Ella snorted. “Welcome to my life. But you see why we have to get the Coast Guard to tow us back to Sanctuary.”

“Can’t.” Buddy shrugged.

Ella threw up her hands, the blanket sliding down to pool around her waist. “Seriously? Your bowling league is more important than a woman in premature childbirth?”

Grady had no idea what bowling had to do with anything, but he figured it was time to step in before Ella popped the ferry captain a fast one on the jaw. “If the Coast Guard can’t get the power on, the ferry will have to go to the big docks at Winter Harbor to get repaired. We don’t have the resources on Sanctuary.”

That brought Ella’s gaze to him at last. Her blue eyes pierced through him as she stood up, kicking free of the survival blanket. “Then it’s settled. You have to take me back in your boat.”

Alarm chilled down Grady’s spine. “Ella, it’s not safe.”

“It was safe enough for you to come out here just to check on us, even though you’d already called the Coast Guard,” she pointed out through a clenched jaw. “I’m not going all the way to Winter Harbor—I’d never make it back to the island in time to be there for Merry. And I promised her I wouldn’t miss this.”

All his training told him he had to convince her to wait for the professional rescue. “Be reasonable—I only took the boat out because I had to make sure you were safe. When I first called it in, the Coast Guard couldn’t raise y’all on the radio, and no one knew what to think. Anything could’ve happened, there could’ve been a medical emergency—Buddy might’ve had a heart attack!”

“Hey, leave me outta this,” Buddy protested.

Ignoring him, Grady glared at Ella. “I’m trained to deal with situations like that,” he reminded her. “The Coasties were a long ways out, and I was on the spot and able to assist. I had to come.”

“Why?” she asked, squaring off with him. “Why would it matter to you, what happened to a sneaky, lying, conniving bitch like me?”

Grady felt every ugly word like a hammer strike to the gut. “I never said that. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“Well now.” Buddy coughed, sidling toward the door. “Think I’d better go check on the lower deck again.”

Grady barely noticed when the ferry captain slipped out. All he could see was the naked pain drawing Ella’s features tight.

“Fine,” she conceded tightly. “You’re too much of a Southern gentleman to call me a bitch. You only implied it. And you haven’t answered my question. Why bother making your first trip off the island in five years, in dangerous conditions, for a woman you think so little of?”

“Because I was wrong.” His voice was loud in the close confines of the cockpit, but he was having a hard time regulating it. “I was wrong about your proposal and I was wrong about you.”

Instead of melting into his arms the way he’d half hoped she might, Ella stiffened as if someone had tied a plank to her back. “Someone showed you the revised proposal.”

“Ben told me about the therapeutic riding center,” Grady admitted, that feeling of amazement at her bold, innovative ideas washing over him again. “It’s going to be incredible.”

She lifted her chin and stared him down. “It will still bring strangers—outsiders!—to your precious island.”

That was true, but Grady found that he couldn’t begrudge these particular strangers the chance to find the same healing he’d found on Sanctuary. “But they’ll be people who need help, who are looking for something to get them through the worst times of their lives,” he said, emotion clogging his throat. “That’s what
makes
Sanctuary so precious, at least to me. It’s helped me so much. I love the idea of it helping other people. And I want to be a part of it, if you’ll let me.”

Desperate calculation entered Ella’s narrowed eyes. “You admit you misjudged me.”

It was a relief to shoulder the blame so completely. “Yes. I should’ve trusted you. After everything, the time we spent together, the things you made me feel—I’m an idiot. I’m sorry.”

Her eyes flickered, but otherwise her set, determined expression never changed. “I don’t need your apologies. What I need is a ride to Sanctuary Island.” Ella stalked closer and poked a stiff finger into his chest. “I’ve never broken a promise to my sister. I don’t intend to start now. And you
owe me
. So pay up and get me to Merry.”

Whatever hope he’d held that if he could only find Ella and tell her he was sorry, everything would be magically fixed—that hope was dashed against Ella’s single-minded focus on her sister.

Disappointment cascaded through him along with a sense of loss so vast and deep, he nearly staggered. But Ella was right. He did owe her, and Merry was in trouble. That had to take precedence over whatever was happening between Grady and Ella.

And if nothing else, Grady acknowledged silently, he owed Ella for the understanding and compassion that had enabled him to find his long-lost confidence—because he knew, without a doubt, that he could get her back to Sanctuary safely. No matter what happened, he was equal to it.

She’d given him that. The least he could give her was the chance to fulfill her promise to Merry.

“Get your things,” he said, watching as gratitude dawned over her like a sunrise. “I’m taking you home.”

*   *   *

On some level, Ella was aware that she was engaging in what Adrienne would call “risk behavior,” in her very best prim therapist voice. But Ella felt like a robot who’d been issued an overriding directive, a mission that took precedence over everything, including her own safety and happiness.

Merry was in trouble. Ella had to get to her. End of story.

It had to be the end of the story, because there was no room in that narrative for daring rescues by handsome handymen who’d overcome years of fear and conditioning to save her. There was no room for wondering what really motivated said rescue—guilt? Remorse?

She couldn’t even begin to contemplate the possibility of something deeper.

Ella was holding it together with a wish and a prayer as it was—the fear for her sister and the new life struggling into the world right this very second overpowered everything else.

Anxiety about purposefully lifting her leg over the side of the upper-deck railing and starting the slow, wind-buffeted climb down the ferry ladder to Grady’s boat? No big deal.

Awareness that Grady was no more than a foot below her on the ladder, strong arms ready to catch her if she slipped? Nonexistent.

Really.

And once they were both finally in the Stingray, feeling the intense roll of the lightweight craft in the storm-tossed waves, was Ella afraid?

No. There was no time for fear, no time for doubts. When Grady shot her an assessing glance from behind the big steering wheel, she lifted her chin and tried to project poised, unshaken resolve.

Not the easiest image to conjure up when your teeth were chattering and you had to curl your ankles around the seat supports to hold yourself bodily in the boat as it bounced and jumped over the water, but Ella managed.