Sanctuary Island (6 page)

“And that would be why I told you not to come up here. The stairs have rotted through in the center.”

“Why did you let me?” Ella gritted out, pain streaking up her calf and throbbing through her left leg where it was doubled under her, bearing most of her weight.

“You were so determined.” Taylor gave a little shrug of her slim shoulders. “And who am I to stop Jo’s daughters from doing whatever they want? Nobody.”

Ella shook her spinning head, unable to even begin to untangle all that. “Ever think about getting this porch repaired?”

“It’s on the list, believe me.”

“Are you okay?” Merry cried.

“I’m fine. Stay down there,” Ella warned her sister. “I’ll be out of here in a jiffy.”

Except … she wasn’t.

Even when Taylor leaned down to give her a hand, Ella couldn’t budge more than a few inches before the rotten, splintered wood gouged at her skin.

“It’s no good.” Taylor straightened with a guilty grimace, wiping her hands on her denim-clad thighs. “Let me run inside and call our handyman. I’m sure he’ll be able to get you out of there in no time.”

“Umm, I hate to be a focus-puller,” Merry began, a hint of tension tightening her voice, and Ella pushed down the pain in her leg to concentrate on her sister.

“Right. Taylor, would you mind taking Merry in with you? She needs a bathroom, and she should probably sit down and put her feet up with a glass of water. And maybe a sandwich. If it’s not too much trouble.” Ella injected a good amount of
it better not be too much trouble
into her serious glare. Taylor had the good grace to squirm a little before nodding.

“I don’t want to leave you all alone out here,” Merry protested, but Ella could hear the relief in her tone.

“I’ll be fine,” Ella said soothingly, keeping any hint of pain out of her voice. “The sooner you go in and call the handyman, the sooner I’ll be out of here. Go on. You need to stay hydrated, and I know you’re hungry. Don’t make me worry about you.”

Taylor led Merry around to the side of the porch where there was a hole in the railing, and helped her take the giant step up onto what was evidently a more solid portion of flooring.

The screen door banged shut behind them, leaving Ella to contemplate exactly how uncomfortable and embarrassed she was. Thank goodness she’d worn pants to protect against the spring chill—she could only imagine how scraped up and raw her trapped calf would be if she’d been wearing a skirt.

Not to mention that she’d be a lot closer to flashing the whole world right about now.

This couldn’t be further from the way she’d imagined meeting her mother for the first time as an adult.

Ella had visualized herself as strong, independent, completely in control. Instead, here she was, stuck half in and half out of a hole in the woman’s front porch like Winnie-the-Pooh after too much honey.

After the longest fifteen minutes of her life, a heavy tread crunched on the gravel behind her. Ella couldn’t force her head to turn far enough to see who was there. Was it
her
?

Ella stiffened all over, every muscle clenching in anticipation of hearing the voice she’d never quite forgotten, the voice that visited her dreams—sometimes to scold, sometimes to weep, but sometimes to croon sweet lullabies that left Ella awake in the dark, memories shuddering through her in painful waves.

But instead of her mother’s low, husky drawl, the voice that spoke sent a shudder of a different kind down Ella’s curved spine.

“Somebody call for a handyman?”

Ella closed her eyes and counted to ten, but she knew it wouldn’t make any difference.

As her friend Adrienne liked to say, the truth was the truth, no matter how inconvenient or painful … and the truth was that the handyman who’d been called to help her was none other than Grady Wilkes.

CHAPTER 6

Grady saw Ella Preston with her leg stuck between two broken floorboards, and instinct surged up, flooding his bloodstream with adrenaline.

His spine straightened as if a giant hand had slapped him on the back, his movements sure and purposeful as he reined Voyager to walk in a circle so Grady could assess the situation from multiple angles.

It had been a while, but his keep-the-victim-calm voice came out of him without any effort at all. “Are you injured? Are you in pain?”

Not that Ella seemed to need calming. From what he could see of her face, she appeared pale, but composed. Although at the sound of his voice, some tension flowed out of her shoulders. Interesting.

Tossing her dark brown hair back, she watched him come closer out of the corner of her eye. “Grady Wilkes. When you said you were a friend of my mother’s, you neglected to mention that you were actually her employee.”

Studying her, Grady saw the rise of hot red in her cheeks, the tightness of her lips. She was embarrassed to be caught in this pickle, which he could understand. What he didn’t understand was his own gut reaction to witnessing her discomfort.

Grady didn’t like it. Not one bit. “Pretty feisty for a lady jammed halfway into a front porch,” he said as he threw his leg over Voyager’s back and slid to the ground. He looped the reins over the horse’s head and tied the trailing ends in a slipknot around a sturdy portion of the porch railing.

“Are you here to gloat? If I’d taken your warning and headed back to the ferry, this wouldn’t have happened.” Her voice was stifled, as if she were fighting down panic.

So much for teasing.

Pitching his voice to soothe, Grady crouched down to investigate what he could see of the situation under the porch, peering through the rickety wooden lattice fronting the deck. “I’m just here to help, ma’am. We’ll have you out of there in a jiff. I know it’s hard, but keep calm and breathe deep for me.”

She’d gone straight through, all right. Squinting into the dusty blackness of the area under the house, Grady could see that her right leg was dangling, toes barely brushing the dirt foundation. Which meant all her weight was on her other leg, bent and folded under her, and supported by her hands pressed against the splintering floorboards.

Ella sucked in an audible breath, making Grady’s gaze swivel to her pink cheeks and downcast eyes.

He’d knelt beside her without thinking about anything more than getting the lay of the land, but the position had him snugged up next to her so tight that when she took another deep inhale, the expansion of her rib cage brushed her shoulder against his hip.

“You’re right,” she said, still sounding a little choked. “I’m sorry, and thank you for coming so quickly. I do appreciate it. This is just … not how I thought today would go.”

That makes two of us, sweetheart.

Clearing his throat, Grady did his level best to ignore the spine-tingling awareness of her slim body, so close at hand that his fingers buzzed with the need to reach out and shape her curves from hip to waist to breast.

He also had to ignore the fact that, very shortly, he would be putting his hands on her, to pull her out of the porch. And when that happened, he’d have to dig deep for every ounce of focus his training had ever imparted to keep from getting distracted by the softness of her smooth, pearly skin.

Grady shook his head to dislodge the searingly persistent images. “How did this even happen? Taylor was pretty vague on the phone.”

“Right, of course you know Taylor. This is one of those Mayberry-type places where everyone knows everyone else, isn’t it?”

She was starting to steady herself, Grady noted, her deep breathing doing its job of distracting her from the fact that she was trapped. To keep it going while he figured the best way out of this fix, Grady absently started up a light, distracting patter. “Well, yeah. But in this case, we happen to be cousins. I’ve known Taylor since she was born, and your mom has known her almost as long. She’s … a close friend of the family, almost like a mother to Tay, since my aunt died when Taylor was five.”

It occurred to him even as the words flew out of his mouth that maybe talking up Ella’s estranged mother’s close maternalesque relationship with another girl might qualify as sticking his foot in it.

So he was watching closely enough to catch the quick shiver of a flinch in Ella’s frame, even though she rolled her shoulders and got rid of it almost immediately. And her voice was soft and mostly neutral when she replied, “I see. That explains … a lot.”

Narrowing his eyes, Grady stood and propped his hands on his hips. “Wait. Exactly how did you manage to fall through this porch?”

Ella tilted her head back, soft waves of dark hair cascading over the shoulders of her bright green sweater. She looked him straight in the eye and said, “It was an accident. Can you get me out, please?”

There was more to this story, he knew it, but he was distracted from ferreting out the whole truth by the white-knuckled tension of her fingers pressed against the floorboards. He frowned. That could be from the awkwardness of this whole conversation … or it could be an indicator of pain. “You really didn’t answer me before, when I asked if you were okay.”

“Aside from being stuck in a porch, I’m fine,” she said, firm and no-nonsense. “But I’d like to get out of here, preferably before anyone else sees me like this.”

She was lying. Grady knew the look of pain—intimately—and the fine lines bracketing her mouth, the stiff way she held herself, told him there was more going on than she was saying.

Her leg was hurting her, he’d be willing to bet on it, but she didn’t want to admit it.

Slapping his hands on his thighs, Grady stood and swung off the porch. She didn’t have to tell the truth about what was going on with her leg—either way, he’d be careful not to cause her any more pain.

And once she was safely unporched, he’d deal with whatever injuries she might have incurred.

Grady was trained to be rational and mission forward, but it had been five years since he’d been face-to-face with an injured rescue. And the last time he’d had to rescue someone who was more than a stranger … he shuddered, the kick of memory making him fumble with the buckles strapping his tool kit to the pack across the back of Voyager’s saddle.

You’ve done rescues like this a million times,
he reminded himself, flexing his stiff fingers against the compression of his leather gloves.

But when he glanced back at Ella, with her flushed face and glittering blue eyes, her tight shoulders and the determined tilt of her little chin, he knew this wasn’t like any rescue he’d ever done.

Grady’s instincts for danger had been honed over many years in some of the toughest, most devastated areas of the nation, from the treacherous rubble of collapsed buildings to the sodden chaos of flood plains.

The sharp, devastating slap of desire he felt when he looked at Ella Preston was by far the most dangerous thing he’d faced in a long time.

*   *   *

Ella had no idea what Grady Wilkes was doing—something that involved a scary-looking handsaw and a lot of cursing.

At the moment, it was taking all her concentration not to notice the heat radiating off his big, broad-shouldered body. Her skin was so sensitized by the electricity in the air between them, if he even brushed her shoulder, she jumped.

This is ridiculous,
she thought despairingly.
Why is this happening now, of all times?

But the fact that this surge of attraction was super inconvenient didn’t change how much she wanted to lean into the solid strength of him and hide her stupid blush against his neck.

Searching for a way to distract herself, she said, “You should post a sign, at least until you get this porch fixed. It’s common sense. This porch is a liability.”

He grunted irritably, still working away. “Nobody on Sanctuary is going to sue Jo Ellen Hollister.” The handsaw froze for a moment as his gaze shot to hers. “Unless you’re planning to.”

“Of course not.” Ella looked away from that too-penetrating stare. “I don’t want anything from her.”

She lifted her gaze to the peeling paint of the porch ceiling and held her breath, which had the added benefit of silencing her startled whimper when he bumped a little too close to her and jarred her leg against the jagged edge of a broken board.

Not a sound passed her lips, but he shot her another sharp look anyway, almost as if he knew she was hiding exactly how much pain she was in.

Uncomfortable, she splayed out her hands against the floorboards to keep from doing something crazy like reaching out to touch him. “Has Jo always lived in this house?”

That got her a sharp glance. “Yeah. She took care of her aunt here after she had her stroke. And then Miz Dottie left the place to Jo in her will.”

Annoyed by the way he was studying her—what, did he think she was after her mother’s inheritance?—Ella did a quick centering breath exercise. “Well, it’s a lovely house, underneath the disrepair.”

He relaxed enough to smile. “Hey, you’d be in some disrepair, too, if you were as old as this pretty lady. The house dates from 1899.”

“Historical building, structurally sound—mostly.” Ella craned her neck to peer down the wraparound porch to the wings stretching out to the sides of the main building. “Unspoiled natural setting, zero competition. And those wild horse herds, people love stuff like that. You know, this place would make a great bed-and-breakfast.”

Beside her, Grady went completely quiet. Something about his stillness made Ella shiver, like the calm before a storm rolled in off the bay.

“The last thing Sanctuary Island needs is a bed-and-breakfast bringing in tourists to trample all over the wildlife and wreck the peace.” His voice was low and devastating, almost a snarl.

Ella blinked, taken completely off guard by the rush of heat down her spine. She’d never been attracted to big, hot-tempered, aggressive guys in the past, but there was something about the passion in Grady’s voice and the intensity in his green eyes that got her blood pumping.

Flustered, embarrassed, and more than a little annoyed at both herself and Grady, Ella sputtered, “Look, Mr. Protector of the Island, I’m just making idle conversation here. I certainly don’t have any designs on the house or the land, so feel free to stop acting like I’m here to ruin your life, or Jo’s, or anybody else’s.”