Body Search. Jessica Andersen
Читать онлайн книгу.
motion that made him look like someone other than the man she’d known for so long, the man she’d once thought herself in love with. He took her hand and helped her stumble onto the dock with a good deal less grace than he’d shown.
“Come on. We’ll go to the motel and scrounge some dry clothes.” His voice was almost the same, but she knew the man beside her even less than she’d known him when they had been lovers. Now, his perfectly groomed hair was plastered to his skull with salt water. The fine linen shirt, monogrammed at the cuff and collar, was ripped askew, and she could see the shadowy old tattoo she’d always assumed was a scorpion. She’d had to assume. He’d refused to answer questions about the tattoo. But the scorpion-shadow had never quite meshed with the urbane polish of his Boston self.
In the glare of the lobster boat’s running lights, something flickered in the back of his blue eyes. Something uncivilized.
Without really meaning to, Tansy took a step back. “Dale?”
This time it was irritation that sparked in his eyes. “I told you to stay in Boston, Tansy. You don’t belong here.”
“Neither do you,” she countered. “We’re here to do a job.” But she wasn’t sure which of them she was trying to convince. She shivered from the cold, and from the strangeness of it all.
The poised, elegant Dale Metcalf she knew from Boston would have slid an arm around her shoulders and shared his warmth—though not his heart. The stranger he’d become the moment he set foot on Lobster Island merely turned away and walked toward shore, calling over his shoulder, “Come on. Let’s get dry. Then we’ll figure out how to get you home.”
“I’m not going home,” she yelled back through chattering teeth. “We have a job to do.”
“You’re going back to Boston and that’s final. I don’t want you here.”
Tansy flinched. They’d been broken up for three months now. The thought that he didn’t want her shouldn’t hurt anymore.
She heard the crinkle of a rubber rain suit and felt a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, Dr. Whitmore. Let’s get you inside and dried off. That cut on your head should be seen to, as well.”
Miserable from the cold, sick with fear and plagued by an otherworldly feeling, Tansy nodded mutely and followed Dale’s cousin to a windowless old jeep.
The men loaded eight salvaged equipment cases into the vehicle, completely filling the back. Dale climbed in the front and held out a hand. “Come on. You can ride with me.” He patted one knee, though his eyes told her he wished there was another way.
Tansy stalled. They’d ridden sandwiched together in a hundred military vehicles, before and after becoming lovers. With only one or two transports for the HFH equipment and crew, there was rarely room for comfort. It had never bothered her before. It shouldn’t bother her now.
But it did.
Dale saw her hesitation and snapped, “Don’t be foolish. You’re freezing. Get in. I won’t touch you.”
But it was a hard promise to keep when the jeep rocked along the bumpy dirt road and jostled them against each other. After a few minutes, his arms encircled her and pulled her back against his chest.
“Relax,” he whispered. “It’s nothing personal. We’ll be at the motel soon.”
It’s nothing personal. Tansy cursed the surge of hurt, and hated him for not understanding that it was personal. Everything between them was too personal, and not personal enough. It had been personal when they’d become lovers on a thin pallet in Tehru. It had been personal when they’d moved in together on assignment. And it had been very personal when he’d drawn away from her every time they returned to home base.
Eventually, she’d realized he wasn’t letting her in any deeper. Then she’d seen the signs her mother had warned her about. The frequent, unexplained absences. The furtive phone calls. The emotional withdrawal.
When she’d accused him of finding someone else, he hadn’t denied it. He’d let her walk out and he hadn’t come after her. That alone had proven Eva Whitmore’s point. Either you knew a man inside and out or you didn’t. And if you didn’t, you were in for a nasty surprise.
The jeep bumped along, and Tansy realized she’d unconsciously relaxed against Dale, sinking into the familiar spots where they fit together so well. Not strong enough to pull away, she sighed and turned her attention to the view. They passed a row of small cottages that might have been pretty once upon a time. Now, paint peeled from the clapboards and fell into weed-choked planting beds. An empty swing dangled from a tree. The whole area was deserted. Depressed.
Tansy thought it strange to find parallels between an island off Maine and the shattered Third World villages they so often visited for HFH. But the island, like the man, was a surprise. She’d envisioned a quaint old New England fishing village with a healthy tourist trade. This poor, dispirited place was anything but. It might have been charming once, might have been picturesque.
Now, it was just dreary. Dale’s cousin, Mickey, had mentioned a recent stretch of bad lobstering. She bet it had been going on longer than that.
Automatically, she scanned the area, registering the details of the outbreak location. The familiar action soothed her, distanced her from the feel of the man wrapped around her and the memory of the roughest landing of her piloting career.
Why the hell had the landing gear snapped? As soon as she dried off, she’d call the FAA. There would be an investigation, and an answer.
A sudden lurch of the jeep threw her against Dale’s arm and she felt the brush of his thumb along one breast like wildfire. She stifled a gasp as her flesh tightened, and she cursed the flood of wet warmth that swirled at his touch. Her body, it appeared, hadn’t forgotten Dale any more than her heart had.
“Sorry.” He moved his hand and shifted in his seat, and she became aware that hers wasn’t the only body with a memory. She could feel him, hard and ready, against her buttocks. And, God help her, she wanted him with a deep, insistent pulse she hadn’t managed to conquer in the time they’d been apart.
She was no better than her mother, willing to accept so much less than she deserved because of an illusion of love.
They bumped past a low collection of cottages with a No Vacancy sign and a few cars in the lot. “Turn in here,” Dale snapped, his voice rough with a tone that sent a ripple of memory through her. “I left a message reserving rooms.”
Rooms, plural. Tansy hated the flash of disappointment. Of course they weren’t staying together. They were broken up. Finished. She was only on the island because HFH management had insisted Dale take his partner. Tansy thought she might strangle her boss when she got home, which would be sooner than later, if Dale got his way.
Home. It was tempting. She was out of her depth, not in control of the situation. But at the same time, it was clear the outbreak wasn’t as small an issue as she’d thought. If patients were dying, if people needed her, she’d stay.
Especially since her plane was at the bottom of the ocean.
Chilled, she leaned back against Dale. His arm tightened across her waist as Mickey passed the motel and said, “Sorry, there aren’t any vacancies.” He turned onto a dirt track, barely visible in the thin headlight beams. Stunted island trees closed in, reaching soggy branches toward the travelers. “The clinic is too small for all the patients. We’re using the motel as a hospital, and the only available room is being rented by a big-shot real estate developer named Roberts.”
She felt Dale’s body tense. “Where are we sleeping, then?”
In Tehru they had picked the dying up off the streets, carried them into the crumbling hotel rooms and treated them on the beds. The HFH doctors had slept on the floors when they’d slept at all. The lodgings weren’t important. The patients were.
So why did Dale sound upset? Why was his body tense beneath hers? She looked