Carolina Dreaming: A Dare Island Novel Read online

  Gabe frowned. Dare Island was a long way from the roughneck boomtowns of North Dakota. But she was here all alone, with Luke and the entire police force tied up at some accident by the bridge.

  He turned. She stood very close. Not touching, but he was aware of how soft she was, how round and plump and female. Vulnerable. “Make sure you lock up behind me.”

  She gave him an odd look. Because, yeah, from her perspective, the biggest threat on this quiet island was him.

  She didn’t say anything, though, just handed him a white bakery bag.

  “What’s this?”

  “Coffee and a sandwich. Be careful it doesn’t spill. I put the coffee in a thermos cup, but, well . . .” She shrugged. “You never know.”

  You never did. He’d certainly never expected this. He had figured she would rush him on his way, not make him a sandwich.

  “Let me pay you.” He might not want to throw money away on a motel room, but he had enough cash and pride left to pay for a damn sandwich.

  “Luke already did.”

  Gabe remembered the bills Luke had left on the table. “That was your tip.”

  Her flush deepened. She had the prettiest skin, fine-pored and smooth, the color surging below the surface. “Owners don’t accept tips.”

  He wouldn’t know. Almost every damn thing he possessed fit into his seabag.

  He searched for a way to keep the conversation going. Not hitting on her, just . . . not leaving yet. “This is your place?”

  “Yes.” Not encouraging.

  “It’s nice.” Nice. Jesus. Way to dazzle her with compliments, dude. He looked around at the hand-painted tables and mismatched chairs, seeking another word. “Cozy.”

  “Thanks.” One syllable.

  He tried again, remembering what Luke had said about the island in the off-season. “Must be tough this time of year. You ever think about moving?”

  “No. My family’s here.”

  Four whole words. Jackpot. Gabe looked at her left hand, but he didn’t see a wedding band. So the family she was talking about must be the hard-ass who drove him to the station. Officer H. Clark. Her father.

  You stay away from her.

  There was a time when Gabe would have taken those words as a challenge. Never mind that she was the prettiest thing he’d seen in a long time, that her skin was like milk and her eyes were like fog and she smelled like freshly baked cookies. He would have made a play for her just to piss off her old man.

  She stood there, holding out the paper sack, watching him with a pleat between her eyebrows.

  He was an asshole.

  She deserved better.

  Besides, Clark wasn’t simply Jane’s father. He worked with Luke. And Gabe was not fucking things up for his buddy on or off the job.

  He clenched his teeth, locking in all the things he shouldn’t say, and took the bag. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  * * *

  JANE THUMPED HER forehead on the inside of the door as if she could knock some sense into it.

  DON’T FEED THE STRAYS.

  The warning was tacked up outside every restaurant and in half the tourist shops on the island.

  It only encourages them, Jane’s old boss, the chef at the Brunswick, had explained the first time he caught her slipping scraps out the back door to the kittens playing just beyond the reach of the lights.

  You’re supporting the feral population, scolded Carol Oates, who ran the island’s trap-neuter-return program.

  In her head, Jane knew they were right. So she let Carol set humane traps in the bushes behind the bakery. She placed her pans full of cat food away from the kitchen door, on the other side of the carport. She took precautions.

  But how could she let them go hungry when it was in her power to feed them?

  Or Gabe, either.

  She walked through the empty bakery by the soft glow of the display cases.

  When he stood straight-shouldered in her shop, so stubbornly refusing to give in to the battering the world was giving him, and looked around her shop with that light of appreciation in his eyes, with that hunger . . .

  Well, how could she turn him away unsatisfied?

  Feeding people was what she did. Who she was. That didn’t mean she had to be stupid about it.

  She armed the bakery’s security alarm, dimmed the shop lights, and shut the back door.

  Make sure you lock up behind me. The memory of Gabe’s deep-timbred voice whispered over her skin.

  She didn’t need his warning. She’d had the security system installed six months ago, after her ex showed up again and vandalized the bakery’s HVAC unit. Not that the setup had prevented Travis from making threats. Demanding money. Walking through her bakery door as if he owned the place and assaulting one of her employees.

  Her hand tightened on her keys.

  All the safety precautions in the world couldn’t make up for her stupidity in taking up with Travis in the first place.

  But she was no longer that naïve girl, desperate for love and flattered by attention from a dangerous stranger.

  Jane crunched over the oyster-shell drive to her car. She had learned from her mistakes. She lived with the consequences every day. And if she ever forgot, her father was there to remind her. Gabe Murphy, with his sun-streaked hair and strong, muscled arms, was a mistake she simply couldn’t allow herself to make.

  She drove down Main and along School House Road, past shingled houses huddled under the trees, a playground, one ball field, two graveyards. The moss-covered tombstones had the same names as the rural mailboxes by the side of the road: Doyle. Fletcher. Nelson. Clark.

  Home.

  Jane pulled into the driveway of a faded blue two-story bungalow, careful not to block her father’s patrol car.

  “Hey, Daddy,” she called as she came into the kitchen carrying a bakery bag of essentials, milk and fresh snickerdoodles. The cookies were a bribe, a thanks, a guilt offering. “Aidan? I’m home.”

  No reply. But she could hear the television from the other room, Hank watching ESPN, the way he had every night as far back as she could remember. When Jane was a little girl, nine or eleven, even thirteen, she used to sit with him sometimes, hoping he would look over and see her. Talk to her.

  Of course he never did. Talking wasn’t their thing.

  She slid the milk into the fridge and took out a package of chicken thighs.

  “Aidan? Dad?” She poked her head into the living room. “Hi.”

  Hank nodded without taking his eyes off the TV. Seven-year-old Aidan hunched over a sprinkling of Legos on the coffee table, his straight brown hair flopping over his face, into his eyes. His shoulder blades stuck out from his back like the stumps of wings. At her greeting, he twitched one shoulder in acknowledgment or dismissal.

  “How was your day?” Jane asked.

  “Okay,” Aidan mumbled.

  Just like his grandfather.

  Jane had read all the books the school counselor gave her. She knew she should be grateful that her son had a positive male role model in his life. She was grateful that her dad was around to fill in around her bakery hours, to see Aidan off to school every morning, to be home on the nights Jane had to close.

  But Aidan was only seven. Young enough to still need hugs and bedtime stories. Too young for his little-boy sweetness to be lost, for him to go all strong-and-silent on her all the time.

  Jane stooped, brushing the hair off his forehead to kiss him.

  Aidan flinched.

  She drew back, narrowing her eyes. His cheekbone was red and puffy. She ran her fingers down the side of his jaw, tipping his face to the light. His lip was swollen, split and bloody.

  Her stomach hollowed. “Aidan! What happened?”

  His shoulders rounded as if he could draw his head in like a turtle.

  “Who did this?” she asked.

  Another shrug.

  “Did you get in a fight? Did somebody pick on you?”

  He shook his head.


  “Aidan . . .”

  He tugged his chin away, his gaze dropping. “I’m fine.”

  “Did it happen at school?” Children could be suspended for fighting at school. Even teasing or bullying earned a visit to the principal’s office. Jane looked at Hank. “Did you talk to his teacher?”

  “Wasn’t at school,” Hank said. “I sent him out to play, and he came home with a busted lip.”

  Her heart squeezed. “You should have called me.”

  “What for?”

  “I could have done something.”

  “I put frozen peas on it,” Hank said.

  “That’s great, Dad.” She regarded Aidan’s small, pinched face, his broken lip. She could tell by the look on his face that she wasn’t getting anything more out of him now. So she comforted him the only way she could, the only way he would allow. “I brought home snickerdoodles.” Cookies made everything better. “Go wash your hands and you can have one.”

  Aidan looked up, a glint in his eyes. “Before dinner?”

  Jane fidgeted with the end of her braid. The hardest part of being a single parent was making decisions all the time, all by yourself, always with the awareness that you were potentially screwing up. “I don’t see how it can hurt. Just this once.”

  He smiled, a quick, fugitive smile, and then winced because of his split lip. “Cool.”

  She waited until her son was out of earshot in the kitchen before she turned to Hank. “Did he tell you what happened?”

  “He got into a fight. That’s what boys do.”

  “He’s bleeding.”

  Hank’s face settled into the same stubborn, uncommunicative lines as Aidan’s. “What do you want me to do? Go down to the playground and make arrests?”

  “Nnoo,” she said uncertainly, thinking, Maybe. “He’s only seven.”

  “You baby him.”

  She wanted to. Needed to. She wanted to cocoon him in protection, to swaddle him with all the mothering she’d lacked. To give him not only cookies and hugs, but that deep-in-the-bone certainty that he was someone special, that he was loved, that he was deserving of love.

  Because she knew what it felt like to grow up without those things. How part of you was always unsure, always doubting, always vulnerable to the wrong person who paid you a little attention.

  Because if your own mother walked out on you, if she couldn’t love you, you learned to accept whatever you got. You started to believe that’s all you deserved, scraps of affection.

  Or worse.

  She swallowed the ache in her throat. “I just want to know that he’s all right.”

  Hank reached out, almost as if he might pat her shoulder, before his hand dropped awkwardly. “Boys don’t tell their mothers everything.”

  “Maybe he should talk to somebody.”

  Hank grunted. “Who?”

  “I don’t know. A counselor at school. Lauren.”

  Lauren Patterson, with her piercings and tattoos, looked more like an indie musician than a bestselling author. Or a school psychologist. But after working briefly at the bakery last summer, Lauren was back on the island, newly engaged to the chief of police and apparently happy as a counselor at Aidan’s school. Jane had always found her easy to talk to.

  Hank scowled. “The boy doesn’t need to snitch on every playground fight to Jack Rossi’s fiancée.”

  “It’s not snitching to report a bully, Dad. Anyway, anything Aidan would say to a counselor is confidential. Lauren’s not going to call the cops.”

  Even if she was sleeping with one.

  “You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Boy’s got to learn to defend himself,” Hank said. “Let him handle his own problems.”

  Jane sighed. “It’s not just the fight, Dad.” She hesitated. “He still hasn’t processed what happened with Travis.”

  Hank snorted. “Processed?”

  “Dad. You know what I mean.”

  Hank’s face set like a mule’s. “That was seven months ago. He’s fine.”

  “Fine” was one of those words they used to fill the spaces of the things they didn’t talk about, a Band-Aid word to cover the anger and fear, the silence and hurt.

  Aidan was fine growing up without a father. Fine, with a father whose only interest in obtaining custody was claiming child support. Fine, with that father in jail.

  “That bum come into the bakery this afternoon?” Hank asked.

  The question sounded like a change of subject. But it wasn’t, Jane knew. This was why they didn’t talk. Every topic led back to her lack of judgment, her failure to listen to Hank, her terrible choices in men.

  “What bum?” she said, knowing she was being evasive. Also cowardly.

  “Murphy. Inmate from North Dakota. Killed some guy in a bar fight.”

  “He was acquitted, Dad.” She had overhead that much.

  “That just means there wasn’t enough evidence to put him away,” Hank said with the cynicism of almost forty years in law enforcement.

  “Luke seems to trust him.”

  “Because they served together. He could’ve changed. And if he wasn’t changed before he was locked up, he is now. Nine months in jail? Guy’s a hardened criminal by now.”

  “Since I didn’t know him before—and I don’t know him now—I couldn’t say.”

  “He planning on sticking around?”

  If you need me to spot you a couple nights, Luke had said, just until you find something . . .

  “How would I know? He didn’t talk to me,” Jane said, her voice even. “Ask Luke.”

  Hank’s scowl deepened, his gaze still fixed on the TV. “Guy like that . . . he’s trouble. He bothers you, you let me know.”

  Under his gruff tone, she heard his affection and his fear. She leaned over his recliner to kiss his rough cheek, surprising them both. He smelled of bay rum and tobacco, safe and familiar.

  “I’m fine, Daddy.” She had Aidan to think of now. She couldn’t let herself be anything but fine.

  She thought of the stranger, Gabe Murphy, fresh out of jail for killing a man, and of her ex, Travis, doing time for assault. And she wished with all her heart that just once she could be attracted to a good man, a gentle man, a guy who was no danger to her heart or her bones, a man who didn’t leave scars.

  But then she wouldn’t have had Aidan.

  And Aidan was all that mattered.

  Three

  HE HAD COMPANY.

  Gabe’s senses, honed by nine months in a cellblock and six tours in the sandbox, went on alert. He raised his head from the sandwich in his hands, scanning the perimeter of his campsite.

  He’d considered spending the night under one of the big empty houses on stilts that stood along the beach. The oceanfront rentals provided benches, shelter, even outdoor showers, some of them. But the police were paid to patrol and protect private property. Gabe could tolerate being moved along, but he didn’t want to give that son-of-a-bitch Clark an excuse to arrest him. Things with Luke were awkward enough already.

  So he’d made camp instead under a dense thicket at the edge of a trailer park. PARADISE SHOALS, according to the sign.

  Gabe surveyed the junkyard cars, held together with hope and Bondo, and the mildewed plastic garden furniture under the trees. Paradise, my ass. But at least no anxious homeowners or merchants were likely to see him and call the cops.

  The bushes rustled.

  His muscles bunched. Silently, he set down the sandwich, prepared for action.

  A blunt black nose poked through the bushes.

  Not a terrorist looking for an ambush. Not a prisoner seeking out a victim.

  A dog.

  A big dog. Gabe eyed it warily as its body followed its nose out of the shadows: broad head, heavy shoulders, dirty tail close to the ground. Cautiously, it eyed him back before fixing its gaze on his sandwich.

  “Oh, hell, no,” Gabe said.

  Probably belonged to one of the trailers. It looked like a trailer park dog, a lean, mean
, scruffy bastard. Some kind of pit bull–shepherd mix, maybe, smart and aggressive.

  Except it hadn’t growled at him. Or barked.

  Its black-and-tan coat was gray with grime. Its shoulders stuck up, its belly caved in. No collar.

  “Go home,” Gabe said.

  The dog stared at him, nose quivering at the scent of ham sandwich. It had cartoon-dog eyes, big and brown, with tan patches like eyebrows, giving its face a hopeful, quizzical expression.

  “Seriously. Go away. I don’t have anything for you.”

  The dog sat, watching him. Its tail brushed the ground slowly, sweeping pine needles from side to side.

  Gabe had never had a pet growing up. Even if animals had been allowed in their apartment, his home life wasn’t fit for a dog. But he’d seen plenty of strays before, abandoned along the highway or traveling in feral packs in Helmand Province. There were always dogs hanging around the forward operating base, adopted by successive combat rotations of Marines. And Gabe had always fed them, even when the brass cracked down and ordered him not to.

  Shit. “Fine.”

  His stomach growled as he pulled a piece of ham from his sandwich and tossed it to the dog.

  The dog caught the meat with a neat snap of its massive jaws and then settled back on its haunches, those brown, expectant eyes on Gabe.

  He shook his head. “That’s it.”

  The cute blonde had packed the sandwich for him, not some dog. He was hungry, damn it.

  The dog cocked its head, trying to understand. Because, shit, it was probably hungry, too, and it wasn’t whining.

  Gabe hefted the paper sack. When he’d opened it, he’d discovered the sandwich, thick with ham, and not one but two giant chocolate chip cookies. His throat tightened. He didn’t have words to describe what that meant to him, that the coffee stayed hot until he was ready to drink it, that he had a second cookie to eat whenever he felt like it. The little blonde’s kindness got under his skin, burrowing deeper, toward his heart.

  The dog swallowed and watched him, panting gently.

  “Stupid mutt,” Gabe said, and put half the sandwich on the ground.

  He watched the dog bolt the food, trying to ignore the satisfied feeling around his heart.