as he strode past, saying nothing else as he headed for the kitchen.
Jason walked right past her, too, his chin tucked down as he tugged on the zipper of his jacket.
“Is everything all right?” she called after her sibling.
“He’s getting the manifest.”
At the sound of the deep voice in the doorway, Lauren’s heart gave an unhealthy jerk. She’d suspected Zach would be right behind Sam. The thought alone had given her pause. But there was something about the husky sound of his voice and the unblinking way he watched her as he stepped over the threshold that tensed every nerve in her body.
Since she had no intention of letting him know that, she deliberately shifted her focus to the woman emerging from behind the door.
The apology in her expression moved into her voice. “Are you all right?”
The woman, who’d asked to be called Doe, gave her a forgiving smile. “No harm,” she replied softly, tugging the strap of her fringed bag over her shoulder. Hair the texture of fine wire shifted as she glanced from the dark and disturbing man blocking her exit to the child who’d stopped in the middle of the spacious room. Jason was still working at his zipper. “It’s busy around here, isn’t it?”
“Here it is,” Sam called, retrieving the file from the top of the refrigerator. “Hi,” he said to their visitor, looking slightly puzzled by her presence when he spotted her from the kitchen door.
Doe appeared as sympathetic as she did uncertain as she offered him a smile he barely noticed. “I guess I’ll be on my way,” she said to Lauren. “Remember to call Maddy O’Toole at the Road’s End Café. If you get word out there that you’re looking for a sitter, you shouldn’t have any trouble at all finding someone. Especially if it’s only for a couple months or so.”
“Thanks,” Lauren murmured, meaning it. “And thanks for your time. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
Though Doe Adams’s smile was as gentle as she herself seemed to be, Lauren didn’t think the woman who greeted every sunrise in the lotus position looked all that disappointed as she scooted past Zach. If anything, she looked relieved to be escaping the room. Doe was certainly nice enough. Interesting, too, in a decidedly eccentric sort of way. But from the moment she’d walked in, Lauren had had the feeling that she wasn’t quite what her brother was looking for. When the woman’s first question about the children had been about their birth signs, she was pretty much convinced of it.
With their visitor heading down the steps, Zach moved back into the doorway and took the file Sam handed him. The men were the same height and easily met eye to eye, but her brother was stockier than Zach, more powerfully built. Zach was rangier, leaner. More…predatory.
The word powerful described him, too.
Like a panther.
“She looked familiar,” Sam said to Lauren as she shivered against the damp chill of the air.
“She said you flew her to the mainland last year. Apparently that was the only time since 1973 that she’s been off the island.”
“Sounds like a lot of people around here,” he murmured. “Is she going to watch the kids?”
Lauren shook her head, less concerned with the apparent idiosyncrasies of the people who’d chosen to live on Harbor than she was with the finely tuned tension snaking between her and the man edging toward the stairs himself. “She only cooks vegetarian and won’t work in a house that has animal hides on the furniture.”
She glanced toward the leather sofa and armchairs and gave a philosophical shrug. Everyone was entitled to their causes. She would have mentioned that, too, except she didn’t want to hold him up from letting Zach go now that the man had what he’d come for.
Zach obviously wasn’t interested in being held up, either.
“Listen, Sam.” He pulled open his vest, tucking his precious file between the waterproof fabric and his shirt. “I need to talk to you this afternoon. It’s important.”
There wasn’t a trace of curiosity in her brother’s obliging, “Sure. Come back when you’re through. I need to talk to you about switching flights tomorrow, anyway. I want to take the first mail run.”
“I mean at the office,” Zach replied, completely ignoring what Sam wanted to do. “It’s business.”
“We can’t talk business here?”
“Humor me. Okay?”
Looking as if it really didn’t matter to him one way or the other, Sam shrugged. “If that’s what you want,” he murmured. “What time are you leaving?”
“I’ll wait until you get there.”
Sam gave a mechanical nod. An instant later, having pointedly avoided meeting her eyes, Zach bounded down the steps to his truck and her brother finally closed the door on the cold.
Wearily running his fingers through his hair, he turned to where Lauren knelt to pick up the jacket Jason had left in the middle of the wine-colored rug. Jason himself was at the television set, opening the long drawer under it that housed videotapes. His denim-covered behind rested on the heels of little hiking boots that looked like miniature versions of his dad’s and he appeared, for the moment, totally preoccupied.
So did his father.
Lauren had thought a few moments ago that Sam looked a little ragged. Studying him more closely in the light of the bright brass lamps, she decided that he simply looked worn out.
“Do you want me to get you something to eat?” she asked, because food was the only real comfort she could think to offer. “Mom said she left a couple of casseroles in there.”
“She did. Lasagnas, I think. But you don’t have to worry about me. It’s the kids I need help with.” He blew a breath, forced a smile. “I really appreciate you coming, Sis.”
She knew he did. He’d practically broken her ribs when he’d wrapped her in his greeting hug. Yet, when she’d hugged him back, just as fiercely, he’d immediately eased up and let her go. She’d just wanted to hold him and absorb whatever she could of his pain. But he wasn’t the kind of man who could handle sympathy. Rather than make things worse for him by offering it, she would simply offer her support.
That meant doing whatever she could to keep anyone from making his life any harder than it needed to be. And that meant dealing with Zach McKendrick.
She knew exactly what he wanted to talk to Sam about. She knew why he didn’t want to talk to him at the house, too. He didn’t want her around to point out what a louse he was. He’d said he had his reasons for grounding her brother. But she didn’t care what those reasons were. She simply couldn’t bear the thought of him telling her brother he couldn’t do the only thing that provided any real escape for him right now.
“Sam,” she began, intent on ignoring the sudden sick sensation in her stomach. “I know your partner asked to see you, but I need to run an errand before you go. Just a quick one,” she assured him, darting a glance down the hall. “Jenny’s still asleep, so I guess everything should be okay here for a while.”
Jason
