desperately shy. Keith mumbled his name and with ill-disguised relief swiveled to face the motor.
When they reached the shore, he drove the boat right up on the slip. Troy stepped out and hauled it still further over the thick wood slats beneath which the salt water gurgled and slapped. He gave a hand to Hubert, who gathered up a small backpack, waved a cheery goodbye and set off along a trail that followed the curve of the shore.
“This way,” Keith said, and without looking to see if Troy was following set off on another trail that led in the opposite direction through the woods.
The ground was springy and the air smelled sweetly of moss and fallen needles; Troy tramped along, his heart pounding in his chest because at any moment now he might see Lucy.
Tucked into a sheltered cove, the Seal Bay Inn was a two-storied cedar building, with an expanse of glass overlooking the ocean and a generous deck where chairs and pots of flowers were scattered; a small cabin sat a little apart from it in the trees. “It’s delightful,” Troy said spontaneously. “Who built it, Keith?”
“Me.”
“You did a fine job.”
Keith said nothing, merely gestured for Troy to go ahead of him through the sliding glass door. It opened into a spacious living area paneled in pine; the sea and sky were as much a part of the room as the comfortable sofas and well-furnished bookshelves. An alcove was taken up by a long trestle table laid for dinner. Then Troy heard footsteps coming down the hall and felt his heart rise into his throat. Lucy. It had to be Lucy.
But the woman who entered the room was very different from Lucy. For one thing, she was at least eight months pregnant; for another her hair was as straight and dark as Martine’s, although it was pulled back into a ponytail from a face unadorned by make-up. She said in a friendly voice, “You’re our new guest—Mr Daniels, I believe?”
Struggling to overcome a crushing disappointment, Troy remembered that he’d reserved under a false name to avoid alerting Lucy to his arrival. He said awkwardly, and untruthfully, “I hope you don’t mind—my friend Daniels couldn’t come at the last minute. So I took his place. Donovan’s the name.”
“That’s no problem. Welcome to Shag Island, Mr Donovan. I’m Anna McManus.”
Because her smile was innocent of guile, Troy felt ashamed of his deception. Fighting down the urge to ask about Lucy, he went upstairs with her and approved his room.
“Dinner’s in half an hour—I ring the bell,” she said. “The bar’s downstairs; you keep your own tab. Please let me know if there’s anything we can do to make your stay more pleasant.”
Give me back my wife, he thought wildly, and with relief closed the door behind her. He’d hoped to meet Lucy with some semblance of privacy; now, it would seem, she’d be waiting on all the guests at the dinner table.
Her face, when she first saw him, would tell him all he needed to know. He must keep his eyes glued to her face.
But thirty-five minutes later, when Troy was seated in the alcove, the woman who carried in the bowls of steaming fish chowder was plump and middle-aged, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the stove. The widowed Mrs Mossop, thought Troy, and politely made conversation with the four other guests, whose names he’d forgotten as soon as he’d heard them and whose impassioned discussion about a buff-breasted sandpiper couldn’t have interested him less. Lucy surely hadn’t left the island, he thought, his throat constricting with terror. She must be in the kitchen, working behind the scenes. She had to be.
However, Anna was the cook that evening—so Mrs Mossop informed them, when one of the guests complimented her on the roast chicken. “It’s Lucy’s day off,” she said. “She’ll be back in the morning, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’ll make blueberry pancakes for breakfast; she was going berry-picking today.”
So she was here. He could relax.
But tomorrow seemed an aeon away. Troy ate his apple pie with less attention than it deserved, swallowed his coffee and excused himself. Hoping to bump into Lucy, he hiked along the shore until dusk. Then, knowing he hadn’t got a hope of sleeping yet, because he was still jet-lagged, he sat in one of the chairs on the deck, watching the last peach flush fade from the sky.
His body merged with the shadows. A pale arm of the Milky Way gestured gracefully across the heavens, whose blackness was studded with larger, brighter stars, their cold, impersonal light making him all the lonelier.
An owl hooted in the distance. A crescent moon rose, curved like an empty bowl; the tide sucked at the rocks. And then, overriding the sounds of the sea, Troy heard the one voice he’d been wanting to hear for months. Lucy’s voice. He twisted to face the woods and saw two people standing close together on the little porch of the cabin.
“Thanks so much, Quentin,” Lucy was saying, her clear, light voice carrying through the velvet darkness. “I had a lovely day. I promise I’ll make you some blueberry muffins tomorrow.”
“I got you home later than I’d planned—you have to get up so early in the morning.”
“It was worth it.”
“I’ll drop by tomorrow for the muffins.”
“Great.”
Because Troy’s eyes were so well adjusted to the night, he had no trouble seeing Quentin lean forward, kiss Lucy, then move back. His fingernails digging into the chair, he missed Quentin’s next, low-voiced remark; Lucy laughed lightheartedly in return and went inside the cabin. Quentin flipped on a flashlight and disappeared down the path. Lucy closed the door and almost immediately a soft light glowed through the windows facing the sea, as though she had lit a candle.
Troy surged to his feet. On the long plane flight from Vancouver he had played with a number of different scenarios for the meeting between him and Lucy; none of them had included another man. Every one of his carefully reasoned speeches vanishing from his mind, he jumped over the railing of the deck and marched across the grass. Raising his fist, he knocked on Lucy’s door.
“Coming!” she called, and even as she opened the door was saying, “Did you forget——?”
Her voice broke off. Because the light was behind her, Troy couldn’t see the expression on her face, although her gasp of shock and her instinctive step backward were only too obvious. Pushing past her, he went inside.
She had lit two oil lamps—one beside the double bed, one on the table by the window. It took him less than two seconds to see the marks of her occupancy in the tiny cabin, none of which included a photograph of either himself or Michael. Stationing himself against the edge of the table, he said viciously, “What a cozy little setupdoes the artist go along with it?”
“Troy! What are you doing here?” Her face paled, and suddenly she stepped to meet him, her fingers digging into his wrist under his light wool sweater. “Mother—is she all right? There’s nothing wrong, is there?”
“There’s a great deal wrong, which has nothing to do with your mother or your sisters and everything to do with us.”
“You frightened me…”
He glanced down. It was Lucy’s left hand that was clasping his wrist. Her finger was bare of the narrow gold band he had given her on their wedding-day. He said roughly,
