it through this one last assignment with Dale, and then she’d leave. She couldn’t stand seeing him every day. Not like this. Though in the end she’d been the one to walk away from their relationship, he had pushed her there.
He simply hadn’t cared as much as she did.
“We’re almost there.” The voice was thick from the silence. The rough timbre heated the back of her neck with memory, and she stared harder out the cockpit window. The shadow of an island appeared, black against the gray sea. The granite claws arced around a central harbor at one end. The subtle curve of tail at the other end completed the illusion and created a second harbor.
She craned her neck to follow the rocky contours as she flew past and came around to face the northernmost claw. “Damn. It does look like a lobster.”
“That’s why they call it Lobster Island,” Dale muttered as they began their descent.
Frustrated by his mood and his nearness, she snapped, “This trip wasn’t my idea, you know.”
“Wasn’t mine either,” he growled in return. “I tried to leave you home.”
Tansy compressed her lips and concentrated on flying. Maybe she should’ve refused the assignment and risked her job. But part of her had wanted this one last trip with Dale. Away from Boston General, she knew she would see the man beneath the brittle upper-crust charm. The man she’d fallen for. In the field, Dale Metcalf was a bit loud and a bit rough. Exciting. Almost uncivilized. More at home in the slums of the small, hot country of Tehru than the Theater District of Boston.
But the moment they returned to the city, that man disappeared and was replaced by someone else. She didn’t like the other Dale much, nor did she trust him. There was something…false about him in the city.
She darted a glance at the pale, perfect features of Boston General’s most eligible bachelor. His square jaw was tight with tension, the lines beside his mouth deeper than she remembered. Though they were headed into the field, he had avoided his usual attire of bush pants and a cotton shirt. Instead, he wore a monogrammed shirt from England and lightweight wool trousers.
He was wearing his Boston clothes, Tansy realized. Not his field clothes. She felt a strange, unexpected stir of fear. Her mother had taught her that if she knew everything and understood everything, she’d never be out of control. That had made medicine a perfect career choice. Tansy understood illness, understood health. But as the little plane dropped through a scattering of clouds and shimmied in a slap of crosswind, she realized she didn’t know everything about this assignment.
And she knew even less about the man sitting beside her.
Worried now, though for no good reason, she side-slipped the plane to lose altitude and radioed her approach to the Lobster Island tower. The response was slow in coming, and informal, but the parallel row of lights sparkled in the near distance, outlining a runway that was much longer than the blasted dirt strips she was used to.
“Almost there,” she murmured, more to herself than Dale.
“Great.” He bit off a curse and she felt another flash of annoyance.
“If you’re going to snarl at me every time I open my mouth, this is going to be a very long investigation, Metcalf.”
“This from the woman who’s called me a ‘slimy toad’ whenever she’s seen me for the past three months?” His knuckles whitened. “You wanted happily ever after. I wanted to be friends. The two don’t mix, Tansy.”
It still hurt that their breakup hadn’t crushed him like it had crushed her. Then again, that was part of the problem. “Never mind,” she snapped. “Forget I was about to suggest a truce. Let’s just keep biting each other’s heads off and hope the patients don’t notice.”
The little plane dropped down through the last fifty feet of air and the rocky bulk of the island flashed beneath them. Their airspeed bled from a hundred miles per hour to eighty, then slower.
Dale sighed heavily and reached out a hand as though to touch her, but he didn’t. “Tansy, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to fight with you. But this is…awkward for me.”
The first of the runway lights glinted below the plane and Tansy brought it down expertly, letting the wheels kiss the smooth, shadowed tarmac. “It’s awkward because of me. Because of us.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Or at least, not entirely. It’s the island. You see, I was born—”
Crack! A horrendous jolt yanked the control yoke from Tansy’s fingers. Her body slammed against the shoulder harness and the plane bottomed out, hard, on the runway.
“Christ!” Dale yelled, grabbing for a handhold. “Hang on!”
No time. There was no time for hanging on. Sparks flashed by the windows, brighter than the sunset. Metal screamed.
“Dale! The landing gear’s collapsed!” Fear grabbed Tansy by the throat. Control. She was out of control.
The little plane slid sideways down the runway at almost fifty miles per hour. Metal ground against asphalt, and sparks spewed higher against the dusky sky. She fought the useless yoke for a few seconds before letting it go. She glanced out the cockpit window. There weren’t any buildings to hit at the end of the runway, thank God.
Then her stomach dropped. “The runway ends!” she shrieked. “Dale! The ocean!”
“Hang on, baby. Hang on!” Somehow, their hands twined together. Their eyes caught and held as the plane slid over the end of the runway and tilted down.
Metal howled. The plane slammed against something. It twisted and fell, bounced, and continued to fall until they hit bottom, hard.
Tansy’s head smacked into the side window.
First, she saw watery stars.
Then she saw nothing.
Chapter Two
The endless moment of freefall was sickening. Dale’s stomach lodged in his throat, then dropped when they hit bottom and Tansy’s head cracked into the side window. She sagged against her safety belt.
“Tansy! Tansy, stay with me. I need you to stay with me!” The words were rote, the feeling beneath them anything but. Panic roared in Dale’s ears. Then he realized it wasn’t just panic.
It was the sound of waves breaking on the plane. They’d fallen into the bay. And Tansy was unconscious.
“Damn!” He yanked free of his belt and struggled to his feet, hunching down in the small cockpit space. The cold, salty water of Lobster Bay splashed around his ankles. God, he hated the ocean.
The floor tilted by degrees as the weight of the engine pulled the front of the plane down. Heart pounding, hands shaking, he glanced out the forward window. In the crimson of twilight, he could see wavelets and greasy, gray water edging up the nose of the plane.
How long until the tower sent help? How long would the little plane float?
Working quickly, he checked Tansy’s vitals. “Tansy! Tansy, sweetheart, wake up. We need to get out of here, baby.” The endearments
