Heroes Are My Weakness(83)

Now she was on her feet. “That’s not true. I gave it to you.”

He tugged on his zipper. “It’s my face. Don’t you think I should know?”

He was lying. She’d grabbed the riding crop and swung it at him in a blistering rage, punishing him for the pups, for what he’d done to her, for the cave and the note he’d written and her broken heart.

“Why are you saying this?” She snatched up her coat and pulled it on over her nakedness. “I know what happened.”

“You hit me. I remember that. But you got me somewhere around here.” He pointed toward a tiny white dash below the larger scar.

Why was he lying? Being in this enchanted cottage had made her drop her guard. A mistake and a sharp reminder that sex wasn’t the same as either trust or intimacy. She reached for her clothes. “Let’s get out of here.”


IT WAS A SILENT TRIP back to town. Theo pulled into the harbor parking lot so Annie could get the Suburban, and as he stopped, a middle-aged woman with a baseball cap pulled over her fried blond hair ran up to the driver’s door. She started to talk even before Theo had rolled his window down all the way.

“I just came from my father’s place. Les Childers. You remember him? He owns the Lucky Charm. He’s got a bad cut on his hand. It’s been bleeding like crazy, and it’s deep. It’s going to need stitches.”

Theo rested his elbow on the window frame. “I’ll look at it, Jessie, but EMTs aren’t licensed for that. Until I finish my paramedic’s training, all I can do is bandage him up. He’ll have to go to the mainland.”

Theo was training as a paramedic? One more thing he hadn’t mentioned.

Jessie leaned back on her heels, ready to do battle. “This is Peregrine, Theo. You think anybody here gives a rat’s ass about what kind of license you have? You know how it works.”

So did Annie. Islanders took care of their own, and in their eyes, Theo’s medical training was something they expected him to use.

Jessie wasn’t done. “I’d also appreciate your stopping in to see my sister. She has to give her dog injections for diabetes, but she’s afraid to use the needle, and she needs help getting started. I wish we’d known you had medical training last month when Jack Brownie had his heart attack.”

Whether he wanted to or not, Theo had been sucked into island life. “I’ll look in on both of them,” he said reluctantly.

“Follow my truck.” Jessie gave Annie a brusque nod and headed toward the rusty skeleton of a once-red pickup.

Annie opened the Range Rover’s door. “Congratulations, Theo. It looks like you’re the new island doctor. And the vet.”

He pulled off his sunglasses with one hand and rubbed the bridge of his nose with the other. “I’m in way over my head.”

“Looks like it,” she said. “You might want to brush up on deworming dogs. And birthing cows.”

“There aren’t any cows on Peregrine.”

“Not now there aren’t.” She stepped out of the car. “But wait till everybody hears there’s a new vet.”





Chapter Sixteen

SOMETHING WAS VERY WRONG. THE cottage’s front door hung open, and Hannibal crouched on the stoop not far from the old wooden lobster traps left partially exposed by the melting snow. Annie shot out of the Suburban and stomped across the yard to the open door. She was too angry to be cautious. She wanted someone to be inside so she could tear them apart.

Paintings hung crookedly on the walls and books were strewn on the floor. Most chilling, the intruder had scrawled a message across the wall in bright red paint.


I’m coming for u

“Like hell you are!” Annie stormed through the cottage. The kitchen and studio looked the same as when she’d last been here. Her puppets were unharmed, Theo’s things untouched, but the drawers had been pulled out of her bedroom dresser, their contents flung on the floor.

The violation of her privacy infuriated her, the outrage of knowing someone felt free to break in whenever they wanted, to go through her things, to paint a cheesy message on her wall. It was too much. Either someone in the Harp family wanted to scare her away, or one of the islanders knew about Mariah’s legacy and wanted Annie out of here so they could tear the place apart until they found what they wanted.

Although Elliott had bad taste in wives, she’d never regarded him as unethical. But Cynthia Harp was more problematic. She had money, motive, and local connections. Just because she was living in the South of France didn’t mean she couldn’t be orchestrating all this. But would she really go to so much trouble for a tiny cottage when she already had Harp House at her disposal? As for Mariah’s legacy . . . With Annie out of the cottage, the intruder could spend as much time as he or she wanted searching for it with no worries of Annie walking in on them.