Charmed By You ((Destiny Bay Romances-The Islanders 5)) (10 page)

“Yes, I owe her a lot.”

So do I
, Heather thought, but she kept the sarcasm
to herself.

“She’s been a good friend,” Mitch continued. “Though her timing may not be the best.” He turned suddenly and caught Heather’s gaze with his own. “Why did you run
away from me last night, Heather?” he asked evenly.

She avoided his eyes, staring at the hands twisted together in her lap. “Your place was getting a little too
crowded for me,” she answered with artificial lightness.

“Were you embarrassed in front of Dede?” His voice
betrayed his incredulity. “But we’ve been married,
Heather. Why should our being together embarrass you?”

She raised her eyes to stare into his, wondering if he
was really as blind on this issue as he seemed. Did he think she had no right to resent Dede’s place in his life? Or did he take sexual affairs so casually that he couldn’t
understand why she might care?

“We’re not married anymore, Mitch.” She stiffened,
moving back across her seat toward her side of the Jeep
as she sensed a gathering aggression in him. “That part
of our life is over.”

He was reaching for her, just as she’d known he would.
Her hand flashed out to stop his, and she tried to inject
coldness into her tone as she complained, “You prom
ised, Mitch. No seduction on this trip.”

His eyes were as flat as tinted glass, but she could
feel the anger beneath his calm exterior. “All right, have it your way.” To her surprise, he started the engine and
began the descent into the village.

She sat back in her seat and tried to feel relief, a bit puzzled by his easy capitulation. She’d expected more
of a fight. More important, and to her complete chagrin, she realized suddenly that she’d been looking forward to
it.

Instead, he was acting as though he hardly cared. But such behavior was typical, wasn’t it? He only took what came to him easily. At least that was what they’d all said at home when he packed his bags and flew off to the
Pacific. She’d never really believed it. But if it wasn’t
true, why had he gone?

The houses of Titano village were square boxes made of wood and corrugated iron and set on stilts, high above
the ground. Tall palm trees swayed lazily over wide
broad-leaved breadfruit trees. While hot island breezes
ruffled the palm fronds and banana leaves around the
open windows, children played in the cool shade under the houses, along with the hairy pigs, straggly chickens,
and mangy dogs.

Mitch pulled up in front of one house that looked like a cartoon version of a Cape Cod cottage. “The Cepeda
children have croup,” he told Heather as he gathered his
black bag and another flat case. “Want to come in and
give me a hand?”

She tried to read the intention behind his impassive
dark eyes, but saw nothing to give her a clue. Why would
he want to drag her into a household full of strangers?
They wouldn’t want her hanging around, gawking at their
illnesses.

“I’ll wait out here,” she said firmly. “I trust you won’t be in there all day.”

He shrugged as though it made no difference to him what she did. “You never can tell,” he said unhelpfully. “I’ve got three families to visit in this village today.” He
walked toward the house without another glance her way.

She watched him go, noting as she so often did how he moved like a jungle cat on the prowl. As he climbed
the rickety steps to the doorway and disappeared into the
house, she closed her eyes, fighting back a wave of anguish.

She loved him so. It was true. She’d admitted it again.
She did love him; she always did. When he’d walked out of her life, he’d taken all the sparkle from the day. She’d never found it again. Sometimes she thought she never would.

When she began to hear a scuffling sound around the car, she opened her eyes. An audience had assembled
around her made up of eight or nine dark-eyed children, all under four feet tall, all dressed in ragged clothes with dirty faces. She blinked, looking from one set of staring
eyes to the next.

“Hi, lady,” the bravest said at last.

“Hi.” Good grief, what did she call him? She had known few children since she’d stopped being one her
self, and she was very uncertain how one dealt with such
little people.

“Are you the doctor’s lady?” another high voice piped.

“No,” she answered swiftly. “No, I just came along for the ride.” They took in this information solemnly, their eyes wide as they looked her over.

“You got any pennies, lady?” asked the bold first speaker. As he made his demand, all the others got the
giggles, covering their mouths with dirty fists and scrunching up their shoulders as they laughed.

She shook her head sternly, wondering what visitors
had been corrupting these children by handing out money
to them. “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

She didn’t add that it wasn’t nice to ask strangers for
money, but she could see that they felt her disapproval
without her having to voice it. Their faces crumpled with
disappointment, and they all began to back away.

Heather bit her lip as she watched them. She wished
she could think of something to say that would bring
back the giggles. She hadn’t meant to drive them off,
but she couldn’t think of how to draw them back. They were so cute, so endearingly wide eyed. But they obviously hadn’t found much to like in her. They were
loping off, looking for new adventures.
 

Well, who could blame them? She must have come across as the Wicked Witch of the West. For just a moment, regret settled like a fog around her.
 

She sighed, glancing at the silent house. Mitch might
be in there for hours. Why had he insisted she come
along, anyway? She certainly wasn’t about to sit here in this hot Jeep for the rest of the morning. Pulling her large
shoulder bag from behind the seat, she slipped down
onto the coral highway and began to walk toward a cliff
that overlooked the sea.

She never went anywhere without her sketch pad. Maybe she could record her visit by capturing on paper
these scattered houses as she’d done with the mansions
in Flagstaff. She would try to catch the spirit of the island
in the faces of its dwellings.

While she worked with her pastels, the sun played peekaboo with a thick layer of fluffy clouds, making it difficult to get the lighting right. She finished the house
Mitch was working in and held it away from her, studying
it critically.

Nothing. Not a bit of life to it. She chewed her lips abstractedly, wondering where her talent had gone. She’d drawn the house well enough, but it lay dead on the page. Maybe she didn’t have the proper feeling of oneness with the island. Maybe she could only draw what she understood.

Tearing off the used sheet, she settled back, deter
mined to try again. But a sudden shower squelched that.
She ran back to the Jeep, hoping to stay dry, while rain turned the dirt road to mud.

It was over as suddenly as it began. The dark cloud that had dropped the shower swept on across the island, leaving behind nothing but sunshine.

Heather sat in the Jeep, staring moodily at the muddy road. Puddles filled every rut and something was moving
in the murky water. She narrowed her eyes and looked intently. Toads. Each puddle was full of toads as big as softballs. As she watched, they jumped from one pool to another, merry little beasts.

Fascinated, she failed to notice the sound of footsteps
approaching the Jeep. When she looked up, she saw a little girl of not more than five coming along the road, her arms piled high with items she must have been sent
to the store to purchase for her family. But her thin arms
couldn’t hold so many things. Heather watched as she dropped one after another, bending down to retrieve a
box of brown sugar, only to drop the corn flakes, bending
to take up the cereal, staggering for a few steps, then dropping it again.

Heather jumped to the ground, then hesitated. Her recent experience with the other children made her reluctant to get involved with another one. She
didn’t have an easy way with children. Should she try again—or forget it?

But as she watched the pitiful spectacle, she had a
sudden memory of another little girl, many years before.
She’d just ridden to the Girl Scout leader’s house on her bike to pick up the Girl Scout cookies she’d sold. But the
basket on her bike would hold only six boxes comfort
ably, and she had eight. She’d struggled along much as
this little girl was now, dropping boxes and stopping to
pick them up. Her mouth curled as she remembered what
she’d finally brought home—eight boxes of cookie
crumbs and lots of tears. Suddenly she felt a real kinship
with the child coming toward her.

Resolutely, Heather stuffed her belongings back into
the shoulder bag and hurried out to the road. “Here, honey,” she said. “You look as though you could use a
little help.”

The little girl stopped and stared up at her, and in her
moment of surprise, everything tumbled to her feet.

“Oh, no!” Heather laughed softly, kneeling to help retrieve them. “I’m sorry. I wanted to help, and I ended
up making it worse, didn’t I?”

She replaced a few packages in the skinny arms and
took the rest herself. “My name’s Heather. What’s yours?’

The little girl gazed at her for a long moment, her
eyes wide with naive intelligence. She was a pretty girl,
her lashes long and black against her coffee-colored skin.
Heather liked the look of her.

“What’s this?” The girl shifted packages and pointed
one slim finger at Heather’s legs.

Heather looked down, turning to see what had cap
tured the girl’s attention. “What do you mean?” she asked,
then realization dawned. “Oh, this?” She pulled a pinch
of stretchy nylon fabric away from her knee. “Panty hose.
Haven’t you ever seen panty hose before?”

The girl’s black curls bounced as she shook her head. She looked into Heather’s face, then slowly reached out to touch. “It feels funny.” She grinned. “I like it.”

“I like it, too.” Heather chuckled. “Are you ever going
to tell me your name?”

“Lizzie Cabrillo,” she said at last, her voice clear and
true. There was no shyness about her, and she smiled in answer to Heather’s nod. “Thank you for helping me. I live on the corner.”

“You ought to take a cart with you, Lizzie,” Heather
said lightly as they walked along. “Or at least a little red
wagon.” For the first time she noticed that Lizzie had a definite limp.

“I had it all in a sack when I started,” Lizzie told her,
“but the sack tore on a bush when I stopped to throw rocks in the river.”

“Didn’t the storm get you wet?”

“No. Oh, look out for that big old frog. He almost jumped on you.”

Heather shuddered and gave the next puddle a wider berth. “Where did all these huge toads come from?”

Lizzie shrugged. “They come from the sky when it rains,” she said calmly.

“Oh, no, honey, they couldn’t do that.”

The little girl shrugged again. “Every time it rains there they are, all over the road. After the water dries up they’re gone again.”

Heather smiled. “I’ll bet they find someplace to hide until the next rainstorm.”

Lizzie cocked her head to one side, considering.

“Maybe,” she allowed. “But I don’t see them.” She looked
up questioningly. “Want to see the snails? They like it
when it rains, too.”

“The snails?” Toads she could handle, from a dis
tance, but snails?

“Sure, come on.” Lizzie reached up and took her
hand. “I’ll show you.” She led Heather into a yard toward
a huge breadfruit tree, its large lobed leaves still dripping
water on the ground. “Look at these.”

Heather gasped and stepped back involuntarily. She’d
never seen such huge snails before. Each carried a pointed
shell raised high above its moving foot. Some of the
animals were as big as the toads on the road.

“Oh, how awful,” Heather exclaimed.

“Awful?” Lizzie looked at her in amazement. “They’re
my favorite animal. They’re really enchanted princesses,
you know.”

“What?”

The little girl nodded wisely. “They were all changed
into snails by a wicked witch. See, they still have their
cone-shaped hats.”

Suddenly Heather could see them through Lizzie’s eyes. “You’re right, of course,” she said slowly. “Why
didn’t I see that before?”

Lizzie smiled. “You just didn’t look right. Come on,
we’re almost home.”

Lizzie’s house was painted bright yellow. Dark green hibiscus shrubs studded with golden blossoms circled it,
and a flock of chickens poured out from beneath to escape
the strange voices. As Heather and Lizzie walked up to the high lanai, Heather could hear the sound of a guitar
coming from inside.