Heartbreak Cove (Sanctuary Island) (RE8) (6 page)

And after that one swift glance, Caitlin hadn’t met Andie’s eyes again. Instead, she’d opted to stare down at the scruffy pink backpack at her feet. Andie crouched down to put herself on Caitlin’s level. “Hey there, I’m your Aunt Andie. It’s nice to meet you.”

That familiar blue gaze flicked up to Andie’s face, almost unreadable. Dread fluttered down Andie’s spine at the thought of what kind of life could train such a young girl to blank her expression. No kid should have this much self-control, this ability to hold herself still like a mouse hiding from a hawk. Remembering herself at age eight, and how grown-up she’d thought she was, Andie mustered up a smile and held her hand out. Caitlin glanced at the chaplain before stepping forward to shake Andie’s hand. Like the strangers they were … for now.

Pushing out a shaky breath, Andie felt her smile widen into something real and hopeful. They had time. She could push gently at Caitlin’s boundaries, make her feel safe enough to let down the walls. It would take time and patience, but Andie had that in spades.

“I’m sorry, but I should really get going now if I want to make tonight’s return ferry,” Lt. Phelps was saying, and Andie mustered up an understanding smile as she stood.

“Of course. Can I give you a ride?”

“I have my car.” The chaplain turned her gentle face down to the girl at her side. “Caitlin, it was wonderful to meet you. I know you’ll be very happy here on this beautiful island, with your aunt.”

Caitlin shrugged one skinny shoulder and said nothing, and Andie experienced an odd moment of embarrassment, as if Caitlin’s stiff silence reflected on Andie somehow. She simultaneously wanted to urge Caitlin to politely thank the chaplain—and also to step in front of Caitlin and defend her from anyone who might criticize her for rudeness. Was this what being a parent felt like?

Lt. Phelps didn’t appear offended or judgmental. Instead she laid a sympathetic hand on Caitlin’s shoulder as a silent good-bye, and walked to the door. With one hand on the knob, she said, “Sheriff, if I could have a moment?”

“Uh sure.” Andie looked uncertainly at the motionless child in her living room. “I’ll be right back, Caitlin, and we’ll get you settled in. Okay?”

Another shrug. Squaring her own shoulders, Andie followed the chaplain out into the cool April night. She crossed her arms over her chest and waited for Lt. Phelps to find the words she was obviously searching for.

“I didn’t spend much more than a day with Caitlin,” she said finally, “but on the trip here, I couldn’t help but notice that she’s struggling.”

“Hardly surprising,” Andie pointed out, keeping her voice low. “Considering her mother just passed away, and all the big changes that have come flying at her. Anyone would be struggling, much less an eight-year-old.”

Lt. Phelps nodded. “I didn’t get a lot of information from the Child Protective Services rep who was assigned to Caitlin’s case, but … I got the impression that the mother’s death wasn’t the reason for the assignment. The rep seemed to know Caitlin better than the couple of weeks it took for them to track down your brother.”

Andie crossed her arms over her chest to ward off a sudden chill. “You mean, CPS had gotten involved with Caitlin and her mother before? As in … Caitlin was abused?”

“I’m not privy to the details of her file. As her temporary guardian, you might be able to get more information if you apply for it, but generally, the involvement of CPS can mean several things. Abuse and neglect, certainly, but that covers a range of situations. I just thought you should be aware, so you could follow up with the CPS rep and get Caitlin any outside help that might be appropriate, like therapy.”

“Do you really think that’s going to be necessary?” Andie asked, heart aching in her chest.

“I can’t say,” Lt. Phelps told her softly. “From my observations, Caitlin is deeply troubled, withdrawn and unresponsive to most adults, especially women.”

“And now she’s been dumped on an adult woman she’s never met,” Andie finished painfully, staring over her shoulder at the closed door. “Maybe this was a bad idea. I don’t want to make things harder for her than they already are.”

“You’re her family. No one in the world can make it easy, what she’s got to go through now … but you can help. If you’re anything like your brother, you’ll be fine.”

The slight smile lit the chaplain’s plain features with a warmth and happiness that transformed her face. The light pink blush that suffused her cheeks didn’t hurt, either, and Andie bit her lips against a smile.

That was Owen, all right. Her baby brother, making friends and breaking hearts wherever he went.

“Owen and I are both in your debt,” Andie said, holding out her hand. “I don’t know how we can ever repay you for taking your own personal time to bring Caitlin all the way here, but if you ever need anything, I hope you’ll call. And that you’ll at least let me pay your expenses for the trip.”

Lt. Phelps waved away any thought of payment and shook Andie’s hand. “I was glad to do it. Your brother is a good man, even if he doesn’t always believe it himself. Good luck, Sheriff Shepard.”

With that last, perfect insight, the chaplain walked briskly down the slate paving stone walkway to climb into her little gray car. Andie watched her go, her mind a whirl of new information, worries, and aching empathy for the child who had nowhere to go and no one to count on but an aunt she’d never met.

Andie braced herself to chisel away at Caitlin’s walls, but when she went back inside, the girl was no longer standing in the middle of the living room. Instead, she’d curled up on the sofa with her head on her ratty backpack and her sneakers dangling off the edge like she’d been trying to keep her feet off the cushions. Andie’s neck hurt just looking at the weird angle of Caitlin’s thin body, but the girl was fast asleep.

“Tomorrow is a new day,” Andie promised herself in a whisper as a spasm of love shuddered through her. “And everything is going to be all right.”

As she lifted the too-light burden of her sleeping niece into her arms and carried her down the hall to tuck her into the guest bed, Andie did her best to believe her own words.

Chapter Five

Sam liked his room at Harrington House. The Victorian mansion where his cousin, Penny, used to be the caretaker and now was the mistress, was one of the oldest homes on Sanctuary Island. Sam’s window looked out over the town square across Island Road, an expanse of bright spring green grass and tender saplings sheltered by big, old oaks.

He was shoving his feet into his boots when Matt rapped his knuckles on the open door frame. Sam gave the kid a quick grin. “Up already? I thought you were supposed to be a teenager.”

“I was sure you’d be the one sleeping in, old man,” Matt countered, smirking. “You said last night we were up way past your bedtime.”

“It takes more than a Scrabble grudge match to wear me out. Unlike your wimpy mother.”

Penny had pleaded exhaustion by nine o’clock, heading for bed with a sweet kiss to Matt’s forehead and a squeeze of Sam’s shoulders. Her new husband, Dylan, had made his excuses not long after. It had been more than a year, but those two still acted like newlyweds.

“Mom’s never been a night owl.” Matt shrugged, but a hint of a frown darkened his hazel eyes.

“Y’all are doing all right here, aren’t you?” Sam got to his feet, keeping a weather eye on his young cousin.

“I think so. I mean, yeah. Things are good.”

Sam tucked his tongue into his cheek. “Real convincing, kid. I hope you’re not considering a career in politics.”

Slugging Sam half-heartedly in the shoulder, Matt made a face. “Lay off.”

After Penny grabbed Matt and left her jackwagon of a first husband, Sam had been the only man Matty had to look up to for a long time. And maybe Sam wasn’t exactly cut out to be anyone’s hero, but he’d done his best. And even now that Dylan was in the picture and apparently in the running for Stepfather of the Year, from what Sam had seen, it was a tough habit to break. “Hey, y’all are putting me up in your house, least I can do is play armchair family counselor.”

“We don’t need a family counselor!” Matt insisted, twitchy as all hell.

Sam spread his hands and dropped his voice to the tone he used on nervous horses. “Seriously, Matty. You in trouble? Maybe it’s not family stuff. Maybe girl trouble?”

Bull’s-eye. Matt’s cheeks went red and splotchy, his gaze dropped to the floor, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot like the awkward, shy, overweight kid he’d been up until his growth spurt hit last year. “No,” Matt muttered. “I’ve got a girlfriend. The most popular girl in school, actually.”

Sam had spent most of his school career hiding out in wood shop, because Mr. Farley was the only teacher who didn’t bat an eye at a kid who showed up with bruises. Sam had been thinking about other stuff back then, consumed with getting big enough to fight back or run away, not dating and social status. His understanding of what it meant to be dating the “popular girl” was mostly based on movies and TV at this point. “That sounds good. So what’s the problem?”

“There’s no problem.” Matt threw his hands in the air then turned and stomped down the stairs.

Sam followed him more slowly, turning the conversation over in his mind. “Does this have anything to do with Taylor McNamara?”

Matt stopped so suddenly, Sam almost crashed into him and sent them both diving face-first down the steep wood staircase. “I’m not cheating on Dakota!”

“Nobody said you were,” Sam pointed out reasonably, with a gentle nudge between the kid’s shoulder blades to get him moving again. The scent of fresh-brewed coffee and sizzling bacon rose warmly up to greet them, making Sam’s mouth water. “All I’m saying is, watch out for Taylor. She’s a live wire.”

Matt gripped the elaborate newel post at the bottom of the banister and tilted his chin up to look Sam in the eye. “You think she’s a bad influence, but you’ve got the wrong idea about her.”

“I was there when she convinced you it was a good idea to swipe a bottle of rum and sneak out to the protected part of the wild horse preserve,” Sam reminded him, arching a brow.

“But you weren’t there when we did the community service with Sheriff Shepard,” Matt said earnestly. “The sheriff had us hauling fertilizer and paving stones, digging flower beds and edging pathways for the rose garden Dylan and his brothers donated to the town.”

Sam’s idiot imagination flashed on an image of Andie Shepard surrounded by rosebuds and green leaves, wearing nothing but sunlight, freckles, and a seductive smile. It took him a second to tune back in to Matt’s recitation of Taylor’s many fine qualities.

“… and even though she had to be at the barn early to help coordinate the therapy riding volunteers, she got up at five every morning last summer to do her part. And after the first few days, I realized she was doing way more than her part, so I started showing up at the crack of dawn to make sure we pulled equal weight. And we just … talked. While we worked, we talked about all kinds of stuff, and we became friends. Good friends. Taylor’s a good person, Sam. Better than anyone realizes, including her.”

Sam smoothed a hand down his close-trimmed beard to hide his smile. “Sounds like Taylor’s really been there for you this past year.”

“She has.” Matt glanced down the hall to the kitchen, where they could hear the murmur of Dylan’s deep voice and Penny’s soft, contented laughter. “You’ll see for yourself—she’s out at the barn almost every day. Just promise me you’ll give Taylor a chance.”

Sam was beginning to get an inkling of what Matt’s girl problem might be, but instead of pointing it out, he slung an arm around the kid’s wide shoulders and steered him into the kitchen. “I promise, I’ll give Taylor a clean slate and get to know her.”

Sam nodded gravely through Matt’s thanks and a few additions to the list of Taylor’s Virtues, and kept his insights about Matt’s girl troubles to himself. At least until he had a chance to judge whether Taylor really was this amazing, perfect paragon, Sam didn’t intend to stick his oar in and get Matt to realize that of the two girls in his life, he’d spent five times longer rhapsodizing about his best bud than he had about his popular girlfriend.

When Sam finally escaped his cousin Penny’s attempts to “feed him up” by heaping every breakfast food she could think of onto his plate, he was more than ready to work off all the biscuits and gravy with a long day at the barn. He didn’t just love the horses and the satisfaction of helping them learn to trust humans again—he loved the physicality of the work. He liked to push his body hard, to feel the work he’d done in the ache of sore muscles at the end of the day.

Unfortunately, no one at Windy Corner appeared to want to get any work done that morning. Instead, they were all gossiping about the strangers who’d ridden over on the ferry the night before.

Sam shook his head and went back to sorting through his tack and his training kit. Something about a female army officer and a kid, blah blah. He tuned it out fairly successfully until someone mentioned Sheriff Shepard. At which point, Sam perked up like a stallion scenting danger on the wind.

“I wonder if this means the sheriff won’t show up for her volunteer session this afternoon,” Jo Ellen mused.

“She better.” Taylor made an indignant face without looking up from texting on her phone. “The volunteer schedule is perfect this week and I hate having to reschedule people. It throws everything out of whack and all the other volunteers whine and complain. It sucks.”

“I think the sheriff gets a pass on this one,” Jo said mildly. “I know better than most how disrupting it can be to suddenly find yourself in a position to mother someone.”

“You know, a while back, I might have taken that personally.” Taylor tapped a contemplative finger against her chin, but the crinkle at the corners of her brown eyes was all mischief. And beyond a squawk, she didn’t resist when Jo grabbed her in a headlock and ruffled her short blonde hair.

“But now that you’re all grown up,” Jo Ellen laughed, “and have realized that the entire world doesn’t revolve around you…”

“Says who?” Taylor demanded, tugging free with a toss of her carelessly tousled head. “My life is tuned to the Taylor Channel. It’s All Taylor, All the Time, from where I’m standing.”

She held the snotty pose, hands on hips, for a handful of seconds before rolling her eyes, giving a full-body shake and going back to her phone with a snort. Sam resisted a smile. He was starting to see why Matt liked this girl. He watched her fingers fly over the face of her phone and wondered if she was texting Matt. She’d been basically glued to that thing since Sam arrived that morning.

“How are Ella and Merry doing, anyway?” Sam asked, doing the polite thing to get the conversation back on track. And if that meant eventually circling it around to find out more about what was up with Andie, then so be it. Good manners dictated the whole thing.

“All three of my girls are doing well,” Jo Ellen said with a fond glance at her soon-to-be stepdaughter. “Ella’s talking about moving here full time after the wedding. Merry is giving her the hard sell, of course. She’d love to have another back-up babysitter for Alex, when she and Ben want some time alone.”

Sam’s head swam a little bit. It was either from the leather polish fumes or from the idea of having so much family, so many interlocking relationships, so many people to deal with. “Sounds like you’ve been busy.”

“That’s life.” Jo shrugged one plaid-flannel-clad shoulder. “I’d rather be busy and surrounded by family than completely relaxed and alone.”

Sam, who’d been alone in all the ways that mattered for most of his life, felt a strange pang in his chest. Ignoring it, he arched a brow in Jo’s direction. “Let’s talk again in a few months, after the therapy center is up and running and a big success, and you’re trying to plan another wedding and help your daughter move and get this one off to college. You might change your tune.”

“Fair enough.” Kicking her brown paddock boots up onto the metal desk and folding her hands over her stomach, Jo didn’t seem especially concerned.

Until Taylor piped up with, “Who says I’m going to college?”

Jo’s boots hit the ground with a thud just as a car door slammed out front and a voice called, “Hello? Anyone here?”

Every cell in Sam’s body lit up like the first fireflies on a summer’s night. It was Andie. He’d know that sweet, husky voice anywhere.

Dropping his half-cleaned halter back into his tack trunk, Sam stood and glanced at Jo and Taylor. They were locked in some kind of silent stare down that looked likely to explode at any moment. Figuring he’d best get clear of the blast radius, Sam pointed at the office door. “I’ll go see what the sheriff wants.”

Sam edged out the door with a sigh of relief that almost choked him when he saw Andie Shepard’s tall, slim figure silhouetted between the open barn doors. At her side, a careful foot of distance between them, was a little kid.

Curiosity simmered alongside the ever-present attraction that flared to life whenever Sam was close enough to Andie to see the subtle cinnamon flecks of her freckles. He tucked his hands in his pockets to keep from touching her when he walked a few steps closer—and by now, he could see the banked desperation in her deep-sea eyes and the downturned corners of her wide, pink mouth.

“What’s up, Sheriff?” he asked, keeping it light and easy while he got the lay of the land.

She ran a hand through her hair—loose waves of dark red-gold today, the first time Sam had ever seen it down, and suddenly all he could think about was plunging his fingers into the silken strands and fisting his hands to hold her still as he plundered that mouth. Andie caught her bottom lip between her teeth for a split second and Sam’s blood went hot and thick.

Down boy
, he told himself.
Not the time or the place or the audience you want for something like that.

“Something … unexpected has come up,” Andie said, more uncertain than he’d ever seen her. “I’m going to be looking after my niece, Caitlin, for a little while. Until my brother can come home.”

Sam watched as Andie put a tentative hand on Caitlin’s shoulder, only to see the girl twitch out of her grasp like a colt shaking off flies. The way Andie’s face fell into resigned lines told him this wasn’t the first time she’d reached out and been rejected, and the blank, closed-off look on Caitlin’s young face made Sam’s heart ache. His protective instincts, never far from the surface, bloomed into a need to help these two find their way to each other.

A soft whicker from the integration stall behind him was all it took to remind Sam of why he couldn’t get caught up in the sheriff’s problems. He had enough of his own to deal with.

Still, he couldn’t help asking, “You bowing out of the volunteer gig? I’m sure Jo Ellen will understand.”

“I don’t want to quit on them before we even get started.” Frustration clipped Andie’s words short and brisk. “But I don’t see how I can manage it. I’ve got to go on duty this morning, and I guess Caitlin’s going to have to hang out at the office until I can get her into school and figure out day care, and I’m not sure how long Owen is going to be away—”

She broke off when Sam put his hands on her shoulders, and she stared up into his face with the blankness of real panic. “Breathe,” Sam told her softly, sliding one hand to cup the back of her long, pale neck.

Andie squeezed her eyes shut and ground her back teeth—Sam could feel the pressure where he held her—and when she opened her eyes again, the panic had dissipated. That was a good coping mechanism, right there, Sam noted … and not something a person developed unless panic attacks were a frequent occurrence. The beautiful lady sheriff got more interesting every time he saw her.

Which was a problem.

“I’m fine,” Andie said, mostly steadily. “You can let go of me now, I’m not going to pass out or anything.”

Sam realized he’d been staring into Andie’s fathomless blue-green eyes for way too long. He ought to step back, let them both reclaim their personal space, but he couldn’t quite bear to stop touching her now that he’d gotten his hands on her. His right hand flexed gently against the nape of her neck, dragging the pads of his fingers through the delicate tendrils of hair there, and Andie rewarded him with a shiver.