Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady) (15 page)

“But you’re part of that work.” George was thinking aloud, remembering the fierce look in Jake’s eyes as he’d met Jenny on the wharf at Masset. “So just which is the most important – you or the job – now that he has to separate them in his mind?”

Jenny shook her head and George said swiftly, concern for her cousin evident in her voice, “You can’t let one bad experience mess up your whole life. I know something happened to you. I had no idea then, but thinking back, remembering… it was Lance, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Jenny admitted, her mind going back to the days after George married Scott.

As children, she and George had been constant companions. Jenny hadn’t needed any other close friends. Even when George married, Jenny’s growing relationship with Lance had insulated her from loneliness.

Until Lance left.

Her brief ecstasy of love had ended bitterly. Jenny had been left alone, isolated, living in Aunt Georgia’s house, walking to and from school, always seeming to be on the outside, looking in on other people’s lives. There had been no one to help her through her misery.

George was frowning as if she had somehow tuned into Jenny’s memories. “Honey, part of your agony was adolescence, and immaturity, but— loving does make you very vulnerable. But it’s worth it, Jenny. It really is.”

George had started a fire and wrapped some clams in seaweed, then heaped hot coals over them. Now she was picking them apart with a stick and fingers that jerked back every time the hot clam shells burned her. Watching, Jenny couldn’t help smiling.

“George, no one would believe that last year you were eating
escargots
in a famous restaurant in France.”

“I’m versatile,” mumbled her cousin around a hot mouthful of clam that she had just dipped in butter. “Now shut up and eat some of it!”

“Delicious!” Jenny agreed, but she had no appetite. She ate three, then said, “I’m going for a walk. Come with me?”

“No. I’m feeling a bit woozy – I think my legs haven’t adjusted to dry land. I keep feeling as if I’m still moving.”

Jenny hadn’t walked more than a few steps when she heard the engine of the seaplane. She swung around, searching the sky in the direction where she thought Queen Charlotte must be. She couldn’t see anything at all, then suddenly she saw the seaplane, large and close and dropping for a landing.

She caught herself waving wildly before she could make out Jake sitting beside the pilot. She pulled her hand down to stop, but then he waved back and she ran down the beach and launched the dinghy, getting her feet wet without even noticing.

She must have left one oar on the shore. She couldn’t find it. She grabbed the other one and started to paddle out to the seaplane. The propeller was slowing to a stop, the seaplane just drifting in the bay a few yards away from the boat.

He grasped the side of the dinghy as she came up against the pontoon.

“Hi, Jake.” She was breathless, the blood rushing to her head and making it feel funny, tingly and odd. She licked her lips nervously.

“Hi, yourself.” His eyes probed hers deeply, making her dizzy with the intimate contact. He turned and called back to the seaplane pilot, “Thanks, Luke!”

The pilot stepped out onto the far pontoon, looking around, smiling slightly. “Peaceful here today, isn’t it?” he said, grasping the strut overhead with a large, muscular hand. “Sometimes the wind howls through that opening – I wonder if the fish are biting? I think I’ll try a couple of casts before I go.”

Jake climbed into the dinghy, touching Jenny’s shoulder in a brief, casual caress. “How are you? How was your trip? Where’s the other oar?”

“I left it on shore. I paddled out.”

“Sit down, then.” His eyes were intent, examining every detail of her appearance, traveling from her face, down to the trembling hands folded in her lap. “Don’t you know better than to come out on the water without a life jacket on?”

Jenny glared at him, then back at the seaplane that was quickly getting smaller as Jake swept the dinghy towards shore.

“I was going to ask you to come ashore and share some of our clams,” she told him, but she thought her own voice seemed far away and unreal as she went on. “—fresh baked and delicious – but if you’re going to start yelling at me the minute you arrive, I’d appreciate it if you’d just turn around and get back on that seaplane. It’s still there. I’m sure you could get a ride back.”

He was silent for a moment, facing away from her and pulling heavily with the paddle. Then he stopped, motionless as the little dinghy continued to shoot along the glassy water, slowly losing speed.

“I’m sorry if I shouted.” He turned and looked at her at last. His face was rather somber, the lines deep. “I do worry about you – you and George, taking on these waters without—”

“Without a man?” she finished, her voice wry.

“I suppose,” he agreed slowly, still watching her from worried eyes. “Yes, I suppose that’s what I mean. Though I worried when I thought George was a man, but— will you promise me to wear your life jacket?”

“I usually do.” Today she had been so excited, seeing that plane coming, knowing he was in it. “I feel a little funny today,” she admitted slowly. “I might be a bit unhinged from sailing out on the west coast.”

“Was it rough?” he sympathized with a bit of a smile.

“Not really. We had good winds, perfect for sailing. Except one day – I was disgustingly sick. I wouldn’t have believed how much motion there was. I don’t think I was really meant to be a sailor. Not just the wind and the water, but…” She trailed off, losing track of her thought.

“What?” He asked sharply.

She rubbed her hand across her lips. Perhaps she’d gotten salt on them from the water. They were tingling oddly. “Nothing. I just—” Her tongue stumbled and she lost track again. She reached up a hand to rub the tip of her ear. “—but there was always a swell, up and down, the wa–wave…”

“What’s wrong with your ear?” he demanded in a voice suddenly harsh.

“Don’ shout.” She rubbed the ear again. “Don’ shout at me, Jake. I—”

“Did you say
clams
?”

She shook her head, trying to concentrate over the dizzy tingling, and said weakly, “…George baked them.”

“Are your ears tingling?” He was shouting again, demanding, “The tip of your ears? And your tongue? Damn it, Jenny! Answer me! Is your tongue tingling?”

“Yesh— yes.” Her tongue wasn’t working at all, as if she’d been drinking too much.

“How many clams, Jenny?” The boat was moving again and Jenny slid down in the seat to let her head relax. “Jenny!”

She shook her head, wishing he would stop shouting.

“How many clams, Jennifer?”

“…two… three… George had lots.”

“Damn!”

Jenny closed her eyes, realizing that it was all a dream. It had seemed too real, but now it was receding, Jake’s voice echoing as if she were spinning away from him and he were shouting into the distance. “Luke! Fire it up again! We’ve got to get them into the hospital! Red tide!”

Red? That was funny. The water was blue… not actually blue, but more of a green. The tide came in and went out again, but it wasn’t red. She felt so odd. As if her body were moving in and out with the tide. She touched her lips with her tongue – felt nothing and realized it was the dentist who had frozen her mouth. He’d turn up any minute and start drilling.

Jake drove the dinghy into shore with hard, desperate strokes of the paddle.

Jennifer’s head was resting on the gunwale, her eyes closed. God, was she breathing? Her chest moved, or he thought it did. He shipped the paddle, leaned over her, desperately looking for a sign, feeling a sagging relief as he felt the warm movement of her breath against his face.

He wanted desperately to get Jennifer to the seaplane, get her to a doctor. But George was on shore, probably in worse condition than her cousin. He gave Jenny another worried glance, then dashed ashore to pick up an unconscious George.

Luckily, George was still breathing. He hadn’t stopped to think how he could administer artificial respiration while paddling the dinghy. What if Jennifer stopped breathing while he was carrying George to the dinghy? What if she never opened her eyes again, never challenged him with that cool reserve again?

Once he had lifted George aboard, he paddled the dinghy swiftly back to the seaplane, his heart thundering in his ears so that he wouldn’t have heard Luke if he’d been shouting. Luke, the tough-looking seaplane pilot, had the back door open and waiting.

“I think she’s just stopped breathing,” gasped Jake as he handed George to the pilot. “She’ll need mouth-to-mouth.” Luke bent over the blond woman’s still body.

Jake picked Jenny up, felt her warm body sagging in his arms. He strapped her into the front seat. She mumbled something as he fastened her seat belt. He couldn’t hear what she said, but he was grateful for even that small sign of life.

“Take it easy, hon,” he whispered, not knowing if she could hear him or not. “You’ll be okay, just keep breathing while we get you to the hospital!”

She looked so helpless, so vulnerable. He felt terrified looking down at her, knowing the danger of the insidious paralytic shellfish poison that was flowing in her veins.

They had to move fast, but it all seemed to take so long. Strapping in Jenny, arranging George so that Jake could take over breathing for her. And Jenny – what if she quit breathing too?

Luke closed the doors, did a record-quick pre-flight inspection that seemed to take forever, then got the Beaver into the air – fast, if not smoothly. Jake heard him calling in an emergency request to his base station.

“Get an ambulance down to the seaplane base! I’m bringing in two victims of Red Tide. Both of them unconscious.”

“Jennifer?” asked Jake desperately, without breaking the rhythm of breathing into George’s lungs. His own lungs were bursting, his mind desperately listening for Jennifer as he maintained the rhythm of George’s breathing.

“She’s okay,” Luke called back. “Still breathing.”

She couldn’t die. She mustn’t!

The summer Jake was fourteen, two tourists had been flown out of Cumshewa Inlet after taking a large feed of clams. The helicopter had flown in only minutes after a third member of the party called for help in the radio.

One of the men had died before he reached hospital. The other had been hospitalized in critical condition.

How many clams had they eaten? He couldn’t remember. Jennifer said she had eaten only three, but she’d been confused, fuddled by the poison in her blood. God, Jenny! She couldn’t die. He couldn’t let her. If she died—

He blew a measured breath into George’s lungs, his mind filled with a vision of a world without Jennifer. “Jennifer?” he gasped between breaths.

Luke’s voice came back, confident and reassuring, “She’s still okay – we’re coming down for our landing now. I can see the ambulance waiting for us.”

In the moments of landing, Jake suffered an agony of apprehension as the seaplane bumped over the waves, taxiing in to the wharf. An ambulance attendant stepped up as the pilot opened the back door, taking over the rhythm of breathing for George as the pilot lifted her down to the stretcher.

Jake, finally free of his obligation to breathe for George, scrambled through the space between the seats, freeing Jenny from the seat belt, lifting her into his arms and finally feeling the miracle of her warm breath on his cheek.

From outside, a second attendant opened the front passenger door. Jake shook his head, saying, “I’ve got her. She’s breathing. You look after the other one.” He couldn’t let her go, couldn’t give her up to anyone else’s arms.

He carried her to the ambulance, his eyes watchful for any sign of change in her breathing.

How long since she’d eaten the clams? It must be almost an hour. The worst symptoms usually appeared within a half-hour. Was that right? Or was it some piece of false folklore he’d picked up?

One attendant was working over George. The other bent over Jenny, lifting her wrist to take a pulse reading.

“She’s breathing,” Jake said. “How is her pulse? Is it all right? Do you think—”

“Clams or mussels?” asked the attendant.

“Clams. Do you think she’s all right?”

The attendant shrugged. “She’s still breathing.”

She rested across his lap in the back seat of the ambulance as they tore across to the hospital. Once she opened her eyes and stared at him sightlessly. Surely any movement was a good sign? He tightened his arms on her. “You’re okay,” he said firmly, hoping he was telling the truth. “Just relax.”

She had to live. He wasn’t sure what she wanted, why she had been so insistent on leaving him, but he knew now that he needed her to make his life complete.

He’d known it, subconsciously, ever since the first day she walked into his studio. She’d walked into his life and the sun had started shining brighter. Life had become exciting, a new challenge.

Not just his working life. Jennifer had spoiled him for any other woman. She had never given herself to him in passion, but he’d found himself comparing every other woman to her. He couldn’t kiss a woman without wishing she was Jennifer. He’d tried to fight it, tried to tell himself it was only a desire for what he couldn’t have.