Sanctuary Island (10 page)

Except … when she went to close the drawer, she couldn’t help noticing that it held a very official-looking letter. A letter that was dated only a few days previous. Words like “lien” and “debt” jumped out at her as if they’d been bolded.

“Delinquent payment.” “Court.”

Ella closed the drawer with a snap and hurried out of the room, determined not to care, not to even think about that stupid letter.

This house … it’s all I have left of her.

Distracted by memories of last night’s talk with Jo and trying to deal with the fact that her stomach appeared to have tied itself into a knot, Ella got lost twice on her way to the small, white-tiled kitchen at the back of the house.

She braced herself to see Jo, and did her level best to wipe the new knowledge she’d just gained off her face. Breathing out a slow, steadying sigh, Ella opened the door.

But no amount of breathing could have prepared her for the way everything inside her jumped at the sight of Grady Wilkes standing over the old white porcelain stove.

Ella stopped stock-still in the doorway and sent up a fervent prayer of thanksgiving that she hadn’t stumbled in here, braless and hair all sticking up on one side of her head.

“Good morning,” he said, without looking up from whatever he was doing with the stove. “I hope you like red-eye gravy.”

Ella’s usual breakfast consisted of a buttered cinnamon raisin bagel from the coffee cart on the corner, so she didn’t consider herself a connoisseur of breakfast foods. And she certainly wasn’t a cook—the apartment she rented in Alexandria boasted a kitchen approximately the size of the claw-footed enamel bathtub she’d just showered in.

Red-eye gravy didn’t sound particularly appetizing. Still, she had manners.

“What are you doing here?” Ella demanded.

Okay, so maybe this one time, manners could take a backseat to finding out why Grady Wilkes was in her mother’s kitchen at eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning.

“Fixing breakfast.” His response was short and clipped, as if he weren’t any happier to be here than she was to see him. “Do you want some or not?”

Ella’s stomach answered for her with a long, embarrassingly audible gurgle. A smirk tugged at the corner of Grady’s mouth.

Lifting her chin, Ella sank down on one of the ladder-backed wooden chairs and folded her hands on the scarred pine tabletop with as much dignity as she could muster.

“Breakfast would be delightful. Thank you.”

Two chipped platters in the center of the table were mounded with enough food to feed a family of ten. Flaky, golden biscuits steamed gently on one, while the other was piled with thick slices of dark red meat—maybe ham?

Ella swallowed as her mouth started to water. “Shouldn’t we wait for everyone else?”

“They’re not here.”

She blinked, her interlocked fingers tightening until the tips went numb. “What?”

Grady turned away from the stove and faced the table, leaning one hip on the counter. Tall and rawboned, his dark blond hair shaggy and his jaw rough with stubble, he should’ve looked silly with blue-and-white striped oven mitts covering his hands.

But instead, he looked completely at home, in his element, and it didn’t matter that he was holding a cast-iron skillet and a long-handled wooden spoon instead of a handsaw and a crowbar. He leaned across the table to ladle a thin, darkly fragrant liquid over the waiting ham and said, “Your mom and sister. They were up early—I guess they wanted to catch the sunrise over the eastern marsh.”

Something inside her shriveled at being left behind, but Ella firmed her jaw and nodded. This was what they were here for, and she’d been very clear and forthright with Jo the night before. If anything, she should be pleased Jo was respecting her wishes and wasn’t pushing her. “Good. That sounds nice.”

Grady gave her a look from under his lowered brows, a lock of hair falling over his forehead and making him seem younger, somehow. “The island is better than nice. And dawn breaking over the water … it’s a sight that can change your life.”

“Maybe you can show it to me sometime.” She grabbed a biscuit off the top of the pile and set it on her plate before she realized how unintentionally flirty that sounded.

She sneaked a sidelong glance at Grady, pulling off his oven mitts and tossing them to the counter, to see if he’d noticed. The slight red flush at the tips of his ears said he probably had.

Ella blinked. Underneath the mitts, Grady was still wearing those leather gloves.

He pulled out the chair next to hers and reached for the platter of breakfast meat. “I’d be happy to, if you’re here long enough. There’s a lot to see on Sanctuary Island.”

“Like the wild horses.” Ella couldn’t remember her dreams from the night before, but she had a shivery awareness of the sense of freedom and majesty she’d felt, watching that band of horses sweep across the field. “Where did they come from, anyway? I couldn’t find anything about their origin online. Is there a mystery to it?”

“Not a mystery, exactly.” Grady piled so much ham onto his biscuit, it was going to take two hands to get it to his mouth. “But there are a few different theories. No one knows the truth, for sure.”

“That would drive me nuts,” Ella said, laughing. “Don’t you want to know?”

“I know everything I need to about the horses. The rest, I take on faith.”

There it was again, something uncurling in her chest and turning toward Grady like a flower seeking sunshine. “What’s your favorite theory about the horses?”

A half smile quirked up the corner of Grady’s mouth, and the look he slanted her way made blood throb heavily in her veins. “Some people say the horses are descended from livestock the British colonists hid on the island to avoid paying taxes to the crown; some say the first horses on Sanctuary belonged to the Harringtons of New York, who owned the whole island back in the thirties and used it as a summer home.”

Ella propped her elbow on the table and leaned in, fascinated by the rich warmth of Grady’s voice as he spun his tale.

“But what I believe,” he continued, “is that the horses were here first, before the colonists, before the millionaires. The Spanish explorers brought horses to North America in the fifteenth century, sailing them across uncharted seas to the eastern shores of a newly discovered land. The voyage was dangerous, and many a crew came to grief on the rocky shoals off the coast of Virginia … including a Spanish galleon with a herd of Arabians in the hold. When that galleon foundered and sank, those horses, bred for toughness, elegance, and survival in the harshest conditions on earth, refused to go down with the ship. They swam and swam until they found land … a small, uninhabited island that the horses made their own. Now, hundreds of years later, they’ve adapted to the island’s conditions and learned to flourish here.”

“I love that story,” Ella told him, dazzled. She could almost see the terrified horses kicking out into the storm-tossed waves, pushing through exhaustion to reach the beach.

“That’s why I spend so much time looking out for the wild horses and their habitat.” Ella tried not to melt at the way Grady’s jaw went hard with determination. “Sanctuary is their home, just as much as it is ours.”

A pang shot through her. This wasn’t her home, and she didn’t know why it hurt a little to be reminded of that. “Thank you for cooking,” she said, trying to drag the conversation back up to the surface.

Ella wasn’t great at accepting help, but she was trying to do better. “I’m not an invalid, though—my ankle must have only been twisted, like I said, because it’s fine today. So if Jo asked you over here to babysit me, you don’t need to feel obligated.”

Grady paused in the act of building the perfect ham biscuit. “You’re not an obligation. I’m here because I want to be.”

CHAPTER 10

Ella had been joking, or trying to, but the way Grady said that, so seriously and with his eyes intent on her face, sent a shiver of awareness skating over her skin.

She could actually feel herself getting pink in the cheeks, so she dipped her head and got busy with her own breakfast. “Okay. Well, thank you, anyway. This is really…” She paused to take a big bite, and had to close her eyes as the rich taste of smoky ham and intense salt exploded across her tongue. “Oh. Wow.”

She tried not to be warmed by the glint of approval in his smile, but it was hopeless.

“Real country ham, fried up nice and crisp,” Grady said, tearing into his breakfast while Ella did the same. “Then you take the hot drippings, add some strong black coffee, and boil it down until it’s the saltiest, most perfect flavor on the planet. Soak it up with good buttermilk biscuits, and you’ve got yourself a slice of heaven, right there.”

She popped the last bite in her mouth and contemplated copying Grady as he reached for a second biscuit with a brown-leather-gloved hand.

Without meaning to, she tracked his movements while her mind clicked through the possibilities, the reasons a man like Grady might have to keep his hands covered at all times. He was pretty covered up, in general, she noted. Her eyes skimmed the broad shoulders under layers of cotton undershirt and unbuttoned flannel shirt. The soft, forest-green-sleeves were buttoned tightly at his wrists, leaving not even an inch of bare skin to peep out between the edge of his gloves and the shirt cuff.

“Noticed the gloves, huh?” His mouth twisted in a crooked smile, as if her answer didn’t matter much, but Ella had the sense that if she said the wrong thing, he’d be out of his chair, maybe even out of the house, in the blink of an eye.

Even though she was embarrassed to be caught staring, Ella knew the worst possible reaction she could give him would be to make a big deal out of what was so clearly a hot-button issue for him.

So she shrugged as casually as she could manage, and reached for another biscuit. “They’re nice. I like the stitching. Pass the red-eye gravy, please.”

She deliberately didn’t look at him, concentrating most of her attention on getting her ham biscuit together. But she could feel the moment the tension left his big frame, like air escaping from a tire.

Ella ate her biscuit and tried to think of something to say that wasn’t “So what are you hiding under those gloves?”

But maybe Grady could feel the question hanging in the air over their heads the same way she did, because after a minute or so of silent eating, he abruptly started talking.

“I received an injury a few years back. For a while, I had to wear gloves for protection, and I got used to it.”

Ella wondered if the injury happened during his time with Texas Task Force One. Peeking up at him, she tried to gauge whether sympathy would be welcome.

“So … your injury is all healed up now? Good as new?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Not exactly. But as close as it’s going to get.”

There was definitely something he wasn’t saying, but Ella didn’t get a chance to dig deeper because he sat back in his chair with a determined glint in his straightforward green gaze.

“Actually, I’m as healed as I am because of your mom. I owe her a lot.”

This time, Ella was the one stiffening up. “Oh?”

“Your mom, and Sanctuary Island. When I first moved here, right after I got out of the hospital, I was kind of a mess.” He lifted one shoulder in a dismissive jerk. “I mean, I had it better than … a lot of folks. At least I’m still alive and walking around, right? It was stupid to be so screwed up about it. But I was a mess, all the same.”

“It’s not stupid,” Ella felt compelled to say. She couldn’t dial back the fierceness in her voice, so she settled for keeping it short. “Whatever happened to you, however you got hurt … Trauma is never stupid. Don’t play the game of comparing who had it worse and how much suffering earns you the right to be upset. No one wins.”

“You sound like a shrink.”

Ella lifted her chin. She hadn’t missed the way his open expression shut down. “That’s probably because I’ve been in and out of therapy since I was about fifteen.”

Staring into his wide eyes, Ella could see the moment he realized why she’d needed therapy. But if he wanted more details, he was out of luck. She’d stripped herself bare enough already—sitting in her mother’s kitchen comparing painful histories, Ella felt like a single exposed nerve.

“Anyway,” he went on, as if realizing that the topic of Ella’s therapy had been closed. “I think you’re right. I got there eventually on my own, with some help from Jo.”

“Got where?”

He shrugged, making a face like he was trying to do a complicated math problem in his head. “I guess … it is what it is, you feel how you feel, and you can’t control it. All you can really control is what you do about it—that’s what the island taught me.”

“It sounds like Jo was here for you at a time when you really needed someone,” Ella said, with some difficulty. “And I’m glad, honestly. But you have to understand—she was never there for me. For us.”

“But she wanted to be,” Grady protested, resting his elbows on the table and leaning in as if warming to his subject.

“But she
wasn’t
.” Ella flinched a little at the sharpness of her own retort, but she wouldn’t take it back. Trying to moderate her tone, she said, “Look. I know you’re trying to help. But I can’t…”

He shook his head, looking pissed at himself. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go there. What’s between you and Jo is your business. I’m not here to meddle in that.”

It took a few tries to swallow down the lump in her throat, and even Ella wasn’t sure if it was tears or relief.

Ever since they arrived on the island, she’d felt like all the stress fractures in her psyche were showing up. And Grady Wilkes seemed to have an uncanny ability to strike at them. “Then why are you here? Do you cook breakfast for my mother every morning?”

“No. And I should tell you, I can’t take credit for these biscuits. Jo made them before she left.”

“They’re pretty good,” Ella had to admit. Light, fluffy layers of buttery perfection, with the slightest hint of buttermilk tang inside to contrast with the salty richness of the golden toasty outside.

“Pretty good? Your mama makes the best biscuits on Sanctuary.”