Set Me Free (4 page)

T
ap-tap-tap-tap
.

Someone was at the door. But what door? I didn’t even have a door anymore, did I?

A harsh beam of light illuminated the book tented on my chest, my hand strewn across it, the blue bracelet pressing into my wrist.

The car. I’d been reading in the back seat and must have fallen asleep. Not too surprising—
Richard III
was not one of my favorites.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

Blearily, I sat up, sending
Richard III
tumbling to the floor. The beam of light shone into my face, making my eyes water. The beam lowered, and once my eyes adjusted
,
I saw the man standing outside my window.

Rhys?

My throat constricted. If he had found me—

But the man scowling into my driver’s side window was older than Rhys. He had a stockier build. And, most noticeably, he was wearing a cop uniform. The fear clutching my throat loosened its grip.

Officer Not-Rhys beckoned for me to get out of the car.

My fingers trembling, I unlocked the door and slipped outside. We were alone in the parking lot, apart from the crickets chirping in the brush. The only light came from his flashlight and the dimmed headlights of his cruiser. My gaze flicked to the gun on his hip. “Is something wrong, Officer?”

He gave me a hard, assessing look, from my unkempt hair to my stocking feet, then glanced past me into my car. His eyes narrowed at the empty pack of cigarettes in the center console and the handbag slumped across the passenger’s seat, as if he were looking for something.

“Can I ask what you’re doing here, miss?”

My mind whirled with possible explanations. “I was at the beach.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“And you decided to take a nap?”

I couldn’t tell him I lived here. I
couldn’t
. “I was reading, and I must have dozed off.”

“Reading.” He scrutinized my face, my eyes. I could have sworn he was trying to smell me.

Drugs—that was what he was worried about, what he was looking for. He thought I’d been getting high in my car.

“I didn’t want to go home right away, that’s all,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “but I’ll go home now, if that’s okay.”

Please let me leave. Please.

His expression shifted from one worry to another. “Are you having problems at home, miss?”

“No. No problems.” I’d say anything if it meant he’d let me leave. I didn’t want to be arrested. I couldn’t stand the thought of him touching me.

“All right,” the cop said slowly. “Why don’t you head home.”

“Thank you, Officer.”

He nodded at my driver’s side window. “Go ahead and leave first. And don’t let me catch you parking here at night again.”

“Yes, sir.” Still shaking, I slid into the driver’s seat and toed the pedals.

He was letting me leave, but where was I going to go? Claire’s? I was pretty sure she knew, or at least suspected, no matter how much I’d tried to hide it. But if I showed up at Claire’s, Owen would find out. And Jenny. I couldn’t stand the thought of Jenny knowing this about me.

I’d have to spend the night at the motel in Bellisle again, even though it would set me back even more. I had no other options.

But when I reached Main Street, I didn’t turn right towards the bridge to Bellisle. Instead, I turned left and drove to work. I couldn’t be alone in that grimy motel room. Not yet. It was only about nine o’clock; I could go there in a couple of hours.

The Widow’s Walk was empty apart from Andy, who was unloading the dishwasher under the bar. But a moment later, two of the waitresses walked out of the kitchen, their raised voices carrying across the restaurant to where I stood by the door. The tall one, Kaye, who had always been kind to me, ran a hand through her short white-blonde hair, sticking it straight up like a dandelion puff. “You’re being ridiculous, Margot,” Kaye said, addressing the curly-haired waitress who’d hated me on sight.

“Fine, take her side. You’re—” Margot saw me and her face twisted into a frown. “Oh, look, it’s the painter.”

“Hi, Margot,” I said, hunching into my jacket.

“Miranda,” Kaye said in surprise. “Did you come by to hang out?” She smiled, her fair skin brightening. She’d asked me to hang out a couple times already. Everybody on staff hung around the bar on their days off. There weren’t many other places to go.

“I had a craving for some whiskey,” I told Kaye. Ignoring Margot’s look of disdain, I crossed the dining room and sat down at one of the barstools, underneath a stuffed raven dangling from an exposed ceiling beam.

“On the rocks, M.?” Andy asked.

“Yes, please.”

Margot stalked back into the kitchen while Kaye came and sat beside me, smoothing her short apron down over her jeans.

“You know Margot’s a painter, too?” Kaye toyed with a cocktail straw. “I don’t think she likes the competition.”

Andy slid a tumbler of whiskey across the bar towards me, and I took a grateful swig, willing myself to relax. I could handle the motel tonight. It wasn’t so bad, even if it was dingy. At least I’d be able to shower.

Still…I had to ask.

“You guys know anyone who’s looking for a roommate? It’s not working out…er…where I am now.”

Kaye and Andy exchanged a glance across the bar.

“Actually,” Kaye said, “we’ll need somebody soon. Our housemate, Rusty, is moving out in a few weeks.”

“You guys live together?” No wonder everybody thought they were dating.

“Yeah, with our friend Scott.” Kaye glanced at Andy again, and he nodded briefly, his dark brown eyes serious.

“You know,” Kaye said carefully, “we have a lot of space. If it’s really bad…where you are now…you can crash on our couch for a couple of weeks.”

I had a sudden lump in my throat. My eyes stung. They knew, didn’t they? God, how had they figured it out? I’d tried so hard to keep up appearances—to smell clean, to keep my hair looking nice.

“I would…I would love that,” I said, my voice hoarse.

Kaye placed her hand on my arm and squeezed. “Great! You can stay tonight! Want to come over after we close?”

Tonight? They definitely knew. It was just as well, I told myself. I
needed
this. I had nowhere else. It was lucky that I’d decided to come here tonight.

Lucky.

Except that whenever I thought back to my first day on Fall Island, I could not remember deciding to drive onto the bridge. I’d passed so many towns, but none had drawn me in like this one. It was like the island had scooped me up, though for what, I could not imagine. Since then, I’d gotten a job, found Suzanna’s statue, and now this—as if the island had moved me wherever it wanted me to go, like a chess piece.

An eerie tingling crept up the back of my neck—the way you feel when you’re being watched.

Still, what choice did I have? I took a deep breath.

“Tonight would be great.”

* * *

W
e drove
over after the bar closed. Kaye showed me around their weather-beaten white Colonial. The house was run-down, but after living out of my car for almost a month, heat and running water felt opulent.

“Let me show you the second floor. You can tell a bunch of guys live here,” Kaye added, eyeing a tennis shoe sprawled across the bottom step. She turned to me with one of her broad smiles. “I’m really excited to have you here. Have I said that yet? I’m so tired of being the only clean one around the place.”

At least she thought I was clean. That had to be a good sign.

We headed upstairs, where she showed me the layout of the bedrooms. Strange to think I’d have my own bedroom again. No car. No Rhys.

“What’s that?” I asked, noticing the outline of a rectangle in the hallway ceiling.

“Oh, that’s the attic. I have no idea who finished it, or why, but they did a nice job. Do you want to see it?”

Attics, like basements, are very mysterious to native Floridians like myself. “Definitely.”

Kaye was tall enough at nearly six feet that she could reach up and trace the outline of the door just by standing on her tiptoes. She took hold of the handle and carefully lowered the interlocking stairs. We climbed up into a wide-open space with a peaked ceiling that sloped to the floor on either side. A small window in an alcove overlooked the forest behind the house—it was the most perfect painting nook I’d ever seen.

“We can’t really use it, since the ceilings are so slanted.” Kaye was already stooped over. Since I was at least six inches shorter than Kaye, though, I was fine.

“I
love
it.”

“Really? Do you want it? It’s always bothered me that we can’t use it. It’s not incredibly functional, but it’s a cool space.”

I ran my fingers along the slanted wall. “You wouldn’t mind if it was my room?”

“Not at all! I’m so glad you like it.”

For the second time that night, my eyes stung. This time, I didn’t feel ashamed or trapped, but grateful. “Thank you, Kaye,” I said quietly.

She waved a hand. “Let’s go see the guys. You can meet Scott and Rusty.”

We went downstairs into the bitterly cold Maine midnight. Kaye pulled me towards three men sitting around a smoldering bonfire.

“I found us a new housemate,” she announced. “Your replacement, Rusty, since you’re abandoning us. This is Miranda Lewis. M., this is Scott and Rusty. Rusty is the one with the hats.”

Rusty was indeed wearing a hat—a dark fedora with a feather stuck in the band.

“Looks good.” I leaned forwards to shake the hand he had extended. “So, why are you moving out?”

He shrugged. “Girlfriend.”

“She wants Rusty to grow up. I tried to tell her not to get her hopes up, but she didn’t listen. I’m Scott, by the way.” Scott’s eyes were glassy, his cheeks flushed, as if he’d been drinking for hours. He had a baby face that made him look younger than the others, though I guessed him to be the same age. I was pretty sure they had all been in high school together.

“And this is Muscles.” Kaye gestured at the third man, who was poking at the fire pit with a stick. “He doesn’t
technically
live here.”

“Your name is Muscles?” I asked.

“The guys at the fire station started calling me that years ago, and it’s kind of stuck.” In addition to being pretty burly, Muscles had quite the impressive mustache.

I smiled. “As nicknames go, it could be worse.”

“Muscles is a firefighter,” Kaye explained. “He’s our token manly man.”

“Hey,” Andy protested, around a mouthful of crackers.

Suddenly, I realized that Scott was staring at me. He gave me an odd, crooked smile. “Everyone’s talking about you in town, you know.”

I flinched, hoping he didn’t mean my parking lot.

Kaye frowned. “Scott, be nice. Anyway, that’s not…totally true.”

“It’s okay,” I assured her, despite how raw I felt. I hated the thought of people knowing this about me.

“We’re just not used to having new people here,” Andy said apologetically. “Most people come in June and leave in August.”

“I’m not going to leave.”

Scott was still watching me. He looked…fascinated. As if he were an entomologist and I were a butterfly he wanted to stick on a pin. “Maybe she means it. If she stays, she’ll need to learn some of our secrets.”

Kaye rolled her eyes. “Scott…not now. Seriously.”

“You probably don’t need to worry about that, buddy.” Andy handed Scott the box of crackers, and Scott turned his attention to them, instead of me. I shivered with relief, but I still felt the imprint of his eyes on my skin.

I
hopped
from stone to stone, splashing stream water on my wedge espadrilles. I should probably have worn sneakers, but I’d left my only pair in the closet I’d shared with Rhys.

Now that I had a little bit more money, I’d started slowly replacing my abandoned wardrobe. It just hadn’t occurred to me—city girl that I was—that on Fall Island, “a nice walk along a nature trail” meant fording rivers and climbing mountains.

I ducked under a pine bough and emerged onto a cracked granite hilltop. Sunlight streamed down from a periwinkle sky and caught on veins of crystal quartz in the granite, casting little fireflies of light across the air. All around me, the dark tops of pine trees rippled in the breeze, rising and falling like ocean waves. At least the view was worth it.

I spread one of Kaye’s extra picnic blankets across the granite and pulled a sketchbook and pencils from my handbag. I’d decided to use my occasional days off to learn from Suzanna White’s paintings, especially her energetic use of color. I wanted to make my own work less dark, less quiet, but I was so out of practice after my year with Rhys that I didn’t know where to begin. I hardly remembered how to hold a pencil.

Before I could second-guess myself, I flipped open my sketchbook and drew Suzanna’s angel statue in big, bold strokes, with the hood of her robe down to reveal each twining curl and her wings spread wide. At the foot of her statue, I drew myself, comically small, gazing up at her.

“Miranda?”

Startled, I leapt up, knocking my sketchbook off my lap onto the blanket. I turned—

Owen Larsen stood at the mouth of the forest path. Sunlight poured down onto his blond hair and broad shoulders. He squinted at me, his brow furrowing, while my heart pounded crazily. What was he doing here?

“You’re hurt,” Owen said.

“I am?” I glanced down. For the first time, I noticed the blood racing down my leg. A big gash on my knee hung open.

“Christ.” Owen ran a hand through his brilliant hair. He stalked across the hilltop towards me. “How did you do that?” he demanded.

“I don’t know! I was just sketching.”

Owen’s gaze snapped towards mine. A strange flicker of emotion passed across his face. “You’d better sit down,” he said gruffly, “and let me take a look at this.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” I said, even as the warm blood coated my shin and trickled dangerously close to the ankle strap of my wedges. “My shoe,” I added stupidly.

Owen slung an arm around my shoulders and sat me down on the blanket too quickly for me to register my surprise. I didn’t flinch away from him the way I usually did when someone came too close to me these days. I held perfectly still, hardly breathing.

He knelt beside me and unbuckled the ankle strap. His big, scarred hands were surprisingly gentle, sliding across my ankle and instep, making my heart patter. Without a word, he put the shoe on the blanket next to me.

“Thanks,” I whispered, feeling incredibly silly. “I like these shoes.”

“Got any napkins or tissues or anything?”

“No. Just my sketchbook paper.”

Owen dismissed this suggestion with a grunt. His hands moved to the buttons of his flannel shirt.

“Oh, no,” I said in alarm, “you don’t have to—”

“It’s all right,” he muttered, tugging the shirt off. His muscular arms were lightly furred with golden hair. A white undershirt stretched taut across his broad chest and shoulders.

Good Lord.

His cheeks flushing, he placed one hand across my thigh. With his other hand, he tied his shirt carefully around my knee. “You have no idea how you did this?”

“No idea.”

“You weren’t attacked by a wild animal or something?”

“I’m pretty sure I’d remember that,” I said, with a shaky laugh.

Owen cast me a quick, lopsided grin. “How’s that feel?”

I knew he didn’t mean his hand, curling over the sensitive skin of my thigh, skimming the hem of my sundress. “Good.”

“It doesn’t hurt?” He met my eyes, but I looked away, blushing.

“No.”

“Closest walk-in clinic is in Bellisle, about twenty minutes away. Think you can hold out ‘til then?”

“I can’t—I mean, I’m sure I don’t need a clinic visit.”

“You probably need stitches…”

“No, seriously, I’ll just go home. Think I’ve got some Band-Aids.” I probably didn’t, but you never knew.

“Don’t you live all the way across town?”

I was surprised he knew where I lived, since it was only my second week at the house. But word got around fast on an island this small. Besides, he and Andy had been friends since high school.

“Better come to my place.” Owen sighed. “It’s the closest thing around.”

“Oh, no, I don’t want to impose—”

He frowned, eyes flashing in the sunlight. “It’s the least I can do if you won’t let me take you to a doctor. Can you stand?”

I nodded and got painfully to my feet. I could feel the cut now, and it ached more with every step. We made slow progress down the path, with Owen carrying my things for me and helping me down the steeper parts. At the base of the mountain, we reached a narrow, wooded street. It was a different street from the one I’d taken this morning, and I no longer knew quite where I was.

Owen led me up the road to a red house with a massive attached garage. When we went in the front door, I wasn’t sure what to expect—a Viking beer hall, perhaps—but it certainly wasn’t this spotless farmhouse kitchen. I stared at the big book on French cooking on his kitchen table with a sudden, overpowering lust. He
cooked
, in addition to being gorgeous.

“We should wash that up before we bandage it.” He reached for my elbow, but I jerked out of his reach involuntarily.

What the hell was I doing in this man’s house? Especially injured and limping. No one in the world who knew where I was, apart from the two of us.
I
hardly knew where I was.

My heart thumping, I looked up at Owen, expecting to see his usual gruff expression. Instead, his dark eyes were solemn and steady.

It’s all right, I told myself. Owen was all right.

I nodded at him to show me the way. Without a word, he led me through a tidy living room into a small bathroom. I couldn’t help noticing there were no women’s hair products or extra toothbrushes or any other signs of Jenny staying the night. Strange. Unless maybe Jenny was just as neat as he was?

I sat down on the edge of Owen’s bathtub with a sigh of relief at being off my knee.

He handed me a washcloth and a bar of soap that smelled like allspice and nutmeg. “First thing is to rinse the blood off so we can take a look at it.”

I took my shoes off and got my hurt leg into the tub, wincing. Rinsing the wound stung, but not enough to distract me from Owen standing a foot away. If I’d reached out my left arm, I could’ve touched him.

But I wouldn’t, because he had a girlfriend and I had at least some instinct for self-preservation. Even if he did know how to cook.

I snuck a glance up at him and was taken aback by the dark flush across his strong cheekbones and at the base of his throat. He was staring at the hem of my dress where it met my wet, soapy thighs. My stomach tightened in an immediate, visceral response.

Tearing his gaze away from me, he stared instead at my espadrilles, which were lying on his bathmat. “Um…want some coffee? Think I might make a pot.”

“I never turn down coffee.”

“No wonder my mom likes you so much. Cream and sugar?”

“Yes, please.”

By the time he came back with two steaming mugs of coffee, I was sitting on the edge of the tub with my hurt leg stretching out to the floor. Owen handed me a coffee and set his own mug down on the sink. He pulled a roll of gauze and some surgical tape out of his medicine cabinet and sat down next to me on the edge of the tub, so close I could catch the sweet spicy scent of his soap again, but this time warmed by his skin.

“It’s still bleeding,” he said. “Sure you don’t want to go get stitches?”

“It’s slowed down a lot. Thank you, though.”

He dabbed at the cut with an ointment-soaked gauze pad, wrapping his free hand around the back of my knee—a place that suddenly felt vulnerable and intimate.

“You’re really good at this,” I said, then blushed again. “I mean…wounds.”

His mouth crooked up, but he kept his gaze focused on my leg. “I do a lot of woodworking. Cut myself pretty good a couple times.”

“That explains the scars on your hands.”

This time, he met my eyes, his eyebrows rising. “Yes. Just glad I haven’t lost a finger yet. A lot of woodworkers do, eventually.”

I shuddered. “How awful.”

He shrugged and reached for some more gauze.

“What kind of woodworking do you do?” I asked curiously, as he taped the gauze to my cut.

“Well, for my business, I make arbors, pergolas, railings, that kind of thing. But at home, I make instruments.”

“Instruments?”

“Violins, mostly. Started a cello, but it’s slow-going.”

“That is so cool,” I said, which made him laugh. “Seriously,” I insisted. “I’d love to see them.”

“Really?”

He’d finished taping up my cut now, but one of his hands was still resting on my shin.

“Yes, really.” I’d seen plenty of painting studios, but I’d never seen a violin workshop. And…I didn’t want to leave yet, as selfish as that was. “Unless you’re busy? I don’t want to—”

“No,” he said. “I’m done for the day, anyway. How’s the bandage feel?”

“Good, thanks.” I moved my leg experimentally.

Owen stood and offered me a hand up. My fingers vanished inside his callused palm. He had the hands of a manual laborer. It would have been hard to imagine him making something as delicate as a violin, if it weren’t for how gently he’d bandaged up my leg.

I slid my shoes back on and followed Owen back into his living room. We crossed through a mudroom filled with L.L.Bean parkas and dog leashes and went into the gigantic garage I’d seen from outside. Violins in varying stages of completion lined the walls. Under the violins were rows of tools. The rest of the garage was filled with standing machinery, workbenches, and more instruments: an upright piano, an acoustic guitar, a viola.

I realized my mouth was hanging open and shut it with a snap. “This is amazing.”

“You like it?”

I grinned up at him. He was blushing again, too. I’d never seen anyone make a blush look so sexy. “I
love
it. Is that the cello you’re making? On the workbench?”

“That’s right.” We threaded our way through some of the bigger machines—an electric saw, I guessed, and maybe a dehumidifier. At the workbench against the far wall, Owen picked up a piece of wood and handed it to me.

“Oh, look!” I exclaimed. “It’s the neck, and the whatsit!”

“The scroll,” he supplied, smiling.

I traced the spiraling wood at the end of the scroll, bewitched. “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s not quite done yet. I haven’t even made the peg box.”

I pointed at two meticulously carved pieces laid carefully on the workbench. “What are these?”

“This is the back plate, and this is the front plate. They’ll be the body of the cello, eventually, after I make the ribs.”

“The ribs?”

“The sides of the cello body. You bend them around the cello mold, to make them curved, and then glue it all together. Tell me if I’m boring you yet.”

“Not at all.” Owen was truly an artist. “So you made all of these?”

“Almost all of them. Some of them I got used so I could try out fixing them up, back when I was first starting out.” He reached up and plucked one of the violins off the wall. It looked like a child’s toy in his hands. He offered it to me, and I took it as if it were made of crystal. It weighed so little, and its striated varnish was incredibly lovely.

“It’s so pretty,” I said. “How are you so good at this? When did you start doing it?”

“Seven years ago.” His tone flattened. My skin prickled at the sudden change.

He cleared his throat and scraped his knuckles over the blond stubble growing in along his jawline. “Are you musical?”

“Kind of. My dad had me take piano and voice lessons starting when I was a kid. He’s really into that stuff—being well-rounded and accomplished. I had private tutors for everything—ballet, French, horseback riding…you name it.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, I mean, he’s a Shakespeare professor. I think he lives in a different era from the rest of us.”

“I have no idea what it’s like to have an eccentric parent.” His mouth quirked.

I laughed. “I really like your mom. She’s been so nice to me.”

“That’s what she does. She’s all heart. Which is good—no one else would’ve made it this long in this town.”

I wanted to ask what he meant, but he turned and went to the upright piano. “What do you remember from your piano lessons?”

“Nothing, probably.” I set his violin carefully down on the workbench and followed him across the room. He gestured for me to sit on the piano bench.

“All those private tutors, you must remember something.”

Placing my fingers on the keys and toeing the pedals with my espadrille, I tried out a couple of blues scales. “I remember more of the stuff I picked up in high school, not the proper classical stuff my tutor taught me,” I admitted. “So you won’t get much Bach out of me, I’m afraid.”

Owen was watching me, that wry smile back in place. “What did you pick up in high school?”

“Well, Tom Waits was my favorite.”

He nodded at the keys.

I tried out a few notes as the song slowly assembled itself in my head. Finally, I leaned into the keyboard the way Tom Waits did and sang a few lines about drinking to forget my lover before letting the song fade out. “I can’t remember the rest.”

“That was fantastic.”

We grinned at each other. I slid over on the piano bench and patted the seat beside me. “Your turn.”

“I don’t play piano.”

“Nonsense,” I said, channeling my inner Claire. “Why would you have an instrument you can’t play?”

With a sudden flare of embarrassment, I remembered that Jenny was a piano teacher. It had to be for her. And she could probably play Bach’s
Goldberg Variations
without breaking a sweat.