The Kiss on Castle Road (A Lavender Island Novel) (22 page)

She sighed and looked for something else to help with before she could feed Moe.

For the next two weeks, Natalie stopped at the center each day and tried to help where she could. She always popped in to see Moe, and snapped on gloves and did his feedings when her timing was in synch. At other times, she helped at other stations—weighing pups, moving laundry, driving the golf cart down to the harbor landing to pick up supplies, or whatever was called for. The center had been forced to relax its standards on volunteers, no longer insisting on a year’s worth of training, as they tried to just get enough people to do all the work that needed to be done.

Lavender Island had really stepped up. Natalie always bumped into Doris, Marie, the Colonel, Sugar, and George at the center, even on their days off. John-O often tried to stay after his Casas del Sur driving was done. Sometimes June came. Tag was often there, and Mrs. Conner from the post office came to help some days, while Mr. Conner often donated his golf cart for extra rescues. Lily couldn’t stand to be left out either and begged to come, so Natalie agreed to bring her once a week only. She’d broken the news to her that Moe wasn’t doing well. Lily cried the first time she saw Moe in the playpen, but after that, she came back strong, wearing her EMT costume every visit with her stethoscope around her neck.

Like everyone else, Elliott became a full-fledged volunteer, not just a scientist. Gone was his lab coat. He spent most of his days in T-shirts and cargo shorts like the rescue teams.

Sometimes Natalie saw Elliott hauling sea lions from room to room. Other times she saw him in the feeding room, feeding the baby seals with baby bottles. Sometimes he was in the pool area, helping another volunteer haul out heavy buckets of fish, which they threw into the pool and watched to see if the sea lions were strong enough to catch fish to properly nourish themselves. Sometimes he was with Jim, back in his lab coat, soothing a sea lion from seizures. And other times he was out behind the propped-open back door with his gloves on, waving the next golf cart in with new intakes.

The following Wednesday night, Natalie drove home with Lily and realized, right after dinner, that Lily had left her Elsa doll at the center. Natalie called to find out if someone would still be there to let her in and got Tiffany, who assured her she was staying until midnight.

Natalie bounced along in her golf cart back through Canyon Road and parked in the cool night air. The center was mostly closed down, but she could see two lights still on.

The gravel crunched underneath her tennis shoes as she headed in.

“Tiffany?” she called into the silence.

“I’m here,” she heard a voice call out to her.

She walked around the corner to where Tiffany was folding donation letters into envelopes.

“There you are!” Tiffany hopped off her stool and motioned for Natalie to follow her down the hall to the feeding room, where Natalie had remembered she and Lily had been earlier. But when they walked up to the chair where Lily had been sitting, the doll was nowhere to be found. Tiffany stopped short. “Where did it go?” She looked all around the seating area. “I swear it was just here an hour ago.”

Natalie looked, too—under stacks of towels, inside buckets, inside the boots that lined one wall. “You don’t think a sea lion could have grabbed it, do you?” she asked.

“Weirder things have happened,” Tiffany said.

They made their way into the next room and looked around there, too, but then Tiffany stopped and peered down the hallway. “I forgot I wasn’t alone. Follow me.”

They walked down the hall, toward the lab, which had the only other light coming from beneath the door. Tiffany barged in.

“Hey, Tiffany,” Elliott’s voice said.

The sound sent a warm feeling into Natalie’s gut, and she actually had to put her hands over her stomach to calm herself. She took a deep breath and headed in.

“There it is! We were looking for this,” Tiffany said, rushing across the room.

“We?”

Tiffany motioned back to the entrance, and Elliott did a double take at Natalie in the doorway.

“Oh, hey.” He put a test tube in a small wooden rack with several others, which all clanked together with a soft tinkling noise. “I saw the doll and knew it was Lily’s, so I brought it here to return to her.”

He wiped his hands on his lab coat and turned to face Natalie. He looked as if he was going to move toward her, but then he stopped and redirected his hands into his coat pockets.

“Here ya go,” Tiffany said, bringing the doll back to Natalie and shoving it into her arms. She motioned for Natalie to follow her out.

But Natalie stayed facing Elliott instead, clamping the doll across her middle. He looked terrible—his blue eyes half-lidded behind his glasses, dark circles under both eyes. And his skin looked ashen. It all could have been the lab lights, of course, but his stooped shoulders gave away the fact that it probably wasn’t.

He gave Natalie a wan smile and ran his fingers through his messy hair. “Glad you got her back. I’m sure Lily misses her.”

“Even after just a few hours,” she said.

He tried another smile.

A strange silence welled in which everyone seemed to be waiting on Natalie.

Finally, she turned toward the door. “Tiffany, can you leave us alone for a minute?”

CHAPTER 20

The door closed, much to Elliott’s frustration, and Natalie turned back toward him in the silence.

He knew he’d been avoiding her. It had just been easier. After the kiss on Castle Road, her fleeing that night, then her admission on the beach that she really just wanted to keep things cooled down between them, he could take a hint.

He wanted to be friends with her, as she’d suggested, but he wasn’t sure how. Every time he came near her, all he could think of was what it felt like to have her in his arms like he had that night, to have her turn her head and kiss him, to have her body become supple and inviting against his. She’d let him protect her, she’d let him save her, she’d let him take care of her. And, since that moment, he knew one thing for sure—he wanted to do that for the rest of his life. He wanted Natalie Grant.

But she didn’t want him.

So he was stepping back, trying to determine where the line was: how much he could enjoy her in his life without pushing himself across the boundary she didn’t want him to cross.

“You look pretty bad,” she suddenly said.

He slid a glance her way. He didn’t even know what to do with that information. “Thanks.”

“I just figure that’s the kind of things friends can say to each other.” She thrust her chin in the air. “Right?”

“I suppose.”

“You just look tired.”

That was probably true. That happened when you worked all the time. When you did your own science work between two and four in the morning. And, of course, when you finally did get to sleep but intense sexual dreams about a woman you couldn’t have left you feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.

“Working a lot,” was all he said.

“Elliott . . .” Natalie walked toward him.

He stepped back instinctively. Man, he didn’t want to have a conversation with her right now—he was way too tired. Way too susceptible to saying something stupid. Way too close to memories of dreams that might let his body betray his wayward thoughts.

Damn it, where was his lab coat?

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” Natalie said.

He turned and filled a couple of test tubes. “Now’s probably not the best time.”

“I won’t take up much of your time, I just wanted to say a few things while we have some quietude. It’s always so busy here. It’s nice to be alone with you for a second.”

The test tubes clanked together beneath his suddenly indelicate touch, and he mentally cursed himself. He lifted the rack and walked over to the incubator. “Maybe we could do this another time.”

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Elliott froze.
Sorry?
He hadn’t seen that one coming.

“For what?” he asked over his shoulder, as casually as possible.

“For creating such an awkwardness that we’re now avoiding each other.”

He stalled over one of the buttons on the incubator, then finished punching in the correct temperatures. “I don’t think you need to apologize for that.”

“Just hear me out.”

She was right behind him now. Touching distance, he was sure. He wiped his brow and gave the buttons one more try. On the second attempt, he got it right and the machine finally began whirring.

He turned and was immediately face-to-face with her. Or face-to-chin. Or breasts-to . . .

He took a deep breath and sidled away. Where had he put his lab coat?

He fumbled along the countertop for his locker key, put it next to his laptop mindlessly, then pretended he was looking at something important on the screen. “I think I need to wrap things up here.”

“We can leave together.”

Four hearty cuss words floated through his head, and he bit them all back.
Good move, Sherman. That wasn’t very well thought out.
But at least some fresh air might do some good. He grabbed his locker key and strode toward his lab coat.

“I can drive you,” she said. “I promise to stay on the road this time.”

He pulled the coat out of the locker and shuffled it over his shoulders. He closed his laptop and attempted to straighten his lab desk, almost knocking over a rack of empty tubes, then piled a stack of scientific journal articles he’d printed. As he untangled the paper clips holding the articles together, a small index notecard fell out of one of the stacks and landed faceup on the counter.

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” —Anaïs Nin

It was an index card that the Colonel had given him. The Colonel had left seven in the last week, all in his own linear handwriting—one on Elliott’s laptop, one slipped inside. Two had been in his lab-coat pockets, and two had been rubber-banded with his mail. They were always about courage.

Elliott had been realizing the truth of what the Colonel had told him—courage in the face of danger was actually doable. His adrenaline-fueled experience in the cart about to go over the cliff had shown him that. But courage in the face of rejection was where you really needed to pull your bootstraps up. Facing your own feelings—and then laying them bare for someone else to see—was where real courage took place.

Elliott stared at this latest card and took a deep breath.

“Okay, Natalie,” he finally said, stuffing the notecard into his pocket. “Let’s head home. I have a few things I need to talk about with you, too.”

The night air blew through the golf cart as they bumped down the unpaved hill toward Elliott’s house. Natalie had decided to forgo the main road and off-road it on a path she knew went directly to his hill. She tried to ignore the fact that he was clutching the passenger doorway with white knuckles and instead focused on driving.

“So what do you think?” she asked.

“About your driving? It kind of sucks. Where’s the road?”

“Thanks a lot.”

“I figure that’s the kind of things friends say to each other, right?”

She swung past the little cottages toward Elliott’s place on the ocean. Hardly anyone was out this late, so the narrow path was their own. “I meant, what do you think about my being a good friend or a bad friend?”

“I think you’re a fine friend. You’re just a crazy driver.”

She took a hard turn onto the paved portion, and Lily’s Elsa doll flew off the seat between them and scuttled across the floorboard, landing in the street.

“Darn it.” She put the cart in reverse. Elliott leaned out and swiped the doll up. She barely let him sit back before she floored it again.

“So anyway, is it because you said you have feelings for me, Elliott? Maybe we should have talked about that more so we could have a more relaxed friendship. I like that you were so honest with me—I really do. I respect that a lot. And I feel like I didn’t acknowledge your honesty. And I feel like I’m not being very straightforward or honest with
you
. But friends are honest, right?”

Elliott was gripping the passenger doorway again. “I imagine so.”

“I truly want us to be friends. I really like you.”

“I like you, too, Natalie.”

“But you avoid me.”

The wheels bumped over the wooden pier to the other side of Diver’s Nook and puttered down a slight dirt hill, then began rounding the cove.

Elliott glanced at something in his lab-coat pocket and then took a deep breath. “Yes, I’ve been avoiding you.”

Natalie looked over at him, surprised he’d admitted that. Although it was true of her, too, it was hard to say out loud.

“Watch the road, please.” He pointed ahead.

She refocused her attention and concentrated on the rest of her speech.

“I don’t want things to be awkward between us,” she said. “I want to hang out with you. I hope you’re not avoiding me because I kissed you. Or because you said you have feelings for me. Or because I’ve recommitted to my mancation, and you think it’s something personal.”

She turned to stare at him again. He was slumped now in his seat, looking tired.

“If we’re going to be honest, here—I’ll say that it’s probably all of those things,” he said. “But mostly I’ve been avoiding you because I’m attracted to you. I just don’t know how to behave, I guess.”

His honesty threw a little dart into her heart. She wanted to reach out and touch his hand, but knew that would just confuse things further.

“Oh, Elliott.” She let out a deep sigh through the open windshield.

“Road.” He pointed again.

“Would it help if I admitted something, too?”

He seemed to think that over. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I will. I watch you on the beach running every day.”

He turned and stared at her. “Really?”

“Really.”

He looked back at the road, watching the cliffs go by. “Why do you do that?”

“It makes me feel close to you, like we’re the only two out there on the beach, and we understand each other somehow.”

He stared straight forward for half a minute, seemingly thinking that over. “You could join me sometime.”

“I can’t run as fast as you. I’d never keep up.”

“I could slow down.”

“How slow?”

“For you? A crawl.”

She smiled. “A light jog might do. Would that eliminate the awkwardness and allow us to be friends?”

“It might. Or it might not. Depends on how cute you look in your running clothes.”

Natalie grinned back at him and steered the golf cart straight up his hill. “You might be shocked to know that my running clothes consist of a man’s sweatpants and sweatshirt. Not very exciting.”

“We’ll definitely be friends then.”

She laughed and pulled up into his drive. “Can I come in? I just had a few more things I wanted to say. I won’t keep you long.”

He seemed to look at something in his pocket again, then shrugged. “Sure.”

She followed him through the back door they’d entered with Alice, past the same kitchen, past the same dining table. Nothing looked as cozy or romantic as it had that night, though. Instead of candles and dinner for two, Elliott now had papers strewn all over the dining table—stacks and stacks—along with some empty paper plates. A laptop sat at the head of the table, surrounded by empty coffee mugs, cords, and a headset.

The living room looked similar—papers stacked on almost every flat surface. Natalie could see where Elliott must have carved a small place for himself on the floor in front of the fireplace. Another empty coffee mug sat there.

“What are all these?” she asked.

“Journal articles.” He quickly shuffled several of them out of the way, clearing a place for her to sit. “I’ve been reading up on other scientists’ studies of gene sequences for the sea lions in every rookery up the California coast. Plus, reading up on the history of the island and doing some studies on the other animals that live here—trying to see if the environment is affecting them. Here, have a seat.”

“Don’t mess up your papers. They’re probably all organized how you like them. We can go outside.”

He looked up, eyebrows raised, papers stalled midair. “Now
that
, Natalie, is being a good friend.”

She grinned and wandered out to the patio. The night was warm for June in California—a cooling ocean breeze brushed across the patio and blew across her face. The ice plants on the hill below were ready to explode into their blooms, but the buds were all closed for the night. Natalie pulled her hair from her lips and plopped into a chaise lounge, kicking her legs out in front of her. The ocean rolled out in the distance, the stars rolled out above. Elliott perched on the chaise next to her.

“You don’t look very comfortable,” she said. “Do you always wear your lab coat at home and sit so stiffly like that?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t often have Natalie Grant lying on a chaise lounge on my back patio.”

She took in his lowered eyes, his messy hair, and then noticed a bit of a smart-ass smile quirking the corners of his lips. “You’re
liking
this honesty thing, aren’t you, Elliott?”

“It is kind of liberating.”

“Do you realize you’re flirting?”

“Is that what this is?”

“Yeah, and you’re kind of good at it. So have fun. But here’s the thing—I need to remind you that this has to stay purely platonic.”

“Got it.”

“I need to finish this mancation thing. For myself, not just for the bet. I need to know that I don’t need a man to show or tell me my worth. Can you understand that?”

He nodded.

“I need you to know it has nothing to do with you—I truly enjoy your company. So I’m wondering if we can just put everything else aside—forget about the kisses and the awkward attraction—and simply be true friends for each other while I learn a little more about myself. Doris said you could really use a friend right now who just lets you be yourself. And I know I could.”

He looked up at her—the open, accepting expression back on his face. It was an expression she hadn’t seen since the Castle, as he’d shut it down right after she’d talked to him on the beach. But now here it was again: compassion, acceptance, concern, and a kind of caring in his eyes she realized she’d missed.

He nodded solemnly. “I’d like that,” he said softly.

Relief flooded her. She had Elliott back. And now she needed to be this kind of person to him—the selfless person who acted on what was best for a friend, not what was best for her.