Heroes Are My Weakness: A Novel

She reached under the bed, extending her arm. The cat lifted his head, and then, miraculously, started to crawl toward her. She held her breath. The cat approached her hand, sniffed, and began licking her fingers.

A ketchup-loving cat.

As long as she kept a little ketchup on her fingers, the cat was content to let her pick him up, carry him back into the main house and down to the kitchen. Jaycie was still with Livia, so there were no witnesses to Annie’s struggle getting an extremely pissed-off animal into the lidded picnic basket she found in the pantry. The cat howled like a car siren all the way down to the cottage.

By the time she got him inside, her nerves were scraped as raw as the scratches on her arms. “Believe me, I don’t like this any better than you do.” She flipped open the lid. The cat jumped out, arched his back, and hissed at her.

She filled a bowl with water. A pile of newspapers on the floor was the best she could do for a litter box. This evening, she’d feed him her last can of tuna, the one she’d intended for her own dinner.

She wanted to go to bed, but she’d stupidly promised Jaycie she’d talk to Theo. As she trudged back up to the top of the cliff, a scarf wrapped over her nose and mouth, she wondered how much longer she’d have to keep doing this before she paid off her debt to Jaycie.

Who was she kidding? She’d barely started.

She smelled the fire even before she saw the smoke rising from the trash drums behind the garage. Jaycie couldn’t have managed that icy path, so Theo was back from town and satisfying his unhealthy fascination with fire.

When they were kids, he’d kept a supply of driftwood above the tide line so they could build beach fires whenever they wanted. “If you look into the flames,” he’d say, “you can see the future.” But one day Annie had spied him alone on the beach tossing what she thought was a piece of driftwood on the fire he’d built until she’d caught a flash of purple and realized he’d thrown Regan’s precious purple poetry notebook into the flames.

That night she’d heard them fighting in Theo’s room. “You did it!” Regan had cried. “I know you did it. Why are you so mean?”

Whatever response Theo had made was lost in the sound of the argument Elliott and Mariah were having at the bottom of the stairs.

A few weeks later, Regan’s beloved oboe went missing. Eventually a visiting houseguest spotted the charred remains in one of the trash drums. Was it so impossible to believe that he’d played a part in Regan’s death?

Annie wanted to snatch back the promise she’d made to Jaycie that she’d talk to him. Instead she steeled herself and rounded the garage. His jacket lay across a tree stump, and he wore only jeans and a long-sleeved gray T-shirt. As she moved closer, she realized that confronting him right now, when she’d just come up from the cottage, worked to her favor. He didn’t know this was her second trip, so he’d have no reason to connect her with the handprint on his mirror. Jaycie couldn’t maneuver the steps, and Livia was too small to have reached the mirror. That left only a not-so-friendly creature from the other world.

A shower of sparks erupted from the drum. Seeing him through those glowing red embers—that dramatic dark hair, those feral blue eyes and saber-sharp features—was like catching a glimpse of the devil’s lieutenant out for a winter romp.

She curled her hands in her coat pockets and stepped inside the burning circle. “Jaycie says you’re going to fire her.”

“Does she?” He picked up a chicken carcass that had fallen on the ground.

“I told you last week that I’d help her, and I have. The house is decent, and you’re getting your meals.”

“If you can call what the two of you send up ‘meals.’?” He tossed the carcass into the fire. “The world’s a tough place for a bleeding heart like you.”

“Better a bleeding heart than no heart at all. Even if you gave her a big severance check, how long would it last? It’s not like there are other jobs waiting for her. And she’s one of your oldest friends.”

“This morning, I was the one who had to drive the recycling into town.” He gathered up a handful of withered orange peels.

“I would have taken it in.”

“Right.” He threw in the orange peels. “We saw how well yesterday’s trip worked out for you.”

“An aberration.” She said the words with a straight face and some serious attitude.

He gazed at her, taking in her undoubtedly flushed cheeks and the tangled mayhem poking out from beneath her red knit hat. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her. Not threatening, but more as if he were really seeing her. All of her. Bumps and bruises. Scars. Even—She tried to shake off the impression. Even . . . a few holy spots.

Instead of the fear and disgust his scrutiny should have elicited, she had a disturbing desire to sit down on one of the tree stumps and tell him her troubles, as if she were fifteen all over again. Exactly how he’d roped her in the first time. Her hatred spewed over. “Why did you burn Regan’s poetry notebook?”

The fire flared. “I don’t remember.”

“She was always trying to protect you. No matter what horrible thing you did, she’d defend you.”

“Twins are weird.” He almost sneered, reminding her so much of Leo that she shivered. “Tell you what,” he said. “Maybe we can work something out.”

The calculation in his eyes made her suspect he’d set another one of his traps. “No way.”

He shrugged. “All right.” He pitched a full trash bag into the fire. “I’ll go talk to Jaycie.”

The trap snapped shut. “You haven’t changed a bit! What do you want?”

He turned his devil’s eyes on her. “I want to use the cottage.”

“I’m not leaving the island,” she said as the acrid smell of burning plastic filled the clearing.

“Not a problem. I only need it during the day.” The waves of heat rising from the fire between them distorted his features. “You stay at Harp House in the daytime. Use the WiFi. Do whatever you want. When evening comes, we trade places.”

He’d set a trap, and the jaws had snapped. Had he ever said that he was going to fire Jaycie, or had she and Jaycie merely assumed that was the case? As she considered the likelihood that this was a ploy designed to manipulate her into doing his bidding, she was struck by something else. “You’re the one who was using the cottage before I got here. That coffee I found belonged to you. And the newspaper.”

He threw the last of the trash into the fiery drum. “So what? Your mother never minded lending out the cottage.”

“My mother’s gone,” Annie countered. She remembered the newspaper she’d found that had been dated a few days before her arrival. “You must have known when I was arriving—everybody on this island seemed to know. But when I got here, there was no water, no heat. That was deliberate.”

“I didn’t want you to stay.”

He exhibited not even a trace of shame, but under the circumstances, she wasn’t handing him a gold star for honesty. “What’s so special about the cottage?”

He grabbed his jacket from the stump. “It’s not Harp House.”

“But if you hate the place so much, why are you here?”

“I could ask you the same.”

“I didn’t have a choice.” She jerked her hat over her ears. “That’s not the way it is with you.”

“Isn’t it?” He hooked his jacket over his shoulder and headed toward the house.

“I’ll only agree on one condition,” she called after him, knowing as she did that she was in no position to make conditions. “I can use your Range Rover whenever I want.”

He kept going. “The key’s on a hook next to the back door.”

She remembered the underwear she’d left scattered around the bedroom and the book of pornographic art photos lying open on the couch. Then there was the black cat. “Fine. But our deal doesn’t start until tomorrow. I’ll bring you a key to the cottage in the morning.”

“No need. I already have one.” In two long strides he’d rounded the stables and was out of sight.