“I understand why you’d think that. And maybe I am. But I like the person I’ve become, Donovan. I thought you did, too.”
“Of course I do, but you can be that person in Portland just as well,” he insisted, almost shouting.
Lani had been considering that from the beginning. From the day she had first started falling in love with a man from the mainland. She shook her head decisively.
“No, I couldn’t. If I moved there, I couldn’t just sit around waiting for you to come home. Pretty soon I’d be back in my old routine of losing myself in a job, and you’d either be spending all your time trying to soothe the commissioner and wheedle money out of the city council for the police department, and there we’d be, two workaholics who’d be lucky if they saw each other for five minutes a week.”
She was close to tears. “We’d destroy everything we have together, Donovan. And that would break my heart.” Her eyes filled and she forced herself to look out over the sparkling turquoise water.
“But you’re tossing it away by not coming with me,” he argued.
She rubbed away the free-falling tears with her knuckles. “I don’t have any choice.”
“We’re going to have to talk about this some more,” he insisted. “You can’t just drop all this on me out of the blue when I have a plane to catch.”
“There’s nothing left to say.”
He reached out and cupped her downcast chin in his hand, lifting her tear-stained face to his. “We’re not finished yet, Lani, not by a long shot.”
As his mouth covered hers, a treacherous sob escaped her lips.
As he began walking down the beach, back to Nate’s house, with plans to turn the rental in to Kenny at the ferry dock, Donovan felt his own eyes burning.
25
Two weeks after leaving Orchid Island, and Lani, Donovan sat in the dark, nursing a tall glass of Scotch, which had, until his trip to the island always been his drink of choice. Now he found himself wishing he’d stopped at the liquor store on the way home and picked up a bottle of rum.
The apartment building was located on the river, the scene from every window spectacular. As the purple shadows of dusk gave way to night, the moon created mysterious shadows in the mist that hung over the icy waters of the river.
The city lights were wrapped in a soft blanket of fog that dulled their brightness, and down on the darkened streets, the car lights looked like fallen stars. The magnificent view had never failed to lift his spirits. That night was an exception.
He wasn’t a special agent. But he was chief of police. After years of climbing the ladder, the mist-draped city was his. So why did he feel so f*ck
ing rotten? The answer was simple: Lani wasn’t here to share it with him.
Before the appointment had been announced that afternoon, he’d had lunch with a furious Nate. Over thick steak sandwiches, Lani’s brother had accused him of being at best a damned fool. Or at worst, a bastard. Donovan had readily agreed on both counts.
“So go to her,” Nate had insisted.
“And lose my job? I’m not the kind of man to let my wife support me.”
Nate had muttered a pungent oath that Donovan, in years of police work, had never heard. “So you get a damned job on Orchid Island,” he said. “What’s so hard about that?”
“Doing what? Tending bar at The Blue Parrot?”
Nate had tossed back his head and polished off his beer. “You’re supposed to be an intelligent man,” he growled as he got up from the table. “You f*ck
ing figure something out.” With that, he had marched out of the restaurant.
* * *
Lani was aware of him the moment he entered the beach house. First there was the slight squeak of the screen door being opened, then the soft swish of her bedroom door, followed by his footsteps as he made his way toward the bed. All these sounds drifting into her subconscious mind as she slept told Lani that Donovan had returned.
But it was something far more elemental, emanating from the very essence of the man, that roused her to instant awareness. She sat up, pushing her tumbled hair out of her eyes.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” she whispered.
The mattress sagged as he sat on the edge of the bed. “You don’t sound very surprised,” he said, his lips caressing her scented hair.
Lani traced his face with her fingertips, as if to reassure herself that this was not a dream. “I wished for you. And here you are.”
Nuzzling against the soft, fragrant cloud of her hair, Donovan nodded. “And here I am.”
He drew her into his arms, running his hands up and down her back. The satin of her sleep shirt was cool against his palms, but Donovan knew that her skin would be warm.
He kissed her then because they had been much too long apart. Although by the calendar it had been two weeks and two days since they’d been together, since he had held her in his arms, Donovan felt as if it had been a lifetime ago.
“You didn’t lock your door.”