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Maybe she should invite him over for a few weeks. Maybe she’d take their relationship a step beyond flirtation. No further, of course. She never went further.
She was pondering her options as she walked to the Cessna that was to be her transport to the island.
Usually when she returned home she took the Captain Hook, the ferry that did the trip between Puffin Island and the mainland three times a day. She’d grown up listening to the boom of the horn and the clatter of cars as they drove off the ramp onto the road that led from the harbor. Once or twice over the years she’d used the services of Maine Island Air, the company that flew cargo, locals and tourists between the islands of Penobscot Bay. On those occasions she often found herself wedged between the mail and several grocery orders.
This experience was going to be different.
For once, she was arriving in style.
Imagining what the residents of Puffin Island would say when word got around that she’d arrived on a private plane, Brittany smiled to herself. Dan, who worked up at the airstrip, would tell his wife, Angie, who would mention it in Harbor Stores or the Ocean Club, the favorite watering hole of the locals. From there it would travel across the island faster than the wind blew. It was a joke on Puffin Island that gossip traveled faster than the internet. It was certainly more reliable. There were times when the lack of privacy drove her insane but other times when it had proved useful, like recently when the islanders had closed ranks to protect Emily from trouble.
She felt a rush of affection for them. True, they occasionally drove her crazy with their interfering ways, but there was no doubting the strength of the community.
Suddenly eager to get home, she hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder, dragged her single suitcase behind her and strolled the last few steps towards the plane, thinking that she wasn’t dressed for such an upmarket mode of transport.
The pilot was probably more used to matching Louis Vuitton luggage than the tough outdoor gear she hauled around the world on her archaeological digs and she was pretty sure Manolo Blahnick would have cried if he’d seen her favored footwear. Her boots were scuffed and sturdy, built for hiking across rough, unforgiving terrain, although even they hadn’t been able to prevent her falling in Greece.
Thanks to her carelessness she was facing a summer of inactivity. She had regular appointments at the hospital scheduled, all of which would require a tedious trip to the mainland. To be sure of regaining full mobility in her right wrist, they’d told her she needed to be patient.
As she walked up to the Cessna the pilot appeared at the top of the steps.
Dark glasses shielded his eyes but she felt a jolt of instant recognition followed by a strange flutter in her stomach and an alarming shake of her knees.
It had been ten years, but she would have known him anywhere.
The shoulders under the crisp white shirt were broader and thickened with hard muscle, the glossy black hair cropped shorter, but he had that same “don’t fuck with me” attitude that had drawn her adventure-seeking, eighteen-year-old self all those years before. A million times since then she’d wished she’d looked for another way of enjoying an adrenaline rush, like bungee jumping or white-water rafting.
Instead she’d gone after bad boy Zachary Flynn. On an island bursting with fresh fruit, he’d been the one bad apple.
In the first dizzying weeks of their relationship she’d thought there could be no bigger adventure than love. Her feelings for him had overwhelmed her and made her vulnerable, open and exposed. She’d spent the entire summer walking round the island on legs the consistency of jelly, her stomach clenched in nervous knots. Her ability to sleep had vanished along with her appetite. Overnight, her vision for her future had changed.
She’d had plans and ambitions, but for Zachary Flynn she’d thrown them all away. Her life and her future had taken a different shape. Faced with a choice, she’d chosen him. And when she’d given him everything, all of herself, he’d walked away with a shattering disregard for her and she’d crashed so hard she still had the bruises. She’d often thought the damage would have been less had she jumped from a plane without a parachute.
“One female passenger, and it’s you.” His handsome face was inscrutable. “What are the chances.”
“Given that I live here, I’d say the chances are pretty high.” She held herself together, whipped up the control and calm she’d mastered over the years. Despite the turmoil inside she refused to give him any clues about her emotions, nor did she need to study his face for clues as to how he was feeling. She already knew he felt nothing.
“I thought you were living in Greece. Rumor has it you’re the female Indiana Jones.”
She’d heard it all before, all the jokes about whips, hats, snakes and rolling boulders. Usually she made a flippant response, but not today.
He strolled onto the tarmac and lifted her case before she could stop him. The luggage label flipped over and caught his eye. “Dr. Forrest?” He studied it, and then her. “So you lived up to everyone’s expectations.”
His statement made her feel dull and boring, as if her whole life had been mapped out in front of her. Which of course it had, apart from a brief diversion when she’d met him.
“I studied archaeology because it was what I wanted to do. My choice was my own. And Puffin Island is my home. Always has been.” And it had been her relationship with him that had driven her from it. She couldn’t stand the sympathy, the pitying glances, the “I told you so’s” every time she’d ventured into town. Stewing in her own mistake, it had been impossible to forget and move on while she was living on the island. “What are you doing here, Zach? Last thing I heard you were flying in the wilds of Alaska.” And from time to time she’d hoped he had developed frostbite in certain vital parts of his anatomy.
Irritation and a touch of outrage merged with something that felt disturbingly close to panic.
He had no right to be here in her space, her part of the world.
She
’d moved on, built a life. She had no wish to be forced to confront the path she hadn’t taken.
“I’m flying people with more money than sense to the islands. Today that seems to be you.”
“Would you have refused if you’d known?”
