CHAPTER 3
YOU’RE SUCH A JERK!”
The voice of his sister shooting up from outside and through the open bedroom window woke Jake from where he’d dozed off, on Dinah’s bed, in the room down the hall from his. Aggie was curled on the bed, asleep, her stuffed unicorn clutched under her arm, the book he’d been reading to her fallen on the floor in their slumber.
A Wrinkle in Time. His mother’s suggestion—a story about a little girl who goes in search of her father. It sounded like something appropriate for Aggie, although Jake hadn’t a clue how much she understood.
Three days since Ham’s departure and she still hadn’t said a word. Jake had spent the weekend playing checkers with her, taking her out in the speedboat, teaching her how to play croquet—he was a regular super uncle.
Still, even Jake was starting to worry. “What happened to you, little one?”
But maybe he had other problems, like what had caused his sister Ellie to slam the car door outside, shoot off the words to her boyfriend, then bang her way into the house.
He looked at the clock. After 10:00 p.m., which meant his folks were probably asleep. His mother had started going to bed at 9:00 p.m., which had him a little worried. Her last cancer scans had declared her still in remission, but he feared that someday she’d gather the family around the table with the news that the breast cancer had returned, in force.
He saw the worry in his father’s eyes too, sometimes.
In truth, he worried about all of them. Dinah’s marriage felt a little off, what with Mark showing up so late to the party a few days ago, not to mention Stephan not showing up at all for Phoebe. But he’d just made partner in his law firm, so he got a pass.
Chloe seemed off—quiet. Jake wanted to ask her about her last assignment. After all, he still had his SEAL security clearance. But Chloe always played things close to the chest, so who knew what she might be brooding over. She saw a lot of dark things in her job as a war correspondent. He had long lived in fear that he’d show up in a country on an assignment to rescue hostages, and one of them would be his too-tough-for-her-own-good kid sister.
And then there was Selah. She and North had taken a walk down to the beach after the fireworks, and maybe that should have given him pause, but frankly, North was a good guy. A man of faith, and Selah could do worse. Maybe there was room for a man in that heart dedicated to Jesus. She’d inherited the family do-gooder gene, so North better buckle up. Being with Selah meant joining her on her quest to save the world, or at least the downtrodden and hurting.
But Ellie—she was an enigma to Jake. Mostly because he’d missed the majority of her childhood. When he’d left home, she’d been all of four years old. Now, at seventeen he recognized a smidgen of himself in her, and frankly, that scared him.
He got up and shut the door, moving down the hall to find her.
She was standing in the kitchen, the glow of the fridge light bathing her as she pondered her food choices.
“Ice cream is in the freezer.”
She pulled out the milk and set it on the counter. “Not every girl needs ice cream when she breaks up with a guy.” She gave him a look.
“You two broke up?”
She went to the pantry and took out a box of Lucky Charms. “Yeah, we broke up.”
“Why?”
She poured out the cereal. “Just because.” But she didn’t look at him, and her voice wavered. And he’d been through enough breakups with Dinah and Phoebe to know the look of a stiff upper lip.
“You need to talk about it?”
“With you?” She looked up. “No.”
He frowned. “Yeah, with me. I’m your big brother.”
“Listen, Jake. I know you’re my big brother, but frankly, we barely know each other. You moved back six months ago and were gone for the last month, so really . . .” She lifted a shoulder.
“It doesn’t mean I don’t care. I’m still your big brother.”
“Fine.” She set the box on the counter. “I’ll tell you why I broke up if you tell me why you separated from the navy. Mom says we’re supposed to give you time to get your feet under you, but frankly, I’m trying to figure out what took you out in the first place.”
“What’s your deal? Did I wrong you somehow?”
She looked at him, her eyes glistening. Then looked away. “No. I’m sorry. I’m just . . . mad.”
Yeah. He got mad.
He spent most of his life, lately, mad. “Do I need to go have a talk with this guy?”
She gave him an eye roll.
“Like I’m going to send my big brother around to shake some sense into him?” She poured in the milk. “No thanks, Jake. You don’t need to save everyone.”
“I’m not trying to—”
She picked up the bowl, but it slid out of her hands and dropped onto the counter, sloshing milk everywhere. She let out a word.
“Hey—hey.” Jake came around and picked up a towel. “Listen. I’ll get you more cereal. Go sit down.”
She turned away from the counter, covered her face with her hands, her shoulders trembling. “He’s just such a jerk!”
Oh. He said nothing, cleaning up the milk, pouring the cereal down into the sink. Then he got a new bowl and set it on the counter.
And because she was still standing there, crying, he reached over and pulled her to himself. She sort of leaned in, pressed her forehead to his chest.
“I’m happy to shake some sense into him.”
She sniffed, and her body trembled. “Can you make it hurt?”
“Probably.”
“Without marks?”
He held her away, raised an eyebrow. “What happened, El?”
“He . . .” She winced, and looked away.
“Okay, now I’m serious. What did he do?”
“Nothing. I mean—nothing. I don’t know. I guess I just let him in too far . . .”
He froze, although his heart gave a hard thump, betraying him. “Too far.”
She pushed out of his arms. “Calm down, big brother. I don’t mean too far. I mean . . . you know. I let him into my life. I . . . let him know me.” She cocked her head. “And not in the biblical sense, so you can put away your Ka-Bar.”
He held up his hands. “I’m unarmed.”
“Hardly.”
His voice softened. “What happened?”
“Nothing. I don’t know.” She turned her back to him. “I . . . I told him about Hannah and he didn’t say anything—”
“You told him about Hannah? Why?”
She rounded on him. “Because, I don’t know, it matters?”
“Fine.”
“And now you’re acting weird. What’s the big deal?”
He poured her cereal, added milk.
“Jake?”
“Nothing. Here are your Lucky Charms.”
She put a hand on his arm. “Really? Just like that you go from being all great to being a jerk.”
He glanced at her, his mouth tight. “I just don’t think . . . well, that’s family business. Besides, you weren’t even around.”
She drew in her breath. “Thanks.” She grabbed her cereal. “Thanks for that.”
“El—”
“Listen, truth is, I wouldn’t be around if she was still here, so there’s that, Jake.” Her eyes were hard in his. “Try being me. The replacement for the sister you never knew. The sister everyone lost.”
She pressed past him.
Not everyone. Him.
The sister he lost.
“Ellie—” He followed her into the den. She sat down on the brown corduroy sofa. “Listen. We don’t know what would have happened—”
“Six years says they were done having kids. Then, three years after Hannah goes missing, I’m born. Seriously, Jake. Don’t think I don’t live with that fun fact every day. I’m a replacement child.”
“You’re not, Ellie. You’re your own person.” He sat on the end of the sofa. She drew up her feet, but he picked them up and put them on his lap. “Listen. It was really hard after—well, after. No one talked about it, but Mom . . . she spent days locked in her room. So maybe they thought having another kid would help. But then you were born and you are nothing like Hannah. She was quiet and—”
“Sweet and obedient and never threw a temper tantrum—yeah, I know it all—”
“You’re amazing and beautiful and feisty and exactly who you’re supposed to be.” His throat tightened at the way her eyes glistened. “I miss Hannah. But I would miss you too, Ellie, if you weren’t here.”
She stared down at her cereal. “You’re such a sap, Jake.”
“All this estrogen in the house. It’s hard to escape.”
She looked up at him. “You know, you don’t have to always fix everything.”
He reached over and stole a marshmallow. “It’s the curse of the oldest child.”
The television had flickered on, turned to the Weather Channel.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. Dad’s been watching Storm Chasers again.” She went to pick up the remote, but he put his hand over hers.
“I want to hear this.”
The weather map showed a swirl of storm moving in from the south of the Atlantic, toward Florida. He pumped up the volume and listened to the female redhead on the screen give a rundown. “It looks like the storm is building—it might go up the coast and miss Florida completely, but until then, we’re keeping an eye on it.” The screen flipped to a local report and he turned the volume back down.
“Were you going to do some diving or something?”
“No. Just someone I know is down there right now, and . . . I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“You’re such a worrywart.” She threw a pillow at him.
Yeah, well, he had good reasons. For a second, his gaze landed on the wall of family pictures, some before Ellie, some after. He hadn’t really noticed the change in his mother until he saw them lined up. She’d lost hair and weight after Hannah went missing. Never really regained it. The rest of them, too, looked wrung out.
And then there was Ellie, a beaming cherub in the midst of them. Maybe she had been a replacement.
Maybe she’d saved them all.
“Who is it?”
He looked at her. “Who is—?”
“The friend.” She pointed her empty spoon at him. “The girl you’re worried about.”
“I’m not . . .”
She took another bite of cereal and raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, fine. Just a woman I met in Alaska.”
“One of the women you rescued?” She wagged her eyebrows now.
“Fine. Yes. I rescued her. But she’s a doctor and pretty capable. She was just hurt, so—”
“Okay, whatever, Superman. Stop being modest. You like this girl.”
He lifted a shoulder.
“Wait.” She set her spoon down. “Was she at the party? The dark-haired one in the yellow sundress? What was her name—Aria? I saw you talking to her.”
He looked at the television. They were showing the storm front again, a circle of wrath moving up the shoreline.
“Yeah, I remember her. She let you win the volleyball game.”
“And she was with that handsome doctor—what was his name?”
“Devon.” Aw shoot, his tone gave him away. “She wasn’t with him, I don’t think . . .” Except, what if she was? It didn’t matter. “We’re just friends. It’s nothing.”
“Mmmhmm.”
He looked at her. “Really. It’s nothing.”
“Right. That’s what all that flexing was about.”
“I was not flexing.”
“It was blinding.”
He shook his head.
“You do like her.”
“We . . . I thought . . . we . . . we got along, okay?”
“Oh. You . . . told her things, didn’t you?”
His mouth closed into a tight line.
“You let her in too far!”
“I—” But, okay, maybe he did. He glanced at her. “People do stupid things when they’re under trauma. We were stuck in a tent together for two days, trying to keep her friend alive during a blizzard. We shared stories.”
And yeah, there’d been more, but maybe his sister didn’t need to know that.
Problem was, he hadn’t exactly stopped thinking of the more for the past three days. Aria had just looked so . . . so put together at the party. Pretty in that sundress, her smile exactly why he was, yes, flexing.
Clearly, he still liked her. But she had a different life here in Minneapolis, one that included buttoned-up doctors like Devon McMillan.
Jake might be the least buttoned-up person he knew.
Dr. Aria Sinclair was a world-renowned surgeon.
He was a has-been SEAL who taught ten-year-olds how to swim.
Oh boy, he needed someone to grab his feet and pull him down to reality. “Sometimes that’s all there is . . .”
“Nope.” Ellie shook her head, disentangled herself, and got up.
“Where are you going?”
“Stay here.” Ellie left the room and he sat there, watching as the storm swirled at the bottom of the screen. Maybe he should just text Aria, make sure she was safe.
Because they were friends. And that’s what friends did.
Yeah, right.
He wanted to be her friend like he wanted to let a truck drive over him.
Ellie returned holding the box of Lucky Charms. She handed it to Jake.
“What’s this for?”
“The girl you like, the one you spilled your heart to? Yeah, she showed up at our Fourth of July bash with a date. You need these Lucky Charms, bro, because like it or not, the great and awesome Jake Silver has been dumped. Feel free to cry, tough guy.”
He looked at her.
Took the box.
“The green ones are especially tasty,” she said.
Aria was probably going to die. And it was all Jake’s fault.
Okay, that might not be entirely fair, but his description of snorkeling as “flying” had her intrigued and made Aria sign up for the snorkeling tour out of Key Largo on her first day off.
Two days of teaching in paradise and she felt like she’d found her way back to herself, just a little. Distance from the loss of Leo had helped, and the fact that her peers packed her class on the advanced techniques of in-utero septoplasty had made her wake up to the idea that really, she did know what she was doing.
Hello, mojo.
The fiasco with Jake hadn’t completely knocked her off her game.
And paradise might be exactly the place to forget him, move on. Delegate him to the just friends section of her heart.
“Jenny, you’re right,” she’d said into her friend’s voice mail after the first night on the island. “No more slogging through ice and snow. Our next great adventure will have to be in Cancun.”
Or Key West.
She might be in love with the tiny island on the southern tip of the United States. After flying into Miami, she’d driven down Highway 1, past the swamplands that boasted mangrove and alligators, then farther south into the sandy strips of beach that bisected the Atlantic from the Gulf of Mexico. Boats and resorts whitewashed with a summer glare, stores that boasted surfing and snorkeling attire, and beach restaurants heralding the catch of the day evidenced that she’d left the great white north behind.
The wind smelled of the sea and salt, a sweet heat in the air that came from lazy afternoons with toes tucked into the sand.
When she reached the final key—after driving through Key Largo and a dozen other keys—she’d felt her body begin to relax, her muscles shake out, the coiled stress of the past month loosen.
Lucas’s travel agent had booked her a deluxe room at the Bahama Mama resort, a sprawling two-story tiki hut complete with grass roof. She just wanted to take a dive off her veranda, which overlooked both the sparkling aqua pool and the endless blue ocean. The pillow on her bed read “Relax” on the printed burlap, and by the time she changed into a sundress and flip-flops and headed down to the beach, she decided to agree.
She’d spent the first two days tucked into an air-conditioned room at the resort, overlooking the blue, listening to speakers, serving on panels, and delivering her talk.
In the evenings, she’d commandeer a lounger and face it west to catch the final wink of the sunset. She was healing, her body uncoiling. Even her ankle felt stronger—she had taken off her brace and was walking with the barest of limps.
Yesterday, she’d taken a walk into the borough and found Ernest Hemingway’s house. Drank a fruity drink on the shoreline and chatted with a pregnant woman working on a watercolor on the beach. The woman wore her hair in blonde dreadlocks and had a cool name—Evangeline, or something like that. She possessed a smile that made Aria sit down next to her and watch the sunset as she painted. Aria purchased a postcard from her basket of offerings, addressed it, and slipped it into the mail for Jenny.
She’d made a few friends at the conference too. A redheaded doctor from Cincinnati named Drey had invited her to dinner the first night with his friends. It only brought her thoughts back to the Fourth of July volleyball game.
To Jake, and his quiet “You okay?”
She might be, after a few more days in paradise. The concern in his blue eyes had found her bones.
Yeah, she might be able to be his friend. Someday. Once her heart figured out how to let him go.
His suggestion to go snorkeling sat inside her, nudging her.
She made the mistake of mentioning the excursion to Drey after a dinner of crab cakes and fresh squid, raw oysters, and buttery lobster.
Drey caught up the idea like he’d thought of it and suddenly she found herself in a bus headed up to Key Largo at 8:00 a.m. on her first day off.
She purchased a laminated fish-finder guide and boarded a scuba boat around 11:00 a.m. with the sun high, the waves choppy but endlessly blue.
“Ever been snorkeling before?” asked a guy named Joe, lean and tanned, wearing a swimsuit and a rash guard surfing shirt. He wore a mask backward on his head and was issuing her gear—a snorkel, a mask, an optional life preserver. She took it, not sure how she felt about the swells of the ocean as their boat split the waves, motoring out to the reef offshore.
Drey sat across from her. “You’re looking a little green, Aria.”
He was a handsome man. Less than six feet tall, but lean with short hair and magnetic blue eyes. He’d headed up a discussion on the technical aspects of segmentectomy and lobectomy, including some new methods for vessel transection.
She’d read about most of them in the Journal for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.
Aria gripped the railing of the boat. Not a big vessel, maybe forty-five feet, it held oxygen tanks in slots on either side of the boat behind benches where clients hung on, their faces turned to or away from the spray. A few people had climbed to the front of the boat, sitting on the hull.
“You could go up top,” Drey said, pointing to the captain’s roost.
“No, I’m okay.” Aria put her hand to her stomach, wishing she’d eaten more than a hard-boiled egg for breakfast.
“What are you reading?”
“It’s a guide about the fish on the reef.”
Drey shook his head. “Wow. I’ll bet you were the top of your class. You could just enjoy the view, you know. There won’t be a test.”
“Or, I could actually know what I’m looking at.”
Drey lifted a shoulder. “Sometimes the fun is in the discovery. Be impulsive. Let go.”
They hit a swell and the boat rammed hard into the wave, the water splashing the deck.
Her hand tightened on the railing.
The last time she’d let go, she found herself in the arms of a guy she was trying hard—and failing—to forget.
Thanks, but she was done with impulsive. Life was better preplanned. At least that way she knew what disasters to expect.
They arrived at the site. A few other boats bobbed in the water, snorkelers and divers already fighting the waves. Joe helped her gear up. He semi-inflated her life vest and helped her slip on her fins. “Listen, I’ll be nearby, but just stay in the area and make sure you listen for the boat’s horn. And if you see any sharks, don’t panic. They’re harmless.”
Sharks?
Drey was grinning at her with a gleam in his eye. Sort of reminded her of Jake.
Except, she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about Jake.
The icy chill sent a shock through her, but she warmed up fast and set her face in the water.
“Just breathe normally,” said Joe, who was treading nearby.
Normally.
Hard to breathe normally when a whole new world transformed before your eyes. She’d never considered, really, what might live in the ocean depths, except, of course, for the aquariums and Animal Planet specials. But to see it up close—the vivid colors of the reef, the fish swimming just out of reach—
She gasped, got a mouthful of water, came up sputtering.
Joe lifted his head and spat out his snorkel. “Listen, if you have water in your snorkel, just blow out hard. The key is to just float on top of the water and let your body relax. You can do this.”
“It’s amazing, I promise.”
She didn’t know why Jake’s voice slid into her thoughts, but she put her face back down and forced herself to float.
The world turned magical. Below her, maybe twenty feet down, a pink-and-blue coral reef teemed with life. White coral spires and dark green or brilliant red ferns shifted in the current, and around them, fish searched for food. Blue-and-green triggerfish, red-striped hawkfish, saddleback butterflyfish with the black markings on their tails. Angelfish and tangs flitted around a large rock, and a lobster peeked out with its spindly antennae and beady eyes.
The waves undulated around her, moving her in the water, and her stomach tried to rebel. But she ignored it and focused on a sudden scattering of sand in the distance. Joe pointed and she nearly stopped breathing when a stingray emerged from the dust and, like an eagle, glided away, the water rippling its gray skin in a gentle caress.
Oh, Jake, you were right. She did feel like she might be flying, high above, weightless over the earth. So maybe letting go had its merits.
A hand closed around her wrist and she looked over to see Drey pointing to his right.
Deep in an underground grotto, a statue of what looked like Jesus, his hands raised to the heavens, was covered in barnacles and algae.
And swimming around it, as if stalking its prey, was a snub-nosed shark.
Drey’s hand tightened as if he realized she might bolt. But a small crowd had gathered, watching the sleek creature as it skidded along the blue-sandy bottom and under an overhanging reef.
After it vanished, she surfaced and spat out her snorkel. Drey, Joe, and a few others came up also.
“That’s a nurse shark,” said Joe, treading water. “They populate the area. Sometimes we might even see a loggerhead turtle.”
The waves had picked up, turned choppy. A blast from the boat sounded across the water.
“Time to head back,” Joe said. He ducked into the water again.
She kicked hard to follow him, aware now of the pull of the waves, tossing her off course. The wind, too, had picked up, and by the time she reached the boat, it was bobbing hard in the water.
She got knocked in the face with the ladder when she missed her grip. Joe came up beside her and helped her tug off her fins. He lifted them up to the divemaster on board, and she hoisted herself onto the ladder and out of the water.
“If you’re going to hurl, do it over the side,” Joe said as he climbed up behind her.
“I’m not going to—oh . . . shoot . . .” She grabbed the railing and found herself on her knees, starboard side, emptying her meager breakfast into the ocean.
Nice.
She staggered back to the bench and sat back, letting the sun warm her bones.
“You going to live, Aria?” Drey said as he sat down opposite her.
“Mmmhmm.”
Except, by the time they returned to port, she just wanted to die a quick death.
“Maybe it’s something you ate,” Drey suggested as they walked to the bus.
She never wanted to eat again.
Someone in the group passed her a couple Dramamine, and in desperation she downed them with a sip of water.
Then she curled up in the back of the bus and rued her life.
So much for impulsiveness.
Night had pitched the resort into darkness, cloud cover blanketing the sky by the time they returned. She staggered to her room while Drey and the others headed to the tiki bar by the pool to finish off their adventure. The wind stirred the night, whispering through the palm trees, crashing the ocean onto shore. She fell onto her bed in the fetal position.
The room swam.
Maybe she did have a touch of food poisoning, because her stomach still convulsed, every pore in her body repulsed by the thought of food, movement, even life.
A rush of nausea made her fall to her knees, and she crawled to the bathroom and lay with her face on the cool tile floor.
Oh, this was gross.
Suddenly all she could think about was the way she’d felt on the mountain, when altitude sickness had swept in and her entire body had wanted to curl into her sleeping bag and never move again.
Except for Jake, she might have perished on the mountain, frozen to death. He’d made her laugh and kept her hydrated, and when she shivered nearly out of her skin, he’d kept her warm.
A gentleman, really.
Then, to save her life, he’d picked her up in his arms and helped lift her into a chopper, then stayed behind to find her friend Jenny.
The guy was a hero and shoot, she might never get him out of her head. Not if, when she was drunk on Dramamine and woozy with illness, she still wished he were here to hold her hair back as she—
Oh. Yeah, she could call it quits on her tropical vacation any time.
She heard her phone buzzing somewhere in the room, and after she rinsed her mouth, she crawled back out and found it on her bedside stand, where she’d left it.
She thumbed open a voice mail from Devon. “Just checking in. Hope you’re having a great time. Nothing to worry about here. I was just . . . well, checking in.”
Huh. She wasn’t unaware of the way he’d sat next to her, purposely, at the picnic.
Jenny’s voice mail was more to the point. “Listen, you’d better be out having a good time and not in your room reading some medical report on aortic valve repair or something. Call me.”
Rolling onto the bed, she opened her contacts. Hit J and scrolled down to Jenny’s name. JC, for Jenny Calhoun.
She opened the texting app and used her voice-to-text. “Hey, J. I wish you were here. Went snorkeling today. I spent the day throwing up and now I feel like I have the flu. I could use some TLC, LOL. This is worse than Denali. Why do I always get myself in over my head? Anyway, try and stay out of trouble until I get back. See you in a few days.”
She pushed send, then turned off her phone. Dropped it on the bed.
Rolled over.
And told herself that next time she came to paradise, she’d stay away from the fish.