12
“With all eight of us, it’s kind of like living in a frat house or a dorm again, isn’t it?” Nick asked Claire as he toweled his hair dry after coming back from his turn in the shower. He sat on the edge of the bed, removing the plastic he’d had taped on his wounded leg to keep it dry. Claire thought they’d shared a bed so little in their forced, short marriage that they had never really declared a his-side or her-side.
Despite how nervous she was, she smiled at the dorm comment. Though she really liked her new “sorority sisters” Nita and Gina, she still missed her own sister and her family desperately. Yes, when she started to comfort and counsel Lexi tomorrow, she’d talk to her some about how they would never lose their first family and how—someday soon perhaps—they’d all be back together. That made her think of Julia again. In a way, she had already lost her father. And, as a single mother, if her daughter moved away, how sad.
Claire had already bathed Lexi and sat with her until she fell asleep while Nita spent some time with Bronco downstairs. After Claire had taken her own shower, she’d been unpacking clothes for herself, Nick and Lexi and putting hers and Nick’s in a tall chest of drawers that smelled of cedar. Strange to be looking at and wearing clothes someone else had picked out. This was like living someone else’s life, and she desperately wanted her own back. What she planned now to tell Nick—that seemed so unreal too. Everything had happened so fast in their lives together.
Nick leaned back against the pile of pillows and pulled the covers up over his legs, ever careful of the bandaged one that could shoot pain at him if he hit it wrong.
“There’s just one thing I want more than sleep—and safety,” he told her as she turned from the dresser and walked slowly toward the four-poster bed.
“Me, I hope,” she said, gripping the post because her legs were trembling.
“Exactly. Peace, quiet and you. By the way, I locked our door with that old skeleton key. We don’t need Shark-Killer and its owner coming in here right now. What is it? Come here and let me hold you, or at least you hold me.”
He leaned forward before she could answer and went on, “What is it? Claire-Jenna, my sweetheart, whatever your name, what’s the matter? It’s more than just the turns our lives have taken, isn’t it? You’ve been so strong and brave. Do you still feel ill? Dizzy?”
She walked to his side of the bed and sat, careful to avoid his hurt leg. “Dizzy in love with you,” she said, her voice breaking. “But there is something—another complication—I have to tell you about. I know it hasn’t been long and things are a big blur, but you know that night on the yacht where you, Jace and I made a deal to trust WITSEC?”
“Sure. And don’t you now? I don’t believe the plane crash had anything to do with Rob Patterson, even though he arranged the plane. I think it was Ames’s lackeys again. And I think we lucked out with Julia Collister. She’ll ease us into island life and, hopefully, give us a horse bargaining chip with Lexi, our Meggie.”
She had to tell him. She had to tell him now. How could a man be so dense when she was obsessed with this? She wanted to fall into his arms, but once she did that, she always lost control. So, like some coward, she sat where she was and merely nodded.
Frowning, he asked—in his lawyer voice, as if grilling a hostile witness, “Did Jace say something to upset you, more than his behavior toward Julia?”
“No. I mean, he does upset me because he’s so unhappy and trapped, but aren’t we all? And now, it’s plain that he sees Julia as some sort of diversion, and that’s all we need to mess things up even more.”
She burst into tears. “Oh, Nick, I’m sorry. I’m just strung out, so—”
He scooted closer and did just what she was afraid of, because she had to be rational about this. He pulled her close and held her against his strong body, his good leg and hip. Just then the wind outside began again, whining, moaning overhead like there really was some woman on the widow’s walk, keening while she waited for her husband to come home.
“Nick,” she got out, seizing control of herself again, “I’m not sure but kind of sure. That night we didn’t use anything and made love—I think I may be pregnant. I swear that only happens on soap operas, one night, then a baby, and—I know it hasn’t been long though it seems like ages with all we’ve been through but—Nick?” she said and lifted her head from his shoulder, uncertain what she’d see or hear.
He looked shocked. Then dazed. Then, thank heavens, happy.
“I—I should have known, my love. I’m paid big bucks to put cases together. But that’s why I hired you in the first place to psych out people for me. But—that statue with the baby in her arms that upset you, your wondering about a hospital here, your extra exhaustion and stomach upset... I should have guessed.”
He looked down at her midriff as if she would be showing after such a short time. She burst into hysterical laughter with her tears.
“And my missed period, and what an emotional mess I am,” she added as he hugged her hard to him again. “Nick, with all we’ve been through—not to mention my heavy meds I’ve been on and off—I can’t be sure, but a pregnancy is a big possibility. I wish I could have gone to a doctor first, planned us a private, lovely dinner for two and told you then for sure yay or nay but—”
“But just the idea of it,” he said, expelling a big breath and rocking her against him as if she was a frightened child. “I know we’re in a mess here still, but just the thought of a child of our own is amazing. Lexi would love it too, I’m sure, as soon as she gets through her hard times. And, my love,” he added, setting her back a bit and smiling with a devilish gleam in his dark, teary eyes, “we will get to a doctor, and if he says it’s true, we’ll celebrate both with a romantic dinner and in this bed. But it will be our secret until we know for sure, maybe until you show.”
Until you show. The words echoed in her head as she reached over to snap out the light. Until you show that you can survive all this, can conquer the bad guys, can help Lexi, can love Nick and not Jace for ever and ever...
“Claire. Feel better now?”
“Yes, of course. Thank heavens you’re not upset. But then, I must admit our courtship and marriage was hardly normal, so why should starting our family be?”
In the dark, he kissed her soundly, salty tears and all. He turned her back to him, and they lay together spoon fashion under the covers with his lips in her tousled hair.
“Claire,” he whispered, “we’ll make up for these tough times. We will make it, all of us, including our new son or daughter if that’s what we find out. Just think, maybe floating inside you like a little island in a sea, just like us now here on Mackinac.”
His arms tightened around her. He put his hand under her nightgown on her flat belly. “I love you, Claire, and no matter what happens, always will.”
“Then I will treasure this moment and have it always in my heart.”
She heard Jace’s voice boom a laugh from the first floor. She cuddled close to Nick, warm and weary, and finally was swept away, swimming into sleep.
* * *
Claire woke still in Nick’s embrace, but were they swimming in the sea? No, she stood on a marble pedestal with a baby in her arms. People were leaving flowers at her feet and taking photographs. But was her baby stone-cold dead? And the other child standing so stiff below...that little girl. Where was she? Was she missing? Had someone taken her?
She managed to pull herself from her fears. No, she’d found her daughter, but she wanted to leave the island. She had to get off the island!
Had she remembered to take her medicine, that terrible drink that made her sleep and gave her strange dreams? But was she having a dream now, or was this real?
In some far-off cemetery, she walked and walked in a circle, dragging her heavy stone feet. Where was her husband? Where was her daughter and her baby? Someone said they had buried the baby at her feet but now it was in her arms, a miracle.
“Claire! Claire, you’re having a nightmare.”
Nick. It was Nick. She was safe here, somewhere, lying in his arms. Oh, right. On the island, in the widow’s house, in bed, safe from Clayton Ames and his other house surrounded by poison plants with vicious fish swimming past. He’d taken Lexi, and he’d made Nick marry her, so he could watch them, hurt them all.
“Are you all right, sweetheart?”
Nick’s voice again. That was real, even though they had to have fake names and pretend not to be themselves.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Just a bad dream.”
“No more of those. Sleep. We need our sleep. Lexi’s safe with Nita and Gina. We’ll make it, get to go back home when this is over.”
She nodded and sighed, fighting now to slip away again. Nick knew how powerful her night meds were, in contrast to the stimulants for narcolepsy she sometimes took during the day. He understood. But then, she’d made the terrible mistake—really a sin—of not sharing her disease with Jace when they were married, and then when he’d found out and felt betrayed...
She tried to relax. Jace had been away so much, flying international routes. It was partly his fault too. But Jace loved planes. She’d seen that hungry, hurt look on his face when he’d seen the naval planes on the tarmac at the airfield across the harbor from Guantanamo, and then at the air base in New Orleans. And the same expression when he’d looked at Julia...
She suddenly remembered where she’d seen the Grand Hotel on this island before, the place Julia wanted them to see. Funny how things came to her clearly when she woke up for her second dose at night or even in dreams. Years ago, she and Darcy had loved that old movie with Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve they’d seen in reruns on TV, the one filmed at that hotel on this very island. What was the movie’s name? Her mind was clearing now. Oh, yes, Somewhere in Time, where he fell in love with a woman who had lived years before and managed to slip back in time and into her life. But then he lost her, like the woman who once lived here lost her beloved, like the man in Havana lost his wife and baby in the statue, like maybe Julia lost her husband...
She sucked in a big breath and became even more alert, but this time Nick did not wake up. He breathed steadily, on his back but still pressed against her. Claire shifted slightly away, propped herself up on one elbow and pushed her hair back from her damp face. She looked at the clock and reached for the midnight dose of liquid medication and vowed that, somewhere in time, they were going to help convict and imprison Clayton Ames before they were all lost forever.