Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Copyright

“Lucy, you haven’t kissed me good-morning.”

As if he’d uttered an obscenity, every one of the men was staring at him. “Why would she do that?” the bald one blurted.

“She’s my wife,” Troy announced with a bland smile. “Who else would she kiss good-morning?”

For a wild moment he thought Lucy was going to dump the coffeepot and its contents over his head. “We’re separated,” she said. “We’re going to get a divorce.”

“So is that your decision?”

Her eyes blazed into his. “Yes.”

“Ah…in that case you won’t mind if I hang around for a few days. Obviously, if you’re going to divorce me, my presence shouldn’t matter to you one way or the other.”

“You ought to be down on your knees giving thanks that this is a coffeepot and not a carving knife,” she grated.

“Stop being insufferable, Troy, and go back to Vancouver.”

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the second of three scintillating books by Sandra Field. When Sandra first came up with the idea for Beyond Reach (#1806) she fell in love with her characters so much that she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving them behind. So she wrote another book. Then another…And SIGNIFICANT OTHERS was born.

“This series of three books crept up on me unawares. After Troy and Lucy met in the West Indies, I found myself curious to discover how marriage would change them. Hence Second Honeymoon, again set on an island, this time off the coast of Nova Scotia. Lucy’s laid-back friend Quentin and her uptight sister Marcia played minor roles in Second Honeymoon. Once Quentin had appeared on the scene, I knew I wouldn’t rest until I’d brought him face-to-face with Marcia, which I did in my next book, After Hours.”

Though all three books can be read on their own, why not follow Marcia and Quentin’s own romance in After Hours—coming soon in Harlequin Presents! Look for the special SIGNIFICANT OTHERS flash at your favorite bookstore—this is one series you don’t want to miss!

Happy reading!

The Editor

Second Honeymoon

Sandra Field

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

UNTIL four that afternoon, it was a day like any other.

At four o’clock Troy Donovan strode past the receptionist’s desk, giving Vera a distracted smile and quite oblivious to the fact that the eyes of every woman in the room had swiveled to follow his progress.

Vera smiled back. “Your mail’s on your desk,” she said. Vera was very happily married to a civil servant who adored her, but she had long ago decided that the woman who could ignore the cleft in Dr Troy Donovan’s chin, not to mention the breadth of his shoulders and his sexy gray eyes, might as well be in her coffin. How his wife could have left him was more than Vera could imagine.

“Thanks, Vera.” Troy marched down the corridorenjoying the stretch in his long legs after the hours he’d spent in the operating room, rubbing at the back of his neck under the collar of his open-necked shirt. He was supposed to be at a meeting at four-thirty. He’d have time to glance at his mail and make a few phone calls first. He pushed open the door of his office and shuffled through the neat pile of envelopes on his desk.

The letterhead on a white vellum envelope leaped out at him. The institute whose name was printed in ornate script on the envelope was located in Arizona, and was the most prestigious center in the continent for pediatric plastic surgery—Troy’s speciality. But why would they be writing to him? Slowly he sat down at his desk and reached for his letter-opener.

Ten minutes later Troy was still staring at the thick sheet of vellum. He was being offered a job. A plum job. A prize job. The very pick of the crop. A job that any craniofacial surgeon in the world would yearn after. Teaching, surgery, opportunities for research—it was all there, and at a salary that made him blink.

A new start. A new country, a new hospital, a whole group of new people. None of whom would know about Lucy or Michael.

He could sell the house where he and Lucy had lived during the four brief years of their marriage. Where he had stayed by himself for the twelve months since she had gone. Sell it. Be rid of it and all its memories. Start afresh.

He buried his head in his hands, feeling the longfamiliar pain rip at his guts. Twelve months since she had left him, and not for one day of those months had he been without her presence. It walked down the hospital corridors beside him. Perched on the stool by the west window in the kitchen, the evening sun burnishing the mahogany curls. It lay alongside him in the big bed where they had taken such pleasure in each other.

Why move to another country? He’d only take her with him.

Jarring as an electric shock, the telephone shrilled in his ear. Automatically he picked up the receiver. “Donovan speaking.”

Vera said, “There are two people here to see you if you have a minute, Dr Donovan. Trish and Peter Winslow. They do realize they don’t have an appointment.”

Troy remembered them instantly. Two years ago their little girl had sustained third-degree burns, and had—mercifully, in his opinion—died. Pushing the letter from Arizona to one side, he said, “Send them in, please, Vera.”

Trish came in first, her blue eyes smiling; the last time Troy had seen her they had been filled with desolation. Her husband Peter, raw-boned and inarticulate, followed her. With a nasty jolt in his chest Troy saw that Peter was carrying a baby.

Trish said shyly, “We were here for my six-week checkup and we wanted to come and see you…We’ve never forgotten how kind you were. We thought you’d like to know we have a new baby; we called her Sarah. Show him, Peter.”

Peter came round the desk, bumping into a chair on the way; for all his clumsiness, he made intricately carved pine furniture that won awards at the local craft fairs. He proffered the baby rather as if she were a chunk of wood.

Every nerve protesting, Troy took the small bundle in his arms. Sarah, disturbed by the transition, opened smoke-blue eyes, yawned, and fell asleep again. Her dimpled fist and the tiny ovals of her fingernails were perfectly formed and perfectly beautiful. Not sure he could trust his voice, Troy said tritely, “She’s lovely. You must be very happy.”

“Yes.” Trish’s smile included her husband. “No one can ever replace Mandy, but we needed a new start—didn’t we, Peter?”

The very words that he himself had used, Troy thought numbly.

Peter rubbed his jaw, staring at the desk rather than at Troy. “You were straight with us, Doc,” he said. “I don’t like anyone tryin’ to hide the knotholes from me. Doesn’t do any good in the long run; you find ’em anyway. You never did that. Not once.”

Sarah whimpered in her sleep. Troy said—and at one level it was true—“I’m very happy for both of you, and I wish you and the baby all the best…Here, Peter, you’d better take her before she starts to cry. And do sit down, please.”

“You got kids, Doc?”

“No,” Troy said. It was the simplest answer, the easiest; yet he hated himself for making it. He tried to pay attention, because Trish was telling him about the addition Peter had built on their bungalow and about the crib he had hand-carved for Sarah.

Then she said, “We must go. I know you’re always so busy. I hope things are going as well for you as they are for us.”

She clearly had no knowledge of his personal life. Troy said heartily, “Fine, thanks, Trish. I’m really glad you dropped in. And it was a pleasure to have met Sarah.”

As the door closed behind them he let out his breath in a long sigh and wandered over to the window. Above the downtown highrises soared the peaks of Grouse and Seymour Mountains, where he and Lucy had often skied together. It was an enviable view and he didn’t even see it. Trish and Peter’s marriage had held firm under the onslaught of tragedy, he thought heavily, and they’d had the courage to bring a second child into a world that they knew all too well could be both cruel and capricious.

Trish and Peter had done better than he and Lucy. They’d earned their new start.

He’d take the job, he thought fiercely. Take it and get the hell out of here. It couldn’t be any worse in Phoenix than it was in Vancouver, and it might well be better—at least there’d be no memories of Lucy there. He’d get out more, too, start dating on a regular basis—maybe remarry.

To remarry he’d have to divorce Lucy.

Divorce Lucy? The idea was ludicrous.

With a low growl of frustration Troy picked up the sheaf of notes Vera had collected for the meeting and left his office. And if he was more than usually intolerant of the bureaucratic bunglings and asinine government cutbacks that were part and parcel of all the hospital meetings nowadays, he wasn’t about to apologise to anyone for his bad temper.

The meeting ran late. Troy hurried back to his office and changed from the casual cotton trousers and shirt that he wore around the hospital into a gray business suit and a formal white shirt. After adjusting his silk tie in the mirror he ran a comb through his hair. Because it was blond and thick, and streaked by the sun, no one but Troy would have noticed the few gray hairs over his ears. He knew they were there, though. After all, he was thirty-seven years old.

He’d be forty soon. If he was going to make a new start, he’d better get a move on.

He read the letter from the institute once again. That they were offering him the job before they opened it for competition was to say the least flattering. The letter concluded with the polite hope that they would hear from him by the first week of September.

First thing tomorrow he’d get Vera to fax them. He should fly down there and check the situation out before making a decision. He had three weeks’ vacation starting next week, and while he’d tentatively arranged to go sailing with his long-time friend Gavin for about ten days he could cancel out of that with no difficulty. The timing was ideal.

And if he was into new starts, Troy thought, tucking his wallet in his inner pocket, he did have a date tonight. A bona fide date with the female ophthalmologist who’d set the eye clinic on its heels when she’d arrived from Montreal six months ago.

Dr Martine Robichaud was intelligent, beautiful and sophisticated, and a brilliant diagnostician to boot. And, unless he was misreading all the signals, she was in serious pursuit of him. While this was their third date he had yet to touch her, other than a casual hand on her elbow, an arm around her shoulders to adjust her raincoat. Maybe tonight he should change that, too. It was time—past time—that he quit being incapacitated by the past. Time to let go of the woman who no longer wanted him and to find one who did.

He gave himself a defiant grin in the mirror, picked up his car keys and ran down the stairs to the parking lot. He was meeting Martine at a bar on Robson Street at seven; he’d better hurry.

He got there five minutes before her, and thus had the pleasure of watching her walk across the room toward his table. Heads turned; conversation stilled. She was, he sensed, both aware of this and unaffected by it. He stood up, rested both hands on her shoulders—rediscovering with a small shock how much shorter than he she was—and kissed her cheek. Contradicting the tailored linen dress and classic gold jewelry, her scent was complex, sensual—even a touch flamboyant.

He was quite sure the contrast was deliberate. With a twinge of excitement he pulled out her chair, watching the swing of her straight dark hair, the grace of her movements, and was not surprised when the waiter came to their table as soon as she was seated.

“Extra dry martini, no olive, please,” she said in her impeccable English, which was flavored with the slightest of accents from her Francophone heritage. “I’m sorry I’m late, Troy. Another of these cutback meetings—they manage to cut back on everything but my time.”

He smiled at her. “I behaved disgracefully at the surgery meeting. Not that it’ll make any difference.”

They talked easily about hospital matters, then moved to the trip Martine had taken to San Francisco and the conference Troy had attended in Texas. And all the while Troy was aware that the whole conversation was window-dressing—interesting, urbane and witty, most certainly, but window-dressing, nevertheless.

When they had almost finished their second drink, he said casually, “Shall we move on? I thought we might have dinner at the new place on Granville Island that everyone’s raving about.”

“Or,” Martine said, “we could go to my apartment.”

Her dark brown eyes were unwavering, her purpose clear. “You’re very direct,” Troy said.

“I almost always know what I want.”

He looked down at his hands. A couple of months ago he had tried taking off his wedding-band and putting it away in his bureau, and had found himself unable to do so. So he had compromised, and now wore it on his right hand. “Technically I’m still married,” he replied. “Even though I haven’t lived with my wife for the last year. Do you know that, too?”

She nodded. “I noticed you the very first time we met at the general staff meeting. So I checked out your marital status and was told you were separated. At the time, I have to admit, you seemed only half-alive. Then one day in the canteen I saw you laugh out loud at something someone had said, and that’s when I knew I wanted to go to bed with you. The difference was as day to night.”

“You see me as a challenge, in other words,” he said drily.

“I am not promiscuous,” she said, and put down her glass.

“I never thought you were,” Troy responded, and realized it for the truth. Her offer was, in its way, as flattering as that from the institute in Arizona.

Lucy might not want him, but other people did, he thought with sudden underlying fury, and drained his own glass. “Let me drive you to your car, then I can follow you to your apartment.”

Fifteen minutes later he was standing in Martine’s living-room. It exhibited the same cool, uncluttered elegance as the woman herself, although the great jug of vivid silk peonies in one corner hinted at climes other than coolness. She had poured him a drink and then excused herself; he took a big gulp of an exquisitely smooth malt whiskey, and wished he didn’t feel so much like a teenager on his first date.

The room was warm. He took off his jacket and loosened his tie, and prowled around looking at the serigraphs on the pale pink walls and the books on the shelves—all of which demonstrated a taste both individualistic and eclectic. Why, then, did he feel so hollow inside?

From behind him Martine said lightly, “Have you read the latest Atwood? I always buy her books in hardcover because I can’t wait for the paperback.”

He hadn’t come here to talk about Canadian literature. Troy turned around. She had shed the linen dress in favor of a flowing black jumpsuit that revealed her creamy shoulders and clung to her hips. In the soft light of the single lamp her eyes and her hair also looked black. He said flatly, “Where’s your bedroom?” and pulled off his tie, flinging it on the plump leather couch.

Her lashes flickered. “This way,” she said.

She had lit a candle on either side of the wide bed, and had pulled back the covers. The room looked like a stage set, Troy thought. Seduction Scene—take one. He began unbuttoning his shirt with furious haste.

Martine murmured, “There’s no hurry; we have all night.”

“I haven’t been with anyone except my wife since the day I met her,” Troy said, noticing with a distant part of his mind how he was avoiding the use of Lucy’s name in this room.

“Ah…then I am flattered.”

He didn’t like Martine using the same word he had used in his thoughts. Quit thinking, for God’s sake, he told himself. This isn’t about your brain, it’s about your genitals. You’re going to break out of the cage you’ve been in for what seems like forever. So get on with it.

As he hauled his shirt out of his waistband Martine ran her fingers up his chest and raised her face for his kiss. Without finesse he pulled her close to his body and began kissing her—hard, almost angry kisses. With one hand he stroked her hair—its smoothness another shock—and with the other found the rise of her breast under the sensuous black fabric.

And somehow, in the confusion of desperation, incipient desire and raw novelty that was tumbling through his brain and his body, Troy knew that he had expected to find the full curve of Lucy’s breast—so familiar, so desirable—not the small, firm peak of another woman’s. A woman who was a stranger to him.

A woman who wasn’t Lucy.

His hand felt like a lump of ice. Or was it his heart that felt that way? With an inarticulate groan he pulled his mouth free, let go of Martine and sat down hard on the corner of the bed, running his fingers through his hair and realizing dimly that the harsh breathing he was hearing was his own.

Resting his hands on his thighs, because his fingers were trembling and he didn’t want Martine to see that, he said hoarsely, “I’m sorry…more sorry than I can say. I can’t make love with you, Martine. I just…can’t.”

“You’re still in love with your wife.”

He glanced up. Her voice had been level, her face was expressionless, and he had no idea what she was thinking or feeling. Both were well hidden, he thought, with a stab of entirely irrational rage. “I don’t know the answer to that. If I am, I’m a damn fool.”

“What is her name?”

“You mean no one’s told you about her?”

“I endeavor not to listen to gossip,” Martine said coolly, crossing her arms over her chest. “I only asked about your marital status for my own protection.”

“Her name’s Lucy.”

“Why did she leave you? Because I am presuming the separation wasn’t of your choice.”

“You got that right,” Troy said, more bitterly than he’d intended, reaching for his shirt where it had fallen on the carpet and shrugging into it. He hated talking about Lucy, but he owed Martine, minimally, the decency of an explanation. “Can we go back into the living-room?”

“Better than that. We will go to the kitchen and I will make an omelette,” Martine said composedly.

For the first time since he had entered the apartment, Troy really looked at her. “You’re not surprised by what happened,” he said slowly. “Or rather, didn’t happen.”

“No. But I thought you worth the risk.”

“Playing games with me, Martine?”

She gave a very Gallic shrug. “Wanting you in my bed-that’s all.”

Discovering that he thoroughly disliked someone else anticipating his reactions before he knew them himself, Troy said, “Why weren’t you surprised?”

“Not long ago I overheard three of the nurses in the laser clinic bemoaning the fact that you never dated anyone. Since I saw no overt signs that you were homosexual, I could only assume you didn’t feel yourself to be free.”

He had been more than competently diagnosed; trying to shrug off his distaste, both for Martine’s objectivity and her accuracy, he said, “I can’t believe you want me so badly that you’d risk the kind of rejection I just subjected you to—and no, I’m not fishing for compliments.”

“Then you’ll get none.” She widened her dark eyes. “A Spanish omelette?” she asked.

“To really put the lid on my lack of romantic sensibility, I’m extremely hungry,” Troy said in faint surprise. “Why don’t we blow our cholesterol counts and make it a six-egg omelette?”

“Four,” she said, leading him into a kitchen that looked dauntingly efficient. “Three for you and one for me.” Opening the massive refrigerator, she put red and green peppers and a bunch of green onions on the counter. “You may chop these. Very fine.”

Obediently Troy did as he was told. As the small heap of red and green cubes accumulated he heard himself say, “I was offered a job today in Arizona.”

“Ah? Tell me about it.” After he had given her the details, she said, “And will you take it?”

“I plan to go down and check it out.”

“So is this another rejection?”

The oversize apron she had tied round her waist made her look more human, more approachable. He put the knife down and said straightforwardly, “Martine, it’s clear to me—and must be to you as well—that I’m not ready for an affair. Serious or otherwise. Nor do I really want to bare my soul and tell you all about the breakdown of my marriage.”

Moodily he pulled at the rubber bands from the bunch of onions. “I need to get away. Out of Vancouver. Away from nurses who think I should be dating—away from everyone who knew Lucy and me as a couple in the days when I was happy…I need a new start. And Arizona might very well give me that.”

“You’d be missed,” Martine said obliquely.

The thought that she might possibly be falling in love with him filled Troy with dismay. “For a while I might be missed. But not for long. No one’s irreplaceable.”

“Not even Lucy?” she flashed with the first show of temper he’d seen.

Her question flicked him on the raw. And, of course, he had no answer for her. “Shall I chop all these onions?” he said evenly.

“Half would be plenty.” Whisking the eggs vigorously, she added, “I’ve never married, Troy. I’m beginning to feel it’s time I did. Particularly if I want a child.”

The knife in his hands didn’t even falter. “You’re an exceptionally attractive woman. Any number of men would find it a privilege and an adventure to be married to you.”

“But not you.”

“No, Martine. Not me.”

She banged the bowl of eggs down on the counter so hard that the yellow liquid swirled to the rim. “Later on I’ll no doubt be grateful that we had this conversation. That you didn’t take me to bed. But for now I feel anything but grateful.”

Troy was damned if he was going to feel guilty; as far as he was concerned he hadn’t done one single thing to encourage her to fall in love with him. Quite suddenly the stark, efficient kitchen, the perceptive and beautiful woman glaring at him across the expanse of countertop, the false domesticity of the scene, were all too much for him. He said, “Martine, why don’t we skip the omelette? I suspect neither one of us is in the mood for food or small talk—and we seem to have said anything else there is to say.”

“Fine,” she snapped. “You can see yourself out.”

He stood up and said truthfully, “If I’ve done anything to hurt you that wasn’t my intention, and I’m sorry. Goodnight.”

Grabbing his jacket and tie on his way through the living-room, he flicked the lock on the door and stepped out into the corridor. The door shut smartly behind him. He chose the stairs rather than the elevator, taking them two at a time and feeling rather like a little boy let out of school.

He’d learned one thing this evening. He wasn’t ready for any kind of emotional involvement.

It wasn’t until Troy unlocked his own front door and stepped into the house where he’d lived with Lucy that his new-found sense of freedom evaporated. Although Lucy’s clothes were gone from the front closet, although her scent no longer lingered in the hallway and her voice didn’t call a welcome from upstairs, her stamp was everywhere—in every corner of the house.

He walked across the hall and stood in the doorway of the living-room. It wasn’t an elegant room, like Martine’s, but it was full of color and unexpected treasures—ranging from the seashells Lucy had collected in the Virgin Islands, where they had met, to a collection of Tibetan singing-bowls they had found in a bazaar in India. She had had a brief craze for embroidering cushions, the rather uneven results of which were lying on every chair, and the vibrant, Impressionistic watercolor she had fallen in love with in Provence, and which he had taken enormous pleasure in buying for her, hung over the fireplace.

Nothing matched; Troy knew that—an interior decorator would have thrown up her hands in despair. But somehow the room was redolent of Lucy’s warmth and love of life.

He didn’t want Martine. Or anyone else like Martine. He wanted Lucy.

In his mind’s eye he could picture the rest of the house very easily. The kitchen had never been Lucy’s favorite room, although she could make cheesecakes that melted in the mouth and she liked stir fries because no two ever came out the same. She had never used the copper pans that hung from the ceiling; rather, she had loved the way the sun shot turquoise fire from them late in the afternoon. The bathroom she had decorated in forest-green and scarlet as soon as they had moved in, because, she had said, every day with him felt like Christmas Day.

The bedroom, for the sake of his sanity, he had stripped of all her touches.

Reluctantly Troy came back to the present, to the reality of a house empty but for himself and his memories. As though pulled by an unseen hand, he walked upstairs and into the den. The photographs that had been in the bedroom were now in here. Lucy’s face laughed at him from within a gold frame on the bookshelves and in the informal snapshot on the pine desk her arms were wrapped around him, the blue waters of the Virgin Islands tingeing her eyes with the same vivid blue, her tangled mahogany curls standing out from her head like an aureole. Tall, beautiful Lucy, who, when she had married Troy, had made him happier than he had thought it was possible to be.

And then, side by side on the shelf, there were the photos of Michael.

Michael, their son. Who had died when he was seven months old, a year and a half ago. Who was the reason Lucy had left Troy alone in the big house on the bay.

Blond curls, eyes the same color as Sarah’s, and a toothless grin that bespoke Michael’s delight in the world in which he had found himself.

Troy turned on his heel and left the room, passing the door to the nursery as he went—a door that remained closed all the time. He walked downstairs again, his footsteps echoing in the hall, and in the kitchen took a pizza out of the freezer and thrust it in the oven. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he went to stand by the window, where the trees’ serrated black edges cut into a starspattered sky, and was achingly aware of the silence of the house, of his solitude and his loneliness.

He was in limbo. Nowhere. Alone yet unable to be with anyone. Divorced from laughter and the small, cumulative pleasures of living with the woman he loved. Cut off from his sexuality and the deep erotic joy he had found in Lucy.

He was thirty-seven years old.

He wanted another child. He had loved being a father, and the thought of remaining childless filled him with a nameless dread. All too well as he stood there he could recall Sarah’s tiny movements, and her miniature perfection as she had lain trustingly in his arms. He wanted a family. Like sex, this was a normal enough human urge. Yet Lucy was denying him both of them.

He moved his shoulders uneasily. The job he’d been offered today wouldn’t interest him nearly as much if Lucy were still living with him. He knew that as well as he knew that the sun would rise in the morning. He loved his present job—was more than fulfilled and challenged by it in every hour he spent in the hospital.

So yet another thing that had been stolen from him was decisiveness. He was allowing his future career to depend on Lucy. He’d never sold the house they’d lived in because he kept hoping she’d come back to it. He couldn’t even take a lover, for God’s sake.

What kind of a man was he?

An empty shell, like the whelks and angel wings Lucy had scattered round the living-room.

So what the hell was he going to do about it? Eat frozen pizza in a house that held nothing but memories for the rest of his life? Stay celibate because no other woman was Lucy?

It was five months since he’d seen her. Last April he’d flown to Ottawa, where she was living, and pleaded with her to come back to him. White-faced, she’d refused. And like a beaten dog he’d crawled back home, only wanting privacy to lick his wounds.

Dammit, he thought, that’s not good enough. Once, years ago, she’d told him that there was no use begging anyone for anything. So why had he wasted his time begging her for something she didn’t want to give? He’d never do that again. Never.

His mind made another leap. Maybe, Troy thought, he was kidding himself that he was still in love with her. If he saw her again he might realize that he was clinging to something that existed only in his imagination: a prettified notion of undying love, a romantic fantasy that had no basis in reality.

Like a limpet glued to its rock, he was still clasping the words he’d said on their wedding-day, and had meant with all his heart. “Til death us do part”. Death had parted them, all right. Though not quite in the way the marriage ceremony had pictured it.

Could it be true? Might he discover, if he saw Lucy, that the ties binding him to her had unraveled of their own accord? Or even rotted from disuse, thereby freeing him?

He didn’t know the answers to his own questions. He did know he was sick to death of being half a man, a hollow man, a man of straw. He was tired of feeling frustrated, trapped and unhappy…How long before his friends got bored with him, before women like Martine started viewing him as a crabby old bachelor who was better avoided?

The buzzer rang on the oven. Troy shoveled the pizza on to a plate and sat down at the counter. He chewed the crust and the layered cheese and mushrooms as if they were cardboard, his convictions—and his angerhardening.

He was going to go and see Lucy. And this time he’d tell her she could come back and be his wife—in fact as well as in name—or else he’d file for a divorce. A simple choice. Yes or no.

No more begging. No more opening himself to the kind of rejection he’d suffered in April. No more of the dull ache that had lodged itself in his belly months ago and never gone away. He was through with being a zombie. Enough was enough.

Marriage or divorce. A straightforward choice. And then he’d know where he was, even if he didn’t like it very much. Because the hard fact was that Lucy, in the year since she had stormed out of the house after the worst fight in their marriage, had not once gotten in touch with him. No phone calls, no letters, not even a Christmas card.

Divorce. Troy played with the word in his mind, hating the very sound of it, yet knowing he’d be a naive fool to imagine that Lucy was going to throw herself in his arms the minute he walked across the threshold of her apartment. There was a very strong possibility she might slam the door in his face.

If she chose—for the third time—to reject him, then somehow he’d have to learn to let go of her. With the sharpest of scalpels he’d have to amputate her from his body and his soul, and afterwards he’d have to allow himself to recuperate, to heal, so that he could rebuild a life that would include risk and intimacy and, eventually, children.

But in order to let go of her, he had to see her first.

The pizza seemed to have disappeared. Troy poured himself a beer, grabbed the latest medical journal and went upstairs to read it.

Troy slept better that night than he had in weeks, and the next morning his resolve was unchanged. He was going to get on with his life, Lucy or no Lucy. And the sooner he saw her, the better. It had, however, occurred to him that before he went banging on the door of her apartment it might be sensible to check that she hadn’t gone away on holiday. So that afternoon he phoned Evelyn Barnes, his mother-in-law, who also lived in Ottawa.

“Troy here. How are you, Evelyn?”

With genuine pleasure Evelyn said, “How nice to hear from you. I’m snowed under at work and otherwise fine.”

Evelyn was a forensic pathologist; while she lacked the emotional warmth of her middle daughter, Lucy, Troy had always known she was fond of him, and that she had been upset when Lucy had left him. He said, “Is Lucy around? While I’d rather you didn’t warn her ahead of time, I need to see her.”

Evelyn hesitated. “No…no, she hasn’t lived in Ottawa since May.”

She’s found another man.

The words had sprung from nowhere, and the rush of emotion that churned in Troy’s chest had nothing to do with detachment. “You mean she’s moved?” he said stupidly.

“She’s working on the east coast for the summer.”

So it was temporary. Troy loosened his hold on the receiver. “When’ll she be back?”

“Not until October, as far as I know.”

It was now the end of August. Suffused with an anger that he made no attempt to subdue, Troy said, “I can’t wait that long. Give me her address and I’ll go wherever she is.”

The pause was longer this time. Evelyn said reluctantly, “She made me promise not to tell you her whereabouts.”

“For Pete’s sake,” he exploded, “what’s she playing at?”

“She’s trying to sort things out, Troy, as best she can.”

“Good for her,” he snarled. “You’ve got to tell me where she is, Evelyn—I’ve been offered a job in the States and I’d have to sell the house. I can’t do that without at least consulting her.”

“Fax me the details and I’ll see she gets it right away.”

“Thanks, but no, thanks—she’s my wife, Evelyn!”

“If she hadn’t been so insistent, I wouldn’t have promised.”

Insistent. Determined to stay away from him. To hide so he’d never find her. Too bad, Lucy, he thought grimly. This time it’s not going to work. “If I’m to move from Vancouver, if I’m to divorce her, then I have to see her first. You surely must understand that.” There, he had said it. He had actually used the word.

“Oh, Troy,” Evelyn said faintly, “has it come to that?”

“I’m tired of being in limbo. Neither married nor free,” he replied implacably.

“I do understand that your position’s untenable.” There was another of the long pauses that were quite out of character for Evelyn. Then she said slowly, “I believe Marcia’s in touch with Lucy—you might try her… Oh, there’s my doorbell—I’m going to a play with some friends. I’ve got to go, Troy.”

Marcia was the eldest of Evelyn’s three daughters. Marcia and Troy rarely saw eye to eye on anything. After saying goodbye to Evelyn, he dialed Marcia’s number and made a huge effort to modulate his tone. “Marcia? Troy here. I wondered if you would give me Lucy’s address. Evelyn was busy when I called her.”

You lying bastard, he told himself. But it’s all in a good cause.

One of Marcia’s virtues, in Troy’s opinion, was her supreme incuriosity about other people’s lives. “She’s staying on an island off the coast of Nova Scotia,” Marcia said. “Let me think…Shag Island—that’s it. Near Yarmouth. She’s working at a guest house called the Seal Bay Inn. Sounds like the end of the world to me, but you know Lucy—she always was a bit off the wall.”

If Lucy hadn’t decided on impulse to go sailing for four weeks in Tortola, he, Troy, would never have met her. “Thanks,” he said and, not above pumping her, added, “Have you seen Lucy lately?”

“Goodness, no. You wouldn’t catch me going on a smelly old fishing boat to some godforsaken island. Not my thing at all. She’ll be home in a month or so; I’ll see her then.”

“What took her there, do you know?”

“She got laid off at the bookstore where she was working. A friend of Cat’s knows the couple who runs the inn—they needed someone for the summer, I guess.” Marcia yawned. “The sort of harebrained scheme Lucy loves.”

Cat was Lucy’s younger sister. “Well, thanks for the information, Marcia. Should you be talking to Lucy, you could forget we’ve had this conversation—okay?”

“Whatever you like,” Marcia said indifferently. “If you were to take my advice, Troy, you’d cut your losses as far as Lucy’s concerned.”

“I may just do that.”

“Well,” she replied with patent surprise, “I’m very glad to hear it—I think she’s behaved deplorably the last couple of years.”

It was one thing for Troy to think that, another to hear Lucy’s sister say so. “She lost her child, Marcia.”

“So did you. But she’s the one who’s been running away from her responsibilities ever since.”

He could feel his throat closing with the old pain, and in his heart of hearts he recognized the kernel of truth in Marcia’s judgement. “Thanks for the address,” he said huskily. “Don’t work too hard.” Very carefully Troy replaced the receiver in its cradle.

One of the many things which had distressed him unutterably in the last six months he and Lucy had lived together had been watching her withdraw from people, from her clients and her friends—she who had always delighted in the company of others. She was a certified massage therapist, and had worked one day a week after Michael was born to keep her hand in; after he had died she had lost all interest in her job.

In Ottawa she’d worked in a chain bookstore, an impersonal milieu that demanded nothing from her in the way of intimacy. And now she’d retreated still further, to spend the summer on an isolated island.

Shag Island. He’d get Vera to make a reservation under a false name at the Seal Bay Inn and this time next week he’d be face to face with Lucy. In the meantime he’d get in touch with the institute and tell them he needed a little more time to make his decision.

After that, whatever happened, he’d have to get on with his life.

CHAPTER TWO

AS TROY strode down the long concrete wharf in his rubber boots, his canvas bag slung over one shoulder, the sea wind tugged at his hair; Seawind had been the name of the sloop he’d been skippering in the Virgin Islands when he’d first met Lucy.

A tangle of dried seaweed cracked under his boots. He glanced down, his nerves strung tight as catgut. He might look just like another tourist on holiday. But he wasn’t a tourist. His only reason for being here was to go and see Lucy. Although this time not in an immaculate yacht. Unless he was mistaken, one of the workmanlike Cape Islanders clustered at the very end of the wharf was going to take him to his destination.

From the flat deck of a boat called Four Angels a man of about forty with a weathered face called, “You goin’ to Shag Island?”

“That’s right.”

“Come on aboard, then. Hand yer gear down to Gus, and watch yer step.”

Although Gus looked about fourteen, he swung Troy’s heavy bag down on to the deck with agility. Troy climbed down the metal rungs set into the side of the wharf and felt the gunwale dip under his weight. Four Angels was even less prepossessing up close than she had been at a distance—her anchors rusty, her deck stained with the debris of years of fishing. But as Clarence, her skipper, introduced himself he gave Troy a broad smile, his blue eyes twinkling. Her engine started with a well-bred purr and she backed between two other boats into the open water with a precision Troy could appreciate.

There was another man sharing the deck with him, an elderly man with a crop of salt-white hair. Troy smiled at him and said, “My name’s Troy Donovan. Are you staying at the Seal Bay Inn as well?”

“Hubert Woollner.” A pair of eyes as fierce as a falcon’s stared at him beneath bushy brows. “I own my own place on the south end of the island. Near the lighthouse.”

“Come on, Hubert,” Clarence interjected. “You own the whole darn island, from the lighthouse to the cliffs—tell the truth, now.”

“Steer the boat, Clarence, and mind your own business.”

Hubert had spoken without rancor. Clarence chuckled. “You are my business. The way fishin’ is these days, it’s a good thing I got this here ferry service to fall back on. Gotta feed the family somehow.”

“The boat’s named after Clarence’s family,” Hubert said to Troy. “A touch of poetic license.”

“Named after the wife and me three daughters. Not that they’re always angels. You married, Mr Donovan?”

“Yes,” Troy said, and waited for someone to ask if Lucy Donovan was his wife.

But Clarence was following his own train of thought. “Then you know what I’m talkin’ about. There’s days I think I should’ve named her Four Devils. But there wouldn’t be much luck callin’ a boat that, now, would there? So Four Angels she is, and more power to her.” With a flourish he spat over the gunwales and revved up the engine. The bow bit into the waves, the wake bubbled from the stern and the wharf fell back behind them.

For a moment Troy forgot about Lucy and the purpose of his visit in the sheer pleasure of being on the sea again; in the last year and a half he’d lost his enthusiasm for sailing. Then Hubert asked, “Did you come for the long-billed dowitcher?”

“The who?” said Troy.

“So you’re not a birder?” Hubert said sternly.

“I know a duck from a pelican,” Troy remarked, raising his voice over the roar of the engine and the hissing of the sea. He’d always been more interested in snorkeling and diving in the Caribbean than in the birds.

“Humph. So you wouldn’t know what a shag is, then?”

A long ago crossword clue flickered through Troy’s memory. “A fish like a herring,” he hazarded.

“That’s a shag. See that bird flying low over the water?” Obligingly Troy looked to starboard, seeing a black bird with a skinny neck flapping madly away from Four Angels. “That’s a shag,” Hubert went on. “It’s the local name for a cormorant—in this case an immature double-crested cormorant. What made you come to Shag Island if you’re not a birder?”

Amused by this inquisition, Troy prevaricated, “I needed a holiday. I work in a crowded hospital in a big city and a few days on an island sounded like heaven.”

“If you’re staying a few days, Keith’ll fix you up with a pair of binoculars. Keith McManus owns the inn. Doesn’t have much to say for himself, but he knows his birds.”

This was clearly high praise. “Is it a one-man operation, then?” Troy asked with low cunning.

“Anna helps out—his wife. They’ve got a hired girl this summer as well.” For a moment the fierce old eyes softened. “A real beauty, she is.”

Spreading his feet on the deck and absently noticing that he’d never lost his sea-legs, Troy said, “And what’s her name?”

“Lucy Barnes,” said Hubert.

With another of the explosions of rage that seemed to haunt him these days Troy realized that no one had connected his name with Lucy’s because Lucy was no longer using his name. She’d reverted to her maiden name. As if, he thought savagely, he, Troy, didn’t exist. As though her marriage was better forgotten.

Hubert was still talking. “…myself if I was forty years younger. You’ll meet her if you’re staying for a while. She and Mrs Mossop take turns with the cooking.”

Lucy had been the cook on Seawind. “Who else lives on the island?” Troy asked.

“Mrs Mossop—she’s a widow. Myself. Quentin—he’s an artist; he puts big globs of paint on a canvas and calls it Untitled Composition and the critics rave over it. This new-fangled stuff they call art; I can’t give it the time of day.”

Four Angels had rounded a headland and was headed due west. On the horizon lay a long island—the small pinnacle of a lighthouse at one end, cliffs rearing from the sea like the blunt head of a whale from the other. Filling his nostrils with clean salt air, Troy asked, “Is that Shag Island?”

“That’s it.”

“Not very many people for the size of the island.”

“I keep the numbers low because of the petrels,” Hubert said.

“Petrol?” Troy repeated, puzzled.

Hubert raised his brows heavenwards. “Petrels are birds. Leach’s storm petrels nest on the southern end of the island. So I don’t allow cats on the island and we use a dory to go from this boat to shore, to do away with the possibility of rats. There aren’t any racoons or foxes to prey on them. Too many humans would be just as bad. I decided a long time ago that we’re the most destructive species there is. So I won’t let Keith expand the inn.”

“How do you keep the guests at the inn from doing any damage?”

“That’s one of Lucy’s jobs. I pay part of her salary.”

“So you’re a benevolent despot?”

Hubert gave a cackle of laughter. “I’ve willed the island to a conservation society, with so many provisos and heretofores it’ll take them forever to sort it out. But in the meantime the petrels’ll be safe. And that’s what counts.”

“Birds over people?” Troy asked with conscious provocation.

“Birds and people coexisting,” Hubert retorted with a gleam in his eye. “Non-interference. Respect for the intricacies of nature. I’ll invite you for dinner one evening, providing you don’t mind canned beans, and we’ll thrash it out.”

“You’re a proselytizer, Mr Woollner.”

“Hubert’s the name. By the time you leave I’ll make sure you know a least sandpiper from a semipalmated. How long did you say you were staying.”

“I didn’t say…because I’m not sure.”

“You’ll stay a while. The island gets you that way. Got me fifty years ago, and she’s been like a mistress to me ever since.” He pulled at his ear, laughter sparking his tawny old eyes. “Less trouble than a woman in the long run, I dare say.”

They both fell silent as the island drew closer, until Troy could see rocks girdled with kelp, ranks of spruce trees huddled and bent against the wind, and to the north the long sweep of a low-lying field, with drifts of yellow wildflowers between it and the shore. The Lucy he had fallen in love with would be very much at home on Shag Island.

With a kindling of excitement he wondered if during a summer spent in this wild and beautiful place she’d found herself again…become the old Lucy, the passionate, laughing creature who’d turned his life upside-down when he’d first met her five years ago. Maybe—just maybe—she’d welcome him with open arms, with all the delight in his presence that had always, paradoxically, both nourished and humbled him.

Clarence cut the engines and Gus went forward to hook the big pink buoy bobbing on the waves. Onshore a wooden dock sloped into the sea; a man was hauling a red-painted boat down it into the water. He clambered aboard, and in a swirl of wake headed for Four Angels.

“That’s Keith,” Hubert said. “You’ll arrive at the inn nicely in time for dinner.”

“Where’s your house?” Troy asked idly.

“I took over one of the bungalows where the light-keepers used to live. Mrs Mossop lives in the other one. Here’s Keith now—hand down the gear first, then get in and sit near the bow.”

Refraining from saying that boats had been part of his life since he was a boy, Troy did as he was told and introduced himself to Keith. A considerable part of Keith’s face was hidden by the twin growths of a fiery red beard and a mop of red hair; between them peered a pair of hazel eyes that were not so much unfriendly as desperately shy. Keith mumbled his name and with ill-disguised relief swiveled to face the motor.

When they reached the shore, he drove the boat right up on the slip. Troy stepped out and hauled it still further over the thick wood slats beneath which the salt water gurgled and slapped. He gave a hand to Hubert, who gathered up a small backpack, waved a cheery goodbye and set off along a trail that followed the curve of the shore.

“This way,” Keith said, and without looking to see if Troy was following set off on another trail that led in the opposite direction through the woods.

The ground was springy and the air smelled sweetly of moss and fallen needles; Troy tramped along, his heart pounding in his chest because at any moment now he might see Lucy.

Tucked into a sheltered cove, the Seal Bay Inn was a two-storied cedar building, with an expanse of glass overlooking the ocean and a generous deck where chairs and pots of flowers were scattered; a small cabin sat a little apart from it in the trees. “It’s delightful,” Troy said spontaneously. “Who built it, Keith?”

“Me.”

“You did a fine job.”

Keith said nothing, merely gestured for Troy to go ahead of him through the sliding glass door. It opened into a spacious living area paneled in pine; the sea and sky were as much a part of the room as the comfortable sofas and well-furnished bookshelves. An alcove was taken up by a long trestle table laid for dinner. Then Troy heard footsteps coming down the hall and felt his heart rise into his throat. Lucy. It had to be Lucy.

But the woman who entered the room was very different from Lucy. For one thing, she was at least eight months pregnant; for another her hair was as straight and dark as Martine’s, although it was pulled back into a ponytail from a face unadorned by make-up. She said in a friendly voice, “You’re our new guest—Mr Daniels, I believe?”

Struggling to overcome a crushing disappointment, Troy remembered that he’d reserved under a false name to avoid alerting Lucy to his arrival. He said awkwardly, and untruthfully, “I hope you don’t mind—my friend Daniels couldn’t come at the last minute. So I took his place. Donovan’s the name.”

“That’s no problem. Welcome to Shag Island, Mr Donovan. I’m Anna McManus.”

Because her smile was innocent of guile, Troy felt ashamed of his deception. Fighting down the urge to ask about Lucy, he went upstairs with her and approved his room.

“Dinner’s in half an hour—I ring the bell,” she said. “The bar’s downstairs; you keep your own tab. Please let me know if there’s anything we can do to make your stay more pleasant.”

Give me back my wife, he thought wildly, and with relief closed the door behind her. He’d hoped to meet Lucy with some semblance of privacy; now, it would seem, she’d be waiting on all the guests at the dinner table.

Her face, when she first saw him, would tell him all he needed to know. He must keep his eyes glued to her face.

But thirty-five minutes later, when Troy was seated in the alcove, the woman who carried in the bowls of steaming fish chowder was plump and middle-aged, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the stove. The widowed Mrs Mossop, thought Troy, and politely made conversation with the four other guests, whose names he’d forgotten as soon as he’d heard them and whose impassioned discussion about a buff-breasted sandpiper couldn’t have interested him less. Lucy surely hadn’t left the island, he thought, his throat constricting with terror. She must be in the kitchen, working behind the scenes. She had to be.

However, Anna was the cook that evening—so Mrs Mossop informed them, when one of the guests complimented her on the roast chicken. “It’s Lucy’s day off,” she said. “She’ll be back in the morning, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’ll make blueberry pancakes for breakfast; she was going berry-picking today.”

So she was here. He could relax.

But tomorrow seemed an aeon away. Troy ate his apple pie with less attention than it deserved, swallowed his coffee and excused himself. Hoping to bump into Lucy, he hiked along the shore until dusk. Then, knowing he hadn’t got a hope of sleeping yet, because he was still jet-lagged, he sat in one of the chairs on the deck, watching the last peach flush fade from the sky.

His body merged with the shadows. A pale arm of the Milky Way gestured gracefully across the heavens, whose blackness was studded with larger, brighter stars, their cold, impersonal light making him all the lonelier.

An owl hooted in the distance. A crescent moon rose, curved like an empty bowl; the tide sucked at the rocks. And then, overriding the sounds of the sea, Troy heard the one voice he’d been wanting to hear for months. Lucy’s voice. He twisted to face the woods and saw two people standing close together on the little porch of the cabin.

“Thanks so much, Quentin,” Lucy was saying, her clear, light voice carrying through the velvet darkness. “I had a lovely day. I promise I’ll make you some blueberry muffins tomorrow.”

“I got you home later than I’d planned—you have to get up so early in the morning.”

“It was worth it.”

“I’ll drop by tomorrow for the muffins.”

“Great.”

Because Troy’s eyes were so well adjusted to the night, he had no trouble seeing Quentin lean forward, kiss Lucy, then move back. His fingernails digging into the chair, he missed Quentin’s next, low-voiced remark; Lucy laughed lightheartedly in return and went inside the cabin. Quentin flipped on a flashlight and disappeared down the path. Lucy closed the door and almost immediately a soft light glowed through the windows facing the sea, as though she had lit a candle.

Troy surged to his feet. On the long plane flight from Vancouver he had played with a number of different scenarios for the meeting between him and Lucy; none of them had included another man. Every one of his carefully reasoned speeches vanishing from his mind, he jumped over the railing of the deck and marched across the grass. Raising his fist, he knocked on Lucy’s door.

“Coming!” she called, and even as she opened the door was saying, “Did you forget——?”

Her voice broke off. Because the light was behind her, Troy couldn’t see the expression on her face, although her gasp of shock and her instinctive step backward were only too obvious. Pushing past her, he went inside.

She had lit two oil lamps—one beside the double bed, one on the table by the window. It took him less than two seconds to see the marks of her occupancy in the tiny cabin, none of which included a photograph of either himself or Michael. Stationing himself against the edge of the table, he said viciously, “What a cozy little setupdoes the artist go along with it?”

“Troy! What are you doing here?” Her face paled, and suddenly she stepped to meet him, her fingers digging into his wrist under his light wool sweater. “Mother—is she all right? There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

“There’s a great deal wrong, which has nothing to do with your mother or your sisters and everything to do with us.”

“You frightened me…”

He glanced down. It was Lucy’s left hand that was clasping his wrist. Her finger was bare of the narrow gold band he had given her on their wedding-day. He said roughly, “Where’s your wedding-ring? And your engagement ring?”

She jerked her hand away. “I left the sapphire in Ottawa—a busy kitchen is no place for an expensive ring.” Her gray eyes openly defiant, she added, “I took off my wedding-band before I got on the boat to come over here.”

“You left your married name behind as well. Isn’t Donovan good enough for you any more?”

Suspicion had darkened her eyes. Ignoring his question, she said, “It was a Mr Daniels who was supposed to arrive today. Not you.”

“I made the reservation under a false name,” Troy said.

She was standing so close to him that her scent drifted to his nostrils. As though this was the only cue his body needed, it sprang to life, desire shooting sparks amid his anger like fresh wood tossed on to a fire. She looked wonderful, and this, too, fueled his rage. Her bare legs and her face were lightly tanned, her full breasts pushed at her loose cotton sweater, and her hair, longer than he had ever seen it, was a thick mass of mahogany curls. When Troy had last seen her, five months ago in Ottawa, she’d been thin and pale, with hollows under her cheekbones.

The last vestige of speech, planned or otherwise, vanished from Troy’s brain. He put his arms around Lucy, pulled her against the length of his body and kissed her.

She fit. He knew her as he knew himself. She was his.

His kiss deepened, his hands rediscovering with frantic hunger the arch of her ribs, the little bump of her vertebrae where her neck met her shoulders, the labyrinth of her soft, fragrant hair. I’ve come home, he thought, his rage dropping away like a garment no longer needed.

He had felt the shock slam through Lucy’s frame when he had first touched her; she had been standing as rigid as an iron bar in his embrace. But then she began to tremble and shake, like aspen leaves in the wind, clutching his sweater as if she might fall down were she to let go. Troy parted her lips with his tongue, wanting to savor the sweetness of her mouth, aching for her to open to him like a sunflower to the golden light of morning, to bend to his touch like long grass to a summer breeze.

“Lucy,” he whispered, showering kisses on her lips, her cheeks, her throat. “Lucy, I love you so much.” And somewhere, distantly, he remembered that these words had never been part of his plan.

She shoved against his chest with a strength that jarred every nerve in his body, and wrenched her mouth free. “Let go!” she cried. “Troy, let go of me or I’ll scream the place down.”

She looked entirely capable of doing so. Trying to gather his wits, which were scattered like confetti at a wedding, Troy said urgently, “You felt it, too, Lucy—you must have. It was like coming home after a long absence to the one you never meant to leave. It couldn’t only have been me who felt that way—tell me it wasn’t!”

“I don’t want to go home!” she cried, in a voice raw with pain. “Why do you think I left in the first place? Because I couldn’t bear it—because it was killing me.”

“Say it, why don’t you?” he rasped. “Because I was killing you—that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

Behind the question lay all the pain of their last six months together. Because if Lucy had withdrawn from her clients and her friends, she had also withdrawn from Troy, in a way that had devastated him.

In the first few days after the baby had died Lucy hadn’t cried at all. Stunned, blank-faced, she had wandered around the house like a lost soul. Then one day a neighbor who had been away had innocently asked after him and Lucy had broken down, shutting herself in the nursery and sobbing for hours at a time. Although Troy had done his best to comfort her, he had been fatally hampered by the rawness of his own grief, and, without him being quite sure how it had happened, her withdrawal had become a pattern that he’d never been able to break.

Worst than that, though, had been Lucy’s refusal to make love with him—her almost hysterical repudiation of the intimacy that had bound them together. At first Troy had understood. Even though he had been struggling, for her sake, to keep his own emotions under control, for days at a time, and from moment to moment, he had lived on the very edge of falling apart; and he had sensed the same fragility in Lucy. But later, when he had gone to her for consolation, desperate for a physical closeness that might keep the blackness of his sorrow at bay, she had struck him away.

She was afraid of getting pregnant again, or so she had said; she couldn’t bear to start another baby. It had made sense, and Troy had believed her. However, as week after week had passed, and she’d continued, stony-faced, to reject him, Troy had begun to doubt the rapture they had once shared, and even the love that bound them together; the woman who was his wife had become a woman he no longer knew. And that had been the cruelest cut of all. Lucy, his beloved wife, had turned into a stranger.

Shaking his head like a wounded animal, Troy came back to the present. Lucy had stepped away from him, perhaps frightened by something in his face, her body rigid with tension. She said, “I stayed away just so we wouldn’t go on hurting each other like this.”

“You’re a coward, Lucy.”

She flinched. Then, raising her chin, she said, “Maybe instead I know when to let go.”

It was Troy’s turn to flinch. His naïve assumption that he might have fallen out of love with Lucy had vanished without a trace at the very first sight of her; if anything he loved her all the more. That he had even considered the possibility of his love being dead seemed laughable in the unalterable fact of her presence. Let go of her? He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

He might have to. She had taken off his ring and was no longer using his name. She had pushed him away when he’d kissed her. She had—to use her own wordslet him go.

Then she said, and there could be no mistaking her sincerity, “Troy, I don’t want to cause you more pain. Can’t we start this conversation over again?” She swallowed, the small movements of her throat filling him with frenzied longing. “Where did you come from? And why did you come?”

The table was hard against the backs of his thighs. Troy wrapped his fingers around the curved wood to keep himself from touching her and said harshly, “I came from Vancouver, which is where I happen to live—remember?”

Because the door to the cabin was still open a fraction, small brown moths were fluttering at the threshold. Lucy went to close the door, then leaned against it, visibly needing its support. “Why are you so angry?”

She had kissed Quentin, and laughed with him in the intimate darkness in front of her cabin. But Troy she had pushed away. “Oh, I’m not angry,” Troy said sarcastically. “I just love seeing you with another manpromising to make him muffins, for Pete’s sake—when for the last four months you haven’t even done me the courtesy of a phone call to let me know where you are.”

“We’re separated,” she said mutinously, pushing her hands in the pockets of her blue shorts.

He looked at her in silence. Her face was almost as well known to him as his own. Her cheeks were flushed, her features given character by the imperious bump in her nose and by her brows, dark as the wings of a bird. Her eyes were, like his own, gray, although in certain lights they swam mysteriously into depths of blue. “Separation must agree with you,” he said deliberately. “You look better than you have since Michael died.”

“Don’t!” she said in a choked voice.

Troy fought for control, bunching his knuckles against the table. But for far too long his feelings had been cooped up inside him, and the sight of her—so beautiful, so sorely missed, so unattainable—was more than he could stand.

“Don’t, what? Don’t mention Michael’s name?” he flared. “Pretend he never existed? We both know better than that, Lucy. We know his death was the reason you moved out on me.” Not for the life of him could he have disguised the anguish in his voice as he added, “You don’t even have a photo of him here…Do you hate him so much for dying?”

“I loved him too much to ever hate him for anything,” she whispered. “I’m trying to forget what happened——”

“Forget Michael?”

“I’m trying to accept his death, to move on—that’s why I keep my photos of him out of sight.”

“Move on with Quentin? Is that the plan? How clever of you to have taken off your wedding-ring before you got here.”

“Troy, you can’t push your way in here and start throwing accusations at me. Nothing gives you that right!”

“I do happen to be your husband,” he said, with deadly calm. “Or are you trying to forget that, too?”

“How can I? You won’t let me!”

He took a deep breath. “You asked why I came here. I came to offer you a choice. Either we live together as husband and wife or I want a divorce.”

Her eyes widened and her whole body tensed, like a sparrow who, safe in its hedgerow, had suddenly sighted a hawk perched on a nearby branch. She stared at him blankly while the slow seconds ticked by, and for the life of him Troy couldn’t have guessed what she was thinking. Then she said, her voice not quite steady, “That sounds more like an ultimatum than a choice.”

“You can call it what you like. I’ve gone on long enough being neither one thing nor the other—I’m not married because you refuse to live with me, but I’m not divorced either, so I’m not free to pursue any other options.”

“Other women, you mean,” she flashed.

“I didn’t say that, Lucy.” Belatedly Troy struggled to find the right words. “I want intimacy and companionship and a family—all the things you and I shared that felt so right. The things that made me so happy. I still want them with you, of course I do. But——”

“I can’t, Troy! Not again, never again…It hurts too much.”

It was a cry from the heart. “You can’t hide forever,” he said fiercely. “You never were afraid of living, Lucy. When I met you, you had enormous courage.”

“That was then. This is now. I’ve changed; you’ve got to accept that.”

“I won’t allow you to turn into someone less than who you are!”

“Maybe you have no control over it,” she retorted. “I’m not one of your patients—I’m not a nurse you can order around.”

“Dammit, I’m not like that! I love you—that’s why I’m here.”

“Love should set you free,” she said incoherently. “You brandish love in front of me like a set of chains.”

With deadly emphasis Troy said, “So the answer’s divorce.”

“Stop putting words into my mouth! I’ve seen you once in the last year, yet you waltz in here, as though you own the place, and expect me to make a huge decision with all kinds of ramifications in the space of five minutes, just because it’s convenient for you—you really do have a nerve, Troy.”

“So how long will it take you to make up your mind?”

“How can I possibly know that?” she snapped.

“You want to have your cake and eat it too,” he said furiously. “Keep me dangling like some kind of tame rabbit and in the meantime live exactly as you please. It won’t wash, Lucy. I’m sick to death of it.”

“I’m not making a decision at eleven o’clock at night that’s going to affect my whole life,” she seethed. “Go home, Troy. On the first plane. I’ll write to you; I promise.”

Knowing he was shooting himself in the foot, yet hearing the words spill from his mouth, Troy sneered, “And does that promise mean any more to you than the blueberry muffins you promised Quentin?”

“You really are intolerable,” Lucy cried. “Get out of here. I’ve had more than enough and right now divorce seems like a very viable option.” She whirled and flung the door open. “I’ve said I’ll write to you, and I will.”

He let go of the table, flexing his fingers, and crossed the painted wooden floorboards. “You can’t fool me—you don’t like the word divorce any more than I do. You might want to think about that tomorrow while you’re mixing that batch of muffins.” He looked straight into her eyes. “You might also want to think of what best honors our son’s memory. Running away from reality like a child afraid of the dark—or embracing everything that life brings with it, both good and bad, happy and tragic.” Lightly he ran one finger down her cheek to the corner of her mouth. “Goodnight.”

He walked out on to the porch and closed the door in Lucy’s face. Her jaw had dropped at his last speech—almost the only one he’d made that he’d rehearsed beforehand—and she’d been, temporarily anyway, speechless. He had needed that small victory, because his whole body felt sore, as though an unseen opponent had pummeled him mercilessly against a concrete wall.

She hadn’t agreed to a divorce. But she had accused him of holding her captive with a love that was like chains.

An image he hated with all his soul.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN the bell chimed for breakfast the next morning, Troy had just finished shaving. He gazed at himself in the mirror, dabbing at the small cut on his chin. He looked exactly like a man who’d had about three hours’ sleep. Although three was probably an exaggeration.

His eyes, deepset at the best of times, were now bruised by the remnants of a night trapped between nightmares and the raging hunger of his sexuality. To know that Lucy was so near and yet so far had been torture. Worse, perhaps, had been the extinguishing of any hope that he no longer cared for her. He loved her—heart, soul and body. He’d probably, he thought gloomily, running a comb through his hair, love her forever.

For all the good it would do him.

His mother had once compared the color of his eyes to the rock from the quarry near where he’d grown up. Maybe chains were that same unrevealing, stony gray. If he stayed here, would he be treating Lucy like some medieval prisoner? Manacling her to him by force?

His cut appeared to have stopped bleeding; he should go down to breakfast. He straightened the mirror, remembering how Lucy had used to love tracing the strong line of his nose and the curve of his lips down to the cleft in his chin with her fingertip. She had used to find him irresistible.

Not any more.

If he were smart he’d take her advice and get on the first flight out of here. And then he’d accept the job in Arizona. If she did come back to him they could live just as well in Arizona as in Vancouver; with her at his side, he didn’t care where he lived.

She was afraid of love. Afraid of its costs and penalties.

Or else she hated his guts; that didn’t seem too unlikely either.

He adjusted the collar of his blue open-necked shirt and then, as though he couldn’t help himself, he replaced his wedding-ring on his left hand.

When he went downstairs only his place was empty at the trestle table; the birders had all been up at dawn and were now ravenously tucking into heaped blueberry pancakes and jugs of hot maple syrup. The buff-breasted sandpiper had been usurped by the long-billed dowitcher as the main topic of discussion. Troy drained his orange juice and helped himself to a pancake.

“Would you like coffee?”

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