Heroes Are My Weakness

  You got that right, he thought. And don’t forget it.

  Chapter Eight

  ANNIE STOOD OFF TO THE side of the kitchen window, watching as the cat jumped willingly into Theo’s car and the two of them drove off together. Don’t turn your back, Hannibal, she thought.

  There was nothing sexy about Theo pulling her robe open. A bastard’s nature was to act like a bastard, and he’d done what came naturally. But as she turned away from the window, she thought about the calculation she’d seen in his eyes when he’d done it. He’d deliberately tried to unhinge her, but it hadn’t worked. He was a devious jerk, but was he a dangerous one? Her instincts said no, but her reliable brain was flashing enough warning signals to stop a freight train.

  She headed for her bedroom. His so-called rental of her cottage was supposed to start today, and she needed to get out of here before he came back. She pulled on what had become her standard island uniform—jeans and wool socks with a long-sleeved top and heavy sweater. She missed the floaty fabrics and colorful prints of her summer boho dresses. She missed her vintage 1950s frocks with their fitted bodices and full skirts. One of her favorites was printed with ripe summer cherries. Another had a border of dancing martini glasses. Unlike Mariah, Annie loved colorful clothes with whimsical trims and decorative buttons. None of which enlivened the jeans and ratty sweaters she’d brought with her.

  She returned to the living room and glanced out the window but saw no sign of Theo’s car. She dressed quickly, grabbed her inventory notebook, and began going through the cottage room by room to see if anything was missing. She’d wanted to do this last night, but she wasn’t letting Theo know anything about the legacy or her suspicion that the break-in was tied to it.

  Everything on her list was still in place, but for all she knew, what she was looking for could be tucked in the back of a drawer or in one of the closets she hadn’t yet thoroughly investigated. Had her housebreaker found what Annie couldn’t locate?

  Theo worried her. As she zipped up her coat, she made herself reexamine the possibility that the break-in had nothing to do with Mariah’s legacy and everything to do with Theo trying to pay her back for spooking him. She’d thought she’d gotten away with the clock incident, but what if she hadn’t? What if he’d seen through her and this was his payback? Should she follow her head or her instincts?

  Definitely her head. Trusting Theo Harp was like trusting a poisonous snake not to bite.

  She circled the cottage. Theo had done the same before he’d left, ostensibly to look for tracks . . . or maybe to wipe out any evidence he might have left himself. He’d told her the lack of fresh snow and the confusion from her footprints made it impossible to see anything unusual. She didn’t quite believe him, but as she searched the same area, she couldn’t find anything suspicious either. She turned toward the ocean. The morning tide was going out. If Theo had made it along the beach path last night, she should be able to make it in daylight.

  Wet, jagged rocks guarded the shoreline near the cottage, and the icy ocean wind carried the smell of salt and seaweed. In warmer weather, she could have walked right along the water’s edge, but now she stayed farther back, carefully picking her way along a narrow path that was sandy during the summer but was now icy with hard-packed snow.

  The path wasn’t as well defined as it had once been, and she had to climb over a few of the boulders that used to serve as her reading perches. She’d spent hours here daydreaming about the characters in whichever novel she was reading. The heroines were fueled only by strength of character as they faced down these forbidding men with their noble lineages, savage moods, and aquiline noses. Not unlike a certain Theo Harp. Although Theo’s nose wasn’t aquiline. She remembered how disappointed she’d been when she’d looked up that romantic-sounding word and seen what it really meant.

  A pair of seagulls battled the cut of the wind. She stopped for a moment to take in the fierce beauty of the ocean as it pounded toward the shoreline, the foamy gray crests plunging into roiling dark valleys. She’d lived in the city so long that she’d forgotten this sense of being absolutely alone in the universe. It was a pleasant, dreamy sensation in the summer, but unsettling in the winter.

  She moved on. The icy crust cracked beneath her feet as she reached the Harp House beach. She hadn’t been here since the day she’d almost died.

  The memory she’d tried so hard to suppress came flooding back.

  She and Regan had found the litter of pups a few weeks before the end of the summer. Annie was still miserable from Theo’s hostile withdrawal, and she’d been staying away from him as much as she could. On that particular morning while he was out surfing, she, Regan, and Jaycie were in the stable with the new pups. The pregnant mongrel who hung around the yard had delivered them during the night.

  The pups, cuddled against their mother, were only a few hours old, six squirmy masses of black and white fur with their eyes still closed and their soft pink tummies rising and falling with each new breath. Their mother, a short-haired mix of so many breeds it was impossible to guess her pedigree, had shown up at the beginning of the summer. Theo had initially claimed her as his own, then lost interest after the dog had hurt its foot.

  The three girls had sat cross-legged in the straw, their soft chatter drifting back and forth as they examined each tiny pup. “That one is the cutest,” Jaycie declared.

  “I wish we could take them with us when we leave.”

  “I want to name them.”

  Eventually, Regan had fallen silent. When Annie asked if something was wrong, Regan twisted a strand of her shiny dark hair around her finger and poked at the floor with a piece of straw. “Let’s not tell Theo about them.”

  Annie didn’t intend to tell Theo anything, but she still wanted to know what Regan meant. “Why not?”

  Regan pulled the lock across her cheek. “Sometimes he—”

  Jaycie jumped in. “He’s a boy. Boys are rougher than girls.”

  Annie thought of Regan’s oboe and the purple notebook full of her poetry. She thought of herself—locked in the dumbwaiter, attacked by the gulls, pushed into the marsh. Regan jumped to her feet as if she wanted to change the subject. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  The three of them had left the stable, but later that afternoon, when she and Regan had returned to check on the pups, Theo was already there.

  Annie hung back while Regan went to his side. He was crouched in the straw stroking one of the small, wriggling bodies. Regan settled next to him. “They’re cute, aren’t they?” She framed it as a question, as if she needed him to validate her opinions.

  “They’re mutts,” he said. “Nothing special. I don’t like dogs.” He rose from the straw and stalked out of the stable, not even glancing at Annie.

  The next day Annie found him in the stable again. It was raining outside, the smell of fall already in the air. Regan was off packing the last of her things for the next day’s trip home, and Theo had one of the pups in his hands. Regan’s words came rushing back, and Annie leaped forward. “Put it down!” she’d exclaimed.

  He didn’t argue with her, just set the pup back with the rest. As he looked at her, his normal sulky expression disappeared, and in her imaginative eyes, he seemed more tragic than sullen. The romantic bookworm inside her forgot about his cruelty and thought only of her beloved misunderstood heroes with their dark secrets, hidden nobility, and prodigious passions. “What’s wrong?”

  He shrugged. “The summer’s over. Sucks that it’s raining on our last day.”

  Annie liked the rain. It gave her a good excuse to curl up and read. And she was glad to leave. The past few months had been too hard.

  All three of them would be going back to their old schools. Theo and Regan to fancy boarding schools in Connecticut, and Annie to her junior year at LaGuardia High, the Fame school.

  He dug his fists into the pockets of his shorts. “Things aren’t going too great with your mom and my dad.”

  She’d heard th
e quarrels, too. The quirkiness Elliott had originally found so charming in Mariah had gotten under his skin, and she’d overheard her mother accuse Elliott of being stuffy, which he was, but his stability was what Mariah had wanted, even more than his money. Now Mariah was saying she and Annie were going back to their old apartment when they returned to the city. Just to pack things up, she’d said, but Annie didn’t believe her.

  Rain clicked against the dusty stable windows. Theo nudged the toe of his sneaker into the straw. “I’m . . . sorry things got weird with us this summer.”

  Things hadn’t gotten weird. He’d gotten weird. But she wasn’t big on confrontation, and she’d merely muttered, “It’s okay.”

  “I—I liked talking to you.”

  She’d liked talking to him, too, and she’d liked their make-out sessions even more. “Me, too.”

  She didn’t know exactly how it happened, but they ended up sitting on one of the wood benches, their backs against the stable wall, talking about school, about their parents, about the books they had to read next year. It was exactly as it used to be, and she could have talked to him for hours, but Jaycie and Regan appeared. Theo jumped up from the bench, spat in the straw, and jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s go into town,” he told them. “I want some fried clams.”

  He didn’t invite Annie to come along.

  She felt ugly and stupid for talking to him again. But that night, right after she’d finished packing the last of her things, she found a note from him slipped under her bedroom door.

  Tide’s out. Meet me in the cave. Please.

  T.

  She’d pulled a fresh top and a clean pair of shorts from her suitcase, fluffed her hair, dabbed on some lip gloss, and slipped out of the house.

  He wasn’t on the beach, but she hadn’t really expected to see him there. They always met by a small, sandy area toward the back where there was a tidal pool to poke around in.

  He was wrong about the tide. It was coming in strong. But they’d been in the cave before when the tide shifted, and there was no danger of being trapped. Even though the water was deeper at the back of the cave, they had no trouble swimming out.

  Cold seawater soaked her sneakers and splashed her bare legs as she scrambled over the rocks to the entrance. When she got there, she turned on the small pink flashlight she’d brought down with her. “Theo?” Her voice echoed around the rocky chamber.

  He didn’t answer.

  A wave splashed her knees. Disappointed, she was about to turn back when she heard it. Not his response, but the frantic yips of the pups.

  Her first thought was that Theo had brought them down so they could play with them. “Theo?” she called for him again, and when he didn’t answer, she moved deeper into the cave, searching it with the flashlight she’d brought with her.

  The sandy crescent in the back near where she and Theo used to make out was underwater. The waves lapped at the ledge just above. On that ledge sat a cardboard box, and from inside the box came the sounds she was hearing.

  “Theo!” She got a sick feeling in her stomach, a feeling that grew worse when he didn’t respond. She began wading toward the back of the cave until the rising water was at her waist.

  The ledge was cut into the rock wall a few inches over her head. The old cardboard box was already getting soaked from the spray. If she tried to pull it off the ledge, the bottom would drop out and the pups would fall in the water. But she couldn’t leave them here. In no time at all, the waves would sweep the box away.

  Theo, what have you done?

  She couldn’t think about that, not with the pups’ yips growing more frantic. She felt along the cave wall with the toe of her sneaker until she found a niche to use as a step. She pulled herself up and shone the flashlight into the box. All six of the pups were there, yipping, terrified, scampering frenetically on a scrap of brown towel already soggy with seawater. She set the flashlight on the ledge, grabbed two of them, and tried to secure them against her chest so she could step down. Their sharp claws scratched her through her T-shirt, and she lost her grip. With terrified yelps, both pups tumbled back into the box.

  She’d have to take them out one at a time. She snatched up the biggest and stepped off the ledge, wincing as his claws dug into her arm. So easy to swim out of the cave. So hard to wade through the swirling water with a struggling puppy in her arms.

  She dragged herself toward the fading light at the cave opening. The water sucked at her legs. The pup was frantic, and its claws hurt. “Please be still. Please, please . . .”

  By the time she reached the mouth of the cave, the scratches on her arm had begun to bleed, and five more pups were still inside. But before she could go back for any of them, she had to find someplace safe to put this one. She stumbled across the rocks toward their fire circle.

  The pit held the ashes of last week’s fire, but the inside was dry, and the stones around the perimeter were high enough to keep the pup from getting out. She set it down, raced to the cave, and rushed back inside. She’d never stayed in there long enough to see how high the tide reached, but the water was still rising. As the cave floor sloped down, she began to swim. Even though it was summer, the water was icy. Her hands touched the wall, and she found her foothold under the ledge. Shivering, she reached into the box for the second pup and winced when a new set of claws scored her skin.

  She managed to get this pup safely to the fire pit, but the water was growing deeper, and she had to struggle to reach the back of the cave for the third one. The flashlight she’d left on the ledge had grown dimmer, but she could see enough to tell that the cardboard box was close to collapsing. She’d never get them all out in time. But she had to.

  She lifted the third pup and stepped off the ledge. A wave caught her, the dog struggled, and she lost her grip. It slipped into the water.

  With a sob, she plunged her arms into the churning salt water and reached frantically around for the small body. She felt something and snatched the pup up.

  The undertow dragged at her as she tried to wade toward the fading light at the mouth of the cave. She was having trouble breathing. The pup had stopped struggling, and she didn’t know if it was dead or alive until she placed it in the fire pit and saw it move.

  Three more. She couldn’t go back in yet. She had to rest. But if she did, the animals would drown.

  The undertow was growing stronger instead of weaker, and the water was rising higher. She lost a sneaker somewhere and kicked off the other. Every breath was a struggle, and by the time she reached the water-sodden box, she’d gone under twice. The second time, she swallowed so much salt water, she was still choking when she climbed up.

  Before she could grab hold of the fourth pup, a wave knocked her back. She found her footing and climbed again, gasping for breath. She made a wild grab and pulled out another pup. The pain from the scratches on her arms and chest, the fire in her lungs, were excruciating. Her legs were giving out, and her muscles screamed for her to stop. A wave pulled her feet out from under her, and she and the pup were swamped, but somehow she managed to hold on. She tried to cough out the water she’d swallowed. The muscles in her arms and legs burned. Somehow she reached the fire pit.

  Two more . . .

  If she’d been thinking clearly, she would have stopped, but she was acting on instinct. Her entire life had led to this moment when her only purpose was to save the pups. She fell on the rocks as she scrambled back to the cave, and a long gash opened on her calf. She staggered inside. An icy wave pushed her down. She struggled to swim.

  Only the faintest glow came from the flashlight on the ledge. The wet cardboard box sagged precariously. Her knee scraped the rock as she pulled herself up.

  Two pups. She couldn’t do this twice. She had to get them both out. She tried to pick them up together but couldn’t make her hands work. Her foot slipped again, and again she fell back in the water. Gasping, she fought her way to the surface, but she was choking and disoriented. She barely
managed to hoist herself up to the ledge again. She reached inside.

  Only one. She could only save one.

  Her fingers closed around wet fur. With a wrenching sob, she took the pup and started to swim only to discover that her legs wouldn’t move. She tried to get them under her so she could stand, but the undertow was too strong. And then, in the dim light coming from outside, she saw the monster wave barreling toward the cave. Rising higher and higher still. Scudding inside, engulfing her, and throwing her against the rocky cave wall. She twisted and tumbled, her arms flailing, knowing she was drowning.

  A hand pulled at her. She fought, struggled. The arms were strong. Insistent. They dragged at her until she felt clean air on her face.

  Theo.

  It wasn’t Theo. It was Jaycie. “Stop fighting!” the girl cried.

  “The dogs . . .” Annie gasped. “There’s another—” She ran out of oxygen.

  Another wave crashed over them. Jaycie’s grip stayed firm. She dragged Annie and the pup against the current and out of the cave.

  When they reached the rocks, Annie collapsed, but Jaycie didn’t. As Annie struggled to sit up, her rescuer rushed back to the cave. It didn’t take her long to return carrying a wet, wriggling puppy.

  Annie was dimly aware of the blood streaming from the gash in her calf, of her scratched arms, and the stains blooming like crimson roses through her T-shirt. She heard the dogs’ yips coming from the fire pit, but the sound brought her no pleasure.

  Jaycie hovered over the pit, the pup she’d rescued still in her arms. Annie slowly absorbed the fact that Jaycie had saved her life, and through her chattering teeth she mustered a ragged “Thank you.”

  Jaycie shrugged. “I guess you should thank my old man for getting drunk. I had to get out.”

  “Annie! Annie, are you down there?”

  It was too dark to see, but Annie had no trouble recognizing Regan’s voice. “She’s here,” Jaycie called up when Annie couldn’t answer.