“It’s not funny,” she snapped.Please don’t be nice; it’s easier to watch you leave when you’re being an arse.“Besides, I thought you had a flight to catch. Why are you still here?”
“And how do you suggest I get off this hill?” His tone was still reasonable, his voice a deepbaritone.
“The same way you got on it.”
Every drop of willpower was going into holding on to her irritation with him, into not softening to that voice.
He tipped his head towards the west. “I don’tthink so.”
Her eyes swept the purple-and-green landscape. Where had the isthmus gone? She stood on tiptoe and looked to the right and the left and eventually found the dip in the terrain. Barely twenty yards remained of the narrow gravelly path before it disappeared below the sea.
“You’ve heard the saying ‘tide waits for no man’?” George asked.
A mixture of fear and something else caught her breath. The rising sea had cut off Blue Sage Bay from the rest of the island. Nature had the two of them at its mercy here.
Right on cue, the first drops of rain hither face.
Blue Sage Bay, 8pm
The heavens opened. With a roar and a crash, heavy rain beat down on the island. It pelted the surface of the roiling, frothing sea.
George closed the distance between them and grabbed her arm above the elbow. “Come on!” he shouted in her ear.
Millie hunched over, hugging her bag to her chest as they raced for the only cover—the cottage onthe jetty.
Rain pounded the hillside and slicked the path into a muddy swamp by the time they made the boardwalk. Their feet clattered on the wooden platform and skidded to a stop at the faded blue-green door.
She tried the handle. Locked. George looked around, under an empty clay pot, behind a broken wall lantern, nothing. Water streamed off his face and down his neck under his collar.
He reached above the lintel and found a key, but the rusty lock wouldn’t budge. Finally he gave the stiff door a shove with his shoulder, and they fell through.
“Well, we needn’t have bothered with the door.”She looked around; at least two of the windows were broken and, judging by the dried autumn leaves on the floor, they’d broken years ago. Cold air blew in, and water dripped from a dozen holes in the ceiling to puddle onthe floor.
“Don’t step on anything,” George said, dashing rain from his face with the back of his hand. “There’s glass everywhere. Let me sweep it with something.” He searched around the big empty room.
The cottage must have been a shop once upon a time. There was a kitchen in the corner of the large front room, but a cupboard with doors hanging loose was all that remained. An arched door led to a back room, and Millie, stepping carefully around scattered glass, went to look.
That must’ve been the living quarters. It was gorgeous. Not the dusty windswept emptiness. Her eyes swept over the cosy space. There was an arched alcove near a fireplace. She imagined it cleaned, painted a cerulean blue, sun streaming through the clear windows. The room needed seagrass rugs, wicker chairs and cushions, plants, maybe hand-painted pottery. Her earlier nerves disappeared as her imagination took over. The place was fabulous. It just needed a little TLC, maybe a warm fire in the alcove.
She poked into the empty fireplace and found not only a sealed hessian bag of chopped wood but a fire starter kit. Whoever had owned this cottage long ago had cared for it.
“George?” she called, to be heard above the rain pelting the roof. “Can you do something masculine?”
“What?” He came through carrying a large metal can full of glass shards.
“Light a fire?”
She left him to wrestle with the wood and went into the small bathroom atthe back.
Her clothes were dripping, but the shorts and vest in her tote were perfectly dry and still smelled of sun and salt. She stripped off everything, including her underwear, and squeezed as much water as she could into the bathroom sink.
The taps gurgled and coughed, then produced clean running water. A frame for hanging laundry was suspended over the bath tub. Standing naked in the bathroom, she thought again that someone must have loved this place once upon a time. They had left it ready for the nextoccupant.
Her beach towel still had a little sand, but that couldn’t be helped. At least she could dryher skin.
George, it seemed, was a dab hand with wood and kindling. Millie found a respectable flame dancing in the grate. He’d even managed to wedge the front door shut to stop it banging open in the wind and rain. But he was less accomplished with thecleaning.
Millie tried not to laugh at the sight of him using the flat edge of a log to sweep the floor of debris into a tin can. The wet floor didn’t help, and neither did his clothes, which dripped and left a water trail inthe dust.
