CHAPTER THREE
What am I gonna do?” Gen demanded yet again.
Still in her bare feet, her T-shirt molded to her and her damp hair itching the back of her neck, she stood in her den with the radio mike in her hand. It was dead. Not that she should have been surprised. The radio was a relic, and she’d just never seen fit to get a new one.
But this wasn’t the time for it to break down. She had to get that man out of her house. Off her island. She had to get in touch with the real world before she got back and found out it wasn’t there anymore. Had never been there. Suddenly, as the wind began to whine again and the rain clattered against the tin roof, Gen wondered if she wasn’t trapped somehow, lost in time, where the Civil War still raged outside her door and her daughter hadn’t been born yet. Might never be born.
That was ridiculous. All she had to do was get back to the mainland, and she’d find that everything would be all right. Back in place, with this man just an incredible coincidence. A scientist who had suffered from the storm while studying the coastal islands. A neighbor from across the channel, blown off course and shipwrecked. Something.
The problem was that until the storm eased and her patient woke up reasonably coherent, she wasn’t going anywhere. She only had a moped to get around the island on, and a little power boat over by the research station at the other end of the island to get back to the mainland.
Modern amenities had come to the island with the research facility—phone lines and electricity and one partially paved road up by the salt marshes. But it was still an island, no matter that it was separated from the mainland by no more than marshes and estuaries. Gen was stuck right where she was until the weather eased a little.
She hoped her patient survived.
She hoped she survived her patient.
Gen took another quick look into the living room, where usually she only saw wicker furniture and a motley accumulation of seascapes on the walls. Now those were joined by a man lying on her floor, a man who set off bells in Gen she hadn’t even known she had. A man who had single-handedly upended her universe more than all the deaths and desertions she’d suffered in her life.
He’d called her by name. By name, for God’s sake, when she would have gladly sworn in court that she’d never set eyes on him before in her life. In this life, anyway.
But that was absurd.
What was she going to do?
“Gen...”
She moved without thinking.
His voice was so deep, like the growl of the surf against rocks. His face was so weary, as if he’d struggled for a long time against something. Gen wanted to ease the lines of strain that marred his forehead. She wanted to pull him back into her arms.
She crouched down next to him, preparing to demand answers.
“I can’t... I...”
She squeezed her eyes shut a moment, held her breath. Knew she didn’t have a whole lot to lose, and sought her answers.
“Rafe?”
His eyelids fluttered again. His hands clutched at something she couldn’t see.
“I’m sorry, girl. I’m sorry.”
Gen didn’t think she could be more afraid. “Rafe, it’s me. Wake up.”
She even nudged him, which probably wasn’t therapeutic in anybody’s book. But she wasn’t a nurse, no matter what she seemed to suddenly remember. She was a businesswoman, and TLC wasn’t one of the degrees she’d earned.
“Rafe, please,” she begged, easing down to a sitting position for what looked like a long wait. “Talk to me.”
He surprised her yet again. With no more than a sigh, he opened his eyes and looked at her.
And Gen felt her own breath catch. Snagged deep in her chest by a storm of emotions she’d thought she only imagined being so powerful. Joy, desire, relief. Love.
It couldn’t be. She didn’t even know him.
And yet she felt as if she’d loved him for the longest time.
“Rafe?” Her voice this time was small, uncertain. Tears burned the back of her throat.
