Summer Secrets - Barbara Freethy [86]
Maybe that was enough. Maybe she could stop planning, worrying, analyzing for five seconds and just let it all be. It had been working pretty well so far, so well she didn't want it to end. She didn't really care if she had ice cream or not; she just wanted more time with Tyler. Now that he'd agreed to drop the article, she could relax even more. The fact that he'd made that agreement niggled a bit at her brain. It didn't seem entirely logical or probable that a man who had such determined purpose a few days earlier could so quickly change his mind, but she was reluctant to bring the subject back up.
They walked down the street, stopping at the corner as the light in front of the ferry terminal turned red.
"Doesn't it bother you that you can only get off this island at certain times of the day?" Tyler asked.
"Not at all."
"I live ten minutes from an airport that can get me to any country in the world about as fast as I can buy a ticket and board a plane."
"And you find that comforting?"
"I guess I do," he admitted. "I used to feel trapped as a kid. I couldn't get away from my father, couldn't get back to my mother. I spent a lot of time looking desperately at exit signs. Old habits die hard."
"You really had a terrible childhood, didn't you?" She couldn't imagine what he'd gone through.
"Not completely. My father didn't abuse me. He just wanted me with him in the most selfish way possible." He cleared his throat. "But we don't need to talk about him. Hey, isn't that Caroline?"
She followed his gaze to where the ferry was loading. Her sister was with Mike Stanaway. Kate tensed, not liking the way Mike had his hand on Caroline's arm. "What is she doing with him?" Worry gripped her as she watched them board the ferry. "I don't like the look of that. We need to stop her."
"What?"
Kate began walking rapidly down the street, breaking into a run when she realized that the ferry had finished loading and would no doubt pull away any second. Sure enough, it was fifteen feet into the harbor by the time she arrived at the dock. "Damn."
Tyler caught up with her a second later. "What were you going to do, Kate? Pull yourself off the boat? Isn't she a grown woman? Aren't you being a little overprotective?"
She turned to face him. "Caroline has dark purple bruises all over her arm. I saw them earlier today. She said she banged her arm, but I think she was lying. Rumor has it that Mike's wife left him because of abuse. I'm afraid he might have hurt Caroline."
"Did you ask her about it?"
"She said he didn't do it."
"Maybe you should believe her."
She ignored that. He didn't know Caroline as well as she did. He didn't know how many lies Caroline had told in the past.
She pulled out cell phone and called Caroline, hoping she had her phone with her.
"Hello," Caroline said a moment later.
"It's Kate. I just saw you get on the ferry with Mike."
"Are you spying on me?"
Kate ignored the outrage in her sister's voice. "Where are you going?"
"None of your business, Kate. I'm hanging up now."
"When will you be back?"
"When I feel like it."
"But -- " Kate's words were met with a click. "She hung up on me."
"I can't say I'm surprised. Are you going to call her back?"
"She'll probably just hang up again. If I tell Caroline not to jump, the first thing she wants to do is jump. I should know that by now." Kate stared after the rapidly disappearing ferry. "I just hope she'll be all right."
"I saw them together yesterday," Tyler said. "They were arguing, but he backed off when I approached them."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because Caroline wasn't upset, Kate. She wasn't scared. She didn't act like she was in trouble."
"Maybe she didn't want you to know." She