The Way Back

Charm and personality. Two things she used to have plenty of. Surely she could drudge them up again.

One thing was for sure, she needed to get over this crazy starstruck feeling. Seeing him in person had been like fire bolt to her system. It had taken her ten seconds to remember her name and why she’d come. He might be halfway between forty and fifty, but, damn, he still looked good.

She’d met semi-famous people when she’d been the host of Wake Up Philadelphia. There had been the mayor of the city, the governor of the state, sports figures, local actors and performers who had made good. She’d interviewed Kevin Bacon for Pete’s sake. Once you knew him, you were basically connected to everyone else in Hollywood. It was a known fact.

Jamison Hunter wasn’t any of those people, though. He was more. At least to her. Growing up without her father during her teenage years, it wasn’t hard to understand how she had formed such an attachment to a media figure—especially one who had seemed so perfect. A girl had to look for heroes where she could find them.

Of course, she hadn’t been some silly twelve-year-old when Colonel Jamison Hunter first captured the world’s attention. No, she’d been twenty-three, engaged and starting her career. She’d had the world in her hands and had believed her father’s abandonment hadn’t made a single dent in her perspective or her life choices. Maybe she wasn’t the most romantic person, and wasn’t overly sentimental. However, she had committed herself to a relationship. That was an achievement. Something to be proud of.

She really hadn’t had a reason to fall into a crush with an image on the TV screen. Something about him had captivated her.

Air Force Colonel. Astronaut. American hero.

It was a story everyone knew. As embedded into the American psyche as Apollo 13, the Challenger tragedy and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. Colonel Hunter had commanded a space-shuttle mission to help with repairs on the international space station. Once there, the crew of the station informed him the situation was more critical than first realized. In fact, they feared an imminent explosion would not only take out the station but the shuttle docked to it, as well.

In an unprecedented move originally not sanctioned by NASA, Hunter did the unthinkable with an unplanned, untethered, space walk. He set out to make the repairs, knowing if he didn’t find and fix the problem, the lives of his crew and those on the station would be lost.

Gabby never understood all the specifics of what he’d done. Reporters explained the science, the possible complications and ultimately the risk he took, but none of it mattered to her. All she cared about was after he’d taken that brave action and was safely on American soil and she watched him being interviewed time and time again, she felt safe.

The world was a safer place because Jamison Hunter was in it.

Gabby wasn’t alone in her hero worship of him. It seemed everyone had all come together to place him on a pedestal. It was one of the reasons he’d fallen so hard and so far when the scandal broke.

A sunny day in Florida. A motel not too far from Cape Canaveral. A picture of Jamison Hunter standing in the doorway of the room with a woman wearing only a sheet. Next to them stood his wife with a look of sheer horror on her face. His deception had crushed the world. It had devastated Gabby. How could a man capable of such honorable and heroic actions cheat on his wife? And if he could cheat on his beautiful, accomplished wife, what chance did an average woman have of preventing much less heroic men from doing the same? Gabby couldn’t stop asking herself that question and becoming deeply suspicious of her own fiancé as a result. In retrospect that suspicion was a good thing…and warranted.

Finding her fiancé in bed with her half-sister might not have happened if she hadn’t started looking for signs.

Gabby owed Jamison Hunter for saving her from a marriage with a cheating scumbag—something for which she was eternally grateful. But she also blamed Jamison for her inability to make any other relationship in the past ten years since Brad work.

“Stop it, Gabby.”

The sound of her voice startled her. She needed the reminder though. She wasn’t here to contemplate her life and dwell on her failures. She was moving on with her life. Fresh start, et cetera.

The drive into what the residents of Hawk Island considered town was short. The car had finally heated up, but still Gabby shuddered against the chill. It was late, she hadn’t eaten since lunch and her stomach was grumbling so loudly she didn’t think she could wait until the B and B’s breakfast.

Of course she should. She had more than enough stores of fat on her body to hold her through the night. But the rational side of her brain reminded her starving wasn’t a healthy method of weight loss. She needed to fuel her body at regular intervals to keep her metabolism up.

There weren’t many options, though. The town consisted of four or five mom-and-pop shops—currently closed for the night—ranging from a small grocery, liquor and hardware stores to an antique toy place and an exclusive clothing boutique. Obviously those last two were targeted to the tourists who were starting to discover the charm of an island situated off the coast of Maine.

No fast food. No twenty-four-hour grocery stores. Everything was locked up and dark.

She spied one place that still had the lights on. Pulling up, Gabby peered through the window, which was painted with the name Adel’s. She could see booths lined up along the window and a counter with stools suggesting this was a diner. Food. According to the sign that dangled from the doorknob she had seven minutes to get some.

Hopping out of her car and sprinting as fast as she could, Gabby reached for the door and heard the satisfying ring of a bell overhead.

“Oy, you’ve got to be kidding.” The tall girl behind the counter stopped wiping the surface in front of her and scowled.

“The sign says you’re still open.”

“For only seven more minutes.”

At first the Gabby didn’t understand the woman, then she realized what had sounded like meenoots, was actually the word minutes. “I’ll be quick.”

“You’ll make a mess.”

“No, I swear I’ll order only a salad.”

The girl huffed and rolled her eyes. “Sit.”

Gabby didn’t have to be told twice. She plopped her butt on a round stool and tried to appear super hungry so the server would understand that she wouldn’t have come in here unless she was really desperate.

“Adel, there is someone here who wants food.”

An older woman pushed her way through a swinging door, carrying a tub of what appeared to be clean coffee cups.

“Oh, crap.”

Gabby shifted. “I’m sure you all don’t mean it but I’m starting to feel a little unwelcome.”

Adel plunked down the tub with a rattle. “No, sign says we’re open until nine, so I guess we’re going to have to feed you. Coffee?”

“Please.” She saw the young girl pour what was no doubt multiple-hours-old coffee dregs into a cup, but Gabby didn’t mind. It was piping hot.

She shivered as the heat transferred from the cream-colored ceramic to her hands. It had been spring in New York when she left this morning. She was sure of it. She took a tentative sip. It was as foul as she expected but it warmed her throat all the way down.

“What do you want?”

This was easy. She’d already committed herself to a salad so there would be no reason to look at the menu and tempt herself with any of the other offerings. Willpower, Gabby. Willpower.

“House salad, oil and vinegar dressing is fine.” Then she caught herself. “On the side. I need the dressing on the side.”

“Oy.” The girl rolled her eyes. “One of those. On the side this, on the side that. If you want it all on the side to put together yourself, go buy groceries and do it at home.”

Said the girl with the long legs, tiny torso and high cheekbones. She was gorgeous—model thin with long, straight brown hair that looked as though it might actually touch her bottom.

Gabby naturally hated her on sight.

“Zhanna, give it a break.” Adel finished stacking the cups under the counter and stared at Gabby for a moment. “You look hungry. You sure a salad is going to be enough to hold you?”

“Absolutely.” Not. But this is what happened when you let yourself get careless. When you enjoyed food instead of counting calories. When you didn’t accept you were thirty-three and not twenty-three and couldn’t shed five pounds in a weekend. When your metabolism worked against you, but no one let on there was a problem until it ended up costing you your job.

A woman had to pay the price.

Gabby felt her price might have been slightly steeper than any another woman’s, but those were the breaks. Especially in television.

“A salad is fine,” she said.

“Right.” Adel exited through the swinging door and Gabby was left with the decidedly unfriendly Zhanna. If she was staying on the island for a while, it would probably help to make an effort to get to know the locals.

“Zhanna, that’s a beautiful name. Where are you from?”

Zhanna stared at Gabby as though trying to discover her true intention in asking. She must have concluded it was no more than mild curiosity because she answered, “Russia.”

The way the R rolled off her tongue was dramatic and Gabby couldn’t help but be a little impressed. She was just chubby Gabby from Philadelphia. While this girl was the exotic Zhanna from Russia. That comparison made Gabby wish she had more of an accent. “How did you find yourself here?”

“How did you?”

Not exactly a conversationalist, this Zhanna. “I took the ferry.”

“Me, too.”

Small talk over. Okay. Clearly, this local wasn’t someone Gabby was going to win over. After a few minutes of silence, the kitchen door swung open again. Adel set the large plate of green stuff in front of her.

Gabby wished she could be more excited about it, but veggies had never really done it for her. Still, she needed to fill her stomach, so she started eating. Halfway through she was actually starting to feel better. Then Adel came out of the kitchen carrying a slice of pie.

Hot apple pie if the smell and tendrils of steam emerging from it were any indicators. To compound the evil temptation she scooped up some vanilla bean ice cream—the easy-to-detect brown bean flecks suggested it might be homemade—and plopped it on top.

“Figured you ate the salad, you might as well have a little pie.”

Don’t do it, Gabby told herself. Do not eat that pie. Being forced to eat the pastries, the gourmet cupcakes and all those delightful things the local chefs who were featured on the show’s kitchen segments had ended up killing her career.

Gabby didn’t think she wanted to ever return to television to expose herself to that scrutiny again, but she couldn’t shake the feeling she had been responsible for destroying her life and not the show’s executives.

“It’s not going to kill you,” Adel said as she simultaneously slid the pie in front of Gabby while she cleared the salad plate. “It’s pie. Not poison.”

“You don’t understand,” Gabby said wearily. “I’m trying to change my life.”

“Really?” Zhanna asked, leaning on the counter. “Your life? Why do you need the changing of it?”

Oh, sure, Zhanna couldn’t talk about making her way from Russia to Maine, but Gabby was supposed to come clean with all of her secrets. The odd thing was, late at night, alone in a café with a girl who rolled her R’s and a woman who looked as though she knew what a lifetime of hard work meant, Gabby found herself wanting to confess.

“I got fired from a morning talk show because I put on too much weight and I’m getting too old.”

“Bastards,” Adel hissed. “A woman’s always got to be young, thin and beautiful. Is that it?”

“For men,” Zhanna said. “Yes. Go on.”

“I realized I had nothing in my life but the job. Which meant without it I had nothing. I was nothing.”

“Tragic.” Zhanna’s face was a study of sympathy. “Russians, we understand tragedy.”

“I needed a job, so I took this entry-level position at a publishing company, but I know it’s not where I want to be. I feel like an old lady among kids.”

“You must find a new path for yourself.”

“Yes,” Gabby declared. “That’s what I want to do. I thought this job would help me buy time, but now I think it’s given me something even better to do. I think I want to write.”

Adel leaned on the counter next to Zhanna. “Writing. Interesting. What are you going to write—murder mysteries, thrillers, romance?”

“I love the romance books,” Zhanna said. “Especially the American ones where nobody dies at the end.”

“No, I’m not a fiction writer,” Gabby said. “I was sent here to get Jamison Hunter’s story and damn it, I’m not only going to get his story, I’m going to tell it.”

At the mention of his name both women straightened. Zhanna scowled and Adel frowned. Gabby was trying to figure out what she said to garner this reaction when Zhanna grabbed the plate of pie and dumped it under the counter.

“On second thought, you don’t need the pie.”

CHAPTER TWO

GABBY FOLLOWED THE scent of coffee downstairs the next morning. She could only hope Adel and Zhanna hadn’t made it a point to stop by the B and B to rat her out to the owners. Their reaction to the news she wanted to write a book about Jamison was startling, and took her completely off guard. She understood wanting to protect a friend’s privacy, but their instant hostility had been extreme. Even after explaining she wasn’t some seedy journalist from a trash magazine, or a person looking to earn a quick buck by writing a lurid tell-all, the two women had still been cold. They’d accepted payment for the food, but had refused to take any tip.

Gabby had left the café with her head down and her enthusiasm for a new start somewhat diminished.

She’d left without a taste of that gorgeous pie, too.

Based on their conversation last night when she’d checked in, the inn’s owner Susan had seemed like a nice middle-aged woman with a gift for making people feel welcome. Gabby didn’t peg her as the type to withhold essentials such as coffee and toast simply because she didn’t like what Gabby was planning to do.

Unfortunately there really was no way of knowing. If Zhanna and Adel were any indication, Gabby probably wasn’t going to be the most welcome person on the island.

But this was a new day and she’d woken herself up with a pep talk.

She’d been fired. Nothing remained to go back to so she needed to make this new job work. If she could accomplish what no editor had accomplished to date, maybe she could leapfrog over a few people in the company and have an above entry-level position. If she actually convinced Jamison to tell his story to her while she wrote it, maybe the publishing company would line up more biographies for her. That was a role she could get behind.

Jamison’s biography, as written by her, would hit bestseller lists. She would be back on the talk-show circuit, only this time as the interviewee. A sneaky thought drifted through her conscience, pointing out this crazy need to have more instead of being happy with what she had, but she squashed it before it fully formed.

Gabby stopped at the bottom of the stairs and poked her head into the dining room. There was one table for all the guests and on it sat a pitcher of juice and what appeared to be a pot of coffee. With not a little awkwardness, she took the seat over the single place setting laid out and hoped it was for her. Then the door on the opposite wall—that presumably lead to the kitchen—opened and Susan entered wearing a crisp white apron which made her look like a young Julia Child. She set a basket of assorted breads next to Gabby and smiled.

“Good morning.”

Gabby felt a little more confident now. The diner women had not been in contact. “Good morning.”

“I hope you don’t mind eating alone, but you’re my only guest right now.”

Actually, Gabby preferred it. She’d been living on her own since she was eighteen—except for that brief stint with Brad—and she’d always felt mornings were sacred time. Silence was needed to get your head straight for the events of the day. Silence was also needed until the coffee kicked in.

“Not a problem.”

“Now there is juice and coffee…”

Gabby didn’t wait for the rest. She turned over the cup in front of her and reached for the pot. The smell of it as it poured out was life changing.

“Here are some pastries. But what can I make you? I can do eggs and bacon. Or, if you don’t mind waiting a bit, I can do homemade French toast.”

Gabby tried to pretend her mouth wasn’t watering over the French toast. Strength. Willpower. “Just wheat toast if you have it. Dry.”

Susan’s expression fell. “Dry wheat toast? That’s it?”

“I’m watching my figure.” Gabby patted what she considered to be an only slightly larger than average hip.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Your figure is fine.” Susan sighed. “But I suppose if it’s all you want, then that’s easy enough. You know, this isn’t a normal time of year for vacationers. Not that I’ve ever had that many. Even in the summer the water is too cold to swim in, which puts us low on most people’s lists of vacation spots. But in the fall folks like to come for the foliage. You’re darn near my first guest in the month of April.”

“Do you run this whole place on your own?”

“Yep. Just me. My husband—sorry ex-husband—used to be around to help, but it wasn’t his life. He said, ‘Susan, I’m not living my life.’ I said, ‘George, then you go do what you need to do.’”

Gabby nodded as she sipped her coffee. Her separation from Brad had been slightly more acrimonious with a great deal more foul words.

Even before Susan spoke next, Gabby could sense her purpose. “Back to you, April is somewhat of a strange time to take a trip north.”

“Actually, I’m here working.”

“Oh. That makes more sense. Working on what, dear?”

“A novel,” she lied. “I’m a writer. Fiction. Pure fiction. I want to set my story on an island, so I came here to do some research.”

Susan clapped her hands. “Oh, isn’t that fascinating. A writer. Have I heard of you?”

Gabby wondered how much trouble she would get into if she lied and said her pen name was Nora Roberts. Best not to go too far out on the limb. “No, I’m just starting.”

“Well, good luck to you. You’re welcome to stay with me as long as you like. I’ve got no reservations for at least the next six weeks, which means you’re going to be spoiled, spoiled, spoiled. I hope you don’t mind.”

Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled. That would be a first for Gabby. One of the downsides of living alone was you had to do everything for yourself. She never minded it really, but she also had no problem trying on spoiled to see how it fit.

Susan left Gabby to her coffee and thoughts. She’d gone to sleep last night thinking about what her next step should be. Obviously, Jamison wasn’t open to the idea of his story being told. And as obviously, some of the locals were hostile, too. That meant she was going to have a hard time getting people to talk about him. It would be a lot easier to write this book with his buy-in.

A story like the one she imagined McKay wanted would have to be big in scope. It would need the color and depth of the perceptions from the locals who he’d lived among for the past eight years to help shape it. That wasn’t going to happen, not unless she got him to trust her.

The next step was clear then. She needed to get to know Jamison Hunter—not as an editor who had an agenda, but as a person he might consider working with. She needed to let him see she didn’t intend to sensationalize him or vilify him. Gabby wasn’t interested in salaciousness for the sake of selling books. Of course, McKay might have a different view—scandal sold. But she imagined anyone interested in the story of Jamison Hunter was looking for more than a few sordid facts about his infidelity.

People wanted the truth. They knew what he did. What they wanted to know was why. Why a man of seemingly high honor and definite bravery could become a lying, cheating scumbag. It was the contradiction that made him so fascinating. That’s what she wanted to write about. That’s what she wanted to read about.

She needed to go to his house. At the very least she wanted to get a sense of how he lived and why he chose to live here. Not that it was all so far-fetched. Hawk Island was a perfect backdrop for a recluse. Accessible from the coast only by ferry, it was almost its own country separated from the U.S. by a couple of miles of cold north Atlantic water.

Where else would a man hunted by the world go to hide? Anyone not a local was easily identifiable. And if he’d done something to win over the locals here, which he’d obviously done with Adel and Zhanna, they could take extreme measures to make life difficult for anyone trying to pursue him.

Like denying people pie.

Adel and Zhanna. What had he done to win them over? Given his reputation it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that he’d seduced them. Adel was close to fifty if she was a day, but she was lean and strong and probably closer to his age than Zhanna.

But Zhanna was young and beautiful and exotic. The perfect target for a man on the prowl. Had he had his way with both? And if they were that loyal, did it mean he was that good?

Gabby shook the image from her head. Sex—especially Jamison having sex—was the last thing she needed in her head, combining with all the stuff about him in there. She’d had a crush on him, she’d been hurt by him. She’d even cried tears over him. Hell, she’d had a whole relationship with the man and she’d never met him until last night.

Bottom line was none of it mattered. Her crush, her anger, her wounds…none of it. She was over him, over the infatuation. She needed to be if she going to be objective in helping him tell his story.

Gabby Haines was a professional and she would act like one. Even if it meant working with and getting to know a man who was—she had to face it—a liar.

Gabby hated liars. She’d had enough of them in her life. From the father who always said he would come to see her after the divorce, but didn’t, to her fiancé who said he loved her, but didn’t, to her half sister who said she hadn’t meant to fall in love with Gabby’s fiancé, but did.

When Susan brought the toast out it was exactly as ordered—dry and consequently difficult to eat. Or it might have been thinking about Kim and Brad that left a bad taste in Gabby’s mouth. Fortunately, the quality of the coffee almost made up for it. Either way she had enough fuel to start her day.

Brand-new start plus good coffee equals a great day, every time.

She had parked the rental car on the street in front of the B and B, but that didn’t seem to bother anyone. There were no posted signs about places and times to park. Definitely not like Manhattan where there was a plethora of signs telling people where they couldn’t park—among other things—and people choosing to disobey those signs.

Looking at the practical beige Ford rental, Gabby couldn’t help but remember the powder blue Beemer with gray leather interior she’d bought herself as her thirtieth birthday present. It had been a declaration of her success and she loved driving it. But once she’d decided to move to New York City, it was clear she didn’t need a car. So, her heart breaking one more time, she’d sold it and used the money to help pay the rent on her apartment in Brooklyn until she found a job.

Besides, after losing her job, she’d felt like a fraud in the car. It was a reflection of everything she had been, but no longer was. Its perfection ridiculed her whenever she got behind the wheel.

Look everyone. See how far Gabby Haines has fallen.

Not allowing herself to descend into doom and gloom mode, she focused on the task at hand.