“Have you spoken much with him? Are you two dear friends now?”

I press my lips together and shrug. I have to summon all my courage to lie compellingly to Anna. “We are friends, I would say. It was good to have him with me. He was always kind and understanding, just as Freddy said.”

“I’m so glad of that. I suppose you heard about the dinner tomorrow?”

“Come again?”

“They’re doing a dinner for you—for the two of you. Celebratory. It’s at the Burger Joint.” Anna laughs, and I realize I’m scowling.

“Don’t you want to tell the story one more time?” She grins. “About the Atkins bars and how you dug fair Declan out?”

“I didn’t dig him out.”

She shrugs. “That’s what he told Freddy. We all know you can be overmodest. At times,” she teases.

“Do you think

I ought to go?”

Anna chortles as she uncovers the plate she brought. “You’ll have to at least stop in, you goose. You can sit with Freddy and me. Holly’s working on the setup, and you can guess where she’s seating herself.”

I groan, and Anna makes a sympathetic face. “I know that’s got to gnaw at you a bit. It’s understandable.”

I nod once. I’ve confided in Anna about my feelings regarding Declan’s father and my mother. The strangeness of knowing Mum was telling me Prince Declan stories just before he and his father arrived. And she’d been writing letters to Charles Carnegie. It’s quite difficult to name the feeling it brings me. I suppose it’s one of…fate. Making me think of the oddness of it. If they’d survived the outing on the boat, would I have grown up in America?

I can’t put my thoughts into words, so I nod again. “I can’t imagine losing Holly or Dot,” I say softly.

“I can’t imagine being swept away.” She smiles, a bit dreamy, and I think of the seething ocean—not of Declan—as I say, “I wouldn’t want to be.”

I make Anna’s tea, and we eat too much friendship bread. She heads home a bit after nine, and I tuck in early, falling right away into a dream in which I’m locked inside the clinic, pacing the wide room alone as my hair grows down past my backside and turns gray. Doctor grabs my backside, his hand squeezing.

Sometime after midnight, noise breaks through the dreaming. I open my eyes to find Baby curled up on the rug beside the bed. As I sink back into dreamland, I hear it once more: the sound of someone knocking. A peek out the door reveals an empty stoop.

Twenty-Four

Declan

“So how was she?”

I stop with my foot on the shovel and look across the trench at Mark. He’s got his cap off, re-tying the red bandana he wears as a sweatband underneath.

“How was who?” I get another scoop of dirt and toss it over my shoulder.

“Oh, you know…the doctor’s lady.”

I frown. “Finley?”

He nods, fitting his cap back over the bandana. He goes back to digging on his side. I look up and down the trench. With the island’s only mechanical digger broken, we’ve spread out, one person digging every four or five feet on opposite sides of the trench.

“What’re you getting at?” I ask quietly, because I don’t want to draw more eyes and ears.

He gives a chuckle, as if he knows my uncouth implication. “I’m asking how is she. Did she give an ordinary sort of appearance? I only ask because the missus and I are seldom ill, and so I’ve never heard her speak.”

I hold my breath a second, trying not to let frustration cross my face. Sometimes it’s hard to understand the thick Tristanian accent, and I’ve got a searing headache. “I’m not sure I get it, man.”

“Finley—she’s the mute.”

“What?”

Tags: Ella James Sinful Secrets Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net