5. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
Before taking their dessert outside, Kieran went to the cedar chest to gather warm woolen blankets, and sent up a silent prayer that Addy wouldn’t ask him to start a fire.
He and the lovely doctor were—his niece in Toronto would call it “vibing,” and he was eager to explore this new connection, but open flames plus ocean view?
That combination was still a bridge too far.
It had taken him a full year of living in the cottage before he worked up the nerve to light the fireplace.
After years of therapy, he’d finally learned to maneuver around his triggers and sleep through the night—mostly.
Okay, sometimes. But he was so much better than the jittery mess of a man who came to Trappers Cove in search of a fresh start.
Adding a woman to the mix would require rethinking…
well, pretty much everything. The delicate balance of his new life might topple if he attempted an actual relationship.
But with Addy, there was no danger of that, a thought that landed in his gut with a sickening thunk. Even if she gave him a tumble, she was only in town for a week, and she’d be leaving Washington soon. Seems he’d just met “the one who got away.”
But she wasn’t gone yet.
Arms loaded with blankets, he lowered the chest’s lid, but it slipped from his fingers and slammed shut with a loud bang. Behind him, the dog yelped.
“Sorry, buddy. Clumsy of me.” He turned to find Snoot under the dining table, huddled with his mistress, who crouched on her knees and clasped her hands over her nape as if shielding herself from falling debris. The Lab nuzzled her hair and whined.
“Jaysus,” he murmured and dropped the blankets. Lowering himself to the floor, he crawled under the table, where the poor woman hunched, trembling like an aspen leaf.
“Addy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. You’re safe, I promise.”
Slowly, cautiously, she unfolded and raised her head. Her gaze was haunted, her tear-streaked cheeks ashen.
“Hey now, it’s okay.” He gathered her into his arms and held her against his chest until she stopped shaking. Finally, she released a long, trembling breath. “Sorry, Kieran. I’m not usually this jumpy. Sometimes, it just sneaks up on me, you know?”
His poor heart squeezed like a fist. “PTSD, is it?”
Her chuckle rang brittle as glass. “Helluva way for you to find out.”
He stroked her hair, pulled loose from its knot by the sudden scramble for shelter. “Fella in my therapy group reacted the same when the wind blew the door open.”
“I’m being ridiculous,” she muttered into his shoulder.
“Startling like a scared rabbit. The combat soldiers I treated saw so much worse than I ever did. All I had to do was stitch up the aftermath.” Her voice hitched as she fixed him with wide, glassy eyes.
“But there were so many I couldn’t save. ”
“Oh, darling.” He hugged her tight and rested his cheek against her silky hair. She smelled of springtime, green and fresh and full of promise, but this delicate-seeming woman had endured horrors beyond his imagination. And considering his own trauma, that was saying quite a lot.
“Well, I’ll let you in on a secret.” He rocked her slowly, hoping the motion would settle her.
She gave a mighty sniffle. “What’s that?”
“I have the same diagnosis.”
She propped her chin on his chest and drilled him with her reddened, watery eyes. “What happened?”
“Oil rig fire. Lost some dear friends. Family, really.” He tilted his head toward the door.
“Come outside and I’ll tell you my tale.
What do you say?” A change of topic and a bit of soul-baring might soothe her crackling nerves.
Not that he looked forward to prying the lid off that can of snakes, but she’d shared her own traumatic past. Fair’s fair.
And if he was a hundred percent honest with himself, Addy’s brave honesty made her the perfect person to open up to. The time had come to admit the truth he’d fought since quitting his therapy group—going it alone wasn’t working.
“Damn it to hell and back.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Way to make a good impression.”
Chuckling, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I have nothing but high esteem for you, Addy.” He scooted backward, got his feet under him, and extended his hand. “Shall we?”
He loaded a tray with two generous servings of warm apple pie, ceramic mugs, and a thermos of herbal tea, then draped a blanket around Addy’s shoulders and folded the other over his arm.
As they made their way to the bench behind the lighthouse, Addy peered up at the tower and frowned. “Is that feeble light enough to warn ships?”
“Good thing it’s not. Otherwise, we’d be besieged by bats and bugs.
” He set down the tray on a low table and pointed to a bright flash offshore.
“This light is just for show. There’s a series of beacons out there now.
The waters at the mouth of the Columbia are too treacherous for one little lighthouse to be of much help. ”
“Ah.” She settled onto the bench at the bluff’s edge. “All the better for us, I suppose. So many stars!” She tilted her head back to drink it all in, exposing the pale, smooth arc of her throat.
Kieran bit his lower lip hard and fought the almost irresistible urge to kiss the satiny skin she’d bared.
A half-hour later, their pie devoured and their tea mugs empty, they sat side by side, each wrapped in blankets and watching the full moon’s glow sprinkle diamonds across the waves.
When their companionable silence stretched into awkwardness, Kieran cleared his throat. “Right. Well, I promised you my story, if you’re still up for it.”
Addy’s jade eyes glimmered with reflected moonlight. “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me.”
The compassion in her gaze gave him the strength to dive in. “It’s never easy, but sharing with someone who’s experienced something similar, it lightens the load, you know?”
“In that case, I’d be honored to hear it.” Addy extricated her hand from her blanket cocoon and set it between them, facing up. He nestled his palm into her grip, relishing her warmth and steadiness.
“Right. Well, it was my third year of working the rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico. Great crew. Working together in close quarters, twelve-hour shifts, far from the comforts of home, we became like family to each other.”
Though he was as fond of embellishing a story as any Irishman, that was no exaggeration.
Out there on the rig, surrounded by choppy waters, battered by wind and rain and blazing sun, he and his crewmates shared every dream, every regret, every secret.
Sure, they squabbled like brothers sometimes, but he’d trusted them with his very life.
“Wait, back up.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “How did you end up on an oil rig in the Gulf? That’s pretty damn far from Ireland.”
Might as well share that bit of ugliness while he was at it.
“After Mam died, Dad dove head-first into the bottle and never came out. Mean drunk. Took it out on his kids, so each of us fled as soon as we were of age. A cousin in Texas married a roughneck, and he got me the job. The money was good, and the camaraderie healed me—especially Jack Jefferson, our foreman.” His lips stretched in a fond smile.
“I needed a father figure, and he was kind to me. Whipped me into shape, you could say. Wise old fart, he was. Saw through my bluster and bullshit, right to my hurting heart.” He stroked the back of Addy’s hand with his thumb.
“We need more of his sort in the world.”
He fell into silence as flame-licked memories swirled, and once again he sent up a silent prayer that Jack didn’t suffer. Why a great man like Jack was taken while he was spared remained the most baffling mystery of Kieran’s life.
Addy nudged his shoulder with hers. “You want to stop there?”
Truth be told, he’d much rather keep the gory details locked down tight. But his therapist touted the benefits of—what was it called?—Cognitive Processing something or other. Talking it all out to keep it from festering.
Beyond that, Addy was hurting, and he felt a bone-deep need to help her. Call it kismet or cosmic guidance, this new connection vibrated with significance. They were kindred souls learning to live again after trauma.
Who knows, maybe he could even convince her to stick around. Trappers Cove was the most welcoming place he’d ever lived, and the town’s hospital, really just a clinic, was chronically short of medical staff. He damn sure wouldn’t mind seeing Addy on the other end of a stethoscope.
He refilled their mugs from the thermos.
“I’ll keep it short, because a night like this is too beautiful to spoil with ugly details.
You see—” He shifted in his seat, searching for the right words.
No use boring her with technicalities. “To drill into the sea floor, you’ve got to maintain a careful balance between gas pushing up and mud pushing down.
When too much gas rises, we call it a ‘kick,’ and on the third of May six years ago, the earth gave us a mighty kick. ”
Before that day, he’d thought of Mother Nature as mostly benevolent, sometimes cranky, but on that bright morning, he’d learned what a vengeful bitch she could be.
“Natural gas is heavier than air, you see. It pooled around the derrick floor, and something ignited it. Probably static electricity. We’ll never know for sure because the evidence burned and melted.”
Addy inhaled sharply and tightened her grip. He raised her hand to his chest and pressed her palm over his heart.
“I should’ve been there at the detonation point.
It was my turn to monitor the controls, but something—a weird hunch that crawled over my skin like ants—sent me back to my bunk belowdecks, convinced I’d forgotten something.
When I came back topside, I heard an evil hiss that grew louder and louder.
Now, there are lots of noises on an offshore rig—machinery, wind, crashing surf, shouting voices, but I’d never heard anything like this. ”
Even now, six years later, that ominous sizzle haunted his dreams, the sound of a malevolent sea serpent bent on devouring the victims it missed on that hellish day.
“The first blast flung me like a rag doll. There were sirens and screams, ‘To the lifeboats. This is not a drill.’ I just—” His voice hitched, and as much as he hated breaking down in front of Addy, he’d sunk too deep in the memory to stop now.
He shifted his focus to the dark horizon and away from her glistening, sympathetic eyes.
“My mind blanked out most of it. That’s a mercy.
But I remember the deck swaying under my feet, the flames shooting up like dragon’s breath.
I remember my heart beating so hard I feared it’d burst right through my chest.” He scraped a hand down his sweat-dotted face.
“It’s a miracle most of us escaped with our lives. ”
Addy cupped his cheek, her eyes glistening with sympathy. “How many didn’t make it?”
“Eleven.” Every face, every name was seared in his memory. And he would have been one of them, if not for that hunch.
A low growl came from the wind-twisted cypress where Snoot had been gnawing a rawhide chew. Hackles bristling, growling deep in his throat, he stalked to the bluff’s edge.
“What’s up, buddy?” Addy started toward her pet, but Kieran yanked her back and clamped his arm tight around her waist.
“She’s here.”