Survival Instinct. Rachelle McCalla
trying to ignore the way the close contact of his fingertips made her thoughts skitter like so many leaves in the wind. She tried not to think about how close behind her he stood, though she knew if she so much as leaned back she’d be in his arms.
“All right.” Scott’s voice broke the spell as he nodded his head with an air of certainty and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Now where are we going to find a seaworthy craft?”
Abby headed toward the door, retreating from the feelings she’d felt. “There are several outbuildings we can check. Who knows what might have been stashed out here over the years?” She fell back on words and action to keep herself from even considering what the emotions stirring in her heart might mean.
Abby locked the door behind them and returned the key to its hiding place before starting off toward the nearest outbuilding, a large shed not far from the house.
They couldn’t find a key to the shed. Abby even ran back to the keeper’s quarters and tried the key from under the rock, but the hole in the lock was too small. Finally she put her hands on her hips and stared at the building, trying to remember what had been inside when she’d worked on the island six years before. The insides of so many sheds and outbuildings ran together in her mind, and she couldn’t sort it out. Somewhere, though, she had a vague recollection of having seen, here and there, aging rowboats, old fiberglass dinghies and all manner of historical marine artifacts that had been kept around for educational displays for the tourists who visited the islands in the summer months.
“We could try that little window,” Scott suggested, pointing to the small wooden-shuttered opening above the main door.
Abby looked at Scott’s broad shoulders and then looked back at the window. “It’s ten feet in the air, and I don’t think you’ll fit through.”
“But you can. Come on, I’ll hoist you up.”
A riot of protests filled Abby’s mind, most of them involving the width of her hips, but Scott looked determined. Abby sighed. They had wasted plenty of time already looking for a key, and she felt desperation rising inside her. She had less than thirty-six hours to get the ring back to Trevor. Every minute counted.
“Come on.” Scott crouched low, his back braced against the door. “Stand on my shoulders.”
“My hiking boots are going to hurt you,” Abby warned him as she moved forward and pulled off her purse, tossing it to the ground before placing a tentative hand on his ball cap.
“I’ll be fine. I’m made of pretty tough stuff,” Scott assured her.
She hadn’t been too worried about how tough he was—she’d been more embarrassed by the idea of such close contact with the man she’d always mooned after. Still, she realized his suggestion was a shrewd one, and relented. Stepping up on his knees, Abby somehow got both of her feet steady on Scott’s shoulders. He held tight to her ankles as he stood, and then she cautiously straightened, crawling upward with her hands against the side of the building until she stood on eye level with the window. Grabbing tight to the sill with one hand, she lifted the old wooden lever-style latch and pulled the window open.
“Good news,” she called down to Scott. “There’s no glass.”
“Great. Can you make it in?”
Though his words sounded steady, Abby was aware of how much pressure her shoes must be exerting on his shoulders. She tried to hurry.
“I think so.” She dipped her head and shoulders inside, but most of her body still hung outside. “Mind if I step on your head?”
“Do what you’ve got to do.”
Abby put most of her weight on her arms and pulled herself up, stepping on Scott’s cap mostly for balance. She felt his hands change position on her ankles as he lifted her higher, supporting much of her weight with the sheer strength of his arms. She scrambled to pull herself through the window and was glad to find rafters within reach of the window sill so she wouldn’t be forced to fall the entire ten feet to the floor.
Her hips wedged in the window, but she barely had time to consider the embarrassment of getting stuck there before she shifted sideways and pulled herself through. Then it was simply a matter of dropping to the floor and letting her eyes adjust to the darkness.
She tried the light switch. It was dead. Probably on the same line as the house, she reasoned. With the window open above her, enough overcast sunlight spilled in for her to identify a large lawn tractor, a workshop area, rusting old snow blower, sawhorses and gas cans.
“Are you all right in there?” Scott called.
“Yes,” she answered back. Much as she wished she could tell him she’d found something, there was nothing in the shed that looked like it would float. As she stood there, she realized all the items were for the maintenance of the area around the keeper’s quarters. Boats were more likely to be housed closer to the lake. Thanking God for at least providing her with a way out of the shed, she turned the dead bolt and stepped back out into the light.
Scott did what he could to help Abby with her quick search of the outbuildings, but his enthusiasm for the search began to wane quickly. As Abby scrambled around, peeking in windows when she couldn’t find a key, he felt time and again the contrasting emotions of hope and disappointment as, in building after building, they came up with nothing.
“I don’t want to sound pessimistic,” he offered after Abby shut the door on the last building in the area of the keeper’s quarters, “but wouldn’t someone who’d gone to all the trouble of cutting off our electricity and cutting the line on our radio probably check to make sure they hadn’t left us a boat?”
“I suppose so. But they may have overlooked something. This is still a pretty big island,” Abby told him as they headed back down the road toward the dock. They’d both found decent walking sticks over the course of their searching, and with the extra limbs, were able to move a little faster down the slippery trail.
Scott was glad Abby was keeping a positive attitude. He only wished his mother could be so resilient. He’d hoped they’d at least be able to find a boat so she wouldn’t be utterly crushed by the news they were unable to get in touch with the Coast Guard.
Apparently Abby was thinking along the same lines. “You know,” she offered after they’d gone a couple hundred yards, “we’ll have to tell your mother that we might not get rescued today. I know she’s not going to like hearing it, but she’ll probably take the news a lot better if we tell her while it’s still daylight instead of waiting until it’s cold and dark.”
“You’re right,” Scott agreed morosely. He sighed, unsure how much of his mother’s story Abby needed to hear in order to understand how to deal with his mom. “It’s not that she’s a flighty person by nature. For most of my life I considered her to be pretty hardy, actually. But four years ago, my dad went out hunting and didn’t come back by suppertime. Mom knew something must be wrong, and she called me. I was living in Saint Paul, a good four-hour drive from home, so I couldn’t be there. She went out, alone, and found him on some land my family owns. He was dead.”
“Heart attack?” Abby asked, her voice concerned.
Scott shook his head. “Hunting accident.” He paused on the trail.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Abby came to a stop beside him, her face knit with empathy.
“His death was really hard for Mom to take. She’s had a difficult time ever since.”
“Financially?” Abby’s voice sounded sympathetic.
“No.” Scott thought her question seemed odd, especially given how many diamonds his mother had been wearing that morning. She didn’t look like a woman down on her luck, by his estimation. “Why would you think that?”
Abby blushed bright red. “I’m sorry. That’s horrible of me to ask. I just thought, well, since she and Mitch didn’t seem to get along so