Free Isle of Hope by Julie Lessman

surgeons.
    She angled a brow, stealing a page from Dr. Doom’s playbook when her body didn’t budge.
    The scowl on his stone face slashed even deeper, revealing a hint of the “gargoyle glare” Lacey had always feared—hard, searing, and more than a little bit scary. And a glare that didn’t faze Tess in the least. If she learned one thing from being best friends with the Carmichaels for almost a quarter of a century, it was that Ben Carmichael was all bluff, not all that different from her son Jack, really, which was one of the reasons Tess had always liked him so much. Serious, moody, yet a depth of passion and integrity that told her he was a bottomless well of emotion roiling beneath a mirror-lake he worked so hard to convey.
    Ah, yes … still waters run deep.
    Her smile tipped. And, turbulently it seemed, given the forbidding glower on his face.
    He slacked a hip, a motion that coincided with a noisy blast of air to reveal his frustration. “Beau will give you a drool bath, Tess, so just give me the stupid package,” he said in a near growl. He flexed impatient fingers while Beau obliged with a mile-long strand of drool that quivered and swayed like Spanish moss in a breeze.
    “Drool I can handle, Ben—I raised three grown children, a bulldog, a basset, and am still wiping up after a hyperactive eight-year-old.” Her chin engaged for battle. “It’s rudeness I can’t abide.”
    He had the grace to blush, a ruddy color that blotched its way up his neck, just shy of a well-defined chin that sported a shadow of beard. His lips thinned as he unlatched the lock. “It’s kept you away till now,” he muttered, jerking the gate ajar enough to slide through, blocking Beau in … and Tess out. A tic flickered in his angular jaw as he reached out again, palm up. “Thank you for the cookies and the bacon. Now, may I please have my package?”
    “Sure.” She secured her hold on the box with a blazing smile. “After we talk.”
    His mouth flat-lined, deader than a corpse in the hospital morgue. “I don’t need this,” he mumbled, jerking the gate open to retreat into his yard before slamming it closed again. “Keep it.” He stormed away in a huff, Beau in his wake.
    Well, that went well. She stood her ground for several moments, pretty sure that any package that required a signature had to be important enough for him to relent. And she was equally certain he expected her to park the package inside the gate or on his front porch as she had in the past.
    Poor deluded man. Did he not know she was a veteran in the trenches when it came to children demanding their own way? Apparently not. Mouth skewed, she shimmied a finger beneath the Tupperware lid to steal a cookie and leaned against a towering pine tree, humming the Jeopardy song with a waggle of her head. “Doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo …”
    A mild curse sizzled the air on the third stanza as he reappeared. “What are you still doing here?”
    She studied him while she chewed, her manner matter-of-fact. “Enjoying one of the best monster cookies I’ve ever made, if I must say so myself.” Popping the remainder into her mouth, she swallowed before bobbling the package in one hand. “The secret is extra peanut butter and extra chocolate chips, you know, and uh … looking for this?”
    He scowled, the hazel eyes as thin as the dead pine needles beneath her feet. “No, I’m looking for the ‘secret’ to get rid of an obnoxious neighbor.”
    “Easy as monster cookies, my friend—just open the gate and let me in.”
    He continued to glare, but the barest crook of his lip told her she had breached his defenses. “What do you want, Tess?” he whispered, almost as if he didn’t really want to know.
    Her look was open and honest, and her voice gentled, suddenly void of all tease. “I need closure, Ben,” she said quietly, “and so do you. And heaven knows we both could use a friend who understands the pain of betrayal.”
    A heavy sigh escaped him