Free Moondance Beach by Susan Donovan Page A

and alive—like he was ready to fight her. Suddenly, she understood. He was mad because he was sick. He couldn’t have any fun, so he didn’t want anyone else to have fun either. He didn’t think good things happened, so he didn’t want anyone else to think so either. It made sense, she decided. If she were sick like that, she would be mad, too.
    “Well? You got something to say?”
    Lena shrugged. It was going to be hard to be friends with a boy like Duncan. He was mean on the outside and scared and lonely on the inside. How could you be a friend to someone who pretended he didn’t want or need a friend?
    “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.
    Lena wandered down the back staircase to theapartment she shared with her mother. It was right off the kitchen, very small, but her mother said they had everything they needed. Lena had her own bedroom. They had their own TV, bathroom, and something her mother called a kitchenette. Lena shut her bedroom door, plopped down on her bed, and rolled onto her stomach. She opened the book and began reading again. This time she would start at the very beginning, so she didn’t miss anything.
    Duncan was wrong about Rutherford and the mermaid, of course. He said those things only because he was angry and had never been to the Azores. Lena knew that someday, when he felt better, Duncan Flynn would be able to believe.
    Maybe she would help him.

Chapter Six
     
    L ena tossed her wallet into her canvas bag and exited the farmers’ market near the public dock. Her mind was on the painting she’d been tinkering with all morning and her sudden desire to make grilled eggplant for dinner, an urge that, unfortunately, required a trip to town. She breathed in the cornucopia of smells to be found on a summer day during high-tourist season—the briny sea and ferryboat diesel fumes mixed with fried clams, boardwalk fries, pizza, and sunshine—and headed toward her car in the public parking lot. Out of nowhere, her body began to buzz with awareness. Lena looked up. And spotted him.
    Duncan towered above most everyone else on Main Street. He walked at a steady pace, with a strong stride. He was about half a block from the water and headed right toward her.
    Lena slipped under the awning of Frankie’s Fish-n-Chips, pulled a bistro chair into the shade, and sat with her back against the restaurant’s cedar-shingled wall. Her heart was beating like crazy! What was she—eleven years old? She took a deep breath and told herself tocalm down and blend in with the dozen or so tourists dining al fresco. She slumped in the chair and covered the lower part of her face with her shopping bag.
    A mother of two glared at Lena, moving her chair to act as a buffer between Lena and her offspring. Good grief! Since when did a woman with a tote full of eggplant look like a threat? Especially in a place where festival-week tourists dressed like zombie pirates just to go out for ice cream.
    From the shadows, Lena watched Duncan approach the very doorway she’d just exited. It gave her chills to think that if she’d dawdled near the squash only two extra minutes, she would have run right into him!
    She sighed, resting her chin on her tote, simply enjoying the sight of him. The first and most important thing she noticed was that he had come a long way in the month he’d been home. Her mother had told her that when Duncan first arrived, he’d had trouble walking. Today he seemed steady and sure of himself, even in a crowd. On closer inspection, Lena did detect a slight limp, but only because she was looking for it.
    It wouldn’t be much longer before he was ready to return to work, and the thought of that squeezed her heart.
    It was embarrassing, but Lena wasn’t just examining his gait. The truth was that she had never known, and would never know, a man as crazy sexy as Duncan Flynn. The only reason she wasn’t gawking in shock was because she’d caught a glimpse of Duncan last year during festival