Free You Don't Want To Know by Lisa Jackson Page B

out of the bay the night before. “You sure?”
    â€œYeah, really. Despite what you might think or may have heard, I don’t need a keeper.”
    â€œI didn’t say—”
    â€œI know.” She held up a hand to ward off any further arguments. “Thanks.”
    He nodded, then started toward the waterfront. “Your loss.”
    â€œIf you say so,” she said, throwing his words back at him, and the sound of his laughter tumbled back at her. Watching him walk down the hill toward the marina, she noted the breadth of his shoulders pulling at the seams of his jacket and the way the faded denim of his jeans fell over buttocks that moved easily.
    Heat climbed up the back of her neck, and though she told herself it didn’t hurt anyone to “check out” another man, her gaze slid to the slip where Wyatt had docked the family cabin cruiser.
    â€œGet over yourself,” she whispered under her breath, then waited, sipping her cooling coffee until she saw Dern climb into a boat and negotiate a ride. As he settled into a seat, he glanced over his shoulder and up the hill, his eyes finding her before the captain started the taxi’s engine and maneuvered his boat out of the marina.
    She wondered about him. How he’d found the job on the island.
    Nothing sinister in looking for a job.
    So why did she feel she’d met him before? That Austin Dern had his own set of secrets? That he wasn’t who he said he was?
    Because you’re a suspicious bitch.
    She smiled a little, then as the first raindrops fell, turned up the hood of her jacket and hurried along the side streets. Head bent against the wind, she decided to cut through the park where an elderly woman was herding two dogs on separate leashes. Half-grown whippets were pulling this way and that, nosing the wet grass and charging after a gray squirrel that had the nerve to scamper from one oak tree to the next.
    â€œHarold! Maude! Come along!” the woman said, pulling hard on the leashes, while the thin dogs strained to give chase. They lunged and stood on their back legs as the woman tried in vain to haul them toward a little blue Subaru parked near the curb. “It’s raining!” she reminded her pups, though neither Harold nor Maude seemed to notice. “Oh, for goodness’ sake. How about a treat? Come on now!”
    Her dogs didn’t so much as flick an ear in her direction. Ava skirted the woman’s unruly charges and wound up at the far edge of the park, where a wrought-iron gate was open to the street. She was about to jaywalk when she stopped dead in her tracks.
    Her husband was holding open the door to a coffee shop and looking toward the interior. A second later, Dr. McPherson emerged. Wearing boots, a slim skirt, and sleek leather jacket, the psychologist opened an umbrella against the rain, then turned and with Wyatt’s hand on her elbow, walked away from the park, heading toward the bay.
    Ava stood frozen to the spot.
    Her heart drummed in her chest as she watched the couple leave. Wyatt’s head bent low under the umbrella, and his fingers never left the crook of Evelyn McPherson’s elbow. It was almost as if he were shepherding her along the wet sidewalk, as if he had some proprietary claim to his wife’s doctor.
    What did that mean? She barely noticed the steady drip of the rain or a teenager who whipped by her, sending up spray from a puddle.
    It’s nothing, she told herself. Nothing.
    Yet she was left with the same cold feeling of suspicion that had been with her since leaving the hospital, that everyone she knew wasn’t as he or she pretended to be. Not even her own husband.
    Fortunately, Wyatt had been so wrapped up in Dr. McPherson that he hadn’t noticed his bedraggled wife standing in the rain. Which was just as well. It was far better if no one had any idea about what she was doing on the mainland.
    They already thought she was nuts as it was.
    If