Page 1 of The Cottage on Plum Island
CHAPTER 1
Jennifer Gains’s head throbbed from the five-hour Los Angeles-to-Boston flight. The idea of checking into a hotel for the night crossed her mind, but her aunt needed her. She adjusted the rental car’s mirror and watched Boston fade into the distance.
Jennifer wasn’t due back in Plum Island for another two weeks, as she was supposed to fly from Los Angeles to New York to pack up her life before moving home to Plum Island. But her aunt Betty had fallen off a ladder and broken her leg. Jennifer’s older brother, Liam, had been with her for the past six days while Betty was in the hospital. But Liam was taking his daughter and some of her friends to Disneyland for a week and had left early that morning. Jennifer knew the kids hadbeen excited about going, so she’d moved her timeframe up to help out her aunt so Liam could go.
Luckily, Sam Donovan, a key figure on Plum Island and one of Betty’s oldest friends, had come to her rescue. Sam’s goddaughter, Doctor Daniella Thornton, ran a small clinic on Plum Island. Sam had taken Aunt Betty to Daniella, and she’d gotten Betty transferred to Newbury Port Hospital. That was two days ago, and Aunt Betty was ready to be released. Jennifer was going to fetch her on the way through.
Jennifer was still unclear as to why her aunt would be trying to climb onto the roof. She had forbidden Betty to attempt to clean out the gutters two years ago after Betty’s last fall. She sighed and put her hand over her mouth as she yawned.
The past week in Los Angeles had been a whirlwind of meetings with various celebrities, courtesy of her new friend, Harriet Joyce. Jennifer had found herself at countless functions and parties with her new friend. For a woman who didn’t like to socialize much, Harriet had dragged Jennifer to their fair share of social gatherings.
Although they were select functions, the parties were tasteful garden or yacht parties. They also only stayed at a party for a short time. A smile touched Jennifer’s lips as she thought about Harriet’s mantra:You just need to show your face, mingle for a while, and then discreetly leave, and don’t forget to grab a bottle of champagne on the way out.
Jennifer yawned once again and glanced at the dashboard clock. She’d been traveling for forty minutes. Jennifer didn’t have much farther to go. As she yawned again, Jennifer decided she needed water to refresh and rehydrate. She’d read somewhere that sometimes fatigue meant you could be dehydrated. Jennifer reached into the cup holder in the door to get her bottle of water, and as Jennifer opened the lid, it took a nosedive to the floor.
“Shoot!” Jennifer cursed, glancing down to see where the runaway cap had gone.
She spotted the white lid next to her foot. Jennifer managed to maneuver the lid back to where she could reach down to grab it. She placed the opened water bottle in the dashboard cup holder and bent down to grab the lid. A terrible crunching noise resonated through the vehicle as her fingers closed around the little troublemaker.
“Darn it!” Jennifer exclaimed as the clatter-clatter noise mimicked the sound of a flat tire. “That’s all I need!”
Wondering what she could’ve hit that would give her a flat, she glanced in the mirror. As her eyes were drawn back to the road ahead, they widened as a man appeared in front of her, flapping his arms widely in the air. Instinct kicked in, sending pinprick shockwaveszapping through her nerve endings, and she swerved sharply to avoid him. As she turned the wheel to right the car, water and the other items on the passenger seat flew everywhere.
As she pulled to the side of the road, Jennifer barely heard the clatter-clatter noise still coming from the front of the car as a whooshing noise echoed through her ears. Shaken, Jennifer sat for a few seconds staring ahead, unblinking, with her hands attached to the wheel in a death grip.
Her chest rose and fell as her heart hammered against her ribcage. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the crazy man, who’d been flapping his arms in the middle of the road, banged on her window.
Jennifer turned to see a handsome man with stormy aquamarine eyes glaring at her accusingly.
“You nearly killed me!” The man was so close to the window that his breath misted a spot on the window. “Are you crazy, lady?”
The shock faded and was replaced by instant, boiling rage at being called insane by a man flapping around in the middle of the road.Did he just call me crazy?
“I’mcrazy?“ Jennifer seethed. Her eyes narrowed as she shoved her door open with a force that sent the man stumbling backward. She pushed herself out of the car.
“What the—“ The man stared at her in disbelief, holding his chest where the door had hit it.
His eyes widened as Jennifer advanced on him, enraged. Index finger at the ready, she pointed at him accusingly and hissed, “Who jumps around in the middle of the road on abend?”
“It’s a slight curve, and you can see around it.” The man’s shock eased, and he retaliated, giving as good as he got. “Foryourinformation, I wasn’t in the middle of the road. I was on the curb, which is whereyouwere driving!”
“It’s natural to go slightly into the curb when taking abend!”Jennifer exclaimed, her voice raising slightly. “Why on earth would you be jumping around on the side of the road?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” The man said sarcastically. “Why do people usually try to flag people down from thesideof the road?“ He turned to glance at his blue pickup parked on the grassy verge with its hood up. “I was trying to get help.”
“What century are you from?” Jennifer sneered. “Because in this one, we have cell phones to use that don’t require us to jump out in front of moving vehicles.”
”Ididn’tjump out in front of you,“ the man said through gritted teeth. “And my phone has died. That’s why I was trying to flag downthe only car I’ve seen in an hour. I didn’t expect to nearly get killed by a crazy person swerving all over the road.”
“I swerved to avoid the idiot standing in the middle of the road flapping his arms around like Peter Pan trying to fly!” Jennifer was seething. “And anyone with anyroad sensewould’ve put an emergency triangle out to warn vehicles!”
“I did have one out!” The man snarled, storming to the front of Jennifer’s car, and crouching down.
Alarmed, Jennifer moved to see what he was doing, and her eyes widened as she watched the man untangle something from between the tire and fender of her car. He stood with a mangled piece of orange plastic in his hand and held it up for her to see.
“Here’s my triangle!” he exclaimed. “You killed it!”
Oh! That’s what I drove over!Jennifer realized.Oops!She had to bite her lip not to laugh at the crunched-up triangle and cleared her throat.
