Her pride kept her rooted to the bed. He might have been honest, but that didn’t make him right. She hadn’t chosen cleaning a house over being with him.

She hadn’t.

Then what the hell had she been doing?

No sooner had he left than her body ignited. She grabbed fistfuls of the sheet and tugged. Her blood boiled. Her heart went out of rhythm. Kate’s vision wavered, and for a moment, she thought she was going to throw up.

She lay back and closed her eyes, concentrating on making the flames go away.

Please, dear God, leave me. I can’t take it!

She tried to picture being on the ice planet Hoth, the chill winds and snow dousing the blaze in her body, Luke Skywalker doing his best to bring down her body temperature. The image didn’t last long. It was easily replaced with a vision of crackling flames.

When she was at the brink and about to cry out (for relief or merciful death, she wasn’t sure), the cottage went sideways and she nearly blacked out.

The pain had crested and, just like flipping a switch, was gone.

Kate buried her head in Mooshy and sobbed, wanting Andrew desperately and not wanting him just the same.

Chapter Sixteen

She’d refused to eat the sandwich earlier. Now that she was up once again in the dead of night, she was hungry. Kate didn’t remember taking the plastic wrap off the sandwich. The bread was hard as a rock.

Every muscle in her body was killing her. Looking over at the kitchen, she thought she might as well have been gazing at the shores of Ireland. There was no way she could will her bones to get out of the bed and into the kitchen to make something to eat. Her foray into housekeeping had done a number on her, as it always did. So why was she still surprised?

Stomach grumbling, she settled for chewing on her nail.

It was her first night alone in bed since they’d come to Maine.

Andrew had told her a week ago that there was a small island, not much more than a pile of rocks and dirt with one lone, skinny tree jutting from the random clod of earth, smack in the middle of the lake. It couldn’t be seen from the cottage. He’d spotted it on one of his runs.

Kate felt like she was on that island, removed, alone, and uneasy.

“But-But?”

Even the dog was nowhere to be seen.

Probably in the bedroom with Andrew. I’ll bet he bribed him with treats to get him away from me.

She made a fist, digging her nails into her palm.

You know he didn’t do that. He wasn’t even mad before. He just looked, I don’t know, sad.