Carolina Dreaming: A Dare Island Novel by Virginia Kantra Page B

will give it to him?”
    “She did before.”
    Marta’s dark brows drew together. “They knew each other before?”
    “No, damn it. She hooked up with some loser before.”
    And he hadn’t stopped her.
    The guilt of that would be with him always. His baby girl still hadn’t recovered.
    Hank had known that Travis was trouble. He’d warned her. But all his warning had done was gloss the bastard with the shine of forbidden fruit.
    Maybe Jane would have listened to a mother’s advice. But Hank couldn’t be her mother. And when it counted, he hadn’t been the father she deserved, either. A father’s job was to protect.
    Old, impotent fury stirred. He should have killed the son of a bitch when he had the chance.
    The chief’s door opened and Jack came out. “If you two are done bickering like an old married couple, I could use those reports. I’m going out to check on Dora Abrams.”
    Dora Abrams was eighty-four years old and called in for everything from suspicious noises to a stopped-up toilet.
    “I’ll take it,” Hank said. “Her house is on my way anyway. Aidan will be home from school in forty minutes.”
    Marta smiled at him. “You’re a good grandfather.”
    He didn’t deserve her praise. “Boys are easy.”
    Her smile broadened. “You say that because you have only raised a girl. Wait until he gets older.”
    *   *   *
     
    “T HAT ’ S FORTY - NINE DOLLARS a night,” said the clerk at the Fishermen’s Motel, middle-aged and wiry, sporting a paunch and a walrus mustache. He looked past Gabe toward the parking lot. “That your dog?”
    Gabe glanced over his shoulder. The mutt sat panting gently in the sunshine on the other side of the glass door. “Is that a problem?”
    “I’ll need a ten-dollar damage deposit a day. Nonrefundable,” he added before Gabe could speak.
    “He’s not my dog,” Gabe said.
    “Whatever, buddy. Fifty-nine dollars. Unless you wantme to call the cops to get him. I don’t allow strays on my property.”
    He paid. It was easier than explaining to Luke or that hard-ass Clark what he was doing with a dog.
    There was a rack of fly-specked postcards standing on the counter—grass waving on the dunes, the fishing pier—and he bought one of those, too. As long as he was here, he might as well follow routine. “You got a washing machine in the building?”
    “End of the hall. You’ll need quarters.”
    “You make change?”
    “Sure.”
    Gabe stopped by the laundry room on his way down the hall, tossing a load of clothes into a washer, using leftover laundry soap from the shelf above. He grabbed a half-empty bottle of detergent to take to his room. The Fishermen’s Motel didn’t seem like the kind of place that provided complimentary toiletries.
    The dog sniffed the edges of the motel room door before slinking inside.
    Gabe dumped his seabag on the quilted bedspread and looked around at the paneled walls and dirty blue carpet, the faded poster of the harbor over the TV.
    He grinned. Compared to some of the places he had slept on deployment, and some of the places he had slept since, the Fishermen’s Motel was the fucking Baghdad royal palace.
    He turned on the hot water in the tiny bathroom, regarding his reflection in the spotted mirror over the sink.
    He wasn’t meeting Luke’s wife and daughter looking like a homeless drifter. Too late for a haircut. But he could shave.
    When he got in the shower, the dog, who had been padding around investigating the carpet smells, stuck its nose past the curtain and whined.
    “Oh, hell, no,” Gabe said.
    The mutt dropped its head, staring up at him with those hopeful cartoon eyes, its tail waving slowly back and forth.
    Gabe sighed. He hadn’t caught fleas last night. That didn’t mean he’d get lucky two nights in a row. Anyway, the beast was filthy. He couldn’t keep it in his motel room in its current condition, nonrefundable damage deposit or not.
    “Fine.” He pushed back the shower curtain. “But