“I wonder what they’ll bring me. I don’t suppose I’ll be inundated with cakes and pies from the single men.”
“Maybe you’ll get cans of baked beans. Or motor oil.”
“Small-town hell. Check.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it hell. More like a really claustrophobic closet in the middle of an island.”
“With eighteen-hundred people in it.”
“Exactly.” And didn’t that sound appealing?
You decided to come here. You wanted a total do-over.
Yeah. Right. He had.
He’d been the one who wanted a change, the one so anxious to get out of Chicago—to escape from the darkness, the blood, the anger and the nonstop violence. It had been nobody’s choice but his own to quit his job of eight years with the Chicago P.D., to leave his upwardly mobile career as a detective.
He’d seen the ad for a Chief of Police of Tiny Island, Nowhere, and jumped on it, not really sure what he wanted or where he was going, just sure that after near misses with at least three bullets and a direct hit with a switchblade, he had to get away for his own sanity. And for his parents’, who’d pleaded with him to find another—safer—career.
Of course, they hadn’t intended for it to be so far away from them. He wasn’t sure if they’d call Wild Boar an improvement, considering he was the first Santori of his generation to actually move out of Illinois. But considering his parents had their first grandbaby to look forward to, courtesy of his brother Leo and his new wife, he supposed he wasn’t on their minds 24/7.
Besides, he couldn’t say if this would be a long-term change or not. He was well into his probationary period, having agreed to stay on the job for a minimum of six months. At the end of that time, either he, or the island’s authorities, could make a change, no harm, no foul. No matter how often he’d wondered if he’d made the biggest mistake of his life, he would keep his word on that. He’d see how he felt at the end of the six months, and then make some decisions for his future.
Mike wanted it to work out. He couldn’t stand the thought of going back to the Chicago P.D. An optimist like him could only stick it out for so long in a job where he couldn’t make a difference before it became agony to go to work every day. Maybe on Wild Boar he wasn’t saving lives, but he made a difference in little ways. In Chicago, the only life he’d managed to save was his own, and that had been a struggle every Goddamn day of the week.
His spirit had been crushed by it. Day after day he’d seen the same brutal crimes, the same utter disregard for other people’s lives and property, the same hopelessness and despair. It had become an agony to go to work every day.
Wild Boar was the complete opposite. Peaceful, tranquil, a place where neighbors helped neighbors and everybody knew every other person on the island.
True, he didn’t love it yet, or even like it that much. He was too much of a Chicagoan for that. He was hopeful, though, that one day he’d wake up and realize he’d become a true islander and want to stick around for a few years. Or twenty.
Sometimes he even pictured himself asking one of those nice, pie-making women out, giving this life a real shot. Maybe he’d get married, do the whole family thing with the picket fence and pot-roast dinners on Sunday. The matchmakers on Wild Boar certainly seemed to want that future for him. And, unlike his last girlfriend, a nice, small-town woman from Wild Boar Island would probably be happy with that kind of life. He couldn’t deny, part of him found that idea very appealing, too.
Of course, another part wanted to jump off this ferry right now and swim back to the mainland.
No. You’re sticking this out.
He just had to keep his head down, do his job, and focus on figuring out what he really wanted before someone else decided for him. He definitely didn’t need complications—like romantic entanglements—to interfere with the decision-making process.
“So the matchmakers are a powerful force, I take it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Listen, Mike, I’m only going to be on the island for a short time and I’m not looking for...”
He assumed she was about to let him down easy and he put a hand up, palm out, heading her off at the rejection. Not that he’d tried to, er, lift himself up. “Say no more. I said the gossipers are pairing us up, not that I wanted them to. You are perfectly safe from me.”
Her spine might have stiffened the tiniest bit. Hard to tell beneath her coat, and he realized he might have insulted her. Damn, he was so not used to this, though he should be. When it came to matchmaking, the entire population of Wild Boar Island had nothing on the Santori family. Whenever he was between relationships, his mother, aunts and cousins were always pushing females in his direction—blond, brunette, divorcées, partying singles—if she had a pulse but not a ring, they sent her his way.