“Hmm,” said Antoine, peering around the empty space. “He should be here. Let me go see if I can find him.”
Antoine wandered toward the gleaming white-tiled and stainless steel kitchen, and Cat let her eyes follow, choosing to ignore the furious flutter of butterflies in her belly. Then she caught sight of the wood hostess stand shoved up against the far wall. A single word, silver and curling, was embossed on the front.
Caterina
.
She reached out for something—anything—to steady herself in a tilting world. Her fingers snagged a crate labeled “chairs” and she clung to it, leaning into it. Letting it hold her up. Breathing. Eyes closed. Not moving.
Hope boiled inside her but she refused to let it rise to the surface, to believe in it. It had done nothing for her, all these months alone in San Francisco. Hope had started so strong,
and then had died rather spectacularly. Not even the Ofarians’ unfailing inclusion had healed her. Not even meeting her mother, who had been lovely and supportive. No, hope had not served her well. She’d waited for Xavier—and waited, and waited—and he hadn’t come to her.
And then he was there. Behind her. Saying her name.
“Cat.”
The sound of his voice surged over the persistent crash of the waves outside and the pounding of her blood in her ears.
She turned. There he stood, tall as she remembered, beautiful as a statue, his heart in his eyes.
“Oh, God. Xavier.”
He’d cut some of his hair off, but it was still long and shaggy. Still surfer hot. And now he had the sunburn to go with it.
“Did you do this?” She could barely get the words out. “Did you bring me here?”
The restaurant door opened and she glanced over to see Antoine slipping out, grinning. When she turned back to Xavier, he’d lowered his chin but kept those incredible gunmetal eyes on her.
“Is this
your
restaurant?”
“No. It’s the resort’s. But the menu is mine.” He looked to the hostess stand. “And the name.”
“I saw.” Her knees were as shaky as water. “How—”
“Pam. She hooked me up. She knows someone who knows someone who heard about this place opening up.” He shook his head. “She’s been an incredible mentor to me.”
But that meant…“You went back to White Clover Creek?”
“Yes, right after I left Nevada. When I thought you’d be there. And again, when I needed to sell the house a month or two later.”
She gasped. “I
was
there! I went back the second I could, looking for you. But I couldn’t get there for several weeks and by then everything was so messed up. I called and called.”
The molten silver of his eyes started to swirl and darken. She’d missed that so much. So very, very much.
“Please believe me,” she said. “I was there. I went back for you.”
One corner of his mouth twitched. Was that a smile? “I believe you. Pam told me you came to see her. And then there
was this.” He stuffed a hand into his back pocket and pulled out the boarding pass note she’d left in his front door. Heavily creased and faded, he held it out, and there was blinding intensity in his expression.
“You kept this?”
He nodded, reached into his pocket again and pulled out an equally creased note on Griffin’s own letterhead. It read:
Everything Cat said to you in the Plant to make you leave was untrue. Please forgive me. Please forgive us. Please forgive her.
She made a fist, confused and a little angry. “So why didn’t you try to contact me? Or Griffin or Gwen, even? I know I’ve been moved around, but Gwen’s still in the same place. Xavier, I’ve been going out of my mind, thinking you thought I’d shoved you away on purpose.”
He smiled and it might have been the most beautiful thing she’d seen in months. He exhaled deeply. “Come with me.” He backed toward the door leading out to the patio. “I want to show you something.”
She followed him, dazed, into the brilliant sunshine. He turned his face to the cloudless sky for a moment, then looked over his shoulder at her, the smile still there. Her heart gave a little flip, but her mind was racing after him, wondering what was going on. Still trying to believe this whole thing was real, that he was close to her again. That he was
smiling
.
He crossed the patio, his shoes making prints in the sand that had blown onto the bricks. When he hit the beach he just kept going, walking slowly over the sand and down to the water.
She followed, saying, “Xavier, I’m so confused. Why—”
“Let me talk.” He turned to her then, right at the edge of the water, where the highest waves slid up the wet, packed sand. His words were a caress, his eyes like hot steel. “Please.”
And she shut her mouth, because she realized that she’d never seen him so at peace. Gone was the tension from his shoulders, the hard set of his mouth, the drifting focus of his eyes due to discomfort. He’d never spoken with such confidence. He’d never smiled like that, unbidden. He’d never turned his face into the sun. She was entranced.
“You sent me away,” he said, “and I was angry for a long time. But I don’t blame you for doing what you did at the Plant. I figured out you were forced to do it, I just didn’t know why.
It was hard. So, so hard.” He shook his head, the warm breeze tangling in his hair that was now a whiter shade of blond.
“I’m so sorry. You have no idea how sorry.”
“You did what you had to. I was selfish, thinking that you and I were the most important things in that building that day. But I kept thinking, after some of the rage wore off, that maybe it had been easy for you to set me aside, because of the way I treated you.”
It took her a moment to process those words. “The way
you
treated
me
?”
This whole scene was beginning to feel unbearably surreal, like maybe she’d fallen asleep in her hotel room and was dreaming every moment of this.
“Did you know that the first thing that drew me to you, that really made me want to get close to you, was your smile? Your laugh?” He looked off toward the horizon and shoved his hands into his pockets. “And then I figured out what you were, and I took away that joy. I didn’t mean to, but I did. Not with my revelation, but with my reaction. You didn’t think I accepted you—and I didn’t—and you lost your spark.”
He looked back at her, and his eyes burned with an emotion she hadn’t seen since the morning after they’d first slept together. No, it was stronger than that. Ten times stronger.
“I want your spark back,” he said. “I want
you
back.”
Her fingers pressed to her lips. She tried to speak, choked up, tried again. Xavier looked almost deliriously happy to see that.
“Why did you wait so long?” she demanded, her hands dropping. “If you found my note, if you knew all along I was in San Francisco with Griffin, why didn’t you come to me sooner?”
“When I first got back to White Clover Creek and you weren’t there, I left and didn’t look back. I traveled everywhere, all over the country. For two months I just wandered. Then finally one day I called Pam on a whim and she told me you’d come back to White Clover Creek looking for me. She told me how upset you were. And oh, Cat”—he put a hand to his chest, and his palms must have been sweating because when he pulled it away, the faint imprint of his big hand remained over his
heart—“it sucks to say, but that made me believe that everything between us would be all right.”
Frustration started to get the better of her. “But
why
? Why wait so long? Do you have any idea how unhappy I’ve been without you? How horrible it’s been for me imagining you out there, hating me? Thinking I wouldn’t ever be able to tell you the truth about that day in the Plant?”
“Yes, I have a very good idea. Because I bet it’s about as unhappy as I’ve been without you. But I couldn’t go to you yet. Not without doing this.” He started to back toward the water and lifted his voice. “Not without finding a piece of something I could share with you. Not without getting over my own shit. Otherwise we’d just find ourselves back where we were before. I know you’ve been living in San Francisco, so I know you’re neck deep in the Ofarian world. I could have gone there to tell you I accept you, but I’d said that to you before and it didn’t work out. I wanted to prove it to you.” He stretched out his long arms. “This whole place is surrounded by water and I want to see you in it. I want you to be here. I want you to be here, with me.”
She just stood there, dumbfounded, as a strong wave rushed the beach and splashed over her shoes. Xavier kicked off his own shoes, peeled off his wet socks, and went right for the water. He waded into the ocean, the water blackening his jeans and making them suck to his strong thighs. He stopped, turned around. Looked her so deeply in the eyes she could swear he was touching her.
“What are you doing?” she called.
He trailed his hands through the impossibly blue water, then raised his arms and let streams trickle from his fingertips. “I’m showing you me. Standing in the one thing that has scared the shit out of me for so long. I’m showing you me, surrounded by what makes you
you
.”
Holy crap
.
“Xavier, I’m not—”
“I’m telling you,” his voice rang clear and strong, “that I don’t care what you are, whose blood you have. I’m telling you, Caterina, standing here soaked to the skin, that I don’t love you despite you being Ofarian. I love you because of it.”
The very first moment she’d ever touched water—the intimate connection that defied words, the ever-expanding high, the joy, the love—was
nothing
compared to how Xavier made her feel just then.
And then she was splashing into the water toward him. Running over soggy sand and kicking into the warm ocean. She slammed into him and he caught her, wrapping those long, strong arms around her. He kissed her, and a new universe exploded on her tongue, with Xavier the sun, the center. Her arms folded around his neck and suddenly her feet were no longer touching sand. He lifted her, buoyant in the water, and they kissed and kissed and kissed.
When he finally released her, letting her slide back down his body, they were both shivering in the hot Caribbean air.
“Do you really love me?” she whispered against his mouth.
One hand slid around her hip, his fingers teasing that crease between butt and thigh. He smiled against the skin of her neck, then turned his face to kiss her softly once more. “I started that day on the ice, once I got a taste of what we could be. I never stopped.”
By the confident way his hands were smoothing over her back, making dirty promises to her skin and igniting a desire she’d thought dead months ago, he didn’t seem to be looking for a response. He wasn’t that man anymore—the man who’d been drifting unsure and unattached through the world—and it floored her.
So she told him how she felt, just to surprise him. To feel his reaction. “I love you, too.”
He didn’t disappoint. His body sagged against hers. For a brief moment she felt his whole weight, physical and emotional, and it didn’t scare her. Not one teensy bit. She’d take care of him, just as she knew he’d take care of her.
“No one’s ever said that to me,” he whispered.
“And now you can’t claim that anymore.”
He took her face in his hands and slid his mouth over hers again, his tongue wet and delicious. She kissed him until she couldn’t breathe. Her dress was drenched, her shoes ruined, and she couldn’t have cared less.
“There’s something I should probably tell you,” she
murmured against his lips. He just nuzzled her. “I’m no longer Ofarian.”
With a splash he pushed her away, holding her at arm’s length, searching her face. “What? How?”
“
Nelicoda
. Enough to kill the magic.”
“When?”
“The day I sent you away.”
“Oh, Cat…” His grip on her shoulders tightened. “Why?”
She took fistfuls of his wet shirt, pulled him to her again. “For many reasons. Just one of them you. Another being my father. But I’m okay with it. I’m more than okay, actually.”
Because Xavier had declared his love to her while standing in the ocean, still thinking she was his enemy.
He pushed a wet lock of her hair over her shoulder. “What the hell happened?”
“It’s such a long story. Bitter lovers, hot lava, half-naked warriors tossing around fire, Hawaii—”
“Holy shit. Tell me everything. No, wait.” His eyes dropped to her chest. In the water, her dress had pretty much gone transparent, and his hand slid over one breast. “Tell me everything naked. Where’s your room?”
He carried her from the sea and they left trails of dripping water all through the resort. He had her halfway naked before she got her room unlocked—her shoes off, her thong pulled down and over her feet. Inside her suite, he pushed her up against the wall and covered her from the back. His hands moved hot and slow over her body, stripping the straps of her wet dress down her arms. She could feel all of him behind her, through his wet clothes. One hand curled around her front, teasing her nipple, then dipping lower to find the place inside her as wet as the ocean.
“God, I love you.” Her voice was as shaky and unstable as her legs.
He kept touching her, making her rise and rise while he made low sounds of approval.
“I want to be in you,” he said. “But not like this.”
He pulled away and turned her around so they faced one another. As he kissed her, he backed her toward the bed. He peeled off his wet shirt and went to work on his soaked jeans.
From one pocket, he pulled out a condom and dangled it between his fingers with a grin. She marveled at the body she’d never forgotten, at his height and lean build, at the skin that now had sun lines she wanted to trace with her fingers and mouth.
He loomed over her, every part of him hard except for his eyes. With a gentle nudge, he pressed her body into the comforter and then followed her up, settling between her legs but not entering. He stared down at her, the ends of his hair tickling her face.
“I love you,” he whispered. “And I want to do it like this. Looking into your face.”
She smiled, lifted one leg around his hips. “You can do anything you want to me, anytime.”