Authors: Virginia Kantra
“I don’t understand the difference.”
“Because in your world, if you do the right thing, you get rewarded. Follow the rules, and everything will be fine. My world, the real world, isn’t like that. I can’t tell you everything’s going to be all right because I don’t know.”
Hurt bloomed in her chest. Swam in her eyes. But when she blinked, it wasn’t impatience she saw in his face. It wasn’t irritation that ripped that ragged edge in his voice. It was doubt.
Sympathy moved in her, for the boy he had been, for the man he had become, struggling to steer an honorable course without compass or bearings.
“I don’t need guarantees,” she said gently. “I’ll settle for good intentions.”
The first car rumbled off the ferry.
Iestyn smiled wryly and stood, carrying the plastic bags that held all their worldly possessions. “Paving the road to Hell?”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Babe, you’re living proof of that. We both are. We’ve both made what we thought were the right choices for the right reasons. You turn back the ship, or you tie yourself to the fucking mast. You try to save something, a dog, a kid, a sailor you found hanging in the rigging. You put yourself out there, take a stand. And you fail.” His voice rang with quiet intensity. “You Fall.”
Beneath the sunlit surface, his eyes were deep and bitter as the sea.
Her heart wrenched with pity. This was what he believed.
This was why he was drifting. Lost. Not because he was selkie, but because he had lost faith in himself and his choices. Even his loss of memory was another layer of defense between him and what he perceived as his failure.
“So we’re not perfect,” she said, preceding him to the stairs. “We don’t have perfect knowledge. Sometimes we make bad decisions. And maybe sometimes things happen as part of a larger plan, and we just can’t see it yet.”
“What happened to you as a child wasn’t part of any plan.”
Oddly, the fury pulsing in his voice made her own pain and anger easier to accept. But then, she’d had years of therapy that made it possible to say, “What happened to me as a child wasn’t my fault. Or God’s will . I don’t blame myself or Him for the actions of one sick, evil man.” She drew a steadying breath as they emerged into the sunlight of the lower deck. “But sooner or later, my choices led me to you. This may not be the reward I was looking for at the time I expected it. But I think I was always meant to find you somehow. To bring you back where you belong.”
* * *
“Lara.” Iestyn stopped, at a loss for words. Her confidence shook him. Her strength awed him.
“I don’t have your faith,” he said quietly. “But I admire the hell out of you.”
Somehow she had taken her Fall from grace and the trauma of her childhood to forge herself into the woman who stood before him, brave, clear-eyed, and strong.
He didn’t deserve her.
“Whatever brought us together—choice or chance or God—I’m grateful.” He rested his hand at the small of her back to steer her across the ramp to the dock. “But I don’t know if I belong here. I don’t know where I belong.”
She looked back at him, her smile misty around the edges.
“That’s why we came, isn’t it? To find out.”
She made it sound so simple. His gut churned. He scanned beyond her to the ragged line of rooftops climbing above the parking strip. World’s End wasn’t Sanctuary. No seals played in the harbor, no castle stood upon the hill , no shimmer of magic hung like mist around the rocks.
But despite his words to Lara a moment ago, something tightened his chest and his throat. Longing. Anticipation.
A woman swung down from her landscaping truck—Cora’s Floras was painted on the side—to sign for a pallet of mulch being offloaded from the ferry. Iestyn caught a flash of blond braid beneath her cap and stiffened like Madagh spotting a hare.
Lara glanced over quickly. “Is that her? Lucy Hunter?”
He took a second, longer look. Sure, there was a resemblance, but . . . This woman’s face was too full, her eyes too green. “No.”
“I thought I recognized her,” Lara said. “From your dream.”
She was a Seeker, Iestyn remembered. “You didn’t pick up some kind of vibe?”
Regretfully, she shook her head. “Only with you. Usually I need physical contact to identify the presence of another elemental.”
His mind stumbled on that
only with you
before he grinned.
“That’s your plan? Walk around the island groping people?”
“I don’t have a plan,” Lara admitted ruefully. “I was sort of hoping that when we finally got here, it would be like the return of the prodigal son.”
He raised an eyebrow. “‘Father, I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight’?”
Her laughter bubbled, surprising them both. “I was thinking more along the lines of killing the fatted calf.”
“Hungry, are you?”
Her cheeks turned pink. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
She was brushing him off. Just the way he’d brushed aside her concerns on the boat.
He hadn’t given a thought to where they would eat tonight.
Where they would sleep.
For years, he hadn’t bothered to plan ahead. Hadn’t needed to think about anyone but himself. The fact that he was now, that he wanted to now, was something else he’d have to think about. Later.
“I’ll take you out to eat as soon as we find a place to stay,” he promised.
She glanced around the emptying wharf. “Shouldn’t we stick around here? In case someone shows up with the welcome selkies banner?”
“Berth first. Search later.”
“It’s the middle of the season,” Lara said. “It might be hard to find a vacancy.”
He regarded the picture postcard view, the parked cars and storefronts staggering up the hill, the snapping flags and spilling window boxes. She had a point. He didn’t know much about vacation rentals. But he knew rich people.
Yacht people. There would be a room somewhere, for a price.
He nodded at the big white elephant overlooking the harbor. “So we’ll start at the top.”
* * *
The Island Inn was undergoing renovations, red-haired Kate Begley told them when she finally answered the bell at the front desk.
She was a younger woman, wiry and energetic. Judging from the paint in her hair and under her nails, she was doing at least some of those renovations herself.
“I’d hoped to have more of the guest rooms open by now. But we do have a king suite available on the third floor,” she said, regarding them over the top of her little black glasses. “Private bath, great ocean view.”
“How much?” Iestyn asked.
Her gaze flickered to the plastic Wal-Mart bags in his hand.
“The suite lists for three fifty-five a night. But I can let it go for three hundred.”
He winced inwardly, doing the mental calculations. Beside him Lara had the fine-boned, fragile appearance of an angel in a stained glass window, her skin pale and transparent, every shadow showing. After all he’d put her through, she deserved the best the inn could offer. The best he had to offer.
He still had most of his roll from his last job. He could swing at least a couple of nights.
“One fifty cash in advance,” Lara said.
They both regarded her with varying degrees of surprise and respect.
“We came in on the four o’clock ferry,” Lara said, suddenly looking a lot less unworldly. “It’s highly unlikely you’re going to see any more late drop-ins tonight. You can either leave the room empty or take our money.”
“Two hundred,” Kate Begley said. “That includes breakfast in the bar in the morning. Our dining room’s closed during renovations. But I can set you up with coffee, bagels, fruit, stuff like that.”
Lara looked at Iestyn.
“That’d be great,” he said. “What about dinner?”
“Antonia’s on Main Street is very good. A lot of the locals eat there.”
Iestyn peeled a couple big bills off his roll. “You’re not a local?”
Kate’s face set. “I am for now.”
It was an opening. He dived right through. “It must be hard moving into a place like this where everybody knows everybody else.”
“I don’t plan on staying.” She wiped her hands, fished a key from a cubby. “My parents bought this place ten years ago. I’m just trying to turn enough of a profit to sell.”
Iestyn ran his tongue over his teeth. “So, I guess you don’t know Lucy Hunter.”
“Hunter . . . I know Caleb Hunter. The chief of police,”
Kate explained in response to Iestyn’s lifted brow. “And the chef at Antonia’s is a Hunter, too. His sister-in-law, I think. Regina.”
Memories scuttled like crabs on the sea bottom, stirring him up.
Caleb Hunter.
Regina Hunter. “His sister-in-law, I think.”
Which meant . . . The connections pinched at Iestyn with razor-sharp claws. Which meant . . .
“Dylan’s wife.” He forced the words from his thick tongue.
Kate Begley shrugged, pushing two keys across the counter. “Maybe. I haven’t met her husband.”
Iestyn’s head pounded. He couldn’t breathe.
Lara slipped her hand into his arm. He looked down at her, abruptly recalled to the present.
“Thanks.” He pocketed the keys. “Antonia’s, you said?”
Kate’s glasses glinted as she nodded. “Order the swordfish. Or the lobster fra diavolo.”
The stair carpet was covered in plaster dust. An empty utility bucket sat out on the second floor landing. But their room was large and clean, with a thick white comforter on the bed and thin white sheers at the windows framing a spectacular view of the harbor.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Lara asked,
“What was that about?”
Iestyn crossed the window and stood looking out at the sea.
“It appears we have a lead.”
“The police chief. Caleb Hunter?”
“Yes.”
“He’s selkie?”
“No.” Iestyn jammed his hands in his pockets. “But his brother Dylan is.”
“How does that work?”
“Their father was human. Their mother was the sea witch Atargatis. Halfbloods are more often human than not. It is one of the reasons the merfolk are dying out.”
The sun was slipping in the sky, staining the water rose and gold.
“I thought the children of the sea were immortal,” she said.
He turned to face her. “As long as we stay in the sea. Or live protected by the magic of Sanctuary. But we pay for that immortality with a low birth rate.”
A pause while she digested that. “So Dylan Hunter is selkie.”
“A selkie warden, one of the sea lord’s elite.”
“You know him?”
“I did.”
He remembered the day Dylan’s mother brought him to the prince’s court on Sanctuary, a sneering, black-eyed boy with a chip on his shoulder and a shield around him even Griff’s patient teaching could not dent. Dylan had been younger than Iestyn then. Dylan’s determination to grow up, the time he spent away from the magic of Sanctuary, had quickly aged him beyond the others.
Still, it had been a shock, Iestyn recalled, when he learned the sullen youth had been made a warden on the human island of World’s End.
He could practically hear the
click, snap, pop
, as Lara’s busy mind made the connections. “So if Caleb is Dylan’s brother, then their sister is . . .”
“Lucy Hunter.”
Her smile broke like dawn. “But that’s wonderful! You’re almost there. We’re almost done.”
“We’re not done.”
She nodded seriously. “Of course not. We still have to find him. Her. But . . .”
“We’re not done,” he repeated. His heart pumped, panicked for the first time by the end of a journey. “I’m not finished with you yet.”
When she stared at him, wide-eyed, he crossed the room to her and pulled her into his arms.
He was desperate for her. Her taste. Her smell. The wide, soft curve of her lower lip. The fine, shining core of her, like tempered steel.
He pressed his lips to her shoulder and felt her tremble, pressed a kiss to her throat and heard her sigh. The quiet exhalation stirred his soul like wind on the water, moving him to the depths.
“Lara.” He stopped, at a loss for words.
“I’m not asking you for promises
,” she’d said.
But he wanted to make them.
“Ssh.” Her fingers winnowed his hair, brushed his jaw, her touch as light as air. “Kiss me.”
How could he think when she looked at him from under those dark winged brows, her big eyes shining with trust and need? How could he speak?
So he kissed her, hoping that would be enough, trying to tell her without words all the longing that bloomed in his heart, soft, tender kisses to her temple, her cheek, her mouth.
When her fingers found the edge of his shirt and the hot skin underneath, he stepped back and ripped it over his head.
Her eyes widened and then narrowed. She reached for the burn that still throbbed below the hollow of his throat.
But he didn’t need her healing now. He needed her with him, in this room, in this moment, all of her with him. Catching her hand, he pulled her to him, coaxing her shirt up, inch by inch.
Her skin had the thick, creamy texture of lilies. Her scent swam in his head. He pushed her jeans down, frowning at the faint shadows that marched along her hip. Bruises.
He’d bruised her with his hands, his fingertips.
Sinking to his knees, he kissed each careless mark and then the curve of her belly and then the silky dark thatch between her thighs. Her legs trembled. Her hips arched in silent invitation. He pushed her back to lie on the bed, licking into her, sipping from her skin, drinking her heady response. She moved with him and against him, against his mouth and hands, her body fluid and restless as water, until everything that was in him gathered like a flood, and he surged from the floor, rising over her, crawling to get to her, dying to be inside her.
He dug a condom from his discarded jeans—
almost the
last one, maybe the last time
, the finality of it beat in his blood—and covered himself with shaking hands.
She lay back, watching him, as he nudged her thighs apart and found his place between them. Everything he was, everything inside him, he gave to her, pleasure flowing through him, tenderness brimming inside him, and it almost didn’t matter where they went from here, what they did, who they found. If this was love, he was fathoms deep and drowning.
When he sank into her, he was already home.
* * *
She wanted to take him inside her, hold him inside her, absorb him through her skin. Every kiss, every stroke, pulled her deeper into something sacred, something holy, a sacrament of flesh and love.
She loved him.
But she would not force her words on him and risk his puzzled disbelief. He did not want her guarantees.
And so she gave him herself instead, her body, loving him with everything in her, everything she’d held inside, pouring herself into their union, feeling his pleasure rise and build and crest. Until the wave that took him swamped them both, carrying her away, leaving her heart stranded on an unfamiliar shore.
She hugged him tightly while their ragged breathing smoothed, while their rapid heartbeats slowed, while their bodies cooled, sealed together by sweat and sex.
A finger of sunset stole through the pretty white curtains and lay across the bed.
She could never go home again.
* * *
“Have you thought what you’re going to say to him?” Lara asked as they climbed the hill toward the center of town, a two-block stretch of parked cars, telephone poles, and gray-shingled houses.
A few family groups wandered the dusk, peering in the darkened windows of picturesque storefronts. Island Realty.
Lighthouse Gift Shop. An amorphous group of teenagers blocking the sidewalk in front of Wiley’s Market shuffled to let them by. One of the boys muttered a comment as they passed. One of the girls laughed. With a pang, Lara thought of Bria.
It was all very ordinary, she supposed. It was like nothing she knew. She had never been part of a family. She had never been like those teens, chafing against the restrictions of a parent’s love, experimenting with freedom within safe distance of home. Maybe she was going through some kind of delayed adolescence.
She stole a glance at Iestyn. He looked at home here, with his sun-streaked hair and easy, waterman’s stride.
There was more to her flight from Rockhaven than teenage rebellion. More to her feelings for him than a dizzy infatuation with sex.
He could belong here. Her heart swelled with hope and loss. He could make a life here.
For a moment, she let herself imagine it, Iestyn, working on the water during the day, coming home at night to a gray shingled house and a couple of children with golden eyes . . .
He slanted a look down at her. “Say to who?”
She pulled her thoughts back together, embarrassed to be caught dreaming over a future that didn’t belong to her.
“Dylan Hunter. Have you planned what to say?”
“Besides hello?”
“I’m sure you have questions, but I think it’s important to explain about the amnesia because . . .” She caught him grinning at her and broke off. “What? It’s good to be prepared.”
“It is if you know what you’re preparing for. We don’t.”
He caught her hand, making her jolt with surprise and pleasure, adjusting his steps to hers. Anyone looking at them would think they were any couple strolling to dinner.
But they weren’t.
“Relax,” he murmured. “We’ll make it up as we go along.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she confessed.
He stroked her knuckles with his thumb, tiny circles she felt in the pit of her stomach. “You’re doing fine so far.”
She had a feeling he wasn’t just talking about their search for Lucy Hunter.
The red awning of Antonia’s Ristorante stretched over the sidewalk, glowing from the lights outside and in. The bell over the door jangled as Iestyn opened it for Lara to precede him inside.
Red vinyl booths and crowded four-top tables, a scarred wooden floor, and an open pass-through window. Voices hummed. Dishes clattered. Smells floated on the air, a rich broth of garlic, onions, clams.
Lara inhaled appreciatively and heard Iestyn suck in his breath behind her.
She turned at once, her nerves jumping, but he only opened the door wider, stepping back to let an older couple leave.
Inside, a few tables were clearing. A black-haired busboy who couldn’t be more than fifteen stopped with a tray full of dishes.
His face lit with pleasure when he saw them. “Zack! Man, why didn’t you tell me you were . . .” His dark eyes flickered. His face flushed. “Sorry. I thought you were somebody else.”
“Who?” Lara asked.
The boy jerked one shoulder in a shrug. Apology. Dismissal. “Sit anywhere,” he said. “Hailey will take your order.”
They found a booth near the kitchen, with a view of the chalkboard menu.
“Zack?” Lara repeated quietly when they were seated.
Iestyn rubbed at the front of his shirt, over the burn.
“Who knows?”
“You don’t recognize the name?”
He shook his head.
Their waitress—young, blond, with a face full of freckles—arrived at their table. “What’ll you have?”
“Do you have bottled water?” Lara asked.
“This isn’t the Galaxy. You can drink out of a glass here.” Iestyn smiled. “You can even order wine.”
Wine was a bad idea. Wine belonged to celebrations and candlelit dinners, the whole ordinary dating world she’d never really been part of. But just for tonight, she was tempted to go with the flow, to pretend they were out to dinner to enjoy each other’s company, to imagine that they could have a future together.
I’m not finished with you yet.
She swallowed. “Maybe . . . a glass of white?”
“A bottle of the pinot grigio,” Iestyn said. “A bottle of Sam Adams. And the swordfish for me.”
“I hear the lobster fra diavolo is good,” Lara said to the waitress.
“Well, yeah, it is, but . . .”
“I’m not making it,” a raspy female voice shouted through the pass. “You can have the steamed lobster or the clam linguini.”
Lara bit her lip, wavering between offense and amusement.
“She’ll have the lobster,” Iestyn said.
“One swordfish, one lobster.” A strong-featured Italian woman, with one of those faces that looked the same at forty and at sixty, appeared briefly in the pass, her mouth a hard red slash, her dark eyes snapping in satisfaction. “Coming up.”
“Cole slaw, fries, or baked potato with that?” their waitress asked.
“Cole slaw, I think.”
When their waitress was gone with their order, Lara met Iestyn’s eyes, resisting the urge to giggle.
“If that was Dylan Hunter’s wife,” he said, “more has changed than I thought.”
“Don’t mind Nonna.” The busboy appeared with a basket of bread and a bottle of olive oil. “Mom’s out of the kitchen tonight, so she’s feeling feisty.”
“Nonna?” Lara repeated.
His smile was quick and charming. “My grandmother Antonia.”
Antonia’s Ristorante.
Lara squeezed her hands together under the table. “So the regular chef—your mother—would be Regina Hunter.”
The boy drizzled oil and herbs onto a thick white plate.
“That’s right.”
“Your father is Dylan Hunter.”
“So?”
“Where is he?” Lara asked.
The question earned her a measuring look from those big, dark Italian eyes and another charming smile. “At work.”
“What kind of work does he do?”
The boy’s smile faded.
Iestyn’s foot pressed hers under the table. “Good bread.”
“Glad you like it,” said the boy and escaped.
Lara frowned. “Why did you stop me?”
“Because you were scaring him.” Iestyn’s long, strong fingers tore a hunk from the loaf of bread. “And because I want to enjoy our dinner.”
She didn’t understand him. Everything inside her was alight and alive with impatience. If this was the end, she wanted to get there as quickly as possible.
Minimize the
pain
, she told herself.
Like ripping off a bandage.
“Don’t you want to find them? Dylan? Lucy?”
“We will find them.” He dipped the bread into the olive oil. “Tomorrow.”
She stared at him, frustrated. “But we’re so close.”
He offered her the bread across the table. “Lara, I’ve been gone for seven years. We’ve been searching less than two days. Another night won’t make any difference.”
Reluctantly, she reached for the bread. He pulled it back, holding it teasingly away from her mouth until she leaned forward to eat from his hand. As her lips closed around the bread, he added softly, with intent, “Especially if it means I get to spend that night with you.”
Her gaze met his.
She almost choked, bathed in golden heat.
“Another night won’t make any difference.”
Oh, but it could. How long could she be with him, how many times could she lie with him, and still survive a separation? And yet how could she resist this chance to know him better? To make love with him one more time?
Deliberately, she picked up her wineglass. “So,” she said. “Tell me how you learned about wine.”
He narrowed his eyes at her obvious change of subject, but he played along, telling her about the yachts he’d crewed, the jobs he’d handled, the places he’d been.
Their lives could hardly have been more different, she reflected, listening to his stories about a delivery to Bahia, a race in Key West. In thirteen years, she’d rarely left the walls of Rockhaven. Yet he seemed genuinely interested in her life there, encouraging her to talk about her job in the school office.
“It might seem like busywork to some,” she said. “But I like the routine. I like being organized.”
His eyes gleamed. “I noticed.”
Under his subtle prodding, she told him things that should have bored him silly, details about living in the dorms, minor infractions after lights out, stories about Bria.
“You must miss her,” he said quietly, and tipsy with wine and attention, Lara blurted out a truth she had barely admitted to herself.
“I hated her. She was the person I was closest to in the whole world, and she left me. She didn’t care enough to try to talk to me, she didn’t tell me she was going. And then I wondered if she left because of me. Because she knew I resented her for having the courage to do all the things I wasn’t brave enough to try.”
“Bull shit,” Iestyn said.
Lara blinked. “Excuse me?”
“First, you’re one of the bravest people I know.” He reached across and took her hand, holding it in his warm, strong clasp. “Second, your friend didn’t leave because of you.
She left because she had to, because of something inside her that couldn’t be there anymore. Maybe she really cared about you.” He looked down at their fingers, joined on the table; up into her eyes. “Maybe she was afraid if she told you, you’d talk her out of it.”
* * *
They were among the last customers to leave the restaurant. They walked back to the inn along roads without streetlamps under stars pulsing raw and real overhead. So many stars, undimmed by human light, Lara could almost imagine herself in Heaven.
In the near darkness of their room, he undressed her, revealing her pale body in the silver light that slipped through the window. He laid her back on the soft white bed, spreading her legs wide, easing inside her.
Her sore muscles tensed against his blunt intrusion.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
He kissed her, stroking her hair back from her face. “It’s all right. You’re all right. You’re perfect.”
“I guess I’m not used to . . .
Oh
,” as he slid carefully deeper, as her tender flesh yielded around him.
“I’ll go slow,” he whispered wickedly, and he did, teasing her with his hands and his body, making her tremble, making her moan and clutch at him with anxious hands.