Under the Boardwalk: A Dazzling Collection of All New Summertime Love Stories (11 page)

"I was afraid he'd come back and y'all started shooting at each other again. I was afraid I'd find you dead, or dying." His voice was remarkably calm, considering how shaken he felt.

She shook her head. "I haven't seen Thaniel since day before yesterday, but I don't have any way to prove it."

"Lilah." He gripped her shoulders, shaking her a little to get her attention. "You seem to think I’m going to take you in for murder. Baby, even if you did kill him, after what happened no D
A
. would prosecute, at least not the DA here. But I don't think you could murder anyone, not even Thaniel, and he was one worthless jackass. If you say you didn't kill him, then I believe you." The man was speaking again. The sheriff struggled to regain his detachment, though he thought it was a losing cause. He would never be detached when it came to Lilah.

She stared at him, a sense of wonderment coming to her eyes. In a flash of intuition he knew then she hadn't believed him when he blurted out that he loved her. Why should she? Men said "I love you" all the time in the heat of passion. And they had known each other less than two days. He was acutely aware that she hadn't said anything about love in return, but that would wait.

"But one thing keeps eating at me. Day before yesterday, you looked at him and said, 'You're dead,' and damn near scared him to death right then." He didn't ask anything, didn't try to form her answer in any way. He wanted her response to come from her own thoughts.

To his surprise, she went pale. She looked away, staring at the river. "I just—knew," she finally said, her voice stifled.

"Knew?"

"Jackson, I—" She half-turned away from him, then turned back. She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. "I don't know how to explain it."

"In English. That's my only requirement."

"I just know things. I get flashes."

"Flashes?"

Again the helpless gesture. "It isn't a vision, not exactly. I don't really
see
anything, I just
know
like intuition, only more."

"So you had one of these flashes about Thaniel?"

She nodded. "I looked at him when I came out on the porch and all of a sudden I knew he was going to die. I didn't know he was going to get killed. Just… that he wasn't going to be here anymore."

He rubbed the back of his neck. In the distance he could hear the droning of an outboard motor the Rescue Squad was getting close.

"I've never been wrong," she said, almost apologetically.

"No one else knows what you said." His voice was as somber as he felt. "Just me."

She bent her head, and he saw her worrying her lower lip. She saw his dilemma. Then she raised, her head and squared her shoulders. "You have to do your job. You can't keep this to yourself, and be a good sheriff."

If he hadn't already known he loved her, that moment would have done it for him. And suddenly he knew something else. "Are these 'flashes' the reason Thaniel thought you're a witch?"

She gave him a rueful little smile. "I wasn't very good at hiding things when I was young. I blabbed."

"Scared him, huh? And all these people who come to you for treatment—you just look at them and have flashes about what's wrong with them?"

"Of course not," she said, startled. Then she blushed. "That's something else."

The blush both intrigued and alarmed him. "What kind of something else?"

"You'll think I'm a freak," she said in dismay.

"But a sexy freak. Tell me." A little bit of the sheriff was in his tone, a quiet authority.

"I see auras. You know, the colors that everyone has around them. I know what the different colors mean, and if someone's sick I can see where and know what to do, whether or not I can help them or they need to see a doctor."

Auras. Jackson wanted to sit down. He'd heard all that New Age mumbo-jumbo, but that's just what it was, as far as he was concerned. He'd never seen a nimbus of color around anyone, never seen proof such a thing existed.

"I haven't told anyone about the auras," she said, her voice shaking. "They just think I'm a… a medicine woman, like my mother. She saw them too. I remember her telling me, when I was little, what the different colors meant. That's how I learned my colors." She gave a quick look at the river, where the boat had come into view. Tears welled in her eyes. "You have the most beautiful aura," she whispered. "So clean and rich and healthy. I knew as soon as I saw you that—"

She broke off, and he didn't pursue it. The Rescue Squad boat had reached her dock, and the two men in it were getting out. One was Hal, who had come along himself to take charge if the Squad was needed, and the other was a tall, thin man Jackson recognized as a medic, though he didn't know his name.

Lilah did, though. She left Jackson's side and walked out of the trees into the open, her hand lifted in a wave.

Both men waved back. "Glad to see you're okay," Hal called as they started up the dock.

"Just fine, thanks. Thaniel hadn't been here, though."

"Yeah, we know." Hal looked past Lilah to Jackson. "You left about a minute too soon, sheriff. I still can't believe it."

"Believe what?"

"Jerry Watkins drove up just as you went out of sight. We were just getting the boat in the water. I tell you, Jerry looked like hell, like he'd been on a week-long bender. He looked at the body bag in the meat wagon and just broke down, crying like a baby. He's the one killed Thaniel, Sheriff. He jumped Thaniel about his boat, and you know how Thaniel was, too stupid to know when to back down. He told Jerry he sunk the son of a bitch. Beg pardon, Lilah. Jerry set a store by that boat. The way he tells it, he lost all control, grabbed the shotgun from his truck, and let Thaniel have it."

After years in law enforcement, little could surprise Jackson. He wasn't surprised now, because dumber things had happened. And though the full moon was waning, weird things would continue to happen for another couple of days. He did feel as if he'd dropped the ball, however. He should have thought of Jerry. Everyone who knew Jerry knew how he loved that boat. Instead he'd been so focused on Lilah that he hadn't been able to see anything else.

"He sat down on the ground and put his hands on his head for your deputies to arrest him. Guess he saw that on television," Hal finished.

Well, that was that. Thaniel's murder was solved before it had time to become a real mystery. But one little detail struck him as strange. Jackson looked at the medic "If you knew Lilah was okay, that Thaniel hadn't been killed in a fight here, why did you come along?"

"He came to see me," Lilah said. She shook her head.

"I can't help you, Cory. You've got gallstones. You're going to have to see a doctor."

"Ah, hell, Lilah, I haven't even told you my symptoms!"

"You don't have to tell me, I can see how you look. It hurts like blue blazes every time you eat, doesn't it? Were you afraid you were having heart problems, maybe?"

Cory made a face. "How'd you know?"

"Just a hunch. Go see that doctor. There's a good gastro specialist in Montgomery. I'll give you his name."

"Okay," he said glumly. "I was hoping it was an ulcer and you could give me something for it."

"Nope. Surgery."

"Damn."

"Well, that's taken care of," Hal said. "We'd better get back, we still got some more work to do in Pine Flats. Will you be along soon, Jackson?"

"In a little while," Jackson said. From the way Hal winked, he figured the older man had cottoned on to the fact that there was something between him and Lilah. Frankly, Jackson didn't care if the whole county knew.

He and Lilah watched the two men get back into the boat and head back down river. Jackson squinted his eyes in the bright sun. "Auras, huh?" What the hell. If he believed she could have flashes of precognition, why not auras? If you loved someone, he thought, you accepted a lot of stuff that you never would have considered before. Privately, he'd check on Cory's diagnosis from a doctor, just to make sure, but for some reason he figured Lilah had been right. Auras were as good a reason as anything.

She reached for his hand. "I told you that you have a beautiful aura. I probably would have loved you just because of what I saw in it. But I had another flash when I saw you the first time."

He closed his hand warmly around hers. "What did that one tell you?"

She gave him a somber look. "That you were going to be the love of my life."

He felt a little light-headed. Maybe it was just the culmination of a very stressful morning, but he remembered that feeling or dizziness the first time he'd seen
her
. "Didn't you say those flashes had never been wrong?"

"That's right." She rose on tiptoe and kissed him. "They're one-hundred percent accurate."

He needed to get back to work. He needed to do a lot of things. But he didn't need to do them as much as he needed to hold her, so he wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, breathing in the essence of the love of
his
life, so happy he thought he might burst.

"We're going to do this up right," he said aloud. "The whole enchilada. Marriage. Kids."

"The whole enchilada, " she agreed, and hand in hand they walked into the house.

Linda Howard is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Kill and Tell, Son of the Morning, Shades of Twilight, After the Night, Dream Man, Heart of Fire, The Touch of Fire, Angel Creek
and
A Lady of the West
. Her many awards include the Silver Pen from
Affaire de Coeur
and the
Romantic Times
Reviewer's Choice Award for Best Sensual Romance.

Wild Horse Island, Texas

1883

Naked, Drew Coryell emerged from the lazy surf and strode across the warm sand toward the spot where he'd left the jug of fresh water. Pulling the cork, he lifted the stoneware crock to his lips and tilted back his head. The cool, sweet water slid down his throat like nectar. Swimming always gave him a powerful thirst.

He lowered the jug with a satisfied sigh and gazed out at the gunmetal gray waters of the Gulf of Mexico. A smile lifted the corners of his mouth as he rolled his shoulders, the pleasant ache of fatigued muscles a welcome sensation. "You've been spending too many hours behind a damned desk," he muttered to himself.

Then he sighed loudly and scowled. The thought had painted a dark cloud across his personal sky. He'd come to this secluded island to fish, to get away from the pressures of his business for a time. He didn't want to think about the Castaway Bait Company.

Just then, movement out on the water snagged his attention. A small sailboat cut across the swells headed inland. Curious, Drew sauntered back toward the dunes where he'd dropped his knapsack upon deciding to take a swim. From the knapsack, he removed his greatgrandfather's slim brass spyglass, which he carried with him out of habit while here on the island. He lifted the glass to his eye and twisted the lens, bringing the vessel into focus.

He saw a sailor at the wheel and a woman in the bow. A very shapely woman, judging by the way the sea breeze flattened her clothing against her generous curves. She stood in the bow of the boat, a figurehead worthy of the finest of ships.