With Her Last Breath

by Cait London

  Nick couldn’t stop his grin; he was used to family and friends touting potential girlfriends to him. “They mean well, Maggie.”

  “Leave…me…alone,” she ordered tightly.

  “Lady, I didn’t come to see you. You’re the one who turned up here, all full of spit and fire. I’ll bet you get plenty of clients with that friendly attitude.”

  Scout squirmed and whined in Maggie’s grip. “I do okay.”

  He reached to brush a bit of sand from her cheek, and her skin was smooth beneath his fingertips. She stiffened and he jerked his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

  Nick knew her walls were up, pasted with big flashing warning signs. She’d been hurt badly, and by a man. “Let the dog go, Maggie. She loves the water and wants to play, but she loves you, too. You’re really upset and shaking. Your fear of water isn’t ordinary. Is there some way I can help you?”

  “No.” In profile, Maggie’s face lowered, a tear dropping from her cheek as she whispered, again gripping that gold locket, “She’s all I’ve got. I couldn’t bear for anything to happen to her.”

  “I know. I won’t let anything happen to her. Just let her go into the water.”

  Maggie’s pale, capable hands tightened on the dog’s thick coat. “No.”

  If he couldn’t help the woman, he could help the dog. Nick slipped off his canvas loafers and stood. He walked to a small stick; he was taking a big chance, he thought as he sailed it out onto the water.

  Immediately Scout started barking excitedly, struggling to free herself from Maggie. Finally twisting free, Scout ran full speed into the water and with a leap, started swimming for the stick.

  “You idiot!” Maggie was on her feet, running toward the water. She stopped abruptly, just inches from the lapping foam of the waves. “Scout, you come here this minute!”

  Scout had the stick in her mouth and was swimming back to shore.

  Maggie turned to Nick, her cheeks pink with wind and anger. “You idiot.”

  “You already said that.” For a man whose temper rarely nudged him, Nick was starting to feel the burn. “Look, I’ve offered to help you with no strings attached. Are you always in a bad mood, or is it just me?”

  The answer shot at him like a bullet. “It’s you. I get along fine with most people.”

  “So do I. In fact, most people think I’m likable.”

  “They’re mistaken.” She watched him walk to the stick Scout had dropped. He stopped to pick it up, and Maggie ordered, “Don’t you dare.”

  With a look that said he would, Nick dared, and Scout was racing out into the water, leaping into it. She swam to the stick, retrieved it, and returned to shore, carrying it directly to Nick. After a small tussle, she released the stick to him, and he threw it once more. When Scout was swimming, Nick turned to Maggie, watching her.

  She was stubborn and a fighter, and that fear was still in her eyes, her hand clasped on that locket.

  Nick wasn’t going to ask any more questions and get another verbal slap. But he wondered about that locket—to whom it had belonged, who had given it to her, and what rested inside.

  He could almost feel Maggie’s heart gallop with fear, and that was a terrible thing. This time, as though sensing Maggie’s fear, Scout dropped the stick and ran to her, leaping happily on her.

  Maggie went down with a soft cry and Scout was all over her, playfully licking her face and ignoring her orders. Nick hurried to grab Scout’s collar and haul her back. Amid the dog’s prints in the sand, Maggie lay quiet, breathing hard as she frowned up at Nick. Sandy dog pawprints ran across her T-shirt where her sweat jacket had opened. She blew sand from her mouth and ignored his extended hand as she got to her feet, brushing her clothing.

  In the fracas, her nipples had hardened, thrusting at the light cloth. Nick’s throat dried suddenly and his body became sensually taut and locked onto her curves. He wanted to brush her body, feel that softness flowing beneath his hands, ease that damp, muddy T-shirt from her and—and from the blaze of those green-gold eyes, he was likely to have a hard time of it.

  “Maggie is in a bad mood,” he said to Scout. “Let’s behave.”

  The dog whined softly and stared longingly at the water.

  “So she likes water and she can swim,” Maggie stated grudgingly. “You’ve proved your point.”

  “Didn’t you know that when you got her? Hunters use Labs for retrievers.”

  “I know exactly what they use them for—showing off what a high-priced dog can do for their buddies. But if that dog is untrained and too young and—”

  The dark, bitter leap of temper surprised him. “So you rescued her.”

  “Someone had to.” Her fists were tight now, her color high and her eyes lashing at him.

  “It takes a lot of patience to do rescue work. Sometimes the dog is too far gone, but you’ve done a good job.”

  “You don’t know anything about it.”

  The bitterness was there again, simmering just beneath the surface. “I’m listening. Tell me.”

  When Maggie frowned and looked away, Nick knew he’d hit a nerve; he’d come too close to her life and the secrets she wanted to keep. She walked to Scout’s stick, hesitated as if the decision came hard to her, then picked it up and threw it into the water. With an excited bark and ready to play, Scout leaped into the lake.

  Nick stood still, admiring the woman from the back. Her ball cap had tilted, her ponytail was coated with sand, and the wind pushed her loose jogging pants against her body. He admired the curve of her bottom, and when she turned, he served his best innocent smile. “Looks like she’ll be at that awhile.”

  “Don’t you throw another one. She’s my dog. If she needs something, I’ll do it for her.”

  “Fine.” Nick settled down on the sand and watched Maggie kick off her jogging shoes, dump the sand from them, and then peel off her socks. She stuffed them into her shoes and began rolling up her pants.

  He wondered how those slender pale feet would feel on his calves, bracing as her hips lifted in lovemaking.

  He sighed roughly. It had been a long time since he’d made love.

  Maggie glanced at him, anger simmering around her. “Don’t you have something to do?”

  He could have watched her forever. Maybe it was his fate to meet a foul-tempered woman with witch’s eyes and fire in her hair, and to want to take her, right there on the sand, and never let her go.

  And maybe bottling wine and working at the restaurant for fourteen-hour days had made him a little crazy. Maybe it was that he needed a woman’s body again, his own coming to life, shocking him. “Not really. It’s not often that I meet a real mystery woman and want to know everything about her. But then, I’d just be wasting my time if I were to ask more questions, right? You must love wallowing in your own secrecy, making people wonder about you. Maybe it’s a game with you.”

  “It is not a game. You’re prodding and pushing. Try someone else. It’s my life and my business, not yours.”

  Nick’s easy patience said he could outlast Maggie’s walls, and he deliberately nudged her. “Well, then, maybe you’re just a moody woman and this is the wrong time. If there is a right time, I’m available. Something has happened to you that’s made you distrustful of everyone. I’d say you need someone to listen—unless you just like being a sourpuss.”

  Maggie’s dark look at him and her silence, those lips firmly pressed together, ended any further conversation.

  After several more runs, Scout began to tire. She carried the stick not to Maggie this time, but to Nick, where she did her dog-shaking-water thing. Scout plopped onto the sand beside him and stared at the lake.

  “Let’s go, Scout,” Maggie said as she picked up her shoes and began carrying them toward the path up to Nick’s house.

  The dog remained, tongue hanging down as she panted beside Nick, a new friend.

  With a tired sigh, Maggie returned to sit on the other side of her dog. “Whenever you’re ready, Scout, j
ust let me know.”

  With the dog between them, Nick and Maggie settled into silence and peace. Nick liked the feel of that, the feel of the wind, telling him that he was alive, the sense of peace that water always brought, and the sense that something was happening with this woman. Maybe he was just a romantic, but the odd inner calm told him his life had changed and that something waited for him—with Maggie.

  “That’s a strange house,” she said, her voice flowing over the sound of the waves breaking on the shore. “With that brick tower on top.”

  That was something, Nick thought. That quiet remark showed a woman’s curiosity working, stilling the brief bitterness. “It’s supposed to be a lighthouse, or at least the Frenchman’s version of one in another century. He built the house on the highest point of land—built it around the lighthouse, and his fiancée was to join him. Legend has it that her ship sunk just out there, and that he still haunts the place, waiting for her. My brothers and I used to go there with Dad and hunt for treasure that might have washed ashore from Monique’s shipwreck.”

  He wanted to smooth her hair, to feel the warm burn of it on his skin. Instead, he brushed sand from her shoulder and caught the quick wary tension of her body. “My grandfather bought this place because he thought it would make a good vineyard. We worked together out here when we could. We got the grapes going—he wanted only reds—selling them to buyers, until we got enough to start the winery. He never saw the first bottle out of it, though we made some home wines.”

  “That tower makes quite a statement here on this knoll.”

  “Oh, what’s that?” But from the way she turned away, he knew that she hadn’t meant the words to come out as they did. Some men drove expensive mechanical penis symbols, but he had chosen a lighthouse.

  Nick considered the suspected jutting monument to manhood. “Maybe.”

  “I meant that you like the solitary life.” Her blush delighted him, soft and rosy and sweet beneath the crust and the fear. He had to know more of what ran beneath the surface and why she hoarded it.

  Maggie removed her ball cap and dusted the sand from it. Nick watched, fascinated, as those deft feminine hands removed the band confining her ponytail, her fingers winnowing through her hair. It caught the wind, and sailed in a dark red storm around her head, unwilling to be captured—just like the woman.

  As if she felt him watching her, Maggie turned slowly, and their eyes locked for just that heartbeat.

  “Hello, Maggie,” he said again, more softly this time, as his heart hitched just that half beat.

  She shivered as if sensing what ran between them, and then stood. “I’d better go. Scout?”

  At the top of the knoll, Maggie glanced at the house, and Nick wanted to keep her with him longer, to know more about her. “Would you like to see the house? I work on it when I can. The view from the old lighthouse is something.”

  “No, thanks. I’m leaving.”

  Nick tried again, justifying his lie with his need to be with her. “Give me a ride into town, will you? My pickup is dead and I’ve got to work tonight. Someone could come get me, but that would take more time.”

  That hesitation said she was wary, that she wasn’t used to sharing. “I didn’t ask you to throw sticks for my dog. If you’re late, it’s not my fault.”

  All defensive bristles, he thought, until she feared for her dog and clasped that gold locket. Then cracks in that brittle façade revealed a woman’s softness and pain. What had happened to her? Why did that locket mean so much? Why was she so scared of water? And why was she alone and afraid? “Do you ever laugh?” he asked abruptly, and wondered what she would look like if she were happy.

  Her fierce scowl held a big warning. “What’s it to you?”

  “Don’t get all touchy. Look, you can either drive out of here and leave me stranded—” Okay, Nick decided, so he’d learned a little something about guilt trips from his mother. “Or you can take in the fantastic view from the old lighthouse while I shower and change. On a clear day, you can see Blanchefleur’s red lighthouse, and there’s a gray bump way out on the horizon that is a tiny island. Supposedly Monique, the Frenchman’s fiancée, drowned near there. We call it Monique’s Island.”

  He watched Maggie weigh options as she glanced up at the brick tower-like structure. It really was a hell of a symbol for a man living alone, he thought, amused.

  “How long before you’re ready?” she asked.

  “Long enough.”

  Maggie was dying to go up into that old lighthouse and look out, scanning the lake. She didn’t often go in for romantic notions, but the idea that the Frenchman haunted the structure was irresistible. How could a man love a woman so much that he still waited for her through time? “Make it fast.”

  Inside the home that had been built around the lighthouse, Nick indicated the doorway to the Frenchman’s tower and then disappeared. Smooth with age and use, the winding wooden stairs led upward, the bricks gleaming from the sunlight shafting from the top. The tiny enclosure provided a fantastic view of Lake Michigan, a sprawling beach, and in the other direction—toward land—naked grapevines in neat rows flowing across the land.

  A wooden Adirondack-style chair dominated the small space. An empty jam jar sat on the chair’s arm, a bottle of Alessandro Cabernet Franc on the rough plank floor beside it. The only other things in the room were a table containing an album, and an ornately framed picture of a bride and groom, cracks splintering across the glass. Young and carefree, Nick smiled down at the woman he held in his arms, her black hair in a curling froth around her pixieish face, the white bridal gown draped to the church steps.

  Her face turned to the camera, the young bride smiled wistfully; another woman from another time, she seemed to stare right into Maggie’s eyes.

  Maggie had been a bride just like that once, believing that the world waited for her.

  Ryan was in her past; he had sided with the man who had led Glenda to her death.

  The windows were new, and on impulse, Maggie slid one open, needing the relief from the heavy nuances in the room. Nick’s wife had left him and he brooded over her in this room. A fresh wind swirled inside, lifting the hair on her nape almost like a caress. The breath of air held an earthy spring scent, tinged with new beginnings and hope.

  The feeling was so strong, Maggie felt as if she could reach out and grab it in her fist and make it come true.

  Instead she traced her finger over the new caulking on the opened window. Were the quiet vibrations, the feeling of expectations to be met Maggie’s own hopes for a new start? Or the dreams of the Frenchman long ago, in love and waiting for his bride-to-be? Or was it Nick’s longing for his wife that seemed to soften the barren room?

  Wind, Earth, and Fire milled around Celeste’s long flowing skirts, their tails high, rubbing against her as cats do when seeking selfish attention. But just now, Celeste was intent on the restlessness within her. She’d tried to push it away, but still it came coiling back, wrapping around her.

  Turning in the breeze, a pewter earth goddess like the one outside Celeste’s shop made her rounds within the wind chimes’ silver tubes, producing a relaxing melody. With bare breasts and flaring hips and arms upraised, the goddess in different styles was a favorite of Celeste’s and her customers. In the goddess, they recognized the woman within, an earth mother, life giving, and sensual. In the universe, each person played a part, and Celeste liked to think that goddess defined and brought sensuality to women who had forgotten their role.

  She smiled slightly. The goddess’s spinning movements mirrored Celeste’s own restlessness.

  The dying day had been sunny and warm, enough to liven the lavender growing around her small yellow house. Perched on a hill overlooking Blanchefleur’s Main Street, the cottage had once been a summer home to the wealthy, abandoned for the sleeker, upscale models more popular now.

  Celeste raised her face to the chilly April breeze. She could smell tourist dollars in the air, those bored r
ich wives coming to her shop, their soft hands manicured and gleaming with rings. When the bell over the shop’s door tinkled, she would be fattening her checkbook.

  She wrapped her shawl around her, felt the fringes brush sensually against her skin. She enjoyed the sunset before she settled in for a relaxing night of labeling her specialty lotions and ordering supplies for her soaps.

  Mary Lou Ingeborg, Iowa farm girl, was in her past, and she had become Celeste Moonstar, Blanchefleur’s resident psychic. Her specialty ran to tarot cards, because they never lied to her. She might lie to clients, giving false hope and dreams because they wanted them so, and there was really nothing she could do to change what would come.

  She shrugged lightly and smiled. She couldn’t change the future, or their lives. So long as her clients were happy, her bills were paid. She carefully worded her assessments of their futures and problems so that they fell into a quasi-zone of how the clients wished to translate them.

  But when the police called on her in murder cases, she saw awful things, the darkness that lived in humans, the need to hurt and kill. The sensations of the victims as they met death made her ill, and it sometimes took weeks for her to recover.

  The wind chimes tinkled musically, and that wave of restlessness stirred in her again. On the end of her chain, the goddess turned slowly, her slender nude body silvery in the light, and then in shadows as dark as death.

  Celeste bent to run her hand over the fur of her cats, treating each one equally, and each sat, twitching its tail, watching her.

  Did they feel it? That strange unsettling of the air?

  The cats on the porch strolled in separate directions. One sprawled on the boards, another leaped to the wooden swing, and the third sat by the troll, hunched and clasping his knees, his ugly cement face grinning at her.