by BJ James
Meeting Devlin’s gaze, keeping it, she knew in her heart that once there had been laughter in his eyes. Laughter like blue fire, wild and free, as he had surely been before the joy in his life was snuffed out. “There’s a story here,” she said at last. “I think I should hear it.”
Devlin agreed. Offering his hand, he waited for her touch. A sign of trust regained, until his story was told.
Nothing about him changed. There was no frown, or grimace, only a subtle unveiling nuance, perceived rather than seen, causing reflection. “You don’t want to tell me, do you?”
Kate’s observation was shrewd. The counselor, again, this time reading the surfacing emotions he’d kept hidden for so long. Emotions and truths he never wanted her to know, but now she must. “No. But you have to understand.”
“Because…?” Looking to his open hand and back again to his face, she waited. No longer the counselor, but a woman, instead, wanting a woman’s answers.
“Because I need for you to understand.” After a thoughtful pause, he continued in a solemn voice. “Because when you hear what I have to say, if it’s what you want, I’ll leave.”
She smelled of a subtle perfume and of rain. Every breath he drew was laden with the scent, soft, delicate, enticing. He hadn’t wanted to come to Summer Island. He’d never intended to stay. That had been his monotonous credo every minute of every hour, until he heard her play, filling the night with music. Now he wondered how he could bear it if she wanted him to go.
His outstretched hand was curled and waiting, and when she slipped her fingers over his palm, his clasp was strong, but gentle. With a rueful smile he led her to the sofa.
Kate’s vanquished anger was replaced by a growing dilemma. One that left her torn between the need to know and the risk of losing Devlin, the friend she’d never had. Amid the steady roar of a surf still wild, in the clamor of raucous gulls quarreling over treasures the tumbling sea swept onto shifting sand, a waiting silence enveloped them. A man and a woman, hurt and hurting, but reaching out for a place of peace.
After a time of pondering, Devlin laughed a humorless laugh. “In the wake of that less than brilliant argument, I don’t know what to say, or where to begin.”
“Begin with who you are.” Her hand was still in his, she made no effort to take it back. “Not just that you’re Devlin O’Hara, but of the man who made the name his.”
“Long story.” Now the grin was rueful.
“We have the rest of the day with no telephone or chores requiring electricity to intrude.” In a voice that was gentle and pensive, she added, “If need be, we have the night.”
“No music?”
His smile altered again, but she wanted the blue fire, the mischief, the joy. “This is your day, and your night, not mine.”
Devlin still had no idea where to start, or what to say, so he began with his family. “There are five of us. Three boys and two girls, the luckiest children in the world. Lucky in our parents, and in each other. All so much alike, yet each uniquely different. We were close as children and even closer as adults. Not often in proximity, but always in our hearts.”
Kate watched his expression mellow and the lines in his forehead ease as he reminisced. She wondered if he could guess he was describing the family she’d always wanted.
“When Patience was six and I twelve, with the others falling between, to make sure we would always be close, we cut our palms and mingled our blood to make the bond stronger.”
“Brothers and sisters by birth. Comrades by the rite of blood.” Unconsciously stroking the ridged scar across his palm, in her mind Kate could picture five little O’Haras, wiry bodies tanned by the sun, huddled together. With Devlin the tallest, the darkest, the most handsome, leading their vow of fealty forever. She didn’t know he was tallest, or that he was their leader and the most handsome, but she would stake heart and soul on it. “Comrades forever, with the scars as proof.”
Devlin’s hand closed convulsively over hers. “Regrettably, no.” Beyond the denial he offered no explanation, for there was more to tell before then. “Like you, we traveled. Our parents took us everywhere, taught us everything. Or so it seemed. As we grew older, we went separate ways. Patience, into veterinary medicine. Tynan, eventually, to Montana. Valentina and Kieran, by one route or another to The Black Watch. And I? I was the oldest, the one in whom the wanderlust was strongest.
“Until I found Denali. Then, for the first time, I’d found a home. A place I wanted to stay. A place for roots.”
Kate had never had a home. Not of the lasting sort. She’d longed for that special place, for the traditions, the favorite things, the stability. Quietly, as if by raising her voice she might break the spell of his narration, she asked, “What was it that drew you to Denali?”
Devlin looked down at their joined hands, resting on his thigh. With the pad of his thumb stroking the translucent flesh of her knuckles, he answered as honestly as he knew how. “At first it was the excitement of the mountain, the sheer wonder of the challenge. Flying over the ice, landing on glaciers. But in the long run, it was as much the friends I found there.” Shaking his head he rephrased. “No. Most of all it was the friends I found.”
Kate was fascinated by his story, and with the man she saw as he spoke of his brothers, his sisters, and the days before the smile left his eyes. It wasn’t plausible to believe his life had been perfect until then, but to Kate it was more than she’d ever dared to dream.
Or so she thought until he drew a long, shuddering breath and spoke again. “I didn’t know what I was searching for, or even that I was searching, until I found Denali. In that unexpected corner of the world I had everything.” His stroking finger moved over her hand, once, twice, then was still. Lifting his head, he fixed his riveting gaze on Kate. And in it she saw the hurt and pain she’d suspected magnified tenfold. The beautiful blue gaze was dulled, glazed. The eyes that looked to her and then through her were the eyes of a stranger.
“I had everything I ever wanted, and more,” he said again, softly, his voice hoarse with grief and guilt. Looking away, he stared into a distant void, as if he couldn’t bear to see her, to let her see him. Or to continue.
Her anger long dissipated, Kate waited, lost, puzzled, even afraid, with her hand still resting beneath his.
Slowly, inch by dreaded inch, his gaze returned to her, focusing on hers. “For that little while the world was a perfect place,” he said bleakly. “Until I killed Joy Bohannon.”
Six
Kate sat in a daze. As the color drained from her face, she looked away from wondrously beautiful eyes that looked as if they had beheld the end of his own world. Slowly, as if drawn by a will greater than her own, beneath lowered lashes Kate stared down at her hand in his. Devlin’s dark, broad, scarred, gentle hand.
…killed Joy Bohannon.
…killed.
…killed.
The broken words echoed again and again in her mind, reverberating like a damning chant in her heart.
“No.” Her denial was a hoarse whisper born on a rasping breath she didn’t know she’d caught and held. Catching another, she turned her head a bare fraction. With her hair swinging heavily against her cheek, shielding her stunned dismay only a little, she repeated her answer in unwavering disbelief, “Never.”
He’d come to the island a stranger. An intriguing, disarming intruder she’d wanted away and gone. Away from the island. Gone from her life. He’d stayed instead, becoming a familiar part of this place she’d come to regard as home. Then, as quickly, as inexplicably, he was firmly entrenched in her thoughts, and increasingly an integral part of her life.
Even as she wished him away, she’d been drawn to him. She’d set limits, he’d kept to them. She turned him away, he went, but not very far. She stumbled, and he was there, offering only kindness and strength. And only when she would accept them.
No matter who had sent him, or why he’d come, in her unflinching honesty, Kate could not help but admit Dev
lin had made her world a better place.
“No, Devlin,” she whispered again, as if saying the word enough would make the memory of his confession go away. With her fingers still laced through his, keeping her gaze on their joined hands, she avowed with regained composure, “I might be uncertain of your reason for coming to Belle Terre, I might question who sent you and why. I might resent the need or the choice. I might have wished you away from the island and out of my life. But don’t ask me to believe you would deliberately hurt anyone. Least of all, a woman. I won’t even think it. I can’t.”
“Hey.” Brushing away the curtain of her hair, letting his fingertips linger at her temple as he tucked the gold strand behind her ear, he smiled a dry nonsmile. “Who are you trying to convince? Yourself, darlin’, or me?”
Nonplussed and oddly distracted for a moment, Kate kept her head bowed, reflecting on how much their joined hands were like them. Different in so many ways, and yet so much alike. Devlin’s hands were bigger, darker, stronger. The truly masculine, truly capable hands of an adventurer. Hands roughened by his labors and marked by the scars that mapped his past. Her own hands were strong and, in their given right, capable. The secret tools of her trade. Weapons of mayhem, and even death, if need be.
Simon had seen to that.
Yet they were utterly feminine hands, smooth and slender. To the unaware they were no more than the hands of an accomplished pianist, a fastidious model, a boardroom peacemaker. And fragile in contrast to the inherent masculinity of Devlin’s.
One could be perceived as harsh, even brutal, master of powerful deeds. The other as frail, defenseless, inured in decorum and grace. Neither was true. Just as she knew it wasn’t true that Devlin had taken a life.
Breaking away from her musing she lifted her head and her gaze to Devlin’s. “I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. Nor can you, or any who might try, make me believe you killed someone. Not Joy Bohannon.” The clasp of her hand was harsh, her nails driving home the strength of her conviction. “Not anyone.”
Devlin had watched her silently, waiting for the revulsion and the horror that would send him away. He’d almost wished for it. Hoping he wouldn’t have to tell her the whole of it. For then he must watch her face again, perhaps seeing worse than revulsion and horror as she understood how, for an act of monstrous and criminally arrogant misjudgment, more than a life was lost.
“God help me, Kate,” he said at last, his face and voice somber. “I wish I deserved such trust. But I don’t.” Slipping his hand from her grasp, he left the sofa to stalk to the windows. The water was calming, but it would be hours, maybe days, before the serene sea of the peaceful low country returned. He wondered if he would be here to see that serenity, or that peace. “Dear heaven! You can’t know how much I wish I could go back, undo it all.”
Turning, one hand in his jeans’ pocket, the other a tight, impotent fist, he faced her, ready to tell the truth that would damn him. “I took a dream from a woman, and the greatest love of his life from my best friend. Neither can ever be undone.”
Once, on the day he brought coffee and stayed for the breakfast he prepared, Kate had wondered if there was a woman in his life. She’d thought not, then. She couldn’t explain her reaction, but she had been certain. Moments ago, when he’d called Joy Bohannon’s name with such despair, for one immeasurable instant that surety was shaken. But only for that instant. Listening now, one could rush into sordid conclusions of an illicit affair. Of love gone wrong, and wife-stealing friends. But these occurred to Kate only for dismissal. Neither more than chaff to be disposed of, in order to see and understand the truth.
Kate played hunches and obeyed instincts in her work as mediator. Hunches and instincts had kept her one step beyond the head games the cunning of the world were wont to play.
But when she left the sofa to go to Devlin, she was spurred by more than the instinct and intuition of a professional. The most basic factors that had drawn her to him in the beginning drew her to him now. The simple faith of a woman, and her trust in a special man.
With her fingers circling his wrist above the clenched fist, she looked up into the bleak, grieving face. In calm and quiet words barely audible above the pounding surf, she asked, “Will you tell me about Joy?”
When it seemed as if he would never answer, with a grim quirk of his lips, he nodded his stark assent.
As if it were her signal, yet in a move that seemed totally unplanned and without premeditation, Kate stepped closer. Releasing his wrist, she slipped her arms around his waist, holding him as if she would console him.
Devlin was reeling, his mind chaotic. In a day he’d run the gamut from friend to unwanted meddler and even traitor. From confessed killer, to this. He didn’t know what her embrace meant. Kindness? Pity? Remorse? But did it matter?
Did anything matter, but that she looked like an angel? Or that her beguiling scent mingling with the rain was intoxicating? Did any of anything matter when the touch of her body, and the heat of it reaching out to warm him and comfort him, was the gentle trust he’d never hoped would be his?
He’d offered her his strength, and even in a seething dilemma she’d almost yielded. Almost, until a renewed surge of anger at his deceit turned him away. Now, as he’d offered her the ugly truth in one of the worst moments of his life, she’d come to him, forgetting her anger, refusing to believe, offering her tender strength for him to take.
And he felt so damnably, wonderfully good with her arms around him, with her golden eyes looking up at him with marvelous, restored trust. So good, he could almost believe that in her eyes he could be the man he’d been. The man who loved life and lived the gift of every minute to the fullest. The man before Denali.
Could he be that man again? With Kate to hold and to keep? And with her trust? Could it be? His desperate thought was a prayer, a dream, a mournful wish.
But it was too soon, there was more to tell. More ugliness. More horror. Taking her by the shoulders, his fingers flexing against the need to draw her closer, steeling himself against the need to take one kiss, he moved her from him.
“You said there was a story here. There is,” he murmured quietly into the aura of her scent that seemed to enfold him even as the space widened between them. “You said you should hear it.” The rasp of his words rattled in the still air, lingering in his mind like a toll for the lost. Letting his hands fall from her at last, he said what he must. “You should.”
Kate searched his face. The sadness was there in his eyes tenfold. Whoever Joy Bohannon was, whatever happened on Denali, when she died, so did the smile in his eyes. So did a wonderful part of Devlin O’Hara, the man who loved women.
He didn’t want to relive that awful time, but he would, for her sake. And oddly, it was for his sake that she would listen.
Linking her fingers through his again, she smiled up at him. Her heart hurt at the broken, faltering effort he tried in return.
“Come with me, Devlin.” The word was an invitation and a plea. As she moved toward the sofa, it took only a little tug for him to follow. Once there, with a hand on his shoulder, Kate guided him to his seat, yet didn’t take her own. Instead she crossed to a small, exquisitely stocked bar, studying shelves and new and aged bottles for a thoughtful moment, before choosing a wine.
Devlin watched each careful, efficient move as she dispensed with ceremony and expertly drew the cork. Paying even less homage to the pretenses often accompanying the partaking of the finer vintages, she splashed a few ounces in one gracefully unadorned glass, and then another.
Even in the increasing gloom, the wine swaying within the fluted crystal sparkled and shimmered like a living ruby. A stunning sight, but never as stunning as the woman who came to him.
He wanted her so badly he ached in every inch of his body. She was in his blood, in his mind and heart, in his thoughts. She was the center of his life and his desire as no woman had ever been.
Of course there had been women in the life of a m
an like Devlin O’Hara. Some whose faces and names he didn’t remember. Some he would never forget. Some, passing acquaintances whose lives touched his in some way that led to lust or mutual hunger. Some, friends who shared a need and a moment.
But none had ever been lovers. Not in the sense of what the name meant to Devlin.
He had loved them, the women he forgot and the women he remembered. But to be lovers, lust or hunger or need weren’t enough. Being in love, the forever kind shared by true lovers, had never touched him. Until now. Until Kate.
Until it was too late.
As he took the glass, his fingers closed over hers, briefly allowing one secret, yearning touch. “Thank you, Kate.”
“For the wine?” Kate didn’t know what prompted her question. Maybe it was the tone of his words, maybe the expression on his face. Maybe it was the way he spoke her name. Or only intuition, the impression there was more.
Devlin’s only response was a slight tilt of his lips as he considered her question. Yes, for the wine, but for so much more. For the days on the island, for the walks, for whales and turtles. For her childish delight in angel wings, the delicate shell she loved best of all.
And even for this day.
Not just for this day, he amended in his mind. Especially for this day. For believing, for a little while.
Smiling his half smile, he lifted his glass in a small salute to the woman who would never know that he’d fallen a little in love with her in a crowded grocery. Then completely, as he sat on a lonely, moonlit beach listening to night music. And now, irrevocably, as she watched him over a glass of wine, with faith brimming in her eyes.
“For that first day in Ravenel’s, for music on the beach,” he said at last, with an honesty she would never know. Then sobering, he murmured, “Most of all, for the wine.”
