"Okay, maybe it is. But you and I started on the same ground, Nell, when it comes to what we were making together."
Were making, she thought. Not are making. If this was his line she could stand where she was, keep on her side of it, or take the first step over.
It wasn't any harder, she decided, than driving off a cliff.
"I was with a man, for three years, I was with a man who hurt me. Not just the slaps and the shoves. Those kinds of bruises don't last. But others do."
She had to let out a little breath to ease the pressure in her chest. "He systematically chipped away at my confidence, my self-esteem, my courage and my choices, and he did it so skillfully they were gone before I realized what was happening. It's not easy to rebuild those things, and I'm still working on it. Coming here, just walking over here tonight took everything I've managed to store up. I shouldn't have gotten involved with you, and I didn't intend to. But something about being here, and about being with you, made me feel normal again."
"That's the start of a fine speech. Why don't you sit down and just talk to me."
"I did what I had to do to get away from him. I'm not going to apologize for it."
"I'm not asking you to."
"I'm not going into the details." She turned away, leaned on the rail and stared out at the night-dark sea. "I'll tell you it was like living in a pit that got deeper and deeper and colder and colder. Whenever I tried to crawl out, he was right there."
"But you found a way."
"I won't go back. Whatever I have to do, wherever I have to run, I won't go back. So I've lied, and deceived. I've broken the law. And I've hurt you." She turned back. "The only thing I'm sorry for is the last."
She said it defiantly, almost furiously as she stood with her back to the rail and her hands in white-knuckled fists.
Terror and courage, he thought, dragging at each other inside her. "Did you think I wouldn't understand?"
"Zack." She lifted her hands, dropped them. "I still don't understand. I wasn't a doormat when I met him, I wasn't a victim waiting to be exploited. I came from a solid, steady family, as functional as any family manages to be. I was educated, independent, helping to run a business. There'd been men in my life before, nothing really serious, but normal, healthy relationships. Then there I was, manipulated and abused. And trapped."
Oh, baby, he thought, as he had when she'd fallen to pieces in the café kitchen. "Why are you still blaming yourself for it?"
The question broke her rhythm. For a moment she could only stare at him, baffled. "I don't know." She walked over to sit in the chair beside him.
"It'd be a good next step to stop doing that." He said it easily, taking a sip of his beer. There was still temper inside him, dregs of it for Nell, but a new and ripe well of it for the man—the faceless, nameless entity—who'd scarred her.
He thought he might work that off later by pounding the hell out of Ripley's punching bag.
"Why don't you tell me about your family?" he suggested and offered her the beer. "You know my mother can't cook worth a damn and my father likes to take snapshots with his new toy. You know they grew up here on the island, got married, and had a couple of kids. And you've had personal acquaintance with my sister."
"My father was in the Army. He was a lieutenant colonel."
"An Army brat." Since she shook her head at the beer, he took another pull himself. "Saw some of the world, didn't you?"
"Yeah, we moved around a lot. He always liked getting new orders. Something new to handle, I suppose. He was a good man, very steady, with a wonderful, warm laugh. He liked old Marx Brothers movies and Reese's peanut butter cups. Oh, God."
Grief caught her by the throat, choked off her voice, dug raw wounds in her stomach.
"He's been gone so long, I don't know how it could seem like yesterday."
"When you love somebody, it's always there. I still think about my grandmother now and again." He took Nell's hand, held it loosely. "When I do, I can smell her. Lavender water and peppermint. She died when I was fourteen."
How was it he could understand, and so exactly? That, she thought, was the magic of him. "My father was killed in the Gulf War. I thought he was invincible. He'd always seemed to be. Everyone said he was a good soldier, but I remember he was a good father.
He would always listen if I needed to tell him something. He was honest and fair, and had this code of honor, a personal one that meant more than all the rules and regulations. He… God." She turned her head to study Zack's face. "It just hit me, how much you're like him. He would have approved of you, Sheriff Todd."
"I'm sorry I never got the chance to meet him." He turned the scope toward her. "Why don't you take a look, see what you can find up there?"
She lowered her head toward the viewer, scanned the stars. "You've forgiven me."
"Let's say we've made some progress."
"Good thing for me. Otherwise Ripley was going to kick my ass."
"And she's a hell of an ass-kicker, too."
"She loves you. I always wanted a brother or a sister. My mother and I were tight, and I guess we got tighter after we lost my father. But I always wanted a sister. You'd've liked my mother. She was tough and smart and full of fun. Started her own business from the ground up after she was widowed. And she made it work."
"Sounds like someone else I know."
Her lips curved. "My father always said I took after her. Zack, who I am now is who I was before. The three years between, they were the aberration. You wouldn't recognize the person I became during that lost time. I barely do."
"Maybe you had to go through it to get where you are now."
"Maybe." The light through the scope haloed as her eyes misted. "I feel like I was always headed here. All those moves when I was growing up. I'd look around and think: No, this isn't it. Not yet. The day I crossed over on the ferry, and I saw the island floating on the water, I knew. This is my place."
He lifted their joined hands, kissed the back of hers. "The day I saw you behind the counter in the café, I knew."
The thrill rocketed up her arm, and straight into her heart. "I've got baggage, Zack. I've got complications. More than I can tell you. You matter to me more than I thought anyone ever could. I don't want to mess up your life with my problems."
"From where I'm sitting, Nell, it's too late to worry about that. I'm in love with you."
Another long thrill rippled through her. "There's so much you don't know, and any one piece of it could change your mind."
"You don't think much of my wherewithal."
"Oh, yes, I do. Okay." She pulled her hand away, rose. She faced crises better on her feet. "There's something else I can tell you, and I don't expect you to understand or accept it."
"You're a kleptomaniac."
"No."
"An agent for a clandestine splinter group."
She managed to laugh. "No. Zack—"
"Wait, I get one more. You're one of those Star Trek addicts who can recite all the dialogue in every episode."
"No, only in the first season of the original."
"Well, that's all right, then. Okay, I give up."
"I'm a witch."
"Oh, well, I know that."
"I'm not using that as a euphemism for temperament," she said impatiently. "I mean it literally. Spells and charms and that sort of thing. A witch."
"Yeah, I got that the night you were dancing naked on your front lawn and glowing like a candle. Nell, I've lived on Three Sisters all my life. Do you expect me to be stupefied, or to do that crossed-fingers thing to ward off evil?"
Unsure if she was relieved or disappointed by his reaction, she frowned at him. "I guess I expected you to be something."
"It gave me a moment," he admitted. "But then, living with Rip sort of tones down the jolt. Of course she hasn't had anything to do with that kind of thing for years now. If you were to tell me you'd put some sort of love spell on me, I might be a little irked."
"Of cour
se I didn't. I wouldn't even know how. I'm just… learning."
"An apprentice witch, then." Amused at both of them, he got to his feet. "I imagine Mia'll whip you into shape before long."
Did nothing surprise the man? "A couple of nights ago, I drew down the moon."
"What the hell does that mean? No, never mind, I don't have much of a head for the metaphysical. I'm a simple man, Nell." He ran his hands up and down her arms in the way he had that managed to arouse and soothe at the same time.
"No, you're not."
"Simple enough to know I'm standing here with a pretty woman and wasting the moonlight." He lowered his mouth to hers, drew her up and into a sumptuous kiss.
When her head fell back in surrender, and her arms wound around his neck, he circled her toward the glass door.
"I want to take you to bed. My bed. I want to love you—the Army brat who takes after her mother." He slid the door open, drew her inside. "I do love you."
Here, she thought as they lowered to the bed, was truth. And here was compassion. He would give these to her, as much as desire, as much as need. When he touched her, those thrills, those soft and fluid aches, were welcome.
The yearning she'd felt for home was satisfied.
Slow and sweet she moved with him. Freely, she opened for him, baring her heart as well as her body.
Her skin hummed under the brush of his fingers. The long, liquid pull inside her made her sigh. When her mouth met his again, she poured all she had into the kiss. What she couldn't give him in words, she could give him here, with her heart. With her body.
He skimmed his lips over her shoulder, tracing the shape of it, marveling at the firmness of muscle, the delicacy of bone. The taste of her intoxicated him, a flavor he'd come to crave as much as the next breath of air.
He found her breast, pleasured them both with lips and teeth and tongue until her heart began to beat under his mouth like the endless pulse of the sea. And as that beat quickened, she rose beneath him with a single breathless gasp.
Without hurry, he moved down her. A skim of fingers, a brush of lips. Felt her begin to tremble while his own blood pounded in sharp, anvil strikes of need.
Her hands groped, then fisted desperately in the sheets when he lifted her hips and used his mouth on her. With a kind of ruthless patience, he shot her screaming to peak.
Her breath was sobbing now, her skin slick and damp as she rolled with him over the tangled sheets. Heat spiked, seemed to throb in the air, under her skin until her body felt like a furnace stoked too high.
"Zack—"
"Not yet. Not yet."
He was wild for her, for the taste of flesh, the urgency of her hands. In the pale splash of moonlight through the glass, her body seemed unearthly, white marble erotically hot to the touch and glimmering with the healthy sweat of lust.
When he fixed his teeth on her neck, it felt like feeding. Her mouth was wild, her body plunging. Then she cried out again, shocked pleasure, when his fingers drove her relentlessly over the edge.
Beyond control, beyond reason, she moved like lightning. She would have sworn the bed spun, in fast, dizzy circles, as she straddled him. Panting, she took him, rode him, drove him as he had driven her. Curved down to him, she ravished his mouth, then flung herself back, arms bowed behind her head, and flew as power whipped through her.
He reached for her, his fingers sliding helplessly down her busy hips. His blood was a rage, his mind a torrent. For a moment, all he could see was her eyes, flame-blue and vivid as jewels.
He reared up, pressed his lips to her heart, and shattered.
Chapter Fourteen
Ripley stopped her cruiser and watched Nell unpack her car. The sun had gone down, and with the cold snap that had slapped the island with a wicked northeast punch, any tourists were snuggled into the hotel sipping hot drinks.
Most of the natives would be sensibly settled in front of the television or finishing up dinner. She was looking forward to engaging in both those activities herself.
But she hadn't managed a one-on-one with Nell since the evening she'd come to the door.
"You're either getting a very late start or a really early one," Ripley called out.
Nell hefted the box and hunched inside the fleece-lined jacket she'd mail-ordered from the mainland. "A second start. The book club that Mia runs is back from its summer break. First meeting's tonight."
"Oh, yeah." Ripley got out of the car. She was wearing an ancient and well-loved bomber jacket and hiking boots. Her summer-weight ball cap had been replaced by one of plain black wool. "Need a hand?"
"I wouldn't turn one down." Happy that she sensed no lingering animosity, Nell gestured with her elbow to the second box. "Refreshments for the meeting. Are you going?"
"Not a chance."
"Don't like to read?"
"No, I like to read, I just don't like groups. Groups are made up of members," she explained. "And members are almost always people. So there you go."
"People you know," Nell pointed out.
"Which gives my stand a firmer base. This group's a bunch of hens who'll spend as much time pecking at the latest gossip as they will discussing whatever book they used as an excuse to get out of the house for the evening."
"How do you know that if you don't belong to the club?"
"Let's just say I have a sixth sense about these things."
"All right." Nell adjusted the balance of her box as they walked toward the rear entrance. Despite the weather, Mia's salvia hung on, as red and sassy as July. "Is that why you don't accept the Craft? Because it's like joining a group?"
"That would be reason enough. Added to that, I don't like being told I have to fall in line with something that started three hundred years before I was born."
A blast of wind blew her ponytail into a thick, dark whip. She ignored it, and the cold fingers that tried to sneak under her jacket. "I figure whatever needs to be dealt with can and should be dealt with without cackling over a cauldron, and I don't like having people wondering if I'm going to come flying by on my broom wearing a pointy black hat."
"I can't argue with the first two reasons." Nell opened the door, stepped into the welcome warmth. "But the second two don't hold. I've never once heard Mia cackle, over a cauldron or otherwise, and I've never seen anyone look at her as if they expected her to jump on a broom."
"Wouldn't surprise me if she did." Ripley strode into the main store, nodded at Lulu. "Lu."
"Rip." Lulu continued setting up the folding chairs. "Joining us tonight?"
"Are they holding the Ice Capades in hell?"
"Not that I've heard." She sniffed the air. "Do I smell gingerbread?"
"Got it in one," Nell told her. "Is there any special way you want the refreshments set up?"
"You're the expert there. Mia's upstairs yet. If she doesn't like the way you've done it, she'll tell you."
Nell carried the box to the table that was already waiting. She'd made some pricks in Lulu's shell, but had yet to crack all the way through. It was, she admitted, becoming a personal challenge.
"Do you think I can stay for some of the discussion?"
Lulu peered narrowly over the tops of her glasses. "You read the book?"
Damn. Nell took out the plate of gingerbread first, hoping the scent would sweeten her chances. "Well, no. I didn't know about the club until last week, and—"
"A person's got an hour a day that can be put to reading. I don't care how busy they are."
"Oh, stop being such a bitch, Lulu."
Nell's jaw dropped at Ripley's command, but the sidelong look she risked showed her Lulu's reaction was a happy grin.
"I can't. It goes down to the bone. You can stay if this one stays." She jerked a thumb at Ripley.
"I'm not interested in hanging out with a bunch of females chattering about a book and who's sleeping with who, who shouldn't be. Besides, I haven't had my dinner."
"Café's open another ten minutes," Lulu told her. "Split pea a
nd ham soup was good today. And it'll do you good to spend some time with females. Explore your inner woman."
Ripley snorted. But the idea of the soup—in fact, any food that she wasn't obliged to fix herself—held tremendous appeal. "My inner woman doesn't need any exploration. She's lean and mean. But I'll check out the soup."
She sauntered toward the steps. "I might stay for the first twenty minutes," she called back. "But if I do, I want first crack at that gingerbread."
"Lulu?" Nell arranged star-shaped cookies on a glass plate.
"What?"
"I'll call you a bitch if it'll help bring us closer as people willing to explore our inner woman."
Lulu gave a snort of her own. "You've got a quick mouth on you when you want to. You carry your weight and you keep your word. That goes a way with me."
"I also make superior gingerbread."
Lulu walked over, picked up a slice. "I'll be the judge of that. See that you read October's book before the next discussion."
Nell's dimples flickered. "I will."
~•~
Upstairs, Ripley annoyed Peg by demanding a bowl of soup minutes before closing.
"I've got a date, so if you don't finish this before my time's up, you'll just have to wash the bowl yourself."
"I can dump it in the sink the same as you would, for Nell to deal with in the morning. Give me a hot chocolate to go with it. Are you still stepping out with Mick Burmingham?"
"That's right. We're snugging in and having a video festival. We're watching Scream One, Two, and Three."
"Very sexy. If you want to take off, I won't snitch to Mia."
Peg didn't hesitate. "Thanks." She whipped off her apron. "I'm gone."
Appreciating the fact that the café was empty, Ripley settled down to enjoy her soup in blissful solitude. Nothing could have spoiled her pleasure more quickly than hearing the click of Mia's heels on the floor barely one minute later.
"Where's Peg?"
"I cut her loose. Hot date."
"I don't appreciate you giving my employees permission to leave early. The café doesn't close for another four minutes, and it's part of her job description to clean the case, counters, and kitchen after that time."
Books by Nora Roberts Page 162
