by Lori Foster
“I think it is a very good morning,” he said, and held out the mug.
With the sheet clutched to her bare chest, she struggled to a sitting position and then claimed the coffee. It smelled delicious and a little like... “Cinnamon?” she asked, sniffing.
“A trick I learned from my sister. You sprinkle it over the grounds before brewing.”
“You really are trying to become domesticated.”
“After my heart surgery I decided I needed a few more dimensions to my life,” Caleb said.
Meg didn’t like thinking of him in a hospital, his chest being opened. She’d kissed him there the night before, right over the scar, just before drifting off to sleep. It was covered now by a simple T-shirt, the pale green color a contrast to the golden tan of his skin. Taking another sip, she noted the newly shaved skin of his face and the shininess of his damp hair. Really, he was ridiculously handsome, she thought, as warmth started pooling in her belly.
Not a good idea. Remember—one-night stand!
“What time is it?” she asked, glancing around for a clock. The overcast sky she could see through the window made it impossible to guess.
“About nine.”
“Nine?” She squeaked and shoved the mug in his direction, preparing to leap from the bed. “I never sleep late. I have things to do—”
“Like what?” he asked, pushing the coffee back into her hands.
“I... Well, something. People will be checking in today.”
“What time? How many?”
“Several families. But not until three this afternoon,” she admitted.
“So there’s plenty of time for coffee, breakfast, followed later by the picnic I’ve planned,” Caleb said.
Meg scowled. She should have told him an army was expected by ten! “Caleb...” Thinking back, she replayed the moment on Captain Crow’s deck when she’d offered to sleep with him. Hadn’t she made clear it was a single session she was after, a way to address and then eliminate the almost adolescent fascination she felt for him?
Damn, she realized she’d not been clear after all.
A flush crawled up her neck to her face. “I should have said... It’s not that last night wasn’t nice—”
“From my side of the blankets, it was damn fabulous.”
It was hard not to be pleased about that. “Well, yes, for me, too.”
“Good.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her mouth, the touch gentle and unassuming.
Beneath the sheets, her toes curled. “Still,” she said, rallying her good sense. “I wasn’t supposing, you know...” God, how to say this?
“When I came to the cove I wasn’t supposing anything, either, Meg,” he replied. “So how about we stop concerning ourselves with expectations and just enjoy the day? I’ve become quite good at that.”
Since the surgery, he meant, and the second reference to it quelled her objections. She could have a picnic with him, she supposed. It didn’t mean anything would go further than that.
Another night in his bed wasn’t a foregone conclusion.
But enjoyment—that did seem to be foregone. Caleb had already proved himself a charming companion and that didn’t change as he coaxed her into exploring the cove with him, Bitzer at their heels. They wandered along the hiking paths winding around the hillside behind the cottages, finding evidence of the small creeks that kept the tropical vegetation lush.
She found herself telling him about her great-great-grandparents, Max Sunstrum and Edith Essex. The moviemaker and the ingénue. Their love affair and subsequent marriage were the stuff of legends. “Some accounts say he was so obsessed with her he made her quit acting. He didn’t want her to have any other leading man but him.”
“Isn’t there something about a missing piece of jewelry?” Caleb asked. “Given to Edith by her final costar?”
They stopped in the shade of a palm tree, and the breeze made a silvery sound through the fronds. “An old Hollywood rumor,” Meg said. “Our family has never really bought into it. It’s purported to be a magnificent choker nicknamed ‘The Collar,’ inspired by the last movie made here, The Egyptian.”
“There’s Cleopatra’s barge and everything in that one, isn’t there?”
Meg glanced over. “You’ve seen it?” At his nod, she smiled. “When we were kids, we wished the barge had survived way more than some dumb necklace.”
“I can’t imagine growing up here,” Caleb said. “It must have felt like being shipwrecked on your own private island.”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “Especially in the off-season when my sister, my parents and I were often the only ones here.” That’s when their mother would tell her stories about the merpeople and every day had felt enchanted.
After eating the lunch he’d provided—Caleb admitted to stocking up on deli stuff before moving in to his cottage—they continued their walk on the beach, starting at the tide pools on the northern end and strolling along the sand to the southernmost point, right in front of Beach House No. 9.
They paused there, staring up at it. “The numbers on the houses refer not to their geographical location, but to the order in which they were built. My mom always claims this one holds a special charm for lovers, though, just like in the song ‘Love Potion No. 9.’” Meg slanted a look at Caleb. “Sentimental stuff, huh?”
He opened his mouth as if to speak, then shrugged, and bent to pluck something from the firm sand. A clam shell, bone-white with gray rings toward the outer edge. His thumb stroked over the surface. “I bet you collected a thousand of these in your lifetime.”
“Maybe a million,” Meg said. “My sister, Skye, and I pored over our beach treasures like other kids did trading cards.”
He glanced up. “I remember one particular treasure you had.... A piece of abalone shell, I think it was, that you’d strung on a leather thong for Peter. He wore it everywhere.”
“Yes.” Her fingers found Bitzer, and she rubbed his thick coat. That fragment had been part of her collection forever, and one of her prized possessions because it was shaped like a heart. She’d given it to Peter that summer ten years ago, and told him it was just that. Her heart. “He wore it all the time except when he went into the ocean.”
Caleb petted the dog as well, his lean hand caressing Bitzer’s flank. “So you have it, then.”
“No. We don’t know what became of it. Maybe that day, that time, he kept it on when he went out...though it was never recovered.” Even when Peter’s body and his kayak had shown up a day later, on a beach five miles south of the cove.
A beat of silence went by, the quiet only filled by the rush of the waves. “I’m sorry if my mentioning that made you unhappy,” Caleb said. He stepped around the dog to pull her close.
Although she knew she shouldn’t, Meg leaned against him. “It’s all right,” she said. “There are those sad memories, but so many happy ones at the cove, too.”
“Tell me,” he urged, taking her hand and turning to direct their walk back up the beach.
And the next thing she knew she was doing just that, mixing up her mother’s merfolk stories with the real-life escapades of the cove kids who had run wild every summer. She laughed out loud, remembering the games they’d invented, the sand abodes they’d built, the miniature popsicle-stick boats they’d launched or the real-life rafts they’d attempted to construct out of driftwood lashed together with rope.
Before she knew it, it was nearing three o’clock and she had to rush to the property management office to meet the newcomers. When her duties were over, she locked up, only to find Caleb and Bitzer on the sand right outside.
The dog sat beside his master. Caleb was staring out to sea, the wind ruffling his hair. Again she couldn’t help but admire the width of his shoulders, the strong muscles of his back that she could see through the
thin cotton of his shirt. But it was that calm stillness that attracted her most, she thought, as if the mere act of breathing in air was something to which he gave his utmost attention.
Apparently sensing her presence, he turned his head. “Business done?” he asked, holding out his hand to her.
She went toward him, drawn like a magnet. Once her bottom touched the sand, he drew her close. It was the most natural thing in the world to drop her head to his shoulder.
“What should we do now?” he asked idly.
She should tell him what they should do now was head to their separate lives. But it didn’t seem right to upset the affable mood. So she shrugged.
“We could go for a swim,” Caleb said.
“I don’t go into the water anymore.” She didn’t even gaze upon it. Right now her eyes were focused on the beach. In her peripheral vision she could just glimpse the white foam stretching toward their feet, but that was the closest look she allowed herself.
Caleb drew her more snugly to his side, then sighed. “I guess it’s sex, then.”
The words took a moment to sink in. Caught between amusement and exasperation, she turned her head to look at him. “What? Isn’t that a trifle presumptuous?”
“My mother always said that about me.”
Meg laughed, then pushed at him. “You stop.”
He fell to the ground, then pulled her on top of him. “Not gonna.” With a roll, he had her flat on the sand and his weight was on top of her, the effect more thrilling than she cared to admit. “Haven’t you ever heard of afternoon delight?”
“No,” she lied. “And even if I had, I remind you we’re on a public beach.”
His mouth touched her eyebrow, her cheek, her nose. “There’s nobody around.”
“You didn’t even check!” she protested, giggling when his mouth tickled the rim of her ear.
Giggling. The realization stunned her for a moment. When was the last time she’d made such a sound? A little alarmed by it, she twisted from beneath him, squirming away so she could jump to her feet. Then she started sprinting for home.
“Don’t think you’ll get away from me!” he called out.
Her legs churned faster. Bitzer started barking, a joyous sound, and Meg took that to mean Caleb was in hot pursuit. More laughter bubbled up in her throat as she put on the afterburners.
He pounced twelve feet from her front door. When his hands gripped either side of her waist, she shrieked, then felt herself going down. Caleb saved her, though, landing first and then rolling them both to their sides. He grinned at her, and she could feel an answering smile stretch across her face.
“I win,” he crowed.
“And I suppose you’ve already picked out a prize,” she said, trying to look stern and standoffish, even though her pulse was a flurry in her throat and at her wrists. She tried pulling in her smile, pursing her lips in a prudish gesture.
He made a noise—a sort of groan—then swooped close for a kiss. “That mouth of yours is going to do me in,” he said upon coming up for air. “You’ve ruined me for any other lady’s lips.”
Absurdly pleased, she allowed herself to touch him as she wanted, pushing those boyish locks of hair off his forehead. “You’re funny.”
“I’m serious.” His smile died then, as his gaze searched her face. “Meg, where do you see yourself in five years?”
She considered the question, then gave him an honest answer, she who hadn’t wanted to give him anything beyond a one-night stand. “I see myself visiting here. I haven’t been back, you know, not ever, and now I think I’d like to return every once in a while. Maybe more often than that.”
“You don’t want to stay?”
“No. I like where I live. I like my job.”
“Me, too,” Caleb answered. “Though I’m mending the worst of my workaholic ways. Coming here has been very good for cementing in me the notion that there’s more to life than my business. I don’t plan to forget that.”
Meg nodded. “Being at the cove has been good for me, too. I was feeling a little ‘meh’ lately, but I think I have the bounce back in my step.”
Mischief sparked again in his eyes. “Is that what we’re calling it now?” She felt his hand creep under her T-shirt at the small of her back. His forefinger moved in circles and curlicues, some kind of pattern, she thought.
“What are you doing?”
“A game from my childhood,” he answered. “I’m spelling out a word.” His finger moved again. “This is what I want to do to you.”
She sat up in faux outrage. “I know that word!”
He yanked her back down. “You’re going to get it before I’m through.”
They did make it to his house while they were fully clothed. But the garments came flying off once the door was shut behind them. Then they tussled on the bed, laughing and kissing and writing words on each other’s skin with fingers and tongues until there was no teasing left in them and the desire had to be sated through a more serious touch.
They lay on their sides again, and he drew her thigh on top of his as he opened her with his fingers. Then his erection was there, the thick knob of it rubbing against her clitoris, making her gasp, before he began to push inside. One of his hands was curled over her hip, his fingers steadying her as he penetrated.
Hot chills flashed across her flesh as he entered her, the possession so achingly sweet that she moaned. Her breasts were tender, heavy, and the nipples, still wet from his mouth, tightened impossibly more.
“Caleb...” she breathed.
His gaze was on her face as he continued moving into her. “You feel so good. So wet and hot, sticky and sweet, like honey.”
She slid her knee farther up his flank, allowing him further entry. He kept coming inside, heavy and so thick it stung just a little, and the shuddering pleasure of it made an ache of tears start behind her eyes.
When he was seated inside he did the same maddening, wonderful thing he’d done the night before.... He didn’t move for long, long moments. She felt full and possessed and needy and desperate and her fingers clutched at his shoulders. She wanted to urge him to move, to insist he start rocking inside her, but this was so good, too, as if they were two interlocking pieces of one whole.
“So right,” she whispered.
And then Caleb smiled, as if she’d uttered the words he’d been waiting to hear. His hips began to move in time with the pulse of the ocean. Meg gasped, the ebb and release a rhythm that she’d been born hearing, that she’d absorbed to her marrow during the first two-thirds of her life. Now she moved, too, the counterpoint second nature to her, as they stared into each other’s eyes and rode each wave toward final bliss.
When it was over, they lay together, still tangled. Caleb stroked her hair, then her cheek. “You said it feels so right.”
Meg felt tension infuse her lax muscles. “I—”
“No.” He put his fingers over her mouth. “It feels right to me, too. You feel right.”
“Caleb, I can’t—”
“I know. Just don’t run on me again, okay?”
“You don’t understand. I thought something was right before.” Panic robbed her lungs of air. “‘Right’ doesn’t always lead to a good place.”
“I understand why you’d think that.” He brushed another soothing hand over her hair. “It’s because you lost something. You lost what belongs right here.” His fingertips touched the center of her chest.
She couldn’t say he was wrong.
“Give me a chance to get it back for you,” he said. “I have two more full days at the cove. Let me spend them with you.”
And Meg, who had woken up that morning with a one-night stand behind her, couldn’t make any promises...but she didn’t refuse Caleb, either.
CHAPTER FOUR
; MEG TOLD HERSELF it wasn’t because she was superstitious. After all, she’d learned a decade before not to believe in irrational ideas like fated mates and forever-afters. Still, that didn’t stop her from hedging her bets and steering clear of Beach House No. 9 while Caleb continued as a cove visitor—just in case there was a kernel of truth to the idea it was some sort of architectural love potion.
No sense in risking infection.
It was bad enough, she realized, just spending time with him at his rental or at her family home, or anywhere for that matter...even in the car on the twenty-minute ride to the nearest grocery store—by SoCal standards, a near-epic distance—because everywhere they went he slipped in mentions of the future. “I’ve got to take you to this great fish market I found in Tiburon,” he said, as they perused the butcher section and the packaged selections offered there.
When they peeked into the small gallery at the cove, he insisted on buying her a pair of earrings, tiers of tiny shells strung on multicolored silk thread, that she adored so much she swallowed her third round of protests. “Have you ever poked around the jewelry stalls along Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco?” he asked as he watched her don his gift. Without even waiting for a response, he tacked on a “We’ll have to do that this summer.”
Meg found it exasperating and bewildering at the same time. He seemed like an intelligent human being, and one with adequate hearing, too, but each time she demurred or even flat-out ignored his comments, it didn’t give him pause.
Maybe, she thought with a stab of guilt as they cleaned up the dinner dishes on his last night at the cove, that was because she also didn’t hesitate to let him kiss her, touch her, hug her whenever he wanted. And she kissed, touched and hugged him whenever she wanted, too. They were in the small kitchen of his rental, and their hips kept bumping and their shoulders kept rubbing as they moved about, putting everything to rights.
His warm palms circled either side of her waist as she dried her hands on a towel. Drawing her back against his chest, he whispered in her ear, “Are you too sore for sex? I’ve been giving you quite the workout.”
