by Radclyffe
Synopsis
In Beyond the Breakwater, the sequel to Safe Harbor, Sheriff Reese Conlon and Doctor Tory King face the challenges of personal change as they define their lives and future together. Dr. Tory King’s pregnancy forces her to examine her personal needs and goals while her partner, Sheriff Reese Conlon, struggles with her escalating anxieties over conditions she cannot control. Twenty-year-old Brianna Parker makes a sacrifice for love that threatens not just her happiness, but her life, when she returns home as the newest member of the Sheriff's department. A life-threatening accident, a suspicious fire, and the appearance of more than one woman vying for Bri’s attentions makes one Provincetown summer a time of transformation as each woman learns the true meaning of love, friendship, and family.
Beyond the Breakwater
Brought to you by
eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.
Beyond the Breakwater
© 2003 By Radclyffe. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-243-6
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: September 2003
Second Printing: October, 2004 Bold Strokes Books, Inc
Third Printing: December, 2004 Bold Strokes Books, Inc
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Executive Editor: Stacia Seaman
Editor: Laney Robert
Production Design: J. Barre Greystone
Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])
Title Page Art: Judith Curcio
By the Author
Romances
Innocent Hearts
Love’s Melody Lost
Love’s Tender Warriors
Tomorrow’s Promise
Love’s Masquerade
shadowland
Fated Love
Turn Back Time
Promising Hearts
When Dreams Tremble
The Lonely Hearts Club
Night Call
Secrets in the Stone
The Provincetown Tales
Safe Harbor
Beyond the Breakwater
Distant Shores, Silent Thunder
Storms of Change
Winds of Fortune
Honor Series
Above All, Honor
Honor Bound
Love & Honor
Honor Guards
Honor Reclaimed
Honor Under Siege
Word of Honor
Justice Series
A Matter of Trust (prequel)
Shield of Justice
In Pursuit of Justice
Justice in the Shadows
Justice Served
Justice For All
Erotic Interludes: Change of Pace
(A Short Story Collection)
Radical Encounters
(A Erotic Short Story Collection)
Stacia Seaman and Radclyffe, eds.
Erotic Interludes 2: Stolen Moments
Erotic Interludes 3: Lessons in Love
Erotic Interludes 4: Extreme Passions
Erotic Interludes 5: Road Games
Romantic Interludes 1: Discovery
Acknowledgments
This seems like the perfect time to be writing this foreword since I am in Provincetown and have daily walked by many of the places in this book. As always, the town and the natural beauty of the land and sea and the famous “Provincetown light” inspire. I have never wanted to be able to paint or write poetry as much as I have when I am here. This book is special to me for many reasons: because of the setting, because it continues the story begun in my first published work, and because the characters have carved a permanent place in my heart. I owe a debt of thanks to all the readers who asked for this sequel.
Thanks go to my editors, Laney Roberts and Stacia Seaman, for their patience, professionalism, and willingness to live with my quirks; my beta readers, Athos, JB, Jane, Tomboy, and Diane, for their review of the early manuscript; and to HS and all the members of the Radlist for their enthusiastic support and unflagging belief in me.
The cover photograph is the lighthouse at Wood End in Provincetown. Once again, Sheri has captured the spirit of the story with another superb cover.
Every day, Lee graciously and without complaint makes room in her life for these characters, these stories, and the demands they make on our time. Every day, I am grateful for her. Amo te.
Radclyffe 2004
Dedication
For Lee,
For Always and Beyond
Chapter One
September, Provincetown, MA
Dr. Victoria King tilted her face to the sun and let the swift ocean current carry her to shore. She rested her paddle across the front of the seventeen-foot-long, twenty-one-inch-wide red kayak and squinted in the early morning haze toward the beach at Herring Cove. Men and women perched on the undulating curve of sand marking the border between earth and water, casting baited lines to tempt the sea bass to their last meal. In the black ribbon of parking lot sandwiched between the dunes and the shore, vacationers were just beginning to stir, opening the windows and doors of their mobile homes and airing out their sea-dampened linens and clothes.
Tory was so used to seeing the idyllic tableau, she barely took note as her craft glided the last few feet and touched bottom in the frothing water at the ocean’s edge. But then, she wasn’t watching the locals or the end-of-the-season tourists. There was only one thing for which she was searching.
Smiling, she found it.
As it had almost every morning for the last two years, a police cruiser sat amongst the battered trucks belonging to the early-morning anglers and the huge Winnebagos of intrepid travelers. And, as it never failed to do, the sight of the vehicle settled her world even as a swift surge of pleasure raced along her spine.
Carefully, she pulled her legs from inside her shell and swung a foot over each side, straddling the kayak as she stood up in the shallow foam. Once she had her balance, she moved to the needle-thin front and pulled the boat onto land. The fiberglass construction was amazingly light, making it easy for her to maneuver it over the sand unaided.
As she unzipped her life vest and tossed it into her boat, the sound of a car door thudding closed penetrated the roar of the waves. Looking up, she stopped what she was doing to watch the tall, lean, uniformed figure walk toward her across the shell-littered sand, a blazing grin on her handsome face. Tory was used to seeing the deputy sheriff’s cruiser on the shore every morning, too, as natural a part of her personal landscape now as the dunes and the sea and the clear blue skies. But seeing the dark-haired, blue-eyed woman made her heart flutter just as it had the very first time they had met.
There were moments like this, after they’d been apart, when Reese would appear and Tory would wonder fleetingly if perhaps she had conjured her. Because, after all, women don’t walk out of your dreams and right into your life. And because, after all this time, her heart still fluttered. Walk slowly, so I can watch.
Reese must have read Tory’s mind, or maybe she just read the gleam in her eye, but she took her time crossing the beach, one
dark eyebrow quirked to match her cocky grin.
“Good morning, Sheriff,” Tory called on the wind, her eyes roaming the trim body in the immaculately pressed and polished uniform, moving slowly from the broad shoulders over the faint swell of breasts to the narrow hips and long, muscular thighs. Reese had left her hat in the patrol car, and the wind ruffled her thick black just short-of-short hair, giving her that slightly wild look that Tory loved. God, you’re gorgeous.
“Good morning, Doctor,” Reese replied easily, stopping a few feet away, shoulders squared in that unconscious military posture that was second nature to her. She knew Tory was watching her, wanting her, and she liked it. Her skin tingled under the stiff cotton of her khakis everywhere Tory’s glance fell, the visual caress as tangible as a touch. The two feet of air between them shimmered like the currents above blacktop on a hot summer’s day. “Nice out there today?”
“Mmm. Yeah, it was.”
Reese smiled. Tory’s clear, lightly tanned skin was flushed from the wind off the water and the exertion of her recent paddle. The T-shirt she had worn under her PFD was damp with sweat and spray, the thin material subtly outlining her firm, high breasts. Her mid-thigh-length shorts hugged slender, toned legs. Even the scarred and damaged calf held a trace of valiant beauty.
“Give you a hand?” Reese’s voice was husky. You are so very lovely.
“Anytime.” Tory let Reese take the kayak up the beach, following with paddle and drybag, but falling slightly behind as her unsteady gait in the sand hampered her progress. Still, the lightweight high-impact plastic brace on her right ankle was far better than the full metal one she had needed until recently, and she wasn’t complaining, especially now that she rarely, if ever, needed her cane. If it had been anyone other than Reese, though, she would have refused the aid. She had managed such things on her own for so long that it was second nature for her to decline assistance.
She caught up to Reese by the side of her Jeep and opened the back. Tossing the items she carried inside, she then turned and found the sheriff leaning against the side of the vehicle, watching her…watching her with that particular sparkle in her eye that suggested she was considering things one couldn’t do in public. Things Tory really didn’t want to think about at eight in the morning when she had forty patients waiting in her office.
Flushing, Tory looked away and reached for the rear of the kayak. “Ready?”
“Any time you say, love.” Except Reese wasn’t looking at the kayak.
Tory reached for the lift strap on the end of the boat. “Stop.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Reese’s voice was playful.
“Just help me with this and try to behave.”
“Anything you want.”
Tory laughed, and together they lifted the craft to the roof rack and secured it. As they stood facing one another by the side of the vehicle, their eyes met and they moved close enough that their hands touched. Tory slid her fingers under the starched cuff of Reese’s shirt, lightly encircling her wrist.
“Busy day today?” Reese brushed the auburn collar-length hair back from Tory’s face with her fingertips, letting her hand linger against her lover’s cheek.
“Uh-huh,” Tory murmured, pressing her face to Reese’s palm as she rested her free hand on the taller woman’s chest. “You?”
“Routine,” the sheriff replied, watching the green eyes deepen to the color of the ocean in August. “I won’t be late. Can we have dinner?”
“Probably. Call me when you finish your shift, and I’ll see where I am with my patients.”
“You think Randy will let me interrupt your office hours, even for dinner?” Reese referred to Tory’s clinic majordomo with genuine deference. “He doesn’t like it when I interfere with your schedule.”
“He’ll make room for you if he knows what’s good for him.”
Reese laughed. “I’ll tell him you said that.”
“Mmm, okay.” Tory ran a finger down the buttons on Reese’s shirt, thinking about the hard muscles and soft smooth skin underneath. She thought about waking with her that morning and how much she had wanted her right then and knowing that there wasn’t time—knowing that she would want her all day, knowing that in the evening there would be time. “I love you.”
Reese lowered her head and brushed her lips over Tory’s, her hand beneath Tory’s hair caressing the back of her neck. “Me, too,” she whispered against her lover’s ear. “I don’t suppose you could get away at lunch?”
“Now you’re pushing it, Sheriff.” Tory’s laughter was rich and full as she pressed both palms against Reese’s chest and pushed, backing her up a step. “No, I can’t. And it won’t hurt you to wait.”
“I’m suffering already.”
“Go to work,” Tory ordered as she stepped away. Reese had a dangerous glint in her deep blue eyes, the kind of spark that promised flames. Tory was afraid that if they touched again they’d kiss for real, and then she wouldn’t be able to concentrate all day. Twelve hours was an eternity when your body was on fire.
“When?” Reese persisted, but she didn’t move. She didn’t dare. You always do this to me—make me so hot I can’t think.
“Later. Now go.” Tory slid into the Jeep, pulled the door closed, and started the ignition with shaking hands. After two years, she had expected the passion to lessen, the heat to cool, but neither had. She glanced into the rearview mirror as she drove away. Watching Reese stride to her patrol car, she hoped that they never would.
*
Later turned out to be eleven o’clock that night.
Tory’s patient schedule had been disrupted while she sutured a series of nasty lacerations on the forehead of a cyclist who had blown a tire coming down Route 6 from Truro. He’d catapulted into the guardrail, and he looked it. By the time she got home, her head ached, she was exhausted, and sex was the last thing on her mind.
“Did you ever get dinner?” Reese, in jeans and a faded green T-shirt with USMC stenciled on the left chest, met her lover on the rear deck of the house they shared overlooking Provincetown Harbor.
“No.” Tory sighed as she flopped into a deck chair, absently petting the huge brindle mastiff that lumbered to her side. “Hey, Jed,” she whispered faintly. Looking up at Reese, she added wryly, “Some date night, huh? Sorry.”
“You’re forgiven.” Reese leaned in for a kiss. “Relax a minute. I’ll be right back.”
Tory closed her eyes, and when she jerked awake a few moments later, there was a tray table beside her with a glass of wine and a sandwich. Suddenly, she was ravenous.
“Oh, yes,” she breathed, casting a grateful glance at the woman who leaned against the deck rail a few feet away. Moonlight and the soft glow from the kitchen behind them illuminated Reese’s strikingly beautiful Black Irish coloring and sculpted features. Sandwich nearly forgotten, Tory had to swallow around the fist of desire in her throat before she could speak. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure.” Reese watched Tory consume the late meal, trying not to let her worry show. As the town’s only year-round doctor, Tory worked long hours and was always on call, and she often forgot to eat or didn’t get enough sleep. “Better?” she asked when Tory set her glass down with a satisfied groan.
“Almost.”
Reese raised an eyebrow. “Something else?”
“Uh-huh.” Tory held out a hand, and Reese moved to take it. Tory tugged her lover down onto the lounge chair beside her, turning so that they rested face to face. Threading her arms around Reese’s waist, she pressed close, pushing one thigh between Reese’s. “This.”
It began with just a kiss—a kiss to say welcome home, a kiss to say I missed you, a kiss to say I love you. It became something more urgent as flesh met flesh and passions stirred. Tory worked her hand between them and pulled the T-shirt from Reese’s jeans, resting her palm on the curve of rib as it arched above Reese’s taut stomach. She ran her nails lightly down the center of Reese’s abdomen, smiling against Reese’s
lips as muscles flickered.
Reese kissed her way from Tory’s mouth along the line of her jaw to the smooth skin of her neck, biting lightly until she drew soft cries from her lover’s throat. Their hearts pounded, beating a familiar rhythm that echoed in each other’s blood as they explored one another with mouths and lips and demanding hands.
“Love,” Reese gasped as she felt Tory’s fingers slip down the front of her jeans. She didn’t remember opening her fly, but one of them must have. “Careful there. I’ve waited all day.”
“And your point is…?” Tory murmured thickly, pushing lower, finding heat, as she leaned up on the other arm so she could watch Reese’s face. “I’ve been waiting all day, too. Now, I’m done waiting.”
“Ah, God…you know I’ll go fast if you touch me like that.”
“I’m not worried.” Tory’s fingers found the hardness she sought, and as she pressed steadily, Reese moaned. “You’re always good for more than one.”
Through a haze of want, Tory watched; she loved to see Reese like this—growing so still under her hands, body arched slightly, head tilted back, pupils wide and dark. After all this time, Tory knew just how to touch her to keep her on the edge, knew the telltale flutter of her lids, the stutter of breath in her chest, the faint cry barely uttered. She knew and she held Reese there on the brink, moving her fingers slowly, carefully, one gentle stroke after another.
“Tory…love,” Reese whispered as the pleasure escaped the confines of the places Tory touched and cascaded outward to burn through her blood and roll down her legs, muscles clenching with the force of nerves and vessels turning to fire. She pressed her forehead to Tory’s shoulder and shuddered helplessly, lost and forever found.
