by Noelle Adams
“I’m exhausted,” she said, her eyes closed and arms stretched up above her head. Then she squinted at him in an exaggerated glare. “Why aren’t you tired too?”
He almost laughed at the irony. He must be a better actor than he thought. “I am,” he admitted, lowering himself to sit beside her on the sand. “I feel like I might just fall over.”
“Good.” She was doing that suppressed smile thing, and it made her face look absolutely enchanting—almost as attractive to him as her body.
He couldn’t keep his eyes from crawling over her long limbs and firm curves though. She was only a few inches away from him, and her breasts alone made him want to howl. He felt the erection that had tightened earlier get a little harder as he gazed at her. Soon it was going to be uncomfortable.
“Don’t get too turned on,” she said without opening her eyes. “Nothing is going to happen.”
“I know that. But there’s not any sense in trying to reason with my body. It does what it does, no matter how sternly I lecture it differently.”
She chuckled, and he was irrationally pleased that he’d managed to amuse her. She opened her eyes to meet his again. “If it’s going to be a problem for you, then you’ll need to leave. This isn’t an invitation.”
“I know it isn’t. I’m not a lumbering buffoon who thinks a body is only there for me to touch. It’s not going to be a problem for me.” He noticed that she didn’t offer to cover up. That was interesting and not a normal response for a woman—at least for the women he’d known before.
She wasn’t taking any responsibility at all for the state of his body, even though she was lying next to him mostly naked.
“Good. Then you can stay for a little while.”
“Thanks.” His voice was dry but not sarcastic.
She smiled again and relaxed on her towel, obviously enjoying the feel of the sun and the breeze.
Cade adjusted his position and tried to enjoy it too, although his mind was whirling with too many questions and responses.
“It doesn’t bother you?” he asked after a minute.
She turned her head to look up at him. “What doesn’t bother me?”
“My sitting here staring at you like this.”
“You weren’t staring just now. You were looking out at the bay, trying to get less turned on.”
She was exactly right, although how she’d realized it with her eyes closed he had no idea. “But I was staring at you earlier. It doesn’t bother you?”
“No. Why would it?”
“I don’t know. A lot of women are self-conscious about people staring at their bodies. And since you seem to be… reluctant to socialize, I would have thought it would be harder for you.”
“No. I think people are self-conscious because they want other people to think well of them, more so about the parts of them that are most intimate. I couldn’t care less about whether you like my body or not.”
She was speaking the truth. He could tell. It was so different from what he was used to that he had trouble wrapping his mind around it.
“And lying here like this doesn’t feel very intimate to me anyway. I’d far rather you see me naked than set foot into my house.”
She was telling him the truth about that too. He wondered whether something was in the house that made it so off-limits or if it was just a private sanctuary that no one but her could ever enter.
There were still far too many questions about her than answers. He might have seen her mostly naked, but he had barely scratched the surface of who she was.
He wondered why she’d allowed him to swim with her this evening, why she wasn’t sending him away now.
“You interest me,” she said at last, as if she had read his mind. “I can’t quite figure you out.”
“Same here,” he said, speaking only the truth.
“No one has really interested me in a long time.” Her words drifted off as if she was speaking to herself.
He didn’t give her the answer out loud, but the same was true of him. He wanted—needed—to know more about her. It made him feel alive, so alive that he wondered if he’d been living half-dead for the past few years.
Seven
Holly woke up the next morning, thinking about Cade.
She wasn’t used to being wrapped up in thoughts of another person like this. She usually woke up with a clear mind. Occasionally she woke up thinking about a big job she had to accomplish that day—like when she’d had to clean the gutters. And, every once in a while, she woke up in a panic, feeling like she was trapped, like she was alone in the dark hiding place with the world threatening outside, like the ghost in the middle of the woods would finally get her.
But she almost never woke up thinking about someone else.
The day before had been exciting in a way that few of her days ever were anymore. She lay in bed reliving her interaction with Cade, her conversations with him, his various tones and expressions.
She wasn’t sure what was driving him, but there was something other than the curiosity and attraction he’d expressed to her. There was something more powerful underlying his behavior. She wondered what it was.
Everyone was driven by something, and she was usually good at intuitively pinpointing what the driving force was. She herself was driven by the need to hide, but that wasn’t true of Cade.
He was driven by… something else.
She wanted to know what it was. She wanted to talk to him more. She wanted to see that hot look in his eyes again, the one that made it clear he wanted to touch her.
She’d done a lot of kissing and petting as a teenager. The first few times, she’d gone all the way to intercourse, but she’d found it very upsetting. She’d been trapped, uncomfortable, violated, and hadn’t wanted to do it again. But she enjoyed the preliminaries and kept doing those. It was exciting, like a dangerous ride—hanging on to the edge, living in the moment, testing her limits. And the limits of the boy she’d been with.
She wasn’t scared or self-conscious about physical attraction. It was just bodies, after all. But she’d given up on it six years ago, when she was eighteen and her mother had left.
That had changed her, and her attempts to enter the world had no longer seemed worth the trouble.
She’d decided she was happier—and safer—alone.
Her absorption with Cade was a little worrying, but it was also natural and unavoidable. She was content with her life. She was safe here and enjoyed her days in a way she had as a child with her mother and hadn’t in the years she’d spent away from here. But someone couldn’t live as isolated as she was without missing real interaction with other people, without feeling the lack.
She debated internally for a long time about whether she should avoid Cade from now on since spending time with him might make her less content with the lifestyle that was best for her. She finally decided against it.
It might make her feel more alone for a little while afterward, but it also might temporarily satisfy some of the desires that were part of being human, making it easier in the long run.
It would remind her of what she was missing and of how that was less important than what she had.
It also might give her the chance to enjoy some more physical experiences.
That would be nice.
Ever since she was a child and lived in hiding with her mother, she’d had to rely on her instincts to keep her safe and warn her of dangers.
Whatever else he was, Cade wasn’t a danger.
So she felt pleased with her decision and excited about what the day would bring when she finally got up, aware that the sun was rising and the sky starting to lighten.
Cade didn’t strike her as an early riser, so she could make her normal round of the property—one of her favorite parts of the day—before she had to worry about running into him.
She realized her muscles were sorer than usual as she pulled on a dress and braided her hair. She’d taken a shower the night before because she di
dn’t like the shock of water all over her face and body first thing in the morning. She filled up a water bottle before she walked outside and toward the boardwalk.
It was a gray morning—cooler than yesterday—and a fine sprinkle of rain hit her skin as she walked.
She liked mornings like this. The big gray clouds over the bay were starkly beautiful and ever changing. The birds and bugs were silent instead of filling the air with their loud, chaotic chorus. It wasn’t raining hard enough to keep the fox and deer away, and it wasn’t going to keep her from her walk.
When she reached the beach, she took off her sandals so she could feel the damp sand on her feet and between her toes.
She was listening to the muffled sound of the bay when she was aware of someone approaching.
Her first instinct was to flee, but she turned her head to look first and saw it was Cade.
She didn’t know what he was doing up so early. He hadn’t made an appearance until nine the previous morning. But here he was, stepping over the border onto her property, wearing beat-up trousers and a T-shirt and smiling at her.
She did like his smile, especially when he wasn’t trying to charm her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, taken off guard by his unexpected appearance and thus feeling rather defensive.
“Good morning to you too.” He was still smiling as he stopped in front of her.
She ignored the sardonic tone. “What are you doing here?”
“I was taking a walk.”
“In the rain?”
“It’s not raining that hard.” His amber-colored eyes were resting on her face with half interest, half admiration. “And since you’re taking a walk in the rain too, I’m not sure why you should be surprised.”
“Because you’re not like me.” Her heart was beating a little faster, excited even by this conversation. He was intelligent. Very intelligent. It was a challenge to match him in wits.
She liked that, and she almost never experienced it.
“Maybe I’m more like you than you think.”
“I doubt it.”
He chuckled and glanced out to the waves pushing in on the shore, pulling back sand and shells and leaving white foam in its wake. “You’re probably right. But I’m not such a wuss that I can’t stand a little rain, you know.”
She thought about that and realized he was right. He seemed to live an indulged lifestyle. His clothes—even the casual stuff he had on today—all looked expensive, and he was evidently able to take a month off work to hang around and do nothing. But he didn’t seem to be one of those spoiled assholes who balked at the least discomfort.
That was good. She wouldn’t have wanted to talk to someone like that at all.
“Why are you up so early?”
“I woke up,” he replied with a little shrug. “So I got up.”
She wondered if it was the truth, but then she couldn’t think of any reason why he would have lied to her about it.
“Do you always give guys an interrogation first thing in the morning?” he asked teasingly when she didn’t say anything.
“I do if they show up on my beach.”
“I only came over here because I saw you. I can go back if you don’t want me here.”
She almost told him to leave, as she felt a flare of anxiety at how much she was enjoying the conversation. But she remembered the internal debate she’d had before she got up this morning and remembered it wouldn’t do any harm to enjoy Cade’s company for a little while. “You’re fine for now,” she said.
His smile changed, became almost fond. She really liked that expression. “I’m glad to hear it. What are you doing up so early?”
“I always get up this early.”
“Do you just stroll along the beach?”
She shook her head, thinking with a stab of regret of the fox and the deer. “No. I usually walk around my land.”
“I can join you if you want.”
“No. You’re not invited.” She didn’t mind spending time with Cade on the beach, but she wasn’t going to let him into her private sanctuary. It was enough of an intrusion for him to come to the burial spot yesterday. She wasn’t going to show him the rest of her home.
He was looking at her curiously and didn’t appear offended. “Okay. The beach is fine for me. Do you want to walk?”
She nodded and started toward the right, toward his stretch of beach. “Do you always get such a long vacation from work?”
He fell into step with her. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you said you rented that house all month. And you had last week off too. That seems like a longer vacation than most people take.”
He gave her a lazy look, but the laziness masked something observant and very intelligent. “How do you know I had last week off too?”
She realized she’d revealed something in the thoughtless comment, but she decided it didn’t matter. She told him the truth. “Because I saw you in town running.”
He paused for a moment, evidently searching his memory. “That must have been Friday.”
“Is that because you know I came to town on Friday or because that was the only day you ran.”
“Both,” he admitted. The sun suddenly broke through the clouds for just a minute, and it cast an orange glow on him, making his light brown hair and tanned skin burnished with gold.
Holly felt a surge of attraction for him. She felt an immediate flicker of fear but reminded herself again that it wasn’t a problem. It was natural, inevitable. She was allowed to be attracted to a man. It didn’t threaten her security here. It didn’t threaten the sanctuary she’d created.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said after a moment.
“What question?”
It felt like he was stalling now, and she didn’t like it. “Do you always get such a long vacation from work?”
“Oh.” He paused, reluctance twisting on his face briefly. “I’m… in between jobs at the moment.”
This was a new piece of information and was interesting. “I see. What do you do then?”
He opened his mouth to answer and then gave her a narrow look. “Are you prepared to answer a lot of personal questions from me? Because if you ask me these kinds of questions, then you better believe I’m going to ask you too.”
She pressed her lips together, annoyed by his words even though she had to admit they were perfectly fair.
“I thought you wanted things to be even between us,” he added.
“I do.” She let out a breath. “You don’t have to answer.”
“Okay then.” He looked pleased with himself, and even that slightly smug expression was appealing.
Who was this guy anyway?
They were silent for a few minutes, and Holly walked farther into the surf, letting the soft, cool waves lap around her ankles.
“Have you ever been to the ocean?” Cade asked idly, watching her as she walked through the waves.
“Yes. I have. I don’t like it though.”
“Why not?” His eyebrows lifted in surprise.
“I don’t know. It’s just… not as nice.”
“What does that mean? It’s like the bay, only more so.”
He had a real way with words, she reflected. He seemed to be able to capture a feeling she had with just a few well-chosen words. “That’s it exactly,” she replied, looking him in the eye. “But it’s too much. There’s too much of it. It feels… too big. The bay feels like a friend. The ocean feels… like a stranger.”
She wasn’t even sure if her words made sense, but he seemed to understand them. He thought about them for a minute before he said, “But don’t you think the ocean might feel like a friend too, if you spent as much time with it as you do the bay?”
She shook her head and pointed to the west, where a dark smudgy line was visible on the horizon. “Look there. That’s the opposite end of the bay. You can see where it ends. That makes it feel… safe.”
Again he didn’t
answer immediately, and his voice was no more than a murmur when he finally did. “Safety is really important to you, isn’t it?”
She didn’t like the sound of that. It made her feel weak. “It’s important to everyone, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. A lot of people do things because they’re dangerous, because they like the thrill of it.”
“That’s because they’ve never really experienced danger. You don’t play around with it, if you know what it really is.”
She was afraid she’d said too much, revealed too much, but he didn’t react or make a big deal about it. She knew he’d heard her and added the comment to everything else he already knew about her, but he didn’t share with her his conclusions.
He had a really deep mind. She could almost see it working in his expression.
She liked that he was smart. She liked that he genuinely thought about things. She liked that he didn’t immediately decide his conclusions, without first thinking them through.
“You might be right,” he said at last.
“I am right.”
He cut his eyes back over to her face and asked very softly, “Do you feel like you’re in danger?”
He seemed to really want to know, so it didn’t feel fair to deflect the question. So she answered it truthfully. “Not here.”
His brows drew together. “Why is this place safe?”
She couldn’t answer that question. Not for real. “Because it is.”
When he didn’t reply, just frowned thoughtfully and stared at the sand, she started to walk again. He fell in step with her almost immediately.
They’d walked for another five minutes when he finally asked, “If you’re in danger, maybe you should go to someone for help.”
She almost snorted at the irony. The authorities couldn’t do a thing about the ghost she still ran from. “Like the police, you mean?”
“You don’t think they could help?”
“No. Definitely not.” Holly was speaking the truth. The only things that were chasing her now were ghosts, and the police had no power over them.
“Then someone else maybe? Surely you don’t want to spend your entire life trapped here because it’s the only place you feel safe.”
