by Nora Roberts
So had Kate. “When I’m having a job done, I’ve found that it saves a considerable amount of time and trouble to find the most suitable person.” With forced calm, she set down her wine and picked up her fork. “I wouldn’t have come back to Ocracoke for any other reason.” She tilted her head, surprised by the quick surge of challenge that rushed through her. “Things will be simpler for both of us if that’s clear up front.”
Anger moved through him, but he controlled it. If they were playing word games, he had to keep his wits. She’d always been clever, but now it appeared the cleverness was glossed over with sophistication. He remembered the innocent, curious Kate with a pang. “As I recall, you were always one for complicating rather than simplifying. I had to explain the purpose, history and mechanics of every piece of equipment before you’d take the first dive.”
“That’s called caution, not complication.”
“You’d know more about caution than I would. Some people spend half their lives testing the wind.” He drank deeply of wine. “I’d rather ride with it.”
“Yes.” This time it was she who smiled with her lips only. “I remember very well. No plans, no ties, tomorrow the wind might change.”
“If you’re anchored in one spot too long, you can become like those trees out there.” He gestured out the window where a line of sparse junipers bent away from the sea. “Stunted.”
“Yet you’re still here, where you were born, where you grew up.”
Slowly Ky poured her more wine. “The island’s too isolated, the life a bit too basic for some. I prefer it to those structured little communities with their parties and country clubs.”
Kate looked like she belonged in such a place, Ky thought as he fought against the frustrated desire that ebbed and flowed inside him. She belonged in an elegant silk suit, holding a Dresden cup and discussing an obscure eighteenth-century English poet. Was that why she could still make him feel rough and awkward and too full of longings?
If they could be swept back in time, he’d have stolen her, taken her out to open sea and kept her there. They would have traveled from port to exotic port. If having her meant he could never go home again, then he’d have sailed until his time was up. But he would have had her. Ky’s fingers tightened around his glass. By God, he would have had her.
The main course was slipped in front of him discreetly. Ky brought himself back to the moment. It wasn’t the eighteenth century, but today. Still, she had brought him the past with the papers and maps. Perhaps they’d both find more than they’d bargained for.
“I looked over the things you left with me.”
“Oh?” She felt a quick tingle of excitement but speared the first delicate shrimp as though it were all that concerned her.
“Your father’s research is very thorough.”
“Of course.”
Ky let out a quick laugh. “Of course,” he repeated, toasting her. “In any case, I think he might have been on the right track. You do realize that the section he narrowed it down to goes into a dangerous area.”
Her brows drew together, but she continued to eat. “Sharks?”
“Sharks are a little difficult to confine to an area,” he said easily. “A lot of people forget that the war came this close in the forties. There are still mines all along the coast of the Outer Banks. If we’re going down to the bottom, it’d be smart to keep that in mind.”
“I’ve no intention of being careless.”
“No, but sometimes people look so far ahead they don’t see what’s under their feet.”
Though he’d eaten barely half of his meal, Ky picked up his wine again. How could he eat when his whole system was aware of her? He couldn’t stop himself from wondering what it would be like to pull those confining pins out of her hair as he’d done so often in the past. He couldn’t prevent the memory from springing up about what it had been like to bundle her into his arms and just hold her there with her body fitting so neatly against his. He could picture those long, serious looks she’d give him just before passion would start to take over, then the freedom he could feel racing through her in those last heady moments of love-making.
How could it have been so right once and so wrong now? Wouldn’t her body still fit against his? Wouldn’t her hair flow through his hands as it fell—that quiet brown that took on such fascinating lights in the sun. She’d always murmur his name after passion was spent, as if the sound alone sustained her. He wanted to hear her say it, just once more, soft and breathless while they were tangled together, bodies still warm and pulsing. He wasn’t sure he could resist it.
Absently Ky signaled for coffee. Perhaps he didn’t want to resist it. He needed her. He’d forgotten just how sharp and sure a need could be. Perhaps he’d take her. He didn’t believe she was indifferent to him—certain things never fade completely. In his own time, in his own way, he’d take what he once had from her. And pray it would be enough this time.
When he looked back at her, Kate felt the warning signals shiver through her. Ky was a difficult man to understand. She knew only that he’d come to some decision and that it involved her. Grateful for the warming effects of the coffee, she drank. She was in charge this time, she reminded herself, every step of the way and she’d make him aware of it. There was no time like the present to begin.
“I’ll be at the harbor at eight,” she said briskly. “I’ll require tanks of course, but I brought my own wet suit. I’d appreciate it if you’d have my briefcase and its contents on board. I believe we’d be wise to spend between six and eight hours out a day.”
“Have you kept up with your diving?”
“I know what to do.”
“I’d be the last to argue that you had the best teacher.” He tilted his cup back in a quick, impatient gesture Kate found typical of him. “But if you’re rusty, we’ll take it slow for a day or two.”
“I’m a perfectly competent diver.”
“I want more than competence in a partner.”
He saw the flare in her eyes and his need sharpened. It was a rare and arousing thing to watch her controlled and reasonable temperament heat up. “We’re not partners. You’re working for me.”
“A matter of viewpoint,” Ky said easily. He rose, deliberately blocking her in. “We’ll be putting in a full day tomorrow, so you’d better go catch up on all the sleep you’ve been missing lately.”
“I don’t need you to worry about my health, Ky.”
“I worry about my own,” he said curtly. “You don’t go under with me unless you’re rested and alert. You come to the harbor in the morning with shadows under your eyes, you won’t make the first dive.” Furiously she squashed the urge to argue with the reasonable. “If you’re sluggish, you make mistakes,” Ky said briefly. “A mistake you make can cost me. That logical enough for you, professor?”
“It’s perfectly clear.” Bracing herself for the brush of bodies, Kate rose. But bracing herself didn’t stop the jolt, not for either of them.
“I’ll walk you back.”
“It’s not necessary.”
His hand curled over her wrist, strong and stubborn. “It’s civilized,” he said lazily. “You were always big on being civilized.”
Until you’d touch me, she thought. No, she wouldn’t remember that, not if she wanted to sleep tonight. Kate merely inclined her head in cool agreement. “I want to thank Marsh.”
“You can thank him tomorrow.” Ky dropped the waitress’s tip on the table. “He’s busy.”
She started to protest, then saw Marsh disappear into what must have been the kitchen. “All right.” Kate moved by him and out into the balmy evening air.
The sun was low, though it wouldn’t set for nearly an hour. The clouds to the west were just touched with mauve and rose. When she stepped outside, Kate decided there were more people in the restaurant than there were on the streets.
A charter fishing boat glided into the harbor. Some of the tourists would be staying on the island, others woul
d be riding back across Hatteras Inlet on one of the last ferries of the day.
She’d like to go out on the water now, while the light was softening and the breeze was quiet. Now, she thought, while others were coming in and the sea would stretch for mile after endless empty mile.
Shaking off the mood, she headed for the hotel. What she needed wasn’t a sunset sail but a good solid night’s sleep. Daydreaming was foolish, and tomorrow too important.
The same hotel. Ky glanced up at her window. He already knew she had the same room. He’d walked her there before, but then she’d have had her arm through his in that sweet way she had of joining them together. She’d have looked up and laughed at him over something that had happened that day. And she’d have kissed him, warm, long and lingeringly before the door would close behind her.
Because her thoughts had run the same gamut, Kate turned to him while they were still outside the hotel. “Thank you, Ky.” She made a business out of shifting her purse strap on her arm. “There’s no need for you to go any further out of your way.”
“No, there isn’t.” He’d have something to take home with him that night, he thought with sudden, fierce impatience. And he’d leave her something to take up to the room where they’d had one long, glorious night. “But then we’ve always looked at needs from different angles.” He cupped his hand around the back of her neck, holding firm as he felt her stiffen.
“Don’t.” She didn’t back away. Kate told herself she didn’t back away because to do so would make her seem vulnerable. And she was, feeling those long hard fingers play against her skin again.
“I think this is something you owe me,” he told her in a voice so quiet it shivered on the air. “Maybe something I owe myself.”
He wasn’t gentle. That was deliberate. Somewhere inside him was a need to punish for what hadn’t been—or perhaps what had. The mouth he crushed on hers hungered, the arms he wrapped around her demanded. If she’d forgotten, he thought grimly, this would remind her. And remind her.
With her arms trapped between them, he could feel her hands ball into tight fists. Let her hate him, loathe him. He’d rather that than cool politeness.
But God she was sweet. Sweet and as delicate as one of the frothy waves that lapped and spread along the shoreline. Dimly, distantly, he knew he could drown in her without a murmur or complaint.
She wanted it to be different. Oh, how she wanted it to be different so that she’d feel nothing. But she felt everything.
The hard, impatient mouth that had always thrilled and bemused her—it was the same. The lean restless body that fit so unerringly against her—no different. The scent that clung to him, sea and salt—hadn’t changed. Always when he kissed her, there’d been the sounds of water or wind or gulls. That, too, remained constant. Behind them boats rocked gently in their slips, water against wood. A gull resting on pilings let out a long, lonely call. The light dimmed as the sun dropped closer to the sea. The flood of past feelings rose up to merge and mingle with the moment.
She didn’t resist him. Kate had told herself she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a struggle. But the command to her brain not to respond was lost in the thin clouds of dusk. She gave because she had to. She took because she had no choice.
His tongue played over hers and her fists uncurled until Kate’s palms rested against his chest. So warm, so hard, so familiar. He kissed as he always had, with complete concentration, no inhibitions and little patience.
Time tumbled back and she was young and in love and foolish. Why, she wondered while her head swam, should that make her want to weep?
He had to let her go or he’d beg. Ky could feel it rising in him. He wasn’t fool enough to plead for what was already gone. He wasn’t strong enough to accept that he had to let go again. The tug-of-war going on inside him was fierce enough to make him moan. On the sound he pulled away from her, frustrated, infuriated, bewitched.
Taking a moment, he stared down at her. Her look was the same, he realized—that half surprised, half speculative look she’d given him after their first kiss. It disoriented him. Whatever he’d sought to prove, Ky knew now he’d only proven that he was still as much enchanted with her as he’d ever been. He bit back an oath, instead, giving her a half-salute as he walked away.
“Get eight hours of sleep,” he ordered without turning around.
CHAPTER 4
Some mornings the sun seemed to rise more slowly than others, as if nature wanted to show off her particular majesty just a bit longer. When she’d gone to bed, Kate had left her shades up knowing that the morning light would awaken her before the travel alarm beside her bed rang.
She took the dawn as a gift to herself, something individual and personal. Standing at the window, she watched it bloom. The first quiet breeze of morning drifted through the screen to run over her hair and face, through the thin material of her nightshirt, cool and promising. While she stood, Kate absorbed the colors, the light and the silent thunder of day breaking over water.
The lazy contemplation was far different from her structured routine of the past months and years. Mornings had been a time to dress, a time to run over her schedule and notes for the day’s classes over two cups of coffee and a quick breakfast. She never had time to give herself the dawn, so she took it now.
She slept better than she’d expected, lulled by the quiet, exhausted by the days of traveling and the strain on her emotions. There’d been no dreams to haunt her from the time she’d turned back the sheets until the first light had fallen over her face. Then she rose quickly. There’d be no dreams now.
Kate let the morning wash over her with all its new promises, its beginnings. Today was the start. Everything, from the moment she’d taken out her father’s papers until she’d seen Ky again, had been a prelude. Even the brief, torrid embrace of the night before had been no more than a ghost of the past. Today was the real beginning.
She dressed and went out into the morning.
Breakfast was impossible. The excitement she’d so meticulously held off was beginning to strain for freedom. The feeling that what she was doing was right was back with her. Whatever it took, whatever it cost her, she’d look for the gold her father had dreamed of. She’d follow his directions. If she found nothing, she’d have looked anyway.
In looking, Kate had come to believe she’d lay all her personal ghosts to rest.
Ky’s kiss. It had been aching, disturbing as it had always been. She’d been absorbed, just as she’d always been. Though she knew she had to face both Ky and the past, she hadn’t known it would be so frighteningly easy to go back—back to that dark, dreamy world where only he had taken her.
Now that she knew, now that she’d faced even that, Kate had to prepare to fight the wind.
He’d never forgiven her, she realized, for saying no. For bruising his pride. She’d gone back to her world when he’d asked her to stay in his. Asked her to stay, Kate remembered, without offering anything, not even a promise. If he’d given her that, no matter how casual or airy the promise might have been, she wouldn’t have gone. She wondered if he knew that.
Perhaps he thought if he could make her lose herself to him again, the scales would be even. She wouldn’t lose. Kate stuck her hands into the pockets of her brief pleated shorts. No, she didn’t intend to lose. If he had pressed her last night, if he’d known just how weakened she’d been by that one kiss…
But he wouldn’t know, she told herself. She wouldn’t weaken again. For the summer, she’d make the treasure her goal and her one ambition. She wouldn’t leave the island empty-handed this time.
He was already on board the Vortex. Kate could see him stowing gear, his hair tousled by the breeze that flowed in from the sea. With only cut-offs and a sleeveless T-shirt between him and the sun she could see the muscles coil and relax, the skin gleam.
Magnificent. She felt the dull ache deep in her stomach and tried to rationalize it away. After all, a well-honed masculine build should make a
woman respond. It was natural. One could even call it impersonal, Kate decided. As she started down the dock she wished she could believe it.
He didn’t see her. A fishing boat already well out on the water had caught his attention. For a moment, she stopped, just watching him. Why was it she could always sense the restlessness in him? There was movement in him even when he was still, sound even when he was silent. What was it he saw when he looked out over the sea? Challenge? Romance?
He was a man who always seemed poised for action, for doing. Yet he could sit quietly and watch the waves as if there were nothing more important than that endless battle between earth and water.
Just now he stood on the deck of his boat, hands on hips, watching the tubby fishing vessel putt toward the horizon. It was something he’d seen countless times, yet he stopped to take it in again. Kate looked where Ky looked and wished she could see what he was seeing.
Quietly she went forward, her deck shoes making no sound, but he turned, eyes still intense. “You’re early,” he said, and with no more greeting reached out a hand to help her on board.
“I thought you might be as anxious to start as I am.”
Palm met palm, rough against smooth. Both of them broke contact as soon as possible.
“It should be an easy ride.” He looked back to sea, toward the boat, but this time he didn’t focus on it. “The wind’s coming in from the north, no more than ten knots.”
“Good.” Though it wouldn’t have mattered to her nor, she thought, to him, if the wind had been twice as fast. This was the morning to begin.
She could sense the impatience in him, the desire to be gone and doing. Wanting to make things as simple as possible Kate helped Ky cast off, then walked to the stern. That would keep the maximum distance between them. They didn’t speak. The engine roared to life, shattering the calm. Smoothly, Ky maneuvered the small cruiser out of the harbor, setting up a small wake that caused the water to lap against pilings. He kept the same steady even speed while they sailed through the shallows of Ocracoke Inlet. Looking back, Kate watched the distance between the boat and the village grow.
