Dangerous Embrace

by Nora Roberts

  “Something like that. And of course trying to pretend I didn’t notice the natives ogling me.”

  She grinned. “People in grass skirts,” she began then let out a muffled shout as he tossed a peach in her direction. Catching it cleanly, Kate smiled at him before she bit into the fruit.

  “Still have good reflexes,” Ky commented as he came up the last step.

  “Especially when I’m hungry.” She touched her tongue to her palm where juice dribbled. “I couldn’t eat this morning, I was too keyed up.”

  He held out one of two bottles of cold soda he’d taken from the refrigerator. “About the dive?”

  “That and…” Kate broke off, surprised that she was talking to him as if it had been four years before.

  “And?” Ky prompted. Though his tone was casual, his gaze had sharpened.

  Aware of it, Kate rose, turning away to look back over the stern. She saw nothing there but sky and water. “It was the morning,” she murmured. “The way the sun came up over the water. All that color.” She shook her head and water dripped from the ends of her hair onto the deck. “I haven’t watched a sunrise in a very long time.”

  Making himself relax again, Ky leaned back, biting into his own peach as he watched her. “Why?”

  “No time. No need.”

  “Do they both mean the same thing to you?”

  Restless, she moved her shoulders. “When your life revolves around schedules and classes, I suppose one equals the other.”

  “That’s what you want? A daily timetable?”

  Kate looked back over her shoulder, meeting his eyes levelly. How could they ever understand each other, she wondered. Her world was as foreign to him as his to her. “It’s what I’ve chosen.”

  “One of your multiple choices of life?” Ky countered, giving a short laugh before he tilted his bottle back again.

  “Maybe, or maybe some parts of life only have one choice.” She turned completely around, determined not to lose the euphoria that had come to her with the dive. “Tell me about Tahiti, Ky. What’s it like?”

  “Soft air, soft water. Blue, green, white. Those are the colors that come to mind, then outrageous splashes of red and orange and yellow.”

  “Like a Gauguin painting.”

  The length of the deck separated them. Perhaps that made it easier for him to smile. “I suppose, but I don’t think he’d have appreciated all the hotels and resorts. It isn’t an island that’s been left to itself.”

  “Things rarely are.”

  “Whether they should be or not.”

  Something in the way he said it, in the way he looked at her, made Kate think he wasn’t speaking of an island now, but of something more personal. She drank, cooling her throat, moistening her lips. “Did you scuba?”

  “Some. Shells and coral so thick I could’ve filled a boat with them if I’d wanted. Fish that looked like they should’ve been in an aquarium. And sharks.” He remembered one that had nearly caught him half a mile out. Remembering made him grin. “The waters off Tahiti are anything but boring.”

  Kate recognized the look, the recklessness that would always surface just under his skill. Perhaps he didn’t look for trouble, but she thought he’d rarely sidestep it. No, she doubted they’d ever fully understand each other, if they had a lifetime.

  “Did you bring back a shark’s tooth necklace?”

  “I gave it to Hope.” He grinned again. “Linda won’t let her have it yet.”

  “I should think not. Does it feel odd, being an uncle?”

  “No. She looks like me.”

  “Ah, the male ego.”

  Ky shrugged, aware that he had a healthy share and was comfortable with it. “I get a kick out of watching her run Marsh and Linda in circles. There’s not much entertainment on the island.”

  She tried to imagine Ky being entertained by something as tame as a baby girl. She failed. “It’s strange,” Kate said after a moment. “Coming back to find Marsh and Linda married and parents. When I left Marsh treated Linda like his little sister.”

  “Didn’t your father keep you up on progress on the island?”

  The smile left her eyes. “No.”

  Ky lifted a brow. “Did you ask?”

  “No.”

  He tossed his empty bottle into a small barrel. “He hadn’t told you anything about the ship either, about why he kept coming back to the island year after year.”

  She tossed her drying hair back from her face. It hadn’t been put in the tone of a question. Still, she answered because it was simpler that way. “No, he never mentioned the Liberty to me.”

  “That doesn’t bother you?”

  The ache came, but she pushed it aside. “Why should it?” she countered. “He was entitled to his own life, his privacy.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  She felt the chill come and go. Crossing the deck, Kate dropped her bottle beside Ky’s before reaching for her shirt. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You know exactly what I mean.” He closed his hand over hers before she could pull the shirt on. Because it would’ve been cowardly to do otherwise, she lifted her head and faced him. “You know,” he said again, quietly. “You just aren’t ready to say it out loud yet.”

  “Leave it alone, Ky.” Her voice trembled, and though it infuriated her, she couldn’t prevent it. “Just leave it.”

  He wanted to shake her, to make her admit, so that he could hear, that she’d left him because her father had preferred it. He wanted her to say, perhaps sob, that she hadn’t had the strength to stand up to the man who had shaped and molded her life to suit his values and wants.

  With an effort, he relaxed his fingers. As he had before, Ky turned away with something like a shrug. “For now,” he said easily as he went back to the helm. “Summer’s just beginning.” He started the engine before turning around for one last look. “We both know what can happen during a summer.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “The first thing you have to understand about Hope,” Linda began, steadying a vase the toddler had jostled, “is that she has a mind of her own.”

  Kate watched the chubby black-haired Hope climb onto a wing-backed chair to examine herself in an ornamental mirror. In the fifteen minutes Kate had been in Linda’s home, Hope hadn’t been still a moment. She was quick, surprisingly agile, with a look in her eyes that made Kate believe she knew exactly what she wanted and intended to get it, one way or the other. Ky had been right. His niece looked like him, in more ways than one.

  “I can see that. Where do you find the energy to run a restaurant, keep a home and manage a fireball?”

  “Vitamins,” Linda sighed. “Lots and lots of vitamins. Hope, don’t put your fingers on the glass.”

  “Hope!” the toddler cried out, making faces at herself in the mirror. “Pretty, pretty, pretty.”

  “The Silver ego,” Linda commented. “It never tarnishes.”

  With a chuckle, Kate watched Hope crawl backwards out of the chair, land on her diaper-padded bottom and begin to systematically destroy the tower of blocks she’d built a short time before. “Well, she is pretty. It only shows she’s smart enough to know it.”

  “It’s hard for me to argue that point, except when she’s spread toothpaste all over the bathroom floor.” With a contented sigh, Linda sat back on the couch. She enjoyed having Monday afternoons off to play with Hope and catch up on the dozens of things that went by the wayside when the restaurant demanded her time. “You’ve been here over a week now, and this is the first time we’ve been able to talk.”

  Kate bent over to ruffle Hope’s hair. “You’re a busy woman.”

  “So are you.”

  Kate heard the question, not so subtly submerged in the statement, and smiled. “You know I didn’t come back to the island to fish and wade, Linda.”

  “All right, all right, the heck with being tactful.” With a mother’s skill, she kept her antenna honed on her active toddler and leaned toward Kate. �
�What are you and Ky doing out on his boat every day?”

  With Linda, evasions were neither necessary nor advisable. “Looking for treasure,” Kate said simply.

  “Oh.” Expressing only mild surprise, Linda saved a budding African violet from her daughter’s curious fingers. “Blackbeard’s treasure.” She handed Hope a rubber duck in lieu of the plant. “My grandfather still tells stories about it. Pieces of eight, a king’s ransom and bottles of rum. I always figured that it was buried on land.”

  Amused at the way Linda could handle the toddler without breaking rhythm, Kate shook her head. “No, not Blackbeard’s.”

  There were dozens of theories and myths about where the infamous pirate had hidden his booty, and fantastic speculation on just how rich the trove was. Kate had never considered them any more than stories. Yet she supposed, in her own way, she was following a similar fantasy.

  “My father’d been researching the whereabouts of an English merchant ship that sank off the coast here in the eighteenth century.”

  “Your father?” Instantly Linda’s attention sharpened. She couldn’t conceive of the Edwin Hardesty she remembered from summers past as a treasure searcher. “That’s why he kept coming to the island every summer? I could never figure out why…” She broke off, grimaced, then plunged ahead. “I’m sorry, Kate, but he never seemed the type to take up scuba diving as a hobby, and I never once saw him with a fish. He certainly managed to keep what he was doing a secret.”

  “Yes, even from me.”

  “You didn’t know?” Linda glanced over idly as Hope began to beat on a plastic bucket with a wooden puzzle piece.

  “Not until I went through his papers a few weeks ago. I decided to follow through on what he’d started.”

  “And you came to Ky.”

  “I came to Ky.” Kate smoothed the material of her thin summer skirt over her knees. “I needed a boat, a diver, preferably an islander. He’s the best.”

  Linda’s attention shifted from her daughter to Kate. There was simple understanding there, but it didn’t completely mask impatience. “Is that the only reason you came to Ky?”

  Needs rose up to taunt her. Memories washed up in one warm wave. “Yes, that’s the only reason.”

  Linda wondered why Kate should want her to believe what Kate didn’t believe herself. “What if I told you he’s never forgotten you?”

  Kate shook her head quickly, almost frantically. “Don’t.”

  “I love him.” Linda rose to distract Hope who’d discovered tossing blocks was more interesting than stacking them. “Even though he’s a frustrating, difficult man. He’s Marsh’s brother.” She set Hope in front of a small army of stuffed animals before she turned and smiled. “He’s my brother. And you were the first mainlander I was ever really close to. It’s hard for me to be objective.”

  It was tempting to pour out her heart, her doubts. Too tempting. “I appreciate that, Linda. Believe me, what was between Ky and me was over a long time ago. Lives change.”

  Making a neutral sound, Linda sat again. There were some people you didn’t press. Ky and Kate were both the same in that area, however diverse they were otherwise. “All right. You know what I’ve been doing the past four years.” She sent a long-suffering look in Hope’s direction. “Tell me what your life’s been like.”

  “Quieter.”

  Linda laughed. “A small border war would be quieter than life in this house.”

  “Earning my doctorate as early as I did took a lot of concentrated effort.” She’d needed that one goal to keep herself level, to keep herself…calm. “When you’re teaching as well it doesn’t leave much time for anything else.” Shrugging, she rose. It sounded so staid, she realized. So dull. She’d wanted to learn, she’d wanted to teach, but in and of itself, it sounded hollow.

  There were toys spread all over the living room, tiny pieces of childhood. A tie was tossed carelessly over the back of a chair next to a table where Linda had dropped her purse. Small pieces of a marriage. Family. She wondered, with a panic that came and went quickly, how she would ever survive the empty house back in Connecticut.

  “This past year at Yale has been fascinating and difficult.” Was she defending or explaining? Kate wondered impatiently. “Strange, even though my father taught, I didn’t realize that being a teacher is just as hard and demanding as being a student.”

  “Harder,” Linda declared after a moment. “You have to have the answers.”

  “Yes.” Kate crouched down to look at Hope’s collection of stuffed animals. “I suppose that’s part of the appeal, though. The challenge of either knowing the answer or reasoning it out, then watching it sink in.”

  “Hoping it sinks in?” Linda ventured.

  Kate laughed again. “Yes, I suppose that’s it. When it does, that’s the most rewarding aspect. Being a mother can’t be that much different. You’re teaching every day.”

  “Or trying to,” Linda said dryly.

  “The same thing.”

  “You’re happy?”

  Hope squeezed a bright pink dragon then held it out for Kate. Was she happy? Kate wondered as she obliged by cuddling the dragon in turn. She’d been aiming for achievement, she supposed, not happiness. Her father had never asked that very simple, very basic question. She’d never taken the time to ask herself. “I want to teach,” she answered at length. “I’d be unhappy if I couldn’t.”

  “That’s a roundabout way of answering without answering at all.”

  “Sometimes there isn’t any yes or no.”

  “Ky!” Hope shouted so that Kate jolted, whipping her head around to the front door.

  “No.” Linda noted the reaction, but said nothing. “She means the dragon. He gave it to her, so it’s Ky.”

  “Oh.” She wanted to swear but managed to smile as she handed the baby back her treasured dragon. It wasn’t reasonable that just his name should make her hands unsteady, her pulse unsteady, her thoughts unsteady. “He wouldn’t pick the usual, would he?” she asked carelessly as she rose.

  “No.” She gave Kate a very direct, very level look. “His tastes have always run to the unique.”

  Amusement helped to relax her. Kate’s brow rose as she met the look. “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “Not on something I believe in.” A trace of stubbornness came through. The stubbornness, Kate mused, that had kept her determinedly waiting for Marsh to fall in love with her. “I believe in you and Ky,” Linda continued. “You two can make a mess of it for as long as you want, but I’ll still believe in you.”

  “You haven’t changed,” Kate said on a sigh. “I came back to find you a wife, a mother, and the owner of a restaurant, but you haven’t changed at all.”

  “Being a wife and mother only makes me more certain that what I believe is right.” She had her share of arrogance, too, and used it. “We don’t own the restaurant,” she added as an afterthought.

  “No?” Surprised, Kate looked up again. “But I thought you said the Roost was yours and Marsh’s.”

  “We run it,” Linda corrected. “And we do have a twenty percent interest.” Sitting back, she gave Kate a pleased smile. There was nothing she liked better than to drop small bombs in calm water and watch the ripples. “Ky owns the Roost.”

  “Ky?” Kate couldn’t have disguised the astonishment if she’d tried. The Ky Silver she thought she knew hadn’t owned anything but a boat and a shaky beach cottage. He hadn’t wanted to. Buying a restaurant, even a small one on a remote island took more than capital. It took ambition.

  “Apparently he didn’t bother to mention it.”

  “No.” He’d had several opportunities, Kate recalled, the night they’d had dinner. “No, he didn’t. It doesn’t seem characteristic,” she murmured. “I can picture him buying another boat, a bigger boat or a faster boat, but I can’t imagine him buying a restaurant.”

  “I guess it surprised everyone except Marsh—but then Marsh knows Ky better than anyone. A couple of weeks bef
ore we were married, Ky told us he’d bought the place and intended to remodel. Marsh was ferrying over to Hatteras every day to work, I was helping out in my aunt’s craft shop during the season. When Ky asked if we wanted to buy in for twenty percent and take over as managers, we jumped at it.” She smiled, pleased, and perhaps relieved. “It wasn’t a mistake for any of us.”

  Kate remembered the homey atmosphere, the excellent sea food, the fast service. No, it hadn’t been a mistake, but Ky… “I just can’t picture Ky in business, not on land anyway.”

  “Ky knows the island,” Linda said simply. “And he knows what he wants. To my way of thinking, he just doesn’t always know how to get it.”

  Kate was going to avoid that area of speculation. “I’m going to take a walk down to the beach,” she decided. “Would you like to come?”

  “I’d love to, but—” With a gesture of her hand Linda indicated why Hope had been quiet for the last few minutes. With her arm hooked around her dragon, she was sprawled over the rest of the animals, sound asleep.

  “It’s either stop or go with her, isn’t it?” Kate observed with a laugh.

  “The nice thing is that when she stops, so can I.” Expertly Linda gathered up Hope, cradling her daughter on her shoulder. “Have a nice walk, and stop into the Roost tonight if you have the chance.”

  “I will.” Kate touched Hope’s head, the thick, dark, disordered hair that was so much like her uncle’s. “She’s beautiful, Linda. You’re very lucky.”

  “I know. It’s something I don’t ever forget.”

  Kate let herself out of the house and walked along the quiet street. Clouds were low, making the light gloomy, but the rain held off. She could taste it in the breeze, the clean freshness of it, mixed with the faintest hint of the sea. It was in that direction she walked.

  On an island, she’d discovered, you were much more drawn to the water than to the land. It was the one thing she’d understood completely about Ky, the one thing she’d never questioned.

  It had been easier to avoid going to the beach in Connecticut, though she’d always loved the rocky, windy New England coast. She’d been able to resist it, knowing what memories it would bring back. Pain. Kate had learned there were ways of avoiding pain. But here, knowing you could reach the edge of land by walking in any direction, she couldn’t resist. It might have been wiser to walk to the sound, or the inlet. She walked to the sea.