Immortal Sea

by Virginia Kantra

  “I can’t. I have to get home.”

  He wondered suddenly if she had a man at home, expecting her.

  “You are married.”

  Her firm lips pressed together. Parted reluctantly. “Widowed.”

  Ah. “Recently?”

  “Three years ago.”

  He was aware of a faint satisfaction, almost relief. Not that the existence of a husband would have mattered. The boy was his. “Then there is nothing to prevent you from joining me.”

  She sucked in her breath.

  “Dr. Rodriguez, I’ve got Caleb on line three,” her assistant called.

  “Thank you, Nancy.” She took a step forward.

  Morgan did not budge from the doorway.

  Her gaze held his for one heartbeat. Two. Beneath the lemon fragrance on her skin, he caught a subtler, salty note like panic or desire.

  “Drinks,” she snapped. “Four-thirty. I’ll meet you in the bar at the inn.”

  Morgan shifted out of her way. “I look forward to seeing you.”

  It was true, he thought as she stalked past him without a word.

  Not simply because their meeting would bring him another step closer to his goal. He was . . . intrigued by her. Attracted by warm brown eyes and a cool smile, by strong shoulders and delicate hands.

  The years between were nothing to him. He had not changed.

  Yet as he watched her walk away, her hips barely suggested by the shape of her coat, her dark hair bundled at the base of her neck, he was aware of the passage of time like the beating of his blood or the rush of angel wings.

  She was grown, changed, different. Better armored and more interesting than the girl who had sex with him sixteen years ago.

  Deep in his belly, he felt a tug of curiosity, a quick, hot coil of lust. How else was she changed? And what would it take to persuade her to have sex with him again?

  Liz adjusted the rearview mirror, smoothing on her lipstick with a trembling hand.

  Oh, God. She met her overbright eyes in the mirror. What was she doing? She was not fussing with her face like a twenty-one-year-old primping for the first date they’d never had.

  She wasn’t that stupid. Not anymore.

  Even if he was the most compelling man she’d laid eyes on then or in all the long years since.

  She jammed the top on her lipstick and zipped her purse shut. She just wanted to look presentable, that was all. Put together. In control.

  Satisfied with her rationalization and her appearance, she slid out of the car and locked the doors, ignoring her broken back window.

  The Inn at World’s End was a sprawling white Victorian perched on the bluffs north of the harbor. Neglected gardens and old, storm-weathered trees surrounded the spindled porch and rolling green lawn. The owners, Caroline and Walter Begley, were transplants from Boston. Liz had already noticed that they catered more to the yacht crowd than to the islanders.

  Which suited her just fine. She didn’t need the entire island speculating about the new doctor’s after-hours rendezvous with some hot stranger in the bar.

  The Reef Bar had a separate entrance off the crumbling parking lot. Liz tugged on the heavy wooden door, grateful for the room’s low lighting.

  The Reef’s walls were decorated with fishing nets and neon beer signs. At the bar, a couple of lobstermen in flannel shirts and faded ball caps provided additional local color. The rest of the scattered clientele was a mix of pastel stripes and plaids, a blur of tans and topsiders. The women wore white denim skirts and capris, the men salt-faded polos from L.L. Bean.

  Alone in a corner booth facing the door, Morgan sat, his black shirt blending with the shadows, his pale hair capturing the light.

  Liz met that gold-rimmed gaze and sucked in her stomach.

  She threaded through the tables, head high. In control. “What do you want?”

  He raised his brows at her bluntness. His lips curled in a thin smile. “You used to prefer some preliminaries. Sit down.”

  Her cheeks burned. Her hand tightened on the strap of her purse. She didn’t let men—she didn’t let anyone—boss her around. But she was attracting attention, standing here. She dropped onto the bench and lowered her voice. “How did you find me?”

  “I recognized your vehicle. Drink?”

  She glanced up as the waitress appeared beside their table, a fresh-faced college student who looked too young to serve alcohol. The girl smiled hopefully at Morgan, clearly ready to give him whatever he wanted.

  Like Liz sixteen years ago.

  She winced. “I don’t need anything.” This wasn’t a date. And she wanted a clear head.

  “You look like you do. Another whiskey,” he instructed the waitress.

  “Wine.” She didn’t have to drink it. “A glass of pinot grigio,” she ordered, and tried to hide her annoyance when the girl waited for Morgan’s nod before moving away.

  Liz cleared her throat, the edge of her determination blunted. “Well.”

  “Yes.”

  “Here we are.”

  “Indeed.”

  The faint mockery in his voice made her fist her hands in frustration. “What are you doing here? What do you want?” she repeated.

  “To see you.”

  “You haven’t seen me in sixteen years,” she said baldly.

  “To meet my son.”

  Her stomach jumped. For one wild moment, she was tempted to deny he was Zack’s father. He couldn’t know. He had no proof. But the impulse died stillborn.

  He wasn’t stupid either.

  “Is this some midlife crisis thing?” she asked.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  She pressed her clammy hands together in her lap. “You didn’t care about the possibility of fathering a child sixteen years ago. It’s a little late for you to come forward claiming . . .”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Paternity?”

  “Concern.” Their eyes locked. She leaned forward across the table. “Which makes me wonder what happened to change your mind. Life-threatening illness?”

  “I don’t get sick.”

  “Divorce?”

  He held her gaze. “I never married.”

  Her heart gave an inconvenient kick. Oh, damn. He could have added, “No one could ever compare with you.” Or, “I was waiting to find you again.”

  But he didn’t, so she couldn’t even accuse him of lying.

  The young waitress returned to set a glass of wine in front of Liz and lingered. “Anything else? Another Scotch?”

  Morgan shook his head without glancing up.

  She pouted freshly glossed lips, twirling the ends of her blond hair around her finger. Morgan didn’t seem to notice. “Well, let me know if you change your mind.”

  “We will,” Liz said. “Thank you.”

  The girl smiled quickly, uncertainly, and left.

  Liz sighed. Had she ever been that young? That hopeful and unguarded?

  Yes.

  She looked across the table again into Morgan’s eyes, dark and bright as a night full of stars, a night sixteen years ago when she was young and foolish and aching with possibilities.

  He looked exactly the same. Broad nose, sharp jaw, lean cheeks. His upper lip was still narrow, the lower one full, curved, and compelling.

  She yanked her mind back. Okay, this was bad.

  “I don’t even know your name.” Had she said that before, sixteen years ago?

  “Morgan.”

  Another memory, of sitting upright in her hospital bed, staring blankly at the application form for Zachary’s birth certificate. FATHER’S NAME.

  Unknown, she had written, the point of her pen gouging the paper.

  “Last name,” she said.

  He hesitated. “Bressay.”

  His accent, faint and indefinable, roughened on the word. She cocked her head. “What is that, French?”

  “Scottish.”

  She waited. Sometimes listening encouraged patients to talk better than asking questio
ns.

  “Bressay is an island north of Scotland. Settled by the Viking longships.”

  He looked a bit like a Viking, big and brutally handsome with his hair like foam.

  Like Zack’s.

  He was Zack’s father. The implications made her head pound.

  She drew a painful breath. “How did you find us?”

  “I didn’t,” he said so simply she almost believed him.

  “Until I saw the boy yesterday, I was unaware of his existence.”

  She would have told him. If she’d ever had the chance. But he never came, he never called, he never contacted her.

  He never tried to find them. Her.

  The realization was like peeling adhesive back from an old wound. “So you’re telling me your being here is, what? Coincidence? An accident.”

  “Or destiny,” he said. “Fate has brought us together. Twice.”

  As if their one-night stand was more than lust on his part, stupidity on hers.

  “I don’t believe in fate. Bad luck, maybe.”

  Those pale gold eyes assessed her. “You consider the boy a misfortune.”

  “Of course not.” She pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples. “When I found out I was pregnant . . . My parents didn’t want me to have the baby. They said if I went through with the pregnancy, I’d have to take full responsibility for my choices and my child. So I did. I put myself through med school. I kept my baby.” She raised her head, the old resolve burning in her breast. “And you can’t just show up sixteen years later and take any of that away from me.”

  “No female among my people would choose as you did,” he said quietly. “I honor your choice.”

  The sincerity in his voice, the admiration in his eyes, caught her off guard. Since Ben’s death, she was used to getting through the days and the nights and the years on her own. There were rewards, sure. But precious few compliments.

  She blinked back sudden tears. “Thank you.”

  “But the choice is not yours any longer,” he continued inexorably.

  She stiffened, on the alert again. “Zack is my son.”

  Morgan regarded her steadily beneath hooded lids. “He is almost a man. He must make his own choices.”

  “You don’t know him. You don’t know anything about him. He’s fifteen years old and going through a very difficult time.” So difficult she had given up her practice and moved her family nine hundred miles to provide them with a fresh start. “You have no right to tell me how to raise my son.”

  “What about his rights?” Morgan asked.

  She stared at him blankly, attracted. Unsettled. Afraid. “What are you talking about?”

  “He has the right to know his father.”

  She didn’t want to consider the truth of his words. Without moving a muscle, he had managed to threaten everything she valued, her life, her family, her control. “Bernardo Rodriguez was his father.”

  “Your dead husband.”

  Anger shook her. Anger at Ben, for leaving. Fury at Morgan, for making her feel, for making her face that loss again.

  She curled her fingers around the wineglass. “Ben loved Zack. He was there for him all of his life.”

  Morgan’s gaze collided with hers. “But not at the beginning of it.”

  The air whooshed from her lungs, sucked away by heat and memory. Only this, only him, his hot gaze, his overwhelming size, the violent grace of his body in hers as he pinned her down and pounded inside her, as the sky wheeled and the world changed around them . . .

  She sucked in her breath, gripping the stem of her wineglass. “Ben was there when it mattered. Zack is still adjusting to his loss. He doesn’t need another disruption or another disappointment in his life. He doesn’t need you.”

  “What of your needs?” Morgan asked. “This cannot be the life you envisioned for yourself.”

  She gulped her wine to dispel the faint bitterness in her mouth. “My life is none of your business.”

  “Look around you. You cannot be satisfied with this place.” His gaze flickered over the bar’s clientele, his lip curling. “By these people.”

  She set her glass down with a snap. “I have work I love and children who need me. What do you have?”

  He looked back at her, his eyes dark. Menacing. Sexual. “I can have whatever I want whenever I want it. Can you say the same?”

  His face was so cold, his body throwing off heat. Despite herself, she was shaken and attracted, her own body warming and softening in response.

  She must be out of her mind.

  “You mean the waitress,” she said in a thin attempt at scorn.

  “I mean sex.” His deep voice taunted her, plucking at her nerve endings. She trembled like a violin to the pull of the bow, raw and roused, angry and achingly alive.

  And that was absolutely unacceptable. She was not his instrument or his tool. He would not get to her child through her. Or the lure of . . .

  “Sex,” she repeated slowly, drawing the word out, testing it, tasting it in her mouth.

  She felt the force of his attention, full-blown and intense. She smiled and slipped her foot from its shoe. “I can have sex with whomever I want.”

  With her bare foot, she touched his ankle, traced a line up his calf to his knee. His chest rose with one rapid breath, but he did not move, did not shake his gaze from hers. Her heart pattered wildly.

  In control, she reminded herself.

  She pressed her arch to his thigh. His leg was hard as iron, his thigh heavy with muscle. She meant to turn him on. To turn on him. But she was caught up in her sensual exploration, swept away by a quick surge of need, as riveted by this journey into new territory as he.

  She moistened her lips, her toes casting higher. His eyes blazed. He was . . . Oh, God, he was there, hot and hard under her foot. Her toes curled.

  “Whenever I want,” she said huskily.

  His face was harsh. Focused. “My room is upstairs.”

  His invitation jolted her. Temptation—to go with the flow, to follow the current of desire—tugged deep in her belly. Oh, she wanted to. She wanted him.

  Dropping her foot from his lap, she forced it into her shoe. She slid from the booth and stood looking down on him.

  “But that’s the difference between us.” She was amazed her voice could sound so cool, so steady, when she was boiling and shaking inside. “I don’t take something just because I want it,” she said and walked out.

  5

  PERHAPS THE SEA LORD WAS RIGHT, MORGAN mused as he strolled down the inn steps late the next morning. Perhaps there was some magic on World’s End.

  Trees framed the view, the long green lawn falling away to a crescent of beach bordered by sea and stone.

  It felt good to be away from the tensions on Sanctuary, from the sweaty labor of hauling rocks and the frustration of wrangling his work crew from the water. The children of the sea were hunters, not builders. They did not make or mine, plow or spin. Sanctuary had been furnished with the plunder of centuries, Viking gold and Spanish iron, French silks and Italian pottery. All gone now, all lost beneath the waves from which they had been recovered. Two days of hot meals and hot showers, soft linens and uninterrupted sleep had given Morgan a newfound appreciation for human comforts and surroundings. His mind was clear, his body alert, his spirits lighter than they had been in months. Years.

  He squinted against the sun sparkling on the blue water below, free as the gulls soaring against the pale sky.

  Of course, his current satisfaction might have had another source.

  Elizabeth.

  Anticipation hummed in his blood and low in his throat. He thought about her body braced in challenge, her cool control, that flash of heat. He’d thought about her quite a lot, in that quiet white room at the inn where he slept alone.

  He enjoyed a test of wills almost as much as he enjoyed sex. With her, it would be a pleasure to indulge in both.

  He wanted her again, more now than sixteen years ago. And
unlike her, he had no hesitation taking what he wanted.

  The road from the inn curved uphill and inland past weathered gray houses and small, bright gardens. Following the innkeeper’s directions, he found the police department housed in the town hall, a modest brick building overlooking the harbor.

  He went inside. The air was acrid with dust and ink and burned coffee.

  The steely-haired woman behind the counter wore her eyeglasses around her neck like a badge of office and looked older than the building itself. Morgan glanced at the name plate on her desk. EDITH PAINE, TOWN CLERK.

  “Chief Caleb Hunter,” he said.

  She continued to poke at her keyboard. “In his office,” she said without looking up. “Take a seat.”

  Caleb had called Morgan with a request to drop by the police station. Possibly the policeman was following up on the report of the broken window. More likely, he wanted to keep tabs on the finfolk lord while he was on human turf. Morgan was willing to oblige in either case. He needed Elizabeth’s address.

  “He is expecting me,” Morgan said.

  “Maybe he is.”

  “You will tell him I am here.”

  The clerk raised her glasses to her nose and looked at him for a moment. As if, Morgan thought, he were a shark on her fishing line, unworthy of her bait or effort.

  He bit back a grin.

  “Maybe I will,” Edith Paine said. “When he’s free. Chairs are behind you if you want to wait.”

  He supposed he could wait.

  Turning, he surveyed the row of uncomfortable-looking chairs. The one in the middle was already occupied. A small girl with a halo of soft black curls huddled on the wooden seat clutching a large, pale doll. A candy bar sat on the chair beside her, unwrapped. Uneaten.

  Someone’s attempt at comfort, Morgan deduced. It was none of his business. Clearly, the child was being cared for after a fashion. Children had survived on Sanctuary for centuries with less.

  She looked up at him, her wide, dark eyes swimming with moisture, and stuck out her chin.

  Something stirred in his gut. His memory.

  “She seems rather young for a felon,” he said to the woman behind the counter.

  She sniffed and tapped the keyboard on her desk.

  Morgan glanced back at the child. Her lips trembled. Something about that face . . . That chin . . . He narrowed his gaze.