For the Taking (2 page)

T
halassa came toward Loucan across a lush field of green grass, where several sleek and well-fed horses grazed.

Her red-gold hair, which still shocked him with its almost boyish length, glinted like polished copper. A clingy, cream knit tank top showed off smooth pale skin and a figure that was just as shapely above the waist as it was below. Her legs were neat and athletic in a pair of khaki stretch pants, and she had brown leather boots on her feet, making her walk easy and confident. She was as graceful and sure in her body as one of the horses she’d just been tending.

Something stirred inside Loucan, and he recognized the feeling with ease. He’d felt it the other night, too—the night they’d first met. He could be attracted to this woman. Very easily. There was something so lush and physical about her. The rich color of her hair. The fullness of her breasts.

There was something very contained and self-
sufficient in her emotional makeup, as well. He suspected she wouldn’t open up to him easily. She had reasons for that—reasons to do with the past. She’d probably trained herself to be mistrustful.

But it wasn’t just a matter of history, of discordant beliefs and opposing factions. It went deeper than that, to the very heart of her. The powerful sensuality he detected in her seemed dormant, as if she hadn’t yet discovered it.

Or as if she feared it, and kept it hidden.

As soon as Lass registered his presence on her land, the whole aura of her body changed. She tensed and lifted a hand to shield her eyes against the Australian summer sunlight, which was strong even at nine in the morning.

Yes, she’d recognized him, and she wasn’t surprised. Loucan had told her on the beach the other night that he would give her two days—time in which to think, to get used to this, to understand that he wasn’t a part of the violence of the past—and then he would come looking for her. In the end, he’d given her three days, but now, as promised, he was here.

She wouldn’t even acknowledge him at first. They were still some distance apart. He leaned against the side of his dark blue rental car and took in the details of her place, while she swung two feed buckets in her hands and scowled up at the leafy tops of the eucalyptus trees, moving in a light breeze.

Lass had found a pretty incredible home for herself, Loucan decided. At the end of a gravel path lined with nasturtiums and lavender stood a quaint old building with a veneer of pale yellow stucco and a mantle of leafy green wisteria.

According to an elegantly carved and painted sign,
this was The Old Dairy—Tearoom and Gallery. The sign listed its opening hours, as well as the fact that “light meals and Devonshire teas” were served. Lass owned the place, and the land it was situated on. Several acres, if he was judging it right.

Beyond the tearoom building, and connected to it by another path, was a low, gracious house built in the Australian colonial style, with a galvanized metal roof that curved down to form what Loucan now knew was called a bull-nosed veranda.

At the moment, the veranda was filled with morning sunshine. It made the terra-cotta pots of bright flowers stand out like beacons. Later, though, as the day grew hot, the long sweep of stone flagging would be darkened by cool shade.

Behind the house was a stable and a shed or two, neatly kept, then more green fields and forest, and finally, in the distance, the mountains. Wild mountains, Loucan observed, clothed in forests of sage-green eucalyptus.

This view to the west was impressive enough, but behind Loucan, in the opposite direction, it was even better. More significant, too. It told him much more about Lass than she probably wanted him to know. About three miles away, beyond lush dairy country, beyond a scattering of small towns, beyond tidal lakes, rocky headlands and miles of pristine sandy beaches, was the beckoning sea.

Technically, it was the Tasman Sea, this two-thousand-mile stretch between the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, but in reality it was an integral part of the Pacific Ocean. It stretched, blue and sparkling, in a long, wide ribbon from north to south, and in the summer haze its horizon blurred indistinctly with the
almost garishly blue sky. The whole scene was breathtaking.

“You came,” Lass said.

He turned to find her watching him from a distance of twenty feet or so. “I said I would.”

“I hoped you wouldn’t. I didn’t want to see you again.”

“I know.”

He had a sudden flashback to the other night’s most shocking moment. After he had told her who he was and how he had found her, she had fled from him across the sand in the darkness to hide among the jagged piles of rocks on the nearby headland. He had followed her, and found her sobbing wildly, in anger and fear, while hacking at her gorgeous fall of hair—it reached to her thighs—with a jagged piece of oyster shell.

“I like your hair that way,” he said to her now. He wasn’t going to let her avoid the difficult issues between them. He couldn’t pretend. They both needed to confront this.

“I’m getting used to it,” she answered guardedly. Self-conscious, she ran her fingers through its short, bright strands, making it seem more alive than ever. The gesture momentarily deepened the cleft between her breasts and drew his gaze. “I went to my hairdresser on Wednesday morning to get it properly shaped,” she added.

“What did you tell her?”

She shrugged. “That I’d grown sick of it, suddenly. That it was too much work, so I’d chopped it off.”

She was so prickly and distant and defensive! Loucan knew how emotional she had been the other night when he’d found her on the beach and told her who
he was, but she was trying to pretend her outburst had never happened.

“Why did you hack it off like that?” he persisted.

“You know why.”

Yes, but I want to hear it from your own mouth.

She had a passionate mouth, he observed. It was full-lipped, sensuous and strong. With a surge of understanding, he gave in and said it for her. “Because your hair was the thing that led me to you.”

Her nod was just a brief jerk of her jutting chin, and her green eyes were narrowed.

“Does this mean you’re going to hurt the dolphins, too?” He asked, then ignored her shocked hiss of breath. “Hearing that you’d been seen surfing with them at sunset was what clinched it for me. I knew you were the woman I’d been looking for, and I knew where to find you.”

“Hurt the—!” She shook her head and swallowed, outraged.

Maybe he’d gone too far. He wanted to push her into talking about what she believed and why she was so scared, but this wasn’t the way. She wasn’t like Kevin Cartwright, who rose to the bait of a direct attack. She was a woman—a mer woman, if she could accept that—and therefore very different.

He was about to apologize, but she hadn’t stopped speaking. “Why are you doing this? I won’t tolerate it. Leave my property, please!”

She turned in the direction of the house, ignoring him as he followed her. When she reached the veranda, she clumsily levered off her elastic-sided riding boots and socks, and tossed them into a basket beside the door. Retrieving a pair of flimsy, high-heeled
cream sandals from the same basket, she slipped them onto her feet and tottered inside.

Still he followed her. Still she ignored him. It would get to be a habit between them, soon. Almost immediately, as if hardly noticing what she’d done, she kicked the sandals off again and frowned down at her pink manicured toes.

Did she have a love-hate relationship with her footwear? Or with her feet?

She tipped her head to one side thoughtfully and said, “Is it enough to tell you that I’m busy this morning? Or should I phone the police?”

“Thalassa—”

“My name is Lass. Or Letitia Susan Morgan, if you want the full, legal version.”

“Cyria did change your name, then.”

“Who? Oh, you mean Aunt Catherine?”

“Do I?” His gaze held hers for a moment, and it was a toss-up whose was the most stubborn. He changed tack. “You have a fabulous view of the ocean, Lass.”

“I prefer the view in the other direction. To the mountains.”

“No, you don’t,” he told her softly. “It’s not the mountains you watch. It’s not the mountains that call you. You couldn’t stay away, could you? You couldn’t when you bought this place, and you still can’t.”

She lifted her chin, and he appreciated the stubborn yet delicate line of her jaw. “I go for weeks, sometimes, without setting foot on the beach.”

He laughed. “You sound like a gambler, talking about visits to the track. You do without it for weeks,
but you think about it every day. Are you really going to call the police?”

“Yes! And I really don’t have time to talk! The tearoom opens at ten, and there’s a ton of stuff to do to prepare. My staff will be here any minute.”

“I have something for you from your sisters, Lass.”

Loucan didn’t wait for another defensive answer, another threat to throw him off the property. He just reached into the breast pocket of his conservative and anonymous navy T-shirt and pulled out a paper packet.

“Wedding pictures,” he said, and took the sheaf of prints out of the packet to show her. He knew exactly what effect it would have. It was his one asset in all this, and he was counting on it.

Watching her reaction, he saw that he wasn’t wrong.

Lass gasped and clamped a fist to her heart. Pictures? Of Phoebe and Kai? She had long ago shut off any hope of finding them, had often wondered if they were even still alive. She had thought of trying to trace them somehow, but it had seemed like such a hopeless quest. She didn’t even know to which part of the world or with whom her father had sent them. Didn’t know if they were together or apart.

She hadn’t seen them since they were two years old. They’d been the light of her life, back then—the beings she’d loved most in the world. She still remembered the soft, plump feel of their little cheeks pressed against hers for a “Tiss, Lassie. I want a tiss!” She remembered the exuberant embrace of their little arms, the innocent joyousness of their laughter
and the equal intensity of their tears. And now they were grown women, old enough to be married.

She wanted to hear about her sisters.

Set against this longing, all her bravado toward Loucan was fake. For the sake of her sisters, she would make herself believe what he said—that he hadn’t been part of the violence. Because of her sisters, she wouldn’t turn him off her property.

And he knew it, too. Oh, he knew it.

He’d brought those pictures with him on purpose, and he’d mentioned them at exactly the right moment. Now he was cradling them closely in his hand. On the surface, it was a casual gesture, but she knew he was doing it with deliberate intent. She wasn’t going to get to touch those pictures until he chose to let her, and since they were so precious to her, she didn’t dare try and grab them from him by force.

Against a man like Loucan, she would have no hope of success. His strength had been apparent to her from the beginning. It wasn’t just about his powerful size or his almost intimidating good looks. There was an unusual force of will displayed in those incredible blue eyes. This man knew what he wanted.

His thick, dark hair was pulled into a short, tight braid that lay against the back of his neck, making him look like an English sailor from two hundred years ago. The style revealed the regal height and breadth of his forehead and emphasized his square jaw and very masculine bone structure.

He’d frightened her on the beach the other night, from the moment his strong, deep voice had uttered her name. Her full, real name. No one had used it since Cyria died.

Thalassa.

It meant “one who comes from the sea.”

She shivered a little, and wished she was wearing something more substantial than this snug top this morning. She felt vulnerable, physically and emotionally, but wasn’t going to let it show if she could possibly help it.

“Show me the photos!” she demanded.

In his hand she caught the tiniest glimpse of a gorgeous couple dressed in wedding finery, and her heart did a flip against her rib cage. Was that lovely woman with the honey-colored hair Phoebe? Or was it Kai? Oh lord, she should
know!
A woman should be able to recognize her own sisters!

The phone rang—so perfectly timed that she almost suspected Loucan of engineering the call somehow.

She was tempted to let it ring, except that when you ran a small business essentially on your own, you couldn’t afford to do that. All her calls were potentially important. In any case, Loucan had taken advantage of the moment and had hidden the photos back in their packet.

“Take the call,” he said. “This can wait.”

She was already running to the phone that was fixed to the kitchen wall. It was her decision to take the call, not his! She
refused
to respond to his arrogant orders, and she wasn’t going to let him underestimate her.

“Lass?” The voice on the other end of the line was shaky, but she recognized it right away.

“Susie? What’s up?”

“We’ve just had an accident. Rob was driving, but it wasn’t his fault….”

“Oh, Lord, Susie, are you all okay?”

Susie and her sister Megan helped in the tearoom
kitchen every day, while Susie’s husband, Rob, came part-time to keep the garden in shape and handle maintenance. Susie and Rob were in their late twenties, hoping to start a family soon, and Lass was close to them.

Well, as close as she ever let herself get to anybody.

“We’re fine.” Susie burst into tears.

They were obviously not fine. In a rambling account, Lass heard the details. Susie had lacerations on her face, Megan was being assessed for a head injury and Rob had probably broken something, but they weren’t yet sure what. They were at the emergency department of the local hospital.

“I’ll try to get out to you as soon as I can,” Susie promised, “but they want to put dressings on the cuts, and—”

“Susie, you’re not coming in today, okay? None of you. Or tomorrow. Not till you’re ready. It should be quiet. I’ll—”