Independence (28 page)

I kissed his lips and he immediately tightened his grip and kissed me back. When his eyes started to flutter, I knew he was waking up. He looked at me like he was expecting me there, like it was natural and the most comfortable thing in the world.
"Hey, baby," he muttered sleepily and huskily. "Good morning."

"Good morning."

"Did you sleep good?"

I paused for dramatic effect. "I slept great," I whispered.

His eyes opened wider, completely awake. "Oh, really?" I nodded
slowly
. He grinned. It was one of those
completely all-male, smug, sexy grins. "Well, that's great. That you slept well." He was still grinning.

I laughed and burrowed further under him. He was leaning over me barely on his one elbow.
"And how do you feel this morning, Mrs. Jacobson?"

I smiled
and bit my lip. "Perfect."

He put one hand on the other side of me on the bed
and leaned down to kiss my lips softly.
With not an inch between his mouth and mine he said, "The words for what I want to say right now don't exist. Everything sounds…so cliché."

"You don't have to say anything, Jacobson." I smoothed his chest over his heart. "I know exactly what you want to say."

"Well,
right now
,"
he started and then leaned in
to nibble my throat, "I don't really want to talk anyway."

I sighed as I felt my skin start to tingle. "OK," I agreed.

He chuckled. "Oh, you're
really
putting up a fight."

"Shut up and kiss me," I said before pulling him to me.

His hand found my leg and moved up to my thigh as his lips stopped talking.

And he claimed me once more.

"We should probably get going," he said, but made no advances to move. "We need to meet up with everyone soon."

I was almost back asleep again as his fingers traced little star patterns on my back.
"Boo."

He laugh
ed, his warm breath stirring my hair. "Come on, gorgeous. Don't
make
this harder than it already is."

Then we heard a knock. "See?" he said l
aughing and jumped
up to get dressed. "Now you've done it." He could have been speaking Chinese for all I knew. Because last night had been dark, and now it was daytime. And I wasn't closing my eyes this time. I watched eagerly as he slipped his black pants back on without his boxers. "Your pops is here to scold me for not letting his daughter outta bed."

I smirked. "I'm going t
o say it's all your fault, too.
"

He
smiled devilishly as he turned and called over his shoulder. "Don't play with fire, baby."

I giggled into the covers before throwing them aside and running to the bathroom. I put the thick robe on and went out to greet whoever had come to pay us a visit, but Caleb was alone. He carried a tray to the bed that held juice and two huge plates of pancakes with
clear
covers over the top. "You ordered room service?"

"No, he said that someone else had. Probably someone at the office knew it was our honeymoon. That was nice of them."

"Yeah," I agreed and sat
on his lap. I lifted the lid. "Now we don't even have to leave the room to eat."

He pulled the robe off
of
my shoulder and kissed my skin as I bit into the bacon. "
Oh, my…I've created a monster, haven't I?" he mocked.

"Well,
then
I can get dressed and-"

He grabbed me to keep me there when I started to get up. "
Don't." He pushed my hair aside and kissed me neck. "Let me rephrase that.
You've
created a monster."

"That's right," I joked and turned to straddle his lap. I fed him a bite of bacon. "This feels so normal. For once I feel like we're just
a normal couple with normal things going on. I like all the supernatural stuff, too," I assured him. He smiled and nodded like he understood. "But being normal is underrated."

"Yeah…"
He sighed. "I wish I could just run away with you somewhere. Never look back."

I tilted my head to the side. "No you don't." He smiled at being caught in his lie. "You'd miss Maria and Bella like crazy."

"I would," he agreed
. "I miss Bella right now. She'd
be stealing my bacon from me."

I laughed. "Is she going to live with us or stay with your parents?"
"Us. She likes you too much."

"I like her, too." I took a deep breath. I couldn't believe how happy and just…calm I felt. "I'm so happy," I heard myself say.

He did this half
sigh, half laugh thing. "
You have no idea how happy that makes me."

He kissed me, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me to him sweetly.

When we finally managed to finish our breakfast and juice and get dressed, it was almost lunch.
We mosey
ed through the back door across
the san
d to the veranda. This place looked
like it was made for honeymoons. The white sheer curtains matched the ones in our room. They flowed in the wind and blocked the sand from blowing on us as we sat down on the lounger. The rest of them joined us
shortly and I closed my mind to them all, not wanting to hear their thoughts about their nights, and not wanting to hear their questions or…whatever…about my own.

Dad wouldn’t even look at me. Neither would Bish.
Kyle and Lynne were the only ones who were normal, asking the waiter for sweat tea for everyone and laughing and joking with each other. Caleb watched the fabric on the chair beside us like it was made of gold.

I started to giggle. I couldn't help it. It was so funny to me that we all knew what we'd all done last night and now everyone was acting so weird about it, like it wasn't normal or something. Caleb started to laugh under his breath with me.

Dad looked at me curiously, but Bish must've caught on
,
because he and Jen both leaned into each other laughing.
I guess he finally understood the
discomfort
everyone was putting out was the cause of our outbursts. He chuckled a little and shook his head. "So anyway," I said with a smile. "Now that that's out of the way, we need to just figure out how long we're going to be here. What we need to do as far as Marcus goes."

Caleb answered me so everyone could hear, but so that it didn't carry out to the other people on the beach. "Dad's having the family look. He hasn't shown up at the Watson compound or any of the family houses. He ditched his cell. We have no idea where he is."

I grumbled, "If I only had something of his, I could touch it and find him."

He rubbed my arm, "It's OK, baby. We'll make sure we find him."

"Have you heard from Beck?" Kyle asked.

I nodded. "She's fine. They're safe somewhere, but she said to stop calling, so…"

"Aw, Mags. That sucks. Rebecca was always pretty stubborn."

"Not to me she wasn't," I said softly. Caleb's arm came around me and he pulled me to his side, kissing my temple.

"She'll come
around," he soothed, but his c
a
l
m didn’t come. I was just about to panic, when I finally felt it seep into my skin. I looked at him and he had been feeling the same thing. His browed scrunched.

You must be too worked up. I didn't realize you were that upset about it.

Neither did I.

I shook my head and went on. "
We'll call Peter later and see what's up with the search."

"In the meantime,
"
Kyle said playfully and pulled Lynne into his lap, "we'll have to be miserable at the beach." He nipped her shoulder. "
With a room all to ourselves. How will we ever survive?
"

"Shut it, Kyle," Caleb joked.

Everyone laughed. Then Dad
pulled Fiona to him and leaned back in his chair with her leaning on his chest. It was very sweet and it was good to see Dad being normal again. And he was so sweet to Fiona in the way that Virtuoso
men we
re to their significants. It made me happy to know that not only would Dad have a good life because of their finding each other, but so would Fiona. He
said, "So we just wait here until we hear back from Peter about Marcus? That's it?"

"I'm going to start calling and texting the other clans to see if anyone knows anything, or may have heard something even if they didn't understand what it was they were
hearing. They might
not
think it was anything. But we're going to keep looking." I looked to Bish who was already looking at me. "We have to."

He gulped visibly and grippe
d Jen's hand tighter in his as
he pleaded with his eyes to please find a way to stop the vision.

I nodded a little. I was going to stop that vision. No matter what had to happen, I was going to make sure I stopped it.

Once we sat around and ate some lunch
,
we all decided to go to the beach for a swim.
We rented surfboards and
Caleb, Kyle, Lynne and I surfed while Bish and Dad sat with Jen and Fiona on the lounges in the sun. I forgot almost all he'd taught me, or my body had, because it was practically impossible to stay on the board.
I fell every single time I tried to glide and may have pouted a little.

Caleb and I went to
lie
on the beach towels while Kyle and L
ynne kept surfing. I traced
the star tattoo on Caleb's shoulder with my finger as he dozed beside me when we heard Lynne's scream. He jolted awake and we both ran over to where Kyle was carrying her and putting her down in the sand. He held her foot in
his
lap as he tried to h
eal the cut from the shell she
stepped on. It had sliced her foot from toe to heal. I cringed as the blood stained the sand under them.

The others ran over, too, and watched Kyle concentrate. He looked up at her and huffed. "Why isn't it working?"

I watched her cut and it wasn't healing.
And then it was. He sighed loudly and rubbed her leg to soothe her. "Must've been too worked up, I guess," he said out loud, but his mind said,
What the hell! Thought I was about to have another situation like her cheek.

Lynne
sat up and gave him a scolding look. "Stop. I'm fine."
He rubbed his thumb over the scar on her cheek and sighed. "You're beautiful. Even with this."

"Kyle, stop beating yourself up."

He shrugged like he was appeasing her, but had no real plans to do so. I broke in.

"Why don't we all go take a nap? I'm pretty tired actually."
"Yeah right," Kyle said and grinned deviously. "We all know why you want to drag my cousin back to that room, Maggie
Jacobson."
I glared
and Caleb punched his shoulder. "Shut up," he hissed and glanced at Dad.

"Mr. Masters knows why you want to, too," Kyle joked and dodged Caleb's swing.

"Kyle," Dad complained and rolled his eyes. "That's a good idea. I am actually pretty tired. Want to meet back up for dinner?"
Caleb held up h
is hand. "There's actually this
great little
seafood place right around the corner
the guy I booked the cottages through told me about. We can try it if you want."

"Yes!" Jen said and smiled pleadingly at Bish. "Aw, I've been dying for some real crab cakes!"

He quirked his mouth to the side in a half smile. I knew tha
t smile. He used to use it on me
when I was a kid and he
thought I was being adorable. And I'd seen him use it on Maria when she asked him to dance at the Reunification. And now he was using
it
on Jen because even I had to admit she was adorable. She was so happy and almost silly. That just wasn't Jen
,
and it was good to see her kic
k
back and be able to be young again.

"Yeah, let's," he agreed. She squealed a little. Squealed
…a
nd jumped up to hug him around his neck. He held her to him easily and looked at me over her shoulder. He smiled the biggest smile. It was amazing.

So that's what we did. And that night at the restaurant
,
Dad gave us some big news. I must've been too focused on Caleb to pay attention to anyone else's thoughts because I was a little shocked. "So…" he started and made this noise like he knew we weren't going to like it, "I've decided to go and live with Fiona's family…clan…for a while."

Bish was the first to respond. "But why? We're going to be…"