Moonshell Beach: A Shelter Bay Novel (2 page)
Belying the song lyrics about it never raining in California, a dark gray sky was weeping onto the black Suburban’s windshield as Marine captain J. T. Douchett drove through rain-slicked streets to carry out his mission. A mission he’d been catapulted into a year ago. A mission without weapons, which, given that every Marine was a rifleman, was not one he’d prepared for at Officer Candidates School, at the War College, or even during years of combat.
The rain was appropriate, he thought wearily as he pulled into the parking lot of a Denny’s restaurant. As tough as this assignment was, it always seemed a lot worse when a benevolent sun was shining and birds were singing.
The drizzle reminded him of home. Back in Shelter Bay, his father and his brother Cole would’ve already gone out on their fishing boat. Maybe his grandfather, who often missed his days at sea, would have gone with them. The small coastal town would be coming to life—shopkeepers down on Harborview Drive would be opening their doors and lowering their bright awnings; beachcombers would be
walking at the edge of the surf, gathering shells and agates; locals would be sitting around tables at the Grateful Bread, enjoying French toast and gossip while tourists lined up at the pier to go whale watching.
Memories of his hometown not only comforted; they reminded him of family, which, in turn, drove home the significance of this mission for which he definitely never, in a million years, would have volunteered.
But the first thing J.T. had learned at OCS was that every Marine was part of a larger picture. And the tradition of “Leave no Marine behind” was a sacred promise that went beyond the battlefield.
He and his passenger, a staff sergeant who, despite years of marching cadences, still had the slightly bowed legs of a man who’d grown up riding horses in Abilene, retrieved their garment bags from the backseat. They entered the restaurant, walking past the tables to the men’s room, where they changed from their civilian clothes into high-necked, dark blue jackets, dark blue pants with a bloodred stripe down the outside of each leg, and shoes spit-polished to a mirror gloss.
Although he could feel that every eye in the place was on them, J.T. put on a focused but distant stare and glanced neither left nor right as he walked straight back to the Suburban. Neither man spoke. There was no need. They’d been through this before. And it never got any easier, so why talk about it?
After he was waved through Camp Pendleton’s main gate, passing a golf course, a McDonald’s, a Taco Bell, and a veterinary clinic on the way to his
destination, it occurred to J.T. how appearances could be deceiving.
The treelined streets he drove through, set on hillsides behind a lake shadowed by fog, with their manicured lawns and children’s play park, portrayed a sense of tranquillity. It could, he thought, as he turned onto Marine Drive, be any one of a million suburban neighborhoods scattered across the country.
What made his destination different from most was that these tile-roofed beige stucco houses were home to warriors. Another reason he was grateful for the rain. On a sunny day, more people would be outside and the sight of the black SUV with two Marines inside wearing dress blues would set off alarms that would spread like wildfire.
J.T. leaned forward, trying to read the house numbers through the slanting rain. He could have used the GPS, but found the computerized female voice a distraction in situations like these.
The house was located at the end of a cul-de-sac. A white Ford Escape with a child’s car seat in back was parked in the driveway. A bumper sticker on the small SUV read
My Heart Belongs to a U.S. Marine
.
Exchanging a look with the sergeant, J.T. pulled on his white cotton gloves and climbed out of the Suburban. The heels of his shiny shoes clicked on the concrete sidewalk.
A pot of red geraniums on the small covered porch added a bright spot to the gray day. A blue star flag, signifying a deployed family member, hung in the side window.
J.T. took a deep breath. He knew the sergeant
standing beside him would be saying a prayer. Wishing he still possessed such faith, J.T. found his own peace by envisioning himself back home. The remembered tang of Douglas fir trees and brisk salt-tinged sea air cleared his head.
Although he’d rather have been back in Afghanistan, facing a horde of Taliban, than standing at this front door on this rainy California day, J.T. squared his shoulders and braced himself as he reached out a gloved hand to ring the bell and shatter yet another woman’s heart.
He came to Mary Joyce, as he had for each of the past five nights, in her dreams. His hair was as dark as a moonless night over the Burren, his eyes the color of rain. He was striding determinedly toward her on long legs that ate up the ground. Flames blazed across the battle-scarred landscape behind him.
His jaw was wide and square, his rawboned face as chiseled as the stone cliffs of her native Ireland. He was every bit a warrior, in rough clothing, carrying a huge and dangerous sword in his large hands.
Having grown up in a country that had suffered centuries of hostilities from battling factions, Mary hated war. And, although she understood intellectually that occasionally such things were necessary for the greater good, she’d never experienced a moment’s attraction to men who’d conduct them.
Which didn’t explain why, as he stopped in front of her, his granite gray eyes intense as they glared down into hers, she felt her body melting like a candle left out too long in a warm summer sun.
There was no seduction.
No romance.
There never was.
The dangerously menacing stranger did not even bother to ask; he took, as if it were his perfect right. As if she were merely a battle prize granted without question to the victor. Dropping his weapon, his fist crumpled the front of the emerald green nightgown that had cost an obscene amount of money for such a scrap of silk and lace—and ripped it down the front.
When she gasped, as she always did, his head swooped down and his mouth—hard and demanding—devoured hers in a deep, forceful kiss, as broad, rough hands claimed her body.
Her head was swimming. As she felt her legs weaken, Mary struggled to keep from fainting. Such savage, primal passion made her tremble. Not from fear, nor outrage at being taken by this stranger without a single pretty word or bit of clever foreplay, but from a burning need for fulfillment.
Seeming oblivious to the death and destruction behind him, he dragged her to the ground beside a mountain lake, where, in direct contrast to the battle that was still waging, a pair of swans—one white, the other black—drifted on glassy blue water.
His body was all rock-hard muscle and sinew. They came together like thunder. Like lightning. Every coherent thought Mary possessed was swept away by the hot winds swirling around them.
When a soft, shimmering lavender dawn light began to filter into the bedroom, Mary woke, emerging from the storm shaken, as she had for the past five mornings.
And alone.
* * *
The house was quiet. Her guests must still be sleeping. Turning on the coffee, so it’d be brewed when they got up, Mary quickly braided her long black hair, pulled on a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and running shoes, and went out her back door and down the wooden steps onto the beach.
It was early enough that the fog had yet to burn off, and as she ran down the packed sand at the edge of the surf, she could almost imagine that she was back running on the beach in Castlelough.
She’d always loved the ocean. Granted, this glistening strip of sand on Malibu beach was not the kelp-draped shores of home, and the houses crowded together like crows on a line were a poor substitute for the soaring, vertical west Irish cliffs, but the salt air still managed to clear her head, even as it failed to blow away those last lingering fragments of the erotic dream that had been bedeviling her.
Once upon a time, while growing up in a small county on the far west coast of Ireland, Mary had dreamed of moving to America, where she’d become a rich and famous movie star, live in a mansion in Beverly Hills, and have a worldwide audience of fans who’d follow her every move.
Despite having chosen an acting career that had thrust her into the public eye and onto the covers of tabloid magazines, Mary had always been an intensely private person. After surviving admittedly tempestuous teenage years, she’d emerged as what she liked to believe was a sensible, logical adult. A woman who was the polar opposite of the sexy Queen of the Selkies, a role she’d created by writing the screenplays that had garnered her wealth beyond
her wildest dreams—along with a legion of fans who’d show up in droves at theaters for the opening of her movies and hold festivals where they’d enact favorite scenes and conduct workshops about selkie myths and culture.
At the urging of the studio’s publicity department, Mary had attended several of these events, and as grateful as she was for these moviegoers who’d made her dream come true, she was bemused by the idea her stories, drawn from myths her late father loved to tell, could be taken by anyone as gospel truth.
“I’m simply telling stories,” she’d insist to those who’d push her to admit otherwise. “They’re make-believe. Like leprechauns or fairies.”
Of course, one problem with that explanation was her own father had believed in leprechauns and fairies. Fictional or not, her stories had stimulated the imaginations of millions who preferred to believe in an alternate reality.
And lately she’d been feeling more and more trapped in a life of her own making.
The sun was rising in the sky, burning off the fog, as she returned to the house and found her houseguests seated out on the deck.
“Good morning!” Kate MacKenna waved as Mary approached.
“Good morning to you.” Mary ran up the steps and gave the older woman a hug. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to be making you breakfast.”
“Don’t bother your head about it. We’ve only just gotten up.” As Kate exchanged a look with her husband, a telltale flush rose in her cheeks.
The idea that her older sister’s best friend had found such love with the American horse trainer after a miserable and abusive marriage brought Mary a rush of pleasure. Kate was one of the kindest, most nonjudgmental people Mary had ever met, which was why she’d been such a valuable sounding board during those young and foolish years when Mary’s entire happiness seemed to have revolved around whether she’d be popular with the village boys.
Kate’s smile faded, just a bit, as she swept a gaze over Mary’s face. “You look a bit tired,” she said. “I hope we haven’t been a bother.”
“Don’t talk foolishness. I love having you visit. I just had a restless night.”
“More than a few of them, I’d be thinking,” Kate said, as her husband, Alec, went into the house, returning with a mug of coffee he handed to Mary. “Is something wrong?”
Damn. There was no hiding anything from this woman. According to Mary’s sister Nora, ever since childhood Kate had been able to “see” things. Like when she was five and saw the black wreath on Mrs. Callahan’s door two months before the elderly woman dropped dead of a heart attack while weeding her cabbage patch.
Or the time, when Nora and Kate were teenagers, that Kate saw little Kevin Noonan floating facedown in the surf seconds before a white-crested wave swept the wandering toddler off his feet—but soon enough to warn his mother.
“Thank you,” she said to Alec as she cradled the mug in her hands, breathing in the fragrant steam. When she was home in Ireland, she tended to drink
tea. But she’d developed the coffee-drinking habit while living in America. “There’s just a lot of stress involved with releasing a new film.”
“I imagine it’s a bit like an upcoming race,” Alec said.
“I would imagine,” Kate echoed. Then gave Mary an even longer, more pointed look. “Is that all it would be?”
“I’ve been having dreams,” Mary admitted reluctantly.
“Would those dreams be about a man?” Kate asked. “And would they be a stranger?”
“Yes on both counts, but as for him being a stranger, that’s undoubtedly because I don’t personally know men worth dreaming about.”
Before her warrior stranger had begun visiting her, Mary had experienced a particularly hot dream about Daniel Craig where she’d played a Bond Girl to his 007. Not that she was going to share that bit of information in front of Kate’s husband, who was pretty hot himself.
It was time to change the subject. “You must be really excited, with Lady of the Lake’s win yesterday.”
The Thoroughbred, sired by Legends Lake out of Irish Dancer, was the reason for Kate and Alec’s visit. They’d brought her from the couple’s Kentucky farm for the American Oaks Invitational Stakes at Hollywood Park.
“I hoped she’d do well, but winning by so many lengths was definitely the icing on the cake,” Kate said. She exchanged another look with Alec, who, on cue, stood up. “Well, if you ladies will excuse me, I have some calls to make,” he said.
“What was that about?” Mary asked as he went back into the house.
“Oh, you know how it is.” Kate brushed away the question with a graceful wave of her hand. “The stud business never rests.”
