Sea Glass Sunrise (31 page)

“So, why did he bring me in then? What was the angle?”

“I think he was hoping you’d contest the rights to the property, then he’d work through you to buy it out, knowing Jonah would never sell. But he couldn’t even get the concept of the yacht club to take root. Rumor is that the members of his club down in Bar Harbor were laughing behind his back about his little ‘fishing town club.’” She made air quotes around that last part.

“I bet that went over not well at all. So . . . what is he going to do?”

“I don’t know. He donated the land for the club back to the city, and walked away from it. Actually, he’s more or less been a recluse since the incident with Ted. Ted has been recommended for outpatient psychiatric help, and he’s also been arrested on a very long laundry list of things. He’s been transferred to a larger jail facility near Bangor, where they can keep him from doing anything stupid to himself. I have no idea what will happen with the marriage. Cami hasn’t been seen or heard from either. I think this really brought both father and daughter down so many pegs . . .” She trailed off, then shook her head. “It has to have changed them in some way, some permanent way. But it remains to be seen how.”

“Might not be a bad thing,” Calder said, “though not worth the danger folks were put in to get there.”

“That’s the thing, I think, that really got them. Brooks and Cami, I mean. Seeing Bit like that, in Ted’s arms, with that gun.” She shivered then, and he rubbed his thumb over her fingers.

“So, will your friend Delia get the land back now, build a new diner? Seems like the least the town can do, give her first dibs.”

Hannah shook her head. “She’s started in on a new place, so she’s good.” She looked from their hands, to his face, her gaze on his. “Actually, the town wants to build a community center there. The boat tours will happen, and Grace—Brodie’s significant other—will open her inn there on the waterfront very shortly. Delia’s place should be up and running by then, too. Brodie’s boatbuilding shops are going well—the publicity of the schooner he built has brought him a lot of attention. He’s got contracts from all over, even international interest. The schooner launches in a few weeks, with the town’s tercentennial celebration, so that will officially get things rolling. But it’s all . . . I don’t know. Now it all seems to fit. Everything will stay slower, quieter, and the new businesses will still celebrate the harbor as it’s meant to be, what with the historic Monaghan shipyard operating again, albeit on a much, much smaller scale.” She smiled. “Though apparently Brodie will be building a yacht or two with the international contracts, so that’s kind of ironic.”

Her smile shifted from wry to hopeful. “There’s talk of turning one of his boathouses into a maritime museum, celebrating his family’s contribution to founding the town, along with the other main enterprises that built the Cove and the harbor, like Blue’s. Jonah is digging in, doing everything he can to rebound from the fire and the town is really rallying around him. It’s all new, but it’s all very promising. It feels . . . back to normal. Only better.” She broke off, and looked down again. “I’m rambling. I shouldn’t be so nervous. I don’t know why I am. It’s ridiculous.”

He tugged at her hand until she looked up at him again. The tension in the room had lessened as she’d talked, giving them both a chance to take a collective breath. At least the nervous tension had decreased. Now when she looked at him, an entirely different sort of tension stirred.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. She shoved the folder at him with her free hand. “It’s a contract. For your company. To build the community center. We felt it was the least we could do, seeing as you risked your life to save one of our own.” She held his gaze. “You are one of our own. You made things right, that day. Forevermore, you’re a part of our town.”

“Tell Jonah that.”

“Actually, Jonah has come around. A little,” she added at his skeptical look. “But he’s conceded that he might have been a little hard on you.”

“A little.” Calder shook his head, but he’d ceased to be annoyed with Jonah. His father’s stroke had taught him that life was far too short, and too precious, to hold grudges. Especially when that’s what had gotten the Blues into trouble in the first place.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you get a call from him. Jonah, I mean.”

“Your doing?”

She shook her head. “Not me. But I know Owen had a long talk with him.”

Calder smiled, thinking if anyone could get to Jonah, it would be the unassuming-looking Owen. “He’s like the stealth mayor.”

Hannah laughed. “Exactly!” Her smile lingered as she went on, though she sounded a bit tentative again. “I was thinking that you’d said your nieces were the same age as Bit. And, if you take the contract offer, you and your brothers will be coming in to do the work on the community center. Maybe your brothers’ wives would come with them on occasion, bring the girls. There aren’t that many young kids in the Cove and I know Bit would love having play friends.”

A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.

“What?” she asked, looking honestly perplexed.

“I’m surprised any of your cases went to trial, Counselor. You are quite adept at negotiating a settlement.”

She smiled then, too. Lifted a shoulder. “Go with your strength.”

It was all he could do not to pull her into his arms right then. “Why did you come all the way out here?” he asked her, his voice quiet now, but the smile still teasing his mouth.

“The contract. To get you to sign it.”

“I know this house may not look like much, but our offices are actually very nice. Our offices, with the fax machines and everything.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d even look at the contract if I just sent it over. I didn’t know how you felt. Or if you ever wanted to even think about the Cove again, considering all you have going on.”

He rubbed the side of her hand with this thumb again; then he turned her hand over, and rubbed it over her palm. She gasped, and he felt the shudder of response to his touch run through her. And his pulse went from steady to hot and thrumming, like a temperature spike. “Just the contract then.”

She nodded.

“I’d think you’d have a better poker face,” he said idly. “All that time in front of juries, and everything.”

“I—”

“Would it help if I told you that I want you so badly I can barely breathe? That I think about you when I open my eyes in the morning, see your face when I close them at night, and that a good number more seconds than is possible, given all that is going on in my world right now, are spent doing that exact same thing, all damn day long? Every single day? Would that help? Because you need to tell me if it doesn’t. And I’ll find some other words.”

“Calder—”

“I’ll sign the contract,” he told her. “There. Now your business here is done.”

She just looked at him.

“Hannah,” he said, the word rough. “Put me out of my misery. One way or the other.”

He wasn’t sure if she stood first or if he just dragged her across the kitchen table. But the folder went flying one way, the contract pages another, and he didn’t give a good goddamn about any of it because she was finally back where she belonged again. In his arms.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Hannah framed his beautiful, handsome face with shaky hands. “I—didn’t know if—I didn’t know.”

He was running his hands over her arms, tunneling his fingers through her hair, touching her face, as if making himself believe she was really there, reuniting himself with every part of her. And she rejoiced in every step of his rediscovery.

“Then you should have asked,” he said. “What didn’t you know?”

“Like you said, you have so much going on, and your life is upside down.”

“Yours, too.”

“Mine is my own, yours is anything but.”

“I want you, Hannah. I never stopped wanting you. But . . . I don’t have the right to ask you to tangle yourself up in my family madness. That’s not why you came back to Maine.”

“Shouldn’t that be my decision?”

He looked startled. “Is that—why would you even consider it? Hannah, there is no part of my life that makes any sense right now.”

“I’m good at making sense of things.”

“I have no doubt. But that doesn’t mean you should—”

She put her finger over his lips. “Will you be here? Does this madness of a life come with you in it?”

His gaze burned into hers and he nipped her finger, which she pulled away as desire flared in his beautiful golden eyes. “I’d say for better or for worse, only, sweetheart,” he said, doing a really,
really
bad Bogart impression, “I’m afraid it’s pretty much all for worse right now.”

Hannah could only grin at him in response. And it felt glorious. “Why don’t you let me worry my pretty little head over that,” she replied, in full-on Scarlett. She realized it made no sense with his Bogey, but hearing him laugh, seeing the smile light up those eyes of his, she thought she’d do a lot, go to a great deal of trouble, in fact, to make sure he did that far more often.

“Hannah,” he said, only it sounded more like a benediction this time. He traced his fingers over her cheek, slid his fingers down the length of her hair.

“Tell you what,” she said, thinking that as nervous as she’d been while finally getting out why she’d come here, she was surprisingly calm now. “Why don’t you kiss me, and we’ll see how that goes. Then take it from there.” She leaned in until her lips were just a breath away from his. “You remember how to kiss me, don’t you? You just put your lips together and—” The rest of that was lost in a squeal as he took her mouth in a fierce, hard kiss. Then the sound changed to a long, keening moan, as the kiss changed into something slower, deeper, but no less devastating.

He shoved his chair back so she could straddle his lap, but he was half shoving her dress up her thighs and she was tugging at his shirt when he said, “No, not this time.” He wrapped his arms around her. “Hold on.”

She didn’t question him, because she had no intent of letting him go anytime soon anyway. She crossed her ankles around his back as he stood, and nibbled the side of his neck as he half stumbled, half walked them through the house, stopping every few seconds to pin her to a handy wall and plunge right back into another soul-searing kiss.

She was panting heavily by the time they reached the bedroom. “I was pretty sure I’d blown that whole day by your truck into something unrealistic in my mind.”

He laid her on a bed the size of a small ocean and climbed right down on top of her. “And now?”

She smiled up into his face, wondering why in the hell she’d waited so long. “Now I think I didn’t do it justice.”

He grinned, his eyes going all caramel hot, and she squirmed under him. She started tugging at his shirt as he undid the small row of buttons that ran down the bodice of her sundress. He finally leaned up enough to pull his T-shirt off over his head and toss it aside, but when he came back down, intent on nibbling his way along her neck, she stopped him, her hands going to the small blue talisman drilled and knotted on a piece of twined rope, tied around his tanned neck so it dangled in the hollow of his throat.

She fingered the pitted, rounded surface, then looked up at him. “Sea glass,” she said. “Is it from—you didn’t have this on before.”

“I found it in my jeans pocket. It was what I had. Of you. Of that perfect day.”

She smiled, her throat growing tight. “I don’t know how perfect it was. I looked like an extra from
Dawn of the Dead
, and you were—”

“I fell in love with you that day, Hannah,” he said, and her throat closed right over. “I was halfway there, maybe all the way there, even before then. But the way you gave yourself to me, completely and utterly, then watching you walking the tidal pool, your delight in just . . . in just being there. You’re life, and breath, and sunshine. And hope. I—”

She lifted her head and kissed him, not knowing what else to say, awed to silence by his declaration. When he lifted his head, the look in his eyes leveled her. The honesty there, the truth of what he’d just told her, was laid bare for her to see. She felt humbled and not a little awed that this man, this good, honest, kind, decent, sexy as hell, hardworking, family-loving man, felt that way about her. “You, uh—” She had to clear her throat, because she wanted to say the words back to him, but she didn’t want him to think she was just parroting his. She needed him to know she truly believed every word. “You don’t strike me as the jewelry type.”

His gaze didn’t waver from hers. “There’s an ancient belief that if you wear a piece of something you gathered in a meaningful place, carry it with you, you’ll go back there someday.”

“You want to go back to the Cove?”

“I wanted to go back to you.”

“Oh, Calder,” she said on a hushed whisper. If she thought she’d been loved before, cherished before . . . she knew now she’d had no idea of the real meaning of the word. And if she thought she’d known love, known what it felt to feel love, to give love . . . it paled in the face of what she felt when she looked at him. “You never left me. Not for one second. You’ve been inside me, in my heart, my head, every part of me. I never wanted you to leave.”

“I—”

“No, I don’t mean leave to come back home. I know why you’re here, what you have to do. I meant . . .”

He leaned down and caught her lips in a slow, tugging kiss, then seduced his way between them, much as he had that very first time, when she’d been in the car dressed in that ridiculous, awful getup. She ran her hands up his arms, framed his face and kissed him back, taking him, seducing him, showing him, telling him, in all the ways she could, all the ways she knew she’d never stop showing him, what he meant to her.

The kisses changed from slow to deep, from deep to hot, and from hot to breathless. Her dress was tugged off and sent to some far corner of the room where she hoped it would stay for hours. Days. Weeks. His jeans followed, along with every other stitch of clothing they were wearing. She pulled him down on top of her, but he resisted, leaning up on one elbow to look down at her.

“I didn’t get the pleasure of this last time,” he said, tracing a finger over her collarbone, and down to the tip of her breast. “I want to explore every inch of you. Of this lovely, very naked you.”

She gasped, arched, and said, “I think you might have to wait until next time. After which, I’d really—really—like to return that favor.”

He laughed, then groaned as she slid her legs up the sides of his thighs and angled her hips so he could—“Oh,” she said as he slid deep inside of her, all the way, until she was full with every hard, perfect inch of him.

She groaned. Then she squealed when he slid out, and cried out when he thrust back in. “Maybe the time after next,” she panted, as he kept up the pace, and she matched him, thrust for thrust and they both drove each other up, up . . . and over.

She was still trying to catch her breath when he finally slid out of her, and started working his way down her body, lingering over her most sensitive parts. “Calder, I can’t—”

“It’s next time—”

“I know, but I need time to—”

“You’ll be fine.”

“No, I know what I—” Then she gasped, then she moaned.

He chuckled against the inside of her thigh. “You’re so much more than fine.”

“I—I believe I am,” she said, arching and crying out as he found her and took her directly to the edge, and shoved her flying off of it.

It was another few times later, when they finally lay spent, sprawled over each other in a tangle of arms and legs, all hot and damp and sweaty . . . and delicious. She laughed.

“What’s funny?” he said, his face half smushed into the mattress.

“This can’t be right.”

“If this ain’t right, then I pray to God we keep getting it wrong.”

She laughed again, and he managed a chuckle, which came out like more of a wheeze.

“Are you okay?” she asked, pushing his hair back from his face.

“I might have been doing a little more actual work than you,” he said. “Just give me five minutes.”

She ran her hand down his back, and over his very, very fine backside, which, it turned out, far exceeded even her initial expectations that day she’d first admired it, sitting inside her wrecked Audi.

He groaned. “Okay, maybe ten.”

She laughed again, then squealed when he reached out and tugged her so she was pinned half under him. “No more wandering fingers,” he told her, his voice getting drowsier.

She ran her tongue over his shoulder. “How about a wandering this?”

He slid a finger over her lips. “Shh.”

“What if I wanted to say I love you?” she said against his big, wide finger.

He rolled his head and opened one eye. “That you can do. But you’ll have to tell me again later. Maybe more than once.”

“Because you think you’ll forget?”

He moved more quickly than she would have thought possible, given his half-drugged stupor. She was suddenly flat on her back and a very revived Calder was pinning her to the bed. “No,” he said gruffly, “because it’s the best thing anyone has ever said to me.” He leaned in and kissed her. “And I’m greedy like that.”

She wiggled under him. “I like greedy.”

Now he barked a laugh. “I think perhaps I’ve awakened the real beast. It’s no wonder you like that car.”

“I bought it,” she said proudly. “Well, I traded it. For the Audi. Sal got permission from his nephew. I think it suits the new me.”

“The new you.”

She nodded, then slipped her hands free of his grasp and tugged his face down to hers. “The me who loves you and drives a blue hot rod and tries really hot court cases about who stole whose lobster traps and pot buoys, and maybe figures out how to help you turn this farm into the place you’re dreaming it will be even faster, so as soon as your family is put back together, you can be here full-time. Where we can do a lot more of this.”

“Oh,” he said, a devastatingly sexy smile starting to curve his lips. “That new you.”

“I love you, Calder Blue.”

He leaned down and nuzzled the side of her neck, and slipped between her thighs again. “How’d you like a last name to match that hot rod of yours?”

She gasped, then shoved his face back to where she could see it. “Is that what I—did you just—really? Here? Is it because you’re hormone addled—?”

“Come here, Scarlett, and let me love you some more. We’ll talk cars and last names later.”

“But—”

“I love you, Hannah McCrae. From Blueberry Cove. Hmm. Blueberry. I’m seeing a pattern here. I don’t know how I missed it.”

She grinned and it felt as if her entire body had just expanded to include the entirety of the universe, because that was the only way she could describe how full of joy she was in that moment. “Me, either.”

“We should think about that.”

“Okay.” Then she flipped him to his back and straddled him. “But frankly, right now, Mr. Blue?” She wriggled back onto him and sighed. “I really don’t give a damn.”