The Love Shack (28 page)

He lifted his head. “You won’t?”

Another tear slid along her temple. “Never.”

His body slowed then, his hips moving in deliberate, incendiary pitches. His tongue licked at her tears. And when the orgasm finally broke over her, it completely shattered her heart.

But still, there remained pieces of it left to splinter, she discovered. That happened a little later, after he’d come back with a warm washcloth used to soothe her face and body. Next he tucked her into the bed, pulling the sheets and blanket to her chin. Only then did he turn on a lamp. Only then did he crush whatever was left beating in her chest.

He was dressed. His bags were packed. There were just two, a duffel and a backpack.

Skye sat up, feeling the color drain from her face.

“It wasn’t going to be any better tomorrow,” he said, sitting on the edge of the mattress. His palm cupped her cheek. “We’re both wretched. So I moved up my flight.”

She continued staring at him.

“I’m going now. It will be better this way.”

“I...” Her voice deserted her. “You...”

He smiled a little, rubbed his thumb over a fresh tear. “Yeah.” Then he placed a last kiss on her forehead, and was gone.

* * *

S
TUNNED
, S
KYE
LAY
BACK
on the bed. Overwrought with emotion, she stared at the bedroom walls and tried absorbing what had happened. He’d gone. She’d let him go.

If she’d begged him to stay, would he be beside her right now?

Yes. He wouldn’t have made the offer unless he’d been willing to follow through with it. But that wasn’t how she wanted to have him.

Gathering his pillow into her arms, she closed her eyes and listened to the waves sliding onto the sand, just as they had in Edith’s time, and just as they had when Edith was gone. Just as they had when Gage spent part of a summer with her, and just as they would now that he was gone.

Skye slept.

At first light, she awoke. Her body felt heavy as she dressed, then made her way into the kitchen. She brewed coffee, because that’s what people did in the morning. A steaming mug in hand, she walked out onto the deck and took a seat at the table, staring out to sea.

The dark heads of a pair of seals popped up from the surf. They gamboled in the waves, enjoying their morning swim. People supposed they were the source of the mermaid and merman legends. In the right light—say the gray of early morning—someone could mistake their sleek figures for those of a water-dwelling race. Skye found herself smiling at their antics.

Smiling!

But why not? She let her gaze follow the crescent shape of the beach. This was her place, her legacy, and she was still here, wasn’t she? Still in her magical, wonderful corner of the world. Gage had helped her recapture her sense of security and her ability to appreciate her beautiful surroundings.

Closing her eyes, she filled her chest with the salt-laden air. Maybe the merfolk in the cove could find a way to rebuild her heart.

Her name floated past her on the breeze. She smiled again, bemused by the power of her imagination. Gage was thousands of miles away by now, so that couldn’t be his voice.

“Skye!”

She jolted, her eyes going wide. That...that sounded so like him. Standing, she heard footsteps on the stairs leading from the beach. The top of a familiar head came into view.

Her mouth went dry. “Gage?”

Reaching the deck, he dropped his bags, then held his arms wide.

In one magnificent rush, she leaped onto him, causing him to stagger back. He laughed, his arms closing tight around her as her legs clasped his waist. “Hey, baby,” he said, pressing his face against her neck. “Miss me?”

Her fingers twined in his hair and she pulled on his head to lift his gaze to hers. “Did your flight get canceled?”

“Something better than that. My life plan got canceled.”

“I...I don’t understand.”

“I know.” He hitched her up, then carried her to the double-wide lounger, where he sat with her in his lap. His mouth found hers, and she fell headlong into the kiss—that he cut short. “Let me tell you something first.”

“All right,” she said, suddenly wary again.

“During the drive to the airport, questions kept running through my head. First and foremost, why I’d been avoiding taking pictures. Hell, I couldn’t even make myself take a final photo of you last night.”

“I thought maybe it was because of my sunburned nose.”

“Brat,” he said, then kissed it. “The answer was actually pretty simple. I’d always used the camera lens as a buffer between me and my subjects. I didn’t want any buffer from you. Not last night. Not ever.”

Skye’s heart was pounding in her chest. The merfolk must be fast workers, she thought, dizzy with the new rush of blood zinging through her veins.

“I love you, Skye,” Gage said. “I’m so in love with you.”

Her body started to tremble. “You know, you know I—”

“I know.” His grin was easy, and very pleased. “No doubt I’ll insist you say it a hell of a lot, too, but let me finish telling you why I didn’t make that plane.”

She clasped her hands together.

“When I learned about Griff’s PTSD, I did a little research. Scientists have named another condition that happens to people who experience an impactful life event—PTG, post-traumatic growth. It leaves a person with a new outlook on life and relationships. A man may discover that he wants to spend more time with family instead of his career. Maybe he sees himself putting down roots—still taking photographs, mind you—but from a home base and with a woman beside him who can fill his heart, not just his zest for adventure.”

Skye frowned. “That woman might not like the idea of being the one who curtails his zest.”

He smiled at her. “She’s going to provide plenty of zest, don’t you worry.”

At her doubtful expression, he laughed.

“Trust me, honey,” he said, then, sobering, he gathered her even closer. “While I was driving, I kept remembering Charlie, something he told me. Just a few weeks before his kidnapping, he was walking through Kabul and a bullet pierced a wall right by his head. Pure good luck that it didn’t kill him outright. And he wondered if that wasn’t a sign from the universe. He thought about going home to Mara and Anthony, right then and there.”

Skye frowned. “So your sign from the universe was the kidnapping?”

“My sign from the universe was you. At first your letters, and then your smile, and then your love. It made no sense not to heed it...not to be with you, the person who makes me happy. So...here I am.”

“So...here you are.” She smiled, her heart whole and clamoring for its turn to talk. “Do I get to say I love you now?”

“Sure, I—” His gaze suddenly shifted over her shoulder, and he blinked. “Jesus,” he murmured. “Skye, there’s...there’s merpeople out there.”

Seals. “But of course,” she replied, without even bothering to look. “They’re here to welcome you home.”

EPILOGUE

S
KYE
STOOD
AT
THE
RAILING
on the deck of Beach House No. 9, her hand shading her eyes as she gazed up the sand. No fog shrouded the cove this afternoon; instead the sun was beaming down in warm welcome for the Memorial Day weekend visitors. Her shoulder muscles ached a little, but she didn’t mind, because the hard work of preparing for another Crescent Cove summer was now completed.

Their group of friends had even managed to make time for a simultaneous week-long visit, with the exception of Addy and her husband, Baxter, who were living in France. For the rest of them, those who considered themselves the happy recipients of No. 9’s magic, it was going to be seven days of horseshoes on the beach and barbecues on the deck. There was talk of making some after-dark visits to Captain Crow’s for a little dancing.

That was, if they could talk Tess and David’s teenage boys into babysitting. Their daughter Rebecca would want to go along to the bar with the other adults.

The passel of kids she was expecting came into view and Skye smiled, remembering her days as part of a Neverland tribe just like this one. It only made the memory sweeter to know that a good number of those jostling each other as they made their way along the beach were the progeny of her own childhood posse. Jane and Griffin’s two children, dark-haired R.J.—Rex Joseph—and dainty Amaryllis led the way. Skye’s sister’s daughter with her husband, Caleb, was named Starr just like her mother had once been, and she had her arms slung around Tina and Karen, the offspring of Polly and Teague White, who had fallen in love here at the cove a decade before.

Ten years had indeed elapsed since that fateful summer, and it would seem like the time had passed in the blink of an eye unless you took into account the growing families. Vance and Layla Smith had managed to produce three kids in those years, though only the oldest two—boys—were part of the group heading for No. 9. Baby Katherine was napping with her mother inside the house.

Straggling behind the rest of the kids were a pair of scamps. Hard to believe Max and Neal were six already, Skye thought, but Gage claimed they’d lost two years in a sleepless delirium of diapers and spit-up. As if sensing her regard, Max looked up, saw her on the deck, and gave her the exuberant wave of a sailor sighting land. Then Neal did the same, and she grinned, her heart swelling with intense, almost painful love. Her little men.

She put her hand over her belly and wondered if she’d be introducing a daughter to this paradise next. Tonight, when she was snuggled in bed with her husband at their house just up the beach, she’d give him the news of the pregnancy and see if he had a prediction.

I bet it’s a girl,
she thought, rubbing her palm over her navel.
Edith.

Her sons were waving at her again and in response, she threw up her arm. It hit solid metal.

And she woke up.

Blinking, Skye struggled to orient herself. She wasn’t standing on No. 9’s deck. She was stretched out on one of its loungers, under the shade of a patio umbrella. Her dream gesture had caused her hand to encounter its center pole. Sitting up, she rubbed at her tender knuckles. What a dream! It had felt so real, even though ten years had not passed since the Summer of Love—as she and Gage had come to talk of it—at Beach House No. 9.

It was only the end of September, and just a few weeks since her pen pal who was also the man she loved had entered her life. She’d come here this afternoon to shut up the house for the season since Gage had moved in with her. After doing all the necessary chores, she’d taken a break on the lounger and then apparently taken a nap.

Smiling, she got to her feet. She and Gage had stayed up too late the night before, practicing for that babymaking that her dream portended. Max and Neal and Edith? Wow.

She gathered the lounge cushions in her arms, intending to stow them in the storage area beneath the deck. Using her foot, she shoved the lounger’s metal frame against the side of the house and heard an ominous crack.

“Darn,” she muttered, dropping the cushions to survey the damage. The metal teeth that propped up the chair’s back had caught one of the siding shingles at the base of the house and half ripped it away. After moving the metal frame, she hunkered down and fiddled with the broken piece. It came off in her hand and with another curse she went belly-down on the deck to see if she could retrieve the rest from beneath its overlapping partner.

What she saw instead was a small, shadowy niche that had a canvas drawstring bag stuffed inside.

“What are you doing?”

Skye started, then turned her head toward her fiancé, who was striding across the deck. “I think I’m playing pirate and this is the hidden treasure.” Refusing to think about spiders and snakes, she reached in the shallow nook and pulled out the fabric sack. It was heavy in her hand.

She rolled over and sat up as Gage settled on the painted wooden surface beside her. Her pulse fluttered as she looked at him. “Could it be...?”

“Only one way to find out, honey.” He leaned close to kiss her temple. “What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t know.” Her fingers tightened on the dirty, yellowed material and she forced them to loosen. “You do it,” she said, holding the package toward him.

He held up both hands. “Not me.”

She hesitated another moment, then with a little growl, attacked the strings. There was another sack inside the first, this one made of oilcloth. Inside that was a velvet pouch.

From the soft, silk-lined material, Skye drew out a magnificent necklace made up of four parallel lines of precious stones, graduating from the size of her thumbnail to the size of a pea. “The Collar,” she breathed, and held it with two hands, the jeweled rows flowing like water over her palms.

Gage let out a long whistle. “I’m no gem expert, but I would guess those are rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and amethysts.”

“They say Nicky Aston adored Edith,” Skye said slowly, dazzled by the way the sun set the colors blazing. “She thought his avowed feelings were more publicity stunt than sincerity, but you have to wonder...”

They studied it in silence for several long moments, the only sound that of the ocean breathing in and breathing out. “What are you going to do with it?” Gage finally asked.

“Good question. I don’t know...” But then she thought she did. She looked over her shoulder, through the glass that led into Beach House No. 9. The bungalow had brought several lives together this summer, and probably other times, as well. Her mother had always claimed so, anyway.

Without its magic, would she be sitting here with the love of her life?

“You might think I’m crazy,” she warned Gage.

“As long as you’re still crazy about me,” he said, smiling, “I’m happy.”

She stretched over to kiss his mouth, fierce and hot. “That’s a foregone conclusion.” Then, with only the slightest twinge of regret, she bundled the magnificent piece into its protective layers and returned it to the hidey-hole, carefully positioning the half-broken shingle over it. Tomorrow she’d come back for a more secure repair.

Gage’s eyebrows were raised when she turned to face him. “You’re leaving it then?” he asked.

“At least for now.” Because as woo-woo as it might sound, she sensed its placement could be part of Crescent Cove’s mystique—perhaps the very source of the enchantment that Beach House No. 9 held. To her mind, the necklace symbolized a yearning heart, the kind of heart that had found its mate here this summer—and hopefully for many more seasons to come.

Gage got to his feet, pulling her up with him. “What now?”

She smiled, thrilling again that this beautiful man was hers. “Let’s go for a walk to the tide pools. I want to tell you about my dream.”

And how she felt certain that it was sure to come true
.

* * * * *