Tides of Love (Seaswept Seduction Series) (4 page)

"Do you have a fever?" Zach crouched before her, his knuckles grazing her brow. "This coat isn't helping. Blamed thing is more suited to the North Pole."

"Or Chicago," she said between splayed fingers.

"Yes, Chicago, I sup—" His heels popped the floor; he rocked back. "Noah's here." He grabbed her shoulders, slid her forward in the chair. "You've seen him? Where is he?"

She shoved his chest with both hands and jumped to her feet.
"You knew.
You knew he was coming."

He nodded, an eager glow in his eyes.

"Mercy above, you could have told me. Warned me, at the very least." She sniffed and wiped her nose on Noah's sleeve. A potent scent, as purely masculine as any she'd ever smelled, clung to the material.

Zach tipped her chin high. "Could I? Then what? You move to the mainland until he leaves? Hide in Widow Wynne's basement for a month?
No.
It's enough your father has driven you from your home, forced you into a desperate situation. A situation you've refused to let me help you with. Caleb and I are the only family you have right now. I did what I thought best."

"I wouldn't call my situation desperate," she said, angling her chin away. She couldn't look at Zach and fib at the same time. "Not truly desperate."

"You've taken up residence in a boardinghouse and act as an old woman's nursemaid to survive. All for refusing to accept a loveless marriage. In my book, that's pretty desperate."

Elle turned to the window, pressed her brow against the cool glass. She would not marry a man she didn't love. Being alone seemed a far better choice than living a lie for the rest of her life. She agreed with Zach, but she didn't feel comfortable discussing marriage with him. Not after he had lost his wife to consumption two years ago. Hannah had been the light in his life and only recently had the light begun to shine again.

"How did he look?" Zach sighed, his toe tapping the stone floor. "Did he seem glad to be back?"

Her heart sank. Steadfast, reliable Zach.

"Did he ask about me? About Caleb?" His voice weakened with each word.

Elle pasted on a smile and turned to face him. "Well, he's really tall." She held her hand high above her head. "Six inches, maybe more. He had to duck inside the coach house."

"His head almost brushed the frame? Imagine that."

"And his voice, you remember, kind of rough, like sandpaper? Sounds the same." His lashes were long enough to make any woman jealous. "Hair, his hair was a little darker, I think." A face so handsome she had experienced an absurd rush of anger. "Thin, he looked thin."

"Did he seem happy, Ellie?"

Combative, defensive, suspicious.

"I didn't have much of a chance to talk to him." She chewed her lip and glanced away.

The stove lid rattled as Zach settled wood inside. "I should go to him. Get this confrontation over with. He can't hide in a town this size for long."

"I don't think he wants to hide." Her lids drifted low as she pictured Noah's expression when he'd stormed through Widow Wynne's gate. Disbelief, certainly, and mistrust. A definite trace of fear. "He mentioned waiting two months before coming back. I think he wants to be the one to decide when you'll meet."

She opened her eyes to find Zach staring at her. "He tell you all that?"

"Of course not. He won't tell Saint Peter that much at the Pearly Gates."

Zach nodded and flipped the stove lid closed. "It's still there between you two."

"No, Zach, it's
not."

"Lord knows I tried, but I never understood him like you did. Even when he was no higher than my knee, the questions he asked nearly knocked me from my feet. As if I had this special person to tend to, to watch over. I was a ship's pilot. What would I know about how shells are formed or how birds fly? And that nonsense, the fishermen treating him like a carnival fortune-teller. Professor. What a stupid nickname for a kid." He grabbed his coat from a hook by the door and shrugged into it. "Yet you, you always knew what he was thinking. Heck, I never did. Made me crazy to even try."

Elle trembled beneath wool still holding Noah's body heat. She wanted to deny the notion, call it a whim, a flight of fancy, but she
had
always known.

"He came along when I needed a protector, someone who didn't laugh at my accent and knock me into the dirt in the schoolyard. I guess I loved him for that. An immature infatuation, one I did not manage well." She sighed. "Clearly, I don't need a protector any longer. I'm not going to drink too much cider at the Spring Tide Festival and get sick on my shoes. Or tumble off a slick roof and break my arm. Noah doesn't have to save me anymore."

"You don't really believe—"

"Papa!"

A boy burst into the room, filthy coattail flapping past his waist, bootlaces tripping him up. Elle watched Rory fling his arms about his father's shoulders, snuggle his cheek in the folds of Zach's shirt. A swift jab of envy pierced her. If she shielded her sight for a moment, she could imagine he was
her
child, this lovely boy who shared an uncanny resemblance to his absent uncle. Only, she had loved his mother too much to do that. Hannah's smile, the dimple in her cheek, the shape of her nose, all lived in Rory's face. Her warm laughter rolled from his lips, her gentle touch from his fingers.

"Tomorrow, Miss Ellie," Rory mumbled around a mouthful of chocolate filched from his father's pocket.

"Tomorrow?"

"The beach. We're taking the skiff to the beach."

She fluffed his hair, traced Hannah's dimple. He smelled lovely, like sweets, dirt, and little boy. "I promised, didn't I?" Over Rory's tousled head, she captured Zach's gaze. "Caleb?"

Zach shifted from one foot to the other and popped two buttons loose at the neck of his shirt. Avoiding her question, he grabbed Rory's arm and hustled him through the doorway.

Elle just managed to pluck Zach's sleeve between her fingers as he moved past. "You have to tell him. Everyone in town will know by tomorrow. The next day at best. Caleb will be home by then."

"I know," Zach said, tugging his arm free.

"See ya, Miss Ellie," Rory called, racing down the jail's narrow walkway, trailing his father like a pup.

Elle sighed and sank onto a stiff wooden bench, the music of Pilot Isle wafting inside the open door. Pounding waves and squawking gulls, the crunch of wagon wheels over crushed shell, ships' flags snapping. She accepted the meager solace, willing to accept anything but the sight of Noah's eyes, guarded and full of torment. A deep, enduring sadness armored by a wall of restraint.

In his trenchant gaze, she witnessed every misstep, every foible, every foolish poem wrapped around a rock and tossed through his bedroom window. If he cared to differentiate, and of course, he did not, Noah would find an independent woman, not a bothersome child. A competent teacher, an active member of a thriving community, a woman no longer infatuated with a young man who did not return her feelings. She had become the sensible person he had encouraged her to be. The proper woman her father demanded. She had relinquished her hopes of true love and an education, prudent enough to realize they weren't in the cards.

A gust of putrid air filled the room, signaling a receding tide on the marsh. She wondered if Noah smelled the scent and remembered. Elle's slick palms slid along her skirt. She gripped her knees and bowed her head. The man she'd encountered this afternoon was a stranger, yet she'd recognized him in a purely elemental way. Detected his wounds, as visible to her as hers were to him.

She had nothing to fear; the silly girl in need of a young man's acceptance had departed years ago. The mature woman who'd taken her place had enough good sense to stay out of trouble.

Only, her
good sense
had come at the price of her dreams.

Chapter 2

"The tangles certainly make a sad mess of the specimens."

C. Wyville Thomson

The Depths of the Sea

Walking along a narrow street, who, oh who, should I meet?

Noah pressed his cheek into the sand, humming the ditty he'd sung as a boy. The rush and swirl of the sea mingled with the lilting tune. A strange dream, he thought drowsily. He blinked. Darkness. And heat. Vapor fogging his spectacle lenses.

The warehouse in Chicago never got this warm.

Pushing to his elbows, he knocked his hat from his face.

"No bite yet."

Noah turned to find a young boy sitting beside him, legs spread, trousers rolled to the knee, a fixed grip on
his
fishing pole.

The boy gestured to the hat. "Your face looked kinda burnt."

"Burnt?" Noah mumbled, his mind clouded by sleep.

"You come to Devil Island to fish?"

"Um, well, I came out here to"—
hide
—"yes, fish."

"Name's Rory."

Rory?
The mover of boxes into his coach house Rory? Elle's fiancé?
Damn.
The kid looked about six years old, tops.

"You didn't sail here alone, did you?"

Rory laughed, the skinny end of the pole dipping toward the sand. "My pa'd skin me then." He jumped up and dashed to the water's edge. "My friend brung me," he yelled and reared, pulling hard on the line. "Can't swim near the dock in Pilot Isle, with the boats and all anchored about. Devil is the nearest beach."

Rory raced back and plopped to the sand at Noah's feet. "Got any more? I had a couple shrimp, but used 'em." He waved the empty hook, the bait long gone.

Noah passed Rory the bucket sitting behind him.

"Sand fleas?" Rory's expression soured. "No wonder nothing biting." He shrugged, secured the pole between his knees, and easily baited the hook.

"Did you bring a pole?" Noah plucked his hat from the sand and adjusted the wrinkled brim.

"Nah. I'll just use yours."

Noah coughed behind his hand, not wanting to hurt his feelings. And, he had not laughed in months.

It felt good.

Rory squatted beside him, throwing curious glances at Noah's rucksack. Noah pulled it close, removed a short length of wire and a pair of tweezers. His hook had taken a beating at the boy's eager hands. "Where is this friend of yours?" he asked, curling the metal. A worthless chaperon, that one.

"Oh, down the beach aways. She tried to do a somsault." He wiggled his tiny toes in the sand. "Pretty wet now."

Noah dipped his head, hiding a smile.

Rory tinkered with the pole, shifting from side to side on his scrawny buttocks. "Are... are you my uncle Noah? The one I look like?"

Noah dropped the tweezers. He jerked his gaze to the boy's face and cataloged features as meticulously as he cataloged species of fish. Square jaw. Tousled gold curls. Conceivably, the jaw could be... and the eyes. Gray, like all the Garrett men. He felt a sharp prick and looked to find the wire embedded in his palm. He winced, snatched it out, and thumbed the dribble of blood.

Rory poked his big toe in a ghost-crab hole. "I heard them talking once. Real loud. Mad. Uncle Caleb said it was the same as walking 'cross a ghost, seeing me." A shoulder jerk accompanied the confession. "Then I heared my pa talking last night, about you sailing in on Mr. Stymie's skiff."

Noah reached for the small chin, tipped it high. Rory stared, curious and hopeful. "Where did you hear this?"

"Warped door at Widow Wynne's. You can listen lots if you're quiet. My pa says everything at Widow Wynne's is warped or busted."

Noah let his hand drop, unable to do the same with his gaze.

"You a professor?"

Seagulls scurried past, searching for a piece of discarded bait. Waves surged, nearly brushing their feet. Rising tide. Noah recorded this in dazed silence as he watched the boy fidget and squirm, a trickle of love seeping past his hardened heart.

"You a professor?" Rory repeated, tapping the corked end of the pole against his hip.

Zach's son. Caleb's nephew.
His
nephew. He swallowed, throat clicking. "That's a, a nickname someone gave me a long time ago."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I don't remember the exact reason. People used to come by the house. The house where I lived with your father and Caleb." Where Rory lived with Zach and Hannah? "They asked me questions."

"Where'd you find the answers?"

Noah grabbed the tweezers and made little roads in the sand between his feet. "Books, usually." What year was the cotton gin invented? Why don't the numbers in my ledger add up? Is this a King Mackerel or a Spanish Mackerel? The questions had been as preposterous as the nickname. "They weren't hard to figure out."

"There's my friend," Rory said, pointing with the tip of the pole.

He shaded his eyes in time to see Elle swagger over the packed sand, her barefoot stride sure and even. In no hurry to reach them, she stopped once to skip a rock, again to stoop for a shell. The same girl, obviously. Head chock-full of mischief and frivolity. She waved at Rory and turned slightly, her stride faltering. Her hand dropped to her side. The other tensed around her basket handle.