Under the Boardwalk: A Dazzling Collection of All New Summertime Love Stories (37 page)

She threw the shell at him, aiming at his face, but he deftly caught it with one hand.

"A Maiden's Wish, isn't it?" he said as he took one step toward her, then another, lightly tossing the little shell in his palm as if he'd never seen it before. "They say it will always tell the truth of a female heart. And I'd say they were right."

"How long did it take you and Zach to make up
that
crock of nonsense?" she said defiantly, even as she began to back away. "Take care that you stay where you are, Jack Wilder. Don't you come one bit closer."

"Then you stay where you are, Miriam Rowe, and stop making me chase you."

"Jack, please," she said, the first edge of panic creeping into her voice as she inched away from him. "Go away. Leave me alone. Whatever there was between us is done, finished. Go away
now
."

"I've come clear around the world for you," he said, his voice harsh with honesty as he held his hand out toward her. "Do you think I'll clear off now with only an arm's span left between us?"

She shook her head, but as her bare feet slid backwards and away from him she forgot how close she was to the edge of the dock until it was too late. Abruptly she began to topple backwards again, and this time, before she could protest, Jack caught her wrist and pulled her back from the edge, and back into his arms.

Too late Miriam realized what he'd done, too late to choose the dark-running river instead of the infinitely greater danger of Jack. In the water she could thrash her way to shore, but pressed against the hard wall of his chest she was powerless to save herself. Instantly she remembered the dangerous feel of him, and worse, her body remembered, too, shamelessly moulding against his as if four years were no more than last night. Four years, she was discovering, meant nothing: it would take a lifetime for her racing heart to forget the feel of him.

"Let me go, Jack," she ordered breathlessly, scrambling against him. "Blast you, let me
go
!"

"No," he said, tipping her effortlessly back over his arm. "I won't."

"Jack Wilder, if you don't—"

"Hush," he ordered, his voice low as his face came down upon hers, "and not one word more, mind?"

She wouldn't mind, but as she began to tell him so his mouth closed over hers, reducing her protest to a wordless whimper. Sensation raced through her like a flame, and mindlessly she parted her lips for him. All the heat of July was concentrated in his kiss, searing her even as she sought more. He drew her closer, his hands spreading wide over her bottom to pull her tight against his hips.

"You're mine, Miriam," he breathed hoarsely, his words hot upon her throat. "All mine."

But she wasn't, and his arrogant assumption instantly cut through the foggy haze of desire. With her palms square on his chest she shoved hard to break free, reeling back away from him.

"The devil take you as one of his own!" she gasped, struggling to regain what little composure she'd had, or at least as much as was possible under the circumstances. "I am
not
yours, Jack Wilder, and don't you believe otherwise!"

Yet from how he was watching her, his pale gray eyes with their thick lashes at once predatory and possessive in a way that made her shiver despite the heat, she knew he believed exactly that. He was still tall and lean and a trifle unkempt, still the rough-edged orphan boy in town without a mother to keep him tidy: his thick, wavy hair coming untied and his cheeks shadowed with dark stubble, his coat open and his shirt loose, with a patterned bandana knotted carelessly around his throat. But he wasn't the same boy who'd loved her once. He was a man now, a man who'd discovered a whole world of experience and sin, and with her entire being she sensed the difference.

"I am not yours," she said again, more weakly, as she strived to convince herself as much as him. "I'm
not
."

"Why the hell should I believe that when you don't?" he demanded, raking his fingers impatiently back through his hair. "Didn't that kiss prove as much?"

She shook her head fiercely. "You gave up all right to me when you left, Jack. You took my… my innocence, and then you sailed away without a second thought for the consequences."

"Damnation, Miriam, I had no say in that!" he said, his voice rumbling low with the urgency to make her understand. "I was as good as a prisoner on that ship! Do you believe I would have left you of my own will, after the best night of my life—"

"But you did," she said bitterly. "You
did
."

"And don't you think it grieved me, too?" he demanded roughly. "Those first weeks I thought I'd go mad. God knows I wanted to get back to you, Mirry, but those bastards watched me night and day, swearing it was my father's fondest wish that I be with them."

"Don't blame this on your father!" she cried unhappily, the agony of the day he'd left suddenly fresh again. "He was dead before you were bom. You had no reason to follow in his wicked footsteps, none at all!"

"For God's sake, Miriam, it wasn't that simple." He shook his head with frustration. "You, and my father, and every other damned thing that happened—it's so hard to explain, Mirry."

She went very still. He'd never kept secrets from her before, and she felt this one now rising like a wall between them. "Even to me, Jack?"

"Especially to you." He shook his head again, his face oddly expressionless, his thoughts turned inward and apart from her as he stared off toward the river. "I don't even know where to begin."

"Then why did you have to come back, anyway?" she whispered. "Why didn't you just stay in India or China or whatever heathenish place you were?"

"That's one question you shouldn't have to ask." He took her hand to draw her back. "Do you think I'd ever forget what we had, lass? What we still have?"

She stiffened, determined this time not to yield. "You will let me go, Jack. Let me go, or I'll… I'll scream."

"You?" he said incredulously. The small gold rings in his ears glinted in the moonlight and made him look every bit as exotically disreputable as he was supposed to be. "Not you, Mirry. You never were the sort of girl to fall into fits and scream. Ringing that bell to raise the dead, now, that's more your manner."

"Very well." With her free hand she grabbed for the rope to the ferry bell. "I'll sound an alarum to wake the whole town."

"Oh, aye, and what would the whole town make of it?" he said. "They'll remember us together, lass, hand in hand, and they'll see no crime in us together again. Except your new lover.
He
might not be as understanding."

Instantly her hand dropped from the bell rope. "No, Jack," she said slowly. "You're the one who must understand."

"And I do, sweet," he said. "I understand that you and I are—"

"No," she said as firmly as she could. "That's not what I meant. It's done between us, Jack, done forever."

Done
: the word fell with a grim finality between them, a finality that she felt just as keenly.

"Done?" he repeated with an odd little twist of his shoulders, his expression growing guarded. "Done with me, you say?"

She swallowed hard, and nodded.

"Done." His smile turned into a grimace as he shook his head. Stiff armed, he jammed his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat, so much like the lost boy she remembered that she almost wept. "Done, am I, to be tossed away like an old stocking not worth the mending?"

"Jack, I didn't—"

"Did you never spare a kind thought for me then, lass? Four years, and not one?"

"In four years?" she repeated wistfully. "Oh, Jack, in four years I've granted at least ten thousand thoughts to you, and shed a tear to match each one!"

She saw how his face relaxed with a reassurance she did not want him to feel. "I knew you weren't hardhearted, love," he said in a rough whisper. "Don't be cruel and pretend otherwise."

Swiftly she looked down at the dock and away from him, and rushed on before he'd say more things, sweet, loverlike things, that she'd no right to hear.

"Don't begin, Jack," she pleaded. "Just… just don't. I'm not a girl any longer, and I can't live on wild games and promises you've no intention of keeping."

"But I've never lied to you, Miny," he said slowly, "not once, and I'm not about to begin now. You'll see. I've plans for us, lass, great dreams and—"

"No more dreams, Jack, I beg of you!" she cried. "I need someone who lives his life honestly and won't go off for years and years and get himself killed for no reason. I need a man who will be there when I need him. Chilton will, and that's why I'm going to marry him, and nothing you do or say now is going to change my mind."

She turned then and ran, not trusting herself to wait for Jack's answer. But the answer didn't come, and he didn't follow her, either, her own footsteps echoing unanswered on the dock, and as she fled alone she couldn't decide whether she was disappointed or relieved.

Still she ran and didn't look back, up the path and around the tavern and through the kitchen door and up the winding stairs to her room beneath the eaves. With a muffled sob she threw herself face down on the bed.

Oh, Jack, why have you come back now? If you had to return at all, why couldn't you have come back in a fortnight, when I'd be wed and safely locked away from you forever?

Her heart was pounding, her lips still burned from his kiss, and her whole body felt heavy with unfulfillment and longing for what was wrong.

Wrong, wrong,
wrong
…

"Miriam?" Gently her mother pushed the door open, her face beneath the linen nightcap lined with worry in the glow of the candlestick in her hand. "Aren't you abed, girl?"

"Oh, yes, Mama." Miriam twisted around, taking care to keep her chin tipped down in the shadows so her mother would not see her tears. "I… it was so warm a night that I went outside for a breath of air. But I'm back now, and wicked weary, too."

She yawned dramatically, hating herself for being untruthful to her mother.

"Very well." Her mother frowned, her expression a mixture of doubt and concern. "But your father was sure he'd heard voices down near the dock."

" 'Twas nothing, Mama." She pulled her pillow into her arms, hugging it so tightly against her aching, confused heart to keep from crying that she thought her arms would break. "Nothing at all."

"Are you looking for a dram of rum, sir?" asked the small boy, his voice piping up cheerfully beside Jack. "You'll find a traveler's welcome there at the sign of the Green Lion, and that's the honest truth."

"Is that so?" Jack doubted he'd find any sort of welcome at all at the Green Lion this morning, but that hadn't kept him from coming back to this beach to squint up at the tavern, hoping for another chance to speak to Miriam. Reluctantly he looked away from the tavern down to the boy beside him, and scarcely managed to bite back an oath of astonishment. The boy's round face and shock of tow-colored hair were the very mirror of Miriam's, even to the eager grin framed by Miriam's dimples. Desperately Jack tried to guess the boy's age: five, six, or only four? Blast, he never could tell with children!

" 'Course it's so," said the boy staunchly. "My pa keeps the best house north of Boston, and my mam's the best cook, and the devil take the rascal who dares say otherwise."