Never Been Witched (31 page)

But a starving dog could not sneer at a bone.

His hands curled into fists at his sides. In recent weeks, visions of her had haunted him from half a world away, reflected in the water, impressed upon his brain, burned like a candle against his retinas at night.

He might not want her, but his magic insisted he needed her. His gift was as fickle as a beautiful woman. And like a woman, his power would abandon him entirely if he ignored its favors. He could not risk that.

He watched the girl drag her hand along the swollen side of a pumpkin. Brushing off dirt? Testing it for ripeness? He had only the vaguest idea what she might be doing here among the tiny plots of staked vines and fading flowers. The children of the sea did not work the earth for their sustenance.

Frustration welled in him.

What has she to do with me?
he demanded silently.
What am I to do with her?

The magic did not reply.

Which led him, again, to the obvious answer. But he had ruled too long to trust the obvious.

He did not expect resistance. He could make her willing, make her want him. It was, he thought bitterly, the remaining power of his kind, when other gifts had been abandoned or forgotten.

No, she would not resist. She had family, however, who might interfere. Brothers. Conn had no doubt the human, Caleb, would do what he could to shield his sister from either sex or magic.

Dylan, on the other hand, was selkie, like their mother. He had lived among the children of the sea since he was thirteen years old. Conn had always counted on Dylan’s loyalty. He did not think Dylan would have much interest in or control over his sister’s life. But Dylan was involved with a human woman now. Who knew where his loyalties lay?

Conn frowned. He could not afford a misstep. The survival of his kind depended on him.

And if, as his visions insisted, their fate involved this human girl as well . . .

He regarded her head, bent like one of her heavy gold sunflowers over the dirt of the garden, and felt a twinge of pity. Of regret.

That was unfortunate for both of them.

 

 

LUCY patted the pumpkin affectionately like a dog. Her second graders’ garden plots would be ready for harvest soon. Plants and students were rewarding like that. Put in a little time, a little effort, and you could actually see results.

Too bad the rest of her life didn’t work that way.

Not that she was complaining, she told herself firmly. She had a job she enjoyed and people who needed her. If at times she felt so frustrated and restless she could scream, well, that was her own fault for moving back home after college. Back to the cold, cramped house she grew up in. Back to the empty rooms haunted by her father’s shell and her mother’s ghost. Back to the island, where everyone assumed they knew everything about her.

Back to the sea she dreaded and could not live without.

She wiped her hands on her jeans. She had tried to leave once, when she was fifteen and finally figured out her adored brother Cal wasn’t ever coming back to rescue her. She’d run away as fast and as far as she could go.

Which, it turned out, wasn’t very far at all.

Lucy looked over the dried stalks and hillocks of the garden, remembering. She had hitchhiked to Richmond, twenty miles from the coast, where she collapsed on the stinking tile floor of a gas station restroom. Her stomach lurched at the memory. Caleb had found her, shivering and puking her guts into the toilet, and brought her back to the echoing house and the sound of the sea whispering under her window.

She had recovered before the ferry left the dock.

Flu, concluded the island doctor.

Stress, said the physician’s assistant at Dartmouth when Lucy was taken ill on her tour of the college.

Panic attack, insisted her ex-boyfriend, when their planned weekend getaway left her wheezing and heaving by the side of the road.

Whatever the reason, Lucy had learned her limits. She got her teaching certificate at Machias, within walking distance of the bay. And she never again traveled more than twenty miles from the sea.

She climbed to her feet. Anyway, she was . . . maybe not happy, but content with her life on World’s End. Both her brothers lived on the island now, and she had a new sister-in-law. Soon, when Dylan married Regina, she’d have two. Then there would be nieces and nephews coming along.

And if her brothers’ happiness sometimes made her chafe and fidget . . .

Lucy took a deep breath, still staring at the garden, and forced herself to think about plants until the feeling went away.

Garlic, she told herself. Next week her class could plant garlic. The bulbs could winter in the soil, and next season her seven-year-old students could sell their crop to Regina’s restaurant. Her future sister-in-law was always complaining that she wanted fresh herbs.

Steadied by the thought, Lucy turned from the untidy rows.

Someone was watching from the edge of the field. Her heart thumped. A man, improbably dressed in a dark, tight-fitting suit. A stranger, here on World’s End, where she knew everybody outside of tourist season. And the last of the summer people had left on Labor Day.

She rubbed sweaty palms on the thighs of her jeans. He must have come on the ferry, she reasoned. Or by boat. She was uncomfortably aware of how quiet the school was now that all the children had gone home.

When he saw her notice him, he stepped from the shadow of the trees. She had to press her knees together so she wouldn’t run away.

He was big, taller than Dylan, broader than Caleb, and a little younger. Or older. She squinted. It was hard to tell. Despite his impressive stillness and well-cut black hair, there was a wildness to him that charged the air like a storm. He had a strong, wide forehead; long, bold nose; firm, unsmiling mouth; oh my. His eyes were the color of rain.

Something stirred in Lucy, something that had been closed off and quiet for years. Something that should
stay
quiet. Her throat tightened. The blood drummed in her ears like the sea.

Maybe she should have run after all.

Too late.

He strode across the field, crunching through the dry furrows, somehow avoiding the stakes and strings that tripped up most adults. Her heart beat in her throat.

She cleared it. “Can I help you?”

Her voice sounded husky, sexy, almost unrecognizable to her own ears.

The man’s cool, light gaze washed over her. She felt it ripple along her nerves and stir something deep in her belly.

“That remains to be seen,” he said.

Lucy bit her tongue. She would not take offense. She wasn’t going to take anything he offered.

“The inn’s along there. First road to the right.” She pointed. “The harbor’s back that way.”

Go away
, she thought at him.
Leave me alone
.

The man’s strong black brows climbed. “And why should I care where this inn is, or the harbor?”

His voice was deep and oddly inflected, too deliberate for a local, too precise to be called an accent.

“Because you’re obviously not from around here. I thought you might be lost. Or looking for somebody. Something.” She felt heat crawl in her cheeks again. Why didn’t he go?

“I am,” he said, still regarding her down his long, aquiline nose.

Like he was used to women who blushed and babbled in his presence. Probably they did. He was definitely a hunk. A well-dressed hunk with chilly eyes.

Lucy hunched her shoulders, doing her best turtle impression to avoid notice. Not easy when you were six feet tall and the daughter of the town drunk, but she had practice.

“You are what?” she asked reluctantly.

He took a step closer. “Looking for someone.”

Oh.
Oh boy.

Another slow step brought him within arm’s reach. Her gaze jerked up to meet his eyes. Amazing eyes, like molten silver. Not cold at all. His heated gaze poured over her, filling her, warming her, melting her . . .

Oh God.

Air clogged her lungs. She broke eye contact, focusing instead on the hard line of his mouth, the stubble lurking beneath his close shave, the column of his throat rising from his tight white collar.

Even with her gaze averted, she could feel his eyes on her, disturbing her shallow composure like a stick poked into a tide pool, stirring up sand. Her head was clouded. Her senses swam.

He was too near. Too big. Even his clothes seemed made for a smaller man. Fabric clung to the rounded muscle of his upper arms and smoothed over his wide shoulders like a lover’s hand. She imagined sliding her palms through his open jacket, slipping her fingers between the straining buttons of his shirt to touch rough hair and hot skin.

Wrong,
insisted a small, clear corner of her brain.
Wrong clothes, wrong man, wrong reaction.
This was the island, where the working man’s uniform was flannel plaid over a white T-shirt. He was a stranger. He didn’t belong here.

And she could never belong anywhere else.

She dragged in air, holding her breath the way she had taught herself when she was a child, forcing everything inside her back into its proper place. She could
smell
him, hot male, cool cotton, and something deeper, wilder, like the briny notes of the sea. When had he come so close? She never let anyone so close.

His gaze probed her like the rays of the sun, heavy and warm, seeking out all the shadowed places, all the secret corners of her soul. She felt naked. Exposed. If she met those eyes, she was lost.

She gulped and fixed her gaze on his shirtfront. Her blood thrummed.
Do not look up, do not . . .

She focused on his tie, silver gray with a thin blue stripe and the luster of silk.

Lucy frowned.
Just like . . .

She peered closer.
Exactly like . . .

Her head cleared. She took a step back. “That’s Dylan’s tie.”

Dylan’s suit. She recognized it from Caleb’s wedding.

“Presumably,” the stranger admitted coolly. “Since I took it from his closet.”

Lucy blinked. Dylan had left the island with their mother when she was just a baby. Four months ago, he’d returned for their brother Caleb’s wedding and stayed when he fell in love with single mom Regina Barone. But of course in his years away, Dylan must have made connections, friends, a life beyond World’s End.

Lucky bastard.

“Dylan’s my brother,” she said.

“I know.”

His assurance got under her skin. “You know him well enough to borrow his clothes?”

A corner of that wide, firm mouth quirked. “Why not ask him?”

“Um . . .” She got lost again in his eyes. What? Crap. No. No way was she dragging this stranger home to meet her family. She pictured their faces in her mind: steady, patient Caleb; edgy, elegant Dylan; Maggie’s knowing smile; Regina’s scowl. She blinked, building the images brick by brick like a wall to hide behind. “That’s okay. You have a nice . . .”

“Visit,” she concluded and backed away.