He touched her cheek.
Don’t touch me like that. Don’t touch me anywhere. Touch me everywhere.
He did. With a kiss that seemed almost angry. Because she wasn’t someone as beautiful as he? As privileged? As successful?
His tongue invaded, and she gripped his arms. Parted her lips. Gave herself up to the seductive power of the kiss. He pressed against her. He was taller, and they shouldn’t have fit together so well, but their bodies meshed perfectly.
His hands slipped under her sweater, splayed over her back. His thumbs marked a path along her spine. He’d taken charge, and she needed to stop it. To step up and assert herself the way today’s woman should. Use him, instead of the other way around. But it felt so good to be desired.
“I want to see you,” he murmured against her lips. “Your body. Golden in the sunlight.”
His writer’s words poured over her like poetry, and she couldn’t find a single wisecrack to put up between them. She even lifted her arms as he tugged her sweater over her head. He unhooked her bra. It fell to the floor. He pulled off his own sweater, never taking his eyes from her breasts. The sunlight bathed her body, and although the farmhouse was cold, she was warm. Hot.
She wanted more of his poetry. More of him. She bent down and took off her shoes. As she slipped off her socks, his fingertips glided over the bumps of her curved spine. “Like a strand of pearls,” he whispered.
Her skin pebbled. Men didn’t talk like this during sex. They barely talked at all. When they did, it tended to be coarse, unimaginative, and libido-dulling.
She kept her eyes locked with his as she slid down the zipper of her jeans. With the shadow of a smile, he went to his knees. Kissed the skin of her belly just above the waistband of her underpants. She slipped her hands into his hair. Felt his scalp under the pads of her fingers. Gripped the strands. Not pulling it but experiencing its texture, its feel.
He took his time, finding her hip bones and her navel, the stubble on his jaw lightly abrading her skin. Through the thin nylon fabric, his fingers traced the crack between her buttocks. She braced her hands on his shoulders as he grew impatient, tugging on her underpants, her jeans, shoving both to her ankles, then inhaling and nuzzling all that was exposed.
He wanted more, and he tried to push her knees apart. They yearned to open, but her jeans still manacled her ankles, something he quickly took care of.
She gripped his shoulders tighter as he clasped the backs of her thighs, opened them as he wished, and delved deeper.
She arched her neck. Tried to find the oxygen she needed. Her knees threatened to give out. And did.
She fell back onto their coats, her legs awkwardly splayed. He stepped between them and gazed down at all she’d revealed. “A ruffled rose garden. Full bloom.”
He was killing her with his dirty poetry. She wanted to kill him back. Conquer. But it felt so good to receive.
He loomed over her; pulling off the rest of his clothes; standing between her knees; large, naked. Daring her?
Oh, yes . . .
He went to his knees. Braced her ankles on his shoulders. Parted her with his thumbs. Found her with his mouth.
Her eyes drifted closed. Neck arched.
Oh, he was thorough. So thorough. Stopping. Beginning again. Touching with fingers. Touching with lips. Tongue. Breath cooling, then heating. She traveled the rise. Journeyed higher. Higher still. Reaching . . . Suspending . . . Seize up . . .
And the long, blissful burn.
He didn’t let her close her legs. “You’re not done. Quiet. Shhh . . . Don’t fight me.”
He owned her body.
How many times? The rise, the throb, the burn . . . He was seeing her at her most vulnerable, her most defenseless. And she was allowing it.
Only when she could handle no more did she struggle. He gave her room, then began to lower his own body over hers, all his focus on claiming what was so clearly his. On top. Still dominant. In control of his own satisfaction.
They weren’t real lovers, and she couldn’t permit it. She twisted from beneath him before he could pin her to the floor. Now he was the one on top of the pile of coats. He rolled to his side and reached out to gather her beneath him once again. But in the release he’d given her, she possessed an energy he didn’t have. She splayed her hands on his chest and pushed him hard, sending him to his back where she could practice her own magic.
She studied the musculature of his chest, the hard plane of his abdomen. And below. She bent over him. Her hair brushed his skin. He lifted his hands and crumpled the curly strands in his fists, not pulling it. Almost . . . savoring it.
She did to him as he’d done to her. Playing. Stopping. Playing again, her skin pale against his darker complexion. Sunlight and dust, the smell of sex, of her and him. He pressed the back of her head, but she resisted, refusing to let him fly. She was the most practiced courtesan on earth. Able to give satisfaction. Or to withhold it.
He’d long ago closed his eyes. He arched his back. His features contorted. At her mercy.
Finally, she gave him the release he sought.
THAT WASN’T THE END OF it. A coat zipper soon dug into her back, and she was on the bottom. Then on top. Then on the bottom again. At some point he abandoned her long enough to light the fire. He hadn’t been kidding about the condoms. He had them with him, and he seemed to want to use them all.
As the old farmhouse creaked around them, they explored each other more slowly. He seemed to love her idiotic hair, and she rubbed his body with it. She adored his lips. He called her a “beautiful creature” again, and she wanted to cry.
The sun was high in the sky before they were sated. “Consider this makeup sex,” he murmured in her ear.
It broke the spell that had captured her. She lifted her head from his shoulder. “Making up for what? We haven’t been fighting. For a change.”
He rolled to his side and slipped his finger in a curl by her cheek. “I’m making up for all that clumsy fumbling around I did when I was sixteen. It’s a miracle you weren’t turned off sex forever.”
“Obviously not.” A blade of light cut across his face, highlighting the scar at the corner of his eyebrow. She touched it and said, more harshly than she’d intended, “I’m not sorry about this.”
“No reason you should be.” He dropped her curl and rose from the floor. “You didn’t do it.”
She propped herself up. A red mark from the coats—or her fingernails—crossed his back. “I did,” she said. “I hit you across the face with your riding crop.”
He pulled on his jeans. “You didn’t give me that scar. It was a surfing accident. Stupid on my part.”
Now she was on her feet. “That’s not true. I gave it to you.”
He tugged on his zipper. “It’s my face. Don’t you think I should know?”
He was lying. She’d grabbed the riding crop and swung it at him in a blistering rage, punishing him for the pups, for what he’d done to her, for the cave and the note he’d written and her broken heart.
“Why are you saying this?” She snatched up her coat and pulled it on over her nakedness. “I know what happened.”
“You hit me. I remember that. But you got me somewhere around here.” He pointed toward a tiny white dash below the larger scar.
Why was he lying? Being in this enchanted cottage had made her drop her guard. A mistake and a sharp reminder that sex wasn’t the same as either trust or intimacy. She reached for her clothes. “Let’s get out of here.”
IT WAS A SILENT TRIP back to town. Theo pulled into the harbor parking lot so Annie could get the Suburban, and as he stopped, a middle-aged woman with a baseball cap pulled over her fried blond hair ran up to the driver’s door. She started to talk even before Theo had rolled his window down all the way.
“I just came from my father’s place. Les Childers. You remember him? He owns the Lucky Charm. He’s got a bad cut on his hand. It’s been bleeding like crazy, and it’s deep. It’s goin
g to need stitches.”
Theo rested his elbow on the window frame. “I’ll look at it, Jessie, but EMTs aren’t licensed for that. Until I finish my paramedic’s training, all I can do is bandage him up. He’ll have to go to the mainland.”
Theo was training as a paramedic? One more thing he hadn’t mentioned.
Jessie leaned back on her heels, ready to do battle. “This is Peregrine, Theo. You think anybody here gives a rat’s ass about what kind of license you have? You know how it works.”
So did Annie. Islanders took care of their own, and in their eyes, Theo’s medical training was something they expected him to use.
Jessie wasn’t done. “I’d also appreciate your stopping in to see my sister. She has to give her dog injections for diabetes, but she’s afraid to use the needle, and she needs help getting started. I wish we’d known you had medical training last month when Jack Brownie had his heart attack.”
Whether he wanted to or not, Theo had been sucked into island life. “I’ll look in on both of them,” he said reluctantly.
“Follow my truck.” Jessie gave Annie a brusque nod and headed toward the rusty skeleton of a once-red pickup.
Annie opened the Range Rover’s door. “Congratulations, Theo. It looks like you’re the new island doctor. And the vet.”
He pulled off his sunglasses with one hand and rubbed the bridge of his nose with the other. “I’m in way over my head.”
“Looks like it,” she said. “You might want to brush up on deworming dogs. And birthing cows.”
“There aren’t any cows on Peregrine.”
“Not now there aren’t.” She stepped out of the car. “But wait till everybody hears there’s a new vet.”
Chapter Sixteen
SOMETHING WAS VERY WRONG. THE cottage’s front door hung open, and Hannibal crouched on the stoop not far from the old wooden lobster traps left partially exposed by the melting snow. Annie shot out of the Suburban and stomped across the yard to the open door. She was too angry to be cautious. She wanted someone to be inside so she could tear them apart.
Paintings hung crookedly on the walls and books were strewn on the floor. Most chilling, the intruder had scrawled a message across the wall in bright red paint.
I’m coming for u
“Like hell you are!” Annie stormed through the cottage. The kitchen and studio looked the same as when she’d last been here. Her puppets were unharmed, Theo’s things untouched, but the drawers had been pulled out of her bedroom dresser, their contents flung on the floor.
The violation of her privacy infuriated her, the outrage of knowing someone felt free to break in whenever they wanted, to go through her things, to paint a cheesy message on her wall. It was too much. Either someone in the Harp family wanted to scare her away, or one of the islanders knew about Mariah’s legacy and wanted Annie out of here so they could tear the place apart until they found what they wanted.
Although Elliott had bad taste in wives, she’d never regarded him as unethical. But Cynthia Harp was more problematic. She had money, motive, and local connections. Just because she was living in the South of France didn’t mean she couldn’t be orchestrating all this. But would she really go to so much trouble for a tiny cottage when she already had Harp House at her disposal? As for Mariah’s legacy . . . With Annie out of the cottage, the intruder could spend as much time as he or she wanted searching for it with no worries of Annie walking in on them.
But Annie had had all the time in the world, and she still hadn’t found what she was looking for. Still, she hadn’t pried up floorboards or poked holes in walls, and maybe that was what the intruder wanted time to do. Whoever was behind this couldn’t have found out about the legacy until after Annie had arrived, or they’d have already searched for it. As Hannibal hid under her bed, she skirted the sheets that had been torn from her mattress and marched back into the living room.
I’m coming for u
The red paint was still tacky. Someone wanted to frighten her, and if she wasn’t so furious, it might have worked.
There was another possibility, one she was reluctant to consider but could no longer avoid, not as long as she kept hearing the sound of that bullet whizzing past her head. What if this wasn’t about the legacy at all? What if someone simply hated her?
SHE FOUND A CAN OF leftover paint in the storage closet and painted over the hateful message, then headed for Harp House in the Suburban. She almost missed walking. Three weeks ago, the climb to the house had been like ascending Mount Everest, but her coughing had finally disappeared, and the exertion had started to feel good.
As Annie got out, Livia dashed outside in her socks and ran toward her, a big smile on her face. “Livia! You don’t have your shoes on!” Jaycie called after her. “Come back here, you dickens.”
Annie brushed Livia’s cheek with her fingertips and followed her inside. Jaycie moved awkwardly toward the sink. “Lisa called. She saw you and Theo driving through town this morning.”
Annie dodged Jaycie’s implied question. “A woman stopped him and asked him to check on her father. Jessie somebody. Apparently the news has spread that Theo’s an EMT.”
Jaycie turned on the water in the sink and gave Livia a drink. “Jessie Childers. We haven’t had medical help on the island since Jenny Schaeffer moved.”
“That’s what I heard.”
Annie went off to Elliott’s office to check her e-mail. She received an invitation to an old roommate’s baby shower, a message from another friend, and a one-line response from Jeff Koons’s dealer.
This is not his piece.
She wanted to cry. She’d told herself not to get her hopes up, but she had been certain the mermaid chair was a Koons. Instead, she’d hit another dead end.
A thud came from the kitchen, and she made herself get up to investigate. She found Jaycie trying to right one of the straight-backed chairs. “No more running, Livie. You’re going to break something.”
Livia kicked the corner of the chair with her sneaker. Jaycie leaned against the table with a defeated sigh. “It’s not her fault. She has no place to work off her energy.”
“I’ll take her out,” Annie said. “How ’bout it, Liv? Want to go for a walk?”
Livia nodded so vigorously that her lavender plastic headband slipped over her eyes.
Annie decided to take her down to the beach. The sun had emerged and the tide was out. Livia was an island kid. She needed to be near the water.
Annie held tightly to her hand as they descended the stone steps. Livia tried to pull away, anxious to get to the bottom, but Annie held on to her. As they cleared the last step, however, Livia stalled, taking it all in, almost as if she couldn’t believe she had so much space to run free.
Annie pointed down the beach. “See if you can catch those gulls.”
Livia didn’t need encouragement. She started to run, her short legs churning, hair flying from beneath her pink pom-pom hat. She darted through the rocks toward the sand, but stayed away from the breaking waves.
Annie found a flat-top boulder far from the old cave entrance. Dropping her backpack, she watched Livia climb rocks, chase the shorebirds, and dig in the sand. When the four-year-old finally got tired, she came to sit next to Annie and her backpack. Annie smiled, removed Scamp, and slipped the puppet onto her arm.
Scamp wasted no time. “Free secret?”
Livia nodded.
“I’m scared.” And then, more dramatically, “Terrified.”
Livia’s forehead knit.
“The ocean is so big,” Scamp whispered, “and I can’t swim. That’s scary.”
Livia shook her head.
“You don’t think the water is scary?” Scamp said.
Livia didn’t.
“I s’pose different things are scary to different people.” Scamp tapped her cheek. “Like some things are good to be scared of—going in the ocean if there aren’t any grown-ups around. And some things aren’t good to be scared of because they’re no
t real, like monsters.”
Livia seemed to agree.
As Annie had watched Livia play, she’d thought over what she now knew about Livia’s trauma. She wasn’t sure whether this was a good idea or not, but she was going to try. “Like watching your dad try to hurt your mom,” Scamp said. “That was really, really scary.”
Livia poked her finger into a tiny hole in her jeans.
Annie wasn’t a child psychologist, and the only thing she knew about treating childhood trauma was what she’d picked up on the Internet. This situation was too complicated, and she needed to stop right here. But . . .
Jaycie couldn’t talk to Livia about what had happened. Maybe Scamp could make the topic less forbidden. “A lot scarier than the ocean,” Scamp said. “If I saw my mommy have to shoot my dad with a gun, I would be so scared I might not want to talk either.”
Eyes wide, Livia abandoned the hole in her jeans and turned all her attention to the puppet.
Annie backed off and let Scamp speak in her most cheerful voice. “But then, after a while, I’d get bored not talking. Especially if I had something important to say. Or if I wanted to sing. Did I ever tell you that I’m a magnificent singer?”
Livia nodded vigorously.
A wild idea occurred to Annie. An idea she had no business pursuing. But, what if . . .
Scamp began to sing, bobbing her curly yarn hair to the rhythm of the makeshift tune Annie improvised on the spot.
“A scary, scary thing happened to me.
A thing I want to forget.
Times are good and times are bad,
And that was the baddest yet!
Oh . . . That was the baddest yet!”
Livia remained attentive, not seeming upset, so Annie plunged on with her ridiculous, improvised lyrics.
“Some daddies are good and some are bad
You’re stuck with what you get.
Liv’s dad was bad, the very, very worst
But . . . she didn’t want to see him die, oh!
She didn’t want to see him die.”
Ohmygod! The reality of what she’d just done sent her stomach plummeting. It was like a bad Saturday Night Live skit! The happy little tune, the gruesome lyrics . . . She’d just treated Livia’s trauma as if it were a stand-up comedy routine.