Aidan caught her wrist, detached her fingers from the life belt. “She isn’t there. She’s halfway to the island by now, and she swims like a seal.”
“Then you do know who she is?”
Aidan sighed. “She’s my teenage wet dream.”
Chapter Ten “She’s the naked woman from the beach,” Chrissy said flatly. “If she thinks you betrayed her with me—”
“No one’s betrayed anyone,” Aidan interrupted. He dragged his hand through his hair and glanced at her. The odd, slightly wild look had faded from his eyes. He even gave her a rueful smile. “You’re going to think I’m insane, but you really did see what I did, didn’t you? One moment she was a woman, the next she was a seal.”
“That isn’t possible. The seal must have been there, and the girl went under—”
“You’re rationalizing. That’s what I did as a teenager, so much so that I barely recognized her when she came back. We both saw her take something into the water with her too. Her seal skin.”
“Oh, bollocks!” Chrissy exclaimed. “How would a seal climb aboard and over the rail?”
“It couldn’t,” Aidan said. “She changed in the sea and brought her skin on board with her.”
Chrissy stared at him. Just when she’d begun to imagine he was perfect. “Do you really believe I’ll sleep with you again if you can just persuade me your other woman’s a selkie?”
A breath of laughter escaped him. He hung the life belt back up and sat on the bench close to where she stood. “More rationalizing. But we both know I’d have more chance if I just kept my mouth shut. Trust me, I’m suffering badly from mistimed honesty. Think about it, Chrissy. It’s January, and it’s not exactly warm. Do you think any human could swim naked from the island out to here and not even shiver?”
He had a point. Slowly, she sank down on the bench beside him. “But it doesn’t make any sense.”
“I say that a lot,” he observed. “Doesn’t change the truth of what happens.”
Izzy once saw the ghost of a fifteenth century Lady of Ardknocken. Glenn, Chrissy was pretty sure, had second sight, even if he’d never admit it. Neither spoke about their experiences, and they were both pretty down-to-earth people. But if Chrissy was prepared to allow ghosts and second sight into her tolerant world, why should she balk at selkies?
He said, “I used to go sailing a lot as a kid, followed the seals, sometimes. Other times, I just followed my own nose. Used to drive my parents wild, actually. I was too young to be sailing alone, but I used to nick the boat anyway. I’d learned from my dad and other experienced sailors, but I’d never had a formal lesson in my life. When I was sixteen, I mistimed everything and got lost on a trip to Sky. Since it was dark, I dropped the anchor and went below to rest until morning.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I had the most erotic dream ever beloved by a teenage boy. A beautiful woman slipped into my bed and made love to me. Several times. In many different ways. She told me she was a selkie, that I was too young to be with her but that she’d come back to me one day. Before she left, she gathered up an animal skin from the floor.”
He dropped his hand into his lap, smiling faintly. “I was too exhausted to do more than fall asleep. And in the harsh light of day, I told myself I’d been chasing too many seals and should get a girlfriend rather than getting my rocks off in dreams about selkies.”
“So did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Get a girlfriend.”
“Yes, I did actually.”
Chrissy waited, but he said no more. She wasn’t sure if he was lost in thought or waiting for her to have him sectioned.
“So that naked woman,” Chrissy said expressionlessly, “is the selkie you dreamed about? The woman on the beach with you?”
“Yes, I think she is.”
“But why?” Chrissy burst out. “Why pick on you? Are you… Oh shit.” She remembered discovering something in the cave that felt like fur, and then gazing out over the beach and seeing a slightly anxious Aidan watching her over his shoulder. “Are you…one of them?”
Aidan blinked, then grinned. “Hardly. What made you think that?”
Hurriedly, she told him about the cave and the fur, then about the odd presence she’d sensed between the cabin and the deck.
“She said she swam with someone,” Aidan said. “I’m sure I heard him go in too. I think he was the second seal we saw.”
“This is nuts,” Chrissy stated, tugging at her hair. “Why would such creatures—if they even exist!—be remotely interested in us?”
He shrugged. “Legend says they’re drawn to the unhappy, the lonely and the frustrated.”
“Why?” she said again. “What for?”
“Sex,” Aidan replied. “The lonely are twice as grateful for a shag and less likely to make a fuss. Trust me, I was bloody grateful as a randy, unhappy sixteen-year-old.”
Her stomach twisted unpleasantly. “You mean there’s a selkie stalking me for sex too?”
He took her hand. “I never heard any stories of force. Persuasion, maybe.”
“Did you say no to her?”
“This time? Hell, yes, I’m shattered. You wore me out.”
“Liar,” she retorted without heat. “How do we get rid of them? Stop watching seals?”
“I can’t imagine they’ll come back. They know we just had sex with each other and aren’t interested.”
“I can’t believe I’m having this conversation,” Chrissy muttered.
“Never mind. Have some coffee.” Aidan reached under the bench for the flask and a bag containing sandwiches. While she poured the coffee, still trying to adjust her head, Aidan stood up and lifted the anchor.
“Are we going home?” Chrissy asked, slightly disappointed.
“No,” Aidan said, striding over to start the outboard motor. “We’re going over to the island.”
Chrissy eyed him. “Are you looking for your selkie lover?”
He smiled as he came back towards her and picked up his coffee. It was the sort of smile that turned her bones to jelly. “No.”
And when he sat beside her and reached for a sandwich, his thigh pressed against hers, spreading warmth and a buzz of contentment. Despite the weirdness that had just happened, the closeness of making love was still with them.
As they drew closer to the island, Chrissy was disappointed not to see a beach full of seals. “Later in the month, it should be,” Aidan said. “Right now, there are just a couple resting.”
“Our visitors?” she asked lightly, still uncomfortable with believing. But he was right. The woman had changed in the water, right in front of Chrissy’s eyes.
“Hard to tell. We won’t go too close. There’s a sort of observation point set up. We’ll go up there.”
“Can you get the boat in close enough?”
“Should do. There used to be an ancient wooden jetty… Yes it’s still there. People used to keep sheep on the island a hundred years ago.”
“Who owns it?” she asked. She’d never really paid much attention to it before. You couldn’t see it from the house, and people were always more interested in Skye and the other bigger islands further away.
Aidan shrugged. “No one, I don’t think. I’m sure the lairds of Ardknocken regarded it as theirs at one time, although it always seemed to be used as common land. Nowadays hardly anyone comes out here, apart from one or two to see the seals—but it’s hardly the most important breeding ground in Scotland. I don’t think it’s even protected.”
Aidan’s company was so beguiling that it didn’t actually enter her head that he had an ulterior motive for coming to the island. After landing at the rickety and half-rotting jetty, he led her up a worn cliff path to an overhanging rock from where there was a clear view of the beach and the three seals sleeping there. Chrissy got out her binoculars and examined them. Their appealing, oddly human faces were turned towards the sea. She’d no idea whether any of them were the ones who’d swum away from
the boat. Selkies…
Beside her, Aidan also had binoculars hung around his neck, but he appeared to be pointing them everywhere except at the seals.
“What are you…?” she began.
“Back in a minute,” he said, and leapt onto the rock above. He didn’t stop there, but began to climb towards the grassier area higher up.
It wasn’t a sheer cliff, but neither did it look an easy climb. Clearly, he’d been here as a boy and learned, no doubt through several falls, the best way up, for he moved with surprising speed, sure-footed and agile.
After a few moments, Chrissy abandoned the seals to their fate. She liked the animals, had found a certain peace in observing them, but frankly, between them and Aidan there was no contest. Not where curiosity was concerned. And even if they were selkies. Following his lead, she began to climb.
It wasn’t as hard as it looked. In fact, in most places, it was more of a scramble than a climb. And once Aidan realized she was following him, he halted and waited for her, reaching down to help her over the difficult bits.
“Don’t tell me there are seals up there,” she said wryly, as she knelt beside him on the wild, clumpy grass close to the top of the hill.
“I’d be surprised.”
“Then what are we looking for?”
“I’ll know it when I see it.” He hesitated, then, “I’m recommending quiet.”
She felt her eyes widen. “Why?”
“Because we don’t know what’s on the other side.”
She closed her mouth. What the hell was he expecting? A selkie convention with armed guards?
When he reached the top of the cliff, he pulled himself up, a bit like a seal onto a rock, and lay flat on his stomach in the long grass before reaching down to help her up beside him. Then he parted the grass and peered through.
Here there really was a sheer drop down to the rocky beach below. On either side, the hill spread out—this would be where the sheep had once fed—but there didn’t look to be any easy way down. Aidan pulled his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the beach and surrounding rocks.
“People,” he breathed with what sounded like immense satisfaction.
She blinked. “Where?”
“In a cave, maybe. There are a couple on that side of the island. But look, there’s been a recent fire there, and over to the left, you can just make out the nose of a small boat.”
“It could be a wreck.”
“No,” Aidan said with certainty.
She stared at his focused face. “What are you thinking here?”
“I’m thinking hardly anyone comes to the island. Those that do land at the old jetty, watch seals and admire the view from where we did. The other side of the island is pretty inaccessible, and there’s no reason to go. You can’t even see it from any of the ferries or other ships that sail to the islands. In fact, there’s only one point in the road, about six miles outside Ardknocken village, where you can see the very tip of that side of the island. That bit there.” He pointed to a rock jutting out of the sea.
Unease filtered through her. “So…it makes a good hiding place.”
“For people or…stuff. Most days, because of the hills and the wind or the mist, you wouldn’t even see smoke from a fire down there.”
She drew in her breath. “You think this is where the drugs are coming in?”
“I think it might be now. They’ll have had to change after those people died. Every policeman, coastguard and customs official in the country is watching the coast, and our guys know it. I think Gowan was killed in a crisis disagreement, maybe some leadership changeover that involved Ardknocken House. He was shot with your gun. And this is the best place in the vicinity for secret exchanges.”
“But who the hell would do that, Aidan?”
“It’s recent. My money’s on one of your new guys who came here expressly for this purpose.”
“What, he came to Ardknocken to shoot Gowan in Oban with my gun? And run dodgy drug shipments onto this island which no one’s ever even heard of?”
“I think he’s been up here before he joined you, checked out the land and the best hiding places and made his bid for leadership. Do you know Ken MacLeod in the village? Likes the booze too much. Swore blind to anyone who’d listen that his car had vanished when he came home from the pub on the evening of the second of January, and that when he woke up on the third, it was back. Everyone laughed at him. I think our man stole it to get to Oban and back. I doubt he went with the intention of shooting Gowan, but that he took your gun proves he went prepared for violence. Ironic, really, because he’d probably have got away with it except for using your gun. That was personal, and that’s how we’ll get him.”
She stared at him, the sudden intensity of hurt depriving her of breath. She felt sick. While Aidan continued to scan the area, she stared unseeingly at the grass in front of her eyes.
“Personal,” she said dully. “You still think I’m connected to the killer.”
“Oh, you are.” He lowered the binoculars. “But not to the killing. Not to this. Chrissy, I collect evidence, but I do it by judging people. I never suspected you beyond New Year’s night.”
She opened her mouth to deliver some blistering and entirely false denial about caring for his stupid suspicions, only he shifted suddenly, lying across her body and covering her mouth with his. It was brief and hard, and her whole body arched to meet his. One kiss, and everything else, every hurt and irritation vanished into blind lust.
“You’re good,” she whispered against his lips when they loosened enough. His still-growing erection pressed into her hip. “Women must have spilled their souls to you.”
“And men, though not always for the same reasons. Don’t ask me.”
Don’t ask if he’d slept with women to learn their secrets. Which meant he had. She closed her eyes, but he didn’t move off her, didn’t lie. He cupped her face in his hands. His fingertips touched the corners of her eyes, as if he’d open them for her.
“Don’t. If it happened naturally in my story, I did it. I even cared while I did it. Don’t confuse this with that part of my life.”
Something in his voice made her open her eyes, and the blackness in his shocked her. “I’m not undercover here,” he said intensely. “It would have been smarter to come alone.”
She swallowed, touching his cheek, desperate to shift the darkness from his eyes. “Except if you had, you wouldn’t have fucked me,” she said brazenly. “Which would have been a shame.”
A smile flickered across his lips, lightening his eyes. “I’ll fuck you again, if you like.”
“Here?” Her body on fire, she tried and failed to sound outraged. In fact, she was pretty sure she sounded exactly what she was—excited.
“No, I’d make too much noise, and it’s too bloody cold.” He kissed her with his open mouth, then slid reluctantly off her to look once more at the beach.
Life, she thought, was a bit of an emotional roller coaster around Aidan. But it certainly wasn’t boring.
As spots of cold rain began to patter on her head and hands, Aidan glanced up at the grey sky. “We should go,” he said. “It’ll be dark soon.”
“Don’t you have headlights or something?” she asked flippantly.
He grinned. “Something. From that side of the island, they shouldn’t be able to see either us or the boat, but I don’t want anything to make them suspicious just yet. Come on.”
He’d just begun to wriggle back down from the ridge of the hill, when he paused and raised his binoculars again. Chrissy looked too. A man in a woolly hat and thick jacket was walking along the beach in the direction of the mostly hidden boat.
She found she was holding her breath, listening to the click of Aidan’s phone camera. Eventually, the man disappeared from view, perhaps rummaging in the boat. A few moments later, he reappeared, walking back the way he’d come, carrying something shoe-box sized in one arm.
“Bull’s eye,” Aidan murmured, taking anot
her photograph.
“Can you see his face over this distance?”
“The camera can. Come on, that’s our lot for today.”
They slithered and slid down the grassy part of the hill. As it turned to bare rock, Aidan went first, showing the safe foot and hand holds. By the time they reached the observation post, the seals had vanished.
Aidan, who’d lifted her down the last jump as if she weighed nothing, slid one hand down her arm, over her wrist and took hold of her fingers as they began to walk down the path to the jetty. Above her, a seabird called. Aidan’s thumb stroked the side of her hand. Across the sea, the hills of the mainland stood out stark and spectacular against the red and gold setting sun.
Another of those waves of happiness washed over her. They seemed to have been happening all day.
“I thought you’d have waited to see what else they did,” she said, over the noise of the outboard motor as he guided the boat back out to sea.
“I don’t want word to get back to Ardknocken House that I’m behaving oddly. And I need to get back. Evenings are tough on Louise.”
“She’s got a lot on her plate,” Chrissy agreed.
There was silence, then, “I hate to see her struggling,” he said abruptly. “But she knows I won’t stay, and she won’t hear of a nursing home, even for Dad.”
“It’s not the only solution,” Chrissy said. “I’m presuming you’d be the one paying for the nursing home?”
Aidan nodded curtly.
“Maybe the money could be used differently,” Chrissy suggested. “A stair lift would be a start, and other accessories to let them help themselves.”
Aidan’s lips twisted. He released the wheel and sat down beside her. “That was my plan B,” he said ruefully. “It would help, but it wouldn’t free Louise from the babysitting. I know neighbours offer to help, but she refuses nearly everyone. Including the doctor—who’s old-fashioned anyway and probably sees no good reason why Louise shouldn’t lose her youth caring for our parents. Some of it’s pride with Louise, but not just her own. She’s protecting them.”
In Her Secret Fantasy Page 12