Money Shot

by Susan Sey

  “Isn’t it?”

  “God, of course not! It’s just—” She broke off, looked around him to the crowd gathering in Lila’s backyard. Candlelight danced on the air, laughing voices rose and fell. This wasn’t the time or the place to get into what exactly she was doing with Einar. What she suspected him of.

  “Just what?”

  “It’s time for esbat,” she said. “Can we please talk about this later?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, but sidestepped him and moved into the yard. It was full of brown-robed people in many of whose living rooms she’d sat and sipped tea and nibbled cookies a few days ago. Rush followed like her own personal storm cloud, though only she seemed aware of the dark menace in his frown. Hands reached out from all directions to pat his shoulder, touch his elbow. People greeted him with surprise, with smiles but above all with welcome.

  They’ve missed him, she thought as she joined the line of women waiting to enter the candlelit circle. Rush joined the line of men. This is his family, and they’ve missed him.

  Lila stood just inside the circle, greeting the men. Einar stood beside her, greeting the women. When Rush reached the front of the line, Lila dipped her fingers into a small bowl, smeared something oily on his forehead and said, “In the name of the goddess, in the name of the god, I bid you welcome to this sacred place.” Her voice dropped, went husky with emotion, and she placed ritual kisses on both cheeks, a step she’d skipped with everybody else. “Merry meet, nephew.”

  A sniffle sounded from inside the circle and Goose saw Ronnie Samuelsson blink back a tear. She wasn’t the only covener watching aunt and nephew with suspiciously bright eyes, either. He’s home, Goose thought again, her heart squeezing unbearably. He was finally back home and everybody knew how much it meant except him. Even Einar.

  Maybe especially Einar, she thought. He stood in front of Goose, his fingers stiff on the bowl of oil or whatever it was he and Lila were anointing people with, his eyes fixed on the little scene between his aunt and cousin. And he wasn’t crying happy tears, either.

  Goose cleared her throat and Einar turned back to her with a smooth smile. He touched wet fingers to her forehead and said, “In the name of the goddess, in the name of the god, I bid you welcome to this sacred place.” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Merry meet, sister.”

  She gave him an automatic smile and moved into the circle described by the candles. After a few moments of distracted milling about, three bells sounded and Lila raised her voice above the crowd.

  “Welcome, peace and love to each soul in this place.”

  “Welcome, peace and love,” the coven murmured.

  “We’ve got a full schedule tonight,” Lila said, smiling out over the crowd. “We’ll have the Rite of the Full Moon, plus a spell for healing for Libby’s fibromyalgia. Are there any announcements before we begin?” She let a long beat of silence pass, then lifted her arms and turned to face the yellow candle at the circle’s entrance. “Hail to the East . . .”

  TWO HOURS later, Rush hiked back to the Ranger Station with the moon riding high and ripe in the night sky overhead, and temper rumbling low and ominous inside him.

  “You didn’t tell me Einar was a pagan,” Goose said from behind him. “Let alone a pagan priest.”

  “Was I supposed to?” He kept his tone carefully even. He didn’t want to talk about Einar. Einar with his Greekgod face and his affable charm, who’d just tonight tried to put his sticky, greedy hands all over the only thing Rush had wanted in years.

  Mine.

  It had chimed inside him, this inconvenient mine, the instant he’d kissed her in that ugly old truck. It was like his moral compass had just woken up and declared Goose true north. She drew him now in some fundamental way he couldn’t even explain, let alone argue with. Then along came Einar—pretty, amusing Einar—and threw his ante into the pot. Shit.

  “Does the Secret Service care what religion he is?” Rush asked now, perhaps a trifle sharply. “Do you?”

  “No,” she said slowly. “It’s just interesting. I mean, his religion is none of my business, obviously. But paganism seems to be an integral aspect of the island community. An integral aspect of his—and your—family history.”

  “And you care about the family history?”

  “Of course.”

  He stopped, turned on her. “Why?”

  She blinked, those dark eyes going wide with surprise. “Why?”

  “Yes, Goose. Why are you interested? So there’s a pseudo-hippie population here that likes to strip down and perform ceremonies under the full moon. So what? It’s a national park. If there weren’t naked hippies, I think we could lose funding or something. What is it about it—or him—that you find so fascinating?”

  “I just wondered if it was new,” she said. “Einar’s devotion to the family religion.”

  He stepped closer, and his belly hollowed at the sight of her guarded, bottomless eyes in the pale wash of the moonlight. She was keeping something back, he thought with a dull thud of dismay. Hiding something. Not the investigation. He already knew about that. Feelings for Einar, then? Feelings that would hurt poor, pathetic Rush? She wouldn’t want that, would she? Of course not. God.

  “New? How could it be new? It’s like you said—it’s been going on as long as my family’s been tangled up with this place.”

  “But for him,” she persisted. “Is it something he’s always believed in?”

  Was she really going to pump him for information on her new crush? He laughed, even as anger rose inside him. Even as it twisted together with the hunger and grew to an aching want. A sharp, compelling need. “You want to know what Einar believes? He believes in getting what he wants.”

  “Which is?”

  He jerked his shoulders in a rough shrug. “Everything. He’s like a fucking seagull, okay? If it’s bright, he wants it. If it’s shiny, he wants it. If other people have it, God, does he want it. Gets it, too. He’s good that way.”

  He loosed an ugly chuckle. “You’re not his usual, but I can see why he wants you.” He yanked off his glove and reached for her. Her eyes were huge in her angular face, but she didn’t flinch away from him, and the thumb he ran over the sharp blade of her cheekbone was, thank God, gentle. Because what burned inside him was anything but. “You’re so very, very shiny, aren’t you? Polished bright as a new penny.”

  “Rush, I—”

  He cut her off before she could ask even one more question. “I don’t know what Einar believes in terms of religion,” he said impatiently. “All I know is that people have been getting naked here and howling for the moon since there was a moon to howl for. Some places strip away the civilization better than others, and Mishkwa is one of the best. We’re all just animals here. Not so different from that damn moose, all heat and anger and drive and want.” He slipped his hand into the glorious warmth of her hair, felt it slide like living water over his fingers to pool in his palm. “Einar, though, he’s a greedy bastard. He wants everything.”

  She stared up at him, her eyes impossibly wide and deep.

  “Me, though?” He shook his head. “I only want you.”

  And he kissed her.

  Chapter 16

  IT WAS like crashing through the ice, Goose thought as the black waters of Rush’s kiss closed over her head. A devastating, disorienting, full-body shock. Not cold, though. Jesus, no. His mouth was hot on hers, aggressive and assured and uncompromising, and she understood that diplomatic relations had just been terminated. This was no warning, fair or otherwise. This was taking.

  Taking. Satisfaction sang through her even as sharpedged hunger began to churn. The clean, male scent of him filled her, enveloped her, sang to her, and desire rolled up hot and thick from that dark place in her soul where appetite lurked, dangerous and relentless.

  But she didn’t check it. Not this time. No, this time she rode the surge of it, gloried in the whippy, consuming thrill of wanting. He’d only whetted her appetite with th
at sneaky, sucker punch of a kiss back in town. He hadn’t satisfied, only fed that dangerous, smoky little fire she’d been stamping at ever since landing on this island.

  And now he breathed that fire into flames. Flames that roared. Crackled. Craved.

  His big hand tipped her chin to a different angle, and she lost herself. Lost the self she’d cultivated so carefully over the years. The self with the strength to resist, control, moderate. She rose up on her toes and met him, matched him, opened to him, not in eager invitation but in fierce demand.

  His tongue slid hot and wild into her mouth, sending a liquid pulse of yes through her entire body. Her hands fisted in his coat collar, wound themselves into the fabric there. She anchored herself into the heat and strength of his body, rocking and sliding and pleasing herself against the hard length of him. She tipped her face up, let the moonlight spill over her skin, and kissed him back.

  She kissed him with everything inside her. With all the heady, driving desire, yes. But also with the loneliness, the pain and the weariness she hadn’t even been aware of until he’d shoved aside her charm and her smile and demanded to see somebody else. The woman she used to be.

  The woman she sometimes—despite of every ounce of her strength and courage—still was.

  A shock of shame and guilt, more powerful for its familiarity, rolled over her and she snapped back to herself with a gasp. Rush had already released her. Had sensed, knowing him, the split second in which she’d withdrawn her real self, the self he’d been tugging on since that first kiss. He didn’t want this other woman she’d cultivated. He didn’t want Goose. He wanted the girl she’d been. The woman that girl would have grown into. The one who wanted without thought and took without limit. He wanted Maria. She knew that. He’d told her so, hadn’t he? Walked away from her offer of some sweaty, no-strings sex in the hopes that he could have something more? Somebody more?

  But he couldn’t have that woman. Neither could Goose. Fire was glorious but it was nothing to play with.

  “Rush,” she began, regret an aching tightness in her throat. “I’m sorry. I—”

  “Don’t apologize.” He reached down to retrieve the glove he’d let fall to the snow. “Just . . . don’t.”

  “It’s this place,” she said anyway. She had to say something . A hot knot of tears lodged in her chest as she waved an arm at the whole ridiculous scene. The perfect bowl of evergreens skirting the quaint little cabin, the homey invitation of wood smoke hanging in the air, the full, fertile moon plastered round and lush in the night sky above them. “It’s so—” Frustration had her fisting her hands on either side of her head, like she could threaten her brain into providing some magic words to fix this situation. Neutralize it. God, erase it.

  “Einar’s no fool,” she finally said with a bitter laugh. “This island is a gold mine. It’s a drug. And the guy who figures out how to bottle and sell whatever this place does to people is going to end up richer than hell.”

  “Fuck that.” Rush shoved one hand into his snowy glove and glared at her. “And fuck lying, too, Goose. To yourself and to me.”

  She stared at him, openmouthed. “Lying?”

  “Honesty, Agent di Guzman.” He shook his head. “You promised.”

  “I am being—”

  “The fuck you are,” he said, and the banked fury in his silver eyes knocked her back a step. “Blaming your shit on an island? Please.” His hard mouth curled in disgust. “Mishkwa doesn’t do anything to people except cut them off from all the noise. It doesn’t put anything in you, Goose. It strips things away. Forces you to look yourself right in the eye.” He gave a ragged laugh. “Jesus, what do you think I’m here for?”

  “The view?” She tried for a flip smile but her lips were numb with shock.

  “I came back to face myself. I needed to look at what was in me. To figure out if I could live with it. Turned out I could. I can.” His eyes locked on hers, and compassion swirled into the burning anger there. “Can you?”

  Anger slapped at her, sudden and nasty. “Of course I can live with myself,” she snapped. She’d spent the last twelve years proving it, hadn’t she? To herself? To her family? To the world? “Hell, I’ll go you one better. I not only live with myself, I improve myself. Daily.”

  “Well, there’s your problem.”

  “My what?”

  “You’re not living with yourself, Goose. You’re living in spite of yourself.” He touched her cheek, his fingers gentle despite that stony gaze. “You don’t need improvement. You just need to be yourself. And until you figure out how to do that, you’re no good to anybody. No matter how pretty you are.”

  She stared at him in stunned dismay, her head ringing like he’d smashed her upside it with a Mallet of Truth or something.

  Because he was right, damn him. She wasn’t living with herself. She was living around herself. Around what was inside her. She’d built a life based on avoidance, where every choice she made—from her career down to her hair-style—allowed her to pretend she was making herself better rather than different. Making the most of what God had given her rather than simply creating a pretty shell in which she could lock away her dangerous and disappointing—and truest—self.

  And up until this very moment, it had worked. Hell, it had rocked. Because twelve years ago she’d been awkward and passionate and angry and hungry. But now? Now she was shiny and successful and well dressed and . . .

  And still hungry. Still passionate. Still angry. But now she could throw in tired, scared and lonely, too.

  And just when the hell had that happened? The plan had worked, and worked well, for years. How had things come apart with such spectacular suddenness?

  It was Rush. Of course it was. The problem, she realized, was that the plan only worked when she wanted to be in control more than she wanted anything else.

  And now she found herself wanting something—someone—as much if not more than her precious control.

  “Rush,” she said, reaching for him in spite of herself.

  He stepped back, and her stupid body mourned. “Figure it out, Goose. Figure out who you are and what you want.” His eyes dropped to her mouth. “Soon.”

  Tears prickled in her eyes, swift and shaming, but he didn’t see them as he’d already turned his back on her. Small mercies, she thought. He headed down the trail toward the Ranger Station, and after a single, wretched moment, Goose fell in behind him. She didn’t weep as she followed, though. Didn’t allow herself even one single, self-indulgent tear.

  Chapter 17

  “TEA, DEAR?” Lila asked the next morning, and Goose smiled. Tea seemed to be Lila’s all-purpose antidote for whatever ailed a person. No wonder she had a pot in every room.

  “No, thanks. I don’t want to put you to any trouble, especially not so early.” She glanced toward the window, where the winter sun struggled to achieve liftoff from the horizon. “You’re going to start locking the doors before business hours if I keep dropping by at dawn.”

  Lila gave her a smile as she settled into the curvy wire café chair across from her. “Dawn works just fine for me, Agent di Guzman. You get to be my age and sleep is rarer than rubies.”

  Goose shook her head. “You’re not exactly elderly, Lila.”

  Lila gave her hand a brisk pat. “Sweet. But what about you? I know for a fact Rush’s been snowshoeing you all over the island. Why aren’t you sleeping the sleep of the righteous this morning?”

  “I have one of those brains,” she said easily, though she was anything but easy over the sleepless night she’d passed. “The kind that won’t turn off if there’s a good question to chew on, no matter how tired I am.”

  “I see.”

  Goose feared she did, actually. Lila didn’t miss much. But she didn’t press, so Goose didn’t offer. She just pasted on a smile and said, “Do you mind if I ask you some questions about the coven here on Mishkwa?”

  “Of course not, dear. Ask away. I’ll confess I’m surprised, though. I
thought you’d have asked Einar anything you wanted to know last night.”

  “Sir Humpalot cut our conversation short.” Thank God.

  “Mmm,” Lila said, as if she’d heard the mental aside. Goose shifted uncomfortably. She hadn’t considered until just this moment how Lila might feel about her rejecting Einar’s romantic attentions. And if Lila didn’t like that, she really wasn’t going to like the rest of this conversation.

  “So,” Goose said with a determined briskness. “Einar tells me he’s in line to inherit the coven.”

  “He and Rush,” Lila said. “We’re the last of our line, the boys and me. When I’m gone, it’ll just be them.”

  “Which one will inherit leadership? Have you decided?”

  “My hope is that they’ll lead together.”

  Goose let the skepticism show on her face. “Does Einar know that?”

  Lila tipped her head. “You think he’d feel slighted?”

  “You think he wouldn’t? He’s the dutiful son, after all. Staying, working, tending, while Rush disappears for years at a time. He’s earned his half of the birthright, easy, and Rush’s, too. Probably even has plans for it already.”

  “Plans?”

  “It was my impression,” Goose said carefully, “that Einar would like Mishkwa Coven to be a bit more high profile.”

  “Oh,” Lila said. “The Paganpalooza thing.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Einar can’t help himself. He’s an entrepreneur to his bones. The boy loves people, parties, crowds.”

  “Money.”

  Lila’s eyes went shrewd and sharp, but she inclined her head in acknowledgment of that truth. “Money, too. Things for which Rush cares not at all. They’d balance each other.”

  “Why don’t you trust him?”

  “Who, Rush?”

  “No, Einar.”

  Lila drew back. “Of course I trust Einar. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I don’t know, Lila. You tell me. You made him a priest, you gave him the title, the responsibility, the show. But when push comes to shove, you don’t want to let him fly solo.”