She hugged him tightly while their ragged breathing smoothed, while their rapid heartbeats slowed, while their bodies cooled, sealed together by sweat and sex.
A finger of sunset stole through the pretty white curtains and lay across the bed.
She could never go home again.
*
“Have you thought what you’re going to say to him?” Lara asked as they climbed the hill toward the center of town, a two-block stretch of parked cars, telephone poles, and gray-shingled houses. A few family groups wandered the dusk, peering in the darkened windows of picturesque storefronts. Island Realty.
Lighthouse Gift Shop. An amorphous group of teenagers blocking the sidewalk in front of Wiley’s Market shuffled to let them by. One of the boys muttered a comment as they passed. One of the girls laughed. With a pang, Lara thought of Bria.
It was all very ordinary, she supposed. It was like nothing she knew. She had never been part of a family. She had never been like those teens, chafing against the restrictions of a parent’s love, experimenting with freedom within safe distance of home.
Maybe she was going through some kind of delayed adolescence.
She stole a glance at Iestyn. He looked at home here, with his sun-streaked hair and easy, waterman’s stride.
There was more to her flight from Rockhaven than teenage rebellion. More to her feelings for him than a dizzy infatuation with sex.
He could belong here. Her heart swelled with hope and loss. He could make a life here.
For a moment, she let herself imagine it, Iestyn, working on the water during the day, coming home at night to a grayshingled house and a couple of children with golden eyes . . .
He slanted a look down at her. “Say to who?”
She pulled her thoughts back together, embarrassed to be caught dreaming over a future that didn’t belong to her.
“Dylan Hunter. Have you planned what to say?”
“Besides hello?”
“I’m sure you have questions, but I think it’s important to explain about the amnesia because . . .” She caught him grinning at her and broke off. “What? It’s good to be prepared.”
“It is if you know what you’re preparing for. We don’t.”
He caught her hand, making her jolt with surprise and pleasure, adjusting his steps to hers. Anyone looking at them would think they were any couple strolling to dinner.
But they weren’t.
“Relax,” he murmured. “We’ll make it up as we go along.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she confessed.
He stroked her knuckles with his thumb, tiny circles she felt in the pit of her stomach. “You’re doing fine so far.”
She had a feeling he wasn’t just talking about their search for Lucy Hunter.
The red awning of Antonia’s Ristorante stretched over the sidewalk, glowing from the lights outside and in. The bell over the door jangled as Iestyn opened it for Lara to precede him inside.
Red vinyl booths and crowded four-top tables, a scarred wooden floor, and an open pass-through window. Voices hummed. Dishes clattered. Smells floated on the air, a rich broth of garlic, onions, clams.
Lara inhaled appreciatively and heard Iestyn suck in his breath behind her.
She turned at once, her nerves jumping, but he only opened the door wider, stepping back to let an older couple leave.
Inside, a few tables were clearing. A black-haired busboy who couldn’t be more than fifteen stopped with a tray full of dishes.
His face lit with pleasure when he saw them. “Zack!
Man, why didn’t you tell me you were . . .” His dark eyes flickered. His face flushed. “Sorry. I thought you were somebody else.”
“Who?” Lara asked.
The boy jerked one shoulder in a shrug. Apology.
Dismissal. “Sit anywhere,” he said. “Hailey will take your order.”
They found a booth near the kitchen, with a view of the chalkboard menu.
“Zack?” Lara repeated quietly when they were seated.
Iestyn rubbed at the front of his shirt, over the burn.
“Who knows?”
“You don’t recognize the name?”
He shook his head.
Their waitress—young, blond, with a face full of freckles—arrived at their table. “What’ll you have?”
“Do you have bottled water?” Lara asked.
“This isn’t the Galaxy. You can drink out of a glass here.”
Iestyn smiled. “You can even order wine.”
Wine was a bad idea. Wine belonged to celebrations and candlelit dinners, the whole ordinary dating world she’d never really been part of. But just for tonight, she was tempted to go with the flow, to pretend they were out to dinner to enjoy each other’s company, to imagine that they could have a future together.
“I’m not finished with you yet.”
She swallowed. “Maybe . . . a glass of white?”
“A bottle of the pinot grigio,” Iestyn said. “A bottle of Sam Adams. And the swordfish for me.”
“I hear the lobster fra diavolo is good,” Lara said to the waitress.
“Well, yeah, it is, but . . .”
“I’m not making it,” a raspy female voice shouted through the pass. “You can have the steamed lobster or the clam linguini.”
Lara bit her lip, wavering between offense and amusement.
“She’ll have the lobster,” Iestyn said.
“One swordfish, one lobster.” A strong-featured Italian woman, with one of those faces that looked the same at forty and at sixty, appeared briefly in the pass, her mouth a hard red slash, her dark eyes snapping in satisfaction.
“Coming up.”
“Cole slaw, fries, or baked potato with that?” their waitress asked.
“Cole slaw, I think.”
When their waitress was gone with their order, Lara met Iestyn’s eyes, resisting the urge to giggle.
“If that was Dylan Hunter’s wife,” he said, “more has changed than I thought.”
“Don’t mind Nonna.” The busboy appeared with a basket of bread and a bottle of olive oil. “Mom’s out of the kitchen tonight, so she’s feeling feisty.”
“Nonna?” Lara repeated.
His smile was quick and charming. “My grandmother Antonia.”
Antonia’s Ristorante.
Lara squeezed her hands together under the table. “So the regular chef—your mother—would be Regina Hunter.”
The boy drizzled oil and herbs onto a thick white plate.
“That’s right.”
“Your father is Dylan Hunter.”
“So?”
“So?”
“Where is he?” Lara asked.
The question earned her a measuring look from those big, dark Italian eyes and another charming smile. “At work.”
“What kind of work does he do?”
The boy’s smile faded.
Iestyn’s foot pressed hers under the table. “Good bread.”
“Glad you like it,” said the boy and escaped.
Lara frowned. “Why did you stop me?”
“Because you were scaring him.” Iestyn’s long, strong fingers tore a hunk from the loaf of bread. “And because I want to enjoy our dinner.”
She didn’t understand him. Everything inside her was alight and alive with impatience. If this was the end, she wanted to get there as quickly as possible. Minimize the pain, she told herself. Like ripping off a bandage. “Don’t you want to find them? Dylan? Lucy?”
“We will find them.” He dipped the bread into the olive oil.
“Tomorrow.”
She stared at him, frustrated. “But we’re so close.”
He offered her the bread across the table. “Lara, I’ve been gone for seven years. We’ve been searching less than two days. Another night won’t make any difference.”
Reluctantly, she reached for the bread. He pulled it
back, holding it teasingly away from her mouth until she leaned forward to eat from his hand. As her lips closed around the bread, he added softly, with intent, “Especially if it means I get to spend that night with you.”
Her gaze met his.
She almost choked, bathed in golden heat.
“Another night won’t make any difference.”
Oh, but it could. How long could she be with him, how many times could she lie with him, and still survive a separation?
And yet how could she resist this chance to know him better? To make love with him one more time?
Deliberately, she picked up her wineglass. “So,” she said.
“Tell me how you learned about wine.”
He narrowed his eyes at her obvious change of subject, but he played along, tel ing her about the yachts he’d crewed, the jobs he’d handled, the places he’d been.
Their lives could hardly have been more different, she reflected, listening to his stories about a delivery to Bahia, a race in Key West. In thirteen years, she’d rarely left the wal s of Rockhaven. Yet he seemed genuinely interested in her life there, encouraging her to talk about her job in the school office.
“It might seem like busywork to some,” she said. “But I like the routine. I like being organized.”
His eyes gleamed. “I noticed.”
Under his subtle prodding, she told him things that should have bored him silly, details about living in the dorms, minor infractions after lights out, stories about Bria.
“You must miss her,” he said quietly, and tipsy with wine and attention, Lara blurted out a truth she had barely admitted to herself.
“I hated her. She was the person I was closest to in the whole world, and she left me. She didn’t care enough to try to talk to me, she didn’t tell me she was going. And then I wondered if she left because of me. Because she knew I resented her for having the courage to do all the things I wasn’t brave enough to try.”
“Bullshit,” Iestyn said.
Lara blinked. “Excuse me?”
“First, you’re one of the bravest people I know.” He reached across and took her hand, holding it in his warm, strong clasp. “Second, your friend didn’t leave because of you.
She left because she had to, because of something inside her that couldn’t be there anymore. Maybe she really cared about you.” He looked down at their fingers, joined on the table; up into her eyes. “Maybe she was afraid if she told you, you’d talk her out of it.”
*
They were among the last customers to leave the restaurant. They walked back to the inn along roads without streetlamps under stars pulsing raw and real overhead. So many stars, undimmed by human light, Lara could almost imagine herself in Heaven. In the near darkness of their room, he undressed her, revealing her pale body in the silver light that slipped through the window. He laid her back on the soft white bed, spreading her legs wide, easing inside her.
Her sore muscles tensed against his blunt intrusion.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
He kissed her, stroking her hair back from her face. “It’s all right. You’re all right. You’re perfect.”
“I guess I’m not used to . . . Oh,” as he slid carefully deeper, as her tender flesh yielded around him.
“I’ll go slow,” he whispered wickedly, and he did, teasing her with his hands and his body, making her tremble, making her moan and clutch at him with anxious hands.
He pressed deep inside her, holding himself still inside her, until she shimmered with impatience, until she twined her legs around him, pushing her hips against him, nudging in restless rhythm, I want, I want, I want, until his control broke and he gave it to her, stroking into her, thrusting into her, driving deep and hard.
She came so hard she saw stars. With a groan, he plunged once, twice, again, before he finally let himself go and followed her into oblivion.
Afterward they lay in silence, her head on his shoulder, his hand in her hair.
Lara closed her eyes, holding thought at bay.
Iestyn kissed her forehead and got up and went into the bathroom. The light shone under the door, dimming the glow from beyond the curtains.
He was gone a long time. She lay motionless, listening to the sounds of running water, a muffled thump, almost glad for the respite. Not for her body, but for her heart. She could handle a little soreness from their lovemaking. She was unprepared to deal with these extremes of emotion, the delight and the pain of loving him so much.
But after a while, a niggle of discomfort made itself heard over the twinges of her muscles and the ache of her heart.
What was taking him so long?
Plucking his T-shirt from the floor, she pulled it over her head and followed him into the bathroom.
Iestyn stood leaning over the sink, looking at himself in the mirror, his back to the door.
She met his eyes in the glass. Around his throat, the angry red line of the heth burned. New blisters puffed and oozed on his skin.
She inhaled sharply, taking in the lines of pain on his face, the open tube of burn ointment on the sink. “You should have called me.”
“I thought you were asleep.”
“Then you should have woken me up.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Her voice cracked. “To help you. To do what I did before.”
“How many times?” he asked wearily.
“As many times as it takes. Until your burn gets better.”
But the burn wasn’t getting better. It was worse, had been worse since they were on the ferry to the island, and they both knew it.
Iestyn scrubbed his hand over his face, a tired gesture that made her heart contract. “I’m not bothering you every half hour because of a damn necklace.”
“Then we need to take it off,” she said steadily.
“How?”
“Soldier said . . .” She struggled to concentrate with the image of his raw, wet wound seared into her brain. “Any way we can. It’s glass. It can be fractured.”
“I’ve tried,” he said. She recalled the muffled thump.
“It’s not so easy.”
“You said yourself we can do more together than we can apart,” she reminded him.
He turned to face her. “Unless I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
“I do.”
She wasn’t a chemist. She wasn’t an artist or a magic worker. Simon had never recommended her, Zayin had never recruited her, to work in the factory. But she had a good memory. She’d taken theory classes with the rest of her cohort. For years, she’d listened to Jacob and David argue about glass over breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She could do this. They could do this.
She hoped.
“The spell is in the bead,” she explained. “If there are flaws in the glass, if we put the right pressure on the flaws, the bead will crack. The spell will be broken.”
“Just like that.”
She bit her lip. “It’s worth a try.”
His eyes warmed as he looked at her. “Yeah, it is. Tell me what you need me to do.”
“Sit down?” she suggested.
He sat on the closed lid of the toilet, his large square knees jutting into the confined space.
She swallowed. “Do you want to put on some clothes?”
“Will it make a difference?”
“Probably not. Okay.” She looked into his steady eyes and felt the knot of nerves in her stomach relax. Taking a slow breath, she tried to imagine What-should-be.
Iestyn, free.
He held her hand. The way they did before. Yes.
She closed her free hand on the heth. The bead was smooth and strong, hot against her clenched palm. She felt the power collecting in the pit of her stomach, at the nape of her neck, from her hand joined to Iestyn’s hand, felt the pressure building, moving up from her gut and down her arms. Her heart pounded.
But there was no place for the powe
r to go. The bead was smooth and black and impenetrable. Their combined magic slid off the polished glass surface.
Her palm burned as if she held a live coal. She gasped and dropped it.
Iestyn tightened his grip on her other hand. “Easy.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You’re doing great. Is there a sign for this?” he asked.
“Like there was for water?”
She stared at him, considering. “Well. . . Heth means
‘wall.’ ” She thought. “Or ‘fence.’ A spell of binding and containment.”
“So all we need is a door,” he joked.
A way in. A crack. An opening.
She felt a glimmer of hope. It was worth a shot.
“You’ll have to hold on to me,” she said. “I need both hands for this.”
Wordlessly, he wrapped his arms around her waist.
She took another deep breath that did nothing to settle her stomach and grabbed the heth again, trying to remember the ancient symbols.
What can be . . .
Daleth, door. He, window. She pictured the runes in her mind, scratching them into the surface of the glass, probing it for weakness.
Iestyn, free.
Daleth, door, he, window, over and over again like a madwoman scribbling on the walls of her cell. A great surge of power pushed from her heart and her stomach, from Iestyn’s arms around her waist, ripples of power flowing through her veins, racing along her nerves, shooting into the heth.
What must be.
Free.
And power exploded under her hand, red hot, white hot, scalding, boiling out of control.
Glass cracked.
Sharp pain cut across her palm. Blood dripped between her fingers. The room stank.
Lara shuddered. She uncurled her bleeding hand, and the shards of the heth fell dully to the bathroom floor. She touched her other hand lightly to Iestyn’s hair, willing him to look up and reassure her.
“Well, we did it,” she said shakily.
“Oh yes.” He raised his head and smiled a terrible smile, and his eyes were not Iestyn’s eyes, and his voice was not Iestyn’s voice. “We certainly did.”
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