Sanctuary Island

by Everett, Lily

  She trailed off as her gaze slipped down his nearly naked body, and when both her eyes and her flush brightened, Grady felt his mood lift. It turned out, one embarrassed ogle from Ella Preston was better than a hot cup of joe.

  And in spite of the fact that he’d spent many hours the night before tossing and turning under the weight of the revelation he’d had after the foaling, now that it came to the point, it was surprisingly easy to step back and reach out a hand to hold open the door. “Don’t worry about it. Come on inside.”

  Ducking her head, Ella brushed past him in a cloud of soapy, sweet-smelling warmth. She paused in the entryway, her curious stare taking in everything from the hand-carved wooden furniture to the multicolored rag rug covering the hearth.

  “This is … beautiful,” she said, sounding surprised.

  Now Grady was the one who was embarrassed. He shrugged off the compliment, not wanting to make a big deal out of how much the praise for his hideaway pleased him. “It’s home.”

  “Was this your family’s summer cottage?”

  Surprised she remembered what he’d told her about his history with the island, Grady was a beat too slow in replying. “Ah, no. When I was a kid, we’d come and stay with my aunt and uncle. We stopped coming when my aunt Carol got sick.”

  “But you never forgot the island.”

  There was something in her voice, something wistful and a little yearning as she took in the simple charcoal drawing over the mantel. In a few fluid lines, the artist had rendered the sense of movement and freedom of a band of wild horses sweeping across a meadow, tall grass rippling in the breeze like waves on the shore.

  “This place tends to get into your blood,” he said quietly. “At least, that’s how it was for me. When I got out of the hospital, all I could think about was coming here.”

  Drawing close enough to study the framed photograph on the mantelpiece, Ella said, “Is that you?”

  Grady nodded, grinning a little as he remembered the day that picture was taken. “In my first boat. My uncle took up sailing and gave me his little powerboat. He even paid for a slip at the public dock for whenever I came to visit.”

  “It’s so beautiful,” Ella said, eyes wide and interested. “And you couldn’t be more than … what, fifteen in the photo?”

  “Sixteen.” Sixteen, gangly, towheaded, and grinning a mouthful of braces from ear to ear as he took his pride and joy out for the first time as her captain.

  “Do you still have that boat?” Ella asked.

  “Yep, tied up down at the dock. A ’98 Stingray 200LS. I work on her every now and then, keep her in good shape. She’s a bit of a collector’s item now.”

  “Maybe we should plan a boat tour around the island sometime,” Ella suggested, her gaze lingering on the image of the happy boy.

  Grady felt the grin drop off his face. “I don’t take her out anymore.”

  Startled, Ella looked up at him. “What, never?”

  “That’s right.” He clenched his jaw, uncomfortable and wishing she’d just drop it.

  As if she’d heard his unspoken wish, Ella turned a bright smile on him. “So, I guess you’re wondering what I’m doing here!”

  Something about the abrupt subject change grated on him, pinging his finely honed something’s-not-right instinct.

  No one should be that perky this early in the morning.

  “Honestly?” He relaxed enough to feel another yawn threatening. “I’m wondering what the odds are that I have time to put on a pot of coffee before we head out to check on the foal.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Oh, can we?”

  Grady hiked up the quilt again, taking the opportunity to make sure it was tucked securely under his more heavily scarred left arm, and headed for the eat-in kitchen. “Sure. I mean, I thought that’s why you were here.”

  “Actually, I had a different request. But I’d really, really like to see the foal again. Please.”

  He hid his grin by busying himself with his coffeemaker. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “I just…” She fidgeted in his peripheral vision, her hands making graceful circles as she groped for the right words. “I’ve never seen anything quite like that before.”

  Grady laughed. “Who knew the miracle of life involved so many bodily fluids, huh?”

  But that wasn’t what she meant, and he knew it.

  “Don’t make fun of me.” Her voice was quiet, intense enough to stop Grady in the middle of scooping coffee grounds into the paper filter.

  “I’m not,” he told her, focusing on what his hands were doing to avoid having to face her. “I’ve never been involved in anything like that before, either.”

  Silence stretched between them for a long moment, broken only by the gurgling rush of coffee perking.

  Grady managed not to tense up when Ella stepped closer and turned to lean against the counter beside him.

  “And here I thought you were the original Horse Whisperer,” she said.

  He shot her a look, but the half smile quirking her lips told him she was teasing. “Nah, not really. Your mom’s the one with the magic touch. I just … care about the horses, is all.”

  He didn’t know how else to say it, how to explain the need he had to keep tabs on the wild horse herd. No one on Sanctuary acted like it was that big a deal, or weird, but saying it out loud to someone new, like Ella, made him uncomfortably aware that Protector of the Island wasn’t exactly an official title, with a salary and benefits and a career path.

  He cleared his throat. “If you didn’t come over because you wanted to check on the foal, what did you have in mind?”

  “Oh. I was hoping you’d be willing…” Ella trailed off, her gaze glancing off him and slipping away to the side.

  Grady was having a hard time imagining something he wouldn’t be willing to do with Ella Preston. “What?”

  “I made a promise to get to know Sanctuary,” Ella said, her gaze sliding off to the side. “Can I get the rest of that guided tour?”

  Grady blinked down at her, blood rushing in his ears. He’d been right—she looked good in his kitchen. Her trim, slender form slipped into the corners of his life as if there’d been an Ella-shaped hole at his side, waiting for her.

  I am in so much trouble.

  But she wanted to see Sanctuary. That had to be a good sign. He breathed in and felt something sharp and clean pierce through the clutter in his brain.

  It had been a long time since he’d felt anything like it, but Grady was pretty sure he remembered and recognized it, from before the accident.

  Hope.

  *

  Ella was very careful not to fidget.

  There was so much riding on Grady’s response—she needed his help to scout the island as a potential property for development. But she was pretty sure if she told him that, he’d refuse to listen to anything more.

  She comforted herself with the knowledge that once he realized how much her ideas would help the island, in general—and his very good friend Jo Ellen Hollister, in particular—he’d understand.

  In the meantime, she had to push through her worries and fears about Merry and the thorny prickle of guilt that she was using Grady’s knowledge of Sanctuary for a purpose he wouldn’t approve of. This was all business. It had to be.

  But as she stood there, so close to him, every square inch of her skin began to tingle. Her lungs opened up, every breath filling her entire body with the rich scent of coffee beans and the sleep-warm spice of Grady’s skin.

  A lot of skin, barely covered by that beautiful, hand-worked quilt, although he was clearly trying to conceal the rest of his scars.

  Ella tried not to stare. The last thing she wanted was to make Grady feel awkward, on display in his own home.

  “What do you want to see?” Grady’s deep voice startled Ella.

  Resisting the urge to say “your naked torso,” she determinedly met his gaze and said, “Everything. The wild horses, the town square, the best restaurant in to
wn … whatever you want to show me.”

  The slow smile that spread over his face took her breath away. It changed his harsh, closed features, softened and illuminated them into something she wanted to keep looking at for a long, long time.

  As she stared up at him now, it was hard to remember she’d only met him a few days ago. The hard line of his jaw, shadowed with the dark gold beginnings of a beard, was already familiar to her.

  His cheeks burned red for a brief instant before he busied himself pouring coffee into his mug without spilling or dropping his grip on the blanket over his shoulders.

  “I can do that. I did promise Jo I’d try to give you a sense of your heritage. Believe it or not, there’s more to the island than pregnant mares.”

  “Maybe,” Ella conceded. “But I wouldn’t mind finding a few other things on the island that gave me the same feeling I got around those horses yesterday.”

  Without taking his eyes off the coffee mug, Grady mumbled, “How did you feel?”

  Ella paused. Feelings were slippery things, in her experience.

  After years of therapy, she didn’t have any problem analyzing or talking about her feelings. But she’d also noticed that feelings weren’t concrete. They didn’t get set in stone. They were defined, in large part, by the ways people reacted to them. And the story a person told about the emotion later on was every bit as important and meaningful as the experience of that emotion in the moment.

  So it was with a certain amount of deliberation and purpose that Ella said, “I felt at peace.”

  “And that’s something you don’t get a lot of, in your life.”

  It wasn’t phrased as a question, but Ella shrugged anyway. “Not a lot of time for meditation and yoga, in my line of work. I tried a couple of different religion courses in college. Modern dance and avant-garde theater exercises that involved lying on my back on the floor and visualizing numbers in my head.”

  He took a sip of hot coffee, hiding his mouth, but his moss-green eyes over the rim of his mug were bright and curious.

  “It was all interesting.” She laughed a little. “But honestly? The closest I came to true happiness was exam time. I know. I’m a nerd. But that feeling of studying hard—absorbing information, spilling it back out for the professors to give a high grade—that made me feel good.”

  “I bet you were a straight-A student all through school.”

  Her smile faded. “Oh, there were a few rocky years.”

  The year her mom spiraled down into the depths of alcoholism, for instance. The year after, when her parents split up and her dad moved them across the city to that tiny apartment on the depressed, crime-ridden north side.

  She shook her head to jog the bad memories loose and gave him a smile. “But mostly, yes. I was always working hard to fit in, to keep anyone from noticing there was something very wrong at home. It made me a bit of an overachiever.”

  Grady frowned, and she held up her hands. “Hey, it turned out okay, because doing well in school meant I had my pick of colleges, and later, careers. Maybe I owe Jo Ellen a thank-you.”

  Grady winced a little, and Ella bit her lip, regretting the sour twist of bitterness that lingered on her tongue.

  “Sounds like you’ve given a lot of thought to how you got where you are,” he said quietly.

  “That’s what thousands of dollars’ worth of therapy will get you,” she quipped. “No, seriously. It’s important to me to understand myself, what drives me. I never understood that about Jo, and part of me—” Ella stopped short, surprised at what she’d been about to reveal.

  Grady didn’t pressure her, though. He simply watched her with those deep, soft eyes, his body a solid wall of strength keeping the real world at bay.

  “Part of me is scared that if I don’t figure out what went wrong with Jo and our family … it could happen to me, too. And I don’t want to ever be like her.” She paused for breath, feeling as if a weight she’d been carrying around for a long time had just slid off her shoulders.

  Neither of them spoke, but the silence was perfectly comfortable.

  Soon she realized that if she stood here much longer, staring up into his focused, interested, intense eyes, she was going to do something crazy.

  Suddenly needing to move, she pushed away from the kitchen counter and found a smile. “So are you ready to head out?”

  “Well, now, city mouse. We might be a touch more casual out here on the island, but I still probably need to put some real clothes on.”

  He spread his arms out to the sides, holding the quilt at his back like a superhero cape, and Ella’s gaze dropped as if magnetized.

  The chiseled lines of his bare chest were shadowed and mysterious in the dim morning light filtering through the window above the kitchen sink. A narrowing V of crisp, dark gold hair drew her eye down his flat, hard stomach, disappearing into his pants.

  He’d obviously been in a hurry when he pulled on the faded pair of jeans, which hung low, exposing the cut of his lean hip bones. They were zipped, but he hadn’t bothered to do up the button at the top of the fly, and Ella felt all the blood in her body pooling low down in a languid, honeyed rush.

  She didn’t even know she was planning to speak before she said, “Do you have to?”

  Grady stilled, alert tension entering his big, rangy frame, like a stallion scenting the wind for danger.

  Swaying toward him, Ella felt the core of herself warming to his nearness. Her body knew what it wanted and her mind … her mind was telling her she’d never felt this level of connection with another living soul. His quiet stillness called to her, made her feel safe and crazy and brave enough to take a huge risk, all at the same time.

  The knowledge that this was every bit as big a risk for him pushed her forward.

  She took a step toward him, holding her breath against the moment when Grady would take a step back. But he didn’t. He stood his ground, every muscle and sinew tensed, practically vibrating with stress—but he didn’t move.

  He wasn’t wearing his gloves. But she’d seen him without the gloves already—felt the gentle scrape of his scar-roughened fingers along the back of her hand, the curve of her cheek—and Ella wanted more.

  She wanted to see everything, to know all of him. On a level deeper than rational thought, she understood how difficult it would be for him to expose himself that way.

  Baby steps, she decided, capturing Grady’s left hand, the one with the deeper scars, between both of her smaller, smoother hands. He didn’t resist, but he didn’t take over, either, as she cradled his hand and brought it up to her face.

  Staring up into his set, expressionless face, Ella pressed his hard palm to her cheek.

  The simple touch unleashed a shiver that coursed over the surface of her skin, and something flared hot and fierce in the depths of Grady’s eyes.

  Light-headed, giddy, no thought in her brain except for him, Ella turned her face far enough to press a kiss to the center of his palm. The scarred skin was raised under her lips, a strange mix of smooth and rough.

  “Do you feel that?”

  His throat clicked when he swallowed. “The scars themselves are pretty numb. But the edges can be sensitive. Hard to tell pain from pleasure.”

  That sounded like a challenge.

  CHAPTER 16

  Ella let go of his hand, satisfaction roaring through her when he didn’t pull away.

  Nestling her cheek more firmly into the cup of his palm, she touched the part of his body that had been tugging at her attention since he’d first opened his door to her.

  Her hands skimmed his lean waist, the taut flesh under her fingertips hot and silky, before her grip settled gently on the jut of his hip bones above the line of denim. She didn’t even try to stop her thumbs from finding the divots of his hips, the gorgeous planes of his muscular body drawing her in.

  Grady shifted his weight under her touch. The muscles in his outstretched arm went tight, corded with trembling tension, but his touch on
her face stayed soft and warm. Almost tender.

  Keeping the caress light, she traced her way up over the bellows of his rib cage. His chest expanded and contracted under her hands as he sucked in an audible breath. “Ella, what are you…?”

  “Shhh,” she hummed, the way she’d calmed the mare yesterday, and like magic, she felt some of the tension melt out of Grady’s body.

  “I thought you wanted to get going,” he tried, his voice strangling on the rush of words. “Pour yourself some coffee and I’ll put on a shirt.”

  Ella shook her head, skimming her fingers up, up, feeling the broad slabs of powerful muscle under her hands. “I like you like this.”

  “Come on, quit playing around. I have to get dressed.” With a bitter twist to his mouth, he dropped his hand from her face and stepped away from her, hitching the quilt higher over his left shoulder. “I’m not going out like this—I don’t want to scare anybody.”

  “Stop.” The sharpness of her voice startled Ella. Grady, too, if the way he paused and stared at her was any indication. “I mean it,” she insisted, her palms already aching with emptiness, the buzz of desire demanding that she get her hands back on him right now, immediately, if not sooner.

  “Stop what?”

  The genuine confusion on his face struck at Ella’s heart. It was a long moment before she could speak.

  The words felt huge, too big to force out of her throat, but she managed it. “Nothing about you is ugly. I don’t know how you got those scars, but they’re part of you. I’m starting to know you, a little bit, and I promise—anyone who’d be turned off by any part of you isn’t worth your time.”

  Grady stopped, eyes wide and intense on her face, and Ella lifted her chin. She meant every word, and she wouldn’t back down.

  She saw the moment when his control evaporated. And as his lips brushed against her mouth, like a whisper, like a dream, his arms slid around her shoulders and Ella felt the whoosh as the quilt dropped to the floor.