by Sarah Abbot
“You want to apologize to me? What for?”
“I slapped you,” she said, eyes wide. “I…I was insufferably rude. You told me about something terrible my mother did to you, and I didn’t care. I want you to know that that’s not like me. I was shocked. I know that’s no excuse, but there it is.”
Ryan nodded slowly, rocked back on his heels. “Okay. I accept your apology.”
“For what it’s worth,” she added quickly, “I’m sure my mother didn’t know Cora was pregnant when she fell in love with Douglas. At least I hope she didn’t.”
Ryan shrugged, jamming his hands into his pockets.
Abby cocked her head at him, a curious expression on her face. “You look strange.”
His breath escaped in a barely suppressed explosion. “You don’t know the half of it.” He wanted to be done with this business, and the sooner the better. “So, you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” Her arms tightened around herself. “It was good of you to check in on me.”
They stood, shifting, for a solid minute longer. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“You mean besides verbally attack me at your bar, defame my family and drag me to the town sheriff for questioning? No. I’m good.”
He actually felt himself jolt.
Abby started laughing—a sound as long and loud and free as an anthem. Not until tears were beginning to roll down her cheeks did she look up, and by that time Ryan was laughing, too. Nervously, at first. Then—when feeling the sweet truth of it, the utter relief of it—he let it spiral down to the core of him and double back ’til he rocked with it, shook with it, let it join hers and fill the room with something he knew he’d remember always.
“I’m coming unhinged,” she said softly. “First I’m crying, then I’m laughing. If you knew what a ride this has been, you’d get it.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Abby walked to the refrigerator, still giggling, pulled out two coolers, and handed one to Ryan.
He lifted the bottle and read. “Wild-berry Fizzer? You’re kidding, right?”
“Do you want to get drunk with me or not?”
He felt himself jolt. Again.
He shrugged, twisted the cap and downed a healthy portion of the fruity-tasting drink. “You know, this isn’t all bad. You tell a soul I said that, and I’ll deny it.”
“Please. Like I’d admit to drinking with the likes of you,” she said, winking over her shoulder.
As nimbly as a cat, she slid over the back of the sofa and nuzzled into a mound of cushions. “It’s been a bloody awful day, Brannigan, I gotta tell you.”
He swallowed a mouthful of his drink, nodding. “I’m with you on that,” he said solemnly, wishing the laughter was back.
“Ryan,” she said, picking at the label on her bottle, “I don’t want you to be awkward around me—I mean, just for tonight, let’s pretend we’re old pals. I need to let the stuff between us be bygones.” She sipped thoughtfully, staring through the window at the surging ocean. “My mom’s past is just one shock after the next. There’s a sociopath intent on scaring the daylights out of me, the sheriff would like to see me in the pillory…what I don’t need is a nervous drinking buddy.”
“So, we’re drinking buddies now, are we?”
“All I’m saying is that here, now…what I don’t need is another enemy.”
“Sure that’s not just your Wild-berry Fizzer talking?” he asked, feeling a rush of something that made him hopeful and disbelieving all at once; a feeling that this could change everything, and suddenly hoping it did.
“Yeah. I’m sure.”
“Okay, I’ll be your drinking buddy, Abby, only next time, I bring the booze.”
Abby chuckled. “You got something against my Wild-berry Fizzer?”
“So much, I couldn’t even begin to tell you.” He looked pointedly at her. “Listen, there’s another reason I came out here. I think you should move out of the cottage.”
“Are you serious?”
“Completely. This place is miles from anywhere, and I don’t need to point out that there’s a lunatic on the island with his sights set on you. I have a vacant apartment in town, and I know for sure Mom has a couple, as well. Maybe one of them would be to your liking.”
Abby’s expression hardened. “If you think I’m going to go running scared because of a few tasteless pranks—”
“And what if they aren’t pranks? What if whoever sent these things is very, very serious?”
“I have locks, I have a phone and a black belt in jujitsu. I can take care of myself.”
Ryan blinked. “You have a black belt in jujitsu?”
“Well, not exactly,” she said, blushing. “But if you could spread the word around town that I do, I’d be most obliged.”
“I’m serious about this, Abby.”
“So am I,” she said, eyeing him levelly and looking as if she meant every word. “Ryan, my mother lived here. She loved it here, and I feel connected to her when I’m here.”
“Well, I guess you’d better get used to the fact that I’ll be checking on you every time I’m out this way.” He didn’t mention that he had a sudden urge to be out this way far, far more often.
“That’s fine,” she said with a shrug.
“And if one more thing happens, Abby—and I mean one more thing, you’ve got to move out.”
“I agree.”
Abby laughed at the surprised expression he’d been unable to hide. “Good grief, am I so contrary that a nod of agreement leaves you speechless?”
Ryan lifted a brow. “In a word: yes.”
The ocean hissed along the rocks that lined the shore, saving them both from the discomfort of total silence. “Tell me something, Ryan,” she said, looking over at him with a softness of expression that made his insides twist uncomfortably. “Why do they call this place ‘Abandon Bluff’?” she asked. “Who was abandoned?”
Ryan stood and walked over to the window to better appreciate the view of the surging Atlantic. “Come here,” he said, beckoning with his hand.
She stepped forward tentatively. “Just right here,” he said, placing his hands on her shoulders and positioning her directly in front of him. He felt the stiffening of her shoulders beneath his touch, then the slow, almost deliberate relaxing that followed.
Just as he had intended, her gaze was now riveted upon the undulating sea.
Beneath the auburn sky, the water seethed with pent-up anger. Foamy crests whispered of a another storm, and colors of charcoal flashed beneath deceptively benign shades of silvery blue.
Ryan felt the mammoth surge of power as if it flowed toward him; he felt the warmth of her flesh as if his hands rested directly upon her.
“Not who,” he said quietly, his breath lifting the delicate strands of hair that rested against the side of her face. “What.”
Beneath his touch, her skin seemed to warm; her shoulders lifted gently with the breath that filled her ever more quickly. Is she feeling this, too?
“Caution,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Logic. Good sense. That’s what’s abandoned.”
Ryan felt his breath quicken. His loins seemed attuned to the threatening passion of the sea, as if uniting and rising with the primordial strength that seethed beneath the undulating mass of water.
The back of her neck was so close, so fair and inviting. He could touch her right there, could see for himself if she was as soft as she appeared.
He closed his eyes on the thought, shaken, even as his fingertips thrummed with need.
“What else?” she whispered. “Tell me what else was abandoned here.”
“Everything that makes us what we’re not.” He felt the shudder, then the almost imperceptible trembling that rippled over her flesh—found its echo in his.
The setting sun fell through the window in beams of gold, touched her hair with tawny light and gilded her features with silver.
The loose shirt
she wore was diaphanous on her body, the light that shone through it stroking her flesh with a nimbus that made her look golden.
“Don’t move,” he said quietly, his voice gruff but gentle as he walked over to the table.
Abby turned her head slightly, but the rest of her remained still. She looked at him, a curious expression on her face.
He lifted a pad of paper and pencil, ripped off the first few pages and stared at her; he drank in the sight of her that was like water to a parched throat.
He touched the pencil to the page, began the sinuous, fluid line that was her spine, the graceful swell of her buttock, the long, lithe stroke of her thigh. He started on the front, his heart slamming as if he touched her very flesh, as he drew the curve of her neck, the roundness of her shoulder, and the lush fullness of her breast beneath the fabric.
He lifted his pencil, inhaled a pacing breath, and returned to her face, where striking violet eyes gazed back at him, direct and yet shy, intangible, and yet utterly alluring.
In that instant, he understood every instinct of the man who had fathered him, for he felt the same urges now; he felt them coursing through his body and igniting a firestorm in their wake.
As if she felt it, too, she met his eyes. He saw that her cheeks were beautifully flushed, that her eyes glistened as she stared at him.
The arm that held the paper fell to his side, forgotten. The pencil he dropped rolled across the floor, making a soft rumbling that seemed to echo through his chest.
He stepped toward her, grasped her shoulders, her exhaled gasp thrilling through his body like lightning.
“Ryan,” she whispered, her eyes deep pools that seemed to drink him in.
Before he could rethink it, he pressed his mouth to hers.
He wasn’t prepared for the jolt that struck him to the heart, that reached into the truth of who he was and changed it into something unfathomably deeper. She was perfect softness, perfect womanliness…perfect.
He felt Abby’s hands gently kneading the fabric of his shirt, felt the touch become suddenly more intense as she tilted her head, opened her mouth and drew him into her.
He was drunk, and it had nothing to do with the Wild-berry Fizzer.
His BlackBerry chimed shrilly, ripping through the moment as effectively as a reaper’s scythe.
His initial instinct was to hurl the bloody thing against the nearest wall. Instead, he pressed the ignore button, suddenly stunned by what he—what they—had done. He wanted to speak, but words were like a logjam in his throat.
Abby looked up at him, smiling shyly. “You could have answered that. I don’t mind.”
“Naw. It was probably nothing.”
She tilted her head at him. “You were drawing me, just a minute ago, I mean. Before you kissed me.”
“I was,” he said quietly. “I’ve wanted to draw you for a long time.”
“Then let me pose for you,” she said, the pink in her cheeks deepening.
“I’d like that.” And to his surprise, he meant it. In fact, the thought of her—lying still for him as he traced her body with his hand—thrilled him as little else ever had.
“So would I.” Her smile widened. “I had no idea you were an artist.” Then she flushed; her smile faded. Ryan looked into her face and knew she feared she’d offended him.
With anyone else, he would have felt stinging resentment, but with her, he only wanted to tell her his secret truth: that he was an artist, and as much as he sometimes wanted to, there was no way he could deny it. “Yeah, I guess you could say I’m an artist,” he admitted quietly. “The only person I could have inherited it from is my father, because Mom can’t draw a straight line with a ruler.”
Relief flooded her face, was light in the sound of her laughter. She picked up the paper and looked at the image. “This is beautiful. I’d love to see your work, Ryan.”
He nodded toward the pencil drawing. “There you have it. The complete works of Ryan Brannigan.”
“You’re not serious?”
“I have a bad habit of tossing everything I draw.” He couldn’t believe he was admitting this. Couldn’t believe that she had drawn it out of him without an ounce of effort.
“Well, that’s just going to have to change,” she said, sinking into the billowy pillows of the couch. “Draw me, Ryan. Let mine be the first of your pictures that you actually keep.”
He thought of the picture underneath his desk blotter. Hers already was the first picture he had ever kept. “Okay,” he said, a burgeoning excitement filling the full measure of him. “We’ll do that. Soon.”
“Ryan? Did you know it was a painting that brought me here to Destiny Bay?”
“No.”
She patted the couch as she looked up at him, smiled sweetly as he accepted the invitation and sat beside her. “I found a portrait of my mother in the house where I grew up. It was painted by your father. She was lying on the banks of stone just outside the cottage. There were petals sprinkled over her body. It was a beautiful painting, Ryan. I looked at it and I knew she loved the man who painted it. Would you like to see it?”
Ryan felt his blood stop in his veins. Would he? Should he? “Yes,” he said, before he knew that he’d spoken.
Abby took his hand and led him up the stairs to her bedroom. Hanging on the wall facing her bed was a portrait of a woman who could only be her mother, and it was extraordinary.
“She’s beautiful,” he said.
Abby swallowed loudly, blinked as if to rid her eyes of tears. “She’s happy. Say what you will about your father, but his gift was God-given, and if you’ve inherited it, you must celebrate it. Anything less would be tragic.”
For the first time in his life, Ryan felt pride in his talent. How did that happen? It was no longer a shameful thing, inherited from a man he despised, but a glorious, wondrous thing, filled with promise. And perhaps even healing.
A crazy, impulsive thought rushed to the center of his mind. He wanted to paint her as his father had painted her mother—there on the rocks, her naked body sprinkled with petals.
What was in that Wild-berry Fizzer? He chuckled aloud at himself, shook his head.
“What’s so funny?”
He took her hand, looked into her upturned face. “Nothing. Come on, there’s a place I want to show you.” Gently, he tugged her from the couch. “Get your coat.”
Chapter Twenty
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going or not?” Abby asked as Ryan parked his truck on the corner of Victoria Lane and Brigantine Way.
“We’re going to see Captain Josiah Watson’s house.”
“Who’s he?”
He rounded the truck and opened her door. Abby’s insides simmered warmly. Could it be possible that he is a gentleman? They got even warmer as he grasped her hand and helped her down from the truck. She was suddenly glad for the dusky light—it provided some disguise for her blushing cheeks.
“Josiah Watson was one of our more famous past residents,” he said knowledgeably.
Abby nodded, tried to look as intelligent as possible— which likely wasn’t very, because …he was still holding her hand! What on earth was going on here? Was it a slip of his mind? Did he not realize she had already completed a successful dismount from his monstrous Navigator?
Her head was swimming. And come to think of it, her lips still felt warm from that kiss. Something was very wrong. Or very, very right.
Focus, Abby, she commanded herself, forcing her brain to listen and absorb what he was saying.
“…shipbuilding was where he made his fortune, though. He built this house and lived here with his wife, Elizabeth Watson—reputedly the most beautiful woman on the eastern seaboard.”
“That’s a great story,” she said, hoping she was right— she’d hardly heard a word of it. “I can’t wait to see the house. Is it a museum?”
“No.”
“Do you know the present owner?”
Ryan seemed suddenly uncomfortable. “Y
ou could say that. I’m the present owner.”
“Really?” Now she was intrigued. “What have you done to it? Oh, please don’t tell me you’ve converted it into rental units—I hate when people lop up grand old houses.”
Ryan stopped, looked down at her. “I haven’t done anything with it. After I bought it, I found out that my father and your mother had once put down a deposit on the house. They’d wanted to live in it. Together. From what I could learn, your mother left the island shortly before the sale was final, and my father lost his deposit. I guess he didn’t care much about the house if he couldn’t share it with Celeste.
“After that, I couldn’t get my heart into doing anything with the property. It reminded me of things I’d rather forget. It’s just gathered dust for the last six years.”
Abby was stunned. She looked at the house in a new light. “Ryan, do you believe that things happen for a reason?”
“I never did…but I’m starting to change that assumption,” he said, giving her a wry smile.
“Maybe you bought that house for a reason that you don’t yet understand. Maybe it was always meant to be in your hands.”
He shrugged. “Could be.”
He squeezed her hand—the one he was still holding— and smiled. A complicated smile that was sad and accepting, yet peaceful and resolved.
Together, they turned onto Victoria Lane, the hub of Destiny Bay’s shopping and tourist district. It was lined with pricey boutiques, galleries, restaurants and teahouses, not to mention a gracious tourist information center and town hall.
Despite its central location, only on the rarest of occasions did vehicular traffic attempt to navigate Victoria Lane. Most local folk had come to accept the fact that driving down Victoria Lane was an exercise in frustration. It took visitors only one attempt to arrive at the same conclusion. Tourists and pedestrians walked freely down the cobblestone lane, and cars could travel only a matter of feet before being forced to give way to those who shopped leisurely or admired the local architecture.