Storm Surge

by Celia Ashley

  * * * *

  Liam grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and pressed the cold bottle to the blister on his thumb. On the counter, the grilled burger sat on a plate beside cooked beets. Behind him, a floorboard creaked. He lifted the bottle. “Want one?”

  He received no answer. Of course he didn’t. What the hell was he thinking?

  Snatching up the plate, he turned and headed outside. On the porch, he shoved a box out of his way and lowered himself onto a badly painted Adirondack chair. Knees bent, he planted his bare feet on a wooden baluster on the railing. A chill swirl of air danced across his forearm, raising a rill of hair. He ignored it. Cold air dancing on an otherwise hot evening meant nothing. Not every odd occurrence was something to sweat about. Some were just nature.

  Liam bit off and chewed a meaty mouthful, then chased it down his throat with a deep swig of beer. He’d worked up quite the thirst working in the sun. Pretty soon, though, he’d have to lay off and let some of the repairs go for a while. He had other deadlines to meet. The kind that paid the bills.

  Movement caught his eye out on the purple-shadowed beach. He leaned to the side for a better look through the porch railing. He took another bite off the burger, chewing slowly. “Paige Waters,” he said around the mouthful. “What are you up to?”

  He watched her pace, a few steps one way and then back. She wore jeans rolled up to mid-calf and the water, foaming in evening shadow, purled around her ankles at the tide line. Pulled into a high ponytail, her curly brown hair bobbed and bounced with her head’s movement. She appeared to be talking animatedly. To herself.

  Liam continued to observe her as he finished his meal, his thoughts growing less clinical with every passing minute. Each time they interacted, his necessary detachment became harder to maintain—especially at this moment, with the double whammy of both curiosity and attraction. He set aside his plate and headed out onto the beach, beer in hand. He thought about stopping first to get her one, but decided against it. He didn’t want to appear too friendly. Besides, in her present mood, she’d probably kick sand at him.

  He managed to get within two yards without her noticing. He stopped, crossing his arms. Over the growling waves, her voice carried to him, rising and falling in indistinct agitation.

  “Wouldn’t it be more helpful to bounce all that energy off someone else?”

  She jerked about and lost her balance, the canvas shoes in her right hand sailing from her grip. Liam lurched toward her, snagging her by the arm before she tumbled into the waves. She fell against his chest. The bottle flew to the sand.

  After he set her back on her feet, Paige bent and picked up the bottle, brushing off the sand. She held the container in the air. A glint of evening sun shone on the contents through the clear glass.

  “You were going to offer me used beer?”

  “Used beer?”

  “That bottle didn’t spill, and it’s only half full. You’ve been drinking it.”

  “I have been. But I wasn’t offering it to you.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him—eyes, he noticed, the color of honey—then pushed past him, starting up the sand toward the house. She glanced back. “I’ll take one, thanks.” And off she went at a staggered trot, heading for the stairs leading to the porch.

  Liam hurried past her and leapt up the steps two at a time. At the top, he planted his feet apart to the width of the tread, blocking her way. “What’s wrong, Ms. Waters?”

  “Don’t flirt with me,” she said.

  “Don’t flirt?” Good God, was he? She needed watching and he, of course, was the best candidate for the task. Flirting was both stupid and dangerous. “I’m wondering what’s wrong, that’s all. People don’t stand by the ocean in boisterous conversation with themselves if everything is fine. You haven’t been drinking already?”

  Rolling her eyes, she pushed his leg out of her way and threw herself down into his abandoned chair. “I wish,” she stated in an emphatic manner.

  With a mental shrug, Liam snatched up his empty plate from the porch floor and went inside to grab two more beers. He set the sandy, half-full bottle in the sink. He wasn’t a fanatic who bemoaned a waste of “good beer.” He only drank a few times a month, when he felt a change in the cycle of his life or had worked up a really rip-roaring thirst. Tonight, it was both. He could blame Paige Waters for that.

  Pausing before exiting the kitchen, he tipped his head back to listen. “Are you still here?” he queried softly.

  Nothing. Just as well. He didn’t need to be making those kinds of explanations to Paige. Back outside, he handed Paige one bottle and took the other over to the railing. He hopped up, balancing himself on top, one foot hooked around a baluster and the other leg stretched out along the length of the rail, his spine pressed against the upright post. A month and a half ago, this stunt would have left him on the ground. Little by little he was making the necessary repairs.

  “Would you like the chair?”

  He shook his head. Paige tipped the bottle and her head back with a fluid motion and swallowed a third of the contents in a few gulps. Then she set the bottle on the chair arm, her face twisting in indecision.

  “I don’t think I like beer,” she said.

  Laughing so hard he nearly upended himself over the railing, Liam managed to gasp out a question. “Then why did you demand one?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She didn’t know? He doubted that. “I can get you something else. Water or a glass of apple juice?”

  “I’ll just sip this. It’ll make me drunk, right?”

  “It might. You’re a small person.”

  She nodded, taking a mouthful gingerly.

  “But why do you want it to?”

  “Something somebody told me.”

  Liam slid down from the railing. He kicked the upended crate closer to the chair and sat on it. She kept her gaze on the bottle in her hand as she picked at the label with the edge of her thumbnail. Condensation dripped down her wrist. “Why did you come back to Alcina Cove?”

  Pick. Pick. “I told you.”

  “To find out what happened to your dad. But if that was all you wanted, wouldn’t you have gone straight to the police? They’d be the best source of answers for you. There must be something else. Do you have no family here?”

  She shook her head. Tendrils of hair flicked around her brow and into her eyes. She blinked them out. “Not anymore.”

  He waited in silence.

  “I was told today that we never really know our parents and they never know us. I get that. I understand.” Swig, swallow, face. Pick. Pick. Pick.

  “And?”

  “I guess I need to know them. I need to know what made them tick, why they got together, how things went so horribly awry. Of course, it’s too late. Even if I get answers, they’re hearsay, really. Someone else’s opinion of why they acted as they did.”

  The burger and beets he’d eaten began a revolution in his gut. He wriggled the crate closer, tipping his head to look into her downturned face. “Why do you need to know?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “It’s just a question. It’s rather late in the game to be seeking those kinds of answers, and I was wondering why you were putting yourself through it.”

  She began to pull at the label in earnest. Liam took the bottle away. She bowed her head again and stared at her hand, at the thumbnail she had chipped with her actions. After a moment, she put it in her mouth and bit off the sharp edge. He gave her back the beer, sensing she’d drawn into herself, as if to become as small a target as possible. He wondered why. In the past day and a half he’d found her to be feisty and fearless. She had faced him, a rather large stranger, in the darkness without backing down, and he had to admit he admired her for it, although he’d been trying not to.

  She lifted her head. “Because I…I feel I’m tainted by the past. I can’t get beyond it. It has affected so many of my decisi
ons.” Tears glistened on her lashes in the growing twilight. Soon it would be dark. Her distress disturbed him. He resolved not to get up from that box until she was back in fighting mode.

  “Paige.”

  She waved her fingers, took another gulp of beer, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m fine. Really. Oh, and you’ll get a kick out of this. You probably know her or heard of her. I went to see someone whose name Mom had marked in her address book. Alva Mabry?”

  He sat up. “The—”

  “Psychic? Yeah. That would be the one.” Leaning her head against the chair back, Paige stared up at the shadowed ceiling. “You know what she told me? That there’s a darkness around me. She implied that I’m haunted.”

  Liam’s muscles lost heat and elasticity as he went still as stone. The susurration of the ocean sounded far away, and the click of a firefly against the rhododendron growing beside the house beat like a stick against concrete. “She said that?”

  “Yep. What do you think?”

  “I couldn’t say. Depends on what you believe.”

  “What I believe was she made a lucky guess. People like her, they learn to read other people. Of course I’m haunted. It probably showed in my face, my body language, as soon as I walked in the door. Aren’t people always haunted by the deaths of others— Are you okay?”

  Blowing out a breath, he rose. “I’m fine. I know you don’t want another, but I’m going to grab a cold one. This one’s a little warm.”

  In the kitchen, Liam leaned his hips against the counter, his back to the window facing out to the porch. A mouthful at a time, he drank half the contents of the bottle in his hand, his gaze glued to the far wall. Then he turned and dumped the remainder into the sink. He didn’t bother to turn on the light. He didn’t want Paige seeing him through the glass because surely his face would reveal more than he could allow.

  Liam listened closely to the sounds of the house around him, for the creaks and snaps of normal settling and the movement beyond the mere cooling of timbers.

  There’s a darkness around me… I am haunted.

  As much as he had no faith in Alva’s brand of quackery, this time the old woman might be right.

  Chapter 5

  Paige gripped the beer she’d been babying. She wasn’t going to finish it. She knew that. Yet she derived some comfort from the feel of the bottle, solid and heavy in her hand.

  Liam had taken a long time getting himself another beer. Paige glanced at the darkened window over her shoulder before returning her gaze to the ocean. In the setting sun, the waves battering the rocky shoreline had gone blue-black, each rolling crest tipped in a wash of gold and red. Gulls soared on the sea breeze in the darkening sky with wings outspread. And there, way out on the water, another freighter winked its tiny lights. The scene tugged at her insides, pulling at old memories, causing conflicting and harrowing emotions to rise to the surface. Teeth in her lip, Paige blinked back tears.

  “Enough.” She struggled up from the deep, angled seat. When she stood, she caught sight of the man she had seen the night before down by the water’s edge, his bobbing lantern bright against the dark sea beyond. She rushed to the porch railing, leaning forward to study the man’s locomotion, spotting something not quite right in the way he moved. The screen door rasped open behind her.

  “Do you know that man?” she asked Liam. He didn’t answer. She turned.

  No one was there.

  “Liam?”

  Paige twisted back toward the ocean and hastened out onto the weathered steps. The man had vanished, lantern and all. Perhaps he had already clambered over the jetty of rock, but he had been moving with profound sluggishness, as if age or infirmity weighed him down.

  The screen door opened and closed again. Liam appeared at her side on the step. “Were you calling me?”

  She frowned at him. “Did you forget something?”

  “I thought you didn’t want another beer?”

  “No, no, I don’t. Thank you. I mean, you started to come out a second ago. I heard the door. But you weren’t there when I turned around.”

  Liam’s left eyebrow shot up. “That happens sometimes.”

  “Absentmindedness?”

  “No, the door opening and closing with no one there.”

  She frowned at him before breaking into laughter. “Ooh, creepy. Got it. But you forget, I used to live here. The door doesn’t open and shut on its own.”

  “Maybe it didn’t, but it does now.”

  “Tighten the screws on the hinges or something. I was calling you because there was a man on the beach. I wanted to know if you knew him. He’s gone now.”

  Liam gave the beach the onceover. “No one there.”

  “He vanished.”

  “Like smoke?”

  “No,” Paige said in sharp impatience, “not like smoke. I didn’t see what happened to him. One second he was there, and the next he wasn’t. And believe me, he was moving none too quickly. But he wasn’t a ghost. Oh!” She skipped down two steps. “Do you think he might have slipped into the water?”

  Unconcerned, Liam went back up onto the porch. “There’s nothing splashing about down there. Probably a mirage.”

  Paige followed. “A mirage? Like you see in the desert?”

  “It happens. If the conditions are right, objects miles out to sea will appear as if they’re right in front of you. That man might have been walking on the deck of a ship that’s no more than a speck on the water.” He resumed his seat on the crate. Paige noticed his hands were empty. He folded them together between his knees. Instead of taking the chair, Paige remained standing.

  “That would mean the conditions were right two days in a row. I saw him last night, too.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I don’t know. It was hard to see. Curly hair and beard. He wore a hat and coat, now that you mention it. Odd time of year for that.”

  “Hmm. Perhaps a ghost, then?” His eyes cut in her direction as if to gauge her reaction.

  Paige didn’t hold back. She snorted. “A ghost? Come on. This isn’t some television show.”

  “No,” he agreed, “it isn’t. It’s a very real town with three hundred years of history behind it. Before I moved here, I’d heard the town referred to as Haunted Alcina Cove.”

  “Haunted?” Paige tried not to laugh again and was not entirely successful. “Although its residents might not always be the friendliest, and some might be downright peculiar, it’s a quaint, picturesque location. Certainly not the stuff of nightmares.”

  “Neither are ghosts. Not usually, anyway.”

  “You sound like you believe—”

  “I don’t know what I believe.” He stood. “But this is what I do. I write travelogues, and I gather and research local stories about ghosts and other mysterious happenings and compile them into books. Sometimes I combine the two, writing travelogues featuring ghost stories of the area along with the scenic spots. I can’t explain everything I’ve found out or everything people believe they’ve seen.”

  He paused in his pacing in front of her. The heat off his body was palpable in the evening’s dropping temperature. She lifted her head to look him in the eye. “Okay. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “You didn’t upset me. The subject just makes me a little nuts at times.” He laughed. “What about you? What do you do when you’re not here?”

  Paige sidled away from him. His proximity made her twitchy. She reclaimed the Adirondack chair since he obviously wasn’t using it. He returned to his earlier roost on the railing.

  “I teach eighth grade English,” she said.

  “A bunch of hormonal thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys? They must adore you.”

  “What?”

  “You have to be aware you’re a good-looking woman, Paige.”

  Paige waved a hand, heat flaring in her cheeks. “I don’t have to be aware of any such thing. And we’ve gotten o
ff topic. I want to go back to you. How long have you been making a living at writing?”

  Liam folded his arms across his chest. Evening’s last light flashed off the water behind him. “Making a living? Not long. And not hand-over-fist, either. But I like it. I’ve been writing most of my life. But a sedentary occupation was never the destiny of a Gray. Nope. I was out on the sea at sixteen and owned and operated my own trawler by nineteen. Fished the ocean for more than fourteen years.”

  Performing some quick math even after only half a beer proved difficult, but Paige figured she had an approximate idea of his age. Curiosity satisfied, Paige smiled. “So you gave that up? Commercial fishing?”

  “About eight months ago,” he said with a small affirmative motion of his head. “Sold the boat and equipment shortly after I bought this place.”

  “To pursue your writing? Bold move.”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  Paige leaned forward, elbows on her knees in an awkward position on the sloped seat. “Not satisfied writing about ghosts?”

  “That’s not what I meant. But I don’t plan to talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

  He held her gaze as though daring her to question him. She shook her head. Another thing he didn’t want to talk about, like his scar. And he didn’t have to. Who was she to him, after all? A stranger who’d shown up practically on his doorstep in the wee hours, claiming an association to the house he owned. No reason for confidences exchanged. No cause for anything beyond a neighborly chat. “It’s your business, not mine, Liam. We both have our secrets, I guess.”

  “Yes,” he said quietly, “I think we do.”

  * * * *

  Soon after the exchange, Paige thanked Liam for the beer she hadn’t finished and left. Instead of returning to the cottage, she went to her car and removed a small flashlight from the glove compartment. Slipping it into her pocket, she headed down to the waterline. Despite her dismissal of Liam’s ghost story, she found herself motivated to prove a flesh and blood man had been walking on the beach and not some specter of seafaring lore. Though she appreciated Liam’s pursuit of a writing career, she wondered if he couldn’t have chosen a more worthy topic than tales of phantoms and things that went bump in the night.