Storm Surge

by Celia Ashley

  “I paid for the entirety of the summer in advance.”

  Good God, and stubborn, too. “Considering your safety is an issue, you could probably get your money back.”

  “I’ll think about it.” She glanced around for the waitress, who was fortunately nowhere in sight.

  “You’ll think about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll think about it.”

  “Yes.” She began to drum her fingers lightly on the table again.

  “How many cups of coffee have you had?”

  Folding her other hand around the offending one, she dragged them both into her lap. “Point taken. They kept bringing them to me at the station up there, and I kept drinking. By the way, my dad’s ship didn’t operate out of that harbor. The only report anyone had was a nameless sailboat going down in a sudden storm, nothing about captain or crew or recovery of any part of the ship.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Did you get a chance to check the archives?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m not sure I want to deal with any of that right now.”

  “Can’t blame you.” He nodded at the server, who deposited the check on the table. Paige reached for the paper, but he beat her to it.

  “Maybe you could come back with me,” Paige said, “for a couple of minutes only and check the cottage again before I lock myself in?”

  She wasn’t coming on to him. No, she was serious. But a return to the cottage could prove problematic. “I have plans.”

  “Oh.” She gathered her purse. “Okay. The guy would be stupid to come back, right?”

  “I would hope. But you can’t count on that. I can get one of the on-duty officers to accompany you. Or you could call your neighbor. Liam…Gray, is it?”

  “Yes. Liam Gray.”

  She sounded odd. He frowned. “Would that be a problem? You should talk to him about this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you should.” Dan slid to the end of the bench and stood. “He’s the closest neighbor. He should know.”

  “I thought you didn’t trust him.”

  “I was obviously wrong, unless he’s a master of disguise. And in the meantime, I’ve also requested an increased patrol of the area. You need anything, 911, got it?”

  Paige thanked him at the register while he was paying and headed for the door. “I want to get back before dark.”

  “Sure. And talk to Liam.”

  She didn’t answer. He watched her through the glass as she crossed the parking lot to her car. She looked around before she got in, including checking the back seat. Good. And she needed to talk to Liam Gray. That guy had some explaining to do.

  * * * *

  Paige turned off the ignition and leaned her head back against the headrest but didn’t remove her seatbelt. Something about the containment, snug across her hips, her chest, felt safe for the moment, comforting. The doors had automatically unlocked upon putting the car in park. She hit the button that secured them and heard four locks click into place with a satisfying thump.

  Next door, the setting sun glazed the upstairs windows in gold. Paige tried to recall the good times she’d had in that house. They had to have existed. She hadn’t been an unhappy child. Not always. But she should have stayed away.

  Who was that guy today? Some unstable individual she’d passed on the sidewalk in Alcina Cove who, in his lunacy, chose to fixate on her? If so, she reckoned he would be more dangerous in his unpredictability than if it had been someone she had once known but didn’t remember.

  Understanding she couldn’t stay locked in the car all night, Paige removed the keys from the ignition, steeling herself to get out. In one movement, she removed her seatbelt and threw open the door, scrambling out and upright beside the car, purse in hand, heart beating in her ears.

  Inhale. Exhale. Close door. Lock it. Move.

  Years ago, she’d seen a movie in the theater about dinosaurs in a park who had escaped to rampage, stalk, and try to eat the few people on an island. She’d only been seven or eight years old, but still mature enough to recognize the people were actors and the dinosaurs not real. But that night, coming home, walking up to the front door beside her parents, the bushes had rattled, from the wind, perhaps, or a small animal. The fear she’d experienced, no matter how irrational, had been genuine. She felt that way now, standing beside her car with the cottage door key in her hand. Exposed and vulnerable and filled with the certain knowledge something far beyond the realm of reality was about to gobble her whole.

  In short bursts, like a mismanaged puppet, Paige sped across the open expanse toward Liam’s front door. She faltered on the walkway. With the clarity of the immediate, she recalled the night of flight more than sixteen years ago in every detail, seeing herself and her mother stumbling with the weight of the suitcase between them toward the car. The urgency, the devastating confusion, mingled with her fear in the present. Overwhelmed, she sat down hard on the huge white rock beside the walkway—the one her father had placed there long ago as a centerpiece for Debra Waters’ planned garden that had never come to fruition—and wept.

  A hand dropped gently on her shoulder blade. Paige rocketed up and away.

  “Paige? What is it?”

  Paige spun to face Liam on the other side of the rock. “Nothing. I’m sick and tired of crying.”

  “Paige.”

  “What?”

  “Your… your friend, Dan Stauffer. He called me.”

  “Why would he do that?” Paige demanded, beginning to pace on the walkway. “And he’s not my friend. Not really. I suppose he is. I don’t know what he is! Does he think I can’t handle this on my own?”

  “You shouldn’t have to. And you did call him. You must have decided you needed something from somebody.”

  She stopped, fists clenched, staring at him in challenge. “I would have called you if I’d had your number.”

  “I’m not the police.”

  “I don’t care. You’re the one I would have called.”

  “Paige.”

  Paige Waters, you always charge in before thinking.

  I know, Mom. I know.

  “Do you have someone in your life, Liam?”

  As she spoke, her nipples hardened within her thin bra. All he needed to do was look and he would see. But he held his gaze steady on hers.

  “I don’t. Not anymore.”

  Paige marched across the walkway and onto the white boulder glistening in the dying day. This is how she would reach his mouth. Just like this.

  Chapter 9

  Liam opened in shocked but eager willingness to the heat and hunger of her questing tongue. She had unexpected strength in her arms, pulling him solidly against her body. He lost his breath and clear thought as blood plunged into his groin. Inside his boxers, his penis sprang up hard against the rough denim of his jeans.

  He slid his hands beneath her blouse, wanting skin, naked and warm and responsive, against his palms. Yanking down a soft bra cup, he grasped her stiffened nipple between his fingers. She moaned. He maneuvered his other hand past her waistband, cupping her buttocks, pressing her against his straining cock. A shock ran though him, like a static charge. He wanted in. Now. He shoved her pants down farther, the waistband expanding to accommodate his search, and slid his hand into her underwear, fingering the soft, slick places, feeling her shudder.

  Conscience and self-preservation took his libido in a strangle hold. He released her, backing away. “Paige, I’m sorry.”

  “I—what?” Paige stepped down from the stone, shoving her hair off her face. Her ponytail had come loose in a mass of tangled curls. He reached for her hand.

  “Oh, God,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t—I need to go.”

  He grabbed her fingers before she got away. “No, Paige, you don’t need to go anywhere. I don’t want you to go anywhere.” Recognizing the truth in his last statem
ent nearly floored him. A couple of deep breaths were in order. “Come inside and sit for a minute. We’ll go get a few things from your place that you might want for the night. You can have the couch. Or we can finish what we’ve started.”

  She shook her head. “Not tonight.”

  “That’s fine. It’s up to you. But you’re not staying at the cottage. There’s no guarantee of safety there.”

  “And you’re sure there’s no one—that I haven’t just—that—”

  He smiled. “I’ve never seen you at such a loss for speech. Not since the night I met you, anyway. And I’m positive. There’s no one.” His heart contracted with a hollow, remembered pain when he spoke those words.

  Leaving Paige on the sofa, looking like an animal ready to chew her paw off to escape a trap, Liam climbed the stairs to the upper hallway to shut down his computer. He hesitated at the attic door. Twice last night, while he’d been working, he thought he’d heard a weighted step on the timbers. He hadn’t gone up, as he’d gotten used to these occurrences. Now, in light of what had happened to Paige, he figured the attic warranted an examination.

  Liam yelled down the stairs for Paige to help herself to whatever she might like from the fridge. He received a mumbled reply that at least assured him she hadn’t left. Reaching for the attic doorknob, he paused to eye the heavy doorstop in his office, gauging its use as a weapon. After a moment’s debate, he picked it up.

  Hefting the weight in his hand, he understood his fists, his strength, might not be enough because sometimes people had other plans, ways and means of doing bodily harm that had nothing to do with the limits of human endurance. And he feared that the man who had been in Paige’s cottage, who had followed her north and likely back again, was such a person.

  * * * *

  Paige returned to the couch with water in a tumbler. She sat, gazing at the lowering night through the bow window. Suddenly the lamp on the end table clicked on. She jumped, splashing liquid on her knee. Spotting a timer hooked up to the cord, she relaxed and sat back, taking a sip from the glass. Her actions, the room around her, were reflected in the curved expanse of the window. She turned the lamp off. Anyone could be out there, able to see in. She’d rather sit in the dark.

  Liam was taking a lot longer upstairs than she’d expected. Recalling those few heated minutes outside, the abandon with which she threw herself at him, her underwear’s condition right now, Paige vacillated between longing and a niggling anxiety. But she wouldn’t go back and undo it. Despite her babbling behavior immediately following, what had occurred was exactly what she’d needed. She only hoped Liam’s long absence wasn’t due to regret.

  Five minutes later, she heard him coming down the stairs with a quiet, hesitant tread. She bit her lip. In spite of his ability to hold himself utterly still, she’d noted his energetic locomotion from place to place. He liked to pound up the steps two at a time. Perhaps he’d noted the darkened living room and hoped she’d gone. Well, no reason to keep him in suspense now that he was nearing the bottom. She turned the light back on.

  The stairs were empty. Paige shot up from the couch.

  “Liam? Liam! Where are you?”

  He gave a shout from somewhere up above. A scant minute later, his footsteps sounded across the ceiling and down the stairs to the first landing. “Sorry,” he said, “I was having a quick look in the attic.” He came down and crossed the floor to pull the drapes.

  “I thought I heard you on the stairs. When I looked, no one was there.”

  Liam paused a moment in his adjustment of the curtains and then continued, his back to her. “You really never noticed anything like that when you lived here?”

  “Hearing footsteps and finding no one? Not that I remember. Are you going to try to tell me this house, the house I grew up in, is haunted?” She moved to stand between him and the curtained window. Even now, his nearness caused her blood to heat.

  “Yes, that’s what I’m telling you,” he said.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts, Liam. But tell me, why wouldn’t it have been haunted when I was a kid?”

  Liam twitched a shoulder. “Recent catalyst?”

  “Like what?” She considered a moment, eyes widening at the implication. “Not my father dying?”

  No matter what her father had done, who he’d hurt and who he’d abandoned, Paige had no wish to see his spirit, his soul, whatever energy survived after the body had failed, trapped in some kind of limbo. Because that’s what people said, didn’t they? Ghosts had unfinished business, couldn’t move on, whatever claptrap believers touted.

  “I didn’t say it was your father,” Liam murmured. “This house is nearly a hundred and twenty years old. It was built around the turn of the last century, but you knew that, I suppose.”

  Paige barely heard him. Her thoughts had returned to the morning, when she’d looked up at the window and witnessed a shadow converge with and pass over Liam’s, moving faster than he had been. “Liam, don’t misunderstand me when I ask this. It’s not the same question I asked earlier. Was there someone with you when the sun was coming up?”

  “No.” Quickly. Maybe too quickly.

  Paige narrowed her eyes at him. His expression remained bland as he faced her with the curtain still in his fist, giving the material one final tug. His blue eyes looked black in the lamplight.

  “I need to know,” Paige said. “Please tell me.”

  Dropping the curtain, he came to her and took her hand, pulling her down beside him on the cushions. He shook his head. “No. No one was with me. Why?”

  Turning her fingers in his warm grasp, she realized how cold her own had grown. “I was outside and I looked up. I saw you in the window. I saw someone, or something, with you. I saw what I thought was their shadow moving past.”

  He remained silent for a small time, finally rubbing his free hand across his eyes. Releasing her, he stood. “Thank you for telling me. Are you hungry? I know it’s late, but I’ll make us something to eat.”

  Paige rose beside him. “That’s all you have to say?”

  “That’s it.”

  “You’re not surprised.”

  “Surprised? No. But confirmation troubles me in ways I can’t even begin to explain.”

  She frowned. “I haven’t confirmed anything.”

  He turned a condescending expression on her. Unreasoning anger shot through her veins like boiling water. She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it before a word escaped. Loosening her curled fingers, she flattened her palm against her thigh. She knew this scenario. She’d played it out many times before. Sex, pick a fight, move on. Most men were happy to have it that way. But she and Liam hadn’t had sex yet. And she held a deep suspicion Liam Gray wasn’t most men. “Can I help with dinner?” she asked. Reasonably, she hoped. “What are you planning on making?”

  Scratching his head, he gazed at the ceiling in thought. “I have leftover beets. Three or four eggs. Enough ham and bread for a single sandwich. Think we can make something out of that?”

  Paige snorted. “If we skip the beets? Definitely.”

  * * * *

  Though attentive and shockingly kind, Liam kept himself at a distance. She couldn’t blame him. He’d invited her into his house for her protection. If he slept with her, the night and however many days that followed could get complicated pretty quickly. She wasn’t even sure he wanted to. Not emotionally, anyway. The erection he’d pressed against her was pretty solid evidence his body had a different idea.

  Liam went alone to collect her things from the cottage and returned with a puzzled expression on his face. “What was the point of placing the bed over the trapdoor?”

  “I don’t like mice,” she said, and left it at that. It didn’t matter he’d found nothing beneath the floorboards. Blocking off the dark province under the cottage had eased her mind, however foolish. Microscopic, icy feet tiptoed up the ridges of her spine in memory. Suppressing a shiver, Paige grabbed her
toothbrush and comb from her suitcase, along with something suitable to wear while sleeping, and put a foot to the bottom stair tread.

  “Bathroom’s upstairs, first door on the—”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Forgot.” He smiled apologetically. The scar almost disappeared in the deep creases created by his grin. One day, if she didn’t blow it, they might reach a point—as friends, if nothing else—when he would feel comfortable telling her about the injury. Of course, that one day would have to come soon, or she’d be gone. She’d given herself until the Saturday prior to Labor Day before heading back home. The way the last two days had panned out, she might not make it that long. If somebody didn’t find the creep who’d broken into the cottage, her departure could be much sooner.

  Upstairs, Paige made her way slowly toward the home’s only bathroom. On her way, she glanced toward the room that had been her parents’ and, finding the door open, paused in the hallway to look in. She experienced no guilt over her study since it had nothing to do with curiosity about Liam and his lifestyle, whatever that might be. Nope. For the briefest of moments, she thought she might be able to feel her parents there, perhaps recall tenderness, a display of affection, some small proof of the love they must, at one time, have shared.

  She’d sensed nothing downstairs while sitting on Liam’s sofa. She felt nothing of them here, either, gaze lingering on Liam’s large and tumbled bed, his dark, masculine furniture, a handsome, brightly-colored area rug upon which a book lay open to a page marked by what appeared to be discarded junk mail. She backed away and crossed the hall.

  She paused in the middle of the cracked tile floor of the bathroom. Liam had only made a rudimentary attempt at renovations in this room. It looked almost exactly as she remembered. Paige sank down onto the closed toilet, shutting her eyes to block out the burden of recollection prompted by wallpaper bits still stuck to the plaster walls, the fixtures with their yellow light beside the outdated mirror, the familiar curve of the sink. Images circled in her mind like flotsam in a whirlpool.