by Celia Ashley
With the gun in her side, Maris had no choice but to comply and allowed him to pull her outside to the tall dark stone structure of the lighthouse. He yanked her toward the parapet where she and Dan had eaten their chocolate feast.
“How sweet,” he murmured.
“Shut up.”
“You haven’t even asked me my name.”
“Maybe I don’t care.”
Gunmetal ground into her flesh down to bone. She winced and bit back a yelp of pain.
“It’s Robert,” he said. “Your dad, his brothers, none of them ever mentioned cousin Bobby to you?”
Maris shook her head. “I’m sorry that they didn’t. I’m sorry for the life you had. I—”
“Here we are. Now isn’t this perfect?” He spun her around and pushed her forward. Her knees cracked against the stone wall.
“How could you kill your mother?” Maris demanded, clutching the stone for support.
“With poison.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard. “I was with her for a few days. I could tell she wasn’t exactly happy to see me, but she didn’t kick me out. I made sure she had contact with the same medication I found out she was taking for her heart, increasing it each day in the hope she would just keel over and I could watch when she did, not helping her at all, like she never helped me. She hung on too long, though. I got impatient and put a needle full of air into her neck.”
Oh, God. Maris felt the depth of his anger, his years of resentment and pain, his bewilderment and longing. Her stomach twisted. Sorrow filled her. For Alva. For this damaged man who was her son.
He pushed her again. “Climb the fu—”
At the pause in his command, Maris glanced behind and found him staring toward the ocean. She followed his gaze. A golden line burned the length of the horizon, the sky above glowing in gradients of bottle-green to a blue as deep as midnight. Below, the sea reflected the colors beneath an overlay of shimmering silver.
“For thirty years, I’ve missed this. Even in the time I’ve been back, I haven’t gone out at sunrise. I’ve been afraid the sight of it would break my heart.”
The wistfulness of his voice, the pain of the child he once had been, broke her own heart. Moisture rolled down her cheeks, chilling flesh in the cool morning air.
“Don’t weep for me, Maris Granger. I’m a very bad man.”
“Robert, please…”
“I can shoot you in places that will prolong your agony and make you beg to go. Do yourself a favor and jump. Now. The water’s cold. It won’t take long.”
Maris bit her lip, tears flowing freely, dripping off her chin. She wanted to save him, from himself, from his long-endured pain.
“You can’t save me, Maris. No one can. I understood that long ago.”
Maris covered her face with her hands. He jolted her again with the gun. She climbed the stones to the top of the wall. From that height, the fall would be short and swift.
“Drop the gun!”
Struggling for balance, Maris looked back to the sound of Dan’s voice. “Dan!” He wasn’t alone. Jamie was with him. Beside her, Robert raised his gun higher. Not at her, but at the approaching men.
“Don’t do it,” Maris implored.
Robert glanced at her, the eyes of the last Mabry awash with agony. He stepped up next to her, his gun still level on Dan and Jamie. “What, death by cop? Keeps me from going back to prison. I’d never come out again. At least I got to see an Alcina Cove sunrise one more time. With family. Pretty fucking strange, huh?”
“Robert, please.”
“No.” He shoved her. She stumbled back and went over.
Chapter 26
“Son of a fucking bitch!” God the water was like ice, stabbing with needle teeth into Dan’s flesh. Ice fish, he couldn’t get the image of sharp-toothed ice fish out of his head. Far above, something was taking place. He had no idea what and didn’t care. He’d shot Robert Mabry in the right arm, causing the gun to spin out of the man’s hand. Dan had been aiming for his freaking head, though. A shot on the fly. He couldn’t have hoped for perfection. He was surprised he hadn’t missed altogether. Afterward, he’d leapt over the stone wall and followed Maris down into the sea.
They were both probably going to die with the water this cold and waves crashing the surf repeatedly against the rocks. They damned well better die together because he wasn’t going to let her die alone.
Had he ever loved anyone this much in his life? He supposed he had, but if he did, they’d been forgotten in the intensity of the moment when he watched Maris tumble off that stone wall forty feet above the waterline.
Bobbing above the waves, he screamed out her name. Fat lot of good that was going to do. Nothing could be heard above the pounding surf. “Maris! Don’t you leave me! Damn it all, don’t you leave—”
He sucked in a mouthful of salt water and spewed it back out again, floundering to keep his head up, to fight the outgoing current and the incoming breakers. There. There it was again. A glowing ball of silver-white light shooting up and down above the surf.
You find her. That’s why I sent her to you. You find my little Maris and save her before I leave.
Dan headed off with strong, sure strokes in the direction of the light.
Chapter 27
Maris smiled up at Jamie. It couldn’t have been easy for him to come to her like this, away from the others.
“You’re truly cleared now, Maris. The gas station owner said their machine has been printing a day behind for the past six months. They don’t seem able to fix the issue. And he remembered you, too, as soon as he saw your photo.”
“Thanks, Jamie.”
He started to walk away, but turned back. “As for Robert Mabry, if he doesn’t plead and goes to trial, the outcome will be the same. He’ll never get out of jail again. He’ll die there.”
Maris nodded. “I’ll visit him when I can. And I’ll write.”
Jamie’s eyes went wide. “You’ll do what?”
“He never meant to be what he’d become. I’m all the family he has.”
The detective stepped forward in awkward haste and threw his arms around her, crushing her against his chest. “You’re a strange woman, Maris Granger,” he whispered against her ear. “And a wonderful one. No wonder Dan was willing to throw everything away for you.”
“I never would have let him.”
“I don’t think you could have stopped him.”
A step sounded on the garden pathway. “Hey! Get your hands off my woman.”
Jamie hopped back. Maris spun to look at Dan approaching. “You call me your woman like that again,” she said with a smile, “and I’ll…I’ll…I’ll sic Jamie on you.”
Jamie arched a brow and snorted. “I’ll see you two inside.” He strode toward the Timeless Inn’s dining room. Dan took her hand and turned it over so the diamond on her finger caught the last of the evening sun. Tonight was a celebration of their engagement. And of life, really, and the abatement of the darkness that had once clung to him. A darkness not of death, of doom, but of emotions he’d kept contained for way too long. He exuded a green light now, of healing and contentment. No one knew the latter part of the celebration except the two of them.
“I have something to show you. I’ve been saving it for a special moment. I think this is special enough.”
She slipped her hand into his and allowed him to lead her back the way he’d come on the path. He brought her to the maple tree, the leaves burgundy and green with autumn’s onset. “Stand here,” he said, setting her in place on the walkway. He then walked over to the tree and stood in front of it, striking a pose that caused her to frown and laugh at the same time. “I’m sorry, what is it that you’re doing?”
“Remember this, where I’m standing and what I’m doing.”
“Okay.”
He strode back to her side. “And now look at thi
s.” He held up a photograph. She gasped.
“That’s us. You and me.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“How old were you? Six? And I was what, about two?”
“Uh-huh, and apparently we were standing there, the best of friends, right here in your backyard. I don’t think someone with my eyes was ever your imaginary friend, Maris. I think it’s always been me, and you’ve always been mine.”
He kissed her. She slipped her arms behind his back and pulled him close. The word in his heart echoed through hers, over and over.
Always. Always.
About the Author
Celia Ashley lives in rural Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, an area rich in history and beauty and from which she has drawn inspiration for many of her tales. She is the mother of three grown sons, as well as the companion of five cats. When not writing, she is a garden enthusiast and spends time painting in a variety of mediums. Published in historical romance under the pen names Alyssa Deane and Robin Maderich, she has most recently taken to writing spicy contemporary paranormal romance as Celia Ashley, for which she has received enthusiastic reviews. Please visit the author at www.celiaashley.com, find her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter.
Be sure to read the first book in the series, Dark Tides, followed by Storm Surge. Each gripping tale is set in the fictional coastal town of Alcina Cove and is a standalone novel.
Dark Tides
The depths of the ocean hide more secrets than one…
When a man without a memory washes up outside her lonely seaside cottage, Meg can’t explain the connection she feels to him. She should be afraid, suspicious, even angry that he would disturb her hard-won peace. But something about Caleb Hunter calls to her. On instinct, Meg asks this stranger into her home, her life—into the place left vacant by her dead husband, who drowned at sea a year to the day before Caleb appeared.
But something isn’t right. Half-buried memories begin to haunt Meg’s dreams, Caleb seems to know things he can’t possibly know, and there are signs that someone else is watching them, someone with a heart as cold as the sea…
Chapter 1
Swiping a handful of sodden hair from his eyes, Caleb Hunter scrambled upright, stepping away from the water purling around his bare feet. An expanse of sand stretched as far as he could see into a soaking fog, although beyond the crest of dune in front of him, a slate-roofed, decrepit white Victorian rose out of the shimmering haze. The house didn’t look at all familiar. Neither did the beach. Nothing did, no matter what direction he turned.
With a deep, painful breath, Caleb considered what he did know. His name, for one. Good. He thought he might be thirty-five or thirty-six years old. Somehow, he knew he stood six-foot-one, he had brown eyes, and his nearly black hair badly needed trimming. At this point, it needed a great deal more than that, plastered with salt and sand and a bit of debris hanging in front of his eyes. Yanking a piece of seaweed from above his brow, he tossed the vegetation down, tracking its descent past the length of his naked body. He pivoted in a slow, searching circle. Not a stitch of clothing lay in the sand.
After a moment, he lifted his hands, turning them palm up and finding them well-formed, calloused across the pad of flesh below his fingers. The skin of his fingertips had wrinkled from long immersion, and fine sand had embedded in the bend of each joint. Salt and sand encrusted the hair on his chafed arms. A black, ugly bruise throbbed on his right forearm. When he flexed his hand, the injury burned deep into the muscle. More sand coated his torso and his groin, clumped in the hair on his legs, and grated in places more private. He planted his feet apart and bent to brush the sand away, discovering this only made the situation worse.
Dismayed by his lack of recollection, as well as his lack of garments, Caleb closed his eyes and pushed both hands through his hair. Clasping his fingers behind his neck, he frowned when he located a hard knot of tender flesh at the base of his skull. Something had struck him there. He remembered that.
No, not something. Someone. Someone had tried to kill him.
Shit.
That fragment of recall brought no further revelation, but his skin crawled in reaction to a danger he couldn’t fathom, and he checked again to make certain no one else occupied the stretch of beach. Shredding fog revealed a woman approaching him from a short distance. Walking with her head down, she bent every now and then to collect small items from the water’s edge. Not knowing what else to do, Caleb sat in the sand once more, pulling his knees up close to his chin and wrapping his arms around his legs. After ascertaining he’d tucked everything neatly out of view, he waited.
She stopped little more than a dozen feet from him, bending to pluck at a polished stone to deposit with the array of minuscule treasures on her palm. The wind fluttered the length of a dark blue shawl from her shoulders, dragging the fringed edge in the sand. Tan trousers, rolled to the knee, exposed the curve of her calf and slender feet washed by the surge of the tide as she crouched. Caleb lifted his gaze again to her face. Even at that distance, he could see her eyes were quite green and staring straight into his.
Clutching her treasure trove against her breast, the woman straightened. Her lips moved in speech, words drowned by the low growl of the tide. Caleb cleared his parched throat, uncertain what to say as the woman continued to stare at him with an unreadable expression. After a moment, she dropped the items from her fingers into a heap on the sand and backed away, placing one bare foot behind the other, gaze never leaving his face until she turned on her heel and started an awkward run across the shifting sand. The blue shawl flew from her shoulders.
Leaping to his feet, Caleb darted forward and snatched up the garment, draping the soft wool around his waist. He tugged the folds to cover as much of his hip area as he could. Scooping the woman’s discarded treasure into his hand, he went after her, following her toward the white house. Already a good distance ahead of him, she leaped up the long flight of wooden steps from the beach two at a time, crossing a seaside garden to a porch, where she yanked open the door and disappeared inside. Caleb paused in uncertainty. He hadn’t meant to alarm her, and she appeared frightened, not merely startled. Nevertheless, if he didn’t speak to her, he had no hope of receiving any answers to his many questions.
Girding his determination, as well as his grip on her shawl, he set his own bare feet to the first step and climbed to a brick pathway that led through the garden. At the porch, he paused again, studying the length of the covered area, the blank face of each window for any sign she peered out at him. He found only the milky reflection on glass of the fogged-in sea.
He walked across the porch and halted in front of the door. “Hello?” he called, listening hard.
She responded in a muffled demand through the solid wood. “Who are you?”
“I’m sorry if I startled you.”
Silence.
“My name is Caleb Hunter,” he said with a crazy expectation she would throw open the door and announce him welcome, perhaps apologize for not recognizing him in his present state. Instead, he heard nothing. The door remained closed.
“I need help.” He waited. “I thought I would return your shawl to you, but…but I have a specific need of it at the moment.”
“Keep it,” he heard her say. The fact she had spoken again gave him a glimmer of hope.
“I don’t know where I am,” he persisted. “I don’t know who I am,” he added, frowning down at the worn boards of the porch floor. Aloud, the statement sounded ludicrous. The brief flare of fear surging through him at his own words held no humor at all.
“What do you mean, you don’t know who you are?”
The door creaked open. A security chain stretched taut in the space between frame and door. Her leaf-green eyes regarded him intently from behind a fringe of honey-colored bangs.
“I don’t remember much of anything specific,” he said. “I believe I was hit on the head and…and maybe I washed up onto the beach from the
ocean. I’m not sure. My name is about all I do remember with any certainty. Is the name Caleb Hunter familiar to you?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
The door shut again. Scoured by the salt winds, the light blue paint had peeled away in places to show the bare, weathered wood beneath. A moment later, the door opened again, enough for her to toss something out at him. He bent and picked up a crumpled pair of pants. Light blue fabric, heavy and faded with wear. Jeans, they were called. He remembered that. They looked like they would fit him.
Turning his back, Caleb dropped the shells, stones, and bits of sea glass onto the lacquered surface of a nearby wicker chair. He set the shawl beside them and hastened into the jeans, grimacing as sand abraded his flesh. If the woman still stood in the doorway watching him struggle with the pants, she gave no indication. He glanced over his shoulder. Through the narrow opening, he saw nothing.
“What was that in your hand?”
At her question, he slowly pivoted to face the door, feeling more naked now than he had in her shawl. Talking to her half-dressed, wearing nothing but a pair of borrowed blue jeans, he contemplated picking up the shawl and draping it across his shoulders. Instead, he seized it from the floor where it had fallen and placed it beside her rescued treasure. The door opened a little more and her face appeared.
“Your things,” he said by way of explanation. “I never meant to frighten you, to make you drop what you’d been gathering.”
She frowned at the shells and oddments he had placed on the chair before turning her gaze to meet his. Slow to speak, she studied him a moment. “Thank you.”
The door closed again.
Caleb moved to another chair and sat down. He leaned forward, elbows on thighs, hands folded together between his knees. The shifting of his body renewed pain in every muscle and tendon. Reaching up, he fingered the back of his head to trace again the contours of the vicious lump. He remembered a flurry of fists, grunting blows, and male voices raised in harsh invective, but he didn’t recall the words. Was one of those voices his? Could have been. Yes, it could have been his voice. He remembered…nothing. Nothing else.