by Lilian Darcy
On Loucan it looked like a classic, creases and holes included, and she couldn’t help telling him so.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
He drawled the words like an American cowboy as he tipped it into his hand, then slapped it low onto his head once more, climbed through the post-and-rail fence and swung himself into Milo’s saddle. The animal shifted his feet a couple of times, then settled as if he recognized the feel of experienced hands on the reins.
“Where are we headed?” Loucan asked.
“Across the paddock.” She used the Australian word for field. “Through the gate and onto one of the forestry trails. It leads to a creek. I like to stop there and…well, listen to the birds, and to the water. It’s nothing like the sea,” she added, and knew that she sounded far too defensive. “The sea sighs and roars. The creek gurgles over the rocks. It’s less dramatic, but more musical. We might hear kookaburras laughing, too. They’re only birds, but they sound exactly as if they’re all enjoying a great joke.”
“Sounds good,” he said. “I love the smell of the air here.”
“It’s the eucalyptus. The leaves release some of their oil into the air. I’ve heard that’s what makes the skies so blue here, too. The oil in the atmosphere intensifies the color.”
“It’s true I’ve never seen skies quite as blue as this.”
They rode in silence until after they’d passed through the gate. Lass dismounted and opened it, and Loucan led Willoughby through, managing with ease what could sometimes be an awkward maneuver.
“You must have ridden a lot, at one time.” It wasn’t quite an accusation on her part, but almost.
“When I was married,” he answered. “My wife was an Arizona rancher’s daughter.”
“You’re married? Or, no, you were. Once.”
“We were divorced a long time ago,” he said. “It’s been, what, around seventeen years since I sat a horse. For a couple of years, I rode nearly every day. I got to like it. It was one of the few things that made up for how much I missed the sea.”
“Tell me what else you want from me, Loucan,” Lass begged him suddenly. “It’s too hard like this. Just waiting for you to say it. Hearing the way you keep bringing the sea into our conversation. You want me to go back to Pacifica and I’ve said that I—” Can’t, she almost said “—won’t. What else could be important enough to keep you away from the place, when you’ve told me that the situation there still isn’t stable?”
He looked across at her for a moment, the wide brim of the hat shadowing his brilliant eyes, then said, “Okay. You’re right. It’s time to say it. And it’s quite simple. I want your quarter of the key. I thought you might have guessed.”
“Key? What key?”
“I’ve noticed you’re not wearing it, but you were when you left Pacifica, and you must have it somewhere. Okeana had it strung onto a necklace. Cyria would never have let you lose it.”
She frowned at him. “I’ve never had a key from Pacifica. Or a necklace.”
“Okeana wanted you to wear it always,” Loucan said, persisting in spite of her denials.
His thought processes seemed sluggish to him this morning. Maybe it was that eucalyptus tang in the air.
Or maybe not.
He hadn’t been sleeping well since he’d found Lass. Between his impatience to get back to Pacifica and his realization that he had to take things slowly with Lass, his nerves were stretched tightly.
“But I don’t have it,” Lass said. “I know nothing about a Pacifican key.”
Her blank face disconcerted him. Phoebe, Kai and Saegar had each been wearing their portion of the key like a talisman, even though the twins hadn’t had any inkling about the significance of the unusual piece of jewelry. Lass, on the other hand, the only one of Okeana’s children old enough to remember leaving Pacifica, claimed not to know anything about it.
Unless her apparent innocence was a pretense… Loucan wondered. Mistrust could cut both ways. So far he’d spent all his energy trying to overcome her doubts and fears. He’d been so busy trying to gain her trust, he hadn’t questioned whether he had any reason not to trust her in return. A flash of suspicion darted into his mind. Could she possibly be in touch with Joran?
There were so many contradictions to what he’d seen in her so far. Thirty-three years old, and so innocent she didn’t recognize when a man was aroused? Able to surf joyously among a school of dolphins, yet so guilty about her need for the sea that she spent half her life fighting to pretend to herself that it didn’t exist? Maybe all her fear and doubt was a performance, designed to throw him off.
She had to know about the key…didn’t she?
Then he remembered another, long-ago line of Cyria’s. “For your own good, my little princess.” Another possibility occurred to him.
“Cyria could have kept it for you,” he said aloud. “Kept it secret, hidden among her things. She might have taken the necklace from you without telling you of its significance, and in time you forgot that it even existed. But one of you must have had it. Must still have it.”
“No, Loucan.” Lass shook her head, sounding very sure of her ground.
He kept on pushing. “It’s in the shape of a quarter circle, about two inches across. She died nearly thirteen years ago, isn’t that right?”
“Yes. When I was twenty.”
“And she left you all her possessions, in her will?”
“Yes. I was astonished,” Lass said.
She frowned and shook her head, and Loucan watched the way memory unfolded on her face. A tinge of pink came into her cheeks, her green eyes seemed to darken, her lips parted a little and the tip of her tongue touched her upper lip for a moment. For a woman who had spent so much time and effort on hiding who she really was, her emotions showed very clearly. Or was that something new, something to do with him?
Milo quickened his pace and Loucan held him back so that he could still see Lass’s face as she talked. The sun caught the side of her jaw, emphasizing its strong yet graceful line. The air was filled with the scent of the Australian bushland and the percussive sounds of the horses. It was one of those days when it was good just to be alive. Briefly, Loucan wished he could simply enjoy the feeling, and forget the goals that drove him so hard.
“We’d always lived so frugally,” Lass was saying. “I thought we could barely make ends meet. Cyria worked cleaning houses. Wouldn’t consider retirement, even when it began to get too much for her. She was so stubborn, and always thought she knew best.”
“I remember that,” Loucan said. “I wondered if that trait might intensify, over the years.”
“She was determined I should get a business degree so I could look after myself. I assumed that was because we had nothing to fall back on. It always seemed strange to me that my father would have sent us away with nothing to help us.”
“But Lass, he didn’t.”
“No, I realized that after her death. Cyria herself never mentioned the subject, and any questions I asked, she deflected. She gave me a watch for my sixteenth birthday, the kind that’s set in a solid gold bangle. It was the only expensive gift she ever gave me, and I thought she must have saved for months to buy it. I was so touched by that. Then when she died and I found she’d left me thousands of dollars worth of gold and pearls—enough to buy the old dairy and the farmhouse and several acres of land, restore the whole place and set myself up in business—I was just astonished!”
“It was in character,” Loucan said. “She retained her mistrust of land-dwellers and her desire to protect you until the very end.”
“Yes, she did.” Lass smiled. “She loved me. I never doubted that. It didn’t take the treasure she’d left me to prove it.”
“But there was no quarter circle? It’s made of a silvery metal, very distinctive, with some Pacifican symbols etched into it. Nothing like that among the gold and jewels she left you when she died? There must have been!”
“No, Loucan. I’m sorry. There wasn’t.�
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Hearing it in such simple words, he had to believe her, and she carried even more conviction when she continued, “Believe me, if I knew anything about it, I’d be only too glad to hand it over.”
“Because it would get me out of your life?”
“Yes.” She tilted her head to look at him. Their horses clopped along the hard, dry dirt road, sending little swirls of warm summer dust into the scented air. “Would it get you out of my life, Loucan?”
Her voice was a little lower and a little huskier than usual, and the dark felt hat sat low on her forehead, darkening her eyes. They were sea-toned, instead of iridescent green opal. In the bright light, the hair that curled just below the hat’s brim looked like flame.
Loucan shook his head slowly.
“No. It wouldn’t get me out of your life,” he said. “You know there’s no going back, Lass.”
“There is, if I choose! Once you leave—”
“No,” he repeated. “You want to stay in contact with Saegar and your sisters. For better or for worse, Pacifica is a part of your life again. I won’t pretend that it’s pure, unadulterated good news. Joran is still on the loose, playing his old games.”
“I’m starting to remember Joran….”
“He’s gotten even more dangerous now that he no longer has your father’s backing. He traced Phoebe through my search for her, and her life was in danger at one stage. We know he’s after the four sections of the key.”
“Why is it so important? What is it a key to, Loucan?”
“To Pacifica’s hidden archive of scientific knowledge. Your father locked it away when the unrest began. He thought it would only add to the danger. Joran believes—and maybe he’s right—that if he can control and make use of that knowledge, he can hold power. I can’t let that happen. He’s driven purely by ego, and he would lead our entire people to destruction.”
“Where are the other quarters of the key? You said my siblings had them? Surely that puts them in danger!”
“They’ve given them to me, and I have them hidden at sea for safekeeping. No one but me now knows where they are. I won’t risk Joran getting his hands on them.”
“If anything happened to you, they might never be found.”
“Better that than to risk them getting into the wrong hands. I want you to think, Lass, and I want you to go through Cyria’s things again. Could she have hidden your part of the key somewhere? Buried it or put it in a bank vault? Did she ever say something to you that in hindsight might have been a cryptic clue?”
“Loucan, I—”
“I’m not expecting you to come up with a miracle on the spot.”
“That’s good,” she drawled, “because I’m running a little low on miracles today.”
“In fact, let’s forget the whole thing for now. Let your subconscious work on it, and maybe it will throw something into the light. Are we getting close to your musical creek?”
“Yes, the trail is to the right, just over this rise.”
She urged her horse on a little faster, and Loucan dropped behind, content to watch her rear view and leave further talking for later. When they reached the creek, she dismounted at once, led Willoughby down to drink, then turned him loose to graze.
“Milo, too?” Loucan asked.
She nodded. “There are fences running parallel to this trail on both sides. You can see them through the trees. Even if the horses do wander off, they can’t go far. I’ve got some treats in my backpack to make them come running.”
“Picnic time, then. Did you bring a blanket to sit on?”
“Uh, yes. Yes, I did.” She looked a little self-conscious. Goose bumps rose on her arms as if she was cold in her short-sleeved, pale blue T-shirt, and when she’d spread the blanket on a patch of dapple-shaded grass, he understood why.
It wasn’t meant for two…unless those two happened to be lovers.
Lass clearly didn’t know what to do about the problem. A lot of the women he’d known would have used the opportunity to flirt, but even if she knew how—and he doubted she did—she obviously wasn’t planning on flirting with him.
He thought back to yesterday’s kiss, and it disturbed him. In theory, those long, intense moments in each other’s arms should have played right in the direction he wanted. From the time when he first began his search for Okeana’s children, he’d hoped for a strategic marriage with one of the three Pacifican princesses. Kissing Lass was the closest he’d gotten to realizing that goal.
And yet, although it didn’t make sense, he couldn’t help wondering if the unplanned kiss had been a huge mistake.
Without it, he might not have suspected just how innocent she was. Now that he knew, her innocence wasn’t something he could ignore. Coupled with the passionate sensuality of her response, it added up to a woman he could very easily hurt. An emotionally volatile woman who might not be able to contemplate the cool-headed political alliance he was looking for.
With the restless, questing life he’d led in his late teens and early twenties, Loucan had hurt women before. His ex-wife, Tara, had suffered, through his cowardly inaction, the kind of hurt that no woman every truly forgot. His guilt over that had been terrible. He’d questioned everything he believed, and everything about the man he’d become. In the end it was what had impelled him back to Pacifica.
There, he had sworn off the whole idea of love. He’d loved Tara once, but not enough to act in a way that might have saved their marriage. He didn’t want the same kind of power over a woman’s happiness a second time. He didn’t trust his capacity to give that much.
The last thing he wanted, therefore, was that Lass should fall in love with him, and he had no intention whatsoever of falling in love with her. He still wanted to marry her, though. He just didn’t know if he dared.
Hands off, he decided silently to himself. That’s the only way this can work. I can’t kiss her again.
“Did you want me to…? I—I mean, there’s room,” Lass stammered, drawing his focus away from strategic questions. Her cheeks had gone pink once more. She shifted her firm, shapely backside six inches toward the edge of the plaid picnic blanket. The movement rocked her hips gracefully. “Please sit down!”
Loucan realized that he had been standing there for an embarrassing interval, staring down at the blanket without even seeing it. She must have thought he was waiting for an invitation to sit beside her.
He did so, and at once arrived back at square one.
This blanket wasn’t big enough for two.
Maybe it was the calculated decision not to—definitely not to—kiss her again, but he was suddenly very aware of just how easy a kiss would be. She had her legs curled to one side and her weight resting on the other hand. The only way he could sit comfortably was in a mirror image of the same pose. It brought his shoulder within a few inches of hers.
He could smell her, too. He could tell that she’d washed her hair this morning, that she was wearing sunscreen and that her cotton T-shirt had been line-dried in the fresh air. It was a very close-fitting top. The short sleeves just capped her shoulders, and below them her fair, tender skin stretched over smooth arm muscles.
If he moved his hand three inches to touch her fingers… If he leaned a little closer and she turned her head his way… Yes. He would reach her mouth and taste those warm, passionate lips again.
“Can I start with the mud cake?” he asked, in an iron-willed attempt to think of something besides her full, gorgeous mouth.
She laughed, eased the weight off her hand and sat up straighter. “If you were a child, I’d have to say no, wouldn’t I? You’re not supposed to start with dessert. But, yes, let’s. I’m in the mood for chocolate, too.”
She was still smiling, and still pink-cheeked, as she used a pocket knife to cut the thick wedge of cake she’d brought. When she handed half to him, he carefully took it without letting their fingers touch, but this turned into a wasted effort. He’d accidentally smeared some of the thick, gooey frostin
g onto her thumb, and his gaze was trapped by the sight of her mouth and tongue as she licked it off.
The action was delicate, yet astonishingly sensual. The tip of her tongue darted forward to scoop the smear of frosting, then her lips closed over the spot and she sucked it clean. Finally she looked at it and gave it one last, expert lick, like a cat lapping at a saucer of milk.
If she knew I was watching her like this…
Maybe she’d sensed it. Taking a slow, careful mouthful of cake, she turned toward him and smiled. “Better to let it melt in your mouth than in your hand.”
Loucan shifted his focus just in time. “I guess it is,” he said, and took a bite, barely tasting it.
He didn’t understand it. He’d been attracted to mer women and land women before. What was different about Lass? The fact that she was such an intriguing mixture of both?
Or was it the lure of forbidden fruit?
He had just told himself categorically that he must not kiss her again, which meant, in the perversity of the male psyche, that now he wanted to kiss her all the more. He wanted her mouth and tongue to do to his skin—every inch of his skin—exactly what they’d just done to that smear of chocolate frosting. With exactly the same skill, and exactly the same attention to detail.
He cleared his throat behind his fist. “Are Susie and Megan coming to work today?”
“Yes, thank goodness,” Lass said. “That’s the only reason I had time for a ride this morning.”
“And would you also have time to show me Cyria’s things when we get back?”
“What makes you think I’m prepared to do that?”
Lass lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes deliberately, although she was sure her attempts to act cool this morning weren’t fooling him. He was watching her. She knew he was. He had to be looking for signs of how vulnerable she was. He would remember the way she’d kissed him. That kind of response didn’t go away overnight, did it?
Even sitting as straight as a Victorian schoolmarm in a whalebone corset, she couldn’t get far enough away from him on this blanket. He knew what he did to her. The only thing she could do was to make it clear that her attraction to him didn’t make her vulnerable, after all. She wasn’t going to give him everything he asked for.