by Cindy Miles
Matt kept his gaze on hers; they danced slowly, he still bare-chested, she in her work clothes and 1930s hat, and listened to the horns and instruments of the song. She looked up and saw Matt’s gaze had darkened—he lowered his mouth and swept his lips over hers. Emily’s fingers dragged over his skin, his back and the puckering scars. As his tongue found hers, her knees weakened, and she didn’t think she could be much happier.
He turned her, kissed and danced her backward to the front door, reached behind to open it and danced her out. A cool breeze wafted on the evening air and caressed her heated skin.
“Better?” Matt asked, looking at her.
“Much,” Emily said. “Except your mouth isn’t on mine anymore.”
Matt grinned, cupped her face and pulled her close. “Easy to remedy.”
And he kissed her until they were both breathless.
“You know what Jep calls this?” Matt asked quietly as they leaned against the rail.
“This what?”
Matt turned her, pulled her back against his chest. “This time of night. He calls it the gloaming hour.” He lowered his mouth to her ear, and his warm breath brushed over her skin, and she shivered. “He says it’s when the magical underground rises out of the sea and hovers over the land.”
He laughed softly, and the sound was rough and raspy and delicate at the same time. “He says his da always used to tell him stories from Ireland in the gloaming hour, from the top of the light station.” He looked down at her, and the warmth in his eyes made her chest tighten. “You remember all those crazy magical Irish stories about the fae folk living underground, and coming topside at dusk. He’s told them to us a thousand times.”
“I always loved hearing them, although sometimes they scared me a little,” Emily confessed. “Especially the ones about the changelings.”
He stood back, pulled her with him and twirled her, and she shuddered, wasn’t entirely sure if it was the memory of the scary Irish fae folk or how near Matt was to her. How safe she felt beside him. How the feel of his calloused hand closing around hers, or slipping to the small of her back made those butterflies beat her insides mercilessly.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said. “I was going to wait—”
“I can’t wait one more second!” she squealed.
“Okay, okay.” Matt held her hand and led to the marsh, then onto the dock. “Keep your eyes closed, Em,” he warned. “I mean it. No peeking.”
“I won’t peek,” she agreed. “Hurry, Matt!”
The familiar scents of the marsh swallowed them up as they walked along the dock. The breeze that shifted the air, moist, damp and filled with salty brine, caressed her skin as they hurried into the gloaming hour.
“Okay, stop, but keep your eyes closed,” he warned, and she did, and he stood close. His hands found her shoulders, and he turned her body around.
“Open your eyes, Em,” he whispered against her ear, and she shivered and did as he asked.
In the fading light of dusk, when the colors of the sky streak heather and gray and ginger and gold, and a silvery veil falls over everything else, she faced her dock house. New red tin roof. New screen. New screened door.
And over the door, on a sanded piece of deck board and painted against a sea-serpent-green background in white vintage letters—Come Josephine in My Flying Machine, flanked by two white angel-wing shells. On the inside of one, Matt. The other, Em.
“I guess it’s kind of arrogant of me to put my name on your dock sign,” Matt said. He reached into the pocket of his khaki shorts and held something between his thumb and forefinger. When Emily drew closer and peered into the fading light, she saw it was the same shell he’d kept on the day she’d left Cassabaw. “But I’ve kept my half all these years. It’s been on all four tours with me in the corps.” The dusky light cast his eyes in a darker shade, darker than moss, darker than sage. “My good-luck charm.”
She looked up into his eyes and she fought tears and memories. “I’ve still got mine, too,” she said. “I wore it on a necklace for quite a long time—until I got scared of losing it.” She smiled, laced her fingers through his free hand. “It’s been in my beloved ballerina treasure box ever since.”
Matt squeezed her fingers gently. “I hated that day,” he confessed. “I hated everything about it. Your parents dying. The shirt and tie Dad made me wear.” He grazed the side of her face with his knuckle. “I even hated your grandparents for taking you away. But most of all I hated you leaving. It was the worst day of my life.”
“You were the only good thing about that day, for me,” Emily confessed. She closed her eyes and leaned into his caress. “And before long it actually hurt to think of you.” She sighed and looked up. “I wanted to come home so bad.”
He looked at her. “I wrote letters, Em. You never answered them.”
She stared, surprised. “I...never got them. I’m so sorry, Matt.”
“Well, you’re home now,” Matt comforted.
“I love the Josephine sign to absolute pieces and back,” she said, and rose on her tiptoes. “I’ll keep it forever.”
He jerked a pinkie toward her. “Promise?”
Emily hooked her pinkie with Matt’s and pulled it to her chest. “Promise.”
Matt grasped her jaw, his fingers sliding into her hair as he pulled her mouth to his, and his lips caressed hers, his hand slid along her throat, and Emily wrapped her arms around his waist as she drowned in his kiss. In his taste.
Drowned in Matt.
Finally, he lifted his head. Darkness had begun to settle over the marsh, but moonshine began to filter through the gray haze of the gloaming. “I’m not sure what this is,” he said as gentle as Matt Malone could say. “With me and you. But I know one thing.”
“What’s that?” Emily asked.
“I’ve dreamed about it for a long damn time.”
Close by, the blow of a dolphin sounded. “Let’s sit on the floating dock and listen to the mermaids.”
Matt gave a single nod. “After you.”
Together they sat, side by side, legs dangling in the warm July water, with Emily’s head resting on Matt’s shoulder. “You’re so different than you were when I saw you that first day. Why is that?”
* * *
MATT SAT SILENT for a moment while he thought about it. The feel of Emily—and knowing it was his Em—beside him, leaning into him, made his body ache for her. Not just his body, but something way deeper. Way primal. And so exceptionally intimate that it all but made him drunk with sensation. As if he wanted to swallow her up.
“I suppose it’s because I’d lost purpose after the corps. Didn’t know who I was. Thought that I had to be leading a company with a firearm in my hand in order to make a difference in the world.” He lifted one shoulder. “I guess now I see other options.”
“Like what?”
“You, for one. I’ve watched you with people, Em. You’re the same as you were as a little girl. You have a unique ability to make people see light. To see around the darkness.” He kissed the top of her head. “You make people see a different side of themselves than what they perceive in the mirror, or in their heart.” He draped an arm around her, and the feel of her slender shoulder bones, her head resting in the crook of his neck, made him feel as though he was in some sort of dream state—one he wished never to awaken from. “Or different than what others see.”
She laughed lightly, and the sound flicked off the water. “I guess. I really don’t do it intentionally, though. It just...happens. I like people.”
“It shows. And that’s what’s special about you. Special to me.” He gave a low laugh. “Take Catesby, for instance.” He ducked his head, searching her features out in the darkness. “Sweet?”
The tinkling sound that was Emily’s laugh made his mouth tug upward. “Absolutely, sweet. If you look past all the gruffness and loneliness.”
“He’s not an islander. Comes from—”
“Cooper Lake,” E
mily said, beating him to it. “Anyway. I like to let people know they’re important in this world. And not by simply telling them I like their hair or they have pretty teeth or their bald head is beautiful, but why, specifically. Like Owen’s lovely skin reminds me of a dull copper penny. Not generic compliments, but real ones. Real to me.”
“And that’s why you reach a place inside of people no one else can.”
“Including you?” she asked.
“Especially me,” he replied.
“So,” Emily began, leaning into Matt, “does this mean you’re asking me to be your girl, Matt Malone? Because I’m old-fashioned, in case you didn’t know. I like to be asked proper and all.”
Matt’s face pulled into a smile. “Oh, I know that. And yes, ma’am—” he linked their fingers together “—I’m askin’.” He turned her head with his knuckle, and the moonlight gave her face an ethereal glow as though she was anything but a normal, everyday human being. Something unique, beyond rare, irreplaceable.
“Then I most assuredly and excitedly, and with utmost pride, accept the title of being Matt Malone’s girl.”
He kissed her then, swept his mouth over hers under the moonlit Back River where they both grew up, and as her mouth moved gentle, sweet, then turned hungry beneath his, he knew this was what he’d been waiting for all along. Why he’d had only a string of one-night stands, never interested in a girl for more than a night, or hadn’t met the right girl.
Emily had been the right girl all along.
As they sat on the end of the dock, a low moon hanging over the marsh and Emily’s mermaids blowing air each time they broke the surface of the water, Matt felt an old fear gnaw at his insides; a new one started to chew, too.
He’d lost Emily once. He couldn’t lose her again. She’d reached him. That place inside of him that even his own family hadn’t been able to touch.
She’d found the old him. The old Matt. And strangely enough, he’d missed the hell out of him.
Matt grinned as Emily’s stomach rumbled, and he hugged her close. “Your stomach is about to wake up the river. Let’s go eat.”
“You don’t have to ask me twice,” she giggled.
At the end of the dock, Matt twirled Emily around once more, and dipped her proper.
“For someone who doesn’t dance you don’t do too bad, son.”
Emily and Matt both jumped at the sound of Nathan’s voice, and he came lumbering up from the trail. He met them at the veranda steps and propped a foot up, a grin on his handsome face. “Am I interrupting anything?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MATT WAS GOING to strangle Nathan in his sleep.
He’d never even see it coming.
Matt’s glare at his older brother would’ve made most grown men balk. He knew it. Prided himself in it. Not to mention his intimidation had been more than useful in the marines. It’d spared him a lot of unnecessary bloodshed.
Nathan simply gave him a crooked grin.
“Of course you aren’t interrupting anything!” Emily said in a hurry. “We’re just making out and dancing to some of my old vinyls.” She grinned and twirled. “Your brother is an exceptional kisser. Wanna give it a try?” she asked Nathan. “The dancing, I mean?”
Nathan’s gaze eased to Matt, who glared even harder. Nathan laughed. “Thanks, Emily, but I’ll take a rain check.” He nodded toward Matt. “I actually need my little brother’s expertise on my truck.”
Matt simmered. He’d told Nathan he’d help him later that night. Right now he was just being nosy and irritating as hell.
“I will remind you later,” she smiled. Her eyes moved to Matt’s, and in the light of the porch they seemed larger than usual, softer. Wearing that old hat she’d bought from old man Catesby, with her hair pulled back and tucked beneath it, she kinda looked like a girl from decades past.
She quirked her lips and crossed her eyes.
He smiled. She looked ridiculous.
Ridiculous and beautiful.
“If you two finish up in time the fellas and I are working on the penny counter at the café,” Emily said as they started for the path. Matt eyed her over his shoulder, and she gave a sweet wave as she leaned against the post on the veranda.
“We’ll be there,” Matt called back. “This shouldn’t take too long.”
“Nice hat, Em,” Nathan called out.
“Thanks!” she hollered back. “Bye, boys.”
“Only I call her Em,” Matt said.
“Hey,” Nathan said. He matched Matt’s stride as they made their way to the garage behind the Malones’ river house. “What’s eatin’ you, bro?”
Matt kept walking. “Nothing.”
Nathan swore under his breath. “Always nothing, right?” He gave a sarcastic laugh. “Man, if you love her then just—”
“If I want your advice I’ll ask for it.” The last thing he needed was relationship therapy from Nathan.
In the darkness, his brother snorted. “So you do love her. I knew it. That means you’ve made your mind up to stay on Cassabaw, right?” He pulled an envelope from his back pocket and handed it to Matt. “Despite whatever is in this?”
They’d just stepped off the path and into the edge of the Malone property. Matt rounded on his brother and grabbed a fistful of T-shirt at his neck. Nose to nose, they eyed each other. “Back off, Nathan. I mean it.”
Nathan, who was easily as big as Matt, shoved him off. “Don’t throw that tough-ass marine crap at me, junior. I don’t intimidate.” He put his hands on his hips, stared at the sky and looked back at Matt, who stood still to keep from lashing out at him again. “What’s the problem, Matthew? You used to talk to me. About everything. Now?” He shook his head. “You keep everything crammed into that concrete jarhead of yours, and you’re like a walking firecracker, fuse lit, ready to explode.” He pointed at him. “And it’s starting to piss me off. Now talk to me. I know what I saw. In both of your faces. And it is sheer, unadulterated love. Now you have an envelope, and I know for a fact there can’t be much good inside of it. You’re not leaving, are you? Leaving Emily?”
Matt kept walking, the envelope burning in his palm, and he continued storming toward the marsh, the familiar, pungent scent clinging to the air, and his skin, the inside of his lungs as he breathed. Nothing would calm him.
“Did you hear me?” Nathan said, following close behind. “Matt! Freaking stop, will ya?”
At the water’s edge, Matt picked up a chunk of oyster shell and hurled it. With a plop, it landed. Several marsh birds screamed.
“You can keep it all bottled up if you want to,” Nathan said, coming to stand beside him. “But you’d have to be a blind man not to notice the way you two are with each other.”
“We’re best friends. More than that.”
“Uh-huh,” Nathan agreed. “And never have I seen two people click the way you guys do. Jesus Christ, Matt—the tension that hangs in the air constantly with you two is ridiculous. It’s a struggle for you not to constantly touch her. I can see it in your face.”
“Ugh,” Matt growled, and rubbed his head with his hand. He grasped the back of his neck with both palms and stared at the sky over Morgan’s Creek. “I’m gonna screw everything up, Nathan. You don’t understand.” Matt closed his eyes, swore, then looked at his brother. “This envelope? It changes everything. It’s my job. It’s who I am. I have to respond. And you, Dad, Jep, Eric, Emily? You can’t know anything.”
The faint strings and horns of an age-old orchestra from decades past floated over the marsh. Emily was playing her thirties vinyl on the record player, and something surged within him. Something he couldn’t identify.
Or just wasn’t ready to identify.
“What don’t I understand?” Nathan rounded on him, but his usual calm voice settled his frustration. “That a long time ago you met your soul mate in the girl next door. Then you lost her.” He put his hands on his hips. “And now she’s come home. You’ve come home. And despite how hard you buc
ked her, and no matter what kind of hard-ass shit you threw at her in the beginning, with your sour-ass looks and short answers and fierce soldier face, you didn’t scare her away. You didn’t intimidate her.”
Nathan grasped Matt by the shoulder and squeezed in that brotherly way he frequently did. “You love her. And now you’re going to let the contents of an envelope keep you from Emily? And you still haven’t answered my question.” Nathan exhaled, looked away, then back at him. “You’ve been given a second chance with a girl most guys would kill to have.” He inclined his head toward her home. “Seriously, bro. Listen to that. I mean she’s different, Matthew. She listens to old twenties and thirties music on a record player, wears an eighty-year-old hat and pulls it off, and can bake? Like, bat-shit crazy bake?” He grinned, and the light shined off his teeth. “She’s smart. Beautiful. Funny as hell. And she’s crazy about you.”
“Maybe she’s just crazy about the past I represent?” Matt said. “Maybe when she thinks of me it takes her back. To before her parents died. Before she had to leave here.”
“Yeah,” Nathan replied sarcastically. “Seriously? You think that’s why she’s crazy about you?” He pointed toward her house. “That’s Emily, man. Your Emily. She’s as real as they come. And you know that’s what’s most important. You’re both back, on Cassabaw. Here. Now.” He ducked his head. “Are you staying?”
Matt squatted down, rested his forearms on his thighs and stared out over the moonlit marsh. The envelope weighed heavy in his hands. “I don’t know.”
Nathan’s brows furrowed. The muscles in his jaws flexed. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
Matt sighed in frustration. “As a soldier, I knew who I was. I knew my role. As a civilian?” He shrugged. “I got nothing. No direction. Just a part-time handyman job for the girl next door—a job that’s almost finished.” He listened to the tide lap against the saw grass. Somewhere close by an oyster shoal bubbled and gurgled. Low tide.
Nathan squatted beside him and in the vague shaft of afternoon light, with Emily’s vintage music sweeping over the marsh, he met his older brother’s quiet gaze. “I’d rather only have her for a little while than not have her at all.” He returned to the creek. “I can’t just bum around from one local pissant job to the next.” He shook his head and threw another oyster shell. “No damn way. I have my pride. And I want Emily’s respect. There’s just nothing for me here.”