by Tracy Sumner
“I see we’ve moved to the Irish blarney.”
“Stubborn fool, you wouldn’t know a good woman if she kicked you in the head.”
Noah slid low in the chair and crossed his hands over his stomach. “You suspected what was in the book.”
Caroline pleated the hem of her skirt between her fingers, then stilled, realizing she clicked her back teeth. “You remember the other day, when I stopped by?”
“Vaguely. Those pain powders didn’t do wonders for my memory.”
“Well,” she said, “Henri Beaumont telegraphed me and asked me to come to Pilot Isle. To keep you away from his daughter. I mean, at the time, I thought you weren’t interested in staying. And, because of Russell and his sticky fingers—”
“How the hell did Henri Beaumont know about you? Where did the report come from?”
Caroline flashed a sad smile. “Darling, you really are naive. I’ve seen at least five similar communications about myself over the years. People can pay for a piece of your past. Simple as can be.” She shook her head. “Don’t you realize Henri Beaumont paid for your past, too? The little hellcat probably suspects. She’s just afraid to go looking in her papa’s desk.”
“That bastard had someone investigate me?”
“How else do you think he got my name?”
Noah whistled through his teeth. “Chrissakes.”
“A good account.” Caroline turned the sheet of paper over and back. “Not entirely factual, but I’ve seen worse.”
Noah inched forward, his fingers linked. “Did he offer you money, Caro?”
“Of course he offered money.”
“Did you take it?”
She leaned in, her nose bumping his. “I’m not a prostitute anymore, Noah Garrett. Do you recall helping me leave the profession. So, wipe the affronted frown off your face. I could sell my house on Prairie Avenue and buy this whole town if I wanted to. To heck with Henri Beaumont’s paltry offer.”
“I’m sorry.” He scooted back with a grimace of pain.
“You’re the only man who has ever respected me. I don’t want to think I’ve lost that.”
“Oh, Caro.” He sighed. “You haven’t. I’m simply mired knee-deep right now.”
“Make a list. What you usually do.”
“I have a list. A growing pile of lists. One right there, beside you.” He rubbed his fingers beneath his spectacles. “They’re not helping.”
She grabbed the pad of paper and tilted it into the light. “Well, well, a list of reasons to stay clear of darling Marielle-Claire. Not exactly the list I had in mind, but—”
He snatched the pad from her.
“I brought just the stuff to ease your troubles, darling.” She tapped a leather-covered flask against his knee. “I keep it tucked in my garter. For strictly medicinal purposes.”
He lifted the flask to his lips, the metal still warm from her skin. Before he drank, he threw a quick glance toward the house. The last thing he needed was Zach’s censure.
“I heard about you and Marielle-Claire. Her idolizing you, you protecting her. A smelly old fisherman even took me to see the tree trunks in the schoolyard. It felt as if I was on a tour.”
“Wonderful,” he said around another gulp.
“I found the story a charmingly sweet testament to a girl’s undying love.”
“Elle didn’t carve those in the trees, by the way.” He grimaced. “But she went back later and dug the marks in deeper.”
Caroline smiled. “And you think Marielle-Claire is the same willful, devoted child.”
“Of course not. But she’s still too impulsive.” Too intelligent, interesting, vexing, beautiful. Ma chere fille. He shoved the cork into the flask, the taste of whiskey heavy on his tongue. Those few sips had softened the memory of Elle’s torment, making it easier to catch a full breath. “She isn’t the kind of woman to dally with, and when I decide to marry, if I decide to marry, I’ll marry a woman who will not disrupt my well-organized life. Elle doesn’t fit my plan, Caro. In fact, she’d blow my plan straight to Hades if I let her.” He tossed the flask at her feet. “Regardless, I’m returning to Chicago once the laboratory is finished. I have a shellfish study to initiate and biology classes to teach. My life is not here anymore, and I’m not going to change that.”
“Do you miss Chicago so much?”
He crossed his ankles and scowled. “Who said anything about missing Chicago?”
“Hmmm.”
“Mind your own business, Caro. There’s no future. Elle Beaumont and I are too different. We always have been.”
She didn’t answer, just hummed a soft tune.
Her silence annoyed the hell out of him.
* * *
“Uncle Noah, why can’t you keep your hands off Miss Ellie?”
Noah dropped his fork to the plate. He glanced at Rory, who dabbed his spoon in the pool of gravy inside his mashed potatoes, and Caleb, who buttered his bread, a flush reddening his cheeks.
Rory wiped his nose and rocked the table as he swung his legs beneath it. Flaxen hair stuck to his brow in sweat-darkened clumps. “Huh, Uncle Noah? I love Miss Ellie, but she’s still a girl. Have you kissed her? Johnny-Bob says you got to open your mouth for a real kiss. Yuck.”
Noah lifted his napkin from his lap and wiped a dab of gravy from Rory’s chin. “Who told you this?”
Caleb coughed. “Um, Rory, you’re just playing with your supper. How about you go upstairs and wash up. I’ll take you to Scoggins for ice cream.”
“Yippee!” Rory raced from the kitchen, his chair swaying, his napkin fluttering to the floor, the subject of yucky kisses forgotten.
“Noah—”
“You know, you and Zach need to develop some other interests.”
“Ah, come on.” Caleb cracked a smile. “He must have heard us talking today.”
Noah’s chair skidded into the wall. “I think I’ll spend the night at the coach house. There’s a textbook I need to review before I make my next research trip to Devil Island.”
“Heck, little bro’, why are you angry if you can keep your hands off of her?”
Noah slammed the door in reply.
Chapter 12
“They are conspicuous things, showing sufficiently bold specific characters, and thus they are less liable to confusion.”
C. Wyville Thomson
The Depths of the Sea
Noah left the laboratory site, head bent, gaze fixed on the wet planks beneath his brogans. The waves whipping the pilings almost erased the sound of Caleb’s mockery. The promise of a storm scented the air and threw a solid punch into the wind coming off the sea. A fine mist struck his face and slicked his shirt to his chest. He crossed the deserted street and stopped to observe the flame wavering behind the globe of a streetlamp. Elle had mentioned petitioning the town committee for twenty and the insufficient approval for eight. Her cheeks had gone wild with color just talking about it.
He laughed, a sound that echoed off the warehouses looming on each side of him. No matter how much Elle troubled him, he was unable to deny her uniqueness, her inherent strength—or his fascination. Jocularity dwindling, he slipped his spectacles off, yanked his shirttail from his trousers, and swabbed the spotted lenses.
As a child, how had he missed those things about her?
He frowned and forced his spectacles into place. He’d squandered half his childhood running from her and the other half rescuing her from some farcical disaster. Who had time to wonder about—well, just to wonder? He had been doing ceaseless amounts of reflection since their passionate kiss behind the Nook. He touched his lips, imagining her fingers, her touch.
His heart picked up speed as his body betrayed him.
Cursing, he pulled the tattered scrap of paper from his shirt pocket and tipped it into the light, reviewing the list for the hundredth time. Five solid, irrefutable reasons to avoid Elle Beaumont, starting—
Lightning arced. A drop of rain pelted his cheek. Another smacked
his chest, soaking to the skin. With a muttered oath and a shiver, he broke into a run. His brogans skimmed over a patch of shells, and he struggled to maintain his balance, his side beginning to throb in an impressive rhythm.
Relief poured through him when the next bolt of lightning illuminated Widow Wynne’s pitched roof. Whipping off his spectacles, he slapped the gate back on its hinges. The heavy rainfall had unfurled a silver blanket, obliterating his view. Better that, he mused, taking the coach house stairs two at a time.
The key slipped from his hand twice before he jammed it into place.
Water streamed down his neck. He licked raindrops from his lips, the taste of salt invading his mouth. Shivering in the small entranceway, he ripped his shirt and undershirt over his head, and heeled his boots from his feet. He stepped to the landing and flipped the wet clothing across the length of twine he’d tacked between two posts.
A rumble splintered the air, and a chill claimed his body. He turned, tugging at the bandage circling his ribs.
A whisper of movement... a hiss of breath. Elle perched in the corner of the landing like a panther ready to pounce. A nightdress of cream muslin, drenched in all the right places, or hell, all the wrong ones, clung to her curves.
She may as well be naked.
The curtain of rainfall sheltered them from the world as they stared, immobile, seeing each other in a state neither had known existed.
Light illuminated her face: shock, curiosity, greed. She shoved her hair back, revealing brilliant eyes. Her lids fluttered, her gaze lowering to his chest. Her tongue peeked from between her lips, a promise intensely desirable in its innocence. In response, Noah exhaled, the sound muffling a distant thunderclap and the fierce thumping of his heart.
Passion scorched the air around them.
“What are you doing here?” he asked in a voice he hardly recognized.
When she continued to stare, he stepped forward, flustered and angry. His chest ached—longing, hunger, and pain. Repressed until he felt like a tin can ready to explode. “What, Elle?”
She hooked her arms beneath her breasts, unconsciously raising them above the drooping neck of her nightdress. “I wanted to make sure the roof wasn’t leaking.” Her chest rose and fell, adding fuel to the fire. “On your, your beautiful books.”
He dragged his hand down his face, her goodness seeping into him. I’m doomed, he realized, and to prove it, effortlessly located her nipples beneath muslin. As he stared, they pebbled, tight and hard, as if he’d stroked his tongue across them. He swallowed, masking a groan, desire tensing every muscle in his body and melting in a leisurely slide to his groin.
Some of the lewd images spinning through his mind must have shown because broad spills of rose, much lighter than her nipples, stained Elle’s cheeks. Her skin glowed, in a way he had never seen skin glow, how he imagined a newborn’s would look.
Rejecting honorable intentions and prudent reluctance, he took a step closer, near enough to catch her fragrance. “Honeysuckle.” He trailed his knuckle along her jaw, slipped his finger behind her earlobe. “Did you put it here?”
She swallowed and made a sound of fear or pleasure.
Noah discarded fear. Fear wasn’t driving her to explore his naked chest, her look hot. “How about here?” He moved past her shoulder, circling her elbow, making a gradual sweep to her wrist. Her fist uncurled. Her pulse skittered beneath his fingertips. She gave a low gasp of surprise.
Rain coursed down her cheeks, a lock of cinnamon—hair he wanted spread under them while he plunged into her lithe body—lay tucked in the edge of her mouth. If he moved closer, he could use his teeth to peel it from her skin.
Take her.
“I want to make you mine, touch you everywhere, in every way,” he said, surprising himself with the thread of need, the brutal honesty. His lips met her cheek, his tongue working the silken strand between his teeth, the taste of lemon filling his mouth. She arched and lengthened, dragging his lips over her jawbone to just below her ear. He brought his hand to her back, spread his fingers, and drew her near. “I want to explore your body in ways I’ve yet to explore, in ways I’ve yet to allow another to explore mine.” The words rang true, yet he scarcely believed he voiced them. As it was with Elle, as it had always been, he could not hide behind a wall of indifference.
“Caroline,” she said, and turned, presenting her back to him.
His arm circled her waist. “Never.” His lips brushed her ear, skimming the nape of her neck. The faultless feel of her, the completeness, colored his desire in dark shades. A dizzying ribbon of anticipation wrapped itself around his mind and yanked, choking his fear. Defeated, he bent low and cradled her, her buttocks coming to rest against him.
“Never?” Her sigh captured him, tugged him deeper. Her cheek met his chest. She released a ragged inhalation that skated across his skin.
“Never.” He tightened his hold and fit her to him. Like pieces of broken pottery, they slipped into place.
“I’m frightened.”
“Don’t be. Not of me,” he murmured, fitting his fingers in the groove of her ribs, her heart pounding beneath his thumb as he swept it toward the rounded weight of her breast. He kissed from the sloped arch of her neck to her shoulder. A haunting chorus of sound, pelting rain and howling wind, mixed with their gasping breaths. A shiver shook her, her head lolling forward, inviting more. Unable to stop, he drew her skin between his teeth and sucked, hoping to mark her, a primal urge. She melted into him, her hand rising to cup his jaw. In turn, he breathed her in, her essence delicious and decadent on his lips.
“Sweet, oh, if you only knew how much I want you.” She could have no idea how reckless, how savage and uncontrolled this was, to the exclusion of reason and rationale, the mainstays of his structured existence.
“How... much?” A shift of her bottom accompanied her question.
“Too much,” he whispered, and returned the motion, rocking his hips into her. Leave it to this woman to find the precise movement to drive him mad. Pressing his face to her hair, the scent of citrus filled his nostrils, made him picture clear drops of pulp glistening on her lower lip, her dusky pink nipples.
He closed his eyes and pictured licking her clean.
What he could reach, he kissed, the edge of her mouth, her cheek, her jaw... starved, desperate, and impatient. He slanted his head, trying to seize her lips completely, thinking only to have more, much more.
Rising to her toes, she tangled her fingers in his hair and urged him closer.
A burst of liquid heat, passion in its most potent form, sparked and ignited. Bringing her with him, Noah swayed against the railing. He could hardly take it in. Could hardly believe his luck.
She hungered for him as desperately as he hungered for her.
Trust me, he thought. Or did he say it? With the roar in his head, who knew? Lifting his thumb, he rolled it over her nipple. Once, twice, until it puckered and protruded, ready to suckle. He groaned in a mixture of frustration and pleasure, the angle he held her insufficient.
He took her waist in both hands and propelled her forward. Kicking the coach house door closed, he turned her to face him, dipped his head, and seized her lips, his fingers tunneling through her hair. They were alone, utterly, temptingly alone. The gleeful knowledge seared the edges of his consciousness. Images of the woman of his dreams swirled, dulling reason and firing his senses. Pleasures he dared share, pleasures he had never wanted to share with another.
He traced the front of her teeth, a brazen invitation. “Like before,” he said, beseeching her to remember their kiss in the alley.
She hesitated for only a moment before showing him she did, indeed, remember. She flowered; tongues tangled, a kiss of promise, earnest and absorbed. Mindless, Noah dragged his mouth to her cheek, bent low and wrapped his arm beneath her buttocks, the other across her back. He lifted her against his chest and recaptured her lips. Claiming every inch of her made it worth the dull ache in his side.
&n
bsp; Ducking through the doorway, he halted by his bed, and let her slide down his body. Before her toes touched the floor, he laid her across the mattress in a gentle sprawl.
Her hair, bright and sleek, contrasted sharply against the linens, a seductive flame on a sea of ivory. Her unblinking regard revealed frantic desire. Raw and intimate, emotions a husband should see, but instead a lover would.
Lightning slashed outside the window, a burst of brightness. Through thin muslin, her generous curves stood in shadowed relief. He fought to stay focused on her face. Every tiny crease, every smattering of freckles. She shifted under his perusal, her legs falling open, Down a more dangerous path. Truly, he couldn’t possibly govern this urge. Hadn’t he wondered—even at the decidedly naive age of fifteen—if her hair was red all over? With a boy’s uncontrollable provocation guiding him, he found her... dark and glistening. Heart hammering, his cock swelled, straining against his trouser buttons.
He exhaled raggedly and wedged his knees inside hers. “Do you know what I want from you?”
She licked her lips and nodded. Her gaze dipped low. A burst of air left her as she centered on his arousal.
His pulse pounded in his ears, hard and furious. He didn’t recognize himself, a man who stood there thinking only of what he could do to this woman, not what it would cost him.
Or what it would cost her.
He vowed to go slowly and savor every damned inch of her. Tracing the delicate arch of her foot, he brushed his knuckle over each tiny, perfect toe. “If you’re ever going to deny me”—he cupped her heel and raised her foot to his mouth, a delicious impulse—”deny me now.” With a sigh, he trailed his lips over her ankle and up her calf.
She gasped, perhaps just realizing the man doing these wicked things to her was not her beloved protector. Wiggling from his grasp, she clawed at the mattress, digging her heels in. Her nightdress gathered in a sloppy roll at the bottom of her thighs. Unable, despite his warning, to restrain himself, Noah slid his hands behind her knees, lingered a moment to caress the rain-drenched skin, then stooped and jerked her forward. She glided across the sheets, legs dangling, muslin creeping higher, scarcely covering the triangle between her thighs.