by Nora Roberts
soft, wicked promises if he’d steal the gold and the longboat. When he did, because she was a woman who could drive a man to murder with a look, she went with him.” Grant felt her hair tangle around his fingers as though it had a life of its own.
“So he rowed for two days and two nights, knowing when they came to land he’d have her. But when they spotted the coast, she drew out a saber and lopped off his head. Now his skull sits on the rocks and moans in frustrated desire.”
Amused, Gennie tilted her head. “And the woman?”
“Invested her gold, doubled her profits, and became a pillar of the community.”
Laughing, Gennie began to walk with him again. “The moral seems to be never trust a woman who makes you promises.”
“Certainly not a beautiful one.”
“Have you had your head lopped off, Grant?”
He gave a short, appreciative laugh. “No.”
“A pity.” She sighed. “I suppose that means you make a habit of resisting temptation.”
“It’s not necessary to resist it,” he countered. “As long as you keep one eye open.”
“There’s no romance in that,” Gennie complained.
“I’ve other uses for my head, thanks.”
She shot him a thoughtful look. “Stamp collecting?”
“For one.”
They walked in silence again while the sea crashed close beside them. On the other side the rocks rose like a wall. Far out on the water there were dots of boats. That one sign of humanity only added to the sense of space and aloneness.
“Where did you come from?” she asked impulsively.
“The same place you did.”
It took her a minute, then she chuckled. “I don’t mean biologically. Geographically.”
He shrugged, trying not to be pleased she had caught on so quickly. “South of here.”
“Oh, well that’s specific,” she muttered, then tried again. “What about family? Do you have family?”
He stopped to study her. “Why?”
With an exaggerated sigh, Gennie shook her head. “This is called making friendly conversation. It’s a new trend that’s catching on everywhere.”
“I’m a noncomformist.”
“No! Really?”
“You do that wide-eyed, guileless look very well, Genviève.”
“Thank you.” She turned the shell over in her hand, then looked up at him with a slow smile. “I’ll tell you something about my family, just to give you a running start.” She thought for a moment, then hit on something she thought he’d relate to. “I have a cousin, a few times removed. I’ve always thought he was the most fascinating member of the family tree, though you couldn’t call him a Grandeau.”
“What would you call him?”
“The black sheep,” she said with relish. “He did things his own way, never giving a damn about what anyone thought. I heard stories about him from time to time—though I wasn’t meant to—and it wasn’t until I was a grown woman that I met him. I’m happy to say we took to each other within minutes and have kept in touch over the last couple of years. He’d lived his life by his wits, and done quite well—which didn’t sit well with some of the more staid members of the family. Then he confounded everyone by getting married.”
“To an exotic dancer.”
“No.” She laughed, pleased that he was interested enough to joke. “To someone absolutely suitable—intelligent, well bred, wealthy—” She rolled her eyes. “The black sheep, who’d spent some time in jail, gambled his way into a fortune, had outdone them all.” With a laugh, Gennie thought of the Comanche Blade. Cousin Justin had indeed outdone them all. And he didn’t even bother to thumb his nose.
“I love a happy ending,” Grant said dryly.
With her eyes narrowed, Gennie turned to him. “Don’t you know that the less you tell someone, the more they want to know? You’re better off to make something up than to say nothing at all.”
“I’m the youngest of twelve children of two South African missionaries,” he said with such ease, she very nearly believed him. “When I was six, I wandered into the jungle and was taken in by a pride of lions. I still have a penchant for zebra meat. Then when I was eighteen, I was captured by hunters and sold to a circus. For five years I was the star of the sideshow.”
“The Lion Boy,” Gennie put it.
“Naturally. One night during a storm the tent caught fire. In the confusion I escaped. Living off the land, I wandered the country—stealing a few chickens now and again. Eventually an old hermit took me in after I’d saved him from a grizzly.”
“With your bare hands,” Gennie added.
“I’m telling the story,” he reminded her. “He taught me to read and write. On his deathbed he told me where he’d buried his life savings—a quarter million in gold bullion. After giving him the Viking funeral he’d requested, I had to decide whether to be a stockbroker or go back to the wilderness.”
“So you decided against Wall Street, came here, and began to collect stamps.”
“That’s about it.”
“Well,” Gennie said after a moment. “With a boring story like that, I can see why you keep it to yourself.”
“You asked,” Grant pointed out.
“You might have made something up.”
“No imagination.”
She laughed then and leaned her head on his shoulder. “No, I can see you have a very literal mind.”
Her laugh rippled along his skin, and the casual intimacy of her head against his shoulder shot straight down to the soles of his feet. He should shake her off, Grant told himself. He had no business walking here with her and enjoying it. “I’ve got things to do,” he said abruptly. “We can go up this way.”
It was the change in his tone that reminded Gennie she’d come there for a purpose, and the purpose was not to wind up liking him.
The way up was easier than the way down, she noted as he turned toward what was now a slope rather than a cliff. Though his fingers loosened on hers, she held on, shooting him a smile that had him muttering under his breath as he helped her climb. Thinking quickly, she stuck the shell in her back pocket. When they neared the top, Gennie held her other hand out to him. With her eyes narrowed a bit against the sun, her hair flowing down her back, she looked up at him. Swearing, Grant grabbed her other hand and hauled her up the last few feet.
On level ground she stayed close, her body just brushing his as their hands remained linked. His breath had stayed even during the climb, but now it came unsteadily. Feeling a surge of satisfaction, Gennie gave him a slow, lazy smile.
“Going back to your stamps?” she murmured. Deliberately, she leaned closer to brush her lips over his chin. “Enjoy yourself.” Drawing her hands from his, Gennie turned. She’d taken three steps before he grabbed her arm. Though her heart began to thud, she looked over her shoulder at him. “Want something?” she asked in a low, amused voice.
She could see it on his face—the struggle for control. And in his eyes she could see a flare of desire that had her throat going dry. No, she wasn’t going to back down now, she insisted. She’d finish out the game. When he yanked her against him, she told herself it wasn’t fear she felt, it wasn’t passion. It was self-gratification.
“It seems you do,” she said with a laugh, and slid her hands up his back.
When his mouth crushed down on hers, her mind spun. All thoughts of purpose, all thoughts of revenge vanished. It was as it had been the first time—the passion, and over the passion a rightness, and with the rightness a storm of confused needs and longings and wishes. Opening to him was so natural she did so without thought, and with a simplicity that made him groan as he drew her closer.
His tongue skimmed over her lips then tangled with hers as his hands roamed to mold her hips. Strong hands—she’d known they’d be strong. Her skin tingled with the image of being touched without barriers even as her mouth sought to take all he could give her through a kiss alone. She strained
against him, offering, demanding, and it seemed he couldn’t give or take fast enough to satisfy either of them. His mouth ravaged, but hers wouldn’t surrender. What she drew out of him excited them both.
It wasn’t until she began to feel the weakness that Gennie remembered to fear. This wasn’t what she’d come for … Was it? No, she wouldn’t believe she’d come to feel this terrifying pleasure, this aching, gnawing need to give what she’d never given before. Panic rose and she struggled against it in a way she knew she’d never be able to struggle against desire. She had to stop him, and herself. If he held her much longer, she would melt, and melting, lose.
Drawing on what was left of her strength she pulled back, determined not to show either the passion or the fear that raced through her. “Very nice,” she murmured, praying he wouldn’t notice how breathless her voice was. “Though your technique’s a bit—rough for my taste.”
His breath came quick and fast. Grant didn’t speak, knowing if he did madness would pour out. For the second time she’d emptied him out then filled him again with herself. Need for her, raw, exclusive, penetrating, ripped through him as he stared into her eyes and waited for it to abate. It didn’t.
He was stronger than she was, he told himself as he gathered her shirtfront in his hand. Her heart thudded against his knuckles. There was nothing to stop him from … He dropped his hand as though she’d scalded him. No one pushed him to that, he thought furiously while she continued to stare up at him. No one.
“You’re walking on dangerous ground, Genviève,” he said softly.
She tossed back her head. “I’m very sure-footed.” With a parting smile, she turned, counting each step as she went back to her canvas. Perhaps her hands weren’t steady as she packed up her gear. Perhaps her blood roared in her ears. But she’d won the first round. She let out a deep breath as she heard the door to the lighthouse slam shut.
The first round, she repeated, wishing she wasn’t looking forward quite so much to the next one.
Chapter 5
Grant managed to avoid Gennie for three days. She came back to paint every morning, and though she worked for hours, she never saw a sign of him. The lighthouse was silent, its windows winking blankly in the sun.
Once his boat was gone when she arrived and hadn’t returned when she lost the light she wanted. She was tempted to go down the cliff and walk along the beach where he had taken her. She found she could have more easily strolled into his house uninvited than gone to that one particular spot without his knowledge. Even had she wanted to paint there, the sense of trespassing would have forbidden it.
She painted in peace, assured that since she had gotten her own back with Grant she wouldn’t think of him. But the painting itself kept him lodged in her mind. She would never be able to see that spot, on canvas or in reality, and not see him. It was his, as surely as if he’d been hewed from the rocks or tossed up by the sea. She could feel the force of his personality as she guided her brush, and the challenge of it as she struggled to put what should have only been nature’s mood onto canvas.
But it wouldn’t only be nature’s, she discovered as she painted sea and surf. Though his form wouldn’t be on the canvas, his substance would. Gennie had always felt a particle of her own soul went into each one of her canvases. In this one she would capture a part of Grant’s as well. Neither of them had a choice.
Somehow knowing it drove her to create something with force and muscle. The painting excited her. She knew she’d been meant to paint that view, and to paint it well. And she knew when it was done, she would give it to Grant. Because it could never belong to anyone else.
It wouldn’t be a token of affection, she told herself, or an offer of friendship. It was simply something that had to be done. She’d never be able, in good conscience, to sell that canvas. And if she kept it herself, he’d haunt her. So before she left Windy Point, she would make him a gift of it. Perhaps, in her way, she would then haunt him.
Her mornings were filled with an urgency to finish it, an urgency she had to block again and again unless she miss something vital in the process. Gennie knew it was imperative to move slowly, to absorb everything around her and give it to the painting. In the afternoons she forced herself to pack up so that she wouldn’t work longer than she should and ignore the changing light.
She sketched her inlet and planned a watercolor. She fretted for morning so that she could go back to the sea.
Her restlessness drove her to town. It was time to make some sketches there, to decide what she would paint and in what medium. She told herself she needed to see people again to keep her mind from focusing so continually on Grant.
In the midafternoon, Windy Point was sleepy and quiet. Boats were out to sea, and a hazy summer heat shimmered in the air. She saw a woman sitting on her porch stringing the last of the season’s beans while a toddler plucked at the clover in the yard.
Gennie parked her car at the end of the road and began to walk. She could sketch the buildings, the gardens. She could gather impressions that would bring them to life again when she began to paint. This was a different world from the force at Windy Point Station, different yet from the quiet inlet behind her cottage, but they were all connected. The sea touched all of them in different ways.
She wandered, glad she had come though the voices she heard were the voices of strangers. It was a town she’d remember more clearly than any of the others she’d visited on her tour of New England. But it was the sea that continued to tug at her underneath it all—and the man who lived there.
When would she see him again? Gennie wondered, forced to admit that she missed him. She missed the scowl and the curt words, the quick grin and surprising humor, the light of amused cynicism she caught in his eyes from time to time. And though it was the hardest to admit, she missed that furious passion he’d brought to her so suddenly.
Leaning against the side of a building, she wondered if there would be another man somewhere who would touch her that way. She couldn’t imagine one. She’d never looked for a knight in armor—they were simply too much trouble, expecting a helpless damsel in return. Helpless she would never be, and chivalry, for the most part, got in the way of an intelligent relationship. Grant Campbell, Gennie mused, would never be chivalrous, and a helpless female would infuriate him.
Remembering their first meeting, she chuckled. No, he didn’t care to be put out by a lady in distress any more than she cared to be one. She supposed, on both parts, it went back to a fierce need for independence.
No, he wasn’t looking for a lady, and while she hadn’t been looking for a knight, she hadn’t been searching out ogres, either. Gennie thought Grant came very close to fitting into that category. While she enjoyed men’s company, she didn’t want one tangling up her life—at least not until she was ready. And she certainly didn’t want to be involved with an ogre—they were entirely too unpredictable. Who knew when they’d just swallow you whole?
Shaking her head, she glanced down, surprised to see that she’d not only been thinking of Grant, but had been sketching him. Lips pursed, Gennie lifted the pad for a critical study. A good likeness, she decided. His eyes were narrowed a bit, dark and intense on the point of anger. His brows were lowered, forming that faint vertical line of temper between them. She’d captured that lean face with its planes and shadows, the aristocratic nose and unruly hair. And his mouth …
The little jolt of response wasn’t surprising, but it was unwelcomed. She’d drawn his mouth as she’d seen it before it came down on hers—the sensuousness, the ruthlessness. Yes, she could taste that stormy flavor even now, standing in the quiet town with the scent of fish and aging flowers around her.
Carefully closing the book, Gennie reminded herself she’d be much better off sticking to the buildings she’d come to draw. With the pencil stuck behind her ear, Gennie crossed the road to go into the post office. The skinny teenager she remembered from her first trip through the town turned to goggle at her when she entered. As
she walked up to the counter, she smiled at him, then watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down.
“Will.” Mrs. Lawrence plunked letters down on the counter. “You’d best be getting Mr. Fairfield his mail before you lose your job.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He scooped at the letters while he continued to stare at Gennie. When he dropped the lot of them on the floor, Gennie bent to help him and sent him into a blushing attack of stutters.
“Will Turner,” Mrs. Lawrence repeated with the pitch of an impatient schoolteacher. “Gather up those letters and be on your way.”
“You missed one, Will,” Gennie said kindly, then handed the envelope to him as his jaw went slack. Face pink, eyes glued to hers, Will stumbled to the door and out.
Mrs. Lawrence gave a dry chuckle. “Be lucky he doesn’t fall off the curb.”
“I suppose I should be flattered,” Gennie considered. “I don’t remember having that effect on anyone before.”
“Awkward age for a boy when he starts noticing females is shaped a bit different.”
With a laugh, Gennie leaned on the counter. “I wanted to thank you again for coming by the other day. I’ve been painting out at the lighthouse and haven’t been into town.”
Mrs. Lawrence glanced down at the sketchbook Gennie had set on the counter. “Doing some drawing here?”
“Yes.” On impulse, Gennie opened the book and flipped through. “It was the town that interested me right away—the sense of permanence and purpose.”
Cool-eyed, the widow paged through the book while Gennie nibbled on her lip and waited for the verdict. “Ayah,” she said at length. “You know what you’re about.” With one finger, she pushed back a sheet, then studied Gennie’s sketch of Grant. “Looks a bit fierce,” she decided as the wispy smile touched her mouth.
“Is a bit for my thinking,” Gennie countered.
“Ayah, well there be a woman who like a touch of vinegar in a man.” She gave another dry chuckle and for once her eyes were more friendly than shrewd. “I be one of them.” With a glance over Gennie’s shoulder, the widow closed the book. “Afternoon, Mr. Campbell.”
For a moment Gennie goggled at the widow much as Will had goggled at her. Recovering, she laid a hand on the now closed book.
“Afternoon, Mrs. Lawrence.” When he came to stand at the counter beside her, Gennie caught the scent of the sea on him. “Genviève,” he said, giving her a long, enigmatic look.
He’d wondered how long he could stand it before he saw her up close again. There’d been too many times in the past three days that he hadn’t been able to resist the urge to go to his studio window and watch her paint. All that had stopped him from going down to her was the knowledge that if he touched her again, he’d be heading down a road he’d never turn back from. As yet he was uncertain what was at the end of it.
A picture of the blushing, stuttering teenager ran through her mind and straightened Gennie’s spine. “Hello, Grant.” When she smiled, she was careful to bank down the warmth and make up for it with mockery. “I thought you were hibernating.”
“Been busy,” he said easily. “Didn’t know you were still around.” That gave him the satisfaction of seeing annoyance dart into her eyes before she controlled it.
“I’ll be around for some time yet.”
Mrs. Lawrence slid a thick bundle of mail on the counter, then followed it with a stack of newspapers. Gennie caught the Chicago return address of the top letter and the banner of the Washington Post before Grant scooped everything up. “Thanks.”
With a frown between her brows, Gennie watched him walk out. There must have been a dozen letters and a dozen newspapers. Letters from Chicago, a Washington paper for a man who lived on a deserted cliff outside a town that didn’t even boast a stoplight. What in the hell …
“Fine-looking young man,” Mrs. Lawrence commented behind Gennie’s back.
With a mumbled answer, Gennie started for the door. “Bye, Mrs. Lawrence.”
Mrs. Lawrence tapped a finger on the counter thinking there hadn’t been such tugging and pulling in the air since the last storm. Maybe another one was brewing.
Puzzled, Gennie began to walk again. It wasn’t any of her business why some odd recluse received so much mail. For all she knew, he might only come into town to pick it up once a month … but that had been yesterday’s paper. With a brisk shake of her head, she struggled against curiosity. The real point was that she’d been able to get a couple shots in—even if he’d had a bull’s-eye for her.
She loitered at the corner, doing another quick sketch while she reminded herself that instead of thinking of him, she should be thinking what provisions she needed before she headed back to the cottage.
But she was restless again. The sense of order and peace she’d found after an hour in town had vanished the moment he’d walked into the post office. She wanted to find that feeling again before she went back to spend the night alone.
Aimlessly, she wandered down the road, pausing now and then at a store window. She was nearly to the edge of town when she remembered the churchyard. She’d sketch there until she was tired enough to go home.
A truck rattled by, perhaps the third vehicle Gennie had seen in an hour. After waiting for it, she crossed the road. She passed the small, uneven plot of the cemetery, listening to the quiet. The grass was high enough to bend in the breeze. Overhead a flock of gulls flew by, calling out on their way to the sea.
The paint on the high fence was rusted and peeling. Queen Anne’s lace grew stubbornly between the posts. The church itself was small and white with a single stained-glass panel at the V of the roof. Other windows were clear glass and paned, and the door itself was sturdy and scarred with time. Gennie walked to the side and sat where the grass had been recently tended. She could smell it.
Fleetingly she wondered how it was possible one tiny scrap on the map could have so much that demanded to be painted. She could easily spend six months there rather than six weeks and never capture all she wanted to.
The restlessness evaporated as she began to sketch. Perhaps she wouldn’t be able to transfer everything into oils or watercolor before she left, but she’d have the sketches. In months to come, she could use them to go back to Windy Point when she felt the need for it.
She’d turned over the page to start a second sketch when a shadow fell over her. A quick fluctuation of her pulse, a swift warmth on her skin. She knew who