Authors: Virginia Kantra
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal, #Suspense, #General
at her with dark-eyed intensity, like the brooding hero of some romance
novel. Regina shivered. It was perversely arousing. Annoying. People
were beginning to talk.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” she demanded, keeping her
voice low.
By the door, a middle-aged couple hung with cameras and water
bottles perused the menu. Nick was under one of the tables, playing with
the cat.
Dylan studied her a moment. A corner of his mouth quirked. “No.”
“Someplace to go? A job?”
“I have a job to do here.”
“You’re not a lobsterman.” The lobster fishermen, the good ones,
were all on the water by five o’clock. It was after ten now.
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“No,” he acknowledged.
She set her hands on her hips and waited.
“Salvage,” he offered finally.
Her brows drew together. “You mean, shipwrecks? Like, Titanic
stuff?”
“What lies in the sea belongs to the sea.”
“I heard it belongs to the government.”
He shrugged. “Most exploration is done by private divers.”
“Grave robbers.”
The edge of his teeth showed in a smile. “Treasure seekers.”
Nick poked his head from under the table. “Did you ever find
treasure?”
He was stuck indoors, grounded, until Regina’s shift ended at three.
Antonia told Regina she was overreacting, but she didn’t care. She had
enough problems without worrying about Nick’s whereabouts ten times a
day.
Dylan reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin. Regina caught
the gleam as he flipped it to her son.
“Wow.” Nick’s eyes widened as he turned the coin over in his hand.
“Is it real?”
Dylan nodded. “Morgan Liberty Head silver dollar.”
“Cool.”
“Keep it.”
“No,” Regina said.
“It’s only a dollar,” Nick said.
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“And not in mint condition,” Dylan added.
“I don’t care what kind of condition it’s in. He doesn’t take gifts
from strangers.”
Nick thrust out his lower lip. “But—”
She pinned him with her I-mean-it-Nicky-now look. She didn’t want
her son romanticizing this guy. Even if Dylan did look a little like a
pirate, with that long dark hair and sexy stubble . . .
She pulled herself up. She wasn’t going to romanticizehim either. He
was just an island boy who’d gone away, no different and certainly no
better than any of the men she had considered and rejected over the years.
Men she hadn’t had sex with.
Shit.
“Sorry, kid,” Dylan said.
“Yeah.” Nick dropped the coin into Dylan’s palm. “Me, too.”
Regina sighed as her son stomped into the kitchen.
Dylan turned toward the door, stretching his legs into the room.
Long legs, Regina noticed. No socks.
“Who is that?” he asked.
Regina jerked her attention from his corded legs and followed his
gaze to the front window, where Jericho waited on the sidewalk. “Jericho
Jones.”
She gave him the islanders’ wave, lifted fingers, an almost-nod. The
vet shouldered his pack and disappeared around the corner of the
building.
“What does he want?”
“Nothing. A sandwich.”
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He came by once a day, or every other day. She slipped him food
through the back door when Antonia wasn’t watching.
“I meant here, on the island.”
Regina shrugged. “Maybe he can’t afford the ferry back to the
mainland.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“I didn’t ask. It’s your brother’s job to question people. I just feed
them.”
Dylan’s gaze narrowed on her face. “You are kind,” he said, almost
accusingly.
“Not really. The way our country treats its returning soldiers sucks.
He shouldn’t be living on the streets, he—”
“— could be trouble.”
“Look, he doesn’t bother the customers, and he’s not a registered sex
offender. That’s all I need to know.”
“And how do you know that much?”
She flushed. “Your brother told me.”
“Where does he sleep?”
“Jericho? I don’t know,” she said irritably. “Around. I don’t know
where you sleep either.”
“Would you like to see?” he asked softly.
Her pulse jumped. “N-no.” She cleared her throat. “No. It’s just . . .
The inn’s full up, and most places were rented months ago. Unless you’re
staying with your family?”
Dylan’s brows rose. “With the newlyweds? I think not.”
She wiped her hands on her apron. “What about your dad’s place?”
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His face closed like a poker player’s. “My father and I do not
speak.”
“But your sister—”
“Lucy was a baby when I . . . left.”
He had Margred’s habit of pausing before certain words, as if
English was his second language or something. Regina wondered again
where he’d lived and how they’d met. “All the more reason to get to
know her now,” she pointed out.
“You’re suddenly very interested in my personal life.”
“I—” Oh, shit. “I’m thinking about Lucy. She was Nicky’s teacher
for two years, you know. First and second grade.”
“I did not know.” He caught her eye and for a second looked almost
embarrassed, like the boy he must have been before his mother took him
away. “We do not have much sense of family.”
But that wasn’t true. Bart Hunter had been devastated by his wife’s
desertion. Lucy had turned down a post in Cumberland County to teach
on the island and keep house for her father. Caleb was a thoughtful and
devoted brother. Since his return from Iraq, he had even begun a painful
reconciliation with his dad.
“You mean, you don’t have much sense of family,” she accused.
He shrugged. “If you like.”
She didn’t like it at all.
* * *
The next morning, Regina sat on the toilet, counting the days in her
mental calendar, controlling panic.
Her period wasn’t even due yet, not for another— she counted
again— two days, she wasn’t late, she couldn’t possibly be pregnant.
Her throat closed.
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Well, technically, she could.
She could take a pregnancy test. Regina thought about walking into
Wiley’s Grocery and requesting a pregnancy kit from the Wileys’ teenage
daughter and shuddered. That would certainly liven up the discussion in
the checkout line.
Regina swallowed. Okay, no test. Not yet. Not until she could get to
the mainland, Rockland or someplace, to buy one. In the meanwhile, she
would count the days and pray and stay as far away as possible from
Dylan “No Family Ties” Hunter.
57
Five
LIVING IN HUMAN FORM AMONG HUMANS was like being
dragged naked over rocks.
Dylan stood motionless on the wharf outside the lobster cooperative,
itching for the coverage of his pelt, craving the rush and freedom of the
sea.
His hands flexed and fisted. He had dallied in human form before,
sometimes for sex, most often alone on the island his mother had
bequeathed to him. But never for so long. Never surrounded by other
beings who claimed a share of his space, a portion of his attention. He felt
assaulted, abraded, by the constant human contact.
No wonder the old king, Llyr, had gone “beneath the wave,” the
polite selkie term for those who had withdrawn so deeply into themselves
and the sea that they lost the desire and ability to assume human shape.
The smell of diesel and oil, the tang of coffee, sweat, and cigarettes,
rose from the saturated planks, overlaying the rich brine of the ocean.
Fishermen came into the low wooden building to sell their catch, to buy
bait and fuel and rubber bands, to share complaints or gossip. Dylan felt
their glances light like flies against his skin, but no one questioned his
presence. He was accepted— not one of them, but still of the island.
He listened to their conversations, trying to fathom from their talk of
weather, traps, and prices what the demons could possibly want from
World’s End.
“He’s got no right to set traps on that ledge,” one man told another.
“So I cut his line and retied it with a big knot up by the buoy.”
His companion nodded. “That’ll teach him.”
“It better.” The rumble of an incoming boat underscored the threat.
“Or next time I’ll cut his line for good.”
Dylan smiled to himself. Apparently humans could be as territorial
as selkies.
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The engine behind him throttled down. Another fisherman, Dylan
thought. He turned. And froze, his casual greeting stuck in his throat.
The boat was the Pretty Saro. He recognized her lines even before he
registered the name painted on her side. And the fisherman was Bart
Hunter.
His father.
He was old. Dylan had seen his father before, of course, at the
wedding. But out of a suit, out in the sunlight, the realization struck with
fresh force.
Bart Hunter had always been a big man. Dylan had his height; Caleb,
his shoulders and large, square, workingman’s hands. But the years or the
drinking had whittled the flesh from his bones, weathered his face,
bleached his hair, until he stood like an old spar, stark and gray. Human.
Old.
How had Dylan ever been afraid of him?
They stared at each other across the narrowing strip of water.
They had barely spoken at the wedding. Dylan had nothing to say to
the man who had held his mother captive for fourteen years.
But before he could clear out, Bart tossed him a rope.
Dylan caught it automatically. Old habits died hard. He was eight or
nine when he started sterning for his father, hard, wet, dirty work in
oversized boots and rubber gloves.
Dylan tied the line, cursing the memories that dragged at him as hard
as any rope.
And then he turned and walked away without a word. “Don’t judge
me, boy,” Bart called after him. The words thumped like stones between
his shoulder blades. “You can’t judge me.”
Dylan did not look back.
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He climbed the road away from the wharf, the need to escape
swelling inside him, coiling in his gut, clawing under his skin.
He sucked in the cool ocean air in a vain attempt to placate the beast
in his belly. He burned with need, for a woman, for the sea, the two
hungers twining and combining, eating him up inside. He fought the urge
to run back and plunge off the pier, to merge with the dance beneath the
waves, the life lurking, darting, swaying, streaming, in the flowing moss,
in the forests of kelp, in the cold, deep dark. To blot out thought with
sensation. To wash the taint of humanity from his soul.
How did Conn stand it?
Within the confines of Sanctuary, the prince had held to his human
form longer than any selkie living. But he would not leave the magic of
the island. He could not risk aging.
Dylan gulped another mouthful of air. He was young by selkie
standards— not yet forty. He could spend weeks, years, on land and still
not approach his chronological age. At least he would not die from this
experience. Unless the frustration killed him.
He raised his gaze from the asphalt. At the top of the winding road,
the restaurant’s red awning gleamed like a sail in the sunset.
The slippery knot in his gut eased. There was one hunger he could
satisfy.
He went to see her only because it suited his purpose, Dylan told
himself as he passed the ferry road. His very public pursuit of Regina
provided him with an excuse to keep an eye on the humans’ comings and
goings, to listen to their gossip. If a demon did possess an islander,
chances were good that his neighbors would be discussing his strange
behavior over coffee at Antonia’s the next day.
And yet . . .
He wanted to see her. Looked forward to the wary light that came
into her eyes when he walked through the door, the challenge in her chin,
the annoyance in her voice. Liked watching her through the pass-through
into the kitchen, her quick, neat movements, her small, strong hands, the
impatient press of her lips. He smiled, picturing her. Always busy, always
in motion, like a bird at the edge of the tide.
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He pushed open the restaurant door, making the bell jangle. The
restaurant cat raised its head from its window perch, regarding him with
sleepy golden eyes.
Margred paused in the act of untying her apron. “Oh, it’s you.”
Dylan raised an eyebrow, nettled by her obvious disappointment.
Selkie or human, married or not, Margred had power, a purely female
magic that would always draw men’s eyes. But this time the sight of her
did nothing to blunt the edge in him.
His restless gaze moved past her to the kitchen. “Where is she?”