Beyond the Misty Shore (11 page)

Maggie’s thoughts spooled. Spots formed before her eyes. She took in three deep breaths and warned herself to calm down and not to jump to conclusions. “Like your parents’ deaths were your fault?”

“More so. With them, I didn’t know what to expect. But with my fiancée...” He let out a sigh laden with self-disgust. “Have you ever sensed something coming and ignored it?”

Surprise streaked up her backbone. She’d tried to ignore him, his despair, those ominous whispers. “Yes.”

“So did I. That’s why her death is my fault. I knew she was headed for trouble, and I didn’t stop her.”

Knowing Carolyn, he
couldn’t
have stopped her. Once she’d made up her mind, she’d had tunnel vision until she’d gotten what she’d wanted. Was that all there was to MacGregor’s involvement in her death? Was the guilt Maggie had sensed he’d caused only that he hadn’t stopped Carolyn from self-destructing? “Maybe you weren’t supposed to stop her. Maybe you were just supposed to try.” Maggie rubbed his finger with the forefinger of her free hand. “Did you try?”

“Too late, but, yes, I did. She wouldn’t listen.” His Adam’s apple bobbed and the veins in his neck bulged. “I—I really don’t want to talk about that anymore.”

It hurt him. Maggie could see that it did. But did it hurt because he’d loved Carolyn, or because she’d died? “All right.”

“The bottom line is I couldn’t paint again. Every-time I picked up a brush, or even thought about picking up one, I remembered just how much my gift has cost me, you know? Everything and everyone I care about is dead—because of my gift.”

“Tyler, that’s not true.”

“It is. My parents were coming to see my exhibit. Carolyn had my painting with her—she was obsessed with the damn thing, Maggie. They died. They all died.”

She cupped her free hand over their linked ones. “So you came back here to see if you could again be healed.”

“Yes.” He loosened his tight jaw. “I don’t want to paint—how could I want to paint?” He paused and dragged in a shuddered breath. “I need peace, Maggie. I just... need peace.”

His torment reflected in every fiber of his expression. “I understand.” She scooted closer still and rested her bent knee on his thigh. Her shadow spilled over his chest and slanted onto the root-roughened ground beyond him. “Do you think maybe it’s because you feel guilty about these things that you can’t leave here?”

“Yeah, I do. But it isn’t all in my mind. Bill Butler thinks it is, but he’s wrong. I’m not crazy.”

“Of course, you aren’t crazy. But you aren’t guilty either, and yet you still feel guilty. Maybe that’s what’s happening to you. You think you can’t go, so you just can’t go. You feel guilty.”

“I am guilty.”

“Okay. I disagree, but I’m not going to argue the point with you.” A little speckle of dip spotted his cheek. She reached up and thumbed it off.

“Maggie?” he whispered.

She looked at him, their hands clasped, her thumb still resting against his jaw.

“What would you think about us kissing?”

“Bad idea.” She wanted to pull back, meant to pull back, but it was as if someone held a hand at the center of her back, refusing to let her. She stared into MacGregor’s eyes. So dark. So intense. So many emotions flitting through their depths.

“Very bad idea.” His pupils dilated and he focused on her mouth. “You wanna do it anyway?”

Her heart careened, nearly shattering in her chest. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I guess I do.”

“I have to taste you. Just once.” He let go of her hand, cupped her face in his upturned palms, and leaned toward her.

“Just once.” His lips were warm, soft, and as gentle as a summer breeze. She fisted her hands on his thigh, wanting to touch him, to let her fingers drift through his hair to see if it was as soft as it looked, to stir his heated, winter pine scent that conjured all manner of romantic fantasies in her mind, to feel his chest to see if his heart was beating as hard as her own. She wanted to do all those things, but she didn’t do any of them. She couldn’t. She had no right.

He pulled back and looked into her eyes, his own, solemn.

“MacGregor?”

No answer. He just looked at her.

He knew she felt torn about this. And he wasn’t going to make it easy for her. In fact, he wasn’t going to sway her decision either way. She shouldn’t do it. It wasn’t right. She wasn’t playing straight with the man, and she wasn’t any more sure he was playing straight with her. But he looked so good. Smelled and tasted and felt so good. And if she didn’t get one really serious kiss from him, she’d die wondering what it would have been like. She didn’t want to die wondering...

“Well, hell, MacGregor.” Sighing her resignation, she circled his neck with her arms, and kissed his lips.

Chapter 5

T.J. walked into the bathroom and saw her clothes puddled on the floor. Fresh ones lay on the countertop. He grimaced, picked up the little
Occupied
sign and rapped it against the inner door, separating the rest from the shower and tub. “Hey, Maggie. You forgot the sign again.”

Water splashed. She gurgled and came up muttering. “Damn it, MacGregor, you scared the socks off me.”

He arched a brow. “Bathe in your socks now, do you?”

“Go away. How’d you get in here? I know I locked that door.”

“It’s broken.”

“Well, thanks so much for passing along that tidbit of information.”

The corner of his mouth twitched at her sarcasm. Forget a gnat. He didn’t worry her a mite’s worth. He dropped down and sat on the step up to the tub room. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Can it wait?” She lowered her voice to a mumble. “The man just can’t
stand
the idea of letting me bathe in peace.”

“Yeah, it could wait. But what’s wrong with talking now? It’s not as if I can see through walls or anything.” But he sure could hear through the door. And she had no idea...

“So much for privacy.” She elevated her voice. “All right, talk. But I’m warning you, so much as one fingerprint shows up on my underclothes out there and I’ll be using your razor for more than shaving my legs.”

“You’re using my razor?” He glared at the door. “First you leave half my backside on the rocks, now you’re bent on mutilating my face. Exactly what is your problem with my skin?”

She laughed.

The sound warmed him. “Ah, I get it. Just what infraction have I allegedly committed against you to prompt
this
subtle revenge?”

“No revenge,” she assured him. “I left my own razor in my room.”

“Well, thank heaven for small mercies.” Now, she owed him. But he thought he’d just wait a while to tell her. Maybe until she was good and steamed.

“So what do you want to talk about?”

Certainly not what the vision of his razor gliding up her long legs did to him. “I’ve been thinking,” he told her. “Maybe you have a point about the boundary line.”

“What do you mean?”

Splash. “Ah, geez.”

He frowned. “Cut yourself?”

“Nicked. Is this a new blade? I hate new blades, MacGregor. The darn things are lethal weapons.”

“It’s new.” He smiled, hoping she’d spare her shins a little skin. They were much too nice to be scabbed up. “What if this stuff isn’t happening to me because I’m crossing the boundary, but because of where I’m crossing it?”

“Mmm. I never thought about that. Do you think location will make a difference?”

A pang of disappointment stung him. She thought this was all in his mind—just as Bill did. But could T.J. blame her? If this weren’t happening to him, he’d think that, too. Hell, sometimes he still thought it. “I don’t know if it’ll make any difference at all,” he answered honestly. “Probably won’t. But there’s nothing else left to try.”

He leaned back against the door. Stared at the streaks of shadows the light played on the ceiling. “I’m thinking to try crossing out by the pond. Up by the stone wall between here and Beaulah Favish’s place.”

“It couldn’t hurt.” She muttered as if she’d nicked herself again. “MacGregor, when you actually cross over, what do you feel?”

Should he tell her? Right now she just thought he was nuts. But if he told her about the episodes in detail, she’d be certain of it. He knew how crazy it sounded, but he wasn’t crazy, and he knew that, too. She didn’t. Whatever was happening here fit into the weird, strange, abnormal and unusual categories, but it
was
happening. It was real.

But if he didn’t tell her, she’d just ask Miss Hattie, who might or might not tell her. Better it came from him. “First the temperature takes a nosedive.” He studied his nails, disassociating from the things he felt when this happened, fearing if he didn’t, Maggie would hear all the emotion in his voice and think him nuts
and
weak. “Then this mist comes up over me. I feel it everywhere, like a blanket. No. No, it’s more like a second skin.”

A thread of anxiousness stole into his voice. He paused to level it out, to further distance himself.

“What else?”

She sounded controlled, her tone not reflecting the strangeness of what he was telling her at all. Grateful for that, he went on. “Then it’s like these icy-cold fingers grab me by the shoulder. I try to knock them loose, but I can’t.”

“That’s what you’re fighting, then?”

“Yeah.” He stared at her clothes on the floor. Her sleeve was crumpled and twisted around the leg of her jeans. Her panties lay right on top. He shut his eyes. “Yeah, that’s what I’m fighting.”

“Then what?”

The water rippled, lapped against the sides of the garden tub, and he imagined himself in it with her. Her skin wet and rosy from the heat, her cheeks flushed, her eyes soft and slumberous.

“MacGregor?”

The image popped like a bubble. “Then I’m too weak to fight. I see spots, know I’m blacking out—and I know that there’s nothing I can do to stop it.” He swallowed an emotional knot from his throat. “Then I’m out.”

“Sounds creepy.”

It was. “Try experiencing it.”

“No, thanks.”

Something in her tone alerted his sixth sense. He stared at the woodgrain in the door, wishing he could see her expressive eyes. “Maggie, have you been experiencing strange things here, too?”

She hesitated. “Um, no.” The water pipes groaned ominously and the room temperature seemed to suddenly drop. “Why do you ask?”

She’d lied. “Just curious.” He leaned back, rested his head against the door and stared at the antique brass shell soap dish on the marble counter. Why had she lied?

“What happens to you then?”

“Nothing. Out’s out, Maggie.” He pivoted, leaned his weight fully against the door to scratch an itch in the middle of his shoulders. “The next thing I know, I’m waking up looking at angels.”

“Angels?” She opened the door.

Not expecting it, T.J. crashed onto his back.

“Sorry.” She looked down at him, her hair damp and swinging forward cupping her face.

He looked up her legs to the fluffy pink towel circling her middle. Droplets of water clung to her skin, between her clavicles, in the soft hollow of her throat. A lone trickle slid down her shoulder and onto her arm, and she smelled of lavender soap. He loved the smell of lavender soap as much as the smell of the sea.

“Tell me about the angels.”

He sat up. “They’re not your halo variety.”

“Glad to hear it. You were starting to worry me.”

Telling her about the boundary crossing should have her plenty worried already. Why didn’t it? “These angels flap hankies, not wings.”

“Ah, Miss Hattie.”

“And you.” He rolled his shoulder, bowed his spine, and worked a kink out of his back.

She smiled. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called me an angel before.”

“No? Well, don’t let it go to your head. I curse you plenty, too.”

“You?” She drew in a sharp breath that was totally faked. “Well, what do you know? And here I had you pegged as a gentleman.”

“Uh-huh. And I buy swampland by the parcel to build subdivisions on, too.”

“Now, MacGregor” —she flipped at a curl clinging to his ear—“who these days other than a gentleman asks a woman for a kiss?”

He caught her finger and held it. “I’ve been meaning to talk with you about that.”

“Oh?”

“Color me uninformed on the politically correct scene—I’ve been out of circulation for some time—but at least I asked you before I kissed you. You didn’t ask me. Worse, you kissed me
and
cursed me.” He cleared his throat. “Notice how chivalrous I was about that, Maggie. I’m needing to rack up some redemption points here.”

“Intention noted.”

He nodded. “Did you note, too, that I didn’t hold it against you—you’re not asking me before you kissed me, I mean? I didn’t. I kissed you back, anyway.”

“Did you?” She pressed a fingertip to her temple and walked past him, then scooped up her clothes. “Gee, MacGregor, I can’t say I did notice.”

“You didn’t?” He stood up and moved toward her. “How the hell could you not notice?”

She looked up at him and shrugged, her eyes glinting mischief. The towel, knotted between her breasts, lifted with each of her breaths. “I guess maybe it was one sorely-lacking kiss.”

“You’re lying, Maggie.”

“Am I?” She feigned innocence.

“Yeah, you are.” It was so transparent. Too transparent. She meant for him to realize it. “You know what I think?”

“No idea.” Holding her clothes bundled near her stomach, she backed up a step, against the hallway door.

He stepped closer, hemmed her in, determined to see her eyes on this one. She didn’t know it, but every emotion she even thought about feeling shone clearly in her eyes. “I’m thinking it wasn’t a sorely-lacking kiss. I’m thinking you want to kiss me again.”

“Nope. Not me.” She shook her head, setting her hair to swinging. “You’re thinking wrong.”

“No, I’m not. And I’m also thinking that you don’t want a sweet and gentle kiss.” He nodded to let her know he meant it.

Her little quiver had the knot at her breasts heaving. “Uh-uh.”

“Uh-huh.” He stepped closer still, until they touched chest to breasts, thigh to thigh. Her clothes crushed between their stomachs, she moved her hands, hesitated as if uncertain what to do with them, then lowered them to her sides, palms flat against the door.

He lifted his hands to her shoulders. Her skin was creamy soft, so warm and tempting. “I’m thinking you want to feel passion, Maggie.”

She hissed out a spurted breath that he thought might just be the sexiest sound he’d ever heard. “I don’t,” she said shakily. “I really, really don’t.”

Again, she’d lied. But this time he knew why. She didn’t want to find him appealing any more than he wanted to be attracted to her. He let his fingertip trail down from her temple to her earlobe, traced the shell of her ear back to her lobe, then to the soft spot behind it. A second finger joined the first and skimmed down her long neck, over her pulse point to her slim shoulder, to the soft hollow at her throat that was still damp and moist and warm from her bath. He circled it, then glided just the very tips of all four fingers along the upper swell of her breasts, meaning for his touch to be sensual, not sexual, and from her rapt expression, he was succeeding. “If passion is what you’re needing to feel, I can—”

“No, MacGregor.” Her voice softened to a pleading whisper. “I can’t.”

“But you want to.”

She swallowed, her breaths rough and loud in the still, moist air hanging between them. “Yes.”

He nearly collapsed from relief. This wasn’t one-sided. Neither of them wanted anything between them, but they were both feeling something. He didn’t like it, but he’d acknowledged it. So had she, though she hadn’t yet acted on it. And that, she had to decide to do.

He locked their gazes, let his hand fall to his side, then slowly and deliberately backed up a step.

The bundle of clothes between them dropped to the floor. Ignoring them, she grasped his arm and squeezed. “MacGregor?”

He paused, watching her inner struggle reflect in her eyes, and then the pressure from her fingers strengthened, urging him toward her. His heart thundering hard, his blood rushing through his veins, he took her into his arms and closed his mouth over her waiting lips.

She lifted her hands to his sides, glided them over him, ribs to waist, then gathered him close and drifted them down his spine. He’d been right. No gentle kiss, this. No tender pressing of lips and light flutters of learning touches. This kiss demanded, took, and delved deeply inside, exploring, touching parts of him he thought had died. This kiss teased and tempted and promised more. And he wanted more. He wanted all it promised. He wanted her.

A little moan escaped the back of her throat and the hands that had been gentle rubbed over his shirt, groped and clutched, bunching the fabric beneath them. He nipped at her lip and she opened her mouth on a gasped sigh. He darted his tongue inside, skimming over lips and teeth, and searched out her tongue. On finding it, he shuddered and touched it with his. Mingling, tangling, mating. She let out a whimper as sexy as that breath, and stroked his jeaned calf with her bare toes. A spiral of pleasure winding through him coiled tightly in his loins, so intense it weakened his knees.

He had to stop. If he didn’t stop—now—he’d be making love with her on the floor. He knew it. She knew it. And though he’d like nothing better, he also knew that the time wasn’t right.

Fighting tremor upon tremor of protest, he lifted his head and stared into her unfocused eyes, knowing his own were every bit as desire-glazed, and brushed his fingertip over her lower lip. “I want you, Maggie.”

Bemused, she breathed in deeply three times, each breath lifting the towel’s knot to brush against the heel of his hand. Each breath expelling warm heat that fanned over his chest. Each breath timing itself with the beats of his heart. “I can’t.”