Immortal Sea (24 page)

“After work.”

“Like you care,” he said bitterly.

“I do. I thought we were friends.”

He dropped a can of baked beans on top of some Kaiser rolls. “Right. That’s why you were home waiting for some guy last night.”

“Waiting for . . . Your total is seventy-three dollars and twenty-nine cents,” she said to the man standing in line. “Thank you for shopping at Wiley’s.”

She waited until the shopper collected his bags before she hissed at Zack, “I was waiting for you, dummy.”

His mouth gaped.

She turned to the next customer in line. “Did you find everything you need today?”

Zack’s mind whirled as he bagged the items that came at him down the line, crackers, dish soap, chunky chicken soup,
two-sixty-nine
.

Stephanie’s voice broke into his concentration. “So, if you weren’t with me, who were you with last night?”

She couldn’t be jealous. Jesus, he was a freak, whatever Morgan said.

“My father,” he mumbled.

She shot him a sharp look over her shoulder. “I thought your father was dead.”

“My biological father.”

“Oh.” Her fingers paused their dance over the register. “Wow. Wait . . . Is he the really hot guy staying at the inn? Looks kind of like you, but older? Blond.”

Zack felt his face get red. “I don’t know.” Was he hot? Did she think he was hot? “He’s got light hair.”

“That’s the one. Your total is thirty-two dollars and eighty-five cents,” she said to the woman in line.

Cans were piling up in front of Zack. He stuffed them into a bag.

“I’m sorry, this register is closed now. Dot can take you over there. Dad.” Stephanie raised her voice, calling over to the other register. “I’m taking my break now.”

“Stephanie, it’s Friday.”

“I get breaks on Friday.” She flashed him a grin. “Please.”

He huffed. “Fifteen minutes. Not one second more.”

“Thanks, Daddy. Come on,” she said to Zack.

He finished loading the woman’s cart. “Where?”

“Break. Hurry up.”

He followed her back to the storeroom, drawn by her quick, firm steps and smoothly moving hips, helpless as a fish on her line.

She dropped into a metal folding chair, waved him to another. “So, what did he want?”

“What?”

“Your father. What’s he doing here?”

He looked into her sharp, interested face. Some of the tension churning inside him eased. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe he’s dying and he wants to leave you all his money.”

He shot her a disbelieving look.

She shrugged. “Okay, my fantasy, not yours. He probably has another family tucked away somewhere.”

“I don’t think so.” Zack swallowed. “According to my mom, he never got married.”

“He could still have kids. You could have, like, half brothers and sisters running around someplace and never know it.”

Zack’s chest felt tight. He was having enough trouble figuring out where he belonged without the thought of others like him out there somewhere.

“I have a half sister already,” he said. “I don’t need anybody else.”

“Still, it’s kind of cool. Him looking you up after all these years. Although it’s weird, him waiting so long.”

“He didn’t know about me,” Zack heard himself saying. “When my mom got pregnant. She didn’t know how to get in touch with him.”

At least, that had been the story she’d always told him. Who knew anymore what was true or not?

“So it was kind of not his fault,” Stephanie said.

Zack jerked one shoulder, unwilling to admit it.

“I wonder if he’s carrying a torch for your mom.”

He recoiled. “What are you talking about?”

“You know, because he never married. And then your dad dies and your other dad, he finds her again and—”

“Stop,” Zack said.

“Sorry. Awkward.”

“Yeah.”

“I hate to think about my parents doing it.”

“He’s not my . . .” Zack’s voice cracked, humiliating him. It hadn’t done that in months. He cleared his throat. “My father is dead.”

Under the black liner, her blue eyes were serious and sympathetic. “It doesn’t take anything away from your dad if you get to know the new guy.”

Morgan’s voice rolled through his memory.
“You have no idea of the dangers out there
.
”

“Which only proves how little you know
.
”

Zack stood, his chair scraping on the concrete floor. “I don’t want to know him. I don’t want anything to do with him.”

“Why not? You might have more in common with him than you think. You probably take after him, at least a little bit.”

Zack’s pulse pounded in his head. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“It’s not like he’s an axe murderer or something.”

His hands clenched into fists at his sides. Inside his boots, his toes curled. Not an axe murderer. A shark. Merfolk. Finfolk.

Whatever the hell he was.

She studied his face. Her own expression softened. “Anyway, he made the first move. I guess what happens next is up to you.”

Her words steadied him, made him feel as if he had a choice, a measure of control.

It was up to him.

He met her gaze, profoundly grateful. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” She strolled closer, tilted her head up. She was so pretty, so forceful, it was almost a shock to realize he was actually taller than she was. Standing on tiptoe, she touched her lips to his. Her lips were sweet and slightly sticky. Cherry Chapstick. Her silver lip ring brushed the corner of his mouth.

His head swam. He put his hands on her waist, tried to kiss her again.

She shook her head and took a step back.

He was wanting, aching, confused. “Stephanie . . .”

“Break’s over. My dad will be looking for us.”

“But—”

She tossed her red-black hair. “I made the first move. What happens next is up to you.”

The forecast called for fog and rain.
Summer in Maine
, Liz accepted with a shrug. There would be no walk on the beach today.

They could meet in her office.

All those interruptions
, her practical side protested.

Or at the inn.

All those beds
, temptation whispered.

But when she called the inn to suggest a change of location with Morgan, he dismissed her concerns.

“The weather will clear,” he had predicted.

He was right.

By the time they emerged from the trail, blooming with Queen Anne’s lace and goldenrod, overgrown with blackberries and beach roses, the clouds had pushed offshore. Liz could see the storm over the mainland, the dramatic gray slant of rain over the water. But here was sunshine and the piercing cry of gulls.

The cove was wild and deserted. No picnic tables or access signs disturbed the natural landscape, only a peeling wooden rowboat and an orange fiberglass canoe drawn up above the water line.

Liz sat on rocks warmed by the sun, listening to the sigh of the wind and the murmur of waves, soothing as a child’s bedtime story. Heat soaked the shoulders of her sensible blouse. She looked up at Morgan, the shape of his head black against the bright sky, and everything inside her flowed and moved to the rhythm of the wind and the waves. All the muscles she’d used last night went lax, all the nerves woke and reminded her they’d like to be used again.

He dropped a couple of towels from the inn on the sunlit rock.

She blinked. “You’re not going to swim. It’s too cold.”

“I may.” His eyes were opaque, his mouth a hard, flat line. “If it becomes necessary.”

Necessary?

She couldn’t imagine any circumstances that would drive her into that water. Someone drowning, maybe.

He nodded toward the two craft beached above the straggling brown line of seaweed. “I thought we would take a boat.”

She felt a spurt of surprised pleasure. She hadn’t expected him to plan a romantic interlude on the water. “You rented a boat?”

“No.” He padded across the hard, damp sand and ran an assessing hand over the rowboat’s upturned prow.

She expelled her breath. “We can’t simply row off in someone else’s property.”

“I am an excellent oarsman,” he assured her. He tugged off his boots, set them on the sand.

“Yes, but . . .”

His feet, she thought. Something about his feet . . .

His muscles bunched. She watched, distracted, as he flipped the heavy boat and hefted it into the air as if it weighed no more than a canoe. Goodness, he was strong.

“I’m sure you are,” she said. “It’s still stealing.”

He turned. His smile revealed an edge of teeth. “My people do not see it that way.”

She had noticed islanders had a more relaxed attitude toward crime and property than people who lived on the mainland: doors left unlocked, cars left running with their keys in the ignition. One of the advantages, she supposed, of knowing all your neighbors.

But Morgan was no more an islander than she was.

Barefoot, he waded into the shallows. The surface of the water heaved and sighed, expanding in ripples around his legs. Wet denim clung to his calves.

“Come.” He swung the boat down with barely a splash. Its bottom scraped sand. “I have something to show you.”

Her heart fluttered. It felt dangerous, delicious, to be doing something as illicit as joyriding in a borrowed boat. He made her feel like a girl again, irresponsible, carefree, sneaking onto the locked grounds of Kastellet in search of adventure.

“I thought we were here to talk about Zachary.”

“We will,” he promised. “In the boat.”

She climbed slowly to her feet. “This really isn’t necessary.”

“Yes, it is.” His eyes glinted. “Otherwise, I cannot be sure you will not run away.”

She laughed. Putting her hand in his, she let him lead her to the water’s edge, leaving solid ground and her scruples behind.

The sea was the color of mossy slate, flashing with sparks like fool’s gold. Pale green bladders of seaweed floated just beyond the reach of the oars.

Liz trailed her fingertips in the cool, dark water, enjoying the surge against her hand, the tingle up her arm.

Tiny, sensory details impressed themselves on her consciousness. The rush of water and the rattle of the oarlocks. The shape of Morgan’s hands and the turn of his head. The faint gold glitter of beard by the edge of his jaw where he’d missed a spot shaving.

He rowed with a fluid, easy strength that sent warmth curling through her midsection. It occurred to her, idly, that she’d never seen him sweat. Not that it mattered. It was remarkably pleasant to be with him like this, to be gliding without effort or destination over the sunlit water while he did all the work. A passenger instead of the captain, enjoying the ride.

She flushed almost guiltily. Not that that arrangement would suit her in her everyday, real life.

She pulled her hand from the water. “So, about Zack. I take it he was rude to you last night.”

Morgan stroked the oars. “We exchanged . . . words,” he acknowledged in that precise way he had, as if English were his second language.

“I know he can be difficult.” She bit her lip. “He was very close to Ben.”

“So you have said.”

“It’s hard for him to accept another man in his place.”

Morgan’s eyes glinted. “To accept me.”

“I . . . Yes.”

“I am not a substitute for your dead husband, Elizabeth.”

She flushed. Ben was never so blunt. “I never said you were.”

“Only that you wanted me to be.”

That gleam must be mockery. It could not be pain. But in her rush to get rid of Morgan last night, she had been rude, too. She owed him. If not an apology, then an explanation.