Sanctuary Island (26 page)

Grady gave Voyager an affectionate scratch along the crest of his mane. “But he’s my boy. He’s never turned me down for a ride yet.”

“You seem like you make a good team,” Ella said, pausing delicately. Expectation thrummed in the air between them.

After watching Ella work with her sister and Peony earlier, and hearing Jo’s story again, it wasn’t as hard to talk about this as he would’ve thought.

“Maybe it sounds corny, but Voyager healed me. Working with him, being around him, it’s like we’re partners.” Grady shook his head. “After the accident, part of me thought I’d never have that again. That maybe I didn’t deserve it. But Voyager doesn’t give a crap about any of that. He trusts me, whether I deserve it or not.”

During the short silence that followed, Grady tipped his head back and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on his face as they passed through the copse of trees and out into the open marsh. They passed a snowy egret, startling it into ungainly flight.

“I’ve never been much of an animal person,” Ella said. “I don’t hate them or anything, but I didn’t really get it. After this morning, though…”

Her voice was so soft and thoughtful, he could barely hear her over the thrush of wind through the prickly pear plants topped with their showy yellow flowers, the distant lap of waves against the shore. Grady checked to see where they were.

Oh, perfect.

Clicking his tongue against his teeth in a signal Voyager knew well, Grady guided them off the well-trodden path and around the back side of the pond that served as one of the wild horse bands’ favorite watering holes. He led them to a sandy rise of land just above the pond and dismounted, looping Voyager’s reins over the pommel of his saddle. Unfazed, Voyager lowered his head to dig into his favorite snack of salt marsh cordgrass.

“Don’t you need to tie him up?” Ella asked, pulling nervously at the reins and causing Peony to shake her head and back up.

Grady grabbed the mare’s bridle smoothly and nodded at Ella to drop the reins. “Nah. As long as the supply of grass holds out, he won’t wander far. Need a hand down?”

She held her arms out to him in answer, and Grady felt something tighten in his chest at the implicit trust. He could be wrong, but he was pretty sure when she first came to Sanctuary, a question like that would’ve resulted in a short, polite refusal—a refusal to be touched, to admit she needed help, that she wasn’t perfectly in control at every moment.

And now, nearly two weeks later, Ella Preston was a soft, supple weight in his arms, sliding down his body and laughing a little breathlessly when her legs wobbled.

“Oof! Who knew sitting around while the horse did all the work could be so tiring? My thigh muscles are like jelly.”

“It’s one of the big misconceptions about horseback riding,” Grady said, enjoying the feel of her slim hips in his palms. He wasn’t letting go until she made him, and from the way she grasped at his shoulders, he didn’t think that was going to be anytime soon.

“I guess I was squeezing my legs pretty hard to stay on. Probably harder than I needed to.”

“No, that’s good,” he told her. “Lots of beginners try to keep their balance by hanging on to the horse’s mane, or sawing at the reins, which brutalizes the poor horse’s mouth. You’ve got a very natural seat.”

Ella lifted a brow, made a show of looking over her own shoulder. “What, this old thing? I’m so glad you like it.”

He adored her this way, bright and laughing, the lines of tension and stress relaxed right out of her body. And what a body, slender and curved in all the right places, warm and sexy where they pressed together.

“I love it,” he growled as heat shot through him in a throbbing wave. Pulling her even closer, until her denim-clad thighs parted around one of his legs, Grady hitched her high against his chest and stole a sun-sweet kiss from that smiling mouth.

And, of course, he slid his hands around to get a better grip on the seat in question.

Ella’s surprised laugh turned into a soft moan at the way their bodies slotted together.

He wanted her with the sun beating down on them, turning her city-pale skin to gold. Keeping his arms tight around her, he executed a controlled fall that ended with him hitting the ground beneath her. The soft give of the sandy hillside cradled his back as he steadied her.

Ella rose over him like a goddess emerging from the sea. The naked desire in her gaze fired Grady’s blood. She bent to take a kiss, and he tangled them together in the sand, wishing he could wrap her up so completely that she’d never even think of leaving him.

Breaking away with a gasp, Ella blinked dazedly. “Really? Here?”

“It’s just us and the horses. No one ever comes out here except me. This is one of my best spots for checking on the wild horses.”

“It’s nice,” she said, without ever taking her eyes off him. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

“There’s a view directly down to the watering hole,” he pointed out.

“Mm-hm.” Ella’s gaze had drifted down to his mouth. She licked her plump bottom lip, so pink and shiny, and it was all over.

Enough talking.

The next time Ella raised her head to blink up at the darkening sky, it was quite a bit later. She still seemed dazed, but this time Grady felt a caveman kind of satisfaction about it.

I did that to her.

She lifted one languid hand to push her tangled curls over her shoulder, and he caught sight of a livid red love bite on the side of her neck where she was extra succulent.

He grinned.

I did that, too.

“I really do like this place,” she said, her voice a little rough. “You’re probably getting tired of me gushing about how beautiful it is here, but I can’t help it. D.C. is nothing like this—not only the landscape and the scenery, which is obviously gorgeous. But there’s something about this island.”

“I’ll never get tired of hearing what you have to say. Especially about the island.”

With a wry twist to her lips, she settled back against his chest and pulled one of his arms around her shoulders like tugging a blanket up to her chin. “Mm. You’ll especially enjoy this bit. You were right. This place, Sanctuary Island … it gets under your skin.”

Curling up in exaggerated shock, Grady made his eyes wide and joked to hide the ecstatic thump of his heart. “What? I think you’re going to need to say that again.”

She rolled her eyes. “You were right. Okay? Don’t get sassy about it—you weren’t even the first person who said it to me, now that I think about it.”

“Who else has been filling your head with Sanctuary propaganda?”

“That older gentleman who sits in the guardhouse by the dock.” She propped her chin on her hand. “The one who’s a little … I don’t like to use the word ‘crazy.’ My friend Adrienne definitely would not approve.”

Grady laughed. “You must mean old King.”

She sat up in a rush. “Don’t tell me he’s actually the king of something!”

“Not exactly.” Grady crossed his arms underneath his head and enjoyed the view. Ella’s shirt was still tossed over a nearby marsh elder bush. “His first name is King.”

Ella blinked. “Why does he wear a crown?”

“He likes it? He’s embracing his inner royalty?” Grady stretched into a shrug, loving the way Ella’s gaze dropped to track the play of muscles in his shoulders. “Why does anyone do anything?”

“You say that like you think there aren’t reasons behind why we do what we do,” Ella argued. “But there are. If I learned anything at all during therapy, it was that.”

“I’m not trying to talk down the work you did in therapy—but that’s not really what we’re all about here on the island.”

A stubborn light kindled in her eyes, and Grady suppressed a smile. So much for afterglow. But he wouldn’t want her any other way.

“I know lots of people think there’s something shameful about therapy.” Ella shook her head. “As if admitting you’ve seen a mental health professional means you need to be fitted for a straitjacket immediately. But I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone, in my whole life, who was so well adjusted that they couldn’t benefit from a calm, supportive, impartial ear.”

This conversation called for pants. Hitching up his jeans, Grady arched his back and did up the buttons while he talked. “I’m not arguing that. I know it works for lots of people—but it didn’t work for me, after the accident. The therapist the hospital assigned was nice and everything, but those sessions were torture. Sitting around, talking about my feelings while I knew the guys from my team were out there, risking their lives, doing real work, helping people?”

Even the memory of Dr. Lipshultz’s bland, round-cheeked patience set up a feeling like fire ants crawling under his skin, itching and painful and just plain wrong.

Ella nodded slowly. “That makes sense. Talk therapy isn’t for everyone. You’re an action guy, used to working with your hands, to moving around.”

Grady sat up and propped his arms on his raised knees. He wasn’t a big one for talking, but it was important to make her understand. “Everything changed for me when I started working with your mom’s horses.”

Ella moved in the direction of covering herself up. Grady was sad about it, but he could see where she might rather have a shirt on now that the conversation had paddled into more treacherous waters.

“Before this morning, I wouldn’t have understood what you meant.” Her face was contemplative as she buttoned up her blouse. “But there was something about the exercise that cut through all the usual noise in my head and forced me to focus. To be present in the moment. And now, thinking back on it, I can see some interesting patterns emerging about the way I approached the problem.”

This, right here, was why Grady would never disparage Ella for having gone to therapy. She was so smart, so willing to examine her own behavior and learn from it. Which he knew, from his own experience, was a lot harder than most people wanted to admit. He helped out by prodding her forward. “What do you mean?”

She pressed her lips together and attempted to restore order to her tumbled, sand-speckled hair. “When Peony didn’t want to move, the first thing I thought of was to try and force her. I’m not sure I like what that says about me.”

At the mention of her name, the little bay mare left off her desultory grazing and paced over to Ella, nosing at her hand in a search for stray sugar cubes or her favorite treat of all, peppermints.

The awed, gentle smile that spread across Ella’s face as she turned her palm up to Peony’s snuffling nose filled Grady with quiet joy.

“What’s that thing TV shrinks are always saying?” He put his hands on his hips. “Acknowledging the issue is the first step toward change.”

“I’ll try if you will,” Ella said, slanting him a look.

Grady’s hands dropped to swing at his sides. “Meaning…”

Ella answered his question with a question—an annoying trick she’d probably picked up from her shrink. “What did the obstacle-course exercise tell you, when you first did it?”

He relaxed a little. “That I missed working as part of a team, that I was still good at it, even if it didn’t feel that way.”

She concentrated on rubbing Peony’s whiskery muzzle as if the mare’s flared nostrils held the secrets of the universe. “So … nothing about forgiving yourself for what happened after the explosion? Or about maybe leaving the island someday?”

The uneven ground shifted under his bare feet. He stumbled, and that’s how he knew he’d taken an instinctive step backward. Setting his jaw and bracing his stance, Grady pulled it together. “I’m not wearing a hair shirt and lashing myself nightly, or anything. I’m fine about what happened, it’s just not my favorite memory.”

“And the island?” Ella turned those soft blue eyes on him, a wealth of compassion turning her voice scratchy like raw silk. “You can’t really intend to never leave Sanctuary again. Jo says everyone here makes weekly or at least monthly trips to the mainland for groceries, doctor’s visits, to go to the movies or a restaurant that isn’t the Firefly Café.”

Unwilling to face the plea on her face, Grady turned in a circle, throwing his arms wide to the sky and the ocean. “Why would I leave? I’ve got everything I need right here.”

“I know this island is your refuge, the first place you felt safe enough to slow down after the accident. I can understand why it would be difficult to leave it, or to ever see it change.”

“Then why are you pushing this?” Feeling hunted, Grady paced to the small stand of sea myrtle that screened his lookout spot from the rest of the marsh.

“Because I’m leaving in three days,” Ella cried brokenly, “and I don’t want to never see you again!”

Heart racing, Grady whirled to face her. Tousled and mussed, cheeks red and a little blotchy with the force of her emotions, eyes brimming with tears she was too stubborn to let fall—he’d never seen anything so gorgeous.

He crossed the few feet of sand between them in two long strides and gathered her into his arms. It was all he could do not to squeeze the life out of her, to press her so close that she’d meld with his ribs, his heart, and never be able to separate herself.

“I don’t want that, either,” he said into her soft, salt-sprayed hair. The wish he’d held on to for so long, kept secret and safe in his head, burst out of him in a rush of honesty. “We’ve just gotten started—I can’t lose you yet. Don’t leave. Stay here with me.”

*   *   *

Ella pressed her face to the hot, smooth skin of Grady’s bare chest and breathed in his complicated scent of leather and salt.

She wanted to ask if he meant it, but she didn’t need to. He meant every word. She could feel it in the slam of his heart against hers, the corded strength of his arms around her.

It wasn’t a real plan. Not in a long-term sort of way. The situation hadn’t changed—he refused to leave this island, and her whole life was back in D.C.

As long as she ignored the fact that the bits of her life she really cared about, like her sister, the mother she was only beginning to understand, this new thing with Grady, and her burgeoning interest in and excitement about the renovation of Windy Corner, were all here on Sanctuary Island.