Sunset Point: A Shelter Bay Novel (26 page)

Along with great sex, the man had another thing going for him, Tess reflected over lunch. Any woman who did marry him certainly wouldn’t starve to death. The seafood recipe he’d prepared was an elegant cross between a Louisiana jambalaya and a Spanish paella. Served with a lightly dressed green salad, it was sinfully delicious. As was everything he’d cooked during her stay at Sunset Point.

“You’re going to spoil me.”

Nate’s only response, as he topped off her wineglass, was an arched brow.

“All this food,” she explained. “If I ate like this every day, I’ll weigh as much as one of those elephant seals.”

“No chance of that,” he countered with a wicked grin. “Not when we’d be working off all the calories every night.”

“Sex fiend,” she murmured, plucking a piece of blackened monkfish from its bed of saffron rice.

“I haven’t heard counsel offering any objections.”

Tess smiled. “No objections, your honor,” she said, succumbing as always to the warm glint in his eyes.

“If that’s the case, marry me.”

Tess dropped her eyes immediately to her plate. “I can’t.”

“Because of the captain’s curse?” he asked incredulously.

She was pushing her food unseeingly around with her fork and didn’t answer immediately.

Nerves screeching like an Exocet missile, Nate forced himself to wait for her answer.

Putting down her fork, Tess braced her elbows on the table and linked her fingers, eyeing him soberly over them. “I know the idea of a curse is ridiculous. But the fact remains that every Lombardi woman since Isabella has had miserable luck with men. My own marriage included.”

“We could make it work, Tess,” he insisted gently. “Curse or no curse.”

She swallowed. “But even without the curse, we can’t ignore the fact that you belong here in Shelter Bay. And I belong in Portland.”

“We belong together,” he insisted, dismissing her argument with a wave of his hand. “Shelter Bay, Portland, it damn well doesn’t matter. We could work it out. If we both cared enough to try.”

It was so tempting. Closing her eyes against his uncomfortably desperate gaze, Tess pressed her lips together to keep from crying out that she’d live with Nate anywhere. Forever.

“I need more time to think about it,” she said finally.

His expression was oddly flat. Emotionless. “You do that,” he agreed before returning his attention to the cooling paella.

As the lunch dragged miserably on, Nate pointedly ignored Tess. Each time she attempted to make conversation, his answer was curt. Short.

After what seemed like an eternity, he began to clear the table. Without a word, Tess rose and began to help.

“I’m going in my office to work for a while,” he said after wiping off the counters. “I tend to lose track of time when I’m writing, so be sure to let me know when you get hungry.”

It took a major effort to match his painfully impersonal tone. “I’m used to taking care of myself, Nate. While my culinary skills admittedly aren’t up to yours, I can certainly manage to feed myself.”

“I’ve no doubt of that,” he said as he left the room.

Exhausted by the emotional battering, Tess went into Nate’s bedroom—which had become hers, as well—and lay down on his bed, breathing in his scent from the pillow. She did honestly love him. But was love enough?

“Damn you, Captain,” she muttered. “Where are you when I need you? You disrupt my life with Nate Breslin, then disappear, just like you did to Isabella.”

She waited, expecting a display of ghostly temper, but the only sound was a loud clap of thunder. Terrific. All her nerves needed was another storm. As lightning flickered over the slate-gray sea, Tess found herself yearning for the gentler rains of her home city. Except for her kidnapping, she’d never felt so alone. Curling up in a ball, she silently wept.

At the other end of the sprawling house, Nate glared out at the storm-tossed sea. He could almost smell the electricity in the air, signaling a rough night. And a lonely one if he couldn’t overcome Tess’s resistance.

The sky outside his bedroom was gray, deadened and wintry. Dark, angry clouds hung silently in the distance as lightning pulsed intermittently. Although she knew it was foolish to be afraid of a mere storm, Tess couldn’t bear another minute alone. She opened the bedroom door at the very moment Nate reached for the handle.

Relief was instant. “I was coming for you,” she said, her eyes wide, dark pools of longing.

“Seems we’re on the same wavelength again.”

Unreasonably nervous, Tess licked her lips. “I do love you, Nate.”

“And I love you. So where does that leave us?”

His words brought with them that now familiar blend of pain and pleasure. Tess shook her head, her heart in her throat. “I don’t know.”

In the courtroom, she was strong, resolute, incomparable. In bed, she was a seductive siren. But now, with her soulful dark eyes brimming with tears, Tess reminded Nate that she was also human. Which meant she was far more vulnerable than she first appeared.

He wrapped his arms around her. He rested his forehead against hers for a long, silent moment. “Promise to tell me when you do?”

Tess wrapped her arms around him and held on tight. “I promise.”

For Nate, for now, it was enough.

Mike, who’d been celibate more years than he cared to count, had come to love waking up in Eleanor’s bed. She was snuggled against him, her arm across his chest, her breath rising and falling in her sleep.

Her bedroom was, hands down, the most feminine room he’d ever been in. Soft rosy-pink curtains hung at the windows, a flowered comforter was spread on the bed, and a needlepoint rug of mint-green leaves covered the center of the wood floor. Small Oriental ceramic bowls shared tabletops with tall white candles in glass holders.

A collection of delicate boxes was arranged atop her dresser, while baskets of potpourri scattered around the room gave off a faint scent of flowers.

Mike had never claimed to have a designing eye. To him, throwing out a week’s worth of newspapers and junk mail off the kitchen counter and scarred wooden coffee table before his weekly poker game with Jake and the guys was as close as he’d ever get to decorating. He occasionally wondered if he was responsible for Tess’s stark apartment that didn’t boast so much as a plant or a goldfish.

When he’d worried about that to Eleanor, she’d assured him that his daughter’s working hours probably were the reason that she wasn’t into as much clutter as she, herself was. Mike didn’t consider the sexy librarian’s decorating scheme cluttered. From that first night, when she’d coaxed him into sharing a bubblebath in the jetted tub that had left him smelling like flowers, he’d decided that the woman’s romantic surroundings suited her to a T.

After having made love long into the night, they’d indulged themselves by sleeping late. But instead of a luxurious, slow awakening, he shot straight up, feeling as if someone had just shot a bullet into his brain.

“What’s the matter?” Eleanor was instantly awake. “Are you all right, Michael? Do I need to call 911?”

“I’m fine.” Although he felt as if someone had just walked over his grave. “I have to leave.”

“So soon? Before you eat?”

Sitting in the plant-filled nook, watching her bustle around the kitchen making him breakfast had become a highlight to his days. Coming a close second to their lovemaking. Not today.

“I need to get to Shelter Bay. Tess is in trouble.”

Mike didn’t know how he knew. He just did. His instincts had never failed him. Except for that hellish time when he’d almost lost his daughter for good. He was not going to make that mistake again.

He was already out of bed, picking up his clothing that was scattered all over the room. They’d been to a supper club on the river the night before, listening to a Sinatra impersonator who hadn’t been half bad. And apparently he wasn’t the only one who liked Old Blue Eyes, because Eleanor had practically attacked him when they’d gotten back to her house.

“I’m coming with you.”

“That’s not necessary.” Where the hell were his boxers?

“Here.” She pulled them off a lamp covered in cream-colored silk. “Give me five minutes to shower and dress, and we’ll be on the road.”

While she was in the bathroom, he called Kara, who promised to get out to Sunset Point right away. Unfortunately, when he tried to call Tess, he kept getting a “no signal” response.

Despite his frustration at not being able to get hold of his daughter, Mike appreciated that Eleanor hadn’t asked any questions about how he knew his daughter was in trouble. He also decided, as she came out of the bathroom already dressed, that he hadn’t seen anyone take a quicker shower since his Marine days on an aircraft carrier.

“Whatever the problem is, you’ll take care of it,” she assured him as she climbed into the passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt. “And don’t forget, she’s got Nate Breslin with her.”

As he tore away from the curb, headed west, Mike only hoped that the Marine would protect Tess. And that he’d get there in time.

The storm had the house in its grip; the thunder sounded like cannon fire as blue-white lightning flashed across the sky, arcing from black cloud to black cloud. Tess remembered how she’d thought Nate well suited to the rugged coast. The past days had only deepened her belief that he belonged in this fiercely dramatic country. As she belonged in her quirky, civilized river city.

Even as Tess reminded herself of that, she had to admit that Nate had a point. They were two adults. Surely, if they truly loved one another, they could find a compromise solution to such pedestrian problems as work and housing. A thunderclap crashed as fat raindrops spattered on the roof. Then there was a blinding flash of lightning, instantly followed by another shattering crack.

“Frightened?” Nate asked. He’d been running his fingers lazily through her love-tousled hair and couldn’t miss the way she’d jumped.

Tess pressed herself more closely against him. “A little. You get some wild storms here.”

He touched his lips to the top of her head. “None as wild as the ones we make ourselves.”

She couldn’t argue that. She was thinking perhaps that all she needed was to have him take her to bed or the outrageously decadent steam shower or Jacuzzi tub to help release the excess energy when her phone rang. Surprisingly, a familiar name appeared on the screen.

“Eric?”

“It’s me,” Eric Jensen said.

“How did you know where to reach me?”

“Our fearless leader told me. You remember him, don’t you? The district attorney? The guy who signs our paychecks?”

“Of course I remember.” She put the call on the speaker, so Nate could hear, as well. “You don’t have to be so sarcastic,” she shot back.

His tone turned immediately conciliatory. “Hey, I’m sorry, Tess. It’s just that while you’ve been playing house with that writer guy, Vasilyev’s not only killed your snitch last night, he’s done an end run around us.”

“He killed my informant?”

“Well, his fingerprints weren’t on the shiv found in the guy’s throat. But yeah, there’s nobody around here or the prison who doesn’t think he set up the hit.”

“Damn.” Her mind was spinning with what to do next when her colleague dropped a second bombshell.

“Even worse, he could be getting out of prison. Today.”

Her fingers tightened on the phone. “What? How? His hearing isn’t for another two days.”

“His lawyer got his case slipped onto today’s agenda. A guy with connections like that probably paid off someone. Maybe even a judge. The hearing’s scheduled for two thirty.”

Tess glanced over at the clock on Nate’s bedside table. “But that’s only—”

“Three and a half hours from now,” Eric confirmed grimly. “But I think we can make it. I’m already in Shelter Bay with a trooper. We’ll be there any minute.”

That was a surprise. “But if you knew about the change in schedule, why did you wait so long to call me?”

“Everything’s chaos around here. You were supposed to have been notified, but that must’ve fallen through the cracks. Everyone, from the D.A. on down, has been scrambling to find some legal precedent to block Vasilyev’s latest move.”

She heard him say something to whom she assumed to be the trooper. Probably giving directions, she thought. Located on the most westernly outcropping on this central part of the coast, Sunset Point wasn’t the easiest place to find.

“We’ll be there in five, at the most, ten minutes, Tess. Damn, I’ve got another call from Portland. See you in a bit.” He abruptly ended her call.

“It’s strange that they’d move the hearing without notice,” she told Nate after she retrieved the suit and blouse she’d brought with her. After these days in casual clothes, it felt strange putting on what she’d come to realize was a uniform, not that different from the one Nate had worn during his Marine days. “Even stranger that Eric would come all the way down here, when it would save time to have you drive me back to Portland.”

“Maybe now that your informant’s dead, they want someone more official than me,” Nate suggested, his eyes darkening as she shimmied into one of her standard charcoal pencil skirts.

“It’s still odd about Eric. Though, thinking about it, he’s had such rotten luck lately, maybe he just wanted in on the action.”

“Could be. Too bad about your informant,” Nate said. He’d surprised her by actually dragging a suit out of the back of his closet. It was odd seeing him out of jeans. Not bad, since it fit him as if it had been custom tailored, which it probably had been, and made him look like some titan of Wall Street. But she decided she preferred him in those fisherman sweaters he’d told her he bought by the dozen so he wouldn’t have to make clothing decisions every day, and jeans.

“If Vasilyev didn’t kill him, someone would probably have gotten around to it,” she said. “If the people in prison played well with others, they wouldn’t be in prison in the first place.”

“I had a choice, when I started writing,” Nate said. “I couldn’t decide if I wanted to write thrillers or horror. Watching you makes me glad I chose what I did. I’ll take living with ghosts and ghouls over stone-cold killers any day.”