Dance Upon the Air (21 page)

The guilt that had settled on her since he'd walked out her door took on more weight. “He would've considered that rude.”

“Right. I don't mind being rude. So you square this with him, or deal with me.”

“Understood.”

“I like you, and I respect someone who takes care of business. But when you mess with a Todd, you don't get off free. Fair warning.”

Ripley turned toward the stairs leading to the second floor. “Help yourself to a beer on the way through the kitchen. I've got to finish my reps.”

Nell skipped the beer, though she'd have relished a tall glass of ice water to ease the burn in her throat. She walked through the comfortably untidy living
room, through the equally untidy kitchen, and took the outside steps up to the deck.

He sat in a big chair faded to gray by the weather, a bottle of Sam Adams nestled between his thighs and his scope tilted starward.

He knew she was there but didn't acknowledge her. The scent of her was peaches and nerves.

“You're angry with me, and I deserve it. But you're too fair not to listen.”

“I might work my way up to fair by tomorrow. You'd be smarter to wait.”

“I'll risk it.” She wondered if he knew how much it meant—how much he meant—that she would risk it. “I lied. I've lied often and I've lied well, and I'd do it again. The choice was between honesty and survival. For me, it still is, so I'm not going to tell you everything you need to know. Everything you deserve to know. I'm sorry.”

“If two people don't trust each other, they've got no business being together.”

“That's easy for you to say, Zack.”

When he shifted his gaze from the stars to hers, and the heat of it scorched her, she stepped closer. Her heart throbbed. She didn't fear that he would strike her. But she did fear that he'd never want to touch her again.

“No, damn it, it is easy for you. You've got your place here. You've always had it, and you don't have to question it, or fight for it.”

“If I've got a place,” he said in careful, measured tones, “I've had to earn it. The same as anyone.”

“That's different, because you started on a foundation, a solid one, and built from there. These past few
months I've been working to earn a place here. I have earned it. But it's different.”

“Okay, maybe it is. But you and I started on the same ground, Nell, when it comes to what we were making together.”

Were making, she thought. Not are making. If this was his line she could stand where she was, keep on her side of it, or take the first step over.

It wasn't any harder, she decided, than driving off a cliff.

“I was with a man, for three years, I was with a man who hurt me. Not just the slaps and the shoves. Those kinds of bruises don't last. But others do.”

She had to let out a little breath to ease the pressure in her chest. “He systematically chipped away at my confidence, my self-esteem, my courage and my choices, and he did it so skillfully they were gone before I realized what was happening. It's not easy to rebuild those things, and I'm still working on it. Coming here, just walking over here tonight took everything I've managed to store up. I shouldn't have gotten involved with you, and I didn't intend to. But something about being here, and about being with you, made me feel normal again.”

“That's the start of a fine speech. Why don't you sit down and just talk to me.”

“I did what I had to do to get away from him. I'm not going to apologize for it.”

“I'm not asking you to.”

“I'm not going into the details.” She turned away, leaned on the rail and stared out at the night-dark sea. “I'll tell you it was like living in a pit that got deeper
and deeper and colder and colder. Whenever I tried to crawl out, he was right there.”

“But you found a way.”

“I won't go back. Whatever I have to do, wherever I have to run, I won't go back. So I've lied, and deceived. I've broken the law. And I've hurt you.” She turned back. “The only thing I'm sorry for is the last.”

She said it defiantly, almost furiously as she stood with her back to the rail and her hands in white-knuckled fists.

Terror and courage, he thought, dragging at each other inside her. “Did you think I wouldn't understand?”

“Zack.” She lifted her hands, dropped them. “
I
still don't understand. I wasn't a doormat when I met him, I wasn't a victim waiting to be exploited. I came from a solid, steady family, as functional as any family manages to be. I was educated, independent, helping to run a business. There'd been men in my life before, nothing really serious, but normal, healthy relationships. Then there I was, manipulated and abused. And trapped.”

Oh, baby, he thought, as he had when she'd fallen to pieces in the café kitchen. “Why are you still blaming yourself for it?”

The question broke her rhythm. For a moment she could only stare at him, baffled. “I don't know.” She walked over to sit in the chair beside him.

“It'd be a good next step to stop doing that.” He said it easily, taking a sip of his beer. There was still temper inside him, dregs of it for Nell, but a new and ripe well of it for the man—the faceless, nameless entity—who'd scarred her.

He thought he might work that off later by pounding the hell out of Ripley's punching bag.

“Why don't you tell me about your family?” he suggested and offered her the beer. “You know my mother can't cook worth a damn and my father likes to take snapshots with his new toy. You know they grew up here on the island, got married, and had a couple of kids. And you've had personal acquaintance with my sister.”

“My father was in the Army. He was a lieutenant colonel.”

“An Army brat.” Since she shook her head at the beer, he took another pull himself. “Saw some of the world, didn't you?”

“Yeah, we moved around a lot. He always liked getting new orders. Something new to handle, I suppose. He was a good man, very steady, with a wonderful, warm laugh. He liked old Marx Brothers movies and Reese's peanut butter cups. Oh, God.”

Grief caught her by the throat, choked off her voice, dug raw wounds in her stomach.

“He's been gone so long, I don't know how it could seem like yesterday.”

“When you love somebody, it's always there. I still think about my grandmother now and again.” He took Nell's hand, held it loosely. “When I do, I can smell her. Lavender water and peppermint. She died when I was fourteen.”

How was it he could understand, and so exactly? That, she thought, was the magic of him. “My father was killed in the Gulf War. I thought he was invincible. He'd always seemed to be. Everyone said he was a good soldier, but I remember he was a good father.
He would always listen if I needed to tell him something. He was honest and fair, and had this code of honor, a personal one that meant more than all the rules and regulations. He . . . God.” She turned her head to study Zack's face. “It just hit me, how much you're like him. He would have approved of you, Sheriff Todd.”

“I'm sorry I never got the chance to meet him.” He turned the scope toward her. “Why don't you take a look, see what you can find up there?”

She lowered her head toward the viewer, scanned the stars. “You've forgiven me.”

“Let's say we've made some progress.”

“Good thing for me. Otherwise Ripley was going to kick my ass.”

“And she's a hell of an ass-kicker, too.”

“She loves you. I always wanted a brother or a sister. My mother and I were tight, and I guess we got tighter after we lost my father. But I always wanted a sister. You'd've liked my mother. She was tough and smart and full of fun. Started her own business from the ground up after she was widowed. And she made it work.”

“Sounds like someone else I know.”

Her lips curved. “My father always said I took after her. Zack, who I am now is who I was before. The three years between, they were the aberration. You wouldn't recognize the person I became during that lost time. I barely do.”

“Maybe you had to go through it to get where you are now.”

“Maybe.” The light through the scope haloed as her eyes misted. “I feel like I was always headed here. All
those moves when I was growing up. I'd look around and think: No, this isn't it. Not yet. The day I crossed over on the ferry, and I saw the island floating on the water, I knew. This is my place.”

He lifted their joined hands, kissed the back of hers. “The day I saw you behind the counter in the café, I knew.”

The thrill rocketed up her arm, and straight into her heart. “I've got baggage, Zack. I've got complications. More than I can tell you. You matter to me more than I thought anyone ever could. I don't want to mess up your life with my problems.”

“From where I'm sitting, Nell, it's too late to worry about that. I'm in love with you.”

Another long thrill rippled through her. “There's so much you don't know, and any one piece of it could change your mind.”

“You don't think much of my wherewithal.”

“Oh, yes, I do. Okay.” She pulled her hand away, rose. She faced crises better on her feet. “There's something else I can tell you, and I don't expect you to understand or accept it.”

“You're a kleptomaniac.”

“No.”

“An agent for a clandestine splinter group.”

She managed to laugh. “No. Zack—”

“Wait, I get one more. You're one of those
Star Trek
addicts who can recite all the dialogue in every episode.”

“No, only in the first season of the original.”

“Well, that's all right, then. Okay, I give up.”

“I'm a witch.”

“Oh, well, I know that.”

“I'm not using that as a euphemism for temperament,” she said impatiently. “I mean it literally. Spells and charms and that sort of thing. A witch.”

“Yeah, I got that the night you were dancing naked on your front lawn and glowing like a candle. Nell, I've lived on Three Sisters all my life. Do you expect me to be stupefied, or to do that crossed-fingers thing to ward off evil?”

Unsure if she was relieved or disappointed by his reaction, she frowned at him. “I guess I expected you to be something.”

“It gave me a moment,” he admitted. “But then, living with Rip sort of tones down the jolt. Of course she hasn't had anything to do with that kind of thing for years now. If you were to tell me you'd put some sort of love spell on me, I might be a little irked.”

“Of course I didn't. I wouldn't even know how. I'm just . . . learning.”

“An apprentice witch, then.” Amused at both of them, he got to his feet. “I imagine Mia'll whip you into shape before long.”

Did nothing surprise the man? “A couple of nights ago, I drew down the moon.”

“What the hell does that mean? No, never mind, I don't have much of a head for the metaphysical. I'm a simple man, Nell.” He ran his hands up and down her arms in the way he had that managed to arouse and soothe at the same time.

“No, you're not.”

“Simple enough to know I'm standing here with a pretty woman and wasting the moonlight.” He lowered his mouth to hers, drew her up and into a sumptuous kiss.

When her head fell back in surrender, and her arms wound around his neck, he circled her toward the glass door.

“I want to take you to bed. My bed. I want to love you—the Army brat who takes after her mother.” He slid the door open, drew her inside. “I do love you.”

Here, she thought as they lowered to the bed, was truth. And here was compassion. He would give these to her, as much as desire, as much as need. When he touched her, those thrills, those soft and fluid aches, were welcome.

The yearning she'd felt for home was satisfied.

Slow and sweet she moved with him. Freely, she opened for him, baring her heart as well as her body.

Her skin hummed under the brush of his fingers. The long, liquid pull inside her made her sigh. When her mouth met his again, she poured all she had into the kiss. What she couldn't give him in words, she could give him here, with her heart. With her body.

He skimmed his lips over her shoulder, tracing the shape of it, marveling at the firmness of muscle, the delicacy of bone. The taste of her intoxicated him, a flavor he'd come to crave as much as the next breath of air.

He found her breast, pleasured them both with lips and teeth and tongue until her heart began to beat under his mouth like the endless pulse of the sea. And as that beat quickened, she rose beneath him with a single breathless gasp.

Without hurry, he moved down her. A skim of fingers, a brush of lips. Felt her begin to tremble while his own blood pounded in sharp, anvil strikes of need.

Her hands groped, then fisted desperately in the
sheets when he lifted her hips and used his mouth on her. With a kind of ruthless patience, he shot her screaming to peak.

Her breath was sobbing now, her skin slick and damp as she rolled with him over the tangled sheets. Heat spiked, seemed to throb in the air, under her skin until her body felt like a furnace stoked too high.

“Zack—”

“Not yet. Not yet.”

He was wild for her, for the taste of flesh, the urgency of her hands. In the pale splash of moonlight through the glass, her body seemed unearthly, white marble erotically hot to the touch and glimmering with the healthy sweat of lust.

When he fixed his teeth on her neck, it felt like feeding. Her mouth was wild, her body plunging. Then she cried out again, shocked pleasure, when his fingers drove her relentlessly over the edge.

Beyond control, beyond reason, she moved like lightning. She would have sworn the bed spun, in fast, dizzy circles, as she straddled him. Panting, she took him, rode him, drove him as he had driven her. Curved down to him, she ravished his mouth, then flung herself back, arms bowed behind her head, and flew as power whipped through her.