Heart Of The Sea

CHAPTER Seventeen

The morning was misty. Darcy woke to light gray with rolling fog, and the bed empty beside her. There was nothing new in either. The fog would burn off before long if it was meant to. And as far as she could tell, Trevor was always up before dawn.

The man was a robot when it came to such matters.

She rolled over, wishing he was there to cuddle up against and knowing that because he wasn't she wouldn't sleep for wondering what he was up to. She supposed neither of them had gotten a reasonable night's sleep since they'd become lovers. But running on sexual energy seemed to be working.

She felt wonderful.

She rose to take her robe from the hook in the closet. She had clothes in there as well and other things she deemed necessary for basic living throughout the cottage. It was a kind of living together they were doing, she knew, and had been all summer. Though neither of them mentioned it. In fact, they took great pains to avoid the subject, as if it were politics or religion.

He had a few things in her rooms over the pub, for the times he stayed there. And though it was a first for her, this having her things on a man's shelf and his on hers, it had been a casual process, this shifting of items from place to place and melding of homes and lifestyles. Casual, she thought as she walked into the bath to turn on the shower, because that's how they treated the entire business between them.

Yet there had been nothing casual in what had happened the night before. The scope of it was- She stepped under the spray, closing her eyes, tilting back her head. It was beyond anything she'd experienced before, anything she'd known two people could create between them.

It had to have been the same for him. He couldn't have touched that way, been touched by her that way, unless he felt something deep and something true.

Lovemaking. Dreamily, she circled soap over her wet skin while the steam rose and closed her in. She hadn't understood what that meant before Trevor. Not what it could mean. Vulnerability. She'd never realized that being vulnerable to someone else could be beautiful. Safe and warm and lovely. Just as knowing that for that stretch of time, in that soft world, he'd been vulnerable as well.

Here, at last, was a man she could open herself to completely, could promise herself to. And trust, and love, and cherish. They would spend their lives together, going wherever fate took them, grabbing hold of what life offered and making more from it. Through rushed days or quiet nights, in solitude or crowds. Making children, building homes.

She would make her mark beside him, and open all the doors she'd always longed to pass through.

It was possible to have everything after all, she thought. All you needed first was love.

He heard her singing of it when he stepped into the bedroom, of love and longing. It made him ache. He stood, while her voice slipped through the door she hadn't quite closed and twined around him. He waited until her song ended, until he saw her moving around the room through the narrow opening.

He'd spent part of his wakeful night deciding just what to do about her.

He gave the door a quick knock with his knuckle, eased it open. She'd already wrapped a towel around herself and was slathering on the cream she kept in a little white pot. He thought it smelled like warm apricots, and it never failed to whet his appetite.

Her hair was wet and curled and wild as it was in the painting she had in her room. It reminded him, uncomfortably, of his dream.

"I brought you some tea."

"That's lovely. Thanks." She took the cup, smiling at him. Her eyes were still dreamy from her song, "I thought maybe you'd gone on to work already. I'm glad you didn't."

She moved closer to touch her mouth to his. She felt soft everywhere from wishing he'd take her back to bed to make love again as they had in the night.

"I was about to come up and wake you." Wanting her clouded his brain, just as the steam clouded the bath. So he stepped out, kept the door open. "You beat me to it."

She sipped the hot tea as the air in the bedroom shivered in and chilled her. "And what did you have in mind for after you'd waked me?"

A man with a single-digit IQ and no libido would have caught the invitation. Stay on track, Trevor warned himself. "A walk."

"A walk?"

"Yeah." He moved across the room to sit on the edge of the bed. He didn't intend to touch her and lose focus, but that didn't mean he couldn't watch her dress and torture himself. "You usually walk down to the village anyway. So we'll take a walk, then I'll drive you down."

She was pink and warm and fragrant from her shower, naked but for a towel, and the man wanted to go tramping around in the mist. A woman with less confidence, Darcy thought, would wonder if she'd misplaced her sex appeal during the night.

It didn't mean she couldn't be miffed.

"Don't you have to work?" Prepared to pout, she turned to the closet.

"I can take the morning. Mick's coming in to keep an eye on things. Between him and Brenna I can spare a couple hours."

The fact was, he could have spared days. Even weeks. It would have been more sensible to return to New York, handle the business he had there up front rather than long distance. But he watched Darcy slither into underwear and knew he wasn't going anywhere in the near future. Not alone.

"Mr. O'Toole should be at home yet. Recuperating."

"'I've had me fill of women fluttering around me person day and night.' " Trevor's very passable mimic of Mick's disgust had a smile tugging at Darcy's lips.

"Nonetheless."

"You want to try to keep him down? Be my guest. Me, I don't have the heart."

"Well." She pondered over a shirt. "As long as he doesn't overdo. It's not that he's old, but he's not as young as he was, either. And being a man, he'll want to do more than he should."

"Meaning men show off?"

"Of course they do." She shot an amused and female look over her shoulder. Indulgent and insulting. "Don't you?"

"Probably. But Brenna isn't liable to let him overdo. She doesn't flutter, she just watches him like a she-wolf watches a pup. I think he likes it. Men also like being pampered by a woman. They just have to pretend it annoys them."

"As if having two brothers I didn't know that already. I'll lure him into the kitchen for a hot meal and some pampering and tell him how strong and handsome he is." She did up the buttons of the shirt. "He likes the flattery as well."

Holding her trousers by one finger, her shirttail skimming her thighs, she turned. "And, as I can attest you're a man as well, wouldn't you like some of the same? I might be persuaded to fix you a meal downstairs in the cozy kitchen and tell you you're strong and handsome."

Adam's temptation for an apple was nothing compared to Darcy's smile. But there were priorities. "I had a bagel." He grinned at her. "It was great."

"Then I'm pleased." Baffled, but pleased. She stepped into her trousers, slipped on her shoes. "Just let me fix my hair and face, and I'll be right with you."

"What's wrong with your hair?"

"It's wet, for one thing."

"It's damp out, so it won't matter." Impatient now, he rose to take her hand. "If I let you go into that bathroom, you won't come out for an hour."

"Trevor." Exasperated, she tugged to try to free her hand as he pulled her down the steps. "I'm only half done here."

"You look beautiful." Moving quickly, he grabbed her jacket. "You always do." Then ignoring her protests, he bundled her into it.

"What's your hurry?" But she decided to be mollified with the compliment and let him have his way.

That, she liked to think, was a fine give-and-take in a relationship. Letting a man have his way when it didn't really matter one way or the other.

It wasn't particularly damp out, not to her way of thinking. The fog was thin, a lovely filter on the air that turned ordinary shapes into fanciful ones. Bright colors in the cottage garden were softly muted, the hills beyond wonderfully mysterious. Already she could see some breaks in the clouds, hopeful little patches of quiet blue among the gray.

The world was so hushed, they might have been alone in it. All the warmth and intimacy of the night before flowed back into her when he took her hand as they walked.

They went over the field, circling, and for a time she was silent, lost in the romance.

"Where are we heading?"

"Saint Declan's."

A chill ran up her spine. Nerves, superstitions, anticipation, she couldn't be sure. "If I'd known we were going by Old Maude's grave, I'd've brought some flowers."

"There are always flowers on her grave."

Magic flowers, she thought, put to grow there by powers beyond the mortal. In the distance, through the thinning fog, the stone ruin stood, like something waiting. She shivered.

"Cold?"

"No. I-" But she didn't mind when he released her hand to tuck his arm around her. "It's an odd place to come on a misty morning."

"Too early for tourists. It's a great spot. Terrific view if the fog lifts."

"Too early for tourists," she agreed, "but not for faeries." In such a place who knew what was sleeping under a hillock of grass or in the shadow of a stone? "Are you looking for Carrick?"

"No." Though he wondered. "I wanted to come here with you." He passed the well and its crosses, moved with her into the ancient, roofless church where Maude lay. The rough stones that marked ancient dead tilted up through ground and haze. In contrast, flowers swept lovingly over Maude's and thrived.

"They don't pick her flowers."

"Hmm?"

"The people who come here," Trevor said. "Tourists and students and the locals who walk this way. They don't pick her flowers."

"It would be disrespectful."

"People don't always give respect, but they seem to here."

"This is holy ground."

"Yes." He still had his arm around her, leaned down almost absently to press a kiss to her damp hair.

And the thrill moved through her, fast and bright. Alone in the world on holy ground, she realized. The morning after they'd loved each other, and in a way had discovered each other. He'd brought her here, to the cliff above sea and village, in the mist and the magic.

To tell her he loved her. She closed her eyes, trembled a little from the soaring joy of it. Of course, nothing could be more perfect. He wanted such a place to tell her his heart, to ask her to be his wife.

What could be more romantic, more dramatic? More quietly right?

"Fog's lifting," he murmured.

Together, standing on the windy hill, they watched the veil tear gently, and the sun shimmer through, silver-edged, to touch the air with its pearly light. Far below was the village that was home, and the sea that guarded it swam slowly clear as if hands had drawn open a filmy curtain.

The beauty of it, what she saw with her eyes, what she saw with her heart, brought tears stinging. Home, she thought. Yes, Aidan was right. This would always be home, no matter where she traveled with the man beside her. Her love for it filled her as gently as the sunlight that brushed through the clouds.

"It looks perfect from here," she said quietly. "Like something from out of a storybook. I forget that when

I'm down in it, going from day to day doing what's needed to be done."

Swamped with emotions, she rested her head on Trevor's shoulder. "I used to wonder why Maude chose to rest here, away from family and friends, and most of all away from her Johnnie. But this is why. This was the place for her, and she's not away from her Johnnie at all. She never was."

"That kind of love's a miracle." He wanted one for himself, and meant to make it happen.

"Love's always miraculous." Tell me, tell me quickly, she thought. So I can tell you back.

"It seems to be the order of the day around here."

Now, she thought, and wondered if a body could die of sheer happiness.

"It is beautiful, and full of charm and drama. But there are other places in the world, Darcy."

She frowned, puzzled, then almost instantly smiled again. Of course, he thought he needed to prepare her, to explain how he had to travel for his work before he asked her to go with him.

"I've always wanted to see those other places." She could ease the path for him. Another give-and-take, she thought, nearly giddy, in a relationship. "To go and see and do. Just recently I came to realize that wanting that doesn't mean I don't love and appreciate what I have here. Wanting to go just means coming back."

"You can see all those other places." He drew her away, his hands on her shoulders, his gaze intent.

She had the sudden thought that here, now, finally, she was going to be offered her heart's desire. And the only man she'd ever loved would propose to her when her hair was wet and her face naked.

Damn.

The foolishness of it made her laugh and reach for him. He loved her just as she was, and that was a wonder. "Oh, Trevor."

"It'll be work, but exciting work. Satisfying, fulfilling. Lucrative."

"Of course, but I-" The romantic haze parted, much as the fog over the sea, and let the last part of his statement swim clearly into her mind. "Lucrative?"

"Very. The sooner you sign, the sooner we can get started on the groundwork. But you have to take the step, Darcy, make the decision."

"The step." She touched a hand to her temple as if dizzy, then turned away. How could she take any step when she had no balance, she thought. She had no balance at all. Who would, after being struck by such a blow?

It was the contract he spoke of, not love, not marriage, but business. Sweet God, what a fool she was, what romantic fantasies she'd woven and how completely she'd stripped herself of defenses.

And the worst of it was, he didn't even know.

"We've come here, is it, to talk of contracts?"

Step one, he thought. Get her signed, sturdily connected to him. He'd show her the world, and all the things she wanted. Once she had a taste of them, he'd offer her a feast. Anything and everything she'd ever wanted.

"I want you to have what you're looking for. I want to be a part of getting it for you. Celtic Records will nurture you, and build your career. I intend to see to it personally. See to you."

"The package." She tried to swallow the bitterness, but it stuck in her throat when she looked back at him. All she'd ever wanted was standing right here, with his hair blowing in the breeze and his eyes too cool for her to reach out and touch him.

"That's how Nigel put it. So you'll see, personally, to the package?"

"And keep you happy. I can promise that."

Cold now, she angled her head. "How much do you judge it takes to keep me happy?"

"To start, on signing?" He named a figure that would have taken her breath away if she hadn't felt so cold, so bloody cold. Instead, she met the offer with a cynical lift of her brow.

"And how much of that, may I ask, is for the talent, and how much is because I'm sleeping with you?"

His eyes fired quickly, and went hard as stone. "I don't pay women to sleep with me. That's insulting to both of us."

"You're right." Finally, the pain ate through the ice and made her weak. "I'm sorry for that, it was badly put. Others will say it, though. Nigel warned me of that."

He hadn't thought of it. It only showed how tangled up he was in her that he hadn't thought of it. "You'll know better. What else matters?"

She walked away from him, back to Maude's grave, but found no comfort in the flowers or the magic or the dead. "It's easier for you, Trevor. You have the armor of your position, and your power and your name. I'll come into this without any of that."

"Is that what's stopping you?" He went to her, turned her back. "Are you afraid of words spoken by jealous idiots? You're stronger than that, Darcy."

"Not afraid, no, but aware."

"The business is separate from our private life." But he was merging them, knew it. "You have a gift, and I can help you use it. What's between us otherwise is no one's concern but our own."

"And if what's between us begins to fade, if one or the other of us should decide it's time to move on there, or away, what then?"

It would kill him. Even the thought of it stabbed his heart. "It won't affect the business side."

"Maybe we should have a separate contract saying so." She meant it sarcastically, even cruelly, and was stunned when he only nodded.

"All right."

"Well, then. Well." She let out a shaky breath, and walked over to look down at Ardmore once again. So that was how things were done in his world. Contracts and agreements and sensible negotiations. Fine. She could handle that, would handle that.

But just let him try to walk away from her down the road. Let him try, and he'd find his legs across the room from the rest of him. He knew nothing of wrath.

"All right, Magee. Draw up your papers, ring your solicitors, strike up the band, whatever needs doing." She didn't turn back, but whirled. And her smile glittered, hard and gorgeous. "I'll sign my name. You'll get your voice, you'll get the whole flaming package. God help you."

God help us both, she added silently.

Relief came to him in a wave. He had her, and was on his way to keeping her. "You won't regret it."

"I don't intend to." Her eyes were sharp enough to cut glass when he took her hands again, leaned toward her. "No, you don't. I don't seal business arrangements with kisses."

"Point taken." Solemnly he shook her hand. "Business concluded?"

"For the moment." So now he wanted a woman, a lover. Fine, then, she'd give him his money's worth there as well.

Deliberately, she ran her hands up, from hips to ribs, over chest, onto shoulders, sliding her body into his. Provocative, taunting, she nipped, retreated, nipped until she tasted frustrated desire, until she saw the flash of it heat his eyes to smoke.

Then, only then, she tipped her head back and let him take.

They feasted on each other, with none of the tender patience of the night. This was passion and passion only, with its greed and fire and demands. While her soul wept from the loss, she rejoiced.

He wanted her, would want her, again and again. This she would see to. As long as she held this power, she held him. And with it, witchlike, she would bind him.

"Touch me." She tore her mouth from his to use her teeth in little cat bites on his neck. "Put your hands on me."

He hadn't meant to. The time and the place were all wrong. But heat was pumping out of her, into him, burning off control, scorching sense. His hands, rough and possessive, filled themselves with her.

But when he was on the point of losing all reason, of dragging her down to the wild grass, she pulled back. The wind caught her hair and swirled it as if in water, the sun shot into her eyes and sparkled there. For an instant, her beauty was cruel.

"Later," she said, and lifted a hand, lover-like, to stroke his cheek. "You can have me. As later I'll have you."

Fury spurted into his throat, but he didn't know if it was for himself or for her. "That's a dangerous game, Darcy."

"And what fun are they if they're not? You'll have what you want from me, on both counts. Be content that here you've had my word on the first, and a fine taste of the second."

He was just raw enough to risk asking, "What do you want from me?"

Her lashes lowered, a shield against grief. "Didn't you bring me up here because you'd figured that out for yourself already?"

"I guess I did," he murmured.

"Well, then." She was smiling again when she held out a hand. "We'd best go back, as the morning's wasting. And I never did finish my tea." Cheerfully, she gave his hand a little squeeze as they walked. Let's just see if you can keep up with me, you blind, thickheaded bastard. "And will you be willing to share your bagels with me?"

He ordered himself to match her mood. "I could probably be persuaded to share."

Neither of them looked back as they walked away, or saw the air ripple and shred.

"Fools," Carrick muttered, scowling from his perch atop the stone well. "Stubborn, bone-brained fools. And just my luck to be stuck with them. One step away from happiness, and they spring back as if it were bared fangs."

He leaped off his seat, landing an inch above the ground. In the next instant he was sitting, cross-legged, by Maude's grave. "I'm telling you, old friend, I've just no clear understanding of mortals. Maybe they are just in heat, and I'm wrong about them."

Brooding now, he stuck his chin on his fist. "The hell I am," he decided, but it didn't lighten his mood. "They're stupid in love with each other, and there, I think, lies the problem. Neither of them knows how to handle stupidity. Afraid of it is what they are. Afraid to give in to senselessness and let love rule."

He sighed a little, then waved his wrist and took a bite of the golden apple that appeared. "You'd say I was the same. And you'd be right enough. Magee's set on the same path I took. Promise her this, offer her that, vow to give her the world, as the world's safe when you've plenty of it to spare. But you've only one heart, after all, and giving that is a more difficult deal. I didn't look inside my Gwen, and he doesn't look inside his Darcy. He thinks it's sense, but it's nothing but fear."

He gestured toward the headstone with the apple, as if the old woman sat there, listening. Perhaps she did. "And she's no better when it comes to it. As different from my quiet, modest Gwen as sun from moon, but the same in this aspect. She wants him to offer his heart, but will she just bloody say so, for Finn's sake? No, she won't. Females-who can figure them?"

He sighed then, munched his bright apple, contemplated. He'd nearly lost patience, had been on the edge of springing out of the air to order them both to get on with it. They were in love, admit it and be done.

But that was beyond what was permitted. The choices, the timing, the steps of their dance together had to be theirs. His- contribution, Carrick decided-he didn't care for the word "interference"-could be only minor.

He had done what he could do. Now he had to wait as he had waited three centuries already. His fate, his happiness, at times he thought his very life, depended on the hearts of these two mortals.

He'd dealt with the other pairs of them. You'd have thought he'd have learned enough to know how to hurry these last two along. But all he'd learned was that love was a jewel with too many facets to count. Strength and weakness running side by side through it. And that no one could give or take it with any less than an open hand.

He lay back on the grass, and with his mind sketched Gwen's beloved face in the clouds. "I ache for you. Heart, body, mind. I would give all that's in my power to give to touch you again, to breathe your scent, to hear your voice. I swear to you, when you come back to me at last, it's love I'll pour at your feet. The grandeur and humility of it. And the flowers that bloom from that will never die."

He closed his eyes, and weary with waiting, vanished into sleep.

The effort of being cheerful and sexy and witty left Darcy near to exhaustion by the time Trevor drove her down to the pub. But determined to play it all out, she walked around the back with him so she could make happy noises about the progress of the work.

She realized that temper had her overplaying it when Trevor narrowed his eyes at her. So she beat a hasty retreat, giving him a warm but brief kiss.

She made it as far as the kitchen door when Brenna shoved in behind her. "What's the matter?" Brenna asked immediately.

They'd known each other since birth, understood each other's moods often better than they understood their own.

"Come upstairs, can you?" Such was the nature of their friendship that Darcy didn't have to wait for an answer. She went up fast, shedding her brightness and cheer as she might have shed clothes.

"I've a headache." The brutal pounding sent her straight to the bathroom cupboard for aspirin. She chased it with water, drinking the whole glass down.

Their eyes met in the mirror. Brenna knew that sleek and shiny look hid some deep hurt.

"What did he do?"

How marvelous it was to have a friend who simply knew where the blame lay even before the offense was cited. "He offered me a fortune. A small one, I suppose, by his standards, but hefty enough by mine. Enough to set me on the way to where I'm going, and in fine style."

"And?"

"I'm taking it." She tossed her head, and the edgy defiance worried her friend. "I'm signing his recording contract."

"That's grand, Darcy, truly it is, if it's what you want."

"I've always wanted more than I have, and now I'm about to get it. I wouldn't sign if it didn't suit me. I promise you I'm doing it for me first. I haven't lost my head so much to do otherwise."

"Then I'm pleased for you, and proud already." She laid a hand on Darcy's shoulder, rubbed at the tension. "Now tell me how he hurt you."

"I thought he was going to ask me to marry him. I thought he would tell me he loved me and wanted me to belong to him. Can you imagine that?"

"I can." And now Brenna hurt as well. "Perfectly."

"Sure and his vision's not so sharp as yours. He hasn't a clue." She gripped the sides of the sink, breathed slow and deep. "I'm not going to cry. He won't get tears out of me."

"Come sit down and tell me."

When she did and when she had, Brenna held her hand. All sympathy, she said, "Bastard!"

"Thanks for that. I hate that it's partly my fault. Oh, that's a bitter pill. But I set myself up for it, no mistake there. Spinning romantic fantasies in the shower like some fluff-brained girl."

"Why shouldn't you? You love him."

"I do, the cad, and I'll make him pay for it before we're done."

"What are you going to do?"

"Trap him, of course. Blind him with lust, confuse him with my many moods, toy with him. All the things I'm best at when it comes to men."

"I won't say you aren't skilled in that area," Brenna said carefully. "But if you go this way, and win, it won't be enough for you."

"I'll make it enough. Many's the relationship that has its seeds in sex. Lust and love aren't so far apart."

"Maybe not in the flaming dictionary. But Darcy, when one party's in lust and the other in love, they're distant as moons. And between those places is so much room to be hurt."

"I can't hurt any more than I did this morning at Saint Declan's Well. And I survived."

She stepped to the window. Out there, she thought, Trevor was building his dream, but he'd needed some of what was hers for it. Well, she could build her own and take some of his. Of him.

"I'll risk the rest. I can make him need me, Brenna. Need's the step between wanting and loving. It'll be enough for me."

She shook her head before Brenna could speak, crossed back. "I have to try."

"Of course you do." Hadn't she? Brenna thought. Didn't everyone who knew what love was and longing?

"But at the moment, I need to vent out this foul mood. Shawn'll be coming along shortly. I'll just go down and torment him until I feel better."

"If that's the case, I'll get back on the job and out of harm's way."