The Love Shack

Chapter SIX


GAGE SPRINTED UP THE BEACH. His phone was in his pocket, but he didn’t pause for a 911 call, though the thought flitted through his mind. Not only was he unsure of the exact emergency, but he knew he could reach Skye way before any patrol car.

All looked quiet ahead of him. Some of the cottages had their roof-mounted canister lamps, trained to spotlight the surf, turned on, but the sand itself was shadowed and empty of people. There was a glow coming from the direction of Captain Crow’s at the northern end of the cove, but Skye’s office was a quarter mile south...and appeared dark and deserted as he drew closer.

As unease bubbled in his belly, he redoubled his pace while trying to maintain his calm. During his career he’d faced dozens of dire situations and always managed to keep his head. But it felt near to exploding now—his chest, too, as his heart thundered against his ribs.

“Skye!” he shouted as he leaped onto the office step. His knuckles thumped against the door. “Skye? Are you all right?”

Silence. His composure fractured, and he found himself hammering the wood with both fists. “Skye!”

More silence.

He yanked out his phone and started jabbing at the display to dial her number. Was she hurt? Had she left?

A dozen questions whirling through his fragmented mind, he almost missed the crack in the door. A yellow edge of light leaked out. “Gage?” a voice croaked.

He shoved at the wood to make room for himself. Skye gasped, but the sound didn’t register over his vital need to assess the situation. Inside the brightly lit room, he blinked, getting his bearings.

Everything appeared fine. He didn’t know what he’d expected. Upended furnishings? A threatening stranger? But the room looked cheerful, with everything in its normal place...

Oh, shit.

Everything in its normal place except for Skye, who’d retreated to the far corner. She slid to the floor and curled into a self-protective ball, her knees to her chest, her arms wrapping her shins, her head tucked low. The pose was so disturbing he felt a clutch at his throat.

“What the hell is going on?” he demanded in a harsh voice, then winced as she cringed, her body folding tighter as if she was trying to disappear.

His gaze sped around the room again, still finding nothing alarming. In quick strides, he made it to the bathroom doorway. The closet-sized space was empty of anything other than toilet, sink, soap and towel dispenser.

But ghostly feet were tapping up and down his spine and Skye hadn’t moved. Anxiety shook his insides again, but he tried to smooth his expression as he hunkered near her. “Skye?”

She jolted as if in fear, shaking him to the core.

Keep your head, he reminded himself. Keep her calm.

“Skye. Honey.” This time she didn’t twitch a muscle, and it felt like progress. “Was...was someone here?”

He could feel her struggle to find her voice. Finally she spoke, the words low and thready. “I don’t know.”

Ignoring his yammering pulse, he studied what he could see of her. Sloppy, oversize clothes. Bare feet shoved into a pair of shoelace-less sneakers. Her person didn’t seem to have come to any harm, but her body shuddered with a fine tremor.

“Why did you call me?” he asked.

“I want to feel safe.”

Okay. “What made you feel unsafe?”

“I thought I heard someone trying to get in.” Her head inched up and she peeked at him over her knees, her pupils nearly overtaking the gold band surrounding them. “Did you see anyone?”

He shook his head slowly, as if she were a wild animal that might flee if he moved too fast. “No. But let me go look again.” He made to stand and her hand shot out, gave his knee a brief grip, then retracted as if she’d been burned.

“Don’t leave. Don’t leave me.”

“All right.” He blew out a silent breath of air and tried to determine what the hell he should do next. Clearly she was frightened, traumatized maybe, and he didn’t want to make a misstep. Maybe her friend Polly? But Skye had called him.

Gage kept his voice gentle. “Would you like some tea? I can take you back to your house—”

“No.” New tension stiffened her body. Then he saw her shoulders slump. “Maybe. In a minute.”

They kept to the corner, she with her spine to the wall, he sheltering her with his bigger body. He could smell her flowers-and-water fragrance and he breathed in the scent, using the long inhale to steady his ragged pulse. She was physically fine, there was no immediate threat, but he still felt on high alert, nerves jangling. It took all his newfound patience not to leap up and pace about the room.

But he’d learned that sometimes the only power he had was that of waiting it out.

Long moments later, her chin lifted. She didn’t meet his gaze. “There was no one around? You’re sure?”

“I didn’t see anyone. I’ll check further when you’re ready for me to do that.”

“I heard scratching. Maybe at the lock or at the door?” The hand she used to push her hair back from her pale face still trembled.

“When you’re ready,” he reiterated, “I’ll look.” Though he wanted nothing more than to take her into his arms, he held his position. “Should I call the police?”

“No.” Her hair swirled around her shoulders in adamant refusal. “It’s okay. I...I guess I’ll just have to go home.” Placing her palms on the plaster behind her, she drew to a stand.

Gage came to his feet, as well. “Whatever you say.”

But it was what she didn’t say that became the sticking point. At her nod, he did scrutinize the front door and the lock. Both the wood and the device were old, pitted and scarred by their exposure to the wind and salty air. The rustic look suited the cove, but effectively hid any sign of recent tampering. Then he followed her to her house, another three-quarters of a mile south. She was maddeningly silent during the walk.

And still wordless as she unlocked the door and made to slip inside.

“Skye?” he said, astounded. That was it?

Pausing, she gave him a wan smile. “Sorry for your trouble. Thank you.”

Thank you? His temper sparked. She’d scared the shit out of him—she was still scaring the shit out of him—and she expected he’d walk away without a full explanation?

“What kind of f*cking friend do you think I am?” he demanded.

She flinched.

Keep your cool. Keep your head. Shoving his fists inside his pockets, he took a deliberate inhale through his nose. Then he tried again, using a gentler tone. “What kind of friend are you, who doesn’t offer a pal a beverage?” Without giving her time to demur, again he pushed his way past her and shut the door, closing them both inside.

He glanced over his shoulder as he headed for her kitchen. “I’ll take beer if you have it. Or some of that wine you like.”

Her footsteps clapped against the hardwood as she followed him toward the room at the center of her house. When he reached the refrigerator, he yanked it open, then threw her another look.

The handle slipped through his suddenly nerveless fingers. Oh, God. “Skye? What is it, honey? What’s wrong?”

She stood in the kitchen entry, staring inside the tiled interior of the room as if a horror movie played out on a screen he couldn’t see. “This is where he tied me up,” she said in a colorless voice. “I thought he’d come back tonight. I thought he’d found me at the office.”

He leaped for her in a Superman bound—he must have, anyway, because one moment he was ten feet away and the next he was close enough to hear her stuttered breathing. But he wasn’t sure she was completely aware of his presence, because her body swayed as she looked past him, to the table and chairs at the far end of the kitchen. “One minute I was looking through some mail, and the next, he had my arms pinned behind my back.”

Gage lifted his hands to grasp her shoulders, yet halted before he made contact. Keep your cool. Keep your head. “Maybe we should go somewhere else, honey. No. 9? Or leave the cove altogether?”

“Not yet.” Her gaze flicked to his. “I’m not leaving the cove yet.”

“The living room, then.”

“No,” she said, and color flagged her pale cheeks. “No. I grew up in this kitchen. I have a lot more happy memories here than bad ones.”

He stepped aside as she walked past him, her stride resolute. “I carved pumpkins on that counter. We had a family dinner every night at that table.” She made it to the refrigerator, rummaged around and came out with a couple of beers. “You okay with one of these?”

“I’m not okay!” He wasn’t okay with any of this. “Jesus Christ, Skye, what the hell have you been hiding from me?”

He saw her fingers tighten on the long necks of the bottles as her gaze drifted to her feet. “I haven’t shared this with anyone—besides the police, that is. I don’t want to—”

“What happened?”

Her eyes jumped to his. “I—I was the victim of a home invasion. Five months ago a pair of men broke into the house.”

Stunned, Gage just stared. Skye frowned, muttered, “You asked,” then made her way to the wooden table, where she dropped the beers with a clack. In a jerky movement, she pulled out one of the chairs and took a seat. Her hand trembled a little as she drew one bottle toward her.

Gage sat down across from her and allowed seven seconds of silence to pass by. Then he couldn’t stand it any longer. “What the hell happened?”

“I don’t—”

“What. The. Hell. Happened?”

Her gaze flicked to him, flicked away. “Fine, then,” she said, sounding angry.

He liked the fury much better than the fear. “Spit it out, Skye.”

“It was late one night. The off-season. I was in here, flipping through mail like I said, when a man grabbed me from behind. There were two, but only one...only one was him.”

“Someone you recognized?”

“No.” She shook her head. “In the glimpse I had of them before I was blindfolded, one wore a ball cap and bandannas over his face. The other, a ski mask. That one, he went through the house, searching drawers and cupboards—presumably looking for stuff to sell. The first man—” She broke off.

Five months ago they’d been regular correspondents. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this? You wrote me about a dozen important moments in your life.”

She smiled a little. “And a hundred unimportant ones.”

But those had brought them close, too. He’d read and reread every detail under a sputtering lightbulb, and the accounts of everything from her first date at fifteen to her current fight with the cable company had made him sure he knew her like he knew his own heart. “You kept this from me,” he said.

“What was I supposed to say?” Skye asked, lifting a slender hand. “‘Dear Gage, unsettling situation here. A man blindfolded me, gagged me, tied me up. Then he used a knife to slice off my clothes. I was...touched. Threatened sexually. I was sure I was going to be raped.’”

Gage shot to his feet so fast his chair tipped, the back slamming to the floor. Skye jumped, and he cursed himself for betraying his upset. Keep your head. Keep your cool. Leaning down, he retrieved the chair. With it returned to its upright position, he sank back down and ran his hands through his hair.

Feeling slightly more in control, he met her gaze. “How bad were you hurt, honey?” he asked in his gentlest voice.

“I was scared out of my mind,” she admitted. “He enjoyed that, I think. As he ran a knife over my skin he spent a lot of time talking about what would come next.”

Gage could hardly breathe. “What did come next?”

“The searcher returned to the kitchen and hauled my—my molester into the living room. From what I could tell, he was honestly appalled by his partner’s actions. They had a low-voiced argument, and then they left. I managed to inch the chair to the landline phone, work a hand free and call 911.”

Sweet Jesus. Gage picked up the sweating bottle of beer and rolled it across his forehead. “I assume they didn’t catch the men?”

She shook her head. “No fingerprints, no clues left behind.”

What remained instead was Skye’s lingering fear. “How have you managed after that?”

“I...” She bit her bottom lip. “It’s like I said. I have many more good memories than bad. And in the summer...the cottages are full and people are having fun on the beach and it’s almost as if it never happened.”

Except for when it wasn’t like that, he realized...when a strange noise or unbidden memory would reach out to catch her. Catch Gage’s girl, the talisman that had kept him sane. The lodestar that had brought him safely home.

He rubbed his temples. “What now?”

“Now?”

“I won’t just leave you here.”

Some expression he couldn’t name crossed her face. “You’re going to just leave me here before September ends. We both know that.”

“I mean right now. Skye—”

“Don’t worry. I get through these little upsets. I’m accustomed to spooking myself.” She got to her feet. “Let me see you out.”

He stared up at her, disgruntled by the dismissal. “What if I want the beer?”

“You don’t want the beer.”

What he didn’t want was this! Skye, his Skye, having gone through such a thing. “I was...touched. Threatened sexually. I was sure I would be raped.” His gaze took in the stubborn set of her chin, then ran over her camouflaged figure in the masculine, too-large clothes.

He’d told Griffin she wasn’t a woman to him, but now he hurt for her because he understood why she was pretending she wasn’t a woman to herself, either. “Oh, honey,” he murmured. “I hate what he did to you.”

“Me, too.”

“Nightmares?” he asked, well acquainted with the monsters the dark held.

“Some.” Then she yanked on the hem of her oversize sweatshirt, her gaze on her shoes. “And you probably realize I...cover up.”

“The experience left you cold?”

Her head jerked up, her gaze met his. “Yes. I’m cold, outside and inside. When people—men—look at me I remember the feel of his eyes on me, the scrape of the knife along my skin, the rough touch of his hands. I hear his voice and think of what he promised to do and I feel cold and dirty and ugly. I’m no longer Skye. I’m something—someone I don’t even like to see in the mirror.”

Rage at the man who’d done this to her bubbled in Gage’s belly like black tar. But he kept his voice level and calm. “You’re still there. Not one of your warm, womanly pieces have been lost. They’re just playing it safe for now.”

“Sure.” She gave him a disbelieving half smile, then turned to leave the kitchen. “I’m going to be okay. I just need some rest.”

What else could he do but trail her to her front door? Still, when he got there, he paused, rage and sympathy and impotence churning in his gut. He’d been beyond powerless for two weeks, and despised every moment of it, but he’d go through that experience again ten times over if he could erase Skye’s pain.

“Are you really going to be okay?” he asked.

“For the summer, yes. Not so sure how I’ll do once the cove goes quiet again.”

He frowned. “Meaning?”

“I may not stay here,” she said with a shrug.

Her words rocked him. No Skye at the cove? It was like imagining the summer without sun. The ocean without waves. Seagulls without wings.

“Where would you go?” he asked.

“A nunnery, maybe,” she said with another unamused half smile, “as permanent celibacy seems a definite possibility.”

Oh, Skye. Staring down at her small, serious face, he could no longer hold himself apart from her. Touching was imperative. Murmuring something that was half apology, half reassurance, he reached out and pulled her to him.

She stiffened, but he held firm. “Let me,” he said against her hair. “Let me do this.” And when, after another moment, she relaxed against his chest he closed his eyes and breathed out a grateful prayer even as he breathed in her sweet, lovely scent.

It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to draw his lips along her soft hair to the tender skin at her temple. He dropped a baby kiss there, just the slightest press of his mouth to the fluttering pulse that he then felt compelled to taste with his tongue.

Skye quivered at the damp contact and her chin lifted. As they stared into each other’s eyes, an urgency rose in him, a breathless insistence not unlike that he’d felt when he’d been running up the sand. Running to her.

And now that he had her...

He lost his head.

Gage’s mouth came down on hers. His fingers tightened on her upper arms, but instead of fighting him, her body yielded, going boneless. He reassured her anyway. “This is me,” he said against her mouth, then licked the seam of her lips.

They parted, and she quivered in his hold.

He didn’t make any quick moves with his tongue. He just toyed with her mouth, painting the soft surfaces, sucking on the plump upper curve, letting her feel the edge of his teeth as he delicately bit the lower one. She was panting, her breath hot against his chin, and when he heard her moan...

He plunged.

She made a sound deep in her throat. With one arm around her waist, he gathered her closer and fed on her mouth. It was crazy, this intense need to have her, to know her flavor so intimately, but it had him in its thrall. She seemed equally absorbed, her lips still open to him, his shirt tangled in the grip of her fingers. When he broke to allow them air, she stayed glued against him, her body heat mingling with his.

Nuzzling her hair, he knew the moment the brief spell broke. A small whimper sounded. Her hands dropped. She stepped out of his arms.

Without a protest, he let her go.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” she said.

When she meant she hadn’t thought it could happen. Skye hadn’t believed that she could—even for a moment—lose herself and her lingering terror in the pleasure of a man’s kiss.

In Gage’s kiss.

“That really shouldn’t have happened.” She took another step back, a panicked expression on her face.

Gage, on the other hand, felt calm and centered for the first time since receiving her call, his next steps clear in his mind. He owed Skye in ways she’d never know, and he’d make payment on the debt by convincing her that the sweet fire had been no aberration.

Her sexuality still burned, and he would be the one to prove it to her. Not only because it was obvious an attraction ran between them, but because he knew he had her trust.

He wouldn’t break it. Instead, he’d do everything in his power to reassure her she was still a woman. What else were friends for?

* * *

SKYE HAD GOTTEN DRESSED before dawn, determined to get started on an idea she’d come up with weeks before. With a cup of coffee downed, she was caffeinated enough to put her muscles into pushing the living room furniture to the center of the floor. Next, she rolled up the hall runner. Following that, she stacked the kitchen chairs atop the table. Old sheets served as tarps to cover the furniture and then she retrieved the tools from the garage: rollers, pan and brushes. She was lugging in cans of lemon-chiffon-colored paint when she heard someone at her front door.

Pulse tripping, Skye froze. Every instinct she had told her who stood on the other side. Those same instincts warred with each other in loud demand: Pretend you’re not home! Welcome him in!

Part of her was relieved he now knew the truth. She wouldn’t have to paper over her odd edginess. He’d understand her jumpy nerves and aversion to being touched.

Except she’d let him touch her last night.

Kiss her.

And she’d managed not to faint in panic.

Another thump sounded on the door. “I hear your brain whirring in there, Skye,” Gage called through the wood. “Take a deep breath and let me in.”

Still, she hesitated.

“I bear fancy coffee.”

Feeling ridiculous, she set down the cans and made her way toward the door. One comfort kiss from him didn’t mean he anticipated another. She’d probably been a lousy partner in the whole thing, she thought, turning the knob. Had she even responded? She only remembered absorbing—his heat, his strength, his exotic-spice smell.

A blush crawled up her neck as she pulled open the door. Her heart stuttered as she took in the sight of him, breeze-ruffled dark hair, piercing blue-green eyes, faint smile on his lips. His alert gaze gave her an intense study and she suspected he could see every toss and turn, every sleepless minute, every second thought she’d had since bidding him good-night.

She shouldn’t have called him from the office.

She shouldn’t have shared her secret.

She shouldn’t have let him kiss her.

“Stop thinking so much,” he advised, stepping over the threshold. He placed a cardboard cup in her hand.

“Thank you,” she said, sniffing at the rich scent of fresh grounds. “How far did you have to go for this?”

“Captain Crow’s.”

Her eyes rounded. “They don’t open until eleven.”

“Unless you’re me, and you strike up a conversation with the prep cook who starts work at seven.”

“Ah.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” he said, uncurling his forefinger from around his own cup to point it at her. “His name is George and he has a wife and three kids.”

“My mind’s not in the gutter!” Well, not since she woke from a twenty-minute midnight doze during which she’d imagined herself stretched out on her bed, Gage standing at its foot, slowly stripping off his clothes.

He grinned at her, then reached into his front pocket to pull free a slim camera. Still juggling his coffee, he managed to bring the viewfinder to his eye and snap a shot. “I’ll call it ‘Guilty as Charged.’”

“That’s an invasion of privacy,” she said, frowning at him.

“I think that blush indicates that you’ve been mentally invading mine.”

“Gage!”

He laughed. “Relax. Nobody will see the photo but the two of us.”

“I don’t want you looking at me,” she grumbled.

Ignoring her, he took a slow perusal of the living room. “What’s going on?”

She swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “I’ve been planning on repainting some rooms, rearranging the furniture in others. Sort of...”

“Reclaiming your territory?”

“Yes,” she said, grateful that no more explanation was necessary. He understood her so well. “Yes, exactly.”

“You should have written to me when it happened,” he said, his voice low. “I would have done something, anything—”

“Gage, you were thousands of miles away.”

“I know, but—” He blew out a frustrated breath. “But I can do something now. Let me help. Let me help you paint. I’m the best furniture mover you’ll ever meet.”

She sent him a skeptical glance. “Don’t you have better things to do?”

“Actually, no. You’d be doing me a favor. I get tired of my own company pretty quickly these days.”

It was her turn to study him. “That’s a surprise. As you’ve pointed out before, your job means you spend a lot of time alone.”

He lifted a shoulder. “Too much time, it seems. Give me a paint roller, Skye, I’m begging you.”

What could she do when her pen pal put it like that?

And the fact was, his assistance helped her in more ways than one. Not only was he tall, skilled with tools and willing to do whatever asked, but being around him leached the awkwardness she’d been feeling over the kiss, even though they started work in separate rooms. She took the kitchen and he the living room.

They expected to meet in the hallway.

But before that, she caught him taking more pictures. “What are you doing?” she said, craning to look at him from her place on a stepladder.

“Just practicing. I haven’t held a camera in weeks.”

Weird. Because she remembered him never being without one since he was nine or ten. “Why not?”

He shrugged, and snapped again. She thought he’d focused on the back of her hand, speckled with pale yellow paint freckles. “That can’t be pretty,” she said.

“In the eye of the beholder,” he commented as he wandered off.

Half an hour later, she brought him a cold glass of iced tea. He’d opened the front door so that the breeze cleared out some of the paint fumes. Her gaze was drawn to it, and she tried to quell her instant quake of worry. Usually it was double-locked and dead-bolted. At night she hung a cowbell from the knob.

“I’m between you and your nightmares,” he murmured, taking the glass she proffered.

As she glanced away from the concerned look in his eyes, her gaze snagged on the camera he’d left on top of the sheet-draped sofa. She cleared her throat. “I never asked—how did professional photography come about?”

He pursed his lips, appearing to think. “I suspect it all begins with Rex Monroe.”

“Rex?” He was ninety-something years old, and a longtime resident of the cove. A Pulitzer Prize–winning war correspondent, he’d complained about the Lowell twins every year they’d summered at Beach House No. 9.

“He was annoyed with me and Griffin one fog-shrouded afternoon. We were wrestling and yelling at each other in his yard. If I remember correctly, he yanked us into his house by the scruff of our necks and told us we needed to better ourselves instead of batter our brother.”

Skye laughed. “He has a way with words.”

“In his study, he had an old manual typewriter and sitting next to it, a Kodak Brownie camera. It was a classic even then, something he’d had since the 1950s, but he...he let me touch it. Showed me how to use it. Griff was engrossed with putting letters onto paper, but that Brownie...the world looked different to me through its lens.”

“Different how?”

“I controlled it.” He finished off his tea and set the empty glass on the windowsill. “I could cut away the parts that didn’t fit my vision. I could focus on the subjects I thought needed to be seen. The appeal of that never left me.”

“So in college...”

“I studied political science, not photography. But one spring break I went with a philanthropic group to Mexico with the intention of building a school by day and drinking tequila by night. We were there when the region was shaken by a magnitude-7.9 earthquake. The photos I took were the first that made it out...and they were the beginning of making my reputation.”

“And you continued globe-trotting and taking photographs,” Skye said. She didn’t know why the words made her melancholy. Gage had found his place in the world, just as her place was here at the cove. Or had been at the cove.

Okay, melancholy explained.

A crease dug between his eyebrows. “What’s wrong, honey?”

She didn’t want to say the words. This all ends here. We’ll never again be at this place together.

Once summer’s over, we’ll never again be together anywhere.

Still frowning, he approached her slowly. She didn’t move; her feet felt weighted to the floor, made as heavy as her heart by the notion that this was the aching end of everything. “Skye,” he whispered, and his fingers were just as gentle as his voice when he pushed a wisp of hair off her forehead.

“Don’t,” she whispered back, feeling as if she were teetering on the edge of the tall bluff at the south end of the cove, with only cold water and jagged rocks to welcome her at the bottom. Don’t push me. I’ll never survive the fall.

Instead of obeying her unspoken words, Gage stepped closer.

She jerked back, her pulse rocketing.

He only smiled. “Sweet Skye. Don’t worry, I’m not going to kiss you again.” Then he leaned around her to grab a rag draped on the sheet-shrouded wing chair behind her.

“I didn’t... I don’t—”

His second smile held more mischief. “Unless you ask me to, that is.”

Pulse still racing, Skye stared after him as he returned to work, unsure of her reaction to his provocative statement. Was it relief...or disappointment?