him, too, for pissing off the woman who, sometime during the course of their correspondence, had gone from casual pen pal to personal talisman.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, Gage was once again up early. He set out for another walk, keeping to wet sand and the neutral company of the shorebirds. The tide was low and he headed for a favorite haunt just beyond the restaurant. There, where another bluff met the ocean, was an extensive series of tide pools, some small, some shallow, some twice as big and twice as deep as a bathtub.
Eyes cast down, he picked his way around them, also carefully avoiding the exposed rock faces where sharp-edged barnacles and dark-shelled mussels crowded together like villagers confronting a common enemy. Peering into a cup-sized crevice in the rock, he started when he heard his name, the soles of his leather flip-flops slipping on the wet rock.
Regaining his balance, he looked over. Ponytailed Skye stood nearby, dressed in drawstring linen pants and a matching tunic the color of dry sand. Despite how they’d parted the day before, he couldn’t help smiling at her. For two wretched weeks, she’d walked through his imagination, keeping him sane. Seeing her in the flesh was testament to his fortitude. He’d made it back.
Who wouldn’t be glad?
The wind came up, swirling escaped pieces of her dark hair and pressing the thin material of her clothes against her skin. For the first time he could make out the contours of her figure: small high breasts, slender waist, the flare of feminine hips. A flash of heat shot down his spine and curled around his balls. His cock reacted in typical horny male fashion and his smile died.
Hell. She didn’t want his “feasting” to involve her friends or family, so he figured she didn’t want it to involve herself, either. He didn’t want it to involve Skye and mess up what she already was to him. Childhood friend. Charming correspondent. Survival technique.
So he shut down his baser urges and approached her with slow steps, smiling again. “Hey,” he said. “Good morning.”
“Good morning to you, too.” The strap of a backpack was slung over one shoulder and she let it slip down her arm as she returned her own smile. “I have coffee.”
He watched her pull out a silver thermos. “Is that an offer?”
She glanced up as she poured some steaming liquid into the cap. “How about a peace offering?” The smell of the brew wafted his way as she held it out. “I’m sorry about yesterday... I...I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Me, neither.” He took the small cup from her and brought the coffee to his lips. “Maybe we should start hanging out together in the wee hours of the night.”
She was rummaging in her backpack again, and he saw her withdraw an empty plastic container. Then she crossed to a large, high-and-dry flat boulder and sat down, dropping the pack near her hip. Gage followed suit, hoisting himself onto the rock beside her, then passing the cup of coffee in her direction.
After a little hesitation, she took it, and swallowed a small sip before handing it back to him. They shared the beverage and a companionable silence, each of them looking out to sea.
“I picked up your last couple of letters before I returned to the States,” he finally said. “I’m sorry you were worried.”
She kept her gaze on the horizon line. “I think it was because you wrote you had a new contact who was taking you to a region you hadn’t explored before. It sounded dangerous.”
He’d probably telegraphed his own unease. His internal debate over trusting the new guy had gone on for several days. He wasn’t stupid—journalists in that part of the world ran into all kinds of trouble, from muggings to murder. But the truth was, every footstep made in a war-torn country was a judgment call and the accolades went to those willing to take the most risk. It had seemed an acceptable trade-off at the time.
Gage realized that Skye was looking at him expectantly. “What?”
“I asked how that worked out—your new contact,” she said.
He hesitated. The wind whipped past again, propelling a lock of her long hair across his lips. It was silky-soft and smelled like a flowered breeze. Catching it between his fingers, he made to tuck it behind her ear.
She hunched away from him and grabbed the stuff herself, drawing it around her far shoulder. “Your contact?”
Thinking of Jahandar, Gage fought the urge to spit. “He turned out to be not so good.” Understatement.
They subsided into silence again.
“How’s your friend’s widow doing?” Skye asked eventually. “And her son?”
“Okay,” he replied, easily following her train of thought. Ten months ago, a colleague, Charlie Butler, had been abducted and held for ransom by the Taliban. His wife, Mara, the mother of a four-year-old, had been forced to navigate the complex maze of negotiation and counternegotiation along with the crisis management team hired by Charlie’s newspaper. The foreign correspondent community had done what they could, suggesting people to call and offering support, even as they’d kept the story out of the news. It was safer for the kidnap victim that way. “I’ll try to see them while I’m here. They don’t live far.”
“You could invite them to the cove. Sun and sand can be healing.”
Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping, Gage mused, then turned his thoughts back to Mara and her son. No doubt they could use a dose of sun and sand. It had come down to Charlie’s next of kin—to Mara—to give the go-ahead on an American military raid to rescue her husband. He hadn’t survived the attempt. One of his kidnappers had shot him as soldiers stormed the compound where he’d been held.
“I’m glad Griffin has made the choice to stick close to his woman,” Gage said abruptly. “If you love somebody enough, you won’t chance putting them through that.”
“He loves Jane a lot.”
“He does,” Gage agreed, shaking off his dark thoughts and breathing deep of the clean, open air. “Speaking of love lives, how’s yours?”
Skye made a great show of screwing the empty cap back onto her thermos. “Oh, let’s not talk about me.”
“Why not? Did something go wrong with you and Dagwood?”
Her eyes narrowed at him. “Dalton.”
“Dalton, Dagwood.” With a vague wave of his hand, he dismissed his mistake. Fact was, Dalton felt like the mistake. He didn’t know the guy, but she’d written that he worked in commercial real estate. Probably wore a suit seven days a week and didn’t like to get sand or seawater on his feet.
“We broke up,” Skye said.
“Good—wait, what?” Gage turned to face her. “When did this happen?”
“A while back.” Now it was her turn to make an offhand gesture. “He still keeps coming around, but it’s over.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
She shrugged.
Call him nosy, but he couldn’t let it go at that.
