know you like your hot springs,” Isaac said, his voice gruff. “I figured you might like this.”
“That’s a secret,” she replied.
She didn’t have to look at him to feel the impact of his gray gaze. “Maybe it’s time to let go of secrets.”
Caradine wasn’t ready to let go of her remaining secrets or his hand, so she clenched his fingers a little bit tighter. She stared at the water tumbling down, the pool at its base, and then the stunning, impossible view. Far below, the Pacific Ocean stretched out to forever, and maybe beyond.
It was one of the most beautiful places she’d ever seen, but the man beside her was more beautiful still.
And her heart. Her poor heart.
Maybe, a voice in her suggested, it isn’t Julia’s heart you have to worry about.
“When I was a little girl,” she said quietly, lost somewhere in the tumbling water and the waiting sea, “we sometimes went away in the summers. There were probably business reasons my father took us to the Hamptons, but all I cared about was the beach. I would play in the waves until my eyes stung from the salt, and there was sand everywhere. And sometimes I would swim out beyond the breakers and float there. And later, when there were no more beach vacations, and everything was tense and grim, I would remember floating like that.” She looked up at him and wasn’t surprised to find him looking at her with that unguarded heat on his face. “Held by the sea, staring at the sky. And the only other place I’ve ever felt like that was the hot springs in Grizzly Harbor.”
“Caradine,” Isaac said, his voice and his expression grave. “What were you and your sister whispering about on the couch? What are you planning?”
She laughed at that, though tears pricked behind her eyes, and she wasn’t entirely sure that was really a laugh. How could she tell the difference any longer? She picked up the hand laced with hers and brought it to her mouth, kissing those tough, strong knuckles of his.
There was nothing to say to this man. There never had been. Because there was too much to say and no way to start. She’d never stop.
So she didn’t speak. She dropped his hand, and then, holding his gaze, she began to take off her clothes. She kicked off her shoes and peeled off her socks. The volcanic rock that looked smooth and soft to the touch, but was so hard she was surprised it didn’t cut her, reminded her who she was. Why she was here.
What she had to do.
She pulled off her shirt and the sports bra she wore because a girl never knew when she might have to run for her life.
Isaac’s gaze went silver, then brighter still. She saw his chest move as though he were breathing hard as she tossed the sports bra aside.
But that was nothing compared to the way his face changed when she unsnapped her pants and shoved them down over her hips.
“Caradine—” He shook his head. “You can’t distract me.”
She smiled at him then. Not a smirk. Not a scowl. Just . . . her smile.
She didn’t actually say, Watch me.
Because he did. He always did.
She got rid of her pants, kicked off her panties, and then, still smiling, headed for the pool and eased her way in. The water was cooler than the air, but it still felt more like a hug than anything else.
She didn’t look behind her.
She moved to the center of the pool, feeling the water beneath her palms as she eased her way over the rocks beneath her feet. When the water was up past her waist she sank down, submerging herself completely.
And when she came up out of the water, he was there.
“You drive me crazy,” Isaac said against her mouth as he swept her up into his arms.
Her smile widened, there against his mouth, as she wrapped her legs around his waist. “I know.”
And she spent the time they had left proving it, again and again, as if they were the reason the sun lit up the sky with so many bright, wild colors as it put itself to bed and ushered them into the dark.
Twenty-one
It was an overcast summer day in Boston, humid and occasionally rainy.
They had left Maui around ten o’clock island time so they could arrive here midday. And Isaac expected Caradine to be on edge. The way she had been in Maine. After all, they were