A - Immortal Sea

“Scottish.”

She waited. Sometimes listening encouraged patients to talk better than asking questions.

“Bressay is an island north of Scotland. Settled by the Viking longships.”

He looked a bit like a Viking, big and brutally handsome with his hair like foam.

Like Zack‟s.

He was Zack‟s father . The implications made her head pound.

She drew a painful breath. “How did you find us?”

“I didn‟t,” he said so simply she almost believed him.

“Until I saw the boy yesterday, I was unaware of his existence.”

She would have told him. If she‟d ever had the chance. But he never came, he never called, he never contacted her.

He never tried to find them. Her.

The realization was like peeling adhesive back from an old wound. “So you‟re telling me your being here is, what?

Coincidence? An accident.”

“Or destiny,” he said. “Fate has brought us together. Twice.”

As if their one-night stand was more than lust on his part, stupidity on hers.

“I don‟t believe in fate. Bad luck, maybe.”

Those pale gold eyes assessed her. “You consider the boy a misfortune.”

“Of course not.” She pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples. “When I found out I was pregnant . . . My parents didn‟t

want me to have the baby. They said if I went through with the pregnancy, I‟d have to take full responsibility for my choices

and my child. So I did. I put myself through med school. I kept my baby.” She raised her head, the old resolve burning in her

breast. “And you can‟t just show up sixteen years later and take any of that away from me.”

“No female among my people would choose as you did,” he said quietly. “I honor your choice.”

The sincerity in his voice, the admiration in his eyes, caught her off guard. Since Ben‟s death, she was used to getting

through the days and the nights and the years on her own. There were rewards, sure. But precious few compliments.

She blinked back sudden tears. “Thank you.”

“But the choice is not yours any longer,” he continued inexorably.

She stiffened, on the alert again. “Zack is my son.”

Morgan regarded her steadily beneath hooded lids. “He is almost a man. He must make his own choices.”

“You don‟t know him. You don‟t know anything about him. He‟s fifteen years old and going through a very difficult time.”

So difficult she had given up her practice and moved her family nine hundred miles to provide them with a fresh start. “You

have no right to tell me how to raise my son.”

“What about his rights?” Morgan asked.

She stared at him blankly, attracted. Unsettled. Afraid. “What are you talking about?”

“He has the right to know his father.”

She didn‟t want to consider the truth of his words. Without moving a muscle, he had managed to threaten everything she

valued, her life, her family, her control. “Bernardo Rodriguez was his father.”

“Your dead husband.”

Anger shook her. Anger at Ben, for leaving. Fury at Morgan, for making her feel, for making her face that loss again.

She curled her fingers around the wineglass. “Ben loved Zack. He was there for him all of his life.”

Morgan‟s gaze collided with hers. “But not at the beginning of it.”

The air whooshed from her lungs, sucked away by heat and memory. Only this, only him, his hot gaze, his overwhelming

size, the violent grace of his body in hers as he pinned her down and pounded inside her, as the sky wheeled and the world

changed around them . . .

She sucked in her breath, gripping the stem of her wineglass. “Ben was there when it mattered. Zack is still adjusting to his

loss. He doesn‟t need another disruption or another disappointment in his life. He doesn‟t need you.”

“What of your needs?” Morgan asked. “This cannot be the life you envisioned for yourself.”

She gulped her wine to dispel the faint bitterness in her mouth. “My life is none of your business.”

“Look around you. You cannot be satisfied with this place.” His gaze flickered over the bar‟s clientele, his lip curling. “By

these people.”

She set her glass down with a snap. “I have work I love and children who need me. What do you have?”

He looked back at her, his eyes dark. Menacing. Sexual. “I can have whatever I want whenever I want it. Can you say the

same?”

His face was so cold, his body throwing off heat. Despite herself, she was shaken and attracted, her own body warming and

softening in response.

She must be out of her mind.

“You mean the waitress,” she said in a thin attempt at scorn.

“I mean sex.” His deep voice taunted her, plucking at her nerve endings. She trembled like a violin to the pull of the bow,

raw and roused, angry and achingly alive.

And that was absolutely unacceptable. She was not his instrument or his tool. He would not get to her child through her. Or

the lure of . . .

“Sex,” she repeated slowly, drawing the word out, testing it, tasting it in her mouth.

She felt the force of his attention, full-blown and intense. She smiled and slipped her foot from its shoe. “I can have sex

with whomever I want.”

With her bare foot, she touched his ankle, traced a line up his calf to his knee. His chest rose with one rapid breath, but he

did not move, did not shake his gaze from hers. Her heart pattered wildly.

In control, she reminded herself.

She pressed her arch to his thigh. His leg was hard as iron, his thigh heavy with muscle. She meant to turn him on. To turn

on him. But she was caught up in her sensual exploration, swept away by a quick surge of need, as riveted by this journey into

new territory as he.

She moistened her lips, her toes casting higher. His eyes blazed. He was . . . Oh, God, he was there, hot and hard under her

foot. Her toes curled.

“Whenever I want,” she said huskily.

His face was harsh. Focused. “My room is upstairs.”

His invitation jolted her. Temptation—to go with the flow, to follow the current of desire—tugged deep in her belly. Oh,

she wanted to. She wanted him.

Dropping her foot from his lap, she forced it into her shoe. She slid from the booth and stood looking down on him.

“But that‟s the difference between us.” She was amazed her voice could sound so cool, so steady, when she was boiling

and shaking inside. “I don‟t take something just because I want it,” she said and walked out.

5

PERHAPS THE SEA LORD WAS RIGHT, MORGAN mused as he strolled down the inn steps late the next morning.

Perhaps there was some magic on World‟s End.

Trees framed the view, the long green lawn falling away to a crescent of beach bordered by sea and stone.

It felt good to be away from the tensions on Sanctuary, from the sweaty labor of hauling rocks and the frustration of

wrangling his work crew from the water. The children of the sea were hunters, not builders. They did not make or mine, plow

or spin. Sanctuary had been furnished with the plunder of centuries, Viking gold and Spanish iron, French silks and Italian

pottery. All gone now, all lost beneath the waves from which they had been recovered. Two days of hot meals and hot

showers, soft linens and uninterrupted sleep had given Morgan a newfound appreciation for human comforts and surroundings.

His mind was clear, his body alert, his spirits lighter than they had been in months. Years.