Bj James - Heart Of The Hunter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Although Kiawah truly exists and is as lovely as I’ve said, perhaps even more so, no ruin lies on its shore. No legend is told of a foolish dreamer who built a castle for his forbidden love. But those who have been to Kiawah will know, and those yet to go will discover, that such a love affair could be much more than fantasy on this enchanting island.

Enjoy, BJ

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Eleven

He watched. From his quiet lair, his hard stare never wavering, he looked down on the shore.

Down at her.

In this hour after dawn, as gulls glided like shadows against the horizon and waves spilled a froth of gold over glittering sand, there was the woman.

Only the woman.

As the sun lifted above the tree line, the sky was alight with a waiting promise of the white, searing heat of a windless day. But for now, as first light turned the massive window where he stood to a luminous canvas, morning clung doggedly to a fragile cool.

Morning on the island, a collage of contrasts. As was the woman who walked in solitude.

The island was Kiawah, a sultry emerald adorning the coast of South Carolina.

The woman was Nicole Callison.

Callison.

He must not forget.

A wordless mutter ruffled a calm steeped in luxury, the low sound of tempered fury and regret echoed hollowly from cavernous heights. In his stark face, rigid lips thinned to a grim line, mirroring a struggle for discipline that could mean his life.

There was no place for anger in this, nor regret. He was the hunter; Nicole Callison his snare. He would do what he must with no recriminations.

None.

Keeping field glasses trained on her, he lifted his first cup of coffee for the day to his lips. Forgotten in singular concentration, it was tepid, as black and oily as diesel fuel. He barely noticed. He waited for the moment when she would turn, when he would see her face. The face of his quarry.

Glasses clenched hard in one hand, nails scoring pebbled leather, he turned in place, moving only as she moved, tracking her path to the ruin hunkered in the sand. As she began climbing slabs of stone stacked helter-skelter like fallen dominoes, he went utterly still. No effort was needed, now, to keep her in sight. Perhaps not ever, for he’d known her ultimate goal. A sheet of broken marble that rested at its pinnacle, the last crumbling vestige of a ballroom where a dreamer called Foley and a woman of mystery danced through the fury of a hurricane as it swept his gift of love away.

What the ancient storm consigned to the sea on that night, the shore had been a half century reclaiming. Now the ruin and its legend stood on shifting sands, an abiding testament of the pomp and grandeur of another time, of courage and frivolity and unmatched devotion. Scoffed at and revered by the islanders and history alike, Foley’s castle became Folly’s Castle, as it was left as nature would have it.

Folly or masterpiece, there was magnificence in the weather-beaten ruin gleaming dully in the sun. As there must have been in the woman bound to it by love. As there was in the woman who stood drinking in the sight of sea and sky as if there were no more perfect place.

Drawn by the light, defined by it, the line and curve of her body was etched against the backdrop of vast, glittering blue. She was small, five feet two, perhaps three. Beneath the fall of a faded T-shirt her hips were slim, her breasts shapely and free. Legs, clad in tattered shorts just visible beyond the hem of her shirt, were strong and tanned. From bare toes to the battered straw hat tugged low over her forehead, she was the complete beachcomber.

Too complete? he wondered. Through narrowed eyes he studied the subtle sophistication in her bearing, the casual dignity in every move and stride. Was she innocent, or consummate actress? Was there purpose in the role she played? A reason for her quiet existence among the revelers of the exclusive island community?

Why was she the span of a continent from her home, walking the Atlantic shore not the Pacific? What circumstances brought her to trade West for East?

Was she running? Hiding?

Waiting?

Waiting for what? For whom?

The cup he’d forgotten thudded to the table at his knee. Only half aware he’d set it aside, or that he’d caught his breath again, he watched as she faced the shore at last.

There was no elegance now, no sophistication, only the naturalness of a woman at ease with her world. With a sudden fling of her hand, her hat was spinning over the sand, the flamboyant scarf tied at its crown fluttering like the tail of a playful kite.

A shake of her head sent her close cropped hair flying and shimmering in the sun, as iridescent as the wing of a raven. He saw then, as he knew he would, as he had before, that her features had been sculpted kindly by time. Hollows and shadows of maturity made real a beauty that had been a covenant of youth. Her full lips were parted in laughter. Her nose was straight, unmarred by the scar at its bridge. Her eyes were green, sometimes gray or blue, their hue changing with the color she wore.

Today her shirt was red, fading to pink. Her eyes would be green, and were looking directly at him.

He knew it was illusion, a trick of the light. The house with the sun behind it would be no more than squares and angles in black relief against the sky. There was nothing to draw her attention to the sheets of glass that served as doors and windows for the multilevel house. Nothing that would betray him. She had no reason to suspect field glasses, carefully shielded from any telltale glare, tracked every minute detail of her morning ritual day after day. No reason to suspect this quiet routine was intimately familiar to an intruder who watched and waited.

An intruder who stared at her, lost in thoughts of another time, not truly seeing that her eyes were green, nor that the scar curved like a perfect half-moon at the bridge of her nose. For whom that which field glasses weren’t powerful enough to discern, and photos from a dossier couldn’t relate, memory provided.

This moment came each day, and always with the same effect. The measured beat of his heart thudded harder, his breath shuddered to a halt, and with a sense of déjà vu he stepped back into the past, staring into a face that time had turned to a soft, but perfect replica of another.

The face of Tony Callison, the man she’d worshiped. The man he had come here to kill, if he must.

“And now, Nicole?” The question shattered a pervasive silence. Hoarse from disuse, his voice echoed as before, a hollow sound ricocheting from towering ceilings and bare walls. “Do you worship your brother even now?”

White knuckled and grave, he moved the glasses from his eyes. He stared without seeing sea or shore or woman. His blinded sight turned inward, the coil of doubt he’d fought writhed down his spine. What if she did? What would he do if she knew what her brother had become and was a part of it? How would he deal with what must be done?

Would a split second of doubt cloud his perceptions? Would memory blunt his judgment?

“No!” Denial was fierce and low, more growl than word. Shaking aside an uncommon distraction, he turned from the window leaving the sea to break over the shore unwatched. Leaving Nicole Callison to wander in her solitude. He’d been a hunter too long for sentiment to interfere in his work. A hired gun did what was needed and walked away. This time would be no different.