Beverly Barton - This Side of Heaven

"Your father?" Cyn felt his pain. It filled his eyes.

It marred his handsome face. He made a sound some­where between a groan and a snort. "I never had a father. I don't even know who he was. Anyway, it doesn't much matter. He's dead. He died before I was born."

"Oh, Nate, I'm so sorry." She held his hand even tighter, longing to take him in her arms and give him comfort. But she wasn't sure he would accept it, not right now when the pain was so great.

"All he ever gave her was me." Nate pulled away from Cyn's hold and stood up, his back to her. "A bastard child of uncertain heritage who never fit into her blue-blooded Anglo family."

Nate began to walk around the room as if movement alone would ease the tension from his big body. "His name was Rafael. She told me that much. I guess she had to, since she named me after him."

"Nathan Rafael." Cyn thought how well the name suited him, how perfectly it blended his mixed heritage.

"She said I looked like him, and I guess I must. I sure don't resemble anyone in her family, except for my green Anglo eyes."

"Your eyes?" Cyn asked as she stood up and went to him. "You have green eyes like your mother?" She touched his face with tenderness.

"Don't feel sorry for me." He stepped back, away from her touch. "I don't want your pity."

"What do you want from me?" she asked, her voice qui­etly pleading.

"Nothing. Everything. Too much. More than any woman could ever give." He couldn't stand seeing the look in her eyes, the pure, undisguised love. He turned away, moving toward the windows. Didn't she know that if he took what she was offering, he would destroy her? Even if Ryker didn't pose an immediate threat, Nate knew he would still be the wrong man for Cyn. She was so gentle and caring, so filled with love for the whole world. And he was a man filled with bitterness, a man who had spent a lifetime fighting the re­alities of a brutal world far removed from Cynthia Porter's awareness.

Following him, she placed her hand on his shoulder. She wanted to tell him that she was willing to give him every­thing, all that was her, every beat of her heart, every fiber of her being, the very essence of her soul. Didn't he know she already belonged to him?

"Take a walk with me," she said. "Show me the old mis­sion again before it gets too dark to see inside." She wasn't quite sure why she'd made the suggestion, but somehow she knew it was the right thing to do.

Without turning around, he nodded. "No one knows for sure those old storage rooms were once part of a mission." Then he turned around, his face a mask of calm, hiding the emotions he was fighting to conquer. "Inside the sensible, levelheaded Cyn Porter is the soul of a romantic."

"Who, me?" She breathed a sigh of relief, knowing she could handle a cordial Nate much easier than a brooding man in pain. "Just because I love fairy tales and myths and want to believe in legends, you call me a romantic."

"Come on, Persephone. Go with me into the darkness." He held out his hand.

Cyn felt the instant chill, the shuddering anxiety that claimed her. His words held a meaning he had not in­tended. She reached out and took his hand, knowing that she would follow this man anywhere, even into the jaws of death—and beyond, to the depths of Hades or through the gates of heaven.

Twilight shadows fell across the earth while the fading colors of dusk painted the sky with muted tones of pink and lavender. A gentle evening breeze murmured through the trees and bushes, its cool breath caressing Cyn and Nate the moment they stepped outside.

"Is there no entrance to the mission inside the house?" Cyn asked when they stood in front of the arched doorway.

"I think there used to be, but someone plastered over it years ago. Probably long before your Miss Carstairs lived here."

Nate shoved the heavy door open, standing aside to al­low Cyn to enter first. Even though he didn't believe in an­cient legends and certainly not in ghosts, Nate felt the same curiosity here that he'd felt the first time he'd come to these rooms with Cyn. He couldn't quite pinpoint the source of his uncertainty, but he knew there was something here waiting for him, something he wasn't yet ready to accept.

Cyn stepped inside and stopped abruptly, hesitating until her eyesight adjusted to the darkness. Faint evening light seeped through the boarded windows and crept in from the open doorway. Slowly, cautious in her movements, Cyn walked inside, glancing around, searching for something, for anything, that could explain why this place drew her like a magnet. She'd felt it the time before when she'd come here with Nate.

She wasn't sure how she knew, she simply knew that once, long ago, something wonderful had happened here and something horrible. She trembled.

"Are you cold?" Nate asked.

"Don't you feel it?" she asked. "The joy. The pain."

Damn this place to hell and damn his crazy imagination. She'd asked if he felt it. Yes, hell, yes, he could feel it, but he didn't want to. "This is a damp, dark, musty old build­ing. You're letting that stupid legend make you imagine things."

She moved around the room, quickly, almost frantically, her breath coming in quick, ragged spurts. "They were married here, you know. The priest married them."

What was wrong with her? Nate wondered. She was star­ing at the back wall as if she saw more than moss-coated shell rock partially obscured by a stack of battered furni­ture and decaying cardboard boxes. He reached out, grab­bing her by the wrist. "Come on, Cyn, let's get out of here. Let's go for a walk along the beach."

"They died here," she cried. "He killed them both in this very room and dragged their bodies out onto the beach." Cyn fell against the wall, her hot, flushed face seeking comfort on the cool stone surface.

Just as her knees buckled and she began to sway, Nate caught her up in his arms and rushed outside. Deeply in­haling the clean evening air, he felt his chest rising and fall­ing with the heaviness of his breathing. The moment she'd said they died here , he'd known the ancient lovers had been killed in the mission—the Timucuan maiden and her Span­ish conquistador. But the images that had flashed through his mind had not been of long-dead lovers, but of Cyn and himself. And Ryker.

"Oh, Nate, you felt it, too, didn't you?" She clung to him, her slender arms draped around his neck, her fingers threaded through his hair.

"Cyn, don't do this to yourself." He carried her across the road and onto the beach.

"Are you saying you didn't feel them, feel their joy, share their pain?" she asked as he lowered her to her feet, allow­ing her body to slide down his slowly, sensuously.

"I'm saying that we both can't let our imaginations run wild." He wanted her. Now. His body was hard, pulsating, throbbing with desire. How could he answer her, how could he admit that even now, the passion flowing through his veins like an untamed river was more than one man's pas­sion? How could he tell her, without sounding insane, that he wanted to make love to her again, to find the fulfillment he had feund only in her body, to come home to her arms and find the sanctuary his soul had sought for so long?

"It's as if we've been together before," she whispered, clinging to him, her lips pressed against his chest where she was unbuttoning his shirt. "Oh, Nate, I'm scared."

"It's all right, Cyn. I'll never let anything or anyone hurt you." Tonight is all you'll have with her, he told himself. Take her, only if you're sure you can let her go afterward.

"It's not just the legend. There's more." She breathed in the deeply masculine smell of the big man holding her so protectively in his arms. "I'm not afraid for them. They died hundreds of years ago."

"Don't think about it, Brown Eyes." He lowered his mouth, brushing the top of her head with tender kisses.