Forgotten Sea (21 page)

“Is that . . .”

Conn ap Llyr, the sea lord, and his consort, Lucy.

Iestyn stiffened beside her. Under her hand, his arm muscles were rigid. His face was white with emotion.

“Go on,” Lara murmured and released his arm. “Go see them.”

With one bright, backward glance like a boy’s, he left her, striding down the sun-bleached dock, not quite running to meet them.

The dog, a massive, graying beast, barked.

The woman raised her head. Lara was close enough to see the emotions flit across her face. Shock. Relief. Delight.

Lucy held out her arms and Iestyn went into them.

* * *

He was taller than Lucy now, Iestyn realized. The top of her head almost clipped his chin before she hugged him tight.

 “Iestyn,” she whispered. And again, as if she couldn’t believe it,
“Iestyn.”

He adjusted his arms around her, her face warm and wet against his shirtfront. She was crying over him, which made him feel really good and bad at the same time. Awkwardly, he patted her back, looking over her head to meet Conn’s gaze.

The sea lord regarded their embrace, his cool, austere face as unreadable as always. His silver eyes blazed with unidentifiable emotion.

Iestyn’s throat tightened. His heart clenched like a fist in the center of his chest. Everything he had done and failed to do in the past seven years crashed on him like a wave.

“Sorry about the boat,” he blurted out.

Lucy lifted her head from his chest. “The
boat
? Honestly, Iestyn—”

Conn did not waste time on scoldings or reassurances.

He reached Iestyn in one quick stride and pulled him into his arms, holding him hard in a wordless embrace.

Tears burned Iestyn’s throat. Closing his eyes, he bowed his head to the prince’s shoulder.

Finally—
finally
—home.

* * *

Lara blinked back tears. She could feel the force of their connection. She recognized the love in the woman’s welcome, the naked look in the prince’s eyes.

Her heart softened and yearned. But she kept away, wistful and more than a little envious, unwilling to intrude on their private moment.

“Here.” A thin woman with chopped black hair thrust a tray at Lara. Her hostess, Regina Hunter, mother of Nick, Grace, and . . . Lara’s mind fumbled.
Jacob? Noah?

Regina smiled warmly. “Come have some wine while  they get through the big reunion scene. They’ll come up to the house when they’re ready.”

Grateful for direction, for a distraction, Lara followed Regina into the large, surprisingly modern kitchen. The sleek refrigerator was covered in children’s artwork. Pots steamed on the massive stove. Lara recognized the brusque restaurant cook cutting watermelon at the kitchen table.

The dark-eyed busboy stood beside a teenage girl with a halo of soft black curls, slicing bread on the counter.

“My mother, Antonia,” Regina introduced them. “My son, Nick. And the pretty girl with the knife is Elizabeth and Morgan’s daughter Emily.”

Antonia nodded at Lara. “We met,” she said in a smoker’s rasp, low and surprisingly sexy. “Welcome to chaos.”

“You run the restaurant,” Lara said.

“The restaurant and the town. Ma’s the mayor,” Regina explained.

A pair of dark-haired children burst through the screened back door, heading for the refrigerator.

“Hold on,” Regina ordered.

The little girl—seven? eight?—turned on her with black, beseeching eyes. “But, Mom, Calder’s starving.”

“Good. It’s almost time to eat.” Regina handed her a platter of deviled eggs and gave a tray of delicately browned crab cakes to the boy. “Take these outside. You can come back in to tell  me when the coals are ready.”

The children thumped outside.

“Have a glass of wine,” Regina said. “Or a beer.”

“I’m fine,” Lara said. Out of place and slightly out of sorts in the midst of this cheerful family whirlpool, but otherwise all right.

“I’ll have a beer,” Nick said.

His mother narrowed her eyes. “In your dreams, pal.”

 “Is there anything I can do to help?” Lara asked.

She didn’t cook. But she wanted to fit in.

Regina poured her a large glass of white wine. “Relax. Enjoy.”

Lara sipped, but she couldn’t relax.

The teenager, Emily, glanced over her shoulder. She was slim and dark-skinned and very, very pretty. “You could give me a hand with the crostini,” she said kindly.

Lara smiled. “I can if you tell  me what to do.”

Under Emily’s careful supervision, she assembled appetizers, spreading little rounds of bread with something black that smelled delicious. Focused on her task, she only gradually registered the conversation around her.

“No big deal if I can’t take algebra,” Nick was saying. “I’m not a brain like Em.”

“You’re no dummy either,” his grandmother said.

“But its first period,” Nick protested. “When winter comes, I’ll miss half the classes anyway.”

Lara knew most teens were too sleep-deprived to concentrate first thing in the morning. But . . .

“Why when winter comes?” she wanted to know.

“We take the ferry to school on the mainland,” Emily explained. “When the ice is bad, we can’t get across until later in the day.”

“It’s not safe for the boats to travel in the dark,” Regina said.

Lara frowned. “You don’t have your own school?”

“K through nine. No high school,” Antonia said.

“We’ve got the numbers. Almost thirty now,” said Regina.

“The budget the way it is, the state’s consolidating schools,” Antonia said. “They don’t want to open another way out here.”

“A lot of kids board off the island during the school year,” said Emily.

 “Or drop out.” Nick shrugged. “I can make more money lobstering over the summer than a teacher makes in a year.”

“If that’s what you want to do all your life,” his mother said.

“What if you developed a high school magnet pro-gram?” Lara asked. “Or learning enrichment based on, oh, ship building or marine studies or something. That would help your student retention rate and attract families and money from off island.”

Antonia shot her a sharp look. “You a teacher?”

“No, I . . .” Lara hesitated, her world shifting underfoot.

What was she now?

“She’s an administrator,” Iestyn said.

He was there, leaning against the doorjamb, regarding her with warm, golden eyes.

She shook her head, ignoring the bump of her pulse. “I worked in an office.”

“The headmaster’s office. You know stuff.”

His obvious pride made her flush with pleasure and embarrassment. “I know a little. Bookkeeping. Grant writing.”

“See?” He smiled, making her heart flop foolishly. “Stuff.”

He strolled forward and gave her a warm, firm kiss that did nothing to steady her shaky heart. He smelled like sunshine and the sea.

Regina hummed in interest.

“I need to talk to you,” Iestyn said.

“Wait your turn,” Antonia said.

“Go.” Regina took the knife from Lara’s hand. “Eat, drink, enjoy yourself.”

Lara looked from Emily’s bright, curious face to the unfinished crostini. “But . . .”

“Go on. You’re a guest.”

A guest
, Lara thought as Iestyn took her hand, his grip hard and steady, and practically dragged her out to the porch.
Of
course.
That’s exactly what she was. That was all that she was. She swallowed, stricken.

Iestyn swung her to face him. The sun slanted under the porch eaves, illuminating his handsome face, tipping his hair with gold. “Why did you disappear like that?”

“I didn’t disappear.” She was proud of the way she kept her voice even. “You saw me, I was right here, I—”

He cut her off. “I wanted you to hear.”

“Hear what?”

“Good news. The best.” He lifted her up and seated her on the rail of the porch, trapping her between his long, muscled arms. He nuzzled her jaw. “You know Lucy is a healer, right?”

“I . . .” Lara inhaled, dizzied by his closeness, dazzled by his bright expectation. “Did you show her your burn?”

“What? Oh, yeah.” He eased back.

Lara shivered, deprived of his warmth, as he tugged down the neck of his T-shirt, exposing his throat.

She stared at the smooth white scar, faint against his tan.

“You’re healed,” she said stupidly. “She healed you.”

She pushed back his tawny hair. Even his stitches were gone, his head wound healed as if it had never been.

Lucy had done for him what Lara could not.

Iestyn shrugged, revealing in a single, careless gesture how little the pain and trauma of the past few days had affected him. “She
is
the
targair inghean
. But the thing is, she says I’m finfolk. Part finfolk anyway.”

A sliver of ice worked into Lara’s heart. “I don’t understand.”

But she did. Or was afraid she did.

“There are two kinds of merfolk,” Iestyn said. “Selkie, like Dylan, who shed their sealskins to take human form  on land. And finfolk, like Morgan, who are total shapeshifters, who can take the form of any creature of the sea.”

Morgan. Lara summoned a vision of the big, brutal Viking with the sea foam hair and golden eyes.

Iestyn’s eyes.

“He looks like you,” she said slowly.

“Actually, I look like him,” Iestyn said. “My mother was selkie. When I Changed for the first time, I took seal form, so I always figured that was it for me. But I guessed I had finfolk blood, on my da’s side. Because of the eyes.”

“You told me your father was human.”

“He was. But Conn thinks maybe Morgan’s sister Morwenna could have been his grandmother.”

Lara’s head spun. “So, Morgan is your . . . uncle? Great-uncle?”

“Something like that.”

“Wouldn’t he have known?”

“I don’t think he cared. He and his sister were estranged after she married a human. None of her children could Change. Morgan probably never even thought about grandchildren.” Iestyn shook his head impatiently. “Anyway, that’s not the point.”

The sliver in her chest dug deeper. “What is the point?”

“I told you.” Iestyn took a deep breath. “I’m part finfolk. Lucy told me that with her help, I can learn to Change.”

Lara stared at him, her mouth dry, her heart beating up in her throat. She had wanted to restore him to his people. She had hoped to restore him to himself. Apparently she had succeeded beyond her wildest expectations.

“That’s . . .” She sought for a word. “Wonderful.”

“It’s everything. Lara.” Iestyn gripped her arms, the sunlight in his eyes and on his hair, his face lit with joy. “I can go back to sea again.”

* * *

“It’s everything.”
The words rang in Lara’s head, dogged her footsteps, as she trudged back alone to the hotel.
“I can
go back to sea again.”

A bitter little breeze blew, kicking the shining surface of the water into running caps of foam.

She was not running away, Lara told herself, pausing on the bluffs to watch a bird fold its wings and plunge into the sea. She was merely taking some time to herself to think. To regroup. No one would even notice she was gone.

She pulled a face. If she were honest with herself, that was part of the problem.

Her problem.

She climbed the drive to the inn under storm-weathered trees, over rolling green lawn. She was genuinely glad for Iestyn. How could she fail to be glad? She loved him. But he’d never said the words to her. It was unlikely now that he ever would. She would have to find a way to live with that.

Or live without him.

Wearily, she climbed the stairs to their room. The door was unlocked. Kate Begley, she wondered, making the bed?

She almost turned away. She really wasn’t in the mood for company. But the prospect of the cool, white room, of peace and solitude, beckoned too strongly. With a little sigh, she pushed opened the door.

Jude Zayin sat in the rocker by the window, his big, broad-shouldered body dwarfing the chair. Crowding the room.

He looked up at her entrance, his dark face unreadable.

Her heart stopped.

“Hello, Lara,” he said. “I’ve come to take you home.”