Chapter Twenty-Six

Dark clouds blotted out the sun, their menacing shadows hovering overhead with the storm that kicked up suddenly off the lake. The waves churned with agitation, loosening his boat’s ties to the moorings, and cascading sheets of rain pummeled him as he worked to secure the rolling vessel to the dock.

The storm’s ferociousness echoed the violent despair inside him.

He was out of time. With the rainstorm, a cool north wind swept over the island, foretelling of the colder months that lie ahead. Once the storm had passed, he’d need to pull the boat out of the water and place it in storage for the winter. Then he’d have to move inland to the loft. He’d waited as long as he could.

A wind gust snatched the rope from his hand, and a sharp curse shot from him. While he struggled to recapture the cord and knot it tight, the ridiculous belief that he and Isobel might one day find their way back to each other submerged beneath a vast sea of hopelessness. He could no longer avoid the truth—she either didn’t love him or didn’t love him enough to stop the fear from keeping them apart.

A crushing weight sat on his chest when he clambered aboard the boat and darted toward the stern. He leaned over the railing to catch the dangling end of an unfastened rope that danced in the wind. In his rush to attend to the boat’s ties, he’d shoved the legal papers into his back pocket. Now, sodden with water and dislodged by his movements, they dropped heavily to the boat deck.

He crouched to retrieve them.

Just then, a prickle of awareness skittered across his skin, raising the hairs on his arms. He froze, unable to move as the driving rain pounded him. In the distance, a rumble of thunder growled, and a shudder chased through him.

Slowly, he stood. His head bent, he concentrated fiercely on the decking beneath his feet while chaos lashed at him.

“Shea.” In the din of the storm, her voice sounded faint.

He lifted his gaze. Drenched with rain, her dark hair hung in heavy clumps and her breezy blouse and skirt clung to her body. They stood apart, she on the dock and he on the stern of his boat, like a pair of cold cement statues, while the storm whipped and whirled around them

“I’m not perfect.” She called over the howling wind.

“I know.”

“You know?” Accusation wrapped around each of her words.

“I lived with you for seventeen years.” He squinted against the raindrops pelting his face. “Of course I know.”

She might’ve cursed. “Were you going to tell me?”

His shoulders moved. “I thought you knew.”

“Yeah, well… I didn’t.”

“So you have flaws. So what? So do I. So does everyone we know.”

She ducked her chin.

“So every minute of every day isn’t perfect.” His voice rose above the noisy storm. “You think that means I don’t want to be with you? That I don’t love you?”

“Kind of, yeah.” Her head bobbed. “Yes. That’s what I think. What I thought.”

Beneath his feet, the boat rocked. She remained firmly on the dock.

“When my mom died—” He stopped, swallowing the sudden swell of emotion. “Right before she died, she made me promise to take care of my brothers. I cried,” he admitted. “I told her I didn’t know how. Shit, I was afraid.”

Isobel took a wide step toward him but drew up suddenly when she reached the edge of his boat.

“She told me to do the best I could and that’s all she’d ever ask of me. She said as long as I tried my best to take care of them, she’d take care of me.” He pushed a hank of rain-soaked hair off his forehead. “Then she died, and we were sent here, to this weird place on the other side of the world, and I was so fucking mad at her because she’d lied to me. I was trying. I was doing anything and everything I could to help my brothers, and she’d abandoned me.”

Stormy gray eyes seized on his face.

“Then I saw you.”

“What?” she called out.

“That day on the pier,” he shouted back. “When I saw you, I knew it was my mom. She sent you to me.”

Eyes shining, her throat worked when she swallowed.

“That was her way of taking care of me, so that I could take care of my brothers.” When a faint smile touched her mouth, the air squeezed from his lungs. “After that, I wasn’t afraid anymore. Because of you.”

Her smile broke loose, but the flash of beauty was brief before her gaze snapped to the soggy papers clutched in his hand. The clouds that tarnished her pretty features rivaled those darkening the sky.

Instinctively, he looked down.

“Are those our divorce papers?” Then, without an obvious thought given to the turbulent seas or the unstable watercraft, she lurched forward, stumbling onboard his boat to snatch the papers from him.

“Wait—” He reached for the document, but it was too late.

With a vicious wrench, she ripped the wet sheets in two. “Don’t sign them.”

“Isobel—”

She threw herself at him, slamming into his chest in a way that was neither gentle nor elegant but desperate and needy. “Shea, please.”

“I can’t lose you.” She clutched at his T-shirt. “Shea, I… I’m not afraid anymore.”

His heart thrashed, but he ruthlessly crushed the bloom of hope that tried to unfurl inside him.

“I’m so proud of you.” Cupping her face with his hands, he wiped raindrops from her cheeks with the pads of his thumbs. “The storm, it’s a bad one.”

“The storm?” The pucker of confusion between her brows suddenly cleared. “No, not that. I’m terrified of that.”

A trickle of surprise laughter leaked out of him. “Then what aren’t you afraid of anymore?”

Soft eyes gripped him by the balls.

“Love. You. Us.” She shook her head. “I don’t know exactly, except I know I’m not afraid to love you. Not anymore. I’ve been so blind, Shea.”

She raised up on her tip toes to brush her mouth over his, and the taste of rain and Isobel and—God help him—hope, burst on his tongue.

The kiss ended too soon when she dropped back down on her heels and glared up a t him, her gray eyes electric with thunderous fury.

“Did you sign those papers?” She was shoving him backward. “Are we divorced?”

Beneath the cabin’s overhang, he tripped on a bundle of rope and landed hard on the storage bench. She climbed onto his lap, hiking her skirt as she straddled his hips.

The blood left his head and rushed to his groin. He grunted, but then her small hands moved to the fastening of his shorts. When she freed him, her warm hollow sucked him deep and a desperate groan ripped from him.

While he stretched her wide, droplets of rain fell from her hair onto his wet skin.

She pressed her forehead against his and when she’d impaled herself on him completely, she whispered desperately, “Did you sign them?”

He managed only a tight jerk of his head before her knees pushed into the bench cushions and she slid up, then back down, his hefty length. Glorious sensation crashed over him,

“You bastard.” Her choked sob punctured his heart and she tossed the tattered papers over her shoulder. “You’re going to marry me again.”

He gripped her waist to halt the erotic revolutions of her hips. He needed a moment to think, except she was reaching for the top button on her blouse. Working quickly, she exposed herself to his hungry gaze. When she reached back to unhook her bra, she arched, jutting her breasts high. He slipped a hand around her waist and hauled her to him. With his tongue, he took a tiny taste of one perfect, pebbled nipple.

Her warm hollow clasped him tight and he dragged his mouth to the side of her neck. His eager fingers danced over her warm skin and located the throbbing pulse point above her collarbone, then trailed lower to the swells of her lush breasts. In the valley between her ample mounds, he stroked the delicate silver chain.

He leaned back far enough to capture her gaze, then slipped his fingers under the cool necklace and clinched her wedding ring in his palm. He looped the metal rope once around his hand and tugged.

When the fragile chain snapped, a soft gasp escaped between her lips. Gently, he removed her left hand from the spot where it rested on his shoulder and slipped the ring he’d bought her eighteen years ago into place.

A ripple of light disturbed the sea of hurt and fear in her eyes.

“It’s true I signed that document,” he said. “But those weren’t our divorce papers.”

“They weren’t?”

She shifted and he sucked in a sharp hiss of air when another painfully exquisite surge of sensation rolled over him. Teeth clenched, he shook his head.

“We’re still married?” She swiveled her hips.

He gripped her waist with both of his hands, then started to move under her. “You are my wife, Isobel. Now and forever. Do you understand me?”

Pink rushed into her cheeks and she nodded, then her head lolled back. He plunged up into her and she moaned when his shaft rubbed her clit.

Together, they moved, riding the carnal waves of fire and love. She rode him faster, higher, and every moan of pleasure that fell from her lips wedged inside his heart. Around them, the storm raged. For each thrust he pushed into her, he could feel another one of her doubts fall away. The wind snatched her fears and flung them out to sea. The rain dissolved their haunted memories like sugar on the tongue.

Their breathing became ragged, rapid, they hurtled toward the cliff.

Reaching up, he grasped her nape and pulled her face down to his. “I love you, a chuisle mo chroí.” He repeated the words, over and over. In between, he took little licks of her soft mouth. All the while, his hips moved, thrusting up into her in steady but languid glides. “I’m never letting you go, my Bell.”

The heart of her clenched around him and she cried out his name. Soft whimpers sounded in her throat while the sensual spasms of her climax clasped him tight. With one final, shuddering plunge, he drove home.

Pleasure and pain burned through him and his mouth latched onto the column of her throat to quiet his roar of need.

His world had narrowed to only her, and slowly he became aware of the boat dipping and swaying under them. A gusty breeze sent a few tattered paper shreds swirling on the wind and one jagged square struck his cheek.

She lifted her head from his shoulder and peeled the saturated scrap away his skin.

White teeth scraped across her bottom lip. “So, uh, if that wasn’t our divorce papers, what did I just tear up?”

“I made an offer to buy the store. I think you just destroyed Celeste’s counteroffer.”

Emotions chased across her features and he tracked every one of them. Shock, worry, excitement. Love.

So much love.

“You bought the store?” At the hitch of softness in her voice, his body hardened.

“I don’t know.” His palms smoothed up her narrow rib cage. “You tore it up before I got a chance to read it.”

“Celeste already told me she accepted the offer.” Huge round eyes searched his face. “But… how? When?”

“I overheard Celeste talking to her realtor yesterday at the pub and I thought we better move fast.”

“We?”

“I’m sorry there wasn’t time to talk to you first, but I added a clause to make our offer contingent upon your agreement to buy the building.”

She bit down hard on her bottom lip, as if to stop her smile from breaking loose. “You bought the store for me?”

“Well I certainly don’t need it.”

Her smile nudged a little wider. “But you didn’t sign those papers?”

“I did not. Last night, I burned them and dumped their ashes in the lake.” He winced with his confession. “I knew it wouldn’t change anything, but dammit, Isobel, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to give you up. I’m a jerk, and I’m sorry for it, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t let you go.”

She rained kisses on his face, showering him with her love until he caught her mouth with his. With soft nips and licks, they nibbled and tasted, exploring and savoring each other as though they kissed for the first time rather than the first of their next one thousand kisses.

His shaft thickened inside her. In response, a lusty moan vibrated in her throat.

“I’m going to need a little more time,” he murmured against her mouth.

She rolled her hips. “I’ll wait.”

“Is that all you want me for? My twelve-inch cock?” Despite his teasing, a pinch of vulnerability squeezed his chest.

With her fingertips, she traced the outline of his cheek. “I want you for so many reasons, it’d take me all day to list them.”

He reclined deeper into the bench. “I’ll wait.”

Her expression grew serious, and in her eyes, a light radiated through the clouds. “Because I love you, and because after everything, you still love me. I don’t know why you haven’t given up on me, but after all these years, you’ve made me believe that I’m worth loving.”

Words clogged in his throat when the wind pushed a strand of her hair across her forehead and be brushed it back.

“After losing my mom and my dad, somehow you made my heart whole again, Shea.”

His hand squeezed her nape. “That’s only one reason,” he croaked.

Her smile filled his heart. “Yes, but it’s the only one that matters.”