Rainshadow Road (Friday Harbor #2)(7)

Lucy had always liked the story, intrigued by the idea of such encompassing love that you didn’t mind losing yourself in it. Giving up everything for it. But it was a romantic notion that existed only in art, literature, or music. It had nothing to do with real life.

At least not hers.

After lowering the kickstand on her bike, Lucy took off her helmet and made her way down to the underslung beach. The terrain was pebbled and rough, patches of gray sand bristling with driftwood. She walked slowly, trying to figure out what to do. Kevin wanted her to leave the house. She had lost her home, her boyfriend, and her sister in one afternoon.

The clouds lowered, smothering the vestigial layer of daylight. In the distance a thunderhead sent rain to the ocean in showers that moved like gauze veils over a window. A raven gained loft over the water, its black wing tips separated into feathery fingers as it rode an updraft and headed inland. The storm was heading this way—she should leave and take shelter. Except that she couldn’t seem to think of anywhere to go.

Through a salty blur, she saw a green glimmer among the pebbles. She bent to pick it up. Bottles thrown into the ocean from offshore boats were sometimes churned up and washed to the shoreline, tumbled by waves and sand into frosted pebbles.

Closing her hand around the piece of sea glass, she looked out at the water lapping against the shore in rough blankets. The ocean was a bruised gray, the color of regret and resentment and the deepest kind of loneliness. The worst part about having been deceived the way she had been was it made you lose faith in yourself. When your judgment was that wrong about something, you could never be fully certain of anything ever again.

Her fist was burning, a knot of fire. Feeling an odd squirming tickle against her palm, she opened her fingers reflexively. The sea glass was gone. In its place a butterfly rested on her palm, unfolding iridescent blue wings. It stayed only a moment before shivering into flight, an unearthly blue gleam as it flew away to seek shelter.

A grim smile tugged at Lucy’s mouth.

She had never let anyone know what she could do with glass. Sometimes when she experienced powerful emotions, a piece of glass she had touched would change into living creatures, or at least remarkably convincing illusions, always small, always transitory. Lucy had struggled to understand how and why it happened, until she had read a quote by Einstein—that one had to live as though everything was a miracle, or as if nothing was a miracle. And then she had understood that whether she called her gift a phenomenon of molecular physics, or magic, both definitions were true, and the words didn’t matter anyway.

Lucy’s mirthless smile faded as she watched the butterfly disappear.

A butterfly symbolized acceptance of each new phase in life. To keep faith as everything around you changed.

Not this time, she thought, hating her ability, the isolation it imposed.

In the periphery of her vision, she saw a bulldog making his way along the edge of the water. He was followed by a dark-haired stranger, whose alert gaze was fastened on Lucy.

The sight of him kindled instant unease. He had the strapping build of a man who earned his living outdoors. And something about him conveyed a sense of having been acquainted with life’s rougher edges. In other circumstances Lucy might have reacted differently, but she didn’t care to find herself alone on a beach with him.

She headed to the trail that led back up to the roadside turnout. A glance over her shoulder revealed that he was following her. That jolted her nerves into high gear. As she quickened her pace, the toe of her sneaker caught on the wind-scuffed basalt. Her weight pitched forward and she hit the ground, taking the impact on her hands.

Stunned, Lucy tried to collect herself. By the time she had struggled to her feet, the man had reached her. She spun to face him with a gasp, her disheveled brown hair partially obscuring her vision.

“Take it easy, will you?” he said curtly.

Lucy pushed the hair out of her eyes and regarded him warily. His eyes were a vivid shade of blue-green in his tanned face. He was striking, sexy, with a quality of rough-and-tumble attractiveness. Although he looked no more than thirty, his face was seasoned with the maturity of a man who’d done his share of living.

“You were following me,” Lucy said.

“I was not following you. This happens to be the only path back to the road, and I’d like to get back to my truck before the storm hits. So if you wouldn’t mind, either step it up or get out of the way.”

Lucy stood to the side and made a sardonic gesture for him to precede her. “Don’t let me hold you back.”

The stranger’s gaze went to her hand, where smears of blood had collected in the creases of her fingers. An edge of rock had cut into the top of her palm when she had fallen. He frowned. “I’ve got a first-aid kit in my truck.”

“It’s nothing,” Lucy said, although the cut was throbbing heavily. She blotted the welling blood on her jeans. “I’m fine.”

“Put pressure on it with your other hand,” the man said. His mouth tightened as he surveyed her. “I’ll walk up the trail with you.”

“Why?”

“In case you fall again.”

“I’m not going to fall.”

“It’s steep ground. And from what I’ve seen so far, you’re not exactly sure-footed.”

Lucy let out an incredulous laugh. “You are the most … I … I don’t even know you.”