“Yes.”
She breathed out slowly. Empathy washed away several layers of common sense and caution. “It’s only been two months since his death. You must miss him.”
Elias was silent for a couple of heartbeats. “I was with him when he died. Made him go to the emergency room. He kept telling me it was a waste of time, that he was going to die and that no doctor could do anything about it. But he knew that he had to let me take him to the hospital because if I didn’t, I would have spent the rest of my life wondering if he could have been saved. He would have preferred to die quietly in my house.”
“But you took him to the emergency room, and he died there, instead?”
“Yes.” Elias looked out over the cove. “He was very calm at the end. Centered. Balanced. He died as he had lived. The last thing he said to me was that he had given me the tools to free myself. It was up to me to use them.”
“Free yourself from what?”
Another beat of silence. “The need for revenge.”
Charity stared at him. “Against whom?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I don’t mind listening.”
Elias did not respond for several minutes. Charity began to think he had no intention of answering her question. But after a while, he finally began to talk.
“My parents were divorced when I was ten. I lived with my mother. She … suffered from bouts of depression. One month after I turned sixteen, she took her own life.”
“Oh, God, Elias. I’m sorry.”
“I went to live with my grandparents. They never recovered from their grief. I think they always blamed my father for my mother’s problems. And some of that blame shifted to me after her death. I waited for my father to send for me. I never heard from him.”
Charity’s throat tightened. “Where was he?”
“He ran a small air-freight business based on an island named Nihili.”
Charity frowned. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Few people have. It’s out in the Pacific. After a while I talked my grandfather into paying my way out to Nihili. It wasn’t hard.”
“What happened to your father?”
“Dad had a rival, a man named Garrick Keyworth.”
Charity said nothing when he paused again. She simply waited.
“Keyworth sabotaged Dad’s only plane. My father knew it, but he took off, anyway. The plane went down out over the ocean.”
Charity was stunned. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t a tale of murder. “If that’s the truth, then it seems to me that you had every right to want revenge against this Keyworth.”
“It’s not as simple as it sounds. Things rarely are. Dad knew the plane had fuel line problems that day, but he chose to take the chance and fly. He had contracts to fulfill. One of the things I never wanted to admit to myself was that he made his own decision to risk his life.”
A flash of intuition went through Charity. “He not only risked his own life, he risked leaving you alone, didn’t he?”
“You could say that.” Elias’s smile contained no humor. “Hayden certainly said it a few times.”
“Your father may have been guilty of poor judgment, but if you ask me, that still doesn’t absolve this Garrick Keyworth. Not by a long shot.”
“No, it doesn’t. To make a long story short, I arrived on Nihili a couple of days after Dad had gone down. It was Hayden who met me at the airstrip. For reasons of his own, reasons I never fully understood, he accepted me as his personal responsibility. He finished the task of raising me. Helped me start my business. Taught me how to be a man. I owe him more than I can ever repay.”
Charity swallowed to keep herself from bursting into tears. “I see. What about the man who sabotaged your father’s plane?”
“It took me a long time to learn his identity. After I found out who he was, I spent years devising a way to bring down his empire. And then Hayden died.”
“And that changed things?”
“Everything. I looked at Keyworth’s reflection in a different light after I said good-bye to Hayden. One of the things I hadn’t seen before was that Keyworth has paid a price for his crime. He knows that everything he has today is founded on that one act of destruction. It’s eating at his soul. It’s what drives him, and it will ultimately destroy him. It’s already cost him more than he even knows. I decided to leave him to the prison he’s built for himself.”
Charity exhaled deeply. “That’s a very philosophical way of looking at it. Downright metaphysical, in fact. No offense, but I find it a little hard to believe that you just walked away from that situation and left Keyworth to the great wheel of cosmic justice.”
Elias’s dark brows rose. “Very perceptive of you. You’re right. I wasn’t exactly a saint about the whole thing. I went to see Keyworth before I came here. Showed him some documents that proved beyond a doubt that I had the contacts and connections to cripple, possibly even destroy, his operations in the Pacific. Then I walked away.”
Charity was speechless for a few seconds. “And left him to live with the knowledge that you had had him in your power and let him go?”
“I decided I owed myself that much, at least.”
She drew a deep breath. “Very subtle. Perhaps too subtle. Keyworth may think you backed off simply because you were too weak to go through with your plans. Or because you lost your nerve.”
“I doubt it,” Elias said quietly. “I studied him for a long time before I made my move. I know him well.”
“You think that the knowledge that he was vulnerable to you will add to the pressure that’s building inside him?”
“Perhaps.” Elias made a small, dismissing movement with his hand. “Perhaps not. It doesn’t matter. Keyworth no longer concerns me.”
“Yet you spent years plotting against him?”
“It takes time to set up the kind of vengeance I planned.”
Charity held her breeze-tossed hair out of her eyes. “Did you have the confrontation with Keyworth shortly before you moved here?”
“Yes.”
“Whew. You’ve been through a lot during the past couple of months, haven’t you? The death of your friend Hayden, the showdown with Keyworth, a major career shift, and a move to a new location.”
He glanced at her with a curious expression. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that you’d score pretty high right now if you were to take one of those psych tests that measures recent stressful events in your life.”
“I don’t plan to take any psych tests.”
“No, I don’t suppose you do.” For some reason the thought of Elias sitting down to a battery of psychological tests almost made her smile. “You’ll probably just gaze into a nice, clear pool of water instead.”
“It works for me.”
She gave him a sidelong look. “Mind if I ask you a question?”
He appeared to brace himself. “No.”
“Why did you tell me all this? On the first day we met I got the distinct impression that you were the strong, silent type.”
He smiled. “Still suspicious of me?”
“I prefer to think of it as cautious. Suspicious has paranoid connotations, and I don’t think I’m that far over the edge.”
“All right. Cautious. The answer to your question is that I gave you a piece of my privacy as a gift because I want something from you in exchange.”
“Damn it, I knew it.” And he had known just how to get past her defenses, she thought furiously.
She was not hurt or even disappointed, she told herself. She had known there would be a catch to this little evening stroll. Elias wasn’t the kind of man who would share intimate secrets with anyone unless he had an ulterior motive.
“Let’s hear it,” she snapped. “What do you want from me? If this has something to do with the lease negotiations, you’re wasting your time.”
“I don’t care about the lease arrangements. All I want from you is the chance
to get to know you.”
She came to a sudden halt and swung around to face him. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.” As if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if they shared a regular habit of walking along the bluffs in the evening, Elias reached out and took her hand. “My turn to ask you a question.”
4
The approaching storm turns the surface of the sea to steel and silver. Only danger reflects clearly from such a mirror.
—“On the Way of Water,” from the journal of Hayden Stone
Charity instinctively tensed as Elias’s powerful hand wrapped around her fingers. He was strong. Stronger than she had realized. But she still did not sense so much as a tiny frisson of the old claustrophobic sensation that had seized her during the days when she had dated Brett Loftus. And certainly nothing of the twinge of the fight-or-flight response she had felt last month when Rick Swinton, Gwendolyn Pitt’s assistant cult manager, had attempted to sweep her off her feet with his oily charm.
At least she now knew for certain that she was not going to be stuck for the rest of her life with panic attacks every time a man touched her. What a relief.
Euphoria shot through her. Cured at last. She felt a ridiculous grin curve her mouth.
And then she became aware of an eerie thrill curling through her insides. The sensation was not one of sharp, terrifying anxiety, but it certainly did not have a calming effect.
It took her a moment to recognize the devastating sweep of raw desire. She stopped grinning, caught her breath, and nearly stumbled when she realized exactly what it was that was affecting her senses. So this was how real sexual attraction felt.
“Are you okay?” Elias asked as he steadied her.
“Yes.” Damn. She was actually breathless. “Yes, I’m fine. Tripped over a little stone. Hard to see clearly at this time of night. It’ll be full dark soon.”
He gave her an odd look but said nothing.
She’d had one or two pleasant, sincere relationships over the years, no more than a couple because there had never been any time. Her life had not been her own since the day the avalanche had killed her mother and stepfather. Saving Truitt for the next generation had been her only focus. Then she had developed that stupid phobia to poor Brett.
What with one thing and another, she had never experienced anything even remotely akin to this wild, fluttering excitement.
Please don’t let this be another kind of precursor to an anxiety attack, she thought. Please. Not with this man. No more dumb phobias. This feels too good.
What shook her was the sense of intimacy involved. It was as if Elias was allowing her to sample some of his own personal energy. She wondered if he was getting a few tingles from her. Then she wondered what it would be like to kiss him.
Different, she decided after due consideration. Very different. About as out-of-the-ordinary, say, as the arrival of a fleet of spaceships carrying aliens from outer space.
“All right, it’s your turn,” she said briskly. “What’s your question?”
“Hayden mentioned once that when you opened your bookshop a year ago, you single-handedly revived the rest of the businesses on Crazy Otis Landing.”
Charity made a face. “That’s a gross exaggeration. Tourism has been gradually increasing here in the cove for a couple of years. We’ve been discovered in a small way, and the pier is a natural draw. All that was necessary was to provide a reason for visitors and locals to stop. A bookstore does that nicely.”
“He also told me that under your influence, the other shopkeepers have become more businesslike this past year. He said they come to you for advice. He credited you with convincing Bea to install an espresso machine, for example.”
“I had the advantage of having spent several years in the corporate world,” she reminded him. “I wasn’t cut out for it, but I certainly learned a few things. When the others come to me with questions, I try to help. But the truth is, I owe them far more than they owe me.”
“How’s that?”
She hesitated, just as he had earlier, searching for the right words. “When I first came to the cove, I was completely burned out.” She slanted a quick glance at his profile. “You probably heard a few of the rumors?”
“A few.”
She exhaled deeply. “Well, most of them were true. I did make an incredibly embarrassing scene on the night I was to become engaged to a very nice man named Brett Loftus. Had a panic attack, in fact. Right there in front of half the movers and shakers of Seattle. I felt terrible. I mean, it wasn’t Brett’s fault that he was too big and that I didn’t… well, never mind.”
“Too big?” Elias’s voice was oddly neutral.
“Yes, you know.” Charity waved a hand in a vague gesture. “Too tall. Too large. All over. For me, that is.” That wasn’t fair, she thought. Her therapist had explained that Brett’s size hadn’t been the real problem. Unfortunately, her brain had linked her fear of the relationship with his physical stature. The result had become a full-blown phobia.
“I see.” Elias’s tone sounded even more strange.
“Have you ever met him?”
“No. But I’ve seen him. I heard him speak once at a luncheon at one of my clients’ business clubs.”
“I’m sure that he would be just fine for another woman,” she said hastily. “My stepsister, for instance. Lots of women admire, uh, size in a man.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“But every time poor Brett … well, you know. I just couldn’t stand it. He was such a gentleman. He attributed my problems to stress. It was really very awkward.”
“Sure. Awkward.”
“But the bottom line was that when it came right down to it, the thought of … of …” She felt herself blush furiously and was profoundly grateful for the deepening shadows. “Doing it. On a regular basis, that is. The way one would in marriage … I mean, a man as big as that, well, it was just too much.”
“I think I get the picture.”
She cleared her throat. “At any rate, the merger I had planned for months did not go through.”
“You stepped down from the helm of Truitt department stores.”
“Yes. With no warning to my stepbrother and step sister. I just abandoned them. I spent a few weeks getting therapy, realized I could never go back to the business world, and decided to move. I more or less threw a dart at a map of Washington. And here I am.”
“What happened next?”
“A funny thing.” Charity smiled. “I rested. Walked a lot here along the bluffs. Got back into cooking. And then one day I went looking for something to read and realized that Whispering Waters Cove had no bookshop. I went down to the pier and talked it over with Hayden. He rented space to me. Within a couple of months I started to feel reasonably normal again.”
“You know,” Elias said thoughtfully, “under your management, Whispers would flourish in a boutique version of Whispering Waters Cove. You have nothing to fear and everything to gain if the town council’s plans work out.”
“I’m doing fine as it is. I prefer slow, steady growth. Big leaps are hazardous in business. If you crash, you go down in flames. Besides, my aspirations aren’t as high as they used to be. I like small business. I think it’s a calling. You get to know your customers personally. There’s something very satisfying about it.”
“But there’s no reason to tie the future of your business to that of the other businesses on the pier,” Elias insisted. “Why are you doing it? Why form the shopkeepers association? Why do battle with the mayor and the town council?”
Charity frowned, puzzled by his line of inquiry. “The other shopkeepers are my friends. They welcomed me with open arms when I first came to Whispering Waters Cove. They were generous and supportive, and they’ve been good neighbors.”
“So in order to pay them back, you’ve committed yourself to helping them hang on to Crazy Otis Landing?”
“It was the least I could do. You’ve met them
. None of them are what you’d call sophisticated business people. A big corporation would roll right over them.”
“True,” Elias admitted.
“They all ended up on the pier because there was nowhere else for them to go. They’ve formed a community. They need each other. I think Hayden understood that.”
Elias smiled wryly. “Hayden had no interest in going boutique, himself.”
“All I want to do is give the pier shopkeepers a chance to stay where they are as the town begins to pull in more visitors and tourists.”
“Do you think that Yappy and Ted and the rest can learn to compete with a bunch of art galleries?”
“If necessary.” Charity shrugged. “But who knows? Maybe the upscale shops will never materialize.”
“In the meanwhile, you’ve thrown in your lot with the pier crowd.”
She studied him with a long, considering glance. “So have you. If you’re telling me the truth about Far Seas’ intentions, that is.”
The sound of an off-key flute and loud voices rising and falling in an enthusiastic chant forestalled whatever response Elias might have made to her deliberate challenge.
“Looks like the show has started,” he said as they emerged from the trees.
Charity looked around. They had reached the outskirts of the old campground. A large assortment of recreational vehicles were clustered together on the bluff overlooking the cove. Several of the vehicles had been decorated with designs that vaguely resembled ancient Egyptian motifs. Others were painted with imaginative futuristic landscapes and bizarre visions of the universe.
There was no one in sight. Gwendolyn Pitt’s followers were all down on the beach.
At some point in the distant past, a long fence had been installed along the edge of the bluffs. It stretched the length of the campground. There were two openings, one in the center and one at the far end. Each provided access to a narrow path that led down to the rocky beach.
The droning chant filled the air. Charity looked over the edge of the sagging fence and saw the Voyagers gathered below at the water’s edge. There were about twenty of them, she estimated. The number had grown during the past week. There was just enough light left to make out the flowing blue and white robes and the brightly beaded headbands that comprised the cult’s uniform.