Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

their gear and stumble across the sand.
     
    “I can’t find my sweatshirt.”
     
    “Who cares? It’s ugly.”
     
    “You’re ugly.”
     
    “Come on.”
     
    Their voices drifted through the dusk. Caleb waited for them to make a move toward their cars, but something—his threat to tell their parents, maybe, or his shiny new shield or his checkpoint glare—had convinced them to abandon their vehicles for the night.
     
    He dragged his hand over his forehead, dismayed to notice both were sweating.
     
    That was okay.
     
    He was okay.
     
    He was fine, damn it.
     
    He stood with the sound of the surf in his ears, breathing in the fresh salt air, until his skin cooled and his heartbeat slowed. When he couldn’t feel the twitch between his shoulder blades anymore, he hefted the cooler
    8
    and lumbered to the Jeep. His knee shifted and adjusted to take his weight on the soft sand. He’d passed the 1.5-mile run required by the State of Maine to prove his fitness for duty. But that had been on a level track, not struggling to stabilize on uneven ground in the dark.
     
    He stowed the evidence in back, slammed the hatch, and glanced toward the beach.
     
    A woman shone at the water’s edge, wrapped in twilight and a towel.
    The sea foamed around her bare, pale feet. Her long, dark hair lifted in the breeze. Her face was pale and perfect as the moon.
     
    For one second, the sight caught him like a wave smack in the chest, robbing him of speech. Of breath. Yearning rushed through his soul like the wind over the water, stirring him to the depths. His hands curled into fists at his sides.
     
    Not okay. He throttled back his roaring imagination. She was just a kid. A girl. An underage girl in an oversize sweatshirt with—his gaze dipped again, briefly—a really nice rack.
     
    And he was a cop. Time to think like a cop. Mystery Girl hadn’t been with the group around the fire. So where had she been hiding?
     
    Caleb stomped back through the trees. The girl stood with her bare feet planted in the sand, watching him approach. At least he didn’t have to chase her.
     
    He stopped a few yards away. “Your friends are gone. You missed them.”
     
    She tilted her head, regarding him with large, dark, wide-set eyes.
    “They are not my friends.”
     
    “Guess not,” he agreed. “Since they left without you.”
     
    She smiled. Her lips were soft and full, her teeth white and slightly pointed. “I meant I do not know them. They are very . . . young, are they not?”
     
    He narrowed his gaze on her face, mentally reassessing her age. Her skin was baby fine, smooth and well cared for. No makeup. No visible piercings or tattoos. Not even a tan.
     
    9
     
    “How old are you?”
     
    Her smile broadened. “Older than I look.”
     
    He resisted the urge to smile back. She could be over the legal drinking age—not jailbait, after all. Those eyes held a purely adult awareness, and her smile was knowing. But he’d pounded Portland’s pavements long enough to know the kind of trouble a cop invited giving a pretty woman a break. “Can I see your license, please?”
     
    She blinked slowly. “My . . .”
     
    “ID,” he snapped. “Do you have it?”
     
    “Ah. No. I did not realize I would need any.”
     
    He took in her damp hair, the towel tucked around her waist. If she’d come down to the beach to swim . . . Okay, nobody swam in May but fools or tourists. But even if she was simply taking a walk, her story made sense. “You staying near here?”
     
    Her dark gaze traveled over him. She nodded. “Yes, I believe I will.
    Am,” she corrected.
     
    He was sweating again, and not from nerves. His emotions had been on ice a long time, but he still recognized the slow burn of desire.
     
    “Address?” he asked harshly.
     
    “I don’t remember.” She smiled again, charmingly, looking him full in the eyes. “I only recently arrived.”
     
    He refused to be charmed. But he couldn’t deny the tug of attraction, deep in his belly. “Name?”
     
    “Margred.”
     
    Margred. Sounded foreign. He kind of liked it.
     
    He raised his brows. “Just Margred?”
     
    “Margaret, I think you would say.”
     
    10
     
    “Last name?”
     
    She took a step closer, making everything under the sweatshirt sway.
    Hell-o , breasts . “Do you need one?”
     
    He couldn’t think. He couldn’t remember being this distracted and turned on since he’d sat behind Susanna Colburn in seventh-grade English and