Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

mind.
     
    He ignored it. He’d deal with the pelt tomorrow, too.
     
    He unlocked the door and stopped, struck by a smell. Coffee?
    Freshly brewed coffee in his empty house. A pair of sandals lay in the middle of the living room rug. A breeze blew from an open window in the kitchen.
     
    His heart hammered.
     
    “Maggie?” His voice was hoarse. Hopeful.
     
    She uncurled like a cat from the cushions of the couch, her dark hair soft and loose on her shoulders, wearing a blue dress that flowed over her curves like water. Bare feet. Webbed toes.
     
    The sight of her punched him in the gut.
     
    “There you are,” she greeted him. “Are you hungry?”
     
    He was stunned. “You don’t have to cook for me.”
     
    “I didn’t.” She tilted her head to smile into his eyes. “I brought dinner home from the restaurant.”
     
    Home.
     
    His throat tightened. “That sounds good.”
     
    He ran one finger down her warm cheek, as if to assure himself that she was real. Then he did what he had wanted to do eight hours ago on the dock and every second since.
     
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    He kissed her.
     
    Her mouth was soft and welcoming. She tasted of coffee and sugar and, impossibly, of the sea. Had she been crying? But he had never seen her cry.
     
    She stood on tiptoe to deepen the kiss, her hand touching the bare skin at the back of his neck, and Caleb stopped thinking, stopped questioning, let himself be totally in the present, in this moment, with her here and eager in his arms. It was enough. It was everything.
     
    When he raised his head, his split lip throbbed softly and Maggie was trembling along the length of his body.
     
    “Dinner can wait,” he said.
     
    “It could. I cannot.” Her slow smile teased him. “I want to hear about your day.”
     
    He cleared his throat. “Now?”
     
    She tugged his hand. “While you eat.”
     
    He let her lead him to the kitchen. The scent of the salt wood flowed through the open window. The evidence of her presence was everywhere—a bright towel hung haphazardly on the back of a chair, an empty mug in the sink, a dusting of sugar on the kitchen table. She was here. She was back. A weight rolled from Caleb’s shoulders.
     
    She’d lit the emergency candles he kept in case of power failure and laid out a pair of wineglasses left from his first marriage. The trappings of romance? Or simply the way Regina had taught her to set a table?
    But Antonia’s didn’t use candles.
     
    “Sit.” Maggie tugged at him again. “Tell me what happened. That woman, the square one—”
     
    “Evelyn Hall.”
     
    “She would not let me in to see you.”
     
    He watched her open the wine with graceful, practiced movements.
    “In an investigation, you want to keep the witnesses apart.” And the
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    suspects, he thought but did not say. “So they can’t make up or change their stories.”
     
    Maggie bristled. “You were shot. Do they think you made that up?”
     
    Her fierce defense made him smile. “No, they could see that. One of the techs dug a bullet out of the dock they’ll be able to match to Whittaker’s gun. But Reynolds knows— suspects—I’m not telling him everything.”
     
    The white take-out bag rustled. “What did you tell him?”
     
    Caleb leaned back in his chair. “That Whittaker was afraid you had remembered him. That he came after you to stop you from identifying him as your attacker. Based on that, I suggested they had probable cause to search his house in connection with the other woman.”
     
    Maggie tilted her head. “And did they?”
     
    “Yep.”
     
    She set a plate in front of him. With a shock of pleasure, Caleb recognized the lobster rolls and tortellini salad he’d served her at their first picnic on the beach. Did she remember?
     
    Of course she did.
     
    She sat opposite him, leaning across the table. “What did they find?”
     
    He set down his fork. “You sure you want to talk about this now?”
     
    “Why not?”
    “It’s not very”—Caleb paused as the specter of his ex-wife rose to scold him—“pleasant for you to have to deal with.”
     
    Maggie’s eyes flashed. “Gwyneth’s murder was not pleasant . Seeing you possessed by a demon chained on the bottom of the ocean was not pleasant. This is what is. You have been fighting my battles all day. The least I can do is listen.”
     
    Caleb regarded her with wry appreciation. He would never compare her to Sherilee again.
     
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    Baldly, briefly, he described