Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

danger, terrible danger.
     
    Regina was a practical woman. She might have resisted Dylan’s sulky good looks and sneering humor. She could have suppressed her sympathy for his wounded childhood, her helpless response to his stormy passion. Over time, she might even get over his talent for showing up in the right place at exactly the right time.
     
    But his awkward consideration destroyed her defenses.
     
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    She pressed her trembling lips together. Shit. She was at very real risk of falling deeply, hopelessly in love with him.
     
    *
     
    “We’ll be fine,” Antonia told Regina brusquely, sounding for a moment so much like her daughter that Dylan’s brows twitched together.
    “Maggie’s here. Lucy’s here. We’ll be open for dinner.”
     
    Regina leaned her slight weight against the stainless steel counter, ignoring the knife that flashed like lightning not six inches from her hip, chopping, chopping. “Then you need me to do prep.”
     
    “You can do it when you get back. Caleb wants to see you now. To take your statement.”
     
    Dylan didn’t give a damn what his brother wanted. Caleb could not protect Regina.
     
    “Can’t.” Regina snatched a piece of red pepper from the cutting board and ate it. “I have a doctor’s appointment.”
     
    “What for?”
     
    “Oh . . .” She wiped her hands on the legs of her jeans, avoiding her mother’s gaze. “Follow-up. I think she wants to make sure my toes haven’t fallen off.”
     
    Dylan lifted an eyebrow. So she hadn’t told Antonia about her pregnancy yet. Only him. And only because she hadn’t had a choice. He felt the prod of responsibility like a goad.
     
    “And what will you be doing while Regina is at the doctor’s?”
    Margred murmured.
     
    Dylan’s gaze slid past Lucy to find Margred beside a screen of shelves with an ease that was almost . . . troubling. Except that no man, especially a brother, would spare a glance for Lucy when Margred was in the room. Lucy was tall and inoffensive. Human. Insignificant. Margred was . . . herself. Although apparently Caleb wasn’t letting his beautiful
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    wife get enough sleep these days. Faint shadows lay like bruises under her eyes.
     
    In the large commercial kitchen, there was enough space and enough noise for them to speak privately. He joined her by the shelves, lowering his voice so the others would not hear. “I’m going with her.”
     
    Margred tilted her head. “If what Caleb says is true, Conn will expect you to give him a report.”
     
    “I’m giving him more than that.”
     
    Dylan had it figured out now. He’d had time to think in the long quiet night with Regina sleeping beside him, holding him in place with the lightest pressure of her palm against his heart. He could feel that pressure now, squeezing his chest until he couldn’t breathe. Somehow she had made him feel responsible for her. Made him care. That didn’t mean he needed to stay with her forever, tangled in a net of human expectations and emotions, trapped on shore.
     
    “I’m taking her to Sanctuary,” he explained. “Where she will be safe.”
     
    Where he would be free.
     
    Margred’s dark eyes widened. “Have you told her so?”
     
    “Not yet.”
     
    “Ah.” Margred regarded him steadily a moment. Her full lips curved. “Good luck with that.”
     
    *
     
    “You could have been nicer to your sister,” Regina said as they climbed the hill toward town hall.
     
    When Dylan left the island, over twenty years ago, the building had not existed. Most of the weathered gray houses and shops at the center of town were the same. But there were more cars than he remembered, more telephone wires, more flags and flower boxes, more signs and pedestrians
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    crowding the narrow street, cutting him off, closing him in. He could barely see the sky or smell the sea.
     
    Slouching beside Regina, he felt like a ten-year-old boy being dragged clothes shopping or a wild animal being paraded on a leash.
    They could not walk more than a few yards without someone wanting to stop, talk, exclaim. He didn’t want to hear about his sister.
     
    “I was nice to her,” he growled.
     
    “Yeah? Considering she—”
     
    A pretty young woman blocked their way with a baby stroller. “Oh, my God, Reggie, your neck! You look terrible. Are you okay?”
     
    Regina sighed. “Thanks, Sarah, I’m—”
     
    The young woman’s gaze slid sideways. She smiled and fingered her shoulder-length hair. “You