Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

must be Dylan. I heard you carried her all the way to the Mitchells’ house.”
     
    “Yeah, I was pretty out of it,” Regina said. “Look, we—”
     
    “It was just so awful. I mean, you don’t expect anything like that to happen here.” Sarah smiled again at Dylan. “Do you?”
     
    “Actually, I do.”
     
    “Okay.” Regina grabbed his arm. “Great seeing you, Sarah. Come by the shop sometime.”
     
    Dylan regarded the small, strong hand on his arm as she hauled him away. He liked having her hold on to him. And he resented that he liked it.
     
    “So, about your sister . . .” she said.
     
    “What about her?”
     
    “It was nice of her to help us out.”
     
    “Why nice? You’re paying her.”
     
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    “Yes, but—”
     
    “Hey, Regina.” A ruddy, round-faced man carrying a hard hat and a repair bucket hailed her from the street. “That was some excitement at your place yesterday. Everybody all right?”
     
    More cars crawled by. More people stopped to stare. Dylan was overcome by the smells and press of bodies.
     
    “Just fine, thanks, Doug.”
     
    His gaze switched to Dylan. “You the guy that found her?”
     
    Dylan stared down his nose. “Yes. And you are . . . ?”
     
    “Doug does cable repair on the island,” Regina explained. “Eats at Antonia’s two, three times a week.”
     
    “That’s right.” Doug shifted his weight and the bucket. “Hoping to eat lunch there today, as a matter of fact.”
     
    “We won’t open until dinner,” Regina said. “But if you stop by tomorrow, I can—”
     
    Dylan had had enough.
     
    “Excuse us,” he said and walked away.
     
    Since his hand was clamped over Regina’s on his arm, she had no choice but to go with him.
     
    He wanted air. He wanted the sea. He wanted to get Regina away from the people who pressed around them and the circumstances that hedged them in. He wanted her. Still. Again.
     
    Since he could not have what he wanted, he found the nearest escape, a turn off the main road that led to the island church and a cemetery dreaming on the side of a hill.
     
    Dylan stopped among the crooked stones and rough grass, breathing in the silence and the scent of juniper.
     
    “Well.” Regina exhaled. “That was rude.”
     
    161
     
    He wanted her naked. She didn’t have a clue.
     
    “Not as rude as they were. Not half as rude as I wanted to be. How do you stand it?” he demanded. “How do you stand them? All those people. All they cared about was gossip and their own convenience. Not one of them cared about you.”
     
    Her chin cocked. “Oh, and you do.”
     
    “I . . .” His mouth opened. His brows drew together. Was he like her shallow friend, her hungry customer, focused only on his own concerns and appetites?
     
    Wasn’t he?
     
    And why should that bother him? It hadn’t bothered her last night.
    Or the night of his brother’s wedding. He snapped his mouth shut.
     
    Regina smiled, an odd little twist of lips that knotted his insides.
    “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
     
    She sighed again and leaned against the low stone wall that bordered the graveyard. “Tell me about your relationship with your sister.”
     
    What was she after now? “Lucy? I barely know her.”
     
    “So you keep saying.” Regina tilted her head. “You just haven’t told me why.”
     
    “I . . .” He kicked at the grass. “She was a year old when I left.”
     
    “Yeah, well, she grew up. You should, too. Just because you were taken from your family at the age of thirteen is no excuse for spending the rest of your life in a state of arrested emotional development.”
     
    Arrested emotional . . . He ground his teeth together. But the wry understanding in Regina’s eyes eroded his anger and his defenses.
     
    “I hardly see the point of forming a relationship now,” he said stiffly.
     
    “Because you don’t need her.”
     
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    He did not allow himself to need anyone. “Yes.”
     
    Regina met his gaze, her dark, expressive eyes surprisingly compassionate. “Did you ever think maybe she needs you?”
     
    His head throbbed. “She has Caleb. And our father.”
     
    “And that’s enough,” Regina prodded him.
     
    It was more than he had. But he could not, would not, let himself say so. He was selkie, he thought, half desperately.He had made his choice more than twenty years ago.
     
    “She doesn’t appear to be suffering,” he said.
     
    “How would you know? You didn’t even look at her