Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

drummed. “Is there?”
     
    His face set. “It’s my responsibility to protect you. You and your child. Children,” he amended before she could correct him.
     
    Regret welled in her heart like blood. His acknowledgment of Nick was not enough. He’d said “protect,” not love. He did not love her. She could not expect him to. If he did . . .
     
    It wouldn’t make any difference. She had her priorities, too.
     
    At least he was stepping up. It was more than Alain ever offered to do.
     
    Regina stuck out her chin. “Then figure out how to protect us here.
    Because we’re staying.”
     
    *
     
    The woman was impossible.
     
    What she asked was . . . impossible.
     
    Dylan glared at her stumping up the hill, her usual grace hobbled by her gauze-wrapped toes. The collar of bruises showed plainly above the scooped neck of her tank top. Her eyes were shadowed and strained. But nothing seemed to slow her down for long.
     
    Brave girl. She had more courage than most men, as much appetite for life as any selkie, more strength of mind and stubborn spirit than . . .
    well, than anyone he’d ever known.
     
    But she was still only human. She could die.
     
    167
    Fear and admiration coalesced in a hot, tight ball in Dylan’s gut.
    “You have a touching— if misplaced— faith in my ability to save you.”
     
    She turned to look at him. The sun gleamed in her cap of dark hair and warmed her ivory skin to gold. “You rescued me before.”
     
    “I did not face a demon for you before.”
     
    “Scared?” Her tone was teasing, her eyes deadly serious.
     
    He was terrified. Terrified of failing her, terrified of losing her. His hands clenched into fists at his sides.
     
    “I am not . . . trained for this,” he said with difficulty. “You need someone . . .” Better. Stronger. “Someone else.”
     
    “I don’t think so.” They walked on, past gardens edged with day lilies and yards full of rusting cars and lobster traps. “At least you have a stake in this thing.”
     
    A stake? He stared at her in disbelief. That’s what she called this sickening weight of responsibility, this agonized awareness of being found wanting, insufficient, at fault . . .
     
    “There must be somebody you could ask for advice,” she continued, apparently oblivious to the storm raging inside him.
     
    He forced himself to fasten on her words, to quell the nausea of his stomach. “There is,” he replied. “The prince.”
     
    “You have a prince? Of course you do,” she answered her own question. “Because this situation wasn’t unreal enough before.”
     
    He wished he knew some way to reassure her.
     
    “Conn ap Llyr, lord of Sanctuary, prince of the merfolk. He took me under his patronage after my mother died.”
     
    “Like a . . . father figure?”
     
    Dylan pictured the aloof, inscrutable selkie ruler isolated in his tower at Caer Subai. “I was never tempted to call him ‘Daddy,’ ” he said with perfect truth.
     
    168
     
    Regina studied him a moment. Something flickered in her eyes, a perception that made him squirm, a sympathy that tore old wounds and half-healed scars. He stiffened in rejection. He was no longer that fourteen-year-old boy crying for his mother. He was selkie. He did not need her pity.
     
    But all she said was, “Can’t argue with you there. Mine split when I was three years old.” He thought he heard her sigh. “Must be a family tradition.”
     
    As if he would leave her.
     
    He’d intended to leave her. But . . .
     
    “Must it?” he heard himself ask and held his breath for her answer.
     
    She smiled crookedly. “I guess we’ll find out.”
     
    Perversely, he was irritated. He did not need her sympathy. But he would not mind if she admitted to needing him.
     
    She paused at the curb of the clinic. “You want to contact this prince of yours while I’m in my doctor’s appointment?”
     
    He shook his head. “It’s not like I can call him on his cell phone. I have to go down to the beach.”
     
    “So go.”
     
    He opened the clinic’s outer door for her. “I’m coming with you.”
     
    “No, you’re not. I don’t want you in the room while I’m flat on my back in a paper drape getting a pelvic exam.”
     
    The image made him clench uncomfortably. But he said, “I’ve seen you in less.”
     
    “Forget it.”
     
    He narrowed his eyes. Was she actually blushing? “Then I will wait for you.”
     
    169
    “Suit yourself. But . . .” She broke