Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

risk. ”
    “I want you,” he said honestly. “I always want you.”
    Her breasts in his hands, his body in her body. Nothing between them. Skin on skin, the way it had been the first time.
    “Well, then.” Her smile spread. Come and get me.
    Caleb grinned with love and lust and rounded the kitchen table.
    Bart Hunter fumbled with his front door in the dark.
    Something was wrong. Alarm pierced the damp evening mist and the fog of whiskey like a beacon.
    No porch light. Lucy always left the porch light burning for him. The knob turned under his hand before he could get the key in. She never forgot to lock the door either. She was a careful girl, Lucy.
    Responsible. Not like . . .
    But his mind winced from the comparison like an old bruise.
    He stumbled into the front hall. So still. So dark. The smell of the Crock-Pot—tomatoes, maybe, and onions—permeated the downstairs.
    Bart wavered between the empty kitchen and the darkened living room. His stomach rolled with a combination of hunger and too much Seagram’s. Maybe he’d have a bite, to please her.
    But first he’d have another drink.
    He lurched for the living room and the liquor cabinet. Stopped short, his heart banging.
    “Lucy?”
    She sat upright on the couch, her eyes wide open and gleaming in the dark.
    He covered his start, his guilt, in aggression. He hated her to watch him drink. “What the hell are you doing up? You should be in bed.”
    “I should,” she said. Impossible to tell from her tone of voice if she was questioning or agreeing with him.
    Bart scowled. “What’s the matter with you?”
    She paused, like she was really thinking about it. “I don’t know.”
    He took a reluctant step forward. She looked . . . different. Paler, maybe, though it was hard to tell in the dark. She smelled like she’d been working in the garden after school, a sharp, green smell like summer grass. “What are you, sick or something?”
    “I could be sick.”
    Inadequacy rose like bile in his throat.
    He had never known what to do with her, this youngest child, his only daughter. If Alice had stuck around, it would have been different, maybe. Better. Bitterness coated his tongue. A lot of things would have been better.
    He rubbed the side of his nose. “Well, did you eat?”
    “No.”
    He waited for her to move, to get off the couch, to jump up and offer to fix them both something like she usually did.
    He wanted her to go to bed, out of his way, out of his sight. He wanted a drink, damn it.
    But she continued to watch him with wide, unblinking eyes like a doll’s. Rooted to his spot on the couch.
    Shit.
    Bart stomped into the kitchen, burning his hand on the lid of the Crock-Pot as he spooned whatever mess she’d made that morning—chili, he guessed—into two bowls.

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    He thrust one at her. “Go on. Eat.”
    She waited until he dipped his spoon and brought it to his mouth before she did the same.
    They ate in silence. He didn’t know what to say to her. Never had.
    She laid her empty bowl in her lap. Nothing wrong with her appetite, at least.
    “Well.” Bart stood. “I’m turning in.”
    His daughter regarded him blankly.
    “Got an early morning,” he explained.
    She should know that. Wasn’t he out the door before she woke up every morning?
    He was relieved when she nodded.
    “I should be in bed,” she said. “I could be sick.”
    Something was wrong.
    The realization seeped through the fog in Lucy’s brain. Blearily, she raised her head, struggling to focus in the dark. She blinked. Her bed was in the wrong place.
    Her bed . . . Her room . . . Her stomach lurched. Everything was wrong.
    Everything had been wrong for a long, long time.
    But her mind jerked from the thought, the way a child learns to jerk his hand from a candle or the stove.
    If you didn’t linger, you couldn’t get burned.
    Her body felt stiff and weak, as if she’d been lying in one position for too long or had the flu. She’d been sleeping. Dreaming, the way she did when she was a little girl, of her mother’s voice. Her mother’s voice and the sea. Her head felt stuffed with straw.
    What had happened? Was she sick? Where was she?
    Where was Conn?
    Her mouth tasted foul. She worked a little moisture onto her tongue, trying to swallow. To think. The air was close and smelled like the inside of a locker or the closet under the stairs. Moldy. Still. She felt like she was