Sea Fever Read online

  Sea Fever

  Virginia Kantra

  BERKLEY SENSATION, New York

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  SEA FEVER

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2008 by Virginia Kantra.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN : 1-4362-3834-X

  “Virginia Kantra’s stories . . . can make a believer out of the most hardened soul.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Patricia Rice

  PRAISE FOR Sea Witch

  “Sea Witch will definitely make your temperature rise! Virginia Kantra delivers thrills and chills in this sizzling new paranormal series.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Teresa Medeiros

  “A breathtaking new world I intend to visit again. The adventure, romance, and emotion held me captive. A definite must read, and I’m so glad I didn’t miss it!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Lora Leigh

  “A haunting new world of passion and danger, with a truly wonderful hero. I’m already impatient for the next book in what promises to be a fascinating series!”

  —USA Today bestselling author Nalini Singh

  Home Before Midnight

  “Sexy and suspenseful . . . a really good read.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards

  “Virginia Kantra is a sensitive writer with a warm sense of humor, a fine sense of sexual tension, and an unerring sense of place.”

  —BookPage

  Close Up

  “Holy moly, action-adventure-romance fans ! You are going to LOVE this book! I highly, highly recommend it.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann

  “A story fraught with intense emotions and danger . . . Kantra clearly demonstrates that she’s a talent to be reckoned with.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Kantra’s first foray into single-title fiction is fast-paced, engrossing, and full of nail-biting suspense.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Sabrina Jeffries

  “Honest, intelligent romance.”

  —Romance B(u)y the Book

  MORE PRAISE FOR VIRGINIA KANTRA AND HER BESTSELLING NOVELS

  “Smart, sexy, and sophisticated— another winner.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Lori Foster

  “An involving, three-dimensional story that is scary, intriguing, and sexy.”

  —All About Romance

  “Kantra creates powerfully memorable characters.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Virginia Kantra is an autobuy . . . Her books are keepers and her heroes are to die for!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann

  “Spectacularly suspenseful and sexy. Don’t miss it!”

  —Romantic Times

  “Packs a wallop!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Bevarly

  Berkley Sensation Titles by Virginia Kantra

  SEA WITCH

  SEA FEVER

  HOME BEFORE MIDNIGHT

  CLOSE UP

  Anthologies

  SHIFTER

  (with Angela Knight, Lora Leigh, and Alyssa Day)

  OVER THE MOON

  (with Angela Knight, MaryJanice Davidson, and Sunny)

  To Phyllis S. Kantra and Robert A. Kantra

  Thanks, Mom and Dad

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Deepest thanks to my wonderful editor, Cindy Hwang, and the team at Berkley who do such incredible work.

  To my agent, Damaris Rowland, who made this book possible.

  To Melissa McClone and Kristen Dill, for listening, reading, critiquing, and supporting.

  To Lieutenant A.J. Carter (ret.), Martin Urda, M.D., and all the experts who patiently gave well-thought-out responses to the most unlikely scenarios.

  To my niece Marie for letting me “borrow” her tattoo.

  To Jean and Will, Andrew, and Mark, who as deadline approached probably thought that their mother had been kidnapped by demons— or possibly possessed.

  And to Michael. I’d be lost without you.

  But his soul stood with his mother’s folk,

  That were of the rain-wrapped isle,

  Where Patrick and Brandan westerly

  Looked out at last on a landless sea

  And the sun’s last smile.

  — G. K. CHESTERTON, “THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE”

  They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

  — D. H. LAWRENCE

  1

  THE NIGHT THE ONLY ELIGIBLE MAN ON THE island got married, Regina Barone got drunk.

  Getting laid would have been even better.

  Regina looked from Bobby Kincaid, whose eyes had taken on the wet glaze of his beer bottle, to fifty-three-year-old Henry Tibbetts, who smelled like herring, and thought, Fat chance. Anyway, on an island with a year-round population of eleven hundred, a drunken hookup at a wedding reception could have serious consequences.

  Regina knew all about consequences. She had Nick, didn’t she?

  The wedding tent’s tiebacks fluttered in the breeze. Through the open sides, Regina could see the beach where the happy couple had exchanged their vows— a strip of shale, a tumble of rocks, a crescent of sand bordering the restless ocean.

  Not your typical destination wedding. Maine, even Maine in August, was hardly Saint Croix.

  Regina hefted a tray of dirty glassware and then spotted her son, standing beside her mother at the edge of the dance floor, jigging from foot to foot.

  She felt her mouth and shoulders relax. The glasses could wait.

  Setting down her tray, she crossed the big white tent. “Hey, good-looking.”

  Eight-year-old Nick turned, and she saw herself in miniature: dark, Italian eyes; thin, ex
pressive face; big mouth.

  Regina held out both her hands. “Want to show me what you’ve got?”

  Nick’s initial wariness dissolved in a grin.

  Antonia Barone took his hand. Her mother was in full Mayor Mode— a hard red slash of lipstick and her two-piece navy dress. “We were just about to leave,” Antonia said.

  Their eyes clashed.

  “Ma. One dance.”

  “I thought you had work to do,” Antonia said.

  Ever since Regina had offered to cater this wedding, her mother had been bitching about her priorities. “It’s under control.”

  “Do you still want me to watch him tonight?”

  Regina suppressed a sigh. “Yeah. Thanks. But I’d like to have a moment first.”

  “Please, Nonna,” Nick added.

  “It’s not my decision,” Antonia said, her voice suggesting it damn well should be. “Do what you want. You always do.”

  “Not recently,” Regina muttered as they moved away.

  But for the next ten minutes, she enjoyed the sight of Nick hopping and sliding, clapping and turning, laughing and carrying on like any other eight-year-old.

  The music shifted and slowed.

  Couples took their turn on the floor.

  And Regina, her sandal straps biting into her toes, delivered Nick back to her mother.

  “Midnight for us, kiddo. You go home in the pumpkin coach with Grandma.”

  He tipped his head up to look at her. “What about you?”

  Regina brushed his dark hair back from his face, letting her hand rest a moment on his smooth cheek. “I’ve got to work.”

  He nodded. “Love you.”

  She felt a burst of maternal love under her breastbone like heartburn. “Love you.”

  She watched them leave the white rental tent and climb the hill toward the parking lot, her square mother and skinny son casting long shadows on the park grass. The setting sun lingered on the crest, firing the bushes to fuchsia and gold like the enchanted roses in a fairy tale.

  It was one of those summer evenings, one of those days, that almost made Regina believe in happy endings.

  Not for her, though. Never for her.

  She sighed and turned back to the tent. Her feet hurt.

  Mechanic Bobby Kincaid was tending bar for the free beer and as a favor to Cal. Bobby earned good money in his father’s garage. These days every sixteen-year-old on the island with lobster money burning a hole in his pocket had to have a car. Or a pickup.

  Regina sidestepped as Bobby attempted to grab her ass. Too bad he was such a jerk.

  “Hi, Bobby.” She snagged a bottle of sparkling wine from the ice-filled cooler and wrestled the wire cage around the cork. “Let’s do a quick refill of all the glasses, and then I want those cake plates off the tables.”

  “Hey, now,” rumbled a deep male voice behind her. “You’re off duty.”

  Regina’s heart beat faster. She turned. Strong, tanned hands, steady green eyes, and a limp he’d picked up in Iraq. Police Chief Caleb Hunter.

  The groom.

  Plucking the bottle of Prosecco from her grasp, Caleb filled a rented champagne flute and offered it to her. “You’re a guest. We want you to enjoy yourself tonight.”

  “I am enjoying myself. Any chance to serve something besides red sauce and lobster rolls . . .”

  “The menu’s great,” Cal said. “Everything’s great. Those crab patties—”

  “Mini blue crab cakes with chipotle aioli and roasted red pepper sauce,” Regina said.

  “— are really something. You did good.” His eyes were warm.

  Regina flushed all over at the compliment. She had done well. With less than a month to plan and prepare, with only a clueless bride and the groom’s awkward sister for support, Regina had pulled off the wedding she’d never had. The rented tent was warm with lantern light, bright with delphinium, daisies, and sunflowers. Crisp white linens covered the picnic tables, and she’d dressed up the folding chairs from the community center with flowing bows.

  The food—her food, mussels steamed in garlic and white wine, bruschetta topped with basil and tomatoes, smoked wild salmon with dilled crème fraîche— was a huge success.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I was thinking I might talk Ma into adding some of these appetizers to our regular menu. The mussels, maybe, or—”

  “Great,” Cal repeated, but he wasn’t listening any longer. His gaze slid beyond her to his bride, Maggie, dancing with his father.

  Margred’s dark hair had slipped free of its pins to wave on her neck. She’d kicked off her shoes so that the hem of her flowing white dress dragged. She was looking up at Caleb’s father, laughing as he executed a clumsy turn on the floor.

  The naked intensity in Cal’s eyes as he watched his wife closed Regina’s throat.

  In her entire life, no man had ever looked at her like that, as if she were the sun and the moon and his entire world wrapped up in one. If anyone ever did, she would jump him.

  If Cal ever had—

  But he hadn’t. Wouldn’t. Ever.

  “Go dance,” Regina said. “It’s your wedding.”

  “Right,” Caleb said, already moving.

  He turned back a moment to smile at her and order, “No more work tonight. We hired the youth group to give you a break.”

  “You know you have to watch those church kids like a hawk,” Regina called after him.

  But that was just an excuse.

  The truth was she would rather schlep glasses and scrape plates than have the same conversations she’d had before with the same people she’d known all her life. How’s the weather? How’s your mother? When are you getting married?

  Oh, God.

  She watched Cal circling the dance floor with his new bride— slowly, because of his limp— and emptiness caught her under the ribs, sharp as a cramp.

  Grabbing her glass and the open bottle of Prosecco, she walked away from it all, the music, the lights, and the dancing. Away from Bobby behind the bar and Caleb with his arms around Margred.

  Regina’s heels punched holes in the ragged strip of grass. Drawn by the rush and retreat of water on the rocks, she wobbled across the shale. A burst of foam ran toward her feet. She plopped onto an outcrop of granite to remove her sandals. Her bare toes flexed in the cool, coarse sand.

  Ah. That was better.

  Really.

  She poured herself another glass of wine.

  The level in the bottle fell as the moon rose, flat and bright. The sky deepened until it resembled the inside of a shell, purple and gray. Regina rolled her head to look at the stars, feeling the earth whirl around her.

  “Careful.” The deep male voice sounded amused.

  She jerked upright. The contents of her glass sloshed. “Cal?”

  “No. Disappointed?”

  She’d spilled on her dress. Damn it.

  Regina’s gaze swung to the tent and then swept the shore, searching out the owner of that voice.

  There, standing barefoot at the edge of the surf as if he’d just come out of the sea instead of simply wandering away from the wedding reception.

  Her heart pounded. Her head buzzed from the wine.

  Not Caleb. She squinted. He was too tall, too lean, too young, too . . .

  His tie was loosened, his slacks rolled up. The gray light chased across his face, illuminating the long, narrow nose; the sculpted mouth; the eyes, dark and secret as sin.

  Regina felt a pulse, a flutter, of pure feminine attraction and scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He laughed softly, coming closer. “They look good together— Caleb and Margred.”

  She recognized him then. From the ceremony. “You’re his brother. Dylan. The one who—”

  Went away.

  She’d heard stories. She was drunk, but she recalled the basics. How, twenty-five years ago, his mother had left the island, left her husband and Caleb and her infant daughter, Lucy, taking with her
the other son. This one.