The Silkie's Call

  She fumbled in the dark to find her crutches.

  Slowly, carefully, she negotiated the slope down to the dock. It had always been the place she came to whenever her heart was heaviest. She had come here when she was seven and her mother had just died. She had come here again when she was fourteen. Now she was back, seven years later. As she stared down into the water lapping at her toes, her gaze went to her legs. Taylor was right. You couldn’t tell, just looking at her, that her legs were next to useless.

  Annabel dragged her hand across her eyes with sudden decision. Without bothering to remove the t-shirt she slept in, she dove off the end of the dock and swam out and away. At least here she felt at home, felt normal.

  “A little late for a swim, isn’t it, Annabel?”

  The deep voice startled her. Cay! She floundered. Unable to effectively use her legs to tread water, she frantically scissored her arms to regain her equilibrium. Hard fingers closed around her upper arms. He grabbed her, holding her pressed against him while he stood, his feet firmly planted on the bottom of the bay.

  “Leave me alone, Cayden!” she protested, arching away from him and pushing at him with her hands. Even as her mind panicked her body reacted to him. No, not again! At that moment she hated her body even more. Even in the darkness, she saw his nostrils flare as the scent of her arousal rose up to him. She didn’t want this; it was too painful. He was in her past and he should stay there, not see her like she was, not see her as a cripple! “Go away!”

  The Silkie’s Call

  by

  Laura Browning

  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 Silkie’s Call

  COPYRIGHT Ó 2010 by Laura Browning

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com

  Cover Art by Angela Anderson

  The Wild Rose Press

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0706

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Black Rose Edition, 2010

  Print ISBN 1-60154-840-0

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To Harvey—You were right. Thank you .

  Chapter 1

  “You don’t have to finish this right now, Poppy,” Taylor said as he watched her cover her eyes with her hands. “I could take you back over to our place.”

  Taylor still persisted in calling her by her childhood nickname of Poppy. But now, at the age of twenty-one, she was known to everyone else as Annabel Barton. Placing her hands back down on her father’s desk, she stroked the leather surface of the blotter with loving fingertips. Sadness, regret…what was it she truly felt when she thought of her father? Along with those emotions, there were good memories as well.

  She smiled as she looked up at her cousin Taylor. With parents like George and Helen, who would have thought he would turn out to be such a good friend? It was too bad they were cousins. Not only was he fun, generous, and her best friend, he was damn fine looking! With his blond-streaked hair and sapphire eyes, they were often mistaken for brother and sister, something that constantly angered Helen Stokes. Annabel sometimes felt that resemblance was part of the reason her aunt disliked her so much.

  “I do need to do this, Taylor. At least make a start on it. It’s been a month since Daddy’s funeral.”

  “Yes, and you’ve already gone through the apartment in New York, cleaned it out, and put it on the market. You’re driving yourself too damn hard. Why don’t you take a break and enjoy a few weeks up here to just relax. It’s been years since you’ve been here.”

  She looked out the window. Yes, seven to be exact, and she hadn’t wanted to come back now. She had few fond memories of the bay and the sound. Seven years ago, she’d come here as a normal, healthy, if somewhat lonely, fourteen-year-old and left as a physical wreck. At least she had never had to worry about anyone trying to push her onto the field hockey team, she thought cynically. Nor had she been obliged to make her debut at the debutante ball. No, she’d never danced with her father nor needed Taylor to serve as her escort.

  Instead, she spent seven years learning to move out of a wheelchair to the point where she could manage with crutches for at least part of the day. She was focused and determined. Everyone commented on how mature she was, how well she handled her personal tragedy. And she never let them see her private pain, never told anyone of the dreams that haunted her, of the voice she heard over and over. No matter what anyone tells you over the next few years, believe me. I love you.

  But she had quit believing. Oh, not for the first year, or even the second or third, but by the time she left for college she quit believing she ever meant any more to Cayden Clifton than a chance to play around with a naïve little virgin. At least until she chickened out. And she began to believe what her father and Aunt Helen told her. That he deliberately turned his back on her when he heard she would never walk again.

  Being here in this house was a reminder of that last summer. It made her uneasy. She had moved on. The accident had forced her to. And she didn’t want to be here now. But she did need to sort through her father’s belongings. Then she would put this house on the market too. She planned to finish her degree in finance this year, and then she would go after a Master’s. This was just a temporary and unpleasant interlude. An obligation she must fulfill.

  “I had your boat sailed up here for you. It’s docking now.”

  Annabel’s head snapped up and she glared at her cousin. “Taylor! You had no right. I don’t want to stay here.”

  “You need a fucking break!” His lean face reflected the stubbornness coursing through her veins.

  “But not here!” She clenched her hand into a fist when she saw it tremble. There were too many memories of sneaking out to meet Cayden, of swimming in the dark water, the way the moonlight shone in his dark eyes. And his kisses. Even as young as they were, the longing was there. Longing from which they both shied away, too naïve and hesitant to do anything about it.

  Taylor sat in the chair across from her, crossing his legs and staring at her with an intensity that made her shift in her seat. “Don’t practice your legal eagle crap on me. I won’t stay here.” He had just finished law school and would soon join a practice in the city.

  “Why is that, Poppy? What the fuck happened that last summer you were here? Was it something with that guy Cayden Clifton?”

  “Don’t talk about him.” she snapped.

  Taylor watched her, his eyes never wavering from hers. “He used to ask about you.”

  “You’ve seen him?” A shaft of longing hit her right in the heart, and she hated herself for it. Hated herself for caring when Cayden so obviously didn’t.

  “Not for several years. He had a big fight with his family. I got the feeling he was out on his own. He worked around here for a summer. Hiring out as crew at the yacht club and then he disappeared. His parents have been back, but he wasn’t with them. Just the other brother, the younger one.”

  “I really don’t want to talk about this,” Annabel said coolly but firmly, shutting the door on any further conversation about Cayden.

  Taylor studied her for a moment. “Come out with me. Take the wheel and I’ll crew, Captain.”

  His grin disarmed her. She w
as never able to resist it.

  Her father had installed a ramp all the way from the house to the dock years ago, perhaps hoping she would come back during the summers, but she put her foot down and created such a scene when he suggested it that he finally just gave up. Remorse ate at her now when it was too late. He’d made such an effort, and she’d rejected it. She squeezed her eyes shut. More than rejected, she had positively thrown a tantrum. Sometimes she hated herself as much as she hated her condition.

  While she had healed her relationship with her father on many levels, she’d kept some parts shut off from him in the same way that he’d shut her out. She’d never been able to touch or heal some of his deepest grief. And that was what had finally overwhelmed him once she’d left for college. When she’d come home for holidays and breaks, she’d seen that he was deteriorating, but she’d been helpless to do anything about it. She hadn’t understood it. The grief had been about more than her mother, but he’d never talked about it.

  She didn’t understand it. The grief was about more than her mother, but he would never talk about it.

  Then came the call right after she finished her finals, the call that he had been found dead inside the New York apartment, an empty bottle of sleeping pills by his side. You have your wish now, Daddy. You can finally be with Momma. It was what he always wanted. She had known it ever since she was seven. Somehow, she had never been enough to hold him. Even his career as a writer had never been enough.

  From the moment her mother died of cancer, her father had been little more than the walking dead. He would have willingly turned her over to Aunt Helen until Annabel’s accident changed that. In fact, he had planned to, but the accident forced him to go on for a few more years. She had no doubt that had she not been paralyzed that summer when she capsized the Silkie, he would have ended his life years earlier.

  She walked carefully down the ramp now, balancing on the crutches that hooked around her forearms. Taylor strode on ahead, getting the Revenge ready to go. He hopped back onto the dock when she reached the side of the boat and lifted her in. While Annabel would have rejected such help from most people, she accepted it from Taylor. He was more family to her than anyone, and she loved him like a brother.

  “Ready?” he grinned as he untied the lines fore and aft and jumped in.

  She smiled back at him. “Yes, but you’re not. Lifejacket, Taylor. You know my rule.”

  It had saved her seven years ago. It was perhaps the one smart choice she’d made that day when she was fourteen, deciding to put on the lifejacket. If she hadn’t, she would have drowned. The boom had cracked her skull before it damaged her spine, leaving her not only semi-conscious in rough seas, but partially paralyzed from the waist down. Without the lifejacket, she would have been helpless to stay afloat.

  She remembered very little from that day, only what her father had told her. That Carrick and Cayden Clifton found her and pulled her out. She’d heard the story of how the Coast Guard took her by cruiser to the station and then airlifted her to a trauma center.

  Annabel jerked herself back to the present. Taylor dutifully donned a lifejacket and was busy unfurling the sails, so she started the small motor on the boat and came about to head out into the bay.

  “Hey, Poppy! Did you wear your suit under your clothes?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Let’s go to that cove you used to visit and go for a swim.”

  She blanched. “Not there, Taylor.”

  He stared at her. “You can’t let him haunt the rest of your life, you know.”

  “Who?” she asked innocently.

  “Clifton. Make some new memories, Poppy.”

  So in the end, she set off in that direction. It didn’t take long to reach the cove. The Revenge was faster than the Silkie had ever been. They dropped anchor in the middle of the cove and Taylor set the ladder on the stern so that she’d be able to get back in. After stripping down to his trunks, he dove over the side. Annabel took her time, keeping her gaze carefully away from the small beach where she and Cayden first kissed each other.

  Using her arms to keep her balance, she sat on the edge of the Revenge and swung her legs around. To a casual observer, she looked perfectly normal. She now had enough control that she was able to maintain muscle tone in her legs, and when she was in the water, could even swim using a dolphin style kick that relied heavily on the muscles in her abdomen and back to create momentum. That at least was something that hadn’t been taken away from her. She had always loved the water, and even her accident hadn’t changed that.

  It felt wonderful to swim in salt water again. It had been a while. At school, she regularly exercised in the pool, not only using aqua therapy to work her body, but swimming laps to make her stronger. The salt water was so buoyant she could spend more time swimming and less time trying to stay afloat. She sighed blissfully and floated on her back, staring up at the gulls wheeling and turning overhead.

  ****

  Cayden sensed her as soon as she hit the water. The shock to his system almost made him forget to hold his breath as he shot through the water. Breaking away from the school of fish he pursued, he turned out of the sound to search the bay. He followed her scent and her sound as carefully as any predator in the sea. And as a bull seal at full maturity, that’s exactly what he was, a predator. Seven years. Or not quite seven years, so he couldn’t go to her, not until the seventh day of the seventh month, but he could look. He would look because he could do nothing else.

  If he could just see her again. Did she remember what he’d told her? Was that why she was here? He didn’t dare hope for that much.

  It had been a long seven years, he thought bitterly, separated not only from her, but from his family as well. He closed his eyes as he remembered what happened after Bell’s accident. They had taken her away while he watched, his father holding his arms in a vise-like grip to prevent him from following. He’d tried to see her, but Carrick forbade it. Then when he managed to sneak into the hospital in the city, a place he never wished to see again, Phillip Barton physically barred the door and then had him removed by armed security guards. He’d tried again the next day, and this time he’d been arrested. Carrick and Catriona had come to get him.

  But it wasn’t just human law he had violated. His father soon broke the news that they must travel to the islands off Scotland, the ancestral home of the Silkie, to appear before the Council of Lords.

  “But why, Dad?” Cayden had asked.

  Carrick sighed. “You answered the call of a female and didn’t fulfill your responsibility to mate with her. The Council doesn’t understand human beliefs about age and sex. In their eyes, you’ve flaunted our traditions, and because you are my son, they will make an example of you.”

  And they had. What had made it even worse was that Carrick had to sit in judgment on his own son. The outcome was a foregone conclusion. He was banished for seven years to live on his own. His mother cried, his brother, Ciaran looked coldly victorious, and his father slipped a piece of paper into his hand even as he embraced him one last time. Cayden was escorted from the hall and turned out into the night. Shunned by his own kind, he sought shelter with humans while he figured out what to do.

  His father had given him a letter with instructions about where he could access a bank account set up for him. “Use this as an opportunity to grow, my son,” his note had said. “I have supplied you with enough funds to provide for you, if you are thrifty. Learn all you can. On the seventh day, of the seventh month, in seven years, we will find you again.”

  So Cayden had returned to the sound and the town on the bay. He’d found a job cleaning and fixing boats during the off months and crewing during the summer. He’d finished high school and then gone to college, completing a degree in Marine Management. It hadn’t been easy. His father had left funds for him to survive, not to pay for an education, so Cayden had spent the seven years working hard and fitting in classes around whatever jobs he’d been able to find. />
  And he’d tried to forget Annabel Lee Barton. Poppy to nearly everyone in her family, but to him she had always been Bell. His beautiful Bell. He hadn’t found anyone else, and he’d never forgotten her. For seven years, he’d lived in the hope that he would find her again.

  Now she was within reach. If she called to him again, he would go to her. He had to. As a Silkie, it was his nature to please the human who sent for him, and Annabel Barton was the only female who had ever called to him. The only female he had ever wanted.

  He hovered at the entrance to the cove, his dark eyes examining the small sloop anchored there. Revenge. From there his gaze scanned the cove, coming to rest on two heads bobbing close together in the water. Her laughter traveled across the surface to him, at once arousing yearning, jealousy, and anger. Damn her! How could she sound so carefree when he had spent seven years agonizing over her, longing for her?

  He ducked under the water and swam closer, hovering in the depths below them, scenting and listening. He saw the long, slender length of her legs and the way they blended so smoothly into her rounded ass, her flat belly and the slight protuberance of her sex. The cold water had tightened her nipples until they poked, pebble hard, against the thin material of her suit. His Silkie instincts roared to life. Cayden wanted to take her in his mouth, suckle her breasts and bury his erection in the soft folds between her legs.

  He started to move on the human male and then realized two things. His seven years had not yet ended, and the man with her was Taylor Stokes. Some of his jealousy evaporated as he realized she was with her cousin.

  “I told you, Taylor,” she protested. “I don’t want to go to the yacht club. It was bad enough before. It would be torture now.”

  “No one will pay any attention.”

  Her laughter had a hard edge to it. “Please! Just leave it alone. All I want to do is go through everything at the house and get it sold. After that, I never want to see this hellhole again.”