First Time in Forever (Puffin Island 1)

He lowered his mouth to hers, smiling against her lips. “Sweetheart, I haven’t even started. Any time you want another display of my special powers, let me know.”

She felt the weight of him on her, dominating and unbelievably arousing. “It’s dawn. I’m picking up Lizzy in three hours, and the thing about having children is that there isn’t a whole lot of opportunity for sleeping in the day.”

“True. Sleepless nights suck. Unless the reason for it is sex.” He rolled on to his back, but he kept hold of her, locking her body against his. “I want to know more about you. Tell me something. Anything. Did you like school?”

“Mostly, yes. I liked the learning and the routine. There was a consistency that wasn’t ever present at home. Once I walked through those gates, I knew what was going to happen. The people behaved in a predictable way. I was never going to walk in and find them drunk or naked with a guy I’d never met before.”

“I’ve heard a lot of reasons for enjoying school but never that one.”

“Was there a teacher that stood out for you? For me it was Mrs. White. We used to wonder if she’d had her hair dyed to match her name, but she was the best math teacher. I was good at numbers. There was a beauty to it, a logic, that wasn’t present in anything else in my life. I had a gift, I think, and she saw it. She took me under her wing. I don’t know if she guessed what was happening at home, or whether she was just one of those people who are really good at bringing out the best in every child. Either way, she helped me. I was always the last kid in the building.”

“You didn’t want to go home.”

“To begin with that was the reason, but after a few years it was because I didn’t want to leave. School was a place full of possibilities. Mrs. White made me believe education was the key to another world. I wanted that key so badly. For the first time ever, the future looked exciting. I made it into college because of her. Every night when I left she gave me a new book to read, and every morning I gave it back and exchanged it for a different one.”

“You read a book a night?”

“I read from the moment I arrived home until I fell asleep. If the book was good, I didn’t sleep much. Sometimes I’d talk about the books with my stepfather, but mostly I just lived in my own world, and he respected that.”

“And your mom?”

“She didn’t care what I was doing.” She ran her hand over his shoulder, feeling the uneven texture of his skin under her fingers. “Does it hurt? And don’t lie to me.”

“It’s worse when the weather is cold and occasionally when I use it without thinking. But I don’t mind.” He hesitated. “At the beginning when I was going through the endless surgery and rehabilitation and taking the pain and frustration out on my family, I kept thinking of Finn. Every time I was tempted to feel sorry for myself, I thought about him. And the pain reminds me to live in the moment.”

“I wish I was more like that. I spend half my life—no, more than half my life—” she corrected herself “—worrying about stuff that hasn’t happened yet.”

“You’re not alone. Most of us go through life thinking about tomorrow, and we miss today. That was one of the things that made Finn such a great companion on our trips into dangerous territory. He noticed the small things that other people missed. It was also what made him a great photographer.”

“You don’t talk about him much. You don’t talk about any of it much.”

His fingers moved slowly up and down her arm. “The past is useful if it teaches you something about how you should be living in the present. Other than that, it’s just the past.”

Emily thought about her sister. “I think I’ve been living my whole life governed by the past. I didn’t think about it and didn’t talk about it, but it was there in everything I did. Skylar said that to me once and she was right. If it hadn’t been for Lizzy, I probably would have stayed that way forever.”

“And now?”

“Children have a way of making you live in the present. She doesn’t see further than the next meal or the next activity.” But she knew it wasn’t just Lizzy who was responsible for the change in her. It was Ryan.

He turned his head to hers, the gleam in his eyes telling her he knew what she was thinking. “If you need a suggestion for what the next activity could be, just ask.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SHE LEFT BEFORE Ryan woke, tiptoeing out of his apartment as sunlight shimmered through the wall of glass.

The trail of clothes strewn around the room told the story of the night before, and she gathered them up, dressed swiftly and quietly closed the door behind her.

As she walked down the steps that led from his apartment, she wished she’d thought to bring something else to wear.

She was acutely conscious, not only of the dress that announced to the entire island where she’d spent the night, but of the small things. The slight whisker burns on the sensitive skin of her neck and the fact that her body ached in unusual places. And then there were the other things. Emotions she didn’t recognize. Feelings that were unfamiliar.

It was as if she’d gone to sleep as one person and woken as another.

She arrived to pick up Lizzy and was grateful that Lisa said nothing about the fact Emily was overdressed. Instead, she supplied a strong cup of coffee and proceeded to make small talk about her plans for the makeover of Summer Scoop.

On the drive home Lizzy talked nonstop about her sleepover, an evening apparently bursting with pizza and popcorn.

Emily parked outside the cottage and stared at Shell Bay.