“You did.” He crawled over her on all fours, kissed her on the mouth, and then toppled onto the mattress beside her like a felled tree. “Clearly, they were mad if they were willing to leave the famous Sable Beauty behind.”
Emma laughed and turned her head on the pillow to look at him. “Where did you hear about that?”
“In the staff house, my very first day. When the others saw you drop me off on the beach, they couldn’t wait to tell me your nickname.”
“What else did they say?” she asked uneasily.
“Nothing you need to worry about. It was all good, I swear.”
They lay beside each other, flat on their backs, gazing up at the ceiling.
Emma shook her head. “I don’t know whoever came up with that. As far as I know, no one has ever admitted to it.”
“Good thing,” Logan replied, “or I’d have to have a word with him, because you’re mine now. I don’t want anyone else coveting you.”
Emma rolled to face him in the dim moonlight that filtered through the window. “I like that you’re jealous.”
Logan faced her as well and stroked a lock of her hair away from her forehead. “I was serious about raising our child here. How would you feel about that? Would you be willing to stay? We could continue our work with the horses and do other types of research here.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “Anything. The seals, the sparrows, the stuff that washes up on the beach. Or how the grass and plants keep this giant sand dune from washing away.”
“You have the mind of an academic,” she told him, feeling intrigued and fortunate, but also saddened that he might not reach his full potential on Sable. He’d once dreamed of being a college professor.
“I suppose,” he replied and rolled onto his back. For a long while, he lay there thinking, and she wondered if he had any regrets.
“I never imagined I’d end up in a place like this,” he said, “so remote and secluded. I want to make the best of it.” He glanced at her. “I mean themostof it. So few people have been here, and it’s such a unique place. It needs to be documented.”
Yes. She felt the same.
As for regrets ... that night, she had none.
He rolled to face her again and kissed her softly on the mouth. Her body tingled all over.
“I think you were right that day when we got engaged. It was fate that you came here when you did.”
Suddenly, Emma thought of Captain Harris and wondered if she would still be pining away for him if Logan hadn’t landed on the beach the previous spring. Not that there weren’t still moments when the captain entered her thoughts, but the image of him floated away whenever Logan walked into the room. Every time he kissed her, she thanked the heavens that he’d rescued her from that lonely and hopeless abyss she’d fallen into. Along with her father’s accident, it would always remain a low point in her life, and sometimes she wished she could erase it fully from her memory.
In February, when Emma’s condition became obvious to everyone on the island and she began to let out the seams on a few outfits, her father decided that the time had come for a delicate conversation.
“I’ve been waiting for the right time to talk to you about something,” he said one morning at the breakfast table when Logan was out on patrol.
“All right . . . ,” she replied hesitantly.
Her father rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not sure how to begin, exactly. I’ve never talked to you about this before.” His obvious struggle to find the right words persisted until he finally sat back and folded his arms. “We need to discuss what happened to your mother when you were born.”
Emma’s stomach dropped, and the air in the room became thick, almost difficult to breathe. She’d always wondered about the events of the day her mother died. How long had the labor lasted? Did she pass quickly, or was it a slow, painful death, hours later? Or days? And was it Emma’s fault? Was it something she’d done in the womb that had caused trouble? Would her mother have survived with a different child—a boy who was more fearless and ready to be birthed faster?
Now that Emma was expecting a child of her own, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hearanyof that. There was a temptation to cover her ears.
Her father met her gaze, and she felt exposed and defenseless, as if she were staring down the long barrel of a gun. Outside it was snowing—not the pretty, fat snowflakes that fall gracefully on a windless day and make the world feel like a snow globe. These were the small icy pellets that stung your face in a bitter gale. They sounded gritty against the window. She thought of Logan out there, riding on the beach, and braced herself for a different kind of sting.
“I might as well dispense with modesty,” her father finally said, “and be frank about it. What I’m about to tell you won’t be pleasant to hear, but I need you to be informed so that you can make the right decisions for yourself.”
Emma wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. “I’m listening.”
“Everything was fine during your mother’s pregnancy,” he explained. “She was young and healthy, and we were confident in the woman who lived at Station Number Two, who had delivered babies before. Hername was Jane, and she came to the house when your mother went into labor. But you were in the wrong position, and the labor seemed to go on forever. She was in the bedroom with your mother for ten hours.”
