She pressed her palms into the mud and breathed until the wind settled and the river stopped throwing whitecaps against the rocks.
Malrick's words about Rafe sat differently now. Not because she believed them. She wasn't naive enough to take a stranger's version of a man she'd slept with over the man himself. But Malrick hadn't sounded like a liar. He'd sounded like someone telling a different truth, one where the same facts arranged themselves into a different shape.
She thought about Rafe at her kitchen table. The candlelight. The calm. The way he'd said I don't have a name to give you yet, and the careful way he'd held back details while still giving her enough to feel included. She thought about the counter. His hands. The way he'd slept on her floor because whatever happened between them didn't give him the right to her bed.
A good man could still have an agenda. And a protective man could still be protecting his own interests.
She didn't know what Rafe was holding back. But after this morning, she was certain both men were holding something, and the fact that one of them made her pulse race and the other made her skin crawl didn't automatically make either of them honest.
19
RAFE
He was elbow-deep in the hold replacing the last cargo mount when Dex's boots appeared at the top of the ladder.
"Cap." Dex's voice he had slight urgency in it. "You're going to want to come up."
Rafe set the wrench down and climbed the ladder. The afternoon light hit him when he came on deck, warm and clean, the lake flat under a blue sky. A good day.
Malrick Sloane was walking down the dock toward the Ashvane.
He had his hands in his pockets and a smile on his face that Rafe wanted to remove with his fists.
Dex stood at the gangway, arms crossed. Orick had come up from the stern and was watching from the rail. Pell, who had no idea who the man was but could read a room, had set down his sandwich.
Malrick stopped at the foot of the gangway. Looked up at the deck, at Rafe.
"Beautiful afternoon," he said.
"I told you to stay away."
"You told me to stay away from her. You didn't say anything about your ship." The smile widened. "Although I have to say, the repairs are coming along. Rowan does good work. Another few days and you'll be back on the water. Back to your routes, your contracts, your honest living."
"What do you want, Malrick?"
"Just a friendly visit. I was in the area." He rocked on his heels, hands still in his pockets, relaxed as a man at a garden party. "Lovely walk along the river this morning. The western shore is beautiful this time of year. Very peaceful. Until you get close to the water, of course. Then things get a bit more... atmospheric."
Rafe's hands went still at his sides. His wolf had surfaced, hard and fast, pressing against his skin with an intensity that narrowed his vision.
"You went to her."
"I introduced myself. It seemed polite, given that we have mutual interests."
"I told you to stay away from her."
"You made a threat in a tavern. I don't take orders from competitors, Rafe. You know that about me." Malrick tilted his head, studying him with those pale brown eyes. "She's interesting, by the way. More composed than I expected. Strong. Direct. I can see the appeal, beyond the obvious utility."
"Get off my dock."
"It's the town's dock, technically." But he took a half step back, reading the shift in Rafe's posture. Smart enough to know when the line was close. "I just thought you should know that she and I had a productive conversation. About her gift. About the way this town handles it. About you."
"About me."
"Your name came up. Naturally." The smile turned thinner. Sharper. "She had questions. I had answers. Whether shebelieved them is her business, but I will say this, Rafe. For a man who's been sleeping with the woman, you've left a remarkable number of blanks for someone else to fill in."
Dex shifted his weight. A quiet adjustment, the fox positioning himself between the visitor and the ship. Malrick noticed and was amused by it.
"I'm leaving," Malrick said. "Don't worry. I got what I came for." He turned, took two steps up the dock, then stopped and looked back over his shoulder. "She asked me a good question, actually. She asked what I wanted with a stormcaller. You might want to think about what your answer would be. If she ever asks you."
