LITMIR.BIZ

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port. Boat’s gone now, obviously, not even flinders to be found.”

      “Lucky guy,” Ben muttered, coming behind Glory with a menu for someone who had just come in, and Beth nodded in agreement. A boat that thoroughly destroyed, the captain didn’t usually survive.

      “He’s taken a room at the Blue Anchor for don’t know how long. Paid in cash, too. Sold a nice piece of jewelry over at Rosen Jewelers to pay for it. Hasn’t called anyone since he’s been here, poor boy. Must not have any family. Can you imagine that—” Glory stopped, suddenly aware that Beth would be all too able to imagine that.

      “And I’m a thoughtless idiot, but you knew that already. I’m sorry, baby. Here, have some more coffee and I’ll go make your eggroll.”

      Beth couldn’t take offense, not from Glory. Despite the efforts of her friends, she had been alone for so long, sometimes she forgot what it was like to be part of even a small larger group. Sometimes. Most of the time it didn’t bother her.

      Mostly.

      “She forgot to tell you that he was single,” Ben said, sliding up to the counter and taking right over where his wife left off. “Or at least, no ring and not talking about a wife and kidlets.” He had a mug of coffee in his own hands, except that, unlike Beth, this was probably his sixth or seventh mug since the diner had opened at five that morning. Even when he was outside the diner, there was always a to-go cup of coffee somewhere near Ben.

      “Probably because I’m not interested?” Beth offered, smiling despite herself.

      Ben had known her since she was in the womb, and had been speaking his mind about her personal life since then. “Uh-huh. When was the last time you and Jake made the bed shake?”

      “None of your damn business, you pervert,” she shot back, refusing to blush or blink.

      “I rest my case.” Ben looked too damn pleased with himself for a guy who had just pointed out that her social life sucked. She resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him. Ben was the only person she knew who could make her revert back to being a ten-year-old just by poking her.

      “Here you go.” Glory returned with a platter of eggroll and a side of hash browns. “Benjamin, you leave the girl alone. You know better than to meddle.”

      “He does?” That was news to Beth.

      Glory knocked her husband affectionately on the shoulder. “You’ll come to your senses on your own schedule, or not at all. Nothing we can do to rush it along without making things worse. Now eat. If I know you, you haven’t eaten a thing since, oh, lunch yesterday?”

      She had, actually, but in the aftermath of the storm and her dreams, she wasn’t sure if she could remember what, and Beth suspected Glory would say a meal you didn’t remember didn’t count.

      She ate, and Ben and Glory both left her alone, disappearing back into the chrome-and-white depths of the diner’s kitchen.

      Her own schedule? Schedule for what? On any other day the comment would have washed right over her, but today it stuck at her restlessness like a burr, and itched in a place she couldn’t quite reach. She and Jake might not have been setting the world on fire, but what did that have to do with a schedule?

      And if Glory or Ben made one single comment about biological clocks ticking, she was going to clean their clocks. Of all the things she ever wanted in her life, gotten or not gotten, kids were not on the list. She wasn’t even much for pets, although her mother had fed stray cats in the neighborhood. They had all slipped away in the year after the accident; she had forgotten that, too. So much, she had made herself forget.

      The eggroll satisfied her stomach, but the contentment she had earned slipped away, leaving her feeling irritable and restless all over again. What was here for her, really? Okay, the family house, and people who had known her since her mother went into the hospital to give birth, but … so what? Things that normally made her feel supported and secure now added to her irritation.

      Maybe it was time, finally, to do something different. Maybe that was what this restlessness was about. Maybe. maybe she would paint the house pink. Or black. Black, with hot-pink trim.

      The thought of what her proper New Englander neighbors would say made her feel slightly better, even as she knew she would do no such thing. It wasn’t a Havelock thing to do, to draw attention to herself, or her house. Not that there was any rule against it, or that she had ever been scolded for making a fuss, it just … wasn’t Done. The family had lived generations on this island and managed to stay out of every single history book or pamphlet, after all. Her dad used to pretend to be annoyed by that, but she got a sense of satisfaction from him, too. Like he had managed to pull off some secret trick nobody knew about … It was another thing they had never talked about. She had been too young, too full of herself then, to think her father might have anything she needed to know.

      Not for the first time, she wondered what she might have learned, if they’d lived long enough for her to listen.

      “Be a love, will you?” Ben was back, Glory glaring at him over the transom where the orders were placed. He handed her a brown-wrapped package. “Drop this off for me in town?”

      “Town” was a two-block walk away from the diner. Ben walked the two miles from their cottage to the diner every morning, no matter the weather, to start the kitchen before dawn. He was hardly in need of assistance.

      Beth narrowed her hazel-green eyes at him, but he maintained a look of perfect innocence.

      She studied the address on the package’s label. It was addressed to someone in Rockport, Maine, and was already stamped and ready to go. Ben could have just left it out on the counter for the postman to pick up during his rounds.

      “What game are you playing, Benjamin?” she wondered, and got only a low chuckle from behind the counter. Beth slid the package to the side, away from her coffee, and went to work on her breakfast. If she was going to be choregirl, she was going to be fed, first. Post office was barely open yet, anyway. And it was off-season—not like there would be a line.

      The bedroom Dylan had been shown to on the third floor of the three-story house was large, by his standards, with a bed, a pedestal sink and a bookcase filled with old books. Normally, as a single male, he didn’t stay under a roof unless the weather was particularly bad, and the peaked, plastered ceiling meeting his gaze was not as pretty as the flat, wood-beamed one he and his father had rebuilt after a nor’easter almost destroyed the seal-kin village, but it seemed to suit the building. Wooden flooring was covered by a rug made out of brightly colored bits of cloth. His mother had a rug like that in her own cottage, and for a moment Dylan felt his throat close up with an unfamiliar sensation.

      Loneliness, he identified it, without too much surprise. Well, he was without colony or cousins in this place, it made sense. Not pleasant, but understandable.

      But the knowledge that his mate waited for him somewhere in this village made the sensation pass. Once he found her, they could return home, and all would be right again.

      And surely seal-kin came up on these shores. Maybe he wouldn’t be entirely alone here, during his search?

      With that thought, he pushed open the single window, enjoying the feel of the crisp morning air on his skin, looking out into a beautiful blue sky he’d been too focused before then to notice. No clouds, only the slightest hint of any moisture at all in the air, a fine day for swimming …

      Or finding a mate.

      Single-minded, aren’t you? He could hear his mother’s voice, laughing at him. He really should have said something to her, at least, before he left. But nothing to be done for it now. She would at least know—or suspect—where he had gone, and why. He had always been given to acting on impulse.

      Dylan took off the sneakers and shucked the clothing the nurse had given him, dropping them on the bed and luxuriating in the feel of the air through the open window on his skin.

      The pull was getting stronger, minute by

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