Read Online For the Taking by Lilian Darcy - Free Book Online Page A

you keep bringing the sea into our conversation. You want me to go back to Pacifica and I’ve said that I—” Can’t, she almost said “—won’t. What else could be important enough to keep you away from the place, when you’ve told me that the situation there still isn’t stable?”
    He looked across at her for a moment, the wide brim of the hat shadowing his brilliant eyes, then said, “Okay. You’re right. It’s time to say it. And it’s quite simple. I want your quarter of the key. I thought you might have guessed.”
    “Key? What key?”
    “I’ve noticed you’re not wearing it, but you were when you left Pacifica, and you must have it somewhere. Okeana had it strung onto a necklace. Cyria would never have let you lose it.”
    She frowned at him. “I’ve never had a key from Pacifica. Or a necklace.”
    “Okeana wanted you to wear it always,” Loucan said, persisting in spite of her denials.
    His thought processes seemed sluggish to him this morning. Maybe it was that eucalyptus tang in the air.
    Or maybe not.
    He hadn’t been sleeping well since he’d found Lass. Between his impatience to get back to Pacifica and his realization that he had to take things slowly with Lass, his nerves were stretched tightly.
    “But I don’t have it,” Lass said. “I know nothing about a Pacifican key.”
    Her blank face disconcerted him. Phoebe, Kai and Saegar had each been wearing their portion of the key like a talisman, even though the twins hadn’t had any inkling about the significance of the unusual piece of jewelry. Lass, on the other hand, the only one of Okeana’s children old enough to remember leaving Pacifica, claimed not to know anything about it.
    Unless her apparent innocence was a pretense… Loucan wondered. Mistrust could cut both ways. So far he’d spent all his energy trying to overcome her doubts and fears. He’d been so busy trying to gain her trust, he hadn’t questioned whether he had any reason not to trust her in return. A flash of suspicion darted into his mind. Could she possibly be in touch with Joran?
    There were so many contradictions to what he’d seen in her so far. Thirty-three years old, and so innocent she didn’t recognize when a man was aroused? Able to surf joyously among a school of dolphins, yet so guilty about her need for the sea that she spent half her life fighting to pretend to herself that it didn’t exist? Maybe all her fear and doubt was a performance, designed to throw him off.
    She had to know about the key…didn’t she?
    Then he remembered another, long-ago line of Cyria’s. “For your own good, my little princess.” Another possibility occurred to him.
    “Cyria could have kept it for you,” he said aloud. “Kept it secret, hidden among her things. She might have taken the necklace from you without telling you of its significance, and in time you forgot that it even existed. But one of you must have had it. Must still have it.”
    “No, Loucan.” Lass shook her head, sounding very sure of her ground.
    He kept on pushing. “It’s in the shape of a quarter circle, about two inches across. She died nearly thirteen years ago, isn’t that right?”
    “Yes. When I was twenty.”
    “And she left you all her possessions, in her will?”
    “Yes. I was astonished,” Lass said.
    She frowned and shook her head, and Loucan watched the way memory unfolded on her face. A tinge of pink came into her cheeks, her green eyes seemed to darken, her lips parted a little and the tip of her tongue touched her upper lip for a moment. For a woman who had spent so much time and effort on hiding who she really was, her emotions showed very clearly. Or was that something new, something to do with him?
    Milo quickened his pace and Loucan held him back so that he could still see Lass’s face as she talked. The sun caught the side of her jaw, emphasizing its strong yet graceful line. The air was filled with the scent of the Australian bushland and the percussive