Read Online Sanctuary Island by Lily Everett - Free Book Online Page A

reverberated through her chest, and when she gasped, he stroked his tongue along the sensitive flesh of her bottom lip.
    His eyes darkened, and Ella realized this was the first time she’d ever kissed anyone with her eyes open. It was odd, almost too intimate, and some part of her cowered away from the frightening vulnerability of letting him see what he was doing to her.
    But she couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes. She couldn’t look away from him and what he was telling her without words. Whatever Grady was saying, it was in a language Ella didn’t know yet—but with every beat of his heart against hers, she felt herself groping toward understanding.
    A truck engine rattled and coughed, heavy wheels churning up the gravel of the driveway.
    Ella snapped back into reality with an unpleasant sensation of whiplash. Jerking her head back, she blinked into Grady’s intense stare. Her lips were still buzzing and tingling from his kiss. Every part of her body that had been touching his now felt cold and bereft.
    Oh dear Lord. What am I doing?
    A hot flush crawled up her neck, and she squeezed her eyes shut and pulled out of his arms, desperate to escape the unbearable strangeness of this whole episode.
    What had she been thinking? Dreaming up some mystical, spiritual connection with a man she’d known for all of fifteen minutes, letting him save her and then swooning into his arms like some pathetic, helpless damsel offering herself up for a kiss?
    It’s this island, Ella thought hysterically as she put some much needed distance between herself and Grady. Sanctuary Island is doing something to me. It’s turning me into an insane person.
    The loud, dark blue pickup truck rumbled to a stop in front of the house, and the driver’s side door opened. Ella barely had time to smooth a trembling hand over her hair and make sure her shirt was still neatly tucked in before a tall, spare woman stepped down from the truck’s cab.
    The woman shaded her eyes with one hand as she stared up at the porch, and when she smiled, Ella wished she were still standing close enough to Grady for his strong arms to steady her. That smile made the entire world tilt like the D.C. metro train taking a sharp curve.
    That smile. Bright, open, infectious, inviting whoever saw it to share the joke. Ella had seen that smile a thousand times, growing up. But never before on her mother’s face.
    That was Merry’s smile.
    “Well, now.” The woman’s throaty voice, laced with a combination of nerves and amusement, sent a shock of recognition all the way to Ella’s bones. “Looks like Grady is making you feel right at home.”
    Ella gathered the tattered shreds of her dignity around her and drew herself up as straight as she could manage without flinching at the low throb of pain in her stupid ankle. “Yes, he’s been very helpful.”
    And to think, Ella had been sure that when she saw her mother in the flesh for the first time in fifteen years, she’d feel nothing.
    The seething well of messy emotions bubbling in her chest was certainly not nothing. Shocked at herself and taken completely off guard, Ella struggled to find some sort of equilibrium.
    Eyes sharp on Ella’s face, Jo Ellen appeared to be gauging every word carefully. “Ella. It’s been … you look good. Wonderful, really. How are you doing?”
    The stilted question flayed along Ella’s raw nerves like a razor blade. It seemed as if Jo were asking for a lot more than an update on Ella’s health and well-being.
    “I’m fine,” she said, schooling her voice and her expression to show nothing. She didn’t want to give this woman anything, and wow, did she ever need a minute to catch her balance. “You should go inside. Merry is looking forward to seeing you.”
    Next to her, Grady lifted a hand to her shoulder, and the warm, heavy weight of it was an anchor in a stormy sea. Ella straightened her spine and lifted her chin, pathetically grateful for the surprising show of