Face the Fire by Nora Roberts Page A

walked the beach by the cove, because he hadn’t wanted to look beyond it. He wanted Mia, was ready for Mia, and that was that.
    He’d never once entertained the notion that her not wanting him, not loving him, might be the answer.
    He looked toward the mouth of the cave. Maybe it was time to explore that possibility, and face his ghosts. As he walked toward the cave, his heart beat too fast. He stopped, waiting until he’d controlled it, then ducked into the cave’s shadows.
    For a moment, it was filled with sound. Their voices, her laughter. The sighs of lovers.
    And of weeping.
    She’d come here to cry for him. Knowing it, feeling it, sliced him with sharp stabs of guilt.
    He willed them clear, then stood in the silence, with only the backdrop of the surf lapping at the shore.
    When he’d been a boy, the cave had been Aladdin’s, or a bandit’s hideout, or whatever he and Zack and other friends had made it.
    Then he’d no longer been a boy, or not quite a boy, and it had been Mia.
    His legs felt weak as he moved to the far wall, knelt and saw the words he’d carved for her. She hadn’t scored them out. Until that moment, until a fist released its squeezing grip on his heart, he hadn’t realized he’d been afraid she might. That she could. And if she could, that her heart would be lost to him.
    Ever and always.
    He reached out, and light filled the words, seemed to drip from them like tears of gold. He felt in that light everything the boy had felt when he’d carved them, with magic and utter faith.
    It rocked him, staggered him that there had been so much bursting inside that boy that the man he was could still reel from it. And ache for it.
    The power was still there. Why would it be, if it meant nothing? Was it only his will, his wish, that brought back to life what had been?
    They’d loved here, so wrapped up in each other that the world could have ended without them knowing, or caring. They’d shared bodies, and hearts. And magic.
    He could see her now, rising above him, her hair like wildfire and her skin golden. Her arms lifted as she rode them both past reason.
    Or curled against him in sleep with her mouth curved in contentment.
    Or sitting close while they talked, her face alight with excitement, so full of plans. So young.
    Was it his fate to let her go, before he had her again? To be forgiven, then forgotten?
    The idea stabbed at him, left him shaken as he got to his feet. Unable to bear the press of memories any longer, he turned away from them and walked out of the cave.
    Into the sunlight, a flash like fire, where she stood with her back to the sea.

Five
    F or a moment he could only look at her as old memories and old needs tangled with new. Time hadn’t stood still for them. She wasn’t the coltish young girl who would splash headlong into the water with a dare. The woman who watched him now with cool, measuring eyes had a layer of polish and sophistication the girl had lacked.
    The breeze had her hair dancing in fiery spirals. That, at least, hadn’t changed.
    She waited with every appearance of calm as he walked to her, but he neither saw nor felt any welcome.
    “I wondered how long it would take you to come here.” Her voice was low, as measured as her gaze. “I wasn’t sure you’d have the nerve.”
    It was difficult, horribly, to speak rationally when the emotions and images from the cave still churned inside him. “Do you ever come back here?”
    “Why would I? If I want to look at the ocean, I can stand on my own cliffs. If I want the beach, it’s a short walk from my store. There’s nothing here to warrant the trip.”
    “But you’re here now.”
    “Curiosity.” Her head tilted to the side. The dark bluestones at her ears caught the light and glinted. “And did you satisfy your own?”
    “I felt you in there. Felt us in there.”
    It surprised him when her lips curved, almost affectionately. “Sex has strong energy, when it’s done correctly. We never had a problem