Storm Surge by Celia Ashley

from the stone, shoving her hair off her face. Her ponytail had come loose in a mass of tangled curls. He reached for her hand.
    “Oh, God,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t—I need to go.”
    He grabbed her fingers before she got away. “No, Paige, you don’t need to go anywhere. I don’t want you to go anywhere.” Recognizing the truth in his last statement nearly floored him. A couple of deep breaths were in order. “Come inside and sit for a minute. We’ll go get a few things from your place that you might want for the night. You can have the couch. Or we can finish what we’ve started.”
    She shook her head. “Not tonight.”
    “That’s fine. It’s up to you. But you’re not staying at the cottage. There’s no guarantee of safety there.”
    “And you’re sure there’s no one—that I haven’t just—that—”
    He smiled. “I’ve never seen you at such a loss for speech. Not since the night I met you, anyway. And I’m positive. There’s no one.” His heart contracted with a hollow, remembered pain when he spoke those words.
    Leaving Paige on the sofa, looking like an animal ready to chew her paw off to escape a trap, Liam climbed the stairs to the upper hallway to shut down his computer. He hesitated at the attic door. Twice last night, while he’d been working, he thought he’d heard a weighted step on the timbers. He hadn’t gone up, as he’d gotten used to these occurrences. Now, in light of what had happened to Paige, he figured the attic warranted an examination.
    Liam yelled down the stairs for Paige to help herself to whatever she might like from the fridge. He received a mumbled reply that at least assured him she hadn’t left. Reaching for the attic doorknob, he paused to eye the heavy doorstop in his office, gauging its use as a weapon. After a moment’s debate, he picked it up.
    Hefting the weight in his hand, he understood his fists, his strength, might not be enough because sometimes people had other plans, ways and means of doing bodily harm that had nothing to do with the limits of human endurance. And he feared that the man who had been in Paige’s cottage, who had followed her north and likely back again, was such a person.
    * * * *
    Paige returned to the couch with water in a tumbler. She sat, gazing at the lowering night through the bow window. Suddenly the lamp on the end table clicked on. She jumped, splashing liquid on her knee. Spotting a timer hooked up to the cord, she relaxed and sat back, taking a sip from the glass. Her actions, the room around her, were reflected in the curved expanse of the window. She turned the lamp off. Anyone could be out there, able to see in. She’d rather sit in the dark.
    Liam was taking a lot longer upstairs than she’d expected. Recalling those few heated minutes outside, the abandon with which she threw herself at him, her underwear’s condition right now, Paige vacillated between longing and a niggling anxiety. But she wouldn’t go back and undo it. Despite her babbling behavior immediately following, what had occurred was exactly what she’d needed. She only hoped Liam’s long absence wasn’t due to regret.
    Five minutes later, she heard him coming down the stairs with a quiet, hesitant tread. She bit her lip. In spite of his ability to hold himself utterly still, she’d noted his energetic locomotion from place to place. He liked to pound up the steps two at a time. Perhaps he’d noted the darkened living room and hoped she’d gone. Well, no reason to keep him in suspense now that he was nearing the bottom. She turned the light back on.
    The stairs were empty. Paige shot up from the couch.
    “Liam? Liam! Where are you?”
    He gave a shout from somewhere up above. A scant minute later, his footsteps sounded across the ceiling and down the stairs to the first landing. “Sorry,” he said, “I was having a quick look in the attic.” He came down and crossed the floor to pull the drapes.
    “I thought I heard