Dark Tides. Celia Ashley

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      LYRICAL PRESS

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

      www.kensingtonbooks.com

      Copyright

      Lyrical Press books are published by

      Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

      Copyright © 2014 by Celia Ashley

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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      Kensington Publishing Corp.

      119 West 40th Street

      New York, NY 10018

      Attn. Special Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

      Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

      Lyrical Press and the L logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp.

      First Electronic Edition: May 2015

      eISBN-13: 978-1-61650-565-3

      eISBN-10: 1-61650-565-6

      First Print Edition: May 2015

      ISBN-13: 978-1-61650-968-2

      ISBN-10: 1-61650-968-6

      Printed in the United States of America

      Dedication

      To the ladies at PLRW—

      thank you for your sisterhood

      Author’s Foreword

      Although I have a love for the solitude of a barren coastline, the town in which my heroine lives is, of course, fictional, as are all the characters. That is not to say they do not live in my heart, because every character ever set to paper and fleshed out does live there, populating the worlds of my creation. There are those who have not yet been born, as well, but they are—quite literally—for another story.

      Regarding the paranormal element of Dark Tides, I possess some personal experience in this area although not, of course, to the extent to which Meg and Caleb will experience the supernatural in the pages to follow. As with all writers, the ability to take an element of knowledge and expand it to take on another life entirely is our humble gift. I hope the sharing of this gift with you will be entertaining and maybe a little chilling, although ultimately hearts will be warmed.

      As always, I am grateful to my readers for allowing my worlds into theirs. Thank you all.

      Chapter 1

      Swiping a handful of sodden hair from his eyes, Caleb Hunter scrambled upright, stepping away from the water purling around his bare feet. An expanse of sand stretched as far as he could see into a soaking fog, although beyond the crest of dune in front of him, a slate-roofed, decrepit white Victorian rose out of the shimmering haze. The house didn’t look at all familiar. Neither did the beach. Nothing did, no matter what direction he turned.

      With a deep, painful breath, Caleb considered what he did know. His name, for one. Good. He thought he might be thirty-five or thirty-six years old. Somehow, he knew he stood six-foot-one, he had brown eyes, and his nearly black hair badly needed trimming. At this point, it needed a great deal more than that, plastered with salt and sand and a bit of debris hanging in front of his eyes. Yanking a piece of seaweed from above his brow, he tossed the vegetation down, tracking its descent past the length of his naked body. He pivoted in a slow, searching circle. Not a stitch of clothing lay in the sand.

      After a moment, he lifted his hands, turning them palm up and finding them well-formed, calloused across the pad of flesh below his fingers. The skin of his fingertips had wrinkled from long immersion, and fine sand had embedded in the bend of each joint. Salt and sand encrusted the hair on his chafed arms. A black, ugly bruise throbbed on his right forearm. When he flexed his hand, the injury burned deep into the muscle. More sand coated his torso and his groin, clumped in the hair on his legs, and grated in places more private. He planted his feet apart and bent to brush the sand away, discovering this only made the situation worse.

      Dismayed by his lack of recollection, as well as his lack of garments, Caleb closed his eyes and pushed both hands through his hair. Clasping his fingers behind his neck, he frowned when he located a hard knot of tender flesh at the base of his skull. Something had struck him there. He remembered that.

      No, not something. Someone. Someone had tried to kill him.

      Shit.

      That fragment of recall brought no further revelation, but his skin crawled in reaction to a danger he couldn’t fathom, and he checked again to make certain no one else occupied the stretch of beach. Shredding fog revealed a woman approaching him from a short distance. Walking with her head down, she bent every now and then to collect small items from the water’s edge. Not knowing what else to do, Caleb sat in the sand once more, pulling his knees up close to his chin and wrapping his arms around his legs. After ascertaining he’d tucked everything neatly out of view, he waited.

      She stopped little more than a dozen feet from him, bending to pluck at a polished stone to deposit with the array of minuscule treasures on her palm. The wind fluttered the length of a dark blue shawl from her shoulders, dragging the fringed СКАЧАТЬ