Free Sea of Love: A Bayberry Island Novel by Susan Donovan Page B

was too loud. She was washed away in a sea of sensation. But her eyes held his in the on-and-off light, and she saw the tension drain from his expression. She wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light, but she swore a shadow of emotion fell over his face.
    She had no time to dwell on it. Ash somehow rolled off his knees, laid her on her back, and put them right back to where the whole thing began—Rowan trapped beneath him, Ash’s hands in her hair, both of them on the edge of doing something they could never take back.
    But this time, Ash was buried deep inside her, controlling the movement of both their bodies with his physical strength and the force of his will.
    Rowan closed her eyes. Nothing existed but the fierce heat of their need. She allowed him to carry her away and pull her under.
    *   *   *
     
    Mona Flynn blew out the match and dropped it, half incinerated and still smoking, into the Mother’s Day clamshell ashtray Rowan had made for her in second grade. Yet another clap of lightning was followed by yet another growl of thunder. The flash momentarily illuminated the faces of the eight Mermaid Society members assembled in her small living room.
    “This is a pretty bad one,” said Abigail Foster, stating the obvious, as usual.
    Izzy McCracken put her flip-flopped feet up on the center coffee table. “Good thing the council decided to take down the giant starfish. With all this wind, we could have had another decapitation.”
    Polly Estherhausen groaned. “You aren’t talking about that man from Arkansas, are you? Because
he wasn’t decapitated.
We’ve been over this a hundred times.”
    “Well, he did have to have several stitches.”
    “A couple stitches do not a severed head make.”
    Abigail Foster pulled off her wet wig and threw it to the center of the table with a flourish. It landed with the thud of a lifeless animal and smelled almost as musty. “Can we stop arguing about whether or not that tourist’s head was cut off? It was twenty years ago, people! It’s time to move on.”
    “I could not agree more.” Izzy crossed her arms under her shells and pouted like a grumpy toddler.
    “Pass the merlot,” Polly said.
    “Let’s move along, shall we?” Mona was just as wet and irritable as everyone else in the room, yet she couldn’t let it show. As president, it was her responsibility to keep them on point. The official festival kickoff was now a little more than twelve hours away, and the Mermaid Society had actual business to attend to. She grabbed her indexed three-ring binder and placed it with a solid thud on top of her knees.
    “Day one—the parade. We must be at the judging stand by one p.m. and not a minute later. I’ve received confirmation that all the floats were garaged before the storm, so the order is as we originally planned.”
    “Thank God.” Abigail rolled her eyes. “It was like pulling teeth trying to get even two dozen entries this year. Enthusiasm is way down.”
    “It’s all this resort bullshit.” Layla O’Brien’s eyes widened and she slapped a hand over her mouth, but the words were already out. She stared at Mona.
    “Oh Jesus.” Polly poured herself a giant glass of wine.
    “I only meant—”
    “It’s all right.” Mona closed the binder with a sigh, taking a moment to gather her patience. She couldn’t blame people for thinking her position was nothing but stubborn folly. For more than a year now she’d been called a control freak. A bitch. An idiot. And because she’d only married into the Flynn family and wasn’t born and raised on island, some of the people she’d counted as friends for nearly forty years had taken to calling her an interloper, an outsider, and a party crasher. Or worse.
    Mona took it in stride. She knew that by refusing to negotiate with the developers, she had become the defender of all that was good and honorable. It wasn’t always fun and games standing by one’s principles. Which was all right by her. Not