"Someone has to do it." Elle leaned back and closed her eyes. "And I'm really good at it." Her head pounded and her chest felt broken into pieces. She could feel the presence of her sisters as they joined with her to hold Libby close. She had taken on the grave injuries of another and all they could do was shoulder part of the pain to give Libby's body a chance to try to heal.

"What is it between you and Jackson?" Jonas asked curiously.

"Absolutely nothing." Elle frowned. "Jonas? Who was the man that was treated just before Irene went crazy? Do you know how severe his injuries were?"

"Tyson Derrick. He pulled Drew off the cliff. They were being lifted up to the top of the cliffs when something went wrong with his safety harness; he fell about thirty feet into the rocks. Dr. Shayner said he was in bad shape, head trauma, internal injuries." He paused and glanced at her in the rearview mirror. "If he was that bad, how the h.e.l.l was he watching everything through the gla.s.s? d.a.m.n it, she healed him, didn't she? Sometimes you girls set my teeth on edge."

"Why would Libby take such a chance? She's normally very careful. I mean she might have tried to take the edge off, but to take on the injuries, that's too risky, not just to her, but to all of us and she knows better."

"I don't understand any of you, so don't be asking me."

"You love us," Elle said with complete confidence.

He ignored that. It might be true but he wasn't admitting anything out loud. "How did you know Irene was going to attack Libby?" Before Elle could answer, he held up one hand. "Forget I asked. I don't want to know." He parked his car as close to the Drake home as possible.

The Drake house sat at the top of the cliffs, the rising tower and captain's walk giving a breathtaking view of the ocean below. Jonas carried Libby up the stairs and over the covered porch to the living room where her other sisters were waiting.

"Take her to her room, Jonas," Sarah, the eldest, advised. "We can make her more comfortable there. Hannah says this might take some time."

Jonas watched as Libby's sisters surrounded the bed. He could feel the surge of power as they joined hands. He had known them all of their lives and they still never failed to astound him with their combined power. Libby was the healer, the compa.s.sionate Drake. He couldn't imagine a world without Libby in it and right now he could barely detect her breathing. He stifled the urge to feel for her pulse and stepped out of the way.

He had watched over the Drake sisters for as long as he could remember. It wasn't always easy and more often than not, they were aggravated with him, accusing him of being a bully. But they always took risks in dangerous situations. He scowled down at Libby. Like now. He had the urge to shake her, shake all of them, for putting themselves continually in harm's way.

Sarah sighed. "Jonas. Go downstairs and make tea."

"Why? If you want tea, all Hannah has to do is wave her arms around and a cup will come floating." He sounded more sarcastic than he intended, but the feminine power in the house always threw him.

"We're trying to work here," she said, "and you're broadcasting your disapproval loud and clear."

"I don't broadcast. I'm the normal one," he insisted. "Is she going to be all right?"

Six pairs of eyes bored into him. He held up his hands in surrender. "I'm going to make tea. What kind? You have a tea shop down there. I wouldn't want to make the one with crushed lizard tongue in it."

"The canister is on the sink waiting for you," Sarah said. "And of course Libby will be all right. We wouldn't allow anything else."

Chapter Four.

LIBBY laid her head against the back of the chair and stared at the shimmering blue of the sea. There was something incredibly soothing about the ebb and flow of waves and the white foam capping the crests far out in the ocean. The continual cry of gulls and the fresh smell of the coast always lightened the sadness she couldn't quite shake. The weather was cool but there was little wind and it felt good to sit in the sun and listen to the surf.

She pulled the thin wrap around her legs and kept her eyes on the sparkling water. She had been so careless of her life, and worse, of her sisters' lives. Healing Tyson Derrick's head injuries had been criminally stupid. She couldn't remember the events leading up to touching him. She couldn't remember most of what happened afterward. For nearly two weeks she'd lain dangerously ill. Without the help of her sisters, she probably would have died, or worse, been left in a vegetative state. As it was, her head still throbbed if she moved around too much and she was often sick to her stomach.

Sarah had tried to talk to her about why she had risked her life, but Libby honestly didn't know. It was frightening. She'd lost ten days of her life. Gone. No memories. She'd never experienced such a blackout before. Elle had simply told her sisters and Libby that the compulsion to heal Tyson had been beyond Libby's ability to resist.

A shadow fell across her and she looked up. Her heart began to race and her mouth went dry. The book she'd been holding slipped from her fingers to the sand. "Ty." His name came out a croak. He was the last person she expected to see.

Libby was grateful for her dark gla.s.ses and instantly switched her gaze to the ocean. Where were her sisters? Why had she told them she wanted to be left alone for a while? She didn't feel up to facing him, she felt fragile and near tears and guilty as sin.

Tyson stared down at her for a long time. He had no idea why she affected him the way she did, but just the sight of her always changed something lonely inside of him and made him feel strangely alive. He had tried to see her numerous times over the last week and a half. No one had ever captured his interest the way Libby Drake had managed to do. Everything about her intrigued him.

One time, on the university campus, he'd seen her rush to the side of a young woman who had been hit by a car. He had watched as the woman went from writhing in pain, to a few b.l.o.o.d.y scratches, while Libby had been hospitalized for two days. Everyone thought Libby had been the one hit by the car. The real victim had been shielded by the car, so he couldn't really tell if she'd been hurt bad, but Libby had believed it.

That was the day he had begun to suspect Libby Drake needed help. Her family had brainwashed her into thinking she could heal people. The memory of the victim had faded until he could only remember the agony on Libby's face. Someone had to save her, to convince her that magic didn't exist. She was smart and intriguing and yet so caught up in the legacy of her con artist family she actually took on the symptoms of a reputed victim much like a false pregnancy.

He drew up the wooden chair beside her. Close. Allowing the armrests to touch. "Do you mind if I sit down and visit with you for a few minutes?"

Libby twisted her fingers in the thin wrap. "How did you get down here? The beach is private."

He didn't wait for her to give him permission, seating himself beside her so that his arm brushed hers. Libby shifted a little away from him in her chair and pulled up her legs to make herself smaller.

"I spotted you from up above. Did your sisters tell you I came by to see you a few days ago? They said you were ill."

"It's nothing serious." Could she sound any more stilted? Wasn't Elle supposed to have telepathy? And where was Sarah? Sarah knew things, didn't she? Didn't she know Libby was in trouble? What was the point of having sisters if they didn't rush to her aid? "How are you?"

"I've got a few broken ribs and sternum. Ripped cartilage, torn muscle, that sort of thing, but my head is in one piece."

"You got Drew off the rocks and saved his life," Libby said. Her sisters had been forced to repeat the events leading up to her injury numerous times before she could retain the knowledge. She didn't remember the events firsthand and felt vulnerable discussing anything to do with that day at the hospital.

"Do you realize the tide isn't as low or as high as it normally is?"

A small frown appeared. Libby had absolutely no idea where he was going with the conversation. The jump between the accident and the tide sent a small pulse of frustration ricocheting through her. She was trying to appear normal even though her brain was still recovering from last week's trauma. "It's a neap tide," she replied.

"Exactly." He sounded like a pleased professor. "When the moon is in the first or last quarter, the sun's gravitational pull is in a perpendicular direction of that of the moon. The sun pulls water away from areas of high to areas of low tide, resulting in lower high tides and higher low tides. That's how we get neap tides."

Up close he was even better-looking than at a distance-and up close he fl.u.s.tered her, but if he wanted to play science geek and start spouting little science facts, she could match him fact for fact. "Absolutely fascinating. Did you know that when oceans tides are at their highest they're called spring tides?"

A slow smile softened the hard edges of his face. "I do believe that was Libby Drake, her royal highness, putting me in my place." He liked it, too. He liked that she could match him fact for fact. His mind just threw random things out and most people stared at him as if he'd grown two heads. Libby stuck her chin out and threw facts back in his face. She had the same data stored at her fingertips as he did. Somehow that made him feel less of a freak.

He held out his hand. "Come on, let's go for a walk."

Libby stared at his hand, horrified. "I'm still a little weak." He was continually throwing her off balance.

He caught her wrist and exerted enough pressure to bring her to her feet. "I think I can manage to keep you upright." He looked down at her from his superior height. "You need to gain a little weight, Drake. You aren't anorexic, are you?"

She sucked in her breath, feeling her blood pressure rising alarmingly. She hated the fact that she was small. She would have loved to use the word pet.i.te, but she was just plain small. She was a stick, a miniature Hannah without the b.r.e.a.s.t.s. And all her life, never had that fact bothered her more than when she was around Ty, the quietly handsome-in-a-nerdy-genius-way boy she'd had a crush on since the first day he'd entered her seventh-grade cla.s.sroom. She hadn't even seen him in several years and here she was, self-conscious all over again.

"I'm virtually overwhelmed by your extraordinary compliments, Derrick," Libby said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She would not-would not-let him see how his casual dismissal of her feminine qualities still had the power to hurt her. "A woman always loves to hear she looks starved and unhealthy, thank you."

She made the mistake of looking up at him, her gaze locking with his.

He was watching her with a look she'd never seen in a man's eyes before, at least not when those eyes were directed at her. He looked hungry, like a predatory wolf. She swallowed hard and turned her face back toward the ocean. She just couldn't look at him and be rational. Everything he said annoyed her. He was the only person in the world who could get her riled, yet for some logic-defying m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic reason she craved him. She always had.

"I never said you looked bad, Drake. It was merely an observation and genuine concern over your health. I hadn't realized you were so sensitive." He slid his fingers over her wrist to capture her hand, tugging until she came with him. "I noticed the paint on your house. It's very unusual."

She blinked up at him, more fl.u.s.tered than ever, trying desperately to follow the conversation. Her head was beginning to hurt. "The paint? Oh. The paint. What is it with men and paint?"

"Pardon me?"

"Damon, Sarah's fiance, was quite interested in the paint as well. He never got around to examining it."

"Really? The first thing I did was take a sample of it."

"You chipped the paint off of our house?" Libby nearly stopped in her tracks, but he kept walking as if it were the sanest thing in the world to peel paint off other people's houses.

"Of course. Don't you want to know if an ancestor of yours found a preservative that would benefit the entire world? Even if he chose to keep it to himself to defraud the townspeople into believing it was magic, you would have the chance to set the record straight."

Libby felt a powerful rush of emotion so uncommon to her that it actually took a second or two to identify. Anger. Genuine, riled-up, I'm-so-not-a-good-girl anger. She yanked her hand away from him. "First of all, Derrick, most of my ancestors who lived in Sea Haven were women, so it's far more likely one of them found the preservative, if there is one, not a man. Women actually are quite capable of mastering science you know."

He didn't look at all impressed by her outburst. He reached out to tuck a strand of dark hair behind her ear, fingers lingering on her face. "As I recall, for the most part, you were nearly as good as me in the sciences."

"For the most part?" she repeated through clenched teeth. "I totally kicked your b.u.t.t the second semester at Harvard."

"I don't think so, Drake, you never even came close. That aside, the preservative is important. Paint in the salt air never lasts long. Did you know that the ancient Egyptians used varnishes and enamels based on beeswax, gelatin and clay at least as early as 3000 B.C.?"

"Fascinating," Libby said through her clenched teeth. "Did you know the druids of ancient times also knew how to produce durable protective coatings using ox blood and lime?"

He smiled down at her, not noticing her tone. "I remember when I was a kid and Sam first pointed you and your sisters out to me. You all awed me. The Drake sisters, the royalty of Sea Haven. You were all so beautiful. I wondered how you got your hair to be so shiny and why you were always laughing. It was a long time ago and your hair is still shiny and you still always laugh when you're with your sisters."

For a moment Libby thought the ground had shifted, she was suddenly so unsteady on her feet. She was ready to put him on a rocket to Mars and then he had to go and say something like that. "You thought of us as royalty?"

"Everyone thinks of you as royalty."

"Oh, right. That's just what Irene was thinking when she bashed me over the head with her purse. Elle told me she had a picnic smacking me around." Amus.e.m.e.nt crept into her voice.

The small note of laughter, of shared fun, startled him. There had always been awkwardness between them. His mouth softened, began to curve into a smile, but her choice of words. .h.i.t him. Once again he brought her to a halt, pulling off her dark gla.s.ses and looking her straight in the eye. "You don't remember her hitting you with her purse? Your sister had to tell you about it? Did she give you a concussion? Is that what's been wrong with you? d.a.m.n, Libby, you should have said so. You should be sitting down."

"I'm perfectly fine. And I don't want to talk about that." She took the sungla.s.ses back and pushed them onto her nose, frowning at him.

Ty had a very odd and disturbing compulsion to lean down and kiss the frown right off her face. He hesitated, not wanting to further annoy her, but weighing whether he should try insisting she return to her chair.

"You either have a little bite of disapproval in your voice when you talk to me or you get that frown," he said instead. He rubbed the pad of his thumb over her lips as if he could erase her expression. Her breath was warm on his skin, her lips soft. His stomach tightened and his groin hardened in instant reaction.

"I do not," Libby denied, but even she heard the note of disapproval. "What do you expect when you do things like that?" She had to pull away from him. That light touch, oddly intimate, set her pulse racing. She was just too darned old to act like a ninny just because he was really gorgeous. Libby pressed her lips together to keep from blurting out something ridiculous, like "shut up and just let me stare."

"Like what?"

Now he sounded amused and she clenched her teeth together. "Did you come here just to make me crazy?" She suppressed a groan and the need to cover her face. He always managed to reduce her to an idiot within five minutes of conversation. She was just too aware of him as a man. She could feel his body heat, or maybe it was her own body heat. Her temperature was definitely rising. He was definite bad boy material and try as she might, Libby was not bad girl material.

"Do I make you crazy?" He sounded pleased.

This time she took off her gla.s.ses to glare at him. "You're doing it deliberately, aren't you?"

His smile fascinated her. She hadn't realized he could smile. Most of the time he looked focused and brainy, oblivious or arrogant and too superior for words. Now that she'd seen his smile she was really gone. Libby shoved her gla.s.ses back on and tried not to be affected by his looks. It was so shallow. She wasn't a shallow person, was she? Because he just wasn't all that nice.

He took her hand and continued walking down the beach to the tide pools without answering her. He kept her off balance and instead of taking charge and ending things, Libby found herself content to walk with him. His stocky body made her feel ridiculously feminine, something else she wasn't going to admit to her sisters. She didn't hold hands. She couldn't remember holding a man's hand, but she liked walking with him, the feel of his fingers wrapped tightly around hers. He stopped to examine a crab and tucked her hand against his chest.

"Hermit crabs are fascinating. The right claw is larger and a different shape than the left. They use it for protection and holding food while the left is used for eating." A mischievous grin crossed his face and lit his brilliant blue eyes. "The male drags the female around with him using the smaller claw, much like a caveman." He twisted his fingers in Libby's silky hair. "All the while he fights off other males with his large claw, holding on to his mate until she's ready to molt and becomes receptive and fertile." He tugged experimentally on Libby's hair.

"Fortunately, I'm not a female crab," she said.

"You're crabby," he pointed out. He allowed the strands of silky hair to slip through his fingers.

Her heart jumped. "I actually had two hermit crabs as pets and they must have both been males because they didn't drag each other around. They were named Toothbrush and Toothpaste. They escaped and went on a suicide mission right off the deck. I cried for a week."

His eyebrow shot up. "You cried over a crab?"

"Well, of course, they were my pets."

"You aren't normal, Libby," he said with a faint smile, his tone affectionate.

"I suppose not. Everyone teased me." She pointed to the tide pool. "I've moved on to starfish, but I leave them in their own environment."

"Starfish?" He gave a little sigh. "That isn't saying much for your taste. Starfish are carnivorous. They eat whatever they get their feet on. They flip their stomachs outside their mouth and digest prey from the inside out. Only after the animal is completely digested do they pull their stomachs back inside."

"Ew. You sound like Abigail. Leave me some illusions."

Tyson laughed aloud and it startled him. He didn't laugh. He pretended to laugh at appropriate times for the sake of his cousin, one of his small concessions to social niceties, but it was never genuine. Libby actually made him laugh for real. She fascinated him. She was a woman born into a family of con artists. Just knowing that should be reason enough to stay away from her, but he never could. She was just so... so nice. So real. Over the years he'd come to believe she wasn't part of her family's con, but was, instead, a victim of the very people who should have loved her, just as he was to some extent. Without the influence of his aunt, he doubted if he could even function in society at all.

"You're getting sunburned. I think we need to get you into the shade."

"I used sunscreen."

"Well, your nose is getting red."

"Great." Of course her nose had to be burned. She had such fair skin that every time she removed her sungla.s.ses she looked like a racc.o.o.n. Her gla.s.ses were staying firmly in place. "I'm not certain there's much shade on this part of the beach." For some silly reason she wanted to stay in his company just a little while longer, even though she knew she should get out of the sun.

He took her hand and gently tugged until she followed him back to the chairs. "Where's your sunscreen?" He picked both chairs up as if they weighed nothing and moved them against the wall of the cliff in the shade. "Sit down here. You really need sunscreen but maybe this will do."

She was not going to have her nose be white, covered in zinc while she sat there talking to him. "I left it up at the house."

He folded his arms across his chest. He had great arms, all rippling muscle. He was a biochemist. How did he get arms like that? Libby bit her lip to keep from sighing. She needed darker gla.s.ses so she could just get away with staring. If he kept his mouth shut, she could fantasize and then life would be great again. If only he wouldn't talk.

"I saw the brain scans of my head after the accident."

Libby stiffened. All at once she was totally tense, leery of the real reason he must have sought her out. There was belligerence in his voice. She remained silent and pinned her gaze on the foaming surf.

"Shayner tells me I had major head trauma. Fractures, swelling of the brain, blood clots, that sort of thing. Basically, I had scrambled eggs for a cerebellum."

"Interesting."

"He said I should be a vegetable. Instead, I'm walking around with a smashed chest and a few broken ribs."

"I see."