Chapter Eighty-Nine

Safiya

I woke up alone.

But this time, my ghost had stayed the night.

Or what I had remembered of it before I had fallen asleep in his arms.

The memory of his hands skimming my body as he had undressed me, the kisses he had rained down across my breasts, my thighs, my face, the way he had laid me in bed, it made me shiver.

The sheets smelled like him. There was a warm fluttering low in my stomach. I had not clutched a phone all night, and this was not eight years ago. It was not even eight weeks ago. I was not avoiding texts or waiting for a call that would not come, and I was not leaving my phone unattended in case a text did come.

I also was not wondering what it would feel like to have a dominant ghost of a man touch me in ways I had only ever dreamed of.

Heat flushed across my entire body, and a sudden pulse throbbed between my legs as I heard his commanding voice in my head.

"You're beautiful, and you're mine."

Stretching my legs, trying to ignore the aching bundle of nerves he had ignited last night, I glanced toward the glass slider doors.

A smile spread across my face.

One of the sliders nearest to the bed had been pushed open a few inches as if in invitation.

Inhaling past the scent of him that was still lingering on the bedding, I took in the gentle morning breeze as the sound of the waves called.

My smile held as I got up and pulled on a chemise before I crossed the room to the wall of glass overlooking the pool and ocean beyond. Pushing the slider all the way back, I stepped onto the lanai that was already warm underfoot and looked across the yard to the white sands that fronted the property.

No Grayson.

Maybe I should have been more alarmed that he was nowhere in sight, but this was the part of him that was Ghost. Eight years of never knowing when or if he would show up had more than initiated me to his random comings and goings, but this morning something else entirely was happening. Anticipation was wildly flittering across my nerves, making it near impossible to hold back a smile. I could not remember a time I felt this light, this free.

Maybe when it was just me and the sheep, far from the village, and they were all contentedly grazing.

But even those memories paled in comparison to this.

I missed the animals and my anne , but I did not miss the constant threat I had not realized I had lived under until I had been in this house for a fortnight. I woke in the morning and realized I had slept all night without waking several times to listen for all of the dangers that had been my daily life—the bad men, the protests of the sheep being taken or moved, the sound of a vehicle, which was never a harbinger of good after the sun set.

I had not had an idyllic childhood, nor an easy one.

That first time I had seen that vast ocean, it was not only its beauty that had struck me. I had also seen boats and ships, both bobbing on the white-capped swells and cutting through them, and I had realized in that moment that there was an entire world that was living, breathing, thriving beyond my small existence.

But I had not understood how true that realization was until after I had slept through an entire night in this house perched on an ocean far away from my upbringing.

A house he had brought me to.

A home he had made possible for me.

Now, the American SEAL who had come for me eight years ago, who had killed for me, who had landed a plane in an ocean while wounded, the warrior who had saved my life, he wanted to be my husband.

In every way that mattered.

And I wanted to be his wife.

With that thought, I walked back into the bedroom and saw what I had missed when I had woken up.

My bikini was lying carefully folded on the end of the bed.

Folded how he had neatly folded my favorite dress that had gotten stained with his blood.

I glanced toward his clothes from last night that he'd casually tossed on the lounge chair.

Speaking without words, my SEAL, my ghost, my protector, he had left clear instructions.

Quickly pulling off the chemise and putting on the bikini, leaving the top knot for last, I tipped my head over to get my hair out of the way as I walked into the en suite while tying the strings around my neck. But when I flipped my long hair back, I froze.

In between the two sinks, in the middle of the counter, were my sunglasses and the delicate gold necklace, perfectly laid out, with its two entwined hearts shining up at me.

Last night, worried about damaging the chain while I slept or getting my hair tangled in it, I had taken it off and placed it on the nightstand.

"Message received," I quietly murmured as I put the necklace on.

Then I rushed through brushing my hair, but when I looked in my drawer for a hair tie, there were none. No elastics, no clips, no ties.

Not one.

I glanced in the mirror and what I saw reflected back almost startled me.

I was truly smiling.

I did not know if I had ever seen myself smile. Or witness a flush on my cheeks that was not from the sun. Growing up, we did not have indoor plumbing, let alone a bathroom with a mirror.

Shaking my head at Grayson's antics, I glanced one more time at the woman with long, thick, dark brown hair and even darker eyes who was wearing a shy smile and a gifted bikini that had been taken off me twice before.

Flutters of awareness swirled low in my stomach and spread as two gold hearts glinted back at me.

With hope in my soul, I grabbed the sunglasses and left the house through the side entrance that led to the beach.

I was halfway down the path that would take me to the sand when I spotted it.

In the middle of one of the paver stones was a perfect seashell. Sun-bleached and curled in a distinctive pattern, once home to a small creature that had thrived in the ocean, it lay carefully placed in the exact center of the pathway.

Smiling again, I reached down to pick it up, but I did not take it back to the side of the house where I had started a seashell garden of the prettiest or most interesting shells from my almost daily beach walks. Small, large, broken, unblemished, all shapes and colors—I was not uniform in my choice and collection of them. My only criterion was that it be just one. Each walk, I chose a single shell.

The best shell of that day.

Then I brought it back and placed it in what I now thought of as my picture garden of walks. I did not think about why I was doing it when I had taken that first beach walk. And back then, I had only chosen one shell because anything more seemed avaricious. But with each new dawn, on every new walk, that single shell, that latest addition to my garden, it became so much more than creating a picture of beauty I could see from the kitchen window.

It became a reminder.

I was still the girl who had seen the wonderment of the ocean for the first time.

But now I was living it.

Glancing down at the ivory banded tulip shell in my hand, I closed my fingers around it, but I did not take it back to my picture garden.

I rushed out to the beach to find the cunning and enigmatic ghost of a man who had forged a path to my heart by leaving me a trail to his.