ex-lover—shot Ann a wild expression, his eyes wide and eyebrows high. The moonlight caught the black of his irises. “I’ve never seen her before in my life.”
Shock had been protecting her, Ann realized, but that cocooning layer fell gently away now, leaving her naked and raw. Without a word, she stood and slid the straps of her dress over her shoulders, the surf pounding in her ears. Or was it her heart? Not until she tried for a third time to get the silky straps to stay where she put them did she understand her hands were shaking.
“Oh, my God.” Her words trembled. She’d been sleeping with a married man? Certainly an attached man. “I just—” She wrapped her arms around her chest, wanting to hold onto something solid. “Oh, my God.”
“Ann, listen.” Daniel tried to get her attention, touching her shoulder, but he was lost to her. She jerked away from him like his hands were poisonous, as poisonous as a rattlesnake.
“Ann, listen to me.”
The flitter of hope that he could explain this, that he could make her believe his wife wasn’t real, lived—but only for a millisecond. “Go away, Daniel.” Her voice had no emotion. “Leave me alone.”
“Ann!”
She straightened the bodice of her dress as the wind whipped the skirt. “I want no part of this. Or you. I can’t believe you dragged me into this. You sullied me—and yourself.” She looked at the resolute woman standing in the sand and added, “And her.”
“I don’t know her,” the bastard insisted. Ann saw a shifty look in his expression, a momentary flash of anger that he quickly mastered. The subsequent tightening around his eyes made him look like a cornered dog. “I’ve never seen her before this.”
“I don’t believe you. And I don’t want to see you again. I—”
“You don’t know me?” the woman said to Daniel. She put her hands on her hips, pointing the spotlight downward into the sand so that it highlighted her black sandals. Some weird part of Ann’s mind saw that the woman’s toenail polish, a deep purple, was chipped. “We’ve been together for more than ten years, and you don’t know me?”
“Listen.” He took a step toward her, his muscles tight. “Get out of here before I call the cops.”
The woman backed away, clearly unnerved. A breeze whipped through the night and blew her dark hair into her face. She might have followed them here, but Ann didn’t blame her for moving away from Daniel now. The tension in his shoulders, the hard set of his face, gave him a feral look.
“That’s right.” He took another step toward her. “Run home. Leave us alone.”
“I won’t leave—”
Daniel didn’t let her finish. “We don’t want you.” He took another step closer. “We don’t need you.”
The woman took a third step back and stumbled in the sand, dropping her gear. The spotlight flung crazy shadows over the dunes as it hit the sand, hurting Ann’s eyes.
“Stop it.” The stumble seemed to have bolstered something in her, solidified her resolve to see this confrontation to the end. “I’m not in the wrong. You are.”
“No one believes you.” Daniel’s voice growled like an angry dog’s.
“I believe you.” Ann found her boots and started to put them on. “And I’m so sorry.”
“Ann.” Something in his tone made her pause. “Ann!” Daniel took another step toward the woman.
“Leave her alone, Daniel. I never want to see you again.”
His eyes didn’t leave his wife’s face. “This woman’s raving. She’s a lunatic. Don’t listen to her.” He flicked a quick glance in Ann’s direction, but Ann knew he was mostly blind in the moonlit night.
“Should I show her pictures, Daniel?” The woman reached for a handbag she’d dropped in the sand. She didn’t sound crazy at all. “You and me in the Bahamas. You painting the garage.”
“Shut up!”
“You can look and explain it yourself to the blond floozy.”
Floozy? Ann wasn’t a floozy. Was she? “I’m so sorry,” Ann said, but the woman didn’t seem to hear her apology. And what good would it do anyway?
“I have the love letter you wrote me just last week.” The woman turned toward Daniel as she fumbled with the handbag. The light from the spotlight illuminated the sand rather than anything useful for the woman.
Daniel stepped into the light, his hands in fists. “I’ll call the cops and have you arrested so fast you won’t know what hit you.”
“Go ahead.” She quit searching inside her handbag, and a preternatural calm seemed to settle over her, as if nothing on this beach could touch her. “Call them.”
Daniel hauled back his arm and started to swing a roundhouse punch at the woman. She tried to turn away, her arms in front of her face, but she couldn’t protect herself.
Ann could, though. She let her biology take over.
She pulled power from the earth and shunted it to her arms and fists. Before she could blink, she shoved Daniel with the inhuman strength only her kind could channel.
“Daniel!” the other woman cried, flinging herself in his direction. Was she trying to protect him?
The sound of his elbow cracking into the woman’s face reverberated through the night, and then the woman gave a reedy shriek. She clutched her face and fell to the sand with a terrible moan.
“What have you done?” Daniel pulled himself to his feet. “Is she okay?” He looked at the woman he’d been about to punch, and Ann realized she had never known this man. “How did you do that?” he asked.
“You’ve lost your mind.” Ann went to the unconscious woman’s side. The coppery scent of blood filled her nose, tugging at her, calling to her magic.
“You threw me into her. You did this.” He punted the spotlight across the sand with a kick. The bulb exploded as the light hit the ground, and Ann saw bits of white glass shower the sand like wedding confetti.
And Ann knew the truth. She had done this. She’d ruined the relationship the woman had had with the man she’d thought of as her husband, and now Ann had ruined the woman’s face.
“You have no idea what was at stake. If I bring you in I can—” Cutting off his own words, he stalked to the blanket. “I was protecting you,” he snarled.
“I don’t need your protection.” Because unless he had planned to help her fight a predator he didn’t know existed, she didn’t need his help—the magic coalescing in her blood saw to that.
“You have no idea,” he repeated. He stood unmoving as a black cloud skittered in front of the moon, leaving them in darkness for a heartbeat. Despite the blackness, she read his expression. He showed no emotion, no fear or remorse. In that moment she realized if she were a normal woman—a human woman—she would be afraid.
Regardless, she wasn’t normal. Ignoring him, she kneeled in the sand beside the woman. Even without her powers in full swing, she knew the woman’s left cheekbone was crushed and her eye already swelled shut. The hard cartilage of her nose sat at an odd angle, and blood poured from her nostrils.
Ann watched blood trickle from the victim’s ear and faced an ugly, ugly truth. Her own denial had caused this. She should’ve paid more attention during their courtship, realized she’d been cast in the role of the “other woman.” Even Daniel’s perennial unwillingness to truly make love to her should have keyed her into the truth.
She’d have more time for regrets later. Now, she needed to fix this.
Squatting next to the woman, Ann reached for her purse, wanting