"That's the start of a fine speech. Why don't you sit down and just talk to me."

"I did what I had to do to get away from him. I'm not going to apologize for it."

"I'm not asking you to."

"I'm not going into the details." She turned away, leaned on the rail and stared out at the night-dark sea. "I'll tell you it was like living in a pit that got deeper and deeper and colder and colder. Whenever I tried to crawl out, he was right there."

"But you found a way."

"I won't go back. Whatever I have to do, wherever I have to run, I won't go back. So I've lied, and deceived. I've broken the law. And I've hurt you." She turned back. "The only thing I'm sorry for is the last."

She said it defiantly, almost furiously as she stood with her back to the rail and her hands in white-knuckled fists.

Terror and courage, he thought, dragging at each other inside her. "Did you think I wouldn't understand?"

"Zack." She lifted her hands, dropped them. "I still don't understand. I wasn't a doormat when I met him, I wasn't a victim waiting to be exploited. I came from a solid, steady family, as functional as any family manages to be. I was educated, independent, helping to run a business. There'd been men in my life before, nothing really serious, but normal, healthy relationships. Then there I was, manipulated and abused. And trapped."

Oh, baby, he thought, as he had when she'd fallen to pieces in the café kitchen. "Why are you still blaming yourself for it?"

The question broke her rhythm. For a moment she could only stare at him, baffled. "I don't know." She walked over to sit in the chair beside him.

"It'd be a good next step to stop doing that." He said it easily, taking a sip of his beer. There was still temper inside him, dregs of it for Nell, but a new and ripe well of it for the man-the faceless, nameless entity-who'd scarred her.

He thought he might work that off later by pounding the hell out of Ripley's punching bag.

"Why don't you tell me about your family?" he suggested and offered her the beer. "You know my mother can't cook worth a damn and my father likes to take snapshots with his new toy. You know they grew up here on the island, got married, and had a couple of kids. And you've had personal acquaintance with my sister."

"My father was in the Army. He was a lieutenant colonel."

"An Army brat." Since she shook her head at the beer, he took another pull himself. "Saw some of the world, didn't you?"

"Yeah, we moved around a lot. He always liked getting new orders. Something new to handle, I suppose. He was a good man, very steady, with a wonderful, warm laugh. He liked old Marx Brothers movies and Reese's peanut butter cups. Oh, God."

Grief caught her by the throat, choked off her voice, dug raw wounds in her stomach.

"He's been gone so long, I don't know how it could seem like yesterday."

"When you love somebody, it's always there. I still think about my grandmother now and again." He took Nell's hand, held it loosely. "When I do, I can smell her. Lavender water and peppermint. She died when I was fourteen."

How was it he could understand, and so exactly? That, she thought, was the magic of him. "My father was killed in the Gulf War. I thought he was invincible. He'd always seemed to be. Everyone said he was a good soldier, but I remember he was a good father.

He would always listen if I needed to tell him something. He was honest and fair, and had this code of honor, a personal one that meant more than all the rules and regulations. He… God." She turned her head to study Zack's face. "It just hit me, how much you're like him. He would have approved of you, Sheriff Todd."

"I'm sorry I never got the chance to meet him." He turned the scope toward her. "Why don't you take a look, see what you can find up there?"

She lowered her head toward the viewer, scanned the stars. "You've forgiven me."

"Let's say we've made some progress."

"Good thing for me. Otherwise Ripley was going to kick my ass."

"And she's a hell of an ass-kicker, too."

"She loves you. I always wanted a brother or a sister. My mother and I were tight, and I guess we got tighter after we lost my father. But I always wanted a sister. You'd've liked my mother. She was tough and smart and full of fun. Started her own business from the ground up after she was widowed. And she made it work."

"Sounds like someone else I know."

Her lips curved. "My father always said I took after her. Zack, who I am now is who I was before. The three years between, they were the aberration. You wouldn't recognize the person I became during that lost time. I barely do."

"Maybe you had to go through it to get where you are now."

"Maybe." The light through the scope haloed as her eyes misted. "I feel like I was always headed here. All those moves when I was growing up. I'd look around and think: No, this isn't it. Not yet. The day I crossed over on the ferry, and I saw the island floating on the water, I knew. This is my place."

He lifted their joined hands, kissed the back of hers. "The day I saw you behind the counter in the café, I knew."

The thrill rocketed up her arm, and straight into her heart. "I've got baggage, Zack. I've got complications. More than I can tell you. You matter to me more than I thought anyone ever could. I don't want to mess up your life with my problems."

"From where I'm sitting, Nell, it's too late to worry about that. I'm in love with you."

Another long thrill rippled through her. "There's so much you don't know, and any one piece of it could change your mind."

"You don't think much of my wherewithal."

"Oh, yes, I do. Okay." She pulled her hand away, rose. She faced crises better on her feet. "There's something else I can tell you, and I don't expect you to understand or accept it."

"You're a kleptomaniac."

"No."

"An agent for a clandestine splinter group."

She managed to laugh. "No. Zack-"

"Wait, I get one more. You're one of those Star Trek addicts who can recite all the dialogue in every episode."

"No, only in the first season of the original."

"Well, that's all right, then. Okay, I give up."

"I'm a witch."

"Oh, well, I know that."

"I'm not using that as a euphemism for temperament," she said impatiently. "I mean it literally. Spells and charms and that sort of thing. A witch."

"Yeah, I got that the night you were dancing naked on your front lawn and glowing like a candle. Nell, I've lived on Three Sisters all my life. Do you expect me to be stupefied, or to do that crossed-fingers thing to ward off evil?"

Unsure if she was relieved or disappointed by his reaction, she frowned at him. "I guess I expected you to be something."

"It gave me a moment," he admitted. "But then, living with Rip sort of tones down the jolt. Of course she hasn't had anything to do with that kind of thing for years now. If you were to tell me you'd put some sort of love spell on me, I might be a little irked."

"Of course I didn't. I wouldn't even know how. I'm just… learning."

"An apprentice witch, then." Amused at both of them, he got to his feet. "I imagine Mia'll whip you into shape before long."

Did nothing surprise the man? "A couple of nights ago, I drew down the moon."

"What the hell does that mean? No, never mind, I don't have much of a head for the metaphysical. I'm a simple man, Nell." He ran his hands up and down her arms in the way he had that managed to arouse and soothe at the same time.

"No, you're not."

"Simple enough to know I'm standing here with a pretty woman and wasting the moonlight." He lowered his mouth to hers, drew her up and into a sumptuous kiss.

When her head fell back in surrender, and her arms wound around his neck, he circled her toward the glass door.