Eden's Spell by Heather Graham

“Believe in me?”
    â€œI barely know you.”
    â€œYou know me very well.”
    She didn’t know how well. She was suddenly very afraid; she wanted to run.
    She backed away from him, her fists tightened at her sides.
    â€œOh, for heaven’s sake! I’m not really going to do anything to you! Ask Jason—Mom is a sucker. I’ve never sued anyone in my life and I’m hardly likely to start with a wayward Navy doctor! Stay on the island, study whatever you can. Just don’t you dare let any of that pink stuff of yours get near Jason or me again!”
    And then she did run. Not literally. She managed to walk by him with a terse “Good night, Captain Taylor.”
    But she knew that she had run. And she thought that he knew it too.
    It was a perfect night to sleep. The sound of the high winds was actually lulling. Katrina felt safe; she’d faced this kind of weather before.
    The house, she knew, was secure, built with the best and heartiest shutters available. She and James had been young when they’d built it, but young and sensible. Everyone had thought them crazy to live on the island, but Katrina and James had seen their Eden, and they’d known damn well that they were perfectly sane. Her house, his house, their paradise. Strong, strong walls around them …
    And you’ve never escaped those walls have you? she asked herself, lying there, alone still, with the sounds of the night.
    Walls, yes, that she had made. Because it had been so sudden and shocking and painful to be alone. Her marriage might have lasted only four years, but she and James had been together forever. Both native Conchs—or Key Westerners—they had grown up together, gone to all the same schools. In kindergarten he had pulled on her ponytails. In grade school they had tousled in mud puddles. By junior high he had carried her books, and by high school they had known they’d be married as soon as school was out.
    She twisted in her bed, pressing her face against the pillow. James was dead. Had been, for almost five years. It had surely been one of the greatest injustices ever; he’d been only twenty-three, carefree and handsome, with his whole life ahead of him. And then he had been killed. And no matter how she had tried to breathe new life into him, she could not.
    It had taken her a year to realize that he was really gone, that she wouldn’t hear him whistling, coming into the house with a sly smile and a pack of Florida lobster alive and kicking in a net. A year, just to realize that no, he would not return….
    Then there were Ted and Nancy Denver, ravaged forever by the loss of their oldest son. How could she ever face them and say, I’m going on a date? They were such good people….
    And there was no one alive who could love her as James had. She was afraid of caring, of not being cared for in return. It was easier to grow walls of stone all around herself, to devote herself to Jason, and fight the world on his behalf. To be the “coral princess,” cool, aloof, virginal—and independent.
    Except that Mike Taylor had changed it all on her. Mike and his marvelous dream machine. Pink clouds that eased away pain and made every fantasy real. Too real.
    Katrina tossed again, staring up at the ceiling. Even in her dream she had known that James could not come back from the dead. The man in her dream had not been James. He had been very tall, broad, and muscled. His tender strength had been as steely as his eyes, sword steel, touched by silver magic.
    But it was logical. She’d seen Taylor’s eyes just before she’d lost her grip on reality. She had turned him into a lover; Jason had made him into a space conqueror. That, apparently, was what the pink fog did to one….
    Except that she had awakened blissfully bare.
    Ah, that pink dream machine!
    But life was not dreams; it was full of truths. Harsh, brutal truths. And the harsh, brutal truth