Excerpt of Loving Luc by Vicki Crum

The crows were back. Dozens of them. Clustered along the
electrical wires like dark smudges against the sky,
shifting continuously and piercing the air with an
occasional high-pitched caawk. And always, observing the
world around them with a keen, almost human intensity.

Just like yesterday.

And the day before that.

And the day before that.

An unseasonably warm breeze blew Maggie McAllister’s hair
around her face as she watched the sleek black birds from
the wooden porch that wrapped around her house. She hated
crows. She’d had an aversion to the nasty things since
reading Poe’s The Raven when she was twelve years old.
And as if the crows weren’t enough, the trees in her yard
had been inundated with an army of bushy-tailed
squirrels. Two nights ago she’d found a dead possum on
the porch not far from where she was standing, and
yesterday morning she’d discovered the half-eaten carcass
of a rabbit out behind the garage. Odd, indeed.

High on her bluff that overlooked the rugged coastline of
northern California, sea gulls reigned supreme. Their
presence had always seemed to keep the crow population to
a minimum, but the gulls had been noticeably absent the
last few days. As for the influx of furry, four-legged
creatures, it felt to Maggie as if they’d been unerringly
drawn here, like the foam-tipped waves to the craggy
rocks on the shore below.

Maybe that’s why she wasn’t surprised when the stranger
showed up. A man, alone, on foot at the end of her drive.
All she felt was a mild sense of deja vu, as if she’d
been expecting him.

His gaze held her captive as his long-legged gait ate up
the hundred or so feet of unpaved driveway between them.
Tall and lean. Dark hair, dark clothing, dark backpack
thrown over one shoulder. His bold, chiseled features
were striking, even from a distance.

Seldom had Maggie witnessed such raw sensuality in a man.
It radiated from him like early-morning vapor rising up
from the sea. Ethereal, yet undeniable.

He seemed to grow taller as he neared the stone steps
leading up to the yard. It was nothing more than an
optical illusion, of course, but her position on the
porch gave her the welcome advantage of being able to
look down at him while she spoke.

Then he smiled, and Maggie realized it would take more
than a four-foot elevation to grant her any kind of an
advantage over this man.

A crackle of awareness shot through her as she quickly
absorbed little details about him. The deep blue of his
eyes, framed by long sable lashes. The way his lips
tilted slightly at the corners, even after his dimpled
smile relaxed. His smooth jaw, minus the three-day growth
of stubble so many men seemed to favor these days. How
profound his tan, though it was only mid-March and the
damp California winter had yet to relinquish its hold on
the land.

“Can I help you?” Maggie asked, raising one hand to shade
her eyes from a swathe of afternoon sunlight that had
stolen beneath the porch roof.

“I hope so.” His voice, as dark and mysterious as the man
himself, held a faint Scottish burr. The first little
blip appeared on Maggie’s radar screen. Her late husband
had had a similar burr in his speech.

“I’m looking for David McAllister.” The stranger shifted
his backpack from one arm to the other, drawing her
attention to thick, broad shoulders beneath a worn black
T-shirt. The very essence of the man rose up to engulf
her, made her achingly aware of how accustomed she’d
grown to living alone over the past few months.

“You know my husband?” she asked warily.

“I do, indeed. Our connection goes back many years. To
childhood, in fact.” He treated her to another heart-
tripping smile and said, “David and I grew up together.”

“Oh. I see.” That explained the accent. “So you’re from
Killearn?”

An odd glint appeared in the stranger’s eyes, then
quickly died away. “Is that what David told you?” He
shook his head and grinned. “A bit of an exaggeration,
I’m afraid. We come from a much smaller village far to
the north of Killearn. We made the journey here to the
States several years ago, but lost track of each other
when David came west and I settled on the East Coast.”

Something in his words rang hollow, but Maggie couldn’t
put her finger on precisely what it was. She dismissed
the less-than-subtle suggestion that David had lied about
his birthplace. It hardly mattered now, and besides,
certain parts of David’s life had always been shrouded in
mystery. It was part of his charm, and part of what had
drawn her to him in the first place.

It wouldn’t be easy saying what needed to be said while
staring into the stranger’s intense blue eyes, yet if
what he’d told her was true, if he really was a good
friend of David’s, she didn’t have much choice. “I’m
sorry you had to come all this way for nothing, Mr....”

“Luc. Just call me Luc.”

Maggie took a step forward, her fingertips digging into
the worn wooden newel post rising up on her right. “I’m
afraid I have some bad news for you...Luc.”

From where she stood, tiny crinkles at the corners of the
man’s eyes were visible. They deepened when he squinted
into the glare coming off the ocean, accentuating the
small, diamond-shaped scar just below one eye. There was
something hauntingly familiar about him. A crazy notion
if she’d ever had one, since she was positive that she’d
never set eyes on him before.

She cleared the thickness from her throat. “David was
killed in a boating accident six months ago. Six months
ago today.” Maggie’s gaze swung out over the water, in
the general direction of a small cluster of rock
formations about a mile and a half offshore. They’d have
been virtually invisible the night her husband splintered
his catamaran on them. She’d never understood what he had
been doing out there in the wee dark hours of the
morning, without so much as a full moon to light his way.

Luc’s amazing eyes went wide with shock as he struggled
to come to terms with her words. His mouth thinned until
it was a flat line of resignation, and he followed her
line of vision out over the ocean. She should have said
something, offered her condolences, at least, but nothing
that sprang to mind seemed appropriate. Instead she just
stood there, awkwardness clinging to her like an unwanted
lover.

One minute the stranger was below her on the walkway, and
the next he was towering over her at the top of the
stairs. He reached out to her, but she was strangely
hesitant to touch him. She didn’t want to be drawn in,
weighed down, by another’s grief and sadness. She had
made her own particular peace with what happened to
David, or tried to, in any event.

Luc’s solemn gaze didn’t waver. If anything, it
sharpened, like a piercing blue laser capable of cutting
straight through to her heart and dissecting her
emotions. Maggie threw up every invisible barrier she
possessed to keep him out.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said.

She stared at his outstretched hand, where another thin
white scar partially circled one knuckle before
disappearing into the crease between his fingers. His
nails were clean and neatly trimmed.
His hand bespoke of strength and of gentility, and still
she hesitated.

What did she think was going to happen if she touched
him? Was it really his feelings she was afraid of
divining, or that he might somehow guess her unpleasant
little secret---that her grief over losing David only
went so deep? That guilt, more than anything, was the
source of her distress?

Perhaps a bigger concern, at the moment, might be the
irrational path her thoughts were taking, and whether or
not she was becoming delusional. The man couldn’t read
her mind any more than that flock of crows observing them
from on high. She brushed her uncertainties aside and
laid her palm in his.