Riptide [Kismet Cove] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read Online Free PDF Page A

her, more than twenty years ago. Why would she read this to me? It’s not even written for kids.
    Jess had always just called it her “seal people” book, but now she realized it was a collection of legends and tales, and all of them were about selkies. She flipped through the book randomly, skimming bits and pieces as she tried to reconcile the stories she remembered her mother telling her with what she was reading. There were dog-eared pages that Jess realized marked the passages her mother would read aloud to her, and as she let her tired mind drift she could almost hear her mom’s voice, soft and comforting, reading along beside her. It made Jess’s heart ache with loneliness and loss.
    “I miss you, Mom,” she whispered and touched the page she was reading with a loving caress. “I’m not sure why you wanted me to have this book, but I’ll read it, I promise.”
    Jess smothered a yawn and closed the book, hugging it close to her chest. “Just not now. Right now I need to start figuring out how to turn this from a rental cabin into a place I can call home.”

Chapter 3
     
    Over the next few days Jess reclaimed the cabin that had been featured in so many of her childhood memories. She set up a writing area near the bay window so she could stare out at the view when she needed a break, and there was now a gleaming espresso maker sitting on the kitchen counter. Brand new raingear hung by the door, and she’d stocked the fridge and cupboards with every single one of her favorite foods.
    As she had settled in, her eyes kept sliding to the carefully wrapped case she had placed near the living room window. Inside the case was the urn that held her mother’s ashes. Every time Jess passed the case she looked outside, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that her mother was waiting for her to fulfill her last request.
    Jess split her time between settling into the cabin, writing, and reading more of the book her mother had left for her. The more she read, the more she wondered why it had been so important to her mother that she have it. The stories were from Scotland and the Orknie Islands mostly, both places that Jess knew her mother, Mara, had never been. Mara had always wanted to go to Scotland, but there was never enough money, or the timing was wrong.
    “And now you’ll never get to go there,” Jess sighed. “Though I suppose when I scatter your ashes, some of them might make it there eventually. Not much a vacation, Mom, but I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.”
    She sipped her coffee and went back to her reading. The story she was engrossed in was one that appeared more than once in the book. While the selkie men were off chasing lonely human females, the selkie women were often at risk of being captured and taken as wives by human men. When in human form a selkie left their fur pelt behind, usually well hidden. If a human man managed to find and take possession of a selkie’s pelt then the selkie was forced to stay on land in human form and obey the one who possessed their pelt. They could only return to the sea if they were freed or could steal their fur back from the ones who had taken it.
    And Vivian wonders why I have trouble trusting men, Jess thought. Wait until she sees this, I think we’ve found the answer. I was read some seriously dark stuff as a kid! What the hell was my mother thinking?
    Jess had been there nearly a week when the weather finally broke. Despite the winter temperatures, she grabbed her coffee and padded out onto the back porch in her slippers to take in the morning. The sun was fighting to burn through the layer of marine cloud that shrouded the sky, but the rain had stopped and the world was brighter than it had been since her arrival. The sea was choppy, and gray-green waves crested and crashed onto the rocks with enough force to throw up a curtain of spray every third or fourth wave. Her gaze swept along the small stretch of sand beach that curved in behind the