Page 42 of Edge of Stars

He slides his hands around my middle. Pulls me in tighter. “Say that again.”

I chuckle softly but nod knowingly. “What part would that be exactly, husband?”

His approving growl accompanies his warm buss along my hairline. “Keep throwing in a bunch of those, and you can take all the time you need for the glitter.”

A new laugh. “Don’t let Kell hear you offering that. She loves the rhinestone sessions. One time, she even suggested filling a bathtub with them and—”

An agonized rasp cuts me off.

The sound that bursts from my own throat.

As my mind catches up to what my heart has blurted—and drives it through with a stake of reality.

Kell.

My biggest pain in the backside. Closest confidante. Clearest therapist. Constant wingwoman.

My sister. In every imaginable way there is.

I can’t think of my life without her.

I refuse to.

She’s not gone.

It’s more than a protest of my spirit. It’s a knowledge as deep as my bones, embedded into their marrow. The DNA that would surely be on fire if she breathed her last.

She’ll make it through this. They all have to. Believing otherwise…isn’t a choice.

“Kara.”

Maximus almost ends it as a question, and I don’t blame him. Not with a wife who’s gone stiffer than the pier pilings. But his long sigh into my hair, coordinated with his fuller embrace, explains his choice of emphasis. No question needed because he already has his answer.

“She’s going to be fine,” he murmurs, dropping a kiss to my crown. “They all are. I know it.”

“Me too.” My hand finds its way to the center of his sternum. There’s enough room to spread my fingers across the strong thrum of his heartbeat. “I do. I have to. But thank you for saying it anyway. I needed it…more than I thought I did.”

My verbal pause isn’t just for considering my full confession. It’s tied to my physical shiver, which I can’t even blame on the fresh rush of wind across the water. The air feels like summer and smells like rosemary, as textbook a Grecian island dream as it gets. And there’s no one I’d rather be experiencing it with than the son of Olympus who rubs his big warm hands up and down my back.

“What you need most of all is some rest,” he exhorts in a rough mutter, which has me reluctantly moving back from him.

“I hate to be so readily agreeing.” The view beckons my longing stare. So many places I’ve been across this world, from major city hubs to remote luxury resorts, but none of them have blown me away with such an ethereal aura before. Already, I conclude at least one major reason why. “My first time in a long time without a single appointment, meeting, or camera lens to worry about, and all I want to do is sleep through—ahhh!”

A chuckle rolls out of my husband as I repeat the startled cry, having forgotten that when a six-foot-seven male scoops a girl off her feet, the altitude is higher—even a little scarier—than usual.

“There, now. Dilemma solved,” he wryly growls. “You’re no longer on the sleep optional plan, Mrs. Kane. Though if you’d like, management is happy to provide some extra package perks for your slumbering pleasure.”

“Ohhh. Please tell management I’m very intrigued,” I tease back during his approach to the villa’s main door, which seems to be located beyond a line of cypress trees and a stream that’s fed by the lagoon.

Between the trees and the stream is a winding stone path. Maximus follows its quaint twists all the way up to a bridge, which crosses over onto the entry veranda of the villa itself. The whole floor of the platform is a sheet of transparent material—resin, glass, maybe some more of Poseidon’s mysterious aqua manufacturing—that, whatever its mode of creation, is a perfect feature of the place. Beneath its surface, the little tributary expands until it reaches a landing that overlooks a broad sitting room and an expansive kitchen, becoming a waterfall that splashes into a scenic reflecting pool between the two areas.

At the far end of Lake Living Room, as I’ve already decided it should be called, are tall, clear cylinders with collection troughs at their bases. Once one of the drawers fills with water, it’s sucked up into the tube and churned at dizzying speed. Despite the intense energy taking place in the big containers, there’s no sound through this area except the steady shower of the waterfall and the meandering but mesmeric harmonies from windchimes that are hung from the high ceiling, accenting the lines of the curving stairs between the levels.

“Scratch intrigued,” I say as we pause to take in the rest of the space. There’s a peek of a dining patio for two, decorated in tropical fish colors. With that decorative tease in place, it comes as no surprise that one wall of the inside sitting area is dominated by a massive aquari—

And now the surprise party is official.

The massive fish bowl actually isn’t an aquarium. It’s another auxiliary finger to the lagoon that Poseidon brought us in through, and it functions as much more than a stunning interior design choice. It’s a receptacle for another waterfall, narrower but taller than the one that feeds Lake Living Room. I look upward, seeking its source, but see only the balconies of the three floors that compose the rest of the villa.