Whatever trepidation he felt at challenging the elements, she blithely dismissed. She ran toward the ocean, arms and legs flailing with enthusiasm, let the first wave roll over her feet and ran back to him shrieking at the cold. “Isn’t it gorgeous? Isn’t it grand?” Her laughter blended with the sea breeze, and she once again ran toward the ocean.

Eleven days ago, she had drowned in this water.

Today it was her playmate.

He picked up her shoes and carried the picnic backpack to a sheltered spot at the base of the cliff. He spread their wool army-surplus blanket on the sand, then dared to look away from his mundane tasks and into himself...where he feared to go.

Elle made him see things as if he was viewing them for the first time. In the ocean he’d seen only the monster that drove the storms. She made him see the froth and the foam, the blues, the greens, the shadings in between.

Where before he’d heard only the roar of the deep, the constant drive to batter and destroy the land, she helped him hear the seagulls and eternity rolling in the waves.

Change had inexorably rolled in on the waves that had carried her to shore. He wasn’t the same man he’d been eleven days ago. As he walked toward Elle, the dry sand shifted beneath his soles, then a frigid wave frothed around his ankles, his calves, his knees. The cold water splashed his shorts, and hers, because she squealed, caught his arm and ran backward, away from the assault of the ocean. As soon as that wave began its retreat, she dragged him forward again, challenging the Pacific. Her eyes shone, and her hair stood up as if electrified with joy.

She made him feel things, things that terrified and exalted him.

He felt love.

He stood stock-still.

Please, God, no. Not love. Never in his life had he been tempted to play with that shiny, sharp emotion. He’d been sliced open by betrayal, bled every day from the lingering infection of sorrow and guilt.

But love—oh, God. He knew from observation a man could die of love.

He didn’t even know who she was. He didn’t know her real name.

Despite Rune’s assurances, and hers, he knew the chance existed she could be involved, married, have children. Be a criminal. Or even a nun.

Or she could be... She could be the lovely, joyous creature she appeared to be, and he would love her every moment, and someday she would die, and he would be alone, and all the music and beauty in the world would die with her.

“How great is this?” she shouted at him. “We’re alone at the edge of the continent, you and me. Now you know what I want to do?”

“Have lunch?” That seemed like a logical guess. She ate all the time.