by Kim Hornsby
His silence was making this more difficult. He usually finished her sentences, if she needed it. Not today.
“It would be easy to give in to the feeling that the loss of Hank was also the loss of my opportunity to have a baby.”
“Ti, if you’re worried about what Hank would think...”
“No. I’m not.” Hank might approve of Noble taking over the honor. More like the task. “But I can’t think of having a child right now. It’s the worst time for me to make a huge decision. I have to figure out how to let Hank go. I just can’t seem to be able to do that.”
“I can help.” Noble looked softly at her.
“You have helped. I think until Hank’s body is found...”
“Ti…” Noble was one sentence away from a lecture.
She held up her hand to stop him and just then her cell phone rang. “Might be the shop. Just a sec.” She glanced at the screen to see it was Jamey, let it go to message, and then asked Noble to forgive her for being insensitive. “I’m doing the best I can.”
“I know.” Noble’s forehead was lined in worry. They hugged, holding on to each other tightly.
“I’ll get us a movie to watch tonight.” It was a question.
Noble pulled back and smiled. “Something with robots.”
Back upstairs, she fixed Obi’s food and set the dish on the floor. Her phone rang again. “Hi, Jamey.”
“Hey there.” He sounded happy to hear her voice.
Standing at the dining-room window, she stared out at the wide open channel to the south. “What’s up?”
“I’ve been talking to my father, and my counselor in
Afghanistan, who both know something about jumping dreams.” He paused. “I have some ideas. Assuming that the dive in the dream is a real site, we need to find that beach.”
She knew that already. Hadn’t they tried?
“I’m not sure I should jump your dream again because it was risky for me.”
She imagined him pacing the floor as he talked. “I agree.”
“I think the next step is to look from the air.”
It was a good idea. They didn’t have any other fresh options. “Okay.”
“I reserved a plane for eight a.m. tomorrow. I’ll pick you up before seven.”
She hung up the phone and went into the kitchen to get a Coke. For the first time in months, the heaviness on her chest had been lifted. She was lighter. Jamey had gone ahead and taken the initiative to rent a plane. He genuinely wanted to help her find Hank’s body. This was what she needed. Not the hugging kind of help, or someone telling her to move on, but the kind of assistance that might bring her closer to moving on. Jamey actually cared about the one thing that was keeping closure at bay.
Noble had given up months ago, when he persuaded her to have Hank declared dead at the two-month mark. That was his closure.
He’d pushed her to sign the papers and Tina had given in, thinking he might be right. When her parents concurred, she’d signed on the dotted line. She’d expected closure for both her and Noble, but he seemed more miserable once his friend was declared dead. Something told her that if Hank had deserted her, he wouldn’t have left Noble, like this. He loved his best friend fiercely. For twenty years. He wouldn’t have left Noble in this state of misery.
Still, closure hadn’t come for Tina. Even with the surfboard, the wallet and Jamey’s verification of Hank’s death, she needed something more, something to prove to her that Hank was not in Europe or South America living a new life. Better evidence was needed to prove her husband’s death. Something that verified he hadn’t intended to leave her.
***
Hank had seemed overly sophisticated for Maui when Tina first met him. Here was a man who’d lived all over the world, had a degree in art history, and was semi-retired at the age of forty. She’d heard through the gossip circles that he was independently wealthy. He’d followed his Grace Kelly–lookalike girlfriend to Maui. Her father owned art galleries on Front Street and she managed them.
The night Tina met Hank at the party in Kapalua, she had just signed the papers to buy the dive shop and was feeling incredibly full of herself. With every intention of making a success of her life on Maui, she celebrated her bravery by enjoying too many glasses of wine. Pepper told her to remain seated, drink some water, and eat the plate of appetizers placed in front of her, while she got herself some food.
But from her poolside seat, Tina noticed an intriguing man across the expanse of the deep end. His lanky comfortableness drew her in and she stared as she ate. Later, when her head cleared a bit, she found herself in conversation with him.
“What do you do, Tina?” He took a sip from his highball glass. “I bought a dive shop today. I teach scuba and have a degree in business.” For the first time in her life, she wanted to tell someone that she had an education beyond the knowledge of Maui’s sea life. Talk of the ocean led to recipes for seafood dishes. “By any chance, do you have a good recipe for seafood bisque?” he asked.
She laughed to think how useless she was in the kitchen and told him so. “Really? I love to cook.” He rattled off his favorite recipes. “You are frighteningly in touch with your feminine side,” she teased.
“Cooking isn’t feminine. Besides, I love to eat.” He said it in a way that made Tina think there was an underlying meaning to that statement.
He then introduced her to his friend Noble, a large Hawaiian man. They’d been friends for many years, and when Hank excused himself, Noble moved in, letting it be known that he was available, where Hank was not. Noble was handsome, probably more so than Hank, but there was something about Hank that reached out and grabbed Tina by the throat. Noble’s presence barely made contact. Months later, Hank would tell her that he tried to ignore her that night, “but you were just so damn cute.”
At an art gallery opening days later, Tina was sipping a glass of merlot when she saw Hank, his arm around his girlfriend’s ivory shoulders. Again Noble tried to engage Tina in conversation. They pondered which paintings were more marketable. But she couldn’t keep her eyes off Hank. Noble was a player, and she had no time for the uncertainty of him when her desperation to have a baby was gnawing at her thirty-two-year-old body. She wanted a life partner and a family, not a hula-dancing playboy.
Two months later, Tina found herself invited to the “New Year’s Eve Party of the Year” at a Hollywood producer’s house in Wailea. She’d recently broken up with a boyfriend from Honolulu and needed something to brush away her feelings of inadequacy. This was her social debut, not only after the breakup, but after her recent accident with an exploding tank. The chin wound that resulted from the explosion was healing nicely and could now be covered with makeup.
Earlier in the day, Pepper had insisted she get out of her wetsuit and make an effort. “Come on, Tina. We’re thirty and single. Let’s do the party. We’re on the guest list,” she’d pleaded. Without really trying, Tina looked smashing in a sequined mini dress and stilettos. And from the moment they walked past the bouncer at the door, the two women attracted male attention from every direction.
Hank stood by an outdoor fountain, talking to a group of rock stars. He did a double take when he noticed her. This time he excused himself and approached her. “I remember you. Tina, right?” His twinkling eyes made her heart flip, and she secretly hoped the absence of the girlfriend was significant. After an initial conversation about the paintings in the house, Tina professed she knew nothing about art. “I am a total Crayola girl.”
Hank took her by the arm. “Let me give you the twenty-minute art history crash course,” he said as they strolled towards the hallway’s collection. At some point she revealed that she owned paintings. “Inherited,” she said. “They were my grandmother’s. I’m not sure if they’re worth anything. It doesn’t matter because I’ll never sell them. Some painter named Hebert. Maybe Jacques, or Francois. Francois, I think.”
“Never heard of him, but perhaps you’d like an appraisal?�
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Tina stared at the sexy man in front of her, sizing up what he’d said and how he said it. “They’re at my house.” She smiled coyly, unsure of what direction they were taking and how far they’d go with this.
“Airtight containers?” She shook her head.
“The salt air will ruin them.” His voice was all business now. There was a pause, and then Hank’s attitude changed, like someone hit him in the chest. “I’m engaged.”
Tina thought he was kidding. “Did you mean to say, ‘I’m engaging’?”
He paused. “I’m getting married next month.” He knew this conversation was on the wrong track. Flashing a sweet conciliatory smile at her, Tina’s face reddened.
“I know you’re engaged,” she lied. “Congratulations, by the way.” Flirting came to a grinding halt.
“Thanks. Although I’m not entirely sure we’ll make it to the wedding.”
“I’m not surprised with you making,” she made air quotes, “‘appraisal appointments’ with single women.” Tina turned on her sexy stilettos and avoided him for the rest of the evening.
Weeks after, she heard that Hank and his fiancée had split up.
Later, he’d say that his conversation with Tina had been a turning point for him. “As Ingrid and I fought our way closer to the wedding date I had doubts and she did too. It was a mutual split.”
Tina wondered. Then one bright Maui morning, Hank found Tina painting the interior of her new dive shop, just off Front Street on Dickenson.
“And you told me you weren’t artistic.” He stood in the doorway with a huge grin on his face.
“I remember you,” she laughed, holding her paint roller over the tarp. “Hank, the art appraiser.” She’d actually been using him in her sexual fantasies for months.
“You’re painting alone?”
She nodded and adjusted her painter’s cap.
“If I jump in here to help you, I can’t guarantee you’ll end up with a run-of-the-mill store.” He smirked like there were twenty other meanings to what he said.
“I’d love the help, but no fancy stuff on the walls, just blue.”
He came back the next day and the next, finally taking over the remodeling of her dive shop. Weeks later, Hank had turned it into one of Hawaii’s coolest-looking stores, with aquariums covering two walls and a giant model of a humpback whale hanging from the ceiling.
“It looks more like a trendy nightclub,” she said admiringly.
“Then it shall function both as a dive shop and as a work of art.” He’d taken her in his arms and kissed her passionately. They’d all but set the date, at that point.
They were married in a little ceremony on the beach in Wailea. After that, Hank took his job as the shop manager seriously—as serious as Hank Perez could be about anything. He set up a juice bar in a corner of the shop, played current pop music, and hired the Parrot Guy to take Polaroids to draw people around the corner from the main street. The sign, “Tina’s Dive Shop,” came down soon after and a grand party followed to celebrate the raising of the new sign designating “Tina & Hank’s Dive Shop.” Everything had never been more perfect in Tina’s life.
Chapter 17
Tina sat on a poolside lounger at a lush tropical resort, an umbrella’ed drink on the table beside her. A man walked from the bar towards her and stopped. She glanced from beneath her wide-brimmed straw hat, but the sun was in her eyes.
“Excuse me, do I know you?” she said.
“Yes, you do.” He moved closer and blocked the sun.
It was Jamey. His expression held such love that she blushed. She hadn’t seen him in a very long time, but he still loved her. Something stopped her from jumping up to wrap her arms around him.
He knelt and took her hand in his. “It’s good to see you.” He kissed her palm, never taking his eyes from her face.
The feeling of warmth and safety that enveloped her was like nothing she’d ever known. Without a doubt, this man was hers. Jamey would never do anything to hurt her and had always put her first, even though he’d been gone a long time. In contrast, Hank’s head turned with every young girl who passed by, every bikini, cocktail waitress, female dive instructor, the heiress from Atlanta whose interest in Hank almost had Tina cancel the wedding. But not Jamey. Tina sank into his arms. “Yes.” She breathed in the musky scent of him.
Then they were in a room barely big enough for the brass bed covered in snowy white linens and fluffy pillows. Open windows framed three sides of the small room and a light breeze rustled the poplin curtains. Hovered over a turquoise ocean, the bedroom was like a balcony jutting over a Tahitian sea—the perfect fantasy.
Jamey lay back on the pillows, smiling lazily at her. His tanned skin contrasted with the stark white sheets. She went to him and, taking his angular face in her hands, kissed him long and deep, her tongue tasting the sweetness of this man. He responded, almost hesitantly. When his kiss deepened, he flipped her over to her back and pressed himself into her thighs. His face, inches from hers, was almost pained. “Tina, you have always been my reason.”
His words left her breathless. She sank into his blue eyes and imagined taking him into her soul.
“I don’t know if I can stop this,” he said. “I’ve waited so long to be with you.”
“Don’t.” She drew him to her, and their need escalated. She wiggled out from under and pulled her shirt over her head. Pushing him down, she then mounted him. Clothes were tossed aside in a rush to get naked. Skin on skin, hot breath, legs wrapped around each other. “I love this.” She kissed his hard stomach and slid lower.
“And this.”
“No.” He reached down, his whisper gravelly.
Inching up, she kissed his neck, burrowing into his salty scent.
“Slower?”
She could feel his hardness against her legs.
“I don’t want to do anything you’ll regret.”
“I won’t regret this.” She smiled at him.
“If you knew...” He drew back and studied her face. “I trust you, Jamey.” She’d melted into him with bottomless emotion. God, she loved this man. Rocking her hips on him, she whispered, “I want this.”
He chuckled, pulling her into a hug, as if to stop her movement.
He smelled of the ocean. Like possibilities. “Give in.” She kissed just below his jaw line and he moaned. “Jamey, let go,” she coaxed.
His facial muscles slackened and he heaved a long sigh. “Come with me…” Tina slid her way from his throat to his belly, making a trail of kisses down the front of his muscled body. All the way to the birthmark. “I remember this.” She’d waited so long for him to come back to her.
When she slid her breasts across his erect penis his moan was something she’d anticipated. She knew he liked this. She remembered every little thing that drove him wild with longing.
Sweet man that he was. He’d defended her, sheltered her. She couldn’t remember how he’d done all these things but it didn’t matter. Only the complete love she felt for him mattered. More than anything, she wanted to be a part of him. She wanted to bring him to climax, give him something he’d waited for. She’d waited for. Tina slithered up his body, ready to receive him inside her warmth. “My love.”
Firm hands grabbed her shoulders and stopped the momentum. “No. I can’t do it.” He looked panicked.
“We’re doing it.” She smiled like there was still a chance to finish what was started.
“I’m not here with your permission.”
“Oh, you have my permission.”
“Not really. I’m not sure how this happened, but I don’t have your waking permission.” He looked at her hard, and suddenly, she knew what he meant. She was dreaming.
She sat up in bed. Her bed. Alone. In her house. Her bedroom. Obi slept in his usual spot on a cotton blanket at the bottom of the bed with the ribbon on his collar. Looking around, she verified Jamey was not with her. Silence filled the house. Obi looked over.
“I’m going crazy.” She dropped her head in her hands. “Oh, God. It was just a dream.” She took two deep breaths. Then she walked to the window. Sexy feelings for Jamey lingered. They’d been making love and he’d stopped because he jumped into her dream. Or had he? Jamey had told her for jumping he needed to be touching the dreamer.
She got back into the bed and closed her eyes, but she couldn’t stop the memory of making love with James Dunn. It had been wildly exciting—his scent, the look of bliss on his face when she stroked him, his soldier body. Oh God, she had to stop thinking of him this way. She was a widow, for Christ’s sake. And he’d taken advantage of her in the dream, knowing she wasn’t herself.
***
Jamey woke up horrified. He knew what happened, but how had he jumped Tina’s dream from miles away? Again? How in bloody hell was he able to get into Tina’s dreams without touching her?
He jumped out of bed, his first instinct to look around the room for Tina. As a precaution, he turned on the light and searched the condo. The bolt on the front door assured him that Tina couldn’t be inside. Physically.
Regardless, he peeked in an empty bathroom and, turning to look in the mirror, Jamey noticed his erection was still healthy. Down boy. At least he didn’t have a headache. That was good news.
Had it been anything but a sexual dream, he’d have called Tina for information. But he couldn’t call her in the middle of the night to ask if she’d dreamed about making love in a bedroom overlooking the ocean. Dammit. She was probably awake this very minute. Thank God, she wouldn’t realize that it was actually him lying with her on that bed, letting her ravage him until his conscience wouldn’t allow him to take advantage of the situation any longer. She’d think she simply had a sexy dream about him. He almost smiled, but not quite.
Settling back in bed, his penis stayed at attention with the memory of Tina. After finishing what she had started, Jamey drifted off to sleep knowing he needn’t worry. She wouldn’t realize he’d jumped.
When he pulled into her driveway the next morning, Tina had a look on her face that said it all. The absence of her smile spoke volumes. Her eyes avoided his, and she looked like she was strung tighter than a tennis racket when she jumped into the passenger seat. “You ready?” he asked, turning the jeep around in the driveway.