That Summer Place: Island TimeOld ThingsPrivate Paradise

by Susan Wiggs

  She shook his hand, then quickly pulled hers away. She turned around, trying to hold on to a slim thread of dignity, and walked up the porch steps.

  She could feel him watching her. His eyes could still do that, hold on to her as surely as if he’d used his hands to grip her shoulders.

  She stopped and turned.

  He hadn’t moved. His hands were shoved into his pockets as if he didn’t know what to do with them. She remembered that about him. The way he would hide his hands. She loved his hands.

  He was still looking at her.

  She gripped the porch railing because sometimes you just had to hold on to something to get through a certain kind of moment. “It was great to see you again.”

  She gave him a forced smile, one that covered up how she was really feeling.

  It was great to have you look at me that way again. It was great to hear your voice again. It was great to kiss you again and feel your hands on me again.

  It was great, but it wasn’t enough.

  And she walked into the old house.

  “No, I haven’t lost my mind. Have them bring it to the slip this afternoon. And make sure there’s a towline.” Michael crossed the cabin, his cellular phone cradled between his ear and his shoulder.

  “They’ll do it. Gladly. I spend enough money with them.” Michael grabbed his running shoes and moved over to the chair.

  “Then call Valiant Supply and have them deliver that part.” He sat down and stuck his feet into his shoes, then tied the laces while his assistant wrote down the part number. “I’ll be there by four. Meet me at the slip.”

  Michael flipped the phone closed and shrugged into his jacket, then slipped on a Mariners baseball cap. He went to the kitchen, opened a drawer and pulled out a bag.

  A minute later he left the cabin at a half trot. He moved down to the dock, her words running over and over in his mind.

  I wanted the island to be special to them, too.

  All those years ago he had clung to the idea that she had run from him as fast as she could, young and scared and overwhelmed by that last summer. By him. Caught between him and her father’s iron hand and all-too-real threats.

  A month later boot camp had been a welcome escape. There, he’d been too tired to think for all those months. But it had been different when he got to Nam.

  He saw her face on every tree in the jungle. In every muddy river or rice paddy. It was her face he saw whenever he closed his eyes, haunting him as surely as if her image had been tattooed there.

  This time he wasn’t going to let her go so easily. Not again.

  Some fifteen minutes later he had the plugs and points back into his boat engine. He turned the key and fired it up, then he sped toward the mainland.

  Thirteen

  Catherine was standing on the dock the next morning when Michael sailed into the cove on a sleek white sailboat with wicked red sails.

  He waved and called out her name.

  She walked to the edge of the dock as he sailed toward her. Suddenly it was that last summer all over again, as if thirty years hadn’t passed by, but time and life had just frozen in this one instant of déjà vu.

  “Hey!”

  She smiled.

  He tossed her the line, which she tied onto one of the cleats.

  “Thanks.” He stood, then stepped on the dock, and the air around her grew thick and warm.

  He was wearing a pair of cutoffs and a white cotton shirt with the sleeves shoved up his arms and the tails out and halfway unbuttoned. His dark hair was wind tousled, and he hadn’t shaved. His beard was dark and scruffy and sexy as all get-out. He looked like an older more weathered version of JFK Jr.

  She crossed her arms. “How did you manage to get that dark of a tan in the Northwest this time of year? It always rains until June or July.”

  “I didn’t. I got it in Cabo.” He stopped and added, “On a fishing trip.”

  Cabo San Lucas? Well, she thought, they said the dollar went pretty far in Mexico these days. And his financial status was none of her business, she told herself.

  “Do you think your daughters would like to sail in this?”

  “Oh, Michael. Anyone would like to sail in that!” She looked at the boat and got choked up. “It almost looks new.”

  “I take care of my things,” was all he said, then he grabbed a sack, stuck of couple of colored tools in his back pockets and turned back to her. “I got to thinking last night about that ignitor.”

  “Oh my. What an exciting life you must have.”

  He looked down at her through narrowed eyes. “Now I see where your daughter gets her smart mouth.”

  Catherine rolled her eyes. “Every sassy thing I have ever said has come back to haunt me. Now what was so interesting about the ignitor?” She placed her hand on his arm. “And don’t get too technical, okay? I don’t sleep well standing up.”

  He laughed and held up the sack. “I think I’ve found the solution.”

  “You can fix it?”

  “Let’s just say that it might work now.”

  “If you can get the boiler working we won’t have to leave.”

  “I know.”

  She looked up at him, at the pleased look on his face. He wanted them to stay. Ohmygod, but she was in trouble and she was so happy about it she almost shouted out loud.

  “Go get your daughters ready for a day of sailing, Squirt, and I’ll see if I can’t get that boiler going.” He winked, then a moment later disappeared around the corner of the house.

  Laughing, Catherine sliced her fists through the air. “Yes!” Then she ran up the steps and called her girls.

  The sailboat sliced through the water, leaving a stringy trail behind it. They had been on the boat all morning, during which time Michael had shown Dana and Aly how to work the lines and jib. To her daughters’ surprise, Catherine had helped him coach them, then sat back watching them make their accomplishments and their mistakes. She never criticized them, but let them learn on their own.

  She seemed relaxed and ready to just have fun, as if this kind of outing was a rare and unique moment in her life. It was one of the things he remembered about her, her ability to take the most joy from a moment no matter how trivial it might seem to everyone else.

  Even now her arms were resting casually on the rim of the boat and her blond hair was flying back with the wind. She was laughing at something Aly said, and watching her made him smile.

  She leaned forward, opened a cooler. “Here.” She handed him a beer.

  He leaned closer to take it and their bare knees touched. She looked startled, as if she’d just gotten a shock.

  He smiled to himself and leaned back, then let the wind take them through the channel while he took a swig of beer.

  She hadn’t moved her knees.

  Both her girls had been eager to watch and try to work the sails themselves. Dana was like a different person. No more playing the role of moody teen.

  There was a strange kind of intensity about her. She had watched him, every single movement, as if he were a textbook on how to sail. Focused and serious, she took it all in. She wanted to do well. You could see the determination in her face. There was a drive in this girl that was different from both Aly and Catherine. He’d seen this same kind of drive in the men he did business with, the successful ones. This kid had potential.

  Aly sat back after she had popped open a Coke. She looked at him. “Do you know why the water is blue?”

  “No.”

  “It’s blue because every color of the spectrum—like the colors in a rainbow—is inside each molecule of water. When light shines through it, the colors reflect back.” She took a drink and swallowed. “Sometimes it’s blue, sometimes it’s green. The whole process all depends on the amount of light and depth of the water.”

  Michael looked at her. “I never learned that in school.”

  “I didn’t learn it in school.”

  Catherine gave him a smile. “Aly’s a walking
fount of information.”

  “Mom.”

  Catherine laughed. “Well, you are. You learned to ask questions when you were two years old and you haven’t stopped since.” She looked at him. “She doesn’t stop until she finds out an answer that satisfies her.”

  “She doesn’t always find the answer to every question, though,” Dana said. “Toss me something to drink, will you?”

  Aly handed her a soda and sighed. “I still want to know why fingers aren’t all the same size.”

  Michael looked down at his hands and wondered why that question had never crossed his mind. “She has a point.”

  “Aly’s destined to be a scientist, I think.” The look Catherine gave her younger daughter was filled with love and pride and all those things that he saw again and again in his friends who had children.

  “I’m going to be an actress,” Aly announced. “Someone truly wonderful like Winona Ryder.”

  “Okay, sweetie. You can be an actress. Dana can be something useful like a lawyer.” Catherine smiled.

  “You always say that, Mom.” Dana obviously didn’t want to be an attorney.

  “But you argue so well, honey. Of course maybe you can be a political analyst instead.”

  Michael called, “Coming about!” And the boat swung into the wind.

  Dana ducked under the boom so perfectly you’d have thought she’d been sailing all her life. “I don’t know what I want to be.” She looked at Michael, almost as if she were seeking approval, like she wanted to know that it was okay to be undecided.

  He finished off his beer and set the bottle down. Then he looked right at Dana. “I expect Dana will be anything she wants to be.” He gave her a wink.

  A moment later, for the very first time, she smiled at him.

  Fourteen

  Late that evening, Catherine walked him to the dock. The sun was beginning to go down in that golden way it had. “It stays light so much longer here. I can’t believe it’s seven o’clock.”

  “It’s the Northwest. After all the gray and rainy days we have in the winter and spring, nature sort of evens things out. We’ve earned these long summer days.”

  She laughed, then about halfway down the hill she stumbled on a rock.

  He grabbed her hand to steady her.

  And he didn’t let go.

  They walked a few more steps to where the boat was tied to the cleat beside the boathouse. The water in the cove was bright gold and pink from the rich colors of the sky. And a flock of Canadian geese crossed overhead in a noisy arrow pattern that made the soft gull calls sound easy and far away.

  She looked back at the house, which sat alone on the small grade above the rocks and glowed from the lights inside and the reflections of the setting sun. Behind it stood a wall of hills, jagged with tall green trees. A few soft-colored clouds moved slowly past, as though they were grazing the very tops of those same dark trees.

  She leaned against the boathouse door and sighed. “I wonder if there is any place in the world right now, at this very moment, that is more beautiful than this.”

  “It’s something to see.” He was looking at her.

  She didn’t know who moved first, but suddenly she was in his arms. His mouth covered hers and he held her tightly, as if he couldn’t let her go.

  It was just like before, in the woods—a passion that flared and shook her senseless.

  He pressed her against the door and one of his hands left her back. Then he was pushing her inside the boathouse. The door clicked closed behind them.

  It had been so long. She wanted to crawl inside of him; she couldn’t get close enough.

  His hands were all over her, touching her in places that were private and had seemed lost and numb for so very long.

  He slid his hand between her legs and she gave a small cry that didn’t sound like her.

  She came, right then, throbbing hard and fast.

  He kept his hand there, hot against her jeans.

  It took a few moments for her to come back down to earth. Then she realized what had happened. She’d had an orgasm when all he had done was touch her through her clothes.

  This was not her. It was like some sensational article in a women’s magazine, headlines plastered on the cover in bold red letters to sell more copies. She’d always thought a contact orgasm could never really happen. That it was no more than fantasy and fiction.

  But it had just happened. To her.

  “Oh God….” She groaned and turned away. “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Why?” He laughed quietly. “I’m not.”

  She hid her face in his shoulder. He sounded like he had just saved the world.

  He gently forced her head away from his shoulder with both hands.

  Her nose was somewhere near his chin. She had no choice but to look at him.

  That cocky male look he wore in the golden light made her laugh. She shook her head, still embarrassed. “It’s been a long time.”

  “I guess that means I won’t have to mentally recite the Greek alphabet backwards and conjugate Latin verbs while I’m waiting for you to get there.”

  Then she really laughed. “You don’t actually do that.”

  He just looked at her. She couldn’t tell if he was teasing her or not.

  “Do you?”

  “Some women take a while.”

  “Oh.” She was quiet. She didn’t know what to say so she blurted out, “I guess I don’t. I mean…take long.”

  He rubbed his finger slowly over her lips, starting at the corner. Then he moistened that finger from inside her own mouth and traced her lip line. “I remember.”

  She looked into those eyes of his and she was lost.

  He simply slid his hand behind her head and pulled her mouth to his. His hand went to her jeans and an instant later he had them unbuttoned.

  She pulled back. “Wait.” Everything was going too fast. She didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure what she felt. She was just confused.

  She could feel him looking at her. “I can’t do this. My children are right up there, at the house. I…I’m sorry. I—”

  He placed a finger against her lips. “It’s okay, Catherine.”

  She tried to turn but he wouldn’t let her. She looked away and shoved the hair out of her face. “I don’t know how to do this.”

  He gave a sharp laugh. “You used to. I was there the first time.”

  She covered her mouth. “Oh God…”

  He just kept holding her. “I was joking.”

  “I don’t have sex,” she said against his chest.

  He laughed. “I thought I heard you say you don’t have sex.”

  She looked up at him. “I did say that.”

  He stared down at her as if her words were just sinking in.

  “At all,” she added. “I don’t have sex at all.” There. She’d said it.

  “You have two children. They’re not adopted. They look just like you.”

  “But I haven’t been with anyone since my husband,” she explained. “That was eight years ago.”

  “Eight years,” he repeated flatly.

  She nodded.

  “You haven’t had sex for eight years.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He was quiet for the longest time and she had no idea what he was thinking. Probably that she was a nutcase.

  Then he reached down and rebuttoned her jeans.

  She didn’t know what to say. She wanted him, but not like this. She was so confused.

  He tilted her chin up with one knuckle and gave her a strained smile. “I’ll back off.”

  “But—”

  “No. Let’s give this some time, Catherine. We both need some time.”

  She nodded and they left the boathouse. She stood on the dock as he sailed away, hugging her arms and feeling antsy. She started to walk back to the house, but stopped. She opened the boathouse door and went inside for just a moment.

  It was getting darker and the sunlight through
the dirt on the windows was dull and lifeless. It smelled like damp wood and old canvas. She sat down on an old wooden bench that wobbled when she touched it.

  They had made love here, that very first time.

  Her mind went back all those years and she remembered something. She felt along the wood. Then she found the carved initials.

  M P + C W.

  She closed her eyes and just sat there. Her body was still taut and damp and ready. Her blood still raced through her, and her breath was not slow or even. She looked at those initials and wondered if she was nothing but a silly old fool.

  Michael motored the sailboat back to his place. He tied off the line and jumped on the dock. The air had changed, grown lighter, cooler, and was turning blue with the nightfall.

  He had always loved the island best at night, when he could stand there and watch the sky turn. It was that kind of night where the stars crawl above you in lazy patterns. The kind of night when the owl that lived in a nearby tree became silent, and you could make love all night long and still want more in the morning when the sun rose.

  In his mind, the years that might have been slipped by. Waking up with Catherine, making love to her for days at a time, marriage and fighting and making up. And making children. If not for a cruel twist of fate Dana and Aly might have been his daughters.

  Today had been something different for him. And he realized some things he hadn’t understood before. That very first night he had stood there in the fringe of the woods and watched her with her girls, watched her sliding across the lawn in the rain, chasing that umbrella. He had watched their banter in the house afterward. That night had marked the first time in his life he had thought about the children he’d never had.

  He knew now that it wasn’t just children he had thought he missed. It wasn’t some vague paternal instinct coming out in him when it was too late to do anything about it—not some kind of male emotional clock that was ticking away in his head.

  What he had wanted, what he had truly missed, was having children with Catherine. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stood there for the longest time, then laughed at himself, at his thoughts. He had Catherine on the brain. He was in the same state he’d been in for days—hard and ready for something that would probably never happen.