He came out of the bathroom, drying his face on a towel. He eyed the pair of king-sized beds, and walked through to the sitting room furnished with a sofa, coffee table, a small round table and a set of chairs. Louvered doors led to a patio, its columns richly wound in white cloth. A filmy white surround delivered privacy and turned the patio into a cabana. Stone steps led down to an inland estuary. A canoe was tied to an iron stanchion. Caburn retraced his steps and faced Anna.
“What do you want to do?” His tone was short, sharp and unhelpful. He knew the travel master had done the best he could on short notice. He didn’t like to think Anna was going to be ungrateful or uppity.
For Anna it was a moment both innocent and charged—a moment when choices were being made.
“Well—we’re here,” she said, her eyes like two big holes waiting to be filled with glee or grief—whichever came first. “It’s utterly luxurious, and peaceful. I don’t want to sit around in the lobby waiting for a two bedroom suite to become available. Every minute counts. I’m determined to pull myself together. Anyway—it’s not like we have to share a bed. Only the bathroom.”
Caburn let his breathe out. “I’ll be the absolute soul of propriety. I promise.”
“I hope not,” Anna murmured as she turned away to unpack.
“Anna.”
“Mmmm?”
“I have exceptionally keen hearing.”
The air seemed to have become thinner in the room.
“That’s nice,” she said, as if it didn’t matter one whit that he had overheard her comment. “Give me five minutes in the bathroom to freshen up and change, then it’s all yours.”
She came out of the bathroom barefoot, clad in a lime green bikini, and a knee-length flowered sarong tied about her hips.
“Holy Hannah,” Caburn said.
Anna offered him an impish smile. “I think that’s a compliment.” She folded her discarded clothes into a neat stack and put them in a drawer. “I’ll wait on the patio.” She sashayed past him as he sat on the foot of the bed, looking dazed and a wad of clothing dangling from his wonderful hands between his knees. On the patio Anna peeked around the louvers. Frank was still sitting on the foot of the bed. Oh, I’m bad, she thought. And, it feels delicious.
Caburn took a one minute shower, a two minute shave, brushed his teeth, his hair, and emerged clad in a green and white striped swimsuit and a white tee.
Anna looked up. She was on the sofa packing her beach tote. For a moment she thought she would turn her head away, but she couldn’t help herself. She looked him up and down. He had very nice legs. Long, ropy and muscled. She watched him dig around in his sport tote for sandals and sunglasses. He slid their room key into a zipper pocket, and, wearing a frown, pointed a thumb at the door.
“Have you lost the power of speech?” asked Anna.
“No. I forgot to do something important.”
“Like what?”
“Make dinner reservations.”
Anna withheld a sigh. “The beach is this way,” she told him, leading him down a gravel path. Overhead was an artfully designed canopy of indigenous shrubs, and towering bamboo.
In less than five minutes it seemed to Anna that she had been transported into another universe by magic carpet. The blue-green waters of the Caribbean stretched as far as the eye could see beneath an entire ceiling of pure blue sky. The breeze off the water caught her sarong, whipping it away to reveal shapely legs and a superbly formed thigh.
This moment, she decided, stepping into the crystal white sun, was the actual beginning of her new life—whatever it would be, however it went. Hers.
Kevin’s deceit, the dissatisfaction in her marriage, and Clara-Alice’s galling hatefulness would fade with time. Meanwhile she did not have to carry them around as emotional luggage.
~~~~
Caburn was thankful for his sunglasses. They allowed him to stare unabashedly at Anna. Her creamy skin was flawless; luminous in the blazing sun. Silhouetted against the light, her spine was straight, her head tilted toward the sky, her arms out flung to the fulsome breeze and spray of surf, as if she were welcoming some other kind of life. He hoped she was and he hoped he was a part of it.
She turned to him, smiling. “Can you feel it?”
“Impossible not to,” he said, enjoying her innocence of the moment. If only she knew. If only he had not given his word of honor.
“Oh, look. There’s a group doing Tai Chi on the beach. Let’s walk down there. I love Tai Chi.” They had gone no more than a few yards when the assemblage turned in mass. The women were all topless. Anna stopped in her tracks. “I changed my mind. Let’s go down to the salt-water pool instead.”
Caburn laughed. “Hold up a minute. I like Tai Chi, too.”
She lifted her glasses, skewering him with a look. “No, you don’t.” She took his arm and steered him back toward the salt-water pool.
“Miss Anna, you are one prodigious mass of contradictions. I thought you were open-minded.”
“I am. I just didn’t want you to be embarrassed.”
“I’m not embarrassed by naked women. Goodness. There’s Penthouse, Playboy, National Geographic—”
“Oh, it wasn’t the women. Didn’t you notice? The men were topless, too.”
Caburn stopped on the path while Anna walked on to the cabana bar, and ordered a frozen margarita. I better learn to laugh at my foibles, he thought, since I plan on spending a lot of time with this woman.
He got a bottle of water from the barista and went to join Anna. She was sitting on the foot of a lounge chair beneath a thatched-roof cabana lathering on sunscreen. There were a half-dozen others sunning themselves, or in the pool.
“Will you put some on my back?” asked Anna, holding out the tube of lotion.
He found his hands trembling. He smoothed the lotion on slowly, not to create a sensual mood, but to prolong the delightful sensation of feeling her smooth skin against his palm.
“Now, you,” Anna said after he capped the lotion.
“I’m good.”
“You are not. You’re fairer than I am. Why are you suddenly so...so conservative?” Before he could protest or move, she went behind him and lifted the tee. His left shoulder from spine to clavicle was yellow, fading from purple. She saw where the staples had been removed. That area was still blue-black. Her insides felt suddenly airy. She leaned her forehead against his neck. “Goddamn Clara-Alice—and me, too—for being so focused on myself—on my problems...I’m so ashamed, Frank. Why didn’t you say something?”
“Hey. Don’t beat up on yourself. It looks worse than it feels. Honest. Anyway, men don’t hold up mirrors to look at their backside. That’s a woman thing.” Then, to make her feel better, he stripped off his tee. “It’s my front side that’s miserable.”
“Oh. That’s not really too bad. The hair is already growing back where you pulled it out.” Anna put her hand palm flat on his chest, lowering it slowly until it reached the tie string at his waist.
Caburn grabbed her hand. “Whoa!”
“You let Lila cop a feel. Why can’t I?”
“We’re in public.”
“No one is paying any attention to us.”
“Wrong. I’m paying attention.”
“So, it’s okay if I do that when we’re not in public.”
“Nope. I’m not falling into those verbal traps.”
“You have a lot of experience with verbal traps?”
He looked at her with a sea of affection. “About a thousand years of it.”
“What about your back? Is that off-limits, too?”
“No. Pour on that stuff and let’s go swimming.”
She took longer than needed to apply the sunscreen. She included his neck, the tops of his ears. Her hand slid down the side of his back and snaked around to his ribs.
Laughing, he caught her hand. “For a librarian, you’re utterly shameless.”
“Shameless is far better than being dull.” She stood, droppe
d her sarong across his knees, and walked down the steps into the pool.
Caburn stopped laughing and began a mental mantra: I gave my word...I gave my word...
The afternoon tide was at its zenith, the waves curling more than six feet high over the artificial reef to fill the pool. Anna swam its length and back. Caburn joined her on the third lap.
“Is it okay for you to swim, exercise?” She looked troubled and anxious, not as happy as she had one short hour ago.
“Sure. Swimming is great. No pushups. No martial arts—not for another few weeks—or so the doc said.”
A huge wave knocked them over and splashed against the lip of the pool. Anna came up sputtering. “I’m drowned.”
They stayed in the pool, swimming, splashing, touching—but carefully—and briefly chatting with other guests until a gigantic wave brought in a two-foot baby shark. The pool emptied in two seconds flat, and there was a rush to queue up at the bar.
Anna leaned back into the shade of the cabana and sipped a frozen strawberry margarita. “I guess we’re not swimming in this pool anymore.”
Caburn laughed. “I sure as hell am not. This resort has more wild life than the Washington zoo.”
Anna reapplied sunscreen and handed the tube over to Caburn. “Our first day out—we better keep it on thick.” From her tote she withdrew the resort’s activities brochure for the area. “We can go horseback riding on the beach in the morning.”
“Find something a little more tame.”
“Tame? Horses are tame. Don’t you use horses on a farm?”
“Horse power—as in plows, tractors, threshers.”
“Well, I can ride a horse on the beach by myself while you eat and sleep.”
“How many horses have you ridden?”
Tight-lipped, Anna perused the brochure once again. “Here’s something. We can go with a group to Cambalache one evening. That’s an Argentinean Steak House.”
“Sure, we can sign up for that.”
“Okay. If we wanted to, we could combine that with Coco Bongo, Show and Disco. That’s a Las Vegas type floor show—topless dancers; Elvis impersonators. That sounds like fun. We could make a night of it.”
Caburn lifted his sun glasses. “What’s the difference between topless dancers and topless Tai Chi?”
“Distance. We’re not going to run into topless showgirls at breakfast. What about Christmas Day? We could do a sail to Isla Mujeres. That means the Island of Women. Open bar, buffet lunch...”
She left out the part about snorkeling and shopping. Caburn’s comfort zone was food, drink, and sleep.
“What kind of women?”
“Saints, probably.”
Caburn stoppered the sunscreen. “I love the dichotomy—topless dancers Christmas Eve, and saints on Christmas Day.”
“What about having a librarian in between—just to balance things out?”
His eyebrows came together. “Behave.”
A couple strolled by in front of them holding hands. The woman was tall, tanned and wearing a black maillot, she had an exquisite asymmetrical haircut that the breeze shaped and reshaped to envious perfection. Her companion was also tall, his graying hair pulled back into a ponytail. He wore a thong that left his buttocks bare and all of his tinker toys bunched in front.
Anna cut her eyes toward Caburn. “You would look so cute if you let your hair grow and wore it in a ponytail.”
“Let’s go get dressed for dinner.”
“It’s too early. I’m just going to close my eyes and soak up the sun for a bit.”
“Good. Keep ‘em closed.” He got up and walked in the opposite direction to the couple, heading toward the end of the pool to stand amidst a group of men and giggly children who were watching hotel staff try to corral the little shark.
Anna yawned. The sun, the swim, the tequila, were telling on her. Not to mention she’d been up since three in the morning to catch their flight. The adrenalin rush of arriving in the tropics was wearing off.
Caburn woke her as a silvery dusk was descending. Overhead the sky was the color of ripe peaches, streaked with soft reds and mellow purples as the sun moved westward. Or, as the earth rotated, Anna knew, since the sun was anchored in the universe, and didn’t move at all.
“Dibs on the shower,” she called as they entered their suite. Having packed efficiently she gathered up what she needed from her suitcase and disappeared into the bathroom. She made a guttural sound that had Caburn looking up from his unpacking.
The bathroom door slammed shut. Frank’s jeans and shirt were on the tub, his boxer shorts—white, printed with little brown puppies—were on the floor of the shower; socks and loafers under the sink. His shaving kit, deodorant, tooth brush and toothpaste scattered over the marble counter. She rearranged his things to the left side of the marble counter—hers to the right. A used towel had been kicked into a corner. Smoldering, she picked up his clothes, folded them into a neat stack and put them on the tub surround. She caught her image in the mirror over the sink. Her expression was that of a long-suffering harridan. Oh, God. She blinked hard.
Sinking down on the tub edge, she realized the disarray in the bathroom had instantly reminded her of Kevin. She had spent years picking up after him. Crap. Crap. Crap. Emotional baggage was such a slippery slope. Just when she thought she had it under control it came out of nowhere to knock her backwards. This stuff was like quicksand, sucking her under. What was happening to her resolve? Her eyes began to burn with frustration and tears. She looked again at herself in the mirror. You can’t allow this to happen, she whispered. You are on an all-expenses paid vacation compliments of the United States State Department with a man who is the absolute antithesis of the man you were married to for ten years. Not married. Lived with.
Not only that, Frank was a bachelor. He didn’t leave his clothes lying around because there were women to clean up after him. She thought about the bruises on his back. It dawned on her that Frank had been the easier target, standing with his back to the dining room. Had Clara-Alice managed to get past him—she would be the one with the stab wound, the purple bruise, and the scar it would leave. Moreover, Frank had not complained. Compare that to Kevin who whined for a week if he had a hangnail.
Okay, she thought satisfied. She had a handle on the baggage now.
After the assault on her psyche, in addition to all the salt and sun, the shower felt like watered silk. Ten minutes later, after she was thoroughly soaped, shampooed and rinsed with water as cold as she could bear, she again stood in front of the bathroom mirror posturing this way and that. Her tan was coming along just fine, thank you. Perhaps her nose was just a bit rosy, but a swipe of face powder took care of it. She brushed her hair back into a red scrunchie, and hung gold and pearl drop earrings from her lobes. Something was missing besides her clothes. She whisked on a bit of smoky gray eye shadow, smudging it until her eyes looked sultry. She wondered what Frank would do if she walked out of the bathroom naked. Probably go all red in the face, dive under the bed, or head for Pluto.
She tugged on one of the two sundresses she’d snagged in a tiny shop in Paris which had survived Clara-Alice’s manic destruction only because her summer clothes had been packed away in the guest bedroom. The Parisian shop was hardly larger than a walk-in closet. The owner told her the dresses were failed couture designs that never made the runways. They had been created by a lowly assistant whose job it was to cut fabric—without aspiring to anything loftier. The dress she slipped on was a taupe-colored, cotton-silk blend that never wrinkled; it was cut on the bias so that it flowed when the wearer moved, hinting at curves, but never actually revealing them. The lowly assistant had done something practical, which was to double the fabric covering the front so no bra was needed. It had clever, crocheted string straps. It was—step into a pair of panties, fling the dress on, and go. Anna hoped that by now the lowly assistant had overcome the envy and backstabbing rampant in that industry and was at the top of the couture ladder because thi
s dress was awesome. If it didn’t knock Frank’s socks off, she’d stuff one in his mouth.
He was laying out his clothes on his bed when she emerged from the bathroom.
“I’m going to put my swimsuit on the patio to dry,” she said, more to get his attention, than to alert him he could take his turn in the bathroom.
“Good idea.” He glanced her way. “Wow.”
Wow? That’s it? Why wasn’t he sweeping her into his arms? Murmuring how irresistible he found her? She had deliberately not applied lipstick for just this reason.
In a state of very specific dissatisfaction, Anna moved past him onto the patio and draped her swimsuit over the wooden railing. It was full dark now—a beautiful and clear night. Overhead, flickering stars were millions upon millions of tiny lights against a vast black sky. She could hear the soft susurrus of the ocean as waves rolled up the beach. The canoe tied below the patio rocked gently. The gauzy white curtains billowed in the soft breeze crossing the surface of the estuary. She wondered if the little shark was feeling happy to be back in the ocean and not trapped in the pool. I’m not trapped anymore either, she thought, and almost burst into happy tears.
Inside the suite, she heard the shower running full bore—and all of Frank’s clothes were still laid out on his bed—including his boxer shorts. Well. This might get interesting. Meanwhile, she occupied herself by completing her own unpacking and wondering if she had misjudged everything that had happened between herself and Frank Caburn.
Recalling the night, when they had hugged she had felt him rise against her. She wasn’t mistaken about that—was she? At Vincenzo’s when she said that if she came on this trip they’d probably end up sleeping together, it had seemed to her his protest was overdone. There had been that intense look of desire in dark gray eyes that made them seem as black as coal. Had she misread that? Yet, here they were in this Eden, and they had not so much as held hands. It even seemed as though he had pulled back from flirting and sexual innuendo. Oh, he was still charming and engaging. But that was just Frank. She wondered if she were so overcome by her attraction to him that she was not seeing things clearly.
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