A Soft Place to Fall

by Barbara Bretton

  "He works too hard down there," Nancy said with a shake of her head. "Do him good if he spent more time working on his boat and less on his payrolls."

  They walked around back to the old barn that Warren had turned into a boat builder's paradise. Long planks of unblemished wood. Buckets of nails. Hammers in all sizes and shapes hung from hooks on the wall next to saws, hasps, clamps. Two table saws were pushed up against the back wall next to a special steamer used to shape straight planks into graceful curves designed to glide through the water.

  And there in the middle of it all was the Sally B, the lobster boat his father had used right up until the day he died. She was in sorry shape right now: half of her hull was in the process of being restored by Warren and had been for almost as long as Sam could remember. Warren's sister Ellie had remarked that the restoration reminded her of Penelope at her loom, a reference Warren and Sam had to look up in the Britannica.

  "He hasn't touched it since I was up here at Easter," Sam said, running his hand along the sharp edge of the keel. The third Mrs. Bancroft might have been right. "He'll never get it finished if he doesn't put in the time."

  Nancy shot him a look that was sharper than a bandsaw. "You don't think you're up here to watch the snow fall, do you? He'll put you to work proper."

  "There's a good four months of eight-hour days left on this baby," he said. "I think that works out to sixteen blueberry pies."

  Nancy's narrow face broke apart with her smile. If the way to a man's heart was his stomach, the way to a cook's heart was through her blueberry pies.

  "I have half a pie on the counter right now," she said, bending down to scratch Max behind the ear. "You look like you could use a little sustenance."

  "I'd better push on to the cottage, Nance. I've been on the road since the crack of dawn and I'm ready to crash."

  The old woman linked her arm through his and walked him to the truck. "You're sure you can find the place on your own now? It gets wicked dark around here at night."

  "I remember how dark it gets." The difference between Shelter Rock Cove and Bayside, Queens could have been measured in light years instead of miles. The teenaged Sam had been pretty sure he'd landed on another planet. "I have the map Warren faxed me," he said and they both laughed.

  "A map won't do you much good in the dark. Maybe I should drive you down there. Wouldn't want you rolling into the water now, would we?"

  It took another five minutes to convince her that he was capable of finding his way to his new home. She wanted him to call her when he got in and only the fact that his phone service wasn't turned on yet made her back down. His mother had been the same way, watching over each member of her brood as if nobody else on earth mattered. He had the feeling she would have been every bit as zealous today over her adult children.

  "Been one hell of a day, Max," he said as they made their way along the twisting road that led to the beach. "Too bad you had to take off after that squirrel."

  He had wanted to square things with the woman with the sad blue eyes and, if he was being completely honest, square things with himself as well. It seemed he had been leaving nothing but loose ends behind these last few months. Something about her had reached deep into his soul, far deeper than a casual encounter in a parking lot would justify. He had felt a connection, a sense of rightness, that he'd never known before.

  Who are you kidding, Butler? She's married. You saw the guy. You saw the married way they talked to each other.

  That still didn't change the way he'd felt when she turned around and looked up at him. There was something in her eyes, something in the sound of her voice, that seemed familiar. As if he'd waited his whole life to meet her.

  "I take it all back, Max," he said as he rounded a tight curve. "You did me a favor back there." Max's squirrel-chasing stunt had broken the spell long enough for Sam to regain some perspective. He was pretty sure he would see her again. Shelter Rock Cove was a small town and sooner or later their paths were bound to cross. Maybe then he could undo some of the damage Max caused and prove to himself that the churned-up feeling inside his chest was nothing more than a blip on his radar screen..

  A thick, hubcap-level fog was rolling right across the narrow, twisting road and he focused his concentration on keeping the Trooper from a close encounter with the run-off ditch that ran parallel. Winter driving must be a bitch. Good thing he was free to head south when the New Year rolled around.

  Next to him Max whimpered twice and nudged Sam's arm, the dog's signal that a quick stop might not be a bad idea.

  "Not here, buddy," Sam said as he switched on his high beams. "Just wait. We'll be home before you know it."

  #

  By eight o'clock the last of Annie's helpers had left and she was alone in her new home for the first time. "Make sure you eat something," Claudia cautioned her. "You haven't had a bite since breakfast."

  Annie promised her mother-in-law she would heat up a slice or two of leftover pizza before she went to bed then locked the door behind her. She had been starving a few hours ago but now she was too tired to think much beyond a warm bath and sleep.

  The boxes were all unpacked and neatly broken down and stacked out back for recycling. Her dishes and glassware were washed, dried, and put away in the cupboards. Her books lined the living room shelves and her television was hooked up and working. Most of her clothes were still draped across the sleigh bed, mainly because nobody wanted to walk across her mattress to reach the closet by the window, but that was okay. She wasn't in any rush.

  "I think I love it," she said to George and Gracie who were crouched in the bedroom doorway. They looked up at her as if she'd lost her mind. "I think we're going to be very happy here."

  Gracie chose that moment to hack up a hairball the size of a wonton.

  "Tell me how you really feel," Annie muttered as she cleaned up after the feline.

  Unlike Gracie, it had been hard for Annie to know how she felt with the place crammed with people and noise and more opinions than you could shake a stick at. But now that she was alone, she knew she had made the right decision. This was her home. This was where she belonged. She loved the bleached wood floors, the whitewashed walls, the tiny stone fireplace, the double-hung windows, the old-fashioned clawfoot tub so deep you could almost float in it. Sure it would take a while to buy things like chairs and a sofa and a kitchen table but those were small considerations. She had paid off all of Kevin's gambling debts and she owned the roof over her own head and, knowing Warren Bancroft, that roof probably came with a lifetime guarantee. She couldn't prove it, but she was reasonably sure Warren had made a few improvements on the place since she had last seen it. The kitchen seemed brighter and that pedestal sink in the bathroom didn't look like original equipment. She would have to take him to task on Tuesday when she dropped off the latest batch of freshly typed memoir pages.

  "I'd be happy to hold a mortgage for you, Annie," he had said a few days before closing. "No need for you to be cash-poor just because you bought a house."

  Annie had been adamant in her refusal and the deal had gone down in cash. No mortgage. No bank. No strangers at the door or phone calls in the middle of the night. Nobody could take it away from her. If that wasn't cause for celebration, she didn't know what was.

  Maybe a celebration was just what she needed. A housewarming party for one. She'd splurged on a bottle of domestic champagne the day the Flemings closed on her old house with the intention of popping the cork when she moved into her new place. Well, she'd moved into her new place and the cork was still in the bottle and that struck her as a terrible waste of occasion, not to mention champagne.

  Ten minutes later she stripped off her clothes and sank into the warm, fragrant claw-foot tub. Chunky white candles scented with freesia glowed from the windowsill, the counter, and along the baseboard. Good thing candles didn't come with an expiration date or she would have passed it five years ago. The door was closed against an onslaught of cats but the gentle sounds
of Mozart found her just the same. A stack of new towels, a housewarming gift from Susan, were piled high on the shelf next to the window and her favorite silky green robe was tossed over the towel rod by the door. The belt, a beautiful braid of green and gold cord, swayed gently to the music a few inches above the floor like a charmed snake. She'd indulged in a glass of champagne while the bathtub was filling and she felt relaxed in a lovely boneless way that was unfamiliar to her. She reached for the beautiful crystal flute of golden liquid balanced on the edge of the sink then sank back down into the warm and welcoming water.

  "To me!" she said, lifting the glass high. She took a sip. "To the future!"

  For the first time since Kevin's death she actually believed she had one. She decided that deserved another sip of bubbly.

  Champagne? She could hear Claudia's voice clear as a bell. Champagne will give you a terrible headache, honey, especially on an empty stomach.

  "Shut up, Claudia," she said out loud. "Champagne is the elixir of the gods."

  You really should eat something, Anne. A slice of pizza or a nice sandwich. Pour yourself a glass of milk.

  "I don't want milk, Claudia. I want champagne. And if you don't keep your thoughts out of my head, I just might drink the entire bottle."

  #

  The house was at the end of the road, as far east as Sam could drive without plunging into the Atlantic. It was larger than he had expected and a hell of a lot older.

  He pulled into the driveway, turned off the engine, then opened the door. Max, eager to respond to nature's call, was the first one out.

  "Stay close," he warned the dog. "You might be a Lab but I'm not convinced you know how to swim."

  Max, giddy with freedom, took off down the road at a surprising clip.

  "We're getting you a leash tomorrow," Sam grumbled as he headed after the dog.

  He didn't have far to go. Max came to a screeching halt in front of the only other house on the block, a small shingled cottage half-hidden in the trees. Max barked once, then twice more at increasing volume.

  This wasn't the right way to meet the neighbors. Sam made to grab the dog by the collar but Max ran closer to the house. He barked again. Nancy said a widow had just moved into the house. He could imagine the poor old woman cowering behind the door while a strange man and his crazed dog lurked outside. For all he knew she was dialing 911 right now.

  He grabbed for Max again and managed to make contact but the dog ran straight up the porch steps and began scratching at the door.

  What the hell was going on? The dog bounded off the porch then ran to the side of the house where his frantic barks brought Sam running. The dog's full attention was directed to the single small window where a faint yellow and red light flickered crazily behind the shade.

  #

  Annie was floating naked on a raft in the middle of a turquoise lagoon while tropical sun kissed every part of her body. Her right hand clutched a pina colada while her left hand trailed lazily through the balmy waters. Somewhere on shore a campfire burned merrily. If only the crazy man would stop yelling in her ear –

  "Fire!"

  She opened her eyes and saw the man from the Yankee Shopper parking lot advancing toward her, brandishing a flaming bathrobe.

  She sighed deeply and closed her eyes again. Empty stomach. Lots of champagne. Terrible combination. She was quite happily drunk and he was a figment of her grape-sodden imagination.

  "Out of the tub, now!"

  Since when did gorgeous figments of the imagination yell at you? They were supposed to be obedient and cheerful, no matter what you told them to do. She grumbled to herself and wished she had the energy, not to mention the dexterity, to add some more water to the bath. She heard water running some place close by and even imagined she felt droplets of cold water splashing against her exposed skin. Caribbean rain, that's what it was. Everyone knew it rained a lot in the Caribbean. She tried to will it away but the droplets flew at her faster and colder and the whole thing was becoming quite annoying.

  And what happened to the sweet smell of flowers? Instead of scented candles, she smelled burnt fabric. She forced her eyes open again. She wasn't focusing very well but there he was, holding her poor bathrobe under running water. Had she let him in? She couldn't remember but it was clear somebody had because there he was.

  Or then again maybe he wasn't. Why would he be washing a silk bathrobe in her sink? Surely she could think of something more interesting for him to do.

  Of course he wasn't really there. Good thing he was the by-product of three glasses of extremely cheap champagne because otherwise the fact that she was lying there naked in the bath tub while a strange man ruined her favorite robe might actually be something to worry about.

  #

  Sam was no detective but it wasn't hard to figure out what was going on there. The empty bottle of cheap champagne, the drained glass on the rim of the tub, candles burning everywhere, and a tipsy naked woman who was starting to add up the clues.

  "My robe . . . " She sounded fuzzy, like she had a mouthful of cotton candy. "Water ruins silk."

  "Yeah?" He tried not to glance her way but he was, after all, a man and she was naked. "Fire does a better job."

  "Fire?"

  Talking to someone who'd made short work of a bottle of bubbly was never easy, not even when the someone in question was a woman with a body he'd be seeing in his dreams for the next twenty years. "Not too hard to figure, is it? You have enough candlepower going here to light the way to Bangor." As far as he could tell, the belt on her robe had touched the open flame of a candle and things went from there.

  "And you --?"

  "You're not going to remember a word of this later, are you?" he asked, wringing out the sopping wet robe over the sink. "For the record, you have Max to thank. He knew something was wrong. I'm just the guy with the prehensile thumbs who did the breaking and entering."

  She gave him a loopy, dreamy smile. "Kiss Max for me."

  Looking at her was dangerous business. He redirected his attention to the robe. The left side of the robe was badly scorched. Another two or three minutes and the entire garment would have been in flames, followed by the house. Maybe Max did deserve a kiss.

  He held up the robe to show her. "Not much point to saving this."

  Her eyelids fluttered open. "I love that robe."

  "Not any more you don't."

  She sighed deeply and lifted a bare foot, toes pointed. "New beginnings," she said. "Lots of 'em today." She frowned slightly, as if she were trying to focus in on just one of him. "Goodnight."

  "That's it?" He started to laugh. "No 'thanks for saving my life' or 'who the hell are you'?"

  "Too sleepy . . . some other time." She closed her eyes and started to slip beneath the surface of the water.

  "C'mon, don't do that –" What choice did he have? He dropped the robe in the sink then tried to find the least incendiary part of her slippery wet body to grab hold of. There wasn't one. He slid his hands under her arms and pulled her against his chest, trying to pretend she wasn't round and soft and naked. Her head dropped against his shoulder. He could feel her breath against the side of his neck. Hell, he could feel it everywhere. Her long curly hair was wet and smelled of shampoo. He wondered how it would feel, spilling across his bare chest while she straddled him.

  Dangerous ground. He'd never taken advantage of a woman and he wasn't about to start now, even if his mind was taking him places he hadn't been in a long time.

  Somehow he managed to get her to loop an arm around his neck long enough for him to scoop her out of the tub.

  She murmured something then nuzzled closer and he struggled to hang on to his rapidly shredding sense of all that was right and decent. The connection he had felt when he first saw her leaning over her shopping cart in the parking lot was nothing compared to the powerful desire that was wreaking havoc on him.

  "What the hell am I going to do with you?" he said aloud.

  He had saved her
from fire and drowning. All he had to do now was save her from himself.

  The cottage was tiny and ten steps later he found himself in the doorway to a bedroom that seemed to be all bed and no room. A beautiful sleigh bed, the wood smooth and unstained, rose up from the polished floor like something from a Russian fairy tale. Two black and white cats watched from the foot, alert to Max's whimpering from the doorway. All Sam had to do was settle the bundle of woman onto the mattress without enjoying himself any more than necessary.

  The bed was piled high with clothes: jeans, sweaters, a velvet dress the color of the midnight sky. Everything but sheets and a blanket.

  "Work with me," he said as he tried to sit her up at the edge of the bed. "I have to clear a spot for you."

  She bestowed another one of those loopy smiles on him then proceeded to slide off the bed onto the floor where Max tried to sniff her hair.

  "She has enough trouble," Sam said, and gave the dog a gentle push toward the living room.

  He quickly shoved the clothes to the far side of the mattress then picked her up one more time. He told her to stay put while he searched out some towels and blankets but the soft thud as he left the room told him otherwise.

  "What the hell am I going to do with you?"

  The cats' unblinking stares followed every move he made as he placed her on the mattress, tucked a pillow under her head, hunted around for towels and a blanket to cover her. He tried to wrap a towel around her wet hair but she pushed him away. It would be easier to gather mercury in your bare hands than to convince her to stay put for more than ten seconds. He grabbed an assortment of sweaters and a winter coat from the jumble of garments then covered her with them. She mumbled something he assumed wasn't thank you.

  "Don't move," he said, then laughed out loud. As if she had any idea what he was saying.