He released her hands and she lurched forward ungracefully.
‘I don’t –’
Abe wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Was he wiping the taste of her away? On purpose? Fiona ignored the tiny pang she felt. She was taking this all too personally. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, confused. ‘I didn’t mean to …’
‘No,’ Abe said, shoving his hands into his pockets. ‘Nothing to be sorry for. I started that.’
Then finish it. But she couldn’t say it. She was the one with the crush, not him. Fiona took a deep breath and carefully skirted her way around him in the moonlight. Her eyes were so well adjusted now that she could see the bulge at the front of his pants, the bulge that echoed the hot slickness between her thighs. Good. He felt it, too. At least she knew that.
‘It was because I said your real name, wasn’t it?’ She kept her voice light. A kiss like that was probably nothing to him. She could make it mean nothing to herself, too.
Given ten or twelve years.
‘That’s not it …’
But his voice trailed off, and he didn’t finish the sentence.
Awesome.
She should have known. You’re not good enough. Never good enough.
‘Time to go.’ Fiona glanced at her naked wrist as though she was wearing a watch. ‘The Alfa turns into a pumpkin soon, and then we’ll be stranded.’ She wanted to take back the words as soon as she said them. God forbid he think she was comparing herself to Cinderella.
‘Fiona,’ Abe said, reaching for her hand. ‘Wait …’
‘It’s okay,’ she said, leading the way out of the cave. ‘I understand.’
But she didn’t.
At the top of the steep path, Fiona paused to let him catch up, trying not to think of how she must look, out of breath with the exertion and flushed. It wasn’t like she never worked out. She went for a run at least once a month, whether she needed it or not.
Keep it light. Just get home.
Abe was next to her, still much too quiet.
Fiona gestured up toward the lighthouse. ‘Wanna just kick it down with me? Come on.’
He didn’t say anything, just stared at her with those crystalline eyes.
‘It wouldn’t take much,’ she said. ‘Just a few solid hits, probably. The city would pay us, if we saved them the cost.’ She needed to get his mind on anything but what had happened in the cave. Make him stop staring at her lips like that, like he was ravenous and she was sustenance. No gaze had ever felt so good, and it needed to stop if she couldn’t satisfy his need. ‘We could make it into a pile of splinters and then have ourselves a big ole bonfire. Roast some marshmallows.’
He looked as jarred as she’d meant him to. ‘It should stand.’
Good. She wanted to get him riled. ‘It has to go.’
‘Fiona. It’s our history as a city. It was your home, for cripes sake.’
‘It’s a nightmare.’
Frowning, he said, ‘We can talk about it another time. Tomorrow maybe.’
‘Now. This was the plan, right? For us to talk? I can’t believe you actually want to preserve that old jalopy.’ Fiona turned her back and started walking away, toward the highway and her car, which was still parked at the hot dog stand. He’d either follow or he wouldn’t. She wasn’t sure which she wanted.
‘I can’t believe you don’t want to save it.’
Abe caught up to Fiona and walked shoulder-to-shoulder with her. They didn’t say another word until they reached the car. She reached to unlock the door for him, relishing the fact that she was driving now, that she was in control of this at least. If not of her own damn emotions.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said once they were both seated with the doors closed, the sound of the pounding waves dampened by the metal.
‘Nothing to be sorry for.’ Please, please let him be quiet for the short drive back to Tillie’s where he’d left his truck. She wanted to die of embarrassment. Yeah, he’d been obviously turned on, but that was only because she’d thrown herself at him. Like the fool she was. She should have known better. Abe Atwell wasn’t interested in someone like her, and if he was, against his better judgment, of course that wouldn’t – couldn’t – last more than for a fling, which would just end up being embarrassing for everyone involved.
After a long, very awkward pause, after she’d taken the curve to Main Street perhaps just a little too fast, he said, ‘Maybe we can agree to disagree.’
On the kiss? Fiona was horrified and jammed the stick into second, making the engine sound as upset as she felt. ‘It’s fine. We can forget it ever happened.’
Oh, God. It hurt.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Stick to using your best needles when you can. What are you saving them for? – E. C.
‘Not that,’ Abe said quietly. ‘I meant about the lighthouse.’
If Fiona had put just one ounce more energy into the engine via her pedal foot, the car would have fishtailed into the parking spot with a satisfying scream. As it was, the engine roared as she gave it extra gas while moving it into neutral. ‘We don’t need to agree on anything.’
‘Can’t you see that Cypress Hollow needs the light?’
‘It has a light. No one’s wrecked on the shore in thirty years. The auto pulse works just fine, and every single sailor uses GPS devices now, anyway. A full third of the whole country’s lighthouses have already been decommissioned, did you know that? More every year. They’re obsolete.’ Why didn’t he just get out of the car? Couldn’t he see how humiliated she felt? She’d thrown herself at him and he’d done an amazing job of rejecting her. If only he’d finish the job. Oh, yeah – fishermen clubbed their poor injured fish over the head after they dragged them out of the water. Maybe that was next.
‘My father loved the lighthouse,’ said Abe. ‘Once he almost died trying to get the boat in during a storm. I was three and my mother was pregnant with Marina. The old light hadn’t been working for a few days.’
Fiona suddenly remembered how stressed her father would get when he was waiting for a part to come in from the East Coast. He’d watch the weather, cursing if clouds grew.
‘Then, at the moment he’d completely lost his bearings, it lit up. Flashed. Showed him where to go. We would have lost him that night if it hadn’t come on.’
Instead of drowning then, Abe’s father had just drowned later. But she didn’t say this out loud, of course.
‘Bring it up at the meeting, then,’ she said lightly. ‘I’ll see you there.’ Yeah, the next time Abe got gas, she’d look out the window of the station, just like she always did. It would be terrible now that she knew exactly what she was missing – those strong hands, those perfect lips that fit hers like they were made to do nothing but kiss her …
But he didn’t get out of the car.
‘I can’t,’ Abe said. ‘I mean …’ His voice was guttural. His fingers clenched in what looked like frustration.
Fiona said, ‘Sorry?’
‘I can’t bring it up at the meeting. I don’t … I don’t do well in front of people. Talking.’
Fiona frowned. ‘You talk in front of your passengers all the time.’
‘That’s different. That’s what I do.’
‘You have stage fright?’
Abe shook his head. ‘Fear of public speaking.’ He said quickly, ‘It’s very common, you know.’
Fiona felt a headache start behind her eyes. She wanted so badly to be home, safe, alone. Politely as she could, she said, ‘I’m sorry about that. Maybe you can get coaching or something …’
‘Or I can convince you to save the lighthouse.’
‘No.’ She felt a pit at the bottom of her stomach. That wasn’t why he’d gone out with her in the first place, was it? Was she that big a fool?
‘I don’t know if I can explain it to you. But I have to try to make something of it. Build the museum my dad wanted. It was his biggest hope, what he was going to do when he’d finally saved enough to retire.’
>
‘Yeah,’ Fiona said, keeping her eyes straight out the front window, looking at a bent parking meter, willing him to get out of the car. ‘You should pick another place for your museum.’
She opened the car door and stepped outside, sucking the damp night air into her lungs. Maybe he’d take the hint now that she was out of the car. Jesus, Abe, get out.
How had she thought for even a minute that she could be as attractive as Abe would want a woman to be? That she could imitate someone beautiful, classy, interesting and smart? Obviously, he’d kissed her down in the cave and found there that his plan to get her to change her mind on the lighthouse couldn’t include seduction. She was no Cinderella. She was no Rayna, for God’s sake.
Instead of turning into a beautiful princess, Abe’s kiss had reminded them both she was still just a frog.
Abe finally exited the passenger side. His hands flat on the roof of her car, he said in a strained voice, ‘Fiona.’
She wondered if he remembered that day at Tad’s Ice Cream. What was it, twelve years ago? Twenty-one years old, Fiona had been eating a turtle sundae by herself in a front booth that looked out onto the street. She’d just dumped a guy who thought her boobs should be bigger (Gino had offered her money for a breast enhancement and had said he wouldn’t have sex with her until she accepted – she’d cried for hours after she’d told him to get the hell out). Still hearing the echoes of his words, You eat too much sugar. You need to grow your chest, not your hips, Fiona took herself to get ice cream. She’d eat it in front of God and everyone. Screw Gino.
Because she’d had such a good view of the sidewalk, she’d seen Abe before he saw her. Damn, that was what a man should look like. Broad enough to lean on, strong enough to trust. And that’s exactly what Rayna was doing.
They’d entered and ordered, and Rayna had looked around for a place to sit. Her eyes lit up when she saw Fiona sitting in a booth by herself. She’d pulled Abe behind her.
‘Just you here?’
Fiona had nodded. She didn’t want to share her booth with the most romantic couple in Cypress Hollow. Her embarrassing crush on Abe Atwell in those days had been much smaller, but it grew every time she saw him.
‘Big booth,’ said Rayna with a smile. ‘You mind if we join you?’
What could she say? ‘Sure.’
They’d slid in on one side, hip-to-hip. Abe hadn’t looked at her, his eyes glued on Rayna. Fiona knew a girl that pretty could have anything she wanted, up to and including the cherry on top of their shared sundae (which was half the size of the one Fiona was polishing off by herself, she noticed).
The couple had spent more time kissing than eating ice cream, and Fiona had left the last quarter of her sundae regrettably untouched. ‘Okay, see you,’ she mumbled.
Rayna came up for air long enough to smile and say, ‘You have a little … on your shirt.’
Fiona looked down. It wasn’t a little anything – it was a lot of chocolate, all down the front of her t-shirt, as though she were four years old.
Abe, though, hadn’t glanced at her once.
Now, on the other side of her car, he was looking at her. For sure. But he was seeing her in terms of business. He’d gone out with her to talk about the lighthouse – to change her mind on it, to get her to speak for him.
It hurt. A lot. Her headache flared, throbbing with the rhythm of her heart.
‘Okay, see you,’ she said, intentionally echoing her younger, more naïve self.
Abe stepped back slowly, letting his door shut. ‘Fiona. Wait.’
Fiona got back inside the car and started it. He bent and said something at the window, his eyes looking dark and hurt, but she locked the doors.
And then she gunned the shit out of the engine, her wheels spitting rocks. She hadn’t put all that time and money into this engine without knowing that she could hit sixty in six point three.
Six point four seconds later, she was going a mile a minute down the coast road, leaving the sexiest and most dangerous man in the world standing openmouthed in a gravel parking lot under a treacherous moon.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Touch every ball of yarn in your house once a year. Otherwise, they get restless and will form small armies against you. – E. C.
Abe knew his mother had loved many things she couldn’t now do: she had loved to spin yarn, and bead, and weave. But above all, she had loved to knit. When she’d lost that, the ability to use her hands for the fine knitting she loved – due to the arthritis that left her able only to manipulate the huge needles she hated – she’d lost one of the last remaining joys in her life.
So when she called Abe and said, ‘Meet me at Tillie’s for breakfast,’ Abe jumped. Heck yeah, he’d take his mother out for scrambled eggs with melted cheddar cheese on top. Being at Tillie’s would do her good.
It didn’t hurt that he might see Fiona there.
He hadn’t seen her since Friday, four days before. A storm had come in with a vengeance over the weekend, and he was kept busy all day Saturday making sure both boat and houseboat remained shipshape. When the worst of it hit on Sunday, he hadn’t gone aboveboard all day. Just him, Digit, his mystery novels – and a creak on the deck every hour or two that made him wonder if it was her, come to kiss him again. If she’d come to look at him with those sea-green eyes. If she’d come to push him down on his bed, straddling him with those small, shockingly strong arms.
But no. Nothing. Besides waving out his kitchen window to Luther on the houseboat next door, he hadn’t seen another soul in days.
His mother entered Tillie’s, and from this distance – four booths and the coat rack – Abe could see the difference in her. The last time they’d met for breakfast, she’d been more upright. She hadn’t grabbed the back of the stools to steady herself like she did now. Her back hadn’t been that bent. Now she looked so small.
Abe stood and hurried to her, putting an arm under her elbow.
‘What?’ she grumbled. ‘You think I need help just to sit down?’
Even though he knew she was sturdy, Abe used both hands to steady her as she slipped sideways into the booth. ‘You okay, Mom?’
She gave him a sharp glance. ‘Don’t treat me like a hothouse flower, Abe.’
He leaned back into his own side of the booth. ‘I don’t know what that means, besides that I probably shouldn’t water you more than three times a day.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘I know.’ Damn it.
‘Why do you have that look on your face, then? Oh, yes please, Shirley. Hot and black, thanks.’ Hope turned back to Abe, cup gripped between her hands as if she was trying to warm them. ‘There it is again. That look.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ma. I only have the face I was born with, the one you gave me.’
‘That face that says you’re worried I’m going to kick the bucket any minute.’
‘That’s not what I’m thinking.’ But yeah, it was. One morning, he’d go over there and find her fallen in the bathroom in the night, slapped with a stroke, unable to call for help.
Dying alone. Just like Dad had in the ocean. Dying without anyone she loved near to help.
She smiled. ‘I’m like those alley cats I feed in the backyard. Tougher than I look.’ She stretched a hand out to touch his forearm. ‘I really am. You shouldn’t worry so much.’ She took another sip of her coffee. ‘You remember when you were in grade school? You couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, and you came home crying because your teacher told the class that everything dies.’
Abe shuffled his boots uncomfortably. He hadn’t thought of that traumatic moment in a long time. Sweetness, the class guinea pig, had turned up stiff and cold when the class got back in after a weekend. Over the crying of twenty-three seven-year-olds, Mrs. Blanship had said, ‘It’s okay to cry when we feel sad. Everything dies eventually.’
Everything. His father would die. His mother would die. Abe would die. It was an existential crisis
of massive import, even though he was only seven. When he’d arrived home from school that afternoon, he’d clung, sobbing, to his mother’s neck until she’d gotten out of him what was wrong. ‘Oh, honey,’ she’d said, kissing him hard on the side of his face. ‘We’re not going anywhere. Daddy and I are healthy and strong, and we won’t die until you’re old yourself, until you won’t mind us going.’
She’d been wrong.
‘And that’s the exact look you had then. Would you please stop it?’
‘I’m telling you, it’s just my face.’
‘Where is she?’
Confused by the sudden lurch in the conversation, Abe said, ‘Who?’
‘Little Fiona Lynde.’
‘She’s not a kid anymore, Mom. And I have no idea.’
‘Doesn’t she come in here in the mornings? Everyone else does …’
Fiona did come in here. He’d often seen her here Monday mornings with her friend Daisy. He’d just never cared so much before. ‘I don’t know,’ he lied.
His mother sighed. ‘For once, I’d like you to give me a real answer.’
‘Fine. I think she does.’
‘That’s why you can’t take your eyes off the front door?’
‘I’m not –’
She looked amused. ‘Okay, then. So you won’t want to hear that she’s on the sidewalk outside?’
Abe couldn’t help the way his head swiveled, like it was on a bobble-head doll.
There she was. Fiona.
Goddamn, how had he never noticed her before? She wore a black t-shirt, short denim jacket, and blue jeans. Like she usually did. No big deal. But as she walked down the sidewalk and pulled open the front door, Abe wondered how he’d never noticed how well her clothes fit her. She was small, but curvy. Her breasts were high under that tee, and there – as she turned to open the front door – he got to see how well her ass fit into her pockets. How could a man help wanting to slip his hand into those pockets, to make her jeans just the smallest bit tighter …
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