“I travel a lot and I like postcards, too.”
I wasn’t writing or even thinking of anything to write. I was interested in talking to him.
“I always try to think of something funny to put on the card.”
“Something more than ‘wish you were here’?”
He laughed. “Actually, I’ve never written that.”
“It is something a woman likes to hear when she’s a long distance from her man.” I was fishing, wanting to know if he was sending a card to a special woman.
“Like you, I’m between women at the moment.”
I laughed and he flashed me an even white-toothed grin.
“So tell me some of the funny things you write.”
He got up then and moved around to sit next to me. He wore khaki shorts and a sky blue golf shirt. His legs seemed to be as strong as the shoulders I’d admired earlier. Instantly, I went hot. I hoped my shower that morning could contend with the furnace that flared up inside me.
“You have to look at the picture first.” He showed me a card. The picture was of the Inkwell. On the top, in a recognizable script, were the words Martha’s Vineyard. I had one just like it. I knew on the back in a tiny font was printed The Inkwell.
“I’m sending this one to my mother. I thought about the sand and that glass is made from it. Then I thought about all the times I broke something in the house. And this is what I wrote.”
He turned the card over and let me read it. “Mom, someone dropped an inkwell and it shattered to smithereens. I didn’t do it. Love, Shane.”
I laughed and my arm brushed his. I moved aside. “So you’re Shane?”
“Shane Massey.”
“Jacynthia Sterling.” I offered my hand. “My friends call me Jack.” He took my hand and shook it briefly. Again, I noticed the roughness of his fingers, but strangely his palm was callous free.
“Jack? That’s a rather masculine name for one so obviously female.”
I dropped my head so he wouldn’t see me blush. The words were standard. Flattery. I’d heard them before. I’m sure every woman in America over the age of fifteen has heard them. But nevertheless, they had the ability to make me go mushy inside.
“What’s on the other card?” I asked, hiding the way I felt. And I was dying to see if he was sending it to a woman.
“This one is to my best friend. We went to high school together.”
“Where was that?”
“Johnson City, Tennessee. Ever heard of it?”
I shook my head. “Sorry.”
“It’s in east Tennessee.”
“I’m afraid I know nothing about Tennessee.”
“Where are you from?”
“New York.”
“Oh,” he said.
“What does that mean?” I looked at him, offended, defensiveness rising in me like a soldier ready for battle. He’d said it as if there was something wrong with New York.
“Being from New York is like being from Texas. You believe there are no other state except New York … or Texas, if you’re Texan.”
I smiled proudly and relaxed. “There aren’t.” I picked up the card and looked at the address. The name was Jim Chancellor in Nashville. “Jim lives in Nashville?”
He nodded. “We both do.”
“So tell me the story of this card.” The photo was of the princess houses on the Bluff.
When he turned it and held it up for me to read, it said, “Little Red Riding Hood slept here, but not with George.”
I laughed, thinking it was strictly male humor. I understood that the George mention was George Washington, who seemed to have slept everywhere in the Northeast according to numerous plaques that were fixed to historical and would-be historical sites.
“How about this?” I picked up one of my own and looked at the picture. It was of the shopping area at night. The lights colored it brightly. “It’s a strange world here. Night falls in color.”
He smiled and leaned a little closer to me. I felt the heat of his body and smelled the pleasant mixture of male cleanness and raw sexuality.
I lost interest in the postcards. I wanted to know more about him.
“So what are you doing on the Vineyard?”
“I’m in the band.”
“Band?”
“Yeah, part of the music festival going on this week.”
I nodded.
“Well, I’m in the band, playing with Mike Adams.”
I was impressed. Mike Adams was a sensation with a clarinet. He’d won more than one Grammy for his recordings. And I owned a couple of his CDs.
“Have you been with him long?”
“A couple of years.”
“What instrument do you play?”
“Keyboards, trumpet, guitar, a little sax.” He shook his hands, indicating he was shaky on the sax.
“How did you learn all those instruments? I took piano for three years and can’t play anything except one Christmas carol.”
He grinned, showing me his even white teeth again.
“My mother said I had an aptitude for music. I wanted to play baseball some of the times she made me practice, but eventually I came to enjoy it.” He paused a moment. “It impressed the girls.”
I smiled, knowing I’d been one of those girls who was fascinated by a guyin the band in my high school.
“Anyway, after taking piano lessons for several years, I went to New Orleans on spring break and in one of the clubs I met a guy playing guitar. He was so good. I wanted to learn what he did. The next day I went back to the club. It was closed, but I knocked on the door until someone opened it and I asked where I could find him. They wouldn’t tell me anything except his name. I went from club to club asking about him. Eventually, I found where he lived and I went there and asked him to teach me the guitar.”
“And he did?”
“Not at first. He threw me out.”
I sucked a laugh back, wondering how anyone could throw out a guy with shoulders and legs as strong as this guy’s.
“But I was so impressed with his ability that I kept after him until he realized the only way to get rid of me was to teach me. Every free moment I got, summers, holidays, breaks, I’d go back to New Orleans and work with him.”
“Do you play guitar in the band?”
He shook his head. “Mike needed a keyboard player when I joined him.”
“You make me wish I’d spent more time learning that piano instead of fighting my mother to let me quit.”
“You can always pick it up again,” Shane said.
“That’s true,” I agreed. Talking to him had inspired me. Not to return to piano lessons, but that I could do whatever I wanted to do. That if there was something I wanted, I should go after it. This was Amber’s approach to the world. It’s what had brought us to the Vineyard.
Shane checked his watch. I knew he was about to leave and I was sorry for that. I enjoyed talking to him and wouldn’t have minded spending the rest of the day sitting right there.
“I have a rehearsal,” he said. “But if you’d like to see the concert, I could leave a couple of tickets for you.”
“I’d like that.”
“Jacynthia Sterling, right?”
“Right,” I said, impressed that he remembered my name—both first and last.
He stood up. “They’ll be there tonight.”
Flashing me another of his great smiles, he left. I watched him walking away. He stopped a moment to drop his postcards in the mailbox. What a great guy, I thought. I’d like to know him better. But he wasn’t the reason I was on the island. Yet I followed his walk, analyzed the way he moved, transferring his weight from leg to leg like a confident lion.
I looked a little longer before the sound came out of me. I growled.
The Howard University crowd registered in throngs. The noise level rose to the double ceiling. Often it was punctuated by squeals of reunion. A steady rush of guests ready for the annual pilgrimage of sun and music kept the reg
istration desk busy for hours. By noon tomorrow the hotel would be full to capacity with the Bison Music Festival tour group. Howard University alumni came every year, but this year due to the music festival the organizers had gone out with a special promotion and increased the number of guests by a third.
Their coming meant extra work and even more personal attention on my part, but I looked forward to them coming. Most were the older alumni, but there were a good number of people who’d graduated in the past ten years and were working the corporate ladder. They dropped money like discarded candy wrappers. The gift shops, restaurants, and concierge services would likely break previous sales records.
I appreciated that. It meant the summer would end on a banner financial note. My father would be more than pleased. I would win my bet. And maybe Amber could find her millionaire among the guests. I frowned at the thought.
Getting up from my desk, I observed the lobby through the glass wall and door of my office. I shoved Amber to the back of my mind. I’d been looking over the accounts, but the moment her image flooded my mind all else failed. Yesterday had been a disaster. I was still kicking myself for acting like an ass. Everyone on the Vineyard had heard about the tennis game. Some had suggested I enter the annual tournament. Others thought I was showing off and getting put in my place by a woman. I couldn’t say her sex had nothing to do with it. It was because of her sex that I was an ass, that I’d tried to force her to change her course or purpose for being on the island with the force of a tennis racket. And the more I knew I was beating my head against a rock wall, the harder I hit the ball.
Amber didn’t retreat. She gave as good as she got—better than she got.
What those people watching us didn’t know was that the two of us weren’t battling over a game, but something completely different. Our fight, at least mine, was over feelings. I understood that now. The long hours of the night had made it clear to me. She’d gotten to me. The short time we’d known each other didn’t matter. But her rejection based on her perception that I wasn’t rich enough pissed me off. I could have told her, but I’d made the deal with my father when I took on this project to be totally anonymous. If people knew I was really Sheldon St. Romaine, they would treat me as the owner’s son and I wouldn’t be able to turn the place around. And if money was all she wanted from me, I didn’t want her.
I dropped the pen in my hand and left the office. This was a new chapter in my life, I thought. I’d never wanted a woman before, not like this. I’d wanted many women, had plenty of them. They followed me around. I could choose the size, the weight, the color, and with a crook of my finger, have a partner for the night. In the light of day, we went our own ways. No strings, no need, and no regrets. So why did her comment to end anything between us make me so angry?
I walked into the hotel reception area. The place was standing room only. Every day I surveyed the property, making sure everything was in order. I didn’t call it an inspection, but I checked to make sure things were functioning properly.
It was just after ten o’clock. The last of the breakfast stragglers were leaving the room and the lunchtime crowd was a couple of hours away. Still, I needed to pick my way through the throngs of guests.
My first stop was always the fitness room. I would check in with my friend Jeff, the hotel’s personal trainer, and spend a few minutes talking about last night’s sporting event. It didn’t matter which one. Jeff loved all things sports.
When I entered the room, there was no talking at all. Everyone in the place was staring outside. Jeff stood at a table on which he usually folded towels, but his hands were still. His attention was focused on the windows that looked out on the pool.
Unlike most hotels, especially resort hotels, the St. Romaine’s outdoor pool was Olympic size. At the time the hotel was built in the 1940s, swimming champion turned actress Esther Williams was burning up the box office with her films, all of which had long sequences of her swimming or doing water dances. The architects and owners thought they would capitalize on this by building a pool that could entice people into thinking they could swim the way she did.
It worked and drew people to the hotel, the pool being as popular as the Inkwell. That was until times changed, the world became more mobile, the enticement of Europe took families and their money to European or African capitals.
Lately, there was a renewed interest in staying home, seeing America, and driving to vacation destinations. I made sure the Vineyard, specifically the hotel, was one of those locations. And it looked as if my technique was working. However, as I followed the line of Jeff’s gaze, I saw what everyone was looking at. It wasn’t a thing, but a person. A woman.
Amber Nash.
Jeff was mesmerized, as was every other male staring at her. I did a double take when I saw her standing on the high diving board.
“How long has she been coming here?” I asked without acknowledging that Jeff was even in the room.
Jeff glanced at me. “This is her third morning.”
“Is she any good?” I asked.
He spoke without look at me. “Watch.”
Amber stood concentrating. For a moment she seemed to block out the world and pull whatever senses she needed together. In one fluid motion she raised her arms and sprang off the diving board. Her long body went up in the air. With lightning speed, she twisted, somersaulted, turned, defying all the physics I’d ever learned, then headed arms first into the water. Her body cut a clean hole in the liquid, barely making a splash.
“Da-mn,” I said, holding on to the word as if it was two syllables. It was out of my mouth before I realized I’d said it.
“That’s right,” Jeff acknowledged.
“She is good.”
Seconds after she’d entered the water, she surfaced, snapped the water from her face, and pushed off in long strokes for the side of the pool.
There were a few people sitting around the edge of the water on the hotel’s pink and white deck chairs, but Amber had the full pool to herself.
“Feel like applauding?” Jeff asked me.
I nodded.
“The first time she came, she only swam laps,” Jeff said. “About a hundred of them.”
“A hundred laps?” I frowned. I remembered her running for every ball I shot over the net and not even looking like she was winded.
Jeff nodded. “Then yesterday the diving began on the low board. Today all the stops came out. There are only a few people out there. They applauded several times. Then I think she rendered them silent. Each time she dives, she does something different. I think she awes them and they can’t do anything but watch with open-mouthed stares.”
“Where’d she learn that?”
“Don’t know. I haven’t gotten to talk to her. She finishes up just before the real crowd comes in. Then she’s gone.”
I didn’t say anything. The door swung open and in came a guest. I smiled and walked through the door leading to the outside pool deck.
Amber came out of the water. A boy about ten years old ran over to her. “Can you teach me to do that?” he asked, obviously in awe of her.
“Joel, don’t bother the lady,” a man who must be his father said. The kid and the man looked too much alike not to have the same genes.
“It takes time to learn to do that,” Amber said. She glanced up and saw me. For a moment our eyes locked and that invisible connection linked us before she turned back to the boy. “Can you swim?” she asked.
He nodded enthusiastically.
“Can you swim laps?”
He nodded again, but this time not so confidently.
“Would you swim one with me?” Amber looked up at the boy’s dad. The man nodded once.
“Sure,” the boy said with a big smile. He headed toward the deep end of the pool.
“Careful,” she warned. “We have to do it together.”
In a moment they were in the water and swimming toward the shallow end. Amber pulled back, matching the child’s excited str
okes, while hers were smooth and controlled.
As soon as they reached the edge, the boy was out of the water and headed again for the deep end.
“Joel, not so fast,” his father warned. Then the man turned to Amber. “Casey Edwards,” he said. “This is my son Joel.”
“Amber Nash.” The two adults shook hands.
“He liked watching you. He swims well, but has never dived. Don’t let him monopolize your time.”
“I’ll just give him a few pointers.” She smiled her white-toothed smile, which I would know if it was on a page among hundreds with a caption asking you to identify the one that belonged to Amber Nash.
“If the excitement keeps up, you might have to give him lessons when you get home,” Amber said.
“I’d be glad to,” Casey said. “Joel hasn’t shown much interest in anything since his mom died. But he liked you from the beginning.”
Inwardly I groaned. I could see it. Casey Edwards was flirting, cruising, whatever you call it, he was doing it. And he’d started with the king of lines, going right to the top of the deck with a dead wife story. Who could resist that, a cute kid who’d lost his mother and didn’t respond to anything except her? The story took me back to college when we’d make bets on how fast we could get a girl into bed. Casey Edwards had perfected the technique. He’d extract an invitation to dinner with Amber before lunch was served and have her in bed before morning.
I gritted my teeth.
What could I do? I was the manager. Casey Edwards was a guest. Technically, so was Amber. I’d invited her here, giving her permission to use the various facilities. My position was to see to their needs, not engage in those needs, however much I might want to.
Amber and Joel sat on the side of the pool. She spoke softly to him, demonstrating her lesson with her arms and hands. I looked around. Everything was in order. There was nothing more for me to do except leave them to their devices.
And I didn’t like any of the devices that came to mind.
Chapter 9
I’d just finished blow-drying my hair when I heard the front door open and close. Leaving the upstairs bathroom, I went to the top of the stairs. Jack looked up at me.
Some Like Them Rich Page 8