Chesapeake Tide

by Jeanette Baker

  He blinked his eyes, looked away, his senses filled with her image, and looked back again. Her eyes, huge and dark, glowed against the honey-gold of her skin. Her hair, the same velvety shade as her eyes, was pulled severely back from her brow and clasped with a barrette behind her head, allowing the thick mass to float around her face and touch her shoulders. A strapless red dress hugged her waist and hips, the sleek material coming to a stop several inches above her knees. Her legs were long and graceful in pale hose and heeled pumps. He knew she’d smell like peach blossoms, a scent as simple, clean and sweet as Hadley’s grove on the banks of the Chesapeake. She’d grown up without him, but he wasn’t through yet. He rose and made his way through the cloth-covered tables to meet her.

  She smiled and his heart hurt.

  “I’m sorry I’m late. Have you been here long?”

  “Ten minutes, no more.”

  He nodded toward the table he’d left. “I’d like to eat in here. The view’s better. Can we enjoy it for a few minutes or are you hungry now?”

  “I can wait for a while.”

  He led her to a small table near the window and pulled out her chair. A bottle of sparkling wine sat in an ice bucket beside it. Libby noticed that it had yet to be poured. “Thanks for waiting,” she said, and sat down. “It’s a gorgeous night, just the way I like them.”

  Russ poured her a glass of wine. “You like hot, dry nights when you don’t have to wear a sweater and your hair doesn’t curl from the humidity.”

  Libby’s eyes widened. “You’re amazing. I can’t believe you remembered that.”

  He nodded. “It would be even more amazing if I didn’t. You were an original.”

  “Strange.” Her forehead creased. “I didn’t think of myself that way at all.”

  “Does anyone?”

  She considered his question. “Maybe. Someone with confidence might. Chloe might.”

  “I have to meet your Chloe.”

  “There’s plenty of time for that,” Libby said hastily. She picked up her wineglass and focused on the view. Men made her nervous, especially good-looking, sweet-talking men with slate-blue eyes and wicked grins. She’d fallen in love with one and married another. That was enough for one lifetime. This time she was looking for something different. This time she would hold on to the advantage.

  She knew what Russ wanted. It was as obvious as a cool drink of water from a tall, clean glass. It would be so easy to fall under the spell of his considerable charm, to let his sexual magnetism wipe out her inhibitions. But she’d already had experience loving Russell Tremayne Hennessey and she didn’t want to go down that road again. Love had proved to be an overrated emotion. Tying herself up in knots over a man wasn’t a mistake she intended to repeat. Dinner in a romantic restaurant with a view of the bay was as far as she would go. “Isn’t the view incredible?” she asked.

  His eyes never left her face. “Incredible.”

  He was too close. She shifted and sat back in her chair. The blood pulsed, alive in his throat. He was darkly tanned from the sun and the smell of him brought back memories. She inhaled the combined smells of sun and salt and wind and the sweet, weedy hint of tobacco—masculine smells. His hair, dark with glints of red, curled around his ears. Suddenly, she wanted to touch him. Reaching out, she twisted a curl around her fingers, barely grazing his jaw. The electric quality of the contact startled her. She drew back, shaken and self-conscious, wanting more yet desperately afraid of the wanting. Embarrassed, she said the first thing that came to mind. “Your hair’s too long.”

  The Russ Hennessey of eighteen, or even twenty-eight, wouldn’t have looked beyond the obvious. If the woman he wanted was hungry he would have obliged her. But Russ had learned something about women in the years between twenty-eight and thirty-seven, and he knew that this woman, no matter how raging her hormones, wasn’t ready to wake up next to him in the morning. He smiled and ran his hand through his hair. “I’ll see about getting it cut.”

  It took a moment for his words to register. She nodded shakily and felt the color rise to her cheeks.

  Russ congratulated himself. Dinner at the Sealark was an inspiration. The view was the same spectacular one he had grown up with at Hennessey House for eighteen years and taken for granted. The Chesapeake at sunset was a canvas of incomparable beauty, the image of paradise untouched. From their table by the window, blue herons, gulls and brown pelicans circled in a pink-tinged sky, beating their way up from the great backwater. Farther below, floating on a calm current, Canada geese and green-necked mallards tolerated one another’s presence with remarkable fraternity. The bay water, a benevolent sea of liquid amber, lapped gently on hunter-green shores. As they watched, the sky darkened, the sun dipped into the horizon and faint pinpoints of light appeared in the distance. The effortless splendor of nature humbled them—she, who had watched western sunsets equally as breathtaking for seventeen long years, and he, who’d waited nearly as long to see them again.

  The food was superb, simple and expertly prepared. The service was excellent and Libba... Libba was breathtaking. There was no other word for it. Years later Russ knew he would not be able to recall the details of what she wore, but he would remember it was red and that the combination of red dress and dark hair and cream-colored skin had an effect on his senses that had nothing to do with broiled shrimp and a bottle of expensive wine.

  Tonight, there was a sweetness about her that reminded Russ of the old Libba, the girl he’d grown up and fallen in love with, the woman he’d lost and cursed and wept over. She’d dressed up for him. He knew it, just as surely as he’d known a golden sunset, dry wine and the restaurant where he’d taken her the night of his senior prom would sweeten her mood. Driving down the familiar dusty roads of the childhood they’d shared brought them together somehow, before circumstance and a stranger named Eric Richards had torn them apart.

  “Tell me,” she said, “what brought you back to Marshyhope Creek. Cliff told me you had a successful business designing homes for the rich and famous.”

  “Cliff exaggerated.”

  “By how much?”

  “I had a business that paid the bills and left me a little to put aside,” he said honestly. “It was creative and high stress. I traveled all over the world and allowed my child to grow up without me. By the way, Tracy lied.”

  “What?”

  “When she said Tess had never given her a bit of trouble. She’s having a hard time handling her right now. Apparently, Tess isn’t fitting into the mold.”

  “Teenagers are like that.”

  Russ nodded. “Anyway, the money wasn’t worth the price. When my partner wanted to retire, I sold out, made a tidy profit and here I am, doing what I always wanted to do in the first place. Hennessey Blue Crab and Fishing never could support more than one CEO and Mitch had the right of first refusal.”

  Libby frowned. “Why is that? You were the oldest.”

  “By about six minutes.”

  “That isn’t an answer.”

  Russ looked out over the water. “Mitch was good at fishing.”

  “You were, too.”

  “But I was good at other things, too. Schooling came easily to me. Mitch had a hard time learning to read. He couldn’t pass a math class on his own if he tried. But he could fish. It was a logical move to assume he would take over the business and I would go on to the Citadel, my daddy’s dream.”

  Libby wouldn’t bring up the fact that Beau Hennessey was hardly an ideal father who did not believe in sparing the rod, not to Russ. It was a painful blot on their childhood, a memory best wiped out, never to be repeated. “So you’re back. Coincidental, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  “That we’re back here together at the same time, almost at the same point in our lives.”

  “What happened to your marriage?” he asked.

  Libby leaned her chin on her hand, wondering how much to explain. “We had different standards for personal integrity,” she said at
last. “That’s all.”

  “You had your daughter almost immediately. Is that why you stayed?”

  “Yes, and no,” she said slowly. “Eric was never around. He’s a ‘B’ actor, meaning he works and makes a living, but just that. I was very busy with my education, working and taking care of Chloe. It was simply too much effort to initiate a divorce, especially since I was alone most of the time, anyway.”

  “You’re a beautiful woman, Libba Jane. Are you saying you were never tempted to make a life with someone else?”

  She smiled at him. “Like I said, I was busy. There wasn’t time for that.”

  He left it alone. She was done with confessions and he wouldn’t push it. The evening had lived up to his expectations. It was a start.

  Libby felt anxious when he walked her to her car, and then, when he’d closed her door and watched her pull out of the parking lot, she felt reprieved and at the same time oddly disappointed. He’d made no attempt to touch her. She hadn’t wanted him to. Her divorce was barely legal and Russ had ties, strong ties to Tracy Wentworth. Still... Libby pulled down the sun visor and glanced at her reflection in the small mirror. Coming home agreed with her. She looked good, better than she had in a long time. She frowned. Why hadn’t he kissed her good-night?

  Sixteen

  Chloe sat on the frilly daybed, her feet tucked under her, an artificial smile pasted on her face. Tess Hennessey perched beside her, nervously dragging her fingers through her thin sandy hair. Skylar Taft lounged on one of the overstaffed chairs and Casey Dulaine on the other. Two girls whose names Chloe couldn’t remember and who hadn’t said a word between them the entire evening stretched out on the carpeted floor, pillows tucked under their arms.

  Chloe would have been amused at the color scheme if only she hadn’t been so bored. The entire room was decorated in various shades of pink—pink curtains, pink comforter, pink carpet, even the wallpaper was awful with pink flowers on a paler pink background. As if there wasn’t enough already, Skylar’s nightgown was pink with tiny pink rosebuds around the hem. Chloe’s lip curled. She couldn’t imagine anyone choosing to live in this juvenile cotton candy nightmare. Marshyhope Creek was light years behind the times.

  Chloe decided that Skylar was the big cheese. She called the shots and dominated the conversation. “Have you been shopping for school clothes yet?” she asked her audience.

  The two nameless girls nodded and offered nothing, as usual. Casey Dulaine, a plump redhead, waved her hand and shook her head. “Not yet, but Mama promised to take me to Annapolis next weekend.”

  “What about you, Tess?”

  Tess Hennessey shook her head nervously. “I think I’ll wait and see what everybody else is wearing.”

  Skylar nodded at this piece of wisdom while Chloe rolled her eyes. Typical, she thought.

  “Will you be going to school with us, Chloe?” Skylar asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Skylar leaned forward. Silky dark hair fell across her cheeks. “This is just a suggestion, but if I were you, I’d lose the black on your hair.”

  “Oh?” Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “Yours is black.”

  Skylar ignored her. “It may be okay for California, but here it’ll make you stand out. We don’t go for two-toned hair around here.”

  “Maybe I’ll start a new fashion,” Chloe suggested.

  All the girls except Tess tittered.

  “Trust me,” Skylar said. “It won’t happen.”

  Chloe’s smile thinned. “I’ll keep your suggestion in mind.”

  “What about clothes?” Skylar persisted.

  Chloe’s hands closed into fists. “What about them?”

  Skylar made a sweeping gesture with her hand to encompass her friends. “We can help you, if you want. There’s nothing worse than giving everyone the wrong impression on the first day.”

  Chloe could imagine much worse, but she kept her mouth shut. There was no point in letting the natives in.

  “Have you seen Bailey Jones lately?” Casey changed the subject. “He’s a hunk.”

  Skylar pulled out a cigarette case and lighter that anyone who had seen early Clark Gable movies would have recognized as a copy.

  Chloe watched, fascinated, as Skylar flicked open the lighter and expertly lit her cigarette.

  ‘‘Who cares?” Skylar said after she’d blown out a lungful of smoke. “He’s always been good to look at. That doesn’t change what he is.”

  “What is he?” Chloe asked.

  Skylar flicked the end of her cigarette with perfectly manicured fingers. “His mama is part Cherokee and part high yellow colored. No one knows who his daddy is. My guess is he doesn’t, either.”

  Chloe’s ears burned. “Why doesn’t he know?”

  “Because Lizzie Jones is a hooker.”

  Chloe looked at Tess. She appeared the most sensible of the bunch.

  Tess nodded. “My mama says Lizzie’s had so many men it’d be hard to pin down exactly which one fathered Bailey.”

  Sweet, sad Lizzie Jones. Chloe’s stomach heaved. She fought back the gag reflex.

  They stared at her, daring her to say something. This was it, the place where she should say something, anything, to stick up for Bailey, to show loyalty to her friend. She cleared her throat and opened her mouth.

  A soft knock on the door distracted her. Quickly, Skylar ground out her cigarette, moved the ashtray under a low chair and waved the air in front of her face. “Perfume,” she muttered, “hand me the perfume.”

  Casey reached across Tess, grabbed a bottle from the dresser and tossed it to Skylar, who sprayed bursts of fragrance around her head.

  “Come in,” Skylar called out.

  A black woman poked her head into the room. “I laid out a spread for you in the dining room whenever you’re ready.”

  Skylar stood. “Let’s go,” she said, a queen commanding her court.

  Chloe was the last to follow. Halfway down the hall, she whispered to Tess. “I’m not feeling good. I need to find a bathroom.”

  Tess looked concerned. She pointed to a door at the end of the long corridor. “I hope you don’t have to go home.”

  Home, that was it. “Tell Skylar not to wait for me,” Chloe said. “My stomach really hurts. If it gets worse, I’ll call someone to pick me up.”

  Tess nodded. “I’ll tell her.”

  Gratefully, Chloe turned into the bathroom, locked the door and waited until there was only silence in the hallway. Then she slipped back into the bedroom for her backpack. Carrying her shoes, she tiptoed down the stairs and out the front door. Once she’d cleared the porch, she began to run until she reached the shelter of a copse of trees. Panting, she leaned against a huge oak to catch her breath and consider her options. She couldn’t go home. She didn’t want to answer her mother’s questions. Bailey would be a logical person to call, but she was still mad at him. The only other person she knew in Marshyhope Creek was Verna Lee. Maybe she would let her stay awhile, at least until they were all asleep at home.

  Chloe threw her backpack over the fence, pulled on her shoes and wiggled through the two rails. If only Bailey would drive by in his truck. She would tease him out of his mood. That is, if she could stop thinking about Lizzie. Not that Skylar Taft could be considered a reliable source of information, but Tess had corroborated her story. During the ten-minute ride with Tess on the way to Skylar’s, Chloe had decided that although Tess Hennessey was afraid of her own shadow, she was harmless. She wouldn’t spread rumors about Bailey’s mother, not unless they were true and she was asked. Skylar was another story. Poor Bailey. Verna Lee was right. He needed to find a way out of Marshyhope Creek.

  She slid her arms through the straps of her backpack and began trudging toward town and the descending sun. Twenty minutes later the heat and humidity had taken its toll. Chloe was thirsty and exhausted. She’d underestimated the distance. Her spirits were low. She had no idea if Verna Lee would take her in.

  A car engine hum
med in the distance. Too tired to even turn, Chloe kept walking, her eyes on the ground in front of her feet.

  Russ Hennessey saw the slim, blond girl hugging the shoulder of the road, and drove on. He glanced into his rearview mirror, frowned and glanced again. Then he swore softly and pulled over. Setting his parking brake, he opened the door, stepped out and waited.

  Chloe didn’t look up until she was almost upon the Blazer. At first she didn’t recognize Tess’s father. When she did, her eyes rounded with fear. “H-hello,” she stammered.

  “Hello, yourself. Didn’t I just drop you and Tess off about two hours ago?”

  Chloe nodded mutely.

  “What happened?”

  She shrugged. “It wasn’t working out.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged again. Desperate circumstances called for desperate measures. “Would you mind driving me home?”

  “Not at all.” Russ reached for her backpack, walked to the passenger side of the car and opened the door.

  Chloe hopped in and buckled the seat belt.

  Russ swung out onto the road. “Tell me what happened, Chloe,” he said. “I’m the one who suggested you be invited to this party. If anyone has done anything to you, I feel responsible.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Chloe assured him. “They’re just not my kind of people, except for Tess,” she said hurriedly. “She’s very nice.”

  Russ laughed. “Tell me what you really think.”

  “No, really, she’s the nicest of them all. It’s just—”

  “Just what?”

  Chloe sighed. “Everything in Skylar’s entire bedroom is pink, even the toilet seat.”

  Russ winced. “Ouch.”

  “She volunteered to help me pick out clothes for school.”