“See?” he said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “Nothing.”
Georgeanne blinked and looked up at him standing there as cool as a day in December. She could still feel the pressure of his mouth against hers. He’d kissed her and she’d let him.
“There isn’t any reason why the two of us can’t share a house for a week.” He wiped his thumb across his bottom lip, removing a red smear. “Unless, of course, you felt something from that kiss.”
“No. Not a thing,” she tried to assure him, and pushed the corners of her mouth upward, but she had felt something. She still did. Something warm and weightless in the pit of her stomach. She’d let him kiss her and she didn’t know why. She grabbed her briefcase and headed for the door before she screamed or cried and made a fool of herself. Perhaps it was too late. Responding to John’s kiss had certainly been foolish.
As she walked toward her car, she realized she’d hurried out of his house so fast, she’d forgot the picture he’d stolen from her. Well, she wasn’t going back to get it. Not now. And she wasn’t going to Oregon with him either. No way. Nada. Not going to happen.
John stood on the deck attached to the back of his house and looked out at Lake Union. He’d kissed her. Touched her. And now he regretted it. He’d told her he hadn’t felt anything. If she’d bothered to check, she would have known he lied.
He didn’t know why he’d kissed her, except that maybe he’d wanted to assure her she’d be safe at his house in Oregon. Or maybe because she’d told him she’d rather kiss a dead fish. But mostly likely because she was gorgeous and sexy and wore blue lace garters, and he’d wanted a quick taste of her lips. Just one quick kiss. Just for science. That’s all he’d wanted. He got more. He got a swift kick of lust and a throb in his groin. He got a hell of an ache and no real pleasurable way to take care of it.
John kicked off his shoes and dove into the cold water, letting it cool his body. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again. No kissing. No touching. No thinking about Georgeanne naked.
Chapter Twelve
Georgeanne hadn’t meant to agree to John’s vacation plans. She’d meant to remain firm in her opposition to Cannon beach. She would have, too, if it weren’t for Lexie and her interest in her fictional daddy, Anthony.
The day after they’d gone sailing near the San Juan Islands, Lexie’s questions started. Perhaps watching Charles with Amber had triggered her curiosity. Perhaps it was her age. Periodically Lexie had always asked about Anthony, but for the first time, Georgeanne tried to answer without prevarication. Then she’d called John and told him they’d meet him in Oregon. If Lexie was going to have a relationship with John, then she needed to spend time with him before she was told that he was her daddy. Now as Georgeanne drove toward the city of Cannon Beach, she hoped she wasn’t making a colossal mistake. John had promised her that he wouldn’t try to provoke her, but she didn’t really believe him.
“I’ll be on my best behavior,” he’d promised.
Yeah. Right. And elephants roosted in trees.
She looked over at her daughter belted in the seat next to her. While Lexie meticulously colored a picture of a Muppet Baby, her black smiley-face ball cap shaded her forehead and her kiddie blue sunglasses covered her eyes. It was Saturday, so her lips were painted a vivid red. And at last, those little red lips were stilled, and quiet filled the inside of the Hyundai.
The trip had started out pleasant enough, but then somewhere around Tacoma, Lexie had started to sing… and sing… and sing. She’d sung the only verse she knew of “Puff the Magic Dragon” and all verses of “Where Is Thumbkin?” She’d belted out the words to “Deep in the Heart of Texas” and had clapped as enthusiastically as any proud Texan. Unfortunately she sang it clear to Astoria.
Just when Georgeanne had finished calculating the number of years before she could ship Lexie safely off to college, the singing had stopped and Georgeanne had felt like a horrible mother for visually kicking Lexie from the nest.
But then the questions began. “Are we there yet?”
“How much longer?”
“Where are we?”
“Did you remember to pack blankie?” From Astoria to Seaside, she’d become worried about where she was going to sleep and the number of bathrooms in John’s house. She couldn’t remember if she’d packed her press-on fingernails, and she fretted over whether she’d brought enough Barbies to play with for five whole days. She did remember her beach toys, but what if it rained the whole time? And she wondered if there were kids in his neighborhood, how many and how old?
Now as Georgeanne drove through Cannon Beach, she was reminded of dozens of other artsy communities that dotted the coastal Northwest. Studios and cafes and gift shops lined the main street. The storefronts wore subdued shades of blues and grays and foamy greens, and whales and starfish were painted everywhere. The sidewalks were filled with tourists, and colorful flags fluttered in the always present breeze.
She glanced at the digital clock above the radio in the dash of her car. She had been raised on punctuality and usually arrived on schedule, but today she was early by about a half hour. Somewhere between Tacoma and Gearhart, her foot got real heavy on the accelerator. Somewhere between the first round of “Where Is Thumbkin?” and “Are we there yet?” she’d gassed the Hyundai up past eighty-five. The possibility of getting stopped by a cop and given a ticket hadn’t concerned her. In fact, she would have welcomed the adult conversation.
She looked at the map John had drawn for her and drove past weathered homes sandwiched between beachside resorts. She slowed to read his bold, scrawling handwriting, then she turned onto a heavily shaded street and drove straight ahead as instructed and easily found the house. She pulled her Hyundai next to John’s dark green Range Rover parked in the driveway of a white single-story house with a steep roof of wooden shingles. Gnarled pine and acacia shaded the wood porch, stained a light gray. She left the luggage in the car and, with Lexie’s hand in hers, walked to the front door. With each step Georgeanne’s heart picked up its pace. With each step her concern that she was making a big mistake grew.
She rang the bell and knocked several times. No one answered. Looking at the map, she read it carefully again. If she’d drawn it herself, she would have felt the familiar uncertainty that usually sat on her chest when she feared she’d transposed numbers again.
“Maybe he’s takin‘ a nap,” Lexie suggested. “Maybe we should go in and wake him up.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Georgeanne looked at the numbers on the house once more, then she moved to the mailbox nailed to the house and opened the top. She peered inside and hoped neither a neighbor nor a gun-toting postal employee was watching. She pulled out a business reply card addressed to John.
“Do you think he forgot?” Lexie asked.
“I hope not,” Georgeanne answered as she turned the handle and opened the door. What if he had forgotten? she asked herself. What if he was somewhere in the house asleep? Or taking a shower-with a woman? She knew she was a little early; what if he was in bed, his body entwined with some gullible woman?
“John?” she called out, and stepped into the entry-way. Her feet sank into plush carpeting the color of champagne, and with Lexie following close behind, Georgeanne walked into the living room. She immediately realized that the house was not a single story as it appeared from the front. To her left, steps led downward, while to her right a second set went up to an open loft above the dining room. The house was built into the hillside overlooking the beach and ocean, and the entire back wall was made of massive windows framed with bleached oak. Three matching skylights dominated the ceiling above the living room.
“Wow,” Lexie gasped as she spun around in a circle. “Is John rich?”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” The furnishings were modern and made primarily of bleached wood and iron. An overstuffed sectional, upholstered in deep blue, was angled to take in the view of the ocean or the fireplace on the left wall. Abov
e the mantel hung a large picture of John’s grandfather standing next to one of those big blue fish tourists catch off the coast of Florida. It had been a long time since Georgeanne had seen Ernie, but she easily recognized him.
“I wonder if John fell down somewhere.” Lexie moved toward one of three sliding glass doors off the living and dining rooms. “Maybe he broke his leg or got a cut.”
Together the two of them moved to the doors and looked out on a wraparound deck which went down to the beach. Beyond the deck, Haystack Rock jutted toward the clear blue sky. Seabirds circled and hovered above the green vegetation clinging to the top half of the enormous rock while their continuous squawks mingled with the crash of waves.
“John!” Lexie called out in a raised voice. “Where are you?”
Georgeanne opened the sliding door and let in a breeze heavy with the scents of salt water and seaweed and the sounds of the sea. She stepped out onto the deck, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Maybe spending the week in such a beautiful house on such a wonderful piece of real estate wasn’t going to be such a hardship after all. If she didn’t let John charm her into moving him up further on her likable scale, and if he kept his lips to himself, then perhaps this trip wouldn’t turn into a big mistake.
Beneath her feet, Georgeanne felt a heavy thud, thud, thud through the soles of her espadrilles. She heard the steady thumping of footsteps pounding up the stairs, and her insides got a little mushy. Then John emerged one slice at a time. A pair of yellow headphones was strapped across his sweat-dampened hair, and the lower half of his face was covered with a dark shadow of a beard. Next came his wide shoulders and powerful chest. He wore a loose-fitting mesh tank top that looked like he’d hacked off the bottom with a pair of hedge trimmers. Georgeanne wondered why he’d even bothered to wear it. His stomach was flat and bare except for short, dark hair swirling around his navel, then disappearing like the shaft of an arrow into his navy running shorts. He had thighs thick with muscle, and his legs were long and tanned.
“You’re early,” she heard him say as he tried to catch his breath. She looked up as he pushed his headphones to circle his neck. He glanced at his sports watch turned backward on his wrist. “If I’d known, I would have been here.”
“Sorry,” she said, refusing to blush at the sight of him. She was an adult. She could handle a hot, sweaty, half-naked man. She could certainly handle John Kowalsky-no problem. She just had to think of him as one big bad hair day. Uncooperative, annoying, and real messy. “My foot got a little heavy on the gas petal,” she explained.
“How long have you been here?” He reached for a white towel hanging on the rail. He dried his face and hair as if he’d just gotten out of the shower, then his whole head disappeared beneath the thick cotton.
“Just a few minutes.”
“Umm, we thought you fell down and hurt yourself,” Lexie informed him, distracted by the sight of his stomach. Up to this point in her life, she’d never been close to a half-dressed man. She stared at all that skin and hair and took a step forward to get a better look. “I thought maybe you broke your leg or got a cut,” she said.
His head poked out from beneath the towel. He looked a Lexie and smiled. “Did you get a Band-Aid ready just in case?” he asked as he slid the towel around his neck, holding on to the ends with both hands.
She shook her head. “You gots a hairy tummy, John. Really hairy!” she said, then turned to the railing, her short attention drawn to the activity on the beach below.
He looked down and placed a big hand on his hard abdomen. “I don’t think I’m that bad,” he said as he rubbed his palm across his stomach. “I know guys who are a lot worse. At least I don’t have hair on my back.”
Georgeanne watched his hand slide lower on his abdomen, his long fingers slipping through short hair, and memories shimmering in her head like a mirage. She remembered a night a long time ago when she’d touched him, when she’d felt him warm and virile beneath her hands.
“What are you looking at, Georgeanne?”
She raised her gaze up his chest to his eyes. She’d been caught. She could act mortified and guilty or lie. “I was checking out your shoes.”
He chuckled silently. “You were checking out my package.”
Or she could admit it. “It was a long drive.” She shrugged. “I’ll go get our things out of the car.”
John stepped in front of her. “I’ll get your stuff.”
“Thank you.”
He slid the door open. “You’re welcome,” he said though an arrogant smile, and walked across the living room.
“Hey, John!” Lexie hollered, and ran past her mother, leaving Georgeanne to follow behind them both. “I brung my roller skates. And guess what.”
“What?”
“My mom bought me new Barbie knee pads.”
“Barbie?”
“Yeah.”
He opened the front door. “Cool.”
“And guess what else.”
“What?”
“I gots new sunglasses.” She took the blue frames from the bridge of her nose and held them up in the air. “See?”
John turned toward her. “Hey, those are real nice.” He stopped and stared into her face. “Are you going to wear all that purple stuff while you’re here?” he asked, referring to her liberal application of eye shadow.
She nodded. “I get to wear it on Saturdays and Sundays.”
He walked to the back of the Hyundai and said, “Maybe, since you’re on vacation, you could take a break from wearing all that makeup.”
“No way. I like it. It’s my most favorite thing.”
“I thought dogs and cats were your most favorite.”
“Well, makeup is my most favorite thing that I can have.”
His sigh was heavy with resignation as he took two suitcases and a duffel bag of toys from the backseat of the car. “Is this all?” he asked.
Georgeanne smiled and unlocked the trunk.
“Jesus,” John swore as he stared at three more suitcases, two yellow rain slickers, one big umbrella, and a Barbie Beauty Parlor. “Did you pack your whole house?”
“This has been condensed several times since the original load,” she told him, and reached for the jackets and umbrella. “Please don’t swear in front of Lexie.”
“Did I swear?” John asked, looking innocent.
Georgeanne nodded.
Lexie giggled and grabbed her Barbie Beauty Parlor.
Georgeanne and Lexie followed him back into the house and downstairs. He showed them to a guest room decorated in shades of beige and green, then he left to retrieve their luggage. When he’d carried in all their things, he gave a quick tour of the lower floor. A room filled with free weights and exercise equipment separated the guest room from the master bedroom.
“I need to take a shower,” John told them as they headed into the hall after Lexie’s inspection of all three bathrooms. “When I get out, we can go look in tide pools if you want.”
“Why don’t you meet us down there,” Georgeanne suggested, wanting to take advantage of the sunbreak while it lasted, before the skies clouded and became overcast.
“Sounds good. Do you need beach towels?”
Georgeanne had never been a Girl Scout but was usually prepared for anything and everything. She’d brought her own. After John left them, Lexie and Georgeanne changed. Lexie slipped into her pink and purple plaid two-piece swimsuit, then pulled her Don’t Mess With Texas T-shirt over her head. Georgeanne changed into a pair of orange and yellow tie-dyed drawstring shorts, a matching halter that left her abdomen bare, and because she felt a bit too exposed, she slipped her arms into a light cotton blouse. The yellow fabric fell past her behind and she left it unbuttoned. Both she and Lexie shoved their feet into Teva sandals, grabbed beach towels and sunscreen, then headed outside.
By the time John joined them on the beach, Lexie had found a broken sand dollar, half a shell, and a little crab claw. She put them in her pink pail
and crouched down beside Georgeanne to inspect a sea anemone stuck to one of many small rocks exposed by the low tide.
“Touch it,” Georgeanne told her. “It’s sticky.”
Lexie shook her head. “I know it’s sticky, but I don’t like to touch ‘em.”
“It won’t bite you,” John told her, casting a shadow over the two of them.
Georgeanne glanced up and slowly stood. John had shaved and changed into beige cargo shorts and an olive T-shirt. He looked clean and casual, but too rough and too sensuous to ever look completely respectable. “I think she’s afraid it will grab her finger and won’t let go.” Georgeanne said.
“No, I’m not,” Lexie objected, and shook her head again. She scrambled to her feet and pointed to Haystack Rock about a hundred feet away. “I want to go there.”
Together the three of them picked their way toward the huge formation. John helped Lexie jump from rock to rock, and when the terrain got a little rough for her short legs, he picked Lexie up and swung her up on his shoulders as effortlessly as if she weighed nothing.
Lexie grabbed the sides of John’s head, and her pail swung and hit him on his right cheek. “Mommy, I’m high!” she shrieked.
John and Georgeanne looked at each other and laughed. “Just what every mother longs to hear,” she said.
When their laughter died and was drowned out by the sound of waves, John’s smile remained. “I was beginning to think that you only wore dresses or skirts,” he said as he reached up to wrap his hands around Lexie’s ankles.
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