Passionate Kisses

by Various

  “We’ve done a lot of renovations,” Lila said. “Added on a bathroom downstairs and knocked down the old barn out back.”

  “But we didn’t do much with the attic–” Marcia went on.

  “Too hot,” Lila agreed.

  “And there are a few boxes up there from when they moved out. Said we could keep them or get rid of them.”

  “And we’re such packrats we haven’t even touched them yet,” Lila said.

  Sophie’s head spun, from the voices finishing each other’s sentences to the strong aroma of coffee to the bizarre thought that thirty years of not knowing anything about her past had somehow brought her directly to a place where she was being forced to face it. If he was her father. Which he couldn’t be.

  But stranger things had happened, hadn’t they? She’d spent the better part of a year traveling the country and reporting on coincidences, unexplained happenings, and phenomena of nature with no roots in science. How hard was it to believe that maybe her mother hadn’t told her the truth all these years ago because of the simple fact that it was too painful? Why dredge up memories if her husband was dead and the only thing she knew about his parents was they’d died violently, inexplicably, in a small town less than a hundred miles away? Why wouldn’t she protect your daughter from something like that?

  Marcia touched her wrist, breaking into her thoughts, and Sophie jumped. “If you’d like, you’re welcome to stop by and take a look.”

  * * * *

  “Stop shoveling food into your mouth like you’re living in a barn,” Lucas’s mother said.

  “Aw, Ma.” He put down the sandwich and reached for his soda. “How many times do you think you’ve said that to me? I mean, over the years?”

  She passed him another napkin and the bag of chips. “The better question is, why am I still saying it? All these years of raising you, and you’re still eating lunch in my kitchen like a starving teenager.”

  “C’mon. You love it.”

  “I love the company, yes. The manners could stand some improvement.”

  “Sorry.” He finished his sandwich, dumped a few more chips into his mouth and checked his watch. “I gotta go soon, anyway. I told Sally Clemmons I’d stop by and give her a quote on staining her back deck.”

  “Oh, good. I hope you can do the job before the weekend. She’s having some women from the church out for poker and drinks.”

  “Poker? What happened to bridge?”

  Katie Oakes cleared the table. “I’m sixty-two, dear, not eighty. Poker’s more interesting.”

  “And I bet those pitchers of Long Island Iced Tea make it even more so.”

  She tapped him on the back of the head. “Mind your manners.”

  He smiled. He didn’t make it home for a meal too often, but damn he missed it, and he sure enjoyed it when he could.

  “How’s the filming going?”

  “Pretty good. The producer wanted to take the day off for some research. We’re pretty much done shooting at the beach. Another day, and it’ll be a wrap.”

  She leaned against the fridge. “I’m glad you’re doing some camera work again.”

  “Ma.”

  “Don’t ‘Ma’ me. I’m serious. And it has nothing to do with the money your father and I spent on college or the money you could be making. You’re good at it, honey. You like it. I wish you’d gone to Bluffet Edge full-time when they asked you to.”

  “I know.” But he'd chosen part-time travel work instead, and neither one needed to say it was because of Shannon. I want to stay in Lindsey Point, she'd said when they graduated from college. For my dad. “Stop thinking about her,” his mother said.

  “I’m not.” Not for the last hour, anyway. He’d successfully put her out of his mind as soon as he’d pulled into his parents’ driveway.

  “Good.”

  He dropped a kiss onto the top of her head. “Tell Dad I said hi.”

  “Tell him yourself. And bring that girl over here if you get a chance, will you?”

  “Which girl?”

  “Sophie Whatever-Her-Name-Is. From the TV show. You’re spending time with her, right? Three different people told me you took her home last night.”

  “Ma!” That was it. He was officially slicing off one of Finn’s balls.

  “I want to meet her. Celebrities don’t come around Lindsey Point often.”

  “She doesn’t have a lot of extra time, you know.” He could picture the look on Sophie’s face now. Last thing either of them needed was an introduction to Lucas’s mother.

  “I’m just saying, it would be nice.”

  “I’ll mention it.”

  His mother didn’t say another word, just stood inside the screen door and waved as he backed down the sidewalk. Damn small town. Sure, everyone knew everyone else, and he could walk down any street at night without worrying about getting jumped, but say goodbye to privacy. Lucas pulled himself into the cab of his truck and found a country station to hum along to. Maybe Sophie had it right. Swoop in, swoop out, enjoy the charm of a place like Lindsey Point and then lose herself in the anonymity of a big city where the only people who knew her name or your business were the people she really wanted to.

  His phone vibrated with a text. He slowed at the stop sign and opened the message.

  Sophie: She’s cute.

  Lucas frowned. Who? he typed.

  Your ex. The one you were talking to in the parking lot.

  He pulled over at the next intersection. Were you stalking me?

  Don’t flatter yourself. U getting back together with her?

  He shook his head. Of course not. Why would u ask?

  Just wondered. Didn’t want to ask u to have dinner if u already had plans.

  Dinner? Lucas’s mind spun, all the way back to the lighthouse and all the way forward to what might happen after dinner. After drinks and dessert. After he took his time unzipping that red dress and dropping it to the floor. Because this time, he didn’t care how much Sophie needed her beauty rest. He needed something else, and it was her in his bed, naked and damp with sweat and want and calling out his name as she came.

  His hand shook a little as he typed his response. No plans. How’s 7?

  Perfect. Where’s good to eat?

  He thought a minute. The Cove.

  That’s a restaurant?

  And a dance club. In Bluffet Edge. Ten miles up the coast. For a moment, he almost deleted the text and started over. Was he going to do this? Wouldn’t it be a lot less trying on his emotions to have a beer or two, watch a ball game, and go to bed early? Yes, yes, and oh hell yes. But when Sophie’s eyes lit up, when she put her hands on his face and put her magical mouth to his, his stomach did a kind of dance. He pressed Send.

  I have plans this afternoon but 7 sounds good. Pick me up at Francine’s?

  Lucas resisted the urge to ask what those plans involved. Instead he typed a final Yes and a smiley face and shoved away doubt. No business of his what she was up to.

  Bottom line: dinner with Sophie Smithwaite was a much better offer than taking up space on his usual stool at the bar and shooting shit while he and Finn watched the ball game. Or calling Shannon and rehashing old memories over drinks.

  He turned the wheel and headed out of town toward Sally Clemmons’ place. So far, he didn’t know much about Sophie Smithwaite besides what she felt like under his hands and what she tasted like in the rain and the way she quirked her eyes at the camera to flirt with an unseen audience. But tonight he intended to find out.

  Chapter 18

  Sophie stood at the end of the gravel driveway and looked at the house. Wow. It could compete with any Norman Rockwell painting, that was for sure. Cherry red paint, black shutters, gardens wrapping around each side of the house, and a fence. Not white picket, but rough-hewn wood, probably hand-collected some hundred-odd years ago from the woods bordering the edge of the lawn.

  She turned around. Honestly, if the cab hadn’t been halfway to the stop sign, she would have f
lagged down the driver and told him to take her straight back to Francine’s. She wasn’t sure she had the guts for this. But all she saw down the road were brake lights. She rested her hands on her hips. Darn it. Maybe she’d take a few minutes and look around the outside, admire the landscaping and take a few mental pictures of the place where Peterson Smith had grown up. She could add a line or two to her script from that alone. She didn’t need to go inside. She sure as hell didn’t need to look through a box full of dusty old mementos. But then the front door opened and Marcia waved from the porch.

  “Sophie!”

  She’d missed her chance to escape. So Sophie steadied her nerves instead and took her time walking up the flagstone path. A gray cat sunbathed near the porch steps, and it rolled over and blinked up at her as she approached. Didn’t run away. Didn’t even meow. Just stretched out its front legs and yawned.

  “You didn’t have any problems finding it, did you?”

  Sophie shook her head. “I think the cab driver would know everyone’s place by name, wouldn’t he? Even if I didn’t give him an address?”

  Marcia laughed. “Probably. You either had Dave Tompkins or his brother Roy. Their family’s owned the only cab service in town for at least forty years.”

  Sophie stepped across the threshold and took a minute to let her eyes adjust to the dim light. She’d half-expected country decor like the patchwork and dried flowers back at Francine’s, but Marcia and Lila had much better taste. Sleek, modern lines and colors filled the living room and what she could see of the kitchen.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Thank you. Lila’s the decorator. I’m the cook.” Marcia leaned in the doorway. “Took more than a little bit of courage to come out here, I’m thinking. Anyone know you’re here? No one else wanted to come with you?”

  Sophie shook her head in response to both questions.

  “I don’t blame you. Might turn out to be nothing, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Sophie!” Lila appeared in the doorway. She’d changed into an over-sized dress and flip-flops and held a box in her arms. “Here it is. There were two of them, actually, but not too much in either one, so I combined everything.” She set it down on a footstool and looked at Marcia. “We were going to do some gardening out back, figured you’d like your privacy. Unless you want a tour of the house?”

  Sophie shook her head, eyes on the box. “Maybe later. Thanks.”

  Marcia disappeared into the kitchen and reappeared a few moments later with a pitcher and a glass of ice. “Tea. Unsweetened. Sugar’s on the table in the dining room.” She set pitcher and glass on the coffee table and motioned to a small alcove off the living room.

  Sophie barely looked up. “Thank you.”

  A door somewhere in the back of the house opened and closed, and only then did she allow herself to kneel beside the footstool and peel back the lid of the box. It was nothing, she told herself. It would turn out to be a wild goose chase. Couple of locals who wanted some camera time or credit, like Tom Allen. Still, she couldn’t make herself look inside.

  Her cell phone buzzed, and she nearly leapt into an end table as she grabbed her purse. Where are u? read Lon’s text. We need to go over details for tomorrow.

  Where was she? Good question. Truthfully, about to dive down a rabbit hole, with no idea of what might lie at the bottom. She ignored the text and turned her phone to silent. No more distractions. She needed to look through the box and get this over with.

  She let out a deep breath, reached inside, and pulled out a handful of drawings. She examined each one in turn. The sky scribbled with navy blue crayon. A full moon colored in with yellow and given two eyes. A stick-figure family of three: a child standing between a mother and father and something with four legs and a tail sitting in the foreground. The last drawing was of a house. This house, the one she sat inside. She recognized it from the square front and the wooden fence. Artwork from elementary school. Nothing meaningful or suggestive. She set the drawings aside and reached in a second time.

  Two more sheets of paper came out, but not drawings this time. Sentences or maybe an essay of some sort. Looked like the chicken scratch of a teenager, and as she glanced over the words, she saw the initials P+M and a couple of hearts doodled in the margins in a different hand. Huh. Young love. Probably notes passed back and forth in chemistry or geography or some other mind-numbing high school class.

  Hang on–P+M? Petey and Miranda? She took another look at the sheets of paper. Sheet of paper, she corrected herself. Originally a regular-sized notebook page, it had been torn in two, and when she matched the edges up, she could see the writing wasn’t an essay, or even fragments of a love note, but a poem. Sort of. It didn’t rhyme, but it definitely had a rhythm to it.

  Caught between the stars and the sand,

  Between a view of the sky and the sea,

  I reach for the moon,

  I cast its light in your eyes

  So that forever after you will remember

  How it was the first moment I loved you.

  Not from there, but from here

  Not from the top but from the bottom

  Across the never-ending water you will find the treasure

  I have bought for you, my heart.

  I have buried it deep below

  Every day you seek it

  And every day you see it–

  One day, my love, my only, it will be ours.

  This beacon of love will guide us home

  And forever, my sweet, shelter us from the storm.

  Wow. Petey had a creative side, huh? If he was the author. Or was it Peterson Junior, trying to impress a girl using all the standard motifs: sea, sand, stars, moon? You forgot the sunrise, Sophie thought. She ran her fingers over the words. Lucky girl, though, whoever she was, to have someone say those kinds of things about her. She hoped this wasn’t the only copy of the poem, that somehow the original had reached its intended audience. She tucked the pages back inside the box.

  Two t-shirts came out next, and she shook them to smooth away twenty years of wrinkles. One was blue with a peace sign in the center of the chest. The other was yellow and white with what looked like a mascot on it. Lindsey Point Warriors? She cocked her head and squinted at the faded, peeling letters. Strange choice for a coastal town. She’d have to ask Lucas about it later.

  For a moment Sophie’s attention wandered. Those arms. That smile. She leaned back on her heels and wondered what kind of restaurant The Cove would turn out to be. Romantic? Down-home local? Something in-between? It didn’t matter, because after dinner she was bringing him straight back to the bed and breakfast, where they’d finish up what the kiss up on the lighthouse had started.

  Marcia rapped on the open door between kitchen and living room. “Still doing okay?”

  Sophie jumped a little, startled from her thoughts. “There isn’t much in here, tell you the truth.”

  “Nothing you can use for the show?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s fine. We just wanted to offer.” She disappeared again.

  Sophie pulled out a newspaper with a Baby on the Beach front page article, complete with two photos she’d seen about a million times. She’d already read more versions than she needed to. Next thing out of the box, another newspaper, this one dated a few years later. It had nothing about the lighthouse or the deaths. Just some advertisements for a local hardware store and some letters to the editor about moving the church bazaar to the last Saturday in July. Apparently it had been a topic of heated discussion. Huh. She was about to put the paper on the rest of the pile when she realized it was wrapped around an object.

  Something square. And relatively small, five-by-seven inches or so. With shaking hands, Sophie unwrapped it.

  “Oh my God.” Her heart crawled into her throat and sat there, beating furiously. Her fingers grew slick with sweat. The room spun, and she reached for the arm of a chair to try and keep track of wh
ich way was up. She couldn’t.

  “Sophie?” That was Lila, she was pretty sure, but if she looked anywhere but at the people in the picture frame, she’d lose her balance. As it was, kneeling didn’t seem stable anymore. In fact, lying down might be better. “Are you feeling all right?” The voice faded.

  “Sophie.” Someone put a hand on her shoulder and shook. “Look at me.”

  But she couldn’t. She couldn’t because tears were filling up her eyes, rolling down her cheeks and suffocating her. She couldn’t catch her breath at all. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t even blink. All she could do was stare at the faces in the frame. She knew them. Of course she knew them. She’d seen them every day of her life, sitting still-lifes on top of the mantel in her mother’s house.

  Her mother. Her father. Their wedding photo. Clutched in her goddamn hands.

  She has the cheekbones, doesn’t she?

  Welcome home, Sophie.

  Something like bile combined with blood and something worse rose up inside her. She dropped the picture, but then she had nothing to hold onto, nothing to ground her against the spinning. And the room was definitely moving around her. She fumbled for the arm of a chair, for the end table somewhere beside her, for goddamned anything at all, but she couldn’t find a single solid surface. Her pulse beat inside her temples, her wrists, the back of her throat. Faster. Faster.

  All Sophie knew was blackness.

  Chapter 19

  Sophie opened her eyes to Lucas kneeling above her. “Stop,” he said.

  “Stop what?” She tried to sit up. Marcia and Lila stood behind him, hand in hand, staring down at her.

  “Stop trying to fight me.”

  “I’m not.” Then she looked at her palms pressed flat against his chest. “Oh.” She lay back down. “What happened?” For the first time she noticed the ice pack at the back of her neck. It must have started to leak, because something wet was running between her dress and the carpet.

  “You passed out.”

  “I did not. Passed out? No. There’s no way.”

  “Did you eat anything today?” With one hand at her shoulders, the other at her waist, he helped her sit up.