“Our child.”
“Yes, to birth our child would be how I can give back to God what he’s given me by putting you in my life as my husband. I want to do that.”
Kinsey looked at Tanner for validation to her words and Tanner simply said, “I’m the writer and you just said it far better than I ever could it.”
They made love and when they were finished and holding each other, Kinsey felt overwhelmed by it all, by how good her life had become and she said, “If the love we just made conceives a baby that’s going to be a special child.”
Tanner waited for her to explain and when she didn’t he asked, “Why is that, Kins?”
“Because I just opened myself up to you and loved you as hard and as best as I knew how. And…” she felt her eyes filling with tears and she stopped to wipe them.
“I loved you the same way, Kinsey. I know what…”
“Then if I have a new child growing in me now I already love him or her more than I can say and I love you too Tanner. I’ve never been this emotional and I’m so overwhelmed by you, by all this, and I’m so blessed.”
Tanner held tight and let her gather herself. When he felt she was ready he said, “Come on. We have seas to sail and places to go.”
“Okay, Did I hear you say you finished your book earlier?”
“I did. You want to read it sometime?”
“Can I start it on the boat?”
“Really, you want to read it that much? I’m so glad. Sure, we’ll get going and you can read it out loud to me. I always read it out loud to myself to make sure it sounds right. Maybe you could do that for me?”
Kinsey turned in Tanner’s arms, “I’d love to – for all of your books. Let’s go so I can get started.”
16
The Naked Sunset
With the sun high in the evening sky and the skyline of Miami shrinking in the distance to their stern, Tanner asked Kinsey if she had any place specific she’d like him to set course for, if not, he told her, he had many places to take her.
“Is this for us or for my painting?” she asked.
“It’s both, it’s anything you want it to be.”
“Then I only ask that you take me to a place where the sun sets gorgeous, orange, and bright, and the sea looks like it’s being set fire to by the sun as the sun sinks into its waters. I’ve only painted one sunset and that was my gift to you. I’d like to paint you another.”
Tanner nodded and spoke above the breeze, “I know where to start. Key West here we come.”
As the sun began to set Kinsey came out from under the canopy that she and Tanner had been staying under to keep from burning in the sun and walked to the edge of the boat. She looked at Tanner with a gleam in her eye and took off her top. Then she stepped from her sandals and dropped her shorts and panties down her legs. She kicked them toward Tanner and naked, walked to the bow of the boat.
She had Tanner’s full attention and she leaned on the rail at the tip of the bow and spread her arms to the sea and the sun as it set straight before them. With her bare back now to Tanner she stood on her toes and closed her eyes to the sky. Tanner took her into his mind and etched it into the part of his memory that held thoughts and events as words etched in stone. He knew that even at one hundred years of age he’d still see Kinsey as she stood now, naked, on the bow of their new sailboat.
He was lost in his vision of her and he was startled when she appeared at his side and leaned into him.
“How was that?” she asked, leaning into him.
“I’d say that describes you quite well. Why don’t you get my book, my final copy before I send it back to my publisher, from inside the cabin, and start reading it to me?”
“That’s a great idea. Do you want me dressed or undressed?” Kinsey asked as she made her way toward the cabin.
“I prefer you undressed since you’re asking.”
Kinsey stepped down into the cabin and came out with a box four inches thick with a cover on it. “Can I ask now what you titled it? She said, as she came and handed it to him.
“You sure can. It’s the same name as our boat.”
Kinsey put her arms around Tanner. “I love it. That is perfect, it brings us, our story, full circle. You are such a romantic, Tanner. For that I’ll make love to you all night.”
“You know, Kins? It’s my theory that all I have to do is kiss you or touch you and I find myself making love to you. If I had given it a different name I think you would have let me have my way with you tonight anyway.” Tanner smiled big at Kinsey and when she hit his arm and laughed he kissed her, “Here is a deposit for later tonight. It’s just a taste of what I’m going to do to you.”
Kinsey raised her eyebrows, “Is that so? And what might that be?”
Tanner gave her another kiss and reached his hand around to her rear end and lightly touched his fingers to it sending cold chills down her arms. “See how I lead you to wanting more with a little more loving, touching, caressing, kissing and passion with my every move?”
Kinsey nodded, her eyes big and fixed on Tanner’s mouth as he spoke.
“It’s all foreplay but I make sure to end it with a ravishing of your entire body, mind and soul at the end of the night. I love you with everything I have and it seems to work. You can’t get enough can you?” Tanner asked before kissing her gently on the lips.
When he finally pulled back his lips, Kinsey shook her head. “You’re right. I can never get enough.” She leaned her breasts into his chest put her arms to Tanner’s back, being careful not to press into his scars.
As the sun finally dipped into the sea, finished giving its light and heat to the passing day, Tanner wrapped Kinsey with his arms. Again, he kissed her long and hard.
Then later, he turned on a deck light, a reading light as it would be used in the coming nights, and Kinsey sat under it in the well of the boat and prepared to read Tanner’s book aloud to him.
Her last words before starting into it, “I love how all the titles come together, my painting, our boat and your book. It’s so good being married to you. I love you so much.”
Tanner, with both hands on the wheel, his eyes to the sea, smiled and said, “And I love you as well. Thank God for you Kinsey.”
Kinsey opened the manuscript and began reading –
The Naked Sunset by Tanner Brodie.
Dedicated to his new bride, Kinsey Appleton Brodie.
Prologue –
Kinsey stepped onto the balcony of her bedroom, the bedroom in the home of the benefactor who had invited her and her roommate down to Charleston to study art and to paint the city, and took one more look to the sun, now bright orange, shading to red, and beautiful, as it fell slow and hot from the summer sky. She had to hurry or she would miss the shot. She stepped back into her room and went to her camera, mounted on a tripod and pointing across the room and out the window toward the sun and the city, and checked to make sure she had set the shutter button timer to a 15 second delay.
She stepped to the full length mirror and dropped her robe to the floor. She took a quick peek at her reflection to make sure her body was up to the standards she needed for the photo. She grabbed a brush and ran it quickly through her long brown hair hoping to bring out the blond highlights from her days in the summer sun. She turned her back to the mirror and stood on her toes for a different view – she looked as good as she knew to be – it would have to do.
She pulled both doors to the balcony wide open into the room so the camera could get the city, the sun, and all of her body into the shot. She waited for it, the right moment, and then, as the sun dipped low enough to shine its rays directly into her room, flooding it with warm evening light, she stepped to the camera and pushed the shutter release button.
As the camera began its countdown she stepped naked onto the balcony and crossed quickly to the rail. She spread her arms wide in the orange summer light, turned her head so that she was giving her profile to the camera lens and stood high on her to
es to lengthen her athletic body and make sure its lines were long, lovely and feminine. As the camera ticked down to the shot she let the sunlight enter her mind’s eye and she thought about the light, where it came from, then she opened her heart to love and tried to give back to the camera all the beauty that the sun was shining down onto her body and deep into her soul.
Click went the camera and she made sure to hold the pose a second longer. There was a whistle and a catcall from two men in the street below her. Kinsey came back to herself and looked down at them, their mouths agape, and gave them the slightest of smiles before turning and stepping back into her room.
She put her arms back into her robe, wrapped it around her, and went to her camera. She knew it would be the shot she was looking for – no real need to see it now – but she had to look anyway. The shot had felt pure, clean and effortless, like all of her best paintings did as they came life on the canvas. If she was struggling, the photo or the painting she was working on looked to be struggling also and when that happened she would stop the process and try again later. That wouldn’t happen this time.
Standing naked on a balcony in the sunlight of a perfect Charleston evening felt easy and right, the catcalls of the men below notwithstanding, and Kinsey felt like she had touched the universe and possibly even God himself in that moment. She couldn’t wait to get the shot downloaded to her laptop.
It took her about three minutes total to do it and then she was standing in the darkening room, as the sun fell still lower in the sky outside, looking at her work on the computer screen. She couldn’t help herself; she went to her easel and put a canvas on it and began to look at the photo on her screen and then to the canvas itself, trying to picture the light in the photo become paint on her canvas.
There was a call from downstairs, “Kinsey? Are you ready? We leave in five for the museum party.” It was Ms. Lester, the owner of the home and a wonderful lady who loved both Kinsey and her friend, Jessica’s, art work.
Kinsey knew her painting would have to wait but when they returned from the party she would invite Jessica to her room and she would begin her outlines. She’d go deep into the night, all night if she must, to get the painting started. It was how she was born. She felt art inside her like a golfer intuited a putt or a chef knew when his dish was perfect in the oven and she knew to work when the muse was dancing hand to hand with her soul. A muse dancing solo never did anything for her, she had to connect with her canvas when the mysteries of life called to her.
This painting would be for him. For the man that understood her; the man that loved her from the moment she was born. She hadn’t met him yet, but she was only twenty, and she would know him when she did and one way she’d know is that he would be moved by this painting. It would speak to him as much as the evening sun and the city of Charleston had spoken to her as she posed, raw, in the Holy City itself, letting the light of the moment reflect into the lens of her camera and be recorded forever and for him. She knew this would be her finest work and she decided that she’d only sign it when she met the man for whom it was meant.
She stepped to her closet and quickly dressed in a light colored miniskirt and a dark shoulder strap top that showed her beautiful skin. Not shocking in its appearance for the art museum party but it would definitely catch the eyes of any young men, older men too, she decided as she stepped into her heals and made for the door and the night in the lighted city beyond.
She had felt love burning in her heart, love for the city, love for the earth, for the sun and the stars, for God, for the mysteries of life and mostly, she felt love for a man that she had yet to meet. A man she could share herself with, a man she could talk to about anything as he held her through the night, a man she could have children with and care for them together with and watch and help them grow into fine adults, a man she could give her body to and love as hard and as best as she knew how so that he could do the same and when they were exhausted from their passions they could fall asleep as one. She felt that love and she wanted to express it. Her painting, The Naked Sunset, as she was thinking to calling it would be that expression and it would be her gift to the man that would love her back as hard as she would most certainly love him…
Kinsey stopped reading, she looked to Tanner and then stood and approached him, “This is my story. You wrote about me. You put my heart, my love for God, the arts and my love for you on paper. What I painted – The Naked Sunset – my love for a man that I knew was waiting and searching for me as I was for him – you put to words. You – my love for you – my painting to you – you gifted it all back to me.”
Tanner put his hand out and Kinsey took it as he spoke.
“I was blown away by that painting. I loved looking at it as I searched for you and I grew to know and love you and I tried to return it back to you. The harder you love me, Kinsey, the harder I’ll love you. I promise that to you forever. This book is the first of my many efforts. Get used to it Kins.”
They kissed upon a sea of saltwater under a sea of shining stars in a sailboat heading south to the Keys where Tanner hoped to find another perfect sunset for Kinsey to paint.
God had let Tanner circle back in his life and find the girl he was meant to love and he was making sure to always circle around her, his true love, his bride, his wife and his soulmate, and keep her lifted, happy, and impassioned in all their days together.
Kinsey was a gift from God and God had made him wait until he could love her the way God intended a man to love a woman. Tanner married Kinsey and now she was his to care for, to love, to hold and to cherish. Tanner looked to the stars shining above their sails and said, simply, “Thank you,” as he captained their new boat, The Naked Sunset, toward the liquid horizon.
17
Book Three - The Naked Seduction
18
Sunset Kinsey
Theirs was a marriage built on love. But it was a tired love and both of them wanted to do something about it. Him especially. She knew he was about fed up with her and she couldn’t blame him.
The plan was to separate for the week before their anniversary and find themselves and then each other so that they could rediscover the love that had ignited their marriage five years previous. Each would take a trip, a trip separate from the other, to a paradise far away from their jobs, their twin babies – a son and a daughter, their families, and their friends. This was for the best, no questions asked of the other, just find the essential spark before coming home.
He never gave her a choice, he booked her a flight to Tuckers Point, Bermuda and as soon as his parents had arrived to take care of the children, the dog, and the home, she was to leave for the airport. He even had a taxi called to come pick her up and take her to the departure gate of the Charleston International Airport. He had been away on a book signing tour and had done all this by computer and phone over the previous four days. He told her his own trip would begin the day after she’d left on her trip.
Where he was going? She had no idea for he wouldn’t say.
It had started with a note two weeks prior. He left it for her in her car and she saw it on her ride in to her art gallery. She took a peek to its contents and found herself immediately pulling off the road and reading it in its entirety.
He was right. They needed a fresh start, something new to bring the romance and the sex, the hot sex, which had always been such important parts of their marriage back to the forefront of their relationship. Whatever it took they had to make it happen. No rules to their separate journeys – just a cleansing, a purging of old desires and the creation of new ones – new desires for a new beginning to their marriage.
But neither could ask what the other did while on their trip, their separation. They could share that, if they chose, much later, once the marriage was back on track but they never had to.
She knew this was her fault. But in another way it wasn’t. She was overwhelmed and she was depressed; newborn twins and a thriving business were too much for her. She lo
ved her children, adored her husband and she was rolling in adulation and notoriety for her artwork, but it had come at a cost. The doctor had told her she was suffering from postpartum depression and she should take a break. But how? Where was the time? She imagined everything crashing down at both work and home if she wasn’t there to be in charge.
But then it did come crashing down.
It started as nothing and escalated into a full blown crisis at her gallery and it was all because of one customer. One pompous and overbearing customer that had said one too many things to her and set her off.
Okay, so the frame had a scratch and her assistant had failed to notice it before framing the painting. Whooptey-doo-da. She’d exchange it for him. But to call her assistant inept and berate her to the point that she was crying was too much for Kinsey to take and she lit into the customer and didn’t stop.
And then she couldn’t stop.
She called him every name in the book and then some more that she made up just for good measure. And yes, she had to admit that she never should have told the man’s wife that the best way to pull the frame out of his ass, after she herself would make sure to shove it in there real high and tight for him, was with a fishing gaff. “It might hurt coming out,” she’d said to her, but that’s just one of the things wives do for their husbands she’d pointed out just to let them know, without a shadow of a doubt, where she stood on his pompous and mean spirited attitude.
He was a big player in the world of art and it took both her husband and her best friend, Jessica, stepping in several days later and offering him everything in the way of apologies and niceties to stop him from publicly trying to ruin her reputation and her business.
Then just a few days later things went crazy at home. She spent an entire day crying because she’d missed her daughter’s first steps and she decided that the best way to make sure that her husband (who had witnessed those first steps and even been able to video them for her) paid for it was by cutting him off from sex for the next two weeks. That was a month ago and then she didn’t even try to make it up to him until just last week, the day before he was to leave on his book tour, and he said it was too little and too late. He volunteered to sleep on the couch and he was gone the next day without as much as a good-bye.
Lights on the Far Horizon Trilogy Page 16