“I guess you would relate well to one another,” Bruce said after a while. “I never thought about it, but you and Laura have quite a bit in common.”
Donna thought about Laura and Mark and the charged atmosphere pervading their home. Now didn’t seem the appropriate time to discuss the subject with Bruce. “Laura lived in Seattle while she ran her clown troupe, didn’t she?”
“Yes.” Bruce unfolded his arms and rested his hands lightly on Donna’s shoulders. “That’s where she and your dad met. But you already knew that.”
“Then I have Laura to thank for my meeting you.” She craned her neck and smiled up at him. But Bruce wasn’t smiling.
“Laura had a rough time for a few years.”
The burgeoning sun lost some of its tender warmth. “Nobody ever explained exactly why, Bruce.”
“It’s not very pretty. Mark’s father walked under the wheels of a car Laura was driving. It was early in the morning after her high-school prom, and her date was too drunk to drive.”
Donna shuddered. “Oh, how awful.”
“She was delivering papers to the office, papers she should have taken to the Hunts—Bill Hunt—the night before, only she forgot.” He sighed, and rubbed his face. “Anyway. It was raining heavily, Laura may have been driving a little too fast, and she was tired, and Bill didn’t look where he was going before he barged off the curb. Then it was all over, and by the time Mark had finished hounding Laura, she went to live in Seattle. I didn’t see her for six years, until my father died and left his share of Fenton and Hunt to Laura and me jointly. I’m glad he did. It brought us all back together.”
“Maybe that’s what he intended.”
“I’m sure he did. Wherever he is now, he’s got to be smiling. His wayward boy ended up in the firm after all, and Mark and Laura are happily married—perfect.”
“I don’t like thinking what it must have been like for poor Laura. She’s so gentle, and she loves Mark so much.” Donna ducked around Bruce and went to the port rail. Everything wasn’t as perfect with Mark and Laura as Bruce thought, but she wasn’t about to ruin the moment. “That’s Tiburon and Belvedere over there, right? The houses hanging onto the hillside?”
“You’ve got it,” Bruce responded. “And Sausalito. You’re becoming quite the informed native, Donna. We’ll have to drive up around there some day. I’ve always had a thing for all those little lagoons in the Belvedere area. If I wasn’t already entrenched in Pacific Heights, I might consider moving to Belvedere.”
Donna felt an internal pressure, and tried to stifle her longing. The mood was right, and the surroundings, yet she didn’t know what she should or shouldn’t say to Bruce about their situation. “I’m going for a swim,” she announced, slipping off her blue robe. She avoided Bruce’s eyes, knowing well that her white suit did wonderful things for her slender, always-golden body.
His hand on her wrist surprised her. He held fast. “It’s cold as hell in there. I thought you were only going to sun yourself. No one swims in the bay.”
She stared into his eyes, then at his mouth, and the sharp movement in his throat. “Of course they swim. It’s perfect. Clear.”
“It’s freezing, I tell you. The Japanese currents don’t come up this far, and the water’s rarely even slightly warm.”
“It’ll be warm as soon as I’m in.” She pulled free, clambered up to balance herself on the side, and made a clean dive. She rose to the surface, breathless, blinking, slicking back her hair while she shivered. Bruce had been right. The water was icy.
“You nut!” Bruce leaned far out, hatless now, his blond hair blowing this way and that. “Now do you believe me?”
The shock of hitting the water was already fading, and Donna smiled. “It’s wonderful. You don’t know what you’re missing.” She struck out in an easy freestyle, putting some distance between herself and the boat.
“Come back,” Bruce hollered. “You’ll cramp up or something. Women!”
Donna heard a splash and rolled onto her back in time to see circles spreading on the surface. Seconds later, Bruce’s head popped up, his mouth open to let out an anguished howl. She grinned and approached him, side-stroking lazily.
“Argh,” Bruce wailed, “This is awful, Donna. That little run the other night probably took ten years off my life. This’ll finish me. I’m going to have cardiac arrest.”
“Give yourself a minute or two to adjust,” she shouted. “You’ll love it. And quit making so much noise, or they’ll call out the coast guard.”
He snorted, and dived again. Donna paddled in place, smacking water into sheets of sun-dyed drops. She turned her face up to the sun. The next instant she was sinking, dragged down by iron hands on her ankles. Bubbles rushed upward around her head, sweeping into her nose and mouth and ears, and she flailed until strong arms surrounded her and carried her back to the surface.
Bruce, sunlight glittering on his wet hair and lashes and the streaming rivulets on his face and shoulders, held her tight and grinned delightedly. Donna scrubbed at her stinging eyes, choked, and spat brine. Then she pummeled his shoulders. “You lousy rat,” she sputtered. “Why’d you feel you had…” She coughed again. “You didn’t have to get even. I never asked you to swim with me.”
“No, you didn’t. Got carried away, I guess, and in my best shorts, too. It’s a good thing I’ve got a spare pair aboard.”
His grip hadn’t loosened. They bobbed and circled slowly. Donna pushed back her hair, then Bruce’s. His smile slowly faded.
“It isn’t so cold when you’ve been in a while, is it?” Donna said, swallowing. He’d moved a hand to her waist. Their bodies were pressed together, and she felt sharp little thrusts of heat in her breasts and belly and thighs. Bruce’s hand was spread wide over her bottom now.
“I’ve never seen another face like yours, Donna,” Bruce murmured. “Do you know, I can’t sleep sometimes, and I think it could be because of your wonderful face.”
She couldn’t look away from his eyes. “I’ve been seeing yours in my sleep for longer than I want to admit.”
“This isn’t right.”
“Why?”
“It…isn’t.” Bruce kissed her lips softly. Donna tasted salt and closed her eyes, going limp in his embrace. There was something she wanted to tell him…. Then his tongue opened her mouth and she looked at him, startled. She’d been kissed before, they’d kissed before, but not like this. Bruce moved his mouth wildly over hers, and she wound her fingers in his hair.
She gripped his legs between her own and instantly felt the effect she was having on him. When she slid her hands around his waist, he pulled away and put several feet of water between them.
Humiliation sickened her. He thought she was promiscuous, that she was deliberately trying to trick him into seducing her.
“Donna,” Bruce said indistinctly.
She couldn’t answer.
He swam close enough to reach for and hold her hands. “You never asked why I called the boat Lake Lady.”
She shook her head.
“Didn’t you ever wonder, since she’s oceangoing and moored in a bay?”
“I guess I did.”
“After our wedding, Anne and I honeymooned on the lakes in northern Italy.”
Donna’s stomach dropped. “I think I heard that.”
“I bought the boat after we got back, when I still thought of Anne as my lake lady. She liked the name. I really loved her, Donna—or I thought I did. I wasn’t very mature in some ways. The failure of the marriage wasn’t all her fault.”
“Takes two, huh? They always say that.” Her legs were numb now.
“I’m making you uncomfortable.”
She wanted to agree. Instead, she said, “I’d like to talk about the things that matter to you. I want to understand.”
“Let’s go back aboard. I don’t trust myself in this water with you, and I need a clear head.”
They boarded by the fixed ladder to the cockpit. Donna towele
d off, rubbing harder than necessary, concentrating on the sensation of the rough fabric on her skin. She put her robe back on over her wet suit, and found a brush and comb. Bruce had climbed aloft, saying he wanted to change, and by the time she’d wrestled the tangles from her hair, he’d returned in dry shorts and slipped his bare feet back into tennis shoes.
“You didn’t comb your hair,” Donna remarked when he’d settled in his deck chair. She leaned over him and ran her own comb through his hair. She half expected him to stop her. Instead, he held her waist tightly and let her finish. For a few seconds, she looked down on the top of his head, at his broad, deeply tanned shoulders, and wished there were no impediments to their loving each other. “There. Done.” She bent swiftly to kiss his neck, then retreated to her own chair.
A speedboat roared by, leaving Lake Lady rocking in its wake. More and more sails dotted the bay. The early-morning peace was gone, but Donna had no desire to leave.
Bruce watched her through half-closed lids. He was going to tell her some truths he hadn’t confronted himself until today. They’d been there, carefully guarded deep inside him, and now he had to drag them out. In those few minutes with her, in the water, he’d come face-to-face with just how powerful his feelings for Donna were. He couldn’t allow those feelings to get out of hand, not without a lot of thought, and not without knowing that he could be what she needed him to be.
Where did a thirty-one-year-old man start when he hoped to explain to a nineteen-year-old woman why he thought they shouldn’t have a relationship? With the obvious? “I’m too old for you, Donna.” As soon as he’d said it, he knew the argument didn’t hold up.
“No, you’re not, Bruce. Age is relative, we all know that, and it doesn’t have anything to do with what we feel for each other.”
Her hair was slicked tight to her head and formed a V between her shoulder blades. Her face glowed, clean and devoid of makeup. Thick lashes made her dark eyes even more unreadable. Bruce glanced down at her robe, but saw in his mind her spectacular body in the sleek one-piece swimsuit. He looked away.
“Tell me why you think you contributed to your divorce, Bruce. That’s what you were going to do.”
“I’m not sure I can, now. Anne left, and everyone said she was too immature, and I agreed. I never explored what happened very deeply. It was easier that way. But I was deluding myself. I’m not sorry the marriage didn’t work out, but I haven’t been honest about all the reasons it didn’t. You can’t go on until you make peace with what’s gone before, Donna. Do you know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“You’ll understand what I’m saying if you try. I’m saying there’s a lot about some of the things I’ve done and the way I’ve done them that I haven’t looked at objectively.”
“Do we have to analyze everything we do? I don’t think so.” She leaned toward him, then gripped his knee. “Isn’t it okay to let go of what we can’t change and just carry on?”
He covered her hand. She made life sound so simple, but he supposed life had seemed simple to him at nineteen, too. “Some of what we do can be forgotten, Donna. I’ve forgotten more than I remember. I don’t give a damn about hiring cult members to make health-food casseroles, or that whole episode. I was young and stupid, and I did stupid things. But I wasn’t so young when I married. I was twenty-eight, and I still did stupid things.”
Donna turned her palm to twine their fingers together. “Laura said Anne was a spoiled kid who took you for a ride.”
Bruce felt old and tired. “Laura said, Mark said, like I told you—everyone said. But I knew Anne was young, and I don’t mean in years, although she was…about the same age as you are now.” He looked at her sharply and bit his lip. She’d closed her eyes. “Sweetheart, she was young in every way, but she was lovely, and I wanted her. I never once stopped to think that I was marrying a beautiful woman only because she turned me on physically, and because she was the kind of decorative addition to my possessions that I’d always dreamed of having around permanently. Do you hear what I’m saying?” He tightened his grip until she looked at him. “I’m telling you that at twenty-eight, only three years ago, I had never really looked at what it meant to truly love another human being—or at the truth that to make a relationship work there must be friendship and interests and philosophy in common. I hadn’t considered that there had to be more to marriage than a fantastic body ready and willing in bed at night, and a woman on your arm that every other man would wish were his.”
Donna wetted her lips. When she raised her eyes to his, he realized she was close to tears. He was laying too much on her, he thought.
“Nobody starts off in marriage with all the problems ironed out,” she said slowly. “I always thought that you were supposed to spend a marriage getting to know each other. When there’s nothing else to learn, that’s got to be dull. Even when you’ve been together for years, there has to be some little surprise that keeps cropping up. If Anne had stuck around, you’d have learned the other elements you needed to make your marriage whole. You’re blaming yourself because it didn’t work, when it wasn’t your fault.”
“It wasn’t all my fault.” As he said the words, Bruce wanted to believe them and forget the rest. But he couldn’t. “I didn’t help her to grow. When she said she was bored, I bought her another diamond, or took her on a trip. I treated her like a pretty, empty-headed child I could placate with presents. And for a while it worked—until someone with more expensive presents and a more exciting lifestyle came along. She’s somewhere in Europe now, probably still accepting some bauble every time she gets depressed.”
“And that’s your fault?” Donna asked, shaking her head. “I guess I don’t understand.”
“I said what happened wasn’t all my fault. But if I’d thought more, earlier, I probably wouldn’t have married her, or at least I’d have waited until we were both at a point where we were ready to work on a worthwhile marriage. And even after I’d made the first mistake and gone through with the white-lace-and-rice bit, I could have taken a longer look at what was wrong—what was missing—and tried to do something about it.”
“Okay, okay.” Donna stood up and bent over him. “So you’ve come to some valid conclusions. And you didn’t know them then, when they could have made a difference in your relationship with Anne. But you obviously know them now. It’s time to move on, Bruce. Time to stop blaming yourself for what you can’t change.”
He itched to take her in his arms, to kiss her wonderful, serious eyes, her lovely mouth. “You’re partly right, Donna,” he said carefully. “Only, before I get into another supposedly forever situation, I’ve got to be sure it’s with the right person. I’m going to be damned certain the next—the only other woman I ever intend to marry—is right for me and that I’m right for her. We’re going to like each other, even when she has a headache four nights in a row—or I do. I’m going to love her as much with crow’s feet as I did when she didn’t have a line on her anywhere. And she’s going to like and love me, as well as want my money—for good. This woman and I are going to be dotty over each other’s minds.”
“And you don’t think I can be that woman?” Donna had turned away, and he hardly heard what she said. “I’ve still got a long way to go, haven’t I?”
He buried his face in his hands. He wanted her to be the right one, dammit, for both their sakes.
“You were probably right when you said I should do what my parents want and go to school in the fall. The trouble is, I do love you, Bruce, and that isn’t going to change. And even though part of my mind tells me that I’m not as grown up as I need to be, the other part says I’m as old as time in some ways. I don’t think I could have any stronger feelings than I do.”
“I know how you feel. I think I feel it too. But I think you may have some maturing to do before you can honestly be sure what you want in…in a husband.” He inhaled deeply. “And I don’t know how long that’s going to take, any more than you do.”
He put his hand on her shoulder beneath the terry robe. “I’m going to do some of that examining myself. But I do know I’m not ready for another commitment yet. Right here, like this—the sun, the water, you, exactly as you are—everything feels right, and I want it to be. But I know I’m still not ready for another marriage.”
CHAPTER TEN
DONNA LOVED DRIVING alone in San Francisco, and Laura was generous about lending her small BMW when she wasn’t using it. Driving by herself had always given Donna a feeling of freedom, but San Francisco’s hills added the sensation of taking off into space as she topped the crest of each hill. She had her favorites. Bruce had introduced her to the downward sweep of California Street as it approached Grant Avenue in Chinatown. If the signals were with you, you could go down, down, down for blocks before coming to a dead stop at Grant to let a flood of pedestrians cross.
And there was a block on Powell street going toward Market so steep that she had once seen a woman in very high heels turn around and walk down backwards to keep from toppling over. But her favorite was the block on Filbert so perpendicular that the sidewalks alongside were in steps. She might detour over to Filbert now, she thought. There was plenty of time. She knew Bruce wouldn’t get home until about seven.
She was dressed in a new sweat suit, teal blue with white striping down the pant legs. She wasn’t about to wear the same mottled gray outfit Bruce had seen her in the last time they ran. She was sure she could persuade him to go with her again tonight. She’d worked overtime, typing to help out because they were shorthanded due to vacations. She felt tense. She needed a good run. She always felt marvelous after running. There was something about a good run that left her relaxed and exhilarated at the same time. She must try to get Bruce involved in a fitness program on a regular basis.
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