They gathered around the table. Morgan held Petey on her lap and handed him a cracker to gnaw. “Did I tell you the Ruoffs were over about a week ago? They saw the abstract I bought from Natalie and went wild for it.”
“What are the Ruoffs like?” Bella asked. “I’ve never met them.”
Natalie listened to them with part of her mind while she continued drawing and erasing on Louise’s portrait. She preferred working in relative privacy, and her stomach was growling, but she couldn’t stop. This really was going to be an amazing piece. Perhaps her best.
“Whoa.”
The voice, low and masculine, hit Natalie like an electric shock, passing through her ears straight down her torso. She turned.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” Ben said. He wore khakis, a blue-and-white striped button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a dark blue tie.
Natalie was flooded with so many emotions she couldn’t sort them out. Her eyes found delight in the sight of him, her senses yearned to be nearer to him, while at the same time fierce self-protection rose up in her. She didn’t like people to see her work before it was finished, especially not people who mattered.
And it was the emotional news flash that Ben mattered that rocked her. Defensively, she asked, “What are you doing here?”
Ben was too entranced by her drawing to be surprised by her question. “I finished teaching. I have only morning classes in the summer. I want to go out on the lake.” He was walking toward Natalie.
Actually, Natalie realized, as she forced herself to breathe, he was walking toward the portrait. She stepped back from the easel. “It’s not finished,” she protested. “I just started it today. I’ve got a lot of work to do on it.”
“How do you do that?” Ben asked, like a child who’s just seen a magic trick. “That’s amazing. Can I watch you?”
Natalie felt a rush of blood warm her cheeks. Ben was looking right at her now, and standing close enough to reach out and touch her. It was embarrassing to be so attracted to this man while in the same room with his mother and sister! She struggled to be lighthearted. “Some of us can swim long distances, some of us can draw.”
“That’s more than drawing,” Ben said. “That’s really something, Natalie.”
Her name in his mouth was like a caress. She smiled helplessly. “Thank you.”
Morgan interrupted the moment of intimacy that so sweetly enclosed them. “Hungry, Ben? We’ve got tons of munchies here. And we’ve got the best idea about your sister’s shop.”
Ben tore his eyes away from Natalie’s. “Food, yum. Hi, everyone.” He sat down at the table.
“What did you teach today?” Morgan asked.
Ben piled cheese onto a cracker. “I had a lab. We worked with transmission electron microscopes.”
“On your bio-oil catalyzing?” Morgan asked.
“Right.”
Natalie touched her charcoal to the paper, but suddenly all inspiration had vanished, replaced by an irritation that Morgan had stolen Ben’s interest. Was Morgan flirting with Ben? Certainly she was fascinated by whatever it was he was talking about, leaning toward him, gesturing, nodding, totally into the conversation.
Natalie couldn’t work now. Her interest was fogged. She dropped the charcoal onto the tray and stretched her arms. “Done for the day.”
Ben didn’t quite look at Natalie but angled his head toward her. “Want to go for a sail?”
Surprised, she didn’t answer for a moment. “I’d love to.”
Petey dropped his cracker, wriggled off his mother’s lap, and toddled to Ben as fast as his fat legs could carry him. “Sail!”
Morgan reached for her son. “No, sweetie, not today.”
Petey’s lower lip trembled. “Sail.”
“Honey, Mommy can’t sail our Sunfish with you unless Daddy is with us. It’s just not safe.”
Petey’s sweet, innocent face crumpled with disappointment.
“I tell you what,” Ben told the child. “Why don’t I take you and your mommy for a sail first. Then I’ll take Natalie out.”
Natalie thought: Hey! At the same time, she mentally kicked herself for feeling usurped by a toddler.
Morgan lit up. “Oh, Ben, that would be so kind. Afterward, I can put Petey down for his nap. I just don’t feel confident sailing alone with Petey, even when he’s wearing his life jacket.”
“You’re right,” Louise agreed. “Accidents can happen in an instant.”
“And I’m not the best sailor in the world,” Morgan confessed.
“I’ll just get out of these clothes.” Ben left the room for the downstairs bathroom, where a multitude of bathing suits hung.
“Louise?” Morgan asked. “Could you watch Petey while I run across and get our bathing suits and some children’s sunblock?”
“Of course.”
Morgan ran out the door.
Bella said, “Natalie, know what? I’d love to go over to your house now and look at your abstracts again. More carefully this time. I mean, I’d love to show some, but I want to think about space, and what else I’ll put on the walls, if anything.”
Natalie hesitated. The humming invisible bond that she had felt drawing her close to Ben was stretched to breaking now. Yet this could be a real start for Natalie as an artist in the area, having her work shown at Bella’s shop. If Bella were really going to change the shop.
“All right,” she told Bella. She grabbed some cheese and crackers. “Louise, I’d like to leave the easel here. Is there a place where I can put it that’s out of the way?”
Louise pointed. “In the corner. It won’t get knocked over there.”
“So you’re really changing the shop?” Natalie asked as they made their way across the lawns to Natalie’s house.
“I really am,” Bella stated defiantly, softening her words with a funny face. “I guess.”
“What do your parents think?”
“They’re delighted. I guess Mom’s ready to let it go. It kept her buzzing along for years, but now she’s at the point where she wants to slow down and enjoy life. Plus, the shop isn’t doing well.”
“How are you going to change it? What else are you going to carry?” Natalie opened the door and led Bella into the house and up the stairs.
“I don’t have it all worked out yet. Slade’s coming tomorrow, I think, to help me value some of the furniture in our storage locker. We have some pretty pricey antiques we never really knew about, and I have a friend who makes amazing jewelry. Sort of antique and modern at the same time.”
“What about Aaron?” Natalie went around the room flicking on all the lights and raising the blinds on the north windows.
“Good question,” Bella moaned. “We don’t know exactly when he’ll learn about the job in California.” She waved her hand. “Let’s not go there. Let me concentrate on your paintings.”
Bella chose four of the abstracts and went into a fit of compliments over the charcoal of Petey, begging Natalie to let her hang it in the shop. They placed the pieces at one corner of the studio, then hurried downstairs again.
“I’ve got to get back to the shop. Even if we never have any customers, I hate to not be there when I’m supposed to be,” Bella explained. “I mean, we do still have some customers. I’m glad Morgan called me, though, Natalie. I really want to hang the charcoals of Petey and Louise, and do you suppose you could do another one or two charcoals? I’ll bet you could by the time I get the shop repainted and reorganized.”
Natalie laughed at Bella’s enthusiasm. Bella wasn’t an art dealer, she didn’t run an art gallery, she was only a friend with a half-baked idea for a shop, and yet her conviction that Natalie’s work would sell and her eagerness to show it was manna to Natalie’s soul. It was as if she were in a colorful hot-air balloon, shooting high into the wide blue sky, carried by Bella’s bright spirits.
They stepped outside, and the balloon popped.
Ben was at the Barnabys’ beach, lifting Petey out
of the Sunfish. Morgan was stepping out on the other side, and Morgan was wearing a bikini. Not the modest, sporty Speedo she’d worn the day of Natalie and Slade’s picnic, but a teeny bikini. Red. Her legs were longer than Kate Middleton’s. Her stomach was flat; how could that be possible when she’d had a baby? She’d twisted her long brown hair up into a knot at the back of her head. Fetchingly, strands of it had come loose, curling around her face. She was a sexy woman, and Natalie’s self-image shriveled.
Morgan bent over to pick up her son, presenting a flawless backside.
“Natalie!” Ben waved to her from the beach. “Ready for a sail?”
“Sure! Just give me a minute.” She dashed into the house. She could wear her painting clothes, who cared if they got wet? But the afternoon had grown hot, relentless with sunshine, and besides, how pathetic was she? She might not be ten feet tall and sleek like Morgan, but her own body was not to be ignored. It never had been; she’d sat nude for several life painting sessions and seen the admiration in the other artists’ eyes—and more than admiration in some. She knew as an artist that her body was shaped like an hourglass. Just because for some freakish, incomprehensible reason Ben Barnaby’s opinion mattered to her did not make her some kind of abject coward.
She put on her black bikini. It emphasized her black hair and pale skin. She grabbed a tube of sunblock and whipped out the door before she could change her mind.
Morgan and Petey were gone by the time Natalie reached the beach. She waved to Ben. “Ready. Thanks for waiting.”
“We’ve got a good wind today,” Ben told her. He wore a funny floppy canvas hat to protect his face from the sun. “Want a life vest?”
Natalie cocked her hip and gave him a saucy look. “Nah. If I fall over, I’ll tread water until you rescue me.”
He laughed, and perhaps blushed—he moved too quickly for her to see. “Help me shove the boat out.”
They pushed the boat off the sand into the water, then climbed aboard. The sail filled with wind, smoothly carrying them away from the shore and out into the lake. Froth flew up all around, cold and bright as snowflakes as they sped along. Ben handled the tiller with the earnest solemnity of someone racing for his life while Natalie perched on the side, creaming her skin with sunblock and then letting her head fall back, face raised to the sun, the wind ruffling her hair. The breeze sent them skipping along past docks, beaches, houses, and open fields scattered with daisies and wild berry bushes.
After her morning of work, the heat of the sun relaxed Natalie down to her bones, and her mind drifted away from its usual concerns. She felt sweat break out on her skin, until the breeze fluttered over her, cooling her in little shivers. They whipped along so far down the lake she couldn’t see her own house, then Ben tacked and they headed back. She closed her eyes and soaked in the sun.
“Duck,” Ben said.
She felt the boat turn and opened her eyes. Ben had lowered the sail and was slipping them beneath the trailing gray-green branches of a leaning willow tree reaching in an arch from one bank to another. They entered a small cove, all three sides a wilderness of evergreens, thickets, and innumerable grasses and wildflowers tangling together, falling down the bank into the water. The trees shadowed the area. The air was cooler here, the water still. It was intimate, its own sheltered world.
Ben let the boat gently bump alongside a bank.
“Gosh,” Natalie said. “It’s like a sanctuary.”
“I know.” Ben stretched, looking around with satisfaction. “We’ve got a lot of lakes in this area, but few of them have any uninhabited coves like this.”
“Who owns the cove?”
Ben tied a line around a nearby tree trunk. “Some guy from New York who comes up here to play Boy Scout. I’m serious. He brings a tent, walks around his property, hikes the mountain, folds his tent, and goes home. Does it once a season.”
“In a weird way, I can completely understand that,” Natalie mused. She scooted to the edge of the deck, letting her feet dangle in the water.
Ben crossed the short space to sit next to her. “Me, too. When I was a boy, I thought of this place as my own. I don’t think most people on the lake even know it exists because that willow tree was blown sideways by a storm, so it sort of blocks the entrance.”
“Maybe it is your own,” Natalie told him.
They sat for a while, listening to the birds sing and rustle in the trees. The water was flat calm, and in the shade it was more black than blue.
“When I was a girl, I had a special tree that I’d climb,” Natalie reminisced in a quiet voice. “Whenever I needed privacy, I’d be up in it. It was an oak, very tall. I could sit at the top, hidden by branches, and survey my world. Of course, because it was in rural Maine, I mostly saw other treetops. But I felt protected. Completely on my own. Nobody’s child, nobody’s sister, nobody’s student, just myself. I could stay up there for hours. Sometimes I wore my backpack and took up crackers and a thermos of juice.”
“Me, too. I mean, I did the same thing.” Ben grinned at the memory. “Well, not juice, Coke. Not crackers, cookies. But even without food, I could stay hidden away here for hours. Just thinking, or not even that. I liked lying here with my eyes closed, letting the sun play over my eyelids, my eyelashes—”
“Yes!” Natalie broke into a smile. “I know just what you mean. Sometimes I’d close my eyes and rub them and see circles and lines and dots that aren’t really there, so it’s as if you’re seeing a different world.”
“They’re called phosphenes.” Ben shook his head. “Sorry. Don’t mean to get all analytical.”
Natalie replied, “I think I can handle it. After all, David Bohm said, ‘Physics is a form of insight and as such it’s a form of art.’ ”
“That’s stretching the point,” Ben began, then stopped. “You know who David Bohm is?”
“If you study art, you study color, which means you study light, which means you learn about physics. Not to mention perspective, space, movement, time.”
Ben stared at her. “You’re really an interesting person.”
His scrutiny unnerved her. She responded immediately, unthinking, with her usual protective irony: “I know. I’m not just the fluffy little sex object I seem.”
Ben stared at her for a long, silent moment. “I wouldn’t call you fluffy.” He angled his body toward hers. “Could you take off your sunglasses?” he asked. “Because I’d like to kiss you.”
Natalie took off her sunglasses and lifted her face toward Ben’s. He kissed her, his lips warm and tasting slightly of sunblock. She scooted closer to him, her legs squeaking unromantically against the fiberglass hull. Ben put his hand on her face. The kiss deepened. Natalie wanted to press against him. She put her hand on his chest. His naked skin was hot. Beneath them, the boat rocked and tipped.
Ben pulled away. “Okay, now is the time when I need to jump in the lake.”
She blinked, confused.
He grinned. “Like a cold shower?” He went into the lake, feet-first.
Natalie didn’t want to lose the sensation of the kiss. It had been like one of those expensive chocolates, delicious on the outside, hiding in its depths a hint of champagne or Grand Marnier. She wanted to keep kissing.
“Come in the water,” Ben coaxed.
She squirmed. “There are green things in there.”
“Weeds. They won’t get you. They’re just near the edge.” Ben swam to the stern. “Jump over here.”
She jumped, embarrassed by her awkward belly flop. The water was exquisitely cool after the heat of the sun.
“Aaah,” she breathed. Having Ben near her filled her again with a playfulness, a childishness she had not experienced for a very long time. She dove under the surface with her eyes open. She saw weeds swaying near the bank and the tree trunk that seemed, beneath the water, to waver. Surfacing, she swam toward one of the willow branches, reached up with both hands and grabbed it, hanging from it slightly, water dripping off her.
Ben swam toward her, faced her, put his hands on the branch on either side of hers, and let his body lightly touch hers all up and down. Their legs touched and twined beneath the water, but he held his chest and head back, looking at her, watching the effect his touch was having. She could feel his erection through their bathing suits.
“Ben,” she whispered. He kissed her again.
This time the kiss lasted so long Natalie’s arms dropped of their own accord to wrap around Ben. She ran her hands over the long muscles of his back, through his wet hair, over his jawline. Ben let go of the tree branch and clasped her against him. They both sank under the water, still kissing. Ben kicked his legs. One of them was between Natalie’s legs. She thought she was going to faint from desire. Their heads broke the surface of the water, and they both gasped for air and, of necessity, let go of each other to tread water with their arms.
“I think I’d better go for a swim,” Ben said, and struck out, away from Natalie. He dove beneath the willow branch and disappeared out into the wide lake.
Natalie grabbed the branch again and hung there, eyes closed, dazzled.
After a while, Ben reappeared. “It’s getting late. We’d better go back.”
“I have no idea what time it is,” she confessed with a smile.
“Well, physics girl, if you look at the way the sun has moved, and notice how the shadows have changed …” Seeing her face, he laughed and held one arm up, displaying his waterproof stainless steel Seiko. “A watch is good, too.”
She kicked out, splashing his face. He caught her ankle and yanked her away from the branch and next to him. They both sank. Natalie got a nose full of water and started coughing. Immediately, Ben had her by the waist, lifting her above the surface. He swam her to the boat and helped her get aboard, then pulled himself up.
She sat on the hull, gasping.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Yes,” Ben said. “You are fine.”
He undid the line, shoved the boat hard away from the bank. They both ducked as he steered them through the narrow opening between the willow branches and the bank. He raised the sail and headed toward the end of the lake where their houses were. Natalie put on her sunglasses and lounged in the boat, feeling just like Cleopatra triumphantly returning home on her barge.
Summer Beach Reads 5-Book Bundle: Beachcombers, Heat Wave, Moon Shell Beach, Summer House, Summer Breeze Page 138