Nighttime Sweethearts

by Cara Colter

  "And you're here tonight? After drool and freight trains. Why?"

  "Because you are still you."

  Dinner dishes were being cleared away, and a band was coming out. The first strains of music filled the intimate space and Brad and Parris took the dance floor.

  They could have been the only ones in the room, so deeply were they lost in each other, so tender was their gaze and their touch.

  "Dance?" he asked gruffly, as the first song finished and other couples began to take to the floor.

  "Yes." She could have answered nothing else. She took his offered hand and he led her to the floor. The song was slow and romantic. His hand effortlessly found the small of her back and he pulled her to him.

  Cynthia felt as if she might have waited her whole life for this moment, to feel so utterly content in another's company, so exhilarated by his smallest touch.

  So in love.

  Their first dance together faded into another and then another. They stayed toward the edge of the floor, cloaked in darkness, and yet Cynthia felt as though she danced in pure light.

  Suddenly a band of light illuminated them, a technical glitch that had to do with the music. Cynthia glanced up in time to see the shattered side of his face in that terrible harsh glare. The damage was worse than she could have prepared herself for.

  He stood frozen for a moment, the spotlight on him, and then suddenly he was gone. Cynthia found herself standalone at the edge of the floor, swaying by herself.

  "I knew there was a man!" her mother said.

  Cynthia whirled. In those moments of pure magic dancing with him, she had managed to forget her life contained one rather large complication.

  Emma Bluebell Forsythe.

  Emma looked like a queen tonight in a flowing dark-green Christian Dior gown. She even had her diamond tiara—a relic from her coming-out days—pinned in her newly minted hair.

  "There is a man," she said, tapping her foot, her arms crossed over her bosom as if she were a schoolmarm and Cynthia an errant child.

  "There was," Cynthia said, scanning the surrounding shrubbery and trees. He was gone so completely it would be easy to believe he was a figment of her imagination.

  Except the look on her mother's face clearly said he wasn't.

  "He was ugly," her mother said shrilly. "He looked like a monster. No wonder you've been so ashamed of him!"

  "Ashamed of him?" Cynthia said, aghast. He was probably near! What if he had heard? "The only one I'm ashamed of right now is you. How could you? How could you judge a person you have never met by their appearance?"

  "You know, I've had just about enough of this mother-from-hell attitude!"

  "You seem to keep reminding yourself of that title, not me!" Cynthia said. "And you have never earned it more than tonight."

  "I don't like the dress, Cynthia. It is way too loud. It gives the wrong kind of message entirely."

  "And what message would that be?"

  "Ripe," her mother said, cruelly. "Ready."

  Cynthia swore under her breath.

  "A dress to go with that kind of language."

  "You know what? You are the mother from hell," Cynthia said in a low angry voice.

  "And here comes the man who gave me that title right now," her mother said dangerously as she watched Jerome come across the dance floor toward them. He stopped in front of her mother and his smile faded.

  "She does have a man in her life," her mother said tightly. "And she felt no obligation to tell me about that. Can you imagine why, Jerome?"

  "Actually, no, I can't."

  "I'll tell you why. Because you have planted this notion in her head that I don't have to be shown any respect."

  "That's completely untrue," Jerome said, but Cynthia could have told him to save his breath. She recognized all the signs of a major scene coming on, and her mother was just warming up.

  All her life, when her mother had had these moods, Cynthia had done her best to change what her mother was feeling, to avert the coming storm if she could. If the mood was brought on by something Cynthia was doing, she changed it or promised it would never happen again.

  A pretty big price to pay to escape someone else's temper and pettiness.

  She decided right then and there she was no longer accepting responsibility for her mother's temper.

  She caught a glimpse of movement down on the beach.

  "Excuse me," she said.

  "You are not going anywhere!" her mother said, astounded.

  Cynthia didn't even answer, just slid into the shrubs as expertly as Rick had moments ago.

  "This is your fault!" she heard her mother say to Jerome.

  "It would be very wise of you not to scrap with me, Bluebird."

  Something about the quietness of Jerome's tone made Cynthia stop and look back. This sounded as if it was going to be far too interesting to miss.

  Jerome was challenging her mother!

  "Don't you ever call me that again. In fact, don't ever call me again!"

  "Gladly. You're as shrill as a street-corner tart."

  Though she thought the remark served her mother right after her own mean-spirited remarks about Cynthia's dress and about Rick, she still felt a thrill of pure terror. No one talked to her mother like that! And her mother momentarily froze, too.

  And then she raised her hand and slapped Jerome so hard across his cheek that she turned his head.

  He looked slowly back at her, and even from where she stood Cynthia could see the dangerous glitter in his eye.

  He reached out, locked Emma's wrist in an iron grip and yanked her to him. He kissed her hard, and she fought against him like a wild cat for all of three seconds.

  And then she went very pliant. Unless Cynthia was very much mistaken her mother was kissing him back. Moments later they were making their own way from the party. It looked as if they were heading for Emma's apart—and in a hurry, too.

  Someday, Cynthia decided, she would tell Jerome that, if that kiss was any indication, he was worthy of a role in Hot Desert Kisses. Or La Torchere's rendition, Hot Tropical Kisses.

  She could go get Rick now. It was safe. It looked as if they would be able to dance the night away after all.

  Rick was on the beach, kneeling. There was a large pile of sand in front of him, and he appeared to be shaping it. From here they could both see the bear rock.

  "That was my mother," she said.

  "I gathered."

  "I would have introduced you to her, but she's meaner than a rattlesnake."

  "I heard."

  "Rick, I'm so sorry."

  He shrugged. "It's true, isn't it? Ugly. A monster."

  "No," she said desperately, trying to come around so she could see his face, but he quickly averted it from her.

  "Thank you for coming down here. For not—"

  "Stop it," she said. "I didn't come down here because you're some charity case in need of my pity. I came down here because I love you."

  He froze. For a moment she thought he might get up and bolt. But that woman who had emerged from the water the other evening, so sure of what she wanted, so sure of how to get it, grabbed hold of the crisp whiteness of his shirt, dragged him to her with all her strength, and laid her lips on his.

  Possessive. Passionate. No pity anywhere in sight.

  After a millisecond of hesitation, his lips responded to hers, hot and wanting. Everything faded—the party in the background, the sea in the foreground, the whole world was gone, just like that.

  The whole world was his lips claiming hers, the tip of his tongue probing the hollow of her mouth and the ridged edges of her front teeth.

  Sensation washed over her, hot and liquid. Her mother had been right. She was ripe; she was ready. And she had never felt anything quite as compelling as this desire.

  He pulled away from her, nestled his head in the hollow of her throat and whispered, "You pack more punch than a crate of firecrackers."

  "When I'm not drooling and snoring
," she agreed.

  "Should we go back to the party before something happens that we both regret?"

  "I wouldn't regret it," she said softly.

  He closed her eyes with his palm, touched the tip of her nose and then gently put her away from him. He refocused on the pile of sand. In moments he had shaped a turret.

  "You're building a sand castle," she said, delighted in spite of herself. It wasn't nearly as delightful as being kissed.

  "It's what I do. I build things. I'm an architect."

  She got down in the sand with him. It was damp and shaped easily under her hands. She shaped a turret of her own. It was lopsided and way fatter on the bottom than the top.

  "A turret worthy of a drooling, snoring Frankenstein's bride," she said.

  He paused and kissed her on the tip of her nose.

  A little more brotherly than she was looking for.

  Her shoulder touched his. He did not move away. They worked in companionable silence for a while.

  "Last year," he said after a long time, his voice low, "I was working on a big project, a huge office complex. I was walking by a wall that was being put up. There was a machine on the other side of it—a loader. The driver backed up and hit the wall. It toppled like the proverbial pile of bricks."

  "On top of you?" she gasped in horror.

  "Yes."

  "Oh, God, Rick, I am so glad you didn't die."

  "Well, if I had died," he pointed out, "you wouldn't have met me, so you wouldn't even know to be glad."

  "Quit being so logical," she said, slapping him lightly on the arm. It was a nice arm, too.

  "I was buried under quite a pile of concrete and debris. They had to be very careful how they got me out. They had to get all of that stuff off me by hand. It took a long, long time. I lost my eye. My face is badly scarred. My larynx is crushed. I still dream about it at night. I think that's part of why I don't sleep at night anymore. That and the fact that if I go out during the day little kids hide behind their mothers."

  "Rick," she said, tortured.

  "I'm trying to tell you, Cynthia, that I'm flawed."

  "You're telling a woman who drools and snores," she reminded him, trying desperately to let him know it didn't matter to her.

  They worked silently, side by side, on the castle.

  "You're ruining your dress," he pointed out.

  "I like this better than the dress."

  "People who loved me before it happened didn't love me after," he said in a low voice.

  "I would have loved you after," she said fiercely.

  "Cynthia, you can't know that."

  "I do."

  Suddenly there was a terrible ruckus from the general vicinity of the party. A woman and a man were shouting at each other.

  "Something in the air tonight?" Cynthia wondered out loud.

  "I grew up with that kind of thing. My parents fought all the time."

  "Mine did, too. I think my dad died to escape it."

  "So, how does that happen?" he asked. "How does it go from what Brad and Parris had tonight, to that?"

  They listened to the shouting.

  "I hope you fall off a cliff and die!" the woman screamed hysterically.

  "It would be better than spending the rest of my life with you," the man shouted back, underscoring the sad thing Cynthia had just said about her father.

  They finished the sand castle, but Cynthia could tell Rick's mood was altered, changed. She could not tease him out of it; she could not bring him back.

  She tried desperately. "Rick, I meant it. I'm in love with you."

  He went very, very still.

  "I need you to trust me," she continued. "I can't go any further like this. I want to know who you are. I want to see you."

  "I—I need to think about it."

  "All right," she agreed, though she was crushed.

  "And if I don't agree?"

  "I won't see you again," she said sadly. "I can't. Hiding in the night like this just allows you to keep believing you are less than other people because you are scarred physically. It allows you to be ashamed. I don't want you to be ashamed anymore. And I never, ever plan to be ashamed of you."

  "Ah," he said, and his voice was sad, too. "An ultimatum."

  Had he not heard any of the rest of it?

  "If you must call it that, yes, I suppose it is."

  He nodded, got up from the sand castle and brushed the sand off his slacks.

  Then he leaned over and kissed her. It was not the passionate kind of kiss they had shared earlier.

  She thought she tasted farewell.

  "Please," she said. "Meet me right here, in this exact place at noon tomorrow. Meet me in the light, so I can look at you."

  He didn't answer.

  And then he was gone. After a long time she got up and left, too.

  She carefully skirted the party. She had no wish to see either Brad and Parris's happiness, or that other couple who were so far from it.

  Two ends of the spectrum. Rick had spoken a tragic truth tonight. That couple fighting had started in the very same place as Brad and Parris, all love and hope.

  And so had her parents, once upon a time. And his by the sound of it.

  What had happened? What happened in between?

  She got up and walked slowly back to her room. She felt ancient, a hundred years old.

  Merry walked onto the beach. Someone had built a sand castle here. She glared at it for a moment and then kicked it down.

  The Phipps-Stovers had fought publicly tonight, with no thought at all to the pall they were casting over Brad and Parris's moment.

  With no thought at all to what they were doing to her, Merry Montrose, aka Princess Bessart.

  They had been her thirteenth couple. What would it mean to the curse if they split up permanently?

  "I should have known thirteen was going to be unlucky," she said.

  And the evening had started out with such potential! That handsome young pup of a handyman had asked her if she wanted to go to the party with him.

  It hadn't been a date, precisely. No, he had just been being kind to an old woman.

  Still, how she had enjoyed him and his attention.

  And he had seemed not even to notice how old and ugly she was. He seemed to enjoy her as she was.

  Which, of course, was totally impossible. Were some people really so bighearted, so generous of spirit, that they didn't make judgments based on looks?

  Cynthia looked as if she might be one of those people. By now she must have at least glimpsed the travesty to that young man's face.

  Merry had glanced over at her tonight, to see her sitting at that romantic table in the dark with Rick, touching his scarred cheek.

  Hope had leapt in her breast. She was within a hair of breaking the curse.

  Until the complication of the Phipps-Stovers. After their horrible fight, she had left Alex to come here to the beach, too distressed to be in his company anymore.

  "Wait," he had called. "Merry, I have to tell you something. It's important."

  But she had waved her hand dismissively at him, and he'd had the good sense not to follow her.

  What could possibly be important to her now?

  If the Phipps-Stovers were over, it was over. The deadline—her thirtieth birthday—was around the corner. There was no time left, and she had a bad, bad feeling about the longevity of the Phipps-Stovers relationship.

  So, it didn't matter if Cynthia and Rick made it or not.

  None of it mattered. All her hard work, all her attempts to spread love and goodwill were for nothing. Why, she had almost come to believe in the value of love herself, in the power of it!

  In a fit of pure pique she pointed her finger at the rock that sat silently in the sea, like a huge slumbering bear.

  "Bear of rock, awake, unlock,

  Go and wander earth and sea,

  You are of no more use to me."

  The rock shimmered in the darkness, wavered and
then its outline grew strong, vibrating and luminescent, before it vanished with a loud pop.

  Her anger vanished as surely as the rock and she regretted having taken so drastic an action. Perhaps she had been premature, but she was so tired of the whole thing.

  She had no more energy for magic, and none whatsoever for romance.

  Feeling ancient, as if she was a hundred years old, which apparently she was going to be forever and ever, she walked slowly off the beach and back to the loneliness of her room and her sentence.

  Chapter Nine

  Rick packed his bags. He was methodical and neat, avoiding the impulse to throw everything in jumbled, zip up, and run. There was no running, anyway. The ferry that left the island ran on its strict once-a-day schedule, without variation. He could not leave La Torchere until tomorrow at 2:00 p.m.

  No, methodical suited how hard and cold he felt inside. The frozen emotions were pleasingly familiar, far preferable to the gamut he had run over the past few days.

  He had allowed himself to be pulled into a magical place. The drawings he had done of the chapel had reflected his own growing desire to hope and dream and love.

  But Emma Forsythe's words rang in his ears. Ugly. Monster.

  When he was done packing and had set his bags by the door, he went to the table and stared at the finished drawings of the chapel. They did not seem like the drawings of a man who was an ugly monster.

  They seemed like the drawings of a man who had glimpsed heaven. And had glimpsed a part of that inside himself, no matter what he looked like outside.

  He crumpled the pictures angrily, but found he was not quite ready to throw them away. Throwing them away would not be dramatic enough, anyway. Tomorrow, at exactly the same time that he was supposed to meet Cynthia, he would take them to the clearing and make a ceremony of burning them.

  And then he would leave this island and all its temptations far, far behind. He would abandon the feeling that he could rise above what had happened to him. He would indulge no more in the fantasy that his hardship might have made him a better man, more compassionate and more sensitive than he had been before his accident.

  He would leave behind, especially, the hope that someone would see what was inside and love that despite what the outside man looked like.