For All of Her Life

by Heather Graham

  Alex flushed. “Dad asked me not to warn you. He said he wanted to speak to you, that he wanted your decision to be reached by discussion between the two of you. You mean you’re not going to yell at me for eavesdropping?”

  “Alex, you’re almost twenty-one. I can’t really yell at you for anything. However, it was incredibly rude of you to spy on your father and Tara. Don’t do it anymore.”

  Alex grinned, then grew somber again. “I just wish she’d stayed away a while longer.”

  “Well, she’s here, and we’re all going to be polite and make the best of it, right?”

  “Thank God for Jeremy. He is so wickedly good-looking.”

  “Alex—”

  “He has to make Dad jealous.”

  “A man doesn’t always covet what another man has, and jealousy isn’t necessarily a good thing. Trust is the most important ingredient in any relationship. Love and trust. If you have those two—”

  “Did you guys have them?”

  Kathy smiled. “Once. But we lost them. So don’t go through life thinking it’s good to torture someone you love with jealousy.”

  “You did invite Jeremy down.”

  Kathy opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. “That’s not quite the same.”

  “You were chicken about coming alone?”

  “That doesn’t sound great either, but it’s closer.” She inhaled, started to speak again, then broke off as she heard her name called by someone down below.

  “Kathy? You up there?”

  Wincing, she told Alex, “Gram.”

  “That’s super. Isn’t it? I mean, I love Gram. Don’t you?”

  “Of course. I just wasn’t ready to have her here yet.”

  Alex grinned, shaking her head. “Poor Mom! Well, I guess we’d better get back down. You know Dad. When he moves, he goes like lightning. He’ll be ready to head out soon, and I’m starving.”

  “Kathy? Alex?”

  Alex jumped up, hurrying to the door. “Hi, Gram! We’ll be right down.” She looked at her mother. “Come on.”

  “I need to get a cover-up—and dig out my deck shoes.”

  “There’s plenty of stuff on the Sand Shark.”

  “You’d better bring a cover-up,” she told her daughter sternly. “That bathing suit is...”

  “Indecent?” Alex queried, arching a brow.

  “Almost.”

  “Well”—she pointed at her mother—“that one is most certainly decadent.”

  “Really? Should I find something else?”

  “No! It’s great-decadent. Come on, Mom, give Tara a run for it.”

  “I’m not after your father.”

  “Okay, then save the family honor. You look great. You used to just walk on the boat in your bathing suit and throw on one of Dad’s shirts when the sun got to be too much. Be daring. Be natural. Besides, we’re going diving and he has a storage room full of wet suits and skins. You’ll be covered up soon enough.”

  “I still need deck shoes,” Kathy insisted.

  In the end, she slipped into deck shoes and an old shirt, which, beneath Alex’s challenging gaze, she wore open. They came down the stairs arm in arm, found out that Sally had given up waiting for them and gone in to breakfast, and walked on into the huge dining room with its wide windows. Sally was sipping coffee and chatting with her ex-son-in-law, Bren was picking apart a bagel, and Jeremy and Tara were engaged in a conversation at the far end of the table, their heads lowered. Neither of the pair noticed the newcomers.

  “Darlings!” Sally said cheerfully, offering her daughter an arched-brow perusal as she hugged her granddaughter. “You both look lovely. You do take your time, though. I’m glad you can join me for a minute’s worth of breakfast before taking off.”

  “You’re not coming on the boat, Mom?” Kathy asked her. “Jordan won’t mind waiting for you to get settled and changed, I’m sure.”

  “Not in the least,” Jordan said politely. His gaze was impassive when his eyes met Kathy’s.

  “I know, and thanks,” Sally said. “But I’m going to settle into my room and take a good book out to the pool. Maybe do some catching up with Peggy. Angel and Joe are going—you know Joe, he’s always been the dive-master for all of you.”

  “Gram, even if you don’t want to dive, it will be a nice trip out,” Alex said. “Tara and Jeremy are coming.” She managed to keep her distaste from her voice and smile. Her father’s eyes were on her.

  “I’ll be fine on my own. You young people just have a nice day. Besides, Rye is due in, Jeremy tells me. And I haven’t seen him in years. We can discuss really old music together.”

  Kathy arched a brow at Jordan. He hadn’t mentioned to her that his father was coming. She would be glad to see Rye, too. He was a fine gentleman, he’d been the best father-in-law in the world, always seeing if she needed something when the girls were young, when Jordan had been in the service. “How nice,” she said, and she meant it most sincerely.

  “Dad wouldn’t have missed Alex’s birthday,” he reminded her.

  “Of course not,” Kathy said. A knife twisted within her. How would she really know? The girls had led split lives. Most of their time had been spent with her. But they had always had a home with their father as well, and mostly due to Kathy’s insistence, their time with him had been kept entirely separate.

  “Want a muffin or something, Mom?” Alex suggested.

  “A muffin?” Sally said indignantly. “You may all diet later. Peggy whipped up omelettes and her delicious potatoes and all sorts of wonderful things. Eat breakfast! That’s exactly what I intend on doing.” She started for the buffet table. The others followed her.

  “Peggy cooks with low-fat everything,” Jordan said, looking at his ex-wife. “You haven’t given up eating, have you?” As if in challenge, he handed her a plate.

  She shook her head. “An omelette sounds wonderful.”

  It was while she was at the buffet that she felt an arm slip around her. She nearly jumped. Luckily, she didn’t. It was Jeremy.

  “’Morning,” he said huskily.

  “’Morning,” she returned, smiling. Bless him. He was just right. He had that devilishly wicked smile in place. He didn’t do anything overt, he just touched her with an affection that truly might have been that of a lover quite comfortable in this relationship. Jordan was scooping up potatoes at her side. She thought his face tensed.

  “Want some coffee?” Jeremy asked.

  “Love some.”

  Kathy ate breakfast seated between him and Jordan while Tara was to Jordan’s right.

  Tara had changed into a swimsuit. It was one piece, simple and black.

  Black had never looked so good.

  As she engaged in light conversation, Kathy noted that there seemed to be just a slight tension between Jordan and Tara. She wondered what they were discussing. They were careful not to raise their voices.

  Thirty minutes later Sand Shark was already out of the channel and heading south for the Keys. She was large, a beautiful vessel of fifty feet, with old wood and chrome incorporated in her design. Though she had three sails, she was running on the motor today since Jordan was anxious to get down to the reefs. He was at the wheel most of the way, while Tara sat up front on the sleek bow, bathed in lotion. She kept checking her watch.

  Bren told Kathy that she did so because she wanted to get a golden color, but was careful to avoid injury from the sun.

  “The sun ages you terribly, you know,” Bren said, waving a hand dramatically in the air.

  “She’s right about that. You and your sister had better watch out for it,” Kathy said sweetly.

  “I won’t be a hot-house flower for anyone,” Bren said with a sniff.

  “Honey, in this she’s quite intelligent. If you’re not careful you can get skin cancer. Especially when you spend so much time in this sun.”

  “Sure, Mom, whatever you say.”

  Bren left Kathy where she’d been sitting across from Jeremy, ju
st a few feet from the helm where Jordan kept them on course.

  Kathy leaned back and felt the sun on her face. It was good. Tara was right. The sun was an ager. But it felt so damned nice.

  A second later, a golden skinned Tara, now wearing a white cotton cover-up, came up from the galley with a cold Bud in her hand. She slipped into the chair beside the helm, offering the Bud to Jordan.

  He shook his head. Tara seemed unhappy, but popped the metal flip-top herself, took a long swallow of the beer. Jordan cast her a glance. “Thanks, but after!” he called to her over the roar of the motor. “I never drink and dive.”

  “Right!” Tara called. She set a hand upon his neck. Kathy leaned her head back down again, then looked across at Jeremy.

  She might be suffering, but Jeremy was truly in seventh heaven. Slicked down with sun spray, he leaned back and smiled up at the blue sky. As if he sensed that Kathy was watching him he lowered his head, then moved across to join her.

  “Everything okay so far?”

  She squeezed his hand. “Great. You’ve been a lifesaver.”

  “You look great, you know,” he told her.

  She smiled. “Thanks. You don’t mind being out here, right? We won’t stay down that long. Maybe thirty, forty-five minutes at a couple of sites.”

  “Kathy, there’s a pitcher of piña colada down in the galley. The sky is blue, the sea is blue-green, I’m on holiday, and you want to know if I’m all right?”

  She stroked his cheek affectionately. “Thanks,” she said with a smile.

  She was startled to realize that Jordan was suddenly standing over her. “Want to start suiting up? We’re nearly at Molasses Reef.”

  Kathy looked from Jordan to the helm. Joe Garcia, muscled and brown in his swim trunks and dockers, had taken over at the helm. The girls were near him over on the starboard side, slipping into their skins with Angel’s help. Their regulators and buoyancy control vests were already attached to the air cylinders. As they’d all been taught in the classes they’d taken years before, they checked the air pressure in each other’s cylinders. Jordan was a stickler about diving. It was a sport, and they went about it by the rules. No one on his boat ever dove without a buddy, and no one ever went down without proper equipment.

  She gazed back to Jordan. He was wearing sunglasses; she couldn’t begin to read the expression in his eyes.

  “Don’t mind if I borrow her for a diving buddy, do you, old boy?” he asked Jeremy.

  “Be my guest, sir,” Jeremy responded with a smile.

  “Kathy?”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said. She rose, following him over to the equipment. He found her a skin, a nice thin one since the day was so hot, and she crawled into it. They checked one another’s regulators. It was as natural as breathing. They had done this hundreds of times.

  The anchor was thrown. Kathy and Jordan were suited, masks in hand. The girls had on their skins.

  “Shall we go?” Jordan asked Kathy.

  She nodded, grinning. They looked like alien space creatures in their skins, vests, regulators, boots, flippers, gloves, and cylinders, their masks on backward.

  “Do you really need all that stuff?” Tara inquired suddenly. “It looks so uncomfortable.”

  “It isn’t really. You should take a class,” Kathy suggested.

  Tara wrinkled her nose. “I just don’t have the time,” she said. “Of course, it doesn’t look like it can be that hard.”

  “It’s not just a matter of knowing what to do,” Jordan said. “It can be the most beautiful experience in the world, really quite simple—yet deadly if approached stupidly. Kath, let’s go, shall we?”

  “Have a good time, buddies!” Tara called. Too cheerfully.

  “We’ll be up soon,” Jordan said. “Kids, you coming?”

  “Yep!” Angel called to him.

  “Who is whose buddy there?” Tara asked sweetly.

  “When the number of divers isn’t even,” Alex explained gravely, “one group goes as a threesome.”

  Jordan was on his way to the drop-off at the stern. Kathy followed him. He stepped into the water, sank a few feet, surfaced, waited for her. She slipped her mask on, held it in place, and took her step in.

  The water felt deliciously cool after the beating down sun, and since the reef wasn’t a deep one, the temperature wouldn’t fall much more. It would have been delightful without the skin, but once on one of their earlier dives with the girls, they had eschewed skins and Alex had been caught by the tentacles of a jellyfish. Kathy enjoyed the protection of the skin.

  Jordan let air out of his vest, sinking down toward the reef, and she followed suit.

  It had been a long time since she dove. She had forgotten how much she loved it. Elegant sea fans in startling colors waved as she drifted by them, and Jordan tapped her arm, pointing out a huge grouper. When a ray swam up from the sand, she pointed the graceful creature out to him.

  Time stood still; the world was eerily quiet, seductively beautiful. Kathy could hear the rhythmic sound of her own regulator and nothing more. The coolness of the sea was magical. She could have stayed beneath the surface forever.

  Yet forever would not be long, not that day. Within minutes something splashed about heavily in the water, close enough to draw their attention. Frowning, Jordan motioned to Kathy. She followed at first, not understanding what had happened.

  Tara was in the water. Clad in a bathing suit, buoyancy control vest and regulator, and flippers, she was thrashing about madly, trying to surface, trying to rid herself of the paraphernalia.

  Jordan thrust swiftly through the water, Kathy at his side. When he tried to reach Tara, she kicked him, the blow sending him from her. Kathy realized that Tara couldn’t breathe out of her regulator. She thrust her own safe-second into Tara’s mouth even as Jordan regained control and shot back toward them again, grasping Tara and rising with her while she desperately sucked on air from Kathy’s safe-second.

  By then, the girls and Angel were aboard, though it had all happened so fast—and in shallow enough water to keep them from rising as quickly as possible. They got Tara to the surface, got the equipment off her, and handed her over to Joe and Jeremy who were anxiously waiting at the stern to hoist her up.

  “You monsters!” Tara shrieked.

  Kathy, pulling off her fins and hurrying up the ladder, came dripping up on deck in plenty of time to see that Tara was fine—but raging mad and shouting at Bren and Alex. “Vicious little monsters!” she shouted.

  “Wait!” Kathy called out, stepping forward.

  But Jordan was at her side, pushing past her with Joe right behind him, helping him off with his equipment. “I want to know what the hell happened here!” Jordan snapped.

  Tara burst into tears, covering her face. “I’m so sorry, but I was terrified! I thought I’d drown.”

  Jordan, down to his skin and boots, knelt beside her, and she threw her arms around him, sobbing. “I shouldn’t have done it, I wanted you to be proud of me. I know how much you love diving.”

  Kathy felt Joe at her back, helping her doff her equipment.

  She stared at Angel, Bren, and Alex, soaked as well, helping one another with their equipment, their faces white.

  “What happened?” she inquired softly.

  “Tara asked us all sorts of questions,” Alex said with a shrug.

  “We answered them,” Bren added innocently.

  “Miss Hughes just decided to go diving on her own,” Angel offered. “We didn’t realize it until she dove into the water.”

  “You knew what I meant to do!” Tara suddenly accused.

  “I swear,” Alex told her, “I thought you were far too intelligent to attempt such a thing!”

  “Whatever the hell happened,” Jordan said angrily, staring from his daughter to Tara, “it was stupid and dangerous, and nothing like it had better ever happen again.”

  “She never asked how to turn the air on,” Bren told her mother.

  Jorda
n stood up, disentangling himself from Tara’s arms.

  “Jordan...” she said tearfully. “I—”

  “We’ll head back, Tara. I don’t think anyone feels like diving anymore today.”

  He firmly placed her hands in her lap, then glanced at Joe. Joe nodded and he and Angel quickly set about securing the cylinders while Jordan returned to the helm.

  It seemed a very long, very tense ride back to the house on Star Island.

  When they docked, Tara made her way from the boat to the patio, sinking into one of the chairs there, and Jordan began to talk to her.

  Kathy followed her daughters into the kitchen.

  “What happened?” she demanded.

  Alex said, “Mom, honest to God—”

  “Listen to me, darlings, because I mean this. You can’t do evil little things to Tara Hughes. If you encouraged her to go into the water—”

  “We didn’t! We’d never hurt her,” Alex said. “Mom, I swear, we didn’t do anything to her. We told her it was extremely dangerous to think she could dive when she couldn’t.”

  “But you left her by the equipment!”

  “Mom, she asked questions, we answered them, and that was it. Ask Angel. We wouldn’t want to kill her!” Bren said.

  “I know that. But you shouldn’t have told her or shown her anything. She could have died.”

  “We weren’t in more than thirty feet of water,” Alex said with a sigh.

  “People have drowned in just inches,” Kathy reminded her.

  “Honest, Mom, we had no part in this. She asked us questions, we answered them. We didn’t know she meant to be a showoff and flop into the water until we heard her dive in.”

  “All right, I believe you. But in the future, remember, don’t do anything at all to make a fool out of her.”

  “We didn’t and we wouldn’t. We don’t need to. She doesn’t need any help in that department,” Bren said complacently.

  Kathy frowned at her.

  “Mom, please! I swear to God, we didn’t think she’d do anything so foolish.”

  “All right. Just remember, you two can’t fix things, no matter how much you’d like your father and me to be together again. Do you understand?”

  Even as Kathy spoke, her mother came breezing into the kitchen. She went straight for the refrigerator to get a soda, and into the freezer for ice, humming as they all went silent.