If laughter was all it took, then he’d just made a discovery that would put him right up there with Edison, Fessenden and the Wright brothers.
He needed to get out of here. Needed to go for a long walk on the beach. Needed to get as far away from the warm, sweet-smelling woman beside him as possible so that he could examine this thing clearly and logically from all angles. Nothing had really changed. They’d slept together, period. As consenting adults, both unattached and in their right minds, where was the harm in that?
She stirred beside him, and her hair tickled his chin. “I was just thinking, Molly. Maybe I’d better not wait around much longer. I can always come back to see Stu later on. We’ll probably run into each other from time to time—holidays, maybe. I used to try and make Thanksgiving and Christmas special for the kid—for Stu, that is. Maybe we can—”
“Don’t spoil it by feeling guilty, Rafe. It was about the nicest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
He could almost sense her smiling in the darkness. Her voice took on a special note when she was pleased about something. “Yeah, well…”
“I thought they were making it up, you know? The people who went on and on about how it felt to—well, I don’t care for the clinical terms, but you know what I mean. Reading about it is one thing, but actually—you know—experiencing it, that’s something else.”
He wanted to gather her in his arms and hug her all over again, but didn’t dare risk it. His body was already beginning to react to the feel of her warmth beside him, not to mention the heady scent of sex and baby powder. Besides, he’d used his single condom.
“You don’t have to stay here. In my bed, I mean. If you’d rather not—I mean—”
“Molly?”
“What?”
“Hush up and go to sleep.”
She sighed. It was a smiley kind of sigh. He could tell by her even breathing when she drifted off to sleep. He was on the verge of drifting off himself when the phone rang in the other room.
Eight
Rafe held the phone in one hand, his pants in the other, and listened silently for several minutes. By the time Molly joined him, wearing only his discarded shirt, which was the first thing she’d grabbed, he had managed to get his pants pulled on and was struggling one-handedly with the zipper.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered. “Who is it?” Her mind taut with concern, she was struck all over again by the sight of his lean, bronzed body. No matter how often or how rarely she saw him over the years to come, she would never be able to forget the fact that except for a narrow section around his hips, he was tanned all over. That his body hair was several shades darker than the thick crop on his head. Everything about the man was incredibly arousing. From practically her first glimpse, when she hadn’t known him, hadn’t believed him, hadn’t trusted him, she’d been aware at some bone-deep level of that powerful physical attraction.
“Never mind that—I’m here, okay? Yeah, we’ve met,” he said dryly. With one arm he drew her closer to his side and held her there while he spoke tersely into the receiver. “We’ll be there in— No, I can’t fly out until first light. The landing strip’s not—”
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“You’re sure? Level with me. Are you all right?”
“Rafe, what’s wrong?” she whispered fiercely. “Who is it?”
He owned a hotel. He probably had dozens of people working for him. Something must have happened back in Florida.
“You said we. Was that you and me, or did I misunderstand?” Of course she’d misunderstood.
He replaced the phone in its cradle and stood for a moment, visibly gathering his thoughts. By this time Molly was truly uneasy. Whatever had happened—wherever it had happened—Rafe was leaving. Going back to Florida at first light. Leaving her here with two birds and a cat and the rest of her life to get through without him.
The thought was devastating.
“How long will it take you to pack?” he demanded.
She stared at him in confusion. “Pack what?”
“Enough for a couple of days. This next-door neighbor—do you think it’s too early to wake her up and see if she can take care of the menagerie for a day or so?”
“Sally Ann? She works for the ferry department—she has to get up early. Rafe, what’s going on?” Not Florida, then. Which must mean— “Has something happened to Annamarie?”
Rafe related the bare essentials, which was all he knew. “They were involved in an accident, they’re both basically all right, but they’re being kept for observation. Save your questions for later, when we’re underway. We’ve got about an hour to wrap things up here. Then I’m headed for the airport, with or without you.”
He made another quick call to someone named Mike. Molly didn’t wait around to hear what was said. Calling on years of practice, she shoved her emotions into a dark corner of her mind to be dealt with later. First, a quick shower, then she dragged her suitcase out from under the bed and tossed in a few essentials. Every few minutes she would call out another question. “Are you sure neither one of them is seriously hurt?”
“I’m not sure of anything except that they’re both able to talk more or less rationally,” Rafe called back from the next room. “She said the car didn’t catch on fire until after they’d both crawled free.”
Catch on fire! In the act of pulling on her one decent pair of jeans. Molly staggered and fell against the bed. “Why didn’t you let me talk to my sister?”
“Because she was upset and she kept arguing with Stu on the sidelines, and I figured a four-way conversation would only delay us. Lock the windows and turn off the heat, will you?”
“Down, not off. The birds, remember?” She zipped up her jeans and struggled into her black turtleneck. By the time she had snapped her bag shut and dealt with her hair, the sky was showing a hint of color. Light shone from the kitchen window of the cottage next door. Molly hurried over to explain to Sally Ann about the accident. “Stu and Annamarie are both all right as far as we know, but they’ve been admitted to Chesapeake General Hospital for observation.”
“Get going, honey, don’t you worry about a thing. Carly and I will take care of everything.”
“I’m pretty sure I can be back in a day or so. Even if Rafe wants to stay on, I’ll have him fly me back here and—”
“And nothing. You just go, girl. We’ll play zoo-keeper for as long as it takes. You just show me where everything is before you leave.”
The two women hurried back to the cottage, where Molly wrote down the routine, stacked Shag’s canned food on the counter beside two containers of seed mix and opened the refrigerator to point out the bird’s chopped vegetables. She showed Sally Ann how the cages worked and told her about washing and refilling the water cups. “Annamarie says they don’t bite, but I’ve seen what they can do to a chicken wing poked through the bars. Watch your fingers.”
“I’d take the cat home with me, but with the new puppies, maybe I’d better not.”
“He’s fine outdoors as long as it’s not raining too hard. I really owe you for this, Sally Ann.”
“You bet you do. You’re going to have to take one puppy for every day you’re gone once they’re weaned.” She grinned to show she was only half-serious.
A sleepy-eyed Carly wandered over just as Rafe tossed the two bags into the rust bucket. Wearing only an oversize T-shirt and a pair of fur-lined boots, she looked years younger than the spike-haired, body-pierced teenager he had met once before.
“We’d better get underway before the weather changes again,” Rafe said, his gray eyes dark with concern.
Carly yawned, stretched and scratched her neck. “You’re flying?”
He nodded. She said, “Coo-wul.” And then, “Can I feed the birds while you’re gone?”
“It’s up to your mother, but I warn you, their vocabulary is X-rated.”
“Coo-wul!”
Finally they got away. One look at Rafe’s closed
face and Molly decided her questions could wait. She tried to focus on Annamarie’s situation, but her mind kept straying back to the man beside her.
To think that little more than an hour ago she had been lying in his arms, naked and sated, dreaming warm, fuzzy dreams. Now it was if she didn’t even exist. Molly told herself he probably had dozens of women. What wealthy, successful, handsome, charming man didn’t? She could hardly expect him to be swept off his feet by a middle-aged, overweight housekeeper from Grover’s Hollow, West Virginia.
And yes, she thought dolefully, if seventy-two could be considered elderly, then she was truly middle-aged. The fact that Rafe was even older was immaterial. The rules were different for men.
Her sidelong gaze lingered on his profile. Even frowning, his blunt, angular features redefined male beauty. Hard to believe he and Stu were related. Sweet, shy Stu with his turned-up nose and freckles, who blushed and sometimes stammered under social pressure. By the time he had made it to the altar to stand beside his gorgeous bride in her homemade wedding gown, his boutonniere had been dangling and his bow tie askew. The first time she’d met him, her maternal instincts had stirred to life, though she was only about ten years older than he was.
The instincts Rafe stirred were altogether different, she thought as he slowed down to negotiate a puddle that stretched across the narrow highway. She had a feeling she had just committed a catastrophic blunder. She would like to think that if she had it all to do over again, she never would have slept with him, but an innate sense of honesty refused to let her get away with it. If he were standing before her in a lineup with one hundred of the world’s handsomest men, she would have picked him out immediately. There was simply something about the man that got to her. However, this was not the time to analyze it, much less try and deal with it. It would simply have to wait.
The plane was ready to go when they arrived. Rafe checked several things, both inside and out, while a gangly youth lugged their two bags over and shoved them inside. Rafe slipped two folded bills into the hand of the boy, who grinned and said, “Anytime, Cap’n.”
Molly didn’t even try to breathe as they taxied down the narrow runway, only a stone’s throw from the ocean. Eyes closed tightly, she felt the plane lift off and quickly bank around to head north. Opening one eye first and then the other, she clutched her stomach and uttered a soft moan.
“Seat belt too tight? Keep it fastened anyway, okay?”
“It’s not the seat belt. It’s the breakfast we didn’t take time for.”
“Open your eyes and look at the horizon. Take a few deep breaths.”
Dutifully Molly opened her eyes and peered through the Plexiglas. She drew in a deep breath, and then another.
“Don’t hyperventilate,” Rafe said over the drone of the engine. “Just look and enjoy.”
Remarkably enough, she did just that. Fascinated by the brand-new perspective, Molly forgot all about her queasiness. But before she could appreciate the scenery, she needed answers to the questions there hadn’t been time to ask earlier. “Were they on their way back here? What was it, a blow-out? Is Stu a good driver? Because Annamarie’s never been all that good. It took three tries before she could even get her license.” She covered her mouth. “Don’t tell her I told you that. She was so ashamed. I don’t know why I did, only—”
He covered her hand with one of his, and she gasped and cried, “Keep your hands on the steering wheel, watch where you’re going!”
“Relax, Molly. I won’t let anything happen to you. And your secret’s safe with me.”
“What secret?”
Grinning, he said, “That Annamarie had some trouble getting her license and that you can talk the tail off a kangaroo when you’re nervous or uncomfortable.”
She was quiet for all of thirty seconds. Then, in a tone of wounded dignity, she said, “Well.”
“Here’s all I know. There were three vehicles involved. The driver of the dump truck has some broken bones and possible internal injuries, Stu has a mild concussion and three broken bones in his left hand. Unfortunately he’s left-handed. Your sister is basically okay, as far as—”
The plane veered to avoid collision with a flight of geese, and Molly caught her breath and gripped the edges of her seat. Rafe slanted her a quick grin. “Look down.”
“With my eyes open? Are you crazy?”
But she opened her eyes and looked, and when he pointed out the darker stain on the water and told her it was a school of fish, probably channel bass, she shot him a skeptical look. “Trust me,” he said, and she looked again, seeing nothing at all that resembled a fish.
“There. That’s not so bad, is it?”
“What, you mean flying with my eyes open? The fact that I’m up here miles above a shark-filled ocean with no visible means of support? Or the fact that your brother has a concussion and a bunch of broken bones and my sister is probably falling apart, even if she’s not physically injured?”
Or the fact that we made love, and for the first time I discovered what it’s all about, and it probably won’t ever happen again?
“How about all of the above?”
“How about concentrating on getting us there?”
The plane was noisy, but surprisingly steady. After a while, Molly relaxed enough to take in the glorious spectacle of sunrise over the chain of narrow barrier islands, an intricate pattern of dark lacework against a background of fiery gold and coral.
Rafe absorbed the scenery as he did every nuance of sound or vibration. He had been flying for more than twenty years. Sometimes he flew as a means of getting from point A to point B. At other times he flew to free his mind of clutter and allow himself to concentrate on the big picture.
Now all he could concentrate on was the woman beside him. Stu’s marriage would probably fail; marriages in their families inevitably did, which meant he might never see Molly again. But regardless of what happened in the future, he knew he would never forget her. And that bothered him, because he’d never before had a woman get to him as quickly as she had. Not even Belle, whom he genuinely liked. Certainly not the woman he’d been married to briefly, before he’d wised up and figured the odds.
Molly was…Molly. Feet on the ground, cards on the table.
Her feet might be on the ground, he told himself with tender amusement, but her head was definitely in the clouds. For a thirty-six-year-old divorcée, she was incredibly naive. A sleeping beauty who was just beginning to wake up. The fact that he might have played a part in her awakening gave him an inordinate sense of proprietorship; at the same time it scared the hell out of him.
Noticing how absorbed she was in the panorama below, he banked to allow her better visibility. This time she never even grabbed the seat to hold on. After a while she said softly, “This is a season of firsts for me.” Rafe leaned closer to hear, catching a whiff of shampoo and baby powder. She raised her voice and said, “I don’t know if I told you, but it’s my first trip to the beach. And this is my first flight, and last night was the first time I ever—” She slapped a hand over her mouth.
“The first time you ever what?”
“Nothing.”
“You want me to start guessing? The first time you ever what, Molly?”
But Molly wasn’t about to admit that it was the first time she’d ever slept with any man other than her husband. As for that other thing that had happened, all she could say was that a blaze of sunrise reflected in the water and viewed from the cockpit of a small plane paled in comparison. “The first time I ever met a bird that could curse in three languages.”
He laughed. She knew that he knew she was lying, but he was gentleman enough to let her get away with it.
The trip seemed endless. It dawned on Molly that she was moving faster than she had ever moved in her life—another first—yet the earth seemed to creep by below.
“So strange,” she murmured. He couldn’t possibly have heard her, much less have known what she was talking about. All the same,
he reached over and covered her left knee with his right hand, and this time she took comfort in his touch and didn’t even yell at him to mind what he was doing.
When they finally landed, Rafe sent her off to find two coffees and a couple of bagels while he took care of the plane. “Meet you at the car rental desk. I’ll bring the luggage,” he told her, and instructed her on how to get her there.
Airports were another adventure, but by the time she found the ground transportation area, Molly had had her fill of excitement. It had begun to sink in that Annamarie might be more seriously injured than she’d admitted. What about internal injuries? Why else would she be kept for observation?
It didn’t help to tell herself that both her sisters were grown up now. They no longer came running to her to fix every hurt from a stubbed toe to a broken heart. Annamarie had a husband now; she didn’t really need her big sister. And Mary Etta was on the verge of getting herself engaged, but then, Mary Etta had always been more independent than Annamarie. In some ways, she was even more independent than Molly was. With Molly, independence had been mostly pretense born of necessity, something she had only recently admitted to herself.
Nevertheless, being accustomed to worrying, Molly continued to worry. By the time she met Rafe at the car rental desk, she was sick with it. “I want you to tell me everything,” she said, handing over a cup of weak, lukewarm coffee and a bagel. “I’m strong enough to handle the truth, whatever it is, so don’t try to protect me. Besides, I’ll find out everything in a little while, and if you’ve lied, I’ll never trust you again. Why did Annamarie insist on talking to you and not me? It’s because she knew I’d know, isn’t it? I can always tell when she’s trying to hide something from me. Her voice sounds different, like she’s reading from a script or something.”
He dealt with the rental agent, then led her outside, transferred their bags and handed her into the late-model gray sedan. “She talked to me because I answered the phone. As for whether or not she was hiding anything, you know her, I don’t. I’ve never even met her. Whatever we find when we get to the hospital, we can deal with it, all right? Just keep saying to yourself, ‘They’re the kids, we’re the grown-ups.”’
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