She handed Alex a piece of garlic bread and sank back in her chair. As Alegra watched the little boy chew, she wondered how some children could be so loved, and some never knew what it was like.
“You sound so sad,” Christina said to Alegra.
“Excuse me?” Alegra laid down her napkin.
“You sighed, and it sounded as if…” Christina smiled softly. “You must be tired.”
Alegra grabbed the excuse. “Yes, I am very tired,” she said and got to her feet. “Thank you for everything. It’s been lovely.” She glanced from the man to the woman. “You’ve been very kind to a stranger.”
“You’re not a stranger, not anymore,” Joe Senior said. He stood. “And now that we’ve met, you’re welcome here any time at all.” He stopped, studied her, then with a slight shake of his head, he said, “If you want to get away from that world out there, remember, we’re here.”
The warmth and kindness only made it harder for her to breathe, and she moved quickly, going toward the door to get her jacket off the hook. She turned back to say, “Please tell Joe—”
“Tell me what?” Joe asked as he strode into the room, all cleaned up.
“Alegra’s tired, and she’s leaving,” his mother said.
Joe crossed to her and reached around her to get his jacket. “I’ll walk you back to your car,” he said without giving her a chance to object. “You be good for Mamaw,” he said to Alex, then nodded to his dad and mother. “I’ll be back in a while.”
“Don’t rush,” his dad called after him.
“You don’t have to walk me back,” she said when they were outside in the foggy chill air.
Joe shrugged. “Of course I do. First of all, you might get lost, and secondly, I need a favor.”
She pulled her jacket tightly around herself. “You’re going to get that interview sometime or another so—?”
“It’s not that. I need a ride into town.”
She followed him off the porch. “Sure, of course, but won’t you be stuck there without your truck?”
“My truck’s at the office. When I left earlier, my truck was blocked by other cars, so I hitched a ride back.” She fell into step with him. “I figure the crowds will be thinning out now, and the cars will be mostly gone.”
He preceded her down the steps to the beach below.
At the bottom, they walked in silence along the beach, back the way they’d come. The fog thickened around them, and Alegra could hear the low, mournful sound of foghorns far off in the distance. She felt as if she and Joe were the only two people in the world. For a crazy moment, it was an appealing illusion, then she pushed it aside. She didn’t live in illusions. She didn’t need them or want them.
“Your father has a poor opinion of the outside world, doesn’t he?” she said to Joe.
“He’s always had.” Joe’s voice was low and rough in the night. “When I first went to New York, he had a bet with a friend of his that I’d be back in six months.” He chuckled. “He lost the bet.”
“But you came back.”
“Yes, eventually, and I’m happy I did.”
She hunched her shoulders. Of course he was happy here. He had a family that loved him. A little boy. Friends.
“How about you?” he asked. “Happy?”
She’d never made happiness a criterion for anything in her life. She was taken aback to realize that being happy was almost a foreign concept to her. “Things are good,” she said evasively, tension starting in her neck again.
The rest of the trip back to the stairs that led up to the clearing where she’d left her car was made in silence. As they stepped into the clearing and headed toward her car, she saw white writing all over the tinted windows. Moving closer, she read aloud the words that started on the driver’s side window, went back, around the rear of the car and all the way up the windshield.
“Old Bartholomew was here! Beware, matey, beware!”
She heard Joe chuckling as he followed her, then he touched the writing in the last “beware.” It smeared. “At least it’s done in soap, so with some rain, you’ll be bubbling right along.”
She climbed in the driver’s side, and as Joe settled in the passenger seat, she started the engine. She pushed the button on the windshield wipers and cleaner squirted out. The next instant the wipers slapped from side to side, and she found herself laughing at the results. Bubbles were everywhere. Laughter rose in her, and held more than a bit of hysteria in it.
The laughter rolled out of her until it was coming out in gulps that sounded precariously close to sobs. She felt Joe’s hand on her shoulder, and his voice was low in the dim interior. “Hey, it wasn’t that funny.”
It wasn’t, and she knew that the soap writing and bubbles didn’t account for her feelings. She just felt so lost, so totally lost. She didn’t know how to be happy, and she felt a loss for something that had never been. Her laughter changed to tears.
With a low, “Hey, it’s okay,” Joe gathered her to him across the console. She buried her face in the rough denim of his jacket and was certain she felt his heart beating against her forehead. He didn’t speak, just gently rubbed her back as he rested his chin on the top of her head. He held her, anchoring her, giving her a connection that was so foreign to her and so wonderful, that her sobs only deepened.
JOE HAD NO IDEA what had just happened, but the woman in his arms sounded heartbroken. She held on to him and pressed her face hard into his chest. He hadn’t seen this coming. She’d looked sad from time to time, but those moments were brief and were gone almost before he knew they had happened.
But this wasn’t brief at all. She stayed in his arms, and even though her sobs died, she still trembled against him. He’d never been comfortable with a woman in tears, and this wasn’t an exception, but for the first time, he genuinely wanted to know why she cried.
“It’s all right,” he whispered against her hair. “It’s all right.”
He felt her take an unsteady breath, then she was moving away. “Oh, God,” she breathed, “I’m so…so sorry.”
Then she looked up at him in the dim light of the car, and he could see the dampness on her cheeks and her lashes spiked from her tears. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he said.
She released a breath in a soft rush. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’m just…”
He shifted, cupping her chin and tipping up her head so she had to look at him. “Just talk to me. Tell me what’s going on. I’m a good listener.”
She hesitated, seemed on the verge of saying something, but then closed her mouth and lowered her gaze. “I don’t…I can’t.”
“Off the record,” he said. He brushed at her damp cheek with his thumb and felt her shiver at the contact. Then she was looking up at him again, and her lips parted softly. He felt a staggeringly strong impulse to kiss her, and when he saw her tongue touch her upper lip, he didn’t think twice about bringing his mouth to hers.
Heat and saltiness were there, and her hands were on his chest, but she didn’t push him away. Slowly, ever so slowly, her arms lifted and circled his neck. As his tongue tasted her, she came closer. With a low moan, she arched toward him, and even though the console between them dug into his hip, he felt her breasts against his chest. Whatever had stirred him moments ago when she’d been crying, whatever it was that he couldn’t define, had changed. He understood what stirred in him now. Understood it completely.
He wanted her. The need to touch her was overwhelming. But as his hands found their way under her jacket to splay on her back, she tensed and drew back, and all he could do was to let her go.
Turning from him, she gripped the steering wheel. The deep shadows in the car blurred her expression. His body ached, and he felt a loss that almost choked him. But he kept quiet and watched her run a hand across her lips before she whispered, “Sorry,” and reached to start the ignition.
He sat back, hoping his body would realize sooner, rather than later, that nothing else was going to happen
. He pressed his hands to his thighs as she put the car in gear, then backed out onto the road and turned in the direction of town. He looked out the side window, not wanting to see the vulnerable curve of her throat or the way she was nibbling on her lip again.
The fog was thinner now, and it was raining, coming down hard, and the bubbles on the windows were washed off. The car rocked from the force of the wind.
“More rain,” he heard Alegra whisper. “More damn rain.”
He turned to her then, tried to think of what to say. He settled for, “I meant it. If you want to talk, I’ll listen.”
No response at first, then she said, “I don’t think a reporter is someone to confide in.”
He wanted to say, How about the man you just kissed? But instead he said, “I told you, anything you tell me will be off the record. It won’t go any further.”
Her cell phone rang. She shifted, slowing the car, and dug it out of her jacket pocket. She flipped it open, and from where he sat, Joe could see the voice-mail message flashing on the screen. She hit a button and got the screen of missed calls, and almost stopped in the middle of the road as she studied it. Then she flipped the phone shut and dropped it onto the console with a muttered, “Damn it all.”
He wondered what was going on, why she wasn’t on the phone immediately calling in for her voice mails.
As they entered the drenched town, the storm hadn’t dampened the festivities. There were fewer people around, but tents were everywhere, and partiers darted back and forth, with huge umbrellas protecting them, going from shelter to shelter. He could hear the music that was still being pumped in. He checked the clock in the car dash. It was almost nine.
“It’s still going on,” she said softly.
“Come rain or sleet or snow or the dark of night,” he murmured.
She sighed. “Do you feel as if this isn’t part of the real world here, sometimes?”
“It’s real,” he said. “Just a different take on reality. I guess it’s quite a change from what you’re used to.”
“Like night and day.”
“So is it better or worse?”
She slowed the car as a group of people darted across the road, umbrellas bobbing over them. Then she drove slowly on toward the middle of the town and still hadn’t answered him by the time she slipped her car into a parking slot by his truck. He didn’t get out right away, and when she turned toward him, he said, “Well, what is it? Better or worse?”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “Worse, I think…no, I don’t know.”
He studied her for a long moment, the way tendrils of hair that had escaped from her ponytail started to curl from the moisture in the air and the way her lashes shadowed her eyes. “Why are you here?”
She bit her lip again, and he knew she was thinking hard. “I’ve told you—”
“I know what you’ve said, but it’s obvious you aren’t happy being here,” he said bluntly. “You’d rather be working, rather be some other place in the world, but you’re here. And you’re miserable.”
“I’m sorry about what happened back there.” He didn’t know if she meant the crying or the kissing or both.
“If you’re apologizing, it’s not necessary,” he said softly. “I figure that whatever’s going on with you, it has to be pretty important to you to come to the island and stay like this.”
“It is,” was all she said. If she’d been vulnerable before, she was closed-off now. “And there’s your truck. Thanks for the dinner and…for everything.”
He had the urge to take her hand in his, the hand curled into a tight fist on her lap, and hold it until he felt that tension seep away. “So that’s it?”
She turned from him. “What more is there?”
He had a lot of ideas for what more there could be, but obviously she wasn’t interested. “Nothing,” he replied, and opened the door to the chilly night.
He hesitated with the door still open. He couldn’t let it go. He thought she’d enjoyed the time with his family, and he knew damn well he’d enjoyed watching her smile and talk. No, he’d done more than enjoy it. Something had settled in his soul as he’d watched her. He looked at her, her face revealed now in the overhead lights. “The offer still stands if you want to talk off the record.”
He didn’t miss the way her eyes narrowed on him. “What about?” she asked.
“Anything,” he said, and meant it.
“No comment,” she said evenly.
He knew when he’d lost. “Okay, we’ll stick to the interview and leave the rest of it alone.”
“Good idea,” she said.
“Listen,” he said, wishing he really could just let it go and stick to business. But he couldn’t. “I don’t know you very well, but—”
“No, you don’t know me,” she said abruptly.
That shut him up and he climbed out and swung the door closed. Before he’d even grabbed the door handle on his truck, her car was backed up and on its way down the street. He turned and headed in two long strides up onto the walkway. He got out his keys and went into the office.
He didn’t have to call out or look around to know he was alone in the building. Through the dim illumination of the security lights, he headed for his office cubicle. He stripped off his damp jacket, then sat in the chair behind his desk. He started to put in a call to his house, but hung up before touching a single number.
He’d been going to tell his mother he was staying at the office for the night, something he’d done every so often when he had a lot of work to do. But tonight was different. After what she’d said to him about Alegra, he knew if he said he was staying in town for the night, she’d put two and two together and come up with thirty-seven. She would assume he was finally getting a love life, and it began with Alegra.
You don’t know me. Alegra had spoken the truth. He didn’t know her. He wanted to know more and more about why she seemed so incredibly sad sometimes and why she could smile and literally light up his world other times.
He drew his hand away from the receiver and tipped back in the chair, clasping his hands behind his neck. Every encounter he had with Alegra only cemented an attraction he knew wasn’t one-sided. Yet, it was an attraction that could, for him, be messy and wrong. Oh, he had no doubt that sleeping with her would be beyond anything he could imagine; he felt a tug of desire in his body just from the memory of the kiss. But what about when it ended? And it would have to end. She wasn’t going to stay here, and he wasn’t going to go anywhere, not as long as Alex needed to be on the island.
He sat forward, the front legs of the chair hitting the floor with a thud. The facts were pretty damn clear. And he’d never been a man who casually went in and out of relationships. For that moment, he almost wished he was like that—hit and run. Take what was there, then move on. That he could be close to Alegra, then watch her leave.
He went out into the main room and crossed to a small closet. He took out an extra jacket he kept there, then headed out into the rainy night. Joe had been alone for most of his life, by choice. He’d married Jean, by choice. They’d had Alex and they’d broken up, by choice. He’d never been pressured into anything. He’d made the choices that led to this point in his life. Good or bad, they were his choices. Now he chose to pull back from Alegra and the complications that would come with her.
Chapter Nine
Alegra awoke with a start to a window-rattling rendition of a John Philip Sousa march. She was on the couch, where she’d lain down, fully dressed, after coming back last night, and she’d obviously fallen asleep there. She sat up, rotating her neck to ease the kinks. The music changed to someone talking on a loudspeaker, encouraging people to enjoy their stay at “Old Bartholomew’s celebration.”
She stood and her cell phone clattered to the floor. Now she remembered using it to check her e-mail while she laid down, then nothing. She headed into the bathroom to shower and dress in fresh clothing. She didn’t let herself recall the way she’d fallen apart in th
e car with Joe, or kissed him with mind-boggling desperation.
In half an hour she was back in the living area, opening her computer. Work blocked so much out, and she depended on that today. She realized she was almost grateful for the problem at their Boston store—an employee stealing and selling the products at ridiculously low prices on the Internet. It gave her a focus that lasted for most of the day.
She had her meals brought in, and except for an occasional need to stretch her legs, worked right through the day, even blocking out the sounds of the festival. She was just beginning to feel a degree of relaxation when she noticed the painting of the lighthouse, still propped by the door.
Without warning, the memories of the day before flooded over her, the child and the man, the time at the beach, then the Lawrence house. The dinner, the laughter and the conversation that had come so easily at that table. Then going to the car with Joe and rain making bubbles of the soap-writing on the windows.
She wasn’t sure why she’d laughed so hard, or why that laughter had turned to tears and wrenching sadness. And then Joe reaching for her, kissing her, and her responding—it all seemed so very right. A connection that went beyond anything she’d ever had, and she’d let herself go with it. Until she realized it was a fantasy. The whole day was a fantasy, not reality. Not even close.
She sat back and pressed one hand to her mouth, as if the action would stop Joe’s taste. It didn’t. The moment Joe kissed her was a living thing for her, and she stood quickly, going to the small bar that had been neatly set into an old Victorian armoire. She didn’t drink very much and she rarely drank alone, but she found a bottle of cognac, a snifter on a high shelf, and poured herself a shot. She moved to the couch, crossed her legs, and sipped, staring out through the windows at the coming night. No rain, just a cloudy sky.
Alegra's Homecoming Page 9