He stood, as well. “It’s good to see you, too.”
Busying herself at the sink, she spoke with her back to him. “I have to get down to the marina. You can let yourself out when you’re ready to leave. Just lock the door behind you.”
“May I see you again?”
She turned to face him and there was a remote quality in her sad eyes that told him the answer before she opened her mouth. “No,” she said. “That wouldn’t be a good idea.” She laid the dish towel out to dry and walked to the door, then turned back to him one more time. “Thank you.”
He stood in the kitchen as she let herself out and walked down the crushed-shell path. It might not be a good idea in her mind, but as far as he was concerned, it was a great one. She wasn’t indifferent to him, he was positive. There was nothing specific he could put his finger on, just a quickening feeling in his gut and the way her eyes danced around, never quite meeting his. She’d been exceedingly careful not to touch him after she’d woken up sprawled all over him, too.
As he locked her door and walked down the path after cleaning up her kitchen, Reese was whistling. He had a kayak to rent.
Three
It was midafternoon and Celia was heartily sick of paperwork. Soon she’d be wishing for something to keep her busy during the long winter days when there were far fewer customers, but right now the big fish were running. Which meant that she was up to her ears in equipment rentals, slip requests, repairs, guided fishing expeditions and whale watches, not to mention novice fishermen who expected to land a fifteen-foot shark on a lightweight line off the end of the pier.
She picked up her mug of tea and took a big gulp, grimacing at the cold beverage. Heavy footsteps outside the shack alerted her that someone was about to enter.
“Hey, there.” Reese stood in the doorway, grinning at her.
She set down her mug so hard, tea sloshed perilously close to the rim. “Hello.”
“Did you forget about the sea oats?”
She sighed as the morning’s telephone call returned. “It was marsh grass. Although some sea oats would be nice, too. And no, I didn’t forget. Well, not exactly.” Then she raised her eyebrows, wondering what possible interest he could have in sea oats. “Why?”
“I rented a kayak. If you’d like to take a break, we could go now.”
“We?” She made the tone deliberately dubious.
But Reese only grinned wider, his dimples carving deep grooves in both cheeks. “I thought you might enjoy some company.”
“No, thanks.” She shrugged. “I’m used to going alone.”
“Being used to it and enjoying it are two different things. Besides, it would go faster if you had help.”
She was growing annoyed. He wouldn’t take a reasonably polite refusal, so she supposed she was off the hook if she got rude. “Reese, I thought I made it clear this morning that I didn’t want to reestablisha…friendship with you. It’s been thirteen years—”
“And one month and five days.”
She stopped, dumbfounded. “You’re making that up.”
“Nope. Last time I ever saw you was on August the twenty-seventh. It’s the second of October.” His face grew sober. “I guess I can’t blame you for not wanting to renew our friendship. I just thought…” He stopped. “Never mind.” He turned away from the door.
“You thought what?” The words were impulsive. She couldn’t believe he knew to the day when he’d left. As much as she’d thought of him over the years, she hadn’t even known that. She’d been so miserable when he’d left her behind that her memories of that time had simply blurred.
He paused, his back to her, and his shoulders rose and fell. “I’ve been away from home for a long time. I cut my ties when I left, family, friends, everything. It just was…really, really nice to be with someone who shared my past.”
There was a heavy moment of silence in the wake of the words, and her heart filled with pity. The very fact that he knew to the day how long it had been since he’d left had far more to do with the estrangement from his family than it did her, she was sure. She was on her feet and across the small office before she even realized what she was doing. “I’m sorry, Reese. I guess I’m too touchy.” She put one hand on his forearm. “I know how it feels to be alone.”
He wore a short-sleeved T-shirt with a yacht manufacturer’s logo on it and, beneath her fingers, his skin felt hot, rough with whorls of heavy masculine hair, the tendons and muscles tough and hard and tense. The sensations made her acutely aware of how tall and powerful he was, how feminine and needy he made her feel. She knew it was stupid to spend any more time in his company. He could upset the carefully balanced emotions she’d worked so hard to manage in the past two years and leave.
And leave. That was exactly right. And then he’d leave. If she could remember that, and treat this as a temporary visit from an old friend who wouldn’t be staying long, surely she could manage it.
Reese hadn’t moved. Finally he nodded his head her way. “I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable.” He turned and looked her in the eye, his gaze warm and full of unmistakable affection. From the memories they shared? “It was good to see you again, Celia. Really good.” Briefly he lifted his free hand and clasped it over hers where it still rested on his arm. Then he put his hand out and opened the door, stepping away from her.
“No! Reese, wait. I’d like to go kayaking with you.” She followed him through the door. “In fact, I’d appreciate the company. I spend too much of my time alone.”
He froze in midstride, then slowly turned back to her, eyes cautious. “Sure?”
She took a deep breath, then met his eyes and nodded. “I’m sure.” She indicated her office. “Just let me get this stuff organized and tell Angie I’m leaving.”
Twenty minutes later they’d donned jackets against the light breeze and soon were stroking through the water in smooth unison. She set the pace while Reese sat behind her and it gave her a funny feeling to see the flash of his paddle synchronized perfectly with hers. It was ridiculous to interpret the action as intimacy, and yet that was exactly how it felt. She was left awkward and tongue-tied.
“It’s still a lot like I remember.” Reese’s voice startled her as they paddled out of the harbor and around a corner of the Lower Cape shoreline.
“In the off season, it is,” she agreed, relieved by the ordinariness of the topic. “But in the summer, the crowds are horrific. Seems like there are twice as many tourists as there were when I was a kid.”
“It’s that way in Florida, too.”
“Florida?”
“That’s where I live now.”
“Ah.” She couldn’t prevent a small burst of laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
She shrugged. “I guess I assumed you were still a drifter, sailing from one place to another.”
He laughed, too. “Thirteen years would be a long time to drift.”
“I guess it would, but that’s always how I thought of you. Sailing around the world, seeing new places just like you always said you wanted to.”
“You thought of me?”
She could have hit herself over the head with her paddle. “You know, just in passing.”
“I thought of you,” he said softly.
She didn’t know what to say. Finally she said, “I suppose it’s only natural that each of us has wondered about the other from time to time.”
Now Reese was the one who was silent.
They paddled along, skirting the broken coastline and the many little inlets along it. Seagulls checked them out to see if there was any chance of scrounging a meal, and they passed a tidal flat where two young girls in overalls squelched in the mud, raking halfheartedly for quahogs.
“I did it, you know.” He broke the quiet.
“Did what?”
“Sailed around the world.”
“I never doubted it.” That was the truth. “Tell me about it.” Even she could hear the wistful quality in he
r voice. She’d always said she wanted to leave the Cape and see the world. There’d been a time when she’d assumed she’d be doing it with him.
“I headed south and down through the Caribbean. Stopped for a week here, a few days there. My favorite island was St. John in the Virgins. Extraordinary scenery and at that time still mostly undeveloped. Then I came north on the west side of the Florida coast, went across the Gulf, down around South America and up the other side to the Pacific—”
“That must have taken a while.”
“I wasn’t in any rush.”
Translation: he’d had nowhere to be, nobody to whom he’d needed to report. “Were you alone?”
“Yeah. I had a small cruiser that I could handle myself. But I met a guy in Hawaii who started crewing for me and we headed across the Pacific.” The timbre of Reese’s voice reflected fondness. “He stayed with me the rest of the trip. Remind me to tell you sometime about the hurricane we weathered.”
“My God, Reese!” Her heart shot into her throat, despite the fact that he was sitting right behind her, alive and well. “What possessed you? You could have been killed.”
“Don’t think that didn’t occur to us about two hundred times,” he said dryly. “Let’s just say that I have no desire to repeat the experience.”
“I should think not.” Then she gestured toward the shore. “Let’s head into that thicket. I gather grass there a lot. It’s got a good variety of stuff.”
“Isn’t it protected?”
“I’ve got a permit,” she said smugly. “Local economy, and all that.”
“All right.” Reese dug his paddle into the water and turned the kayak efficiently. “The lady’s wish is mine to grant.”
As they moved into the shallower waters and followed a stream that wound among the shrubby bushes and long-stemmed marsh plants, Celia lifted her face to the autumn sun and said, “I love this time of year. And it’s so peaceful out here. I can’t remember the last time I did this.”
“When you gathered grasses for wreaths?” Reese suggested.
She shook her head. “I paid one of the neighbor kids to come get them for me last time. Too busy.”
“You spend a lot of time at the marina?”
She nodded, shifting so that she could look at him. “It’s a full-time job.”
“Did you work there when your husband was harbormaster?”
It was touchy ground and she could tell from the regretful look on his face that he recognized it the minute he’d said it. “I didn’t work.”
“You were a full-time mother.”
It didn’t hurt quite as intensely as she expected and she actually felt her face relax into a soft smile as an image of Leo’s little head bent intently over his building blocks flitted through her mind. “Yes.”
“Why did you take over after your husband passed away?”
She shrugged. “I knew how to do it. Before we were married I worked for his father. That’s how we met. And after we were married, I still helped out sometimes until Leo was born.” She paused. It was the first time she could remember that she’d been able to speak of her son without falling apart. “I didn’t go to college so my options were pretty limited.”
“Wasn’t there life insurance?”
The question startled her. “Wha— Oh, yes.” Then she realized he thought she needed the money. “Actually, Milo left me in good financial shape,” she told him. “I just didn’t want to sit around the house all day.”
“Too lonely.” Unspoken between them was the knowledge that her husband hadn’t been all that was lost.
“Yes.” She was glad her voice was steady. She concentrated on using the sickle she’d brought along to cut wide swaths of some of the prettier stands of grass. Autumn was a good time to gather it. While she used more supple, still-green flora in wreaths, she also dried bunches of grasses for the standing arrangements she donated to several local charity efforts throughout the year.
After a few moments the quiet work began to soothe her. Reese seemed to anticipate her every move because he maneuvered the kayak around so carefully that she was rarely out of reach of the plants she was seeking. He was right—it did go much faster with his help.
“Look.” His low whisper caught her attention. “What is that?”
She scanned the direction he was pointing, finally finding the speckled bird neatly camouflaged among the greens, grays and browns of the marsh grasses. “It’s a duck. A gadwall, to be exact. Aren’t they pretty?”
“Very. Different from most of the ducks I’m familiar with. Isn’t it a little late to be hanging around here?”
“The ducks don’t migrate,” she told him. “Most of the local varieties stay here all winter long. It’s when they find their mates.” Good grief. Could she have said anything more awkward?
But Reese didn’t leap onto her unintended innuendo as she’d feared. “I never spent a winter out here. Our place was strictly a summer residence.”
“It’s open now.”
Reese’s gaze shot to hers. “It is?”
She shrugged, not wanting him to think she kept tabs on members of his family. “I heard in town that one of your brothers was going to be there for a week or so with his family.”
“Which brother?” His lips twisted in a smile that was more bittersweet than amused. “I didn’t even know any of them had gotten married.”
“I believe it was Nicholas.” She knew exactly who it was.
“Nick’s married?” He was completely still, and she could see the regret in his face. “He wrote to me after I left. I got letters from him for a couple of years.”
“You lost touch?”
“I never got back in touch,” he corrected her.
She was shocked. “At all?”
He shook his head.
He’d mentioned cutting ties, but… “Are you telling me you haven’t had any contact with anyone in your family since you left?”
He nodded again, his expression unreadable. “Right.”
Impulsively she said, “Why don’t you give your brother a call? I’m sure your family has missed you as much as you’ve missed them.”
His face was set. “I’ll think about it.”
Sure he would. “Please,” she said, “consider it, Reese. You’ll be sorry for the rest of your life if you don’t take the chance while you still can.”
“I said I’d think about it,” he said irritably. Then he made an effort to smile. “Sorry. Coming back here has me thinking about all kinds of things I haven’t let myself think of in years.”
The silence hummed with unspoken words and she turned back to her task, supremely uncomfortable again. She knew exactly what he meant.
They didn’t address anything of consequence for the rest of the trip and returned to the marina shortly before six. She ran home and brought her car down to the marina to load the grasses into the trunk while Reese waited. A part of her wanted to dismiss him and to get far, far away from Reese Barone before she did something stupid, but an equally insistent part of her lobbied for more contact.
“Would it go faster if I helped?” he asked as they brought the newly harvested materials into the workroom she’d converted in the adjacent shed. “I’ve never made wreaths before but I’m game to try.”
She had to smile at the image of the rugged outdoorsman working at the delicate craft. As she smiled she said, “I don’t know if you’ll want to once you see what it takes, but at the least, I should feed you to thank you for your help.”
His gaze caught and held hers and she found that she couldn’t take a deep breath for the butterfly wings that crowded into her stomach. “That would be nice.”
As they turned and walked toward the kitchen door, he caught her hand in his, threading his fingers through hers. Neither of them spoke. When they reached the door, he let her hand slide free as naturally as if they held hands every day.
But as she assembled a salad and started defrosting some spaghetti sauce she’d made a
few weeks earlier, she realized she was trembling. What was she going to do about Reese Barone?
In the end she did nothing. After the meal he helped with cleanup before they returned to the shed. She showed him how much wire she needed to fasten the wreaths together and he cut it while she worked the grapevine into sizable wreaths that she then began to decorate with a variety of materials.
When she’d finished the raffia bow on the last wreath, she turned to him with a relieved smile. “Thank you for taking me to the marsh today. It was fun.”
“How long has it been since you let yourself do something just for fun?” His eyes were serious.
Her hands stilled on the extra grapevine she was coiling. “I don’t know. A while.”
“How long is a while?”
She concentrated, but she honestly couldn’t come up with an answer. She gestured helplessly. “I can’t remember.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“But today was lovely.”
“It was,” he agreed, “but it wasn’t solely dedicated to the pursuit of fun. You need to give yourself permission to relax and enjoy life again, Celia.”
Instantly she felt her eyes fill with tears. Oh, damn. “Maybe I don’t want to. I feel guilty, Reese. Can you understand that?”
“Not like you can. But I know what you mean.” He laid down the wire cutters he’d been about to put away and came around the table. When he reached out and took her by the elbows, she let him pull her against him but she kept her head down, stubbornly gazing at the buttons on his knit shirt. “My best friend, Kent—the guy I mentioned earlier—and his wife were killed in an accident at sea a few years ago. Every once in a while I feel absolutely awful for living and laughing and just being happy when they no longer can.”
“Oh, Reese, I’m so sorry.” She put her arms around his broad back and hugged him closer. “Life hasn’t been terrific for either one of us, has it?”
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