Her diary.
The pages were crammed with the fluid, looping penmanship she’d long ago left behind, chronicling crushes and heartbreaks, kisses with boys whose lips she’d forgotten, fights with Judy, and secrets confided around those beach bonfires.
The pages also told the story of a girl who’d bled—figuratively—for her father’s attention. A note in the margin with her GPA and a bitter scrawl: another girl’s dad would have cared. The word “cared” underlined three times so hard the pen nip had almost broken through. A paragraph describing the night Judy’s parents had taken them into Boston to celebrate their high school graduation. She wondered at the coincidence of eating her first formal dinner in the DeVarona Boston’s dining room, Serenade.
While her father had been invited as a matter of form, he hadn’t even bothered to decline.
She’d seen her first off-Broadway musical that night, had her first champagne toast in their hotel room, and cried her last bitter tears over her father in the bathroom.
From the dresser, her phone alarm chirped. With a heavy sigh, she pushed the diary into the box and shoved it under her bed. Until Kevin Landry brought her a buyer, she had obligations to fulfill.
SIX
As the end of July melted into early August, Sofia boxed away more than just her diary. She allowed the pleasure of Silas’s company to carry her through the dog days of a New England summer. They ran their respective businesses, slipping away when time warranted to be together away from the beach, and spending many of their nights tangled up in Sofia’s bed.
Before too long, those nights outnumbered the nights they spent apart. The part of her that feared the intimacy that blossomed between them was stashed away under the bed with her box of memories.
On the cusp of a mid-August dawn, their phone alarms woke them at nearly the same moment. After a bleary shuffle to the living room, Silas tossed two silenced phones on the duvet and crawled back into the bed. What began as an easy good-morning kiss left them both breathless and aching, but Houdini was waiting for his breakfast, and the still empty beach was waiting for his run. Silas pushed Sofia’s hair from her face and cruised his lips over her temple.
“Come to Portsmouth with me Sunday night.” He kept his tone casual.
Indecision played over her face.
“Switch shifts with Amy.” He traced her cheekbones with a finger and kissed her mouth. “She can close the course and the snack bar, and I’ll have you home by midnight.” He drew an x over her left breast. “Promise.”
“Okay.” She dodged him and rolled out of bed. Silas admired her behind as she walked away. “I saw that,” she called from the kitchen.
He couldn’t help laughing. She was magnificent. “Couldn’t resist!”
He stepped into his boxers and padded out to the living room to find the rest of his clothes. In the adjoining kitchen, Sofia was making coffee.
“You should never make coffee with clothes on,” he said.
She pushed start on the machine. “Smart ass.”
He ogled. “Great ass.”
“Help yourself to coffee. I’m going to grab a shower before I go down.” She started for the bathroom.
He touched her arm as she passed. “Hey.”
Her expression clouded and cleared in a blink.
“I’ve got to spend some time with my accounts tonight, but I’ll be around.” He kissed her and released her to her morning ablutions.
He grabbed a mug from the dish rack by the sink, poured a cup, and opened her fridge for some milk. Finding nothing suitable, he took the coffee, mug and all, out with him.
He arrived home to a very hungry cat. Scratching Houdini behind the ears, he headed for the jug of two-percent in his fridge, but his feline companion stopped him with a plaintive yowl and proceeded to wind himself around Silas’s ankles.
“If you kill me, cat,” he warned, “it could be days before anyone notices. You think you’re hungry now?” Silas filled Houdini’s bowls with kibble and water, and set the bowls down on the counter next to his coffee. “Let’s you and me have some quality time.”
~~~
For a day that began so well, Sophia was almost impressed by how quickly it went bad. She was knee deep in the water feature, unclogging a filter, when Amy brought the phone out to her. Her soft-serve vendor was stuck in traffic. Later that morning, a couple of rowdy sports fans got into it over the Sox and the Yankees, and she’d ended up giving free rounds of golf to everyone whose games were interrupted.
Her tenants in 2B lost their key on the beach; the cable and internet went out. The annoyances were never-ending. By the time the sun set, she was dead on her feet.
Sofia locked up the golf course gates and switched off the sub-panel that controlled the lights, music, and water system. She could hear Charlotte teasing Gavin behind the counter of the snack bar while they cleaned up after what had been a very busy shift. Their adolescent sparring made her smile, despite a pounding headache. She’d wagered their banter would turn into a full-blown romance, and she’d been right. As long as it didn’t interfere with the pouring of fountain drinks and the soft-serve machine operation, she was all in favor of their puppy-love.
Listening to them was a bittersweet reminder. Like her teenage employees, she’d cut her dating teeth behind that very window, but their awkward flirtation lodged behind her breastbone like a stone. No matter how many boys flirted back, no matter how much laughter rang through those seemingly endless days, she’d had to go home to a broken father and loneliness that carved out her heart. She couldn’t help pitying Charlotte and Gavin a little. Like her stay in Hampton, such loves weren’t destined to outlast the summer.
By the time Charlotte’s father came to pick the pair up after work, Sofia’s restless melancholy had settled in to stay. She changed into more comfortable clothes and sought solace on the cool, damp sand.
The beach never really slept in the summer. Even now, a little past midnight, the tide sneaking in quietly, the sand cool between her toes, there were others around. It had always been like that. The visitors came for the aging rock stars and comedians playing at the Casino, the fried dough stands, and the promise of the cold Atlantic water to soothe their ill-advised sunburns. But when the sun faded and the neon lights came on, Ocean Boulevard got a second wind, and those seeking a break from the hustle and jangle of the arcade and the crush of young people preening came down to the silvery beach.
Sofia chose her spot with some care, sitting on the slight rise above the high tide line. She gave a pair of young lovers some space, and kept far enough away from a group of kids with illicit sparklers to avoid trouble from the Beach Patrol. Before her mother had died, she’d been the instigator, begging her father to light sparklers and Roman candles off from the beach, dancing in the moonlit surf. Even her Dad had danced back then.
Her childhood curled in on the tide, crashing at her feet. She probed the memories tentatively. She’d had ten years to bury them, and bury them she had, but this place had been her home.
The winter was a different animal for a year-round resident of a summer vacation town. A mile inland life went on, autumn eased the transition from blistering summer to snowy chill, but here on the shoreline, there were fewer leaves to turn. The tourist season ended, the clam-shacks and pizza-by-the-slice counters shuttered. The quiet descended. Except for the few restaurants that stayed open to cater to the Casino Ballroom patrons, the strip went dormant.
When her mother’s sunshine warmed those long, dark days by the shore, she hadn’t noticed the cold. She’d gone merrily off to school every morning. Coming home in the afternoon to find her mother making homemade linguine or a big pot of Bolognese had banished a salty north wind. The second floor units were rented out to groups of UNH students in the off-season, usually trios or quartets of brave young guys willing to stick out the winter and the drive into Dover for classes in order to live cheap. Elena Costa Buck’s cooking became something of an off-campus legend. If you r
ented at Buck’s Landing, Mrs. Buck would cook for you a few times a week.
Those dinners had been spicy and rich in conversation—warm, cozy, boisterous meals. Even without their boarders, home was all music and laughter and warmth. Her mother’s laugh was infectious, her beauty unmatched on the boulevard. Her Dad’s rugged good looks and larger than life humor made life on the New Hampshire coastline an endless adventure. They’d been three against the world, a family.
A cold lick of seawater touched her toes, and Sofia realized the tide was fully in. She hitched up the hems of her wide-legged linen trousers. She was startled when Silas dropped down on the sand next to her.
“I used to catch your Dad down here from time to time. Same spot.”
She didn’t turn, didn’t encourage him to stay. Childish, though it might be, she wanted to be alone with her bad mood. “It’s right across the street from the Landing. I suspect it’s just convenient.”
“I was taking care of a few things. I saw you come down here.” He reached up to stroke her hair; a pleasant shiver ran down her back, but the onslaught of memories wouldn’t let her go. When he spoke, he seemed to think she’d come down here to commune with her father’s ghost. “I only knew your dad for a few months, but liked him a lot.”
Grief swelled up. Anger formed a seawall to keep it at bay. Her quiet response belied the storm inside. “I haven’t been home in ten years, Silas. I didn’t even know him.”
Silas slipped his shoes off and pulled them up next to him. He dug into the sand with his feet before folding his legs into a cross-legged position and reaching down to sift the beach through his fingers. “Your dad told me you used to like to fish.”
His calm diffused some of her fury, and Sofia laughed bitterly. “I did. That was a long time ago.”
“He said you were always riding your bike down to the lobster pounds and the sport-fishing places, hanging around the marinas. While it was okay to drop a line across the bridge, what you really wanted was to go out on a boat and fish.”
“I’ve still never fished from a boat.” Finding a smooth stone, she worried it between her fingers as the old longing for the open ocean swamped her. “There was never enough money when I was little, and after my mom… It just never happened.”
“He said that he wanted to buy a Boston Whaler to take you out, but I sometimes wondered if he was talking about the little girl he lost, or the woman he didn’t know anymore.”
“He stopped caring.” She fought fresh tears. “My mom died when I was eleven. She had a congenital heart defect. She just crumpled one day, while the marinara was cooking. Dad went from a guy who liked a can of High Life after dinner, or maybe a little glass of Mom’s homemade limoncello, to a bottomless whiskey bottle of grief and bitterness. Did he tell you that?” She pulled her hand away. “I’m like her. You’ve seen the photos. Same skin, same dark eyes and hair. He couldn’t bear to look at me because I reminded him that the love of his life was dead.”
“Is that what you thought?”
“It’s what I know!” Sofia pitched the stone into the surf. “What could you possibly know about it? You were my father’s neighbor for half a year. He was a miserable drunk for half my childhood.”
The outburst left her feeling exposed. Solitude no longer appealed. She leaned into Silas, craving his steadiness.
“Did I ever tell you how I met him?”
His voice rumbled under his skin where her cheek pressed against his shoulder. She shook her head slightly.
“The second day I was in town was a crazy warm day for January, maybe forty-five or fifty degrees and sunny. I walked up from the motel I was checked into on Ashworth and headed south along the shore.”
Sofia pulled her knees up close to her chest to ward off the breeze. Silas went on with his story.
“I heard a saw, which seemed somehow out of place, so I walked up to the boardwalk to check it out. There was a guy—your dad—under the awning at Buck’s Landing, with sawhorses and a table saw set up. He looked up and waved, just a casual greeting to a welcome stranger. That was when I saw the For Sale sign on the market building. I bought it that day.” He scooped up a handful of sand. “In a way, your Dad led me to where I am. I didn’t even see inside until I’d already made an offer.”
Bitterness flooded her mouth like venom. Everyone was an expert on Jimmy Buck, but none of them had lived through her mother’s death with the man. “I don’t need your stories about how great he was, Silas. Like I said, I didn’t even know that man. The one I knew wouldn’t have welcomed a stranger. He didn’t even welcome his own child.”
“People change, Sofia.”
The seawall around her emotions cracked, and the words poured through, hot and vicious. “My father drowned his grief in booze and let the business fall apart while he chased my mother’s ghost through the house. I lost them both when she died. I spent six years figuring out how to get out of town, and then after college I left. I left and I never came back. I made a life for myself, goddammit. I left a job I worked my ass off to be the best at, a beautiful little condo in a neighborhood I like, to come here because my father had the unmitigated gall to die.” A sob broke her voice.
A summer’s worth of unshed tears spilled over. She pushed up, away from Silas and memories and unwanted sympathy, but his big, warm hand held her tight.
Desire and instinct warred within her. Her body ached for his touch, for the playful intimacy that had woven itself into the fabric of their days, but the violence of her emotions, the driving, white-hot rage her father’s legacy brought out in her had finally surfaced, and she was terrified there was no turning back. Silas turned to her, eyes glittering in the reflected streetlight from the boardwalk. He had only wanted to comfort; it wasn’t his fault that the heat between them was too much to resist. Desire won out. Her heart won out. She tucked up her trousers and settled uneasily on the sand, still trying to keep some distance between them. He reached for her anyway.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Comforting you,” he said, sliding his hand up her arm.
~~~
He saw it in her eyes, the battle between fight and flight. He told himself he was ready for either one. Then he caught it, the slightest softening.
“I don’t need comforting.” Her words didn’t match the husky delivery.
He stretched up, stroked her cheek, his other hand still resting just above her elbow. Her body was strung tight. “Of course you don’t.”
So easy to slide his fingers into all that silky, dark hair. So easy to draw her face in close. She smelled like the cool sand, like salt and summer air, but underneath was something more complex. Searching out the source, he whispered over her jaw line and inhaled the fragrance of the fine skin behind her ear. Perfume, fresh and floral, but musky, and then underneath that, a spicy note that he knew to be all her own. He inhaled again, this time pressing his lips to taste the smooth column of her throat.
An audible sigh escaped her lips, and she turned into him.
He’d once heard that drowning was a pleasant way to die, that the mind slipped into bliss in the final moments. It had always seemed far-fetched to him, but when her lips sought his out in the darkness, when her hair and her scent closed out the percussion of the coming tide, when the air he breathed thickened like water in his lungs, he understood. This was drowning and it was bliss.
He shifted, tested the depth of contact. She yielded; the kiss turned him over and he lost himself. He’d expected to spar with her; the tenderness that washed over him left him defenseless. Her lips parted against his, her hands drifted up to press against his chest, but not in protest. From his chest, up and around his neck, her fingers searched out his bare skin. The taste of her pulled him in.
Her tongue teased his lips, tangled with his, even as she melted against him, rocking him into the sand. His hands coasted down her back, pulling her close with a growl of pleasure. Her skin, exposed between the tank she wore under the flimsy wrap
and her linen pants, was warm under his palms and he wanted more, but she was pushing away, scrambling for purchase in the loose sand.
For the second time that night, Silas followed her. A few months of morning runs on the beach gave him the advantage. Grabbing his sneakers, he loped off after her over the manmade dunes. He caught up with her before she’d gone very far, just where the beach parking lot ended at Haverhill Avenue.
“Please, Sofia. Don’t push me away.”
She whirled on him, fire in her eyes, moonlight on her skin.
There was none of the melting tenderness of before. This kiss scorched, burned. Her mouth was hot and insistent on his. He should have been offended, or at least turned off, by her hot and cold routine, but she was winding her hands up in his shirt and hauling him up against her body. He was helpless to resist.
“Sofia,” he whispered against her lips. “I want you.”
“Yes.” Her reply was almost a whimper.
Not one to waste an opportunity, he angled his lips and plundered. He took her invitation, exploring her with tongue and teeth, wrapping her in his arms, filling his senses with her. Even her flavor was ice and fire. He slid his hands up under her top; the muscles of her back flexed beneath his palms as she stretched up and closer. He circled her ribcage with his fingers, brushing satin and lace, teasing the underside of her breasts.
He forced himself to break the kiss. They were bordering on public indecency. He chuckled, still breathing hard.
“Upstairs?”
They made it as far as her landing, but he was part of the fire now, burning as hot as she did. She moaned and pressed herself against the door, hips jangling the keys in the lock. Silas leaned in, one hand slipping between her bra and the softness of her flesh, the other cupping her ass and pulling her up tight against him. She could have no illusions about how much he wanted her. Pushing the wrap from Sofia’s shoulders, drawing her camisole up, he brushed her nipple with his thumb. She gasped, sighed, shoved at the waistband of his jeans.
Buck's Landing (A New England Seacoast Romance) Page 7