Quinn shook her head, not sure what emotion the news should inspire in her. “Give a boi a fish and she’ll make you a sandwich. Give her a fishing pole, and suddenly she’s an expert on local tides and currents.”
Hal cast again, and this time Quinn remained sitting up to watch. She liked the warmth of the sun on her shoulders, she liked the gentle lapping of the tide against the rocks, she liked the scent of salt in the air. Mostly, though, she liked the sight of Hal, her body tan and boldly outlined against the blue horizon. She cut such a compelling profile, strong and competent, and Quinn felt a familiar stirring in the pit of her stomach. Only this time the warmth spreading there didn’t head directly south. Instead it crept up toward her heart. This wasn’t the incendiary flame that always inspired her to rip Hal’s clothes off, but it didn’t lack the strength or the pull toward her. If anything, its complexity made it hard to resist, and harder to file away into some tidy box labeled “lust” or even “attraction.”
“Got another one,” Hal called again as her line went taut once more, but as soon as she began to reel it in, the line went slack.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Hal reeled the line all the way in and inspected her clean hook. “Something took my bait and spit out the hook.”
“Smart fish.”
“A little too smart for a fish,” Hal muttered as she slid another anchovy onto the hook, then stood up and cast again.
This time the line had barely been in the water a minute before it dipped low and tight. Hal jerked back hard to set the hook, but once again it refused to bite on whatever had bitten it. She started to wind it up slowly, but then froze, her eyes scanning the water.
“What is it?”
“There.” She pointed to a spot a few yards from where the line dipped below the surface.
Quinn saw the water ripple as a slick, black head emerged, followed by two black eyes and a set of wiry, white whiskers. “Oh my God. It’s a seal.”
“A thieving seal.”
“He’s so cute.”
“Don’t let his looks fool you. He’s only here to rob us blind.”
“Hal,” Quinn scolded, “how can you say that about such an adorable seal? A seal! I’ve never seen one before.”
“They have them at the zoo in Buffalo.”
“I mean in the wild.” She got to her feet for a better view. The little guy watched them as intently as she watched him. “He’s so close. Give me an anchovy.”
“No. It’s not good to feed them.”
“What’s the difference between me tossing him one and you feeding him one on a hook?”
“The hook, but I’m not trying to—”
“Right, mine won’t have a hook in it, so it’s safer.”
“It’ll teach him to eat people food,” Hal warned.
“First of all, anchovies are barely people food. Second of all, I think he’s already learned how to eat them.”
Hal sighed and gave her an exasperated look, eyebrows raised and shoulders slumped.
Quinn pursed her lips in a pout. “Please?”
Hal shook her head but grabbed another anchovy from the can in her tackle box. “Come down here.”
Her smile stretched her cheeks as she slid off her rock and onto Hal’s lower one.
“Hey, little buddy. You want a snack?”
“He’s already had two,” Hal grumbled, and Quinn nudged her with her elbow.
“Here it comes.” She held the anchovy in her fist, then rearing back, lobbed it toward the seal. It landed within a few feet of him, and he quickly dove to catch it, his tail flicking up a little splash as he went. They both waited and watched the water until the seal surfaced again only a couple yards from where the fish had landed.
“Do you think he got it?” Quinn asked, clutching Hal’s arm.
“Yeah. I think he got it.”
“Really?” She couldn’t tell. The seal looked the same as he had a moment ago.
Hal didn’t reply, and Quinn tore her attention from the seal to meet her eyes. There was something deep and sweet, amused and caring swirling there. Quinn clearly saw it all but had no method for making sense of the mix. “What are you thinking?”
Hal shrugged and turned away, suddenly busying herself with the tackle box. “Nothing. I never pegged you for someone who’d go all soft at the sight of a cute seal is all.”
“Maybe you pegged me wrong.”
“Yeah.” Her voice sounded a little choked. “I think I did.”
Quinn didn’t push her anymore. She didn’t want to know what she meant. She didn’t want to know if Hal’s chest felt the same tightness she’d experienced earlier, and even more than that, she didn’t want to know if Hal had a word for that feeling, because she was almost certain now she wouldn’t like it.
“You going to keep fishing?”
“No point to it. Either your little friend steals my bait, or he’s somewhere eating the fish I want to catch.”
“Do you have enough fish for dinner?”
“Oh yeah, if I can find a few things to go with it, I can still make you quite the feast.”
“Lucky me,” Quinn said, trying to recapture their playful tone as she started to climb back onto the higher rock, but about halfway up she looked back over her shoulder and caught Hal staring at her ass. Her smile was slow as her emotions returned to a level she was more accustomed to.
“Lucky me, too,” Hal said, then wrapped an arm around Quinn and pulled her back down. “I apparently get an amazing dinner and a show.”
“If the dinner is as amazing as you seem to think it’ll be, you might get more than that.”
Hal kissed her quickly, on the mouth, right out in the open, causing a thrill to shoot up her spine. “How about an appetizer?”
“I’m not sure I could focus on an appetizer with such an obvious reminder of the main course,” Quinn quipped.
Hal arched an eyebrow. “How so?”
She pushed off again and climbed back up to her rock before saying, “You smell like fish.”
Hal laughter followed her up the breakwater. “Actually, now you do too. How about showers, then dinner, then maybe something a little better for dessert?”
Quinn thought about that as she collected her beach blanket. Yes, dessert. Light, airy, sweet, and without any pretense of something more. Dessert didn’t try to pass itself off as the main course. Dessert knew exactly what it was, and it was awesome.
“Dessert sounds more up my alley.”
Hal already had a handful of olive oil and sea salt-coated asparagus on the small grill when Quinn came up from the cabin. Her long blond hair still damp from the shower, she’d slipped into another pair of shorts and one of Hal’s T-shirts, with a picture of a whisk and a caption that read, “Whip it real good.” If the message wasn’t enough to make her smile, the fact that Quinn clearly wasn’t wearing a bra would have been enough to push her into a new level of joy.
“What’s that smug little grin for?” Quinn asked.
“You look good in my clothes. Maybe you should keep that one.”
“I might. I could wear it to board meetings, lighten up the mood.”
“Go figure, all those times in Buffalo I thought you were dressed for a sailing excursion off Cape Cod,” Hal said, pouring a glass of white wine. “But when I finally get you on a sailboat off Cape Cod, you dress like you’re from Buffalo.”
Quinn laughed and accepted the glass. “I like to keep you on your toes.”
“Oh you do. Up on my toes and back on my heels, all parts of my feet engage around you.”
“And you always do such a lovely tap dance I can’t help but want more.”
Hal looked up and met Quinn’s eyes. They’d gone a shade darker, causing her to wonder if she meant what she’d just said. “Do you really want more?”
Quinn sat on the curved bench seat and sighed. “That’s the question to end this trip on, isn’t it?”
“I’d hoped we could avoid
it until tomorrow morning,” Hal admitted. “But it’s out there now.”
“I don’t suppose we could throw it back into the ocean like the ugly fish you caught?”
Hal smiled in spite of the seriousness they were avoiding. She grabbed the plate of fish fillets she’d descaled and boned. “Look at these now, all cleaned up. If you hadn’t seen it until this moment, what would your first impression be?”
Quinn sighed and bit her lip before smiling. “I’d probably think it was perfect.”
“Perfect,” Hal repeated as she stacked all the asparagus to one side.
“Yes,” Quinn said more wistfully, “perfect.”
Hal laid the fish out on the grill and basked in the glow of being right.
“But what about you?”
“Me?” Hal asked, still focused on adjusting a few coals.
“Can you look at me now like you’re seeing me for the first time? Without all the stuff that came between us before?”
The question seeped in, trapping her breath painfully in her chest. She did see Quinn. She saw her beautifully open before her, surrounded by the earliest orange fringes of sunset across the tranquil harbor. She was golden and stunning, her eyes deeper and more inviting than the water. Hal fought the urge to look away.
“What?” Quinn asked. “Did I ask too much of you?”
“No. I mean, yes and no.” She rubbed her face. “You didn’t ask too much. But maybe you are too much.”
“Thank you?”
Hal sat down beside her and took her hand, looping her pale fingers through her own. “I see you, Quinn. I see how beautiful you are, how smart, how committed, how strong, and I want to linger in this perfect moment with you.”
“But?”
“There’s no but. There should be, but there’s not. I like you, Quinn. A lot. And whether it’s right or wrong, I want to be with you.”
“Really?” All the nervousness and insecurity fled Quinn’s expression, and her smile spread so wide it crinkled the corners of her eyes.
She seemed so young, so innocent, so hopeful, Hal couldn’t resist hugging her. “Really.”
Quinn melted into her embrace, her lips pressed into the crook of Hal’s neck as she murmured, “Me too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I want to be with you too.”
Hal’s chest, which had been warm before, seemed to ignite with a swell of fireworks larger than any they’d seen in Boston. “Well, okay then. I hear admitting it is the first step.”
Quinn kissed her cheek and whispered, “So, what are we going to do now?”
“Well, we . . .” She didn’t really know. She’d never been here before, and she got the sense Quinn hadn’t either, and still it felt like something should come next. “I think we could . . . eat dinner?”
Quinn laughed. “Eat dinner?”
“What, did you mean something more? ’Cause I don’t really know. I mean, the whole wanting-to-be-with-someone-who-wants-to-be-with-me thing is new. Should there be flowers or paperwork?”
“Paperwork?”
“I don’t know. You’re the banker. I’m just a chef, hence the dinner.”
Quinn caught Hal’s face between her palms and touched their foreheads together before kissing her lightly on the mouth. “You’re not just a chef. You’re the perfect chef. And dinner with you sounds like perfection.”
“Perfection,” Hal repeated.
Yes, maybe that’s what they had found.
“You just like making me admit I was wrong,” Quinn said as she fought the urge to lick her dinner plate clean.
“It is one of my new favorite hobbies,” Hal said before she popped the last spear of asparagus from her plate into her mouth. “What, are you admitting to being wrong about now?”
“I’m going to ignore the implication there might be more than one thing on the table at the moment and say I shouldn’t have doubted your resolve or your skill when it comes to food.”
“You shouldn’t doubt my skill or resolve when it comes to anything,” Hal said in that lower register her voice often took when the subject turned intimate.
“Right again. I’m sorry I did.”
“It’s okay. As I said earlier, I misread you too.”
“How so?”
“You’re not a soulless corporate raider.”
“Lucky me.”
“Lucky me, too.” Hal grinned and leaned back on the bench seat. “I was pretty upset with you most of the time for the first few weeks after we met. You just wouldn’t go away.”
“Did you really want me to?”
“Yes. Or at least I thought I did, but honestly if I’d really wanted to get rid of you, I could have. I kept leaving the door open, and I hated myself for that, but I couldn’t seem to stop.”
“You didn’t leave the door open very wide,” Quinn said, remembering all the bartering and back channeling she’d had to do. “You were awful surly.”
“I was, wasn’t I?” Hal grinned. “I even bordered on rude.”
“Bordered on?”
“Maybe I crossed the line a time or two, but I never could push you out.”
“Why were you trying so hard?”
“You mean aside from the fact that you were pushy and bossy and nosy, and that you’d inserted yourself into my personal business and tried to make me into something I didn’t want to be?”
Quinn smiled and took another sip from her wine glass. “Of course, other than that.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I just always knew you had the power to wreck me when you left, and I wanted to get that part over with.”
“Hal.” All the air left her lungs with that one name.
“It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”
“It’s not yours either, you know?”
Hal nodded and looked out across the water toward the setting sun. “It doesn’t really matter whose fault it is. But I think it was never really you I worried about. I saw in you everything I’d never let myself be. You wanted something, you admitted it, you went after it, and you made no apologies along the way.”
“It’s the only way I know. Being passive never got me anything but disappointment. I learned early that other people only ever let me down. If I wanted something, I had to do it myself, and I had to do it all the way.”
“Funny, I learned the same lesson about being disappointed in other people, but instead of going after the things I wanted on my own, I just learned to stop wanting them. I cultivated contentment like other people cultivate gardens. I worked every single minute on learning to make what I had be enough.”
Quinn frowned at the thought of Hal giving up parts of herself, her dreams, her goals, her desires because she didn’t think she had any chance of achieving them.
“Don’t feel sorry for me. In a lot of ways, I think I got the better end of the deal.”
“How so?”
“Just look at your life, Quinn. You work all the time. You never let down your guard. You never just enjoy the moment.” Hal’s tone was not hard or judgmental so much as sad. “You’re fighting to hold onto the idea of a distant future and putting so much pressure on yourself to build the world in your image. When do you ever get to enjoy anything for what it is?”
The sailboat rocked gently in the wake of a larger vessel trolling by as Quinn let Hal’s words sink in. Oddly, she didn’t have the urge to defend herself. Seeing Hal’s freedom, her friendships, the easy way she moved through the world had already made it clear to her what she’d been missing. Sitting here now in the most beautiful spot she’d ever seen with an amazing woman so close that they had nothing between them but the shared desire to be together, she couldn’t help but doubt the importance of the future she’d worked so hard for.
“We’ve both had the same problem and handled it in opposite fashions only to find out we’ve both been doing it wrong.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Here, apparently,” Quinn said, her smile breaking
through once more. “And here doesn’t seem such a bad place to be.”
“No,” Hal agreed. “It sure doesn’t. Go figure. All of those things we put ourselves through, and all the things we put each other through, and we both end up together and happy in exactly the same spot. Seems like there’s a lesson in that somewhere.”
“Probably.”
“Any idea about what it might be?”
She thought for a moment, then pressed her lips together. “Maybe it’s one of those things we’re not capable of putting into words yet.”
“Is it something that can be put into action?”
“Maybe.”
“Could it be put into action by me doing something I really want to do?” Hal asked, “something I’ve never let myself want with anyone else?”
“I suppose, so long as I’m open to living in the moment along with you.”
“Are you?”
She didn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”
“Then I want to make love to you, Quinn. I want to hold you all night. I want to wake up tomorrow knowing that wherever we have to go, we’ll try to get there together. I want more than a roll in the hay—or the sailboat cabin, as the case may be.” Hal smiled nervously. “I want to know you and please you and be close to you. I want to let myself need you and open up to you and have you open up to me, too.”
Quinn couldn’t speak through the emotion gathered in her throat. A proposal like that didn’t fall anywhere in her five-year plan, and yet she’d never encountered a more beautiful detour. She nodded, and taking Hal’s face in her hands once more, kissed her soulfully. God, she wanted her so badly, in all the ways she’d just mentioned and more. She wanted her tonight and tomorrow, here and back home. She wanted her inside and out, and she wanted to never ever outgrow the wanting.
The kiss wasn’t hurried. For the first time, the possibilities between them felt as vast and endless as the water around them.
Chapter Eighteen
Hal relaxed into the kiss, tasting salt and wine as she explored the corners of Quinn’s mouth. She had the time and the inclination to get to know every part of her. She kissed the edge of her lips, then moved across her cheek and back to the tip of her nose. The fire between them didn’t roar or lick at her flesh so much as it spread slowly, like the orange glow of the setting sun fanning out across the harbor. She lifted her fingertips to lightly trace the strong line of Quinn’s jaw. She ran her thumb softly along her lower lip and smiled as Quinn kissed it, then caught her hand and kissed the top of each finger. Quinn placed another kiss in the center of her palm, then a slower, more sensual one on the soft skin of her wrist. Hal couldn’t tear her eyes away.
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