by Zana Bell
She stared at him blankly.
“My job. Construction. I’m a steelworker. I do the high-rise stuff.”
“What—skyscrapers?” Light began to dawn. “Are you one of those lunatics who teeter out on the beams hundreds of feet in the air? Who eat lunch sitting with feet dangling over the most terrible drops?”
“That’s me. A lunatic. Though it’s not so dangerous if you keep your wits about you and use common sense. We aren’t a bunch of cowboys up there. Hard hats are professionals who know the risks and work around them.”
She found this new aspect of him hard to take in. “I thought you were, you know, building houses.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, well…”
Her eyes narrowed. “Alicia doesn’t know, does she?”
“No, she doesn’t, and you’d better not tell her. She’d just worry.”
“Unbelievable. There she is, thrilled you aren’t doing stunts, happy you’re going safely to work each day.” Cressa shook her head as she leaned on the tiller and gazed at him. His black hair was blowing back, leaving his face stark and strong. Wrestling huge steel girders high up in the sky—no wonder he was in such fantastic shape. “Why do you do it?”
“It’s far better money than working on the ground. Besides, I enjoy it. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a job.”
Except it wasn’t. Once again he’d shattered her preconceptions. Just when she thought she was getting to know him, he revealed another side to his personality. For him, though, the topic was closed.
“I’m hungry. When’s lunch?”
“Minutes away.”
She steered them into a small cove on one of the islands, out of the wind. Adam went forward, but as he was dropping anchor, something in the water caught his attention. “What the hell?”
She heard a splash as he vaulted over the side of the boat into the sea.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CRESSA LEAPED FOR THE railing. “Adam?”
“Here.”
Then she saw he was swimming toward three dolphins circling the boat. She immediately stripped to her bikini and jumped in, too. The water was pure ice, and she gasped as Adam arrived beside her. “This is mad. We ought to have wetsuits.”
“I know,” he said, shivering violently, eyes alight with excitement. “But I wasn’t sure how long these guys would stick around. Now where are they?”
He spun in the water, and as if on cue, a huge gray shape rose beside him. Cressa yelped. Even though she’d swum with dolphins ten years earlier, she’d forgotten how enormous they were up close. And how spellbinding. The water around them churned as the dolphins wove around them and one another, coming near enough to touch. She forgot to be cold, forgot to be scared. Adam laughed in delight.
“This is incredible.”
This communion with wild creatures in their own habitat felt almost spiritual. Cressa had grown up in the water, but all of a sudden she was vividly aware that she was in their world. The largest dolphin rose and sank again, his muscular flank passing inches in front of her face. His skin was rough, she saw, scarred and nicked all over. A livid scar ran across his brow, as long as the one down Adam’s back. Somehow this made him seem more real. He, too, had battled. Suffered. Lived to fight another day.
As he surfaced again, he paused. Mesmerized, Cressa stared straight into his eye. He only glimpsed her world as he jumped out of the water, but he knew intimately his own underwater mountains and valleys, caverns and canyons. Places she’d never go.
As the dolphin held her gaze, the surrounding scene faded. Sea and sky melded together, and the sounds of water against boat and Adam’s soft splashes went mute. Just she and the dolphin existed. Intelligence glistened in that eye, and it was as if he could see right inside her. Could see all that had happened, but made no judgment. Still he held her gaze, going deeper and deeper into her core. She felt hot tears brimming in her eyes. Felt her chest, her throat, constrict. The dolphin seemed to be nodding and smiling at her, and she found herself nodding and smiling, too.
Then he was gone. All the dolphins were gone, and she was shivering and brushing her tears hastily aside as Adam said, “Oh, wow. I can’t believe it. That was the most mind-blowing experience of my life.”
Back in the cockpit, they stumbled on numbed feet as they pulled towels out of bags, giggling as they collided, in the grip of almost hysterical euphoria.
“Damn pants,” Adam muttered. Having wrestled the button and fly open with icy fingers, he was hopping on one leg as he fought to peel the jeans off the other. He lost balance and sat with a bump. “Ow!”
Cressa laughed at him, but said, “Here, let me help,” as she grabbed the cuffs and pulled. The wet material was heavy and obdurate, and her hands were so cold she couldn’t get a grip, but the jeans suddenly slipped off in a rush and she toppled backward. It was Adam’s turn to laugh.
“Dumb and dumber. But thanks.”
Then she got tangled with towels and wet hair that had come loose in the water, so Adam said, “Here, I’ll help.” He wrapped the towel around her while she held her hair on top of her head, and he rubbed feeling back into her arms, her shoulders. It was glorious to be enveloped in the warmth of the rough towel, and as circulation returned, so too, did her senses. She became conscious of his brown torso close to her face, his arms enfolding her as he toweled her back vigorously. It was like being a kid again, except she hadn’t had thoughts like this when she was a kid. He smelled clean and salty. She wanted to lean into him, rub against him, arching like a cat.
He knelt to rub her legs, but here the efficient rubbing faltered. His movements became slower as the towel shifted from calves and shins to her thighs. His face was directly in line with her bikini bottoms. The rubbing slowed almost to stroking. She could feel the shape of his hands through the towel.
He swallowed. His hands paused. Their light pressure on the backs of her thighs zinged all nerve endings in her body, sending them into an agony of anticipation. For a second she and Adam both remained absolutely still. Then he was getting to his feet, clearing his throat.
“Warmer?” His voice was husky and he didn’t look at her.
“Mmm.” She had to clear her throat, too. “Thanks.”
She went down into the cabin to get some clothes. To work out what was happening. Why had he pulled back? Was she misreading signals again? He constantly left her off balance—she, who was usually so sure of things.
She wrapped a sarong around her waist, pulled on Alicia’s top and went halfway up the ladder, then paused, feeling suddenly self-conscious to be in something so feminine. The sun was hot through the muslin.
Adam turned to her. “You look nice.”
His tone was light, but the expression in his black eyes hollowed her stomach. He’d tied a towel around his waist. Nope, she wasn’t misreading signals at all. Well, two could be off balance, Adam Walker. “Thanks.”
She leaned over to check a cleat that didn’t need checking, so that the neck of her top gaped softly. “Lunch?”
“What?” Adam blinked, cleared his throat once more and became intensely interested in rubbing his thumb over some worn varnish on the tiller. “Lunch? Oh, yeah. Right. Good idea.”
Smiling to herself, she went back down to the galley.
ADAM ATE A GOOD LUNCH, the sea air having sharpened his already healthy appetite. He wished other appetites could be so easily assuaged. Maybe if he and she just did it, then it would be out of their systems. Cressa made it perfectly plain all she wanted was fun.
With the sea, the sun, the wind, the open spaces, he felt alive again. Not that he was backing down on his study, but he was stale. Stale and tired. Tired of chemistry and physics and essays. As far back as he could remember, they’d dominated his life. Surely a guy could take some time for fun. Have his reward for hard work. Especially with Cressa putting out all those signals.
When they set sail again, the enormous gusts had dropped to a steady wind and the waves had flattened. Clouds we
re massing low on the horizon, but the sun was warm. He lay on his back, staring up at the sky, feeling full and lazy. The cramped walls of his bedroom seemed a million miles away. “What’s with New Zealand and clouds? How come you never have a cloudless sky?”
“Aotearoa,” said Cressa.
“Say what?”
“Aotearoa, Land of the Long White Cloud, the Maori name for New Zealand. Pretty, isn’t it?”
Damn, but she looked pretty herself, dressed in that blouse, with her hair loosely tied in a ponytail. He could make out the hazy outline of her low-cut bikini top under the blouse that had just one ribbon at the neckline….
“Land of the Long White Cloud. Sums it up. That would make Texas Land of the Long Straight Road, I guess.”
She laughed as she leaned forward to adjust a sheet. Her sarong fell open, revealing her leg. Why did he continue to resist? He’d have fun. She’d have fun. She could add him to her tally. The skier, the archaeologist, the Texan. Why the hell not?
Lying down was beginning to make him strangely dizzy, so he sat up and dangled his legs into the cockpit, scant inches from her. “Cressa, what’s the real reason you left Brian?”
She was taken aback. “Where did that come from?”
“You never gave me a straight answer. He seems perfect.”
In a Yale kind of way.
The boat was rolling over the water’s surface now, instead of bouncing as it had in the morning. Adam discovered he preferred the rougher ride. Cressa’s arm rested on the tiller. Tendrils of her hair floated on the breeze. The only sound was the shushing of the water below them. “He does everything perfectly. Would you want to marry someone like that?”
He smiled. “My ex-wife was anything but perfect.”
Cressa didn’t buy his cynical tone. “Yet you loved her.”
It was not a question.
“Yeah, I did.” He coiled a sheet and laid it down. He liked the precision of sailing. “So what happened?”
She adjusted the tiller, correcting their course. “There’s not much to say, really.”
“Okay. Give me the salient points only.”
He loved those half smiles of hers. They made him want to kiss her. He remembered her lips, soft and salty against his.
“Salient points? Well, we went out while I was at university. He’d already graduated. Everyone thought I was the luckiest girl to have him—I did myself. Our relationship was picture-perfect. Except, though I enjoyed accountancy, I couldn’t imagine being a suit, stuck in some big firm in downtown Auckland. And then…”
She leaned over to scratch an ankle. Through the thin material of the sarong he could see her thigh. He could almost feel its shape beneath his hands. As she straightened, she saw him watching her. Her eyes darkened and he caught that speculative glint in her eyes. Damn. If she made one of her moves now…
“So then?” he quickly prompted.
She resumed her position at the tiller, their course unchanged. Her eyes fixed on the horizon. “Then I found I was pregnant.”
So there it was, finally, the reef under her apparently smooth waters. He’d been so sure one existed.
“Brian immediately proposed.” She sounded outraged, then looked at Adam, head to one side. “Oh, man, you did the same, didn’t you?”
“Why do you make it sound like it’s the weirdest thing a guy can do?”
“A wedding’s not always the solution.”
He gave a short laugh. “So I learned.”
“Next thing I knew, Mum and Brian were planning the most beautiful wedding, complete with veil and a white dress with an appropriately full skirt to disguise the bump.”
Adam wondered if Crystal would have felt more married if she’d had a wedding like the one Cressa had fled.
Cressa continued, “Suddenly, I hadn’t just chosen the wrong career—I seemed to have fallen into the wrong life.” She paused and stared out over the water. “I didn’t dare tell anyone. It sounded so stupid. A great husband, a great job, a baby. What more could any girl wish for?”
She stopped speaking, focused on the waters in front of the boat. The hand not holding the tiller was braced on the seat beside him. Adam covered it with his. Knowing what had to come next, he couldn’t look at that stern, empty profile, so he, too, focused on the horizon. The way it tilted slowly up and down made him queasy.
“I miscarried at twenty-two weeks.” Adam squeezed her hand, but she pulled away. “These things happen.” Her voice was brusque. “Brian still wanted to marry, so plans went ahead, and well, you know the rest.”
“Running away was understandable. You needed space to grieve—”
She whirled on him. “Grieve? I was relieved, damn it. Everyone was treading around me on eggshells, ready with handkerchiefs and homilies, and there I was, thanking my lucky stars for my narrow escape. Can’t you understand?”
He wanted to but something was still missing. Her tone was adamant but there was pain in her eyes. Pain she wasn’t going to admit to. “Understand? About the marriage, sure. But not the baby. Crystal was a huge mistake, but Stella wasn’t. She was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Cressa’s eyes blazed on either side of her indomitable nose. “My problem is no one gets it! No one wants to get it. I just don’t believe in the picket fence, the happily-ever-after. Is that such a crime?”
The crime was that at this critical moment of confession and sharing and closeness, Adam was finding it hard to ignore the deadly slow, rolling motion.
“Whoa,” he said, leaning back, hands up in surrender. “You’ve made it clear what you want. Freedom and sailing off into the sunset, right?”
She eyed him. “It sounds trite when you say it like that, but yeah, along those lines.”
“Though why the hell you’d want to live on one of these things—”
He barely made it to the railing in time before he was thoroughly and horribly sick.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ADAM RECOVERED THE MINUTE his feet were on land again. Cressa had assured him lots of sailors got seasick, but he knew he’d put a serious dent into her image of him. He told himself this was a good thing. The Adam in her head was nothing like the Adam he really was.
Driving home through the darkness, they talked about movies, saying which ten they’d take to a desert island. There were no overlaps, which just went to show how different they were. Then he found an ancient CD in the glove compartment.
“Ah, your theme song.” And he put on “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” full volume.
“Corny!” Cressa leaned forward and turned down the sound. “And what’s so wrong with that, any way?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
The country road was dark and winding. It felt as if they were in their own little world, just the two of them. Cressa wasn’t driving her usual shit-or-bust style, and he was suddenly aware of her glancing sideways at him.
“So, a steelworker, eh? Walking across the beams so far off the ground must give you a rush. What’s it like?”
Oh, man. This was going to feed her already too lively imagination. “You boil in summer and freeze in winter. Mostly you don’t think of the height at all.”
His prosaic answer didn’t dampen her interest.
“It must be amazing, though—you’d have the most incredible views. What sort of safety gear do you use?”
He kept his eyes on the road ahead. “We don’t. Harnesses are as much a liability as a help. There are safety nets, but the chances of hitting one when you fall are very slim.”
“Wow. So you are literally risking your life every single working day.” She looked at him again, and even in the dark he could see the admiration in her eyes, hear the awe in her voice. “I don’t know anyone else who’d have the courage to do that. You must have absolutely no fear.”
“Oh, I feel fear, believe me. Just not with heights.”
She barely heard him. “Do you remember the other night? You said your dreams had changed. But
you know what? I reckon being a steelworker is not so different from being a trapeze artist, though it’s a lot more dangerous.”
All of a sudden, he knew this couldn’t continue. Somehow his secret had turned into a lie. It was making fools of them both. He had to put her straight once and for all. The truth would kill whatever it was she felt for him, but that would be all to the good. She’d stop pursuing, and then he wouldn’t have to keep fighting temptations that were fast becoming uncontrollable.
“Cressa, you’ve got it wrong. You’ve got me wrong. My dreams did change.” He wound down the window and the cold wind hit him in the face, sharpening his resolve. He turned to her. “I do steelwork because it pays well—real well—and because it gives me flexibility to pursue my true goal.” He drew in a deep breath. “I’m studying to be a doctor. I’m saving to pay my way through medical school.”
She laughed. “Yeah, right. A Brian in Texan leathers.” Then she glanced at him. “Oh, my God, are you serious? You are. But a doctor?” She shook her head as if to clear her ears. “How? Why?”
That was the trouble with women. Too many questions. If Cressa were a guy, she’d have said, “Medicine, huh. No kidding. So who do you think’ll win the Rose Bowl this year?”
Adam looked back at the road. It was pitch-black, in the middle of nowhere. “I told you that after my accident I had a year in and out of hospital.”
“Yup. Life, the universe and—oh. That was it? Becoming a doctor was the answer to the universe?” She was kidding, of course, but he could hear her underlying disbelief.
“It is the answer to my universe. I want to fix people. I want to be a surgeon.”
The Jeep swerved off the road and he slammed his hands against the dashboard. “Cressa! What the hell?”
The vehicle bumped onto the rough verge, the headlights now crazily lighting the trees immediately in front of them. Then she switched off the engine, plunging them into darkness. It was quiet, too. He could hear the crickets in the grass.
“I need to get things straight.” She leaned her arm on the steering wheel to face him. “This is the ‘stuff’ that’s been occupying you day and night these past weeks?” She was incredulous. “You’re studying?”