She had taken a long shower and was finally tucked inside her covers. It was dark inside her room—the moon had taken the night off and was behind the thick shroud of clouds in the sky. She heard the door to her room slowly open. She rose slightly to wait and hear who it was.
The silhouette came toward her, raising the sheet back from the other side of the bed. The male Adonis was easy to recognize, now that she’d seen him twice in the buff.
“Colin, what are you doing here? If your mom finds out, she’ll—”
He kissed her before she could finish. “I can’t seem to be able to get any rest in that bed alone, knowing you’re lying only three doors down, in this bed where it’s easy enough to be with you.” He touched her face tenderly. She tried to make out his features but it was too dark to see his intense blue eyes. “Is it possible I can just lay here for a few minutes and listen to you breathe?” He rose upon his bent arm, waiting for her reply.
She knew if they got caught, she’d probably be sent home immediately. But it didn’t matter. At least she’d have had one more time spent in his arms. And that was worth the embarrassment of being found out.
She placed her arm around him and he laid his head on her chest, calmly listening to the beating of her heart and stroking her arm.
“Your skin is so soft,” he said. “It’s like the angel hair Mom used to use on the Christmas tree. I could sleep with you every night, touching your skin.”
She pressed her eyes tight together. If only he could. This felt amazing. His strong arms made her feel as if the world could fall apart and she wouldn’t even know it. She wanted to feel him with her forever, only she knew it could never be. She stopped herself from fantasizing about the impossible. No matter how much conviction he thought he had to stand up to his father, she knew it would never be enough. Careers were one thing; people were another. If Jason wasn’t good enough for Mallory just because of his degree, Claire would never be good enough for Colin based on the fact she was an orphan living in Queens.
James Prescott scared her as a child with his stern words about how he felt things should be, and they usually were. From the menu for dinner to the restriction of going to the festival with his family wearing her blue sundress with the broken strap. She had to change it if she wanted to go. She was allowed, however, to wear one of Mallory’s. No, this thing with Colin would never happen. It couldn’t.
“Tell me about your bedroom at home. What’s it like? Do you have the pictures up of guys you’ve broken their hearts? Are there posters of boy bands taped to the ceiling?” He nuzzled his head close to hers and waited to hear her answer. She felt his short hair on her neck.
“Boy bands?” She nudged his arm. “I didn’t have any boy bands I really cared for.” She would never admit to the one on the back of her bathroom door. She’d found her mother never took it down after she moved for college. “Let me see. First, it won’t be my room for much longer. I’m moving when I return to New York. I have to find another apartment since my lease is up and the nasty landlord took a deposit from someone else.” She moved her hair from his face, so she could lay cheek to cheek with him.
“As far as it goes, I sleep on the sofa now. Mom used to, but when she became sicker, I moved her into my room. I never moved back in there. But before it was hers, I had a bed, and a floor-length mirror to which I would sing Britney Spears songs into while holding my mother’s bottle of hairspray. Mom painted the frame of it purple. It was her favorite color, and I didn’t care, if it made her happy.
“I don’t have any pictures really, just a dressing table. I have no idea where it came from. I think it was Mom’s before it was mine. The drawer hardware swivels back and forth, and the bottom right side is broken off altogether. I’m pretty sure I still have Easter candy in it, but I can’t open it to get it out. Anyway, I have a picture taped to the mirror of Chloe and me. She was my closest friend in school. We’re in a parking lot, holding pumpkins. I think it was taken when I was twelve. Her mother gave it to me. Other than that, I have my collection of postcards taped to the wall behind the door.”
“Postcards? From where?”
“Everywhere. All the places that exist in the world that I’ll never get to see, but dream to.”
“And how did you get them, if you were never there?”
“Mom’s friend at the airport. She’s a flight attendant. Her name is Veronica and she started getting me postcards from wherever she flew and would bring them back for Mom to give me.”
He rolled over on his side to look at her. “I can fly you to all those places myself, Claire.”
“Don’t you think you’re getting ahead of yourself? You have to know how to fly first.”
“That’s just a matter of schooling. I’m going to do it—watch me. I’m going to learn how to fly and we’re going to see the world.”
She touched his cheek. He was so determined and pitiful at the same time. She knew flying was something he wanted more than breathing itself. She could hear it in his conviction.
“God, you’re gorgeous.” He shook his head, staring at her.
“Not only can’t you see me in the dark, but you don’t have to continue to smooth talk me, Colin. We’ve already consummated this relationship.” Or whatever it was, for that matter. So far, it felt like a secret they’d both have to take to their graves.
Claire felt the need to guard herself from his compliments. She was certain it would go no further than the week she had left to spend there. And she couldn’t afford to have her heart broken by a guy. Not this year. This year was already monumentally the worst year of her life. Colin was great—perfect, in fact—but maybe he was just something to get her through a rough patch. That’s what she’d keep telling herself.
“Claire, you are the most difficult girl I’ve ever met to say sweet nothings to.”
“Sweet nothings? Did you just say sweet nothings?” She laughed low beneath the blankets.
“There you go again. Haven’t you ever read Shakespeare? Doesn’t every girl want a guy to tell her things like how her skin is soft, her eyes are like two endless worlds, swallowing him whole?”
“Only if they mean it, and not saying it because it’s something they read and figure they ought to. Colin, you don’t have to waste this good stuff on me. Save it for someone else.”
“I do mean it. I mean it with all that I am. Why are you becoming so cold and distant? You’re treating me like when we were ten and I dug that hole in the sand for you to trip.”
She nudged him. “That was awful of you. I am not. Maybe I’m keeping guard of myself. Maybe because I see how you can lie to your family without batting an eye. Why should I believe you’re telling me the truth, Colin?” She sat up in the bed and palmed her face. “Would you listen to me? You and all your ‘sweet nothing’ talk should mean nothing to me. Here I was, angry with you earlier for not telling your family about what we’re doing…you know what I mean. And how we feel about each other…well, never mind. We don’t feel anything, I’m sure. I know I agreed to the one-night stand thing.” She shook her head, and tried to figure this out. “Maybe I’m not ready for only a one-night stand, or a week-long stand, or whatever this is, Colin. It’s obvious I’m struggling to keep this in check for what it is. It’s only a quick detour at most to get both our minds off what’s real in our lives. After it’s over, I’ll still be alone and you’ll be at a job you dislike more than your father.”
“That’s not true, Claire. I was going to tell him tonight, but he’s watching that damned baseball game.” He flipped to his back, looking toward the ceiling, and let out a humph. “I’m going to tell him what I want, but I need to know first what you want.” He turned his head to look at her. “Do you want to go back to being lonely, or do you want to try out whatever this is and see where it takes us? It doesn’t have to end when we leave this house. I’d like to see you again. When we’re back in New York.”
The mere suggestion left an el
ephant on her chest. She couldn’t breathe. This feeling of sheer bliss could last longer than this week? And to have it, all she had to do was admit to the fact she wanted it more than anything she’d ever wanted before. Things like this only happened in the books she read.
“I guess I wouldn’t be opposed to taking it for a test drive. Maybe around the block just to be certain you’d hold up.” She began to laugh as he jumped on top of her, tickling her sides.
“Oh, see if I hold up, huh? I’ll show you how I hold up.”
He smothered her with a kiss that led to a quiet session of lovemaking. She tried to suppress her ecstasy with biting into the sheets. Their bodies stuck to each other from the sweat they shared. Her heart was officially thrown into the sacrificial altar of love when she accepted his proposition. It would either suffer with death or soar to new heights.
∞ ∞ ∞
When morning came, Claire woke up to the bright sunshine insisting her eyes to open. She looked beside her. Colin’s side of the bed was empty, the sheet pulled back where his body was the night before. She wondered whether it’d all been a dream. She dressed and crept to the end of the hall and opened his bedroom door. He was asleep underneath the covers, with the blinds drawn shut. It looked as if morning hadn’t made it to his room yet. Claire jumped on top of him and laid a kiss on his lips.
With groggy eyes, he opened them to see her. “Aren’t you little Miss Sunshine in the morning?”
“The sun woke me up. You should sleep with your curtains open, too. It’s good to be naturally awakened by the sun’s rays. At home, we don’t have shades on our windows.”
“Remind me to buy you an eye mask. I’ll slip it on you after you’ve fallen asleep. You wouldn’t believe what the power of sleeping late can do to a person.”
Without warning, he grabbed her and pushed her down on the other side of the bed, kissing her passionately until she felt the hardness of his body against her.
“Slow down, partner, unless—”
They both looked up in shock as Frieda stood in the little hall that led to his bedroom door, with her mouth agape, holding a clothes basket. “I’m sorry. I should’ve knocked. I thought you were downstairs at breakfast.”
Neither of them uttered a word. They waited until Frieda left and they heard the door shut.
Claire let out a loud sigh. “She won’t say anything, will she?” She was caught in the middle of not wanting to be a secret and not wanting to feel the wrath of Mr. Prescott when he found out what they’d been doing. She wasn’t sure he’d be so open-minded to their plan of seeing where things went. She remembered how Mallory said he couldn’t stand thinking Jason was the guy for her. She hoped it was because he sought a degree in social work and not because his family didn’t own anything more than a three-bedroom clapboard house in New Jersey and dreamed of being deep-sea divers. Claire was a certified geneticist with a promising job in research. What she lacked in upbringing, she made up for in aspiration for her future.
“I’ll talk to her.”
“No, let me talk to her. It’s better coming from a girl.”
Claire went back to her room and pulled on her shorts and shirt. Before heading into the dining room for breakfast, she noticed Frieda outside in the rose garden. She wore gardening gloves and her knees were buried in the rich, dark dirt.
“Good morning, Frieda,” Claire said.
“Good morning, Miss Claire. Sleep well?” She never looked up from snipping the dead buds from the bushes.
“About what you saw...”
“No business of mine what I saw.”
Claire shuffled her sandaled foot a few times in the lush grass. “It’s just that I thought you thought—”
“Makes no difference what I thought. The house has its own secrets to keep. They’re not mine. Don’t worry about me saying anything.”
“Thanks.” Claire wondered what she meant about the house having secrets.
Frieda rose up off her knees and grabbed the bucket of dead petals. “I’d ask myself how it would feel being kept secret, though.”
Claire turned back around. “Excuse me?”
“Is Colin going to tell his family about you and him, or—?”
“We’re just seeing if it’s anything to tell. If it is, I suppose he’ll tell them. Why?”
“No reason. It’s just that I’ve been taking care of this family it seems all their life and I haven’t seen one of them speak their mind about anything. Everyone’s too busy walking around on a minefield.” She pulled off one of her gloves and sucked on the end of her finger. Possibly a thorn had penetrated the green fabric. “One of these days, I’m afraid the whole thing is gonna blow up in their faces.”
Frieda walked away after she spoke.
Claire stood still, replaying the words in her mind. Either Frieda was teetering on dementia, or that woman knew things that could destroy the Prescott empire.
Chapter Seven
“I Love You”
“Colin, where are you taking me?” Claire saw he’d taken a right at the intersection, rather than the left that led downtown.
“I hooked us up with a private flight around the island. The instructor told me I can even take the controls to feel what it’s like to pilot the plane by myself.” His eyes became as large as fifty cent pieces, just like the little boy who’d gotten excited when his mother brought home a model plane for him to drive remotely around the side field of the house. Mallory and Claire saw very little of him that summer.
Claire’s anxiety level began to soar, higher than she ever wanted to experience from the air. “I’m not so good in planes, Colin. And that’s usually the commercial ones, with two hundred or so seats and a locked cockpit where I’m unable to see the pilot and all the buttons it takes to lift off into the clouds and stay lifted. I’m not so sure I can do two-seater tin-can models.”
“Do it for me?” He took her hand in his and pleaded, trying to stay on his side of the road.
She took a deep breath, teetering on thoughts of plummeting into the earth’s atmosphere and touching again on soil with all body parts intact. The last thing she wanted was to disappoint Colin. His father did enough of that already, and he looked so happy. His foot was tapping to the song playing on the radio and his smile was completely infectious. “All right, but the first time I’m scared, you’ll tell the pilot it’s time to come back?”
“Promise.” He crossed his heart.
“All right then. Let’s go earn you some wings!” she yelled.
He pulled into the parking space and grabbed her face for a quick kiss. “I love you.”
She opened her eyes quickly right before the contact of lip on lip. What did he just say? He must have caught that slipup, too. Instead of following through with the kiss, he was doing somewhat of a staring-off contest, and neither one was blinking.
“Did you just—”
“I did. It wasn’t planned, I promise, and if it freaked you out…” He didn’t finish his sentence.
She didn’t know what to think. She thought of her mother instantly, and what advice she’d give her. Stop being so guarded, more than likely. Claire had a problem with letting people get close to her. Especially now that she knew how completely lost she was without her mother. But she knew if she was ever going to find love, she’d have to open herself for the possibility of having her heart broken, too.
“Aren’t we still in the trying out period?” She eased back a few inches from his beautiful intense blue eyes. Not that she hadn’t already fallen madly in love with him. But she was waiting it out, for him to figure whether it was something he wanted, too. Guys usually didn’t figure it out until years into a relationship. This was sudden and completely a pinch-me moment for her.
“I mean, did you mean what you said, or was it just sheer excitement and adrenaline over being able to fly a plane and me agreeing to go with you? Risking life and limb.”
His eyes didn’t waver w
ith his answer. They stared at her, to the very core of her, and his words rang inside her ears. “I meant it. I do love you.”
Her heart leapt with joy. A thousand fireworks exploded inside her, setting off tinier ones for the smaller parts, like her pinky fingers and piggy toes. “I love you, too.” She tried her best not to sound fourteen when she said it.
There it was—spoken to the universe. Like a corked bottle finally getting release. Lightning could strike her if it was untrue. But it was true. And a secret. Like the ones Frieda told her the house held. A secret that had been burning inside her since high school. It was in those years after Colin had grown out of a little boy playing pranks and into a young man who was hell-bent on spending his time challenging Claire to swim out to the first beacon. Although both wore the guise of feeling indifferent, inside she wanted him to want her as much as she wanted him. The mask was now off and it felt wonderful to say it out loud.
He moved forward to kiss her again. This time slower, with a hundred percent more passion. His tongue fought to get at her. His chest heaved in and out, as he touched her breasts, straddling across the center console to do so.
“Colin, are you going to be late?” She backed away slightly, wiping her lips. “Not that I’m not enjoying this immensely and maybe hoping a little tiny bit,” she held up two fingers, “that the flight will get canceled and we can return to the guesthouse. But I don’t want you to miss this opportunity.”
“You’re right.” He adjusted his shirt from riding his neckline. “We’re supposed to be in there now. Thanks again, Claire, for coming with me.” He jumped out and ran to her side and escorted her to the tarmac.
∞ ∞ ∞
Claire sat in the back of that single engine plane, clutching the seat she sat on. Listening to the two men talk flight lingo and praying silently to her mother in heaven to protect her for a safe landing. When she wasn’t chanting Bible verses, she managed to look below her. The small island of Kelly’s Cove looked amazingly small and compact; nothing like the hour it took to drive by car. She squinted to see the ferry trudging across to the mainland, with all the cars and passengers on board.
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