His for the Taking

by Julie Cohen

  ‘Dad?’ Nick called. ‘It’s Nick.’ His voice sounded both loud and smaller, as if he were suddenly younger.

  ‘I don’t think he’s here, Nick,’ Zoe said behind him.

  ‘Dad?’ Nick knocked again, hearing this time that there was no noise from inside the trailer at all. All the windows were shut. He turned and scanned the site. For the first time he noticed his truck was the only vehicle parked on the drive.

  He tracked animals as part of his job, made observations about habitats, and he hadn’t noticed that basic fact? He shook his head to clear it and had a good look around.

  His father wasn’t there, all right. But the place wasn’t abandoned; there were fairly recent tyre tracks on the dirt road, and he could see boot marks besides his own on the path leading to the trailer. The padlock on the shed door was both big and fairly new. The grass around the trailer had been cut in the past week or so. He hadn’t noticed a mailbox, so his father probably picked up his mail in town.

  There was nothing obvious like a delivered newspaper to show him how long his father had been gone, and he wasn’t sure what the weather had been like here, but from instinct he felt his father had left probably anywhere from half an hour to twenty-four hours ago, but not much more than that.

  Nick tried the door of the trailer. It was locked. In the woods of Maine, with a house owned by a Mainer, that probably meant the owner had gone away for more than a couple of hours.

  Nick sat down on the wooden stairs and propped his chin in his hands.

  Zoe approached him. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Fine. Looks like I’ll be camping outside this door for a while now.’

  He felt disappointment in his throat and swallowed it. He’d waited this long, he could wait a little longer.

  The muffled sound of a phone ringing disturbed the sounds of the woods. Nick recognised it right away as his own cell phone. Reception wasn’t always great on Mount Desert Island, but they must be close enough to Southwest Harbour to get a signal. He got up, went to the truck, and got the phone out of his glove compartment. The number on the screen was his sister Kitty’s.

  ‘Kit, you will never believe where I am,’ he said into the phone.

  ‘You’ll never believe who I just saw.’

  Nick leaned back against the truck. He had an idea what his sister was going to say, but she sounded too normal and cheerful for that to be true.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dad. He showed up around lunchtime, out of the blue.’

  ‘Dad showed up at your house?’ He stood up straight. Zoe was watching him from near the trailer, her hands on her hips.

  ‘No, at my office. He said he got the address out of the yellow pages. We went back to the house for lunch.’

  ‘You had lunch with our father?’ His voice was loud and incredulous. Zoe started walking toward him.

  ‘Yeah, well, it was lunchtime, and I thought he should meet Jack.’

  Nick tried to picture his sister, his brother-in-law, and his father all sitting around Kitty’s beautifully designed kitchen table eating tuna sandwiches. He couldn’t do it.

  ‘Does Mom know?’

  ‘Yeah, she called while he was there and I told her. You know Mom. She didn’t even act surprised.’

  That, he could picture. Their mother took everything in her stride.

  ‘What did you talk about?’ he asked.

  ‘Just—catching up, you know. He said he went to your house this morning, but you weren’t in, so he decided to drive down to Portland to see us instead. Where are you—in New York still?’

  ‘No, I’m standing outside of Dad’s house in Southwest Harbour.’

  Kitty laughed. ‘That’s pretty funny.’

  Nick didn’t see the funny side at all. ‘He’s been living in Maine all this time.’

  ‘Not all this time, apparently, but for the past few years, I guess. He’s had jobs here and there. Now he takes care of some people’s summer homes.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Yeah? How did you find all that out? He said he hadn’t seen you yet. I told him you were in New York looking for him, and he couldn’t figure out why you would go there. He’s never been there, he said. How’d you trace him back to Maine?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’ Nick glanced at Zoe, who was watching him closely. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘I told you. He’s lived all kinds of places, but now he’s in Maine, and he decided it was time to see us, I guess.’

  ‘I mean, what did he say about why he left?’

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. Nick held his breath.

  ‘We didn’t talk about that.’

  His breath whooshed out in incredulity and frustration. ‘What? You mean he didn’t apologise for leaving? He didn’t even explain it to you?’

  By now Zoe was standing right next to him. Knowing her, she was trying to say something, but he couldn’t hear much but his sister’s voice and his own heart pounding in his ears.

  ‘No. It was—it was all right, Nick.’

  ‘All right?’

  He heard Kitty let out a gentle sigh. ‘Listen. He said he was going to stay the night in Portland at a hotel, and head up north tomorrow. He’ll probably be there by noon. You can talk to him then, if you want.’

  ‘Oh, I want to.’

  ‘And then let’s talk, Nick. I’ll come up there this weekend, okay? I’m worried about you.’

  She’d just had lunch with their father and not even asked about why he’d betrayed her and the rest of the family—and she was worried about him?

  ‘Sure. I’ll see you tomorrow or Sunday.’ He hung up the phone, and then punched the side of his truck hard enough to make a dent. ‘Damn!’

  ‘Hey.’ He felt Zoe’s hand on his arm. ‘That truck is ugly enough without you making it worse.’

  ‘He went to see my sister,’ Nick told her. ‘And he didn’t even have the decency to say he was sorry for walking out on us. He just waltzed in there and had lunch with her like he was some kind of real father.’ He kicked the nearest truck tyre.

  ‘Well, he is your real father, Nick.’

  Nick stopped and looked at her. ‘What?’

  She put both her hands on her hips again and faced him straight on, her jaw set, her eyes sparking. ‘I don’t usually give advice to people, so you should listen up good, Boy Scout. Back in New York, you said that my family try to reach out to me and all I do is push and push them away. Well, your father might have left you, but he wrote you a letter and now he’s gone to find your sister. If that’s not some kind of an apology, I don’t know what is.’

  ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘It might be, but that’s not for you to decide until you’ve heard what he has to say. If you’re not going to let me get away with rejecting my family, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you get away with rejecting yours.’

  He looked at Zoe. Bold, strong, and throwing his own words back in his face. He had the distinct impression that if he didn’t listen to her, she’d offer to kick his ass.

  He felt a smile growing inside him, just a little one, but big enough to relax his shoulders, free his breathing.

  ‘Since when did you get all compassionate and understanding?’ he asked her.

  She shrugged. ‘It must be the pollution-free air.’

  His smile reached the surface, and he saw her smile back.

  ‘Is he going to be back here soon?’ she asked.

  ‘Not till tomorrow, probably.’

  ‘Then let’s go find Xenia’s and get changed and go for a run or something. We’ve both been cooped up too long.’ She stepped closer, stroked back his hair, and kissed him on the cheek.

  Zoe had kissed him in passion. But this, Nick realised, was the first of a different kind of kiss from her: tender, caring, protective.

  He took her hand and squeezed it. ‘You’re right. Let’s go and enjoy the rest of the day.’ He watched her climb back into the truck, and wondered if the rest of t
he day was all he was going to have with her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  AS SOON AS they broke through the trees and Zoe saw the house she knew that she was home.

  It was set back on a small rise, on a lawn surrounded by trees. The house was steep-roofed, generous in size, with brown-painted clapboards and tall windows framed by green shutters. A pot of geraniums sat on the porch next to a pair of rocking chairs. There was a bench underneath a tall pine tree on the front lawn and a picnic table in the sun.

  Nick turned off the truck and for a moment she didn’t move. She listened to the engine ticking and looked at the house. Then she threw open the door and ran up the lawn and up the three broad steps to the porch.

  There was a screen door and then a thick wooden door and the keys the lawyer had given her fitted easily. She stepped into the cool house. It was all one room downstairs, living room and dining room and kitchen all together, bright with the afternoon sun.

  Zoe stopped. ‘Nick,’ she said.

  ‘Nice place.’ He was right behind her, then beside her.

  ‘This is where she wrote,’ she said. She pointed to a vast wooden desk, facing out the back window of the house with a view of green-lit trees. A desktop computer sat next to stacks of paper. Beside the desk, a tall bookcase held Xander Dark hardbacks.

  ‘It’s different from her apartment,’ Nick observed. He touched a chair back with one hand by way of illustration. It was simple, wooden, with a woven seat and a patchwork cushion. Like all the other furniture in the room it was functional, plain, and comfortable. No silks or tapestry, no fiddly antiques or thumbscrews or heavy drapes.

  ‘You can move here,’ Zoe said, and then she realised what she’d done: she’d seen something and automatically called for Nick to share it with her, trusting him to feel as she did.

  ‘I’ll get the groceries from the car,’ she said, shrugging the feeling away.

  ‘I’ll get them.’ Nick left, and she was in the house alone.

  Except she wasn’t alone. This house had Xenia in it: a Xenia whom Zoe had never seen, but whom, she realised, she had always known.

  A staircase was set into one of the walls. Zoe climbed it up to a long hallway that was as strange and familiar to her as the rest of the house. The walls were painted green and they were lined with doors and framed photographs of trees and coastlines. Some of them were old sepia-toned pictures of the house years ago, probably when it had first been built, with people Zoe didn’t know in long white dresses, formal suits, big hats.

  She walked through the second door she came to and looked at the bedroom: a wooden double bed, a candlewick bedspread, an armchair, a roomy chest of drawers. Nick and I could sleep here, she thought, and had an instant picture of the two of them waking up together, the window open to let in the pine-scented morning sunlight. Every day waking up to his kind, sexy smile.

  ‘Zoe?’ The real Nick’s voice cut through her tempting, dangerous daydream. She shut the door after her before going back down the stairs. Nick had brought both of their bags inside along with the groceries and the pigeon. Knowing him, he was feeling very pleased with himself for being the chivalrous gentleman carrying the big heavy luggage.

  Then again, probably not. She’d learned he did these things without thinking, without calculating what he could get back or gain. And possibly, without even making any assumptions about her weakness or feminine unwillingness to carry heavy objects.

  He was putting away the groceries in the kitchen, which was tucked into a corner of the open-plan room. ‘Wow,’ he said, his head in the refrigerator.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s food in this fridge. Butter, ketchup, some eggs and cheese. And meat and vegetables in the freezer,’ he added, checking it. He held up a package. ‘Hot dogs. I thought you said Xenia didn’t eat anything bigger than an oyster with her hands.’

  ‘She was different up here,’ Zoe said. ‘Maybe she was here pretty recently and was planning to come back.’

  ‘That would make sense. My father could have given her the letter to me while she was up here and she mailed it as soon as she got back to New York. I wonder why.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t want you to know the postmark.’

  ‘Could be, though that’s strange if he was planning to come visit me soon anyway.’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t planning it. He could have just decided yesterday.’

  Nick closed the freezer with a snap. ‘I shouldn’t even bother trying to figure him out. Come on, didn’t you want to go for a run?’

  She considered Nick. Even the thought of his father got him agitated, now that he was so close to finding him. He’d been strung as tight as a wire since they’d got to the island, and, to tell the truth, she wasn’t doing too great, either, if she was thinking about a life here with Nick that she would never have.

  If his father came back tomorrow, all she was going to have with Nick was another night, and if she had anything to do with it, that night was going to be full of laughter and great sex. Because she wasn’t going to find anyplace or anybody like this for a long time, if ever, and she wanted a memory or two.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and get it out of our system.’

  Nick watched with amusement as Zoe poured the last bit of wine into his glass, remembering a time not so long ago when she would have taken it for herself.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, chimed his glass with hers, and drank. The wine was excellent; probably too excellent to go with hot dogs and potato salad, but he was beginning to understand Zoe’s natural mixture of unpretentiousness and true class.

  He breathed in deep in contentment. The warm evening had mellowed gradually into cool night, but it was comfortable enough to sit here at the picnic table outside. Of course, being near Zoe brought heat of its own. Even something so simple as sitting together, eating a meal they’d prepared, turned him on, made him feel warm inside, as if he’d cupped his hands around one of the candles they’d taken from the house and drawn its heat deep into his bones.

  ‘Thought you could do with an extra glass of wine after that workout,’ Zoe said, her generous mouth in an impish smile.

  ‘Are you implying I had trouble keeping up with you?’ He hadn’t, but she’d pushed him hard; pushed both of them hard, keeping a quick pace up some pretty steep climbs. Their bodies had worked together, as smoothly as when they made love. And then, when they were finished—

  ‘Do you mean on the roads, or in the shower?’

  ‘Both.’ She raised an eyebrow at him, and he relived their post-exercise workout in the shower, both of them slick with sweat and soap and overcome with desire for each other. He’d remembered to bring a condom this time and they’d had sex, as hard and fast as their run, up against the tiled wall of the shower. Her cries had been sweeter than the sound of falling water.

  He got up and moved around the table to sit on the other side, straddling the bench she sat on. ‘We were together all the way.’

  He pulled her towards him so that she leaned back against him, and began to rub the muscles of her neck and shoulders. Zoe made a low sound of contentment and relaxed under his hands.

  Beyond the golden candlelight halo around the table, the night was velvet black and silver. They were far enough from the road not to hear any cars. In the silence as Nick massaged Zoe’s back he heard a soft hooting from the forest surrounding them.

  He didn’t stop, but he pricked his ears. ‘Hear that?’

  ‘I hear nothing. After the Bronx, it’s almost unnatural.’

  ‘Listen.’ It came again, a staccato tenor flute.

  ‘I feel like I’m in a wildlife documentary. What is it, an owl?’

  ‘A great horned owl.’

  Another hoot, and Zoe said, ‘It sounds eerie.’

  ‘One of the most terrifying things I ever did involved hooting owls.’

  ‘What happened? Did one of them mug you?’

  He moved his hands down the column of her spine, kneading the mu
scles gently. She ‘mmm’ed with pleasure.

  ‘It wasn’t far off from a mugging, actually. Owls are very territorial and I was doing a project mapping their territories in a certain area. It involved going out into the woods at night, with a map, a tape recorder, and a crash helmet.’

  ‘And you say New Yorkers are weird.’

  ‘I would walk around the area playing a recording of an owl hooting. Usually the owls hooted back. Then you’d mark it on the map. Unless you were near a nesting female. Then they’d hurtle down towards you and try to rip your head off with their talons.’

  Zoe burst into laughter. ‘You’re kidding me, Boy Scout.’

  ‘I’m serious. It was an amazing adrenaline rush: walking around a silent forest, looking up into the darkness in anticipation of a bird with a five-foot wingspan, huge talons and a curved beak swooping down out of nowhere.’

  ‘You did this for fun?’

  ‘I did it for conservation. But it was fun, too.’ He reached her waist, and paused. ‘Testing the boundaries to see at what point they’ll be defended. It’s not all that different from hanging out with you.’

  Zoe laughed again, but this time it was less wholehearted. ‘Yeah, I’m finding out all kinds of affinities with birds since meeting you.’

  He kissed the warm side of her neck. ‘You’re different today, though.’

  ‘Sometimes it gets tiring fighting.’ She sighed, and he could feel the small tensing and relaxing of her body.

  ‘I like the strong Zoe. And I like the defences-down Zoe, too.’

  They both listened for the bird again, but it was quiet.

  ‘I think I know what I’m going to do with Xenia’s money,’ Zoe said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I don’t need it. I like working. I think I might keep a little bit of it so that I can give up driving the cab and maybe set up my own exercise studio somewhere. The rest of it, I’m going to give away.’

  ‘To who?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s not difficult to find people who need money. I’ll give some of it to sports charities for inner-city kids, because I see a lot of those whose lives could really be turned around. Maybe I’ll make you happy and give a bunch of it to wildlife conservation. I’m not sure yet, exactly. The one thing I do know is that I’m going to sell Xenia’s houses and give the money to organisations for homeless runaways in New York.’