See You in September : The Refuge Series Book One

by Debbie Zello

  He helped her from the car, handed her the grinders and said he would be over in a few minutes. He threw his keys on the counter and stared out the window towards her cottage. She was afraid and lonely, two debilitating emotions. One ruled her and the other was the result of that grip. He shoved a handful of condoms in the pocket of his jeans, shut his door behind him, squared his shoulders, and went into the battle.

  Cheri opened a bottle of wine to let it breathe. She unpacked the grinders and placed them solemnly on plates. She tried to shake off the feeling that her friendship with this wonderful man would be over in a couple of weeks. He would go back to his life three thousand miles away, and she would go back to her so-called life here.

  Wills, estates, and closings weren’t as riveting as she’d once thought they might be. At first, she’d welcomed the quiet after the fast-paced world she’d occupied before. Now, not so much. The last week or so had been the best in her life so far. She’d laughed more and simply enjoyed him more than she ever had anyone else.

  He lives in California.

  You live in Cape Cod.

  There is no commute from there.

  Gareth knocked on her screen door and she yelled, “Come in, Silly.”

  “You know my rules, darling. All you have to do is ask me in.”

  “I hate rules. I work in the law. All I have are rules,” she said absentmindedly.

  “How do you feel about anger?” he asked probing.

  “I guess I’m comfortable with it. Why?”

  “I think you’re very angry. You just hide it well. You never let it go, did you? Hit a wall, throw a vase, smash a glass, hell, did you do anything?”

  “I left him, got a divorce, and sold my half of a thriving practice. I did plenty,” she said defending herself.

  “You let your fear control you. You have to fight it with all you have. You’re never going to be completely free of it if you just go through life with it,” he said very calmly.

  “The anger and mistrust spread through me. He hurt me in ways I can’t even describe. I’ll never even come close to being able to forgive him. Now he wants more…wants me to help him. And then there’s you,” she said looking directly in his soft eyes. He walked to her and kissed her forehead.

  “What about me?”

  “Do you think everyone deserves a second chance or is that reserved for the few chosen people?” she asked honestly.

  “Does he deserve a second chance with you? No fucking way!” he bellowed.

  “No, not him. Me. Do I get a second chance? Do I get the happily ever after? Someone to love and who loves me?”

  “If you’re asking me if I love you…I honestly don’t know. I love so many things about you. Your childlike qualities through your woman’s eyes. Just the way you look at things. Amazing. You have a sexual aura that surrounds you and pulls me in. You’re funny, witty, gorgeous and smart. Countless other adjectives but it boils down to the fact that I want you. I want you to say the words…ask me…tell me what you want,” he said gently holding her shoulders.

  The seconds ticked off as the air shifted between them. Neither moved nor looked away. A single tear rolled slowly down Cheri’s cheek. Gareth lifted his thumb to wipe it away, smiling. With a deep breath and a sigh, she whispered, “Would you like to join me in my bedroom, in my bed, and screw me into the mattress?” His grin was infectious. Pausing for one beat, he gently took her hand from his chest and slid it down his stomach, gliding slowly south.

  “What are you doing?” she breathed.

  “Showing you my drill.”

  Cheri woke in the morning deliciously sore and feeling well used. Gareth’s drill proved to be non-hamsterish, to say the least. With her eyes still closed, her lips broke into a wide smile. She wanted to stretch, but her arms protested, having spent hours squeezing the arms, back, and ass of a certain director, who just so happened to take directions very well himself.

  The bed shifted beside her and a deep baritone voice asked, “And what is that smile for, counselor?”

  “Smile? What smile? I was dreaming. I can’t be held responsible for what my lips do when I’m sleeping,” she murmured.

  Gareth rolled on top of her, kissing the smile right off her face. He said, “I still have a few left. Wanna use one more?”

  “Don’t you have to plug that thing in and recharge its battery?” she giggled, kissing him back.

  “Done. It recharges quickly, haven’t I proved that already?”

  “Yes, you have. I know now what everyone was talking about. I don’t know what I was doing with him, but last night was unbelievable. You’re clearly addictive.”

  Gareth wasn’t sure about the love thing, however, he poured out his caring for this woman with every advance and retreat. His muscles steeled as his powerful body covered her. Then he kissed her so hard he hoped she would forget who she was. If it wasn’t love, he didn’t know what it was.

  Cheri made her orgasmic coffee, sashaying her tight butt around the kitchen. Now that he had seen, touched, and kissed that particular butt, he couldn’t take his eyes off it. He understood that once would never be enough. A lifetime might do. Shit, he loved her. The realization slammed him right between the eyes.

  “What would you like to do today?” he asked, watching her make breakfast in the pink silk bathrobe that hugged her curves just right. He knew what he wanted to do. Wearing her out, taking a nap and then repeating the process all day, would do for him.

  “I don’t care. What do you want to do?” she said sweetly. Don’t go there, he kept saying in his head. Don’t say it, you’ll sound like an over-sexed teenager. You heard me, keep your mouth shut, if you know what’s good for you.

  “We could stay here and go for a walk and watch some television,” he said weakly.

  “Okay. We still have the grinders from last night. We didn’t get around to having any dinner, did we?”

  “I wasn’t hungry for food. Were you?”

  “Not after we talked. You’re very distracting and inventive,” she said with a knowing smile.

  “Inventive, really? Cheri…how do I say this, what we did last night was strictly…oh my God this is hard…average, run-of-the-mill, sex. I didn’t invent anything. I didn’t want to…this is ridiculous, just say it…go over the top with you. I knew it had been a while for you and I went, for the lack of a better term, easy on you.

  “Cheri, perhaps we need to have a discussion on what you have done in the past because I can…oh my God this is absurd, I’m taking to a grown woman…make the experience better, if I know what you have done…maybe?” he said.

  The look on her face was priceless. She turned pink from her chest to her face and said, “You took it easy on me? I can barely walk. You think you can make it better than that? I’ll be in a coma.”

  Chapter Nine

  Gareth dropped the subject for the time being. Choosing to take it up again the next time, they were engaged in the act itself. Better to show with actions than to attempt the description. Instead, he asked, “Tell me about meeting him.”

  “We met in October my first year of college. David was good looking and smart. He was a year ahead of me and we shared an interest in the law,” she said, recounting the early days.

  “How long before you slept with him? I know that sounds personal but after last night we are personal. I consider that once a woman has seen me naked and I have the pleasure of seeing her so, that makes us lovers rather quickly,” he explained.

  “Quite so. It took a while. I had fooled around with a boyfriend in high school but we didn’t go all-in. It was a few months before I felt comfortable enough with him to do that.”

  “Understandable. Then what? Was it satisfying?”

  “I thought so. After some time had passed, I enjoyed it. The saying that you don’t miss what you never had is probably my theme song. Until last night I didn’t know the difference,” she admitted, slightly embarrassed.

  “How old are you, Cheri?”
<
br />   “I’m a thirty-two-year-old attorney that has only slept with two men now. I’m an enigma, one of a kind.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, exactly, but you are unusual. I’m going to get dressed and then we’ll go for a walk on the beach. When we come back maybe I’ll enlighten you some more,” he said with a wiggle of his eyebrows. With those words, she felt all tingly. She thought she was becoming Pavlov’s dog, salivating at the sound of the bell alone.

  That was how their days and nights went. They began their day with each other, spent the day with each other, and ended their day the same. They went for walks, on a whale watch, out for dinner, and lit fires on the beach. Everyday began with them making love and ended similarly. Cheri found what she had missed, a man that put her first. Gareth had found a woman that thought of him before anything.

  The morning of their last day together, Cheri had her head on his chest. She listened to his rhythmically beating heart and his regular breathing. She held on to him in an attempt to absorb his strength, readying herself to lose him the next morning.

  Gareth was winding a strand of her long hair around his finger. He was thinking much along the same lines as she. How was he going to live without her? Cheri was his mermaid. “I’m going to miss these lazy mornings when all I have to do is make love to you and have you in my arms,” he said.

  “Me too. What are we going to do about that?” she asked.

  “I have a new project to shoot in less than a month. I also have to finish the edit on the last one. Even if you could come with me, I would have around five minutes a day to see you. You’d be so bored, you’d leave me,” he said, continuing to move her hair through his fingers.

  “I couldn’t leave anyway. I have clients with their problems. I have a few closings and I’m sure more stuff that came in while I was riding the wheel of lust with you,” she giggled.

  “The wheel of lust. I like that. Sounds like a book or a movie title,” he said moving her to lie on her back. He moved over her planking so she didn’t feel caged in by his muscled body. “I can come back next September. I’ll work around that, if you want me.”

  “So we’ll have a September affair? What if you meet someone and change your plans?”

  “I don’t see that happening, but if it did, what would you want me to do?”

  “Call me or e-mail so I’m not here waiting for you to show up.”

  “All right. You do the same if you find someone. Deal?”

  “Deal. I’ll see you in September, just like the song.”

  Gareth lay awake that night listening to her softly cry. There was nothing he could say or do to ease her suffering. At three, he got up and dressed to catch his early morning flight. She had just fallen asleep. He lightly kissed her and gazed at her loveliness for a few minutes. Then he snuck out and left like a thief in the night who had stolen her heart.

  Cheri wasn’t really sleeping. She heard him get up and felt him staring at her. She knew if she opened her eyes, she would make a scene, blubbering all over him. They were in an impossible situation. She belonged here and he belonged three thousand miles away. She wondered how she could love him beyond the limits of love, and still survive the separation.

  The plane ride was long and lonely. Gareth sat in his seat unable to concentrate on anything besides thinking of Cheri. He had a script he was supposed to read while on vacation and he hadn’t. He could be reading it now, but didn’t. He was so screwed because he had left a very important thing back at the cape…his heart.

  He got home to his mansion in Santa Barbara, placing his luggage in his bedroom. He was hoping that Naomi, his assistant, wouldn’t mind unpacking for him later. He looked around his home, keenly aware of how empty it was. Six bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, study, living room, movie theater, and game room, his other hamster house. He smiled and chuckled at the memory.

  Choosing to dive back in, staying busy was better than sulking. He called Tucker to let him know he was back. “Hey Tuck! How’s it going?”

  “Are you back, slacker?”

  “You sound like you missed me. I feel warm all over. How’s it going?”

  “Fucking fabulous! What did you think you were filming, my friend, a fucking mini-series? I’m having a hell of a time bringing this in at under a hundred and fifty minutes. You’d better get your ass over here and make some decisions,” Tucker said, sounding frustrated.

  “Okay, I’m on my way. You got liquor?”

  “Lick her? I damn near killed her!”

  “You ass, I’m asking if you have beer, not a date.”

  “I’ve got beer. The date was last night. Mighty fine I must say,” he said smacking his lips.

  “Great, you can tell me all about it when I get there.”

  Cheri got up shortly after she heard his car pull away. In the moonlight, she walked along the beach, avoiding the incoming tide, as the water was cold. She turned around at the usual place, rotting pylons from a long missing dock, and walked back. When she got to the Weisman’s cottage, she thought how lonely it looked now that he was gone. Then she looked at hers and thought the same thing. Then she realized her heart was gone too. Tucked in a suitcase, on a plane bound for California.

  Cheri had made her little hamster into a work of art for Gareth to remember her by. She wrapped it up snugly and placed it in his suitcase in-between his clothes when he wasn’t looking.

  She had found the perfect piece of driftwood, and with an epoxy managed to make sand adhere to it. She placed the hamster and some very small shells on top of the sand. She put a red heart sticker in the sand in front of the hamster as though he was finding it. It was small and stupid, but that was exactly how she had felt before he came into her life. Now she just had to get through eleven months without him.

  Monday she waltzed into her office determined not to look like a wounded bird, lost soul or any other pitiful creature. She greeted Piper, her paralegal. “Good morning. How was your vacation, Piper?”

  “Great! How about yours?”

  “Very nice. I already wish I was back on it.”

  “Me too, but the show must go on. I left the important stuff on your desk. I’m still going through the mail and messages. Could we have lunch and go over the rest?”

  “Sounds good. Order from Pete’s and I’ll have a turkey on wheat,” Cheri said plopping into her chair with little grace. She stared at the medium sized mountain on her desk and shook her head.

  Her first instinct was to run from the building, pack her bag, board a plane and get to him as fast as she could. With that thought, she let out a loud sigh.

  “That doesn’t sound good, Cheri. Remember this is only the first day back. It’s bound to get worse!” Piper wisecracked.

  “Thanks! I feel so much better. I think I’ll take a martini along with the sandwich.”

  “Silly, of course I was ordering drinks.” Piper was a find. Cheri hired her within a few minutes of the interview. She was fresh, fast, and held the office together with her wit-infused glue. Everyone loved her and Cheri appreciated her, too.

  By the time lunch rolled around, Cheri was working on a headache. She popped two Advil and drank a glass of water. Piper had gone to pick up lunch when the office door opened. A short balding man walked in and said, “Miss Cheri Winslow Gates, please.”

  “I’m Cheri Winslow. How may I help you?” she said knowing exactly what was coming next.

  “This is for you. You’ve been served,” he said handing her the summons she had been waiting for.

  “Thank you. Have a good day,” she said sweetly. It did no good to berate the server. He was just doing his job. It was David that deserved her wrath. Cheri opened the envelope and read the enclosed paper. She was to appear next Tuesday at nine. If she didn’t, then they would send Marshalls looking for her.

  That plane ride was sounding better and better.

  Chapter Ten

  Gareth made some decisions that made Tucker’s job slightly easier. The two friends ordered o
ut for pizza and worked far into the night. By the time Gareth made it back to his place, he was beat. With the time difference, he had been up twenty-one hours. He stripped his clothes and fell on the bed naked.

  “Well, that’s not something you see everyday,” the woman’s voice woke him. Gareth opened a blood-shot eye and raised his head slightly. He was still face down on top of his bed. Still naked. “Please say it’s you, Naomi, and not my mother.”

  “It’s me, playboy. And I might add my, my, my, what a fine specimen you are, Gareth. I might like crack, but you make me almost think about going back!”

  “Too early for rhyming, Naomi. I need coffee.”

  “It’s not that early, sweetie. It’s almost ten and you’re lounging around in your birthday suit. You had better get up, big boy, you have stuff to do,” she said wanting very much to slap his bare ass. Just shaking her head, she walked out.

  With a concerted effort, Gareth dragged himself into the shower to attempt to revive himself. The warm water felt good. The shampoo and body wash filled his nose and got his mind working.

  If it was ten here, it was lunchtime there. What was she doing? Whom was she having lunch with? Did she miss him as much as he missed her? Only 334 days until he would see her again.

  He walked back in his bedroom and saw that thankfully Naomi had unpacked for him. She was the best assistant he had ever had. She did things without being asked.

  He opened his closet, which was more like another room than a closet. Gareth didn’t like stuff clogging up a room. Even a bedroom as large as his only had his bed, a chaise, and two nightstands. His closet housed all of his clothes, nicely hung or folded in the built in drawers that lined one side.

  As his towel dropped, Gareth saw a box on top of his suitcase. He picked it up and sat on the bench to open it. Wrapped up in bubble-wrap was the little hamster on his driftwood and sand. Gareth ran his finger over the little creature and marveled at how she glued the sand so it didn’t come off.