Kisses in the Rain

by Pamela Browning

  * * *

  Martha went to meet Nick and Davey at the ferry terminal, where she spent an anxious hour pacing the floor because their scheduled flight was late.

  Nick, carrying Davey with one arm and with a small suitcase in the other hand, hove into sight immediately after the ferry docked. He wore a dashing felt outback hat and towered over the other passengers. Martha's heart swelled at the sight of him; she had missed him incredibly.

  Nick set Davey down and swept Martha into his arms. "Dear Cheechako," he said, the words coming easily to his lips. He had noticed happy tears glistening on her eyelashes in the moment before he embraced her, and the sight of them had so overwhelmed him with emotion that he felt a bit teary himself. He hadn't believed how much he had missed her quick humor and her pleasant disposition all the time he'd been away. He felt amazingly lucky to have her in his life.

  She pulled slightly apart from him. Her gray eyes sparkled; her lips were slightly parted and moist. He wanted to kiss her again, but Davey was silently and insistently tugging at the bottom of his coat.

  "I have food at my place," Martha offered quickly.

  "Davey and I are invited to Dan and Stella's for dinner," Nick said.

  Martha didn't reply, but she looked crestfallen.

  "I'm sure you'd be invited too, if they knew you'd like to come."

  She'd hoped to have Nick to herself. Nick and Davey, that is.

  "I don't know," she said doubtfully.

  Nick realized then that Martha had planned for his return, that she probably had a complete dinner waiting. He should have told her earlier that he and Davey were invited to eat with his brother and his family tonight. He simply wasn't used to including Martha automatically in the day-to-day details of his life.

  "Hey," he said, tipping her chin up so he could look into her troubled eyes. "I'll call Stella and beg off. Okay?"

  "I don't want to interfere with family plans." She seemed so disappointed.

  "Don't be silly," Nick said. "Stella told me she wasn't planning anything special. She was having a big chicken casserole and Davey and I were invited to eat it if we could make it. And our plane was an hour late, so they've probably started eating already."

  Martha smiled. Suddenly everything was all right again. "My car's over there," she said, and after a quick call to Stella, Nick took Davey by the hand and followed her.

  "Good. And Stella's okay with this?"

  "Sure. She's curious about what I found out, but I'll fill her in later."

  Martha served a mouthwatering meal of king crab legs and wild rice, fresh broccoli and carrots. Davey ate well and then sat down to work an easy jigsaw puzzle that Martha had ordered online for him. Martha and Nick sat down on the couch to catch up.

  "The psychiatrist, Dr. Whitmer, tested Davey," Nick told her, keeping his voice low so Davey couldn't hear. "But he wants to give him more tests in two weeks. We'll be going back to Juneau then."

  "I missed you," she said, her heart in her throat. "I wish you didn't have to go away again so soon."

  Nick's face was momentarily clouded with sadness. "I missed you, too. But this was something I had to do. You understand, don't you?"

  "Of course." She reached for his hand.

  At the table where he was working the puzzle, oblivious to their conversation, Davey yawned and scrubbed at his eyes with both fists.

  "He's tired," Nick said. "Aren't you, Davey?"

  Davey nodded. His eyes were heavy and thick-lidded.

  "Why don't you let him lie down on my bed?" Martha suggested.

  "Good idea," Nick replied, and he lifted the unprotesting Davey in his arms and carried him into Martha's bedroom. She brought a warm comforter from the closet and together they billowed it up and over the boy, tucking it in on both sides.

  Davey closed his eyes immediately. His thick black eyelashes curved against plump cheeks; his chest rose and fell evenly with each breath. He was such a beautiful little boy, Martha thought. He looked so healthy. Looking at him now, no one would ever guess that he was a child with a problem.

  Nick bent over and brushed Davey's forehead with his lips. In the dim light from the hall, Martha saw the crease of worry in Nick's forehead. Her heart went out to him. Nick was so conscientious. He tried so hard. He desperately wanted Davey to be normal, and he was afraid that Davey never would be.

  "Come on," she said, folding her hand in his, and together they went out of the room and closed the door.

  "I brought you something," Nick said suddenly when they were back in her living room. He produced a small square package.

  Martha pulled off the gilt wrapping and opened the box. Inside was a wide carved ivory bracelet. The series of carvings on the curved sides of the bracelet depicted animal motifs that she had learned to associate with Alaskan Native art. A polar bear stood on its hind legs. An Eskimo paddled a kayak. A caribou picked its way through a landscape of wildflowers.

  "The bracelet's made of walrus ivory by a Native Alaskan," Nick said. "I thought you'd like it."

  "It's so pretty, Nick," Martha said, captivated by the pictures and the workmanship.

  "Let me do the honors," Nick said, slipping the bracelet on her arm and raising her hand to kiss her fingers. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, then nuzzled her cheek.

  "It'll be something to remind me of Alaska once I've gone home," she said. Her voice quavered, and Nick's embrace loosened in surprise. Martha couldn't believe she had startled him with her statement about going home. She had never led him to think that she planned to stay in Ketchikan. Going back to the Lower Forty-eight was inevitable.

  "Martha," he began uneasily.

  She turned in his arms until she faced him. "Shhh," she whispered against his cheek. "Some things are better left unsaid."

  He folded her in his arms, but she sensed the tension in his muscles. It was too soon, she thought with regret. Why had she brought up a subject that was better off ignored? It must be that their unavoidable separation was on her mind more than ever now that she knew how much she hated being apart from him. She rested her head against his chest, drawing comfort from the strong, steady sound of his heartbeat.

  After a moment he said, "Let's sit down. We need to talk about this. We'll have to face it sooner or later." He led her to the couch and pulled her down beside him. He held both her hands fast in his as he turned toward her.

  "I've never made any secret of the fact that I'm going back to San Francisco," she began haltingly.

  "And I haven't made any secret of the fact that I'm crazy in love with you." His voice remained quiet, but there was something commanding in his tone. He released one hand and cupped her cheek in his palm. "In love with you," he repeated, in case there was some remote chance that she hadn't comprehended.

  "I have an agreement with Sidney," Martha said, fighting to regain her composure. "It's the chance of a lifetime to get in on the bottom floor of a business."

  "I can appreciate that," Nick said slowly, though he wondered if she might change her priorities.

  "Can you?" Martha asked, her eyes searching his. "You were able to expand an existing family business in order to get where you are today. I didn't have that opportunity, although I might have if things had been different."

  "What do you mean, 'different'?" he asked curiously.

  "Oh, Nick, I don't know that it's important to tell you about it."

  He discerned from the restrained tone of her voice that she was becoming agitated, from that and the way her fingertips twitched within the clasp of his hands, but he wanted her to go on talking. He wanted to be a good listener for her, just as she had been for him.

  "Of course it's important," he said seriously. "Everything about you is important to me." It went without saying; didn't she know that?

  "I made up my mind a long time ago that I was going to succeed in some facet of business," she said with a steely glint in her eye that he'd never noticed before. "It has a lot to do with my father and the way
I was brought up."

  She looked so stiff and uncomfortable, so patently unlike herself, that he knew this was a sensitive subject. He decided to make it easier for her.

  "Your father wanted a son but had three daughters," Nick guessed. "He wanted a son to take over the business."

  Martha blinked. "How did you know?" she said.

  "I must have seen a movie like that once. Let me tell you the rest of the plot. You were the one he was counting on to take over the business. And you knew he was counting on you. Am I right so far?"

  Her eyes, which had looked so somber, showed a hint of sparkle. "So far, yes."

  "And so you worked very hard in school and in college and—"

  "And?"

  "And why don't you finish the story? There must be some reason why you didn't take over the business as scheduled."

  Martha bit her lip. "Yes, there was," she said quietly. "Dad died, and then there wasn't any business anymore." She shrugged lightly as if to deny the pain.

  "I'm sorry, Martha," he said with an expression of deep concern. "I didn't mean to make light of it."

  Martha inhaled a deep breath. "It's all right. I've pulled through it. But when Dad died at the beginning of my junior year in college, I thought it was the end of the world. I'd just declared a business major, and I'd spent the summer working with Dad at the retail clothing store he owned in Greenleaf. It was a pretty good-sized operation; he sold both men's and women's clothes."

  "You must have liked the work," Nick said.

  "Oh, I loved it from the beginning, even from the time when Dad would take me to the store with him on Saturday mornings and feed me peppermints from his bottom desk drawer. When I was older, Dad was thrilled that I took an interest in the store because my sisters Roxie and Rebecca never had, except to work there during the summers while they were in high school. Dad and I both looked forward to the day when I'd be able to take over some of the responsibility from him so he could get some well-deserved rest. But after Dad died and we found out how deeply in debt he was, there was nothing to do but sell the store."

  "Wasn't there anything else you could do?"

  Martha shook her head. "It's very risky, running a business of your own. You have to tie up a lot of money in inventory. There's no one to fall back on if you have a couple of bad years. I saw it happen with Dad, and that's why I wouldn't start my own business. That's why I was happy when Sidney made it possible for me to be part of his. I won't turn my back on this opportunity. I can't."

  "Is it the money, Martha?"

  "Not the money, especially, although that's nice. It's the feeling of accomplishment. It's knowing that I'll be responsible for making important decisions. For building a business practically from the ground up."

  "You could do that anywhere," Nick pointed out.

  "There are very few companies where I'll have the chance I have with Sidney Pollov Enterprises," Martha said. "No risk for me, and every opportunity. I can't go wrong."

  "You can't go, period. I don't want you to leave at the end of the summer, Martha. I'd miss you terribly."

  "Nick, I can't continue selling bagels on the dock in the winter. Unless it were frozen bagels, and I don't think that's what Sidney has in mind."

  She wasn't going to give an inch, at least not during this go-round. Nick sighed and pulled her into his arms.

  She forgot everything when he took her in his arms and began to rain little kisses on her ear, on the softly curving line of her jaw. His delicately teasing kisses made her hungry for more, and she pulled his lips down to hers. All the loneliness of the past five days faded away, and Martha felt herself opening to him, unfolding in the heat of his pleasure. His shoulder muscles hardened beneath her gentle fingertips, and she tasted and explored him with unrestrained joy and wonder.

  "My dear Cheechako," he murmured against her lips, and his hands moved up her back, then drifted along her rib cage until they encircled her breasts. His touch was gentle yet sure, awakening nerves and hypnotizing her with pleasure.

  They slid downward on the couch, and the emotion in Martha's sea-gray eyes drowned him in its sheer intensity. She loved him; he could see that. And he loved her. It was time for their relationship to progress to the next step, the merging of their bodies and minds in the most beautiful form of communication ever known.

  Despite her acquiescence up to this point, Martha apparently had other ideas.

  "Nick," she said. "Stop."

  At the sound of her words, Martha struggled her way out of a lovely romantic daze, and at first she wasn't sure Nick even heard her.

  But then he pulled back.

  "Something's wrong?"

  "I'm not comfortable with what was happening between us. Oh, I know, I know. We love each other, and we're both getting tired of only hugs and kisses. But I'm going away at the end of the summer, and maybe we don't want to get that involved." Her hands fluttered, a sign of nervousness. Nick captured them with his and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  "I want to get involved in every way possible" he assured her. "I'm madly in love with you, and we've both waited long enough."

  "It's different for a man," Martha said.

  "I don't think so. We've taken it slowly so far, but I want to be with the woman I love."

  He was the dearest man; he was masculine, considerate, thoughtful and kind. He was emotionally self-sufficient. He was wonderful with children. Martha had seen that in the way he took care of Davey.

  But how could she tie herself to a man she would leave in a few short months? She'd never been one for casual sex. She'd always demanded a relationship before she took things to the next level.

  "Nick, I want to be with you too," she said, meaning it.

  "But?" His eyes searched hers.

  She struggled to find an answer. Lindsay would have said it was better to have loved Nick completely than only to have loved him halfway. Lindsay, of course, would have been referring to the physical side of their relationship. Martha knew herself well enough to understand that if she loved Nick that way she might never be able to leave him. And there were so many things she didn't know about Nick. One of them was sleeping in her bed only a few feet away.

  "I guess I'm just not ready," she said lamely.

  "Not ready. While I'm more than ready."

  "Um, yes. Nick, I missed you so much. I couldn't wait to see you. I'm sure I love you as much as you love me. But give me a little more time, okay?" Her eyes pleaded with him.

  He seemed to think about this for a moment. "Well, Martha," he said finally, touching his lips to her fingertips with something that looked like laughter in his eyes, "just remember this. I'm ready whenever you are."

  At that he really did laugh, a loud, booming sound that woke Davey, but before Davey could come into the living room he kissed Martha with a thoroughness that completely proved his point.

  During the next few days, Martha delighted in her reunion with Nick. Their five-day separation made every moment even more precious to her, especially because she knew she would not stay past Labor Day.

  Nick met her at the Bagel Barn every day and together they ate lunch, sometimes in Nick's company car if the weather was bad, sometimes in the café where they always ordered steaming-hot bowls of chili in honor of that first Sunday they had spent together, sometimes overlooking the Narrows with the boats sailing in and out past the big cruise ships.

  And they laughed. They laughed at everything. They laughed at people and the tourists and themselves. They laughed at silly jokes. Most importantly, they laughed at the same things. Over and over Martha was taken with their compatibility.

  Occasionally Martha felt that this part of her life was taking place in a happy dream. They were both so absorbed in one another that they each developed an urgent, insatiable need for the other's presence. No matter how cloudy the day, no matter how cold the drizzle, they created their own sunshine and warmth when they were together.

  Those were emotional days, but there wer
e no more emotional nights. Martha knew that Nick was purposely giving her the space she needed. She was grateful to him for that even when every fiber of her being longed to be with him through the long, cool nights, warmth against warmth.

  But although he kissed her and told her he loved her each day, he did nothing to pressure her into a physical relationship. And that told her he really loved her more than anything else.

  She thought he loved her, anyway. Until one morning when she called his office to find out if their previously agreed-upon time for lunch still stood and was told by his personal assistant that Mr. Novak was out of town.

  "Out of town? Are you sure?" He hadn't called her. He hadn't texted. But she'd had no reason to expect him to disappear.

  "He left early this morning," was the short reply.

  "When will he be back?" Martha asked.

  "He'll be gone indefinitely. We don't know when Mr. Novak will return."

  "Did he leave a message for me?"

  "No. No message."

  The click on the other end of the line preceded the loud buzz of the dial tone.

  "Indefinitely?" Martha whispered unbelievingly as she stared at the dial pad of her cell phone.

  She simply couldn't believe that Nick would leave Ketchikan without a word to her.

  Chapter 8

  What had happened?

  Martha asked herself this anguished question over and over each day that Nick didn't come home. Had she said something to drive him away? She went over every word they'd said since he'd returned from Juneau. They had been so happy together. Why would he leave suddenly without telling her?

  She thought of asking Hallie, but Hallie was at Williwaw Lodge, and there was no way to contact her except by shortwave radio. Martha didn't have access to shortwave, although she knew there was one at the office of Novak and Sons. After being so summarily turned away by Nick's assistant, however, she wouldn't ask to use it.

  Faye was away in the bush ministering to the sick, and so Martha had no one to talk to. Randy was kind and sympathetic, but Martha hadn't enlightened him about the reason for her distraction. She thought Randy was very clever, therefore, when he asked her abruptly one day, "What's the matter? Has Nick gone away again?"