One long Embrace

by Tina Folsom

  “What would you do?”

  “Well there’s nothing you can do. Not now, it’s already built.”

  “Yes, but if you could do it all over again?”

  “You mean redesign?”

  He nodded encouragingly.

  “Well, first of all, I’d move the door by about two feet to the left, and then I’d take about three inches off the depth of the closet. It’ll still give you enough space inside for hanging whatever you need to, but it’ll make it much easier to move around. And the hardware would have to go, too.”

  “The hardware?”

  “Yes, the handles. Instead of having them stick out where you constantly bump into them, why not carve into the wood so they are recessed? You know?”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “Well, feel free to let your new designer know.”

  Jay smiled and met her eyes. “I haven’t filled the position yet.”

  Frown lines built on her forehead. “You must have had lots of good applicants.”

  “I did. There was one whose designs I loved particularly.”

  “Why didn’t you hire that person?”

  He smirked. “Because she ran out on me before I got a chance to talk to her about her portfolio.”

  Tara looked at him, still a good dose of suspicion in her blue eyes. “You’re probably just saying that so that I’ll like you.”

  “Tara, you already like me. At the moment you’re just pissed at me because I deceived you. But that doesn’t change anything about the fact that you like me. Otherwise you wouldn’t even be here. Or would you have agreed to spend four days alone with Brad Willamott, if he’d made you the same offer as I?”

  Tara opened her mouth, but closed it again without saying anything.

  Jay acknowledged her silence for the admission it was. “Then let’s just lay it out in the open. I like you, Tara. I like you a lot. And I’m attracted to you. But I won’t be acting on that attraction during the next four days. All I want is for you to let me show you who I really am.”

  “Why four days?”

  “Because it’s going to take us four days to get down to South Carolina.”

  “What’s in South Carolina?”

  “Apart from great food and fabulous weather?” He paused for a moment. “A part of me that few people have ever seen.”

  His past. Memories he didn’t share with others. But he was willing to share them with Tara. Because then finally she would understand that he was nothing like the rich men she knew.

  24

  Tara carried a steaming mug of coffee up to the flybridge. They’d been aboard the yacht for over three days now, and she had to admit—if only to herself—that she was actually enjoying the trip.

  Jay was remaining true to his word: he’d made no sexual advances, hadn’t as much as kissed her since they’d left the Hamptons. She’d slept alone in the guest cabin, while her host had spent half the nights steering the boat, anchoring in quiet coves for only a few hours every night.

  He’d stocked the boat well. The industrial size refrigerator and freezer held everything she could possibly want to eat, and Jay had surprised her with one delicious meal after the other. She’d learned much about him during the many hours they spent together. He truly seemed to love the water.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” he said now and reached for the mug. After taking a sip, he placed it in the gimbaled cup holder, where the mug couldn’t slide out even if the boat tilted a bit with the waves.

  “How long have you been up?” she asked and scanned the horizon.

  “Couple of hours. Did I wake you when I started the engine?”

  “I slept right through it.” She’d slept well the last three nights. “But you couldn’t have slept more than a few hours.”

  He smiled at her. “I don’t need a lot of sleep. Besides, I wanted to make sure we’re reaching our destination today.”

  “And are we?”

  “We should be there in a few hours.”

  “I’m curious. Are you finally gonna tell me what you want to show me?”

  “As I said before, all in good time.”

  Even though she’d asked him about their destination many times during the last three days, he hadn’t elaborated. And even now, on the morning of day four, he wasn’t giving her more information than before.

  She sighed. “Fine.”

  “I know you’re anxious to get off the boat. You’re not used to it like I am.”

  “I like being on a boat. How did you get into it? When you started building yachts?”

  “I built my first boat when I was ten years old.”

  “Ten?”

  He laughed. “I carved it out of a piece of wood. It was six inches long, and I used a stick from a lollipop as the mast.”

  Tara noticed how his eyes seemed to shimmer at the recollection.

  “I launched it in a puddle outside my house.”

  “Did it float?”

  “Not for long. Some guy driving a big-ass, shiny truck raced down our street and crushed it before I could rescue it.” Jay looked into the distance. “Well, it was just a piece of wood. Nothing valuable.” But his sad smile said otherwise.

  “You’d made it with your own hands. It must have meant something,” she hedged.

  For a long moment he said nothing. Then, “I like boats, because they can take you away from things. When you’re on the water, you’re free. There’s nobody for miles on end.”

  “Sounds lonely.”

  “You can be lonelier in a crowd of people, if nobody is taking any notice of you. As if you don’t even exist. At least on the water you know you’re on your own and can’t rely on any help from others. On land there is the illusion that there’s help when you need it. But there isn’t.”

  Surprised by his solemn words, she ran her eyes over his body. Today he wore shorts, a T-shirt, and a windbreaker with the zipper open. His hands gripped the steering wheel, and she noticed the scars and calluses on them. She’d noticed the calluses during their first night together, but now she also saw the scars that seemed to stem from cuts and burns. His tan disguised them well, but they were there.

  “You worked with your hands when you were young,” she guessed.

  “I didn’t mind.”

  The answer was so short and casual that she could have easily dismissed it, but she didn’t. Something made her probe for a more complete explanation. “You had to work, didn’t you?”

  Jay laughed it off. “Everybody has to work.”

  “Not everybody. Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. But not you.”

  “Few people are. Look at yourself,” he deflected. “You want to work because it gives you independence from your parents. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.” She pointed at his hands. “You don’t have the hands of an idle man.”

  “Is that why you believed me when I said I worked in construction?”

  She nodded. “Partially.”

  “And the other part?”

  “You seemed so normal. So down to earth. And nice.”

  “Ahh, the killer word: nice. What guy doesn’t want to be labeled nice?” he joked.

  Shaking her head, she rolled her eyes at him. “You know what I mean! And don’t you be changing the subject now. We were talking about you.”

  “Yeah, I know. About how nice I am.” Jay grinned, the sadness from earlier seemingly forgotten.

  She slapped the back of her hand against his bicep. “Can’t you be serious?”

  “I thought you didn’t want serious. Didn’t you tell me when you still thought I was a waiter that you just wanted to have fun?”

  “Oh, great, now you’re gonna use my own words against me?” But she couldn’t be mad at him. She liked the friendly banter between them. It made her feel at ease. Almost made her forget what he’d done, how he’d deceived her. Almost, but not entirely.

  ~ ~ ~
>
  They reached a small coastal community in South Carolina a few hours later. After docking the yacht at a small marina with both commercial boats and sailboats, Jay looked at her.

  “I have a car waiting for us.” He reached his hand out to her.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My home.”

  Tara slipped her hand in his palm and followed him as he led her to the shore. A casually dressed man leaned against an SUV. He straightened when he saw them approach.

  “Mr. Bohannon?”

  Jay nodded. “That’s me.”

  The man handed him a clipboard and a pen. “Sign here please.”

  Jay signed and handed back the clipboard, then accepted the key.

  “Call us when you want me to pick up the car again.”

  “Thank you.” Jay nodded and opened the passenger side door for Tara. “Hop in.”

  Tara took her seat and waited for Jay to slide behind the wheel. He drove off wordlessly. He didn’t speak during the drive, as if he was preoccupied. She looked out the window and scanned her surroundings. This wasn’t an affluent area. And the farther they drove, the shabbier the area seemed to become. The houses lining the street were rundown, the front yards unkempt. With every mile they traveled, they seemed to get deeper and deeper into another world, a world of poverty and despair. This didn’t look like the United States anymore. This looked like a third world country, one that needed help from its more prosperous neighbors.

  Jay slowed the car and turned off the main road. “I don’t come here very often.”

  She glanced at him from the side. “You grew up here.”

  He answered by way of nodding, as if saying it out loud was too painful.

  At the next bend in the road, he pulled into the driveway of a dilapidated one-story home and brought the car to a stop. He turned off the engine, and silence descended upon them.

  Slowly, Jay opened the door and stepped out of the car. Tara followed him and walked around the car to his side. He stood there for a moment, looking at the house. A few steps led to the wrap-around porch and the front door, which looked as if a well-placed kick would lift it out of its hinges.

  “I can’t get myself to sell it,” he murmured.

  “Nobody lives here?”

  “My mother died a long time ago. And my dad left years before that.” He walked toward the house.

  Tara followed him and watched how he pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. A musty odor greeted her when she walked inside. The house was small and simple. A living room in the front, two bedrooms to either side of the hallway, a door to a tiny bathroom. The back of the house opened up to a relatively large eat-in kitchen. The stove looked like it was a hundred years old, and the refrigerator was something out of a 1950s movie.

  There were few decorations, but one picture drew her attention. It stood on an old sideboard whose veneer was peeling. Tara reached for the frame to take a closer look at the picture, when her hand collided with Jay’s. He’d reached for it, too.

  She met his gaze.

  “I was thirteen in that picture.”

  Tara studied it. A boy sat on the stoop of the home, his mother, wearing an apron over her dress, sitting behind him. She looked tired and worn-out, but she smiled nevertheless.

  “We didn’t know it then, but she already had cancer when that picture was taken.”

  Instinctively, Tara closed her hand around Jay’s, squeezing it. “I’m so sorry.”

  “We couldn’t afford regular doctor’s visits,” he explained. “Or they might have caught it earlier. But my mother was too concerned with putting food on the table. She always put herself last. She was a hard worker.”

  “And your dad, did he not help?”

  “There was no work in the area. At first he took out-of-town jobs and only came home on the weekends. But I think in the end it was too hard on him. He gave up. One day, he sent a letter with some money in it. He told my mother he couldn’t do anything else. He said he’d failed as a father and a husband and couldn’t bear seeing us anymore, watching how we had to live. He broke her heart.”

  Tara felt tears well up in her eyes and tried to push them back.

  “I did what I could. After school I helped out at a bait and tackle store. I gutted fish for a small cannery; I helped out at a dry dock. I took whatever job they would give a teenager. And at night, when my mother slept, I took my bike and went down to the harbor and watched the waves rock against the boats. And I wished I’d been born into a different family.” He ran a shaky hand through his hair. “And I hated myself for that, for wishing not to be my mother’s son, for wanting to be rich.”

  His pain broke her heart. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  A sad smile spread on his lips. “I betrayed my mother with my thoughts, because every time I looked out at the boats, I dreamed of getting onto one and leaving this place for good.”

  “But you didn’t. You stayed with her,” she guessed.

  “To the day she died.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “I slipped through the cracks of the social system. I was sixteen and could take care of myself. Charlie, the owner of the dry dock taught me everything I needed to know about boats. And whenever we repaired a boat, I got to take it out on the water and test it out. Those were the moments I lived for.”

  “But how did you become successful? You own one of the largest boat building companies in the US. How did you even start? You had nothing.”

  Jay shook his head. “I had determination. And luck.” He placed the picture back on the sideboard. “I knew everything about boats and what could go wrong. How one wrong move by a rookie skipper could put everybody’s life in danger. I saw it often enough: the young college kids who came down to the marina during spring break and partied on their parents’ expensive yachts. They didn’t even know what danger they were in. They had no clue how to operate a boat, how to keep their passengers and themselves safe.”

  “What did you do?” Tara asked, curious.

  “I developed an electronic system that would activate by itself when it sensed that a boat or its passengers were in danger. I presented it to the Coast Guard. They liked it, but thought it was too expensive to implement. So I talked to the yacht owners and asked them what it would be worth to them to protect their floating assets and passengers. One of them not only bought the device, he tested it extensively and then made me an offer: to patent and mass-produce it. He put up the money, I tossed in my expertise. The profits from that venture allowed me to go to college. I got into Princeton, where I met Paul, Zach, and the others. The gadget I invented generated so much profit that it became the foundation of my boat building business. I knew what made a good boat. And I had plenty of potential customers.”

  “That’s genius.”

  Jay smiled. “As I said, I had a lot of luck.”

  “Hands up, both of ya!” a male voice with a thick southern accent threatened from the door to the hallway. “An’ turn ‘round. Slowly.”

  Jay cast her a reassuring look as they both turned, their hands up in the air. The first thing Tara saw was the barrel of a shotgun. Then she lifted her head and looked at the man holding it.

  25

  Jay lowered his hands and grinned. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

  The man stepped closer. “Jay?” He finally lowered his weapon.

  “It’s good to see you, Charlie.”

  “Boy, what are you doin’ here? Why didn’t ya tell me you’re comin’? I could’ve shot ya.”

  “With that thing?”

  He pointed to the shotgun. It looked as old as Charlie. He was a crusty old man, easily in his early seventies now, but sharp as a tack. And clearly still looking out for Jay and his property.

  “Nut’n wrong with my gun.”

  With one arm, the other still holding the shotgun, Charlie pulled him into an awkward hug.

  “So what are ya doin’ here?” He motioned to Ta
ra. “That your girl?” Charlie grinned appreciatively.

  Jay looked over his shoulder at Tara, not knowing how to answer the question. Was Tara his girlfriend now? It was in her hands.

  Tara took a step forward, reaching her hand out to Charlie. “I’m Tara. Nice to meet you.”

  Charlie shook her hand. “I’m Charlie.” His gaze drifted back to Jay.

  “Charlie owned the dry dock I told you about,” Jay explained.

  “Owned? Oh, so you’re retired now?” Tara asked politely.

  “Retired?” Charlie laughed and jerked his thumb at Jay, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “I would be if it wasn’t for this fella here.”

  Knowing exactly what Charlie was alluding to, Jay decided to intervene. Tara had heard enough of his past, and there was no need to go into any more detail. He slapped Charlie on the shoulder, squeezing it briefly.

  “How’s Mabel doing?” he asked instead.

  “She’s a pain in the butt as always.” He glanced at Tara and added, “My wife.” Then he turned back to Jay. “She woulda baked ya a pecan pie if you’d only told us ya was comin’.”

  “It was all last minute,” Jay said.

  “You wasn’t even gonna stop by, was ya?”

  Jay sighed. No, he hadn’t planned on meeting anybody from his past. It still conjured up too many painful memories.

  Charlie nodded. “Don’t ya wanna at least see what ya money does?”

  “I read the letters.”

  “The kids would love to meet ya,” Charlie coaxed.

  “Kids?” Tara suddenly asked from beside him. “Your grandkids?”

  Charlie shook his head. “Na. Mabel ‘n I, we don’t have any. Wasn’t meant to be. But kids we got plenty now.” He pointed to Jay. “Thanks to that fella.”

  “I’m sure Tara isn’t interested in hearing about that, Charlie. And we should be getting back anyway.”

  Tara looked at him curiously, then smiled back at Charlie. “I’d love to hear about it.”

  “Well, then let’s get ‘n the car and go there.”