Hanna couldn’t resist adding a new hooded sweatshirt to her wardrobe. It seemed like the store carried every color in existence, and she wilted a little at the overwhelming choices. Derick noted her struggle and picked out a pale aqua zip-up that spelled out BLOCK ISLAND across the front in white lettering.
“It brings out your eyes,” he said as he held it out to her.
Hanna blushed when the cashier smiled indulgently at the two of them, but she couldn’t deny the pleasure his compliment gave her. With souvenirs in hand, the little group set out to return to the boat.
THIRTY-THREE
TACKING
“We are not all born to be handsome.”
—Mrs. Clay, Persuasion
For Derick, the hike out to Crescent Beach had been more of a stroll—casual, relaxing, enjoyable, even. But the same stretch of land in wet suits, with enormous stuffed animals, shopping bags, and two cranky kids was nothing short of torture. Walter was out cold on Derick’s shoulder, while CJ stumbled along next to his aunt. By the time they got back to the Asp, Derick had no idea why anyone wanted children of their own—ever.
Back on the boat, no one had much energy for anything. All four of the boys watched a movie on Derick’s I-pad while Sophie and Hanna made taco salad for dinner. There were no protestations when the kids were tucked into one of the four cabins afterward, both of them falling into bed like cooked spaghetti and not moving again.
The adults went up on deck. Adam and Derick played Spades while Sophie read and Hanna sketched. After losing the third game in a row to Derick, Adam declared his intention of turning in, and Sophie embraced Hanna in a brief hug. “Keep him in line for me,” she said, referring to Derick, who wandered over to the bow and sat down to take in the view.
“I’ll do my best,” Hanna pledged.
Derick looked over his shoulder and waggled his eyebrows in response. Sophie rolled her eyes and herded Adam down into the galley, leaving Derick and Hanna on their own.
Hanna joined him on the bow, sliding down beside him and stretching out her legs. She had on a pair of cutoffs that showcased her pale, slender legs. Derick knew from experience, as well as her frequent self-deprecating comments, that she hated her skin tone, but it was something Derick had always loved about her. It reminded him of the old days, when women wore bonnets or carried parasols to stay out of the sun, when being fair-skinned was the standard of beauty. All the better to see that stunning telltale blush.
She wore the sweatshirt he’d picked out for her earlier as well. It had been a good choice—it made her ice blue eyes a little brighter. Her long hair had been twisted into a loose braid over one shoulder, a fringe of blonde framing her face as the wind pulled its fingers through the strands.
It was just the two of them now, under the darkening sky, and Derick could almost feel the night buzzing around them. The only sound was the water lapping gently at the Asp’s hull, the occasional cry of a passing gull. He could taste the salt in the air, could smell the sea as the sun dipped into the water. It seemed like an age that they stayed like that, wrapped in silence as the stars began winking awake in the night sky.
“You alive over there?” Derick asked, bumping her shoulder with his.
“Yeah,” Hanna answered in a strange voice that Derick found himself trying to name. Awe? Contentment? Humility? He longed to see her face, so he could have a frame of reference—but their proximity made looking over awkward.
“For a minute I thought you fell asleep on me. Or rolled overboard,” he joked in an attempt to divert himself from pondering Hannah’s voice inflection.
“I’m sorry,” Hannah sighed. “I don’t mean to be antisocial. It just felt . . . sacrilegious, somehow, to break the silence.” After a short pause in which she seemed to be gathering her thoughts she added, “Like if I were to speak it would alter the course of history or something.” She had the good grace to laugh at herself. “I know it sounds ridiculous.”
Derick swallowed, or tried to—for some reason his windpipe felt as if it was shrinking. “Not at all,” he countered. How had Hanna managed to put into words the very thing that had gone through his soul so many times on the Laconia? So many nights he had been bobbing on the water, completely at nature’s mercy, with nothing but the silence to keep him company, and had thought something along the same vein. How could Hanna be repeating his thoughts to him, almost verbatim? Derick scowled as he set his eyes on the horizon.
Hanna’s voice coaxed him from his thoughts. “Is this what it was like for you, out there?”
Derick appreciated that she didn’t clarify “out there”—they both knew it was unnecessary. Still, he couldn’t help chuckling at Hanna’s idea of his circumnavigation, all calm water and profound silence. Unfortunately, the sea had a soul of its own and wasn’t quite so obliging as all that.
“Sometimes,” he allowed. “There were times when the quiet was almost . . . spiritual. Like something was hiding under the silence that you could only experience on the other side of it, after the peace became too loud. When you make it to the other side of that, you find something more.”
Now it was Derick’s turn to feel ridiculous. “Of course, there were plenty more times on the water that were anything but spiritual,” he continued. “The wind doesn’t cooperate, a line breaks, you find a tear in one of the sails . . . and you understand where the phrase swear like a sailor comes from.”
For just an instant, he was rewarded by her soft laughter before it floated off on the breeze. He’d never wanted to hold anything in his hands so badly. Hanna pivoted to face him, leaning back on her hands.
Clearing his throat, he said, “The boys crashed pretty fast.”
“It’s the rocking,” she said. “And it helps that we drained their batteries today.”
“So it can be done. Good to know. All we have to do is kill ourselves in the process.”
Hanna smiled in sympathy, her blue eyes like a soft summer sky.
So many moments . . .
Reaching out, Derick captured a lock of her hair between his fingers and tucked it carefully behind her ear. She dropped her gaze to her lap, but he lifted her eyes back to his with a hand under her chin.
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Look away.”
“It makes me nervous when people watch me,” she confessed with a tiny tremor in her voice.
“Even me?”
“Especially you.”
“Why?”
Casting her eyes down again, she released a pent-up breath as she removed his hand from under her face, but she didn’t let go. “I don’t know . . .” she trailed off, lifting a shoulder. “I guess I’m afraid that the longer you look, the more flaws you’ll see.” There was a raw vulnerability in her next words. “I’m no Ella Musgrove.”
Derick took a second to process this. He hadn’t expected the conversation to take such a turn. And he was a little sidetracked by the fact that Hanna was playing with his fingers. “I don’t see what Ella has to do with us.”
“She’s, like, a perfect ten.”
“I think you’re forgetting to account for preference. There’s really no such thing as a perfect ten because you’d have a hard time finding two people who agree on what that is.”
Hanna snorted. “Most people agree that petite, tan, and curvy is a good thing.”
Derick shrugged. “I’m sure there’s someone out there who would agree with you—”
“Only the entire male species!”
“You’re generalizing. She’s not really my type.”
“But you dated her! You must have been attracted to her.”
“Sure I was,” Derick allowed. “Until I got distracted by my perfect-ten ex-girlfriend.”
The effect of this bold speech was immediate: Hanna’s lips parted in surprise.
“If you want the truth, I haven’t thought about Ella since the night we all camped out on the beach. I don’t remember the last time I even looked
at her.” He steeled himself with a breath. “For a long time now, the only thing I’ve been able to see is you.”
Her eyes widened, then cut away again as the blush crawled over her skin.
“I wish you would stop doing that,” he said.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” she murmured, “that someone like you would even look at me.”
“But I am looking at you.”
Nothing. Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. In sailing, when a heading took you directly into the wind, you did something called “tacking.” Turn to the left, then to the right, then back to port, then starboard, and so on—reaching your destination in more of a broken zig-zag, but eventually coming to the same end. Derick had never imagined that his sailing prowess might help him out in the romantic sector, but it was worth a try.
Grasping Hanna’s hand, he flattened her palm over the place where his heart beat, then layered his hand over hers to trap it in place. Finally, her eyes traveled slowly up to meet his.
“What do you feel?” he asked.
“Your heartbeat.”
“Very good. Would you say it’s fast? Slow? Average?”
“I don’t know,” she breathed. “Maybe a little fast.”
“I think you’re probably right,” he agreed. “Now, pay close attention,” he told her, then leaned in and touched his lips to hers.
THIRTY-FOUR
AGE DIFFERENCE
There they exchanged again those feelings . . . which had once before seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement.
—Jane Austen, Persuasion
Several things assaulted Hanna’s senses at once: the blood pounding in her ears at Derick’s approach, the thrumming of his heart under her hand—speeding up as he leaned in, his mouth molding itself to hers with patient determination. And then, the way he lost it when she buried her hands in his hair and tugged him closer, the way he deftly scooped her onto his lap without lifting his mouth from hers.
It was their first kiss—or technically, their second first kiss—but, as first kisses went, it couldn’t have been better. It was even sweeter for all the anticipation of the last few weeks, and comprised of all the essentials in perfect amounts: tenderness, desire, urgency, loss of control—all just right. Goldilocks herself couldn’t have been more pleased.
How much time passed after that was difficult to say. When Hanna began to fear spontaneous combustion, she pulled back. Derick protested by clutching her tighter for an instant, then released her into the cradle of his arms. Emotionally drained and still reeling from the implications of what had just transpired, Hanna pressed her cheek to Derick’s chest and snuggled against him. She wouldn’t have left that little cove for all the riches in the world.
After a hush of several minutes, Hanna ventured a glance up at Derick. “What are you thinking about?”
There was a tranquil smile on his face as he answered. “The same thing I’ve been thinking about for weeks: you.”
She felt herself redden, and Derick’s grin spread. “There it is again. If I live a thousand years I’ll never get tired of that blush.”
Hanna tried to turn her face into his arm, but he wouldn’t have it. “Okay, I’m sorry. I won’t tease you on purpose to get that reaction. Even though it’s my favorite thing ever.”
She tried to give him a stern look, but ended up going limp in his arms instead when he bent down and brushed his lips against hers. It was just the hint of a kiss, but it was enough for her to reach out and draw him back for another one. Sated by her reaction, he smiled against her lips. “I guess we know what your love language is. There’s one less thing I have to figure out about you.”
He laughed heartily at her chagrin, and Hanna shushed him.
“What if you wake Adam or Sophie up? What if they see us?” She couldn’t hold onto her disapproving tone with Derick kissing each of her fingertips.
“Adam would give me a high-five, and I’m pretty sure Sophie would do a happy dance. Aside from the fact that you’re one of her favorite people, my sister knows how I feel about you.”
Hanna thrilled to the words, but got distracted by the information. “She does?”
Threading his fingers through hers in a lingering sort of way, he nodded.
“Does she know about . . . before?”
“She knew there was someone I was getting serious with, but I wasn’t wildly keen on talking about it afterward. Anyway, she had no way to contact me since I drowned my phone in the Pacific Ocean on my way out of Port of Brookings Harbor.”
Hanna couldn’t stop the indignant noise that escaped her. “No wonder I always got your voicemail!”
By way of apology, Derick kissed her again. What had she been upset about?
“I almost called you from my first port in Africa, but I let my idiocy get the best of me.”
Shaking her head, Hanna sat up a little in his arms. “I was the reason you left like that. When I think of the last ten years, of what we could’ve—” She broke off, rising emotion choking off the sound.
“It’s not your fault, Hanna. It’s not my fault either. I just don’t think the timing was right.”
“You really believe that?”
“I do. You, at age eighteen, were emotionally, like, forty—whereas I, at age twenty, was still an embryo in that department. It was a big age difference.”
Hanna rolled her eyes.
“We both acted rashly in different ways,” he went on, “but I really feel like things worked out the way they were meant to at the time.”
Hanna took that in. She thought of the initial sting of losing him, the unexpected pain when the tender scar was reopened that first time she saw him on TV, the smarting shock at running into him that morning on the beach, the undeniable ache of watching him with Ella . . .
Would she erase all that hurt if she could? Would she spare herself one ounce of the suffering that had brought her to this moment? In a way, that misery had made her who she was. Somehow, that awfulness had brought her full circle—back into his arms again.
Having waited so long to get back into those arms, she wasn’t keen on leaving them anytime soon. Derick helped her to her feet and, retaining his grip on her hand, towed her after him as he took cushions from the seating area and arranged them on the bow of the Asp. Then he settled himself into a half-reclining position and held his arms open wide in an invitation. Knowing that her embarrassment was plain on her face and that there was nothing she could do about it, Hanna fit herself to his side. She brushed her fingers over his hei matau pendant, flushing with pleasure when his heart sped up at her touch.
“Your heart is pounding again,” she noted aloud, one part chagrin, two parts delight.
“You think?”
She beamed into his shirt. Had she ever been this happy before? She couldn’t say for sure, but nothing came to mind.
The wind was picking up now, sending white-capped sea swells crashing into the hull. By unspoken consent, neither of them made a move toward their own cabins below, and they drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms.
THIRTY-FIVE
THE PARCEL
Because Mr. Elliot’s manners had precisely pleased her . . . she had been too quick in receiving them.
—Jane Austen, Persuasion
Dawn came sluggishly the next morning, a thick blanket of cloud cover effectively blotting out the sun. Derick had been awake for a while, watching Hanna sleep snuggled against him. The wind had not been kind to her hair during the night, working it into a tangled mess. He smiled to himself as he wondered what someone would think if they happened upon the two of them. At least from the state of Hanna’s hair, they would assume that their “sleeping” had not been accomplished fully clothed.
Reaching out, Derick traced her knuckles with his fingertips, then let them slip into the grooves between her fingers. After a moment her hand twitched and then answered by tangling with his. When she opene
d her eyes and looked up at him, a tidal wave of emotion swelled and broke over him.
“What’re you smiling at?” she asked in a groggy voice.
“Your hair.”
Horrified, Hanna smoothed it down with her fingers. “Better?”
“Much. You almost look respectable now,” he teased.
Sophie’s voice preceded her up onto the deck. “So that’s why we have two empty cabins below.”
Hanna bolted upright as if she’d been tazed, putting several inches between Derick and herself.
“Don’t worry, sis, I was a perfect gentleman,” he said. “I can’t say the same for her though . . .”
“I should hope not, seeing as she’s a girl and all.”
Derick paused, considering Hanna. “No . . . no. That’s not it.”
Fortunately for Hanna, the appearance of Walter saved her from overflowing with shame. He toddled over to his aunt, reaching his stubby arms out in supplication.
“Morning, Walt,” Hanna said, drawing him in. Then she held out her open hand. “Binky, please.”
Walter considered her for a moment, then plunked it out of his mouth and dropped it in her palm. “Bye-bye, EE-EE.”
“Where’s CJ?” Hanna inquired. “He can’t still be asleep.”
“He suckered Adam into a game of Go Fish,” Sophie answered.
“You sure it’s Go Fish? I wouldn’t be surprised if Adam is teaching him how to play Poker,” Derick warned.
“He sucks at Poker,” Sophie pointed out.
“That’s true.”
“Anyway,” Sophie said to her brother, “I came up here to tell you that Adam says there’s a storm coming in.”
Persuaded Page 19
