by Susan Wiggs
He pushed away from the tree, turned and pinned her against it, holding her there with his body so his hands were free. He slid one hand across her shoulder, pushed her sweater aside and tried to pull down her bra strap.
He couldn’t get his finger under it. Damn. It was so tight you’d think it was made of iron.
He slid both hands to her waist and up under her sweater to cup her from beneath. She moaned against his mouth and their tongues switched places.
God, but she tasted so good. She felt so good. Her nipples grew hard from his fingers and her breasts were heavy and soft and felt just about as good as a woman could feel.
He slid his hands around and grabbed the back of her bra to unhook it.
“Harold!”
They both froze.
“Ohmygod! It’s Aly!” Catherine wiggled out from between him and the tree trunk, jerking at her clothes and taking big gulps of air. She looked up at him. “Bend down. Quick!”
He did and she used her fingers to comb back his hair.
“Harrr-old!”
“Hurry!” she whispered, still straightening her clothes which looked fine. “Get your toolbox!”
When Aly came down the path a few seconds later, they were both walking casually with no signs of the passion that had burned between them just moments before. No outward signs.
“Mom!” Aly ran toward her mother with tears in her eyes. “Harold got out. I can’t find him anywhere.”
Catherine opened her arms and hugged her daughter to her. “Hey, sweetie, we’ll find him. He won’t go far. It’s Harold. Remember? He never strays far from where we are.”
“But this is a new place and remember when we moved that time and how the vet said animals can get lost because the smells are new and they get confused and can’t find their way back.”
Catherine pulled Aly away from her shoulder and held her head in two hands. “We’ll find him. I promise you.”
Aly sobbed.
“Tell you what. I’ll cook some bacon. That ought to bring him running back home.”
“You will?” Aly looked a little brighter.
“Of course I will.” Catherine wiped the long strips of blond hair out of her daughter’s eyes and smiled. “We’ll look for Harold while Michael fixes the plumbing. Okay?”
Aly nodded, then cast a quick glance at him. “Hi, Mr. Packard.”
“The island’s small,” he reassured her. “Your cat won’t go far.”
“Thanks.” She sniffed again.
He walked past them and stopped. He wiped a tear from Aly’s chin with one finger. “Don’t worry there, Little Squirt. We’ll find your cat.”
Then before she could say anything about what he’d called her, he walked on down the pathway.
“Little Squirt?” he heard her whisper to her mother.
“I’ll explain later,” Catherine said.
He didn’t look back but from behind him he could hear the two of them following at a slower pace, beating the ferns and woods and calling out for the cat.
He kept walking. He might make over a half a million dollars a year in salary and another mil in stock options, but hell, he had a toilet to fix.
He walked out of the woods and into the clearing near the house. Dana was walking from the front door along the crooked porch.
She turned the corner to the side of the house and froze.
A second later she screamed so loud it sounded as if she had cracked the sky.
He ran toward her.
Harold was back, proudly sitting on the porch. He had a two foot long garter snake hanging from his mouth.
Eleven
“Dana!” Catherine came running toward the house just as she saw Michael hop over the porch railing and put his arm around Dana. She was huddled into a frightened stance, looking too scared to move.
Aly was about to run past her toward the porch, so Catherine grabbed her arm. “Stop.”
“What’s going on?” Aly frowned at her.
“I don’t know, but don’t move.” Catherine looked up. “Michael?”
He was still talking to Dana, then he turned to her.
At that same moment Aly called out, “Is it Harold?” She already sounded like she was crying.
“It’s Harold and he’s fine so don’t start crying. He brought home a present.”
“Stay here,” Catherine ordered Aly and she walked to the porch. It had been years, but she could smell the snake before she got there. She stopped where she was and peered over the porch railing, then up at him. “I forgot how much those things stink.”
Aly was suddenly right next to her. “Oh, yuk! Harold! Get away from it!”
Catherine looked at her. “I told you to stay put.”
“Is it poisonous?” Aly asked.
“No.” Michael pulled his gloves out of his back pocket. “It’s only a garter snake.”
“Oh.” She watched it a second. “Why do they smell?”
“Oh, who cares!” Dana snapped from around the corner. “Just get rid of it! Hurry! Please!”
The whole time Harold just sat there with the black snake hanging out of his mouth. He was waiting for praise.
Michael put on the work gloves, then he squatted down in front of Harold, who immediately dropped the snake.
Dana screamed again.
The snake slithered a few inches.
Harold ran off the porch.
Aly ran after him.
Michael picked up the snake.
So Catherine backed away into the middle of the yard. A good twenty feet away.
Michael walked down the porch stairs with the snake in his hands just as Aly came back to Catherine’s side with Harold in her arms.
She stood by Catherine while she stroked Harold’s purring head. After a second she started to follow Michael, but Catherine had a tight hold on her arm, so Aly stretched her neck toward them and asked, “Where are you taking it?”
“Away,” he said over his shoulder as he walked toward the woods.
“Far away,” Catherine added.
Michael was lying on his back on the bathroom floor with his head under the john. If his friends could see him now….
As Michael worked on the main pipe, he tried to decide how to go about telling Catherine he wasn’t the island handyman. Sprawled underneath the toilet didn’t feel like the right time for confessions. “Hand me the crescent wrench.”
“Which one is the crescent wrench?” Catherine asked him.
“The one with the blue handle.”
She handed it to him, then stepped back. After a stretch of silence she said, “You know all the tools by color.” She made it sound like he was a kindergartner who had just picked the right crayon from the Crayola box.
Keep digging the hole deeper there, Squirt.
With narrowed eyes he watched her through the small space between the pipe and the bowl.
She was staring at his belt buckle.
He shot a quick glance to his fly, which wasn’t open. He turned over on his side, then squirmed farther under the pipe and tried to get better leverage to loosen it. He kept cranking at it.
How the hell long were the threads on this pipe joint?
She shifted places, shoved the shower curtain back, and sat down on the rim of the tub. “So.”
He cast her a quick glance over a shoulder.
She had her hands clasped in her lap and stared at his butt. “Do you get a lot of work on the island?”
He turned back to the pipes and didn’t answer her. Instead, he kept on turning the wrench as hard as he could.
“I mean…” She paused. “…there are so many old houses on the island…”
He gripped the wrench harder and pulled.
“So I expect you keep busy.” She stopped as if she were searching for the right words, then explained, “I mean, with you doing plumbing and all.”
He twisted the wrench. “I make a good living.”
“It must be a fascinating business.”
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Crissake, Catherine. That’s stretching it.
“I mean working on old houses, watching them come to life again. It’s like that TV show. What is the name of that show?” she muttered.
“’This Old House.’” He pulled so hard that the pipe almost came loose with one turn.
“That’s it!” she said brightly.
“Yep, just fascinating.” He adjusted the pipe. “Clogged drains rate right up there with snake catching and curing cancer.”
She laughed. “That’s funny, Michael. I bet you watch ‘Home Improvement.’”
That hole she was digging herself into just got two feet deeper.
“My office in San Francisco is in a restored Victorian.”
He grunted some kind of response and slid out from under the toilet, put a bucket under the pipe, then snaked it.
A balled up pair of white athletic socks fell into the bucket with a plop.
“There’s your problem,” he said.
“Good God, what moron would flush a pair of socks down the toilet?”
He shrugged, fixed the pipe, and checked the flushing mechanism. He finished up, put the tools back in the box, then washed his hands at the sink. He turned off the faucet and looked around for a hand towel.
“Oh, here.” Catherine stood up and handed him a towel.
While he dried his hands they both stood in the small area of the bathroom between the pedestal sink and the high old tub. They were so close he could almost taste her breath in the air between them.
He looked at her.
She was staring at his mouth. It was an invitation if he ever saw one.
He started to lower his head.
She drew in a breath and ducked suddenly, as if she had been in a stupor, then grabbed the bucket and held it between them like a shield. “I’ll just take this outside.”
“Okay, that’s it.” He threw the towel down on the sink.
She blinked up at him.
“What the hell is going on in that head of yours?”
She frowned. “My head? Me?”
“Yes. You.”
“Nothing’s going on.”
He waited for her to say more.
She didn’t. She just hugged the bucket to her chest and gave him that same stubborn look she’d had when he’d pulled her from the water. “May I get by, please?”
He gave up and stepped aside.
She was gone an instant later.
He looked at the empty doorway in disbelief, then wondered if his instincts were off that much. All morning she had been giving him mixed signals.
Hell, with Catherine his instincts had always been screwed up. Thirty years later and it was the same thing—an overpowering attraction and complete confusion.
He ran a hand through his hair and sat down on the john. He stared at his grandfather’s battered old toolbox like he was waiting for it to explain to him the workings of the female mind.
He shook his head.
He was fifty years old and he still didn’t understand women.
Twelve
Catherine was forty-seven years old and she still didn’t understand men.
For a brief moment she wondered if she had imagined what had happened between them in the woods. If so, she had one heck of an imagination. Perhaps, if she didn’t get the Letni account, she should switch professions and try writing romance novels.
Dana and Aly came around the corner of the house. They were arguing until they spotted Catherine.
“Mom!” Dana came hobbling toward her dragging a rusty old bike with bent handle bars, a crooked seat, no tires and only one wheel. “Look at this!”
It was awful. She frowned at it. “Must I?”
“These are the only bikes in the basement.”
“Are you sure?” She turned to Aly who hadn’t yet reached the age where she needed to always be on the offensive.
Aly nodded. “That’s the best bike of the bunch. It has a wheel.”
Catherine tried to sound cheery. “Then we’ll have to spend our time sailing instead.”
Dana gave a bitter laugh. “In what?”
“There’s a sailboat. I’m sure it’s in the boathouse.”
“Oh.” Dana had that sassy look about her. “You mean that sailboat?” She waved a hand toward the beach.
“What sailboat?”
“That one. The one we pulled out while you were in the house.” Dana pointed to a lump of green, algae-covered sticks and black boards.
If you really stretched your imagination—perhaps into another dimension—it could have once been a small boat.
“Mom, you can’t make us stay here. It’s sooooo awful.” Dana was whining like she had when she was three.
Aly didn’t look much happier. She was staring at the bicycle as if it were a broken doll.
“Catherine?” Michael came around the other side of the house.
Great, Catherine thought, rubbing her hands over her eyes for a moment. Just great.
Michael held out his hand. “Here’s your problem.”
No, she thought. My biggest problems—all three of them—are standing right in front of me. Then there were her inanimate problems—the broken bike and the sailboat from the River Styx.
She stared at the silver mechanism in his hand. Another problem? Probably. Her eyes almost glazed over. “What is it?”
“The sparking mechanism.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
He kept looking at her as if she should understand why he was holding that metal gadget in his big hand.
She shrugged and threw up her hands. “So?”
“Your ignitor is bad.”
Not in the woods it wasn’t, she thought. I could have lit the whole island. Which is why I’m staying a good distance away from you, Michael Packard.
“You won’t have any hot water.”
“Mo-ther!”
She held up a hand. “Not now, Dana.”
“We have to leave. We just have to. You dragged me away from all my friends.” Dana’s voice cracked. “There’s nothing to do on this dumb island but run from snakes.” She shuddered and hugged herself. “The bikes are broken and that sailboat won’t even float. You promised this would be fun. Now we can’t even take a shower!” Dana burst into tears and ran into the house.
Catherine wanted to cry, too.
Aly looked at her. “She bragged to all her friends that she was going to learn how to sail.”
Catherine nodded. Sailing was something she had promised Dana for years. Bad mothers don’t keep their word. The phrase chanted through her mind as if there was a guilt devil on her shoulder reminding her over and over.
Would this failed vacation matter in five years? Maybe. Would they be able to laugh about this someday? That she didn’t know.
She sighed because there wasn’t much else she could do. She slid her arm around her youngest daughter. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I guess this was all a big mistake.”
“That’s okay, Mom.” Aly patted Catherine’s hand. “I know you tried to make this trip fun even if it isn’t.”
Well, that about said it all. Her daughters were both miserable.
Aly hugged her back, then turned and walked toward the house with her small shoulders hunched and her head down.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Catherine.”
She looked up at Michael. “I had such high hopes.” She sighed. “I wanted the island to be special to them, too. I’m a lousy parent.”
“Looks like you’re their only parent.”
She nodded.
“Where’s their father?”
“Dead.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be. We divorced eight years ago. He died a couple of years later.”
Michael only stood there, looking at her as if he were searching for important answers that were hidden somewhere deep in her eyes.
“Okay, Catherine. What did he do to you?�
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“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
She was quiet for a long time. She stared at some spot over his shoulder because it was that hard for her. She couldn’t even look at him as she said, “He walked out on us.”
Michael swore under his breath.
“Aly was only three, so she doesn’t remember much. But Dana was seven. Even with counseling I don’t think she ever understood why he left.”
“Why did he leave?”
“Because we were too much for him to handle. Tom was different. A free spirit. He needed to chase his rainbows. Something I never saw in him until it was too late. He wanted a wife and children, until he had them.” She shrugged. “Then we were a responsibility. It took me a while to admit and understand that he could never commit to anything. It wasn’t just us. He had twelve different jobs in the ten years we were married, each one a bigger dream than the last.”
Michael didn’t say anything. Now that he had his answer, he looked as if he wanted to take back the question.
“But that was all a long time ago. Before he died I think I finally understood that he loved us. As much as it was in him to love someone other than himself.
“So.” She waved her hand at the gadget he was holding. “There’s no hot water without that…thing?”
He shook his head.
She gave him a weak smile and a shrug to cover up her disappointment. “Well, then. I guess we’ll be leaving on Thursday.”
He didn’t say anything but seemed a million miles away.
She wondered what he thought of her and her past. She spoke openly because that was how she always dealt with her failed marriage, honestly. But it was a chink in her pride to admit that she had failed at something so very important.
She straightened, squared her shoulders back and held out her hand. “Thank you.”
He tossed the gadget into his shirt pocket, wiped his hand on his jeans and took her hand. “Catherine.”
It took every ounce of her pride and control to act natural. “Michael.” Her voice came out in a raspy whisper, as if it knew this was the last time she would say his name, knew that there wouldn’t be a bittersweet meeting in another thirty years.
