“I have a good life, Andrew. I like my friends, my job, where I live. It took me a long time to get over you the first time. Why would I want to take a chance on being hurt again?”
He reached over and took one of the suspender straps between his thumb and forefinger and slowly moved from her shoulder to her waist, feeling her tense when the backs of his fingers lightly brushed her breast, hearing the quick intake of air. “Because you’re not over me,” he said. “Any more than I’m over you.”
3
CHERYL ROLLED TO HER SIDE AND STARED at the narrow line of light coming through the drapes in her motel room. She’d planned to drive home this morning, taking the coast route and stopping in Half Moon Bay to have lunch with her cousin and do some shopping. That was before Andrew talked her into staying another day. She still wasn’t sure staying was wise. Too much had happened. Too fast. She’d come for closure and had been broadsided by openings she hadn’t dreamed existed.
She was scared. She’d expected to feel a mix of emotions if she saw him again, but had been unprepared for the raw power. Thank God for the fear. Without it she would have been in his arms and in his bed and ready to start over.
He was the man she remembered, the man shehad loved, the man she would have followed to the ends of the earth. Being with him again was as easy as if they’d been together the day before.
Nothing real was that easy.
If only he’d told her about the cancer. How different their lives would have been. Even if, in the end, he’d still chosen to leave, she would have understood and could have gone on with her life.
Or so she wanted to believe in hindsight. But could she have gone on as easily as she imagined? No matter how they parted, she would still have loved him, would still have dreamed about him, would still ache for what might have been. Her heart would always be heavy with thoughts of their lost years. Nothing could change it or make it go away.
She glanced at the clock. Ten after six. She was to meet Andrew back at his house at nine for breakfast. Over two and a half hours. Too much time to think.
She got out of bed and headed for the shower.
An hour later she was standing on his front step, her hand raised to knock, when he came up behind her wearing jogging shorts and shoes and nothing else. Her heart skipped a beat and then raced as a wave of pure, naked lust washed over her.
“So you couldn’t sleep either,” he said.
There was no use denying the obvious. “I was hoping you’d be up. We need to talk.”
He reached around her to open the door. “Hungry?”
She caught a hint of shampoo and aftershave and something spicy and masculine mixed with the saltiness of sweat. She flashed back to the illicit mornings they had spent together when she’d sneaked off to spend a weekend with him in San Diego, telling her parents she was off with a girlfriend. They’d pooled their money for a motel room and had stayed up all night then, too, only together. They’d made love and talked and made love again until hunger drove them from their cocoon.
To save money to see each other, they limited their phone calls to twice a week, late Wednesday evening, after the rate change, and Sunday mornings. In between they wrote letters, his long and poetic, hers filled with details of her day. Later, compulsively, she had read and reread what he had written, looking for clues to help her understand why he left. Her darkest moment came the night she burned the letters, one by one, in the backyard at her parents’ home.
Two days later she was in the hospital with pneumonia. While there she realized she needed to either start going through the motions of living again or curl up and die. The next month she started school, graduating with honors two years later.
“All right, so you’re not hungry,” he said, when she didn’t answer. “How about some coffee?”
She looked up into his gaze. “I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for not telling me the truth about your cancer.”
The light left his eyes. “Is that what you came to tell me?”
“One of the things.”
“Can we go inside and talk about this?”
“Yes,” she conceded.
“Can I get cleaned up first?”
The question brought a smile that surprised them both. “Actually, I would prefer it.”
“Sorry. I smelled a lot better an hour ago.” He backed away, indicating she should go first. “I thought maybe you were having trouble sleeping, too–actually, I hoped you were–and figured you might show up early so I got up and did the spit-and-polish thing. And then when you didn’t come I went jogging. It was either that or pace a path in the carpet.”
It was the “too” that reached her. “I was awake; I just didn’t think you would be.”
“Come on, Cheryl. You know better than that.”
“All right, maybe I just didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t sleep.”
“Give me five minutes.”
“Take as long as you want. I’ll make coffee.” She shouldn’t have volunteered. Making coffee was too familiar, too domestic.
He disappeared down the hallway. A minute later she heard running water and the click of a shower door. Slipping her purse strap from her shoulder, she dropped the bag on a table beside the sofa and looked around, something she hadn’t done the night before. As always, Andrew chose comfort over style. The eclectic furniture ranged from a futon that was a step past its prime to a magnificent, custom-made bookcase that ran the length of one wall. Two Mission-style chairs faced a stone fireplace; the table in between held a fanned stack of orchid journals. Specimen seashells lined the mantel, each an exquisite piece of nature’s art. The paintings were watercolors of local scenes, beautiful in their simplicity and execution, the artist, Peter Wylie, one of the most sought after painters of the decade. She was impressed, not because of the small fortune Andrew had hanging on his walls, but because he had settled enough to actually collect something of value.
She realized with a sinking feeling that instead of freeing her mind of him she was filling it with new, fiercely compelling images.
She went into the kitchen and spotted the coffeemaker on the counter beside the sink. She found the coffee in the refrigerator, and with her stomach reminding her that she’d not only skipped dinner the night before, but lunch, too, she tucked a carton of eggs under her arm and dug around for something to add to an omelet.
If making coffee was too domestic, cooking was over the top. He’d invited her to breakfast. Would he get the wrong impression if she–
What was the matter with her? Did it matter whatimpression she gave him? Wasn’t it time they moved past playing games and were honest with each other?
NOT CARING THAT SHE WOULD KNOW HE didn’t want to waste a minute of their time together, Andrew skipped drying his hair and applying cologne, even skipped putting on shoes and socks. He did grab a comb to run through his hair as he walked down the hall, tossing the comb on the futon before entering the kitchen.
In a glance he took in the eggs in the bowl, the green onions on the cutting board, and the cheese beside the grater. He was about to protest that he’d invited her to eat breakfast, not to cook it, but couldn’t get the words out. Seeing her working in his kitchen as if she belonged there, as if she wanted to be there, left him speechless with hope.
Without turning, she asked, “Who lives in the house across the path?”
Andrew’s kitchen had large picture windows on two sides, one facing the ocean, the other the Chapman house. He moved to stand beside her and picked up the cheese. “No one right now. The friend I told you about who died a couple of years ago used to live there. His widow married another friend of mine, and they lived there until his ex-wife moved to Virginia. He and Julia followed to be close to his kids.”
“So the house just sits empty now?”
“They get here as often as they can in the winter, but with a baby on the way and Eric’s writing career taking off, they’re never here in the summer. Instead of selling, th
ey’ve decided to try renting it out again, a month at a time. If that works, they’ll keep it, if it doesn’t, they’ll put the house on the market this fall.”
“You said ‘again.’ If they’ve done it before, why would they think it wouldn’t work this time?”
“The couple who owned the house before Ken were the ones who did the renting. The people they rented to came back every summer for over ten years. They were more like extended family who loved and cared for the place as if it was their own.”
“And none of them want to come back?”
Andrew took a plate from the cupboard to catch the cheese as he grated it. “That last summer turned out to be pivotal for all of them. Their lives changed dramatically. One actually became a movie star.”
“Anyone I would know?”
“Chris Sadler.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “You’re kidding. The girls I work with at the clinic would go crazy if they knew I was even this close to a house Chris Sadler had lived in.”
“He’s a terrific kid. Or at least he was when I knew him. I can’t imagine he’s changed.”
She finished cutting the onions and scoopedthem into a bowl. “How long have you known him?”
“As long as I’ve lived here.”
“There’s so much I don’t know about you. It seems so strange that I came here thinking I knew everything.”
“Whatever you want to know, just ask.” Anything to close the gap, to fill in missing pieces.
“Seventeen years …” She gave him a lost look. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“I told you about finding my grandfather.” What he hadn’t told her was that after six months of cancer treatment, the less-than-wonderful meeting had nearly delivered an emotional knockout punch. Knowing better, he’d gone in with high hopes that someone had been looking for him, too, that someone, somewhere cared.
“When that didn’t work out, I took off and hitchhiked across country, and ended up in Virginia Beach. I figured one ocean was as good as another and tried to settle in, but it didn’t work. A year later I was on the road again, headed home.
She started to say something. He waited, finally prompting, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
She opened drawers until she found a whip to beat the eggs.
“Cheryl?” He put his hand over hers.
Without looking at him, she asked, “Did you miss me? Did you ever think about me?”
He didn’t know the words to tell her how hard it had been to wake up to a sunrise and know she would never share another morning with him or how many times he’d composed a conversation telling her about something new he’d seen or experienced that day. Would she care how many letters he’d written and destroyed? Or how, slowly, he came to recognize that she was more than a habit he could get over, she was an integral part of him, the best part.
“Always,” he told her. “Every moment of every day.”
“Just not enough.”
“At the time I believed I loved you more than any man had ever loved a woman. My inflated sense of nobility kept me away, but not so far I didn’t secretly hope we would run into each other if I came back.”
“No one told you I moved?”
“I couldn’t ask about you and still maintain the self-sacrificing fantasy that I’d left for noble motives. I know how hard this is to understand all these years later, but I believed it was only a matter of time and the cancer would be back. I didn’t want to put you through that. Even if I’d somehow managed to beat the disease, I was only half a man. I could never give you the children you wanted.”
She let out a harsh laugh. “I can’t give me thechildren I wanted. Turns out I’m only half a woman, and I don’t have cancer as an excuse. I was just made that way.”
Andrew did something he’d sworn he would not do. He reached for her and brought her into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair.
She held herself stiffly, resisting the comfort he wanted to give. And then, with a soft moan of letting go, she wrapped her arms around his waist. “I promised myself I wouldn’t let this happen.”
“Me too.”
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
He closed his eyes and nestled his chin against the top of her head. “Nothing.”
“I’ll give you this much–even though I shouldn’t. I’ve never felt as if I really fit in anyone else’s arms.”
A fire raced through his midsection, settling in his loins. It was everything he could do to resist a sudden, nearly overwhelming urge to taste the lips he remembered as if he’d kissed them the day before. Only knowing he was embarking on the most important journey of his life kept him from giving in to that urge. It wasn’t momentary satisfaction he was after, it was a lifetime.
“Welcome home,” he said tenderly.
With more effort than he would have thought possible, Andrew released her. Then, needing something to do, he took out a pan, put it on the stove, turned on the fire, and added a pat of butter.
Cheryl stood back and watched him. For thefirst time she allowed a glimmer of hope to take root in her heart. She’d seen the hunger in his eyes and felt a reciprocal hunger in herself. She knew she wouldn’t have, that she couldn’t have, resisted him, but she also knew that later, when she was alone, she would have questioned whether they were building something real or if they’d simply been caught up in physical longing.
His back to her, his hands planted on the counter, staring out the window, he said, “I want you to know that letting you go just now was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I meant it when I told you I was playing for keeps this time.” He turned. “We have a lot of years ahead of us–and a lot of years to make up.”
“How do we do that, Andrew? How can we possibly make up for seventeen lost years?” She feared if they tried to go back, they would end up mired in what might have been. “Wouldn’t it be better if we just concentrated on the here and now and see where it leads us?”
“Do you really think you could fall in love with me again without dealing with the past?”
Falling in love with him again was a moot point. She’d never stopped loving him. Unexpectedly, tears welled in her eyes. “If only you’d told me.”
The butter crackled in the heated pan and started smoking. Andrew reached to turn off the burner.
“No, don’t,” Cheryl said. “We’ll save it for later.
I’m not ready to go over it again now anyway.” She was mentally exhausted and needed a break.
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. “Want me to do that?”
He smiled, plainly trying to make the transition easier. “I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but I’ve become a pretty good cook.”
She wiped her eyes and summoned a smile. “You’re right, I do find it hard to believe. So, just this once, why don’t you indulge me and let me make the omelet?” More than issuing a challenge, she wanted something to do.
He yielded the skillet. “You do realize you’ve put me in an untenable position. Now I actually have to prove to you that I can cook.”
She eased the eggs into the pan. “You make me sound so … I don’t know … insensitive.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘clever.’ ”
She laughed. He was wrong, of course, but she basked in the gentle teasing. She tilted the pan to let the eggs cook evenly. Andrew was right–she was home. She just wasn’t ready to admit it yet.
AFTER BREAKFAST THEY DID THE DISHES Together, then went down to the beach. Through the morning fog they could see groups of brown pelicans, mostly made up of five or six but some with as many as a dozen, skim the waves, headingnorth for a day of foraging. Sanderlings raced across the sand ahead of incoming waves, then dashed back again as the water retreated, stopping to search for the tiny mollusks and crustaceans the water left behind. Conserving their energy, gulls patiently waited in the dry sand for the waves to br
ing something more substantial.
When the fog cleared, the beach would fill with Sunday visitors, but for the moment Cheryl and Andrew had only a few intrepid fishermen for company. Without giving details, Cheryl had canceled lunch with her cousin, promising they would get together soon. Cheryl sidestepped her cousin’s questions, unwilling to listen to the lecture about getting involved with Andrew that her cousin would relish giving.
Having him in her life again would not be easy. The friends and family who’d seen her through the rough years were not people who forgave or forgot easily.
“You’re drifting.” Andrew stepped in front of her and walked backwards. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“I was thinking about my family and what they will say when they find out that I’m seeing you again.”
“Are you?”
She stopped. “What?”
“Seeing me again?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“No, just one we need to talk about. Among others.”
She folded her arms across her chest, stopped, and dug her toes in the sand. “Like where do we go from here?”
“I ask you out on a date, and you say yes.”
“What kind of date?”
He shrugged. “Dinner? Movie?”
“Don’t you think we’re a little past that?”
He cupped her face with his hands and looked deeply into her eyes. “I’m not sure what you have in mind, but I think we should get something clear right from the start. I’m not one of those guys you pick up in a bar and have your way with–at least not on the first date. You’re going to have to spend some time getting to know me before you get me to agree to anything more than a good night kiss.”
Her heart skipped a beat. Here was the man, the boy, she’d known, the one who could touch her heart and make her laugh and convince her she was safe in his arms. But here, too, was the man who had left her. How could she trust them both?
Instead of responding to his teasing, she said, “Tell me something about you that I don’t know.”
The question threw him. He thought for several seconds. “I sailed around the world a couple of years ago.”
Another Summer Page 4
