Never Too Late

by Patricia Watters

  Jerry slipped his arm around Andrea's waist, dragging her to him, and said, "I assure you, inspector, I'll be with my wife day and night until we leave the island."

  The inspector nodded before turning to leave, but the look on his face clearly showed his puzzlement over the very strange marriage of Andrea and Jerry Porter. Just as Andrea's father's face did... And he would be the person Andrea would be facing next.

  CHAPTER 7

  After the two men left, Andrea's father pinned Andrea with eyes as sharp as a hawk's and said, "You'd better start explaining. That bastard of a husband standing behind you has you mucking around in the same gutter you were in when he dragged you out of college to marry him. I hope to hell you're finally ready to crawl out."

  "She's not," Jerry said, while stepping around Andrea to stand facing the man who'd been his nemesis for twenty-five years. But no more. This day was long overdue. "Andrea, take your mother and go outside," he said in a sharp voice. "Your father and I have some things to say to each other." For once, Andrea didn't argue with him.

  After the door closed behind the women, Jerry squared off with his father-in-law. Looking directly into the eyes of a man who stood as tall as he, a man a quarter-century his senior, with eyes that held the glint of honed steel, and said, "Andrea doesn't owe you an explanation and neither do I. You can't intimidate me, Ellison. You could wreck me financially—buy out my company with petty cash and destroy it—but you can't destroy me because I'd be right back building another company. I know your kind. Men with old money and the power it wields hire my company's services to clean up their messes. But that gutter I grew up in taught me how to not take crap from men like you who get what they want by using their name to intimidate people. But you don't intimidate me, and I'll always have an edge over you because you don't know what I'm capable of doing and it scares the hell out of you."

  Ellison withdrew an aluminum tube from his lapel pocket and removed the cap. "You're about to lose your wife, Porter," he said, slipping a cigar from the tube, "and that scares the hell out of you. For years my daughter lived in a two-bit apartment pumping out babies when she could have lived in a house I wanted to give her but you wouldn't take because you're so damn self-righteous. She resented you for that then and still does. Now she's had enough of your crap and she's coming home to roost." He clipped off the end of the cigar with a gold cigar guillotine and tossed the tip into an ashtray.

  Jerry eyed the cigar tip, then fixed his gaze on Ellison, and said, "Let me give you a little heads up, Ellison. When I took your daughter away from you, you didn't have the power to stop me because I was offering her the one thing she didn't have. A way out. She didn't run off to marry me, she ran off to get out from under your control. That took guts. And she married me when I had nothing. Can you say the same for your wife? Can you ask yourself if Barbara would have married you if you'd had nothing? She's a decent woman. Maybe she would have. But you'll never know, will you?"

  Ellison tucked the cigar in the corner of his mouth. "I still have my wife, Porter," he said, eyeing Jerry with venomous delight, "and she doesn't screw around with other men. Can you say the same about yours?"

  Deciding not to let this become an issue over wives, Jerry ignored his comment, and said, "You try to run the lives of everyone around you, but I refuse to dance to your tune, and you hate it that Andrea's more like me than you in that respect. In fact, that's what I admired most about her when we met. She was one of the few people who'd stand up to Carter Ellison III. Sure, there's nothing I can give her that you can't one up me on. But I wouldn't give a plug nickel to live in your ivory tower with your staff of servants, because that's all you have. Take it away from you and you'd be out on the streets peeing in your pants, wondering what to do next."

  Ellison let out a short guffaw. "I wouldn't be peeing in my pants, Porter, I'd be pissing on gutter scum like you."

  "I may be gutter scum in your book," Jerry said, "but at least I know how to find my way out. If you lost everything you had and ended up there, and some benefactor felt sorry for you and gave you a hundred thousand bucks to get started again, you wouldn't know shit what to do with it. But I'd start a new business, maybe even better than cleaning up other people's messes, and I'd be right back out there racking in the money from men like you who got it for nothing."

  "You really are full of crap," Ellison said, the unlit cigar bobbing up and down in his mouth as he talked, "the kind you get from living in the gutter."

  "I picked up more than just crap living there," Jerry quipped, eyes on the cigar. "I learned how to shove it down the throats of pretentious, self-important jackasses like you. The problem with you is you haven't got your mother's tit to suck on anymore so you suck on a big fat cigar whenever someone with guts stands up to you or refuses to jump through your hoops. Well, I have three daughters who wouldn't jump through your hoops, and they each married men who are self-starters, who don't need to suck on their mother's tits to be somebody." He held the man's caustic gaze, certain he'd hit at the core of the man.

  "You also had a son," Ellison reminded him, "a chip off the old block who you dragged into that same gutter you're so proud of. But he never came out. You knew about the booze parties and the street racing in that fast car of his, a car you bought him. You killed your own son, Porter. You might as well have put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger." He stood looking at Jerry, the cigar tucked in the corner of his mouth.

  Jerry said nothing, just held Ellison's triumphant gaze. The man had won this round because there was nothing more to say because he was right. There had been times when he'd felt so damn guilty about Scott's death he'd wanted to put a gun to his own head, but didn't want to disappoint the girls. Ironic. Not blowing out his brains because he'd let down the kids, like missing one of their piano recitals, or showing up late for a school play.

  "Gotcha didn't I, Porter," Ellison said, a self-satisfied look on his face. "You can't one up me on that." To make sure his victory was recognized he flipped a flame from his butane lighter and held it to the cigar, eyes focused on Jerry as he sucked on it several times until smoke curled up.

  "Rot... in... hell... Ellison," Jerry said in a low controlled voice. Sweeping open the door, he walked out, slamming it forcefully behind. He said nothing to the women as he past them and left. Half way to his place he looked back and saw no one coming. It had been a strident confrontation and there was no question the women heard it, and for some reason he'd expected Andrea to come after him, either to rub his face in the shit her father had thrown at him, or to add her two-bits to her father's final words. And that was the core of a marital rift that had grown progressively wider since the night of Scott's accident. And with good reason. Like her father, Andrea blamed him for Scott's death, and nothing could change that because they were right.

  He hadn't been back at his bungalow more than fifteen minutes when he heard footsteps on the deck and turned to find Barbara Ellison standing in the doorway.

  "Can I have a word with you, Jerry?" she asked.

  "Yeah sure, why not," Jerry snapped. "Everyone else has." He immediately regretted his sharp retort. Barbara had been nothing but decent to him over the years. Early on she'd been resigned to their marriage, even staying with them at the lake house on occasion when the kids were growing up. But her bastard of a husband would be cursing him on his death bed. "Sorry, Barbara," he said. "That was uncalled for. Come on in." He walked over to the window and stared at the beach and the iridescent shells sticking out of the pearly-pink sand, a heady reminder of how it had been when he saw Andrea standing on the beach and wearing a swim suit that touched every place he wanted to touch yet knew he shouldn't... And he didn't care because he wanted her beyond reason... So he simply walked up behind her and dragged the suit off her. And when she stepped out of it and turned around to face him, and she was naked, and sleek, and all female curves, and his... He took her on the beach.

  And that's exactly what it was. A taking. No giving. N
o trying to pleasure her. No rough and tumble. He never heard her laughing, that low throaty laugh she got when they were horsing around and things were starting to get hot and heavy before settling into making love. Man, that husky laugh turned him on. It was the most powerful aphrodisiac he could have. The sound was in his head now, and his body was reacting...

  Barbara placed her hand on his shoulder, and he flinched and turned around. She removed her hand, and said, "Carter's not a bad man but you have to understand that after Andrea dropped out of college and ran off with you like she did, it was a terrible blow to him. Imagine your only child, who'd been the focus of your life for nineteen years, going against everything she'd been taught, and running off with a man who had nothing to offer her but determination and big dreams. But after Carter got over the shock of what Andrea had done, he did something almost unprecedented for him. He tucked his tail between his legs and came to you and offered to buy the two of you a house. For Carter it was a peace offering. For you it was a line drawn in the sand. And when you turned him down flat, it established a course of action for the next twenty-five years. Two dominant males, neither willing to give an inch of territory. Andrea is the territory—the line in the sand—and she's been the pawn between the two of you ever since."

  "She's not a pawn," Jerry said. "She stands up to him."

  "That's because she's married to a man as strong as her father and she's stubborn enough to make sure her father doesn't forget it. Nor will Carter back down, even though he knows you're not the man he makes you out to be. If he wasn't so stubborn, he'd be bragging about you to his friends and associates... His son-in-law who came from nothing and made a success. He knows it, but he can't say it because it would make him a lesser man in his own eyes because he came from old money, and that's bothered him all his life. Deep down, he envies and admires you.

  "He's your husband," Jerry said. "You have to stand by him. But I don't have to give him the time of day, and the less we see of each other, the better our lives will be."

  "You're probably right," Barbara agreed, giving a little wistful sigh. "But for the record, I don't blame you for Scott's death. If he hadn't been killed in the car you got him it could have happened in any other car, or racing someone's motorcycle, or rock climbing, or taking up a dare. Scott always did live on the edge."

  "Yeah, well, Scott's not an issue with Andrea and me anymore because we don't talk about him. We don't talk about much of anything." Jerry looked out the window at the water lapping against the beach, sweeping up the sandy incline and falling back, leaving a watery slope behind and said, broodingly, "Andrea and I are just two ships passing in the night..."

  More accurately, two ships that collided in a storm... bow to stern, stern to stern, however two ships conquer and subjugate. But there had been no victor. Just he and Andrea taking what they wanted...

  "I've been aware that you and Andrea have been having marital problems for the past two years," Barbara's voice came from behind, "and I know lifestyles are different now than when Carter and I married, but I never dreamed you and Andrea had an open marriage. Do the girls know?"

  "The girls know nothing," Jerry replied. "But it's not an open marriage. At least it wasn't until the cruise. Andrea and I are getting a divorce and we were planning to tell the girls before we took off for the lake house. Before I took off for the lake house with the girls, that is. Andrea would have stayed home. But when the girls gave us the cruise we were stuck, so we decided to get a second stateroom and go as singles. We probably would have scratched each other's eyes out if we'd shared the same room."

  "Then you just plan to end twenty-five years, like that." Barbara snapped her fingers.

  "Hell, Barbara. It's definitely not like that. We haven't had a good word to say to each other since Scott died. Yesterday on the beach..." his voice drifted off momentarily. "Well, yesterday wasn't so bad," he said, trying to block out of his mind what might have been... hearing that throaty laugh and experiencing the culmination of months of abstinence. But what happened out there had nothing to do with love, only lust... and years of knowing what turned each other on, knowing those intimate trigger points that awakened passions in an instant, even when things were wrong. And things were definitely wrong on the beach. They were like two strangers, screwing the hell out of each other, and walking away.

  But that's the way it was, a touch of reality, a love lost and buried in the sand...

  "This will devastate the girls," Barbara said. "Have you considered that?"

  "That's about all I've thought of for months," Jerry replied, while continuing to stare out the window. "But there's no other way. We plan to start proceedings when we get back. But I'll make sure Andrea gets a sizeable settlement so she can stay in that big house and be completely independent of her father or else he'll run her life."

  "You do still care," Barbara said, matter-of-factly.

  "She's been my wife for twenty-five years," Jerry replied. "She's the mother of my children. Yeah, I still care. But the marriage is over."

  He walked out, leaving Barbara standing in the bungalow.

  ***

  The beach stretched out in both directions, deserted, pristine, like wide sandy arms trying to embrace the turquoise waters. Andrea knew she shouldn't be walking alone, but after her mother slipped out of the bungalow, leaving her and her father alone to throw verbal darts at each other, she also took off and never looked back. Presumably her father had taken the hint and gone back to the lodge. Unfortunately, her parents were also staying at Finnigan's Hideaway, and Andrea didn't expect them to leave the island until the investigators learned about Alessandro's whereabouts. The knowledge that she'd spent the night in the stateroom of a man who was a kingpin in a drug cartel was very sobering. Was there blood on Alessandro's hands? Had he kidnapped or murdered to protect his interest in the cartel? And to what extent would he go to hold what he considered his, if it were threatened? He was still out there somewhere, and she was walking alone on a deserted beach.

  A few hundred feet from where the path from the bungalow met the beach, she glanced around to see if anyone else was there, and to her alarm, saw someone emerge from the palms and mangroves that skirted the beach, not far behind. A man. Tall and lean, his face and body in shadow with the sun low behind him. Had he been watching her? Maybe saw her leave her bungalow and was following her?

  She knew it wasn't Jerry. Jerry had a distinct walk, a loose kind of amble. But the man following her was tall, erect, walking a straight determined line toward her. She quickened her pace, feeling the first grip of panic. Not far ahead, the beach narrowed and the mangroves came close to the shore. If she hurried she could dart into the brush and find her way back. Other bungalows sat facing the water, each with its own trail to the main path. Jerry's bungalow was among them, though she didn't know which was his. She looked back again, and the man was gone. She was about to rush into the brush and stay until dark, when she heard rustling inside the mangroves, and a figure came bursting out. She started to scream. Then saw it was Jerry.

  "Are you crazy!?" he said. "What in hell are you doing walking on the beach alone? You know what the inspector said."

  "I had to get away," Andrea replied. "My father was driving me crazy." She looked back to where the man had been, and asked, while pointing, "Did you see a man on the beach back there? Tall. Lean?"

  "Cavallaro," Jerry replied.

  "Then you saw him?"

  "No, I took a path that brought me here. But he's out there somewhere. And you're not dealing with some Italian stud now. You're dealing with a dangerous man who wouldn't think twice about wrapping his hands around your neck and snapping it. I'm walking you back to your bungalow and staying with you."

  Andrea didn't argue because she was too scared to worry about Jerry taking what he wanted while protecting her. She didn't care. He could take her on the beach, or in bed, or anywhere he wanted because it didn't matter. They were just two people trapped in a hell they'd created, and
needing a diversion to get through it. And all she wanted was to get off the island and go back to Myrtle Beach and lock herself in her tower and pretend the world beyond didn't exist...

  "I'll sleep on the sofa," Jerry said. "I don't want a repeat of what happened on the beach."

  "Why? Was I lacking in some way?" Andrea clipped. "I thought I performed rather well. You certainly can't accuse me of not moving."

  "Don't push my hot buttons," Jerry warned.

  Andrea clamped her jaws shut. She didn't know why she was taunting Jerry, except that it had become a pattern since Scott's death, a way to keep a physical and an emotional barrier between them. Yet, on the beach, there was no way two people could have been closer together physically. But, while they were struggling to fill a physical void, there had been an emotional barrier between them that was as solid as steel.

  She glanced at Jerry's hard profile. "I'm sorry," she found herself saying. "I just want to get this whole twenty-fifth-wedding-anniversary nightmare over."

  "You've got that right," Jerry replied. "And I'll try to stay out of your way at the bungalow. But if you pull a stunt like you did in the shower before we left on this nightmare, I'll nail you to the bed." There was no humor in his words.

  In the past, those exact words had been sweetly seductive because the look on Jerry's face had been teasing and loving, a look that told her he was about to give her what would make her writhe with passion, then have her cuddling in his arms and sighing in contentment. But there was nothing playful about the way he said it this time. And nothing subtle about its meaning.

  "Don't worry," she said. "You won't have a repeat of the shower. I can't speak for the beach though. You're the one who stripped me and nailed me to the sand. It won’t happen again."

  Jerry heaved a disgruntled sigh then said in a slightly appeasing tone, "I didn’t plan for that to happen. It just did. You looked good in the swim suit."