There was a loud purring in her ear.
She rolled toward it and was rewarded with a faceful of fur. Nutcase’s purr rose to an active buzz.
Then she became aware of two things simultaneously.
First, she wasn’t the only human in this bed.
Second, she had no clothes on.
She lifted the cover and started to slip out of the bunk. A strong arm came from behind, looped around her waist, and pulled her back. In moments she was spooned back against Russell’s chest, his arm a powerful rope around her waist.
Third, she discovered, he wore no clothes either. Despite that, she didn’t feel trapped.
“Feeling better?” His voice was thick with sleep.
She nodded. Was this what she really wanted? If she didn’t, she’d better move soon. Her body chose for her as she shifted closer against the heat of him. She’d never take being warm for granted again.
His arm slid farther around until it encircled her waist and tucked under her rib cage. Then she felt the growing pressure against her behind. Russell loosened his grip and shifted away.
He really was a gentleman. Well, mostly.
“You had to take off all of your clothes, too?” She wrapped her arm over his and pulled it back around her waist to let him know she was teasing.
“They were wet. It seemed like a good idea at the time.” The last was said so close to her ear that his breath tickled.
Again he offered to back off. She wondered what it cost him to lean back so a tiny gap of warm air filled the space where his chest had been.
She rolled in his embrace and pushed on his shoulder until he lay on his back and she straddled him.
“Watch the overhead.”
Raising her head slowly, she just brushed the underside of the decking. The boat was rocking gently with the rhythm of the sea. It felt so natural that her body followed it as easily as a leaf finding the breeze.
Traveling in the upper tiers of the wine and restaurant circles she’d met her share of rich heirs. But Russell played none of their games—showed none of the ego about the wealth he had. His touch didn’t assume or demand, rather it coaxed and asked—a question that her own body was more than happy to reply to in the affirmative. He had a body that had been custom made for her.
When they finished, she slid down against his chest. His hands, soft as kitten fur, brushed against her face and over her hair. He stroked over the bridge of her nose and traced the arc of her eyebrows.
“Oh. My.” His voice husked out about an octave lower than usual.
She couldn’t agree more.
It was late morning when Russell dragged on shorts and wandered down the companionway. Spotting Cassidy on the port bench of the cockpit made his world shift. It wasn’t anything she did. She was simply sitting there, her back to him as she faced the stern. One of his dress shirts riding loose on her shoulders, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
He hung back in the shadows and watched her. Her head was tilted down as she read something in her lap and her hair hung like a shawl over her shoulders. She wasn’t a stranger out of place. She’d taken to the boat as naturally as if she’d always been there—had always been in his life. Nutcase was curled up by her toes, asleep in the sun. In a single day, Cassidy had already become a fixture in the cat’s life.
For the first time, ever, Russell could imagine his sea voyage with two. He could see spending time with this incredible woman, a lot of time. You can’t fall in love with someone overnight. He could almost feel Angelo smacking him on the back of the head. But it wasn’t overnight. He’d never known so much about a woman before bedding her.
Even that was wrong. He hadn’t bedded her. They’d made love. Repeatedly. Wonderfully. Deliciously. Until exhaustion had finally dragged them back under.
He stepped onto the companionway ladder, which groaned as always.
Cassidy spun to stare at him.
For a single instant he saw the red-rimmed eyes. The tear-stained cheeks, then she turned away.
He froze on the step. No! So that’s how the morning-after was going to be. What had he wrecked this time? Angelo could probably tell him, but he was nearly a hundred miles and a two-day sail away.
Russell turned back into the cabin and strode back toward the stateroom. He was there in five steps. No space on a boat. What was he thinking? Two people couldn’t live on something this small, not even for one night. It wasn’t humanly possible. He needed to punch something.
Punch it really hard.
And what was he supposed to do with her now? They were hours from the nearest port. More than half a day from her car, even with the motor.
No!
Why had he gotten his hopes up? Hopeless dream about finding the right woman. Instead, he’d found something new to demolish. And there was no guide on what it was this time, or what it would be next time. He pounded the side of his fist against the butt of the mast where it came through the deck. Hitting it felt good. He raised his fist to hit it again.
A cool hand touched the middle of his back and he froze.
He turned slowly, his fist still above his head.
Cassidy didn’t look up at it.
Didn’t even look at him.
She leaned against his t-shirt and he heard a gasp for breath.
He lowered his arms slowly. She began to shake. Her arms tucked between them just as when she’d been so cold yesterday. With her head tucked under his chin, he could feel her body shudder.
A tentative hand on her back released some unknown dam. In moments she was sobbing against him, long, racking, gasping sobs.
He pulled her closer.
Now he had even less of a clue what to do than before.
“I’m sorry, Cassidy.” It would help if he knew what he was apologizing for. “You tell me what to do and I’ll make it better.”
She rocked her head back and forth keeping her face planted against his sternum and cried harder. That was a clear no.
“I’ll go away, if that’s what you need.” God, how could he say that? Even as he held her he felt more powerful than ever before in his life, as if he could somehow protect her from the world. Unfortunately, what he needed to protect her from was himself.
He took a deep breath. If that’s what she needed…
“You won’t even need to see me again.” The words ripped his throat as he offered them up.
One of her hands slid from between them and slid around his neck. She again shook her head and held on tighter.
At a complete loss, he decided to just keep his mouth shut. Powerful was replaced by helpless between one breath and the next and it felt lousy.
If he felt this way about her already…
Just shut up, Russell. Your brain is made of undercooked tapioca. One of Angelo’s favorite insults. Small, hard nuggets in a slimy matrix of useless goo.
He managed to settle back on the bed with her sitting in his lap. He kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair.
“It’ll be okay. Somehow it’ll be okay.”
In response she pulled her other hand free and shoved a crumpled piece of paper into his hand. He unfolded it as well as he could with one hand. It was a short letter, covered in a spidery scrawl that might have belonged to a child. Actually, it reminded him of one of the funniest letters he’d ever gotten. Angelo had written to him once as he was going under the drugs to have his impacted wisdom teeth removed. The letter had started clear, concise, a little complaining, mixed with some gossip about a pretty nurse. As the handwriting decayed, so had the train of conscious thought. The end of the letter had been an illegible blur—Angelo’s pen had actually dragged all the way across the page in a fading line that they’d never been able to translate.
Cassidy’s letter was mostly readable. Someone who called her “Ice Sweet.” Not a name he’d use, fire and ice maybe, with a lot more fire than he’d ever met before. Cassidy was a deep banked, hot fire; the kind that would burn forever. He glanced at the
bottom. Vic somebody.
Dearest Ice Sweet,
I thought about never telling you this part of our past. About letting the truth die with me. But finally decided that taking it to the grave wasn’t fair to you. Maybe the drugs have clouded my judgment and your father is wrong, in which case, I’m sorry.
Her father was dead. Russell flipped the page over, one side only. Cassidy had gone quiet. Her head resting on his shoulder, her hand on his chest, like a little girl going to sleep.
Your birth was harder on your mother than she ever let on. I was preoccupied with the loss of one vineyard, which nearly broke my heart, and the start of the next. The work was just as brutal, and your mother wasn’t able to help. Her parents were failing fast, your grandfather had a massive stroke and your grandmother just gave up. She caught pneumonia the day before he died and was gone within the week.
And he’d asked Cassidy to help protect him from his parents. His wealthy, healthy, loving parents. He was shameless!
You were born by C-section. There was an infection. Then other things went wrong. We thought they were treated, but some damage was done, something not removed entirely or… We never knew. When the ovarian cancer struck, it took her so fast I barely had a chance to say goodbye.
I always told you she was called to the hospital and killed on the way. It was almost that fast, but that wasn’t what happened.
She wasn’t a nurse, though she nursed my heart after Vietnam, and you and her parents. She was a nurse of the heart, the gentlest soul I’ve ever known. I didn’t know she’d never come home when I took her away that last time. Truth of truths, maybe I didn’t ever really say goodbye. I still miss her so much that every day it is a hole in my heart.
I feel as if I really did get a chance to say goodbye to you. I’m so glad you moved back to Seattle to spend my last six months with me. It is the greatest gift you could have ever given me.
Love you, Ice Sweet
Vic
He turned the page over again. Still blank. He folded it carefully and tucked it back into her hand. She clenched it slowly into a fist, the paper’s crinkling the only sound other than the gentle slap of waves against the hull.
“When did he die?”
“Christmas Day.” Her voice was hoarse, barely a whisper. She found a Kleenex and blew her nose with a very unwomanly honk. She was really a mess.
“I hate crying. I haven’t wept like that since, I don’t know, ever. Maybe since Mama didn’t come home.”
“But it’s August. How…the letter?” She’d been reading a letter on the bow of the boat when his parents were there. And he’d noticed her reading one out at Cape Flattery while he poked around the rocks looking for his Lady of the Lights.
For Cassidy.
“He gave you the calendar of lighthouses.”
She nodded against his chest.
“And…a series of letters.”
Again the smooth slickness of her hair rubbing back and forth under his chin.
“He’s taking a whole year to say goodbye.”
This time she was quiet, though he could feel the gentle warmth of her tears soak once more into his t-shirt.
“He sounds like a wonderful man.”
“The best.”
It took her a while, but she told him about the letters. About his sunny California vineyard followed by the one in rainy Bainbridge Island. Cassidy told him of her trip there and what it had felt like to stand on the soil that had once been his—knowing the vines were gone, but still able to feel his spirit there in that soil.
“You were right.” She was leaning back against the mast now. Her feet propped against his thigh as he lay on the curve of the inside of the hull.
“I was?” Wouldn’t that just shock Angelo. “About what?”
“About my not really knowing a wine.”
“It was a dumb remark made to a woman I didn’t even know. I thought you were—”
“What?”
He shook his head. It would make him sound even dumber than he was.
She poked one of her toes into his ribs. He tried to scoot away but there was nowhere to scoot. She started to wiggle them and he had to shove her leg away. She slid the other foot up his leg with an obvious target. He sat bolt upright and cracked his head on the underside of the deck.
Her laugh spilled out between her fingers even as she mumbled an apology and tried to reach for his head to check for bumps.
An attempt to push her away achieved nothing. Once she ascertained there was no bump, she kissed the spot.
“All better,” she declared.
He turned his head and kissed her. Time slowed, nearly ground to a halt as his blood hammered in his head.
“Give,” she whispered.
“Anything.”
“What were you going to say?”
He clamped his mouth shut.
“Give,” she shifted into his lap.
Give? He could barely remember how to breathe.
“Give.”
“Okay,” he gasped for breath, but there wasn’t any air on the boat. “Okay, just hold still for a second so I can uncross my eyes.”
She held still. Mostly.
“Give. You thought I was…”
“A stuck-up, Upper East Side, rich, spoiled brat.”
Her smile was beatific. “Not a self-made, Northwest island girl, who fought for every inch she ever gained?”
“Uh. No.” He couldn’t believe this was the same woman who had frozen him out on that first date.
“Not one of the country’s leading wine tasters who studied how to be Upper East Side because she didn’t have the entitled, Upper West Side fortune?”
With a quick grab at the back pocket of her shorts, he managed to get the leverage to flip her onto her back.
“I sweated for it too, I’ve earned every blessed cent I’ve ever spent since junior year of high school.” Where did the sudden anger come from? It had soared like a flame inside of him. And now here he was pinning her to his bed, taking advantage of his strength. He shoved away—off the bed and into the main part of the cabin.
She caught up with him after he’d climbed into the cockpit.
The boat was just too small.
“Sorry. I was just teasing. I know you earned it. Your dad told me about it when we had dinner in New York. About how proud he was of you for finding your own way.”
He stared aft. Looking at the sea, the sky, the island, trying to focus on anything.
“You wouldn’t joke about that?” Had he misjudged every single event in his life?
She slid her hands around his waist from behind and rested her head on his shoulder. Together they looked out at the lighthouse.
The day was fading. They’d made love all night, and slept most of the day. The sun was already westerning, though the long Northwest evening was far from over.
“We make a pretty sad pair of porcupines.” Her voice was kind, her hands strong and gentle.
She pulled one of his hands free from where he’d jammed them into his pockets.
He opened his mouth. To explain. To apologize. To thank her for perhaps being the first woman in his life to not care about his money, or his past, or what he might do in the future. The first to like him as he was: a mortal mess.
She rested a finger gently across his lips to silence him.
Not releasing his hand, she led him back into the cabin.
In some ways it was the trickiest shoot Russell had ever done.
Perrin had loaded most of the contents of her store into his boat and he’d anchored off the Seattle waterfront. By the second or third clothing change, the three women had gotten over the self-consciousness that usually caused amateur shoots to look so stiff and miserable.
They laughed more than any group he’d ever been with. They teased him mercilessly, starting with “hubba-hubba” noises and rapidly degenerating to incredibly raunchy—with Perrin definitely taking the lead there. When, in an unthinking moment, Russel
l had stripped off his shirt because of the sun’s heat, Perrin had started a series of catcalls and whistles that could be heard over most of Elliot Bay.
The technical challenges of lighting, background, and a shooting platform that was in constant motion occupied most of his mind. The sun would be right, but the background wrong. The background and light right, but the proper shooting position was a five yards off the beam. Some of Perrin’s more classic designs wanted the older part of Seattle in the background. The more outrageous outfits were accented, more vivid, alive with the mid-town skyscrapers as a setting.
Several times he clambered out onto the boom and swung himself over the side, snapping half-a-dozen images before he swung back inboard. He’d tried standing in the dinghy, but the water was a little too lively for him to keep his balance.
Then Cassidy got him. He was sitting in the dinghy, shooting up at the women on the boat. She was dressed in a skimpy summer beach outfit. His white dress shirt, the one she’d never returned, open and blowing in the gentle breeze. She grabbed one of the shrouds that soared up to hold up the mast. She leaned out over the water and, with a siren-like beauty used to tease sailors onto the rocks of despair, flashed one of her killer smiles.
His heart stumbled. His hands wielded the camera more out of habit than intent. He didn’t need the camera, smiling Cassidy was forever burned into his mind. Moments later Perrin and Jo were with her.
The Three Sirens.
The Three Fates.
Three Sisters.
Jo, Perrin, and Cassidy.
Truth, Joy, and Beauty.
At some point they fed him a sandwich which he’d eaten without tasting. He had to change out the memory card in his camera three times.
As the sun set, he began to wish he’d rented the flash umbrellas. The changing light—with just a few elegant accents—would set the stage for Perrin’s collection of eveningwear.
“Cassidy. Grab the stormsail,” he called down. He’d been banished from below, the women’s changing room.
Moments later, she tossed it out of the hatchway.
The Complete Where Dreams Page 25
