The Beach House

by Georgia Bockoven

  The next morning, while Josi sat on his manuscript and stared at him, he tried to reach Julia, first at her house and then at work. Her housekeeper told him she’d left an hour before he called, her assistant told him she wouldn’t be in for a couple of days.

  He tried working but couldn’t concentrate and gave up to go into the kitchen for his fifth cup of coffee that morning. He wound up back at the computer, staring at a blank screen. Josi moved from his desk to the front door, where she stood on her back legs and tapped the handle with her paw.

  “You’re supposed to be an inside cat,” Eric said.

  She looked at him and meowed.

  He still hadn’t decided what to do with her. He’d never owned a cat, not even as a kid, and had no idea what they required beyond food and water and a litter box. The ideal solution would be to give her to the kids, but Shelly had asthma and was allergic to damn near everything on four legs.

  Again Josi meowed, this time putting both paws around the handle.

  Eric got up and opened the door a crack to see what she would do. She stuck her nose into the opening, and before he knew what was happening, she’d forced her head and then the rest of her body through.

  “Josi—come back,” he shouted as she took off. He threw open the door to go after her. It didn’t seem possible a cat so big could run so fast, but she was out of sight before he made it out onto the porch.

  He found her pressed against the corner of Joe and Maggie’s front door as if she could gain entry by squeezing through the crack. When he tried to pick her up, she hissed and then let out a low, plaintive howl.

  Eric took the key out of his pocket and let her inside.

  She raced to the back of the house, going from room to room, her calls becoming increasingly more frantic.

  “They’re not here,” Eric said after she’d come back into the living room, an accusing look in her eyes. “I know I’m not much, but from now on, I’m all you’ve got.” Not until that moment was he aware that he’d made up his mind what he was going to do with her. Despite a truckload of doubts, he would keep her himself.

  He heard a car pull into the driveway and looked at his watch. The shelter he’d called about taking the boxes of clothes and food said they wouldn’t be able to pick them up until sometime after noon. He went to the window. His stomach did a slow roll when he saw Julia getting out of her car.

  He met her at the door. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  She took a step backward, surprised at finding him there. “The police called me.”

  “God, I’m so sorry you had to find out that way. I was going to come up and tell you in person, but there were some things I had to take care of first.”

  “Then it’s true . . . ?” She looked past him into the house. “They’re dead?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Both of them?”

  She seemed to fold into herself, the shoulders of her Armani suit growing larger as she slowly disappeared inside. “I hoped it was a mistake. I prayed it was.”

  Thinking she was about to collapse, he brought her into his arms. She held on to him as if she were in free fall and he had the only parachute. Eerily silent sobs shook her thin body.

  Eric took her inside. They sat together on the sofa while he continued to cradle her. As the sobs lessened, she started to move away, but he held on, gently letting her know it was all right to stay. As if his action had granted her whatever mental permission she needed, she relaxed in his arms.

  He handed her tissues from the box on the end table. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose and finally asked, “Do you know why they did it?”

  “My guess is that Joe couldn’t imagine a life without Maggie.”

  “I don’t understand. What made him think—”

  “She had cancer. Pretty far advanced, from what I could tell. It was only a matter of time, and I think she wanted the time to be one she chose herself.”

  “She never even hinted there was something wrong when I saw her in March.”

  “I’m convinced she didn’t know that Joe planned to go with her.” Absently he ran his hand along her arm. The soft wool yielded to his touch like fine silk. “What I can’t figure out is why she chose here.” Eric had struggled with the question since finding them. It was obvious Joe and Maggie cared deeply about Julia. How could they have added to her grief over Ken’s death by dying in her house?

  She spread a tissue in her lap and methodically began to fold it over and over again until all that was left was a small square. “She probably didn’t have anywhere else to go. And I’m sure she knew I would understand.” Her hand closed around the tissue. “She thought Joe would be living in their house after she was gone, and she didn’t want him to have to remember her dying there.”

  Eric had witnessed this type of thing between women all his life, and still it never failed to amaze him. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Julia was right. What she said made perfect sense. So much sense that it was as if Maggie herself had told Julia, as if she’d left behind an invisible capsule with her thoughts and feelings for her friend to discover.

  “I know they thought the world of you,” Eric said. He’d meant his words as comfort; instead they triggered fresh tears.

  “Oh, God, I don’t want them to be gone.”

  He looked at the suitcases and boxes lined up by the front door, at Josi sitting in the front window, waiting for Joe and Maggie to return, and at the gurney tracks on the carpet. If he felt the room closing in on him, what must it be like for her? He stood and held out his hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Where?”

  “My place. I’ll fix you lunch.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Coffee, then.”

  She glanced around the living room. “I should—”

  “The hell with that,” he said. “Whatever ‘shoulds’ there are that need doing, I’ll take care of later. Right now it’s you I’m worried about.”

  She wiped her cheeks with long, tapering fingers, the nails sensibly short and buffed to a shine. “I’m fine.”

  “Sure you are.” He helped her up and guided her toward the door.

  “What about Josi?” she asked.

  “I’ll come back for her later.” It was obvious the cat was in the midst of her own mourning process and could not leave until it was convinced Joe and Maggie were really gone.

  Julia waited with her arms folded across her chest as Eric locked the door. “Someone has been working in the garden,” she said. “The flowers look beautiful.”

  To protect herself, she had focused on something inconsequential, the way people waiting for life-and-death surgery counted ceiling tiles. “Joe was teaching Jason how to garden.”

  “Jason?

  “My son.”

  She pressed the flat of her hand to her forehead as if trying to contain a headache. “Oh, of course. Are Jason and his sister still here?”

  “They went home two days ago.”

  “Oh . . .” Julia frowned as if struggling to remember something. “But Maggie and Joe were still alive when they left?”

  Eric nodded.

  A look of understanding came over her. “Maggie must have planned to die last week on her birthday,” she said with conviction. “But she couldn’t because the kids were here. How like her. Even at the end she put others ahead of herself.”

  He dipped his head and reached up to rub a stiff muscle in his neck. He noticed Julia was wearing three-inch-high heels and sheer, glossy nylons. “I was going to suggest we go for a walk on the beach, but you can’t go like that.” He needed to get away, if only for a little while. “I don’t suppose you brought any other clothes.”

  “The police called just as I was leaving for work.” She glanced up at the sound of a passing car. “I came right down. I don’t know why. They said it wasn’t necessary.” In a voice so soft Eric had to strain to hear, she added, “But I couldn’t stay away.” She stopped and put her hand to her mouth to hold back a sob
. “I thought about coming last week for Maggie’s birthday, but I had all those damn meetings. . . . Maybe seeing me would have made a difference.”

  “It wouldn’t have,” he told her.

  “How can you be so sure?” The look she sent begged him to give her an answer she could believe.

  “Maggie had cancer, Julia. She was dying. Nothing you could have done or said was going to change that.”

  “At least I could have seen her one more time,” she said, almost choking on her regret.

  “And made her leaving twice as hard.”

  “But what they did was so wrong. They should never have died that way. Life is too precious not to hold on to every minute.”

  Plainly she’d never seen anyone in the last stages of bone cancer. The pain Maggie had been in was only the beginning. Eventually the narcotics she would have required just to make it through the day would have stolen the Maggie that Joe had known and loved. Her final breath would have been nothing but a formality.

  When they reached his house, Eric opened the door and led Julia inside. She stood in the middle of the room, looking lost and unsure what to do with herself.

  “Would you prefer tea?” he asked.

  She gave him a blank stare.

  “Rather than coffee. Or there’s soda.”

  “I don’t think I want anything now. Maybe later.” She wandered over to the window and stared out at the ocean. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember how much I used to look forward to being here.”

  “You’ll feel that way again.”

  She shook her head. “On the way down I decided that when I leave this time, I’m never coming back. The real estate agent I talked to when I was here in May said I didn’t have to come down when the house sold, that everything could be accomplished through the mail.”

  The thought of never seeing her again hit Eric like an unexpected wave, knocking the wind out of him while it sent him scrambling for his footing. “Is that how you handle all your problems—by running away?”

  She turned on him, her face radiating anger. “How dare you say that? You know nothing about me or my problems or how I handle them.”

  He’d expected a reaction, but nothing like this.

  “You have no idea what my life is like,” she went on. “Every day I’m trying to do a job people under me are ten times more qualified to do. I’m hanging on by my fingernails because I know if I sell the company, half the people who helped Ken build the business into what it is today will more than likely lose their jobs. I can’t do that to them . . . no matter what staying does to me.”

  Julia turned so that her back was to him, closed her eyes, and bit her lip. But it was too late; the angry words were out, and there was nothing she could do to take them back. What was wrong with her? Why had she attacked Eric when he’d tried so hard to help?

  She jumped when she felt him touch her arm. He turned her to face him again. She didn’t see the expected anger in his eyes. In its place was something else, something she didn’t understand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I needed a target, and you were the only one handy. I know it’s not a great excuse, but it’s the only one I have.”

  In a move that seemed to surprise him as much as it did her, he kissed her. When his mouth closed over hers, it wasn’t friendship or understanding or tenderness he relayed, but a raw, needful passion. She hesitated at the force of the demand, then responded on a primitive level, realizing instinctively how desperately she wanted what he offered.

  For almost a year death and its aftermath had been a constant companion. No matter where she went or what she did, it was there in the memories, the demands, the expectations, the loneliness. Every holiday, every birthday, every dinner invitation with an uneven number of guests, the unending stream of mail that still arrived with Ken’s name on it, the board meetings where he was more a presence than she was—they were like chips constantly being removed from the block of marble that was her sanity.

  That morning the phone call telling her Joe and Maggie were dead had been the blow that threatened to topple her. And now Eric offered her a chance to taste life again. It simply didn’t matter why. Sanity and reason were bit players in this drama.

  She put her arms around his neck and pressed her body into his. Deepening the kiss, she opened her mouth and met his tongue with her own, thrusting with a deliberation that left no cloud to hide her intentions. She felt as well as heard the rumble of response that started in his chest and became a moan of primitive desire.

  Julia pulled the shirt from Eric’s jeans as if it were a barrier between her and freedom. She ran her hands up his tightly muscled back, digging her nails in as she moved down to his waist again. This was not the way she made love, it was not the way she asked to be made love to; it was a cry for help.

  Eric reared back, captured her hands, and looked deeply into her eyes. “Is this really what you want?”

  “Isn’t it what you want?”

  “Answer me.”

  “Yes—it’s exactly what I want.”

  “I don’t have any protection.”

  “I’m willing to take the chance.” When he hesitated it felt as if she were lost at sea and that the ship sent to rescue her had sailed by. “But you’re not.”

  Not until that moment did he realize how much he wanted her. “The hell I’m not,” he said in a throaty rasp. With a determination of purpose that matched her own, he ran his hands up the front of her silk shell, grabbed the lapels of her jacket, and stripped it from her shoulders. Somewhere in the back of his mind a voice insisted he stop and think about what he was doing, that he consider the possible consequences and behave like the responsible, rational man he’d always been. For the first time in his life, he ignored the voice and gave himself over to instincts he barely recognized.

  His breath hot, his mouth demanding, he kissed Julia until she began to move against him in heated insistence. He removed her top and cupped her breasts. As he caressed the lace-covered nipples with his thumbs, she arched her back to return the pressure.

  “Take this off,” he demanded.

  She reached behind her and unhooked the bra while he pulled the straps from her shoulders. Now he held her breast and drew the nipple into his mouth with his tongue. Julia felt the tug all the way to her toes. She put her head back and bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  Peripherally she heard the zipper on her skirt open, felt the skirt slide over her hips and thighs and drop to the floor. His fingers slipped into the waistband of her hose and lowered the nylon over her buttocks and then her legs. She looked down where his head lay against her belly as he lifted one foot and then the other out of her heels. It was everything she could do not to press his face closer, to assuage the need that had grown to a mind-numbing intensity.

  “Please . . .” The plea rode on an escaped sigh. She was horrified when she realized the word had come from her. She’d never begged for anything and hated that she had so little control over what was happening to her now. Her only hope was that he hadn’t heard.

  Just as she reached to touch his head, she felt his hand on her inner thigh—and then his breath, hot and full of promise. Something—his tongue, his finger, she couldn’t tell—touched the spot warmed by his breath and sent a shock wave throughout her body. Trembling with its impact, she put her hands on his shoulders to keep from falling.

  She was hit by another wave and then another, as if she were standing in a storm-driven surf. Her legs began to shake. She leaned into Eric and held on as if he were the only thing keeping her upright. Seconds later the spasms began. They lifted her and spun her around, stealing her last semblance of balance. She cried out at the strength of the feeling.

  Just as she was sure she was about to take flight, Eric stood, lifted her into his arms, and took her into the bedroom. She was unprepared for the hunger that resurfaced when he took off his clothes, pinned her beneath him, and entered her. The fury of his movements demanded she respond in kind. And she did
, lifting her hips to meet each thrust. Their skin touched, their flesh bruised, and still Julia wanted more. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and moaned his name as if it were the magic word to open the door to the kingdom.

  Again waves lapped at her consciousness, each one stealing more of her control until, finally, it was gone. She bit into his shoulder to keep from crying out at the same time he arched his back and buried himself deeper into her still.

  Afterward Eric rolled to his side, taking Julia with him, cradling her in the protective circle of his arms. He brushed back her hair where it had come loose from the tightly pinned twist and kissed the dampness from her forehead.

  Julia lay still, accepting his tenderness, wondering about the depth of his caring, and fighting to stay afloat in a whirlpool of recrimination.

  When several minutes had passed and she still hadn’t moved, Eric propped himself up on his elbow and looked at her. “Are you all right?”

  Chapter 11

  My God,” Julia said in a choked whisper. “What have we done?” She crossed her arms over her breasts and sat up, turning her back to him as if she could erase his presence.

  Eric sat up next to her. He’d expected questions—hell, he had a couple of dozen of his own—but not this extreme reaction. “We made love,” he said, answering her obviously rhetorical question.

  “We had sex,” she corrected him.

  “Whatever you want to call it, I’m not sorry it happened.”

  “Well, I am.” She reached for his shirt and held it in front of her.

  “I take it this kind of thing has never happened to you before?”

  She nodded. “You take it right.”

  He wanted to bring her into his arms to comfort her but knew it wouldn’t be welcomed. “How do you feel?”

  “Are you crazy?” She tried to comb her hopelessly tangled hair with her fingers. “How do you think I feel?” Burying her face in her hands, she answered her own question. “Cheap—and stupid.”