“Way to go,” Mark said. “Almost there.”
Nicole wasn’t sure she would choose to walk across the moving deck herself. The boat wasn’t heaving or pitching. But the water was moving by awfully fast, and the floor, that is, the deck, tilted.
Mark released the wheel—Nicole’s heart rocketed to her throat—and extended both hands to his son. But he didn’t close the space between them.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
White-faced with terror and determination, Daniel flung himself forward.
Mark wrapped both arms around him and hoisted him up. He turned so that Daniel could grasp the wheel and put his own hands alongside his son’s. “There you go. Now you can see everything.”
Daniel’s smile lit his face and brought tears to Nicole’s eyes.
She looked away, willing the wind to dry them. She was falling for him. She was falling for both of them: head over heels, overboard, fathoms deep falling.
And she wasn’t at all sure she trusted herself to swim.
Chapter 12
They had lunch in a quiet inlet far from the vacationers’ cottage, where trees ringed a strip of rocks and sand and the water was deep and the current flowed slow. It was one of “his” places, private and solitary. He only brought the kid there because of the beach and because the water’s depth accommodated the boat. Even with the recent high lake levels, the Under Way’s draft wouldn’t allow him to pull in just anywhere.
He brought Nicole there because… He didn’t want to think too much about why he brought Nicole.
Mark dropped anchor and carried the kid through the hip-deep water to shore. Daniel clutched his neck, but once they hit the beach he was okay with letting go. Mark set him on the sand and turned to fetch Nicole.
But she surprised him. She had already stripped to her bikini and slipped into the clear, dark water. It came up to just under her pretty breasts.
“Oh!” she exclaimed.
Despite his appreciation for the picture she made, Mark grinned at the comic outrage in her voice.
“It’s cold!”
“It’s September,” he said.
He watched her find her footing and slog cautiously for the shore, holding his sweatshirt over her head to keep it dry.
“Want a hand?” he called.
He certainly wouldn’t mind getting his hands on her sleek, wet curves. The cold did interesting things to her nipples under the blue nylon bikini.
“I’m fine, thanks.” She sounded breathless.
When she reached the sand, she shook out his sweatshirt and pulled it on, which was too damn bad. But the glimpses he caught of her smooth chest and pale belly framed by the open zipper almost made up for it. And the sight of those long legs disappearing into the short, black cover-up made his groin tighten.
Maybe it was a good thing the water was so cold. He sure as hell wasn’t ready to give his six-year-old son a demonstration in sex education.
Not that Daniel was paying particular attention to the two grown-ups. He was running around acting like a little boy instead of a polite, nervous old man. He threw rocks and buried his lizards in the sand and dug them up again.
“He likes it here,” Nicole observed, leaving her investigation of Daniel’s fossil dig to stand beside Mark.
Something in his chest eased. “Maybe he just likes being on solid ground,” he said.
But when it was time for lunch and he ordered the boy back to the boat, Daniel came along happily.
They took turns changing out of their wet clothes in the boat’s cabin. Nicole exclaimed over the galley—the previous owner’s tastes had run to brass and teak—and Daniel liked the food, box lunches from the Rose Farms Café.
Nicole inspected her turkey sub, the throwaway container of pasta salad, her slightly bruised apple and chocolate chip cookie as if she were already calculating costs in her head. “We could do these at the Blue Moon,” she announced. “We have a better menu, and we’re closer to the marina than they are.”
Mark had had the same thought when he went shopping yesterday. But he only grinned. “Eat your cookie, babe. It’s your day off.”
He figured she needed one. When she showed up on his doorstep this morning, her eyes had been bruised and puffy and her mouth tight with strain. Now her eyes were bright, her cheeks were pink, and she was smiling.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “That doesn’t mean you can order me around.”
But she bit obediently into her cookie. Her pink tongue chased a smear of chocolate at the corner of her mouth, and his lower body tightened. He shifted uncomfortably, glad that he was at least out of the wet, revealing denim.
Daniel yawned.
“Tired?” Mark asked, grateful for the distraction.
The boy nodded. And then, in a surprise move, he slid off the padded bench, crossed the deck and crawled up on the seat beside Mark, leaning his head on his father’s arm.
Holy hell.
Mark took a shallow breath. He felt like a grenade had landed in his lap and any sudden movement would set it off. His heart hammered.
And yet nobody else seemed to feel anything was wrong. Nicole nibbled at her cookie. Daniel yawned again and burrowed deeper into Mark’s side.
Very cautiously he put his arm around the boy’s bony shoulders. Just so he wouldn’t fall off the bench.
“Maybe you should take a nap or something.”
“I’m too old for naps,” Daniel informed him sleepily.
Right. Okay. What did he know?
“Mom used to sing to me.” The words were muffled against Mark’s chest, but they hit his heart with the force of shrapnel. “When she wanted me to sleep? She would lie on my bed and sing to me.”
Mark was silent for a long time. Nicole put down her cookie.
“I don’t know any songs,” he said at last.
The boy raised his head. “Not any?”
“Not many.” Lullabies had never been Isadora DeLucca’s strong suit. Some Joplin, maybe, a little Judy Garland, the anthems of doomed and self-destructive women. “Unless you count ‘Barnacle Bill the Sailor.’”
He knew lots of verses to that. All of them obscene.
“That sounds funny,” Daniel said hopefully. “Sing that.”
“Uh.” What the hell. He could edit as he went along. The beginning wasn’t too bad, as he recalled. He cleared his throat and warbled, “‘Who’s that knocking at my door? said the fair young maiden.’” So far, so good. He lowered his voice to pirate gruffness to sing the part of the sailor. “‘It’s only me from over the sea, says Barnacle Bill the sailor. I—’oops—uh, ‘dumpty-dum and a bottle of rum, says Barnacle Bill the sailor.’”
Jeez. Okay, so editing was going to be tougher than he thought.
But Daniel giggled. Nicole was biting her lip, as if she was trying to keep from laughing, too.
“Is that really how it goes?” Daniel asked.
Not even close.
“Something like that,” Mark said. “It’s not really a kids’ song.”
“Too many bad words,” the boy said wisely.
“Way too many,” Mark agreed.
They sat awhile in silence, as the child’s breathing deepened and slowed. The boat rocked gently.
“You really don’t know any other songs?” the boy asked at last, wistfully.
Mark drew a deep breath. “Maybe. One. Yeah.” He closed his eyes, trying to remember all the words. Don’t blow this, DeLucca. Get this one thing right.
And with his eyes still closed, he opened his mouth and sang every drunken Irishman’s favorite bar tune.
“‘Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling…’”
It was a long song. Four verses, and he sweated every one of them.
“‘…then I will sleep in peace until you come to me.’”
When he finished, the boat was very quiet. Even the breeze had died. Danny was sleeping, finally, against his side, and Nicole was staring at him with wide blue eyes th
at saw—what did she see when she stared at him like that?
“That was beautiful,” she whispered.
He lifted one shoulder, uncomfortable with her warm, open regard. “It’s no big deal. Every bartender who’s worked one St. Patrick’s Day knows ‘Danny Boy.’ Especially in Chicago.”
“It was still very special,” she insisted.
He hoped so. He hoped he could give the kid one good memory of him, even if— But his mind slid away from the thought. It was his day off. Maybe he was entitled to a cookie, too. Maybe today he could pretend he was the kind of father a kid like Danny deserved.
He carried the boy below to lay him on one of the berths. Man, he was small. Mark could remember being six—the start of first grade, a long time ago, and he didn’t have the kind of childhood you wanted to dwell on, anyway—but he couldn’t remember ever being that small. He took time to cover the kid with a blanket and make sure he was still asleep.
A tactical error, that was.
Because when he came up on deck, Nicole had had time to think. She was curled up on the port bench like a little girl on a window seat, staring absently over the water, her eyes thoughtful and her mouth sad.
He eyed her warily. He was used to women who went overboard on drama: sex partners who wanted the excitement of fighting and making up, lovers who made wild demands. His mother, when she was drunk, was given to fits of laughter and weeping. Even his sister, the one emotional anchor in his life, had a temper.
Nicole was different. She didn’t put her emotions on display. And if she occasionally sounded as if she was reading from a script—or quoting from one of those books of hers—at least he never got the feeling that she’d already written his part. Or that she’d prefer some other actor in the role.
He crossed his arms and waited.
“Tell me about Danny’s mother,” she invited.
So he gave her the same basic spiel he had given the lawyer: they were young, they were dumb, they weren’t married, her parents hadn’t approved.
“Did you love her?” Nicole asked quietly, which was the one question the lawyer had never asked.
He answered her honestly, surprising them both. “I think I did. As much as I could love anybody at nineteen. I sure as hell would have wanted to know if she was pregnant.”
“So you didn’t learn about Danny until…?” She paused expectantly.
“Two weeks ago.” He grinned at her stunned face, but there was no humor in him. “Yeah, it was a shock to me, too.”
“I don’t want to pry, but—”
He looked at her.
She turned pink. “All right. I am prying. But what will you do now?”
He turned his head to starboard, staring out at the boundless blue sky and the lake stretching wide and open. An illusion, Mark knew. Just out of sight the water was hemmed in by trees and the beginnings of development. To really feel the freedom of open water, a sailor had to leave Paradise for the Great Lakes and beyond.
Nicole was still waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know.” He looked back at her. “I don’t know if I can take care of him.”
“You’re doing fine. You’ll find a way.”
He was tempted to believe her. And that scared him.
He jerked one shoulder. “Maybe. Or maybe I’ll just find someone else to do it.”
The light in her eyes dimmed. “Is that why you invited me along? To take care of Danny?”
“No. Maybe.” When she didn’t say anything, only looked at him with those serious blue eyes, he admitted, “Well, he wanted you to come. And he likes you. You look—you’re blond, like Betsy. Maybe I thought it would be a good idea to have someone else along while we got used to each other.”
She nodded. “I can accept that.”
So he’d dodged that bullet. His muscles relaxed a fraction.
“I’ve had a lovely time,” she continued. “He’s a wonderful child.”
But? he thought.
She straightened on her bench seat. “But that’s all the more reason for us to examine our expectations before beginning a relationship.”
The jargon was a bad sign. He raised both eyebrows. “There’s no beginning about it, babe. We’re already together ten, twelve hours a day.”
“In a professional capacity,” she said earnestly. “This is personal.”
“Personal, fine. It still doesn’t have anything to do with Danny.”
“Until you need the night off or a week away to be with him.”
“You got a problem with time off?”
“No! No, of course not. I just can’t help wondering… How much do you want me? And how much do you simply want a buffer with your son? Or a baby-sitter.”
“Is this about that Ted guy?” Because he could sympathize with that. Once burned…
But she shook her head. “No. Well, it could be. This is about me. About us.” Her tongue touched her lower lip. Her eyes sought his. “Do you want me?”
Hell, yes.
“Yeah, I want you,” he said. “I told you I want you.”
“Why?”
His laughter cracked like a rifle shot. “I thought I made that obvious.”
“Sex.” Her voice was flat. Not mad, he thought, as much as…disappointed?
He ground his teeth. He was no good at talking about this relationship stuff. He was no good at relationship stuff, period.
“If you want,” he said.
“We’re not talking about what I want.”
“Well, maybe we should.” Maybe she needed to. And maybe it would get him off the hook. “What do you want, Nicole?”
Her gaze slid away. “I guess I made that clear, too.”
Last night, she meant. When she came on to him in the bar.
His heart beat faster. He sat beside her on the bench. The sailboat leaned at their uneven distribution of weight, but Nicole did not protest. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?
He took her hand, the back faintly sunburned, the fingers sparkling with rings. “Okay,” he said. “So, I want you. You want me, too. That’s simple.”
Her fingers twined with his. “But it’s not. You know it’s not.”
He knew.
He just didn’t care. Her hand was warm and smooth in his. Her scent teased at his senses, lake water and mud overlaying her perfume in a weird combination that made him want to lay her back against the seat and lick her skin.
He inhaled sharply. “Let’s see what we can do to simplify it, then.”
“With your six-year-old sleeping downstairs?”
Maybe not. But—
“He has to go back,” Mark said. A circumstance that didn’t exactly fill him with joy, but he had to admit that in this case it was convenient. “To his grandparents. This afternoon.”
Nicole wasn’t convinced. “Workplace relationships are rarely successful and frequently awkward.”
She sounded like she was reading from a book again. But there was real hurt in her eyes and real apprehension in her voice. She’d worked with her other lover, Mark remembered. The dot-com boss. The son of a bitch.
“What are you afraid of? It’s not like I’m in a position to fire you.”
She flushed. “No. But—”
“You planning to fire me?”
“Of course not. But we still have to work together.”
“Tomorrow. We have to work together tomorrow. Today is our day off, remember?”
She bit her lip. “What are you suggesting?”
“Come with me to Chicago. We’ll drop off Danny, and I’ll take you out someplace.”
“You mean, like a date?”
Jeez, he was smooth. “Yeah, a date. Dinner. Just you, just me. No roommate, no sister, no bar, no responsibilities. What do you say?”
She pulled her hand back to fiddle with her rings. “And after dinner?”
After dinner he wanted to drive her to a nice hotel and take her standing against the wall the minute he locked the door behind them.
> He cleared his throat. “Let’s keep it simple, okay? Let’s take it one step at a time.”
She nodded, her eyes wide.
Ah, hell. Did she have any idea at all what he was getting at? What she was getting into? For a woman with a string of loser boyfriends in her past, she was remarkably trusting.
“You might want to pack a toothbrush,” he said, just so she got the idea.
Again she nodded. “I’ll pick up a few things when I go home to change. What time do you want me to come over?”
She was going to do it.
She was going to come with him.
Even if it turned out it was only for dinner.
He was stunned.
“Five o’clock,” he said. “We’ll pick you up.”
That would make it seem more like a date, he reasoned.
“That way you won’t have to worry about your car sitting outside my place,” he said.
She smiled, that wonderful smile that lit her eyes and warmed his insides. “Five o’clock,” she agreed. “I’ll be ready.”
Hot damn.
Her legs were shaved, her eyebrows were plucked, her underwear was color coordinated and her toothbrush was in her purse along with a condom she’d stolen from Kathy. Heart beating and hopes high, Nicole had prepared herself for a night on the town with a man who turned her bones to water.
But for the past twenty minutes, she’d felt frustratingly as if she had somehow hopscotched horribly past courtship, love and marriage and landed smack in the middle of the family vacation from hell. The Jeep’s wiper blades shuddered and squeaked. Danny whined in the back seat. And beside her, Mark drove, white-knuckled and tight-lipped.
Nicole sighed. She needed to get herself a new fantasy.
She dug in her purse for a roll of Lifesavers and turned in her seat to offer one to Danny. He accepted it and subsided, sucking. Mark threw her a grateful glance.
On the other hand she wasn’t sure she would trade her present reality for a dozen romantic fantasy scenarios. Maybe it was enough to be here with him, with them. Included. Wanted. Necessary.
Mark took the exit for Kenilworth, an exclusive suburb of old oaks, putting-green lawns and granite-slab houses. The rain let up. The gray light gleamed off the high stone walls and marble beasts that guarded Chicago’s old money. Keep out, they growled. Go away.
All a Man Can Be Page 14
