Unforgiven

by Anne Calhoun

  The sails trimmed to his satisfaction, Nate clambered back down into the cockpit, jolting Marissa back into the now. She kept both hands on the wheel but stepped aside, intending to transfer the wheel to Nate’s more experienced hands.

  “No, you’ve got her,” he said, his voice calm and steady. He looked at the sails, the compass, the boat off their port side. “He’s got too much sail out,” he said. “See how the edges are flapping? You think more is better, but it’s not. It’s about trimming the right sails to the wind. Jack never did figure that out.” He grinned at her. “You like?”

  The smile transformed a thin-lipped, uncompromising face into something transfixing, leaving her with the sense that she’d joined a secret society. “I love,” she said.

  “We’re going to win,” he said confidently. “Smile nice and big, okay?”

  They did exactly that, the Resolute gliding past Big Deal to the buoy with a couple of lengths to spare. The handset chirped again, and Nate picked it up.

  “Nice race, Jack. Enjoy the rest of the day,” he said casually and hung up on a pissed-off response. “Want a tour belowdecks?”

  14

  ADAM TOOK THE wheel and rigged the sails to take them farther out onto the lake. They had hours before sundown, and he wanted to give Marissa as much sun and wind as she could absorb today. Watching her transition from mildly peeved when he showed up at her door to bewildered when they arrived at the airport to utterly astonished when he said they were going sailing combined to lift a weight from his heart. This was a thirty-six-hour reprieve for both of them, a sliver of dream sliced from day-to-day reality. When he’d returned to Walkers Ford he’d had nothing more on his mind than tying up loose ends.

  This was more than a loose end.

  Marissa followed Nate down the narrow stairwell, into the boat’s oak-appointed interior. Everything was neatly stowed, as befitting a disciplined former Marine, but while Adam was unpacking the bags Nate picked up for Marissa, he’d seen the razor in the head, the fresh supplies in the tiny kitchen, and the books organized in the inset shelf in the larger berth. Unless he missed the mark, his former LT was living on the boat, not with his wife.

  Nate’s low voice rumbled, describing the boat’s features much as he’d run patrol briefings: crisp, clear, concise. They examined everything from the engine room to the head together for several minutes, then came back upstairs to pick their way through the neatly organized lines leading to the sails, where Nate gave a quick, basic lesson in sailing. As Adam watched, Marissa gathered her wind-tossed hair at her nape and focused intently on Nate.

  When they finished, Nate helped her back into the cockpit. “I’ve got to make a couple of calls,” he said. “Got her?”

  Adam nodded. Nate went below and Marissa said, “He said he’d brought a light lunch. Adam, there’s enough food down there to feed us for a week! Three kinds of salads, cold chicken, fresh fruit, French bread, and a chocolate cake.”

  “That’s Nate for you,” Adam said. “C’mere.” He stepped to the side, keeping one hand on the wheel until Marissa reclaimed it. Then he settled onto the bench seat, stretched his arms along the back, and studied her. “It suits you,” he said.

  The hat’s brim didn’t quite hide her eyes. Something wild and vibrant glowed there, as hot and steady as a welding flame, and when she turned to look at him, the connection was like gripping a live wire in his bare hand. “Thank you,” she said.

  He held the connection as long as he could stand it, then looked away, because seeing her so alive reminded him of more than he could bear. He shrugged, and pretended to check the tension on the lines. “I just made a call. Nate did the rest.”

  “That was his jet?” she asked.

  He nodded. “His personal jet. His company owns several for business trips, but Nate’s scrupulous about keeping personal and work trips separate.”

  Nate reappeared with bottles gripped in his fist. “I’ve got white wine, beer, and a variety of nonalcoholic beverages,” he said. Marissa accepted a glass of white wine and studied Nate as he popped the tops off two bottles of beer and handed one to Adam, then sat down across from him.

  “Wondering what a guy who owns a private jet and a yacht was doing in the Marine Corps?” Nate asked with a mild smile.

  “We all wondered, once we found out,” Adam said. Officers all had college degrees, but not many came with Nate’s pedigree.

  “I wanted to do my life instead of thinking about it,” Nate said. “I was two years into college at Penn when I decided not to spend the summer interning on Wall Street but at Officer Candidates School instead. I was commissioned a second lieutenant when I graduated, and stationed in San Diego.”

  “What did your parents think of that?” Marissa asked.

  Nate laughed, short and hard. “Military service is an admirable, honorable profession if you don’t have options. They hadn’t spent nearly three-quarters of a million dollars on twelve years of prep school, a gap year in France and Italy, and an Ivy League education to ship me to Afghanistan to fight in the dirt with some Hispanic kid from the South Side.” He looked at her. “That’s not what they said, but it’s what they meant. I felt differently.”

  “Lucky for us,” Adam said, staring off toward the setting sun. He couldn’t captain a race like Nate, but he’d spent enough time on boats to feel comfortable at the wheel. “Your intuition got us out of some tight spots.”

  Nate settled onto the bench and tipped back his beer bottle. “What got you interested in sailing, Marissa?”

  Adam feigned indifference even as he tuned out everything else, the thud of the rigging as the wind caught the sail, the waves lapping at the hull.

  “My great-great-grandfather came to South Dakota from Connecticut,” she said cautiously. “The family owned mills and kept a yacht in Newport.”

  “So that would have been, what, the eighteen-seventies? Newport was the yachting center of the US back then. It still is. We members of the Chicago Yacht Club are bumpkin upstarts,” Nate said.

  Adam stifled a smile at Marissa’s slightly surprised expression. No way would Nate judge her crazy or even impractical for a passion that had no logical roots. No way would Nate judge her at all. When she continued, her voice was a little less hesitant. “My dad and I were cleaning out some old trunks and found pictures of his grandfather on the family’s yacht, logs from his trips, and his navigation equipment.”

  Nate’s gaze sharpened. “What did you find?”

  “A sextant, a chronometer, a brass torpedo log with a piece of line attached, old almanacs and tables, a double slate in an oak case with a hinge, a box compass, ebony parallel rules, and brass dividers.”

  “That’s quite a collection,” Nate said. “The sextant and the chronometer might be worth a fair amount, especially with your family provenance behind it,” he said.

  “Oh, I’d never sell,” she said. “I couldn’t. It’s part of the Brooks family history.”

  You could accuse Marissa of many things, Adam thought, but not disloyalty. When times got tough, when the chips were down, she stuck. Past the point of logic and reason, sure, but she stuck. He understood that quality. Respected it.

  “Why did he leave everything he knew and go west?”

  “In his journals he wrote about feeling called to leave for new country, for a fresh beginning in an untouched place. He had a dream, I guess.”

  Nate nodded as if that made perfect sense, then stretched out on the bench seat. “Do you want to take over?” Marissa asked.

  “Nope,” he said and closed his eyes. “I sail her by myself all the time. Relaxing while someone else does the work sounds just fine right now.”

  They made the return trip with the sun setting at their backs, burnishing the city’s skyline in an opaque reddish orange layer of light. He and Nate lowered and stowed the sails. Marissa relinquished the wheel to Nate when traffic heading back to shore grew heavy. Adam sat on one of the cushioned benches, his arms stretched out alo
ng the back as he gazed into the distance. To his surprise, Marissa snuggled in beside him. The chilly air must have been cold on her bare feet because she tucked them beside her and pulled a blanket over them.

  He could get used to this.

  “Have a good time?” he murmured in her ear.

  “This is the best day of my life,” she said, her eyes closed. Even he could see the lights flickering across her eyelids as she replayed the day. Sunshine, glittering waves, wind, the creak of the boat, the sensation of movement at its purest.

  “I’m glad,” he replied, and pulled her in close.

  The engine rumbled as Nate guided them into the yacht club’s docks. Adam leaped over the side of the boat and secured the lines. While Nate powered down, Marissa helped Adam gather their belongings from above and belowdecks. He steadied her while she stepped onto the dock, then joined her. She swayed a little, unsteady on her land legs after only a few hours on a boat.

  Nate made no move to leave the boat. “You want a recommendation for dinner?”

  “Somewhere local,” he said. “A neighborhood place, not a tourist trap.”

  Nate squinted up at him, a grin creasing his face. “I remember you eating at local places all over the world and getting sick as a dog from them.”

  “So somewhere local that won’t make me puke my guts out on the sidewalk,” Adam said.

  “Lou Malnati’s has the best Chicago-style pizza, and good pasta if you don’t want pizza,” Nate said. “The State Street location is fairly close to your hotel.”

  “Want to join us, or are you headed home?”

  The smile disappeared, and he looked at the ring on his finger, twisting it with his thumb. “Spending a few nights on the boat,” he said.

  “You can still join us.”

  “Thanks, but no. You two have a good time.”

  “Nate, thank you so much.” She looked out at the lake, where a gleaming silver path reflected the light of the moon. “I can’t describe what today meant to me. Thank you.”

  He cocked his head and gave her that rare wide smile. “Adam told me you had the bug,” he said. “I love sailing, and I love introducing people to the sport. Come back anytime and we’ll go again. Just call the pilot a couple of hours before you’re ready to leave, and he’ll get you home.”

  Adam exchanged one last handshake with Nate, then hoisted the bags in one hand and took Marissa’s chilled fingers in the other to walk along the pier. Several boats were lit, and a party was going on both above and belowdecks on one big yacht. They climbed the stairs to the club and walked out to the street, where a cab was waiting for them. The bags went back in the trunk, and he followed Marissa into the backseat, then gave the driver the restaurant’s cross streets.

  Marissa was slumped in the seat, her eyes closed. “Did you feel the way the boat handled in the wind? I didn’t want to ask, but I think that was one of the original Herreshoff S-class yachts. They built America’s Cup winners in the late eighteen-hundreds on into the twenties. People like the Vanderbilts bought yachts from Nathanael Herreshoff.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. The connection was still like handling a live wire. “And I sailed one today. I sailed one of the finest boats ever built.” She laughed, a mixture of astonishment and delight in the sound. “I can’t believe it.”

  The cab pulled up in front of the restaurant, but when Adam handed money through the window the cab driver said, “It’s been paid for, sir.”

  “Dammit, Nate,” Adam muttered. Despite the driver’s protestations that the tip was included, Adam handed a ten through the window. They retrieved the bags once again.

  There was a short wait for a table, so they found a seat at the bar. Marissa glanced around as if a casual Italian restaurant in Chicago was as foreign as Mumbai or Thailand. She looked completely different, her eyes alight, inquisitive, shining. “Tell me more about Nate.”

  Adam tipped back his beer and swallowed. “We used to call him ESP rather than LT, because he was fucking spooky, like he was with the wind today. He knew where things we couldn’t see—enemy fighters—were going to be before they got there. He probably knew before they got there. He says he’s good with angles and probability. All I know is he took twenty-two men to Afghanistan twice and brought all of them home twice. He owns that boat and half of Chicago, and when I called him last night to see if he could recommend a company to take us out, I thought I’d get voicemail and a call back when he left work at ten. Instead he answered the phone and said he’d send his jet for us.”

  She tilted her head quizzically. “Half of Chicago?”

  He gave a short bark of laughter. “Okay, maybe a quarter of Chicago. He never talks about it. I’d served under him for over a year before I had any idea what kind of money he had.”

  “Things don’t sound ideal with his wife,” she said.

  “I’m not sure what’s going on there,” Adam said quietly. “Deployments are hard on a marriage. He did two in four years, and I don’t think his wife was any happier about his decision than his parents were.” The offhand comment hit too close to home, so he changed the subject in a hurry. “Tell me what you thought about today. Start when I showed up at your door.”

  Marissa laughed and the mood shifted again, flashing quicksilver, as unpredictable and vivid as her eyes. Every guy at the bar turned to look when she hitched herself up on a stool, her hair tousled and tangled down her back, her face pink from the sun and wind, her dark eyes glinting in the light. She looked alive, like she could look. Like she should look.

  His heart skidded in his chest, tumbling and skittering like rocks presaging an avalanche, and for one brief moment he let all kinds of things he’d locked away flare in his brain. What he felt for Marissa. What he’d done for her, and maybe to her by making one phone call. Because this would change her. She might not know it, but it would. Experiences did that to a person with a soul like Marissa’s. Deep and shadowed. On the surface it was as simple as making a call to a friend. Underneath, to a soul starved for water and wind and sun, it was the kind of experience that changed a life.

  She might not believe she could be different, but after today she was, and the fact that he’d done that for her locked them together. He’d shown her she could be the woman she’d only imagined, and that connected them more intimately than sex. He could get deep inside her body, but to open a window in her mind, let in water and sun and wind, that . . . that was connection. That was experience. He’d stood with her while she looked at the swaying forest of masts and the endless expanse of Lake Michigan, and realized that even landlocked, root-bound Marissa Brooks could go sailing.

  He wanted to do it again.

  He wanted to be the only man who ever did that for her, and he’d been a fool to think he’d be able to resist her. Something inside her called to him, brought him alive. Against his will, against all common sense and the consequences of his past experiences, he’d fallen for Marissa Brooks, for her tough-girl attitude and her vulnerable, dreamer heart.

  That wasn’t part of the plan.

  * * *

  HER SEEMINGLY ENDLESS stream of words dried up during dessert. The change was as subtle as Brookhaven’s creek succumbing to a summer drought, a babble becoming a murmur, then a trickle, then nothing. Marissa lifted the last bite of profiterole to her lips, and when the powdered sugar dissolved in her mouth, the words, like water on the prairie, were gone. The city wasn’t so much dark as missing light, and the day already seemed like a dream.

  They’d shared the ice-cream-filled pastry, and Adam let her have the last bite. He’d watched her all day, from the moment she opened her door to him until now. The light from the single candle brought out the gold flecks in his eyes. He leaned back in his chair, an odd half smile on his mouth.

  “You’re sunburned,” she pointed out, then touched her own nose to show him where.

  “So are you,” he said. “Not bad. The hat helped.”

  “How am I going to explain a sunburn to Walkers For
d?” she asked.

  His gaze sharpened. “You don’t have to explain anything to anyone, ever,” he said.

  The waitress arrived with their check, then waited as Adam slid a credit card into the plastic slot without even looking at the total. “I thought we’d walk, unless you’re cold.”

  “I’m not cold,” she said. She’d never felt more alive, like her skin held the day’s sunlight and wind inside her.

  He scrawled his signature on the receipt. Outside the restaurant she zipped her new coat to her chin and pulled up the hood. Adam stuffed her peacoat in his half-full duffle, slung the bags over his left shoulder, looked around as if getting his bearings, then held out his free hand. She slid her hand into his, and set off down the sidewalk.

  The night was crystal clear, the fall air sharp but without the breeze she expected from the Windy City. A few stars glittered overhead, barely a fifth of what she usually saw at home, but she wasn’t here to stargaze. Instead she focused on the architecture along Michigan Avenue, and Grant Park until they turned left at the marble steps and arches of the Art Institute. A couple of blocks later Adam led her into the lobby of the Palmer House Hilton.

  “Wow,” she whispered as they walked through the lobby to the front desk. Ornately decorated ceilings soared overhead. Oriental carpets lay under chairs clustered in groups, and tall vases held floral arrangements larger than the fireplaces dominating Brookhaven’s great room. She gripped his hand more firmly and tried not to gawk.

  “Just one night?” the clerk asked with a smile.

  Adam confirmed, and the smiling desk clerk gave them two plastic key cards and pointed the way to the elevator. They had the dark-paneled rectangle all to themselves. Adam led her down a quiet hallway, then inserted the key card into the door, and the light switched from red to green as the lock clicked open. He held the door open for Marissa and let her walk through, into luxury like she’d never seen. A king-sized bed draped with a cranberry-red spread and apple-green cushions took up most of the space along one wall. Across from it was a flat-screen television hung over a dark wood dresser. A little table with two chairs sat in one corner, but it was the view that drew Marissa. The curtains were open to the city’s skyline, with the dark expanse of Lake Michigan and the sky in the distance. It called to her, the darkness, the unknown, the depths.