Passionate Kisses

by Various

Lucas frowned over the top of his mug, his gaze on the television and the Red Sox score. “Huh?”

  “That TV crew. The one doin’ the show about the lighthouse. They’re supposed to be gettin’ into town tonight.”

  Lucas drained his mug and passed it over for a refill. “Oh. Don’t think so.” No news vans or anything. Just one clueless woman, a tourist of course, who had to get out and walk around all doe-eyed looking at the damage. He guessed he’d heard something about it last week, some New York City cable show filming out on the point, but he hadn’t paid much attention. People were always coming and going, visiting the lighthouse and setting up their tripods to take photos in front of the place where Petey Smith had leapt to his death after killing his wife.

  “You sure?” Finn moved the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “Figured you woulda run into ’em. They’re staying at Beacon Inn downtown. Most of ’em, from what I hear.”

  Lucas nodded. Made sense. Only hotel in town, only place to stay at all, besides the bed and breakfast Francine Thomas had set up a couple years ago out on Patchwork Lane. Francine’s place was closer to the lighthouse, actually, but farther from everything else. Bank, gas station, couple-a restaurants, and the school that housed grades kindergarten through twelfth grade all lined Lindsey Point’s Main Street. Out by the coast, there wasn’t much to see except a view of the ocean. He supposed tourists liked that, though.

  “She’s cute, the host,” Finn went on. He pointed the remote at the television and changed channels until the opening sequence for Small Town Secrets rolled across the screen. “Oh, hey, here it is.” Cheesy music played as the camera moved in slow motion across a mountain range, a river, then a collection of houses squeezed together with kids playing outside. The screen froze on a waterfall and went dark after a second as the title of the show faded away, replaced by a face Lucas knew.

  Or at least recognized.

  He set down his mug and stared. “That’s her?”

  Finn nodded. “A-yep. Cute, right? Told ya. Wonder if she’s married?”

  Lucas didn’t know. He hadn’t checked her finger for a ring as he’d stood looking down at her. He’d only marveled at the idiocy of a woman who would not only get out of her car during a thunderstorm, but go walking down a muddy road in silly, impractical shoes. “I saw her.”

  “I thought you said–”

  “Didn’t know it was her. She was stuck waiting while we cleared the road.”

  “No shit.” Finn’s eyes widened. “She look that good up close? In person?”

  Lucas shrugged. “Dunno. I guess.” She hadn’t been wearing a pound of makeup like she was onscreen, and her hair had looked kind of messy, not all sprayed into place. Still, she had a cute body and green eyes that sparkled, even in the dark. He’d noticed as much before he turned away and got back to business.

  “You guess?” Finn chuckled and glanced at the door as a group of men walked in. Four strangers, Lucas saw at once. They wore khakis and button-down shirts and expensive-looking light jackets that did nothing against the rain coming down outside. They took the stools lining the far end of the bar and nodded at Finn.

  “How you all doin’ tonight?” He tossed down cocktail napkins and dug under the bar for a couple of menus. “Fryer’s open for another half hour, if you want something to eat.”

  “You have anything that’s not fried?” one of them asked. He looked pale in the dim light of the bar, almost green, with eyes sunken into his face. Might have been seasickness, though Lucas couldn’t believe any of them would have been out on the water.

  He shifted his attention back to the television, losing interest. Visitors came and went all the time, and even if these four were with that television show, didn’t matter much to him. They’d be gone in a week, the woman along with them.

  “Nope. Day cook makes sandwiches and salads, but it’s just me tonight.” Finn crossed his arms and waited.

  “Oh. Um, just three Amstel Lights, then. Lemon on the side. And one glass of ginger ale.”

  “Sure.” Finn raised a brow at Lucas and took his time getting the beers and the lemon wedges. “You all from the television show? Filming our lighthouse?”

  The guy on the end, heavy and gray-haired, nodded. “Know anything about it?”

  “The lighthouse?” Another glance at Lucas, another raised brow. “Shit. Course I do. Depends on what you’re looking for, though. Everyone in town knows something about it. But you ask different people, you’ll get a different story.”

  “C’mon now, we want to know about the murders. Right? The guy who killed his wife some fifty years ago and then jumped into the ocean and killed himself. And any ghosts that, you know, might still be hanging around the place.”

  Finn folded his arms on the bar and chewed his toothpick. “Lighthouse hasn’t been open in ten years.”

  “Since September of oh-one, right?” One guy pulled a sheaf of papers from his coat pocket. “Guy died that fall, huh? Last keeper of the place?” He stabbed one of the papers with a thick finger. “Read about it somewhere in here. Shame, huh?

  Lucas wondered what kind of person held a conversation made up mostly of questions.

  “But we got special permission to unlock the place, go inside,” the guy went on.

  No question marks in that sentence. Amazing.

  Finn turned away without answering. Behind him, in the space between the top shelf cognacs and the display of domestic beer bottles, hung three framed newspaper articles, in chronological order from left to right: one of the Baby on the Beach, one of the Cove Fire, and the last of the September Tragedy. No dust on the frames. No cracks in the glass or marks of any kind. Finn polished them almost every night.

  Lucas counted the seconds. Usually it took less than a minute, once a newcomer noticed them. He’d gotten to forty-two when the guy on the second stool, bearded and thin, opened his mouth.

  “Hey, what’s with those pictures?”

  The vein in Finn’s temple pulsed. He replaced his worn-to-bits toothpick with a new one and doused a rag in soapy water.

  The guy half-stood and leaned over the bar. “Did they all happen around here?”

  “A-yep.” Finn began washing glasses. One dunk in the suds, a swipe of the rag, a few seconds under the clear spray of the faucet. He hung each with precision in the rack above him. Lucas had watched the routine a hundred times.

  “Huh.” The guy sat back down. “What’s that last one?” He pointed at the photo of smoldering plane wreckage. Below the photo was a single row of pictures, six teenagers. Beneath the pictures, names and ages. “Is that from September eleventh?”

  “Nope.” Finn hung the last glass into place. “Another beer for any-a ya?” His eyes glittered, black under the bar lights.

  No one spoke.

  “I’ll take one more.” The fourth guy, Spanish and spectacled and the only one who looked as though he might have a brain between his ears, pushed his empty bottle toward Finn. “And a basket of fries, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

  “None at all.” Finn popped the top off another beer, passed it over, and disappeared into the kitchen. The air around the bar settled back into place.

  “What the fuck was that about?” the bearded guy muttered to his friend. The friend shrugged.

  Anyone who didn’t live here wouldn’t know and sure wouldn’t understand. Lucas's gaze flicked across the photos, all senior class pictures from Lindsey Point High except one.

  Erinn Nunez.

  Erinn’s cousin Sal.

  Barbara Cummins, Frankie Thomasen, Tommy Perkins.

  And Sarah O’Brien, the lone junior whose outstanding grades and award-winning essay had convinced the National Board to extend her an invitation to the annual conference as well.

  Sarah.

  Lucas’s chest tightened, and his Adam’s apple stuck in his throat. He should have known better than to look. Sarah. September. Shannon and sadness and sorry, so sorry. All the best and worst words in his vo
cabulary began with the same letter. What the hell was that, some kind of fucked-up karma?

  He ducked his chin and kept his gaze on the bar. Francine had moved away from the town’s tragedy. Finn wanted to be in the thick of it, though he rarely wanted to talk about it. And Lucas fell somewhere in between. Given his own experiences, he guessed that made sense.

  Finn emerged from the kitchen a few minutes later with an overflowing basket of fries. Grease gleamed under the lights. He set it in front of the men.

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded and handed over a stack of napkins. No one spoke for a few minutes.

  “Here’s my card,” said the heavy-set guy through a mouthful of food. “We’ll be in town ’til Friday, maybe Saturday, filming over at the lighthouse. You think of anything you wanna add, or you wanna be interviewed, gimme a call.” He slid a business card across the bar.

  Finn looked at the card and left it where it was.

  Lucas finished his second beer and scraped his stool back from the bar. “Okay, man, I’ll see ya.”

  “You leavin’ already?”

  “Promised Allie Hanifer I’d help stain her deck first thing. And Mom needs a ride to the doctor in the afternoon. Dad doesn’t get off work ’til after four, so I told her I’d go.”

  “Poker at Rich’s tomorrow night. Seven.”

  “I’ll be there.” He stood and glanced over at the four strangers, still pulled up tight to the bar, fingers greasy from the fries. Their eyes looked everywhere but at his face, bouncing off his chest to the garish beer signs behind the bar to the pool table in the corner and back to his feet. He bet they’d never seen someone six-foot-seven who wasn’t dunking a basketball at Madison Square Garden.

  They nodded in turn as he passed, all but the sickly one, who now looked more green than pale. He gripped the edge of the bar and managed a grim smile at Lucas, but a moment later, he pitched forward and smacked his face against the wood.

  “Shit!” Finn tossed the guy a clean rag. “You all right, buddy?”

  He nodded, but blood poured from his nose, and he could barely keep the rag in place as he swayed on the stool. His eyes rolled in his head. He moaned, nothing resembling words, and Lucas was one second away from thinking the guy was gonna hit the floor when he opened his mouth.

  “I think–uh...” The words gargled in his throat. Blood dripped from his nose onto the bar. “I think I’m gonna be sick.” He leaned over and lost everything in his stomach.

  Chapter 3

  Later that night, after Lucas had helped Finn hose down the bar floor and pointed the four men in the direction of the Beacon Inn, he swung his pickup down Patchwork Lane. No reason why, no attachment to the place, except he wasn’t ready to hit the sheets yet and driving usually helped settle his thoughts. The rain had stopped, and a sliver of moon hung low over the water. The ocean ran along his right side, the lighthouse visible on a rocky outcrop less than a mile away.

  Connections. So many damn connections.

  He’d dated Francine’s older sister back in high school, a lifetime ago. He’d liked Marion at first: cheerleader, party girl, looking for a handsome guy to parade on her arm rather than a relationship where words or thoughts really mattered. Still it had been fun, he recalled, until he’d found her in the backseat of Taylor Perkins’ Volvo on homecoming night. He’d planted the game ball into Taylor’s gut, left a key mark five feet long on the Volvo and told Marion exactly what she could do with her life and the mess she’d made of his. After that, he kept his distance from women. Until Shannon, of course.

  It always came back to Shannon.

  But if Sarah hadn’t died...

  His fingers tightened on the steering wheel as the road narrowed. That was the question he always found himself pondering. If Sarah hadn’t died, would he have ended up comforting her sister? If Shannon hadn’t needed comforting, would they have ended up on the beach that night, talking until the sun went down and talking wasn’t enough?

  He blinked himself back to the present. Here by the coast, trees and tall shrubs separated the homes, mostly weathered Capes and a few Colonials sitting back from the road a few hundred yards apart. He’d always found this part of town lonely, detached from the hum and intimacy of downtown, though he supposed some people liked it for just that reason.

  Another curve of lonely road and he came upon Francine’s place, newly sided with flowering baskets on the porch and an inviting air. He smiled, glad for her decision to open it. Once Marion married and moved away, Francine had taken care of her ailing mother until the day Mrs. Thomas took an entire bottle of pain pills and Francine found her out back among the petunias and snapdragons. Francine had spent almost a year in a mental ward up in Boston and then reappeared downtown one day with a new short haircut and fresh clothes and a smile that went crooked sometimes.

  Lucas sometimes wondered if Marion’s leaving, if Mrs. Thomas’ suicide, had all stemmed from that September day. Because Taylor Perkins’ older brother was Tommy Perkins. And Marion had been dating Taylor when they heard the news about the plane crash. She had held Taylor’s head in her lap for hours until he bit all his nails down to nothing and stopped talking altogether. No one said it. No direct relation to Francine or her mother, of course. But still.

  Connections.

  Lucas pulled into the gravel driveway and parked behind a dark four-door sedan. Was it the one from County Route Ten? He couldn’t be sure. He hadn’t looked closely at the woman. He sure hadn’t examined the vehicle she’d climbed from. He slid from his truck and took stock as he approached the front door and knocked. Every light on the first floor was illuminated so he hoped he was safe, even though his watch read almost eleven. He tried to stop by Francine’s place every now and then, just to check in on her. Lots of people did. It was a Lindsey Point thing, his mother said. They all looked out for each other.

  “Lucas, hello.” Francine’s face glowed as she pulled open the door.

  “Hey, Francine. I know it’s late. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. With the storm, I mean. Wanted to make sure you didn’t lose your electric.” He’d replaced some shingles last winter after ice knocked out the town’s power for almost a week, and checked on all her lines back then. He figured that was as good a reason as any to stop by. Had nothing to do with the host of the cable travel show, who might or might not be staying here.

  “No, it’s fine. Not even a flicker.” She took his elbow and pulled him across the threshold. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “You have guests this week?”

  Her head bobbed as if on a string. “One, yes. A woman from New York.” Francine turned away, as if seeking her next comment from the kitchen. “She’s on that television show. You know the one I’m talking about? They’re going to film the lighthouse.” Her cheeks shined with excitement.

  “I heard.” Against his will, he glanced around, wondering if he’d see her, this time maybe in ridiculously high heels or a fur-trimmed robe or something. He shook his head. Why the hell did he care? “You’ll let me know if you need anything, right?”

  “Lucas Oakes.” The voice came from above, and he turned to see her standing on the landing between the second and third floors. “The guy who told me to stay in the car and mind my own business.”

  His face warmed. “Just trying to keep you safe. Power lines down, no one oughta be walking around in the dark.”

  “Mm hmm.” She came down the stairs, taking her time, placing one bare foot before the other. No fur-trimmed robe, no high heels, just a t-shirt and short shorts revealing an exquisite pair of legs and a slim figure that needed his hands running down it. And up it. And along all those curves she wasn’t bothering to hide.

  His thoughts fuzzed, but he chalked it up to the long day and two beers at the bar.

  “Francine told me something interesting,” she said when she reached the ground floor. “Just a few minutes ago, actually. About you.” She smiled. “I didn’t know when we met you’d end up bei
ng my knight in shining armor.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He kept his eyes on hers, not on her cleavage or her mouth or, God help him, the length of her leg he could see just about all of.

  “I need a favor, Lucas Oakes.” She wasn’t short, maybe five-four or five-five, but she still had to look up at him. After a minute she retraced her path and climbed two steps so she met him eye to eye.

  “Yeah?” He fought a grin. Everyone else walked around Lindsey Point craning their necks at him or making comments about the weather up there. She just got as close to his level as she could.

  “Yeah. You’re a cameraman,” she said.

  “Ah, what?” Not what he’d expected.

  “You did camera work for almost two years when there was a local cable show here.”

  He shrugged. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Not that long.” She smiled, and he saw in that instant what the camera loved. Quiet desire slipped through him, gone almost before he realized it. But there. Holy hell, definitely there. His fingers twitched, wanting both to touch her and to reach for the door and get out of the bed and breakfast before he did something embarrassing. Like run his thumb along her jaw. Or move the hair from her eyes. Or rip that t-shirt clean off her body and let his tongue dance down the lines of her torso.

  “I might need one.”

  One what? He took his eyes off hers, gulped and fought to remember what they’d been talking about. “Oh. A cameraman? Saw four guys in the bar an hour ago. Figured they were working for you.”

  “They were. They are. But Gil was taken to the hospital a little while ago. Burst appendix.” She held out her cell phone, bedazzled in pink and silver sparkles. “My producer just called me.”

  “Appendix? Seriously?” Lucas had bet he had an upset stomach or something. Nothing more serious. “Ah, geez. That sucks. But you’ll have to find someone else. I can’t help you.”

  “Please?” She cocked her head to one side, and as her lips curved the question, he found his mind wandering. Those lips. On his. And on other places, working their way inch by inch down the length of his body.