by Lisa Cach
“No, of course not,” she soothed, picking up a chunk of Styrofoam for her bag. “I can appreciate him as a physical specimen, but that’s as far as it goes. I, of course, could never be interested in a man without a graduate degree.”
“But—” Andrew started, then seemed to swallow his own words.
“What?” Grace asked innocently.
“Declan does have an MBA,” he admitted.
“Does he?” Grace said in false surprise. She took on a musing stance. “Hmm. So there’s a brain with the brawn.”
“But that’s not the type of degree you were talking about. It might as well be a glorified accounting degree. You’re more interested in ideas. You’re an intellectual and want someone you can talk to.”
She smiled warmly at him. “Yes. You understand me perfectly.”
He visibly relaxed.
“Besides, it’s not like Declan would see anything here to his taste,” she said, and touched her hand to the neckline of her dress, letting it linger there atop the mound of one full breast. The breeze off the ocean had raised her nipples into pebbles beneath the apricot fabric, and she saw Andrew’s gaze linger on the small peaks. Maybe he wasn’t quite so low on libido after all. “So I’m perfectly safe from a sexual caveman like him.”
“Perfectly,” Andrew said weakly.
They wandered through the shoreline greenery, picking up bits of flotsam and jetsam: more Styrofoam, shoes, scraps of floats and ropes, ancient aluminum cans bleached by salt and sun, and random pieces of plastic. The ocean was calm, the waves making a gentle shoosh shoosh upon the shore. It wasn’t bad for a first date, Grace decided. They had a pretty setting, a nontaxing task to fill the silences, and the pleasure of sand on bare feet. It was worlds calmer than her outing with Declan had been.
And that’s a good thing, she told herself.
“Why does Sophia like Declan so much?” Grace asked some minutes later, her mind having failed to move off the topic of the despised male.
“She feels possessive of her projects.”
“Projects?”
“Without her, he probably would have ended up selling cars after college,” Andrew said.
“Yeah?”
“He had a full-ride football scholarship. He was hoping to go pro, but his junior year he blew out his knee and, with it, all his chances. Sophia redirected him toward business and helped get him into Wharton. He probably wouldn’t have his MBA or have gotten into such a good firm on Wall Street without her, and he sure wouldn’t have been so successful in San Francisco and around here if not for her connections. Half of his clients are friends of hers.”
Grace felt a prick of disappointment. She’d thought Declan was a self-motivated achiever, not a product of someone else’s patronage. “That was generous of Sophia to help him like that.”
“Sophia can be very motherly, and like a mother, generous to a fault.”
“You think she was wrong to help him?”
“I don’t think it’s ever wrong to help someone who needs it,” he said primly.
“But?”
“But I’ve never been happy to see charm rewarded over merit.” He laughed self-consciously and gave her a rueful smile. “Maybe that’s left over from watching the popular kids in high school get away with almost anything. You’d think I’d have grown out of that type of petty jealousy by now.”
She smiled in return, warming to his admission of such a familiar weakness. This was why she’d been attracted to Andrew from the beginning; setting aside the food weirdness, he was just like her. “Did we go to the same school? I know exactly what you mean.”
“Weren’t you popular?”
“Geek, through and through,” she said happily. She didn’t need to pretend otherwise with Andrew. God, what a relief.
“No one would guess it now,” he said, his eyes taking a detour over her figure.
She chuckled. Those twelve pounds seemed to have made a difference in how he saw her. He was ogling her, which just went to show that guys were guys, geek or jock. “Thanks, I think. I liked being a nerdy girl, though.”
“Why?”
“A theory I had. I thought that smart kids were too busy following intellectual pursuits to spend time and energy developing their social skills. The social butterflies, on the other hand, weren’t intellectual enough to be absorbed in the world of the mind. I thought I’d rather be intellectual and a little awkward than popular and vapid.”
“Is that where your thesis idea came from?”
“Kind of, yeah,” she said, even as she felt a faint discomfort. The assumptions her dissertation was based on were beginning to sound the faintest bit silly to her now. Not that she didn’t think there was truth to her hypothesis, but maybe not the all-sweeping truth she’d once thought.
“So you think you can persuade popular girls to give more attention to their minds than to whether or not to get breast implants.”
“You think it’s hopeless.”
“As hopeless as turning one of us geeks into a sex symbol,” he said, smiling.
She smiled back, thinking of Sophia’s lessons. “I don’t know… . When we put our minds to something, is there anything we nerds can’t do?”
“But we wouldn’t ever pursue such ends. You wouldn’t want rewards for having a pretty face, would you?”
“I know I should say no, but I’ve been trying to be more honest with myself lately.” She touched his arm and leaned close. “Wouldn’t you like to live on the ‘other side’ for a bit, to see what it’s like? To experience what it’s like to be one of the beautiful people?”
“I already know what it’s like, just from observation,” he said. “Self-obsessed. Entitled. Ignorant. Like Declan.”
Grace drew back. He sounded exactly like she had a few weeks ago. She should be cheering him on, but she wasn’t. Why not? “You really don’t like Declan, do you?”
“I’m sorry,” Andrew said, grimacing. “I shouldn’t let my dislike show so clearly. I know you spent the day with him yesterday.” He slanted her a glance.
“To please Sophia. It was nice to be shown around. I haven’t had anyone to explore the area with,” she said, tossing him a broad hint.
“The area is about as safe as safe gets. You shouldn’t have any qualms about exploring it on your own.”
She rolled her eyes under the shield of her hat brim. Maybe geeks did need to devote some time to learning social skills. “Declan took me to the site of his development, up in the hills. It was very pretty out there, and I doubt I would have found such a place on my own.”
Andrew straightened up with a faded Budweiser can in his hand, his face darkening. “That development! If his type has its way, the entire county will be slathered in housing developments and private golf courses, and the only green you’ll ever see will be the containment swales for the runoff water. Destroying open land like that is a sin.”
“He says they’re going to be environmentally friendly houses.”
“The only truly green house is the one that isn’t built! Once land like that is developed, it’s gone forever. There’s plenty of space in towns that could be made into high-density housing, although it would probably be better not to encourage population growth at all. The Monterey Peninsula is in a delicate balance between man and nature as it is, with at least seventy of its plant and animal species threatened. The Smith’s blue butterflies are disappearing, and so is the Monterey pine. The Monterey pine, for God’s sake!”
Grace looked up the beach to the multimillion-dollar houses lining the shore. She’d read that Carmel used to be a bohemian art colony, but when she and Declan had driven through, all she’d seen were luxury cars and faux fantasy cottages that only the super rich could afford. She was beginning to see Declan’s point about there being nowhere for normal people to live. She didn’t know enough about it, though, to say whether Andrew’s high density or Declan’s green village made more sense.
Debating the issue wasn’t going to w
in her any points with Andrew, anyway, if Sophia was to be believed. Better to pretend to agree. “It will be sad to see houses there. It was a magical spot, so quiet except for the crickets; I’ve never heard so many in the middle of the day. The sound of them weaves a sort of spell.”
He moved down the dunes and she followed. “Monterey was once thought to have its own unique cricket.”
“Oh?”
“No specimens survive, just a drawing by Ed Ricketts.”
“Who?”
“Ed Ricketts. ‘Doc.’ Haven’t you read any of the Steinbeck stories set around here? Cannery Row, or Sweet Thursday?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Ricketts was the inspiration for the Doc character. He and Steinbeck were friends.”
“It was a real guy?”
“He was a marine biologist. But in his papers he left a drawing of a cricket with unusual markings that he’d labeled Gryllus steinbecki: the Steinbeck cricket. No one ever found a real one, and no one knows if they truly existed, or if he created it and named it after Steinbeck as a joke.”
“Wouldn’t that be something if there were Steinbeck crickets in that field of Declan’s?” Grace said, laughing.
“If there are, they won’t last long.” He shook his bag of trash. “Looks like we’ve done our share, doesn’t it? Shall we call it a day?”
Grace’s lips parted. This was it? They were done? No sitting on the sand and talking, nudging up closer and closer to each other, taking advantage of the solitude and lovely surroundings, waiting for the sun to set? “Uh, sure, okay.”
He trudged off and she hurried to follow.
“Do you want to have lunch before we head back to the house?” she asked his back.
“Lunch?” He stopped long enough for her to catch up.
“If you don’t have anything on your schedule. Maybe you have an appointment or something.”
He glanced at his watch. “No, I have time. I guess I could eat.”
“I’d like that very much.” She blinked up at him. What was Sophia thinking, saying that she needed to be subtle with Andrew? He needed hitting over the head.
“I know a place that serves CRON-friendly food.”
Oh Lord. “Wonderful!”
Grace wrapped her hand around his arm again, taking possession. She might not get fed a decent meal today, but before they parted company she was going to squeeze a kiss out of him. If a girl couldn’t have bacon, at least she could have action.
CHAPTER
15
“If you got your hip replaced, you could join me down on the rocks and I would teach you how to fish,” Ernesto said to Sophia.
“I know how to fish. I choose not to.”
“Then you could sit and admire me while I fish. I could be happy with that.” Lali’s grandfather smiled warmly, the skin creasing around his dark eyes. With his shock of white hair there was something of Spencer Tracy to him, Declan thought; or perhaps it was the idea of The Old Man and the Sea that drew the parallel.
The three of them were sitting on the terrace, sipping iced tea and enjoying the gentle breezes.
Sophia said, “I’m too old and too wise to spend my day sitting on a cold, hard rock admiring an average man.”
“I know you are, querida. That is why you will sit and admire me, a man far above average.”
A vixenish smile curled on Sophia’s lips. “The sight of you, while splendid, is not so inspiring that it will hurry me to the operating table for a new hip. I need a greater inducement than to be allowed to watch you fish.”
“Cielito, there is so much more a new hip will allow.” The look he gave Sophia was so smolderingly intimate that Declan quietly excused himself and left them to their flirtation. A glance over his shoulder as he went down the terrace stairs into the garden told him that they hadn’t noticed his departure.
He’d known there had been a flirtation between Ernesto and Sophia for many years, despite Ernesto being fifteen years Sophia’s junior. He also knew of at least half a dozen other ongoing flirtations Sophia had with men in the area. Collecting them seemed to be a hobby of hers, an afternoon in their adoring company better than any rejuvenating spa treatment. Of them all, Ernesto was the only one who could get under Sophia’s skin with his teasing. He didn’t have the awe of her that the others did, and Declan suspected Sophia liked him all the better for that.
Declan had spent the morning meeting with the head of the construction company that would be building the housing development, but as they pored over the blueprints, Declan’s mind had wandered again and again to Grace.
A small voice protested that he should stop this game they seemed to be playing with each other. There was no upside to pursuing a sexual relationship with her. It wasn’t worth the grief she was causing him, and the rift it could cause in his relationship with Sophia.
His competitive instincts had been roused, however, and after a brief battle with reason as he drove on Highway One last night, he had accepted that he wasn’t going to be able to let it go. And really, he owed her a good time after being such an asshole that first night.
He came around a curve in the garden path and saw Andrew and Grace sitting on a stone bench with a view out over the ocean, their backs to him.
As he watched, Grace put her hand on Andrew’s thigh and turned to face him. Without thinking, Declan stepped to the side to conceal himself behind a large bush. He peered through the leaves at the couple, a stab of dark emotion piercing him.
Grace leaned toward Andrew, her face upturned for a kiss. Andrew shied away.
Declan chortled. The goddamned weenie was scared.
Grace lifted her hands to Andrew’s face and framed it. Andrew’s body stiffened, and Declan grinned in anticipation of what Andrew might do next. Bolt? Push Grace away?
Declan didn’t believe that Grace and Andrew could engage in a major makeout session. It was against the laws of nature.
Grace slowly pulled Andrew’s face toward hers and gently kissed him on the lips. She kissed him a second time, then a third, caressingly, her lips brushing across his. Andrew relaxed, his arms coming around Grace’s waist.
Declan’s stomach dropped, and a furious feeling of wrongness overwhelmed him. He was on the verge of rushing forward to break them apart, when Andrew’s enthusiasm took a sudden lunge forward. He squeezed Grace, his mouth opening wide to cover her lips and half her chin. While Grace made muffled noises of protest he pressed her back on the bench, crushing the straw hat beside her and apparently crushing Grace as well.
“Ow, ow, ow!” she cried, pulling free of his slobbering mouth and pushing at his shoulder.
Andrew jumped off her like a dog scolded off a couch, and with as little care; his hand used her breast for leverage, earning a furious curse from Grace as she cradled the injured mound.
“Sorry! Sorry!” Andrew said, his long limbs full of fluttering anxiety. He reached up and smoothed his hair.
Grace sat up slowly, her own hair mussed. “It’s okay. Don’t worry.”
“I should go.” He clasped his hands together.
“No, it’s okay,” Grace said. “My fault.”
Declan snorted from behind his bush.
“I need to go anyway. So, er … it was a nice day. ’Bye!” Andrew dashed down the path in the opposite direction from where Declan hid.
“See you on Thursday?” Grace called after him but received no reply. Her shoulders slumped and she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. She picked up the hem of her dress and wiped her chin, then dropped it and hung her head.
Declan stepped back onto the path and went to her. She raised her head at the sound of his approach and looked back over her shoulder.
“Oh, it’s you.”
He was taken aback to see that she was on the verge of tears. He sat down next to her, noting the sheen of tears in her eyes and the redness of her nose. “Are you all right?” he asked softly.
“Dandy,” she said, sitting up straight
and sniffling. “Were you spying?”
“Yes.”
She chuckled wetly. “No evasion, just yes?”
“Yes.” With a feather-light touch he brushed the hair back from her face. He was used to seeing her defiant, angry, self-righteous, indignant, surprised, annoyed, impassioned. Never like this, wounded and vulnerable. Unhappy. It distressed him.
“You must have thought that scene was pretty funny.”
“Not really.” He dropped his hand to her back, to the bare skin between her shoulder blades, and drew soothing circles with his fingertips. He needed to know what had doused the fire in his Grace. “I could tell it was a lousy kiss, but surely not worth crying over?”
She gurgled a sad laugh. “No. It’s not that.”
He flattened his palm on her back and rubbed. “Then what?”
Grace smiled sadly and shook her head. She couldn’t tell Declan that what depressed her was the sudden conviction that however different she might look on the outside, she would never be anything but a geek, and geeks married geeks. Someday she’d find herself married to a man like Andrew: smart, conscientious, cute in his way, passionate when encouraged, but always awkward and shy, waiting for her to take the lead, needing guidance in how to please her physically.
It wasn’t necessarily bad; it did encourage her to be proactive where she might otherwise be passive, and she would unquestionably be married to a peer rather than to a man who thought he was her master. But …
But it suddenly seemed that life wasn’t going to be very exciting if she had to rely on herself for all the seduction and adventure. And she didn’t consider exploring the wonders of CRON at a meeting next Thursday to be an adventure. She could have that much fun alone for a week with a six-pack of Slim-Fast shakes, thank you very much.
If she had to be the one in charge in a relationship, then when would she get swept off her feet by passion? When would she be surprised? When would she feel taken care of? Equality was what she’d always wanted—and was still what she wanted—but she was starting to realize it wasn’t going to come without a price.
And the price was swept-off-her-feet passion.
