by Susan Wiggs
Afterward, feeling raw and exposed and confused, she wept, and he held her against his bare chest, damp with her tears. He never said a word, probably knowing she couldn’t explain her feelings. Perhaps she cried because the intimacy was so deep. Or maybe she wept from the sheer joy of finding a hidden part of herself at last. Probably, though, she simply felt an overwhelming relief to find the warmth and familiarity of human contact again.
When the powerful waves of emotion dissipated, he propped himself up on one elbow and brushed at her tears with his thumb. He bent and kissed her cheeks, and then her mouth, her throat, her breasts, lower . . . She clung to him and answered each touch with one of her own, each kiss with one of her own, doing things she was pretty sure Cosmo had never published. Incredibly, they were making love a third time; she had no concept of time passing. She knew only the night and the storm-driven waves, the velvety cocoon of the stateroom and the dimly burning sconces throwing their moving silhouette against the hull.
Much later, they slept a little, but even so, she clung to him as though he were a life raft in a churning sea.
Chapter 22
In the pearly predawn, Mike made love to her again, in a slow, comforting manner that didn’t even wake her fully until she came. She blinked up at him, and her sweetly befuddled look made him smile.
“Hey, Brown Eyes,” he whispered.
“My God. What happened?”
“It’s a little late to explain the facts of life now.”
She shifted away from him, tucking her elbow under her cheek, touching herself where he had touched her. Last night she’d arrived with guns blazing—so to speak—but this morning, she retreated into wary shyness again.
“I can’t believe we did that.”
He reached for her. “If you need further proof—”
“I ‘ll take your word for it.” She pressed her hand to his chest, holding him back.
Damn, she smelled good. Her touch felt like heaven. For days, they’d been a fire waiting to be sparked, the embers banked with a coating of ashes, dim and miserly, but ultimately responsive to the coaxing breath of desire. His need for her had been unrelenting, something he had controlled with an iron will, but when he finally made love to her, he’d been beyond ready.
He kept trying to tell himself that the long absence of a woman from his life accounted for his intense, ravenous need for her. But the fact was, he had a special tenderness for her that grew and strengthened with each passing day. And he knew it wouldn’t simply disappear when she sold her house and moved away.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“I could eat.”
He rifled through a drawer at the end of the bed and produced a one-pound bag of M&Ms. “Actually, I bought these with you in mind. I was going to bring them over to the house.”
“Not exactly breakfast material,” she pointed out.
“I’ll see what I can find.” He slipped out of bed and pulled on his sweatpants.
Sandra sat up, moving a little gingerly.
It struck him then. He knew without a doubt that he was the first guy she’d slept with since Victor. Oh, man.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She combed her fingers through her hair. “I guess.”
He nodded; she probably wanted a few minutes to herself. “Bathroom’s in there. Help yourself to whatever you need. I’ll go put the coffee on.”
He let Zeke out for his morning run and turned up the radio to listen to the weather while he fixed breakfast. The storm had passed through, but there was a high-wind advisory for the rest of the day. What the hell did she eat for breakfast? He kept a supply of Pop-Tarts on hand for the kids, but what adult ate Pop-Tarts? Wheaties would have to do. Who didn’t like Wheaties?
As he poured the juice, he felt her presence and turned to see her standing there, wrapped in his terry-cloth robe and smelling of toothpaste. The robe all but swallowed her; it had been a Father’s Day gift from Kevin and Mary Margaret.
The thought of his kids made him jumpy. They were so fragile right now. They needed him—all of him.
Then Mike grinned. He was getting way ahead of him-self, and Sandra looked damned good in his robe. “Coffee? “ he asked.
“Thanks.” She sat down at the table. He pushed the milk and sugar toward her. She added milk, then a spoonful of sugar. Then another, and another. Glancing up, she saw him looking at her.
“You like it sweet,” he commented. “I noticed that the first time I bought you a cup of coffee.”
She nodded, then quickly lowered her gaze. “I remember.”
“Hey.” Reaching across the table, he lifted her chin. “Is this morning-after bashfulness, or is something wrong?”
She stirred her coffee. “Last night I came to talk about you and Victor, not—you know.”
“But that worked out better. You know.” Damn, he felt good. He hadn’t felt this good in a long time. He knocked back a glass of orange juice and poured another. She sipped her coffee from a spoon.
He poured Wheaties into a bowl and offered it to her.
She shook her head and perused the supplies on the counter. “Could I have a Pop-Tart?”
Amazing. She liked Pop-Tarts.
As he opened the package, she picked up the old photograph of him and Victor. “Do you have any others?”
“I do, but don’t ask me where. I think I keep this one on the boat because it’s a day I want to remember.” The toaster released, and he tossed the Pop-Tart from hand to hand, then onto a plate.
“Thank you.” She blew on the pastry to cool it. The sight of her puckered lips sparked a swift, erotic memory of the night before. Through the door to the stateroom, he could see the unmade bed.
He sat down across from her to drink his coffee. She glanced down at the photograph again and touched the image of Mike. She looked as though she might cry, and he silently begged her not to. It had been hard enough last night, feeling her tears on his naked flesh. Those tears didn’t have anything to do with Victor, and Mike’s wordless comfort had been enough. This morning was a different story—she seemed focused on that old photograph again.
“How old were you in this picture?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe twelve.” He tried to think of a way to change the subject. Jesus, wasn’t a night of great sex enough for this woman? Morning-after conversation was not supposed to be about the dead husband, was it? “So what were you up to, when you were twelve?”
She indicated the picture. “Not this.” At his questioning glance, she added, “I didn’t have many friends, growing up.”
“Come on.” He tried to picture her as a little girl. Big dark eyes, long dark hair, skinny legs. Partial to Pop-Tarts.
“Really, I didn’t. And I didn’t even think it was strange. I lost myself in books and hardly ever came up for air. I never had . . . what you and Victor had.”
“Don’t attach some deep meaning to it. We just hung out.”
“All through your school years.” She broke the pastry into smaller pieces, not seeming to notice she was crumbling it.
“Can we get off the topic of school?” he asked, putting the photograph aside.
“Fine. What about afterward?”
“I already told you that—didn’t make it through college.” He studied Sandra’s face. What the hell was it with her? Something about the way she listened made him feel the need to explain himself. “I was sidelined by an injury and took to partying. Angela—my ex—was a cheerleader, but she quit the squad.” The truth was, she’d been sidelined,, too, by academic probation, and eventually she’d flunked out. “I left school, married her and started getting ready for the baby to come.”
“Oh.” Sandra’s eyes grew intent as she put two and two together. But he knew she couldn’t begin to imagine Angela’s father, with his legendary Italian temper, his Old World values shaken to the core until Mike “did the right thing.”
“So you have a grown child,” Sandra concluded.
He stared down at his hands. He swallowed hard, remembering something he hadn’t thought about in a long time. “Angela had a miscarriage.”
The searing irony of it still stung. They’d married for the sake of the baby. In the sad aftermath of the loss, they’d probably both entertained the private, forbidden thought that their reason for staying together no longer existed. But they stuck it out, trying hard most of the time, neither of them admitting the slow erosion of their marriage had begun even before the miscarriage.
They should have listened to their hearts. But then there would have been no Mary Margaret, no Kevin.
Mike stared at the galley window, which framed a view of whitecaps out in the Sound. “After I quit school, we moved to Newport. Never sent a word to Victor, not even a wedding announcement. I knew he’d take my failure harder than I ever did.”
“What failure? You settled down, had a couple of great kids. Look at all you’ve done. According to Sparky, your business was thriving, and you were winning national recognition for your work.”
“I never got the degree.”
“It’s a piece of paper.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Trust me, it’s no Holy Grail.”
People with advanced degrees generally thought that way. They didn’t know how many doors had been slammed shut in Mike’s face because he lacked that key credential. He won admiration for starting up his own firm; no one seemed to realize he’d had no choice. He was forced to go hat-in-hand to his father-in-law and take out a loan.
Zeke scratched at the door, and Mike let him in. “Anyway, “ he said, sitting down again, “you asked about Victor, and here I am telling you all this stuff about me.”
“I don’t mind.” She propped her chin in her hand, soft-eyed and dreamy. “He didn’t talk about the past much. He said he had a happy childhood, that his folks spoiled him rotten and he tried not to let it show. Ronald and Winifred never had much to say to me.”
We ‘ve never understood her . . . She was the one poor choice Victor made. Mike’s last conversation with the Winslows echoed in his mind.
“They’re nuts, then,” he said. “You’re beautiful. You’re brilliant, and you have a big heart.”
She regarded him as if he’d spoken in a foreign tongue. “Excuse me?”
“What more could they want in a daughter-in-law?” he asked.
“A pedigree.” She spoke simply, with no surprise or outrage, just stating a simple fact. “Victor tried to warn me in advance, before he introduced us. He said his parents were ‘very traditional’ and ‘filled with high-flown hopes’ for him. That’s code with the Winslows. Breeding matters.”
He glanced at Zeke, who had flopped down on his favorite cushion to sleep off his morning run. “Right.”
“Actually, I don’t think it was so much a case of liking or disliking. I simply wasn’t their choice.”
“To marry Victor.”
“Right.”
“So did they have somebody else in mind?”
“Are you kidding? Ronald and Winifred? They probably started looking while Victor was a zygote.” She turned her gaze to Mike. “I’ll bet you know who she is.”
“Know who?”
“The woman they wanted Victor to marry.”
“Who is she?”
“Courtney Procter.”
The local newshound—blond, driven and ambitious. “Yeah? Makes sense, I guess.”
“She was this incredible debutante, attended Brown the same time Victor did. Her parents are friends of the Winslows. Victor took Courtney out a few times. Even after he married me, Winifred made a point of keeping a few photos around, showing them dressed in their formals, the happy couple ready to step out. But for once, maybe for the first time, he rebelled.”
“Was that before or after he met you?”
She laughed. “What, you’d actually believe he’d throw her over for me?”
“Yes.”
“Dream on.” She seemed stubbornly incredulous that anyone might find her attractive. “He dumped Courtney long before he found me.”
“How did you meet?”
“That’s private,” she said quickly, guardedly.
Mike leaned back against the hull, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re some piece of work, lady,” he said.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Mike was pissed, and he couldn’t quite figure out why. Maybe after last night, he wanted her to trust him more. She’d slept with him, but she was still holding back, and it bugged the hell out of him. “You came barging in here, demanding to know why I kept something from you. So I tell you all this stuff I’ve never told anybody, and you can’t even explain how you met your husband?” He leveled his gaze at her, and she stared implacably back. “Listen, maybe last night was a mistake. You’re the client, I’m the contractor. Maybe we’d better keep it that way.”
“You think?”
Don’t go, he thought. Stay and talk to me. But he wanted the choice to be hers.
To his relief, she made no move to get up. She studied Mike for a long time, her gaze invasive, discomfiting. Then she drank her orange juice. “He changed my life.”
It was the last thing Mike had expected to hear. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s true. In a way.” She splayed her hands on the table, her throat working in that strained way he’d noticed before. “To explain this, I have to go way back. You see, when I was little, I used to stutter.”
He hid his surprise, and swiftly reviewed the concept. Sure enough, he could recall a couple of times she’d stumbled over words, hesitated—but didn’t everyone do that? “I understand lots of kids stutter at some time or other,” he said.
“Not like I did. We’re talking every word. Serious disability. My parents hired every sort of speech pathologist and child psychologist they could find. My dad worked overtime to pay for it all, and my mom drilled and sang and did everything she could think of. It . . . had a pretty powerful impact on my life.”
He tried to imagine the teasing she’d endured as a kid, the frustration of having so much to say and no way to say it. No wonder she was a writer.
“Anyway,” she went on, “I was writing books no one wanted to publish. No agent in the business wanted to represent me, and the best job offer I’d had was as an office assistant at the Trawlworks in Narragansett. My speech therapist had me going to a support group. I met Victor there. He was doing volunteer work.”
That didn’t surprise him. Community service was Victor’s middle name.
“I could talk to him. Really talk. It’s such a gift, to find someone who listens, who doesn’t try to finish my sentences, prod me and put words in my mouth. I don’t know why he took such an interest in me, but he did. I worked on his election campaign, wrote him a couple of speeches.” She studied his expression. “I think he liked my loyalty. My . . . quietness.”
“Trust me, he liked more than that.” The oversized robe gave him a view of her cleavage, and Mike couldn’t help staring at it.
She frowned as she clutched the robe tighter. “You don’t know anything about us.”
“Then tell me.” He refilled their coffee cups.
“He invited me to the county fair—he had some official function that evening. We had our first fight over a carnival ride.” The boat listed in the churning waters. “He wanted to go on the Ferris wheel, and I didn’t. Victor practically forced me to go, even though he could tell I was terrified. Maybe that’s why my memory of that day is so sharp. It was summer, and the air felt heavy and sticky with the smells of diesel exhaust and cotton candy. The Ferris wheel was the most popular ride of the night, and I was hoping it would be too crowded, and Victor would change his mind. But it was one of those moments when the universe conspires against you, and all the planets line up and launch you like a stone from a slingshot. The crowd parted, suddenly there was no line, and I stood at the gate with a cardboard ticket in my hand while Victor pushed me up the ramp.” A faraway look of
remembrance diffused her gaze. “I even remember the attendant—greasy blond hair, a muscle shirt over a dark tan. I was terrified to go on the ride, but even more terrified to make a scene. I think Victor always knew that about me. I’d rather die than make a scene.”
A haunted smile touched her lips. “So I waited until we were airborne, and I let him have it. I was so angry, I didn’t even stutter. And Victor just sat there beside me, listening. I don’t remember how many times we took that ride, how many tickets he handed the attendant. We just kept going around and around, and I talked like I’d never talked to anyone before. It was like . . . ” She paused, flashed a grin. “Like now, sort of. At one point, we got stuck at the top. That’s when he asked me to marry him.”
She folded her arms on the table. “Pretty romantic, isn’t it?” Her voice was flat. He wondered what had soured the memory for her.
“And he made it happen, didn’t he?”
“In a big way. We announced our engagement at the Providence Plantation Founders Ball three weeks later.”
“Victor did everything in a big way.”
“Yeah,” she said, holding his gaze with hers. “Even die.”
Chapter 23
In the wake of her confession, Sandra wasn’t sure what to say next. Waves struck the hull of the old trawler, thumping into the silence. The last words she’d spoken seemed to hang in the air, then dissipate like smoke on the wind. Maybe she’d said too much. People seldom wanted the unvarnished truth, even when they asked for it.
Malloy made an unlikely confidant, sitting there with his hair mussed and his eyes as clear as the sky after a storm, his hand covering hers. She tried to read his expression—a combination of incomprehension and regret that he’d broached the topic in the first place. Yet after last night, she wanted to open up to him. “Why do I feel like a waitress who just brought you a dish you didn’t order?” she asked, pulling her hand away.
Leaning back, he absently scratched his bare chest. The gesture, so alien, so male, drew her attention. “I guess I was expecting something—”
“Lighter. Cuter. Every couple has a fun story about the way they met. Getting their underwear tangled at the Laundromat. Falling in love in geometry class. With Victor and me, there was nothing fun about it. He helped me with a serious disability. Six months later, I was saying ‘I do’ in front of five hundred wedding guests. Actually, what I said was ‘Yes, I do,’ because I felt the stutter coming on.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I told you that. I’ve never told anyone that story.”
