“Yes,” Olivia said, but she knew he was right. It didn’t matter.
“We think we have the answers,” he said quietly. “We think we know a better way. I’ve spent four years cursing Laura for not seeing that boat coming and getting the hell out of the way, but I wasn’t at the tiller. I wasn’t in control. I don’t know the time factor, or what I would have done. Since I don’t like the outcome, I say I would have acted differently if I’d been there, but I wasn’t there.” His voice grew raspy. “I wasn’t there, Olivia, and Laura wasn’t me. She did what she could. Same with your mother. We can second-guess them all we want, but what good does it do? It only sullies their memory.” He exhaled deeply and murmured a guttural, “Let it go, Simon, let it go.”
Olivia slid her arms around him. He was solid physically and, while still feeling a pain of his own, solid mentally. He understood what she felt and steadied her at a time when she might otherwise have crumbled. Emptiness did that to a person. Her insides were a big black hole where dreams of her mother had been. She was hollow now. There was nothing of substance to keep her intact, except Simon.
He was substance. The beat of his heart in her ear was strong. His body exuded strength and warmth. He was perhaps just another dream, certainly one she had no business entertaining, but in this place, at this moment, he filled the emptiness.
She wasn’t sure whether she raised her head, or whether it was his hand at her nape that did it, but their mouths met with exact precision, their thoughts apparently alike. She touched his back and his shoulders, touched his jaw and his throat. He was real, such an incredible comfort that she let herself go. He tasted of coffee and smelled of man. He felt like a lover, if the tremor she felt in his lean muscles were an indication.
He whispered her name. She caught the sound in another deep kiss. When he called her a second time, though, there was urgency in his voice.
“We shouldn’t do this,” he whispered, looking down at her with something akin to desperation in his eyes. “It’s not fair. Not tonight. You’re vulnerable.”
“But I need help,” she whispered back and waited, praying that he wouldn’t leave her, because that was part of the dream. She had been left alone too many times. For once, just once, she wanted someone to stay.
He did. He stayed. He pulled her close and held her as though he was into the dream himself, as though he would stay forever. He held her and kissed her. He undressed her with steady caresses in a way that made her feel round and full, made her feel desirable, and when he slipped out of his own clothes and put her hands on him, he was breathing so hard, was so clearly aroused that she felt all the more feminine and strong.
He carried her to his bed and came down over her, pausing only to ask if she was protected, then taking the responsibility himself—and even that was a gift. Loving him just then, trusting him just then, she opened to him as she had rarely done. He rewarded her with a climax that went right through his and beyond, and though she should have felt sad when it was done, the only thing she was aware of was a sense of completeness.
They didn’t speak. Words didn’t seem fitting in the shadow of her mother’s death, but they made love twice more before he walked her back to the house.
SIMON WAS LEANING against the old maple tree the next night when she came out. He hadn’t known if she would come, hadn’t known if he really wanted her to—but his body did. He didn’t understand it. She was unlike any other woman he had known, more spritelike than feminine. He could only guess that sprites had a special way with men.
Taking her hand, he led her back to the cabin and made love to her again, and it was just as good as he remembered, just as exciting—and perhaps just as wrong. But then, it was just for the moment, and he deserved a little pleasure in life. He had no expectations, no plans for the future. He had stopped making those four years ago. But there was pleasure in learning what she liked, and pure male pride in the moment when she cried his name and arched off the bed. There was the utter satiation that intercourse brought and the faint tremor in his muscles that no other physical act caused. He even liked the shared silence of the predawn walk back to the house.
How not to return in hope the next night? They didn’t even make it back to the cabin this time. She was naked under her nightshirt, and hungry, if the hands that freed him from his pants meant anything. Just like that, he was ready. All he had to do was to put his back to a tree. She was easily lifted, easily held even when the going got hot and heavy. He had never had sex like that—and would have told her so, if it hadn’t been too revealing.
Besides, what they shared in the darkness wasn’t talk—it was sensation. When the sun came up, reality set in.
Reality for Simon this August came in the form of a hurricane brewing in the Atlantic basin. It wasn’t the first of the season, and it surely wouldn’t be the last, but it showed signs of becoming one of the strongest. Though it was still a ways off, Simon kept a close eye on its projected track, which at the moment showed it coming perilously close to Rhode Island.
Thinking about a hurricane hitting the vineyard was better than thinking about Olivia leaving Asquonset.
Twenty-five
SUSANNE HADN’T BEEN APART FROM MARK for this long since the summers she had spent at Asquonset with the children, and then he had joined them at least for a weekend or two. This summer, he was taking advantage of her time in Rhode Island to do business traveling that would otherwise have to wait until fall. Though they talked daily, Susanne was starting to think about flying home to see him between trips.
Then she conjured him up. She was in the chilly wine cellar under the Great House, searching for just the right vintage Pinot Noir to go with the tenderloin she was baking for dinner that night, when she heard a sound on the stairs and looked up. The light was dim but there was no mistaking the vision. He stood there with his hand on the rail, smiling at her.
“What’s a gorgeous woman like you doing in a cold, dark place like this?” he asked.
She laughed. This was no apparition. Forgetting the wine, she went to the stairs and wound her arms around his neck. “Waiting to be rescued,” she said, kissing him soundly. “You read my mind.”
“I missed you.”
“Is this Detroit?”
He grinned. “Nope. Canceled Detroit right at the airport. Best impulse I’ve ever had.” He hugged her and said with mock sternness, “I don’t like it when you’re here so long.”
“I can tell,” she answered, warming her hands against his middle. “You feel thinner. I left you tons of food, but you’re not eating.”
He held her back. “You were supposed to say that you don’t like it when you’re here so long, either.”
“Well, I don’t. You always came sooner.”
“That’s still not what you’re supposed to say,” he teased. “You’re supposed to say that you hate this place, that your mother drives you up a tree, that you don’t care what she says, you’re not interested in joining the team.”
“I’m not. But I don’t hate this place. The truth is, I’ve kind of been enjoying myself.”
He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “It would have been easy to say the other, though I’d hardly have believed it. You look too good, all golden and rested.”
“Golden is from the sun. It’s been a perfect August. As for rested, that’s a dream. I fired mother’s second new cook.”
“Fired her?”
“She was impossible—bad-attitude Fiona. This time, I’ll do the interviewing. Mother is such a noncook that she just doesn’t know what it takes. It’ll take me a week to find someone good.”
“And in the meantime?”
“I can cook for another week. It’s easy.”
“And you love it.”
“I always have.”
“I wish you’d do something with it.”
Susanne humored him. “Like what?”
“You tell me. In an ideal world, what would you do?”
She
thought for a minute. “In an ideal world, I’d open a restaurant—but in an ideal world, I’d be thirty-four years old.”
“You can open a restaurant,” he said in a confident tone.
But Susanne was a realist. “I cannot. Owning a restaurant is a major commitment. It takes huge amounts of time and effort. I’m fifty-six.”
“That isn’t exactly ancient.”
“No, but why would I want to work like that at my age?”
“Then open a little restaurant. Or a B-and-B. You could offer breakfast every morning and dinner a night or two a week. You could do it right here in town. Then it’d be a seasonal crowd. You could close for the winter, and we could do something fun.”
Susanne drew in her chin. He sounded serious. “And live here? Come on, Mark. We’re New Yorkers.”
“We never had a summer place. This could be it.”
“Uh-huh. Right. We could live here and watch mother play with Carl.”
Mark’s arms slid from her waist. “You’ve been here for weeks. Has nothing improved on that score?”
“The wedding’s still on. Thank heavens, she has a caterer for that. There’s no way I’d do the cooking.”
“Come on, Susanne.”
“I mean it. I still think it’s wrong.”
“Have you read her story?”
Susanne sighed. She was sorry she had told Mark about that bit of drivel. He asked about it every time they talked. “No,” she said now. “I have other reading.”
He drew his teeth over his lower lip in a gesture she knew well. He was preparing to say something she wasn’t going to like.
Before he could, she warned, “Do not say that the other reading can wait.”
“It can,” he said gently. “This is more important.”
“To Mother. Not to me.”
“It should be to you, too. She isn’t exactly a stranger.”
“She’s making a big mistake.”
“How?” he asked. “Marrying Carl? What’ll change, other than the fact that she won’t be sleeping alone? Why does that bother you so much?”
Susanne frowned. Mark had always been her greatest supporter, which was why she found his questions now unsettling. “Why does it bother you that it bothers me?”
“Because I love you. Because I know what a generous, giving, loving person you are. Because this is out of character.”
“This is my mother,” Susanne reminded him. “Rules change when it comes to mothers.”
He nodded. “That’s fine. I understand that. But they shouldn’t preclude common sense.”
“Are you saying I don’t have that?”
“No. Well, maybe. But only when it comes to your mother. then again, it may not be a matter of common sense, so much as open-mindedness. That scares me a little.”
“Why should it scare you?” Susanne asked. His tone was making her uneasy. “This has to do with my mother and me, not with you and me.”
“In a way it does,” Mark said, suddenly gentle, even beseeching. “I think a lot about aging. I think about the things I’d like to do when I don’t have the pressure of work. I could be like my parents and sit around waiting for death, but it comes faster when you do that. I want to live, Susanne. I want to try new things.”
He hadn’t ever said that before. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe teach. Maybe learn to paint. Maybe travel somewhere far off the beaten path. I don’t know, Susanne. The point is that I want to be open to different things, but you have to be open to them, too, if it’s going to work. I’d never make you do something you don’t want. But there are things both of us like. There’s a whole world waiting for us if we have the guts to take advantage of it. Coming in here just now, I saw Carl on the tennis court with that little girl, and he didn’t look a day older than seventy. That’s because he’s active. That’s how I want us to be.” He touched his head. “But it starts up here. If you can’t accept this change in your mother’s life, how will you ever accept a change in our lives?”
Susanne swallowed. “There’s change, and there’s change.”
“Right,” Mark said, “and we don’t know which kind will fall into our laps. Our kids may hate what we decide to do, but does that mean it’s wrong? Does that mean we shouldn’t do it? What’s right for us isn’t necessarily right for them, any more than what’s right for Natalie is right for you. She’s not asking you to marry Carl.” He paused, then hurried on before she could argue. “I may well die before you. If I do, and if you had a shot at happiness with another man, I’d be the first one to tell you to take it. If the kids have trouble with that, they’re just being narrow minded.”
Susanne wrapped her arms around her middle. “Like me?”
He started to deny it and stopped. “Talk to her, Susanne. And if you can’t talk, read her book. You owe her that.”
SIMON WAS IN AN ODD PLACE, neither here nor there on several counts.
Take the weather. On the one hand, it was ideal. The sun was working its magic on the leaves, which were feeding sugar to the grapes, which were growing larger now and were fungus free. On the other hand, the tropical depression in the Atlantic had worked its way into a tropical storm and continued to grow.
Take Susanne. On the one hand, she relied on him to run the vineyard the way her father would have wanted. On the other hand, she refused to discuss anything but the vineyard with him, lest he forget his place and think he was family.
Take Olivia. On the one hand, she brought passion to his life in ways he hadn’t ever known, which wasn’t taking anything away from Laura, simply saying that Olivia was different. On the other hand, she was leaving, gone in three weeks max.
Take Tess. She was a pest, albeit a sweet one. She was lurking down the next row of vines even then.
“I know you’re there,” he called, not particularly loudly. “Are you following me for a reason?”
There was a pause, then a faceless, “How did you know I was here?”
“Your sneakers are orange and huge. Is that the style?”
“These are last year’s,” she said, crouching down to peer at him under the grapes. “This year’s are more clunky, but my mom wouldn’t let me buy any.” She started to crawl under the vine.
He stopped her with a quick, “Hey. The grapes are right there. Walk around.”
She ran, but he could live with that. He looked up when she rounded the end of the row and came toward him. She had a hand in her pocket and looked innocuous enough.
“Now, those look like grapes,” she said. “What do they taste like?”
“You tell me.” He picked one from the back of a bunch.
She put it in her mouth and made a face. “Sour.”
“Not as sour as they were yesterday. More sour than they’ll be tomorrow.”
She looked up at the vines, which were significantly taller than she was. “Are you pruning again?”
“Nope. Just checking around. I want to know if birds are eating my grapes.”
“What do you do if they are?”
“Fire a cannon.”
“You shoot them?” she asked in horror.
“No. I just scare them away with the noise. It’s not really a cannon, just a machine that makes a boom every few minutes.”
Her hand moved in her pocket. With her free hand, she pushed curly wisps of hair from her face. She looked up at him through her glasses in a way that magnified her eyes and tugged at his heart. For once, she seemed to be hesitant about asking a question.
“What?” he asked, not wanting to be tugged.
“Did you decide what to do with the kittens?”
“Not yet.”
“You won’t just drive down a highway and leave them on the side of the road somewhere, will you?”
“I told you I wouldn’t.”
She gasped and yanked her hand from her pocket. Seconds later, it was back in, and she was trying to look nonchalant.
He cleared his throat. “How many do you hav
e in there?”
“How many what?” she asked innocently.
He rolled his eyes, sighed, squatted down. A conspirator now, he asked, “Is it Bruce?” Tess had named each of the kittens, claiming that even if it was too early to know the sex, Buck had managed just fine as Buck.
She whispered, “Tyrone.”
“Lemme see.”
She pulled the kitten out of her pocket and kissed the top of its furry little head. “His nails are sharp, but he’s the sweetest thing,” she said and smiled.
Simon was dazzled, and not by the kitten. “Did anyone ever tell you how pretty your smile is?”
He could have sworn she blushed. “Kids don’t say things like that. And I don’t smile for them.”
“Not even when you told them about these guys?”
She tucked Tyrone under her chin. “One of the other kids has a cat who just had kittens. Hers had six.”
“Ah. So her story was better.”
“Everything she does is better,” Tess said, solemn now. “Everything they all do is better. They won’t miss me when I’m gone.”
“Sure, they will.”
“If they do, it’s because I make them look good. I’m the one who doesn’t get things.”
“What don’t you get?”
“The tiller. I always push it in the wrong direction. I make the sail luff. I forget which way the wind is coming from, so I jibe instead of coming about. Last time, the boom nearly hit one of the other kids.”
“Well, you sure have the lingo.”
“I’m not stupid,” she said in a defensive reflex, but softened in the next breath. “It just isn’t easy. There’s so much thinking to do. I like tennis better. The ball comes over the net, and you hit it.”
Simon knew both sports. If he had to choose between them, there was no contest at all. “Yup. The ball comes, and you hit it. Always the same. And that flat, hard court? Nah, the ocean’s much more interesting. It has different moods and different sounds. And it’s not that you have to think so much, once you’ve been out sailing enough. Tennis is easier for you just because you’ve done it more.”
The Vineyard Page 32
