Love, Louisa

by Barbara Metzger

  Good god, were they sharing more, already? Dante felt his stomach clench at the thought. Damn, they could be sharing the same blanket at the fireworks, the same burned marshmallow on the same frigging stick. He wouldn’t go.

  “Darling, you are not paying attention.”

  “What?”

  “I said, you are not paying attention. We’re supposed to be looking at this house together, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.” The house, more a fishing shack, was down a low dirt road near the bay and might be for sale, cheap. Dante had wanted his ex-wife’s opinion on its resale value before he bought the place, fixed it up, and put it back on the market. “It’s going to need a lot of money poured into it.”

  Susan consulted her notes. “I don’t think you’ll ever make a profit, not even if you tear the cottage down and start over. It’s private, but there’s not enough land to build the castles people seem to want these days, and the power lines are too close. Besides, one good northeaster will flood the road, and a hurricane will wipe the whole place out. That’s why the price is so low.”

  Dante thought he might buy the house anyway, see if he could get permits to put it up on stilts. He could let Rico fix it up on his own time, instead of paying rent somewhere else. Then Rico might be able to bring his wife up from Colombia, which would make Louisa happy, if not Marta. If there was a hurricane before then, well, all of Paumonok Harbor was in peril, so close to the bay, with the ocean itself a few miles across the low-lying strip of land that led to Montauk. Montauk would be an island, but half of Paumonok Harbor would be underwater, which was why they evacuated the waterfront when a big storm was predicted. The little shack had been here since the hurricane of ’38, though, so Dante wasn’t worried. He was worried about Francine and Aunt Vinnie missing their new friend, when Louisa went traipsing off on her merry globe-trotting way. Teddy would miss her too, and Champ. Maybe he’d get the boy a dog of his own, or a kitten, with fur as soft as Louisa’s—

  “Dante!”

  “I was, um, thinking how low an offer I could make.”

  “Yes, well, if you can pay attention,” Susan said, “I have something else I wanted to speak with you about.” Dante turned the car back toward town and the real estate office.

  “No.”

  “I haven’t asked you a question.”

  “You will, and the answer is no. No, I am not going back to that clinic and no, I am not donating money to the East End Gay Organization. No, I am not cutting you a bigger percent than any of the other realtors get, and no, I am not writing you back into my will.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “No shit.” He hit the brakes, then leaned over and brushed her cheek with his lips. “I mean, congratulations. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “It is. Cora Alice and I are thrilled. We’re thinking of names and choosing a decor for the nursery and—”

  “Isn’t it a little early?”

  “You think we should wait for the amniocentesis to find out if it’s a boy or a girl? I thought a jungle theme could work either way.”

  “No, isn’t it too early to tell if, you know, if it took?”

  Susan patted her hair back into place and waggled her long ornate fingernails for him to start driving again. “A woman knows these things. Can’t you see the glow?”

  He hadn’t looked at her. Now he studied the familiar face and decided that she’d been going to the day spa at Gurney’s in Montauk. “Nice,” was his noncommittal reply.

  “And I’ve been sick to my stomach all the time.”

  He slammed on the brakes again. “Not in my car, you won’t.”

  “If you keep driving like that I am certain to. Besides, we’re in my car, remember? I wouldn’t be caught dead in that truck of yours.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my—”

  “But let us not argue. About that. I wanted to talk about the paper you were supposed to sign.”

  “No, I was supposed to come in a bottle. I did my job. Adequately, it seems.” Something in his chest started to expand. He had made a baby!

  “Do not, and please pardon the phrase, get cocky. Any college boy could have done it. The agreement your lawyer had was to protect all of us. We make no claims on you, and you make no claims on the child.”

  “My son. Or my daughter.”

  Susan checked her lipstick in the visor mirror. “Only in the slightest, biological sense. Cora Alice intends to adopt him or her, so the baby will be ours, hers and mine. Not yours in any way, shape or form. Although your green eyes might be nice.”

  “What name goes on the birth certificate?”

  “Why, both, of course, now that we can be legally married.”

  “Your name: Susan. B for Bethingame. Rivera.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Maybe not to you, but it means a hell of a lot to me. And it will mean something to the kid when he goes to school with my name on his lunch box. ‘How come that strange man has the same name as mine, Mommy?’” Dante mimicked. “So he’ll know I am his father anyway, unless you move out of town. Damn it, Susan, I am not stealing your baby. I just want to be part of his or her life, to make sure the kid has a male role model, to be there for my child if he or she ever needs me.”

  “You didn’t used to be this difficult, darling.”

  “You didn’t used to be carrying my baby. Maybe the only baby I will ever father.”

  “I’ll discuss it with Cora Alice. We can talk about it at Mr. Bradford’s party. You will be there to watch the fireworks, won’t you?”

  “I’m not sure. I might skip this year.”

  She frowned, then remembered not to make lines on her forehead. “You’re not refusing because Cora Alice is going to be there with me, are you? I thought you were over that silly embarrassment ages ago. The rest of the town is.”

  The rest of the town thought she and her lover were aliens from outer space. “Not at all. One of my old computer partners asked me to come watch the Macy’s celebration from his penthouse on the East Side of Manhattan. They put on a lot bigger show.”

  Dante parked behind Susan’s office and walked around to open her door out of habit, and because she’d sit there talking for an hour if he didn’t. When he handed her the keys she said, “You know, that’s the first time I ever heard you admit something about Manhattan was better than Paumonok Harbor.”

  “I’ve never been blind to the drawbacks of a small town. You’re the one who was blind to its good points. I always wondered why you stayed if you hated it so much, and why you’re staying now, when the city would suit your lifestyle better. And keep the baby safe from my influence.”

  “I stayed, darling, because you and the Harbor have made me a very rich woman.” She patted his cheek. “And I am staying now because this is the ideal place to raise a child. But do think about that agreement, Dante. I’d really feel better if you signed it.”

  “What will you do if I don’t? Give the baby back? Sorry, you and Junior are stuck with me.”

  He thought about it as he got in his own pickup truck. He was going to be a father. Another Rivera would carry on his name. This should be one of the proudest days of his life, a champagne moment, a time of wonder mixed in with fears and uncertainties. Would his child be born healthy? Would he be a good father? Would the baby love him?

  Would Susan and Cora Alice even let him hold his own infant? Dante didn’t know. Instead of the joy other men got to feel, he felt hollow, as if someone had stolen something from him.

  His ex-wife was having a baby without him and Louisa would most likely be leaving town. Sure, he felt like celebrating Independence Day. Sure, he did.

  Chapter Twenty

  How hard could it be to give a dog a bath? Certainly not hard enough to demand the prices that the groomer in Sag Harbor was charging. Champ—she had given up on Galahad permanently when Mr. Bradford declared it Hamptons pretentious—stank, though. He’d been rolling in something on the beac
h, and smelled like junkyard dog at low tide. She couldn’t bring him to the party this way, not even if she tied the red, white and blue bandana around his neck.

  She’d seen a fake sheepskin mattress while she was at the pet place making inquiries, with a tag that said dogs should not lie on the bare floor; their joints suffered. A bed or a bath? The choice was easy. After all, she had a garden hose in the backyard, an old plastic baby pool from the garage, doggie shampoo that cost more than her own, and the most obedient, well-trained dog in the county. She gathered a stack of those yellowed towels from the attic, the ones that were stamped in indelible ink with her and her sister’s names from when they went to swimming lessons. Then she wrapped her St. Jerome’s honeymoon sarong, or pareo, around her, trying to figure where to put the knot in the fringed fabric rectangle. It didn’t matter what it looked like because no one would see her, just that she have her arms free. She figured she’d be getting wet whatever she had on, no matter how cooperative Champ was, so was ready to jump into the shower afterward.

  No one told Champ he was supposed to cooperate. He was used to warm baths in a dog sink, with a shower nozzle, with a choke collar clipped to an overhead bar, with a professional groomer at the other end of the water. He was not going to stay in any low-rimmed, slippery, tippy kiddy pool. He was not going to let Louisa douse him with a cold blast or get soap in his eyes and water in his ears.

  He started whimpering, then whined, then wriggled, then made every effort to head back to the dog shelter where he merely faced euthanasia, not drowning. Of course Louisa had taken his collar off to wash him better, so she had nothing to grab on to except wet, wild dog. Her wrap was slipping and her hair was sopping and her patience was wearing as thin as the check she wished she’d written for the dog groomer.

  “Stop that! How are you going to qualify as a canine companion if you smell?”

  She should have remembered that dogs didn’t care what they smelled like. Champ only cared about getting out of the plastic wading pool. He did it with a final leap, tipping the whole thing over on Louisa, of course, not that she could get much wetter. She hiked the sarong’s knot up on her chest, and picked up one of the towels.

  Now that he was out of the water, Champ was ecstatically exuberant. He raced around the backyard, with Louisa behind him, trying to dry him off before she let him in the house. “It might be dog food for both of us next month, but you are going to the Puppy Palace,” she threatened, panting. Champ turned and grabbed the towel, now playing tug-of-war instead of tag. Louisa had to laugh, shaking the other end of the towel when he growled in mock ferocity. “You are a silly dog.”

  Then Champ snatched the towel out of her hand and pranced with it to the fence, where he started to bury it in the loose dirt of Louisa’s latest gardening effort. “Oh, no.”

  Dirt was flying, in the air, in the yard, in the fur of her briefly clean dog. “No! Stop that!”

  He didn’t, so Louisa ran toward him, waving another towel temptingly in front of his nose. He leaped up for it, leaving muddy streaks on her wrap. She backed away, still holding the towel, leading him back toward the garden hose with its spray handle. “And stop jumping. You know the instructor said that was bad.”

  The instructor had also said that Louisa had to speak with more authority in her voice, so she yelled: “No! Stop that, you beast! Get off me!”

  Champ made one last jump for the towel, but got the corner of her sarong instead, and pulled. Which was when, of course, Dante Rivera charged through the gate to her backyard.

  He still had not decided about the party and thought he’d ask her. Did she want him there or would his presence make her uncomfortable? Hell, if it was half as uncomfortable as she made him, she’d tell him to move to Kalamazoo. Louisa always spoke her mind, mare’s nest that it was. They were friends, though. She’d said so. So he should ask.

  He knew she wasn’t working this afternoon. Mr. Bradford was with his physical therapist and the library was closed today. Friends should know their friends’ schedules, shouldn’t they? He could say he’d come to check on the progress of the roof.

  Her car was in the driveway, the house’s front door was open, which was a sure sign that she was losing some of her New York City paranoia. He put his hands in his pockets to look more nonchalant…and so he wouldn’t grab her and beg her not to leave, but stay and have his babies. No way! He just wanted to know about the fireworks, that was all, not her feelings or fertility. Louisa Waldon would drive him crazy in a week. Just look at what she was doing to him without even trying, turning him into a tongue-tied teenager asking a girl to the prom, and just as horny.

  Besides, he’d promised to let her go her own way, plot her own course, sail her own ship.

  Unless she was sinking.

  “No! Stop that, you beast! Get off me!”

  One minute he was slouching by the front door. The next he was in the backyard, gasping. Gasping? He had no air going to his lungs, no blood going to his brain, and only one thought in his head: “Cripes, Louie, you’re killing me.”

  Startled, Louisa let go of the last corner of her erstwhile covering, the corner that the dog had in his mouth. He took off with it. Now she stood, wearing nothing but muddy pawprints. She could feel the heated blush start at her toes and climb to her cheeks—and Dante was watching! She yelped and dove for the pile of towels.

  Her mother sent them to swimming lessons with these minuscule scraps? How was Louisa to cover—to recover—her modesty with something the size of a washcloth? She picked up another and tried to hold the pair in strategic positions.

  “The least you could do,” she said, trying futilely to maintain her dignity and her decency, both long gone anyway, “is turn your back.”

  He managed to shut his mouth enough to speak. “What do you think, I’m crazy?”

  “A gentleman would.” Louisa looked longingly at her muddied sarong, halfway across the yard by now.

  “Only if he had one foot in the grave.”

  She started to inch backward toward the back door—and tripped over the kiddy pool. The towels went flying in a heap of arms and legs and barking dog, who was ready to play this new game. Dante was ready too, altogether too obviously. He stopped grinning and gawking and gasping enough to come offer her a hand.

  Just where he was going to put that hand was going to remain a matter of conjecture.

  “Laugh at me, will you? Gawk?” Louisa picked up the garden hose and turned the spray on both of the miserable, mangy curs. The dog ran off. Dante took off his T-shirt. Now it was Louisa’s turn to gasp. And to ogle.

  She knew he was well-built, but she never imagined… That is, she’d imagined, but the reality was…more. More smooth, flat, tanned planes, covered in the center by short, soft-looking dark hair. More muscles, glistening with the sheen of water. More width to the broad shoulders. “More,” she murmured.

  “More? You want my pants, too?” He reached for his waistband.

  Louisa shrieked. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to cover you up before we both land in the suds, literally and figuratively. Not that it’s not a prettier view than sunset on the bay. All the tourists should come here, instead of the overlook.” He held his damp T-shirt out, and this time he did turn his back, slightly, while she wiggled into it.

  The hem came down just far enough, if she tugged on it, didn’t move fast, and didn’t expand her chest by breathing. She tried not to think of what her chest must look like in the wet shirt. The fact that Dante was staring told her enough. Between his staring and the cold fabric, she could feel her nipples harden. God, what would he think? Whatever it was, was likely the truth. If the Chamber of Commerce put him with his bare chest on their posters, there’d be a constant traffic jam on Main Street. There’d be a heat wave in the winter. There’d be—

  She would not lust after Dante Rivera. She would not. She’d seen any number of totally naked men: a small number, granted, other than Howard, who should have recei
ved her unwedding gift by now, but a number. She must have seen thousands of men, maybe, bare-chested on the beach, in the park, at construction sites. She hadn’t felt her toes curl for any of them. Including Howard, which was a whole nother story. She stamped her bare foot to make the tingling stop. “This is absurd. I am going in now. You can tell me what you wanted later.”

  He’d be taking cold showers later. A lot of them. This was absurd, all right, wanting Louisa Waldon. He’d seen plenty of naked women with more to offer than the slim blonde. God, she had blond curls there too. He swallowed and nodded. “Later.”

  Louisa took careful steps toward the back door, holding the bottom of his shirt down in front. Of course that pulled it up in back, but Dante didn’t think he should point that out. Then the ever-efficient, frugal Ms. Waldon bent over to turn off the water at the spigot.

  Dante groaned.

  Louisa turned. “Are you all right?”

  “No. I don’t think I will ever be all right again.”

  She came closer, inspecting him for bee stings, splinters, whatever could have wrenched such a piteous sound from him. “What’s wrong?”

  “You are. Everything about you is wrong. And perfect. Perfectly wrong.” Two steps brought him to her side. One more had her in his arms. At last. “God, this is not what I came for,” he said before lowering his lips to hers.

  Louisa’s arms twined around Dante’s bare back, her hands touching, feeling, stroking what she had so admired. She could feel the warmth rising in him. Lord, between them there must be enough heat to steam-dry the T-shirt she wore. Between them, that wet T-shirt was the only thing keeping her from melting altogether.