Right Place, Wrong Time

by Judith Arnold

  She recalled Alicia’s innocent question their first evening here: “Can we stay forever?” If only.

  She heard the rattle of a door behind her, a squeak as it slid open. So much for peace and tranquillity, she thought, bracing herself for the invasion of Ethan and Kim. Glancing over her shoulder, however, she saw that Ethan was alone.

  Well, not technically. He was accompanied by two bottles of beer, one of which he extended toward her. “Mind if I join you?” he asked.

  She didn’t have the right to mind. The terrace, like the rest of the condo, was shared territory. But since he’d come bearing the gift of beer, and he had such an endearingly tentative smile, and his hair looked so soft as the breeze fluttered through it…“Make yourself comfortable,” she said, gesturing toward the chair beside her.

  Ethan lowered himself into the chair and handed her the bottle, which was icy, fresh from the refrigerator. He had on khakis and an oxford shirt that was far too crisp and formal for vacation attire; his initials were monogrammed above one of the cuffs. He set his own bottle on the floor, freeing both hands so he could roll up his sleeves. Then he kicked his feet up next to hers. He had on preppy leather deck shoes without socks. Nice ankles, she observed before steering her gaze back to the black water below.

  “Is Alicia asleep?” he asked.

  “Probably on her second dream by now.” Gina took a sip of beer, determined to accept Ethan’s presence casually, as if she actually knew him. With his sleeves cuffed up to his elbows, she noticed that his wrists were as nice as his ankles. His skin looked tan in the moonlight, the hairs on his forearms glittering in coppery strands in the misty light of the moon. A thin gold watch circled his left wrist and his fingernails were clean and square. She remembered how Alicia had touched his arm that afternoon when he’d been teaching her about iguanas, and how Gina had wished she could touch his arm, too.

  Just a playful fantasy, she assured herself, just her imagination having a little fun. He was Kim’s fiancé. She would never touch any part of him.

  “Where’s Kim?” she asked, more to shut down her fun-loving imagination than because she actually wanted to know.

  “She’s having a snit,” he said, as nonchalantly as if they were old friends who shared confidences all the time.

  If he could act as if they were old friends, she could, too. “Did she lock you out?”

  He shrugged and took a sip of beer, apparently unperturbed about the whole thing. “I haven’t tried the doorknob yet. Alicia won’t freak out if she finds me sleeping on the couch tomorrow morning, will she?”

  “Alicia’s cool. She won’t care.”

  “She is cool.” He ran his thumb along the edge of the label on the bottle. Long thumbs, she noted. Long tanned fingers. That he and Kim were having a quarrel shouldn’t free Gina to be so conscious of his strong, graceful hands, but she couldn’t help herself. She was only human, and he was one hell of a good-looking guy.

  “You think my niece is cool?” Keeping a seven-year-old girl at the center of their conversation was an effective way to steer her mind away from Ethan’s sex appeal.

  “I think…” He let out a breath. “Never mind. It’s none of my business.”

  “What?”

  Ethan studied Gina for a long moment. She resolutely stared at the water and tried to ignore the fact that he was scrutinizing her. Finally he spoke. “She mentioned something about her father.”

  Gina’s breath caught. She turned to him, wary. “What did she say?”

  “He has a girlfriend?” Ethan asked rather than stated it.

  Gina swore under her breath, then sank lower in her chair. “Yeah. The asshole. Ali’s parents are separated. Things are pretty screwed up at home, so I thought I’d take her away from all that for a week.”

  “Poor kid.” He sounded genuinely sympathetic. “I don’t know much about children, but…it must be hard on her.”

  “That’s an understatement.” Gina sipped some beer, letting the sour bubbles dance across her tongue. “Thanks for being so patient with her today, talking to her about that ugly green lizard.”

  “Iguanas aren’t ugly.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “They probably think human beings are ugly.”

  “Then they’re ugly and blind,” she said.

  He laughed. For someone destined to sleep on the living-room sofa instead of with his girlfriend, he was in a pretty good mood.

  “Kim said you work for some environmental organization.”

  “The Gage Foundation,” he told her.

  “I’ve never heard of it. What does it do?”

  “It’s a charitable trust set up by the Gage family fifteen years ago,” he explained. “Back in the nineteenth century, the Gages ran fabric mills throughout Connecticut. They made a fortune but polluted a few rivers. Their descendants decided to create an endowment to redeem their tainted souls by protecting the environment. I’m the foundation’s executive director.”

  “So you—what? Give money to do-gooders?”

  “I evaluate applications, monitor the investments and, yes, fund do-gooders.” He swallowed some beer and sighed. He seemed so relaxed Gina couldn’t help but relax, too. “How about you?” he asked. “What do you do in the real world?”

  “I design shoes.”

  He shot her a look, then laughed. “Really?”

  “Someone’s got to do it.”

  “I guess.” His gaze strayed to her feet, her toes curled around the wrought-iron rail. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but…has anyone ever told you you’ve got beautiful feet?”

  It was her turn to laugh. “Oh, yeah, a few people have told me that. I worked my way through college as a foot model.”

  “A foot model?”

  “Modeling shoes, mostly, for magazines and catalogs. Sometimes modeling stockings, sometimes foot-care products, but mostly shoes. My feet are a perfect size five and a half B, which is kind of weird since I’m taller than average. Most women my height would wear around a size eight or nine. But I’ve got a real tiny base. It’s amazing I don’t fall over.”

  He grinned, his gaze lingering on her feet. “It’s not just that your feet are small,” he explained. “They’re shaped so perfectly.”

  “And they aren’t bony, and I don’t have veins showing through the skin. Body-part models have to fit really restrictive specs. But the pay wasn’t bad, and it was nothing like full-body modeling, you know, where eating a cookie or sprouting a zit might cost you a booking. There isn’t a huge demand for foot modeling, but it was enough to keep me in peanut butter and pizza.”

  “So, you went from foot modeling to shoe designing?”

  “More or less.” Crickets hummed in the shrubs beneath the terrace, and as the mist cleared, the moon’s reflection spread across the water like a spill of silver. “I majored in fabric design in college. It was an art school,” she answered the question glinting in his eyes. “Rhode Island School of Design. I thought I wanted to be a painter, but then I got sidetracked into patterning and fabric stuff. After that, I went back to New York, did more foot modeling and trekked around to designers with my portfolio. I got a job offer to design bed linens, but it was down in North Carolina and I didn’t want to leave New York. And in the meantime, I always had to take care of my feet, keep the skin smooth and callus-free, avoid stubbing my toes, the pedicures, the whole thing. When you’re that conscious of your feet, you become conscious of your shoes. There are an awful lot of really uncomfortable shoes being designed and produced. Anyway, I was doing some modeling for Bruno Castiglio, who designs shoes—you’ve probably never heard of him, but he’s a pretty big name in the shoe world—and I talked my way into a designer position with his company. This can’t possibly be interesting to you,” she concluded, realizing she was talking way too much about herself.

  “I’m fascinated,” Ethan said.

  She turned to him and found not a hint of sarcasm or boredom in his expression. His gaze wandered back
and forth between her face and her feet. She wondered if he approached everything so intently—iguanas, the environment, Gina’s insteps. But he didn’t approach his relationship with Kim intently. He seemed pretty lackadaisical about that.

  “It’s none of my business,” she began, “but—”

  “I’ve already said things that were none of my business,” he reminded her. “You owe me one.”

  “Well, just that if you’re going to marry Kim, you really ought to learn how to kiss and make up after an argument. I mean, locking each other out of the bedroom doesn’t seem…I don’t know.” It really was none of her business, just as her sister and brother-in-law were none of his business. But she’d hate to think of Ethan and Kim having a child someday, and then indulging in knock-down-drag-outs while the child got so tense she lost her appetite the way Alicia had last spring. Parents simply shouldn’t do that to their children.

  “I don’t believe I’m going to marry Kim,” he said, then drank some beer.

  The plot thickens, Gina thought. “She told me you two were engaged.”

  “Well, we haven’t…” He exhaled. “She assumed we came down here to plan our marriage. I assumed we came down here to see if we had what it takes. I don’t think we do.”

  “You’d better clue her in.” Gina felt a twinge of sisterly loyalty. Men who kept women in the dark about their intentions lost points in her book.

  He nodded. “What’s you opinion, Gina? Should I tell her now, when we’ve still got four days left in our vacation? Or should I wait until we’re heading for home?”

  “If you tell her now, you’ll ruin the vacation,” she pointed out. “On the other hand, dishonesty isn’t a good policy.”

  “Still, her parents are here. If I break up with her, her father might come after me with a golf club.”

  “He’s probably already pissed because he had to pay for a hotel room.”

  “Yeah. Although his wife was pleased about that. She likes room service.” He gazed out at the water. “They say women turn into their mothers. I wonder if in twenty-five years Kim will be demanding room service.”

  “If you want to find out, you’re going to have to marry her.” Gina sipped her beer, the cool curve of the bottle pressing against her lower lip. “But I don’t think that’s true—that women turn into their mothers. Some, maybe, but there’s no guarantee. I haven’t turned into my mother—who happens to be a really terrific lady—but I’m not going to turn into her.”

  “How are you different from her?”

  “By the time she was my age, she’d been married six years and had three kids—me and Ramona and my brother, Bobby. Her whole life was running loads of laundry, cooking, dragging us kids off to church and sitting around the kitchen table with her girlfriends, gossiping and drinking lemonade. She loved that life, never felt her horizons were limited, never missed the nightlife. All she ever wanted was to make a good home for my dad and us kids, and she did. I’d go crazy if I had to live that kind of life, but it was right for her.”

  “But now, with her kids grown and gone, doesn’t she want more?”

  “No. She and my dad still live in the row house I grew up in. She still cooks for him and goes to church and gossips with her friends. Of course, she’s a grandma now. That’s as much fun as being an aunt. Maybe even more fun.”

  “Alicia is your sister’s child?”

  “Right.”

  “Does your brother have any kids?”

  She shook her head. “Bobby is the baby of the family. He’s twenty-four, a New York City cop and a devout bachelor.”

  “A cop? Wow.” He looked impressed. “That’s dangerous work.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” She chuckled. Bobby was hardly the fearless macho type. He was an energetic guy, funny and talkative, a toucher like Ramona and Gina and their mother. “He walks a beat, does a lot of community outreach, gets homeless people into shelters and picks up shoplifters. About the most dangerous part of his job is all the women throwing themselves at him. Women seem to think cops are heroic studs. Especially when they’re young and have a few dimples.”

  “I don’t know about the stud part, but they are heroic,” Ethan argued, his eyes remaining on her. “How about you? Are you a devout bachelorette with men throwing themselves at you?”

  She snorted. “The only thing I’m devout about is being Ali’s aunt. As for men throwing themselves at me, sure, it happens all the time. Sometimes there are so many I have to beat them back with a stick.”

  His smile lingered, but he didn’t laugh. “I’m not surprised.”

  That he took her seriously was flattering, but it also made her uncomfortable. Never in her life had she been forced to beat men back with a stick. “There are a lot of foot fetishists in the world,” she joked, figuring a little humor would remove the strain she was suddenly feeling as he continued to study her. “Lucky for me I’ve got a cop in the family if I need protection from the weirdos.”

  He shifted his gaze to her feet once more, and she wondered if he was a foot fetishist. Doubtful. He seemed too straight-arrow for anything that kinky. She couldn’t even picture him slumming at the downtown clubs she liked to go to with her friends, or shopping in the vintage clothing boutiques, or sitting in a café until 4:00 a.m., sipping iced chai with vodka and arguing over whether punk music would see a resurgence before the end of the decade.

  Sucking on a woman’s toes? No way. Not Ethan.

  Which was fine with her. If a man ever sucked on her toes, she’d kick him in the teeth. She wanted her kisses where they’d have the greatest impact—her mouth, her face, her breasts, her…Well, never mind. She shouldn’t be thinking about such things while sitting next to another woman’s fiancé, even if the lovebirds were feuding.

  “So, you’re a devout aunt,” he said. “What does that mean? You worship your niece?”

  “I don’t worship her, but I spoil her rotten,” Gina said, aware of the boastful lilt in her voice.

  “She doesn’t seem rotten to me.”

  “I guess I’m not spoiling her enough.”

  He chuckled, then tilted his chair back, balancing it on its two rear legs. “She’s going to remember this week for the rest of her life.”

  “So will I,” Gina said. A fresh breeze washed over her, fragrant with the perfume of the tropical flowers blooming in beds along the walkways below. She would never forget that smell, and the balmy air, and the moonlight draped over the water. She’d never forget the fish at Coki Beach, and the hot, powdery sand, and the iguana, who was grotesquely ugly no matter what Ethan said. She’d never forget the feel of Alicia’s small, soft hand in hers, and the infectious music of her laughter as she scampered across the beach.

  Gina suspected that she would also never forget this handsome, quiet man who was so easy to talk to, even though once their vacations were over he would go back to his life, with or without Kim, and Gina would go back to hers, and they’d never see each other again. This week, this night, this conversation, this unexpected closeness would be nothing more substantial than a dreamy memory—but it would stay with her forever.

  CHAPTER SIX

  KIM HADN’T LOCKED the door. In truth, Ethan would have been surprised if she had. Barring him from the bedroom would have been too public. No matter how angry she was, she’d never want Gina and Alicia—two veritable strangers—to discover him asleep on the living-room sofa the next morning, because then they’d know he and Kim were on the outs. Kim felt very strongly about maintaining appearances and convincing everyone that her life was just peachy-keen.

  Ethan was grateful she’d left the door unlocked for him, if only because convertible couches were rarely as comfortable as beds. He managed to slide under the covers without waking her. The glowing red digits of the alarm clock on the night table indicated that midnight had come and gone a few minutes ago, and after all the snorkeling he’d done during the day, he ought to have been exhausted. But sleep eluded him. He couldn’t get his mind to settle do
wn.

  Why was it so easy to talk to Gina? For hours, he’d sat with her on the deck, enjoying the sea breeze and the conversation. He’d learned that her mother was Italian, her father’s family from the Azores, “but he converted to Italian when he married my mom,” Gina had joked. Her father owned a hardware store, and she’d grown up somewhere between working class and middle class. She didn’t have much time to paint anymore—or much room, given the minuscule dimensions of her studio apartment in Manhattan—but she did still play around with watercolors, which she could work with at her kitchen table or even outdoors, propping a pad on her lap. She believed Jackson Pollack was grossly overrated and Georgia O’Keeffe was a goddess. She’d never been to the northwestern part of Connecticut, where Ethan lived, but she’d traveled the coastline plenty of times, either on the interstate or by train, in her journeys to and from her art school in Rhode Island. She was twenty-eight years old and she hoped someday to live in a house or apartment big enough for a dog to share her home with her. “I like mutts,” she’d said.

  He hadn’t been surprised. She seemed like a mutt-type person, the exact opposite of Kim, whose childhood pet dog, one of those breeds with long elaborate hair and a pudgy little face, had taken ribbons at regional dog shows. Ethan had seen photos of Kim’s dog and he’d thought that if dogs could talk, this one would have had a voice like Betty Boop.

  Beside him Kim sighed and shifted against her pillow. Her hair spread fluid and golden around her face. At one time, just the sight of her hair would have made him hard.

  Now he felt no excitement, no arousal, nothing but restlessness. He could have slept more easily sitting upright on that terrace chair, next to Gina.

  A veritable stranger. An unexpected friend. A sharp, funny, utterly unselfconscious woman who loved snorkeling as much as he did and had the most beautiful feet he’d ever seen.