Right Place, Wrong Time

by Judith Arnold

  “It’s probably got cockroaches. They’re everywhere.” She smiled, hoping to soften his criticism of her beloved city—and her criticism of his precious, ecosystem-filled corner of southern New England. “I’m sure Connecticut is very nice. All I’m saying is, if it weren’t for my friend Carole and your friend—what was his name?”

  “Paul.”

  “Your friend Paul,” she continued, “we never would have crossed paths. It’s only because of some mixed signals that we met.”

  “But we did meet. It doesn’t matter how.”

  “And we have nothing in common.”

  He returned her smile. She held her breath, stunned by the sheer male beauty of his smile, the hint of dimples, the startling white of his teeth, the searing flash of confidence in his eyes. “We both like to snorkel,” he said.

  Hearing Alicia’s observation coming from his mouth disoriented her even more. “That’s only one thing,” she said, sensing a hint of defensiveness—or maybe desperation—in her tone.

  “I’m going snorkeling at Trunk Bay Beach on St. John tomorrow,” he told her. “I’ve asked Kim to join me, but I don’t know if she will. I’d be happy to take you and Alicia with me. If it’s half as amazing as Paul told me it was, you’ll want to come.”

  She definitely wanted to go, and not just because Trunk Bay Beach was reputedly an amazing place to snorkel. She wanted to go because Ethan would be there and they’d share the one thing they had in common. They’d revel in the sights, surface to compare notes, swim together trailed by streams of bubbles and examine coral formations and schools of fish. She wanted to go because Alicia would find it thrilling, and Alicia deserved every wonderful experience Gina could pack into this week for her.

  She wanted to go because Ethan thought she had wonderful eyes. Which was just about the worst reason in the world.

  “Ali and I wouldn’t miss it,” she said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  TO HIS SURPRISE, Kim opted to accompany Gina, Alicia and him to Trunk Bay Beach the next morning. Maybe he shouldn’t have been that amazed—her only alternative might have been golf with her father. Compared with that torture, enduring a day at one of the world’s preeminent snorkeling sites must have seemed more tolerable to her. Or maybe she’d believed him when he’d said all those things Gina had accused him of saying: that she was a terrific woman; that he was genuinely fond of her; that he didn’t regret their relationship, even though it was never going to conclude in a marriage proposal. Clichés, maybe, but he’d meant every word.

  Or maybe she’d come along to St. John with the rest of them because she wanted to keep an eye on Gina and him. Not that there was anything to keep an eye on. He’d meant every word he said to Gina, too—but he wasn’t going to take action. She didn’t want him to. And with Kim around, and the kid, it wouldn’t be right. And…

  He just wouldn’t.

  On the other hand, Gina’s breasts did rank right up there with her eyes and her feet as parts of her anatomy worthy of worship. She was wearing a swimsuit, of course—a black one-piece that looked as though it had been painted onto her. Maybe she’d worn it instead of a bikini to hide her body from his view, but if that was her plan, it was a monumental failure. The suit outlined the roundness of her bottom, stretched snugly across her belly, nipped in at her waist and swelled over her breasts. When she waded into the water, her nipples hardened.

  Terrific breasts, really. Not big, but her feet weren’t big, either. Size had never impressed him as much as shape and proportion, and when it came to shape and proportion, Gina Morante was spectacular.

  And he was a shallow bastard for thinking about her that way.

  Alicia was all pumped up about her nail polish. “Look, Ethan!” she shrieked as they assembled at the water’s edge to don their snorkeling gear. She waggled her hands under his nose. “My nails were purple inside, but now they’re blue! They change color like magic!”

  He tried to fake some enthusiasm for her manicure. Kim’s excitement seemed authentic. “Oh, Alicia, your nails came out so nice! Did you polish them yourself?”

  Alicia gave her a look that shouted, What a stupid question! “Aunt Gina did them for me. She gave me a pedicure, too.” She lifted one flippered foot off the packed, wet sand. “She knows all about pedicures. She’s a foot professional.”

  “I’ll bet she is.” Having apparently exhausted that subject, Kim turned to Gina. “I’m not as good at this snorkeling stuff as you are,” she said, studiously ignoring Ethan. “I hope you don’t mind if I stick by your side.”

  “Sure. We should all stay together, anyway. No swimming alone, right, Ali?”

  “That’s your rule.” Alicia clomped into the water, then lifted her feet and started swimming, her flippers transforming from implements that made her walk clumsily to graceful extensions that made her swim like a stingray.

  He watched Gina and Kim dive in beside her as he adjusted the straps of his facemask. One woman he didn’t want; one he couldn’t have. One had claimed she was perfect for him—they could have been handsome together, and upper-class, and they could have joined her father’s private golf club and raised children who would know the difference between an iron and a mashie, who would prep not because their father was on the faculty of a private school but because Hamilton offspring always prepped. They could have drunk Absolut martinis together—the very thought made his stomach lurch—and been smugly content with all their blessings.

  The other dressed in black and embraced New York City and hung out with tattooed people and tawked instead of talked. And he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  Alicia surfaced and waved him in. “Come on, Ethan! It’s great!” She was probably the only one of the three females who didn’t object to his company.

  All right. He’d come here to explore the marvelous underwater world of Trunk Bay, not to drown in pointless ruminations on women. He tucked the end of his breathing tube into his mouth and pushed off.

  The underwater world was indeed marvelous. The coral formations and shimmering schools of fish were enough to take his mind off the women in his life—or the women not in his life, which seemed a more accurate description of both Kim and Gina. He lost track of them, although every now and then he spotted Alicia, her shorter flippers kicking and leaving swirls of sunlit bubbles in their wake. More than once she swam over to him, tugged on his arm and pointed out a vivid anemone or a conch half-buried in the undulating sand beneath them. When he finally surfaced, he saw no sign of Kim or Gina at all. Alicia hovered near him, her hair slick and black, her two skinny braids so tight and smooth they resembled cable wires adorned with turquoise beads. She spit out her breathing tube and yelled, “Isn’t this great?”

  “Where’s your aunt?” he asked, looking around. The water was full of swimmers and snorkelers, but he didn’t see a woman in a sleek black swimsuit and fluttering black hair among them.

  “She and Kim went in. They said I could stay out here if I stuck by you.”

  He nodded, thinking that it would have been nice for someone to inform him he’d been assigned baby-sitting duty.

  Actually, he didn’t mind baby-sitting Alicia. She was a good kid with a broken home awaiting her at the end of the week. She seemed curious about the names of the fish—before coming to St. Thomas, he should have brushed up on tropical ichthyology—and the questions she asked implied that she cared about his answers.

  In the six months they’d been together, Kim had never asked him a single question about ecology.

  As he and Alicia treaded water, he acknowledged what was really bothering him right now: the prospect of Kim and Gina off on their own, bonding in sisterhood, or antimanhood, or anti-Ethanhood. He wanted Gina to be his friend, but maybe she and Kim were developing a friendship, as well, one in which they could gossip about him, compare notes and enumerate every caddish, selfish, sexist thing he’d ever done to either of them. He tried to perform a quick mental inventory of all those things: Breaking up with
Kim. Holding Gina’s hand. Smirking while Gina punctured Ross Hamilton’s pomposity over dinner. Letting Kim believe, as recently as a week ago, that she had a future with him. Deluding not just Kim but himself.

  He was a vile specimen, and Gina and Kim were no doubt collaborating like colleagues in the D.A.’s office, constructing an airtight case against him. His only character witness would be Alicia, a seven-year-old girl with bluish-purple fingernails.

  Her fingers, he noticed, were also bluish-purple. “I think it’s time to leave the water,” he suggested. At her pout, he added, “Just for a little while. Then we’ll come back in.”

  “Okay,” she grumbled.

  They swam together until they were near enough the beach to walk. Ethan looped an arm around Alicia’s skinny waist and scooped her off her feet so she could pull off her flippers. She giggled and shrieked, and he impulsively swung her in a circle before setting her down again. She didn’t weigh much to begin with, and in the buoyant water she felt absurdly light.

  He tugged off his own flippers, then took her hand and helped her wade through the water, which was knee-high for her and barely covered his ankles. Near the water’s edge, she slowed and scanned the beach, which was fairly crowded with swimmers, divers and sunbathers. He searched the beach, too, and spotted Gina and Kim in the shade of a couple of palms, at the picnic table where they’d left their outerwear and gear bags.

  “There they are.” He pointed them out to Alicia.

  She came to a complete stop, apparently reluctant to join them. “Do you like Aunt Gina?” she asked.

  In more ways than I can tell you. “Sure,” he said, keeping his tone casual.

  “’Cause she’s not married, you know.”

  He peered down at the little girl. Was she playing matchmaker? Did she know how unnecessary that was—and how futile? “That’s her business, don’t you think?”

  “I’m just saying.” Alicia dropped one of her flippers, picked it up and tried to wipe the sand off with her fingers. Ethan eased it out of her grip and dunked it into the sea to wash it off. When he handed it back to her, she resumed speaking. “’Cause she’ll probably get married someday, so if you liked her, I mean, she isn’t married this minute.”

  “I know.” Before this week, he’d never in his adult life had a sustained conversation with anyone under the age of fifteen. Now, here he was, discussing Gina’s availability with a pushy little girl. He wanted to explain to Alicia that she was way out of her depth, that forces far beyond her ability to manipulate were in control of whatever did or didn’t or might or might not exist between him and Gina. But if he said anything like that, she probably wouldn’t understand. And in any case, he didn’t feel comfortable discussing the subject.

  “My uncle Bobby isn’t married, either,” she said calmly, slipping her hand back into his. “But he doesn’t matter, ’cause he’s a guy.”

  “Your aunt Gina mentioned him to me,” he said, eager to change the subject.

  “He has lots of girlfriends. But Aunt Gina doesn’t have a boyfriend. She used to, but she doesn’t anymore. I don’t know why.”

  “I don’t, either,” he said, half to himself. She ought to have dozens of boyfriends, hundreds of them, lining up for the opportunity to win her heart. Perhaps she did. Perhaps she chose—wisely, he thought—not to share this information with her blabbermouth niece.

  “I met Aunt Gina’s old boyfriend a few times,” Alicia said, bristling with self-importance. “He was a policeman like my uncle Bobby.”

  “Really.” Ethan tried to envision Gina kissing a cop. The picture stayed resolutely out of focus.

  “He was very handsome. But he wasn’t rich like you.”

  Ethan’s mouth slammed shut. What did Alicia know about his personal finances?

  “Anyway, I just thought you’d like to know,” she said, then abruptly broke from him and trotted across the sand to the table where Gina and Kim sat. He took a minute to collect himself and assess the girl. Gina couldn’t have coached her to say these things to him. If she’d wanted to encourage his interest, she’d had the opportunity last night.

  No, this was something the kid was doing on her own. Ethan would bet that if Gina knew what Alicia had said to him, she’d throttle her beloved little niece. Grinning, he strode across the sand to the table in the shade.

  By the time he reached it, Gina was gone. Alicia and Kim sat at the table, Kim thumbing through a glossy booklet called Where to Shop on St. John and Alicia resting her chin in her hands. “Aunt Gina went to the snack bar,” she announced. “She’s getting us food.”

  “Food is good.” Ethan dropped his snorkeling gear near the table and gazed toward a concession stand not far from their table. “Do you think she needs some help?”

  “She said she’s paying, because you paid for dinner last night.”

  “I meant help carrying the food back.”

  “You’re such a gentleman,” Kim said dryly, barely glancing up from the booklet. “Go lend her a hand.”

  Was Kim deliberately pushing him onto Gina? He didn’t know—and he didn’t care. If Ross had been at the concession buying food, Ethan would have gone over to help him. He was a gentleman.

  Alicia’s eyes shone eagerly at him. Avoiding her hopeful gaze, he loped over the hot sand to the snack bar and wove through the small crowd to reach Gina, who was up at the counter placing an order, her wallet in her hand. “Hey,” he said.

  Startled, she turned toward him. “Oh—hi, Ethan. I’m getting hamburgers for everyone. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Sure. I just came to help.”

  “Help?” She smiled. “I guess those hamburgers can get pretty heavy.” She turned back to the counter, where an attendant had wedged four lidded soft-drink cups into a tray with circles cut out of it. While she watched the slender young man assemble her order, Ethan watched her. Her shoulders were nearly horizontal, their bones and hollows unnervingly alluring. Equally sexy was the ridge of her spine, visible above the deep U-shaped back of her swimsuit. The skin of her back had a golden undertone, and it looked as smooth and soft as velvet.

  He was taking a crazy chance, and he didn’t care. Her nape was calling to him, the sleek shadows of her shoulder blades, the expanse of tawny skin. He slid his hand under her wet, thick hair, then trailed his fingers down the narrow chain of vertebrae to the edge of her swimsuit. Her back was as soft as he’d imagined, but much warmer.

  She went very still, her eyes remaining on the food clerk, her hands motionless on the counter. For a moment she seemed to stop breathing. Then she whispered, “Ethan.”

  He let his hand drop, but stopped himself before apologizing. He wasn’t sorry. And anyway, she hadn’t snapped at him to bug off and behave himself. All she’d done was say his name, which could have been an invitation as much as a warning.

  “Anything else, miss?” the clerk asked in a lilting accent as he balanced four small bags of potato chips atop the burgers.

  “No, that’s all,” she said in a cool, controlled voice. She handed him some money and glanced at Ethan. “If you want to make yourself useful, you could take the potato chips back to the table. They’re going to fall off the tray.”

  “You take the potato chips,” he said, piling the bags on the counter and lifting the heavier tray. “I’ll carry this.”

  He didn’t wait for her, but instead turned and walked back to the table. The tray was constructed of stiff cardboard, yet he barely felt its rough edges against his palms. His hands felt only the memory of Gina’s warm, sexy back.

  ONE MORE DAY, she thought as she stuffed her change into her wallet and gathered the bags of potato chips. She paused to grab napkins and straws from the dispensers at the end of the counter, then continued toward the table, watching Ethan up ahead. He had a firm, confident stride, not the sort of swagger she saw in some men but a limber gait, his long legs devouring the distance between the food stand and the picnic table. His wet trunks clung to his butt just enough to make
her want to cup her hands around that part of him and squeeze, to see if his muscles were as hard as they looked.

  Well, there was an idiotic idea, she thought. She was not going to fondle Ethan’s butt. She wasn’t even going to think about it. She was going to enjoy the rest of today and tomorrow—her last day in the Virgin Islands with Alicia. Sometime during the next forty or so hours, she was going to break the news to Ali that her father had vacated the family homestead, and she was going to comfort Ali and assure her that everything would be all right, even though she had no way of knowing that was true. Sometimes love meant having to lie a little, or at least make baseless assertions.

  After she broke the news, she and Ali would fly home—and Ethan, his erstwhile almost-fiancée, her superblond mom and her windbag dad would vanish from Gina’s life forever. In two days she’d be back in New York, a city teeming with men who boasted rock-hard butts.

  Yeah, right. Before she and Ethan had clashed over the condominium at Palm Point, she’d been in New York City, and none of the rock-hard butts she’d seen there had ever seized her imagination the way Ethan’s did.

  “Potato chips!” Alicia yelled as Gina neared the table. “Can I have potato chips?”

  “Everyone gets a bag,” she told Alicia as she distributed them. “They came with the burgers.”

  “You can have mine,” Kim said, pushing her bag across the table to Alicia.

  “You don’t want them?” Alicia appeared shocked. She obviously couldn’t conceive of anyone not wanting potato chips.

  “They’re fattening. Not that you have to worry about that,” Kim said with a smile.

  Fattening, hell. Gina tore open her bag and popped a crunchy, salty chip into her mouth. As she chomped down on it, her eyes met Ethan’s. He was smiling—and damned if his smile wasn’t vastly more enticing than his rear end. He had those luscious dimples. Of course, for all she knew, he might have luscious dimples on his other cheeks, too. The thought made her laugh.