Moonlight on Monterey Bay

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “Almost, but not quite.”

  “Not quite? What’s this not quite.” He nuzzled his nose in her neck, nipped lightly at the soft lobe of her ear.

  Warmth bubbled up through her body. “They don’t have burned pancakes in heaven.”

  He scooped up her thick loose braid and planted a kiss in its place. “Small stuff,” he said, then turned slowly back to the scorched pancakes. “How about a muffin instead?” He motioned toward a white bag on the counter.

  “You’ve already been to Rebecca’s?”

  “Rebecca’s and more. Wait—” He abandoned the pan to the sink and walked over to open the French doors. “Come on in, buddy.”

  Eeyore, his fur flying, tore through the door and across the room, tackling Maddie midknee. “Eeyore!” She bent down and buried her face in his fur. Suddenly tears sprang to her eyes. Dumb, she was being silly, overly emotional. But the small, kind gesture had shaken loose all the emotion of the past few days. When she finally lifted her head, her cheeks were damp and a tear trickled down her face.

  “Hey,” Sam said softly, “there was a little selfish motivation here. I’m not all that nice a guy.” He caught the tear on the tip of his finger. “I knew you’d be rushing off to let him out, walk him. This way you don’t have any excuses, no reason to run off—”

  She stood and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Yeah, sure. I know you’re really a tough, mean guy. But let me pretend. Let me pretend you’re really a softy who knew Eeyore would be lonesome.” He shrugged but kept her there, close, pressed against his chest. He lowered one hand to scratch Eeyore’s ear. Damn, it all felt incredibly good, the whole absurd scene.

  After blueberry muffins and orange juice, they walked the beach, a threesome with Eeyore leading the way. Sam tossed out a slender piece of driftwood and Eeyore sailed after it, then returned in a flash, dropping it dutifully back at Sam’s feet.

  “Hey,” Maddie said, elbowing Sam lightly, “that’s my dog.” He was a softy, no matter how he tried to hide it. He wasn’t that man he had pretended to be when they first met, that remote, three-piece-suit guy. No matter what he thought, she knew better. He was her friend, and now he was her lover and her friend.

  Eeyore ran off again, this time to lick the bare knees of a little girl sitting up on a rock with a man and woman, a young family out for a morning stroll. They were the only other people on this part of the beach. While Sam and Maddie watched, Eeyore licked the little girl’s face and elicited from her a high, windchime giggle.

  Maddie felt the familiar, bittersweet twinge. She watched the laughter on the child’s face, and fought the urge to run over, scoop her up, and hug her tightly.

  “Her hair is just like Sara’s,” Sam said.

  Maddie turned toward him. It was the first time he had brought up Sara’s name on his own. “Spun gold?” she said. She smiled softly. “Your daughter has spun-gold hair.” She reached up and touched his, mussed it slightly. “A gift from her pop, though yours is much darker now.” Her baby had had black hair, so thick and curly the nurses passed the word all through the nursery to come look at the wonderful little Eskimo baby. Maddie felt the emotion rise, cap, then slowly ebb away as she had trained it to do. She pulled her attention away from the family, back to the sea, and for a long time she and Sam walked in silence along the edge of the tide, buried in private thoughts.

  Ahead, Eeyore ran freely and Maddie watched the tide suck away his footprints. And she thought of Sam and his golden-haired daughter, imagined them walking along making footprints in the sand.

  “Why so quiet?” Sam said finally, looping an arm around her shoulder.

  “Thinking.”

  “Dangerous.”

  “Thinking about you.”

  Sam looked off, over the ocean. “Let’s not do too much of that, okay?” But who was he to talk? He thought about Maddie all the time now, about being with her, bringing a smile to her face, sharing in her laughter. He thought about everything to do with Maddie—except one thing, the consequences of falling in love with her. They floated there on the fringes, but he turned his head, concentrated on the joy of the moment.

  And that was what had sent him out of the house hours earlier, running the beach alone in the cool morning air. He’d promised her he wouldn’t hurt her. And he meant it with everything in him that was worth anything. But the simple resolve was losing its simpleness.

  “You know,” he said slowly, his arm circling her waist, “I wanted this beach house finished so I would have a place to come to be alone. I’ve liked being alone these past few years. And I thought this would be the perfect place.”

  Maddie listened. All those days when she was planning the house, playing with color swatches until she saw them in her dreams, all that time she had imagined Sam in the house, thought about him sitting in the chair in front of the stone fireplace or the wide, white chaise on the deck, and all that time she had tried to imagine him there with someone, because it wasn’t a house for being alone, no matter what he said. But she couldn’t erase her own shadow enough to allow another person to materialize and fill her vacant outline.

  “And now it’s finished,” Sam went on. “Or almost, anyway. And it’s perfect. A wonderful place.” He stared out at the sea now, his brows pulled together. He focused on a sailboat in the distance, its owner struggling with sails that filled with the brisk breeze. An easy struggle, he thought, vaguely envying the sailor the simplicity of his task. Finally he looked back down at Maddie. She was quiet, waiting patiently.

  “You’ve changed things, Maddie,” he said finally. “Now, when I walk in that house alone, I don’t feel pleasure or satisfaction in the aloneness. The pleasure that comes is from the part of you that’s there. The fact is, I don’t come to that house to be alone anymore. I come to that house to be with you.”

  Maddie’s heart was wedged tightly in her throat. She had promised herself so long ago that she’d be careful, that no one—no one—would ever have access to her heart, not until the time and situation and person were absolutely right.

  But reality had stepped in and ruined all those plans.

  Reality had brought her Sam.

  “How about this fine kettle of fish,” he said, looking down into her eyes. He read the same emotion there, the same damn confusion. He glanced up at the sky. “Do you suppose someone up there got the books mixed up?”

  Maddie shook her head. “No. I can’t begin to explain this or what’s going to happen. But one thing I know—it wasn’t a mistake. The way I feel couldn’t be an accident, Sam.”

  The next few weeks were the most magnificent in Maddie’s memory.

  It was one of those intervals in life, she told Lily, that divided time. There were the things in her life that happened before Sam, and there was the now. The future was held carefully at bay. Making love to Sam, loving Sam, created its own special world, and Maddie refused to let anything touch it.

  There will be time for all that, she told herself. And she almost believed it.

  “Is your business going to survive this romance?” Maddie asked Sam one night.

  They were sitting on the deck of Sam’s house beneath a full white moon. A bottle of champagne chilled in a bucket on the floor. After sitting through a long tedious board meeting Sam knew of only one way to relax, and he had persuaded Maddie to go for a swim with him. And now they sat close together on the white chaise, naked beneath fleecy white robes.

  “My business has never been better,” Sam said. “The people who work for me tell me they like it this way, without me around so much, and that I can have as much time off as I want.” He rubbed the back of her neck. “Do you know you have the nicest neck I know?”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s beautiful and slim. A lovely, slender column—”

  Maddie laughed. “Purple prose of the worst kind, Eastland.”

  “Nope, the truth.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere.” Maddie wiggled on the seat
until her terrycloth-covered thigh pressed hotly against his.

  He slipped his hand inside her robe. “Wanna bet?”

  Some days were quiet and lovely, and some brought surprises and insights, like the day they hiked into Big Basin State Park, Maddie bringing a lunch of banana-and-peanut-butter sandwiches and Sam bringing a knowledge of birds that amazed and pleased her.

  “I love the discovery part,” Maddie said as they walked through the hush of the woods. Their shoes made squishy sounds on the spongy tan carpet of decay. “I love learning new things about you, Sam. It’s like turning a kaleidoscope. Sometimes I want to stand still and soak it all in, what you mean to me, what you are, and what you do to me.…” She stood quietly on the path.

  Sam stopped walking and stood near her, his hands in his pockets. Sunlight filtered down through the green-gold crowns of the giant redwood trees and fell across them in dusty streaks. In these sudden, unexpected moments—for no known reason—she moved him so that he could barely breathe. He looked at her now, standing in the green cool of the woods, her beat-up tennis shoes balanced on a knotted root, her pink V-neck sweater falling loose over her hips and halfway down her jeans. A clump of wild daisies that she had found by the side of the path stuck out of her hip pocket. “So what have you learned?” he asked finally, his voice husky.

  Maddie opened her eyes. “I’ve learned that I can feel you beside me even when I can’t see you. And when you look at me, it makes my face warm, like a streak of sunlight.”

  Sam nodded solemnly. “Good things to know. Did you also know that when you stand like that, still and beautiful, something inside of me moves, right here—” He took her hand and placed it over his heart. “There’s a definite shift, and there’s only one cure.”

  Maddie kept her hand pressed flat over his heart. She held her head back and smiled up into his soft, sensuous smile. “Is that so?”

  “That’s so,” he said as he leaned her back against the enormous trunk of a redwood tree.

  “About that cure …” Maddie said, her free hand lifting to his neck.

  “We’ll get to that in a minute. But there’s something I need to get off my chest.”

  “My hand?”

  “Nope.” He held her hand tight against his chest. His voice, when he spoke, was as clear as the sunlight and echoed inside her head like a church bell.

  “I love you, Maddie,” he said simply.

  And only then, when tears threatened behind Maddie’s lids, did Sam’s cure come, a slow kiss, a lovely kiss that required nothing of her but that she be there.

  It wasn’t until much later that night, when she was alone in her bed with Eeyore asleep on the rag rug beside it, that she brought out Sam’s soul-stirring words again and examined them slowly.

  And it was only then, in the stillness of her room, that she heard the slight, sad apology in them.

  Maddie and Lily sat on the front steps of Lily’s house and watched the twins tumbling over a beach ball.

  “Are you as happy as you look, Maddie?”

  “How do I look?” She hugged her knees to her chest and watched Danny Thorpe do a somersault.

  “Like a million bucks. You positively glow.”

  “He’s wonderful, Lily.”

  “You love him.”

  Maddie looked at her. Then looked back to the twins. She nodded slowly. “I do, but I try not to spend much time defining it. I don’t want to analyze it. Sometimes when things get picked apart, they disappear.”

  “Is that what you think is going to happen here?”

  Maddie shrugged. “I don’t know what is going to happen here. And when I think about that, I get real scared.”

  Lily edged closer, took Maddie’s hand, and held it for a minute. “Don’t be afraid of loving, Mad. Sam’s a good man.”

  Maddie sighed. “I’m scared because I’m starting to wonder what life would be like without Sam in it. And I can’t. I can’t imagine it.”

  “Maddie, how up-front have you and Sam been with each other?”

  Maddie considered the question. “We don’t talk a lot about the future, Lil, but we know what the other wants, in broad sweeps anyway. Sam isn’t into getting married again. He messed one up and isn’t willing to do it again. And he knows I want a family.” Saying the words out loud made her frown. “Not great, huh? But when we’re together, things like that fade away. We can’t seem to get enough of one another.”

  “Maddie, have you told Sam about the baby?”

  She and Lily still referred to her child that way, as the baby. The baby. Maddie shook her head. “It never seemed right, Lil. That should tell me something, shouldn’t it?”

  “What should it tell you, Maddie?” Lily’s voice was filled with caring.

  “It should tell me that that time of my life, a time that shaped me, doesn’t fit into my relationship with Sam.”

  “You can’t be sure it doesn’t, Maddie. Don’t ever underestimate the power of love and what it can do to a person’s thinking.”

  Maddie nibbled on her bottom lip. The baby’s birthday was coming up. Five years. Five long years in which she had healed, had put her life together. Lily seemed to sense her thoughts and gave her a quick hug. “I love you, Mad. You’re so special, and I know somehow this is all going to work out. It has to.”

  Maddie nodded, then caught the ball that Davey kicked her way and tossed it back to him. She loved Lily’s kids so much. And every single time she was with them she thought of the children she would have herself one day. Now she looked back at Lily and forced a smile to her face. “This is much too serious a talk for a gorgeous day like this. Come on, let’s take the kids over to the meadow and fly a kite.”

  And that, she thought later, was the ultimate solution: avoidance. She simply would not think about any of it, except for the joy Sam was bringing into her life in daily, delicious, stupendous doses.

  ELEVEN

  Joseph walked into Maddie’s office and tried to look stern.

  “I thought I told you to take the day off,” he said. Then, before she could answer, he gestured toward the window. “And why the pickup truck outside? You’re not trying to run off with our valuable early-attic antiques, are you?”

  Maddie laughed and picked up some keys from her desk. “I just stopped by to check my mail.”

  She wore jeans and an old UC Santa Cruz sweatshirt with a faded banana slug on it. Joseph thought she looked beautiful.

  “And the truck?”

  “I’m picking up some things at the nursery for Sam’s yard,” Maddie answered. “And a tree for me.”

  Joseph’s smile faded and concern shadowed his face. He glanced at the calendar on the wall. “Tomorrow is the birth date. I should have remembered.”

  “No, Joseph, you shouldn’t have. My annual pilgrimage is a very selfish thing. It makes me feel better to plant my tree each year on the baby’s birthday, but you don’t need to remember or feel guilty if you don’t remember. There’s too much guilt in this world as it is.”

  Joseph walked over and wrapped her in his arms, hugging her hard.

  When he pulled away, Maddie’s eyes were misty and her voice thick with affection. “Now what was that for, Joseph?” she asked. “Are you going soft on me.”

  “Sometimes I need to let you know that even though you drive me crazy at times, I love you as if you were my own daughter. And I couldn’t be prouder of you if you were.”

  “I know, Joseph.” Maddie touched his cheek. “Thanks.”

  “Now get out of here before I do get mushy.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” she said, blowing him a kiss before she disappeared through the doorway.

  The plantings were perfect, Maddie decided. The consummate finishing touch. She pulled them from the back of the pickup, one by one, and dragged each around the house to Sam’s deck. And she wasn’t about to trust them to some gardener Sam picked out of the Yellow Pages. She’d do it herself and surprise him when he showed up later in the day. Besides, it wo
uld keep her mind occupied. And she needed that more and more each day.

  Two hours later, down to the last plant, Maddie sat back on her heels and surveyed the yard. It looked beautiful, casual and lush and natural, as if a strong ocean wind had blown a host of seeds onto the land and they had grown in perfect harmony where they landed.

  “I hope I’m in the right place,” a voice intoned from the distance. “Madeline’s botanical gardens, I presume?”

  Maddie looked over her shoulder and smiled. “What do you think?”

  Sam strode across the lawn until he reached her side. What he thought was that the vision of Maddie sitting there in the grass, with a smudge of dirt on her chin and loose wisps of dark hair clinging to her flushed cheeks, was the most beautiful sight in the world. “I think that I have finally found a gardener I can’t live without.” He leaned over her and kissed her on the top of her hair.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Sure I do.” He tossed his suit coat up on the deck railing and came back to where she sat. “In fact I don’t know what I like the most—the flowers, the tree in the middle of my driveway, or you in the middle of the dirt. It’s a toss-up.” He sat down behind her, straddling her, one leg bent on either side, and nuzzled the skin on her neck. The mixture of earth and soap and sunshine floated up and teased his nostrils. “Heady stuff,” he murmured into her ear.

  “The flowers?”

  “Nope. You. The smell of you.”

  “You’re crazy, Sam.”

  “Crazy about you.” He lifted her braid and kissed the back of her neck. “Do you want me to bring the tree back here?”

  “No, that’s mine. I’ll take it over to my place.”

  “Okay.” Sam pushed aside the uncomfortableness he felt at her reference to her place. Any separation—semantic or geographic—had an edge to it. And the fact that it bothered him, bothered him all to hell.

  “Come on.” He got up and pulled her up beside him. “We need to celebrate this botanical masterpiece with a drink.” He wound his fingers through hers and led the way up the deck steps and into the house. Maddie went to the bathroom to wash the dirt off her hands, and by the time she returned, Sam had discarded his suit for jeans and a T-shirt and was sitting out on the deck with a glass in his hand. Soft music played on the stereo in the distance.