by Owner
“If we’re amending, I have two conditions,” he said.
“That’s blackmail.” But her eyes blinked, not sure that it was.
Jon had her now. “How come it’s blackmail when I make stipulations but not when you do?” He continued to hold her hand and cup.
Maddie exhaled a sweet, honeyed breath that touched his face like the kiss he was after. “What are your conditions?”
“First, a simple kiss.”
“That’s not so simple.” But she smiled. “I do want to kiss you, but we have to be super careful. My friend Sue’s parents own this shop.”
“I can be cautious.”
“Where?” she asked.
Scraping his chair back, he stood up. She stood, too, and dropped her cup into the trashcan. He clasped hold of her hand and led her toward the men’s room.
“No.” She dropped furtive glances over her shoulder, but quickly ducked inside. With a loud click, she locked the door. “How’s your ankle?” she asked.
“Fine. I don’t even need the bandage.” He leaned her up against a fairly clean sink, by men’s room standards, and hugged her tight as he kissed her. Their lips touched like dynamite.
“Hurry,” she whispered through the explosion.
He kissed her harder and faster, but couldn’t pull away regardless how much she wanted him to hurry. She tasted so mind-bendingly delicious. Her body curved into his, fitting him like a glove. Her breasts crushed against his chest, sending jolts of passion to his groin, while her crotch cradled his in the most enticing manner. Blood rushed to both of his heads. His brain throbbed and his cock swelled.
“Hurry,” her gravelly whisper instructed him while she yanked his shirttails from his waistband.
Could she want him to hurry and do what he thought she wanted him to do? What his dick begged him to do?
“Maddie, hunee,” he murmured against her lips, awaiting further instructions. He didn’t want to scare her off if she didn’t mean for him to hurry with more than the lingering kiss.
“Tkdwnyrpantz,” she mumbled into his mouth.
Did she just tell him to take down his pants?
She must have. She was fumbling for his fly.
He helped her out by unzipping, while she hiked up her pretty purple skirt. “Hurry up,” she coached yet again.
Yes, she wanted what he wanted all right, and his erection did a happy dance. When he hitched her buns higher on the slick porcelain sink, liquid soap spurted over his wrist and her back, but she didn’t seem to notice. She grabbed at his butt and pulled him closer, her arm squirting more sterile hand soap around, while her fingers tightened their grip on his ass. His cock bumped against her moist heat, but her panty-covered crotch denied him entrance.
“Wait.” He fumbled for quarters and plunked them into the condom machine. “Convenient, huh?”
She laughed deep in her throat, but as soon as he was protected, her mouth became demanding. “Now.”
He shoved the crotch of her silky panties aside and entered her. She felt so damn good. She was tight and wet and torturously in a hurry when he desired to go at it slow. Enjoy every twitch of her muscles and tremor of her flesh.
“Faster.” The woman wasn’t shy with her directives. But he didn’t care. He was in control of the action.
He braced his hand against the chrome hand dryer so he had better mastery of his hips as he drove into her slickness with a steady, rocking rhythm. A blast of hot air shot at him, but it didn’t stop him. He figured he wouldn’t be here long enough for third-degree burns. He butted his other hand against the mirror for additional support. If they got busted for performing indecent acts in a public restroom his fingerprints would be all over the place.
“Faster,” she gasped, digging her fingers into his back while her kickass sneakers urged his butt on.
Between her cries to speed things along and the hot dryer burning the palm of his hand, taking her slow and easy didn’t seem to be much of an option. His desire to give her whatever she needed along with his fear of her changing her mind about next year urged him on further and faster. He pumped his hips for all he was worth.
Closing her eyes, she tossed her head back. He dropped his forehead onto the base of her throat, driving hard and quick.
She moaned louder and then lower and panted for air. Her fingers no longer grated his back, but massaged it lightly. Her whopper sneakers stopped smacking his behind. She was done. So he went for the mother lode and unloaded with two more pumps.
“Very convenient,” she said afterward when he unpeeled the latex and flushed it down the commode next to the sink. She swiped at his penis with some toilet tissue, then zipped him up.
Kissing her slow and thorough, he shut up her ‘hurry-up’ mutterings. Her mouth tasted hot and moist, her lips felt lush and swollen. When he was satisfied, he stepped back, grabbed her around her waist, and lifted her down from the sink.
He sniffed. “You smell like you had sex in a men’s room.” Musky and soapy.
Maddie tugged her skirt down, smearing a glob of antibacterial soap along her hip.
“You look like you had sex in a men’s room.” She pecked his nose before picking stray toilet tissue from his fly and pushing him toward the door.
“Ready?” he asked, hand on the glass doorknob. He wasn’t ready to let her go, but she was eager to get away.
“See if the Bain Island coast is clear first.”
Jon peeked out. Unfortunately it was.
Then he grinned. They’d never gotten around to his second condition. So he hadn’t actually promised her anything yet.
Chapter Eleven
Jon watched from the men’s room as Maddie’s miniskirted bottom swished out the front door of the drugstore.
Stepping back in, he washed up with the antibacterial soap that would forever remind him of her. He grinned. She’d been hot and unexpected. And he missed her already. He ruffled his fingers through his hair, checked in the mirror to make sure he didn’t look freshly laid, then grabbed his map and set out for the Harbor Inn.
The inn was near the harbor, naturally. The salty smell of sea and fish twitched at his nose. After checking in, leaving the inn’s number on Craig’s answering machine from the phone in his room, and plugging in his dead cell phone, he crashed on the comfortable, maid-freshened sheets in the nautical themed room. A few days of exercise, diet, and Maddie sure wore a man out. He slept until the next day and did a hundred stomach crunches before breakfast.
After decaf and a whole-wheat muffin in the inn’s dining area, he paid the cashier-waiter-registration clerk. The man, whose nametag read Rodger, was obviously a master at multitasking. “Rodger, do you know where I can find the office of the Board of Selectmen?”
He was eager to meet with the members of the board and get his feet back on solid land. Home to be exact. Feeling as if the island were closing in around him, he loosened the neck of his button-down shirt collar. Without Maddie as a distraction, the reality of relying solely on a ferry was giving him claustrophobia.
“The board doesn’t have an office.” The man shrugged his narrow shoulders in apology. “You can check with the mayor. He usually keeps track of the members. Plays golf with them Tuesdays and Sundays.”
“The island has a golf course?”
“Pinewood Golf and Lodge. Most everyone from here is a lodge member.”
“Where can I find the mayor?” He spread his local map across the cashier-registration desk. Looked like lots of roads either circling the beach or wheel-spoking from the center of the island toward the ocean.
Rodger pointed to a building marked Post Office. “The Town Offices are upstairs. The Mayor keeps an office to be readily accessible. Pays for it out of his own pocket. One of the reasons he keeps getting elected despite the fact he’s from away.”
He scrunched his forehead. “Away? He isn’t in?”
The thin, balding man laughed. “Away means he’s not from here. Now his wife, she’s a Bain. They�
�re from here. I figure you for an off-islander.”
“Way off,” Jon said. “Pennsylvania.”
“Far from being a Maineiac.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t think of a worse fate.
Jon thanked him and found the post office with only one wrong turn. After parking alongside the building, he followed a Town Business Offices sign of a wooden, cutout finger pointing up.
He climbed a creaky set of outside stairs, opening into a large room where several people sat behind job-titled, gray metal desks. Off to the side, he spied a door with Mayor painted in black on the opaque, frosted glass.
“Hello.” With a few nods, he wove his way around the scattered desks. Everyone from the Town Clerk to the Code Enforcement Officer stopped what they were doing to say, “Hi.” He guessed they didn’t get many visitors. Still smiling, he knocked on the high-varnished wood of the Mayor’s door.
“Come in,” a deep authoritative voice called out.
When he nudged the door open, it bumped a huge mahogany desk that took up most of the floor space in the office, aside from that of a lone file cabinet topped with a lone ivy plant. He wondered how the desk had fit through the door.
“Can I help you?” A gray-haired man looked up at him, his eyes widening as if he’d seen a ghost. With a quick flip, he closed the file he’d been reading and shoved it beneath his folded morning newspaper.
“I was told you could.”
“Why don’t you take a seat?” The mayor cleared his throat and pointed to a straight-backed chair squeezed behind the door. He stared at him, unblinking, a shocked smile frozen in place.
Edging onto the wooden chair, Jon crossed his ankle over one knee, and with a loud thump knocked his other knee against the edge of the mammoth desk.
“That must’ve hurt,” the man said, sympathetically, while cracking his knuckles.
Jon gritted a grin and extended his hand across the span of the huge desk, banging his elbow and sending shock waves clear up to his shoulder. “I’m the consultant from Matthews.”
“No one told me you were coming.” The mayor shook Jon’s hand mechanically and vigorously, sending further aftershocks up his arm.
“I didn’t plan to stop by, but when I found myself in the neighborhood…” The man’s eyes rounded, and Jon nodded with a chuckle. “I guess it sounds incredible that anyone would turn up in the area unexpectedly.”
“Yes,” the mayor agreed, his brows furrowed, his mouth humorless.
“I had business on another island and thought I’d touch base. Tee up a few ideas with the Board of Selectmen about the island’s revenue issue before returning home.”
The mayor cracked his knuckles again. “What can I do for you, Matthews?”
“Rodger, over at the inn, said you were the man to see about setting up a meeting.”
“I can call a conference.” He steepled his fingers over his green ink blotter, but made no move toward the phone.
Jon waited, eyeing the large pane of glass behind the desk. The massive piece of furniture must’ve been hoisted into the office through the window like some grand piano. Glancing back at the man who remained mute, he concluded the mayor probably wasn’t going to make arrangements with the board until tomorrow’s scheduled golf game.
“I can see you’re busy.” Standing up to leave, he knocked both knees against the side of the desk. “I’m staying at the Harbor Inn.”
“I figured as much. I’ll be in touch.”
When the mayor extended his hand, he took it. “Nice meeting you, sir.”
Jon made his way back down the steps a lot less gingerly than he’d come up, his knees creaking with every step. At least his ankle had survived the visit without re-injury.
The mayor’s welcome had been less than warm. So had Maddie’s. Except for the quick hot flash in the men’s room, she’d all but said, “Thank you, now leave.”
Seemed neither person was thrilled to have him on the island anymore than Jon was to be here. Now why should that bother him?
****
“Maddie’s father hugged her. “We waited dinner for you.”
“That wasn’t necessary.” But she smiled, glad he had.
Arm in arm they entered the foyer. “I was worried about you. Heard a hurricane blew in over on Rose Island. Then I couldn’t reach you by phone.”
“It turned out to be nothing more than a fierce rainstorm that messed with both cell and landline phone services.” She studied his face. “Everything all right? When I got home yesterday you were out and this morning, too.”
“I’m fine.” He patted her hand with a not-to-worry briskness. “I had to trek into Portland yesterday to attend to some business for your mother. Papers had to be on Tolliver’s desk first thing this morning. When I ferried back this afternoon, I went straight to my office.”
“I didn’t call over there. I thought it better we talk in person in private.”
“We shouldn’t talk here either,” he lowered his voice. “Your mother has been behaving strangely.”
“More than usual?” Maddie hushed her own voice. When he nodded, she worried her lip. “Maybe she has a touch of dementia from her meds.”
“Nothing like that. She’s been asking questions, demanding answers.”
Demanding wasn’t unusual behavior for Barb. “What kind of questions?”
She asked no less than a dozen times where you were and when you were coming home.”
Some of the same questions Maddie had asked as a child about her mother.
“That is strange,” she agreed. “Barb is seldom concerned about my whereabouts, unless she wants me to address the Pinewood Ladies’ Club or some other committee and wants me to wear proper shoes when I do.”
He sighed. “I’m afraid this is worse. I think she might have overheard us talking in my den before you went away.”
“Oh, no.” She sank down on the green velveteen chair in the foyer. Guilt washed over her like a high tide. “Do you think she’s had a setback because—”
“Let’s take a walk,” he interrupted. “We don’t want to run the risk of any further eavesdropping.”
“Okay.” Too bad he hadn’t thought of that before she left for the meeting with Grace, which didn’t even take place but Barb might’ve gotten wind of anyway.
Once outside, she waved to the gardener, Mr. Fitch, as he mulched the flowerbeds alongside the house. Her father and she headed toward a pathway all but hidden by lush greenery. She inhaled the scent of wild roses, the only flowers on the property untended by human hands.
After picking their way down and across the rocky shoreline to the beach, she breathed easier. Things looked brighter away from the house. The surf washed everything clean eventually. Even her guilty conscience she hoped.
“How was Grace?” he asked.
“She never showed up,” she said, distracted, more concerned about her mother at the moment than Grace.
He frowned. “That’s odd. Neither one of us has ever missed a weekend before.”
“Maybe there wasn’t a storm before.” She hugged his arm as they strolled along the water’s edge.
“No, there hasn’t been. The weather must’ve kept her away. She isn’t an islander or even a Mainer.” His forehead wrinkled. “I hope you weren’t stranded alone in the cottage during the squall.”
“No,” she assured him, but avoided mentioning Jon, savoring thoughts of her lover for herself. “The trip wasn’t a complete loss. I bought a painting for my bedroom.”
“Good.” Her father stared up at the red-tinged sky, the sun fading, hanging on the edge of the horizon like a ball of fire. “There’s always next year.” His smile returned.
She hated to dampen his spirits, and the mention of Barb’s name usually had that effect, but she was worried. “What about Barb’s suspicions?”
“She’s aware you’ve been away to conferences and work study programs before. That’s the excuse I gave her for your absence.” Stopping to pick up a piece of driftw
ood, he cast it out and the briny water soon ate it up. “I’d rather not bring Grace into the fray right now with Barbra’s current health and legal upheavals.”
Maddie tossed in a few broken shells lying near her feet for the ocean to reclaim. Apprehension prickled at her neck. When her father didn’t elaborate, she asked, “By right now, do you mean you intend to bring Grace out in the open later?”
As seagulls screeched and circled the whitecaps farther out and a buoy bell clanged in the distance, she waited for his reply, suspecting serious changes to their futures were in the making. She shivered and rubbed her arms to ward off the strange chill.
“I love Grace,” he said at last. “Over the years, absence has steadily made our hearts grow fonder. When you turn thirty next year and acquire your Bain Island properties, I’m bowing out as mayor. Grace’s daughter recently wed, leaving us free to marry and travel as soon as you inherit. I haven’t asked Grace yet, but if she agrees to become my wife, I thought we might build a house here on the island. Depending on the islanders’ reaction to my divorce from your mother, naturally. But they might be more inclined to accept us once you takeover as matriarch. If not, Grace and I can buy a condo in the city, up the coast near VIP industrial headquarters, and another in Philadelphia near her children.”
Unable to take in all he said, she swallowed hard. Her chest tightened as if the air had been squeezed out of her. “But everything’s on hold until Barb’s rehabilitated and free of her lawsuits,” she croaked. “She might want to remain First Lady of the island.”
Her father shook his head at the absurd suggestion.
“It’s not likely, but it is possible.” Uncertainty buzzed in her ears. She fought off a sudden headache. “I’ve never given any thought to taking on the responsibilities of Bain Island’s legacy and its customs.”
“You have months until your birthday to consider the pros and cons. By then, Barbra should be mentally and physically able to handle both of our decisions. In the meantime, don’t worry about her suspicions. If she knew something she’d have blasted us, not simply nosed around asking the servants and me questions. I’m sorry I involved you in my affairs. But I had no one else.” He hugged Maddie.
