First Things First

by Barbara Delinsky

  “But you’ve been wonderfully successful!”

  “Sure, but at a cost. Tension. Constant worry. Headaches from thinking about all the other things I should be doing. Don’t you see, Chelsea? Instead of my mother holding the knife at my throat, I started holding it myself. I think that’s one of the things I’ve come to understand since I’ve been here and had time to think.”

  “I thought you didn’t think,” she teased.

  He kissed her ear softly. “About the future … about the future. I have thought about the past, and I’ve realized that there’s a helluva lot of my mother in me after all.”

  “Come on. You’re not cold and domineering.” She was very careful to use his own words, rather than ones representing the opinion she’d herself formed after meeting Beatrice.

  “Maybe not that, but the endless ambition, the insane drive—I got to the point where nothing in life was fun anymore. Anything and everything I did had to have a purpose.”

  “Isn’t that the way we all are?”

  “Not in the extreme, as it was with me, and not when the only goal in life is doing more, better and faster.”

  With the effort and determination the hammock demanded, Chelsea squirmed around to face him. “You’ve broken the pattern, living down here as you have. Isn’t it possible that you can go back, maybe consolidate your business interests, or somehow limit your role in them?” She brushed her knuckles lightly against his cheek. “Understanding the problem is half the battle. If you were to go back to Boston with the express intent of keeping things in perspective, of finding things to do for the sole purpose of having fun, of making a clear demarcation between work and pleasure—wouldn’t it work?”

  His eyes held hers and he wrapped a blond curl around his finger. “I don’t know.”

  “Wouldn’t it be worth a try?”

  He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “I don’t know.”

  Chelsea growled with a mixture of frustration and playfulness. “You are exasperating. Whenever we get to the good part, you fade out.”

  He gave her a lopsided smile. “What do you expect, turning around on me this way? It’s bad enough when I don’t have to look you in the eye, but when I do, there’s no way my mind can function properly.”

  She knew very well that he was avoiding the issue, but he was looking her in the eye and he wasn’t the only one affected. She shouldn’t have turned around, but she’d wanted to, and his body was so long, so warm, so hairy and firm.

  He sought her lips then, kissing her sweetly. When he kissed her a second time, it was with greater feeling. By the third time, he was positively hot, but she didn’t mind because she had her arms around his neck and was fueling his hunger with her own.

  They kissed more, and touched, and Sam found her breasts through the huge armhole of her shirt. His stroking and taunting had her quickly straining closer.

  “Let’s get this open,” he murmured against her lips and deftly dispensed with the buttons. “There,” he crooned as he ran his hand from one breast to the other. “So firm and full …”

  “You make them that way,” she whispered. She caressed his chest, found one taut nipple and brushed her finger back and forth over it. He groaned and she grinned. “Only fair …”

  He gave a low growl, but he was shifting, lowering his shorts, and his voice was thick with desire when he nudged her legs apart. “Put your thigh over mine … that’s it …”

  She was breathing harder. “I thought you said …you couldn’t do it in a hammock.”

  He pressed her closer and easily, so easily because she was moist and warm, slid into her. “I said … mmmmmmm … I wondered if you could … oh, God, Chels, you’re … so perfect for … me …”

  They didn’t talk then, because there were too many other ways to say what they felt. On their sides in the hammock, each had only one arm free, but it was put to good use in the leisurely sensual exploration they’d been too heated to fully appreciate that afternoon. Between those hands, lips that nibbled and tasted and drank, and the sexual persuasion of their loins, the fever rose.

  Sam thrust slowly and smoothly, but his effect on her was as explosive as if he’d been loving her with unleashed force. She found it unbelievably exciting to mate this way, peacefully, almost religiously. It was, she realized, totally appropriate to the setting.

  With her leg braced around his thigh, her hips met his, retreated, sought again. In time the tempo quickened until, with every muscle straining, they climaxed in near-unison.

  The panting that followed was less well-timed and far more ragged than anything that had come before. Only later, after Sam had resettled herself close to him in the hammock, did Chelsea wonder if it was a harbinger of things to come. For, just as she couldn’t help but glow with the love she felt, she couldn’t help but feel duplicitous. She had accepted money, half of which was already in her bank account, to “lure” Sam home. He didn’t know about that, or about her business, or about the plans she had for going back to school in two short months. In time it all had to come out—but when? And would the repercussions be ragged and jarring?

  IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, Chelsea heeded Sam’s example and did her best to push all thought of the future aside. She knew she was being selfish, but for once in her life she didn’t care. She loved him to distraction, and she simply wasn’t willing to do anything that might spoil the happiness of the moment.

  Quite cleverly Sam managed to manipulate the women of the village so that Chelsea could be with him as much as possible. She lent a hand with him in harvesting long, silver-green, bayonetlike leaves from the arrow-straight rows of henequen. She knelt with him to admire the statue of a Mayan god, which was being carved out of wood by one of the elderly villagers. She joined in the joking and easy laughter that took place when he and several other of the men took to sawing planks from a log to make a new door for one of the huts. She watched in astonishment when, in the ancient Mayan manner, they made an addition to the beehive rack by hollowing out a section of a log, sealing its ends with mud and punching a hole in its side to permit the bees access.

  And each night she wrote it all down in her notebook. The first time she did it, she felt as though she were perpetrating a hoax. After all, she’d told Sam she was a writer, and he’d been the one to ask if she oughtn’t to be taking notes. But she quickly found that she enjoyed the writing. She’d seen so much, all of it fascinating, and she wanted to remember everything. Moreover, she took to writing her feelings for Sam, so the notebook became an intimate kind of diary. Subconsciously, perhaps, she hoped he’d sneak it out one day and read it, but she suspected that he was too straightforward for that.

  One week passed after their trip to Chichen and another began, and Chelsea adapted to the rhythm of Mayan life as though it was the only one she’d ever known. Each day was more relaxing, more interesting, more rewarding than the last. And Sam was always there, enthusiastic and caring by day, loving by night.

  After she’d been with him for three weeks, though, something very subtle began to happen. For a fleeting moment here, an instant there, her thoughts turned homeward. She determinedly chased them away, but they returned, each time at a shorter interval than the last. Moreover, she sensed that Sam was suffering from the same affliction, because from time to time she’d catch him with a troubled, faraway look in his eyes.

  She should be grateful, she told herself. It was her job to make him think of home. But she was frightened of the unknown to follow, and she was terrified that one of those would tear them apart.

  She’d actually begun to wonder if some part of Sam was growing restless when, one day in the middle of that third week, he suggested they drive into Cancun. She readily agreed. The thought of returning there with Sam excited her, and, of course, there was the matter of her suitcase—not that she had any need of it. Sam had been right about that, but she was half-worried that the hotel had given up on her and the bag would be lost once again.

  Chelsea
with her faithful carry-on bag and Sam with his suitcase—he hadn’t opened it yet, and it was a strangely ominous presence—drove directly to the Camino Real and checked in, intent on spending several nights there before returning to the pueblito. To Chelsea’s relief, her errant suitcase had indeed been safely stored for her, though there was something threatening about it too as the bellboy carried it to their room.

  “Funny,” she mused when at last they were alone and she stood staring at the bag, “I thought I was going to be lost without it, but I almost hate to open it now.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said quietly, then took a breath as if for courage. “But it’s hot, and it’s not raining, and since it’s siesta time and everything else is closed down, it might be very nice to go to the beach.”

  He was looking at her and she sensed in him the same unsureness that she felt herself. It was something about the room, the hotel, the other Americans they’d passed in the lobby. They were back in civilization, where they’d never before been together, and it remained to be seen if the magic that had bound them in the Mayan lowlands would remain.

  Sam took the first step. Curving his hand very gently around her neck, he spoke. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve been here, and so much has happened to me since I left that I’m feeling a little shaky right about now. Will you help me, Chels? Stay close beside me and tell me I’m doing the right thing by coming back here with you?”

  In that instant she knew the magic remained, because she felt such a rise of tenderness that her throat grew tight. She brought his hand to her cheek and tilted her face into it. “Of course I’ll help. I need you too.”

  Wrapping his arms around her then, he held her tightly. There were no sexual implications in the hug, and it was perhaps all the more meaningful for that reason. She felt warmed all over in an emotional kind of way, such that when he set her back and opened his bag, she followed suit without another thought.

  Fifteen minutes later they were on the beach, alternately basking in the sun and cooling off in the waves, ordering piña coladas and then laughing at their decorative delivery, which seemed to them the height of extravagance after life in the pueblito.

  When they’d had enough of the sun, they returned to the room where they indulged in long, hot showers—separately, together, separately again, together again—until they felt sure the management would be knocking on their door to complain. Then almost shyly they dressed in clean clothes from their suitcases. Chelsea blow dried her hair and put on a pink-and-white shortall—a one-piece short and top outfit—with fresh sandals to match. Sam put on a pair of white shorts, a crisp yellow short-sleeved shirt and a pair of deck shoes. Almost shyly they looked at each other, then burst out with simultaneous compliments and ended up laughing.

  Light-headed, they left the hotel and headed for the shops, but Sam steered her clear of them at the last minute.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as he ushered her further down the main street.

  “I have a sudden urge,” he said, so passionately that she wondered for a minute why he was moving away from the hotel. “I want,” he stated deeply and distinctly, “a cheeseburger.”

  She laughed. “So you have missed something.”

  “Nope. Out of sight, out of mind. But I saw this little burger place on the way in, and my stomach is suddenly like a little kid, tugging and whining, ‘I wannit! I wannit!’” He shot her a sheepish grin. “Sound okay?”

  “Sounds great!”

  It tasted great, too. Thick cheeseburgers with lettuce and tomato and onion and ketchup—Sam had three to Chelsea’s two, and they were both sighing with satisfaction by the time they hit the street again.

  Browsing leisurely, they wandered through the shops, but the carvings in the art stores seemed inferior to those the old man at the pueblito had made and the Mexican dresses hanging in stalls looked gaudy in comparison to the huipiles embroidered by Julia and Tonia.

  Chelsea was fascinated by two things, each of which Sam insisted on buying her. The first was a round carving of the Mayan calendar, made in different shades of wood. She couldn’t deciper it, though Sam was able to explain several of the markings, but she loved the idea of hanging it in her apartment.

  The second was even more special, more personal. It was a ring made of sterling silver, with a flat, straight surface across the top. After much conferring over patterns they liked, they picked an elongated oval one, then watched, delighted and fascinated, as the young Mexican craftsman cut the oval and, within it, Chelsea’s initials from the silver. It was beautiful, sleek and shiny, and she couldn’t keep from lifting her hand to look at it every few minutes.

  When they returned to the hotel they sat in the lobby, playing tourist, listening to a concert being performed by a group of singers and guitarists. The music was typically Mexican, largely love songs with an upbeat tempo and a mellow haunting quality. Sam took her hand in his and she felt something pass between them—something dear but strangely sad, as though they were clinging to a fleeting dream.

  After the concert they went for a swim in the pool, then showered again, then went out for dinner. This time Chelsea wore a pale-blue shirtdress with padded shoulders and the collar raised in back. She’d put on makeup and heels, and was feeling eminently self-conscious until she took a look at Sam.

  For a minute he looked strange, almost foreign to her, and she felt frightened. He wore a broad-striped mauve-and-gray shirt, open at the neck, and a pair of gray linen slacks and black loafers. His hair was neatly combed, and the faint scent of after-shave lingered in the air about him.

  “You look very chic and cosmopolitan,” she said nervously.

  “So do you,” he said in like tone. “But you’re beautiful.”

  “And you’re handsome.”

  “Then I guess they’ll allow us into the restaurant,” he quipped. Then he smiled, which was all Chelsea needed. If she could block out all else—his clothes, their surroundings—he was still the man she loved.

  When he offered his elbow, she hooked her arm in it and together they left the room and found a cab. Maxime’s proved to be an elegant French restaurant set in the former home of the mayor. The food was delicately prepared, the service without fault, the atmosphere calm and relaxing. They laughed about how weird it was to be waited on, how they’d probably get sick because the food was so rich and bacteria-free. They talked of light things—other vacation spots each had either seen or wanted to see, favorite and not-so-favorite restaurants at home, the Boston Common at Christmastime.

  But in between there were awkward times, actually not so much awkward, Chelsea mused, as pensive. Times when their thoughts were their own and not to be shared, and that was sad in itself.

  When they returned to the hotel, she wasn’t sure what to expect. She stood on the balcony looking out over the Caribbean, wanting desperately to be back at the pueblito, in the hut where everything seemed so simple and right.

  Sam stood no more than three feet away but something kept her from reaching for him, though she was lonely and aching.

  “We’ll make it,” he said, so softly that she wondered if he was talking to himself. She looked over at him. His features were lit by the pale moon shimmering across the water, and she saw that his jaw was tense. She sensed then that his words had been more a prayer than a statement of fact, and she remembered how, earlier that day, he’d asked for her help. Yet she’d been so wrapped up in her own worries that she hadn’t been thinking of the qualms he must be having about returning to civilization, if not about their relationship itself.

  Love was a balm then, overpowering her fears, and she broke the distance between them and wrapped her arms around him. “We will, we will,” she murmured, pressing the softest of kisses to his throat. Her reward was in the feel of his arms going around her, tightening, crushing her until she had to gasp for breath.

  “Come.” He released her and led her into the room, where in unspoken agreement they quickly undresse
d. With each item of clothing that fell aside, she felt better. When they were naked before each other, she felt even better. For, after casting off the trappings of the outer world, they were as they’d been before. Man and woman. Familiar and safe. Inexorably drawn to each other.

  Their lovemaking was intense and prolonged. It was their first time on a bed, they joked, and they made the most of it, rolling and writhing without fear of injury or physical upset. Sam used the freedom to thoroughly explore every inch of Chelsea’s body. He twisted around to kiss her toes, flipped her over to lave the backs of her knees with his tongue, returned her to her back so that he could intimately kiss that part of her he’d never tasted before.

  In a brief moment of sanity, Chelsea recalled that Samuel Prescott London was supposed to be inhibited. Inhibited? No way! And she was no more so, finding sensitive spots all over his body, inciting them with her hands, her lips, her tongue.

  They brought each other to fulfillment once, then shifted and began again. When Chelsea thought she was totally exhausted, Sam proved her wrong. When Sam swore he’d never move again, Chelsea made him eat his words. At one point, supposedly between bouts, when she was in her familiar spoonlike position against him, he entered her that way and she was stunned.

  He was forceful but ever gentle, demanding but ever giving, and by the time they finally drifted to sleep some time near dawn, she thought she’d never love him more.

  THEY SLEPT WELL INTO the morning, then went for a late breakfast buffet, where they gorged on pancakes drowned in syrup, croissants and sweet rolls rich with butter and jam, and all the other little treats that they hadn’t had in so long. Lying on the beach later was a necessity. Their stomachs were so full they couldn’t have moved even if their limbs hadn’t been aching from the night’s activity. So they soaked in the sun and eased their weary bones in the sea. From time to time Chelsea would look at Sam and glow at the sight. Relaxed flat out on his lounge chair, he was long and lean, bronzed and virile. His swimsuit was a modest though trim-fitting blue and white job that reminded her of his boxer shorts, which in turn reminded her of the nights they’d spent together at the pueblito. Then her mind would wander further and she’d brood about the future.