by Donna Fasano
Brad came around the back corner of the house and lifted his hand in greeting. When they met, he kissed her cheek.
“Here, let me take those,” he said, reaching for the bags.
“It’s a pretty day.” She looked toward the huge, cottony cumulus clouds hovering high in the cerulean sky.
They walked toward the shoreline.
“No rain in the forecast,” he told her. “We’re all gassed up and ready to go.” He opened both of the jet ski’s storage bins and stowed Cathy’s bags. “I’m starved. I hope you brought something good to eat.”
“You hope?” She pulled a face. “I’m insulted.” But then she grinned. “I’ve made proscuitto-wrapped dates with honey balsamic syrup. And eggplant spread. And black olive and artichoke spread that I’ll serve on crusty bread, and for dessert, I baked a Smith Island cake. I only brought a couple slices of that.”
“Mmm, you’ve got me drooling.” He pulled her close. “And it has little to do with food.”
His husky murmur against her ear sent a delicious shiver cascading along the side of her neck and down her torso. The tickling sensation made her chuckle.
“You want to just stay here?” She teased him, but she wouldn’t have minded in the least if he’d said yes.
“Let’s stick to the plan.” He reached into the pocket of his shorts and handed over the key. “You want to drive?”
“Absolutely.”
Minutes later, the wind whipped at her hair, and sea spray showered them with each small wave she hit. Brad’s smooth, warm hands were settled lightly on her waist. The speed and undulation of zipping across the bay exhilarated her and she let out a laugh.
They passed the Isle of Wight and Cathy waved at the group of teens fishing off the pier. Brad pointed toward the mouth of the St. Martin’s and she slowed just a little and veered right. Less than a half mile into the wide river, she headed toward a desolate sandy beach area and slowed the jet ski until they were crawling forward.
“Hold on,” she said over her shoulder.
They came to an abrupt halt when they made contact with the soft, gritty bottom. Cathy cut the engine and left the key in the ignition.
Brad hopped off the back, splashing in the few inches of water. He offered her his hand and she took it. They grabbed the bags from the bins, and then waded ashore.
“Gosh, that was so fun,” she told him.
“I love being out on the water.”
They immediately started clearing a small area of debris: shells, pebbles, sea grass, bottle caps, drift wood, anything that the wind and tide had washed ashore.
She dove into one of the bags. “Here’s the sheet.”
They worked together like a well-oiled machine; she took two corners and he took the other two, and they spread out the fabric on the sand.
“My arms are still humming.” She rubbed at her upper arms. “Can we sit in the sunshine for a minute before we eat?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t mind at all.” He smiled as he eased down beside her.
Cathy rolled onto her back on the sheet and wriggled her bottom and then her shoulders to make an indentation in the sand. Then she reached over her head and pulled up a small mound under the fabric to use as a pillow. Molding the sand to fit the body was a normal beach-dweller action. You didn’t think about it; you just did it.
Small waves lapped at the shore, nowhere near as big as over on the ocean but just as rhythmic and relaxing. The sun warmed her skin, loosened her joints, melted her bones.
“I love this place,” she said. “It’s so peaceful.”
“Remember when we were in high school,” he said, “and everyone used to meet here?”
“I do.” The heat of the sun warmed her closed eyelids. “Remember the time we started that bonfire?”
“You mean the fire we started without a permit? And the Coast Guard showed up less than an hour after the first sparks were struck?”
“Yup. That’s the one. We never did find out who reported us, did we?”
“Nope.” He tapped the side of her knee with the back of his hand. “It was a hell of a coincidence that Jerri was with us that night, and that her brother was in the Coast Guard, and that Jerri’s brother was on that boat.”
“Coincidence? It was a freakin’ miracle.” The memory made Cathy grin.
“If it hadn’t been for Jerri’s brother,” Brad said, “we’d have all ended up at the county courthouse in Snowhill in front of the juvie judge.”
“Grandmom would have had a conniption fit.” She chuckled. “I remember you were with a different girl almost every weekend.”
“Oh, come on, now. I wasn’t that bad.”
She felt him shift on the sand beside her.
“Weren’t you?”
Her belly clenched when she laughed. “You were a horny toad. You treated us girls like we were a big box of salt water taffy, and you were determined to taste each one.”
“Horny toad,” he muttered under his breath. “I was bad, huh? Am I ever going to live down that reputation?”
“Why would you want to?” Without thinking, she reached out her hand a few inches and dug her fingers into the sand. “You were a good looking guy. And all the girls liked you. They clamored after you, if I recall. Even me.” Her tone sobered as she added, “None of us skipped our turn. And some of us were lucky enough to have more than one go round.”
When he didn’t respond, she peeked at him through her lashes and saw that he was staring off across the water.
“Hey, the reputation thing is really bothering you.” After making the observation, she lifted her head and shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare. His continued silence urged to her sit up. “Brad?”
“Yeah,” he told her softly. “It’s bothering me.”
“What are you talking about? You’ve reveled in being a ladies man. What’s going on?” She leaned forward so she could see his face better. “Is one of your lady friends putting on the pressure? Somebody wanting you to settle down? You have been acting a little weird lately.”
He swiveled his head, his gaze zeroing in on hers. “I don’t have any lady friends, Cathy.”
She barked out a laugh. “Right! Listen to me, you have more babes than there are crabs in Assawoman Bay.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she sniggered. “That probably wasn’t the best metaphor to use when referring to your sex life.”
Sudden annoyance sparked in his blue eyes, and her humor waned.
“Just because you see me in a nightclub with a woman,” he told her, his voice going tight, “doesn’t mean I’m sleeping with her.”
“Okay,” she answered, lifting her palms in surrender. The last thing she wanted to do was get into an argument.
After a moment, she softly asked, “What’s going on, Brad?”
“I know you think our relationship is unconventional. I know you like the game you think we’re playing.” He paused long enough to moisten his lips. “It excites you. You find it titillating.”
“I find it titillating?” One corner of her mouth pulled back. “Did you just fall out of a Regency romance novel or something?”
The things he said… the things he insinuated bemused her, and she could easily see the whole day going to hell in a handcart. Cracking a joke had been her way of attempting to ease the tension.
He shifted on the sand so that he was facing her. “Let me ask you something. Why do you enjoy the whole sleeping around thing, Cathy?”
“I don’t sleep around.”
“I thought as much.”
“I sleep with you.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“You’re the one who sleeps around.”
It was as if they’d fallen into some sort of fast and furious video game where they zinged each other with laser guns.
“If that’s what you think is happening,” he said, “then that makes me… not a very nice person, right? Maybe you should ask yourself why you find it so exciting to be used by me.”
> Her lips parted but no sound came out. She felt as if he’d snatched the breath right out of her throat.
She dragged in a lungful of air, and then words started spewing.
“I’m not titillated by the idea of being used.” Her emphasis made the word sound ugly. “I don’t think about our relationship that way.”
Unable to remain still, she shot to her feet. “What we have between us—” she pointed from herself to him and back again several times as if her wrist were loosely hinged “—offers me freedom. Sweet freedom. I’m free to see you when I want, and if I want. I’m free to have sex with you when I want and if I want. I can—”
“There it is!” He launched off the sheet. “There’s the difference.”
Cathy snapped her jaw closed, wondering what the hell he was talking about.
“You have sex with me,” he ground out. “I make love to you.”
“You have lost your mind,” she said. And then she turned and began stalking down the beach. If she didn’t get away from him, she just might give him a good slug.
“You’d better check your Dictionary of the Day. They’re not the same thing,” he bellowed after her. “And don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you!”
Stark white fury blinded her. No man ordered her around anymore. Not since she’d shaken herself free of her ex. Todd had spent years dictating how she would live; what she could say, where she could work, how and when she could spend money, whom she could call a friend. That sort of treatment wouldn’t start again. No way. No how. She spun around and raced toward him, and she didn’t stop until they were nearly nose to nose.
“It’s Word of the Day, Pal,” she spit out. “It’s about words. Not concepts. And don’t you dare tell me what to do.”
“You are the most infuriating woman I have ever met.”
They glared at each other.
“For weeks,” he said, “I’ve been trying to show you… to tell you that our relationship isn’t what you think. I am not what you think. This isn’t some kind of game I’m playing with you, Cathy.”
Her brow furrowed. “Of course, it’s a game. It’s always been a game. And most of the time it’s fun. But some of the time, Brad—like this very moment—it’s a pain in the ass.”
He shook his head, his eyes never wavering from hers. “What are we doing? Where is this road we’re on taking us? ’Cause I don’t mind admitting that I feel lost.”
Ire got the better of her. “Why does it have to take us anywhere?” she yelled.
The shout was a great release of pent-up frustration, and besides, no one was around for miles.
“Because I’m done with games. I want more. I need more, Cathy.”
She let out a bark of laughter, sharp and harsh. “Of what? This? Harping at each other? Arguing? If that’s so, you really are nuts.”
“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t demean what we have. What we are. We’re good together, and you know it. I want to be in a committed relationship with you. I want you to marry me, damn it!”
Until this moment, she hadn’t even been certain what they’d been arguing about. She and Brad had always walked a fine line between romantic, sexy intimacy and easy, breezy friendship. It worked for them. It had worked for them just fine for years now. But now he was bringing up the dreaded “m” word. What the hell was going on? She felt as if the world suddenly spun out of control; as if she lived in one of those cheap, seaside snow globes found in every souvenir shop in town and someone had picked it up and given it a good, hard shake.
“Marry you?” she said, every ounce of her incredulity evident in the short question. “I’m not going to marry you. I’m not going to marry anyone. Ever again.”
“I’m nothing like that asshole you divorced.”
His tone was low and ominous, and for some reason, it stoked the fires of Cathy’s anger.
“You’re damned straight about that! If you were, I’d have nothing to do with you.” The words burst from her like pebbles from a slingshot. Then an odd thought struck her like one of her ex’s unexpected cuffs to the jaw. She tilted her head and asked, “Did you just propose to me in the middle of an argument?”
The idea was hysterical; funny as hell, really. She should be holding her stomach, rolling on the sand with laughter. So why did she continue to seethe inside?
Apparently, Brad failed to see the humor in the question, too. Fury darkened his expression.
“Yeah,” he said, his chin lifting unapologetically. “Yeah, I did. And it’s because the only time we ever fight is when I have an idea, or an opinion, or a want or need that differs from yours.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You’re free to have all the ideas and opinions you want.”
“Am I? Am I, really? Why do you think I didn’t tell you about the arcade, Cathy?”
The muscles of his face were taut.
“Could it be because I knew you’d tell me all the reasons why the business wouldn’t be a success? Maybe you ought to ask yourself why you always find it necessary to—”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she whispered. “So that’s what this is about. Now I get it. You want me to marry you so I’ll help you pay off the mortgage on that stupid mini-golf course.”
His face flamed with fury. “I don’t owe a mortgage, Cathy!”
He could have been speaking in some foreign language for all she knew. What was important was what she saw; in the periphery of her vision, she deciphered the raising of his hand, and in an instant, she was catapulted back in time.
Chapter Nine
Instinct alone had her flinching into a protective stance—she turned her face to the side, her hands raised, the shoulder closest to him lifted to absorb the anticipated blow, her eyelids clenched shut, and her neck muscles tensed so tightly a spasm of pain arrowed up into her skull.
When she opened her eyes, she was staring down at the sand beneath her feet, still on her feet. No punch had been thrown. No pain rolled over her body.
A gull cried overhead.
She let out her breath slowly, relaxed her shoulders, and lifted her gaze to Brad’s.
Intense perplexity wrinkled his forehead as he stared at her.
A fiery heat burst to life in Cathy’s chest and rose to singe her neck and face, scorch her scalp. The utter mortification forced her to avert her gaze, burned the sockets of her eyes with unshed tears.
A sudden, all-encompassing frailty permeated her being, chinking her armor. She felt weak. Vulnerable.
And completely humiliated.
The sole thought running through her head was to get away from the helplessness. Escape the situation.
“I’m leaving,” she announced, and she raced toward the jet ski as if her life depended on it. And in her mind, her life as she knew it was in jeopardy. The strong, independent woman she’d worked so hard to create had been suddenly invaded by the broken and abused person she had once been.
“Cathy!” Brad called after her, his tone unyielding. “Don’t you even think about leaving me here.”
She was up to her ankles, pushing the jet ski into deeper water when she screamed, “You can’t tell me what to do!”
Straddling the jet ski, she reached to turn the key when he shouted her name again. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she turned her gaze toward shore.
She knew the man standing on the sand was not Todd Kirkland, knew she was safe from physical harm, but reason wasn’t enough to thaw the icy fear and shame that clawed through her veins and urged her to flee. She turned the key, heard the machine rumble to life. Cathy cranked the throttle and the engine roared.
Again, she looked back.
That’s Brad. That’s Brad. That’s Brad.
Her brain shouted the silent chant, over and over.
Glowering at him, she finally lifted her hand and motioned for him.
Brad reached down, snatched up the corners of plastic sheet, and gathered the bags holding their lunch, like a big hobo-bag. He spl
ashed to the jet ski and opened the storage bin.
“If you’re coming,” she said over her shoulder, “get on. Now.”
The instant she sensed the weight of him behind her, she engaged the clutch and took off across the water. He grabbed onto her to keep from being flung off the back.
“Slow down,” he warned.
The sun beat down on her head. The water tasted salty on her lips. The warmth of his hands penetrated the cotton of her t-shirt. Even these normal, everyday sensations weren’t enough to calm the terror that had thrown her world off-kilter.
“The water’s too shallow for this speed,” he yelled, the wind whipping at the words.
Whatever made contact with the bottom of the jet ski—a crab trap, a rock, a tree stump—she would never know. The grating sound filled the air, deafening her. And then they were airborne.
She hit the water with a splash, her bottom and back striking the sandy bottom with enough force to rattle her teeth. Stars danced in her hazy vision and briny water and sand flooded her mouth and eyes. She coughed and shoved herself to her feet in the thigh-deep water.
What she noticed first was the quiet. She swiped the water and grit from her eyes, coughed and spat.
“Brad!”
She saw the jet ski, its engine silenced as it bobbed upside down a few yards away. Plastic zip bags floated on the surface of the river. She identified the many-layered cake and the sliced baguette she’d so painstakingly prepared for lunch.
“Brad!” Panic constricted her throat to the point that her voice was barely recognizable. She scanned the area frantically, and the instant she found him, she slogged through the muddy water as fast as she could.
He lay on his side, deathly still, atop a tangle of exposed roots and reeds. Blood trickled from a cut high on his forehead. His eyes were closed, his ear, jaw, and neck submerged. She couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive.
Her forward momentum pushed a small wall of water at him. The waves hit his stomach and quickly rolled along his chest, over his chin, and across his mouth and nose. She expected him to rise, to sputter, to cough, but he didn’t move. Alarm gripped her like a tight fist.
