Falling Angel (25 page)

The club was still nearly empty. It was not yet 10 and she had a feeling this was a place that only started hopping after midnight.

“So why did you decide to come here?” she asked David.

He put his arm around her waist and squeezed. “I may be a conservative guy, but I know how to have fun, too.” Placing his empty bottle on the counter, he turned to face her. “Let’s dance.”

There were a few people swaying on the dance floor. Cara and David joined them and moved self-consciously to the music.

David wasn’t any better at dancing than Ben had been. All the same, it was sweet of him to try, she thought. It showed that he possessed spontaneity. When the song ended, Cara was already hot. She took off her cardigan and shimmied up to David, smiling.

His eyes widened as he looked at her.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he said, backing up a little.

“What?”

“That shirt.”

“What about it?”

“Don’t you think it’s a little . . . see-through?”

Cara looked down at her shirt. It was true; you could make out her white bra underneath it, and the faint impression of bare skin.

“Do you have a problem with it?”

“Ah, no,” he said, unconvincingly. “It’s just, ah, a different look for you. Not what I expected.”

Cara stopped and looked pointedly around at the other dancers. All were dressed in various styles of fetish gear, from rubber outfits to garter belts, PVC pants, and net tops.

Turning, she left the dance floor.

David ran after her. “Hey! Where are you going?”

“Home, David. I’m going home.”

“Why?”

Gazing into the eyes of handsome, straight-laced, upwardly mobile David, Cara realized she felt nothing but pity for him. No matter how hard she tried, or how much she wanted to, she couldn’t force any stronger emotion to come to the fore.

She placed a hand on his arm, raising her voice to be heard over the music. “I’m sorry, David. This isn’t working out.”

He nodded vehemently. “You’re absolutely right. Let’s go somewhere else.”

“The club is fine. I mean
this
isn’t working.” She moved her hand back and forth between them.

David frowned, as though uncertain whether he had heard her correctly.

Cara slipped her cardigan back on and buttoned it up. “You’re a good person, David. But I’m not the woman you’re looking for. I’m unreliable and spacey and I don’t dress right. And to be totally honest with you, I
like
the idea of a barefoot wedding on the beach.”

 Without looking back, she exited the club.

David followed her out onto the sidewalk and up the steep ramp to the sidewalk. “You’re making a big mistake,” he huffed behind her.

“You’re probably right. I may regret this. But it’s how I feel.” Once on street level, Cara stopped and waited for him.

“Is there someone else?”

She thought for a moment before answering “no.”

Ben was out of the picture. It would take a miracle for him to even talk to her again, let alone for them to pick up where they had broken off.

Stone-faced, David insisted on driving her home.

He parked outside her apartment, leaving the car idling.

“Well, I guess this is it.” He turned in his seat to face her. “I have to say, you surprise me, Cara. I really thought we were on the same wavelength.”

“It’s my fault,” she said again. “I really wanted this to work out. But you can’t force these things.”

From her vantage point in front of the Red Radish, Cara watched the tail lights of David’s BMW dip down the hill and pass out of sight. Sighing, she tossed the wilted daisies he had brought her into a garbage can nearby. She didn’t need any reminders of this dismal night.

All the same, thought Cara as she changed into her pajamas, she was at peace with her decision. In fact, she was proud of herself for finally having the strength to follow her instincts.

As though a switch had been flipped, it was suddenly beyond obvious that she and David were as incompatible as oil and water. And once she had acted on that realization, the rest was easy.

She had let him down gently, placing all the blame on herself. No doubt David’s healthy ego would help him rebound quickly from this minor setback in his plans.

In bed, Cara picked up her book but found herself reading the same paragraph over and over. As she stared sightlessly at the page, a sense of profound loneliness settled over her. Sure, she’d often felt lonely since moving to Seattle. But this was worse.
You’ve blown it, Cara
, she told herself.
It’s time to move on.

Chapter Twenty Four

Early morning fog hung thick across the waters of the Sound as Tom cast his first line of the day. In the back of the Boston Whaler, Ben drained his lukewarm cup of coffee and attempted to shake the cobwebs from his brain. After staying up past midnight to finish his final canvas for the upcoming exhibit, he had taken the 5:30 a.m. ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge to accompany Tom on his fishing trip.

Tom glanced behind him and shook his head. “You’re a sorry sight, my friend.”

“So would you be on three hours’ sleep,” retorted Ben. Rising with a groan, he joined Tom at the bow.

“Used to be you could function on two and still look fresh as a daisy. Face it, dude, you’re getting old,” Tom teased. He let down his line. “I’m going down 100 feet. If you’re not scratching bottom, you’re not deep enough.”

Ben pulled his fishing gear from its case. “If I’m old, you must be geriatric, buddy.” Tom was 18 months older than he was, a fact he had never failed to rub in during their college years.

Baiting his lure with Pacific herring, Ben cast out on the other side of the prow.

“It’s ok for me,” said Tom. “I’m married with children. I can afford to let it all go.”

Ben yanked on his line with unnecessary force. “Women are a distraction. I don’t have time for them.”

Tom raised an eyebrow. “What about the one you brought over? Carla?”

“Cara.”

She seemed nice. Real sweet. Trudy liked her.”

Ben gave a dismissive snort.

The sun shot through the mist. Squinting, Ben pulled a pair of polarized sunglasses from the pocket of his black fleece vest and put them on. “She had this crazy idea in her head of what the perfect guy is. A CEO with a fat pension plan and a lifetime membership to the country club.”

“If she wants all that, why the hell was she hanging out with you to begin with?”

“Beats me,” Ben said. “The whole thing was total a waste of time and energy. Not that I’m bitter or anything,” he added with a pained smile.

“When you think about it, though, you guys really could be a perfect match. I mean, you are the CEO of Ben Kilpatrick Productions. With what? Six-figure commissions pouring in and a walk-up flat in Paris’ Latin Quarter. And you own your own condo and studio right here in Seattle. Granted, you’re not the most conventional guy out there. But what more could a girl want?”

When Ben didn’t answer, Tom socked him lightly on the shoulder. “You didn’t tell her about any of your material assets, did you?”

“It shouldn’t matter.”

“So what did she think? That you’re struggling to pay your rent? Living hand to mouth?”

Ben stared stolidly out over the water. “Something like that.”

Tom whistled softly under his breath. “Man are you an idealist! You think Trudy would have married me if I hadn’t promised to provide for her and our future children? She would have run screaming for the nearest MBA in a suit.”

“Look, even if I had told her about all that, it wouldn’t have worked out. She was confused. Didn’t know what she wanted.”

Tom chuckled. “Sounds like you got a taste of your own medicine, my friend.”

They fished in silence as the rising sun burned away the last of the fog and the water lightened, becoming almost transparent in places. Across the Sound, the green shores of Vashon Island emerged. The wake from a passing container ship thrust rolling waves against the side of their sturdy craft and they both moved to plant their feet more firmly.

“You’ve always marched to your own drummer, and I respect that,” Tom said. “I wish I had your single-mindedness. But at some point you’ve gotta ask yourself if what’s worked before is still working now. Do you still need to prove yourself the way you did when you were 25? Do you still want the same things?”

Ben shrugged. “Maybe not,” he conceded.

“So, why not give it another try?”

“With Cara?” Ben looked at Tom incredulously, shaking his head.

“Why not?”

“She hooked up with some other guy.”

Tom’s face sobered immediately. “That sucks.”

“I found out from her roommate.”

“Wow. She didn’t even have the guts to tell you herself?”

“No. Now would you let it go, already?”

Tom put up a placating hand. “Subject closed.”

Ben’s floater bobbed manically, and he let out a yell of excitement and started to reel in the line, taught and vibrating like the string of a high-pitched instrument. For five minutes, the two men worked together to secure the catch, Ben straining at the reel and Tom offering shouts of encouragement. All else was forgotten as a heavy Chinook salmon broke the surface and thrashed in impotent fury on the hook, water streaming from its sides like molten silver.

Back at Tom’s house, Trudy and the kids greeted the catch with cheers. Tom had caught a couple of crabs, but no fish. With great ceremony, Tom’s son James brought out the kitchen scale. The salmon weighed a good ten pounds.

Ben cut it into thick steaks on a table in the back yard.

“We’ll grill it for lunch,” Tom said.

“I’ll make a nice orzo salad to go with it,” Trudy added. She was still in her dressing gown with her blonde hair in a messy braid. “Though there’s no way we’ll be able to finish it all.”

“Stick half of it in your freezer right now,” Ben told her. “I’m leaving next week for Paris, and much as I’d like to, I can’t take it with me.”

Tom left soon afterwards with the kids to run some errands in town before lunch.

“I’m going to make myself presentable,” said Trudy.