Her First Vacation (6 page)

For the first time since she’d set foot on board Claire
realized the tremendous freedom she had. No one here had reason to be critical
of her. She could do whatever she liked and though she knew it might be
noticed, she also knew it wouldn’t matter. When the cruise was over in a couple
of weeks she would never see anyone on board again. No matter what she did or
how big a fool she made of herself, there was no chance of it following her
back home. There, she always had to worry that every mistake she made would
become additional fuel for her sister’s twisted humor or her mother’s scathing
disapproval. Here, she didn’t have to worry about anything. She felt the frown
ease from her face. For the first time in her life, she was truly free.

Ten minutes later she walked out of her room wearing the
swimsuit she’d owned for more than a decade beneath an old tee shirt and the
brand new pair of shorts she’d bought just for this trip but so far hadn’t
found the nerve to wear because they showed off the unpleasant paleness of her
legs. She carried a new bottle of sunscreen and one of the towels from her
bathroom because she hadn’t thought to buy a beach towel. Maybe she would get a
few stares from people when she showed up at the pool wearing the old swimsuit
with her skin bearing testimony to her lack of exposure to the sun, but who
cared what anyone thought? Let them stare. Let them even laugh. She was
finished being intimidated by her own insecurities.

By the time Claire had reached the pool a good bit of her
bravado had faded. It was all fine and well to damn her insecurities in the
comfort of her room, but it was something else altogether to face up to them in
the brilliant sunlight. She noticed her hands were shaking as she dropped her
towel onto a vacant lounger. It was still early and there weren’t all that many
people at the pool. That proved to be a blessing and a curse. Fewer people
meant fewer witnesses to her discomfort, but it also meant there were fewer
distractions to hold the attention of the handful of others lounging around the
water. She caught more than one person giving her their attention. By the time
she’d stretched out on the lounger, though, she realized they’d all gone back
to whatever it was they’d been doing before she arrived. She breathed a deep
sigh of relief and ordered herself to relax.

An hour later she was still trying to convince herself that
she was having fun. She’d followed the example of the other women there and
flipped from one side to the other while she attempted to read the book she’d
brought along with her. It wasn’t doing much to hold her attention, however,
especially since the sun was gaining in intensity with each passing minute.
She’d slathered herself with tanning lotion, but she still felt like she was
cooking. She turned onto her back once more and gave the water a longing look.
She was bored with just lying in the sun. She never had understood how other
women did it for hours on end.

She shifted her focus from the sun’s glare off the water to
a pair of children who were playing with a water toy at the far end of the
pool. Their mother was stretched out on a lounger nearby, her gaze never
straying far from the children. The pang of longing that hit Claire was not
unfamiliar, though it was unwelcome. She’d grown accustomed to the empty hole
inside her. She had no illusions about what caused it. She’d become a teacher
because she wanted to make a difference. She’d chosen elementary because she
loved children. It never failed to awe her when she looked down into their
trusting little faces and realized just how unconditional their love was. She’d
felt the adoration of the children she taught. She’d had more than one child
tell her they loved her through the years. But she knew what she shared with
her students was nothing compared to the bond between a mother and her child.
She wanted to feel that for herself. She wanted to hold a child in her arms and
know that it was a part of her and would be forever. Most of all, she wanted to
know that there was at least one person alive who would look at her with a
complete and total lack of the judgmental attitude she’d lived with her entire
life. Her child would never tell her she wasn’t good enough. It would never
laugh at her lack of social grace or feminine wiles. It would simply love her
exactly as she was.

Claire watched as the mother got up and joined her children
when they begged her to
come
play with them. Their
squeals of delight mingled with their mother’s laughter, and Claire watched
until the tightness in her chest became too much to bear. She turned away, but
could still hear them playing together. Finally, she shrugged into her shirt
and shorts and gathered her things. She was running again and she knew it, but
this time she didn’t bother to lecture herself about it. Hiding from her own
fears was a bad habit she was determined to break. Distancing herself from the
reminder of what she knew she wasn’t going to have any time soon was strictly
self-preservation. She wanted children, but had no chance of having any in the
foreseeable future. There was no man in her life, no potential father. And
though she knew very well that a man wasn’t necessary, she also knew she wanted
the dream. She wanted to have children that were the product of love, not some
lab procedure. She wanted a husband to share her joys and her sorrows. In
short, she wanted a fairy tale, and she knew very well that the odds were all
stacked against her. She couldn’t allow herself to give up her dream, though.
Not even in the face of her loudly ticking biological clock. Foolish as it was,
she was determined to keep hope alive.

Colin didn’t see Claire at lunch, not that he really
expected to. He couldn’t quite manage to keep himself from watching for her,
though. After the way she’d taken off that morning, he worried that she’d curl
up in her room and hide. He kept berating himself for acting like such an ass.
He should have just kept his mouth shut yesterday morning. Better yet, he
should have gone in the opposite direction when he saw her in the first place.
He’d known she was going to be trouble from the moment he laid eyes on her. She
was exactly the kind of woman he never got anywhere near. Even if he hadn’t
been working, she would have been off limits. He might not exactly be the
Casanova wannabe he was portraying at the moment, but he wasn’t into long-term
relationships either. He knew where those complications led, and he had no intention
of ever walking down the aisle with anyone. He’d had nineteen years of
experience with the nightmare of marriage, and that was more than enough to
assure him that he didn’t want any part of it. His earliest memories included
glimpses of his parents arguing. He watched them tear each other to shreds on
virtually a daily basis and had decided about the time he hit puberty that if
what his parents had was supposed to be love, then he was going to stay as far
away from it as he could. He’d never experienced anything that had led him to
reevaluate that decision.

He had friends who got married, and he couldn’t think of
one of them that he envied. Most of them spent the first few months walking
around looking like moonstruck fools, then they seemed to wake up one day, and
the next thing you knew, they spent all their time bitching about their wives.
He’d come to the conclusion that men weren’t designed to be lifetime partners
with any one woman. Sooner or later the newness wore off, and things started
getting ugly. Better to just get the hell out while everything was still casual
and fun, than to stay too long and wind up dealing
with a
clinging female hearing wedding bells
in her head.

His thoughts turned back to Claire. She was definitely the
wedding type. She had “wife and mother” written all over her. What she needed
was some nice banker or another teacher.
Someone who would
share her love of all things domestic.
Car pools, PTA, daffodils lined
up along a white picket fence with a scruffy dog lying on the front porch.
The works.
She was built for it, and he never would be. She
was everything he knew he didn’t want. So why was it that every time he saw her
he found himself aching to touch her? What was it about her that made him want
to take her into his arms and give her something really exciting to carry back
to her boring little small town life? He suspected that an ever better question
might be why he felt so damned certain that if he ever did take her to his bed,
she wouldn’t be the only one carrying the memory around for a long, long time.

By the time evening rolled around Claire was well aware of
just how mistaken she’d been to assume that her sunscreen would prevent her
from burning. She had an obvious pink tint everywhere her swimsuit hadn’t
covered and though it wasn’t particularly painful, it certainly was
uncomfortable. It wasn’t all that difficult to decide that dinner would be better
spent alone. Her tablemates hadn’t ever paid her any attention, but even they
would be unlikely to overlook her condition. It was pretty much impossible to
miss. So she ordered something to be brought to her room and ate alone. She
spent the entire meal trying and failing to refrain from wondering exactly what
Colin was doing that night. Had he missed her or did he even notice she wasn’t
there? She’d watched him enough to know that he had no trouble finding female
companionship. He had that charming nature that drew women like flies. Garret
was far more flamboyant, but Claire realized that if he’d wanted to, Colin
could easily have stolen all
Garret’s
thunder. Garret
was attractive and obviously accustomed to being the center of attention. But
he would never match Colin’s inherent magnetism.

She felt herself blush as she realized she wasn’t just
thinking about his ability to be a charming conversationalist. Colin had the
sort of charisma that inspired all sorts of erotic thoughts. From his head to
his toes, he was a poster boy for pure sex appeal. Claire knew she wasn’t the
only woman who’d noticed it. Cathy might give Garret most of her attention, but
she hadn’t missed what Colin had to offer. She’d shown him more than a little
interest in the first few days. She didn’t turn her focus to Garret until it
became evident that Colin wasn’t going to return her attentions. Claire had
wondered why Colin had rejected her. Cathy certainly appeared to be the kind of
woman a man like Colin would want. She was attractive and flirtatious, fun and
exciting. Claire was positive that Colin had noticed all those things. He
seemed to notice everything. She’d even seen him giving Cathy the sort of
interested look that left little doubt that he found her appealing as a potential
bed partner. But that had only lasted for the first couple of days on board. By
the third night, Colin was pretending Cathy wasn’t of any interest at all. He
still smiled at her and talked to her, but there was no hint of sexual attraction.
And Claire knew she wasn’t imagining it. She’d had a good fifteen years of
experience watching the way men acted around a woman they wanted. They might
all react differently, but there was no mistaking the interest in their eyes.
Colin simply wasn’t interested in Cathy any longer.

Claire couldn’t help wondering if that might be because
he’d already had her. Had they become lovers so quickly after meeting? She
didn’t want to think so. She wanted Colin to be different than that. But the
truth was
,
she didn’t really know Colin at all. He
might be every bit the Casanova that Garret was, and Cathy might simply have
been his first conquest on the cruise.
Which meant there had
been and would be more.
So why did that thought make her feel so miserable?

Colin swore he wasn’t looking for Claire when he drug
himself out of bed at six the next morning and headed up on deck. He’d been out
late the night before, sharing drinks with Garret and a pair of dancers from
the floorshow. They were the kind of women who had bra cups larger than their
IQs. Basically, they were exactly what Garret tended to favor. Colin had played
his part to the limit. He helped Garret encourage the women to put away copious
amounts of liquor then dutifully participated in the public groping that Garret
was too much of a pig to be disgusted by. The pair of women
were
well on their way to being drunk by the time Garret suggested they find some
privacy. Every fiber of Colin’s being demanded that he find a way to stop
Garret from taking his chosen partner back to his room for the night. She was
too inebriated to think clearly about what she was consenting to. But there was
no way for Colin to interfere without blowing the cover he was so meticulously
working to build. So he followed Garret out of the club and resolutely watched
the pair disappear in the general direction of Garret’s room. The moment they
were out of sight, he escorted his “date” to her room and left her there. She
was barely staying on her feet by the time he opened her door with the key
she’d given him. Once they got inside she plastered herself to him, and he
avoided having to do something abhorrent by suggesting they have another drink
before getting down to business. He poured a couple of shots of tequila down
her, then led her to the bed and helped her take off her clothes. She was
passed out by the time he got her out of her bra. He spent a couple of minutes
messing up the bed around her before flinging the covers over her and slipping
out of her room.

He had no doubt that she’d wake up this morning with one
bitch of a hangover and absolutely no memory of what had happened after they
got to her room. She’d assume they’d had sex. She was, after all, naked and the
bed was a mess. She’d figure he’d gotten what he wanted from her and bailed
before she woke up. She’d make the obvious leap to thinking he was a bastard
and probably never tell a soul what had happened. Or if she did complain to her
friend, she’d only be saying things that would shore up the lie Colin was
living. If, by some miracle, Garret ever ran into either woman and they
bothered to speak to him, they’d both have nothing nice to say about Colin. It
was exactly what he was hoping for.