Just The Way You Are (10 page)

"How about your front?"

"Stop," she said, getting to her feet. "Enough. You're making me laugh. And I'm not supposed to be laughing right now. I'm supposed to be serious and concerned and worried."

"Not for the next hour. Give yourself a break, Tessa. The worry will be waiting when you get back."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Chapter 10

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elax, nothing will happen in the next few hours, except that you're going to think about something besides your grandmother and Tessa," Sam said to Alli as he steered the boat out of the harbor

Alli wrapped her heavy sweater around her as the ocean breeze caught at her hair. She'd exchanged her skirt for a pair of jeans she kept in the back of the shop, and her sandals for white canvas tennis shoes.

"I feel so decadent," she confessed. "I should be working at the shop, or at the very least I should be at the hospital."

"You are working—for me," Sam said with a grin.

He'd looked downright pleased to see her arrive, and when he'd introduced her to the newlyweds, he'd called her his wife. Not his ex-wife, but his wife. For some reason, the distinction seemed important. "And you know Phoebe would want you to take a break," he added.

"I suppose." Alli rested her arms on the rail and glanced over at the young couple who were sitting on the bench seat in the stem of the boat, watching the white water kick up behind them as they gathered speed and left the harbor behind for the wide-open Pacific Ocean.

"They're cute," she said to Sam. "Young love."

"Young? They're our age."

"Really? I feel older than they look."

"So do I," she admitted. She stared out at the horizon for a long moment. "Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be twenty-seven and single, no child, no husband, no mortgage, no business to run, just myself to take care of."

"You'd probably be bored."

"Maybe."

"What's the point in looking back anyway? You can't change what happened," Sam said.

"I can't help it," she said wistfully. "Don't you ever wonder what it would have been like if we'd never gotten together that Christmas? I mean, what if you hadn't come to the party? Or if I'd left before you arrived? Things could have turned out so differently."

"But I did come to the party, and you were still there. I don't have time to wonder about what might have been, and frankly I don't see the point. We've got enough to do just dealing with the present." He stared out at the water, standing tall and straight, his hands firmly on the wheel in front of him.

She supposed that was one of the big differences between them: Sam didn't want to analyze any of it, and she wanted to pick it apart down to the last detail. "I guess the good thing about having a child young is that we'll still be young when Megan grows up."

"That's a long ways off."

"Not really, only ten years till she's eighteen. The last nine have gone pretty fast. And since we don't have anymore children…"

"Don't start, Alli."

"I know you don't want any more children, but I do."

"You just said you wondered what it would be like to have no children. Make up your mind."

"I meant that hypothetically. I wouldn't trade Megan in for anything in the world."

"Neither would I." He sent her a brief look. "And I don't think you'd be happy with no one to take care of, to boss around, to get into fights with. You're not a loner, Alli, you never were. I was always tripping over you growing up. You were in the middle of things, stirring up trouble wherever you went."

"It was the only way I could get your attention," she admitted.

He laughed. "I think you had everyone's attention when you dyed your hair green."

"It wasn't supposed to be green, it was supposed to be blond," she replied.

He laughed. "What happened? Did you forget to read the directions? Oh, that's right, you don't believe in reading directions. Leap first, look later. That was always your style."

His tone was too gentle for her to take offense. "I was in a hurry."

"You were always in a hurry." He sent her a knowing look that reminded her of how many years they had known each other.

"You didn't exactly get through childhood unscathed," she said.

"Let's change the subject."

"Remember that party you had when your parents went out of town?"

"The one you talked me into having?" he asked pointedly.

"And somebody broke the picture frame that Tessa had given you to hold your prom photo?" she continued, ignoring the fact that she had been the one to encourage the party. "You thought Tessa was going to kill you for sure."

"So you went all the way to Portland with me to find an exact copy," he said quietly, turning to face her. "I'd forgotten about that. Why did you help me?"

"I didn't want you to get into trouble."

"Really?" he asked skeptically.

"Okay, I got to ride in the Thunderbird and spend time with you. But it was still a nice thing to do, even if my motives were a bit selfish."

"You were a pal."

She sighed. "And I wanted to be so much more."

"Well, it turned out that way."

For a few moments all was quiet between them. Alli leaned against the rail and watched him sail. Here on the water, he was completely at ease, master of his destiny, strong, powerful, a part of nature as much as the wind and the sea. It was how she always thought of him, the mist off the ocean dampening his hair, his cheeks burning from the midday sun, his eyes dancing with a joy that only being on the water could give him.

"You love this, don't you?" she asked, even though it wasn't really a question.

"More than I ever thought I would."

"So this part of your life turned out okay?"

He smiled at her. "Yeah."

"I'm glad." She looked out at the miles of water stretching before them. "Do you think we'll see any whales today?"

"I hope so or the Starks will be disappointed."

Alli turned her head to see the newlywed couple exchange a deep, passionate kiss. "I'm not sure they will come up for air long enough to see a whale."

"You might be right about that. By the way, we should talk about our kite. The festival is only a few days away. Have you thought about the design?"

"Megan wants to do a picture of our family for the design. She even drew three stick figures. Yours has great hair. Mine just looks fat."

"You always think you look fat."

"I have a mirror."

"You don't look in the mirror. Most of your impressions are stuck in your head from a hundred years ago. Maybe once you looked fat, so forever you're fat. That's the way it is with you. You never change your mind."

"That's not true," she automatically denied, although she had the vague impression that he might be somewhat right.

"Sure it is. Twelve people could say you were skinny and one person could say you were fat, and who would you believe—the one person who said you were fat."

She thought about that for a moment, wondering when Sam had gotten so good at analyzing her. "Maybe."

"Not maybe; it's true."

"It was different for me, Sam. Growing up, you and Tessa had each other for support. I didn't have anyone."

"You had friends."

"I didn't have a relationship like the one you and Tessa had. What was it about her that made you want to be with her every second of the day?"

He thought about her question for a moment. "Tessa was an incredible storyteller," he said finally. "We'd sit for hours in the treehouse and Tessa would talk about climbing the Pyramids and shooting the rapids and coming face-to-face with wild tigers in the jungles of Africa."

"Like any of that would actually come true," Alli said scornfully.

"It didn't matter. The story was enough."

"Did you really want to do all those things—shoot rapids, hunt tigers?"

"At thirteen, yeah. But there was one thing Tessa wasn't good at—"

"You mean there was one thing? I'm in shock. Catch me if I faint."

"Tessa never figured out how we were actually going to get to the African jungle, especially since at the time we didn't even have a driver's license." He laughed at some memory that was not hers, and it hurt. But Alli couldn't let him see that, because then he'd stop talking, and she needed him to talk, she needed to understand why he loved Tessa so much.

"You could still do it, Sam. You and Tessa could travel around the world, see all those things that you never got to see."

"And what about you? What about Megan?" His eyes grew more serious as he looked at her. "Wouldn't you miss me? We've been together for nine years. And they weren't all bad. Is it really so easy to send me away, Alli?"

His words created a lump in her throat that she had trouble swallowing. "Of course we would miss you, Sam, but…" She didn't know what he was asking really. Did he want her to ask him to stay, to walk away from Tessa?

She'd already forced that decision on him once before, and she couldn't do it again, especially now, since he'd reminded her of the past, of all the hours he and Tessa had spent in the treehouse with the flashlight and the telescope.

Alli had seen their first kiss. She'd heard their first fight. She'd watched them fall in love. And she'd broken them up. It was time to do the right thing, set Sam free.

"Alli?"

"What?"

"Look at the seagulls."

She watched a group of gulls dance off the water in search of food only to soar high into the sky as the boat drew closer to them.

"Beautiful," she murmured. "Absolutely free. I'd forgotten how fun this is, to sail into the wind, feel the mist on your face, breathe in the fresh air. It's invigorating."

"It's spectacular," Sam said. "Out here, everything is so simple. Why do we have to complicate things?"

"Because we're human, and we need more than the seagulls to be happy." She paused. "You know what you said about Tessa teaching you how to dream? Well, since I spent most of my time standing on the ground beneath that damn treehouse, I always had to look up to see anything, and when I looked up, I saw you." Her eyes grew watery. "You were my dream, Sam. I wanted so badly to be yours."

"Come here." He held out his hand to her.

Alli hesitated, then walked over and let him slide his arm around her waist as he encouraged her to put her hands on the wheel.

"You can drive," he said.

"Since when?" she asked, feeling the power of the boat under her fingers.

"Since now. Besides, there's nothing around for you to crash into."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

He rested his chin on her head, his hands firm on her waist as she steered the boat. "Sometimes you need to forget everything, Alli—where you've been, where you're going, what you want, what you think you want. Sometimes you just have to be in the moment, or the moment passes you by."

"I think that's how we made Megan," she said dryly.

"And since then you've been trying to take it all back. But you can't. I came to accept the fact that you were never going away, Alli."

"Hey," she protested, but his teasing laugh prevented any further protest.

"And you need to accept the fact that we can't change the past. Just stop and feel the sun on your face and the breeze in your hair and let everything else go. Be as free as those seagulls."

She turned her head, his face so close to hers. "Is that why you spend so much time out here, so you can feel free, so you can forget everything?"

He stared at her for a long time, so long she had to stop herself from fidgeting, force herself to not look away, because she really wanted to hear his answer.

"I used to come out here to forget. Lately, I've been trying to remember." Then he smiled his special smile … and Alli remembered how much she loved him.

* * *

"You'll remember how to do it as soon as you get on," Jimmy said, holding the two-seater bicycle steady as Tessa eyed it with distrust.

"Tell me again why I want to do this."

"Because it will be fun. Because it's here, and we're here, and what the hell."

"It's amazing how complex your thoughts are," Tessa said sarcastically.

Jimmy laughed, feeling better than he had in weeks. He'd missed Tessa, missed the way she didn't take crap from him, saw through all the bullshit and yet still remained one of the most beautiful, desirable women he'd ever met—and he'd met plenty in his career as a fashion photographer. In fact, after his first few years of sexual indulgence, he'd become vaccinated against the superthin, superbeautiful, superbitchy women who only wanted him because he made them look better than anyone else.

Behind the camera, he had all the power, and he'd used it unashamedly for a long, long time. But Tessa, Tessa was different. There had always been a vulnerability to her, a privacy, a secret side that even his camera had yet to unveil. Now, seeing her here in her hometown, he was beginning to believe she was nothing like the woman most people thought they knew.

Tessa straddled the bike, her short dress hitched up to mid-thigh. "I think I should be wearing jeans for this," she said. "I might stop traffic."

"Good. That will save me from running the lights."

"Maybe I should be in the front. Can I trust you to steer?"

"I don't know, can I trust you to pedal?"