Right Place, Wrong Time (7 page)

“Actually…” Kim slid closer to Gina on the bench.
She glanced sidewise, then focused once more on Ethan and Alicia, down near the rock, deeply engrossed in their conversation. Gina couldn’t count on them to rescue her as Kim struck an intimate pose. “I should apologize for the way I’ve been behaving.”

Gina agreed; Kim should apologize. But she didn’t want to have to listen while the beautiful blond woman bared her soul and sought forgiveness.

Kim was going to make her listen anyway. “It wasn’t just the shopping. I was hoping this trip would be a chance for Ethan to bond with my parents, to bring us all together as a family. And when you and your niece refused to move out of the time-share, well, that dream went splat. Know what I mean?”

“Sure.” Gina’s dream of having a peaceful week in the tropics with Alicia had gone splat, too.

“My parents are wonderful people. I want Ethan to love them as much as I do. I thought it would be so perfect, the four of us living together in Paul’s condo, cementing the relationship.”

Gina shrugged, her gaze drifting back to Alicia and Ethan huddling near the rock. The sun must have dried his hair, which looked tawny, shot through with red highlights in the afternoon light. If he’d been boring Alicia with his lecture on iguanas, she’d have let him know. But she was clearly enthralled by what he was telling her, nodding at regular intervals. Maybe living in Paul’s—correction, in
Carole’s
—time-share had cemented the relationship between Ethan and Alicia.

No, of course it hadn’t. There was no relationship, other than whatever existed between strangers brought together by a disaster. And perhaps a shared love of snorkeling. Or iguanas.

Still, Kim seemed determined to make amends. “So
when our plans didn’t work out the way I’d hoped, I blamed you and your niece. I realize it’s not your fault. Well, it is, in a way, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that I didn’t behave well, and I’m sorry.”

“Forget about it,” Gina said, wishing
she
could forget about it. Across the beach, Alicia clamped her hand around Ethan’s sun-bronzed forearm and said something to him. Gina would bet his skin was warm, his bones thick and hard beneath firm muscles. Alicia shouldn’t be touching him—it struck Gina as much too personal—but she was seven years old and didn’t know better. And Ethan, kind soul, didn’t pull his arm away.

If Kim noticed Alicia’s forwardness, she didn’t comment on it. Gina wasn’t sure why she was so aware of that touch. Her family were touchers. Her mother, in particular, used her hands to talk and loved touching whomever she was talking to, as if the words were being imparted through her fingers as well as her mouth. Gina and her sister, Ramona, had picked up that habit, although they were not as bad as their mother, and Alicia was Ramona’s daughter, so she, too, must have inherited the touching gene. Gina would have to explain to her that it wasn’t a good idea to touch someone unless you felt really comfortable with him and you sensed he wouldn’t mind—although it appeared that Ethan didn’t mind. He just kept talking to Alicia, pointing out parts of the iguana with his free hand while the leathery green monster sunned itself on the rock. Maybe Ethan was so glad to have a willing audience for his habitat lecture that he’d endure a few minutes of Morante touching.

Then again, perhaps the reason Gina was so fixated by Alicia’s touching him was that he was Ethan, a tall, athletic, undeniably sexy guy. Kim’s guy, yes, but even with his swimsuit dried out and no longer clinging to
his butt, he had a magnificent body. Maybe some small part of her wished
she
could put her hand on his forearm, or his shoulder, or the taut surface of his chest.

Not that she would. Not that her awareness of him as a man would play into her life in any significant way. Under Gina’s moral code, messing with another woman’s man was a major, major sin—which was why she hated the lady her brother-in-law was having an affair with as much as she hated her brother-in-law.

“So have you set a date yet?” she asked Kim, partly because Kim had been nice enough to apologize for acting so bitchy toward her and Alicia and partly because she needed to establish clearly in her mind the fact that Ethan and Kim were a couple—and if Ethan had chosen a woman like Kim, he would never have had any interest in a woman like Gina, anyway. She and Kim were practically polar opposites, after all. Kim was refined; Gina had grown up in the Bronx. Kim was a gorgeous blonde; Gina’s best feature was her feet. Kim read books on gemstones; Gina read books with sex in them. She’d bet
A Buyer’s Guide to Diamonds
didn’t have a single sex scene in it. If Ethan’s taste in women ran to specimens like Kim, he’d probably think having his forearm touched by someone like Gina would be on par with having his forearm touched by his grandmother, or maybe the nurse taking his blood pressure at his annual physical.

“Not yet,” Kim said. “I’d hoped that this week we could start working out all the details for our wedding.”

“Just because Ali and I are sharing the condo with you doesn’t mean you can’t work it out. We’re doing our best to stay out of your way.”

Kim didn’t thank her for that, although Gina felt a little gratitude would be appropriate. “Well, I’d hoped
my parents would be able to participate in the discussion. But they’re off playing golf, and Ethan and I are here. If they were staying with us, we’d have that much more time to talk about what kind of ceremony we wanted and where to hold the reception. And setting the date, too, of course.”

If and when Gina got married, she wouldn’t want her parents in on the discussion. Tony and Rosa Morante were wonderful people, arguably among the greatest parents in the world, but Gina had no intention of letting them plan her wedding for her. She’d always figured she and the lucky guy would present everything as a fait accompli to her parents: “Hi, folks, this is Ethan, and we’re getting married at St. Anthony’s the third Saturday in May, and afterward we’ll host a dinner party at Rossini’s in Riverdale.” Or, “Hi, folks, this is Ethan, and we’re going to have a nice civil ceremony followed by champagne and cake at the Botanical Gardens.” Of course, his name wouldn’t be Ethan, but just for example. Her parents would be fine with that, also. They’d planned Ramona’s wedding with her as if they were five-star generals plotting a critical military campaign. No detail had been too small, from the centerpieces to the color of Ramona’s garter, from the boutonnieres to the sueded upholstery in the bridal limousine. And ten years after all that meticulous planning, Jack Bari, the son of a bitch, was having an affair.

“Are you involved with someone?” Kim asked.

Did she want to be Gina’s confidante, or was she just trying to make conversation? Gina tried to shake off her resistance to Kim. The poor woman was miles from home, in a bizarre housing arrangement with her fiancé and two total strangers. True, her parents were at a hotel
just down the road, but maybe Kim needed someone her own age to pal around with.

Gina wasn’t going to pal around with her if it meant they had to go shopping. But she could force herself to be sociable. It would make the bizarre housing arrangement a bit easier. “I broke up with a guy six months ago,” she said.

“Men,” Kim said, sighing profoundly. “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”

Actually, Gina could do both just fine. But she gave Kim a sisterly nod.

At long last, the intrepid lizard observers abandoned the rock and returned to the picnic table. Gina’s spirits lifted as Alicia raced over to her. “Ethan knows everything,” she reported, her voice charged with excitement and awe. “He told me all about how iguanas lay eggs and how if their tail falls off they can grow another one.”

Gina hoped the laying-eggs part of his lesson hadn’t been too graphic. “Lucky animals. If I lost my tail, I’d want to grow a second one.”

“You don’t have a tail,” Alicia pointed out, giving Gina another of her don’t-be-silly looks, which dissolved into a giggle. “Can we go snorkeling now?”

“Absolutely. Fish, here we come!” Gina said, grateful to Alicia for rescuing her from having to indulge in girl talk with Kim. She reached for Alicia’s mask and slid the strap over the little girl’s head. Then she grabbed her own mask.

“Fish, here we come!” Alicia cheered, lifting her flippers and charging toward the water.

A
NOTHER EXCRUTIATING
dinner, this time at the hotel where Kim’s parents were staying. The restaurant was nice enough—elegant and expensive, just the way the Hamiltons liked it—and the wine list was large enough for Ross Hamilton to pontificate on its strengths and weaknesses. He also pontificated on the inferior quality of the golf clubs he’d had to rent that day, the absence of morality in the films Hollywood was currently churning out and the extremism of environmentalists who panicked about the melting of the polar ice caps.

Ethan suspected Ross had raised that final subject solely to bait him. The old man knew Ethan’s work for the Gage Foundation involved funding projects designed to protect and improve the environment. He was saying provocative things to test Ethan. Ethan didn’t feel like being tested.

He drank his wine, ate his grilled conch and told Ross Hamilton that global warming was a significant problem, and that when—not if, but when—the polar ice caps started melting, the planet would be drastically altered. Ross pointed out that by the time the problem became significant, he would be dead, so it was hard for him to care about the threat. Ethan suggested that he might show some concern for the world his grandchildren would inherit, and Delia Hamilton let out a delighted
cry, beaming her approval at Ethan and Kim at the mention of potential grandchildren.

Three hours of Ross lecturing, Delia glowing and Kim sending him warning looks that he chose to ignore did not constitute a pleasant dinner. He’d had a hell of a lot more fun discussing iguanas with Ali the Alley Cat that afternoon.

On the drive home, Kim said, “We have to talk.”

“All right,” he agreed, aware that no matter how much her parents annoyed him, he owed them a modicum of respect, if only because he’d been dating their daughter for the past six months. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have enumerated the flaws in your father’s reasoning on global warming. But he was saying those things because he wanted a reaction. I gave him the reaction he wanted.”

“That’s not what we have to talk about. Look out,” she added, pointing to a goat ambling along the side of the road. The goats of St. Thomas weren’t as visible after the sun set, especially because Ethan was still in the habit of checking the right and not the left shoulder of the road.

“I see it.” He swerved slightly to avoid the goat.

“We have to talk about why we’re not having sex,” Kim announced.

Wonderful. That was exactly what Ethan wanted to talk about after a painful evening with her insufferable parents.

“If it’s because those people are sharing the apartment—Gina and the little girl—”

“No, it’s not.” He shot Kim a glance. She looked skeptical, but he was being honest. And he might as well continue being honest. “Kim, we planned this vacation
in part so we could get away from all the demands of our jobs and just be together. Right?”

“Well, don’t blame me that you spent yesterday at the beach alone instead of with me.”

“That’s just it,” he said, not bothering to tell her that he hadn’t been alone at the beach. He’d been with Gina and Alicia, building the Brooklyn Bridge out of sand. But there was a limit to how much honesty Kim needed. “You wanted to go shopping yesterday. You wanted to go shopping again today, but I twisted your arm and you came snorkeling with me, instead. If I hadn’t insisted, you would have gone shopping.”

“I would have gone golfing with my parents—and
then
shopping,” she corrected him. “But I compromised for you, Ethan. I went snorkeling because you wanted to. I met you more than halfway.”

“It shouldn’t have to be a compromise,” he tried to explain. “It’s not that I expect us to do every single thing together. But when we come to a place like St. Thomas, with some of the most spectacular snorkeling in the world—”

“
And
spectacular shopping,” she reminded him. “Plus, my dad said the golf course was good, even if the rental clubs weren’t.”

“The thing is, you and I want to do different things. It’s like a big deal for one of us to do what the other one wants. A noble compromise. Maybe we just don’t share many interests.”

Kim reflected on that possibility for a bit. “We don’t have this problem back in Connecticut,” she noted.

“Back in Connecticut, we both work long days. If we get together after work, we eat dinner and zone out in front of the TV, or review work that we brought home from our offices. Then we go to sleep, because we’re
exhausted. It’s not as if we share that many activities at home, either.”

“I always thought one of the interests we shared was sex,” she said.

True enough. But this trip was supposed to be about more than sex. It was supposed to be about peering into the future and finding out if that future might include a Kim-and-Ethan lifetime commitment. He’d been peering since he and Kim had met her parents at the airport in Atlanta, and he just didn’t see a lifetime commitment with her up ahead. And without a commitment, sex would just be sex. Which he wasn’t opposed to, but he and Kim couldn’t go back to that, not after she’d been browsing through the jewelry shops of Charlotte Amalie in search of duty-free diamond solitaires.

“The thing is, my parents aren’t staying at the apartment with us. We maneuvered things so we could share a bed. I think we’re wasting a major opportunity here.”

The opportunity couldn’t be all that major if it didn’t tempt him. “Look, Kim—I’m sorry,” he said. This time the apology came from his heart. He turned onto Palm Point’s entry drive and navigated carefully over the speed bumps, weighing each word as he steered along the narrow driveway. “I’ve got a lot on my mind. I know it’s not fair to you, but right now I need to think some things over.”

“In other words, we’re not going to have sex tonight, either.”

He sighed, wishing she hadn’t reduced their situation to such a primitive level. But if she thought the only problem between them was that they weren’t having sex, then the real problems between them were clearly enormous. “No,” he said quietly. “We’re not going to have sex tonight.”

“Great,” she grunted, offering a pretty little pout. “Fine, Ethan. You want to think some things over? Be my guest.” She barely waited for him to stop the car at Building Six before shoving open her door and leaping out.

He locked up the car and followed her inside. She was truly gorgeous, all elegant curves and delicate features. Yet he felt nothing when he looked at her—not resentment, not anger, not frustration. Definitely not lust. Not tonight.

The only light in the condo came from the recessed ceiling spotlight in the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Gina and Alicia’s door was closed, and as soon as Kim entered the master bedroom, she closed the door, too. Was she expecting Ethan to sleep on the couch? Forget that. If she didn’t want to share a bed with him,
she
could sleep on the couch.

He stared at the closed door for a minute, then stalked through the living room toward the kitchen, deciding to do his thinking on the terrace, armed with a cold beer. Halfway to the kitchen he paused, aware of a silhouette on the terrace, visible through the sliding-glass doors. He moved closer and realized Gina was sitting on one of the molded plastic chairs, staring out at the beach and the ocean beyond it, and the night-dark sky above.

He should have been annoyed by the realization that women were occupying every decent think-things-over locale in the condo. But far from annoyed, he felt a twinge of anticipation. He could think things over in Gina’s company if he had to. Maybe he could even talk to her in a way he couldn’t talk to Kim. If his buddy Paul were around, Ethan could bounce his thoughts off him. But here in St. Thomas, miles from home, he was friendless.

Perhaps Gina could be a friend.

He continued to the kitchen and pulled two beers out of the fridge.

A
COOL
, constant breeze rose off the water and drifted up to the balcony, soothing Gina as effectively as a full-body massage. She had tucked Alicia into bed a while ago, told her a story about a fish that owned magical reverse-snorkel gear that enabled it to swim in the air, and sat with her until she fell asleep. But it was only ten, and Gina wasn’t ready to go to sleep herself yet. She was physically tired but mentally wide-awake.

So she’d settled herself on the balcony. She didn’t need a book or a TV show to entertain her. The velvety night sky, lit with stars and a hazy half-moon, and the rhythmic whisper of the wind through the palms, and the salty-sweet smell of the sea were better than any sitcom or HBO movie.

St. Thomas was glorious. Compared with New York it was so peaceful, so tranquil. No car horns, no crazy people shouting on street corners or sitting on stoops and bickering, no buses rumbling down Seventh Avenue or delivery guys on bicycles zipping along the sidewalk, scattering the pedestrians. No sour smells of auto exhaust, no gusts of searing heat blasting up through the subway vents, no flattened cigarette butts and scraps of trash lining the sidewalks. She loved the city, loved its noise and energy and humanity—but man, she’d developed a whopping crush on this serene tropical island.

She leaned back in her chair and propped her bare feet up on the terrace railing. The wind ruffled her hair and she sighed contentedly. No heartbroken sister in St. Thomas, she thought. No schmuck of a brother-in-law.
No infidelity, no divorce. That whole mess was a thousand miles away.

She recalled Alicia’s innocent question their first evening here: “Can we stay forever?” If only.

She heard the rattle of a door behind her, a squeak as it slid open. So much for peace and tranquillity, she thought, bracing herself for the invasion of Ethan and Kim. Glancing over her shoulder, however, she saw that Ethan was alone.

Well, not technically. He was accompanied by two bottles of beer, one of which he extended toward her. “Mind if I join you?” he asked.

She didn’t have the right to mind. The terrace, like the rest of the condo, was shared territory. But since he’d come bearing the gift of beer, and he had such an endearingly tentative smile, and his hair looked so soft as the breeze fluttered through it…“Make yourself comfortable,” she said, gesturing toward the chair beside her.

Ethan lowered himself into the chair and handed her the bottle, which was icy, fresh from the refrigerator. He had on khakis and an oxford shirt that was far too crisp and formal for vacation attire; his initials were monogrammed above one of the cuffs. He set his own bottle on the floor, freeing both hands so he could roll up his sleeves. Then he kicked his feet up next to hers. He had on preppy leather deck shoes without socks. Nice ankles, she observed before steering her gaze back to the black water below.

“Is Alicia asleep?” he asked.

“Probably on her second dream by now.” Gina took a sip of beer, determined to accept Ethan’s presence casually, as if she actually knew him. With his sleeves cuffed up to his elbows, she noticed that his wrists were
as nice as his ankles. His skin looked tan in the moonlight, the hairs on his forearms glittering in coppery strands in the misty light of the moon. A thin gold watch circled his left wrist and his fingernails were clean and square. She remembered how Alicia had touched his arm that afternoon when he’d been teaching her about iguanas, and how Gina had wished she could touch his arm, too.

Just a playful fantasy, she assured herself, just her imagination having a little fun. He was Kim’s fiancé. She would never touch any part of him.

“Where’s Kim?” she asked, more to shut down her fun-loving imagination than because she actually wanted to know.

“She’s having a snit,” he said, as nonchalantly as if they were old friends who shared confidences all the time.

If he could act as if they were old friends, she could, too. “Did she lock you out?”

He shrugged and took a sip of beer, apparently unperturbed about the whole thing. “I haven’t tried the doorknob yet. Alicia won’t freak out if she finds me sleeping on the couch tomorrow morning, will she?”

“Alicia’s cool. She won’t care.”

“She
is
cool.” He ran his thumb along the edge of the label on the bottle. Long thumbs, she noted. Long tanned fingers. That he and Kim were having a quarrel shouldn’t free Gina to be so conscious of his strong, graceful hands, but she couldn’t help herself. She was only human, and he was one hell of a good-looking guy.

“You think my niece is cool?” Keeping a seven-year-old girl at the center of their conversation was an effective way to steer her mind away from Ethan’s sex appeal.

“I think…” He let out a breath. “Never mind. It’s none of my business.”

“What?”

Ethan studied Gina for a long moment. She resolutely stared at the water and tried to ignore the fact that he was scrutinizing her. Finally he spoke. “She mentioned something about her father.”

Gina’s breath caught. She turned to him, wary. “What did she say?”

“He has a girlfriend?” Ethan asked rather than stated it.

Gina swore under her breath, then sank lower in her chair. “Yeah. The asshole. Ali’s parents are separated. Things are pretty screwed up at home, so I thought I’d take her away from all that for a week.”

“Poor kid.” He sounded genuinely sympathetic. “I don’t know much about children, but…it must be hard on her.”

“That’s an understatement.” Gina sipped some beer, letting the sour bubbles dance across her tongue. “Thanks for being so patient with her today, talking to her about that ugly green lizard.”

“Iguanas aren’t ugly.”

“Yeah, right.”

“They probably think human beings are ugly.”

“Then they’re ugly and blind,” she said.

He laughed. For someone destined to sleep on the living-room sofa instead of with his girlfriend, he was in a pretty good mood.

“Kim said you work for some environmental organization.”

“The Gage Foundation,” he told her.

“I’ve never heard of it. What does it do?”

“It’s a charitable trust set up by the Gage family fif
teen years ago,” he explained. “Back in the nineteenth century, the Gages ran fabric mills throughout Connecticut. They made a fortune but polluted a few rivers. Their descendants decided to create an endowment to redeem their tainted souls by protecting the environment. I’m the foundation’s executive director.”