Right Place, Wrong Time (8 page)

“So you—what? Give money to do-gooders?”

“I evaluate applications, monitor the investments and, yes, fund do-gooders.” He swallowed some beer and sighed. He seemed so relaxed Gina couldn’t help but relax, too. “How about you?” he asked. “What do you do in the real world?”

“I design shoes.”

He shot her a look, then laughed. “Really?”

“Someone’s got to do it.”

“I guess.” His gaze strayed to her feet, her toes curled around the wrought-iron rail. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but…has anyone ever told you you’ve got beautiful feet?”

It was her turn to laugh. “Oh, yeah, a few people have told me that. I worked my way through college as a foot model.”

“A foot model?”

“Modeling shoes, mostly, for magazines and catalogs. Sometimes modeling stockings, sometimes foot-care products, but mostly shoes. My feet are a perfect size five and a half B, which is kind of weird since I’m taller than average. Most women my height would wear around a size eight or nine. But I’ve got a real tiny base. It’s amazing I don’t fall over.”

He grinned, his gaze lingering on her feet. “It’s not just that your feet are small,” he explained. “They’re shaped so perfectly.”

“And they aren’t bony, and I don’t have veins show
ing through the skin. Body-part models have to fit really restrictive specs. But the pay wasn’t bad, and it was nothing like full-body modeling, you know, where eating a cookie or sprouting a zit might cost you a booking. There isn’t a huge demand for foot modeling, but it was enough to keep me in peanut butter and pizza.”

“So, you went from foot modeling to shoe designing?”

“More or less.” Crickets hummed in the shrubs beneath the terrace, and as the mist cleared, the moon’s reflection spread across the water like a spill of silver. “I majored in fabric design in college. It was an art school,” she answered the question glinting in his eyes. “Rhode Island School of Design. I thought I wanted to be a painter, but then I got sidetracked into patterning and fabric stuff. After that, I went back to New York, did more foot modeling and trekked around to designers with my portfolio. I got a job offer to design bed linens, but it was down in North Carolina and I didn’t want to leave New York. And in the meantime, I always had to take care of my feet, keep the skin smooth and callus-free, avoid stubbing my toes, the pedicures, the whole thing. When you’re that conscious of your feet, you become conscious of your shoes. There are an awful lot of really uncomfortable shoes being designed and produced. Anyway, I was doing some modeling for Bruno Castiglio, who designs shoes—you’ve probably never heard of him, but he’s a pretty big name in the shoe world—and I talked my way into a designer position with his company. This can’t possibly be interesting to you,” she concluded, realizing she was talking way too much about herself.

“I’m fascinated,” Ethan said.

She turned to him and found not a hint of sarcasm or
boredom in his expression. His gaze wandered back and forth between her face and her feet. She wondered if he approached everything so intently—iguanas, the environment, Gina’s insteps. But he didn’t approach his relationship with Kim intently. He seemed pretty lackadaisical about that.

“It’s none of my business,” she began, “but—”

“I’ve already said things that were none of my business,” he reminded her. “You owe me one.”

“Well, just that if you’re going to marry Kim, you really ought to learn how to kiss and make up after an argument. I mean, locking each other out of the bedroom doesn’t seem…I don’t know.” It really was none of her business, just as her sister and brother-in-law were none of his business. But she’d hate to think of Ethan and Kim having a child someday, and then indulging in knock-down-drag-outs while the child got so tense she lost her appetite the way Alicia had last spring. Parents simply shouldn’t do that to their children.

“I don’t believe I’m going to marry Kim,” he said, then drank some beer.

The plot thickens
, Gina thought. “She told me you two were engaged.”

“Well, we haven’t…” He exhaled. “She assumed we came down here to plan our marriage. I assumed we came down here to see if we had what it takes. I don’t think we do.”

“You’d better clue her in.” Gina felt a twinge of sisterly loyalty. Men who kept women in the dark about their intentions lost points in her book.

He nodded. “What’s you opinion, Gina? Should I tell her now, when we’ve still got four days left in our vacation? Or should I wait until we’re heading for home?”

“If you tell her now, you’ll ruin the vacation,” she
pointed out. “On the other hand, dishonesty isn’t a good policy.”

“Still, her parents are here. If I break up with her, her father might come after me with a golf club.”

“He’s probably already pissed because he had to pay for a hotel room.”

“Yeah. Although his wife was pleased about that. She likes room service.” He gazed out at the water. “They say women turn into their mothers. I wonder if in twenty-five years Kim will be demanding room service.”

“If you want to find out, you’re going to have to marry her.” Gina sipped her beer, the cool curve of the bottle pressing against her lower lip. “But I don’t think that’s true—that women turn into their mothers. Some, maybe, but there’s no guarantee. I haven’t turned into my mother—who happens to be a really terrific lady—but I’m not going to turn into her.”

“How are you different from her?”

“By the time she was my age, she’d been married six years and had three kids—me and Ramona and my brother, Bobby. Her whole life was running loads of laundry, cooking, dragging us kids off to church and sitting around the kitchen table with her girlfriends, gossiping and drinking lemonade. She loved that life, never felt her horizons were limited, never missed the nightlife. All she ever wanted was to make a good home for my dad and us kids, and she did. I’d go crazy if I had to live that kind of life, but it was right for her.”

“But now, with her kids grown and gone, doesn’t she want more?”

“No. She and my dad still live in the row house I grew up in. She still cooks for him and goes to church and gossips with her friends. Of course, she’s a grandma
now. That’s as much fun as being an aunt. Maybe even more fun.”

“Alicia is your sister’s child?”

“Right.”

“Does your brother have any kids?”

She shook her head. “Bobby is the baby of the family. He’s twenty-four, a New York City cop and a devout bachelor.”

“A cop? Wow.” He looked impressed. “That’s dangerous work.”

“Yeah, I guess.” She chuckled. Bobby was hardly the fearless macho type. He was an energetic guy, funny and talkative, a toucher like Ramona and Gina and their mother. “He walks a beat, does a lot of community outreach, gets homeless people into shelters and picks up shoplifters. About the most dangerous part of his job is all the women throwing themselves at him. Women seem to think cops are heroic studs. Especially when they’re young and have a few dimples.”

“I don’t know about the stud part, but they are heroic,” Ethan argued, his eyes remaining on her. “How about you? Are you a devout bachelorette with men throwing themselves at you?”

She snorted. “The only thing I’m devout about is being Ali’s aunt. As for men throwing themselves at me, sure, it happens all the time. Sometimes there are so many I have to beat them back with a stick.”

His smile lingered, but he didn’t laugh. “I’m not surprised.”

That he took her seriously was flattering, but it also made her uncomfortable. Never in her life had she been forced to beat men back with a stick. “There are a lot of foot fetishists in the world,” she joked, figuring a little humor would remove the strain she was suddenly
feeling as he continued to study her. “Lucky for me I’ve got a cop in the family if I need protection from the weirdos.”

He shifted his gaze to her feet once more, and she wondered if he was a foot fetishist. Doubtful. He seemed too straight-arrow for anything that kinky. She couldn’t even picture him slumming at the downtown clubs she liked to go to with her friends, or shopping in the vintage clothing boutiques, or sitting in a café until 4:00 a.m., sipping iced chai with vodka and arguing over whether punk music would see a resurgence before the end of the decade.

Sucking on a woman’s toes? No way. Not Ethan.

Which was fine with her. If a man ever sucked on her toes, she’d kick him in the teeth. She wanted her kisses where they’d have the greatest impact—her mouth, her face, her breasts, her…Well, never mind. She shouldn’t be thinking about such things while sitting next to another woman’s fiancé, even if the lovebirds were feuding.

“So, you’re a devout aunt,” he said. “What does that mean? You worship your niece?”

“I don’t worship her, but I spoil her rotten,” Gina said, aware of the boastful lilt in her voice.

“She doesn’t seem rotten to me.”

“I guess I’m not spoiling her enough.”

He chuckled, then tilted his chair back, balancing it on its two rear legs. “She’s going to remember this week for the rest of her life.”

“So will I,” Gina said. A fresh breeze washed over her, fragrant with the perfume of the tropical flowers blooming in beds along the walkways below. She would never forget that smell, and the balmy air, and the moonlight draped over the water. She’d never forget the fish
at Coki Beach, and the hot, powdery sand, and the iguana, who was grotesquely ugly no matter what Ethan said. She’d never forget the feel of Alicia’s small, soft hand in hers, and the infectious music of her laughter as she scampered across the beach.

Gina suspected that she would also never forget this handsome, quiet man who was so easy to talk to, even though once their vacations were over he would go back to his life, with or without Kim, and Gina would go back to hers, and they’d never see each other again. This week, this night, this conversation, this unexpected closeness would be nothing more substantial than a dreamy memory—but it would stay with her forever.

K
IM HADN’T LOCKED
the door. In truth, Ethan would have been surprised if she had. Barring him from the bedroom would have been too public. No matter how angry she was, she’d never want Gina and Alicia—two veritable strangers—to discover him asleep on the living-room sofa the next morning, because then they’d know he and Kim were on the outs. Kim felt very strongly about maintaining appearances and convincing everyone that her life was just peachy-keen.

Ethan was grateful she’d left the door unlocked for him, if only because convertible couches were rarely as comfortable as beds. He managed to slide under the covers without waking her. The glowing red digits of the alarm clock on the night table indicated that midnight had come and gone a few minutes ago, and after all the snorkeling he’d done during the day, he ought to have been exhausted. But sleep eluded him. He couldn’t get his mind to settle down.

Why was it so easy to talk to Gina? For hours, he’d sat with her on the deck, enjoying the sea breeze and the conversation. He’d learned that her mother was Italian, her father’s family from the Azores, “but he converted to Italian when he married my mom,” Gina had joked. Her father owned a hardware store, and she’d grown up somewhere between working class and middle class. She didn’t have much time to paint anymore—or
much room, given the minuscule dimensions of her studio apartment in Manhattan—but she did still play around with watercolors, which she could work with at her kitchen table or even outdoors, propping a pad on her lap. She believed Jackson Pollack was grossly overrated and Georgia O’Keeffe was a goddess. She’d never been to the northwestern part of Connecticut, where Ethan lived, but she’d traveled the coastline plenty of times, either on the interstate or by train, in her journeys to and from her art school in Rhode Island. She was twenty-eight years old and she hoped someday to live in a house or apartment big enough for a dog to share her home with her. “I like mutts,” she’d said.

He hadn’t been surprised. She seemed like a mutt-type person, the exact opposite of Kim, whose childhood pet dog, one of those breeds with long elaborate hair and a pudgy little face, had taken ribbons at regional dog shows. Ethan had seen photos of Kim’s dog and he’d thought that if dogs could talk, this one would have had a voice like Betty Boop.

Beside him Kim sighed and shifted against her pillow. Her hair spread fluid and golden around her face. At one time, just the sight of her hair would have made him hard.

Now he felt no excitement, no arousal, nothing but restlessness. He could have slept more easily sitting upright on that terrace chair, next to Gina.

A veritable stranger. An unexpected friend. A sharp, funny, utterly unselfconscious woman who loved snorkeling as much as he did and had the most beautiful feet he’d ever seen.

A
T SOME POINT
he must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes daylight was seeping under the
drawn drapes and into the bedroom. Rolling away from the window, he discovered that Kim was gone.

He glanced at the clock on the night table. Eight-fifteen.

If Kim had been given to high drama, her absence might have concerned him. But she tended to be stable and staid, and again, deeply devoted to maintaining appearances. He doubted that she would have fled to her parents’ hotel, not only because she couldn’t very well go crying to Mommy and Daddy about the lack of sex in her life but also because she’d be hesitant to drive on the left side of the road.

She was probably in the kitchen, drinking some of Gina’s coffee. Or she was sitting on the terrace, in the chair Ethan had occupied last night, and enjoying the view. Maybe Gina was out there with her, chattering away. Maybe Kim found Gina as easy to talk to as he did.

He wondered if he could persuade Kim to travel to St. John today, so they could go snorkeling at Trunk Bay Beach and see that spectacular sea life. She hadn’t been thrilled about yesterday’s snorkeling. Maybe if they swam together, had a little fun together, shared an exotic experience together, they could find their way back to, well, togetherness.

Not likely, but he really wanted to visit Trunk Bay. He heaved himself out of bed, made a halfhearted attempt to smooth the blanket and fluff the pillows and donned a pair of shorts and a polo shirt. Barefoot and rumpled, he left the bedroom and headed down the hall, following the sound of female voices and the aroma of coffee.

They were in the kitchen. Kim looked surprisingly chipper, considering that yesterday had ended with
enough hostility that he and she hadn’t even said good night to each other. She wore a peach-hued blouse-and-shorts outfit, and her hair was pinned back from her face with matching peach-colored barrettes. Alicia had on blue denim shorts and a shirt with glittery threads running through it. Gina wore white shorts and a sleeveless top. Her exquisite feet were naked except for the silver ring circling one toe.

He let his gaze slide up her body. He hadn’t looked at her face much last night, mostly because they’d been sitting side by side and staring out at the horizon, but also because he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge her unique beauty while he was in the throes of a major problem with Kim. But he looked at her now. Her features were too strong, too angular for her to be beautiful the way Kim was. Her eyes were as dark as the coffee steaming in the glass decanter, and they were too wide, too intense, too challenging.

God, he could stare into her eyes forever.

He quickly turned to Kim, who smiled blandly at him. “Good morning,” he said.

“Guess what?” Alicia blurted out, lowering her spoon into the bowl of cereal before her. “There’s this store that sells stuff that changes color in the sunlight, and we’re going there!”

“A store?”

“In Charlotte Amalie,” Kim said coolly. “We’re going shopping—Gina, Alicia and me. My mother, too.”

“We’re going to have a ladies’ day,” Alicia bragged, obviously proud to be thought of as a lady.

“Oh, so I don’t have to go? Phew!” He pretended to wipe his brow in relief at this near miss.

“No, you don’t have to go shopping,” Kim confirmed. “You’ll be playing golf with my father.”

Ethan opened his mouth to object that he didn’t play golf, he didn’t like it and he wouldn’t do it. But he held his words. If he wanted Kim to travel to Trunk Bay Beach with him, he supposed he’d have to compromise when it came to golf. Although it didn’t seem like a fair compromise, since all he was asking her to do was experience a natural phenomenon renowned for its visual splendor, while she was asking him to spend several hours hiking across crew-cut lawns, whacking a little white ball and enduring the company of her father. In the time it would take to complete an eighteen-hole round, Ross Hamilton would be able to lecture him on the glories of unfettered capitalism, the irrelevance of the hole in the ozone layer and the necessity of making Delia Hamilton happy by producing grandchildren for her. He’d also probably find a few spare minutes to discourse on Napa Valley varietals.

But Ethan wanted to snorkel at Trunk Bay. And he wanted what remained of this vacation week to go pleasantly, even though he and Kim were drifting apart. If Trunk Bay and pleasantness hinged on his playing golf with her father, he’d play golf.

The sudden ringing of the telephone jolted him, resonating painfully inside his skull, much too loud for someone who hadn’t yet had his morning coffee. “That’s probably my father now,” Kim said, “calling to find out when to reserve a time at the links.”

“Right,” Ethan grumbled, lifting the receiver from the wall unit. “Hello?”

After a brief pause, a woman’s voice came on the line: “I’m sorry, I must have the wrong number.” Not just a woman’s voice—a woman’s voice with a profound New York accent.

“Who are you trying to reach?”

“Gina Morante?” The woman asked more than stated it.

“She’s right here.” He extended the phone in Gina’s direction. “It’s for you.”

Eyebrows rising in surprise, Gina carried her mug around the table and took the receiver from Ethan. Their fingers brushed as he handed it over, a whisper of sensation that reverberated in his solar plexus—and lower. Her feet might be her most gorgeous appendages, but her hands weren’t far behind.

That he could respond so strongly to such a fleeting touch from her troubled him. Perhaps it was just as well that he’d be golfing with Ross all day. Just as long as he wasn’t with Gina, swimming with her, talking with her, doing anything that might lead to another touch. A miserable game of golf in the merciless heat, with a boring companion, might be just what he needed to get his head straightened out. Or it might leave his mind permanently warped.

Either result was better than for Ethan to spend more time with Gina, trying to think of excuses to touch her.

“H
ELLO
?” Gina said into the phone.

“Gina? Who was that man?”

“Ramona!” She recognized her sister’s voice right away. Her delight immediately transformed into wariness. Ramona wouldn’t have phoned unless something was wrong. “What’s up?” she asked carefully, not wanting to alarm Alicia, who had dropped her spoon into her cereal bowl, spraying droplets of milk across the table, and shrieked, “It’s my mommy!”

“Nothing. I just need to talk to you. Who was the man who answered the phone, Gina? Did you pick some
guy up or something? With Alicia right there, I swear to God—”

“It’s a long story,” Gina cut her off. “We’re sharing the condo.”

“Mommy!” Alicia hollered, bouncing in her chair.

“You want to talk to Ali?” Gina asked Ramona. “She definitely wants to talk to you.”

“Of course I want to talk to her. But listen, Gina, when I’m done talking to her, I need to talk to you. Privately, if you know what I mean.”

Gina did. “Sure,” she said, then gestured toward Alicia, who scrambled out of her chair. “I’ll put on Alicia first.”

“Mommy!” Alicia bellowed, grabbing the phone. “Mommy! I went snorkeling! It was so great! And I saw this iguana! It was really creepy-looking. Ethan taught me all about iguanas….”

Gina backed away from the phone and glanced at Ethan and Kim. The condo had a second phone extension in the master bedroom. Gina had as much right to use that extension as Ethan and Kim did, but it was their room—the room Ethan hadn’t even been sure Kim would let him into last night.

She’d let him in. Whatever their quarrel, they’d apparently made up. Kim had seemed cheerful enough that morning when she’d joined Gina and Alicia in the kitchen, and Ethan, while scruffy and uncombed, didn’t seem terribly upset with the state of his life. Spending the night together in the master bedroom must have led to a reconciliation.

“I need to use the extension in your room,” she whispered, hoping not to distract Alicia as she babbled into the phone about her collection of seashells and the various restaurant meals she’d consumed.

“No problem,” Kim said. Ethan agreed with a nod.

Gina nodded back, then mouthed to Alicia, “Let me know when you’re done.” After giving Alicia’s shoulder a squeeze, she strode out of the kitchen, across the living room and down the hall to the master bedroom, trying not to let Ramona’s unexpected call roil her. Her sister wouldn’t have interrupted their vacation unless she had bad news to deliver, but she’d sounded okay. And she’d said nothing was up.

She’d also said she needed to speak privately with Gina.

Something was up.

Sighing, Gina swung through the doorway into the master bedroom. The first thing she noticed was the bed, sloppily made, the blanket wrinkled—and a foot-wide gap between the two pillows, both of which looked lumpy, as if the people using them had tossed and turned.

Some reconciliation.

Gina turned away, ashamed that a peek at their bed had led her to analyze Kim and Ethan’s sex life. Whether they reconciled was none of her business.

Determined not to think about the bed, she moved toward the window. She gradually became aware of a faint, slightly flowery scent in the air. Kim’s perfume.

Although the bed wasn’t tidily made, the room was neater than hers and Alicia’s, which was strewn with shells, beach toys, the dolls and books Alicia had brought with her and an invisible dusting of sand that made the carpet feel gritty against her bare soles. Neither Ethan nor Kim appeared to be a major slob. No clothes lay draped over the furniture or heaped on the floor. The only shoes visible were a pair of elegant white leather sandals, protruding from underneath the bed. Most of the
toiletries cluttered atop the dresser and windowsill were Kim’s, not Ethan’s. Gina moved to the window—to admire the view, not to snoop, she told herself—and took note of Ethan’s things: aftershave, antiperspirant and a thick, wood-handled hairbrush with a few strands of tawny hair trapped in the bristles. Very few, she noted with satisfaction. He wasn’t going bald.

“Aunt Gina?” Alicia yelled from the kitchen. “Mommy wants to talk to you!”

“Okay, thanks!” Gina yelled back before lifting the receiver from the phone on the night table. She lowered herself to sit on the bed, then stood, then thought
the hell with it
and dropped back onto the mattress. Just because this was Ethan’s bed didn’t mean she had to remain standing while she talked to Ramona.

“I’m on,” she said into the phone.

A click signaled that Alicia had hung up the kitchen extension. “So who’s this Ethan?” Ramona asked. “That’s all Ali could talk about. Ethan went snorkeling with her. Ethan built the Brooklyn Bridge with her.”

“I told you, we have to share the condo,” Gina said, wishing Ramona would let it lie but knowing she wouldn’t. “There was a scheduling snafu. This other couple—Ethan and Kim—are in one bedroom and Alicia and I are in the other. We’re all getting along. It’s no big deal.”

“Who are they?”

“Friends of someone who owns a time-share here. Their friend told them the place was empty this week, just like Carole told me. So we all wound up here together.”

“How cozy.”

“As I said, we’re getting along. Ethan knows about iguanas and Kim knows about shopping. Ali and I are
learning a lot from them.” She decided that was all the explanation her sister needed. “Now, tell me why you called, Mo.”