Seeing Stars (5 page)

"A couple of blocks from here. I'll show you tomorrow, if you want."

"Perhaps." She wondered if Jake would be there, and what she could say to a delinquent boy... if she agreed to say anything.

"Tide's out," he said, taking her arm as they stepped onto the ramp down to the floats. "The ramp's steep for those shoes."

Her shoes were low-heeled pumps, not treacherous at all, but she let herself enjoy the sensation of walking with his arm looped through hers.

"Tell me about Jake."

"He's fourteen. Not your regular tough punk. I might know how to get to him if he were. His mother died two years ago. Breast cancer. Single mom, no other family. He got slotted into foster care. He's a quiet kid, so no one noticed when he started going off the rails. Then he got picked up for joy riding and the foster parents bailed."

"Bailed?"

"They dumped him." She felt his shrug. "Placing fourteen-year-old kids is hard enough without a court date coming up. He ended up in a group home. Not a good fit. Couple of months ago he ended up in the hospital after a drug overdose."

"How did you get involved?"

"Don dropped by one day."

"Don?"

"Don Henley. He was in our class."

"I don't remember."

Under the overhead lights, his face looked even harsher. "He sat behind you in chemistry all year. "

"I didn't talk to the other kids much."

"Yeah, but... Anyway, Don's the probation officer. He asked me if I'd take Jake on. It's been tough." 

Blake stopped in front of a tall sailing ship and she stared at its towering masts.

"Did you build this one?"

"Fortunately not." 

"Fortunately?"

"She's got toredo worms. The next one's one of mine." He drew her further along the float.

She stared at the sleek, varnished rails above a glistening white hull. Even in shadows, she could see the beauty of the carved woodwork. 

"Where do you start? Say someone walks in tomorrow morning and asks you to build a boat. What's your first step?"

"With a plan." He drew her toward the boat's bow. "The plan has to suit the owner. This fellow has a wife and two young children. They wanted the boat for vacations, but he also had a hankering to race her. So you need comfortable berths, a shower, a galley, speed." He shrugged the details away. "It's always a compromise, with a boat."

"And you have to keep the water out, or it'll sink."

"That, too," he agreed with a laugh. "That's the basis of the plan."

"What about working with a teenager? Do you start with a plan there, too?"

" Kids need a more creative approach." He urged her along the float. " You can't push it with a kid, or he'll rebel. You can never tell, at first, how it'll go. If you can get him building something, that works for some. Others respond to the water—a wild sail might bring one kid around to the place where he sees sense, another might cave in when you give him a piece of sandpaper and set him to work. If one thing doesn't work, I try another."

"And if you get desperate?"

"I talk the high school alumni association into having everyone fill out a form for the mailing list, then I steal a look at the forms, looking for someone who might tempt a brainy kid who's lost his connection to life."

She wondered how many times Don had asked Blake's help with troubled teenagers. "What were you taking at the university before you left?"

"Engineering, but I wanted to build boats, and that's what I'm doing here."

"And saving kids." She'd known nothing about him, nothing at all. "You want me to help you, but I'm way out of my league. Where would I start?"

They had been walking, slowly, but now he stopped and turned her to face him. "Thinking about it, that's where you start. Come down to the shipyard tomorrow, let me show you around. Jake might be there. Maybe not, but sometimes you get a break. If he turns up, he won't be able to resist your eyes."

She realized she was clinging to his hands and forced herself to let go, but he kept holding on to hers and she knew she was going to do this crazy thing, try to do something for a kid who terrified her before she even met him.

Playing in her mind was an even crazier idea. Jennifer's idea.

"What about my eyes, Blake?"

She saw his smile grow, masculine and dangerous. "You've got these big eyes, impossibly big, impossibly blue. I used to think it was the glasses that made them look like that, but it's not. A kid like Jake, he sees things, notices things. He'll fall for your eyes."

"Fall for?"

"If the kid gets a crush on you, it's the best thing that could happen to him. Show him a few stars with your telescope, Claire. Talk heavenly bodies and mystery, go back to your mountain and write him a letter once a month. It could work."

"You're crazy." She tugged on her hands. "Let go."

"Your hands are cold."

They weren't cold at all. They were blazing hot, tingling with fever.

She asked, "There must be a woman somewhere who'd be upset about your standing down here on the docks, holding my hands."

"It's a float, not a dock."

"What?"

"The
dock
is the space a boat occupies when it's berthed, in the water. That's why a boat on land is in dry dock. What you're standing on is a float. And no, there's no woman with a right to be upset if I hold your hands."

What did it matter if she made a fool of herself? She could leave tonight, drive away and never come back. 

"Why is there no woman?"

"I've got a shipyard to run, kids to deal with, and I suppose I never wanted to give someone else that much power over me."

It would be completely safe. He'd never want more, never ask her to sacrifice any part of her life. She had to be crazy to think he'd agree. To think she wanted him to agree.

"What about you, Claire? No husband? No boyfriend?"

"There was a man once, but he wanted me to give up my mountaintop, come down and live in the city. I'll make a deal with you about Jake."

"I'm listening."

He was watching too, though it must have been hard to see much in her face with only the overhead marina lights. She pulled her hands away. Have an affair, Jennifer had ordered, but of course it had been a joke.

She turned and walked along the float, past a powerboat with its engines running. "Why do they have the engines running?" 

"Probably charging his batteries. There's no power on this float. What's the deal?"

Her hands didn't know where to settle. She wrapped them around her waist and walked past the noisy powerboat.

"I'm staying at Discovery Bay," she said when they reached the quiet at the end of the float. There was nowhere to go now, and she felt ridiculously frightened.

If she was afraid, she didn't need to ask. If she did ask, and he said no—well, it couldn't be more than a few minutes' embarrassment, could it? She'd simply leave, never see him again.

He stood motionless, watching her. Waiting.

"I'll be here for a week." She dropped her arms because suddenly it seemed a vulnerable pose, hugging herself in front of him. "You want me to spend time with Jake. That's what this is all about? The drinks? The walk on the docks?"

"Floats. Yeah, that's what it's about. It's not a hardship. You've got gorgeous eyes."

"You like my eyes?"

"I've always liked your eyes. Jake's going to like them, too."

She thought he intended to kiss her soon, he was watching her so intensely. She fought to pull air into her lungs. Jenn couldn't have meant this, standing on the float at the edge of the ocean, the stars obscured by clouds, planning....

If she didn't ask, then she'd never know, and she'd always wonder what it would have been like. Life had been simpler, she thought wildly, when she was a teenager, when she kept her eyes on her books and didn't look up.

"Do you still have your motorcycle?"

"It hasn't been out for a while, but I've got it. Want a ride?"

Heavens, he sounded exactly the way she'd imagined, the way he'd sounded when he stopped by the side of the road ahead of her, his motorcycle pulsing between his muscular legs, and asked Lydia if she wanted a ride.

What the hell, she thought, he could only say no, and she was damned if she'd leave Port Townsend carrying a collection of leftover fantasies. 

"I do want a ride, and I want you to take me to tomorrow's dance. I— I'll do what I can for Jake if you'll romance me, the way you did Lydia in high school."

The words came tumbling out. She wasn't sure where they'd been hiding, but she couldn't seem to stop them. "I want you to sneak me away from the crowd at the dance and kiss me as if you couldn't get enough. I want a week of fantasy, flowers and motorcycle rides into the unknown, and then... then, next Friday morning, I want you to kiss me good-bye, a friendly kiss, and tell me it was the best week you ever had."

He stood frozen, a statue against the shape of the big blue boat. When he cleared his throat, if she hadn't known how unlikely it was, she would have sworn he was nervous.

"You want an affair? One week?"

"We don't have to actually—"

"Why?"

She swallowed. "I told you I had a crush on you in high school. I guess there's still..."

"Chemistry."

"If you don't want—"

"You'll work with Jake."

"I'll try."

He reached across and slid his hand into her hair. She felt his fingers tangle in the strands behind her ear, felt nerve endings where there weren't supposed to be any.

"You've got a deal," he growled. "One week." Then, ever so slowly, he drew her face toward his and settled his lips softly over her mouth.

Her body hummed with something breathless and exciting. Her lips parted, softening under his. Then he drew back, leaving her confused and incomplete.

"I think..." She wasn't thinking, she was feeling, wanting. "I can't... I have to get... get back to my car."

"I'll drive you." Was it anger in his voice? Had she offended him by making the overture? Was she supposed to wait for him to ask, the way she'd waited back in her senior year?

Ridiculous. She hadn't been
waiting
for him back then. He'd been out of the question, impossible. Too wild, too dangerous, and he'd never have looked at her back then.

But he remembered her eyes.

"I don't need a ride." She slipped her purse off her shoulder. "You paid for my drink. I'll give you—"

His hand closed over hers. "Is that what you imagined in your fantasies? Having a drink with me, paying your share?"

She laughed breathlessly, her fingers clinging to her wallet under his warm, callused hand. There must be something wrong with her lungs tonight.

His low laughter echoed over the water. "It's a mating ritual, sweetheart. Atmosphere and fantasy, and take my word for it, if you pay for your own drink it's going to mess up the fantasy. Put your wallet back."

One drink—two, actually, but she couldn't imagine the teenage Blake letting Lydia Dutch treat.

"I'll phone for a taxi to take me back to my car," she decided. "I saw a pay phone."

"Claire, I'm not going to stand down here watching you up at the road, waiting for a taxi. In any case, I can't let you drive. Discovery Bay, you said? That winding road, and you've had three drinks. I'll drive you back. That way I'll know where to pick you up tomorrow."

"For heaven's sake, I'm not drunk!" Maybe she was, just a little. Would she have asked this man to romance her if she'd been in her right mind? The motorcycle, she thought. What had happened when Lydia and Blake rode out of her sight on the motorcycle? What would happen when she climbed up behind Blake?

What if he kissed her again? Really kissed her?

"Come on, Claire." There was no hint of seduction in the way his hand gripped her arm as he led her back to the truck. He was remarkably casual for a man who had just agreed to have an affair with her.

When they got to the top of the ramp, she wanted to tell him to drive her to Manresa Castle, to her own car, but almost thirty-one years of following the rules wouldn't let her.

"You're right. I'd better not drive."

She didn't want to talk, either, and when he put the truck in motion she let her head fall against the headrest and closed her eyes.

Mac drove in silence, too aware of Claire sitting beside him, her closed eyes and her soft breathing. She didn't talk all the way to the Highway 101 turnoff, although he knew she hadn't fallen asleep.

What the hell was a guy supposed to do when a woman stared up at him with eyes he could drown in, and then asked him to spend the next seven days romancing her?

If he had any sense, he'd have bolted the moment he saw her at the reunion. She'd learned to use makeup since high school, turning her eyes even bigger, deeper, more dangerous than they'd been fifteen years ago. And that golden waterfall of her hair begged a man to tangle his hands in it. Add one blue dress that pretended not to cling, but hinted at female curves whenever she moved, and she'd had every unattached male in the place panting after her.

She hadn't a clue, not a bloody clue, asking for a week of his time—his lust—as if it were some kind of damned favor! He'd wanted to shake her, to kiss her—really kiss her, not the brief brush of lips he'd allowed himself.