Sound of the Tide (2 page)

C
RAZY FOR
Y
OU

September

I
quickly closed the door behind me, but the wind had already blown the first of the season’s colorful leaves into the house. Laughing, I leaned against the wood and, using my fingers, tried to get my dark curls under control. In the fall, the gusts of wind were much stronger here in Mellos Cove, which is on an exposed part of the shore, than in Blue Hill, the small and more sheltered fishing town below. I would need to get used to that—or consider a shorter hairstyle.

Shaking my head, I fished a golden-red maple leaf from my hair and twirled it between my fingers. Fall had arrived in Mellos Cove, but I hoped the cold weather would wait awhile to get here. At least long enough for us to fix the furnace. I placed the leaf on the table, put down my purse, and pulled the rain poncho over my head.

I took a minute to admire the progress we had made. The brand-new hardwood floors had been freshly treated, and almost all the newly installed white colonial-style windows had been covered with plastic drop cloths. Soon everything would be ready for a first coat of paint.

The smell of fresh paint and an off-key snippet of some popular Madonna song drifted down to me from the upper level. I couldn’t help but smile and started climbing the freshly sanded steps, following the sound of Daniel’s awful howls.

His voice echoed through the empty house, and I pressed my hand against my mouth to stop myself from bursting out laughing.

Daniel was amazing. There was nothing—well, almost nothing—he couldn’t master. He played basketball and football for his firehouse team. His job as a firefighter demanded physical fitness and a lot of skill and dexterity, and there was hardly a sport he wasn’t good at. His cooking skills were better than mine, and what he managed to accomplish here in the house was truly impressive. But his singing voice reminded me of a tomcat strutting his stuff on a hot tin roof.

Daniel was my hero. And like some ancient hero, he possessed one mighty weapon: his song. Yes, with his singing voice he could probably incapacitate his enemies—if, in fact, he had any. To his credit, though, he was aware of this predicament, and out of respect for all other living things on this planet he would only sing when he thought he was alone.

I leaned against the doorframe, watching him. He stood at the top of the ladder and painted the walls. His jeans were sitting low on his hips, with his boxer shorts peeping out, and with every up and down of the paint roller I could see the play of his muscles underneath his gray T-shirt. The walls were taking on the shine of a warm sunlight yellow, but it was Daniel who lit up the room.

“La la la-a-a-a-a . . . ,” he belted out cheerfully.

“The windows are brand-new, honey, you know that, right?” I interrupted quickly before he could raise his voice to the song’s high-pitched finale and shatter the glass. Since he had not noticed me before, he gave a surprised start. Whirling around, he gave me one of his bad-boy grins. Yellow splatters of paint decorated his dark hair, and the dark shadow on his chin showed me that he must have come here straight from the fire station.

“Hey, babe.” He jumped from the ladder, put the paint roller back on the paint tray, and meandered over. “If you sneak backstage during a concert, you have to sleep with the lead singer. Sorry, but those are the rules.”

His kiss was like an electric shock that left me trembling, and I was glad that his strong arms held me tightly against his chest.

“Right here? On the stage?”

I pushed my hands up under his shirt, enjoying the delicious feeling of his skin, and he kissed me again.

“The stage is all ours—but I should finish rocking the song before the paint dries,” he whispered with regret and kissed the tip of my nose.

“Can I help?”

Daniel looked skeptical. “Piper, you know you shouldn’t work too hard.”

I snorted. “I’m pregnant, Daniel, not sick.”

I didn’t feel like standing idly by, and so I reached for a brush and dipped it into the paint. It wouldn’t be too hard to retouch the corners that his paint roller couldn’t reach.

“And if push comes to shove, we’ll just cancel the encore,” I suggested with a wink.

Daniel blew me a kiss and took off his shirt before climbing the ladder again.

“Babe, when we’re done here, you’re going to be begging for it, like all the other groupies,” he promised with a seductive smile.

Bull’s-eye. Watching him, I couldn’t care less about the wall, but he didn’t need to know that. I played it casual.

“As long as you’re not singing . . .” I began, hoping to wipe off his self-satisfied smile while at the same time concentrating on my own job.

Daniel laughed and shook his roller at me, spraying paint my way.

“Hey! Stop it!”

More splatters of paint landed dangerously close to me.

“Daniel!”

“Yes, babe?” He gave me a brazen grin.

“Stop it right now!”

“Or else?”

“Nothing else! Just stop it.”

“Well, Piper—” He climbed down the ladder, roller still in hand, and moved closer. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

The guy was crazy! I jumped to my feet and raised my own paintbrush, just in case.

“Don’t you dare! Daniel, I mean it—”

He laughed and hit me on the arm.

I screeched and recoiled, but there was no escape. Not a minute later there was sunshine yellow right down my cleavage. He’d hit me dead center. In another second, his paint roller fell to the floor, and he closed his arms around me, ignoring the fact that my brush was trapped between us, smearing paint not only on his bare chest but also on my shirt. His yellow-stained fingers were
for sure
leaving marks on the back of my jeans. He pulled me against him.

“You’re crazy!” I panted as he reached under my shirt and opened my bra.

“Crazy for you,” he whispered into my ear, and I felt how he shivered as I dug my nails into his back.

Tenderly he cupped my full breasts in his hands, breaking the last of my resistance. I started getting to work on his pants. He groaned and pressed his still-trapped manhood against my fingers, while pulling my shirt ever higher.

“Wait, babe,” he whispered, breaking our kiss to get rid of my shirt with one urgent move. He slipped out of his jeans.

Christ Almighty, Daniel was
hot
as he stood there before me in nothing but his boxer shorts. He still managed to make my blood surge with lust—even after ten years together.

“Encore?” I doubtfully pulled open the waistband of his boxers to take a peek, but he dragged me down to the floor with him, grinning.

“No,” he said with a wink and placed his hand on my tiny baby bump. “We haven’t reached the end of the main show yet, not by a long shot.”

His kiss was demanding, and his tongue slowly, seductively, slipped into my mouth. I shivered and wrapped my arms around his neck, enjoying his athletic body against mine and his warm skin beneath my fingers.

“That was only the sound check,” he muttered as his lips made their way down my neck.

Night had fallen by the time we strolled arm in arm along the coastal road toward Blue Hill village. The waves lapped gently against the shore, and from the woods echoed the call of a night bird. Alone, I would have found this part of the road a little creepy this time of night, because in my imagination the dense woods hid terrible dangers. I snuggled up a little closer to Daniel, and right away the dark and looming shadows disappeared.

Our new home was located only two miles outside Blue Hill, right by the seashore. The road was relatively deserted because after it passed our house and a few others, it led only to the lighthouse and the Blue Hill Country Club. If there was no special event going on up there, the road belonged to a handful of locals. All the properties were pretty upscale—large lots with forested areas and private access to the coast, some even with a small boat landing. It was an upper class enclave, way out of our price range under normal circumstances. But after a forest fire—one that Daniel and his fellow Blue Hill firefighters had fought—had damaged the beach house, the price dropped significantly. The location was gorgeous, the floor plan generous, and the rooms bright and comfortable.

Daniel hadn’t found it hard to convince me we should buy it. And hopefully very soon we would start spending our nights in our newly renovated home.

People were still working down by the harbor, and the smell of seaweed and brackish water was in the air. A rusty red pickup grumbled past us, then stopped and parked in the middle of the road. Traffic laws started to disintegrate around here on the day before market day, when all vehicles would be prohibited on the coastal road for half the day.

We crossed the road and passed Franky’s Little Bakery, where Daniel and his work buddies would often hang out over a cup of coffee at the end of their shift.

Frank, the owner, a dark-haired Italian American, thought of himself as the best barista on this side of the Atlantic and had turned coffee making into his own, very special art form. But I think it was also his delicious cakes and flans that had made his little shop so popular. He greeted us through his shop window as we passed.

The window display of the bookstore on the first floor of Daniel’s parents’ three-story house was brightly lit. Quietly, like teenagers after a secret date, we started climbing the stairs to Daniel’s apartment, hoping not to run into his mother, Catherine.

The delicious aroma of roasted chicken was wafting through the air, and through the half-closed door leading to Daniel’s parents’ apartment I could see their flickering television set. We tiptoed along, trying to get upstairs without anyone noticing, but Daniel couldn’t stop himself from placing his paint-stained hand against the matching handprint on the back of my jeans, which made me giggle.

“
Shhh
, babe, let sleeping dogs lie,” he whispered, and pinched my posterior.

We had just about reached our front door when from the semidarkness below we heard Catherine’s voice. “Daniel? Is that you?”

The stairway lights came on.

“I made chicken, and there’s plenty left—Dear Lord, look at you two!”

I pressed my lips together, a little embarrassed, and tried to steam clean my paint-splattered self with the sheer power of my thoughts. But Catherine’s facial expression made me realize that I was failing utterly. With his yellow fingers and speckled hair, Daniel did not look a whole lot better than I did, but his mom’s disapproving look did not seem to bother him much.

“We’ve been painting the house, Mom. Thanks for the offer with the chicken, but as you can see we both urgently need a shower.”

Horrified, Catherine shook her head, and I wished that just for once she would look at me with a little less disdain in her eyes.

“I can see that, Daniel. Well, I can always heat it up for you later.”

I clenched my teeth. Didn’t she see that we wanted some alone-time together? Couldn’t she just go back to her TV and stay out of our business?

“Mom, you don’t need to do that! We’re fine!”

With that, he pushed me up the next set of stairs, and Catherine snorted. Maybe she’d noticed his yellow handprint on the back of my jeans.

“You sure you’ll be fine?” she scolded. “You’re going to have a child soon—you should really
try
to make an effort and not behave like teenagers playing paintball!”

“Mom!” Daniel couldn’t stand his mother’s constant nagging either, not because it bothered him much, but only because he knew how horrible it always made me feel.

Fortunately, his dad, Marcus, spoke up from their apartment. “Cat!” he called. “Leave the kids alone and come back inside! Your movie’s starting.”

That finally worked. Vexed and without saying another word, she slammed the door shut behind her, and a moment later we found ourselves alone in the dark again.

The only sound was my teeth grinding, and Daniel was smart enough not to talk to me as he held open the door to our apartment.

I slipped out of my shoes, flung my purse into a corner, and went into the kitchen. But when I got there I felt stuck in a trap.

Our narrow kitchen was a mess, the breakfast dishes were piled up in the sink, and a saucepan with the burned remains of some leftover sauce was sitting on the stove. What a contrast to the lovely smell of roast chicken!

Since Daniel had followed me and was now leaning against the doorframe, I had to pretend I’d come into the kitchen for a reason. But I had only wanted a minute alone. And so I grabbed a glass, opened the refrigerator, and by the fridge’s dim light had to begrudgingly admit that my skills as a housewife were even worse than Catherine thought.

The fridge was depressingly empty. The lonely yogurt cup on the top shelf was well past its best-by date, and a murky, indescribable liquid was collecting underneath a bell pepper and threatening to seep down onto the shelf below. I reached for the milk, but the carton was empty except for a tiny drop.

I closed the refrigerator, my pregnancy-induced mood swings at their absolute lowest, and slumped into a chair, worn out and utterly depressed. I tried to act as if I didn’t notice Daniel watching me. The longer I pretended to stare with interest at the black-and-white floor tiles, the more they were closing in.