Sweet Salt Air (23 page)

“Because I like you,” she whispered back, hard-pressed for a better answer, though it seemed to do the trick.

Pulling her so that she straddled his lap, he returned the kiss with growing hunger. She was starting to feel it in her belly, when he took off her T-shirt and unhooked her bra. The bra had been on the whole time at the beach, but his mouth on her breasts was not something she would have wanted to miss this time. She held his head, fingers in his hair. Needing more, she cried out.

As he had done at the beach, he paused at the sound. “Too much?”

“Not enough,” she moaned.

He helped with her shorts, but she pushed his aside only enough so that she could take him in. They both went still then, forehead to forehead, taking deep, quivering breaths as they savored the possession, and when that wasn’t enough, he rolled her beneath him and thrust.

He took her away—just took her out of herself to a place she could only go with him—but, when it was done, there was nothing scary about the return. He felt solid. Rooted.
Real.

They sat for the longest time, his back against a tree with his arm around her and her cheek to his chest. That chest was finely textured, leanly muscled, and smelled of Leo. Feeling a sense of peace, she could have stayed there forever.

*   *   *

But Leo wanted to work on the roof. “Long’s you’re here,” he reasoned a short time later as they climbed the ladders. The idea was to work sections from left to right, bottom to top, each section overlapping the next. “Two hammers or one?” he asked.

“One,” she said. “I’ll hold, you hammer.” She had done it this way before and thought it the fastest and most efficient. After Leo positioned each shingle, she held it while he nailed. As he pounded in the last nail, she brought a new shingle up for positioning. Once they got into the rhythm, they moved right along. They stood close, arms or legs brushing at times. It wasn’t sexual, but pleasant.

“Definitely anticlimactic,” Charlotte remarked at one point, to which Leo chuckled. She had never heard him do that before, and eyed him in surprise. He seemed surprised, himself, to which she said, “It’s a good sound.”

“Y’think?”

A warmth spread inside. “I do.” She might have kissed him again if they hadn’t been standing on scaffolding clamped to the roof. And then came a
whoosh
in the garden. Looking back, she caught her breath. “The fawn.” A sliver of blurred spots reflecting the moon, it darted here, darted there. “What’s it doing?”

“Chasing a chipmunk. Or a mouse.”

“I thought it was supposed to be sleeping.”

“Did you always sleep when your parents put you to bed?”

Knowingly, she smiled at the fawn, then, feeling Leo’s leg behind her, smiled curiously at him. “You think I’ll fall?”

“Better safe than sorry.”

Bob Lilly used to say that. Same with the hero of
Salt.
“I’m really fine,” she assured him, but did brace herself with a hand when, at a renewed rustling in the garden, she turned quickly. The fawn was jumping and pouncing through the lowest of the herbs.

She watched in enjoyment for a minute, then had a thought. “Where’s Bear?”

“In the shrubs. It’s past his bedtime.”

“Is he okay?”

“Oh yeah. Just old.”

“Do you worry about him?”

“All the time. He’s my best friend in the world.”

Best
animal
friend, Charlotte might have corrected if she had wanted to get into that discussion, but she didn’t. Each time she looked at Leo—each time their eyes met—she felt that spreading warmth. It might be pure chemistry. But she had known chemistry before, and it wasn’t like this.

*   *   *

Their system worked. With Leo adept at repositioning ladders and planks, they lost no time moving from section to section. Still, it was close to midnight when they finished. Charlotte was yawning as he walked her down the drive, though she wasn’t so tired as to be numb. The herbs were sleeping, but not those white flowers. They were night creatures like Leo, stronger than ever in the dark. Their pull kept her awareness of him high.

“Are you sure I can’t drive you?” he asked when they reached the Cole curve.

“I’m sure.” She needed to keep these parts of her life separate. He was here, Nicole was there—fantasy here, reality there.

Say good night,
she thought.
Kiss his cheek. Give him a hug.
But the scent of those flowers was in her head, pushing for more. So she did nothing, simply stood in silence, watching him watch her.

“This is starting to make me nervous,” he said quietly. “You’re leaving at the end of the summer, right?”

“That’s a ways off.”

“But you are leaving.”

She tried to keep it light. “Mid-August is the plan.”

“So we should keep this low-key.”

She laughed. “Like that would work? Like we should just tell our bodies there’s nothing to feel?”

He studied the road underfoot, then raised questioning eyes. Even in the dark, their message was clear. What he was asking, she knew, was whether there was a chance she would stay.

But she had a life. She had friends in far places. She had assignments lined up. “I can’t,” she whispered, though the words tugged at her insides.

He took a breath and nodded. “Okay. Just so I know.”

That, she thought, was reality. But these night hours, the moon, the fawn, that incredible smell—this was fantasy, wasn’t it? Or not? Shouldn’t he argue, fight, plead?

Annoyed that he was so accepting and apparently didn’t feel the same tug she did, she glared back down the drive at the only thing that might have been its source. “What
is
that smell?”

“Me?”

“No, those white flowers. Back there in the garden.”

His voice held a reluctant smile. “Jasmine.”

“Jasmine.”

“It’s an aphrodisiac.”

An aphrodisiac. She hung her head, then righted it and sighed. “Silly me. I should’ve guessed.”

Chapter Fourteen

N
ICOLE LAY IN BED
S
ATURDAY
night listening for Charlotte to return. Ten o’clock came and went, then eleven, and she grew uneasy. She wanted to know what Leo had to say about the recipes. More, though, she was starting to wonder what was really going on between Charlotte and Leo. If it would further hurt the cookbook, she didn’t want it. She had a deadline to meet.

Somewhere around midnight, she fell asleep. When she awoke, it was two. Checking the hall, she saw that the front light was off and Charlotte’s bedroom door closed. At least she was home; Nicole had half feared she would spend the night at Leo’s. That kiss had been a wake-up call. Charlotte at thirty-four might be very different from Charlotte at twenty-four. For all Nicole knew, this Charlotte had lovers wherever she went.

Having married young, Nicole had never experimented much. Other friends had, and she didn’t judge them for it. Nor was she judging Charlotte. She just wanted her here at a time when no one else was.

Feeling alone and lonely as she lay in a bed built for two, she decided to call Julian when morning came. He had sounded more tired than usual tonight. She was worried something else was going on.

*   *   *

As it happened, she didn’t call Sunday, though she thought of it a hundred times. He had told her his plans, which started with rounds at the hospital and would be followed by brunch with the team he was training, then an afternoon with his laptop in a quiet alcove of the university library, drafting lectures for his fall series in California. He would be busy. She didn’t want to disturb him.

But she couldn’t not wonder how he felt. So she texted the question at seven, to which he texted back,
Starting rounds in five minutes,
which told her nothing. She wanted to know if the new drug was helping, whether he was feeling side effects, whether he was actively pursuing the stem cell route. She wanted to know how his hotel accommodations were and whether the laundry service was decent. Mostly, she wanted to know if he missed her, but was afraid to ask that, too.

*   *   *

After a subdued call from him Sunday night, her imagination was going wild. She shot off a handful of Monday morning texts, but his answers were unsatisfying enough to force her hand. Choosing her time with care, she waited until late morning, when he would be in his office-on-loan and hopefully alone before heading to lunch.

“Hey,” she said lightly and, pulse racing, held her breath.

“Hey, baby. How are you?”

At the upbeat sound of his voice—that oh-so-intimate
baby
—she dared breathe again. “I’m good,” she replied in relief. “You sound better.”

“I slept well. Everything okay there?”

“It is. The weather’s gorgeous.” It was small talk. But after last night’s worry and now his sounding like the old Julian, she could happily pretend there was no angst in their lives and enjoy what was right about them as a couple. “The stone on the patio is like a heater once it absorbs the sun. And the ocean is starting to warm up. I wish you’d come,” she added, not nagging, but excited.

Good-spiritedly, Julian said, “I wish I could.” Then, “Did you get the recipes fixed?”

“We did,” she said, allowing for the evasion. She liked that he was concerned about her work. “We spent the morning in town. Leo wouldn’t commit to calling around, but the people we talked with agreed to make changes. I’m guessing he told one person, who then spread the word.”

“Did they say why they changed their ingredients?”

“They said they thought we’d want recipes that people anywhere in the country could follow, but it was kind of a canned line, you know? Like it was either the one he fed them or one they agreed on among themselves.”

“It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s fixed.”

“Assuming Leo lets it go at that. Charlotte still claims he had nothing to do with it, but she’s biased. I don’t trust him. If their relationship ends, he could attack out of sheer spite.”

“Nicki. You’re more positive than that.”

She sighed. “I know. You’re right. I just get frightened sometimes.”

“Did you decide what to do with your father’s clothes?”

It was another evasion, this one picking up on something she had said last week. She liked that he had remembered. “Well, I did, but Mom has other ideas. She called last night after you and I talked. She had a long list of questions, some of which I could answer and some I could not. It’s be so much easier if she was here.”

“It’s an emotional thing for her.”

“It is for me, too, but it has to be done, and she has opinions on all of it. You know what’ll happen, Jules. She’ll refuse to come here and will—quote, unquote—leave the decisions to me, then she won’t like the ones I make. Dad’s clothes are a good example. I thought I’d take them to the consignment shop in Rockland—and it’s not about the money, which I was planning to donate to the animal shelter there, because it’s a cause Dad loved. When I mentioned this last night, Mom first said she didn’t want me
touching
his clothes yet. In the next breath, she said the minister would know what to do with them. But honestly, I can’t see someone here on Quinnipeague walking around in Dad’s clothes. Whoever it is would look ridiculous—like an imposter. Books or furniture or pots and pans are one thing. But something as intimate as clothes?”

“Isn’t it really about what your mother wants?” Julian asked gently enough.

“I suppose.”

“It’ll sort itself out, Nicki. So, with the recipes good, you’re feeling better about the cookbook?”

“I am. Charlotte’s profiles are great. Want me to e-mail you a few?”

“Sure,” he said, but he was only indulging her. He had never been overly interested in Charlotte’s contribution, preferring to think of the cookbook as Nicole’s alone, and she did love him for that.

“Anything new?” she asked gently.

“I talked with Grendjin about the Beijing trip,” Julian offered. Antoine Grendjin was president of the hospital. He and Julian used to play golf together, though they hadn’t done it since Julian had developed chronic tennis elbow, or so he had told Antoine. It was a good enough excuse—tennis elbow being more of a problem for golfers than golfer’s elbow, and an injury that fit in well with Julian shifting to a teaching role in the OR. “He’s fine with my being gone the week.”

“Did you sign the contract?” Nicole asked. The speech was for the following February; typically, there would be paperwork sent straight to him in Durham now.

“Not yet. I have it here.”

She felt a glimmer of unease. “But you haven’t signed it, because you’re not sure how you’ll be in February? Are you feeling any better now?”

“I haven’t signed the contract because I haven’t gotten to it,” he replied sharply and, seeming to hear his edge, asked more quietly, “How about you? Now that there’s progress, when do you think the cookbook will be done?”

“They want it by mid-August. I’ll need all that time. Even after we have the recipes and Charlotte is done with her profiles, I’ll have to pull the whole thing together—you know, write the foreword and the afterword, make menu plans, edit it so that my voice in the book is consistent with my blogging one. I still get the heebie-jeebies about it sometimes. Me, write a
book
? Charlotte was always the confident one. She’s such a professional.”

“So are you.”

“Not in the same way. She knows what it’s like to work under a deadline. She knows what it’s like to see something of hers in print.”

“So do you. Your blog is in print. I’d warrant a guess that your following is much larger than hers.”

“Well, anyway, she keeps me in line. But we’re not working over the Fourth,” she ventured. “Everyone’ll be here, Jules—all the people you like. You’d be able to sleep and swim and take a quick break from Duke. Are you sure you won’t come? I miss you.” She was careful to keep her voice light, not wheedling. She wasn’t a nag, just a wife loving her husband.

“Maybe in another weekend or two.”

“But this is a long one with the Fourth on a Thursday,” she coaxed. “You could—”