That Summer Place (8 page)

L
ate that evening, Catherine walked him to the dock. The sun was beginning to go down in that golden way it had. “It stays light so much longer here. I can’t believe it’s seven o’clock.”

“It’s the Northwest. After all the gray and rainy days we have in the winter and spring, nature sort of evens things out. We’ve earned these long summer days.”

She laughed, then about halfway down the hill she stumbled on a rock.

He grabbed her hand to steady her.

And he didn’t let go.

They walked a few more steps to where the boat was tied to the cleat beside the boathouse. The water in the cove was bright gold and pink from the rich colors of the sky. And a flock of Canadian geese crossed overhead in a noisy arrow pattern that made the soft gull calls sound easy and far away.

She looked back at the house, which sat alone on the small grade above the rocks and glowed from the lights inside and the reflections of the setting sun. Behind it stood a wall of hills, jagged with tall green trees. A few soft-colored clouds moved slowly past, as though they were grazing the very tops of those same dark trees.

She leaned against the boathouse door and sighed. “I wonder if there is any place in the world right now, at this very moment, that is more beautiful than this.”

“It’s something to see.” He was looking at her.

She didn’t know who moved first, but suddenly she was in his arms. His mouth covered hers and he held her tightly, as if he couldn’t let her go.

It was just like before, in the woods—a passion that flared and shook her senseless.

He pressed her against the door and one of his hands left her back. Then he was pushing her inside the boathouse. The door clicked closed behind them.

It had been so long. She wanted to crawl inside of him; she couldn’t get close enough.

His hands were all over her, touching her in places that were private and had seemed lost and numb for so very long.

He slid his hand between her legs and she gave a small cry that didn’t sound like her.

She came, right then, throbbing hard and fast.

He kept his hand there, hot against her jeans.

It took a few moments for her to come back down to earth. Then she realized what had happened. She’d had an orgasm when all he had done was touch her through her clothes.

This was not her. It was like some sensational article in a women’s magazine, headlines plastered on the cover in bold red letters to sell more copies. She’d always thought a contact orgasm could never really happen. That it was no more than fantasy and fiction.

But it had just happened. To her.

“Oh God….” She groaned and turned away. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“Why?” He laughed quietly. “I’m not.”

She hid her face in his shoulder. He sounded like he had just saved the world.

He gently forced her head away from his shoulder with both hands.

Her nose was somewhere near his chin. She had no choice but to look at him.

That cocky male look he wore in the golden light made her laugh. She shook her head, still embarrassed. “It’s been a long time.”

“I guess that means I won’t have to mentally recite the Greek alphabet backwards and conjugate Latin verbs while I’m waiting for you to get there.”

Then she really laughed. “You don’t actually do that.”

He just looked at her. She couldn’t tell if he was teasing her or not.

“Do you?”

“Some women take a while.”

“Oh.” She was quiet. She didn’t know what to say so she blurted out, “I guess I don’t. I mean…take long.”

He rubbed his finger slowly over her lips, starting at the corner. Then he moistened that finger from inside her own mouth and traced her lip line. “I remember.”

She looked into those eyes of his and she was lost.

He simply slid his hand behind her head and pulled her mouth to his. His hand went to her jeans and an instant later he had them unbuttoned.

She pulled back. “Wait.” Everything was going too fast. She didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure what she felt. She was just confused.

She could feel him looking at her. “I can’t do this. My children are right up there, at the house. I…I’m sorry. I—”

He placed a finger against her lips. “It’s okay, Catherine.”

She tried to turn but he wouldn’t let her. She looked away and shoved the hair out of her face. “I don’t know how to do this.”

He gave a sharp laugh. “You used to. I was there the first time.”

She covered her mouth. “Oh God…”

He just kept holding her. “I was joking.”

“I don’t have sex,” she said against his chest.

He laughed. “I thought I heard you say you don’t have sex.”

She looked up at him. “I did say that.”

He stared down at her as if her words were just sinking in.

“At all,” she added. “I don’t have sex at all.” There. She’d said it.

“You have two children. They’re not adopted. They look just like you.”

“But I haven’t been with anyone since my husband,” she explained. “That was eight years ago.”

“Eight years,” he repeated flatly.

She nodded.

“You haven’t had sex for eight years.”

“Uh-huh.”

He was quiet for the longest time and she had no idea what he was thinking. Probably that she was a nutcase.

Then he reached down and rebuttoned her jeans.

She didn’t know what to say. She wanted him, but not like this. She was so confused.

He tilted her chin up with one knuckle and gave her a strained smile. “I’ll back off.”

“But—”

“No. Let’s give this some time, Catherine. We both need some time.”

She nodded and they left the boathouse. She stood on the dock as he sailed away, hugging her arms and feeling antsy. She started to walk back to the house, but stopped. She opened the boathouse door and went inside for just a moment.

It was getting darker and the sunlight through the dirt on the windows was dull and lifeless. It smelled like damp wood and old canvas. She sat down on an old wooden bench that wobbled when she touched it.

They had made love here, that very first time.

Her mind went back all those years and she remembered something. She felt along the wood. Then she found the carved initials.

M P + C W.

She closed her eyes and just sat there. Her body was still taut and damp and ready. Her blood still raced through her, and her breath was not slow or even. She looked at those initials and wondered if she was nothing but a silly old fool.

Michael motored the sailboat back to his place. He tied off the line and jumped on the dock. The air had changed, grown lighter, cooler, and was turning blue with the nightfall.

He had always loved the island best at night, when he could stand there and watch the sky turn. It was that kind of night where the stars crawl above you in lazy patterns. The kind of night when the owl that lived in a nearby tree became silent, and you could make love all night long and still want more in the morning when the sun rose.

In his mind, the years that might have been slipped by. Waking up with Catherine, making love to her for days at a time, marriage and fighting and making up. And making children. If not for a cruel twist of fate Dana and Aly might have been his daughters.

Today had been something different for him. And he realized some things he hadn’t understood before. That very first night he had stood there in the fringe of the woods and watched her with her girls, watched her sliding across the lawn in the rain, chasing that umbrella. He had watched their banter in the house afterward. That night had marked the first time in his life he had thought about the children he’d never had.

He knew now that it wasn’t just children he had thought he missed. It wasn’t some vague paternal instinct coming out in him when it was too late to do anything about it—not some kind of male emotional clock that was ticking away in his head.

What he had wanted, what he had truly missed, was having children with Catherine. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stood there for the longest time, then laughed at himself, at his thoughts. He had Catherine on the brain. He was in the same state he’d been in for days—hard and ready for something that would probably never happen.

“Eight years?” He shook his head. “Jesus…”

Then he stripped off his clothes and jumped into the icy cold water.

B
y Thursday, when the boat arrived, not one of the Winslow women wanted to leave the island. The same was true on the next Sunday. By the following Thursday when the boat had come and gone again, her girls were sailing by themselves in the cove.

Catherine and Michael had settled into an old routine, like the friends they found they still were. They talked about so much, and yet there was some part of him that he seemed to keep private.

She wasn’t certain if he was ashamed of what he did for a living, but he always changed the subject, so she didn’t bring it up anymore. As a safety net she didn’t talk about her career either. They had plenty of other things to talk about. Sometimes it was almost as if there weren’t enough hours in the day.

The noon day sunshine beat down on them, and it was warm and snug sitting on a huge rock at the water’s edge. They shared a lunch basket between them, while they watched the girls sail in the cove.

“You’re spoiling them,” she said as he took a bite of fried chicken.

He waved the chicken leg in the air. “You’re spoiling me. Lunch every day and dinner every night.”

“Hmmm.” She ate a potato chip and tried not to ogle.

He was sitting back on his elbows, a position that stretched his white polo shirt across his abdomen, which she knew from their second day out in the boat was still flat, and rippled and fit for a Calvin Klein ad.

The first time he’d taken off his shirt she’d almost fallen overboard. She’d spent the whole rest of the day trying to look everywhere except at his chest.

She sat there munching on another chip—just what her thighs needed—and looking at him. Half of her was still unable to believe they were sitting on this very rock, here and now, that it was real and not some wishful daydream.

His long legs were stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. The breeze would bring his scent to her every so often.

“I feel seventeen again,” she said, then laughed because it was a stupid thing to say. “I just wish I looked seventeen again.”

He turned to her and cocked his head. “Why?”

“Only a man would ask that.”

“Why this obsession with getting older?”

“It’s not an obsession.” She sat straighter and crossed her legs Indian-style.

“You sure make enough comments about it.”

“I do not.”

He laughed.

She chewed her lip. “Do I?”

He nodded.

She rested her chin on her fist and thought about it for a moment. “Don’t you ever feel it?”

“What?”

“Old. As if life has passed you by?”

“I don’t know, Catherine. With each year I find I feel more comfortable with who I am.”

“Really? Hmmmm. And here I feel older and more uncomfortable with who I am.”

“Women.” He muttered in that foolish male way.

She was quiet for a moment, gathering control so she wouldn’t haul off and punch him. “Women feel this way because men age so well.”

“Women only think they don’t age well.”

She turned. “Do I look that stupid?”

“You don’t agree.”

“Society doesn’t agree.”

“Lauren Bacall, Goldie Hawn and Raquel Welch are all gorgeous.”

“Clothing models are twelve.” She sat up a little straighter and hugged her knees to her chest. “And look at all the older men with pretty young things on their arms.” She gave a wry laugh. “All we women have on our arms is flabby skin.”

When he didn’t defend his sex, she looked at him.

“Suddenly you’re not saying anything.”

“I have a feeling this is a ‘damned if I do, damned if I don’t’ discussion.”

“Chicken.”

“No thanks. I’ve had enough.”

She gave him a look that said his tactic wouldn’t work.

He sighed in that aggravating way men had. “I like you just the way you are, Catherine.”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“I thought we were talking about you getting old.”

“You think I’m old?”

“Hell no. You said you were old, not me.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never dated someone a lot younger than you.”

He was completely silent.

She laughed. “Ha! I got you on that one.”

He looked at her while she crowed, then said, “I dated a woman for two years who was five years older than I was.”

“I didn’t ask you about older women.”

He grinned. “I know.”

She sat there while the sunshine beat down on them. After a moment of silence she said, “There must have been a lot of women in your life.”

“Yes,” he answered honestly, then looked at her and added quickly, “But they all looked like you.”

She was horrified.

“Okay, then,” he said in a rush. “None of them looked like you.” He tried to look serious and failed.

She burst out laughing and shook her head. “You are awful.”

“Yeah, but you love me,” he said in a flippant and teasing way.

But it was so close to the truth she couldn’t laugh. What would her life have been like if she had married Michael? Her daughters could have been his had things been different, had he not gone to war, had she not let her father come between them. Had they been older.

Perhaps, she thought, being young wasn’t such a good thing.

He slid his hand behind her head and before she knew it he had pulled her face toward his. Then he was kissing her deeply, but gently, as if he had all the time in the world to just savor her mouth. It was the first time he’d kissed her since that night in the boathouse. She gave herself up to that kiss, because she felt it clear through to her heart.

And it ended oh, so soon.

He pulled his mouth away from hers, but kept his hand on the back of her head. He searched her face and gave her a tender smile. “You are a beautiful woman, Catherine, and though it seems impossible, you are more beautiful now than you were at seventeen. I know you won’t believe me, but those few lines on your face are the most beautiful part of you.” He shook his head. “Sweetheart, don’t regret even one of those forty-some-odd years.”

And at that moment, Catherine wouldn’t have wanted to be seventeen again for anything.

They had all gone on a hike that morning, even Catherine. And she hated every minute of it. But she never let on. Not one word of complaint, even when she lost her footing, smacked into a fir tree, and the needles poured down all over her.

She deserved a medal for valor, or at least tolerance.

They came home sweaty and muddy and all she wanted was a long shower and to never hear the word “trail” again.

She’d headed straight for the shower and Lord, did it ever feel good. She stood there and let the water beat on her, then she grabbed the shampoo and poured it all over her head.

“Mom?”

For heaven’s sake! She couldn’t even take a shower in peace. When you became a mother, you lost all your privacy.

Aly knocked on the door again. “Mom?”

“What?” She turned and let the water beat on her back while she scrubbed her hair into a nice foamy lather.

“Harold got out.”

“He’ll come back, Aly. Stop fretting about him.” Silly cat.

“He’s back.”

“Fine. Now can I please finish this shower in peace?”

“Harold’s in the bathroom with you.”

“I don’t care, Aly. He comes in the bathroom with me at home, too.”

There was a long silence.

“Mom?”

She took a deep breath. She really didn’t have much patience left. “Yes?”

“He’s not alone.”

Catherine stopped lathering her hair.

She heard Dana whisper, “Did you tell her?”

“Sort of,” Aly whispered back. “Come here, Harold. Come here. I got him!”

Catherine pulled aside one small corner of the shower curtain and hollered, “There’s a snake in here!”

“We know, Mom.” Her girls had opened the door less than an inch and she could see their eyes watching the snake through the crack.

“Well, don’t just stand there! Do something!”