The Beach House (36 page)

“For the past several weeks you’ve been kissing me but nothing more,” she said straight out, wanting the horrid exchange to be over.

He stood in the darkness, just inches away, so close she could see his lips curve into a slow, pleased grin. “Cara,” he said, reaching up to tuck a tendril of hair behind her ear. He let his fingertips skim her jawline, then rest at her chin. “I’m courting you.”

She could only look at him in a daze.
Courting?
Had she heard correctly? Did men still court women? Anywhere today? The concept was utterly beguiling. She was bowled over. Charmed. Damn, she was grinning from ear to ear.

“You are?”

“Is that a problem for you?”

“No! It’s just…I didn’t understand.” Then, because she felt the need to disguise her awkwardness, she said as a gentle tease, “Is that another rule of yours? A Lowcountry gentleman courts his lady?”

“Depends on the lady.”

Her grin widened. She liked that answer enormously.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Want to go camping?”

She looked at him warily. “Where?”

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe. Not to some hammock. I don’t want to sleep with alligators and snakes.”

He barked out a laugh. “I’ve someplace better in mind. Say you’ll come.”

She was nervous, but the way he said it, with his head cocked and his eyes gleaming, was so charmingly boyish she couldn’t resist.

“Where are we headed?” Cara asked Brett the following morning as he nosed the boat out of the dock. He’d packed the small boat with even more gear than before.

“Capers Island,” he answered.

Cara released a smile. Capers Island. It was where they’d gone the first time they’d met. She’d been enchanted by the island ever since and had hoped he’d take her back there someday.

The current was brisk as they headed out and the weather warm and clear. Cara felt the sun sting her exposed shoulders and cheeks as she sat at the bow. They sped across the familiar waterway toward the small barrier island tucked away along the Carolina coastline.

Capers Island was deserted. Its pristine line of beach lay before them undisturbed except for shorebirds that flocked together in the distance. Brett carried the gear up a large, flat dune that rose like a plateau over Boneyard Beach. Together they pitched the tent on a high spot that was protected from harsh winds by pines yet still caught the offshore breezes.

Neither of them was in a talkative mood, so they spent the day in a companionable peace, just lying in the sun, recharging their batteries. When the mood struck, they swam in the silky waters of the sea, then lay in the sand and let the sunshine do its work. She felt the sun melting her bones and her brain, making it impossible to think about anything for too long or too hard.

“Everything is so simple here,” she said to Brett, turning over and resting her chin on her arms. “There are no big decisions to be made, no one needing me for anything or asking to have a problem solved. No money to be earned. Just complete and total bliss. Could we stay here and never return, like those two kids in that movie? You know, the one where they grow up gorgeous together and make great shell jewelry and become lovers?”

“Never saw it. Sounds like a chick flick.”

She leaned over to pinch his arm. “Such a stereotype. That’s like me saying men only watch movies with spy toys or lots of blood and guts.”

“Yeah. So?”

“You’re hopeless.”

“How about
Tarzan?
”

“Good movie.”

“Saw that one. And that’s a movie about a guy who survived alone in the jungle,” he said smugly.

“Yeah, but he didn’t
live
until Jane showed up.”

Brett laughed loudly and climbed to his feet. Then he took her hand and pulled her to her feet.

“Come Jane. Tarzan hungry.”

Her high-pitched laughter scattered the birds at the shoreline.

He brought her to a small creek that cut a gash into the island like a knife. She stood nearby and watched as he grabbed hold of a net with his hands and teeth. After getting a good purchase, he hurled the net into the air with a graceful, full body movement. The net opened up like a flower, spread out over the glistening water and descended with a whispered splash. It was pure poetry in motion. And as he repeated the toss, she witnessed the natural athleticism that had won him as many awards, accolades and scholarships over the years as shrimp he harnessed in the nets.

He
was
rather like Tarzan, she thought. His build, his affinity for nature, his stoicism. But was she at all like Jane? She thought not. She liked to think she could be clever and brave like Jane. And she was learning to do a few things in the wild. After all, she was camping, wasn’t she?

But to stay with one man in the wilderness forever and ever? Cara didn’t think she could. She was a city girl. She couldn’t give up forever the civilized world of e-mails, lattes, movies and restaurants after work.

Nonetheless, she had fun playing out her role as she lowered a mangy-looking chicken neck by a string into the creek the way Brett had taught her. After several tosses and drags, she netted a few crabs that emerged dripping from the water hanging tenaciously to the chicken neck by their claws. It was hardly the poetry of Brett’s net casting but it was very satisfying nonetheless to bring home her contribution to the feast.

When the sun began to lower, they scattered across the beach like ghost crabs to gather driftwood for a campfire. Once the fire was raging, they boiled shrimp and crab and drank chilled wine from the cooler. And when their meal was done, and the full moon rose at last to take her place among the stars, Brett took Cara’s hand and raised her to her feet.

“What are we doing?” she asked.

“Dancing.”

“You’re kidding. I’m not very good,” she worried aloud, backing off. “I’ve got two left feet.”

“Come on.”

“Brett, I haven’t danced the shag since high school!”

“It’s like riding a bicycle. You never forget.”

“Okay, I confess, I never really learned.”

“Then I’ll teach you.”

He bent to turn on the tape player he’d brought along. There was a loud click, then the island’s silence was interrupted by the instantly recognizable sound of beach music: “I Love Beach Music,” “Sixty Minute Man,” “My Girl,” “What Kind of Fool Do You Think I Am?” and “Sweet Carolina Girls.”

“I never danced with you in high school,” he said. “I thought I’d make up for it tonight.”

She laughed lightly. “I feel like I’m sixteen again.”

“I’m glad I didn’t know you at sixteen. You might not have liked me very much back then.”

“You’re very endearing when you’re serious,” she teased.

He brought his hand up to move a stray tendril from her brow. “I am being serious. I’m glad I waited to meet you now, Caretta.”

He looked into her eyes for a long time and she felt a moment’s panic that he could see through her ruse of joking and know that with him she felt uncharacteristically vulnerable and unsure. Like she was indeed back in high school and on a date with this incredible guy she’d been dreaming about and searching for all her life, only she’d been looking in all the wrong places.

He took her hand again and guided her in the intricate footsteps of the shag. He was amazingly fluid for a man his size and he guided her along the sand, humming the tune as he moved his feet.

“Now turn. The other way! That’s right,” he said, lavishing praise. “Who says you’re not a good dancer?”

She giggled and gradually got the hang of it. Beach music was an odd blend of rhythm and blues, band and pop music that made her feet move and her hips sway. Between the heavy backbeat and his lavish praise, she lost her self-consciousness and fell into the rhythm of the music. As they danced, they laughed and remembered details of dances they’d both gone to in high school, but never together. They took turns calling out the names of the great groups they could still recall: the Tams, the Embers, the Clovers, the Zodiacs and the Catalinas. Then they said the names of old friends, favorite stomping grounds, rumors they’d heard, laughing still more at threading together the six degrees of separation. She could hear her mother’s words echo in her brain, “Where are you
from?
” As they held hands and danced and told stories, they were knitting their separate but similar histories together—left to right, knit and pearl—to create this perfect night under the moon and stars.

And when at last he stopped dancing and looked into her eyes with a message of longing and need, he didn’t have to ask. He only had to lead the way to the billowing white tent perched high on the sand dune, nestled between the pines.

The hatchlings are drawn to the brightest light. In nature, this is the white light of the moon or stars over the ocean. Artificial lighting can confuse the hatchlings and lead them to death in tangles of beach grass or on busy streets.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Y
ou gonna eat them fries?”

Toy looked down at the basket of French fries slathered with ketchup. The baby was taking up so much room these days that her stomach was squeezed like a pancake. Even though she was always hungry, always nibbling, she couldn’t eat much at one sitting. She pushed the basket across the table to Darryl.

“No. You can have them.”

It was a Friday night and the Burger King was crowded, mostly with overflow from the movie and tourists with tired, cranky kids. Toy watched as a bit of ketchup dribbled down Darryl’s chin.

“What’re you looking at?”

“You’ve got some ketchup,” she said, pointing. “Right there.” As he wiped it off with his finger, she remembered the sandwiches her mother had made for her lunch when things were so tough they couldn’t afford sandwich meat. Her mother had made a game of it, putting little dollops of ketchup on white bread and calling them button sandwiches. Instead of feeling poor, Toy had thought the sandwiches were special.

“I figure we should leave on September 20,” he said, ramming another fry into his mouth.

Toy noticed that he was talking with his mouth full and that his T-shirt had a tear in it, right in the seam by the sleeve. She noticed things like that now but didn’t mention them because she didn’t want to make him mad. He was being so sweet lately, like when they’d first started dating, telling her how much he loved her and all. He didn’t tell her she was pretty anymore, but that was okay. She knew it was because she was pregnant.

“Do you think you’ll be ready to go by then?”

Toy frowned down at her chocolate milkshake, knowing he was really asking whether the baby would be born by then and if she’d be free to travel. Even though he wasn’t snarly about the baby anymore, he still said that he didn’t want it. He thought the baby would slow them down. Darryl’s band had made their first CD and were heading west to California expecting to stake their claim to fame.

She wasn’t lying to Darryl exactly when she told him that she’d give the baby up and go with him to California. She was just giving him time to get used to the idea of being a daddy and them being a family. She wasn’t lying to Cara and Miss Lovie, either. Ever since the Fourth of July she’d been telling them she was going to the movies a lot. She just didn’t tell them that she was going with Darryl. They were little white lies that didn’t hurt nobody.

Besides, she didn’t know what else to do. She had this baby coming and Cara was leaving for Chicago and Miss Lovie was dying and Darryl was going to California. She had to have someone to be with! Everything was such a mess, and if she thought about it she got shaky and teary eyed. All she knew was that she loved her baby and she’d just have to wait until he was born. Everything would turn out okay. It just had to.

“Hel-lo? Ding dong!” Darryl tossed a fry at her. “What’s the matter with you tonight? I keep asking questions and you just sit there.”

“I was thinking,” she replied, brushing her breast where the fry landed. It lay there as though on a shelf. “It’s not even August. I don’t know about September yet.”

“Hey, it’s the end of July already, okay? September is around the corner. I gotta make plans.”

“The doctor says the baby could come two weeks before or two weeks after my due date. Leaving on the twentieth is cutting it pretty close. Besides, I can’t just have a baby then hop in a car and go on a trip. I’m going to need a few days to rest.”

“You can rest in the car. You’ll be sittin’ down for a couple thousand miles. Jesus Christ,” he swore loudly.

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain!”

It was automatic now; she’d said it without thinking. She darted a nervous glance up at Darryl’s face.

He was looking at her like he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. Then he just laughed and shook his head. “I heard that pregnant ladies start actin’ all crazy and I guess it’s true.”

She slumped in relief and ducked her head to take a sip of her shake.

“I dunno, babe,” he said with a dubious shake of his head. A brown curl slipped over his forehead. “The guys are getting anxious. They’re ready to shove off right now.”

“Let ’em go,” she muttered.

“Can’t. We’re all driving together in Hal’s van. Might not matter, though. Hal’s got to square things with his old lady, too.”

“Is Amber having a baby?”

Darryl looked at her like she was crazy. “Hell no,” he said angrily. “She’s not that dumb.”

Toy felt a sharp pain and rubbed her belly.

“Damn, I’ll be glad when this baby thing’s all over,” he said, shifting in his seat and stretching his arms out along the length of the booth. Then narrowing his eyes he asked, “What’s the matter now?”