The Last Goodbye (15 page)

“I bet you have.”

He was already wearing a black tank top and a pair of old jeans he’d hacked off at the knees and he leaned his shoulder against the door frame as Ally pulled a bright aqua suit from her suitcase.

“You want me to help you on with that?” he asked, pushing away from the door frame and taking a step toward her.

She laughed. “Anyone would think you hadn’t gotten lucky this morning.”

“It’s your fault for being so sexy.”

She made a face at his compliment and he closed the remaining distance between them to take her into his arms.

“You don’t think you’re sexy?”

“Marilyn Monroe was sexy. Monica Bellucci is sexy. I’m…cute. At best.”

“You’re sexy. Trust me.”

He kissed her, and when things started to get interesting, she slipped from his grasp.

“We’re never going to get out of this room if you don’t leave me alone to change.”

Tyler thought of the plans he’d made. If he had
his way, he’d consign them all to hell, but he wanted to give Ally a treat. She’d given so much to him and his father, and he wanted to give her something in return.

“I’ll check on Dad,” he said reluctantly.

She waved him off with a cheeky grin. The age-old tension crept into his neck and shoulders as he walked the short distance next door. Two days on from their argument, his father was still punishing him, refusing to answer his questions, behaving like a spoiled child. It reminded Tyler of the heavy silences they’d endured as children, tiptoeing around his father’s moods. Frankly, Tyler wondered where his father found the energy—Tyler had never been able to sustain a bad mood for longer than a few hours. His father, however, had turned the sulk into an art form.

The house was blessedly quiet for once as he entered, the television switched off. He found his father at the kitchen table, frowning over a crossword puzzle. He looked up briefly when Tyler entered, then returned his attention to the puzzle without saying a word.

“Ally and I are heading out, but there are sandwiches for your lunch in the fridge,” Tyler said.

His father ignored him. Tyler stared at him for a beat, then he crossed to the counter and wrote down his phone number. Tearing the sheet off, he dug around in the junk drawer until he found some tape and stuck the note to the side of the phone.

“Call me if you need anything, okay?”

Again, no response.

In reality, his father was so recovered from his operation that he really didn’t need anyone making meals for him and supervising his showers any longer.

This morning the nurse had taken Tyler aside and told him that she didn’t think it was necessary for her to visit on a daily basis anymore. Between the two of them they’d decided to reduce her visits to weekly check-ups for the time being. If things changed—or, more accurately,
when
they changed—she would in crease her visits again.

Essentially, they were in a holding pattern, waiting for the cancer to make the next move.

Tyler wondered how his father was dealing with this calm before the storm. If they had a different kind of relationship, he’d try to talk to him about it.

But they didn’t. All the same, one day soon they were going to have to sit down and talk about some things. What arrangements, if any, his father wanted made. Who he wanted to perform the service.

Not a conversation Tyler was looking forward to, on several fronts.

“I’ll see you later, Dad.”

When his father continued to ignore him, he headed for the door. Ally was trying to stuff two bulky beach towels into a too-small bag when he returned.

“Here, let me take care of that,” he said.

She handed the towels and bag over. “This ought to be good.”

He slung the bag onto the bed and draped both towels around his neck.

“I could have done that,” Ally said, chagrined.

“So why didn’t you?”

She poked her tongue out at him. He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her toward the door.

“Stop trying to distract me.”

“I was trying to insult you, actually.”

“You’re going to have to try harder. And use a different body part.”

He urged her forward but she dug her heels in.

“Wait, I need sunscreen. And we should take something to drink. And what about lunch?”

“All taken care of.”

“Huh.”

She allowed him to usher her into his truck, and he headed into town. He stopped to collect the picnic lunch he’d ordered from the local café, then he took the freeway north until he found the turnoff he was looking for. The truck began to rock and buck as they drove onto a deeply rutted unmade roadway.

“Good grief. Where are you taking me?” she said, clinging to the armrest.

“I told you, it’s a secret place.”

“No kidding.”

The road became increasingly rough as they neared their destination. Finally he spotted the distinctive crowns of a line of willow trees ahead and
the truck entered a small clearing. He parked in the shade in deference to the hot midday sun.

“I feel like I’m in
Deliverance,
” Ally said, peering through the windshield suspiciously. “Any second now we’ll hear the sound of banjo music.”

He got out of the truck and collected the picnic basket. “Come on, smart-ass.”

She followed him up a short, well-worn dirt track, making cracks about
Deliverance
all the way. Then they emerged on the riverbank and he watched the teasing expression fade from her face as she took in the gently sloping grassy bank and the clear water of the river, all framed by swaying weeping willows, their long branches dipping in and out of the water with the breeze.

“Oh, wow. This is beautiful.”

It was, although it was smaller than he’d remembered, the trees bigger, but he figured that was only natural, since it had been twenty years since he’d last been here.

“Jon and I used to hang out here every summer when we were young. All the local kids did, before they built the pool in town. There used to be an old tire swing, and we’d practice our Tarzan moves hanging out over the water.”

“There still is, look.” Ally pointed to the nearest willow.

It took him a moment to spot the tire propped in the fork of the two main branches. Someone had obviously stowed it out of sight for safekeeping. He
put down the picnic basket and crossed to the tree. On close inspection, he discovered the tire was still firmly tied to one of the large overhead branches with a thick length of rope. He tugged the tire free and let it drop so that it swung like a pendulum.

“I’ve always wanted to try a rope swing. They make them look like so much fun on all those soft drink ads,” Ally said, her voice muffled.

He turned to find she’d laid the towels out on the grass and was pulling off her tank top, stripping down to her bikini top and khaki hiking shorts. He watched as she bent over the picnic basket, enjoying the way her breasts pressed forward, creamy smooth and round.

“Yum. There’s pasta salad. And fruit salad for dessert,” she said, glancing at him.

She shook her head when she realized what he’d been staring at.

“Food first,” she warned him.

He shrugged as though there had never been another thought in his head and joined her on the towels. They grazed on the selection of deli meats and salads, polishing it off with vanilla ice cream and fruit salad and a crisp, cool apple cider to wash it all down. Ally rolled onto her back afterward and closed her eyes.

“That was delicious.” She cracked an eye to look at him. “This place was worth the bumpy ride, by the way.”

He lay down beside her and she wriggled closer
so that she could rest her head on his shoulder, his arm around her. Tyler gazed at the blue sky, her head a heavy weight near his heart. The only sound was the rush of the river. His belly was full, and he had an incredible, generous, smart, funny woman lying next to him. He could feel the warmth of her body alongside his, could smell her unique scent.

All the things he wanted to ask her, all the things he wanted to know faded into the background. Time slowed. The world shrank.

“This is really nice,” she said drowsily.

“Yeah. It is.”

The kind of nice a man could get used to, he decided as he drifted toward sleep.

If he was given half a chance.

H
E WASN’T SURE HOW LONG
he dozed for, but when Tyler woke Ally was gone. He sat up and looked around, only relaxing when he saw that she was near the big willow, investigating the rope swing. He watched with growing amusement as she attempted to climb onto it, only to fail repeatedly as it rocked beneath her weight and tipped her off.

“It’s a two-man job,” he called.

“Then what are you waiting for?”

He stood and stretched, then walked down the slope to join her.

“Give me a boost,” she said, her eyes bright with anticipation.

“First, the golden rule of river swings. Gotta check the water depth before you do anything.”

He walked to the edge, stripping off his tank top. Tossing it onto the grass, he waded into the water. The river bed was soft beneath his feet, the water icy cold despite the heat of the day. He waded in up to his waist, then up to his chest. He turned back to face the bank, the current tugging at him gently.

“See where I’m standing? This is where you want to jump off, okay? Water’s nice and deep.”

“Okay.”

He made his way back to where she waited.

“Up you get.” He grabbed the rope and steadied the tire.

“Hang on a minute.”

She shed her shorts, tossing them toward his tank top. She gave him an excited smile, then placed her hand on his shoulder for balance while she stepped into the hole of the tire, then climbed on top, sliding her legs either side of the rope. She gripped the rope with both hands and looked at him expectantly.

“Okay. I’m ready.”

“One last thing.”

He leaned forward and kissed her. She tasted like sunshine and fresh air, her mouth hot against his. She made one of the small, approving noises that drove him crazy and he angled his head to taste more of her. He tried to move closer, but the tire was a big, round impediment to greater intimacy. Ally started to giggle, finally breaking their kiss to laugh out loud.

“So much for the tire swing as a sex aid,” she said.

“Yeah. I won’t be rushing to the patent office with that one.”

She looked so adorable that he couldn’t resist dropping one last kiss onto her nose. Then he stepped away and got a good grip on the tire.

“Hold on.”

He walked backward, pulling Ally with him, his
arm and leg muscles straining as he took more and more of her weight. Then he let go and shoved with all his might. She let out a whoop of delight as she swung out over the river.

“Get ready to jump!”

Ally shifted on the swing, but when the critical point came, she hesitated. “What if I fall on my face?”

“Then you fall on your face. It’s part of the fun.”

The tire reached its farthest point and started to swing toward shore.

“Now! Go now!” Tyler called.

But again she didn’t let go. And she was coming in, fast.

Tyler glanced over his shoulder. The tree trunk was directly in her path. He’d pushed Ally with so much momentum there was a good chance she’d hit it before the tire ran out of steam.

Bracing himself, he stepped into the path of the tire.

“Tyler. Get out of the way!” Ally called as she swooped toward him.

“It’s me or the tree, babe.”

The swing twisted as it approached and she hit him back-first with a hard slap of skin on skin.

“I’ve got you,” he said.

His arms wrapped around her body but the tire’s momentum pushed him off his feet and knocked the air from his lungs. He waited for the impact of the tree trunk, but the swing petered out inches shy of making
contact then began a more leisurely sway toward the river. He planted his feet firmly and brought the tire to a jerking halt. Ally twisted frantically to look at him.

“Tyler. Are you all right? My God. You haven’t bro ken anything, have you?”

She was so comically concerned he couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m fine. But you need some serious coaching on tire swinging.”

She scrunched her face in self-disgust. “I know. I’m a big chicken. Once I got out there, I kind of froze.”

“Let me show you how it’s done.”

He helped her slide off, then he pulled the tire toward the tree as far as he could. He leaped onto the tire and pushed off with one smooth motion, swinging out over the river with one foot braced in the center of the tire, the other on the top. At the farthest point of the arc, he let go and performed a perfect water bomb into the middle of the river. Cold water splashed over him, rushing up his nose and covering his head.

“That was so cool. I want to learn how to do that,” Ally shouted from the bank when he broke the surface.

He pushed his hair off his forehead and wiped the water off his face with his hands. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

He waded toward shore, deliberately choosing to
exit where the bank was steepest. He pretended to struggle, watching Ally surreptitiously. As he’d anticipated, she immediately rushed forward to offer him her hand.

“Here,” she said, bracing her legs to take his weight as she leaned toward him.

He wrapped his hand around her forearm, then he looked straight into her eyes, not even trying to hide his grin. “Too easy, Ally.”

Her eyes widened with shocked understanding as he jerked her into the water. She splashed in up to her thighs, her body tensing as she registered the temperature of the water.

“Oh! It’s cold!” she gasped as the water splashed her torso. “You sneak, let me go.”

“Come for a swim first,” he said, pulling her deeper into the water.

“It’s too cold.”

The water was up to her breasts now.

“No, it isn’t. Not once you get used to it.” He tugged her arm one last time, pulling her close and wrapping both arms around her. Her skin was warm against his in the cool water, her nipples pebbled and hard against his chest.

“How old are you? Fifteen?” she asked, but she was smiling and she closed her eyes and relaxed into his body when he kissed her.

He slid his hands to her backside, cupping her round little derriere and lifting her against him. She
sucked on his tongue and pressed closer, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

After a few torturous moments, he broke their kiss. His heart was thundering in his ears and he was painfully hard. Any desire he’d had to swim had been well and truly superseded by another, more urgent need.

“Put your legs around my hips.”

She complied readily and he got a good grip on her backside before he started walking toward the bank.

“Tyler! You’ll give yourself a hernia. Put me down, I’m too heavy.”

“You’re small enough to fit in my pocket. Lighter than thistledown.”

All the same, he was straining a little by the time he reached the towels.

“Still lighter than thistledown, am I?”

“Got you where I wanted you, didn’t I?”

He tumbled her onto the towels and rolled on top of her. Her nipples were still hard from the cold water and he tugged her bikini top to one side as he lowered his head toward her. She caught his ears before he could pull her nipple into his mouth.

“Tyler. Anybody could see us.” She sounded like a scandalized Sunday-school teacher.

“But they won’t. We’d hear a car coming long before it got here.”

He slipped free of her grasp, lowering his head and
circling her nipple with his tongue before pulling it into his mouth.

She gripped his shoulders. “Tyler.” It was a halfhearted protest.

“Think of it as the ultimate form of getting back to nature.”

While she was pondering that, he tugged her bikini top off and switched his attention to her other breast.

It wasn’t long before Ally was fumbling at the wet waistband of his jeans, trying to gain access to his erection. The wet denim fought him every step of the way as he tugged it over his hips. When he hooked a finger into the waistband of Ally’s bikini bottoms, she bit her lip and glanced up the slope toward the trail.

“Trust me. This is more private than your backyard,” he said.

She lifted her hips and he pulled her bikini bottoms down. He surveyed her, all pink and cream in the dappled light, her dark curls beckoning enticingly.

“You look good enough to eat. Strawberries and cream.”

She gave a muffled protest as he started to kiss his way down her belly. He pushed her legs wide with a gentle hand, caressing her inner thigh soothingly.

“Relax. Count to ten,” he said with a half-smile. “It’ll be over before you know it.”

She remained tense until he lowered his head and took the first long, slow taste of her. Quickly she
turned to liquid in his hands, moaning and quivering and digging her fingers into his hair and shoulders until he slid up her body again and plunged deep inside her.

Her head dropped back and she closed her eyes as he started to move, her breath coming in choppy little pants. He caressed her breasts and her hips and the smooth skin of her belly, loving how soft and warm and womanly she was. Loving the feel of her around him, beneath him.

She came silently, her breath catching in her throat, her hands clutching at his backside. He let himself go, too, riding her shudders to his own completion, looking into her eyes as she dazedly came back to earth.

He rolled away afterward, breathing heavily. Ally lay languid and supine beside him for a full twenty seconds before she remembered where she was and scrambled to pull one of the towels over both of them.

“You realize we broke about ten different decency laws, don’t you?”

“I counted eleven. But you might be right.”

“You’re a bad influence, Tyler Adamson.”

“That’s what my mother used to say.”

She fell silent for a moment, then propped her chin on her hand. “You never talk about your mother,” she said.

He could hear the unspoken questions in her voice. “Neither do you.”

He had some questions, too.

“That’s different.”

“Is it?”

“If you don’t want to talk about her, it’s okay.”

“I’m fine talking about my mother, but there’s not much to tell, to be honest. She wasn’t a very happy woman. Her and Dad used to fight a lot, especially when we were younger. She was stuck at home with two little kids all day, and he’d stay at the pub after work. I think she resented the isolation. Resented us.”

He waved a fly away with his hand.

“She never did anything to stop him hitting you?”

“Never. She used to tell us it was our fault, that if we were good boys Dad would never have to lay a finger on us.”

“Did he ever hit her?”

He shook his head. “They’d just go at each other verbally. One of the clearest memories of my childhood is my mother crying at the kitchen table. It was practically a nightly event.”

Ally pressed a kiss to his shoulder, resting her cheek against him for a long moment in wordless sympathy.

“What about your mom?”

She stared at him as though she didn’t know where to begin.

“You told me the other day she was an artist,” he prompted.

“That’s right.”

“What sort? Painter, sculptor?”

“Painter. She worked mostly with acrylics. I guess you’d say her style was post-modernist.”

“Would I know any of her work?”

“Probably not. She had a bit of success in the early seventies, but mostly she relied on friends or boyfriends to give her somewhere to live and help her get by.”

“Pretty precarious way to live.” Especially with a child in tow.

“Yes, but she was very charming and she never outstayed her welcome. She was always flitting around. New York, Paris, London, Sydney, Spain. She even lived in Rio for a while. She was the ultimate free spirit, really, and I think it’s safe to say I was the unplanned mistake of her life.”

She gave him a dry look.

“My aunt told me once that my mother was devastated when she found out she was pregnant, especially since it was far too late to do anything about it. Very typical of my mother, not even noticing she was pregnant until it was staring her in the face.”

“What about your father?”

“Never knew him. Don’t even know his name.” She shrugged as though it made no difference to her.

She sat up and reached for her bikini bottoms, shuddering as she pulled them up her legs. “Is there anything worse than putting on a wet swimsuit?”

Tyler could think of worse things. Like being told you were a mistake, for instance, and never knowing your own father.

“I take it your mom stopped traveling when she had you?”

“She tried. But she couldn’t handle it. She hated being tied down, hated ‘sublurbia,’ as she called it. So she left me with my grandmother when I was about six months old.”

She grabbed for her bikini top and put it on.

“I don’t remember Gran very much, although I always feel as though I should. She died when I was five.”

“What happened then?”

“My mother came back for me and I started traveling with her.”

Ally sank to the ground beside him, lying on her belly while she plucked at the grass.

“So you were an international jetsetter at five?”

“For a while. I didn’t like it very much. I used to freak out at all the different places we stayed in. Sent my mother crazy.” She laughed, shaking her head.

“There was this one place in New York, a big old apartment in SoHo or somewhere. It took up a whole floor, but it was completely empty, utterly desolate, except for the bedroom where we stayed. I used to have nightmares about all those dark, empty rooms and wake up screaming. Then there was the place in Provence, with the scary outdoor toilet. More night
mares. And so on. Finally my mother talked her sister into looking after me.”

She plucked a couple of bluebells from amongst the grass and started braiding their stems together.

“How old were you then?”

She screwed up her face, thinking. “I don’t know. Six? Maybe seven. I don’t remember exactly, but I hated being left behind. With a passion. Which probably explains why Aunt Phyllis was more than happy to hand me back to my mother when I was nine. I don’t think I was a very grateful niece.”

She shot him an amused look, inviting him to laugh at the misbehavior of her juvenile self.