A Dolphin's Gift (8 page)

Unwisely, he
took her in his arms and held her, all the while reminding himself that this
perilous road could only lead to a dead end. But for the moment he didn’t want
to think about it. All he wanted was to hold Nellie in his arms and feel her
breasts against his chest, and her heart beating beneath his, and soak up the
warmth of her body, for just a little while.

Two days later,
when Nellie stepped into the galley, she stared in disbelief at the small,
dog-eared book resting on the table. The cover displayed the image of a mouse
wearing a dress. "He's not for real," she said to Katy, who looked up
from her fleece-lined bed on the floor and cocked an ear. Will couldn't really
expect Mike to read
The Tale of Mrs.
Tittlemouse
?

Nellie opened
the cover. Inside, she found a note scrawled in blue ballpoint. "To Willie
from Mrs. Miller." She smiled as she pictured a dark-haired boy with brown
eyes and a crocked smile responding to the name, Willie. She slowly thumbed
through the pages. It was like Will said: a tidy house in a hole in the ground,
a little lady mouse dusting and cleaning, and everything nice and cozy and
secure. But to expect Mike to go for this…

She glanced through
the porthole. On deck, Will was showing Mike a piece of equipment she assumed
was for his orca study. From the perturbed expression on Mike's face, he wanted
no part of whatever Will was saying to him. It wasn't like Mike to be rude, so
she suspected he was jealous. After all, Mike had been the man of the house for
well over a year, and he undoubtedly believed Will was trying to take his
place.

Nellie pondered
that thought. Will being head of the household. She had to admit it appealed to
her, maybe more than it should. But she'd also been puzzled by Will's hasty
departure, two nights before, when he'd sat with her in the salon talking about
Mike's bad dreams. When she'd told him he had the makings of a natural father,
something fleeting in Will's eyes told her differently. She'd noticed other
things about him that night as well. He had the kind of body that captured and
held a woman's attention. She'd fantasized about it after Will left, wondering
what he'd be like in bed. He excited her in a way she'd never felt with
Richard. But then, she'd known Richard for years before they married. With
Will, it was all new. And bizarrely alluring...

And she sensed
Will was attracted to her as well. Over the past week he'd spent time helping
her scrape and sand when she knew he should have been working on the engine.
And the night before he’d found her sitting on deck after Mike had gone to bed,
and they'd talked past midnight, mostly about the memorable times she'd had
with Uncle Vern on the
Isadora
. It
hadn't occurred to her until after Will left that he'd revealed nothing about
himself. But there was time... a month at sea to get better acquainted. She let
out a little snicker. She could never have imagined, the night her car died and
she called Will from the garage, that two weeks later she'd be fantasizing
about the man. It still felt odd to find
herself
thinking romantically about any man but Richard.

A few minutes
later, Will stepped through the door carrying a large box which, Nellie knew,
from the flex of his muscles, was very heavy. He set the box down. Focusing on
The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse
in her
hands, he said, "What do you think?"

"It's very
nice of you," Nellie said, knowing he meant well, "but Mike's ten
years old. He's not going to read a story about a lady mouse cleaning
house."

"He will
when we're in open water and there's nothing to do," Will said.
"Meanwhile, I have something for you." He opened the box, revealing a
portable, heavy-duty sewing machine.

"How long
do we have it for?" Nellie asked, stepping over to inspect the machine.

"As long
as you want," Will replied. "I bought it."

Will stepped up
behind her, and as he peered over her shoulder, Nellie caught the hint of a
very sexy male aftershave. Musk? She'd read somewhere that musk was put in aftershaves
and male colognes as an aphrodisiac. Whatever is was
,
it was working. The image of Will's muscular chest and the thin line of hair
disappearing into his sweats came back. Her breath quickened...

"Is it
what you wanted?" Will asked.

Nellie focused
her attention on the machine again. "Yes," she said, "but this
kind of machine must be very expensive." She turned to face him, and he
was so close she could see the pulse beating in his throat. Then she raised her
eyes and looked at him, and said, somewhat lamely, "I mean, wasn't it
terribly pricey?"

"It's a
used machine," Will said, his eyes focusing on her lips. "You don't
mind owning a used machine, do you?" He moved closer.

"No...
a
used machine... is just fine..." Nellie's words
trailed off when Will's finger curved under her chin and tipped her face up,
and before she analyzed the pros and cons of what was about to happen, their
lips met, and Will's arms were around her, and she didn't try to stop him.
Until now she hadn't realized how much she'd missed being held by a man, and
having the scent of him in her nostrils, and the salty taste of him on her
tongue, and his hands moving in languid strokes up and down her back... and her
hands tangling in his hair... and little moans of pleasure emanating from her
throat...

"I hate
you!" Mike's voice shattered the moment. "I hate you both!" Mike
rushed onto the deck, leapt to the dock and ran out of the boathouse.

Nellie pushed
out of Will's arms. "Mike, wait!" she yelled after him. But he'd
already rushed out, slamming the door behind him.

"I'm
sorry," Will said.

"It's fine
to be sorry, after the fact," Nellie replied, "but as adults, we
should have some control. After all, we only just met a short time ago, and the
sort of thing that happened is confusing to a young boy."

"We were
kissing," Will said. "It happens all the time. I'm sure it's nothing
new to Mike."

"It is
when it's his mother!" Nellie said, her voice rising. "I'm trying to
teach him morals and the least I can do is set an example."

"Kissing
isn’t immoral," Will stated. "It's the exchange of feelings between
two people."

Nellie looked
at Will, exasperated. It was impossible to reason with a man who had so little
experience with children. "Mike isn't ready for this."

"He will
be the next time it happens," Will said.

"There
won't be a next time!" Nellie cried. But even as she said the words,
Nellie found herself looking forward to another kiss. "I've got to find
Mike."

As she searched
the docks, Nellie went over in her mind what she'd say. How does a mother, a
widow no less, explain to her ten-year-old son why she was kissing a man she'd
known for such a short time? But that was the difficult part. Will seemed much
more than just a friend, even though they'd known each other for less than two
weeks.

She spotted
Mike sitting at the far end of a long pier. A stick in his hand, he pounded it
against a weathered piling. From his short, quick, movements she knew he was
upset. She lowered herself beside him and gazed across the water. "It's
real pretty here, don't you think?"

Mike continued
to pound the piling without looking up. A piece of stick broke off and flipped
into the water. He tossed the rest of the stick after it, refusing to answer.

Nellie drew in
a ragged breath. "I'm sorry you're upset about what happened," she
said. "It's okay for you to feel that way. It's not wrong."

Mike didn't
respond and Nellie was beginning to think he hadn't heard her. Then he picked
up a bottle cap, hurled it into the water, and said, "I thought you loved
Daddy."

"I did
love Daddy and I still do," Nellie said, "and losing him saddens me
more than you'll ever know. But he's gone, and my life is still going on, just
as yours is." She waited for Mike to respond. When he didn't, she said,
"You've got to understand, Mike, that I can't just wither and die because
Daddy was taken away from us. He wouldn't want that." She reached for
Mike's arm and he snatched it away. She sighed. "He'd want us to be
happy."

"You
kissed him on the mouth," Mike said, disgusted, "like you kissed Daddy."

The heel of
Mike's shoe thumped repeatedly against the piling and Nellie could feel the
anger roiling inside him. "I'm sorry you walked in on us," she said,
"but that can't be helped. I didn't intend for it to happen. It just
did."

Mike picked up
a clam shell and started scraping the pier. "Are you gonna marry
him?"

Nellie let out
a short, nervous laugh. "Just because we kissed doesn't mean we're going
to get married. A kiss is a sign of affection between two people. And we are
good friends. But if we did decide to get married, would that be so bad?"
She was surprised to hear herself verbalized the idea. But the notion had taken
root, and she couldn't seem to set it aside. She sensed that Will was a man who
could give her love and understanding. And he had an almost uncanny way of
sorting through Mike's problems and getting to the core of things. She could
certainly do worse.

"I don't
like him," Mike stated. "If you marry him I'll run away."

"You don't
mean that," Nellie said, attempting to hide the worry in her voice.

"Yes I
do," Mike insisted.

"Running
away won't solve anything," she said.

Mike hurled the
clam shell into the water and stood. When he turned to leave, Nellie jumped up
and grabbed his arm. "Where are you going?"

"No place.
I just don't want to go back there," Mike said, looking toward the
boathouse.

Nellie stared
at Mike's troubled face and considered his threat, and vowed she'd resist
Will's advances, no matter how difficult it might be. "I'm almost finished
painting trim," she said, "so why don't you come back to the
boathouse and get Katy and take her for a walk, and after that, you and I will
go to the store and buy some candy."

Mike gave a
shrug of indifference, then followed Nellie back to the boathouse, where he
untied Katy from the cleat and left. "Don't be too long," Nellie
called after him.

The door to the
boathouse slammed.

Nellie jumped
to the deck of the
Isadora
and went
inside. She hadn't been there long when Will climbed up from the galley and
stepped into the salon. "You know what," he said, his eyes roaming
over her. "I'd like to nibble on your neck." He reached out and took
her arm, pulling her to him, and before she could protest, he kissed her
soundly.

Bracing her
hands on his chest, Nellie pushed against him, and said, "We’ve absolutely
got to stop this. Mike threatened to run away."

"Lots of
kids threaten to do that, but they rarely mean it," Will replied.
"Mike's probably just testing to see what kind of reaction he'll
get."

"Well, I'm
scared," Nellie said. "He's so upset, he might just do it."

"You can't
believe he'd run away simply because he saw you kiss me," Will said in a
sober voice. "There's got to be more to it than that."

Nellie
shrugged. "That's basically it… almost."

"Almost?"

Nellie gave him
a nervous little smile. "He said he'd run away if we... got married."

"Married?"
The word seemed to hang heavily on Will's lips, and for some moments he said
nothing. Then he eyed her warily, and said, "Why would he think we'd get
married?"

Feeling
chagrined, Nellie shrugged and replied, "I suppose because to Mike kissing
means love, and love means marriage. It's a fairly simple concept."

"And
you?" Will asked, pointedly. "What does kissing mean to you?"

Nellie sensed
his terse words to be a sort of criterion. He’d already told her that never
marry because he was a loner. Feeling foolish for having brought up the
subject, she shrugged, and said, "I don't think kissing or anything else
has to necessarily end in marriage."

But the fact
was
,
she could never give her soul without love, or
her body without commitment. And for her, commitment was marriage.

***

Nellie sat on
the dock checking Katy for fleas while the carpet was being installed in the
salon and staterooms and the vinyl put down in the galley and head. "Looks
pretty good, Katy," she said to the little dog. "I guess your
collar's working. We don't want any fleas to crawl down into the new
carpet," she explained. Katy thumped her tail rhythmically against the
dock.

Nellie glanced
toward the door to the engine room, where she knew Will was working. Ever since
the subject of marriage came up three days before, Will kept a respectable
distance from her, and she missed the closeness they'd come to share. The sight
of his bare chest and the promise of what lay beneath his sweats was like an
intoxicant, and she found herself fantasizing about running her hands over his
sleek male body and down his flat belly and closing her palm around his male
part and learning what gave him pleasure, and showing him what gave her
pleasure, and making hot, heavy love with him...

But Will's
terms didn't include marriage, and hers didn't allow anything else. Still, she
could have her fantasies. Her mind drifted to the master stateroom with its
double-wide berth. She and Will hadn't discussed sleeping arrangements. At the
moment, she was staying in the master stateroom, Mike was in one of the two
bunks in the fo'c'sle, and Will was in his apartment. The only other room
aboard was a small compartment with no bunk and little room to move around.

Returning her
attention to Katy, she commented, "You'll be a regular old sea dog by the
end of the trip but you've got to stop chasing Zeke." Katy cocked an ear
at the change in Nellie's voice then looked at her with curiosity. "I'm
sorry, but it has to be that way," she said. "I know you're just
having fun, but Zeke doesn't view it that way. Nor does
Will
."