A Month at the Shore (26 page)

Laura may have left with her shoes, but she'd forgotten about her car: at the moment, she didn't have one.

Fine. It would be a two-mile trek and in the dark, but she had absolutely no intention of asking Ken for a lift home or even for the use of his phone to call one of the town's two cabs.

It was late. She was exhausted. But she had her pride, damn it. There was absolutely no need for him to assume that Max was part of any list of reasons for her refusal to jump into bed. How anyone could go from being so understanding to being such a total jerk was an infuriating mystery to her.

Suddenly a couple of garden lights went on, casting a soft glow over the brick patio. A doorlatch clicked. Laura whirled around to see Ken fully dressed and slapping his car keys against his thigh.

"Do you want to talk about him?"

"Who?"

"I don't know his name. The guy who broke it off."

"Max? Why would I want to talk about him?"

"Maybe it's something you have to work through," Ken said slowly, as if he were feeling his way. "Now's your chance."

"I don't have to work through Max," she said, exasperated. "I've worked through Max. It's over. Done. Finished."
Aaagh.
She didn't have the energy for this. After a quick and forceful sigh, she said, "It's been a long day." She pointed to his car keys. "Are you offering to drive me home?"

"If that's what you want."

"Thank you," she said, and she sat in one of the teak patio chairs. "I just have to put on my shoes."

He stood and waited while she buckled first one sandal and then the other in self-conscious silence. She felt far more awkward now than she had when she was standing half-naked in front of him.

Of all the ways for the evening to end. She fought back a sudden sting of emotion as she stood up and said briskly, "Okay, I'm all set."

"Watch your step," he warned her quietly as they walked out. "The rest of the way isn't lit."

****

Now what?

That's what Ken kept asking himself as he drove a silent Laura back to Shore Gardens. How could it have gone so wrong? Granted, he'd had other dates that hadn't ended up as ideally as he would have liked—in bed—but this one had just hit a new low. To have a woman as desirable as
Laura
Shore
in his arms for one intensely erotic moment, and then to have her slip away
...
.

He
was
a knucklehead. He hadn't been able to resist her, and he had rushed her, and now here she was: not speaking. Only a knucklehead would have tried to take advantage of her in the state she was in. He was disgusted with himself for having lost control. If he had known that she'd just been ditched by some obvious moron, he wouldn't have touched her with a ten-foot pole. A woman in that position, and with everything else going on in her life besides
?

Not with a ten-foot pole.

And yet there was something about her—a surprising vulnerability, despite her in-your-ear attitude—that made him want to be near her, and take care of her, and keep all the Will Burtons at bay. There was something about a woman who was determined to fight her own battles that made you want to share the battlefield with her. Laura was that kind of a woman.

The question was, since when had he become that kind of man? He wasn't unhappy or restless with the life he was living. Why the need to go and complicate it with a complicated woman? Hell, the last time that he'd felt such a protective surge about someone was
... well, with Laura, that day in the woods.

The realization brought him full circle to the payback smack that Laura had given Will Burton in Captain Jack's. Smiling inwardly despite the chill in the car, he glanced at Laura. "Everything okay over there?" he ventured to ask.

"Perfectly fine."

She could have been answering from a neighboring ice floe.

His thoughts went back, inevitably, to their recent confrontation. She claimed that she was over this Max character. Ken wanted to believe her, more than he wanted to admit. But how could she possibly trust her own judgment right now? She had arrived in Chepaquit at a time of financial crisis; had spen
t punishing hours in an all-or-
nothing effort to save the family farm; had seemed to be pulling it off; and had just been upended by the discovery—
his
discovery, no less—of human remains in her compost pile.

Clearly, the best thing he could do was to leave her some breathing room for the moment. The truth was, he could use a little breathing room himself. Things were moving way too fast, and that was all his fault.

His headlamps bounced their beams off yellow tape as he drove past the site of the search; he was relieved to see that the police hadn't set up lights for an all-nighter. The rest of the nursery was pitch-black, the way it was every night of the year: everyone knew that the Shores had never been ones for wasting electricity.

The house was dark, too, except for two rooms at opposite ends of the second floor.

"Looks like everyone's about to turn in," he said, trying to make ordinary conversation.

Sounding equally offhand, Laura said, "It's been a long—interesting, but long—day for all of us."

He pulled to a stop but left his engine idling, because he didn't want her to feel even remotely obliged to offer him coffee.

Fat chance. She had the door open before he had time to pull the brake.

"Laura—"

"You don't have to say anything, Ken. Tonight never should have happened."

"I know. That's how I feel."

They both said, "I'm sorry," at the same time, and then they both chuckled awkwardly at the same time, and then she closed the door and sa
id good night through the half-
opened window.

He said, "See you—"

She was gone before he could say "tomorrow."

****

Before collapsing for the night, Laura went in to see her sister. Corinne was still awake, sitting on the side of her painted iron bed and twisting her hair into a single long braid. In her plain white nightgown and posed against a backdrop of peeling, faded cabbage-rose wallpaper that had been there for at least half a century, she looked like what she was: a farmer's daughter.

"When did they leave?" asked Laura. No need to explain who "they" were.

"Around dark, just like Chief Mellon promised. I almost couldn't breathe while they were here. I was just so
aware
of them; of what they were doing. They kept filling black plastic bags and then labeling them."

She shook her head slowly, clearly reliving the scene. "Bag after bag after bag
... It was brutal."

"I know. Hopefully they're done digging."

Unless they planned to go hunting for more bodies, of course.

"Lucy called."

"Who?"

"You know—the girl I hired when I thought we were going to be overwhelmed with customers?"

"Oh, yeah. That Lucy." It seemed like at least a decade ago.

"I had to tell her that we wouldn't be needing her," Corinne said, obviously disappointed. "She was really nice. She said she loved what we'd done with the place, then told me to cheer up and said that she was ready to come to work for us whenever we were ready for her. I felt like she was
my
boss. She was so calm, so reasonable. It really is too bad that we can't hire her."

"Did you ever find out her last name?"

"Oh, gosh. I forgot to ask."

"Oh, well. If she wants us, she'll know where to find us."

"We'll call her Lucy in the Sky," said Corinne, and then added, "Did you have a nice time?"

Laura dropped like a sack into a low-slung, quilted armchair positioned across from the bed. "Yeah. I had a good time," she said with a doleful smile. "Too good. By half. One could say."

"Because when Ken said you were going to have a picnic on the beach, I have to say, I was surprised."

"Oh, the beach was fine, actually fun. It's when we went into his house that things took a turn for the worse. Or the better," she corrected, "depending on how you want to look at it."

"You're not making much sense, you know. What exactly happened?"

"There wasn't penetration, if that's what you're wondering," Laura said glumly. She jammed her fists in her pockets and came up with her bra.

Corinne said with obvious disappointment, "Oh. The cotton one. Too bad you weren't wearing the bitsy thing from Victoria's Secret."

"Who knew?" Laura grimaced and stuffed it back in her pocket.

"So you chickened out. Laura, why?"

"Why do you think
I
was the one who chickened out?"

"He's a man," Corinne answered, surprised by the question.

With a sigh, Laura said, "You're right, I got cold feet. The timing just didn't seem to be optimal."

Her sister said with a knowing nod, "Because of Max, you mean."

"No,
not because of Max. Why is everyone fixated on Max? Max has nothing—nothing!—to do with my feelings about Ken."

"Okay, okay," Corinne said, backing down. "So what
are
your feelings about Ken?"

"I don't know," Laura admitted, shaking her head. "I don't have a clue. There's chemistry. That's all I know."

But she was thinking, Max would never drink wine from a child's pail the way Ken had. Max didn't even like the beach; he was afraid of getting sand in his laptop. And would Max have carried her in his arms through thorny roses when he could go the easy way around? Not very likely. And forget about wearing a tie with hot-air balloons all over it.

Corinne stood the pillows on edge against the iron posts of her headboard and sat back against them, then pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her forearms around her shins, just the way she used to do before bed when they were growing up. She was ready for girl-talk.

"Was there any chemistry between you and Max?" she asked.

"Max again!"

"There wasn't, was there? I knew it," Corinne said without any glee. "I could tell that from your phone calls, but I never wanted to say anything. Don't take this wrong
... but if Max was so unexciting, why did you get engaged to him in the first place?"

Laura had propped her legs up on the footboard and was studying her feet, which she never really liked. Why on earth did she keep sticking them in sandals for all the world to see? No wonder she'd felt self-conscious back at Ken's patio. It was probably all because of her feet.

"Laura?"

Reluctantly, Laura looked up to see her sister waiting, not too patiently, for an answer.

"You want the truth?" Laura asked.

"What do
you
think?"

"All right. The truth is—I wanted to get married, I
have
to get married," Laura said, still surprised and exasperated by the fact. "My clock is ticking. I can't wait forever for the perfect man. I watch
60 Minutes.
I read
Newsweek.
I know my eggs are doing a nosedive even as we speak."

"You want kids?" Corinne said, astonished. "Since when? I can't remember you ever talking about it."

"Because I've hardly ever thought about it. It always seemed like something that was down the road. Well, guess what? I'm a fair way down that road."

"But what about your career?"

"I can do both. One of the reasons that I became a consultant instead of signing up for some big-benefits job was so that I could work from home. I
can
do both. I
will
do both."

"The question is," said Corinne, posing her chin on her knees, "who you gonna do it with?"

"If that's a pun, I plan to ignore it," Laura said wryly. "Anyway, just because there's chemistry between Ken and me, that doesn't mean he's husband material."

"Oh, come on. Who better?"

"Okay, let me rephrase: that doesn't mean I'm wife material."

"Aha.
Now
we're getting at it," Corinne said, pointing a triumphant finger at her sister. "You don't think you're good enough for him
!
And you're the one who's supposed to have confidence in yourself. God, you sound like
me."

"Yeah, but I'm the one with a track record," Laura said. "Let us not forget dear Max."

"But Ken has always known about Uncle Norbert. And that didn't stop him from—"

"Trying to get me into bed. Right. Because, as you said yourself: he
is
a guy. It doesn't mean a thing. Anyway, I doubt that he'll try again. I told him tonight that Max dumped me."

"Really! Before or after the bra?"

"After. The fact had nothing to do with my backing away from the bed, of course, but at this point Ken thinks I'm an emotional wreck in general, and he thinks Max is part of that."