Barefoot Beach (26 page)

“I'll stay in and kick back, thanks.”

But after the door closed behind him, I didn't collapse into the cushions. I snatched a cube of dark chocolate for energy and made my way barefoot around the living room, taking advantage of the opportunity to see how Scott Goddard lived and what he surrounded himself with, what brought him pleasure and comfort, picking up clues about the man himself.

The sofa was tweed, a good choice with a dog that shed. Common sense. Two chairs: one brown leather, probably from his late mother-in-law's house, old and worn to a glossy patina. Bunny wouldn't have appreciated its beauty. She would have ceded this chair to him with good riddance. Or maybe it wasn't from a place they'd lived in together; he may have chosen to leave that marriage with as few reminders as possible.

I walked over to inspect the contents of his bookshelves. Tom Clancy, of course, and Sun Tzu's
The Art of War
, Machiavelli, and Daniel Silva, all expected. But also Jane Austen and Flannery O'Connor. I flipped open the cover to find a bookplate imprinted with Scott's name. Interesting
man. Then. There. No, couldn't be. Between
The Sun Also Rises
and
The Sea-Wolf
. Yes. Yes, with a jolt of heartbeat so strong I had to grab the shelf to steady myself:
Wild Mountain
. The spine confirmed it. Lon Farrell. I laughed without reason, withdrew the book, and turned to the title page. Beneath the tiny stylized fish, the visual icon of the book, there was my husband's handwriting. Blurred. Again there was no real reason for my tears, which made a watercolor of a still life. I blinked twice, clearing my vision enough to read, “For Scott, There are fictional heroes and real ones. With admiration for the latter and my personal good wishes,” followed by my husband's familiar signature.

The inscription was undated, but I could pinpoint the time. The spring
Wild Mountain
was released, Lon had done a flurry of signings at bookstores up and down the shore. Scott must have been between deployments that year. Someone stateside could have had the book signed and shipped it to his base, but an eerie tickle told me the two men had met.

Maybe that should have freaked me out, but it did just the opposite. I like seeing connections. Links. Patterns disguised as coincidences. After the first smack of shock subsided, I replaced
Wild Mountain
in its slot between two greats, gave the Hemingway a fond pat, and picked up the remote on the way to the sofa.

I clicked. Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor surged through the room. One of Lon's favorites. Finally weirded out, I moved on. Past Christopher Cross and “Sailing,” Santana and Sheryl Crow. Lon had played “Sailing” ad nauseam the first summer I spent at the beach house and he had a thing for Sheryl Crow. I finally landed on Lady Antebellum's “Need You Now.” Lon was no longer around when that hit the charts. I leaned back against the cushions and, lids lowered, drifted with the music, rousing only when I heard the rasp of a throat being cleared nearby. I opened my eyes slowly to find Scott grinning down at me. “Got in a snooze, huh? Good for you. Sorry we were out so long. Nature took a while to call. You did okay?”

“Fine.”

“Let me get him bedded down. It will be quick.”

He stopped in the kitchen on his way back. I heard the fridge door slam and he materialized with a dark green bottle and two wine glasses. “It's California, not French. I try to buy American.”

“As long as it's bubbly, it could be from Brooklyn,” I said.

“You're from Brooklyn, right?” He set the glasses on the coffee table.

“Born and raised.”

“Then Brooklyn champagne would be vintage.”

He popped the cork and poured. He watched intently as I took my first sip. “Very Flatbush,” I proclaimed. “Assertive and bold with an undertone of bus exhaust and a hint of kosher hot dog in the finish.”

He laughed. “You're witty. Besides being beautiful.”

“Beautiful? Me? Now? My hair is messed up and I've got hardly any lipstick left.”

“You don't need lipstick. In fact, I think we should get rid of the last of it. And let's mess your hair a little more.”

The first kiss was bubbly. The second carried its own fizz, which shot straight to my brain, causing all the unnecessary muscles to relax, but my skin, which he stroked with a look of astonishment, came to life under his touch. I traced a finger along the angle of his jaw and he groaned. He brushed his lips along the inside of my elbow. Who knew that was an erogenous zone?
Oh God.

We made out like the teenagers of our generation. Then we grew up. Scott stood and backed off to unbutton his shirt, removed it and his undershirt, and folded and stacked them neatly at the end of the sofa. I figured that was his military training kicking in.

He offered me a hand, a lift to my feet, pulled me against him, and went for the stripper zipper on my dress, the one Margo had said was essential for easy entrée. She'd been right about the zipper, wrong about the bra. The man who knew how to load a Beretta M9 didn't fumble with a Bali 34D.

He put space between us so we could take each other in. I folded my arms under my chest, supporting what had never, from their first blossoming, been perky. It didn't seem to matter to him. His pupils fired. “Incredible,” he said with a sexy twist to his smile.

I nodded, my throat tightening. His arms and upper torso were well muscled, and I was happy to see just enough hair grassing his pecs so he didn't look airbrushed to glossy like a hero on the cover of a romance novel. He was a real man, and from three feet, then one foot, and up against him—measured any way—Scott was hot. A rhyme that entered my lexicon the moment I thought it.

As I went for
his
zipper, he said, “Not here,” and hitched his neck toward the hallway.

I don't remember who led as we staggered into the bedroom.

We faced each other in the moonlight that poured through the window.

As I moved to unbuckle his belt he murmured, “Damn, I want you,” but then he broke away. He walked across the room and turned off the lamp on one of the night tables. Then he closed the bedroom door. I wondered why; Sarge was crated. Now the door blocked even a sliver of light from the hall. When he came back, he lowered the shades.

That plunged us into total darkness and me into disappointment. I liked to make love with my eyes open. Seeing the action was another turn-on for me. As I felt around empty space for him, I wanted to assure him that he didn't need to hide the techno leg, and if he removed it, that was okay too. I'd seen my share of prostheses on and off.

Not his, though. I remembered how, just before we concluded his intake interview at the dance studio and after we'd gone through his medical history and his objectives for the class, he'd suddenly shifted his gaze from my eyes to his hands, which were capped over his knees. His eyebrows had knitted as he said, “I suppose you want to see the prosthesis. The fit.” But he'd made no move to bend over, to roll up his trouser leg. In fact, he'd tightened the grip on his left knee.

Body language was my second language. I had no problem reading those gestures. He didn't want me to see his leg.

Some do. Proud of the technology that gave them back their mobility, the craftsmanship that fabricated their state-of-the-art prostheses, they want to show them off. Or they're interested in my professional assessment of the socket fitting. Or they're just comfortable with how it's turned out.

Some don't. It's not usually shame that holds them back. They're just private by nature.

My sense back then had been that the colonel was private. Of course, I'd respect his boundaries.

Maybe I should have brought it up then, because I couldn't now. We were in a different place, and in this place, his bedroom, we didn't know each other that well. And how ironic was that, considering where we were heading—if I didn't crash into furniture on the way.

Suddenly he was next to me. I knew because I heard his breath catch and inhaled the scent of him, not his piney cologne, but a primitive mix of healthy sweat and alcohol that made me reach for his fly. He caught my wrist midway and brought it to his lips; then, hands splayed against my shivering back, he steered me to what I discovered as he laid me down on it was the bed. He sat down on the edge, peeled off his trousers—I heard the belt buckle hit the hardwood floor—and I supposed his jockeys came off too. No folding this time. He was moving fast and we were at a point where rules didn't apply. I pitched my Victoria's Secret bikini like a pro. For all I knew, it hooked onto a blade of the ceiling fan, a lacy flag of surrender. Or victory.

Scott lay down next to me, and we began operating entirely by braille. The smooth coolness of the sheet under my skin. The roughness of midnight shadow on his cheek. The sinewy, sinuous probing of tongues. Our breathing was hushed, the space between us thick and steamy. I slid my hand over his chest, his taut nipples, then rode the muscles of his belly to
his hardness. He broke the silence with a groan, then a baritone laugh when he found me soft and wet.

All was going well. Then accidently, while stroking him, my hand strayed to the flesh of his left thigh where it joined the prosthesis. His startle reflex rocked the mattress.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “Pain?”

“Not at all.” He shifted toward me.

Ah, I thought, he was sensitive there. Heightened nerve response, probably stimulating for him, and traced my finger downward. A mistake I discovered when he grabbed my hand and moved it to his right side. “Better,” he said.

But it wasn't. For a while he was all over me. Hands and tongue, attentive, inventive, and incredibly exciting, but when I wanted to touch him, pleasure him, he deflected me and distracted me with overwhelming sensation. His practiced trigger finger found a ready target. When he allowed me to find him again, he was soft.

I did everything I could think of to arouse him. Another mistake. He was a sharp guy and he must have sensed I was working (not good) frantically (even worse). Finally, he tugged me up, drew me close, and cupped my chin in his hand. “Enough. Don't knock yourself out. It's useless. I am. Useless.” Such a sad, sad word.

“Scott.”

“Listen—” He cut me off and rolled to face me. I felt his breath on my cheek. “You know I'm attracted to you, Nora. Frankly, attracted doesn't begin to describe what I feel. And if you have any doubts about that because of”—he groped for the word—“because of tonight, don't. Please. It's just that I get going, and at some point, a switch in me turns off.”

So I wasn't the first. Had there been previous dates? Or just his wife?

After a sigh that drilled through the darkness, he said, “I don't know what's going on. Maybe I'm not ready yet. Maybe I never will be because I'm terminally screwed up. I don't know. Right now all I know is . . . I'm sorry.”

I answered too quickly, too chirpily, “No need. And no big deal. First date. Well, first real date. Both of us overanxious. Plus the champagne. That can interfere. Look, this happens.” I continued to blurt, clumsily trying to make things better, making them worse. “If you want, we can take a break. I'm not Cinderella tonight. It's not like I have a curfew.”

He didn't answer that either. Or he did, but not with words.

He flicked on the bedside lamp, and before my eyes could adjust to the light, he was off like a shot to the bathroom. After a few minutes he emerged tying the belt of a terry robe.

“Let's get ourselves dressed and get you home,” he said.

He drove with the radio on. No music. Nothing that would evoke love, consummated or un. He tuned in the shore's all-news station, but when the report changed from a flood in Mississippi to the latest casualties in the Middle East, he switched to ESPN's local outlet. The night game between the archrival Orioles and Yankees had ended with a spectacular catch by a rookie, a Cuban kid, all of nineteen. Jack's age. The announcer crowed, “What we saw tonight in Camden Yards was the best second baseman in the Orioles' lineup since Pete Manolis. Castillo hasn't got the Greek Icon's power at the plate yet, but he's on his way.”

Pete was out of town and Margo was probably sleeping soundly, storing up strength to interrogate me about the après-party party. I'd duck her tomorrow and be out of town on Monday, which would give me time to invent something to satisfy her. She'd never get the truth from me.

When we pulled up to the spot in front of my house, Scott fixed his gaze on the windshield and said, “I really appreciate your accompanying me to the reception tonight.” The tone was dress-uniform, white-glove formal, as if his bare fingers hadn't been billeted in the most private part of me less than an hour before.

“I had a good time,” I answered.

“Right. Me too.” His tone was unconvincing.

He didn't mention seeing me Tuesday. Or ever again.