Beach House Memories (32 page)

“Come this way,” she said when he came up behind her. “I want to take you to my favorite dune.” She led him several feet along the dunes to its highest point, where the sand flattened to form a kind of perch. The beach was deserted, save for the
ubiquitous peeps still skittering along the shore at this late hour. Russell came to stand at her side. She glanced at him and saw that he was looking out at the sea. She wondered where such a vista took a man like him who had seen many oceans.

“This is my dune,” she told him, feeling possessive. “Ever since I was little, it’s where I come to think or to just stare out at my old friend. We’ve had many conversations, the sea and I. And over there.” She pointed behind them to the small plateau nestled behind the dune. It was a circular haven, surrounded by tall sea oats. “I used to pretend that was my castle. I’ve often slept there, under the stars.”

“So this is another of your secret spots?” he asked her.

She laughed lightly. “Yes. Everyone who grew up on the island has their share of secret spots. But I only share this one with special friends,” she said, gently teasing him.

“I’m glad you consider me your friend,” he told her, and he sounded sincere.

So much more than a friend
, she thought, looking up at a sky that was alive with brilliant stars sparkling. She felt their shimmering light reflected inside her. “When I was little, there were so few houses here,” she said. “I rarely saw lights shining at night by Breach Inlet, except for the Prescott house, of course. The nights are always so black out here and the stars shine so bright.”

“I love that about the islands,” he agreed. “The more remote, the more visible the stars.”

“Let’s sit,” she said, and spread out her shawl. Lovie sat on the dune and felt him beside her, his shoulder against hers, his legs next to hers. He was so near she sensed every breath he took and tried to match hers to his. The ocean stretched its watery fingers higher up the shore, toward her.

“How is Cara?” he asked.

“Oh, she’s fine. She had a few lessons on growing up tonight,
but I’m proud of her.” She turned and said with a secretive smile, “You’ll never guess where she went.”

“The Point.”

“You guessed,” she said with a chuckle.

“It wasn’t hard. Not with her. So she joined the ranks with her mother, uncle, and brother and signed the book?”

Lovie nodded. “It’s official.” She patted his arm. “And you, too. You signed the book.”

“Yep,” he said proudly. “A high point in my career.”

They sat looking out at the sea, lost in their own thoughts. After a while, Russell said, “Lovie, earlier this evening . . . I didn’t like the way our evening ended. It all felt so rushed. Flo was making accusations and I could feel my temper rise. I didn’t think putting in my two cents at that moment would help, so I left feeling like some teenager who brought his date home late.”

“Flo . . . She wasn’t so bad.”

“Are we talking about the same woman?” he said teasingly.

“She means well. She’s my best friend, and she loves my kids like they’re her own. She was just wound up pretty tight when Cara was lost and she couldn’t reach me. When she saw me come home with you, well, she jumped to conclusions.”

Russell leaned closer to her. “What conclusions were those?”

Lovie smelled again the lingering aftershave and closed her eyes against the onslaught of sensations, squeezing the sand in her fingers. “Well . . . that you and I . . . are a couple,” she ventured.

“Ah,” he said, letting his fingers brush lightly against hers. He leaned closer so that his breath stirred the air against the tender follicles of her ear. “And that would be a terrible thing?”

She closed her eyes and her heart beat faster. Yes, she wanted to say. It would. I know what that implies—intimacy. An affair. That was unthinkable. Nothing she’d ever contemplated, at least
not seriously. All her life she’d been careful to construct boundaries that she never crossed, never even approached.

Until now. She couldn’t deny her feelings for Russell Bennett. She hadn’t felt such desire, had not trembled like this, for any man before. And she read that desire in his eyes as well. But to cross that line—to make love—there was no going back from that. She’d made love to only one man in her life, and that was her husband. She was not as experienced as Flo in these matters, or as cavalier. Making love was, to her, the ultimate act of intimacy. It wasn’t merely sex, but a giving of herself—heart, body, mind, and soul. Her body knew what it wanted—him! But her mind warred against it. All she was and ever had been, all she thought was right, told her to run away. Yet all she was at this moment, the woman who was alive and breathing now, cried for the feel of his lips on hers once again.

Lovie felt her breath quicken and looked with despair out to the sea, for a clue, some answer. But tonight the ocean merely breathed in and out, brooding, as though it, too, were watching, waiting.

“Olivia?”

Reluctantly, she turned to face him again, drawn to the light in his eyes like any other moth to a flame driven by instinct. She recognized the same soul-stirring sensation she’d felt the first moment she’d looked into his eyes, and the unfathomable certainty that she was bound to him in a way she’d never been connected to any other man, not even her husband.

He read her answer in her eyes and moved slowly toward her, letting his lips, his cheek, gently skim hers, inhaling her scent. Lovie felt each cell in her body respond to his slightest touch, sending her blood racing. When at last his lips found hers, he took his time, tentatively tasting her reaction. Lovie lifted her hand and let her trembling fingers trace his jawline and the stubble grazing her tender fingertips, then curl around his ears
to the soft hairs behind them. Then she let them slide behind his neck, holding him there, drawing him closer.

Their kiss surged and deepened, and she felt the pressure of his body against hers, holding her tighter. Pushing her slowly back against the cool sand, their weight crushed the small primroses beneath them. She closed her eyes as his full weight stretched out over her. They fit together perfectly, and as they clung together her woman’s body felt that at last it had found the man’s bones from which she’d been created, and she was overcome with desire to become one flesh.

She opened her eyes then and, trembling, she slowly pulled her head back. For a moment, their breathing shared a small space. He raised himself slightly above her as he looked into her eyes, questioning. Lovie moved to rise, and immediately he shifted his weight, allowing her room. She climbed to her feet and he rose beside her, looking unwaveringly at her for her signal. Lovie reached down for her shawl with one hand and for his hand with the other. Turning her back to the ocean, she gently tugged Russell to follow her down to the small plateau in the dunes, to her secret spot where they could lie surrounded by tall sea oats, lost in the moon shadows, muffled by the pulsing beat of the sea.

Sixteen

R
ussell had been gone for three days at the University of Florida. He’d called Lovie the night before to tell her that he hoped to be back on the Isle of Palms sometime today and, if he was, he would meet her at their dune.

Their
dune . . . Just the sound of that one personal pronoun had the power to curl her toes. One small word that said so much.

Lovie felt she’d been living in a dreamworld the past week. They’d met several times at the dune late at night, after they’d made their rounds on the beach checking for nests. As they walked, they talked about everything and nothing, the past and the present; they had no secrets between them. The only subject they did not broach was the future. It was as though they had an unspoken pact not to mention what would happen at the month’s end. Lovie knew that there could be no future for them. That this one summer was all she had, and it had to be enough to last a lifetime.

“What’s got you so quiet this morning?” Flo asked her.

They were walking the beach at 28th, checking a report on dozens of tiny turtle tracks coming from a nest. The island turtle nests were hatching frequently this late in the season, and
Lovie was getting fewer reports of large female turtle tracks and more reports of tiny tracks—
tracklings
, Flo called the adorable, miniature turtle tracks left by the three-inch hatchlings as they emerged from the nest. As long as they headed to the sea, Lovie considered the emergence a success.

“Just thinking,” Lovie replied, swinging the red bucket at her side. It clanged noisily.

“Let me guess. About a certain biologist who’s been MIA the past few days?”

Lovie’s lips twisted in mirth. “Maybe.”

“Oh, get real, Lovie. I don’t know whether you’re just blind to your own feelings, or you’re blind to his. Or if you’re deliberately fooling yourself. But it’s written all over both of your faces.”

“What’s written?” she asked with a sinking feeling.

“You’re infatuated with him. In lust with him. God forbid, in love with him. You’re in one of those things with him!”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?” Flo asked, more gently now. “If it’s the truth.”

“People will gossip, that’s why not. So, no, I’m not in love with him, okay?”

“You’ve always been a terrible liar,” Flo said.

Lovie stopped and her shoulders drooped.

“So which is it?” Flo asked, rounding to face her. “Are you in lust or what?”

Lovie sighed and said with difficulty, “I think I’m falling in love with him.”

Flo exhaled loudly. “Wow.”

Lovie looked away. “Yeah. Wow.” They began walking again, ignoring the few early beachcombers—mothers with kids in tow carrying shovels and buckets, and the ubiquitous joggers—the smattering of surfers out in the ocean waiting for a wave, the black Lab and the mutt sniffing and barking at the remnants of a horseshoe crab by the shoreline.

“It snuck up on me,” Lovie told Flo, feeling relieved to talk to someone about her feelings at last. “I didn’t wake up one day and think,
I’m in love with him
. Just the opposite. I fought it. At first I thought I was just attracted to him.”

Flo snorted. “Who isn’t? He’s insanely good-looking.”

“It would’ve been easier if it was just his looks,” Lovie said. “But from the very first time I met him, when Russell turned his head and his eyes met mine for the first time, I felt my stomach drop. Not with joy, but with such dread. My first thought was,
Oh no. Please God, not now
.”

“Really?”

“It was such a strong feeling, and I fought it. Really, I did. I told myself that I was being ridiculous, a schoolgirl.” She looked over to see her friend’s darkly tanned face looking straight ahead, listening carefully. “I may be married, but I’m not immune to good-looking men.”

“I didn’t say you were.” They walked a few more steps. “Okay, so you’re not in love. You’re in lust.”

Lovie shook her head, rejecting that argument. “I wish. That I could deal with.” She wondered if she’d be able to explain to Flo the evolution of her feelings for Russell. “From the first, it was immediately obvious that we shared interests. We were passionate about the sea turtles, the research, and the project. From the first, he treated me as an equal—it was
our
project.

“Even then I told myself I was attracted to his intelligence, his experience, and all that he could teach me. That what I felt for him was nothing more or less than a student’s crush on her teacher. I could deal with that. But over the months, as we’ve spent more and more time together, my feelings—and his—matured into something much deeper. We were in contact with each other all the time. Mornings, evenings on the beach, and if we weren’t together we called each other on the phone.
Whenever we had an idea.” She shrugged and looked off, her thought trailing. “Whenever.”

Flo studied her face. “Have you slept with him?”

“What? No!” Lovie replied as a knee-jerk response. She took a few steps, then glanced up. “You think I shouldn’t?”

“I’m the last person to tell you that.” Flo shook her head in frustration. “If you were single, I’d be the happiest woman in the world for you. I truly would. But you’re not. You’re married. It complicates things.”

“I know.”

“Sugar, I just want you to be happy. You deserve it. You deserve a real love, one that’s reciprocated, that makes your toes tingle. We both know you’re not getting that from your husband. I have this theory.”

“I can’t wait to hear that,” Lovie said with sarcasm.

Flo put out her hand. “Wait, wait. Just listen. I have this theory that women try to block out their unhappiness with work. Take yourself, for an example. You keep yourself busy from the moment you wake up till you collapse at night. You give to the turtles, to the children, to your marriage, to your church, to the schools, the list goes on. All to keep busy, because something fundamental inside of you remains unfulfilled. Unfortunately, that is a bottomless hole that can’t be filled. Girl, you’ve been giving to everyone but yourself for so long now, when the prospect comes up, you feel guilty.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lovie said, and took a step.