Haven Creek (19 page)

The sun was enormous, shimmering in the darkening sky over the pounding surf. The heat of the day was offset by the setting sun and the wind coming off the ocean. They found a spot away from the other beachgoers, spreading a blanket on the sand and anchoring the corners with the boom box, lanterns, and picnic basket. Morgan took off her flip-flops and sank down to the blanket on her knees. She watched as Nate sat opposite her, opened the basket, and removed its contents. There were plates, silverware, wineglasses, and bottles of red and white wine. There were also clear glass containers with hard and soft cheeses, grapes, and sleeves of stone-ground crackers.

“Where did you get this?”

Nate gave her a sidelong glance. “I bought the basket from the Pick Nick. I was in luck because it was the last one. Velma said they were selling like hotcakes. The cheese, fruit, and crackers came from the deli at the Cove’s supermarket.”

Although smaller and less populated than the Cove or the Landing, Haven Creek was an artist’s paradise. Oak Street was lined with tiny shops selling canned preserves and vegetables, handmade quilts, and sweetgrass baskets; a number of shops sold paintings, sculptures, and handicrafts produced by local artists. Every Tuesday the vegetable stands in the open lot behind the church brimmed with fresh produce grown by local farmers. A portable refrigerated shed was set up for hog and chicken farmers selling fresh corn-fed chickens, eggs, ham, bacon, ribs, and whole and half pigs.

“What about the wine?” South Carolina was still a blue state, which prohibited the sale of alcohol on Sundays.

“I have an extensive wine collection in a cooler at my sister’s house.”

She watched him quickly and expertly uncork a bottle of red wine. “I’d never figure you for a wine connoisseur.” Morgan remembered Nate had ordered beer at Happy Hour.

“I’m more of a collector. Before I started going on the Napa Valley wine tours I didn’t know a Syrah from a Cabernet Sauvignon.” He half filled a wineglass with the Pinot Noir, handing it to her. He repeated the motion, handing Morgan the other glass as well. Then he opened the container of cheese, topping the crackers with Gruyère, Port-Salut, and Swiss. He retrieved his glass, touching it to Morgan’s.
“Salud!”

She inclined her head in acknowledgment.
“Salud!”
Morgan took a sip of the wine, savoring the medium-bo
die
d, fruity wine and its woodlike flavor on her tongue. Morgan popped a grape into her mouth, chewing it slowly. “The wine is excellent.”

The brilliance of the setting sun turned Nate’s white T-shirt a fiery orange-red. “It’s one of my favorite reds.”

“I can see why.” It was the perfect complement to the fruit and mild-flavored cheeses.

Morgan couldn’t believe she was in love with a man who wasn’t willing to give her a happily ever after…again. And in a couple of days all of Cavanaugh Island would speculate about their being an item once they attended the fair together. What would she do when the affair ended? When he decided things were getting too serious?

She shook her head as if to clear it. She couldn’t think about that right now. Instead, she would try and enjoy this time with him.

Nate shifted position, sitting beside Morgan, she resting her head on his shoulder. They sat together, sipping wine, nibbling on fruit, crackers, and cheese, while listening to the music coming from the boom box. The voice of the blues singer was pregnant with raw emotion when he sang about finding the love of his life, then losing her to another man. The lyrics were so heartbreaking she wondered if Nate identified with the vocalist.

“Do you hate your ex for what she did to you?” Morgan felt the muscles in Nate’s shoulder tighten.

Nate couldn’t believe Morgan wanted to talk about another woman when he’d wanted it to be just the two of them. Easing her down to the blanket, he lay behind her in spoon fashion. “No, I don’t, and I don’t want to talk about her. Not tonight.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“You.”

“What about me, Nate?”

“I want to get to know you better. For instance, why did your parents give you a boy’s name?”

“It was a peace offering from my mother to her in-laws. My grandparents never forgave my father for marrying a woman who wasn’t Gullah.”

“I don’t know why, but I always thought she was Gullah.”

Morgan laughed softly. “After being with Daddy for more than forty years, she’s picked up a lot of the traditions and vernacular.”

Nate held his breath when Morgan moved, pushing her hips against his groin. “How did your parents meet?” he asked.

“They were both students at Howard. My grandmother thought my mother was stuck-up. Grandpa gave them a gift of a quarter acre of land on the Creek for their wedding. It wasn’t until after they’d set up a practice in Charleston that they were able to save enough money to build a house. Mama and Grandmomma weren’t bosom buddies, but they dealt with each other because of Rachel and Irene.

“When Mama discovered she was pregnant again, e
v
eryone kept saying she was going to have a boy, and in an effort to extend an olive branch to her in-laws she promised to name the baby Morgan after my grandfather, whom she adored. I was obviously not a boy, but the name stuck.”

Nate pressed his mouth to the nape of Morgan’s neck, breathing a kiss there. “I remember you trailing behind your grandfather.”

Morgan covered his hand, which was resting on her belly, with hers. Her fingers gave his a gentle squeeze. “He was the most incredible man I’ve ever known. He’d only graduated high school, yet he knew so much because he was a voracious reader. But it was what he did with his camera that put him on the map. Grandpa would tell me to look at a house and let him know what I saw. I would say windows, steps leading up to the front door; then he would stop me, telling me to look beyond the obvious. That’s when he’d point out the grain in the wood, how the steps were worn down on one side from countless footsteps, and that the paint on one side of the house was more faded than the other because it faced direct sunlight.

“Whether Grandpa was taking photographs or listening to his prized collection of jazz records, I was always in awe of the stories he’d tell me about back in the day. After my grandmother passed away, I’d come over to clean his house while he cooked. It was when he showed me photographs of the Brooklyn Bridge that I decided I wanted to be an engineer.”

“How old were you?” Nate asked.

“Twelve. I was in awe of the fact that the bridge was designated a National Historic Landmark and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, because I’d thought only homes or buildings were chosen for that designation. I later learned the bridge was also named a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.”

“Why did you give up engineering for architecture?”

“Once I started looking at homes and office buildings the way my grandfather saw them through his camera lens, I knew I wanted to design structures rather than build them. After Grandpa left me his house, I drew up plans and expanded it. I’ve been thinking about adding a second story, but that would entail raising the roof.”

“That’s easy enough to do.”

Morgan raised her head, staring at him over her shoulder. “Maybe in the future.”

Nate chuckled. “Tomorrow is the future.”

“Very funny, Nate.”

“You know, I’ve never really been inside your house.”

“Yes, you have.”

“No, I haven’t, Mo. No farther than your parlor. By the way, I like how you decorated it.”

Turning around, Morgan faced him. “When you take me home I’ll be certain to give you a personal tour. Speaking of decorating, I’ve completed the floor plans for your apartment.”

Nate tried seeing her expression, but there wasn’t enough light coming from the lanterns. “I thought you said it would take you a couple of weeks just for the master bedroom.”

Morgan buried her face between Nate’s chin and shoulder. “I’ll admit I’m a tad bit obsessive-compulsive. Once I start a project, I usually don’t stop until I finish it.”

“How is Mr. Blue?”

Morgan laughed, the sultry sound caressing Nate’s ear. “Spoiled rotten.”

He cupped her hips, pulling her closer. “You should think of saving some of that spoiling for your future children.”

Morgan laughed again. “Don’t worry. There will be more than enough spoiling to spread around.”

“Speaking of babies, Rachel was
very
uncomfortable when I drove her to your parents’ house. I prayed she wouldn’t go into labor and I’d have to try to deliver her baby.”

“Most babies don’t come that fast, Nate. I don’t know why they feel the need to make their mamas suffer before they make their appearance.”

Nate’s hand moved lower, his fingers caressing the skin on Morgan’s smooth thigh. He felt her tense up at the same time she caught her breath. “It’s okay, baby. I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to do.” She relaxed under his light touch. “Doesn’t that go back to the Bible, where it was Eve’s punishment for tempting Adam to sin?”

“He didn’t have to sin,” Morgan argued in a quiet voice. “After all, he was put in charge of the garden, and he knew the rules. He should’ve been strong enough not to permit himself to be tempted.”

“Sometimes it isn’t that easy. I don’t think you women are aware of the power you have over men. You make us do things we professed we’d never do. The next thing we know you have our noses wide open.”

“Oh, no, you’re not going to go there!” Morgan protested. “You’re no better than Adam when he blamed Eve for making him sin.”

“Well, she did,” Nate countered. “If she hadn’t been looking so hot he would’ve been able to resist her.”

Throwing back her head, Morgan laughed hysterically at the same time Nate’s deep chuckle rumbled in his chest. “What makes you so certain she was hot?”

“Look at you, Mo. It’s been proven that Eve was a sister, and if you’re a daughter of Eve, then she had to be hot.”

Without warning Morgan pushed against his chest, and he released her. What had he said to make her withdraw? Nate thought maybe he’d come on too strong, or…His thoughts trailed off as he remembered another time when he’d mentioned her beauty and she’d appeared visibly uncomfortable.

Scooting over on the blanket, he pulled her closer to him, so that she was sitting between his outstretched legs. “Did I say something wrong?”

Morgan swallowed the lump in her throat. She knew she had to tell Nate about her insecurities when it came to men or she would never be able to move forward. She opened her mouth and the pain she’d held on to like a badge of honor came pouring out. Morgan spared no details as she told Nate about the hurtful comments other kids directed at her regarding her height and weight. She told him that she’d prayed to be invisible whenever she walked into Perry’s because she knew no boy would ever invite her to sit with him. And that the very boys who made her adolescence a living hell weren’t interested in her until she became a homeowner and had set up her own business.

“That’s when they came sliding around, talking about how hot I was, when years before they’d called me names. One even had the audacity to apologize because he’d told me he wouldn’t sleep with a bag of bones even if I’d offered it to him for free.”

“They were young and silly, baby.”

“They were mean and evil, Nate. I hated men until I got to college and discovered that guys either liked me because I was an engineering student and smart, or because I was lucky enough to have my own apartment and car.”

Nate’s arms tightened around her middle. “Is that why you said you’d never marry a boy from Cavanaugh Island?”

Morgan watched the increasingly high waves and rough surf wash up on the sand. “Yes. If it hadn’t been for Francine I wouldn’t have had a single friend in high school. She understood what I was going through because a lot of kids teased her about her curly red hair. We made up a gossip column and got our frustrations out by writing salacious stories about girls who were known for sleeping around. Of course we embellished it, then laughed our asses off when we read them to each other. Each week we would try and top the one before, but it stopped when the news got out that one of the girls we wrote about discovered herself pregnant and didn’t know who’d fathered her baby. Her parents were so devastated her mother had a breakdown and had to be hospitalized for a couple of months.” She couldn’t tell Nate that Francine had written what she did after seeing it in a vision.

“What’s the expression about one’s actions having consequences?” Nate said in her ear. “Her getting pregnant had nothing to do with what you’d made up about her in your gossip column.”

“I know, but that didn’t stop me from feeling sorry for her.”

“That’s because you were nothing like her.”

Tears pricked the backs of Morgan’s eyelids, but she managed to blink them back before they fell. “I know if I’d dated you in high school I would be different now.”

Lifting her effortlessly, Nate shifted Morgan so that she was straddling his lap. “You were too young then. And knowing how your father feels about his baby girl, he would’ve come after me packing heat.”

“Why would you say that? We wouldn’t have slept together.”

“I know that and you know that. But would your father have believed it? Before I asked Chauncey out her father made me sign a note stating that I wouldn’t sleep with his daughter.”

Morgan’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”

“No. He raised his daughters to save themselves for marriage, and if he found out they weren’t virgins, then he would have made certain that whoever they’d slept with would never father children after he blasted them with his shotgun. Talk about scared. I never told my father about it because he would’ve gotten in Reverend Dobson’s face, and whatever ensued, Dad would’ve blamed his behavior on the PTSD he’d gotten after serving in Vietnam.”

“Shame on him. All this coming from a man of the cloth.”

“He was a father first and a man of the cloth second. It took me a while to understand that. I probably wouldn’t be any different if I had a girl.”