Love Deluxe (18 page)

We finished the wine and I lay down pulling a blanket over me, “Hey, can I hide under there, too?” John asked. I deftly removed my nylon running shorts without him realizing it as he climbed beneath the blanket. He hugged me to him and we kissed as his hands moved down my body. When he reached my naked butt he looked at me, startled, then as I watched his eyes turn smoky he said, “Cate Stuart, aren’t you the eager one.”

He moved his hand between my legs but I caught his wrist and said, “No, no hands, that’s not what I need.” I unzipped his shorts and when he understood my intention he pulled the shorts off and entered me gently.

“Is this alright?” he asked, eyes searching mine.

I reached for his hips and pulled him into me.

“You’re so hot,” he gasped, “I’ve never known anyone who is always so ready for sex.”

He pushed my knees up, not caring who might see us, and moved so deeply into me that I was caught off guard. We were like teenagers, wild and carefree. When we finished we lay panting, wet and sandy, the quit and blankets in a tangle at our feet.

***

Our days took on an other-worldly quality of languorous perfection as autumn passed. Clear skies, warm days, cool nights, bike rides, walks, every kind of seafood pulled right out of the Gulf and prepared to our liking.

On a cold, overcast day I waved to John as he talked to his dad on the phone. They were in a heated argument over the house they were building. I drove into Destin to shop, run a few errands and deal with the hundred and thirty thousand dollars in my purse. I rented a safe deposit box at a branch of my bank, went into the private viewing room and placed the packets of money inside the metal box, locked and returned it to its place.

I was hungry and made it inside Pompano Joe’s just as rain started falling in sheets. Waiting to be seated I noticed a man alone at a table, he was reading a newspaper and talking on a cell phone. He looked up as I walked toward him and I could see him struggle for a moment to place me, then a look of surprised joy transformed his face.

He stood as I approached, and said, rather shyly, “Hello there, Cate.”

I walked past the chair he pulled out for me, gave him a hug, a peck on the cheek and said, “Hello, McKay.”

The rain beat against the windows as we talked, I don’t know why but I told him my life story and he listened, leaning forward on the table as if committing each word to memory.

“God, too much information, huh?” I asked, drawn as surely to his wide, compassionate eyes as I was to his unequalled knack for listening.

“Not at all,” he said, “I’m enthralled, I love your accent and you tell a story so well. I can’t believe what you’ve been through, you seem so… together, so gracious in the face of such adversity. You carry yourself as if you’ve never had a bad day in your life. I probably shouldn’t tell you that you’ve been on my mind a lot since we met, I’ve had a hard time not picturing your face every day. Please don’t take that the wrong way, but I’m sure you’re well aware of how beautiful you are.”

“No, no,” I laughed, self-consciously, “That’s fine, thank you, I’m flattered.”

“Well, I just felt that it needed saying. So now it’s out of the way and I’m even more impressed with the strong young woman sitting here who feels she can bare her soul to me. I hope we’ll be friends; I’ve made quite a few friends since I moved from Birmingham, but they’re really just acquaintances. They see the boat, hear about the money, that’s what they’re interested in, I know the score. Mostly I’m lonely in a room full of people, you know?”

We ordered food, ate and talked, he was easy to be with, comfortable and like Henry he seemed real, like there was no hidden agenda. I asked about his sons, were they close, did he see them often? He said he did, they still lived in Alabama, both were married and one of them had kids, they’d been running his business since he moved to Destin last year. They visited often, traveled on the boat with him sometimes. His ex-wife did her best to turn them against him in the beginning but she had a boyfriend now, which was a blessing. We laughed at that and I asked about his love life. He said it was hit or miss, a lot of first dates, someone was always fixing him up but he hadn’t met anyone honest, anyone who could see past his possessions. I told him about the billionaire in San Antonio, that when he sold his business suddenly everyone wanted a piece of him.

He said he could relate, his business, a chain of submarine sandwich shops, was being acquired by a national corporation with plans to take the brand global.

“It’s a dream come true but difficult to wrap my mind around. It doesn’t seem quite real that this mega-corporation sees such value in something I started just to make ends meet. I went to college on a football scholarship and ended up as a high school coach; I had a wife and two kids and wasn’t making enough money to put braces on my kid’s teeth. I had this idea for a sandwich shop, you know; build your own with all the fixings. I started with one shop in a bad part of town where the rent was cheap, I coached football and made sandwiches and didn’t have time for anything else. I worked twenty hours a day, but I loved it and people showed up and bought the hell out of my sandwiches. I opened another shop and then another and it snowballed from there.”

The rain stopped and the clouds moved on, the sky was as clear as if the storm was just a sudden crying jag, finished and forgotten. We walked to the parking lot, gazing out toward the beach, it was as pristine as newly fallen snow, but the squall had left the water littered with seaweed.

“Come out on the boat this weekend, you and your husband. We’ll cruise out into the Gulf and have a glass of wine.”

“That sounds nice, I’ll give you my number, just let me know when. But, you have to promise to come to Seaside, I’ll cook and that’s a big deal because I don’t cook anymore.”

“Can’t cook, huh? Well, that’s okay, I’ll take my chances.”

“I didn’t say I can’t, the truth is I’m an excellent cook, I just don’t, I stopped after…. Well, why cook for just one person, right?”

As he walked to his car, he turned and asked, “What did your husband think about your big win at
Harrah’s
, couldn’t believe it I’ll bet?”

“I didn’t tell him,” I said, “and I don’t know why.”

“Women’s intuition,” he said. “Never question it.”

***

“Where were you for so long?” John asked the minute the screen door closed behind me; he was sitting on the porch with a martini glass in hand, the shaker on the table in front of him.

He sounded drunk and his eyes looked strange.

I dropped my purse and bags and went to him, pulled his head against my breasts, stroked his hair. “Was my lover missing me? I got caught in a downpour and had to wait it out, were you needing me like I need you?” I was apprehensive, hoping he wasn’t going to lapse into the awful Kentucky accent again.

“I had an argument with my pig-headed father. God damned controlling bastard, he’s such a fucking country bumpkin, thinks he can build a house out of old shit lumber and scrap material. Shit, he could fuck up a one car funeral.” He wrapped his arms around me, “I thought you weren’t coming back, I thought maybe I’d lost you,” his voice turned soft, playful, “and it was rainy and I got sad, I needed my sweetie.”

“And here I am,” I said, unbuttoning my shirtdress, letting it fall, I pressed his hand to the crotch of my panties.

“Mmm, you were missing me, you’re soaking wet. God that’s so sexy, you always need your husband don’t you?” He pulled my panties down, pressed his face into me.

I leaned in to him, felt sparks shoot through my body, ashamed that I was half naked on the screened porch but certain that I would get naked and have sex with this man anywhere, anytime.

Later we spread a blanket on the grass at the amphitheater, sipped wine and waited for a local band to set up on stage. I told him about running into McKay and before he could protest I rushed ahead about the invitation to go out on his boat that weekend.

“Oh, cool, wow! Did you see the boat, is it really a yacht? When can we go?”

“Saturday, if the weather stays nice, and no, I didn’t see his boat. I ran into him while I was having lunch.”

I changed the subject to remodeling the beach house, my sisters said to do whatever was necessary to bring it up to date. Do away with the bright colors, give the interiors a simple sand and sea palette. I wanted to revamp the kitchen and bathrooms, repaint the outside a softer shade of blue, replace some of the furniture and art, order new slipcovers and drapes. That excited him, a new project. He said he’d drive around tomorrow and check out some of the houses being built and hopefully get some names of carpenters and painters. We listened to the band, drank wine, talked with couples and families who had gathered on the grass.

Walking back to the cottage, I told him to stop and look up. Night had turned the sky into a cobalt dome shot through with countless stars.

“Isn’t it a wonder?” I said. “There are more stars in this sky than anywhere else in the world.”

“There are?”

“Oh, probably not, but doesn’t it seem like it? It’s something about the air, maybe, or looking up through the pine branches. Maybe it’s the silence, no cars, just the waves and the wind in the trees, it’s as if sound is quiet here, and the sky is closer and bluer and the stars actually twinkle. My sisters think so, too, we ride our bikes at midnight in nothing but t-shirts and panties just to feel the air, smell the smells and watch the stars.”

“Yeah, it is beautiful. Wait, you and your sisters ride bikes in your panties?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the look on his face, “And sometimes our nighties, it’s the Midnight Marathon!”

He looked bewildered.

“We’re the
Sisters by the Sea
, we made it up and we have to do the Midnight Marathon to be in the club. If we stay up and have a little too much wine or whatever, and one of us looks at the clock at midnight, whoever sees it yells “Midnight Marathon!” and we grab our bikes and ride around town like wild Comanches.”

“Comanche, hmm?” He said, drawing me to him with one hand and running the other up the back leg of my shorts, “Wild Chippewa is more like it. My wild Chippewa squaw, what else do you and your sisters do here in the middle of the night?”

“We swim naked in the Gulf when it’s hot, sit on the beach and smoke a little Mary Jane, talk about the wildest sex we’ve ever had.”

“Really? What is the wildest sex you’ve ever had?”

I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him, sucked on his bottom lip and pressed my tongue into his mouth.

He slid both hands inside my shorts then, lifting me up.

“I’m not sure,” I said, “you’ll have to ask me later.”

***

John’s powers of persuasion never ceased to amaze, he went out the next morning to scout houses under construction and returned by noon with two painters and a carpenter. They seemed like nice enough men, two were older, one was young and stumbled several times as he wandered through the house. He was either stupid or stoned, I told him not to climb any ladders. I showed them around the cottage and explained what I wanted done, new paint inside and out, the upper kitchen cabinets removed and open shelving installed in their place to begin with. They said they would start in the morning at seven, the painter who was about my age said I should pick paint colors; they would begin sanding and caulking in the meantime. The carpenter saw no reason to tear down perfectly good cabinets.

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him, “I have a vision.”

***

On Saturday we arrived at the Yacht Harbor and McKay waved to us from the back deck of an impressive dark blue motor-yacht. He welcomed us aboard the
Blue Moon
and introduced himself to John.

“Man, this is what I call a boat! Look, Catey, there are Jet Ski’s right here on deck, how do you get them in the water? This is so cool, do you live on board?” He sounded like a kid in a candy store.

McKay laughed and said, “No, I have a condo in the Towers across the street, but I stay on board when I travel. I dock in Key West in January and February and different islands in the Bahamas throughout the year. Have a look around; what can I get you to drink?”

John descended into the main cabin and I rolled my eyes at McKay.

“He seems like a nice guy, good looking too,” he said.

“Yes, he really is, like a big kid sometimes, he makes me happy.”

He poured vodka tonics, “I’ll make them light,” he said, “unless you’d rather have wine?” 

“Tonic with just a splash, please, you don’t want to see me fall overboard.”

John came bounding back up the stairs, he rattled off all the wonders he’d witnessed below.

“Cate, you’ve got see this, there are three bedrooms and a bunk room, four bathrooms with marble everywhere and a kitchen and living room straight out of a James Bond movie!”

McKay handed him a drink and they went up to the bridge and John was “totally stoked” by all the hi-tech navigational gizmos.

When they came back down I said, “Great name,
Blue Moon
, did you choose it?”

“I did, I always wanted a boat like this, but never imagined I could own one, not on a football coach’s salary and my ex didn’t considered it a priority even when the money situation got better. We’d just finalized the divorce when I got the offer to sell my business, they paid a chunk of money up front in good faith and I thought to myself, this kind of thing only happens once in a blue moon.”