On the Ropes (13 page)

He looped a curl near her temple around his fingers. “I figured I’d show you I like it instead of telling you. You didn’t give me a chance.”

“I didn’t stop you from touching me.”

“Like I said, Jan. Patience. If I’d done it at the airport, you probably would have ducked away from my hand.”

He was right. That was her M.O.

She chuckled, and he let go of her. “You must think I’m like a cat. You offer your attention and I ignore it until it suits me, and then it’s too late.”

“It’s not too late.” He walked into the kitchen.

She followed and set a pot of water on the stove to boil. “So, you do like it?”

“I think it’s sexy.”

“Ew!” Toby said from the sofa. He slapped his hands over his ears.

Janette looked at Stephen. He whispered, “He finds adult affection repulsive.”

“Sounds like a typical five-year-old boy to me.”

“I don’t know about that, but it’s typical Toby. Think you can get used to it?” Stephen leaned against the counter next to the stove and set down the strainer of carrots.

“To Toby?” she asked in a low voice. The boy probably couldn’t hear them now, anyway, as he’d turned the television volume up to a thundering roar.

“Yeah. You know, it’s kind of a package deal. He’s my nephew. I’d like to see a lot more of him.”

“And where do I fit into that?”

“Well, I’d like to see a lot more of you, too. Are you going to keep making me beg?”

“I can’t promise you anything, Stephen.”

“I’m not asking for promises.”

“Seems to me you’re asking for commitment. Commit and promise are two different words for the same thing.”

“You say
commitment
like it’s a dirty word, sweetheart.”

“Of course it isn’t, but I also don’t think it’s something you should necessarily pursue with
me
.”

“You—” Whatever he was going to say, he let fall off, as Toby had approached the island. He stood on tiptoes and peered into the fruit bowl.

“Are you looking to spoil your dinner?” Janette asked him.

“Don’t let him!” Meg shouted from who-knows-where. She seemed to have an uncanny knack for minding Toby without actually being in the same room with him. Must have been a mommy thing.

“Come on, just one plum?”

Janette looked to Stephen. Toby was
his
nephew, after all.

Stephen made a “help yourself” gesture. She sighed and rested her forearms against the counter, putting herself closer to Toby’s level.

“Can you count to five?” she asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Good. On a scale of one to five with one being not hungry at all and five being
my tummy is very rumbly
, how do you feel right now? One, two, three, four, or five?”

Toby shifted his lips to one side of his face and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.

He must have had to think about it.

“Two,” he said finally.

“Ah. Well, a two gets you a couple of saltine crackers and a glass of water. When that show you’re watching is over, food will be ready.”

He slumped. “I’d rather go to the beach than have crackers. You said you’d help me make sandcastles.”

“She’s making dinner, bud.” Stephen finally interjected. “She can take you tomorrow.”

Jan turned to him and put her hands up. “No, I said I would, so I will. I don’t break promises.” It helped that she rarely made them. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and set the timer on it. “We’ll just keep close to the house. I’ll run back up in a little while to pour the pasta in, and we’ll see how far we get with our masterpiece while it cooks, okay?”

“I’ll go get my hat!” He ran up the stairs in a blur.

Stephen turned her by the shoulders to face him. “Thank you for being kind.”

“I’m kind to everyone.”

She clamped her hand over his mouth before he could rebut, and he laughed behind it.

“Maybe I was being kind to you by keeping you at arm’s distance.”

She dropped her hand, and he said, “I appreciate that you think you’re being considerate, but why don’t you let me decide how much pain I’m willing to endure?”

“Most reasonable people prefer to avoid misery at all costs.”

“No one’s more reasonable than me, Jan. I hope you’ll see that soon.”

She hoped so, too.

Stephen wasn’t one for domesticity, usually, but there was a certain rightness about being in a kitchen with Jan. They didn’t have to talk to work together. They comfortably traded off chores and switched places without a word while listening to public radio. His mind was on the approaching tropical storm, but she seemed more interested in the current events tidbits—the cultural stuff most people tuned out.

She’d stop sweeping or drying dishes and would cant her head toward the radio, giving it her exclusive focus.

And he’d watch her, relishing the changes in her expressions from mild curiosity at one story to appalled pallor at another. She had all those emotions in her repertoire, and in a year, she’d never shown them to him. He’d known they were in her, though. She just had to be comfortable enough to show them. He couldn’t imagine what she must have gone through to have become so masterful at tamping down her passion.

The station transitioned into their weekend folk music hour, and Stephen turned off the radio.

Jan draped her dishrag over the sink divider and shut off the light over the stove.

The house was utterly quiet with Seth, Meg, and Toby having gone to The Sandbar, and it was early yet. Too early for bed.

“What do you want to do tonight? Up to you,” he said, and stifled a yawn.
Shit
. He thought he’d caught up on sleep. Apparently not. “We can go see if there’s anything good at the movies, go out for drinks, watch television… What are you in the mood for?”

“Hmm.” She tapped her fingertip to her chin. “How about we pour drinks here and take a walk on the beach? Is that illegal here?”

“No, it’s perfectly fine. What are you in the mood for?”

“Just wine. I’m not too familiar with mixed drinks, so I couldn’t even begin to make a request.”

“Really?” He grinned. “You worked at a resort all that time and never haunted the bars there?”

“Hell no. The bartenders may have been perfectly cordial to guests, but behind the scenes, they were rather lecherous.” She shuddered.

“I’m sure Seth would love to introduce you to the finer aspects of vodka, and I’ll leave that to him. You want white wine or red?”

“White. Thank you.”

He poured cold wine from the fridge into a plastic cup and did the same with his beer. The discretion was probably unnecessary, but there was a good chance they’d encounter some kids at the beach. He liked to at least
pretend
to be upright.

He handed her the wine cup, and they walked out the deck doors and down the stairs to the beach.

It was a beautiful night. The day had been a bit cloudy, but the night sky was spangled with blue-tinged stars and the ocean took on a silvery hue under moonlight. The wind had picked up since lunchtime, which Stephen attributed to the storm building off the coast. They might even have to evacuate inland, though he and Meg almost always rode out anything category two and below. This storm might shape up to be a two.

“Stephen?”

He pulled his gaze away from the crashing waves and saw Jan holding her elbow out to him. He did her one better and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Picking across the uneven sand was an acquired skill, and he was out of practice, himself.

They walked quietly and aimlessly, only stopping for her to pick up the occasional shell or bit of sea glass, which she tucked into her dress pockets. He was surprised she’d find value in such things. As intuitive as he was, he’d misjudged her on that. He would have thought a woman like her would be far more interested in gemstones and pearls than bits of unpolished rock. Maybe that’s what she wanted him to think.

He took her cup from her when it was empty, and nested his empty cup into it. He looked back down the beach and guessed they’d walked about a quarter mile. “Know what?” he asked.

“Hmm?” She squatted and smoothed the sand in front of her feet. The ragged edges of a large scallop shell came into view and she snapped her fingers. “Damn, they’re all broken.”

“We’ve got a whole week. We’ll find you more than you know what to do with.” He squatted, too, and indicated the water by pointing the cups at them. “We can make a Dixie Cup sandcastle. Maybe find a hermit crab to live in it.”

She had a marvelous grin that was made so much more stunning by how rarely she showed it. “Toby would probably be rather annoyed if he were to find out.”

“Yeah, he’d be pissed, but he doesn’t need to know. You gonna tell him?”

“If he asks me, I’m not going to lie to him.”

“I hate to say it, but he’s used to being lied to. His father was,
is
, a notorious liar. He never made good on his promises, so half the time, Toby expects people not to follow through on the things they say they’re going to do.”

Her smile pulled in. “That’s sad.”

“Yeah, it is. Honesty is really important to Seth, and it should be, because being truthful with someone means you value their worth and their intelligence. He doesn’t tiptoe around the truth, but he tries to deliver it gently. Not just to Toby, but to Meg, too.”

“And what about you?” She took one of the cups back and stood. Walking toward the water, she looked back, then said, “Do you always try to be truthful? I’m sure that’s difficult for lawyers.”

“Really? A lawyer joke?” He followed her.

She stopped at the very edge of the tide, sat a foot from it, and scooped wet sand into her cup. “Well, do you?”

“I do try to be truthful as much as I can, in spite of my occupation, and especially when it comes to kids.”

“Mmm. Meg said you work with kids at a gym.”

“About every other weekend, assuming I’m not stuck in the office. I help coach at my old rec center. It’s a bit of a drive from Boston. None of the kids are really any good at boxing, but it makes them a little more confident. That’s a helluva thing for the kind of kids who tend to be afraid of their own shadows.”

“Were you?”

“What, like them?”

She nodded and added a second cone of wet sand to her creation.

Hell, he’d better help. He added another cupful of sand so the three mounds made a small triangular base.

“No, I was high-energy, but I wasn’t a particularly anxious kid. The things I was afraid of were much more tangible.”

“What were they?” She packed in more sand.

“People.”

She looked up.

“Kids, really. I got picked on a lot in elementary school. Bullied a bit. I talked funny and couldn’t sit still, and that was cause for teasing.”

“You felt you had to defend yourself because of that?”

“No. With that, I just dealt the best I could.” He poured loose sand into the gap the three cones made and packed more wet sand around them to form a flat, even base. “It was later when I felt physically intimidated. Even though my speech straightened itself out and my ADHD was being treated, I still couldn’t shake that reputation from elementary school.”

She scoffed indignantly. “You must have really intimidated them somehow if they were still demeaning you after all that time. They were jealous.”

“It’s cute that you’re angry on my behalf, but you haven’t seen angry until you’ve seen my mother threaten every person on a school trustee board with bodily harm if they didn’t
do
something. They didn’t. I told her to drop it, because I knew she was just going to make things worse for me. I just figured that was my lot in life. I wasn’t going to change schools and run, you know? My parents paid my tuition and I belonged there just like every other kid.”

“How did you stand it?”

He shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. It may have been some mind over matter thing. I knew those kids were going to grow up and still be assholes with inadequacy issues. They kept trying shit with me, but after I started taking up boxing, they left me alone.”

“You fought back?”

“Here’s the thing. If you’re going to start a fight and throw a punch, you better make sure that first punch is good enough to be the last one. Their mistake was to let me get the second punch. The second guy who learned that lesson was the last one.”

“I hate that you had to go through that.”

“Well, it sure as shit colored my adolescence. I like to think that those experiences made me the kind of lawyer I am. I don’t go for the jugular, but I wait for my opponents to show me who they are. How they fight. Then I just…” He knocked their little sand structure down by the base. “Take them down in one efficient blow.”

“You’re constantly surprising me, you know?” She took his cup and added it to hers.

He helped her stand and knock the sand off her dress. “How so?”

“I’d just assumed you were like every other rich man born with a silver spoon who visited the resort.”

“You would have known better if you’d actually talked to me.” This time, he didn’t wait for her to offer her elbow. He just took it.

“But people
lie
when they talk. I learned that lesson just like Toby, but unlike him, I won’t be able to reteach myself to trust so easily.”

“Do you want to tell me something?”

She looked up at him, then down at her feet.

They were moving back toward the house.

“I…I
do
want to tell you.”

After that, she said nothing. He didn’t push, because maybe that was all she could give him at the moment. That was a hell of a lot more than she’d given him up until yesterday.

They’d made it all the way back to the house, and as they climbed the deck stairs, he already missed getting to hold her. It was platonic and chaste, but it was a kind of touch he needed in a different way than he needed sex. It was an undemanding sort of touch.

He unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door, but she didn’t follow him in.

Instead, she headed for the built-in bench nearest the grill and sat. She rolled the cups between her palms for a moment, then her brow furrowed. “I’d like to tell you why I agreed to come. Why I finally said yes.”