Postcards From Last Summer (18 page)

“I wasn't that young,” I protested.

“But the thing is, I'd hate to ruin it by taking advantage of you, just because you're sitting all naked and sexy in my van.”

Sexy . . . did he really see me that way? Suddenly brave, I let the blanket drop from my shoulders, revealing the swell of my full breasts.

He blinked, openmouthed, suddenly not so lighthearted as I gathered the blanket to my middle, hobbled closer to him on my knees, and pressed my lips to his.

It was the most serious kiss of my life, intense and hungry, punctuated by the sounds of our breathing and the roaring winds outside. His tongue teased my lips gently and played at the edge of my teeth, drawing emotion up from my soul.

Together we fell back onto the carpeting, our bodies pressed skin to skin as we kissed time and again.
The longest, sweetest make-out session in the history of the world,
I thought as my hands explored the solid muscles of his shoulders, down his smooth back to the tight butt I'd watched for years.

He responded to my touch, growing hard against my stomach. For a while, his hands remained on my breasts, stroking my nipples until they tightened and puckered. Then one of his hands smoothed down along my hips, letting his fingers dip between my thighs, and he groaned.

“God, you're so wet,” he whispered.

“Because I want you,” I said honestly. “I want you bad, Bear.”

He closed his eyes, letting his fingers glide over me so sweetly. “Are you sure? Are you really, really sure?”

How could he even ask when he was making my body sing with such pleasure? I knew that making love wouldn't change our separate futures; it wouldn't keep Bear in New York. But I wanted it, wanted him, even if it was going to be only for this moment in time, this single night. “I've never been more sure of anything in my life.” To let him know I was serious, I dared to reach down and touch him, my fingers closing around his hard shaft, making him gasp.

“Okay,” he breathed. “In that case, I'd better find some protection . . . fast.”

Turned out he had a pack of condoms in a duffel bag. I pulled the blanket back on, still feeling a little self-conscious about my weight, and watched him roll it on with ease, a little impressed by his adeptness, his comfort with his own body. The way he tucked his chin into his chest and leaned down over his flat stomach to make sure the rubber was in place.

Something sparked in his clear blue eyes as he leaned over me again, dipping one hand under the blanket to glide over my breasts. My taut nipples stung with desire at his touch, and I swept the blanket aside and reached up to his shoulders.

He positioned himself over me and pressed between my legs, nudging and bobbing, teasing me with taut control. “How's that?”

I lifted my knees, opening myself to him. “Amazing. Awesome. Killer.”

“You're talking surfer talk.”

“When in Rome . . .”

“Do you like it?”

It was getting to the point where I could barely talk, being so wrapped up in the pattern of probing, the steady rhythm. “Yes. Yes!”

“Then how's this?” He pushed past the sensitive folds and plunged deep inside me, causing me to gasp.

I squeezed my eyes shut in ecstasy. “Very good,” I gasped. “And you'd better keep going or I'll have to kill you.”

He laughed and started the steady rhythm again, pumping into me with such energy and warmth I couldn't help the sensations that were building, warming the distant chill, filling my body, all from the touch of Bear.

I closed my eyes and let it all go, existing in this moment with this boy I'd mooned for and crushed on and followed secretly in my heart for so many years. Bear Harmon, the chip-toothed surfer with the silly name, was making love to me, touching me inside. In my yearning to move with him I felt the reality around us slip away. I lost track of any single sensation and gave way to the steady flow that mimicked the surf, the tug and pull, the plumbing of the deep and the swirl of pressure against boundaries, probing and smashing and gently caressing. Bear was loving me, stroking me, again and again and again, and the sheer pleasure of that intimacy and the rising sensation in my body suddenly welled up, causing me to let out a thrill-filled yelp. His cry followed soon after, an elongated sigh of release. He found the blanket and pulled it over the two of us. Then, easing one hip down beside me, he lowered his head to mine, keeping body contact as he dropped a kiss on my cheek, still close and warm and sexy.

“Lindsay . . . you're so beautiful.”

And in that moment, I believed him.

Summer 1998

“A
ll rise for the Honorable Judge Cletus D. Szchenowski,” the court clerk announced in a bored voice, and everyone in the courtroom stood up. Darcy rose demurely and smoothed down the pleats of her plaid linen skirt, thinking that the judge for her father's case had an unfortunate name and wondering if he'd ever thought to change it.

As Judge Szchenowski led the lawyers through the opening protocol of her father's trial, Darcy tried to find a comfortable spot on the hard wooden chair in the visitors' section of lower Manhattan's stuffy old marble courthouse. These guys sure could talk, and none of it came close to the impassioned speeches of television courtroom dramas.

Aside from the protestors outside, former employees circled the bottom of the courtroom steps with signs complaining:
THIEF
! or
WANTED—MY JOB BACK
! or
U-OWE-ME
$290
MILLION
!—it was all very lacking in drama. Of course, the underlying drama was quite intense. The notion that Bud Love and his family could lose it all, their money, the extra houses and fancy cars, all status and respect in the community was a real ass-kicker, but pretty unbelievable.

She wondered if they'd bring in one of those artists to sketch. Would there be photographers outside as the trial proceeded? Maybe they'd catch her in a few shots. She could imagine a newspaper editor—a handsome older man—circling her face in red pencil, barking, “Who's the chick? I want to see more of her. Now!” And the flashes would blind her as she walked out onto the row of steps. And if the day in court wasn't too draining, she'd pause and pose. Recrossing her legs, she composed captions that might accompany the outfit she'd chosen to wear today.

With a sigh she let her head tip to the side, her blond hair falling over one cheek, shy and yet sultry. From her petal pink lipstick to the toes of her Ferragamo mules, Darcy's wardrobe, makeup, and hair were carefully choreographed to show support for her father, compassion for all those poor people who lost their jobs when the money went missing, and youthful innocence—underlining
innocence
for the jury. It was hard to believe that her father was being blamed for missing money just because he was head of the corporation. Did anyone think a CEO like Bud Love actually went into the office and counted dollars, made deposits, kept ledgers? It was totally ludicrous, but here was Buford Love, looking more handsome and earnest than any defendant she'd ever seen on
Law and Order,
his wife and daughter behind him dressed like high-fashion saints.

Darcy straightened a crease in her skirt, the sweetest pink plaid that ever landed on the racks at Bergdorf. It was not something Darcy would even try on during a normal shopping trip, but yesterday she'd set her goals tight and right on courtroom attire: innocent daughter.

She felt a hand touch her shoulder. That would be Kevin, as her mother had retreated into her shell, colder than a clam on a February morning. But the scandal had brought Kevin closer to her than ever before, and with his months of group therapy and meetings he had learned twenty million ways to spell “support.” Sometimes he seemed unrecognizable when he spoke about “giving it all over” or “taking personal inventory” or “taking things one day at a time.”

He touched her arm gently and leaned forward, his green eyes flashing with concern. Those eyes . . . and that smile, so broad with two crooked dimples. And now that he'd stopped abusing drugs and alcohol the gray of his skin had given way to a healthy peach hue—model material, that boy. Sometimes her heart got a squeeze just from looking at him.

“You okay?” he mouthed.

She nodded, trying to make her boredom seem like forbearance in case anyone was watching. Whoever had the brilliant idea of opening a trial on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend? Well, she realized the trial hadn't officially opened today, with jury selection and everything, but still, today's court date had to be putting a crimp in hundreds of vacation plans. Tara was probably helping her mother open the beach house, and most likely Lindsay was already out surfing on this spectacular day. They'd been all over her about their graduation party tomorrow, but Darcy wasn't sure she could stand to celebrate that landmark when her life had snapped in so many pieces. Not to mention the fact that the Hamptons house had been damaged in that Labor Day hurricane, and in the heat of the trial preparation, her parents hadn't driven out to assess the damage.

In front of her sat her father, his head bowed reverently as if he were sitting through Sunday mass. His hair was shot through with sterling gray, a charming shade actually, and Darcy wasn't sure if he'd had it colored before or if the threat of twenty years in prison had turned him gray. She wasn't sure if he was folded over because he'd lost hope or because he was trying to remove himself from the proceedings. She really wasn't sure about much when it came to her father anymore, and it wasn't easy to even look at him without the glaze of anger over how he'd thrown their social reputation and family money into an uproar.

“I can't believe they'd start a trial just before Memorial Day weekend,” she told her father last week while they were waiting for Darcy's deposition in a conference room at the firm. “That's dumb. Don't those people have any social life at all?”

Bud Love had shot her an icy look over the file of papers he was signing. “I blame your mother for comments like that.”

The men and women on his legal team had tittered a little or awkwardly looked away, as if it were way too personal to watch when in fact, there was nothing personal at all between Darcy and her father. He was the moneymaker, the great provider, who was falling down on the job, stumbling along with this trial. Sitting in that conference room, Darcy folded her arms with a tight grin as one of Dad's business philosophies—one of the many Bud Love–isms that the corporation cherished—ran through her mind: “If someone can't do the job, you gotta let him go.” Didn't Dad see that those giggling lawyers weren't doing a very good job? She would have fired them all, months ago.

How could they let the grand jury decide that Buford Love had violated such a big law? Didn't these imbeciles see that a huge corporation was at stake—lots of jobs, lots of reputations?

Apparently not. So began the era of “Daddy the Criminal”—a time of endless depositions, tempers flaring between her normally comatose parents, snide smirks from former friends when she ran into them at the gym or the Great Egg bagel shop, and panic over how far the final verdict might cut into the family finances.

In the humid courtroom, Darcy felt her jaw aching to yawn. She was tired. God, she'd love to yawn, but that would look bad.

If only she'd worn that navy picture hat today. She'd picked it up at Bendel with the plan to wear it for a later court date since it was much too mysterious for the first day. Inside the delightful brown and white striped fitting room, she'd tilted it back on her head and immediately saw herself as a blond Jackie Kennedy Onassis or even Madonna, playing coy for paparazzi.

The hat was a find, and if she had it today it would help to hide the yawn that insisted on bubbling up. She bowed her head to her chest and pressed a fist to her mouth, as if it were all too painful to bear, though she'd tuned out from the legal speak long ago. Damn, the yawn felt good. How late were they up last night?

Kevin had driven into Great Egg from the Hamptons so that he could be with her for the opening of the trial. Mom said he could stay in the guest room. Not that it mattered, since Mom drugged herself to sleep early on and Dad stayed in a hotel suite in Manhattan, to be closer to his lawyers and handlers and probably to also remove himself from the wrath of his family.

Mom disappeared around eight-thirty, and Darcy and Kevin had the screening room in the basement all to themselves. She'd poured them Cokes from her father's wet bar, sneaking a shot of rum into hers, then pretended to go to the pantry for corn chips and salsa. Instead, she took a left turn into the cedar closet, slipped off her clothes, and wrapped herself in a brown fur stole that used to belong to her great-grandmother.

She didn't own any fur, of course, since the idea of hurting little bunnies or seals was disgusting. But she had to admit the sensation was glorious as she slung it around one thigh, then up over her bare breasts. Quite the turn-on.

Kevin had been engrossed in the sitcom, but his attention shifted quickly when she danced out wrapped in a skimpy swathe of fur. She told him to undress while she popped an Anita Baker CD in, and for once he didn't mind taking orders.

His body was in better shape now that he was sober. His daily runs on the beach had built some muscles into those legs, and she enjoyed rubbing the fur against his abs, over his shoulders, then down again to tease him with it.

Ever since he'd finished with rehab, he'd been insatiable, always ready to go. Usually Darcy didn't mind. With her father under fire, the family fortune at stake, and school on hold, it was nice to be in control of one part of her life, always able to coax Kevin into wanting her. In other matters, such as socializing at bars or clubs, Kevin had hatched a new agenda that was diametrically opposed to Darcy's life philosophy, but when it came to making love he would submit to her wishes, and Darcy liked the feeling of power over him. She'd realized that with this level of activity it was going to be a challenge to keep condoms in stock, so after Christmas she called her gyno and switched to birth control pills.

They'd danced around and tickled each other with that fur for more than an hour last night. At one point she was moaning so loud that Kevin pressed a hand over her mouth, and she bit into the flesh of his fingers defiantly just as she came.

Afterwards, thrumming with satisfaction, she took him to the guest room and slid into bed beside him, safe in the crook of his arms. Although he was asleep in a few minutes, she'd lain awake, thinking of the many ways her father had screwed things up.

First, the money issue. Mom said funds were drying up fast, especially since investigators had put some sort of hold on most of Dad's investments. When the cash ran out, it was really going to suck.

And then there was college. Education held sparse appeal for Darcy. Not that she couldn't do well, but when there were poetry readings and student performances and spontaneous road trips to New York City from the placid Bennington campus in Vermont, it didn't seem so important to complete her student projects and papers. As she'd told one faculty advisor, so what if she graduated in five years instead of four? Although the professors did expect her to assert herself academically, Darcy was usually able to loop together a student production or pull off a new interpretation of a Shakespearean role. Life on the commons, overlooking the hills of New York and Pennsylvania, was sweet; why not stay another year?

“Because we just don't have that kind of money anymore,” her father had told her on the phone toward the end of the fall term. His voice was craggy and chipped, the voice of an old man who didn't care that she was focused on her final project, working late hours in one of the studios videotaping a one-woman show. “Finish the semester and come home.”

Leave Bennington? Her second home? And why . . . because he'd fucked everything up with his careless accountants? She'd argued with him on the phone, without success, but the threat of leaving campus made her dig in a little deeper and gave her the impetus to spend more time on her end-of-semester project, her monologue of a deranged shopper. Late that night, she was between takes in the studio when she heard the shrieking sirens of emergency vehicles. Stepping out into the snowy night, she saw a truck from the local fire department cruising slowly down the lane in front of her, its flashing red and white lights spiraling odd shadows on the midnight blue snowscape. Across the meadow, an old-fashioned ambulance whooped, its red lights blinking like a Christmas tree.

Not an emergency. The vehicles were announcing Midnight Breakfast, a Bennington tradition, when students took a break from the looming deadlines of finals and assembled in the dining hall, where faculty members served them waffles and eggs and coffee.

Without hesitation she grabbed her coat and headed toward the dining hall, her boots crunching on the frozen crust of snow. This would be her last Midnight Breakfast, her last chance to be a part of this community. She'd always mocked the superstudents who holed up in the library or science lab; she'd rolled her eyes over the vixens who slept their way into good roles and grades, but now that this world was being snatched from her, she wanted it in the worst way.

Tears formed in her eyes as she headed toward the golden rectangles of the dining-hall windows. It was so unfair—the prosecution of her father, the failure of her father to protect her lifestyle and her future.

Her reckless father and his stupid, stupid accountants were going to ruin her life, and she couldn't think of a way to stop them.

During that walk along the snowy path, she resolved to do her best to play the game, show support in the courtroom, pose as the perfect daughter and give the jury a picture of the defendant's family that might tug on their heartstrings. She'd do her best to save the family fortune and reputation.

And if all that failed, Kevin was her plan B. He'd been doing well in rehab, though the counselors limited her visits, and his father's restaurant was a Hamptons institution, a gold mine, and the Hamptons had a strong social network, where she'd quickly rise to the top.