Some Like It Hot (6 page)

“Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed. For love is sufficient unto love.”

The words had struck her in their simple profundity. Not only had she memorized the verse, but she'd also hand-lettered the words on an index card and put the card inside the top desk drawer in her private study. (That year, her mother's designer had redone Anna's bedroom and adjoining study suite in Chinese antiques from the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Anna's new desk had been made from priceless huanghuali hardwood whose hand-carved pieces fit together without glue or nails.)

By the time Anna was in ninth grade, everyone at Trinity was jaded or at least pretending to be. Ragging on
The Prophet
was party blood sport. No one believed that love existed and everyone pointed to the off-the-charts divorce rates of their parents as empirical proof.

Anna had tossed away the index card but had kept the words emblazoned in her memory. Yes, she'd temporarily jettisoned them when she'd been so certain in the autumn that she was in love with young writer Scott Spencer—a crush she hadn't mentioned to Cyn—and then Cyn had hooked up with Scott. Now that Cyn and Scott were history and Anna didn't want Scott at all, Gibran's words had come roaring back. Could those words apply to a guy who, the last time she'd been on a boat with him, had abandoned her in the middle of the night and then made up some absurd excuse about it?

“Ah. My Selkie maiden longing to return to the sea,” Ben intoned, coming up behind Anna. She was in her ancient gray cashmere sweater and faded jeans—she'd worn her Ralph Lauren deck shoes because it sometimes got slippery. He was in khakis and a faded Princeton sweatshirt. He lifted her ponytail and kissed the back of her neck.

She half-smiled. “The sea is not what I'm longing for. Who's steering the ship of state?”

“It's on autopilot. Kind of like the government.” He put his hands on Anna's shoulders and turned her toward him. “Care to elaborate on what you're longing for?”

For a moment she was ready to fib, but she decided to hold to her honesty policy. When he'd lied about why he'd abandoned her, when she'd not been up-front about the guys she'd been seeing in Los Angeles, when he'd hidden the fact that he had to return to Princeton or that the school would kick him out, it had hurt them. She didn't want that to happen again.

“The truth? I wasn't longing for anything. I was thinking about the first time you brought me out here. New Year's Eve.”

Ben winced and shook his head. “Don't.”

The
Nip 'n' Tuck
cut across the wake of a larger vessel and pitched forward and backward. Ben put his hands on Anna's hips to steady her.

“I was so sure you had used me. But you'd gone off to play the knight in shining armor to your dad.”

“You had no way of knowing that,” Ben reminded her. Anna saw the flush of shame in his cheeks. “I don't blame you for jumping to the wrong conclusion.”

“That's the whole point.” She traced the line of his jaw with her forefinger and gazed over his shoulder at the California coastline. The further they went from the harbor, the more beautiful it became. To the north she could see the Santa Monica Pier, with its famous Ferris wheel. To the south, planes were roaring into the sky from LAX. “Why was I so quick to think the worst of you instead of the best?”

“Because men are dogs?” Ben ventured.

She smiled. “Because I was afraid of … of everything. Being hurt. Wanting you.” She ducked her head self-consciously. “I should shut up now.”

He cupped her chin until she lifted her head to face him again, and turned his body slightly to shield her from the fine spray as the bow of the yacht cut through some choppy water. “Hey, don't do that. I'm just as sick of all the bullshit out there as you are. You can tell me anything.” His hand traced a line from her chin down her neck; then he gently brushed his knuckles against her collarbone. “Man, I missed you.”

“Me too.” Her eyes searched his. “I really think … if we're honest with each other, we can be …” She searched for the right words. “Far from the madding crowd.”

He pointed at her playfully. “Thomas Hardy. You thought I wouldn't know.”

“‘The sky was clear—remarkably clear—and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse,’“
Anna half-whispered. “Isn't that amazing, that one man could write something like that?”

Ben's strong hands circled her slender waist. “I think
you're
amazing.”

Anna rested her cheek against his strong chest and shut her eyes, letting the perfection of the moment wash over her. Then she opened them again. Honest. She had to be honest.

“I wanted to ask you. About Blythe.” She cleared her throat.

“Blythe-at-Princeton Blythe?”

“Is there another one?” she asked archly.

He laughed. “Yeah, somewhere in the universe, I guess. It's just that I haven't even thought about her in three months.”

Anna wanted to make absolutely certain she had this right. “You broke up with her?”

“There wasn't anything to break up. We hung out a few times; that's pretty much it.”

“That's not how it sounded when you first told me about her. You're really not ‘hanging out’ anymore?”

“No, Anna,” he replied as if humoring her. “We are not ‘hanging out’ anymore. I have no female hang-out partners under the age of eighty, I swear.”

“Well, then.” She smiled. That was that. “You need to kiss me.”

He did, over and over, until Anna couldn't think at all. Then he lifted her up in his arms and carried her down the steps to the main cabin. It was bigger than the one that had been on the original
Nip 'n' Tuck,
more lavishly appointed, with actual portholes, a white Berber rug, and an Adriatic desk. The light brown teak king-size bed was built into a darker teak headboard-bookshelf combination—recessed track lighting plus twin reading lamps provided all the illumination one could desire. The bed frame was hand-carved with Moorish designs and inlays so new that Anna could smell the faint aroma of the wood.

The big brown and white pillows on the bed, though, were the same. So was the down comforter with the gold-inlaid comforter cover. So were the light gold silk sheets, his arms, his body—the him that she remembered so well.

Anna opened her eyes to the gentle rocking of the yacht. She was nestled in Ben's arms, the silk sheets crumpled beneath them. His eyes were still closed. She thought about everything they'd shared before falling asleep and shivered deliciously. Whoever had invented sex was a genius.

“You're thinking again,” Ben accused, but there was a smile on his lips.

She gazed at his peaceful face and ran the tips of her fingers down his hard chest. “Your eyes aren't even open; how would you know?”

“I can
feel
it.”

“I had no idea you were so sensitive,” she teased.

“Oh yes you did.” He opened his eyes and pulled her closer. “I think the past hour or two proved that.”

She kissed one of the ridges of his abdominal six-pack. “I have problems with short-term memory. I might need an instant replay to remind me.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Or maybe you need …
this
!”

He picked up a pillow and bopped her with it. She whacked him with another one. She thought she was on the verge of vanquishing him, until Ben held her down and made her say, “Ben is the king!” three times in French. She was laughing so hard she could hardly get the breath to say it.

“Ben est le roi! Trois fois!”
she teased.

Who knew she could be this happy, this carefree? He rolled over next to her, a big, dopey grin on his face. Could it be possible that he was just as happy as she was? Yes, it was. She could feel it.

It was the perfect time to ask him.

“Ben?”

“Anna?”

“How would you feel about going to prom?”

He pretended to muse for a moment. “Prom. You're talking the Beverly Hills High School prom?”

“Is there another kind?”

“I went last year,” Ben remembered. “But that was only because it was for charity. You
really
want to go?”

Anna nodded, conscious of a real lack of enthusiasm in his voice.

“Are Sam and Cammie going?”

“I think so.” For a moment, she was tempted to tell Ben about Sam's movie idea and about how irritated it made her, but she decided she'd wait until she knew if the movie was actually happening. It could, after all, fall through.

“There's just one problem.” He frowned. “If I decide to go, who should I take?”

She laughed. “Don't start or I'll smack you with another pillow and this time I'll win.”

He kissed her tenderly. “Yes, Anna. Of course I'll take you to prom.”

Ben pulled on his jeans and went up top to restart the engine and take them back to shore. There'd been a coastal storm forecast to arrive sometime after midnight; he didn't want them to be caught in it out at sea, even though there was no real danger other than sea-sickness. Meanwhile, Anna lay under the silk sheets grinning like a fool. It had been so simple. It seemed ludicrous that she'd ever stressed about it, about him.

She dozed off for a while as Ben was piloting them back, and awakened only when the engines reversed as they were pulling into the slip at Marina del Rey—a quick look through one of the cabin's portholes confirmed that this was what was happening: the huge, floodlit marina spread out before her, row upon row of docks and boat slips, literally hundreds of white sail-boats and cabin cruisers awaiting their next journey to the high seas. Per the marina regulations, Ben cut the power to no-wake so that the moored vessels wouldn't get sloshed, which gave Anna time to find her clothes, get dressed, and rejoin him on the bridge. She even helped him tie the
Nip 'n' Tuck
to the slip moorings and swab the decks as the first gusts of wind from the incoming storm blew through. They were just finished getting the vessel shipshape for her next outing when they noticed someone bounding up the wooden dock toward them, footfalls echoing in the still night.

Maddy.

What was she doing here?

“Hey, you guys! Hi!” Maddy shouted. She wore an oversized wheat-colored fisherman's sweater and baggy jeans. The rising wind had whipped her dark, wavy hair onto her face. “You know there's a storm coming?”

Ben nodded. “That's why we're back. You didn't have to come down here.”

“I got worried because you forgot your cell phone.” Maddy held up Ben's Samsung D600. “So I called Jack, and he drove me.”

“Sweet of you, Mad, but not necessary,” Ben told her.

“No problem.” She eyed the
Nip 'n' Tuck.
“Wow, that is awesome. I'd love to see it from the inside—hint, hint.”

“Sure, Mad, but some other time—this puppy is coming in sooner than I thought it would.” He gave her a cockeyed look. “Is that … my sweater?”

Maddy looked down at herself. “Oh, yeah. I just grabbed the first thing I saw. You left it in the den.” She made a move as if she were about to remove it. “You can have it back if you want. I only have a really thin little T-shirt on underneath, though.”

I only have a really thin little T-shirt on underneath?

Anna felt heat creep up the back of her neck. She would not let her angst level over this girl spiral out of control again, but there was no mistaking the flirtatiousness of that remark or the unnecessary gesture of Maddy's coming to the marina.

Crush,
Anna realized. Well, of course, that had to be it. Maddy had a crush on Ben. It was sweet, really. Sort of. Kind of. It would have been a lot sweeter if Maddy wasn't quite so … curvy. And if those curves hadn't been living in Ben's house.

Ridiculous. I am being ridiculous.

“So where's Jack?” Anna asked brightly.

“He went into that place, Joe's Clams.” She tilted her head toward the rectangular wooden restaurant/tavern at the far end of the marina parking lot. “I just wanted to bring this to you, then I'm gonna meet him. We're going to a late movie.”

A movie? Anna felt like a fool. She'd jumped to conclusions yet again. So much for the crush-on-Ben theory. She was with Jack. How could Anna possibly be so happy and so in love and yet feel so easily threatened? That was not who she was. Not at all. In fact, she was ashamed of herself.

As if to prove the point, she gave Maddy a big, spontaneous hug. “This was so thoughtful of you.”

“Gee, thanks.” Maddy beamed. “Do you guys want to hang out with us for a little while? I can't eat much—that's what happens when your stomach is stapled—but I'll have a few raw oysters and watch you guys. Okay?”

“Sure,” Anna told her, nodding. “Let's go.”

She hooked her arm in Ben's, sure she had nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

Some French Sex Kitten

T
he door to Joes's Clams opened; Jack saw Ben, Ben's young friend Maddy, and Ben's girlfriend, Anna, step inside and look around for him. He waved and headed in their direction from where he'd been waiting at the bar. The place had a nautical theme—stuffed marlins and tuna on the walls, heavy nautical rope crisscrossing the ceiling, life preservers lashed to the backs of many of the seats, portholes in the walls instead of conventional windows—and served the young, single crowd that lived in Marina del Rey, whether they were boat owners, aspiring boat owners, or were al'ergic to water. At eleven o'clock, weekend or weeknight, Joe's Clams was always jammed—tonight easily a hundred and fifty people were drinking, shooting pool, or throwing darts; some even danced to eighties rock 'n' roll from an old-fashioned Seeburg jukebox.

He joined them at a table for four by the darts area of the club. “Having fun?” he asked Ben as he smoothly held a chair out for Maddy. She looked dazzled by the old-fashioned gesture.

“For sure,” Ben replied as he and Anna sat down. He gave her a meaningful look.

She smiled at him. “Yeah.”

Jack knew that look. The two of them had just screwed their brains out. Well, cool; he was happy for Ben. By any objective standards, Ben was a richie. He didn't have a richie 'tude, though. Maybe that was why he was Jack's best bud at Princeton.