The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (32 page)

“Oh Wes.” She swallowed against the lump in her throat. “When I said ‘I do’ I guess I wasn’t thinking of all the ‘I don’ts.’”

“Are you saying you’re sorry we decided against kids?”

“No. Just…I’m not sure I knew what I was giving up.”

Wes wore a cool, considering expression. What was he thinking? That she was no different from her mother, pretending all this time to be someone she wasn’t? She wouldn’t blame him if he felt tricked.
He
had never led her down the garden path.

“I didn’t know you felt this strongly about it,” he said.

“I didn’t, either.”

“Alice…” Wes straightened. She was shocked to see his dark eyes glittering with tears. She’d never seen him cry, not even when his mother had nearly died last year. “If it’s that important to you, I don’t want to stand in your way.”

Alice jerked a little in surprise. “What are you saying?”

“We can have a baby if that’s what you want.”

“You mean it?”

“I don’t say anything I don’t mean.” He smiled a little. “You, of all people, should know that.”

“I wouldn’t want it to be a burden.”

“No child of ours would ever be a burden.”

The tears that had been shimmering below the surface spilled over, dropping into her lap. “Oh Wes. I didn’t think you would…” She rose unsteadily to her feet.

Wes drew her into his arms. “You mean more to me than anything in the world.” She could feel his fingers trembling a little as he stroked her head. “Anything else is just the icing on the cake.”

“I love you.”

“If I’ve been unfair—”

“No.” She shook her head, his soft shirt grazing her cheek. He smelled of bay rum and barbecue. “You’ve never been anything but honest.”

“Which is more than I can say for you.” He drew back to smile at her. “You’ve been smoking, haven’t you?”

She blushed, feeling as guilty as a schoolgirl. “Just one. In the car.”

“Not,” he said, “that I don’t find it sexy as hell. Reminds me of when we were first dating.” He undid the top button of her blouse. “You wearing anything under this?”

“Why don’t you find out for yourself?”

He reached in to cup a bare breast, stroking her nipple until it stiffened. It was like a bolt of lightning shooting down through her navel. “Promise me one thing.” He nuzzled her neck. “If we ever get divorced, you’ll take me as part of the settlement.”

“That’s not funny.” She smiled anyway.

“It wasn’t meant to be.” When he finished unbuttoning her blouse, he worked a hand down the waistband of her skirt. “I could never let you go. You have this strange hold over me, you see.”

“Never mind your damned settlement. We’re not getting divorced.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Guaranteed.”

He pulled her against him. She could feel how excited he was, and that excited her even more. She pushed a hand up under his T-shirt, splaying her fingers over his back, feeling the dimple of scar tissue from when he’d been wounded in Vietnam. It reminded her of how brave he was…and how close she might have come to losing him.

“There’s just one thing…” she whispered.

“What’s that?”

“Promise
me
you won’t always give in. I might get spoiled.” She unzipped his shorts, grinning down at him. “See what I mean? We haven’t had dinner, and I’m already thinking about dessert.”

They usually took it slow, one button at a time, stopping to kiss and fondle along the way. But she felt suddenly impatient. Even the time it would take to climb the stairs was more than she could wait. She wanted it
now:
fast, furious, hot enough to curl her toes.

They stripped off their clothes, and Wes lowered her onto the sofa, straddling her while holding her arms pinned over her head. She cried out as he thrust into her, feeling a small, sweet ache at her core.

A minute later, when she felt him holding back, she cried, “No. Don’t stop.”

“I’ll come,” he whispered hoarsely.

“It’s okay.”

“What about—?” He didn’t have to say it. The condoms were upstairs.

“Wrong time of the month,” she murmured.
The wrong time for what?
whispered a tiny voice in her head.

Then Wes was moving inside her again. Faster now, in quick, hard jabs. Muscles flexing, contracting, flexing. Shoulders glistening with sweat in the sunlight that slanted in through the blinds.

They came together in a burst that seemed to engulf her entire body. Greedily, she clung to Wes, biting him, biting
hard,
not caring if it hurt, just wanting to take as much of him into her as she could.

He collapsed onto her, spent.

At first, there was only the afterglow, the delicious sense of having had her fill. Then a flicker of anxiety took hold. It was unlikely, with her period due any minute, but suppose she
were
to get pregnant? Did she want a baby? A real live baby, with all it entailed? Or had it been just a case of wanting something she couldn’t have?

Now that the decision was hers, and hers alone, it scared her.

A baby, she thought. A baby would change everything. No more rollicking on the sofa. No more candlelight dinners and midnight skinny-dipping in the pool. And that was just for starters. You had to want a child desperately—as desperately as Laura—to give up so much.

The question was, did
she?

Alice drifted into a light doze, only vaguely aware of Wes easing away from her and gently covering her with a blanket. As if from a distance, she heard the soft click of a phone, then Wes’s low voice, saying, “Ian? It’s Dad.”

“W
HO WAS THAT?”
Markie asked when he’d hung up.

“My dad.”

“What did he want?”

“He was just calling to say hi. I guess it’s been a while.”

“Lucky you. If a whole day went by without one or the other of my parents checking up on me, I’d think they’d dropped off the planet.” She laughed her high, girlish laugh and rolled onto her stomach.

They were lounging by the pool, Markie in a bikini consisting of little more than two strips of fabric no wider than his thumb, he in his Pacific Rim trunks. The deck, which jutted from the side of the cliff, looked out over an ocean so blue that if he’d tried to capture it on canvas it wouldn’t have looked real. Waves churned on the rocks below, and in the cloudless sky overhead, seagulls floated nearly motionless, like pen strokes on pale blue parchment.
I could look out at this every day for the rest of my life and never get tired of it,
he thought.

With an effort, he drew his attention back to Markie.

“Ready?” he asked, replacing the phone on the small glass table by the chaise, which held her Discman, an empty Coke can, the latest issue of
Forbes,
and an ashtray with several lipsticked butts. “We should try to squeeze in another hour while the light’s still good.”

“Let’s go for another swim first.” With a lazy smile she uncoiled from the chaise.

A few months ago he might have been tempted…but the only thing on his mind now was finishing this damn portrait. He’d known, of course, when asked to do the old lady’s, that sooner or later Markie would appear on the scene. Hadn’t that been the idea all along? What he couldn’t have predicted was that she’d sweet talk dear old Dad out of another five grand for
hers.
And how convenient that the Aaronsons left for Europe two days after she arrived. Ian would have hightailed it, too, but the money was too good.

Ten grand in the bank would show Sam he was serious, not just about her, but the baby. She’d see that he wasn’t like her husband. She’d know she could count on him.

They’d spoken over the phone last night, and she’d agreed to drive up next weekend—two whole days to sort things out, days in which the perfect moment would surely arise to…

Ask her to marry me.

Ian’s pulse quickened at the thought. When had it first come to him that that was what he wanted? He couldn’t have said. The process had been so gradual, it seemed he’d always known.

“You’ll have all day tomorrow,” he told Markie. Tomorrow, God willing, they’d be done with sittings, and he could devote the next few days to the finishing touches.

For once, she didn’t argue. “Oh, all right. If you’re going to be
that
way about it.” She injected a teasing note, but he sensed her disappointment. None of this was working out the way she’d planned. A week of togetherness, with only the housekeeper to lend a thin veneer of respectability, had brought them no closer than before.

He pushed his way out the gate. Flagstone steps wound down the steep hillside to the guest house below. He hadn’t gone more than halfway when he heard a splash. Ian felt a surge of irritation. That would mean another ten, fifteen minutes before she meandered down to meet him, still in her bikini. Then another fifteen to blow-dry her hair. Jesus. If it was like this now, what kind of tricks would she pull when he told her Sam was coming?

But when Markie finally appeared, damp and out of breath, her short dark hair standing up in kittenish tufts, he didn’t have the heart to be angry. She looked adorable, and knew it. “Don’t be mad, Ian. It was so hot. I needed to cool off.” She crossed the living room and flopped down on the sofa.

The guest house was a miniature version of the main one, with post-and-beam ceilings and a redwood deck facing out over the ocean. What he liked best was the light; it poured in even on foggy days. He’d set his easel up by the sliding glass doors to the deck, using a rattan love seat as a backdrop. Old Mrs. Aaronson, he recalled with something close to wistfulness, would sit for hour upon hour without moving or uttering a single complaint.

“It doesn’t matter now. By the time you dry off and get dressed it’ll be too late.” He spoke evenly, carefully wiping his brushes clean. The room smelled faintly of linseed oil and turpentine. He preferred working with acrylic, but the old lady, a great admirer of Sargent, had insisted on oil.

He eyed the nearly finished portrait on the easel, seeing it less as a whole than as a checklist of things to correct. A little more cadmium around the eyes? A touch of blue highlight to the hair? The dimple would have to be flattened, too. It didn’t show that much, except when she was laughing.

“We got
hours
in before lunch,” she said, unperturbed.

Lunch. Back home, in his studio, that usually consisted of a sandwich tasting faintly of paint and gesso. But here it was a far more civilized affair. With old Mrs. Aaronson at least two hours had had to be allotted, starting precisely at noon, for a spread that would have rivaled a sultan’s. Today’s lunch had consisted of cold coconut soup, curried chicken salad, slices of mango wrapped in prosciutto, and rolls fresh from the oven. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed every bite. The trouble was that one day had a tendency to melt into the next, whole afternoons dissolving in a wine-induced haze. Aided and abetted by the pool and the siren’s call of the surf.

Ian slid open the door to the deck. It was low tide, and a flock of sandpipers was making its way along the glistening ribbon of sand below. Farther out to sea, a blue heron glided inches above the water as if tracing an invisible line. He followed its progress, so caught up in his thoughts he didn’t notice Markie slipping up alongside him.

She leaned up against the railing. “Feel like a walk?”

“Not particularly.” He brought his gaze back to the sandpipers, like miniature clowns on stilts jerking along the kelp-strewn tide line. But the scent of Coppertone on warmed skin was making it hard to concentrate.

“What
do
you feel like doing?”

“Actually,” he said, “I was thinking of calling my girlfriend.”

“Well, I’m sure you won’t mind if I don’t stick around.” He didn’t have to look at her to know she was sulking.

“Not in the least,” he replied.

Markie didn’t budge. “The older lady, right?”

“Sam.”

“Just how old
is
she?”

Ian turned to her with the same pleasant smile he’d been wearing all week. “Not that it’s any of your business,” he said, “but she has kids your age.”

She dropped her gaze, picking at a splinter on the railing. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not hung up about that kind of thing. It’s just that personally I can’t imagine dating anyone that much older.” She flashed him a little smile. “But that’s just me.”

“I take it you’ve never been in love.”

“Once or twice. It was no big deal, believe me.”

“Like I said, you’ve never been in love.”

She frowned. “You’re not that much older than me, you know.”

Old enough to know better,
he thought. He noticed she was shivering, and said matter-of-factly, “You’d better throw something on. You’ll catch cold.”

“I left my robe by the pool.”

“There’s a shirt on my bed.”

Markie shot him a faintly chastened look and did as she was told, returning moments later with his oldest chambray shirt, daubed with paint, draped about her shoulders. Its tails dangled to her knees, reminding him of Audrey Hepburn in
Roman Holiday.

“Just for the record,” she informed him, “I wasn’t prying. It’s just that you hardly ever talk about her. I was curious, that’s all. What’s she like?”

“You’ll see for yourself,” he said. “She’s coming up next weekend.”

Markie was clearly taken aback. “Oh? I thought…” She caught her lower lip between her teeth.

He knew what she’d thought—that it’d be just the two of them. “I ran it by your grandparents before they left,” he said with a shrug, making it clear he didn’t owe her an explanation. “They were cool with it.”

Markie’s charm school manners quickly rose to the occasion. “In that case, I’ll tell Pilar to set an extra place for dinner on Friday. That is, if you haven’t made other plans.”

Friday he’d planned on taking Sam to dinner at Ventana, but he could see that Markie was trying. One night wouldn’t hurt. “Thanks,” he said. “That’d be nice.”

“Sandra, right?”

“Sam,” he corrected.

“Sam.” She smiled. “I’m looking forward to meeting her.”

By the time Friday rolled around, dinner with Markie was the last thing on Ian’s mind. His head was too filled with thoughts of Sam. Would she want what he was offering? Over the phone she’d sounded excited, brimming with plans for the new house. Chattering on about kitchen cabinets, and whether or not to replace the old sash windows with double-glazed aluminum ones. Not a word to suggest she was thinking about anything other than her own immediate future.