Buck's Landing (A New England Seacoast Romance) (9 page)

“At least he didn’t interrupt tonight,” Sofia said.

“I’d have left his bony ass on the welcome mat this time,” Silas growled.

“Yeah, right.” Sofia giggled again, and then he was touching her. Laughter went up in a flame of sheer pleasure when he filled her. She drew him into the fire until they were both spent.

He dozed afterward, with Sofia warm and sleepy at his side, waking to an unexpected rumble in his belly.

Her whisper told him she wasn’t asleep. “I can’t believe you’re hungry.”

Silas kissed her hairline. “I worked it off. I think it’s time for dessert.”

He stretched, rolled out of her bed, and pulled his shorts on. Sofia rolled into his spot on the bed. “Don’t get up now,” he teased.

She followed him into the kitchen a moment later in a silk robe covered in huge printed poppies. She opened the freezer and pulled out an unlabeled bottle. The contents were pale yellow beneath the frost.

“Limoncello?” he asked.

“Mm hmm.” Her eyes sparkled. A flush still lingered on her skin. “A friend of mine in DC makes her own. It’s wonderful stuff.”

Silas reached into a cabinet for two small glasses and poured them each a few sips.

They tucked into the lemon bars and toasted one another with the homemade liquor.

Silas raised his glass. “To your father, who might not have partaken, but I think would have approved.”

Sofia’s face clouded for a moment and he regretted inviting Jimmy’s ghost into the room. Then she raised her own glass, pushing the moment aside.

“To my mother, who would have concluded such a meal with her own limoncello. I only wish I’d gotten to try it.”

“To women of taste,” Silas agreed, “and exceptionally good red sauce.”

After their belated dessert, Sofia poured them a second round of limoncello and curled up on the sofa, patting the cushion next to her. He sat and she fit herself against his body. He leaned back, and snuggled her close. The noise from the street drifted through the open windows and the waves washed below like a slow heartbeat.

Silas woke a few hours later. The evening had cooled, and Sofia must have pulled the afghan from the end of the couch over them as they slept. Easing himself off the sofa, he slipped a pillow under Sofia’s head and tucked the blanket snugly around her. He pushed her hair away from her face and kissed her, noting the soft hint of a smile on her lips.

~~~

Sofia woke alone on the sofa some time before dawn. When further sleep evaded her, she set about tidying up the apartment. Silas’s record choices were still stacked on the console. She slipped the vinyl into their sleeves and carried them into her parents’ room. The contents of the box Silas had emptied were in neat piles next to the carton.

It wasn’t until she’d returned all the LPs to the box that she saw it. A shoebox from the mall store where she’d picked out her prom shoes, bought with the proceeds from her tips working the ice cream window, sealed with yellowed packing tape and her name, written on top in her own girlish script.

She carried the shoebox into her bedroom and slit the tape open with a nail file. By the light of her bedside lamp, she lifted the lid. Inside were snapshots of her with Judy, with Dex, hugging people she barely remembered, their fire-lit faces joyful against the indigo sea. There was a knotted friendship bracelet, faded by sun and seawater, snipped clean off her ankle at the end of a summer. Bits of polished glass, a sand dollar, a ticket stub from a carnival. At the bottom, a Florentine paper journal, tied closed with grosgrain ribbon.

Her diary.

The pages were crammed with the fluid, looping penmanship she’d long ago left behind, chronicling crushes and heartbreaks, kisses with boys whose lips she’d forgotten, fights with Judy, and secrets confided around those beach bonfires.

The pages also told the story of a girl who’d bled—figuratively—for her father’s attention. A note in the margin with her GPA and a bitter scrawl: another girl’s dad would have cared. The word “cared” underlined three times so hard the pen nip had almost broken through. A paragraph describing the night Judy’s parents had taken them into Boston to celebrate their high school graduation. She wondered at the coincidence of eating her first formal dinner in the DeVarona Boston’s dining room, Serenade.

While her father had been invited as a matter of form, he hadn’t even bothered to decline.

She’d seen her first off-Broadway musical that night, had her first champagne toast in their hotel room, and cried her last bitter tears over her father in the bathroom.

From the dresser, her phone alarm chirped. With a heavy sigh, she pushed the diary into the box and shoved it under her bed. Until Kevin Landry brought her a buyer, she had obligations to fulfill.

SIX

As the end of July melted into early August, Sofia boxed away more than just her diary. She allowed the pleasure of Silas’s company to carry her through the dog days of a New England summer. They ran their respective businesses, slipping away when time warranted to be together away from the beach, and spending many of their nights tangled up in Sofia’s bed.

Before too long, those nights outnumbered the nights they spent apart. The part of her that feared the intimacy that blossomed between them was stashed away under the bed with her box of memories.

On the cusp of a mid-August dawn, their phone alarms woke them at nearly the same moment. After a bleary shuffle to the living room, Silas tossed two silenced phones on the duvet and crawled back into the bed. What began as an easy good-morning kiss left them both breathless and aching, but Houdini was waiting for his breakfast, and the still empty beach was waiting for his run. Silas pushed Sofia’s hair from her face and cruised his lips over her temple.

“Come to Portsmouth with me Sunday night.” He kept his tone casual.

Indecision played over her face.

“Switch shifts with Amy.” He traced her cheekbones with a finger and kissed her mouth. “She can close the course and the snack bar, and I’ll have you home by midnight.” He drew an x over her left breast. “Promise.”

“Okay.” She dodged him and rolled out of bed. Silas admired her behind as she walked away. “I saw that,” she called from the kitchen.

He couldn’t help laughing. She was magnificent. “Couldn’t resist!”

He stepped into his boxers and padded out to the living room to find the rest of his clothes. In the adjoining kitchen, Sofia was making coffee.

“You should never make coffee with clothes on,” he said.

She pushed start on the machine. “Smart ass.”

He ogled. “Great ass.”

“Help yourself to coffee. I’m going to grab a shower before I go down.” She started for the bathroom.

He touched her arm as she passed. “Hey.”

Her expression clouded and cleared in a blink.

“I’ve got to spend some time with my accounts tonight, but I’ll be around.” He kissed her and released her to her morning ablutions.

He grabbed a mug from the dish rack by the sink, poured a cup, and opened her fridge for some milk. Finding nothing suitable, he took the coffee, mug and all, out with him.

He arrived home to a very hungry cat. Scratching Houdini behind the ears, he headed for the jug of two-percent in his fridge, but his feline companion stopped him with a plaintive yowl and proceeded to wind himself around Silas’s ankles.

“If you kill me, cat,” he warned, “it could be days before anyone notices. You think you’re hungry now?” Silas filled Houdini’s bowls with kibble and water, and set the bowls down on the counter next to his coffee. “Let’s you and me have some quality time.”

~~~

For a day that began so well, Sophia was almost impressed by how quickly it went bad. She was knee deep in the water feature, unclogging a filter, when Amy brought the phone out to her. Her soft-serve vendor was stuck in traffic. Later that morning, a couple of rowdy sports fans got into it over the Sox and the Yankees, and she’d ended up giving free rounds of golf to everyone whose games were interrupted.

Her tenants in 2B lost their key on the beach; the cable and internet went out. The annoyances were never-ending. By the time the sun set, she was dead on her feet.

Sofia locked up the golf course gates and switched off the sub-panel that controlled the lights, music, and water system. She could hear Charlotte teasing Gavin behind the counter of the snack bar while they cleaned up after what had been a very busy shift. Their adolescent sparring made her smile, despite a pounding headache. She’d wagered their banter would turn into a full-blown romance, and she’d been right. As long as it didn’t interfere with the pouring of fountain drinks and the soft-serve machine operation, she was all in favor of their puppy-love.

Listening to them was a bittersweet reminder. Like her teenage employees, she’d cut her dating teeth behind that very window, but their awkward flirtation lodged behind her breastbone like a stone. No matter how many boys flirted back, no matter how much laughter rang through those seemingly endless days, she’d had to go home to a broken father and loneliness that carved out her heart. She couldn’t help pitying Charlotte and Gavin a little. Like her stay in Hampton, such loves weren’t destined to outlast the summer.

By the time Charlotte’s father came to pick the pair up after work, Sofia’s restless melancholy had settled in to stay. She changed into more comfortable clothes and sought solace on the cool, damp sand.

The beach never really slept in the summer. Even now, a little past midnight, the tide sneaking in quietly, the sand cool between her toes, there were others around. It had always been like that. The visitors came for the aging rock stars and comedians playing at the Casino, the fried dough stands, and the promise of the cold Atlantic water to soothe their ill-advised sunburns. But when the sun faded and the neon lights came on, Ocean Boulevard got a second wind, and those seeking a break from the hustle and jangle of the arcade and the crush of young people preening came down to the silvery beach.

Sofia chose her spot with some care, sitting on the slight rise above the high tide line. She gave a pair of young lovers some space, and kept far enough away from a group of kids with illicit sparklers to avoid trouble from the Beach Patrol. Before her mother had died, she’d been the instigator, begging her father to light sparklers and Roman candles off from the beach, dancing in the moonlit surf. Even her Dad had danced back then.

Her childhood curled in on the tide, crashing at her feet. She probed the memories tentatively. She’d had ten years to bury them, and bury them she had, but this place had been her home.

The winter was a different animal for a year-round resident of a summer vacation town. A mile inland life went on, autumn eased the transition from blistering summer to snowy chill, but here on the shoreline, there were fewer leaves to turn. The tourist season ended, the clam-shacks and pizza-by-the-slice counters shuttered. The quiet descended. Except for the few restaurants that stayed open to cater to the Casino Ballroom patrons, the strip went dormant.

When her mother’s sunshine warmed those long, dark days by the shore, she hadn’t noticed the cold. She’d gone merrily off to school every morning. Coming home in the afternoon to find her mother making homemade linguine or a big pot of Bolognese had banished a salty north wind. The second floor units were rented out to groups of UNH students in the off-season, usually trios or quartets of brave young guys willing to stick out the winter and the drive into Dover for classes in order to live cheap. Elena Costa Buck’s cooking became something of an off-campus legend. If you rented at Buck’s Landing, Mrs. Buck would cook for you a few times a week.

Those dinners had been spicy and rich in conversation—warm, cozy, boisterous meals. Even without their boarders, home was all music and laughter and warmth. Her mother’s laugh was infectious, her beauty unmatched on the boulevard. Her Dad’s rugged good looks and larger than life humor made life on the New Hampshire coastline an endless adventure. They’d been three against the world, a family.

A cold lick of seawater touched her toes, and Sofia realized the tide was fully in. She hitched up the hems of her wide-legged linen trousers. She was startled when Silas dropped down on the sand next to her.

“I used to catch your Dad down here from time to time. Same spot.”

She didn’t turn, didn’t encourage him to stay. Childish, though it might be, she wanted to be alone with her bad mood. “It’s right across the street from the Landing. I suspect it’s just convenient.”

“I was taking care of a few things. I saw you come down here.” He reached up to stroke her hair; a pleasant shiver ran down her back, but the onslaught of memories wouldn’t let her go. When he spoke, he seemed to think she’d come down here to commune with her father’s ghost. “I only knew your dad for a few months, but liked him a lot.”

Grief swelled up. Anger formed a seawall to keep it at bay. Her quiet response belied the storm inside. “I haven’t been home in ten years, Silas. I didn’t even know him.”

Silas slipped his shoes off and pulled them up next to him. He dug into the sand with his feet before folding his legs into a cross-legged position and reaching down to sift the beach through his fingers. “Your dad told me you used to like to fish.”