Hale's Point (16 page)

From the direction of the kitchen came the droning buzz of
the oven timer. Tucker groaned. Harley began to disentangle her limbs from his,
but he didn’t budge.

“Let it ring,” he said.

“I can’t stand that noise.”

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her down on top of
him. “I can live with it.” He cupped the back of her head with his big hand,
brought her face close to his, and gave her a quick but enthusiastic kiss.

She looked down at him. “The lasagna will burn,” she said.

“Then you can make some gray, goopy stuff to take its place.”
His arms surrounded her, holding her tight.

“You’re willing to eat gray stuff just so you can stay here
with me?”

“Yes!” He loosened his grip to move his hands down to the
small of her back, pressing her to him. When she felt his fingers slip beneath
the waistband of her shorts, she pulled away and stood.

“Well, I’m not.” She offered him a hand, which he took.

“You’ve got a hard heart,” he said, gaining his feet and
looking around for his cane.

“I’ve got an empty stomach. You’re trying to keep me from my
dinner.
You’re
the one with the hard
heart.”

He followed her as she headed for the kitchen, and she
thought she heard him mumble, “Right idea, wrong organ.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Chapter 7

“Yes, I am!”
Harley gave Mimi’s lasagna pan one last scrub with
the
Brillo
pad, rinsed it under the tap, and handed
it to Tucker.

“No, you’re
not
!”
He dried the pan with quick, angry strokes and slammed it down on the counter
next to the sink.

She felt around in the soapy water with a rubber-gloved
hand—no more dishes, they’d done them all—and pulled out the drain plug. The
gloves made a wonderfully angry snap when she peeled them off, the better to
punctuate her wrath.

Wheeling to face him, she said, “Just because we’re going to
be living in the same house doesn’t give you the right to run my life, like
some kind of overbearing, know-it-all…” What was the word she was looking for?

“Paternalistic,” he supplied.

“Paternalistic, full-of-himself, know-it-all…”

He leaned on the counter and grinned at her. “You’re
repeating yourself.”

“You know what I mean!”

“God, you’re beautiful. You
glow
with indignation.”

She wasn’t going to let him charm her out of her anger. “Phil
said if I felt up to it, I should do it.”

“He was talking about a walk on the beach, not swimming.”

“He meant any physical activity. I need
some
kind of exercise, and I love my evening swim. Now that the
rain has stopped, I intend to take it.”

Tucker rubbed at his neck. “Look, I know you don’t remember
yesterday very well, but you were very, very sick. I don’t think it’s a good
idea to swim—not for a while.”

“A doctor of internal medicine let me climb down to the beach
and take a pretty long walk this afternoon.”

He rolled his eyes. “That doctor of internal medicine happens
to have ulterior motives.”

“Oh, please. First Jamie, now Phil. You think every man who
knows me has designs on me, just because… because—”

He leaned his cane against the counter and moved closer. “Because
I
have designs on you? I know what
you think. You think I’m panting after you like a hungry wolf, that I’d do
anything to get you into bed.”

She took a step back and felt the sink behind her. “No, I don’t.”

He quickly dosed in on her. “Well, I am, and I would.” He
took her face in his hands and kissed her, deeply and passionately. When he
released her, she gasped for air, and he murmured, “Anything. Just tell me what
it’ll take.”

“You’re crazy! Men don’t just come out and say things like
that. They, they finesse you, they—”

“Buy you flowers and take you to dinner and spend a lot of
money on you and bring you home and turn off the lights and turn on some tunes
and engineer some ridiculously obvious seduction, all the while pretending they’re
madly in love with you, and a month later you’re history. Right?”

“I take it you’re more into dragging them by their hair into
the nearest cave. Right?”

He stood with hands on hips. “At least it’s honest.”

“And they’re still going to end up history, only probably the
next morning, not the next month, because you’re heavily into bolting. Am I on
target?”

A slight pause on his part. “Pretty much.”

She crossed her arms, looked down at the wide-planked floor,
and shook her head. “The thing is, I know why you’re coming on to me like this,
and it doesn’t have anything to do with me, really. I just happen to be the
only woman around, and you’re… Well, you know, you spent a year ‘out of
circulation,’ as you called it, and you’re—”

“Horny.”

She shrugged and nodded.

He leaned toward her, one hand on the sink while the other
lifted her chin, tilting her face toward his. She thought he was going to kiss
her again, but he didn’t. He just looked at her, his expression open and
direct. “You’re wrong,” he said. His tone had lost its jocularity; he was quiet
and sincere. “I don’t just want a woman. I want you. Mimi and Brenna are
attractive women, but they don’t do anything at all for me. You do.” He
withdrew his hand, but she still didn’t move her head; she couldn’t take her
eyes off his. “Frankly, that surprises me. You’re fourteen years younger than I
am, you’re going for your M.B.A., and you iron your blue jeans, for God’s sake.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you were a registered Republican.”

“I
am
a registered
Republican.”

He blinked. “You are?’

“I thought you said it wouldn’t surprise you.”

“I lied.”

She smiled. “I thought you said you never lied.”

“You’re a Republican? Really?”

“Yes. I am a member of the Republican Party. Not the American
Nazi Party and not the Ku Klux Klan. The party of Abraham Lincoln. What’s so
wrong with that?”

“It’s just that I never lusted after a Republican before. Not
knowingly, anyway.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything. Now, if you’ll
excuse me, I’m going to go change for my swim.”

Exasperation clouded his features. “Harley… damn it. All
right. All right. You can swim.”

“Thanks for the permission, boss. I’ll never forget this.”

“But only with me there.”

She swept past him, heading upstairs to change. “Are you
going to swim, too?”

“Not a chance. I’ll act as lifeguard. I’m very good at
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Want a demonstration?”

“Not a chance,” she echoed over her shoulder, grinning.

“Can’t fault me for trying,” he mumbled.

***

Tucker reclined in the dark on a chaise longue, drawing
slowly on his cigarette as he watched Harley’s sleek form glide toward him
beneath the water, brightly lit by underwater pool lamps. When she reached a
point about ten feet from the end of the pool, she surfaced, skimming both
hands back from her hairline to smooth down the slick tresses.

Tonight her swimsuit was a wisp of burgundy Lycra that dung
to her as if it had been painted on. It was cut low front and back, and the
whole thing was held up—rather tenuously, he thought—by spaghetti straps tied
in bows on her shoulders. Suits like that were designed with bodies like hers
in mind, he decided. He watched, mesmerized, as, head back and eyes closed, she
twisted her hair to wring the pool water out of it.

Some might think her boyish, with her small breasts and slim
hips. Tucker thought her anything but. Yes, she was strong and athletic, and
no, she would never win any Dolly Parton look-alike contests. But she was
incredibly nubile and, to his way of thinking, intensely female.

She stood waist-deep in the water and looked at him, and her
pure, unadorned beauty took his breath away. The water’s phosphorescent glow
reflected onto her in quivering waves of light. With her gold-green eyes and
sleek bronze hair, she looked like a virgin goddess emerging from the sea.

“Join me,” she said.

Her words inspired an instant physical reaction in him that
took him completely by surprise. Words—such innocent words, at any rate—had
never done that to him before. To cover his speechlessness, he drew on the
cigarette again, then tapped it into the jar lid he held in his other hand.

He cleared his throat. ‘‘Haven’t we already had this
conversation?”

She took a couple of slow-motion steps toward him in the
water. “Come on. Let me see if you can swim a lap.”

“Look, Harley, I’ll save us both a lot of effort. I can’t
swim a lap. End of story.”

“How do you know? You haven’t tried.”

He stabbed the cigarette into the lid. “Trust me, I know what
my body’s capable of.”

“You don’t have a clue what your body’s capable of if you
haven’t even tried. I’d have a lot more respect for you if you tried and failed
than if you didn’t even give it a shot. That’s like giving up without a fight.”

He chuckled. “No offense, but that’s a pretty lame excuse for
inspiration. Your friend Eve what’s-her-name had the right idea. What did she
tell them? ‘Catch me and you can have me?’
That’s
motivation.”

“Would that work with you?”

He met her eyes and smiled. “Try it and see.”

There was a pause. She looked down at the bright water for a
moment, and then she looked up and said, “All right. Catch me and you can have
me.”

He studied her eyes, trying to read her intent. “You’re not
serious,” he concluded.

Her eyebrows drew together. “I’m always serious. And I always
do—”

“What you say you’re going to do,” he finished. “Yeah, but…
I know. You’ve got some loophole, some way of getting out of it if I catch you.
That’s exactly the kind of thing they teach you in business school.”

“No loophole.” she said. “Catch me and you can have me.”

“‘Have me,’ meaning…”

“Have me for the night.”

“For the purpose of…”

“For any purpose you want, although I’ve got a pretty good
idea what that purpose will be. Even virgins aren’t that dense.”

He said, “Yeah, now that you mention that, are you sure you
want to make deals like this, given your… lack of experience?”

“If it doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t bother me.”

“Why would it bother me? Down through history, men have paid
top dollar for virgins. And here I’ll be getting one for the price of a lap.”

“First of all, virgins might have been some big prize once
upon a time, but take it from me, they’re no longer in such hot demand.”

He allowed himself a slow smile. “Call me old-fashioned.”

“Second, what makes you think you’ll be getting me at all? By
your own admission, you can’t even swim a lap.”

“Ah.”

“Ah,” she mocked.

He sat up and used his cane to help him stand. “Yeah, but
like you said, how do I really know if I haven’t tried?” He dropped the cane
onto the chaise and whipped his T-shirt over his head. Tossing the shirt aside,
he ran his hands through his hair, noting with amusement Harley’s nonplussed
expression. “So how does this work?”

“‘This’? Oh, uh… why don’t we just do it the way Eve did
with her vets? You start at the shallow end, against the wall. I start at the
drop-off to the deep end. When I say, ‘Go,’ we swim one lap. If you catch me
before I touch the deck at the deep end… well, then—” she shrugged and spread
her arms in offering “—one virginity, yours for the taking.”

“Freestyle okay with you?”

“Whatever stroke suits your fancy.”

“
Mmm
-hmm.” He squatted at the edge
of the pool. “You’ll have a pretty big lead on me.”

“You get to push off the wall.” she told him. “You’ll make up
most of it that way.”

He grimaced, trying to picture using his bad leg to push off
the wall. “Right.” Stepping out of his moccasins, he sat at the edge of the
pool and lowered himself into the water. It was cold but not too bad. His baggy
shorts were instantly waterlogged; they would weigh him down. He started
undoing the fly. “Mind if I lose these?”

She glared at him. “Yes!”

He held up a placating hand as he
rezipped
with the other. “Just wanted to see you angry. For inspiration.”

Who was he kidding, doing this? His trophy days were long
past. Harley could swim circles around him. He honestly didn’t know what he’d
been thinking of, agreeing to this. It would be an exercise in humiliation.

“Ready?” Harley had moved to the drop-off, and stood facing
him. He sighed and nodded.