Never Too Hot (17 page)

Sliding his fingers through hers, he took her over to the edge of the dock.

“Ready to jump, sweetheart?”

It was the sweetheart that did her in, that took any chance of protest away from her. And then they were jumping through the warm evening air before splashing in and and going under, the cool water taking what was left of her breath away.

And still, the water had nothing on Connor who had taken her breath away from the first moment she’d met him.

Connor was doing everything he could to drown in her, to keeping losing himself in the softness of her skin, the taste of her mouth, the feel of her tongue against his.

And still, minute by minute, he could feel himself spiraling out of control, like a rope that was unwinding from the inside out, strangling his guts in the threads as it spun faster and faster.

It was taking everything he had to keep it together.

All his life, his instincts had been to get moving, to use blood and sweat to work through the kinks. But this was one hell of a kink. And right now, the only thing that made sense was to go to a place where all that mattered was sensation. Where his only goal was to take Ginger higher, to use his hands and mouth to make her soft and yielding beneath him, to hear her crying out his name as she came.

He pulled her out deep enough in the lake where he could stand, but she had to wrap her legs around him to stay above the water. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he didn’t kiss her hard, not this time. He wanted this moment to last forever, wanted the rest of the world to stay the hell away.

Only here, with Ginger, as her tongue slipped and slid against his, did he feel the deep ache inside begin to recede.

Only here, as her hands moved to cup his face, did he let himself accept that being with her was more than just great sex, that he was shaking from the power of their connection.

Only here, in the dark, cold water, as Ginger took him inside in a gasp of pleasure, and he let himself fall completely into her, could he see any light at all.

ISABEL WALKED in her front door just as the fireworks had ended. She dropped her keys on the front table, didn’t hear any music pumping out of her son’s bedroom and worried for a second before she realized he was probably still downtown having fun with his friends.

She went upstairs to her bedroom to get ready for bed, her heart pounding as she brushed her teeth, washed her face, put on her pajamas. All afternoon at the diner, all night as she plated dozens of meals, she’d only been half there. She’d wanted to pull out the letters a hundred times. But she’d had a restaurant to run.

Going to the spot in her closet where she’d dropped her purse, she reached in and pulled out the stack of papers. She still couldn’t believe Andrew had kept them all. It meant more to her than it should. Especially since she’d burned all of his.

Slipping beneath her sheets, she turned on her bedside lamp. And as she read one letter after another, two years of young love simply burning up the pages, it all came back to her.

Sailing beside him, capsizing the boat on purpose so that he could pull her against him in the water, kiss her until another boat came around the bend to where they were floating and they were forced to pull away from each other and right their craft.

Hiking through the thick forests, holding his hand at the top of the hill, the whole world at their feet, loving it when he pressed her up against a rough tree trunk, shivering as his fingers moved beneath her shirt, to her bra, crying out as his large palms cupped her, caressed her.

Rowing out to the island and lying in his arms beneath a full moon, listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart as shooting stars fell from the sky.

She nestled deeper beneath her blankets as she read, wishing these sweet memories were all there were, dreading the knowledge that they weren’t.

Because she only knew too well the letter she’d find at the bottom of the pile, what it would say.

“You wanted her. You can have her. Forever.”

Morning came too fast and Isabel was just taking her first sip of coffee for the day while slipping on her clogs when she saw the light blinking on her old-fashioned message machine. She was leaning into the front door only half listening, when she finally realized what Ginger had said.

“Andrew’s coming, Isabel. He’s taking the red-eye out tonight. I figured you’d want to know.”

No. God no. The only trick was the one her heart was playing on her. She wanted so badly to keep from losing her breath, to stop the room from spinning, but it was already too late, and she had to put a hand out against the front door to hold herself up as her most deeply repressed memory came back to life in brilliant technicolor.

Over the past two years, Isabel had gotten used to sneaking out at night to be with Andrew. During the summers at the lake it was easier when he was right there, just next door and they could meet at the island or out by the old carousel late a night. But the rest of the year, when they were back in the city, while she went to high school and he attended classes at NYU, it was harder to see him without getting endless lectures from her parents.

She wished her parents understood her feelings, wished that they could see how perfect he was for her. Instead they said things like, “You’re too young.” “You have your whole life ahead of you.” And her favorite, “First love doesn’t last forever, honey.” As if what she felt for Andrew was nothing more than some kid crush.

Fortunately, he’d made sure the little apartment that he shared with a couple of friends was close to her parents’ house. Whenever her parents were out—which was often, as they were both heavily involved in the local music scene—she’d stuff her bed with blankets to look like a body before she went down the fire escape out back, just in case they came home early and checked on her.

Andrew was always waiting there for her. It was a safe neighborhood, just mothers with strollers and kids playing ball, businessmen coming home late from work. She would have been fine walking the four blocks to his apartment, but he said he’d never forgive himself if something happened to her. If she got hurt coming to him.

They’d go get coffee sometimes and talk for hours, or comb through used-book stores for old books people had written about sailing, but they’d always end up back at his tiny bedroom, lying together on his small bed. He’d strip her down to her bra and panties and tell her how much loved her. How he couldn’t wait for her to turn eighteen so that he could take the promise ring he’d given her, the one she kept buried in her sock drawer, and put it on her finger. How much he wanted to make love to her, to do more than just kiss and stroke her. Sometimes when things got too close, when she wanted to go there with him more than she wanted to breathe, they’d barely pull apart in time. They’d sit on opposite sides of his bed, looking at the nautical maps pinned to his wall and plan their trip around the world until they’d caught their breath.

For all the rules she was breaking every time she snuck out to him, Isabel had heard of several girls in her high school who’d had abortions, and had never wanted to be in that horrible position.

But lately when she pulled away, she’d seen something in Andrew’s eyes, a waning of patience. She couldn’t blame him, not when they were the same eyes that stared at her in the mirror when she got home from his house.

Aching.

Wanting.

A thousand times, she’d imagined what it would feel like. The long, hard slide of him inside her. Filling her with his heat. With everything he was.

It made her hot all over just thinking about it. Soon, she decided.

Before both of them went crazy.

But she didn’t want to be rushed, to have to hurry back into her clothes afterward to get home. She longed to fall asleep in his arms, to spend an entire night with him, to wake up with him in the morning and see the sunlight play across his face. So when her parents told her they’d been invited to play an out-of-town concert, and did she want to come, she made up an excuse about too much homework, needing to get ready for her exams.

She couldn’t wait to tell Andrew her plans, to share the delicious anticipation with him. They hadn’t planned to see each other that night, but after telling her parents she was going out to meet a girlfriend, she headed for his apartment.

She had to knock hard a couple of times to be heard over the loud music. She’d always thought his roommates were a little strange, but she spent so little time with them it really didn’t matter.

James opened the door, his eyes bloodshot, his breath smelling like cheap wine. “Hey baby,” he said to her, striking her, as he always did, as slightly lecherous. “Bring any of your hot schoolgirl friends with you?”

“No,” she said curtly, looking around the room for Andrew. But he wasn’t there. Heading through a haze of smoke, past a couple making out on the ratty couch, another against the kitchen counter, she went into the dark hall.

Andrew’s door was closed and she smiled at the thought of finding him in there, hunched over his industrial engineering books while the party raged a hallway away. He’d told her it was the closest thing to getting a degree in boat building and when she’d flipped through his books and saw all the strange equations and graphs, she’d been so impressed.

She didn’t knock. Why would she, when she’d spent so many hours in his bedroom? Her heartbeat kicked up again at the thought of what she was about to tell him as she turned the knob and opened the door. She already knew what his reaction would be, that he’d pull her into his arms and kiss her until she was breathless.

But as the door cracked open, instead of finding him at his desk, concentrating on homework, she saw two figures moving together in the semidarkness. The sheet had fallen off and there was so much naked skin, more than she’d ever seen. They were facing backward on the bed, as if they’d been in too much of a rush to figure out which way was up.

Her first thought was that it couldn’t be him. But it was—oh God, how could he?—and all she could think around the despair, the betrayal that was rapidly taking over every cell in her body, was that it was supposed to be her beneath him, not some beautiful girl with long dark hair and deeply tanned skin writhing on the bed, calling out his name.

But ultimately it was the expression on his face that she knew she’d never get out of her head. The intense pleasure of release, of all those pent-up years of sexual frustration finally being relieved.

With another girl.

Josh found her there, propped up against the front door, feeling just as nauseous now as she had so many years ago.

“Mom, what are you doing?”

She blinked hard, had to work like hell to push away the vision of Andrew making love to someone else.

“Nothing,” she finally managed. “Just getting ready to head off to work.”

He looked at her like she was crazy. “Whatever.”

Watching him head into the kitchen to get a bowl of cereal, she thought again how much she hated how strained things had been between them since that afternoon at the diner when he’d blown her off.

Forcing a smile, she asked, “Got any fun plans for today?”

He shrugged. “Nope. Just hanging out.”

Of course he didn’t want to talk to her. He never did anymore. She bit her tongue, knowing better by now than to try to force it. It only made him clam up more.

Her son was growing up. And there was nothing she could do about it. Besides, hadn’t she wished her parents would get with the program when she was his age? What went around, she had often discovered over the years as a parent, had a disturbing tendency to come around. The solution was easy. She needed to chill out. Back off a bit.

Still, she couldn’t leave without going over and giving him a kiss on his head, even if he pulled away mid smooch.

Grabbing her keys off the counter, she headed into town to open up the diner, working overtime, the entire way, to push memories of Andrew out of her head.

And to convince herself that it wasn’t going to hurt like hell to see him again.

*   *   *

Andrew MacKenzie had planned never to come back to Poplar Cove. And yet he’d just flown into the Albany International airport, picked up a rental car and wound through the same back-country roads he’d driven so many times with his parents when he was a boy.

As a kid, he’d practically held his breath until their log cabin came into view, hurtling out of the car as soon as they parked. Now, just like then, his heart was pounding when he made the turn off the two-lane highway, but for entirely different reasons.

He wasn’t a kid with his whole life ahead of him anymore. Instead, he was a man heading toward fifty with a bullet. And all he had to show for it was a failed marriage, forced retirement from the law firm he’d given a hundred twenty hours a week to, and a couple of kids he barely knew.

That was the worst part. Not knowing his sons, having to hear from strangers how heroic they were, that they were two in a million, the best of the best.

He should already know it, damn it, had made God a promise two years ago when his youngest son had ended up in the ICU, unconscious and burned, that if only Connor would be all right, if he would walk out of the hospital in one piece, Andrew would do anything. He would become a better husband. Spend less time at the office. Get close to his sons.

But it hadn’t worked out like that at all. Connor was a survivor through and through, thank God, but Elise had served him with the divorce papers practically the same day Connor left the hospital. And although he’d reached out to Sam and Connor again and again, neither of them had wanted anything to do with him. Not until last year, when Sam had fallen in love with the beautiful TV personality from San Francisco. Suddenly, the lines had opened up. Andrew knew he had Dianna to thank for it, that she’d encouraged Sam to return some calls, to accept a couple of dinner invitations.

Connor, on the other hand, was a much tougher nut to crack. Through Sam, Andrew had learned just how much they identified with their jobs. Being a hotshot wasn’t just something that paid the bills, it was who they were, all the way to the core. Which was why Andrew had repeatedly offered to help Connor with the Forest Service appeal process, but his son had never taken him up on it.

And then yesterday, Sam had told Andrew the bad news. The Forest Service thought Connor’s accident was too extreme. He would never fight fire again.

Andrew picked up the phone and bought the first ticket out to Albany. Connor needed him. For once he wouldn’t fail him.

The car drew closer to Poplar Cove and between the cabins, the lake shined so blue he almost thought he was imagining it. Even with sunglasses on he had to squint. Thirty years he’d spent in San Francisco, not once taking a long weekend to go hiking, to throw a fishing pole into the back of his car and find a well-stocked lake.

His chest squeezed. God, how he’d missed this place. He slowed the car so that he could take in the water, the mountains, the familiar old camps.

For a moment, he forgot everything except his intense pleasure at being back at Blue Mountain Lake.

But even as he sat in his car in the middle of the road, it struck him, powerfully, that although he’d been experiencing a major sense of déjà vu since landing in Albany, the fact of the matter was that nothing was the same as it had been thirty years ago.