Safe Harbor (16 page)

“Maybe you think it’s none of my business,” he
persevered. “But...we got together for dinner last night, and I was
going to ask if you were free for dinner tonight—” The sharp look
she gave him silenced him for a moment. Belatedly he concluded, “If
you’re seeing someone else I shouldn’t be monopolizing your
evenings.”

Her expression softened slightly. “Don’t worry
about it,” she said.

“Meaning...you’re free for dinner?”

“Meaning...” She sighed. “I told you last
night, Kip.”

She had told him a great many things last
night. She had told him about how her father had lied and cheated
and destroyed her family, and how her mother had maneuvered herself
into a loveless second marriage, and how Shelley had striven hard
to make a place for herself on the island, far away from the people
who had hurt her. She’d told him that she was in debt, and that the
island was blissfully quiet in the winter. She’d told him she would
never become dependent on a man.

But she hadn’t told him she wasn’t dating
anyone.

Once again, the thump of footsteps behind him
signaled the arrival of customers. If he wanted to interrogate
Shelley further, now was not the time. “So,” he ventured
cautiously, “can we have dinner tonight?”

She shut off the computer and turned to him.
Her eyes were hard and sharp, cutting deep into him. But he
couldn’t interpret the emotion in them. “As friends,” she
said.

Was that it? Did she think he was trying to
romance her? He’d stripped his emotions bare last night, and let
her feast her eyes on his scars. He’d exposed his damaged heart and
his tattered soul. She ought to know better than to think he was a
wolf on the prowl, coming on to her in search of a few casual
thrills.

“Of course as friends,” he snapped.

“Fine. Six o’clock?”

“I’ll pick you up,” he said brusquely, then
rotated on his heel and stalked out of the store.

Not until he reached his bicycle did his anger
begin to dissipate. He unlocked the chain, wrapped it around the
seat support bar, straddled the bike and pushed away. He pedaled
hard, his eyes monitoring the treacherous curves in the road while
his mind journeyed in its own direction, sorting out his
emotions.

He had been alone over a year. Many people
seemed to believe that a year was long enough, that he ought to be
ready to jump back into the world of mature adult relationships.
That he ought to be horny.

Maybe he was. But he couldn’t separate sex from
Amanda in his mind. He couldn’t separate sex from love. He couldn’t
just think of it as a physical release, no strings attached, no
feelings involved.

He didn’t blame people for assuming the monkish
life he was leading was somehow unnatural. Shelley should have
known better, though. She should have known better than to think he
was putting the moves on her, for God’s sake. She shouldn’t have
had to demand a guarantee that if he took her out for dinner
tonight he would be doing so as her friend and nothing more. She
should have known.

She
did
know, he refuted
himself. Her cryptic response to him in the pharmacy had nothing to
do with where he was coming from or what he was going
through.

It had to do with what she was going through.
He wasn’t sure how or why, but it had to do with her.

***

HE ARRIVED AT HER ADDRESS at a little past six.
He’d left his house in plenty of time, stopped in the front yard to
cut a few late-blooming roses from the front hedge for her, and
driven over to Spring Street. The house bearing her number wasn’t
clearly marked, though, and he’d driven past it twice before he
spotted the faded, paint-flecked numbers fastened to the shingles
above the front door.

It was a squat charcoal-gray building, much too
small to contain apartments. Yet there were two mailboxes beside
the door, and two doorbells. He parked on the unpaved shoulder, got
out, walked up the overgrown path to the porch and rang the bell
with “Ballard” printed beneath it.

In less than a minute Shelley opened the door
to him. She was dressed in a simple white dress that set off her
summer tan, and white leather flats. Her smile at seeing Kip was so
sincere he all but forgot about the unresolved tension that had
stretched between them that afternoon.

“Hi,” he said, extending the roses. “These are
for you.”

“Oh, Kip—they’re beautiful!” She took them
carefully to avoid pricking herself on the thorns, and dipped her
nose to the blossoms to inhale their fragrance. “Come on in,” she
said. “I’ve got to put them in some water.”

He entered and followed Shelley up a narrow
flight of stairs. Her apartment occupied the entire second floor,
but given how small the house was, her home was microscopic. She’d
done the best she could to decorate the living room, though,
adorning the window with feathery lace curtains, hanging bright
landscape prints on the dreary dun-colored walls, arranging what
furniture she had to look cozy rather than crowded.

She exited into the kitchen. Through the
doorway Kip saw her pull a glass vase from a shelf, fill it with
water and place the roses in it. She carried the vase back into the
living room and set the bowl on the scratched coffee table in front
of the loveseat. “There,” she said brightly. “They really liven up
the room, don’t they.”

“I’m not sure how long they’ll last,” he
warned. “It’s the end of the season.”

She fussed with one of the flowers. “However
long they last, I’ll enjoy them. Thank you, Kip.”

Her gratitude seemed a bit profuse for a few
cut flowers. It dawned on Kip that maybe this was her way of
apologizing for having acted suspiciously toward him earlier—just
as, perhaps, bringing the flowers had been his way of apologizing
for whatever he’d done to piss her off.

He wasn’t used to playing games with her,
trying to outguess her or read her mind. He and Shelley had always
been frank with each other in the past. “Are we okay?” he asked,
shoving his hands in his pockets and eyeing her
dubiously.

She lifted her eyes from the roses and bravely
met his gaze. “We’re fine,” she declared in a hushed but definitive
voice.

“I said something wrong this afternoon,” he
insisted.

“And I overreacted. I’m sorry.”

He laughed uncertainly. “The trouble is, I
don’t know what I said that was wrong.”

She offered a crooked smile. “I’ll answer any
question you want, Kip, but maybe we should head for the restaurant
first.”

He nodded, handed her the white envelope purse
that was lying on the end table beside him, and ushered her out of
the gloomy little apartment. “Any question, huh,” he murmured as
they descended the stairs to the front door.

“Within reason.”

“Like...how come a single professional woman
lives in such a tiny place?”

“Because she’s trying to save money,” Shelley
answered without hesitation. “Because she’s paying off loans and
trying to save up to buy a house, and because from June through
August even that tiny place has an astronomical rent. On September
first it dropped fifty percent, but during peak season my landlady
can get top dollar for that hell hole.”

“It isn’t a hell hole,” Kip argued, suddenly
ashamed of himself for having denigrated it. “It’s just
small.”

“It’s ridiculous. I can’t even open the bedroom
closet door all the way. My bed blocks it.”

He helped her into the Saab, closed her door
and climbed in behind the wheel. “I made reservations at
Winfield’s,” he told her, and smiled when she nodded her approval.
He started the engine and cruised down the road before asking, “Are
you still in debt from your father?”

He almost expected her to retract her offer to
answer any question he asked, but she didn’t. She shot him a
cryptic look, then faced forward, directing her gaze at the
windshield. “No. Not directly,” she said. “It’s a college loan. I
went to the University of Texas, which wasn’t too expensive since I
was a state resident at the time. But it still cost real
money.”

“Were you able to get any scholarship
aid?”

She issued a bitter laugh. “I probably would
have qualified for some, but I couldn’t bring myself to fill out
forms that asked how come your parents couldn’t pay your schooling
costs. I couldn’t bring myself to write, `My father’s in jail and
my step-father’s a jerk.’ So I took out loans and flipped
hamburgers and pieced an education together as best I
could.”

She fidgeted with her purse. “I won’t ask
anymore,” he promised.

“I don’t mind talking about it,” she said. “But
if you mind listening—”

“No.” That
wasn’t quite true, he admitted silently. He
did
mind hearing the corrosive
undertone in her voice when she talked about her father. He
did
mind thinking about
what the demolition of her family cost her, not so much in money as
in spirit.

By the time they reached the restaurant, she
seemed more relaxed. The hostess led them to a table with a view of
the setting sun. They occupied themselves with the business of
ordering, and when Kip finally found himself able to concentrate
solely on Shelley she appeared mellow.

“My mother says hello,” he told her.

“Oh?”

“I phoned her this afternoon. I told her you
were on the island. She was happy—for me even more than for
you.”

“She’s worried about you, isn’t she,” Shelley
guessed.

“Yes.” He paused when the waiter arrived with
the Bordeaux they’d ordered. After Kip tasted the wine, the waiter
filled their glasses and vanished. “I think,” Kip said as he lifted
his glass and examined the ruby wine in the dusk light pouring in
through the window, “my mother believes you’re going to cure
me.”

“I hope you explained that I’m a pharmacist,
not a doctor,” Shelley said.

He acknowledged Shelley’s joke with a brief
smile, then grew solemn again. “My mother might know what she’s
talking about this time,” he said. “I want to drink to you,
Shelley, so don’t interrupt and drink to me. This is for you.” He
touched his glass to hers and sipped.

Her eyes shimmered above the rim of her goblet,
a glittering silvery gray as she met his unwavering gaze. After a
slight hesitation she sipped her wine. A tiny drop remained on her
lip when she lowered her glass, and she caught it with the tip of
her tongue.

It was an astonishingly sexy
gesture.

Perhaps what startled Kip most was that he
noticed, that he could look at a woman flicking her tongue against
her upper lip and think it was sexy.

Especially when
that woman was Shelley Ballard. “We
are
good friends,” he said, as much
to himself as to her.

At last she broke her gaze from him. The
corners of her mouth twitched upward in a shy smile, and she
brushed a tendril of gold-tinged hair back from her cheek. “I know,
Kip.” She took another sip of wine, then sighed. “I’m sorry I acted
like a maniac in the pharmacy today.”

“Not a maniac,” he argued mildly. “Just
moody.”

Her grin expanded. “I know Jack is a nice guy,
and he’s been trying to get me to go out with him for months.
But...I don’t date, Kip. I mean—this, right now—it isn’t a
date.”

“Of course not,” he teased. “I was planning to
split the bill with you.”

“Like hell,” she shot back. “Who paid for the
pizza and beer yesterday?”

He laughed briefly, then grew solemn. “We’re
agreed that this isn’t a date. I don’t date, either, Shelley. I’m
not—I’m not ready for it.”

She nodded.

“Everyone else in the world seems to think I
should be, but I’m not,” he explained, feeling the need to justify
his own touchiness that afternoon. “When you acted as if you
believed I was asking you out, I thought, shit, even Shelley thinks
I should be dating by now. Sometimes...” He drifted off for a
moment. “Sometimes I think I’ll never be ready.”

She looked sympathetic, and he braced himself
for the possibility that she would say something awful, some
platitude about how he shouldn’t give up hope, he should never say
never. Her pity, however, was aimed elsewhere. “It must be ghastly
having everyone in the world telling you what you should or
shouldn’t do. Particularly when you know they’re only trying to
help.”

“You must get lots of `helpful’ advice,
too.”

“No,” Shelley told him. “My mother wouldn’t
dare to advise me. Maybe in private she wrings her hands over my
marital status, and every now and then she makes some remark about
how isolated I must be, living all alone on the island. But she
knows what happens to women who put too much trust in men. She’s
been there, she knows. And I guess she loves me enough not to want
me to follow in her footsteps.”

Kip scrutinized her thoughtfully. It bothered
him that she was so willing to condemn all men for the actions of a
few bad ones. But given how he despised the well-meaning
interference of his loved ones, he would spare Shelley any
well-meaning interference from him—except to say, “You can trust
me, Shelley. I hope you know that.”