Safe Harbor (25 page)

He was pouring puffed wheat into Jamie’s
plastic Kermit-the-Frog bowl when Shelley entered the kitchen.
Dressed in a flowered cotton dress, with a clean white lab jacket
draped over one arm and her purse clutched in the other hand, she
appeared refreshed and poised, prepared to face the day. In truth,
he preferred the way she’d looked when she’d first stumbled down
the stairs in her nightgown and robe, her feet bare, her hair
mussed, her cheeks rosy from the warmth of her pillow and her eyes
a muted gray color, still half-glazed with sleep.

He was going to have to stop thinking that
way.

“I made some coffee,” he told her, angling his
head toward the coffee maker on the counter. “I didn’t know what
else you wanted.”

“I haven’t got time to eat anything,” she
remarked, pulling a bottle of orange juice from the refrigerator.
“I’m not used to sleeping so late. What time did Jamie wake
up?”

Well, then, there it was—a conversation
revolving around Jamie. As always.

He fixed himself two slices of toast while
Shelley packed Jamie’s tote with diapers and wipes, a clean lidded
cup, a bib and a change of clothing—all items he might need at the
baby-sitter’s. “Has he got a sun hat?” Kip asked.

“It’s in the front hall closet.”

“Do you want me to bring him to Alice’s
today?”

“No, that’s okay,” Shelley answered. “Her house
is on my way to the pharmacy.”

“I don’t mind
taking him. Especially since you’re running late.” It was with a
certain disbelief that Kip listened to the words emerging from him.
Not that any of it wasn’t important, not that Jamie wasn’t the
center of his universe, but damn it, why couldn’t Kip say what he
was really thinking?
You look lovely,
Shelley. That dress makes your eyes look almost blue. I want to
give you a good-morning kiss and I’m afraid to. Tell me how not to
be afraid. Tell me you wouldn’t hate me for kissing
you.

“Use your spoon, Jamie,” he said, instead,
forcing the baby spoon into his son’s chubby fingers.

“I use hand.”

“You’re a big boy, Jamie. Use your spoon,”
Shelley chimed in as she sat at the table with her coffee and
juice. Kip carried his toast to the table and joined them. “What
are your plans for the day?” she asked him.

“I’m going to organize the stuff I unloaded
from the car last night,” he told her. “I may spend some time
clearing out a section of the cellar. I’ll be heading back to
`America’ this afternoon, though. I have an appointment tomorrow
morning in Providence, and then I’ll load up the car and bring some
more stuff over on the ferry.”

“So you won’t be here for dinner,” she
said.

“Not tonight. Tomorrow night, yes.”

“Fine.”

Frustration drummed through him. He supposed he
would have to get used to it. If he permitted anything personal to
enter the discussion, anything that even hinted that his awareness
of Shelley extended beyond her role as Jamie’s mother, she might
feel threatened. She might retreat.

Shit. When he’d contemplated moving to the
island, he had thought only about how wonderful it would be to live
with her and Jamie, to create a real family with them. He’d thought
that since he’d never had serious qualms about spending the weekend
at the house, he’d have no problems spending the week there. But to
find himself seated across the table from a woman he desired—on a
Monday morning—that was different. Finding himself talking with her
about child care when he wanted nothing more than to envelop her in
his arms, to feel her skin against his palms, against his
lips...

That was torture.

“I’d better be going,” she said in a
matter-of-fact tone. “Are you sure you don’t mind bringing Jamie to
Alice’s house?”

“Not at all,” he insisted.

“Look at dis,” Jamie broke in. He rested his
spoon on the edge of the bowl and heaped a pile of wheat puffs in
its curved surface. Then he pounded on the handle of the spoon,
turning it into a catapult that sent the puffs flying all over the
room.

“Jamie!” Kip and Shelley yelled in
unison.

Jamie looked concerned; his demonstration
hadn’t been greeted with the approval he’d obviously expected.
Shelley opened her mouth, ready to chew him out, but before she
could say anything her eye caught Kip’s.

He laughed.

Shelley’s lips twitched into a smile which she
tried valiantly but unsuccessfully to suppress. “Don’t,” she
scolded Kip, her voice wavering around her own laughter. “That was
really naughty of him.”

Kip unstrapped Jamie’s high chair seatbelt and
lifted him out. “Start picking them up, sport,” he commanded, then
glanced at Shelley and grinned. “Hey, the kid’s learning elementary
physics.”

“The kid’s learning that his dad’s a
softie.”

“One of his parents has to be,” Kip defended
himself.

Shelley’s chuckling abated and her smile became
gentle, spreading upward into her eyes. If he wanted, he could
almost believe she was happy about his being there. “I’ve got news
for you,” she murmured. “His mom’s a softie too,
sometimes.”

“Then he’s either very lucky or
doomed.”

“He’s lucky,” she said, then abruptly turned
away and reached for her jacket and purse. “I’ve got to go. Make
sure you get all the cereal cleaned up. We’ve had some ants
parading through the kitchen lately.”

Kip waved Shelley out of the room, then
squatted down beside his son, who, he discovered with dismay, was
picking up the scattered puffs and popping them into his mouth.
“Hey, Jamie, don’t eat off the floor.”

“Eat wabboos,” Jamie declared.

Kip had engaged in enough dialogues with Jamie
to understand what the child was saying: if he’d been served
waffles he would have gobbled them down without mishap, but if he
was going to get stuck eating cereal, he intended to make a mess
with it. This was not a good attitude, and even a certified softie
like Kip wasn’t going to allow it to stand unchallenged.

On the other hand, he couldn’t deny that it had
a certain appealing logic.

You did the best you could in a situation, and
took from it what joy you could. If you couldn’t have waffles, you
found ways to satisfy yourself with puffed wheat. If you couldn’t
make love with Shelley, you satisfied yourself with whatever you
could get from her.

You could make the puffs more palatable by
adding some sliced banana, too. Once the floor was clean and Jamie
was strapped back into his high chair, Kip pulled a banana from the
fruit bowl near the sink. As he peeled it and sliced several sweet
yellow circles into Jamie’s bowl, he thought about the unassuming
touches of sweetness that made his relationship with Shelley more
palatable.

He thought about the way her eyes had glowed
when she’d said, “His mom’s a softie, too.”

Jamie was lucky, all right.

So was Kip. He was lucky to have what he did--a
beautiful son, a tranquil home, the clean, salty winds and
breath-taking scenery of Block Island. And Shelley, who could gaze
into his eyes and smile in a way that made him feel healthy and
whole and glad to be alive.

It was greedy to want everything; he could
learn to be satisfied with a few sweet slices of fruit.

Chapter Twelve

CELLARS WERE SUPPOSED to be cold, but on the
most sweltering day of the summer this one unfortunately held the
heat. Kip had opened the bulkhead door leading out to the side yard
and stood a fan on the stairs, which helped somewhat. It also
helped that he could wear shorts and an old T-shirt while he
worked. His secretary back in Providence didn’t have to know he
wasn’t dressed in proper business attire.

That, he had quickly learned, was one of the
best things about working out of one’s own home.

Two weeks after he’d moved to Block Island, his
office was not yet fully operational, but he was further along
toward that goal than he would have predicted. He’d managed to find
someone to sublet his apartment in Providence. A few of his
furnishings he’d moved to the island; a few he’d donated to his
cousin Becky, who was about to start her second year at Yale Law
School and was in dire need of furniture for the flat in New Haven
she was sharing with a classmate. The tenant who’d taken over Kip’s
lease had bought a few items from him, and the rest went to
Goodwill Industries.

He shuddered whenever he walked past the
smallest bedroom on the second floor and saw the stacks of moving
cartons stored there, full of his personal possessions. Every
morning when he passed the room on his way to the stairs, he
promised himself to unpack at least one carton that evening when he
was done working—but then the evening would arrive and he would
wind up playing with Jamie, instead.

At least his subterranean work space was
reasonably well set up. Bringing telephone lines down into the
cellar had been simple, and the portable generator he’d installed
protected him against the fluctuations in electric power which were
common on the island. He’d gotten his file cabinets, his desk and
his high-back swivel chair arranged in one corner of the cellar,
and he’d brightened one wall with the framed Georgia O’Keefe prints
he’d bought from his neighbor in Boston.

Jamie had fallen madly in love with Kip’s
swivel chair. “Gimme ride! Gimme ride!” he would shriek whenever he
came down to the cellar. When Kip complied Jamie would goad him on:
“Faster, faster!” until he was reduced to a giggling blur spinning
round and round in the chair.

Whatever the inconveniences of working apart
from his clients, they were worth the opportunity to spend more
time with Jamie. Spending more time with Shelley was quite another
thing. They got along well enough, discussing menus and chores,
planning Jamie’s schedule, occasionally renting a video from the
pharmacy and watching it together in companionable silence. They
never argued, never clashed. It was all so cordial, so
accommodating—as flavorless as the air in the cellar.

He blamed himself. If only he could stop
thinking of Shelley as a woman, he could enjoy her as a friend. If
only he could look at her and see simply a busy mother, a
pharmacist, a volunteer with the island’s historical society, a
neighbor who liked to drop in on the McCormicks or the Durgans for
a cold drink on a hot evening...

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t stop noticing the
sleek curves of her calves beneath the hems of her skirts. He
couldn’t stop noticing the golden shimmer in her hair, the
breathtaking clarity of her eyes, the fullness of her lips. Every
evening he would kiss her cheek or pat her arm and say good-night,
and he would dive onto his bed and groan over its emptiness, over
his loneliness.

He wanted her. Not because he wasn’t involved
with anyone else, not because he and she lived under the same roof.
Not even because she was the mother of his child.

He’d wanted her long before he had relocated to
the island. Now that he was there he was forced to acknowledge the
truth: he had moved to the house for Shelley as much as for Jamie.
He’d moved because he loved her.

He didn’t know how to break through the
self-protective layers she wrapped around herself. He didn’t know
how to express his feelings for her, how to convince her they were
genuine. More importantly, he didn’t know how to deal with the
profound uneasiness his love for her caused him.

He didn’t know how to say good-bye to
Amanda.

Emerging from the cellar at four-thirty, he
headed for the kitchen, where a pitcher of lemonade sat waiting for
him inside the refrigerator. He rinsed off his face at the sink,
then filled a glass with lemonade and ice and went
outside.

The front yard baked beneath the merciless July
sun. He strolled across the parched grass to the driveway and down
to the mailbox at the side of the road. Lowering the hinged door,
he withdrew a few bills, a long-awaited check from one of his
clients and a personal letter for Shelley. He carried the mail
inside, opened the envelope containing the check and left the other
letters on the kitchen table. Then he drained his glass, refilled
it with lemonade and returned to his desk to see if his printer was
done producing a hard copy of the spread sheet he’d labored on
throughout most of the afternoon.

The printer had completed its task. Kip settled
in his chair, positioned it to receive the brunt of the fan’s
breeze and scanned his data. It was at times like this, when he
submerged himself fully in the job of deciphering a client’s
pattern of expenditures and investments, that he could forget he
was in love with two women, one of whom was dead and the other of
whom lived behind an emotional fortress no normal man could breach.
He could simply lose himself in the numbers, in the far less
dangerous pursuit of salvaging a client’s faltering
business.

“Daddy! Hi Daddy! Gimme ride!”

Kip glanced up from the spread sheets to see
Jamie clomping down the stairs to the cellar. His round face was
pink from the heat; his hair was curly and damp with sweat; his sun
suit had a mysterious orange stain across the bib front and his
feet looked delectably plump in his miniature sandals.