Safe Harbor (30 page)

He was seated on the edge of her bed, now, his
back to her. He’d already removed his shirt, and as he hunched over
something on his lap her gaze took in the smooth, masculine arch of
his sun-darkened skin, the rugged breadth of his shoulders and the
trim span of his waist above the belt of his jeans. In any other
context, Shelley would have reacted to his naked torso with a sigh
of longing.

Damn it, she was sighing. Despite her frazzled
nerves, despite the anguish wringing her soul, she suffered a
searing pang of sexual awareness at the realization that this man
was going to be spending the night beside her.

She shook her shoulders—as if she could shrug
off her longing—and announced, “I’m all done in the bathroom, if
you want it.”

Kip turned and smiled at her. He was pulling a
crisply folded royal-blue garment out of a rectangular plastic bag.
Standing, he crumpled the bag and discarded it in the garbage pail,
then unfolded the cloth.

“New pajamas?” Shelley asked.

“I bought them Friday afternoon. I thought
you’d feel more comfortable if I wore them.”

His smile was apparently meant to ease her
distress. His words, however, conveyed that he generally didn’t
wear pajamas, and the image that notion provoked only cranked her
tension up another notch.

To distract herself, she concentrated on her
father in the room across the hall, visualizing his wasted body and
his haunted eyes. She recalled the stilted conversation at dinner,
during which he had sketchily described his job manning the desk at
a motel—thank God for the health insurance, he’d said—and his
apartment with its panoramic view of the Connecticut turnpike, and
his pet cat, named Joey after his closest friend from his days at
the federal prison in Danbury. Fortunately he’d been discreet in
front of Jamie, avoiding the actual word “prison.”

Jamie had exclaimed jubilantly over the news
that Granddad had a cat. “We get cat?” he asked over and over, to
Kip’s amusement and Shelley’s irritation.

Less than a day left, she reminded herself.
Less than eighteen hours, and her father would be out of her life
once more.

Kip removed his eyeglasses and set them on the
night table. Then he went into the bathroom and closed the door
behind him. Shelley brushed her hair, rubbed moisturizer into her
hands, listened to the rush of the shower through the closed door
and gazed compulsively at the eyeglasses on the night table, next
to the pillow that would be Kip’s.

Unable to sit still, she left the bedroom to
check on Jamie. He was fast asleep, his thumb in his mouth and his
teddy-bear clutched in his free hand. One of his feet poked out
from under the blanket, and she rearranged the soft coverlet around
his body. Then she leaned over the crib railing and kissed his
cheek. He made a faint sucking noise, his cheeks flexing and his
lips tightening around his thumb.

Only eighteen more hours, she thought, and it
would all be over.

She tiptoed back down the hall to her own room.
Her gaze was drawn to the door across the hall from hers. The
narrow crack between the door and the floor was dark.

Kip always had his light on when she returned
from the nursery after her finally good-night to Jamie. Shelley had
never consciously paid attention to that, but it had registered on
her in some subliminal way, because the darkness filling the space
under the door startled her.

She had absorbed Kip’s presence in so many
subtle ways. In the few weeks since he’d moved permanently into the
house, she had grown accustomed to his scent, his footsteps, his
voice. She’d grown used to seeing the light under his door before
she retired for the night. She’d drawn comfort from knowing he was
near—but not too near.

Sighing again, she turned and entered her own
bedroom. As she closed the door Kip stepped out of the bathroom,
running a towel through his thick brown hair. He had on the new
pajamas. Spotting Shelley, he tossed the towel onto a chair and
struck a comical modeling pose. “Well? How do I look?”

“Very dapper,” she told him with a
smile.

He combed the damp waves of his hair loose with
his fingers, then extended his hand to her. “Come here,” he
murmured.

She experienced another pang, this one
comprising both curiosity and annoyance. If he did anything more
than kiss her on the cheek, she would scream, or crumble, or burst
into tears. She couldn’t handle anything beyond a friendly hug from
him, especially not tonight.

Warily she placed her hand in his. He led her
to the bed and nudged her to sit. “Lie down, Shelley,” he
said.

“Kip.” Her voice carried a firm
warning.

“Just lie down.” He sat beside her and forced
her shoulders down to the mattress.

“Kip—”

“Roll over. On your stomach. That’s it,” he
said, helping her into a prone position. He shifted higher onto the
mattress, then leaned over and dug his thumbs into the knotted
flesh at the base of her neck.

A back rub. Exactly what she needed. How could
she have doubted him? How could she have questioned his
motives?

She lifted her face slightly out of the pillow
so he would hear her when she said, “Thanks.”

“You were expecting something else,” he needled
her.

“Just keep rubbing. It feels
wonderful.”

“Don’t mention it.”

She groaned, feeling him rout out the knots in
her muscles, draw her stress to the surface and sweep it away with
the deft motions of his fingertips. She was ashamed of herself for
having suspected him of attempting a seduction. He had been her
champion all day, her savior, her protector.

“You’ve been too good to me,” she mumbled,
succumbing to the soothing spell of his massage.

“I know,” he agreed.

She measured his tone, searching for amusement
in it. He’d sounded surprisingly serious, though.

“Well—I appreciate it,” she said.

“Do you?”

Puzzled, she raised her head and shoulders,
twisting to glimpse his face.

He pushed her back down. “I’m not done yet,” he
said, inching his fingers down along her spine, loosening the
clenched muscles of her back, soothing her nerves. A minute passed
in silence, and then he said, “You’ve treated your father terribly,
Shelley.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” His voice was low and even,
devoid of rancor. “You’ve been awful to him. You’ve treated him
like shit. You’ve been acting like a first-class bitch.”

She drew in a sharp, angry breath. If he hadn’t
been giving her such an effective back rub, she would have reared
up and slapped him. How could he say such a thing? He knew what her
life had been like, thanks to her father. He knew the way she’d
been wounded, the scars she carried. What was she supposed to do,
treat her father like visiting royalty?

Kip’s hands continued to move on her back. “You
didn’t come to the beach with us. Over dinner you scarcely said a
word to him, and then the minute we were done eating you raced off
with Jamie to get his bath and put him to bed. Then you came back
downstairs and pretended to clean the kitchen, even though I had
already put everything away. And finally, when you condescended to
join your father and me, you sat at the opposite end of the living
room and glowered at him until nine-thirty, at which point you came
upstairs. You didn’t even say good-night.”

So what? She hadn’t even wanted her father to
come. She’d done her good deed by letting him meet his grandchild.
How dare he—or Kip—demand more of her?

She rolled away from Kip so he wouldn’t be able
to subdue her with his massage. Sitting, she glared at him. “Well,
I guess he’s lucky he had you for company all day. He’s obviously
won you over to his side.”

Kip’s expression was stern, his mouth shaping a
grim line as he met her hostile stare. “This isn’t a game, Shelley.
Nobody’s choosing sides.”

“That man—” she waved a furious finger in the
direction of Kip’s bedroom “—is a convicted criminal. He’s an
adulterer. He destroyed my family out of greed and selfishness. He
made us pay for his sins, and I’m not talking about the money. I’m
talking about my heart.” She jabbed her chest with her thumb. “I’m
talking about how much I’ve paid, right here, inside
me.”

“Fine. You’ve paid. It’s time to close out the
account.”

“Don’t you throw your financial-consulting
language at me.”

“I’m not throwing anything at you, Shelley. I’m
trying to talk some sense into you.”

His patronizing attitude honed her already
frazzled nerves to razor sharpness. “Thanks,” she snapped, her
voice taut and her spinal muscles coiling with tension again.
“Thanks a hell of a lot. I thought I could depend on you this
weekend. I should have known better. You’re just a man, sticking up
for another man.”

“Stop,” Kip said with disarming
gentleness.

She wasn’t fooled, not anymore. This wasn’t a
good time to have to learn that even Kip couldn’t be trusted, that
in a crisis he wouldn’t support her. But he’d forced the lesson on
her. She was learning.

He extended his hand and she shrank from him.
“Shelley,” he said, “I’m just trying to open your eyes—”

“Thanks. They’re wide open.” A few tears leaked
down her cheeks, but she wouldn’t give Kip the satisfaction of
seeing her close her eyes against them.

“He’s come to work it out with you before he
dies. Don’t you see? He didn’t come here just to meet his
grandchild. He came here to make amends with you.”

“I haven’t seen him trying to make
amends—”

“You haven’t seen him, period.”

“I let him come here. I never promised I’d
greet him with open arms. He ought to be happy I let him enter my
house.”

“You let him enter your house, and ever since
he walked through the door you’ve been running from him. You’re
evading him. You’re shutting yourself off from him.”

“Because he ruined my life!”

“Ruined it?” Kip put an incredulous spin on the
words. “Whatever he did to your life, Shelley, you’ve managed to
rise above it quite nicely.”

“What is going on here, Kip? What the hell are
you doing?”

“I’m fighting with you.”

“You’ve got a hell of a nerve—”

“Shelley—”

“Criticizing me, lashing out at me—” Her words
became disjointed, mirroring her fragmented state of mind. “Just
stop it, okay? Leave me alone.”

Kip examined her for a moment, gazing across
the bed as if it were a great chasm. He took a deep breath, then
said, “Let’s talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about anything,” she
railed, twisting away and fluffing her pillow in the hope that he’d
turn off the light and shut up.

Instead, he reached across the bed, gripped her
shoulder and turned her back to him. His touch ignited an unknown
rage in her, an emotion as raw and blind as the fury she’d felt
when she’d first found out about her father’s crimes. Without
thinking, she curled her hand into a fist and swung, her only
desire to hit Kip, to hurt him the way he was hurting
her.

He easily blocked her punch and manacled her
wrist with his hand. Neither of them spoke. They simply stared at
each other, breathing hard. At that moment, his dark eyes stabbing
her, his hand squeezing until her fingers began to tingle, Shelley
hated Kip more than she’d ever hated anyone before.

Her eyes burned with tears. She needed Kip’s
strength this weekend. She needed his sympathy. Why was he being so
critical of her?

“Kip, please,” she said softly, unable to quell
the tremor in her voice. “I don’t need this.”

“Yes you do,” he said just as quietly, his tone
as firm and certain as hers was faltering.

She turned away, knowing it was a sign of
defeat to do so but no longer able to meet his piercing gaze. Her
anger seemed to drain from her, leaving behind only a hollow,
throbbing pain as she absorbed the profound grief of Kip’s
betrayal. “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked
querulously.

“Because I’m your friend,” he
answered.

Her tears broke loose, spilling down her
cheeks. Kip released her hand and she jerked away from him, rolling
into a self-defensive position, her back to him and her head buried
in her pillow to muffle her sobs.

She wouldn’t
accept comfort from him, not when he’d been so determined to
undermine her in the first place, not when he’d picked a fight with
her so deliberately, at a time when she was so vulnerable.
I’m fighting with you
,
he’d practically boasted—as if it were an act of
heroism.

She and Kip never fought. They hadn’t had a
single argument since he’d moved back into the house. They hadn’t
argued three years ago, when Kip had returned to the island and
found her living there. In fact, as she thought about it, the last
time they’d actually fought was when they’d been children together,
and teenagers.