Safe Harbor (32 page)

But even though her father hadn’t cheated her
out of it a few years too soon, she would have lost her youthful
naïvete eventually. She would have come of age, like the heroes and
heroines of the books she and Kip had read one summer during their
youth. She would have learned that even in the best of
circumstances a person underwent metamorphosis, that even the
happiest of people lost their innocence, and that one could have
one’s optimism crushed—but sometimes it came back in a new
shape.

For years she had dwelled on her losses. But in
the opalescent light of an early midsummer morning, everything
she’d lost seemed no more valuable than a gold chain
necklace.

What she had now was infinitely better: a man
who had cared enough to pressure her into facing her father, and
the child she and that man had brought into this world.

“Mommy!” Jamie hollered impatiently. “Gemme
out!”

“Yes,” she murmured, taking her father’s hand.
“Come with me.”

Chapter Fifteen

AT FOUR O’CLOCK she drove her father to Old
Harbor. It was their final time alone, their last chance to say
whatever remained to be said. “I’m glad you came,” she admitted as
she stood with him on the dock, waiting for the ferry to begin
boarding. “At least, I think I am.”

Her father smiled. “As visits go, it could have
been worse.”

“I still don’t know if I can forgive you,” she
said. “I just can’t erase everything that happened—”

“It’s our history, Princess. You don’t have to
forgive me or erase anything. All you’ve got to do is keep the
memories in the past, where they belong.”

“Maybe I’m just not able to do
that.”

“Try harder,” he said. A dock worker began to
collect ferry tickets. Shelley’s father gave her a quick, awkward
hug. “I’ll send you a necklace.”

“A piece of string will do,” she told him. “And
don’t send it. Bring it.” Then, before she could retract the
invitation, she spun on her heel and jogged back to the Blazer,
parked in the lot by the dock.

Unspoken words
hung between her and Kip throughout the evening. He didn’t comment
on what had occurred to change Shelley overnight. He didn’t ask how
her farewell with her father had gone. Both he and Shelley
concentrated on Jamie as they usually did, cutting his pizza into
tiny pieces and taking turns refilling his cup whenever he shouted,
“Deuce! Deuce,
pleeeeee
.”

The questions hovered, though, deafening in
their silence. Kip’s questions and Shelley’s confessions. All
through Jamie’s bath, through his futile attempt to use the potty,
through his bedtime story and lullaby and good-night kisses,
thoughts of her father, Kip, and her own life lurked like shadows,
haunting her, waiting until she mustered the courage to acknowledge
them.

After bestowing a final kiss on her slumbering
son, she left the nursery. She reached her bedroom door just as Kip
approached it from inside the room. He was holding his pajamas. “I
left these here,” he explained.

She and Kip had to talk. She had to tell him
that, because of him, she had begun to shed the oppressive burden
of her hatred, that because of what he’d done to her last night she
was a better person today. She had to tell him that, while she
could not exonerate her father, or even understand why he’d done
what he’d done, she could accept him.

She had to thank Kip for being her
friend.

What she said was, “Make love to
me.”

As soon as the
words slipped out she shrank back a step, astonished. Why had she
said that? Where had it come from? She had meant to
talk
to
Kip.

But staring at him across the threshold of her
bedroom, her vision filled with his tall, athletic body and his
square face, the strength and beauty of his deep-set brown eyes
meeting hers, and behind him her bed, the bed she’d shared with him
so chastely and angrily last night... She had spoken not her mind
but her heart.

He had stripped her soul bare last night. Now,
tonight, she stood before him, her soul still exposed, wanting him.
Loving him.

The fabric of his shirt shifted as he breathed;
his fingers clutched his pajamas. As a minute ticked by in silence,
it dawned on Shelley that perhaps Kip didn’t want her, that
spending last night in her bed had meant nothing to him, that he
could desire her only when he was in mourning for another
woman.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

She lowered her eyes. “Not really.”

He tossed his pajamas onto a chair and reached
for her. “I’m sure enough for both of us,” he whispered before
pulling her into his arms and covering her mouth with
his.

The hunger of his kiss told her he did want
her, as much as she wanted him. The force of his tongue filling her
mouth, stroking and teasing and bathing her with the heat of his
need told her that last night had been as difficult for him as it
had been for her. The nearly desperate strength of his arms binding
her to him, his hands flat against her hips as his hardness found
the crevice between her thighs, told her that no conversation, no
confession or explanation or expression of gratitude was as
important as this.

With a hushed groan, he ended the kiss and
moved to the door to close it. “If Jamie needs us he’ll shout,” he
said before Shelley could protest, and she knew he was right. As he
returned to her, she lifted her hands to the buttons of his
shirt.

They undressed each other hastily, carelessly.
The bedside lamp spread an amber glow through the room, giving
Shelley a view of Kip’s body she hadn’t had the last time, when
they’d made love in the dark. It gave Kip a better view of her
body, too—and pregnancy had left her body less young and firm than
it used to be. She modestly crossed her arms over her
breasts.

Kip took her hands in his and eased them away.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, easily comprehending her bashfulness.
“Don’t hide.”

“Maybe I’ll look better without these,” she
remarked, pulling off his eyeglasses and turning to place them on
the night table. He glided behind her, slipping his arms around her
and filling his hands with her breasts. He cupped his palms beneath
their womanly weight, then arched his fingers upward to touch her
nipples, fondling them until they were taut and burning.

His caress sent waves of heat down into her
hips, causing her legs to weaken. His lips found the sensitive skin
below her ear and she moaned. “Kip...”

He spun her around and pressed her down onto
the bed, then dove down beside her. He kissed her throat once more,
exploring the smooth underside of her jaw with his lips and tongue,
nibbling to her collarbone and then downward. “Oh, Shelley—I’ve
been waiting so long...” He captured one swollen nipple with his
mouth and sucked. “I’ve wanted this for so long...”

“One night?” she asked, bewildered. Before last
night, neither of them had dared to breach the hallway that
separated their rooms, their beds.

“Weeks,” he whispered. “Years.”

Before she could question him further he closed
his mouth over her other breast, drawing the swollen nipple deep
into his mouth. She clung to him, overwhelmed by the continuing
surges of heat within her, the seething, building tension rippling
down from her breasts to her belly, to her hips and thighs, making
some parts of her tighten and other parts melt into liquid
softness. She loved him, not because he’d forced her to deal with
her father, not because he’d fathered her child, not even because
he was kissing her so sublimely. She loved him because he was
Kip—because she’d always loved him, because, as frightening as it
was to admit, she needed him.

At that moment, he needed her just as much. She
hugged him, caressed him, raked her fingers through the hair of his
chest and down, brushing lightly over his aroused flesh. She
reveled in the clenching of his abdomen, in his breathless groan of
encouragement as she wrapped her fingers around him. He lifted his
mouth from her breast and closed his eyes for an instant, flexing
his hips in response to her touch. Then he reciprocated, sliding
his hand down her body to find her, to arouse her fully, to stroke
and tantalize and feed her yearning for him until her body ached
for more.

“I have—” She gasped, her hips writhing from
the erotic cadence of his fingers on her. “Kip...” She struggled to
clear her mind. “In the drawer. I have something, I thought...” Her
voice dissolved into another broken moan as his thumb traced a
thrilling circle over her tender flesh, sending a spasm of
sensation deep into her.

He bowed to kiss her lips, an unbearably sweet,
gentle kiss. “What?”

“Protection. There’s a box in the
drawer—”

He kissed her again, his tongue silencing her
with a swift, demoralizing lunge. “No.” His lips moved against hers
as he shaped the words. “Let’s make another baby.”

She should have been shocked. She should have
brought things to a halt, sat up and demanded a serious discussion
of the subject. This wasn’t the sort of decision to be made when
her mind could accommodate nothing but love and longing. She should
have stopped Kip, pulled herself together, made room in her heart
for reality.

But she didn’t. Perhaps she was too aroused to
act sensibly, too eager to pull back and analyze the pros and cons
of having another child. Or perhaps she was unable to object
because there was something irrefutably right in Kip’s suggestion,
something crazy and impetuous but overwhelmingly optimistic about
it, something as glorious as the act of making love
itself.

Without a word, she drew him back to her,
urging him onto her, welcoming his weight, his hard male strength.
He locked himself to her in a deep, conquering thrust that brought
a moan to her lips, a prayer, a sigh of blissful
surrender.

She had experienced something this profound
only twice before: the night Jamie was conceived, and the night she
and Kip had first kissed. He was skillful and sensitive, an
astonishing combination of patience and impatience, ardor and
control, savage power and exquisite tenderness. But Shelley
responded to him not only because of his talent as a
lover.

She responded to him because she trusted
him.

She trusted him to feel the changes in her
body, to adopt her rhythm, to move at the right angle, with the
right pressure. She trusted him to watch and listen, to wait when
he had to and surge faster, harder when her body arched in frantic
need. She trusted him to deliver her to ecstasy, to follow close
behind her, to be there to protect her when the thundering beauty
of it stormed through her.

She felt him go rigid as she peaked, her flesh
pulsing in stunning undulations of pleasure and her breath escaping
her in a faint, ragged cry. Only then did he give in to his own
release, his body wrenching in a final burst of energy, spilling
his essence into her.

He sank down beside her, his skin damp, his
respiration shallow. When she started to shift away he reached out
and gathered her to himself, holding her in an unbreakable embrace.
“Don’t move,” he whispered, his voice muffled by her hair as he
brushed his lips over her temple. “Just stay here. I need you. Just
stay.”

She did. Long after his breathing grew deep and
regular, long after his body became motionless and his arm felt
like a dead weight across her ribs, long after she’d turned off the
light and settled back into the pillow and drew the blanket up over
them, she stayed.

Kip slept, and she thought. About her father,
about her son, about bearing another child. About keeping her
history in the past, and facing the future.

About why Block Island and Jamie, security and
tranquility and the first glimmerings of a rapprochement with her
father weren’t enough to satisfy her. About why Kip’s friendship
wasn’t enough.

Even the intimacy they’d just shared wasn’t
enough. Kip had wanted their lovemaking; Shelley wanted his love.
She wanted him to love her as much as he’d loved Amanda, so much
that Shelley would always be with him, permanently lodged in his
soul, an eternal, indelible part of him, something he could never
escape—and would never wish to escape.

She used to believe that even though he would
never love her that way, she could be content. She still believed
he would never love her that way.

But she could no longer convince herself that
what she had was enough.

***

He dreamed she was slipping away from him,
obscured by the mist. He struggled to see her, searching through
the swirling haze for her black curls, her pale heart-shaped face,
her Cupid’s-bow mouth. But there had been no haze on Geary Street
that evening, and just before the fog swallowed the woman forever
he glimpsed dark blond hair and dazzling gray eyes.

A voice filled
his head, a hoarse rasp of sound:
Let her
know before it’s too late
.

He bolted upright in the bed, gasping for
breath, his skin covered by a film of perspiration and his pulse
pounding in his temples. He was alone.