Summer Beach Reads 5-Book Bundle: Beachcombers, Heat Wave, Moon Shell Beach, Summer House, Summer Breeze (193 page)

Natalie smiled. “I’m drawing Ben.”

“Really?” Bella was amazed. “Is that where he spent all day yesterday? I was at Aaron’s, but I talked to Mom and she said Ben didn’t come over.”

“Natalie!” Morgan sat up in surprise, peered over Bella’s body to stare at Natalie. “You minx! Is something going on there?”

At the same time, her voice chiming along with Morgan’s, Bella asked, “When will the drawing be ready for the gallery?”

Natalie laughed. “Not for a few more days. He posed for me on Sunday, but he’s at the lab today, and you know your brother, he’ll be at the lab constantly, so I probably should start something else.”

“How about a young woman?” Bella suggested.

“Good idea,” Natalie agreed. She sipped her drink and stretched expansively. She’d been working today, actually; she’d taken some
digital shots of Ben in the pose she’d chosen, and she’d played with the shading of the background. She was drawing him as a swimmer, arms extended, legs kicking, head turned sideways, face partly obscured by water. It was the biggest, longest work she’d attempted yet. Ben had been an excellent model, putting tension and strain in his muscles, as if actually racing. The final piece would have a sense of movement. “Bella,” Natalie asked, “would you like to pose?”

Bella shook her head violently. “Absolutely not! How weird would that be, hanging a drawing of myself in my own shop?”

“I see your point. But I could obscure your face.” Natalie grabbed up a handful of nuts and munched, thinking of the possibilities.

“Besides,” Bella added sensibly, “when would I have time? I’ve got to be there six days a week.”

“True,” Natalie agreed. The Bellini was relaxing her. The memory of her Saturday night sales still flowed through her like a heavenly drug, and the memory of Ben—oh, wow, that made her tingle and blush.

“You didn’t answer
my
question,” Morgan reminded Natalie. “About you and Ben.”

“I’m drawing him,” Natalie answered evasively.

“Yeah, and what else?” Morgan demanded.

Natalie took a fortifying gulp of her Bellini. She felt the cold liquid sliding down right between her breasts. “I suppose you could say we’re seeing each other.”

Bella sat up straight. “Oh. My. God. Are you and my brother
lovers
?”

“That’s such a sappy word,” Natalie protested, but her face gave her away.

“But what if Ben does something stupid?” Bella asked. “Ben can be so frustrating. He forgets to keep appointments. He forgets to eat. He—”

Morgan interrupted. “Whatever Ben is like with you, he’s different with Natalie.”

Natalie smiled smugly. “That’s correct.” She turned to Bella. “What about you and Aaron? I heard he got the job in San Francisco.”

Bella’s face dropped. Settling back in her chair, she allowed herself a moment to think before admitting, “I really don’t know. We celebrated when he found out, and then he celebrated with me for the opening of Bella’s, and he really focused on what I had achieved. He knew I needed him to do that, so he did it. Now what? I really don’t know. Today he drove down to the Cape to talk with his parents and his brother. Then tomorrow night …” Bella paused. “And there’s something else—”

“Wait. This calls for more drinks.” Morgan rose, went into the house for fresh, chilled Bellinis, returned, and poured. Sinking back down in her chair, she said, a tang of mischief in her voice, “I notice no one’s asked me about
my
love life.”

“
Your
love life?” Natalie snorted. “You’re married.”

“Wait.” Bella turned on her lounge chair toward Morgan. “We were talking about
my
love life.”

“Sorry.” Morgan tossed some nuts into her mouth. “Proceed.”

“It’s just that—I don’t know quite how to say this, or even what it is I want to say.…” In one quick word, Bella got it over with:
“Slade.”

Natalie groaned. “I knew this would happen.”

“Slade what?” Morgan prompted.

“Slade … You know he’s been so helpful with the shop. We’ve had such fun going antiquing together. We get along so well. He’s really been a kind of mentor, guiding me toward what sorts of things I should sell, but more than that, helping me discover what it is
I
like.”

Natalie muttered, “I’ll bet.”

“Bella.” Morgan set her glass on the table and sat up straight in the lounge chair. “Look, honey. I think Aaron is the best husband material I’ve ever seen in a man. He’s real. He’s reliable. He’s thoughtful. Slade is more—let’s call it
glamorous
.” She hesitated. “Remember, Slade was ‘really helpful’ to me, too.” She made quote marks with her fingers. “He suggested the Victorian settee for our living room, he sent me photos of it online, he brought it to the house.”

“That’s his
work
,” Bella reminded Morgan. “Slade and I have something personal.”

“Bella,” Natalie asked, “tell me. Have you slept with him yet?”

At the same time, Morgan said, “Bella, Slade came on to me.”

Bella blinked. “What?”

Natalie sighed. “Oh God.”

Morgan explained, “It was when he delivered the Victorian settee. The day we painted your shop. We left for a while in his van, remember? He’d brought it out from Ralston’s in Boston. He’d suggested it to sort of jazz up the ambience. So we carried it into the house. We sat down on it. To kind of test it, you know. It’s extremely soft and comfortable, the fabric is very expensive quilted silk—”

“Forget the stupid settee!” Bella cried.

Morgan hurriedly continued. “Hang on, this is
relevant
. We sat next to each other on the settee. I’m trying to remember this exactly as it happened. I think I said the silk was soft or something. Slade said,
Just like your hair
. He said my hair is silky. No. He said
luxurious
. He said the settee was luxurious, like me.”

“What a tool,” Natalie muttered.

“Go on,” Bella insisted.

Morgan shifted her gaze away from Bella. “He touched my hair. He said my skin is like satin. He … he
looked
at me. He told me the settee was long enough for people to lie down on.” She paused, remembering. “We kissed. I’ll admit the kiss was my fault. I instigated it. Actually, I sort of jumped him … but you’ve got to understand, Josh and I have been like strangers lately. I don’t even know if we’ll stay married. He doesn’t seem to care for me anymore.”

“Oh, honey,” Natalie cried, full of concern. “Of course he loves you! He’s writing a novel, and it’s almost ready for the agent, and then—”

Morgan swung around so abruptly she knocked over her glass. Peach-tinted fluid spilled across the glass tabletop and dripped down onto the wooden deck.

“Josh is writing a novel?”

“Yes!” Natalie held out her hands. “Morgan, Josh loves you so much! He wants to complete the novel, and—”

Morgan stood up, hands clenched at her sides. “Josh told
you
he’s writing a goddamned
novel
and he didn’t tell
me
?”

“Wait a minute!” Bella sprang out of the lounge chair and stood towering between them in all her five foot two quivering rage. “Morgan. Finish about you and Slade!”

Morgan forced her attention back on Bella. “What? Me and Slade? There’s nothing else to say! We kissed, that’s all. We didn’t commit any kind of infidelity as serious as telling someone else a really, really HUGE secret!” Tears flooded her eyes.

Bella wouldn’t let go of it. “Please. Morgan. This is important to me. Is that all you did?
Kiss
?”

Morgan looked at her petite, optimistic friend, and with great effort, she wrenched her mind back to that moment with Slade, and not only to that moment, but to the significance of it, the reason she wanted to
warn
Bella. But she was also still fueled by her hurt, her
anger
at Josh and Natalie. “Oh, this is important to you? So I should forget Josh conspiring with Natalie?”

Natalie sighed. “We hardly conspired. Morgan, I apologize. Let me explain.”

But Morgan was speeding down some mental slide as if shoved, and emotional gravity was not about to let her stop. “Okay, Bella, here’s what happened. I kissed Slade. He did not push me away. He did not say, ‘Stop, Morgan, I love Bella.’ ”

“Morgan,” Natalie interjected. “No need to be harsh.”

“He pulled me down on top of him on the settee. Our bodies were all tangled up together. We kept kissing. He had a hard-on, I could feel it through his jeans. He said—not me,
he
was the one who said—the settee was not wide enough to have sex, and he wanted to go up to my bedroom. I was the one who put the brakes on.”

Bella was pale.

Seeing Bella’s shocked expression, Morgan hit the bottom of the slide, and it felt like slamming down into the water, feeling the impact of collision and her actions flying out to slap other people. Abruptly ashamed of herself, she cried, “Bella, listen, I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. I’m not trying to compete with you. I’m your friend. I care for you. I think Aaron is a great guy, a wonderful guy, who loves you truly, I can see it on his face every time he’s around you. What happened between me and Slade was
nothing
. Nothing
to me, and nothing to Slade. But I can tell it means something to you, and you really should think about it before you make any life-changing decisions.”

Bella’s face was miserable, but her voice was calm. “Okay. I know you’re right, Morgan. I’m glad you told me about Slade. It helps me.…” Her voice trailed off as her thoughts went interior.

Morgan walked around Bella and towered over Natalie. Natalie was still seated, although she’d drawn up from the lounge position and turned sideways to set her feet on the deck, her arms crossed over her chest defensively.

“Okay.” Morgan spoke with clenched teeth. “Tell me again. Josh told you he’s writing a novel?”

“Sit down, please, Morgan.” Natalie waved at the end of her chair.

“Why? Am I going to faint?” Morgan shot back sarcastically.

“Fine. Stand. It just hurts my neck to look up at you.” Natalie reached her hand out and touched Morgan’s arm.

Morgan flinched. Stepped back.

“Morgan,” Natalie said, “I apologize. I made an enormous mistake, letting it out like that. I can’t tell you how terrible I feel.”

“I can tell you exactly how terrible
I
feel!” Morgan retorted.

“Let me explain. It was the night of the painting party.”

Morgan remembered. She wanted to know all of it. She sank down onto the lounge chair, careful not to touch Natalie. “When you babysat Petey.”

“Right.” Natalie let it all out in a rush. “Josh came home, only a few minutes before you got back, and he saw the drawing I was doing of Petey, and I suppose that made him want to talk about his own creative work and how worried he was because even though he has an agent who thinks the novel will sell, he won’t ever make as much writing as he will working for Bio-Green.”

“He told you
all that
?” Morgan was dumbfounded.

Earnestly, Natalie said, “He loves you and Petey so much, he feels a tremendous sense of responsibility to protect you both financially, to make enough money to send Petey to college.…”

“Thanks,” Morgan said curtly. “Thanks so very much for telling
me all this private stuff my husband shared, not with me, but with
you
. You’re really reassuring me about the state of my marriage, you know; you’re really a loyal friend, listening to my husband and keeping what he said secret.”

Natalie protested, “He asked me—”

“—to stand right in the middle of our marriage? To go around every single minute of every single day knowing something about my life, my marriage, that I didn’t know? How could you do it, Natalie?”

Bella interrupted. “Maybe we’re all getting kind of carried away—”

“Oh, you
think
?” Morgan was shaking.

“You didn’t tell me about kissing Slade,” Bella pointed out.

“Slade is not your
husband
!” Suddenly Morgan’s anger transformed into a terrible self-knowledge. “What kind of a wife am I?” she asked herself aloud. “What have I done to Josh that he couldn’t confide in me? Why would he tell you, Natalie, and not me? Am I a
monster
?”

“No,” Natalie said soothingly. “It’s not like that, Morgan.”

Morgan buried her face in her hands. She’d plunged down the slide, hit the surface, and now she was hitting bottom, the cold, dark truth of the state of her marriage. Sitting on this expensive furniture on the deck of this magnificent house, she was caught in the murky reality of her marriage, how this house was anything but a home. So this was why Josh never came home at night. So this was why he worked so late in his study. So this was his secret file. She knew how much he loved reading; why hadn’t she ever talked to him about the possibility of his writing? How could she love the man and not be aware of his deepest needs? She was angry with Josh. And she hated herself.

“I’ve got to be alone.” Morgan stood up. She walked away from the spilled Bellini and the glasses of gleaming yellow liquid, from the two women who sat watching her with tears in their own eyes. She walked into her fabulous house, slid the door shut, and locked it.