The Best of Kristina Wright (5 page)

He saw her again the next day and this time the husband was there, too. He’d been right about him being a hulk – he was well muscled and as model perfect as his pretty wife. They seemed like the perfect little family, but the couple rarely looked at or spoke to each other. When they did, it seemed to be in reaction to something the children had done.

The kids and hubby wore swimsuits, the little girl in a bright purple suit, the boy and father in matching yellow trunks. The woman, though, wore shorts and a baggy pink T-shirt. The T-shirt hung low enough to nearly cover the shorts. She seemed to have a nice body, so he wondered what she was hiding. He looked down at his own white T-shirt and black trunks and shook his head. He needed to get back to work so he’d stop speculating about strangers’ lives.

He spoke to her on the third day. The kids were nowhere to be seen and he’d come out earlier than usual because the afternoon promised rain. She was walking along the surf’s edge, arms wrapped around her slender torso as if she were afraid the wind would snap her in half. It seemed as if it might. A gust caught the baseball cap she wore and tossed it across the sand in his direction. He ran half a dozen steps toward it before it was blown into the ocean.

She was breathless when she reached him, a healthy flush in her cheeks. “Thanks.”

He gave her the hat and their fingertips brushed. “No problem. Kids inside today?”

She looked surprised for just a moment, wary the way women sometimes are when a strange man has taken a little too much notice of them. Then something in her face relaxed. Perhaps she remembered him from previous days.

“My husband took them to Kitty Hawk for the day. Some sort of kite competition, I think.”

“Oh.” He looked up at the sky, growing dark with thunderclouds. “Not a good day for kite flying.”

“Probably not.”

They stood there awkwardly. He wanted to say something witty, something charming, but he was about twenty years too old for witty and charming.

“I’m Michael Levine,” he said, extending his hand, wanting to touch her once more.

She hesitated just a moment before extending her hand. It was cool and soft in his grasp. “Kate Gallagher.”

“Is this your first time here?”

She shook her head, wind tossing the long strands of her sable brown hair in all different directions. “No. My in-laws own the house. We come down every year for a couple of weeks.”

“Well then, we’ll be seeing more of each other. I’m here for the month.”

He couldn’t read her expression. “How nice.”

“If you ever need anything – I’m usually here, on the beach.” He tried not to make it sound like a line, but he knew it did. He wanted her. It made no sense and wasn’t based on anything of consequence, but after just a couple days of watching her, he knew how her body would feel beneath his, how her moans would fill his mouth when he fucked her.

“Well, I – um – thanks.” She took a step back, smiling nervously. “I guess I’d better get back. My husband will be home soon.”

He knew by the way she said “husband” that she was reminding him. He didn’t need reminding.

Michael thought about her that night as he stroked himself to orgasm. Something about the way she kept herself covered, not showing much above the legs, made him want to strip her. Slowly. Teasing himself, teasing her.

When he came, he groaned her name.

He didn’t see her for two days. It rained steadily, the ocean churning up in black, angry waves. He stood at the picture window sipping decaffeinated coffee and brooding. He wanted to see her again.

He pulled on his rain slicker and tugged the hood over his head. He had no destination in mind, he told himself, he just needed a distraction. Somehow he found himself walking down the beach in the direction of her beach house.

He knew he would make a fool out of himself, but he kept walking until he was climbing the rickety wooden stairs to her front door. There wasn’t a car in the driveway and he felt a stab of disappointment when he realized she wasn’t home. He started to turn away without bothering to knock when he saw her standing just inside the screen door.

“Hello,” she said, as if she’d been waiting for him.

Today she wore a navy blue T-shirt that skimmed her thighs. He couldn’t tell if she was wearing anything underneath it. She probably was, she didn’t seem the type to be running around in just a T-shirt. There was something about her that was very proper. Ladylike. He thought it was sexy as hell.

“Hi,” he said, jamming his hands in the pockets of the slicker. “I was just walking –”

“In the rain?” she interrupted.

“Yeah. Stupid, huh?”

A hint of a smile played at her full lips. “Actually, I think it’s great. I used to love to walk in the rain.”

He wanted to ask her why she didn’t any longer, but he was afraid she would stop smiling, so he didn’t ask.

“Well, anyway, I was walking by and thought I’d see if you and your family might like to come to dinner.”

He didn’t know where that had come from. He didn’t want them over for dinner. Correction, he didn’t want her husband and kids for dinner. He wanted her to himself, which was even more stupid than walking in the rain.

“Oh, well, I don’t know.”

“Right. Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you,” he said, angry for being so foolish.

The screen door squeaked open. “Wait! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.” Her voice was soft, warm. “Come inside. Have a cup of coffee with me.”

He knew without asking that she was alone. “Thanks.” He shrugged out of his slicker and hung it on a hook by the door.

He followed her into the beach house that was a mirror image of his own. The kitchen was to the left rather than the right, the living room faced the ocean just as his did, but the fireplace was on the opposite wall.

The house was dark and it made it seem more intimate to be there with her.

“Would you like some coffee? I just made it.”

He didn’t want coffee, he wanted to pull her close and learn the shape and feel of her body. He nodded. “Sure, sounds great.”

She went into the kitchen and returned with two oversized pottery mugs. She sat in a chair by the window and he took the chair across from her. They drank their coffee in silence for several minutes, both of them staring out the window as the rain lashed the ocean.

“Where is –” He realized he didn’t know her husband’s name. “Where’s everyone?”

“They drove up to Virginia Beach for the weekend. My in-laws live there.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

She didn’t seem to mind his invasive question. “I wasn’t feeling well. I thought a couple days’ rest might help.”

There was truth in what she said, but he could also sense the lie beneath it. “Well, I hope you won’t be offended if I say I’m glad you weren’t feeling well.”

She didn’t smile, but she didn’t look angry, either. “Me, too.”

Something shifted between them. The difference between strangers and friends was gone.

They continued to drink their coffee, but now they were watching each other. He saw the way her hand trembled slightly as she held her mug. Her gaze was steady though, watching him watch her.

“Are you married?” she asked finally, her soft voice cutting through the sound of the rain on the roof. “Kids?”

“Divorced. Five, no, six years.” He shook his head. “Never had time for kids and too old now to think about it.”

She sat her mug down and tucked her legs under her. “You’re not too old. You could find some younger woman who would want to have children with you.”

He tapped his chest. “Who’d want me? I’m fifty-six years old, I’m going bald, I’ve got bursitis in my shoulder and someone else’s heart.”

Surprise flitted across her face. “Really? Wow.”

He hadn’t meant to tell her, didn’t know why he had. “Yeah. I probably had a month to live, had gotten my life – and death – in order, when a heart came through.”

“That’s pretty amazing.”

He sat his mug on the table beside him. “I guess. Sometimes I wonder what’s the point? I’m alone, I can’t do a lot of the things I used to do, and my best years are behind me. Maybe prolonging things wasn’t a good idea.”

She put her feet on the floor and leaned forward, staring at him intently. “But you’re
alive
. That
means
something. That’s everything. You’re alive.”

She said it so fiercely, with so much passion, he didn’t dare argue with her. “Don’t mind me. I’m grateful most of the time.”

She sat back, as if content with his response. “I know. It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Carrying around the secret of your own mortality, knowing most people haven’t got a clue.”

He hadn’t thought about it that way, but she was right. He would be out with friends and wonder if they had any idea what it felt like to know that today could be the last day. Or tomorrow. Or maybe a week from Tuesday, so there was no point in TiVoing
CSI: Miami
. He wondered if they even ever thought about dying. He hadn’t, before. Then one day his heart started doing funny things and he’d given up all the foods he loved and quit playing golf and put on twenty pounds. He’d hated the thought of dying, then he’d accepted it and been ready to welcome it. Now he was back to hating it – and fearing it.

“How do you know that?”

She watched him, searching his face. Memorizing him, it felt like. “I’ve been there.”

He was about to ask her what she meant, figuring they were already so deep in unknown territory that it wouldn’t matter if he got just a bit more personal, when she stood up. He thought she was going to leave the room, or tell him to leave, but she didn’t. Instead, she hooked her fingers in the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it up over her stomach.

She wore a pair of running shorts, just as he suspected. He was startled by the paleness of her belly in comparison to her tan arms and legs, but his breath caught in his throat as she pulled the T-shirt higher, over her chest.

She didn’t wear a bra. Her right breast was pretty and plump, the nipple a pale, creamy pink. Where her left breast should have been there was only an ugly, pink scar bisecting the left side of her chest.

The T-shirt hid her face as he stared. His eyes kept drifting from one side of her chest to the other, from perfection to deformity, from healthy to ill. Though he supposed she was as healthy as she could be, now that they’d removed the sick part of her.

After what seemed like minutes but couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds, she tugged her shirt down. Her face was blank, expressionless, but he knew what it had taken for her to expose herself like that. Not just her flesh, and her scar, but the part of her no one else could see. The vulnerability.

She stood there, watching him. Waiting.

“Thank you.”

She nodded sharply. “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?”

“Yeah. We are.”

“I don’t know why I did that. I think I’m just to the point where I don’t care anymore,” she said softly. Her fingers played with the hem of her T-shirt. “Eric – my husband – he doesn’t like to talk about it. He doesn’t like to look at me.”

“What do you want, Kate?” There was so much else he could have said, but that seemed to cut to the heart of things.

She didn’t speak. She stood there with her baggy T-shirt hiding her pain and stared at him. Then she slowly reached out a hand to him. Her shell-pink nail polish was chipped at the edges, pretty but imperfect. Like her.

He leaned forward far enough to take her hand. A flash of something – surprise, maybe – flitted across her face before she let herself be pulled onto his lap. Once there, she nestled against him as if she’d needed that exact thing.

He enjoyed the weight of her, the way her bare legs rubbed against him and her arms slipped around his neck. The weight of her ass across his lap made him hard and he started to shift her so she wouldn’t notice, but she clung to him, burying her face in his neck.

“Don’t move,” she breathed against his skin. “Let me feel you.”

So he sat back and held her, his arms around her waist, his chin resting on top of her head. The scent of her – so warm and fresh – surrounded him. He was aroused, almost painfully so, but he wouldn’t move. Not until she wanted him to.

She finally tilted her head up and looked at him. “Tell me if I’m making a horrible mistake.”

He had no idea if she was making a mistake, but he had no intention of turning her away. “What do you need?”

“I need . . . I need . . .” Her voice trailed off. “I don’t know. I just
need
.”

Her voice broke, echoing the ache in his chest. He bent down and brushed his lips across hers, not waiting for permission. Soft at first, then harder. Hard enough to feel the press of her teeth behind her lips. He was torn between being gentle with her and being as rough as both of them could take, to erase everything they’d been through.

She didn’t resist the kiss. If anything, she pulled him closer and kissed him harder. She shifted in his lap, straddling him, her thighs pinned between his legs and the arms of the chair. Her hands fisted in his hair, tugging, urgent. They kissed with a fierceness he’d never experienced, or at least didn’t remember. His tongue invaded her mouth and his cock throbbed, aching to enter her body.

He slid his hands under her shirt, spanning her back, pulling her down on his crotch. She tensed for just a moment as his thumbs curled around her ribcage. One thumb grazed the velvet underside of her breast. The other thumb found only the ridge of scar tissue. It didn’t startle him, he never broke the kiss. He knew what she was hiding and it didn’t matter.

She broke away after a moment, both of them breathless. She stared at him. Her eyes were green with flecks of brown and gold, her pupils dilated.

“Is this – should we –”

He put his fingers against her lips, still moist from his mouth. “Don’t ask that. Just don’t.”

She hesitated a moment, then nodded. She climbed from his lap and he bit back a groan as her knee grazed his erection. She extended a hand to him and it seemed a gesture of trust, of vulnerability. He stood and took her hand, letting her lead him down the hall.