The Guest Cottage (31 page)

“How will you get there?” Sophie asked.

“I’ll drive us in his truck to the airport. We’ll fly.” Hester took another sip of wine. “We probably will have to spend the night in Boston.”

Sophie’s eyes flew to Trevor’s. She knew he was thinking exactly what she was thinking:
the apartment would be empty.

Sophie gathered her wits. “Mother, you’re remarkable. Connor must be thrilled that you came along, knowing so much.”

“I’m sure he is,” Hester replied calmly.

W
as it too good to be true?

Sophie tiptoed down the stairs, her finger to her lips in a shushing sign, and beckoned Trevor into the kitchen.

“They’re all asleep,” she whispered, although there was really no need to whisper. Once her kids were down, they were out for the night. Lacey and Leo and Jonah had all recovered from the flu. They’d spent the day in town—a compromise between the more rigorous sun and fun on the beach and more lying around the house.

“They’re all asleep. Your mother’s in Boston with Connor. Let’s go,” Trevor said.

“Maybe we’d better give it a few more minutes—”

Trevor gently pressed Sophie up against the wall, put his hands on either side of her face, and kissed her. She put her arms around him, pulling herself against him. His kiss was sweet and urgent.

Sophie moved her mouth away enough to gasp, “Where? Not our bedrooms—too close to the kids. The living room? On the sofa?”

“What if the kids come down?” Trevor whispered.

Sophie nodded. “You’re right.” She thought a moment. “The music room. We can shut the door and Connor’s gone, so he won’t be able to hear us in the apartment.”

Trevor took Sophie’s hand in his and led her from the kitchen, through the hall, through the large living room, and finally through the doorway into the music room. He pulled Sophie inside, shut the door, and took her in his arms, kissing her hungrily on her mouth, her neck, and down the tanned bare skin above her tank top. Sophie moaned and let her head fall back, exposing her neck to his kisses. She embraced him, gliding her hands down the long muscles of his back, sliding her hands around to the front of his jeans, undoing the snap, slowly tugging down the zipper, and slipping her hands inside.

Trevor groaned. “Sophie,” he murmured, pulling her to the deep rose-covered sofa.

From the two high windows on either side of the room, a white brilliance gleamed from the moon and stars, striking spots on the chandelier’s crystals with light. The shadows seemed to dip and play over their bodies as Sophie and Trevor undressed each other, slowly removing the light cotton clothing so that it trailed like fingertips over their skin. They stood taking in the sight of the other’s naked body until Trevor pulled Sophie close to him and for a while they remained like that, naked, pressed together, head to toe, inhaling one another’s scent, trembling with desire, allowing the desire, like music, to spiral and climb and build and expand, until Sophie, summoning all her courage, defying any inner voice reminding her that her body was not young, that she might do something wrong, said in a low, urgent voice: “Trevor,
please.
”

He lowered her onto the sofa, pulling a pillow beneath her head. He knelt over her, allowing himself to take possession of her rich, luxurious body with his eyes. Gently, he pressed his knees between her parted legs, rested his hands on either side of her head, and slowly lowered himself to kiss her mouth, her neck, her breasts. Sophie embraced him, nuzzling against his skin,
murmuring—inviting.
And slowly he entered her and they both closed their eyes to savor the sensation.
This
was perfection.

Trevor set the alarm on his watch for four o’clock so they could sneak back into their own beds before the children woke, but Sophie was awake before the alarm. She lay with her face pressed close to Trevor’s chest, which was a marvelous place to be.

The alarm went off. Trevor mumbled, woke up, and stopped the alarm. “What are you doing?”

“Sniffing you.”

He pulled back, raising himself up on one elbow to look down at her. “
Sniffing
me?”

“You smell so good. I want to inhale you, molecule by molecule.”

His low laugh rumbled near her ear. “You’d better stop. We’d both better get up and get to our beds.”

Sophie responded by snuggling closer, pressing herself against him. “Maybe a few more minutes…”

“Stop that.” Trevor rolled away and stood up. “You exhausted me. I’ve got nothing left.”

Sophie heard herself give out a hum of laughter from deep within her belly. Stretching out full-length and brazenly naked in the gentle light of dawn spilling through the windows, she scanned Trevor up and down. “I can see quite a lot left, actually.”

Trevor stooped to dig around in the pile of clothing to find his briefs. He pulled them on. “You’re shameless.”

“I am? How fabulous.” She rose languidly and began to search for her own clothes. As she did, the reality of the day seeped into her mind like the morning light into the house.

Last night, between their first and second times of making love, they had talked about their lives, especially about their children. They couldn’t go frolicking all smoochy and giddy like young lovers in front of their children. That would freak out the kids. Only one more week remained before they left the guest cottage. After that, change would come at them, especially at Jonah and Lacey, like a tornado. Their parents’ divorce. Getting to know Lila, who would be in their lives more and more from now on. Realizing that Trevor and Leo were also going to be a permanent fixture in their lives. And for Sophie’s kids, the all-important return to school, dealing with new classes, new teachers, old and new friends. This was not the time, Sophie and Trevor agreed, for them to let the kids know their parents were anything more than good, even devoted, friends.

This was going to be hard work for Sophie, now that she had, for the first time in her life, truly discovered what her body could do when sex and love overwhelmed her. She had clutched him to her, weeping. “I love you,” she’d sobbed. “Oh, Trevor, I can’t help it. I love you.”

He hadn’t laughed. He had said, “I love you, too, Sophie.”

Sophie pulled on her T-shirt and shorts, slid her feet into her flip-flops, and looked around the room. The rising sun sparked rainbows from the chandelier.

Trevor took her in his arms one more time. “You go first. Go up and get in bed. Try to catch another hour or so of sleep. I’ll hang out in the kitchen. We don’t need anyone catching us sneaking upstairs together.”

Sophie smothered a laugh. “We’re like teenagers.” Then, as her body registered Trevor’s body’s reaction to her warmth and closeness, she whispered, “Are you sure you want me to go to bed alone?”

He pulled away. “Be good. Go.”

Sophie tiptoed up the stairs, unable to stop smiling.

Trevor caught a couple of hours of sleep before he heard Leo bumbling around in the next bedroom. He rose and hurried in for a quick and necessary shower before shaving and pulling on clean shorts. Then he stuck his head into Leo’s room.

“Good morning, guy. Want breakfast?”

Leo was, not surprisingly, building with Legos. “In a while,” he replied, preoccupied.

In the kitchen, Trevor made a pot of coffee and sat down at the table with his laptop. Pretty soon the rest of the household ambled in, yawning and drowsy. The day had quickly become sticky with humidity, the overpowering kind that seemed to suck the energy right out of a person. Or maybe that was because Trevor hadn’t gotten much sleep last night.

Sophie came down, freshly showered and dressed, but looking sleepy. “Morning,” she mumbled, heading for the coffee.

Trevor kept his eyes on his laptop. “Morning.”

Jonah, Lacey, and Leo were at various spots in the kitchen, fixing toast, gulping down juice, looking lazy.

Trevor kept staring at his laptop, but his mind was on the people around him.
This could be my family,
he thought suddenly.
Sophie could be not just my lover, but my wife.
The thoughts were both terrifying and exhilarating. With Tallulah, even with a child, life had still been more like—well, a play—than the real thing. With Tallulah, there had been no disagreements about what to feed Leo or how to dress him or where and when to put him in preschool. Tallulah hadn’t paid attention, and that had given Trevor a freedom that almost felt like being carefree. But with Sophie, who did care about so much, life would be complicated. Trevor would have to man up more than ever before in his life. For one thing, he’d have to be a stepfather. He’d have to engage in these other lives—which meant worry, and sleepless nights, and making mistakes, and getting into heated arguments, and forgiving other people, and forgiving himself.

Trevor said, “I’ve had an idea. We’ve only got a week left and we haven’t seen much of the island at all. I say we rent a four-wheel-drive Jeep and have a picnic at Great Point. We can see seals out there.”

“Dude,”
Jonah said approvingly.

“Great Point,” Sophie echoed, her back to Trevor as she prepared her coffee. “What a brilliant idea.”

They prepared a picnic, rented a Jeep, and set off. To get to Great Point, they had to bump over a rutted dirt road between the end of Nantucket Harbor and the few summer houses facing the Atlantic, high on the top of a dune. At a marked fork in the sand, they turned right, the Jeep growling like a tank as it climbed up the dune and dumped them on the long white stretch of beach on the ocean side. Nothing here but sand, more sand, and the blue Atlantic stretching out forever. It was hard work steering the Jeep as it whined through the deep sand, but the kids shrieked with laughter as they tilted and bounced nearly out of their seats.

The Great Point lighthouse rose at the far end of the barrier beach, a tall white steeple to the sky, with a working light flashing at the top. Here was the end of the island, the great point where the Atlantic Ocean met Nantucket Sound in a froth of waves. All along the point, enormous fat seals lolled on the sand, occasionally lumbering in and out of the water, grunting and lounging like a tribe of overfed Roman emperors.

“Can I pet one, Daddy?” Leo asked.

“Forget it. They bite,” Trevor warned. “We won’t go near them. We’ll watch.”

“We won’t swim here, either,” Sophie added. “The water’s too rough, and we don’t know who’s out there.”

“Maybe a great white shark!” Lacey giggled, safe inside the open Jeep.

They ate lunch and walked up the path to check out the small white entrance to the lighthouse. As they got back into the car, Trevor said, “I think we’ll return via the beach along Coatue. The sand’s packed, easier to drive on. Jonah, why don’t you drive?”

Jonah was too shocked to respond. He gawked at Trevor, eyes wide.

Sophie said, “Um, Jonah doesn’t know how to drive.”

“This is the perfect place to learn,” Trevor said. “No other cars around, and the beach is so wide I could stop the car if he steers us toward the water…”

“Mom,”
Jonah said.

“Okay,” Sophie decided. “You’ve got to learn sometime.”

Sophie remained in the backseat with Leo and Lacey. Trevor sat in the passenger seat instructing Jonah as they lurched down the beach, past driftwood, curious gulls, broken buoys, and seaweed. When they reached the point between Coatue Point and the jetty protecting the harbor, Jonah stopped. They all got out, climbed on the rocks for a while, waded in the shallows, and looked for shells. Trevor stayed away from Sophie, knowing that if he came too near her, he’d give himself away—take her hand, rub up against her arm, touch her somewhere, somehow…This was enough, he thought, the way she smiled at him, the way their kids beachcombed together, the way Jonah, Lacey, and Leo teased and chased and carelessly wrapped arms around each other as if they were of the same flesh.

The ride back through the brushy trails of Coatue was long and hot. Leo complained he was getting motion sick. Jonah didn’t complain because he was the new king of the world, having driven a Jeep on the beach. When Trevor checked in the rearview mirror, he saw Sophie relaxed against the seat, eyes closed, face lifted to the sun.

That night they went out for pizza at Sophie T’s. After showering and cooling down, they all agreed the expedition had been a success. Back home, they spread a map of the island on the dining room table and planned three more explorations. Leo sat on Trevor’s lap, yawning. Even Lacey and Jonah seemed tired from all the fresh air. Trevor thought it might be possible for Sophie and him to go to her room tonight, instead of going down to the music room. He’d keep his hand over Sophie’s mouth.