Читать книгу That Summer Place: Island Time / Old Things / Private Paradise - Сьюзен Виггс - Страница 16

Michael knew the exact moment she stepped into the room. It should have frightened him that he could be so attuned to another person that her mere presence could distract him. With anyone else he would have fought that awareness with a vengeance. Because it was a control thing, and he was a man who needed to be in control.

His awareness of Catherine was different; it didn’t threaten him. It somehow felt right, as if the power between them, this thread of something that linked them together, was an innate part of him.

He glanced up at her from over the rim of a coffee mug. She stood framed in the hall doorway as if she were a painting that had just come alive.

She had been a knockout when she was a young woman. Fresh and tall and sleek. Now she was thirty years older, still beautiful, but added to her face was something better than youthful beauty.

She had character.

He had lived long enough to understand and respect that life did that to you, etched lines of experience on you that said to the world, “I’ve been there, done that, and lived through it.”

On Catherine all that living only made her sexier.

“Hi,” she said and walked calmly into the room, which suddenly felt smaller and warmer.

Aly and Dana had come back downstairs earlier and had been talking to him. Well, Aly had been talking to him. Dana was sitting on the sofa, pretending to work on the puzzle when she wasn’t eyeing him like he was the Antichrist.

Catherine came over to the sofa in that same old long-legged walk of hers that after all these years could still get him hot and tight.

She poured herself a cup of coffee.

Aly scooted over and patted the spot next to him. “Sit here, Mom.”

“No!” Dana said so suddenly Catherine looked up from her coffee with a startled expression.

The only sound for that split second was the rain on the roof, tapping tensely. It was the kind of constant monotonous warning sound that made you follow it with your hearing sharp and your breath held, waiting for the explosion.

Catherine cast a quick apologetic glance at him, then gave a small shrug.

So this wasn’t Dana’s normal behavior with men, he thought. It was him alone and not just any man that made her oldest daughter so protective.

Catherine sat down next to Dana at the opposite end of the sofa. She looked up at him. “We were doing a jigsaw puzzle before the power went out.”

He nodded. “So I see.”

She looked at Dana, who was hunched over the table. “What piece are you looking for?”

“Steve Tyler’s belly button,” she said without looking up.

Catherine looked at him as if she didn’t know what to say to that, which Michael knew was why Dana had said it. Shock value.

He reached out and picked up a puzzle piece and held it out to her. “Here, try this one.”

Dana looked at it, then up at him, then took the piece.

It fit.

He winked at Catherine, who looked as if she wanted to strangle Dana. He shook his head slightly. It didn’t matter. Catherine needed to ignore her daughter’s behavior. It would work better than letting her teenager trap her into getting angry, which was Dana’s objective, even if she didn’t consciously know it.

The tension in the room was so taut you couldn’t have broken through it with two hundred pounds of muscle and a timber ax.

Aly was quietly sitting cross-legged next to him. She had a huge book propped in her lap and seemed oblivious to what was going on with her sister.

Catherine looked at her and asked, “What are you reading?”

“An encyclopedia.”

“Oh.” Catherine frowned. “Why?”

“I was just curious about something.”

“What?”

“Those slug things.” She looked up and grinned. “Slugs are just like you, Mom. They don’t have a mate.”

Michael choked on his coffee and tried hard not to laugh.

He had his answer. There was no man.

Catherine just sat there numbly looking like Christmas in her bright green sweater and her even brighter red face.

“It says here that they are mollusks.”

He caught Catherine’s eye and told her exactly what he had been thinking. “Not only does Aly look just like you did at that age, she is you.”

Catherine sighed and gave him a weak smile. “I know.”

Aly groaned and slammed the book shut. “Everyone says that.” Then she stopped and looked back at her mother. “Not that you aren’t pretty, Mom. It’s just weird, you know?”

“I understand, kiddo. At eleven you want your own identity, not your mother’s. I felt the same way. So did Dana.”

“And at school everyone knows I’m Dana Winslow’s younger sister. Mr. Johnson, the science teacher, even calls me Dana sometimes.”

Dana looked up then. “Do you answer him?”

“I have to. If I don’t he thinks I’m not participating.” Aly got up and trounced over to the bookcase.

There was another lapse of awkward silence.

Catherine took a sip of coffee. “So. The island hasn’t changed much, has it?” She didn’t look at him.

He should tell her now, that he had changed, that he wasn’t a handyman. He watched her and found himself staring at her hair. If she looks at me, he thought, I will tell her the truth.

She stared into her coffee cup as if she were searching inside of it for something to say.

Aly plopped back down next to him. “Mom says there’s plenty to do here. Fishing and sailing and stuff.”

Before he could answer Dana asked, “Do you have a boat?”

Michael nodded. “Yes.”

The girl brightened suddenly. “Good, then you can take us back to the mainland.”

“Dana!” Catherine looked at him then, clearly mortified. “I’m sorry. She seems to have forgotten her manners.” She paused and took a deep breath, clearly exasperated. “Dana doesn’t like it here.”

“There’s nothing to do here.”

Michael was quiet. He looked away from Catherine and into Dana’s sharp eyes. “The engine’s not running right.”

Dana looked like she didn’t believe him. “What’s wrong with it?”

Catherine groaned and buried her face in a hand, shaking her head.

But he answered her daughter. “The plugs are bad and the points need to be replaced.” He stood up then. “I should leave.”

Catherine stood up after him and followed him to the door as if she wanted to say something but didn’t know what. He could feel Dana watching them intently and figured she would have been walking in between them if she thought she could have gotten away with it.

He took his jacket off the hook and put it on, then stepped out onto the porch, sat on the bench and pulled on his boots.

Catherine was leaning against the door jamb with her arms crossed, watching him. She had one of those wistful smiles he remembered, the kind she had just before he used to grab her and kiss the hell out of her.

“The rain’s stopped,” was all she said.

He stood and took two steps to stand near her. He looked down at her face. “I’ve got good timing.”

“I’m sorry about Dana.” She dropped her arms to her sides. “These teenage years aren’t easy.”

He nodded, thinking that she was a teenager the last time he’d seen her.

They stood there like that, not saying anything that mattered. It was as if they were both afraid to say what they were thinking.

He looked away. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“Anytime.”

Neither of them spoke again for a long stretch of seconds. He felt like he was twenty again, standing on the same porch and wanting to touch her so badly he hurt with it. But knowing he couldn’t because her parents were right there on the other side of the door.

There were no parents this time; it was her children who were watching them, probably listening to them.

So he didn’t do what he wanted to. He turned and went down the steps and across the lawn. He heard the screen door slam shut.

“Michael?”

He turned around.

She was standing on the porch gripping the wooden railing in two hands and watching him. “I wrote you.

Several letters.” She waited, as if she wanted him to explain.

When he said nothing she added, “I never got any answer back from you.”

“I never got any letters, Catherine.” He turned then, and walked back into the woods.

Her father was shouting. They were in the boathouse, half-naked, their clothes askew, her hair tousled and her lips red and swollen. A foil Trojan wrapper was torn in two and carelessly thrown by their shoes.

Her father’s flashlight beam was shining on it.

Then the light went out. It was dark. So dark. He was in a VC prison camp, locked in a box with two other prisoners. He couldn’t move.

Something rattled the box. Opened it. Light pierced his eyes. His buddies rescued him. Suddenly they were half-dragging him through the jungle.

Go! Go….

Michael woke up fast and sat up in his bed in a cold sweat, panting like he’d been running from a sniper. Damn. He rubbed his face with his clammy hands. Those nightmares of Nam had stopped years ago.

Seeing Catherine tonight had brought it all back again—the scene with her father. Catherine and her mother disappearing from the island. Her father talking to his grandfather and to him.

He was not to call her. He couldn’t write to her. He was to disappear from Catherine’s life. Or he would go to jail for statutory rape.

Instead he’d gone into the Navy less than a week later and ended up in Special Forces, infiltrating into Laos or patrolling the Mekong Delta for weeks at a time. He’d been captured and spent three months in a dark box.

He drove his hand through his hair and took a few deep breaths, thinking for just a brief moment about a life he had left far behind him and never wanted to think of again, because it was like reliving hell.

He sat there for a minute, then threw back the damp sheet and pulled on his jeans. He shrugged into a jacket and shoes, grabbed a flashlight and left the cabin.

The moon had gone down and it was darker outside than his memory of the deepest jungle. There was silence, and a little rain, that misty kind that came on like soggy fog.

He walked down to the small dock where he moored his boat. He unsnapped the tarp and stepped inside, where he lifted the engine cover and shone the flashlight down into the engine compartment until he saw what he was looking for.

A few minutes later he was walking back down the dock and toward the cabin, the plugs and points jammed into his jeans pocket.

He went inside the cabin and headed straight to the refrigerator, took out a carton of juice and lifted it to his lips. He drank half of it, stuck it back inside without closing it, and took out a Mexican beer.

He grabbed something to eat from a cabinet and popped the cap off the beer as he crossed the room to sit down in front of the dwindling fire. He raised the beer bottle to his mouth, took a long drink and set the bottle down on the table next to him. The smooth flavor of the beer was on his tongue, but what he craved was egg-salad sandwiches.

There was nothing he could do about what he was feeling and wanting, so he did the only thing he could do—he ate a whole damn bag of barbecued potato chips.