Читать книгу That Summer Place: Island Time / Old Things / Private Paradise - Сьюзен Виггс - Страница 17

At ten the next morning Catherine stood on Michael’s front porch, rocking on her feet, her hands clenched behind her back while she waited for him to answer her knock. She could hear his footsteps clumping toward the door, so she licked her lips, brushed her hair back, and took a deep breath before he opened it.

He stared at her from eyes that looked awake but tired.

“The toilet is plugged and the boiler pilot won’t light.”

He seemed startled, like he didn’t know why she was there. And he didn’t exactly look happy to see her.

“I tried to light the boiler pilot again and again and we used the plunger on the toilet. No matter what I tried I couldn’t get them to work.”

He didn’t say anything.

Perhaps she was speaking too fast. Her ex-husband used to chide her for babbling when she was nervous. And she was nervous. She tilted her head slightly and explained more slowly, “There’s no hot water in the house without the boiler.”

“I know what a boiler is, Catherine.”

What a grump.

He turned without another sarcastic word and took a tool belt off a hook near the door. Besides an annoyed look, he was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans that were worn almost white in spots and that time and wear had molded to his body. He might be a grump in the morning but he sure looked good for fifty.

What would he look like in a suit? Catherine was a sucker for a man in a suit. And if a man wore a tux, well, she got all weak-kneed. Heck, Bill Gates probably looked sexy in a tux.

Life was unfair. Here she had to hike up her bra straps and slather on alpha hydroxy creams with a trowel. Some days she had to lie down on the bed to zip up her pants. He was three years older, wearing a plain old pair of jeans, and he looked stronger and sexier than he had when he was twenty.

The faces of all the men who had aged so well flashed through her mind: Sean Connery, Nick Nolte, Robert Redford, James Garner, James Brolin, Michael Packard.

She watched him strap and buckle the tool belt low on his hips the way Paul Newman had strapped on his guns in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

It seemed like such an earthy, male thing—a man doing up his belt buckle; it was sexy and suggestive and made her mouth a little dry.

He stuck a pair of work gloves into his back pocket and turned back around. She quickly looked away.

“I need to find the toolbox. I’ll be right back.” He grabbed a key and walked past her.

She nodded without looking up, then decided to follow him. She didn’t suppose luck would be on her side and there would be a tux in the shed, but heck, he might undo the belt buckle again.

She smiled a wicked little smile as she crossed over to a small shed he had already unlocked.

Heaven be praised if he didn’t bend down to search through it. His jeans pulled tight over his thighs in a way that made her give thanks to Levi Strauss.

Then he knelt on one knee and leaned inside. If she stepped back just a foot or so she had a great shot of his backside. The work gloves stuck out of one back pocket and looked like fingers waving at her. It was almost as if they were calling to her, “Look here.”

“Here it is.” He stood up with a battered old red toolbox.

She quickly looked up at the sky. After a slight pause she said, “Nice day. No clouds.”

He followed her gaze upward, then frowned. “The radio said it was supposed to rain today.”

There was one thing different about this Michael Packard; he was no Mr. Sunshine in the morning.

She walked ahead of him on the gravel path between his place and hers. The silence just about drove her nuts.

Her mind was going a mile a minute, wondering what he was thinking, wondering if they could go the whole day without bringing up the past.

When they were about halfway there she braved the beast. “I wrote you five letters.”

“I never got any letters from you.”

She stopped, spun around and planted her hands on her hips. She looked him straight in the eye. “Are you saying I’m lying?”

“No. I’m saying I never got any letters.” He paused, looking squarely at her. His expression grew tighter. “What I did get was a promise from your father that he’d press charges of statutory rape if I tried to contact you.”

“Oh God. Michael…” She sagged back against a tree, staring at the ground. “Did he really do that?”

“Yes.”

“He was upset. I don’t think he would have sent you to jail.”

“Yes. He would have, Catherine.”

There was nothing between them but a lapse of tense silence.

She looked at him again. “Did you really think I could just walk away after that summer together and never have any contact with you again? Didn’t you know me better than that?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“How do you figure that?”

“You thought I would ignore your letters.”

“Give me a break, here,” she snapped. “I was seventeen.” She straightened and started to walk away.

He dropped the toolbox and touched her shoulder. “I know. And I was twenty, just drafted, and in love with a seventeen-year-old girl.”

She stopped, but she didn’t turn around. He had truly loved her then, all those years ago. Many times over the years she had wondered about that, if he had cared or if she had just wished he had.

His hand was still on her shoulder. She bit her lip because she thought she might do something silly like cry. “I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath and turned around.

His hand fell away.

“When time passes by and you can’t understand why something happened, I guess you make up excuses. You blame others.” She looked at him then. “I was hurt and scared. I blamed you. After a while, when I didn’t hear from you, I believed you were just lying to me about how you had felt so you could—” She stopped because she didn’t need to say anything more.

“Get into your pants?”

“Thank you for sugar-coating it so nicely.” She gave a laugh that wasn’t amused. “But you’re right. That was what I thought.”

He only stared at her, not saying anything.

So she did. “It’s stupid to stand here in the middle of the woods and argue over something that happened so long ago. We’re different people now. It’s 1997 not 1967.” She looked back up into those blue eyes of his and stuck out her hand. “How about a truce?”

His gaze dropped to her outstretched hand.

“Friends,” she said emphatically.

A moment later his hand closed over hers and she almost melted into the ground. It was like she was seventeen all over again. She stared at their hands so she could hide her eyes from him.

Just for good measure she gave his hand a firm shake.

When she looked up he was staring at her face not at their clasped hands.

He pulled her against him, clamped his free hand to the back of her head, and kissed her.

Oh God…She felt like Silly Putty. Her hand fell away from his and moved to his shoulder.

His other hand grabbed her and pulled her against him in one of those hot, eating kind of kisses you see in the movies, all wildness and heat, where an instant later they’ve unbuttoned half their clothes and they’re doing it against a wall.

His hands ran over her back, pressed her closer. There were tools pressed against her belly. A hammer, a flashlight, screwdriver—lots of long, hard things.

One second his tongue was deep inside her mouth.

The next…the damn idiot let her go.

She stood there seeing stars and trying to keep her balance.

“Friends.” He whacked her on the backside with one hand, picked up his toolbox and sauntered on down the path toward her place.