Right Place, Wrong Time
Judith Arnold
Ethan Parnell and Gina Morante meet when they accidentally wind up in the same time-share condominium on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas. Right place for a tropical vacation, but wrong time for them both to appear–and for sure the wrong two people to spend a week together in close quarters.He's a Connecticut type–reserved, well-bred, a product of the best schools. She's a savvy Manhattan girl–a funky shoe designer whose warm, working-class family lives in the Bronx.So how come they end up thinking so much about each other once they're back in their own worlds after the wrong time is up?
“Who the hell are you?” the man asked
“He said a bad word,” seven-year-old Alicia announced in a stage whisper.
“Hell isn’t a bad word,” Gina assured her. Alicia didn’t have to know how often her aunt uttered words a lot worse than hell. “It’s just the name of a place.”
“A bad place.”
“We can turn that bad word right back on him, okay?” Gina stared boldly at the man and said, “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. Gina wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for the invasion or only for his language. “There’s been a mistake.”
“Obviously.” If he could be diplomatic, so could she. “I don’t know how you got in here, but you’re in the wrong unit.”
“Six-fourteen,” he said, glancing at the open door, on which the number appeared. He turned back to Gina and lifted his hand so she could see the key. “This is how we got in here.”
There’s obviously been a mistake, she thought, her brain scrambling to figure out just how serious it was and how she was going to get these strangers out of the unit. “Okay—this is a time-share. We’ve got a key. You’ve got a key. My guess is someone’s here the wrong week.” You, she wanted to say. You’re here the wrong week.
“We’re here the week of July 19,” the man said calmly.
“Um, no.” Gina smiled. “That’s our week…. And we’re not leaving.”
Dear Reader,
One of the problems with being a writer is that no matter where you go, no matter what you do, a part of your mind is always thinking, “Can I use this in a book?”
A couple of years ago, my family took a trip to St. Thomas. It was supposed to be a family vacation, a special getaway to celebrate my older son’s impending high-school graduation and departure for college. On the jitney from the airport, I wound up next to a woman who was planning to spend the week at a time-share condo just up the road from our hotel. It was her cousin’s time-share, she told me, but her cousin wasn’t using it that week and had offered it to this woman and her husband, instead.
Goodbye vacation—hello book idea.
It took me a while to get around to writing Right Place, Wrong Time. I was under contract to write some other books first. But I saved all my research from the week we spent on St. Thomas, all the brochures and maps, all the notes I took—and at last I’ve been able to write this story.
(No, it’s not autobiographical. I didn’t buy a “happy diamonds” watch, although my husband bought me a beautiful bracelet in Charlotte Amalie, in honor of our twentieth wedding anniversary. I also bought a bottle of nail polish that changes color, just like Alicia’s in the book. And the snorkeling was as magnificent as anything Gina and Ethan experience.)
The habit of writers to turn every experience into a research trip can be problematic. But the positive side of that habit is that when a writer finally sits down and puts her research into a book, she gets to relive the experience. Writing Right Place, Wrong Time allowed me to enjoy St. Thomas all over again!
JudithArnold
Right Place, Wrong Time
Judith Arnold
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Ted and the boys
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
“DO YOU HAVE any idea what you’re doing?” Kim’s father asked.
Good question, Ethan muttered. No, he didn’t have any idea what he was doing. But he was doing it anyway. When in doubt, he usually just plowed ahead and hoped for the best.
“You’re driving on the wrong side of the road,” Kim’s father pointed out.
Ethan glanced at the man who might someday be his father-in-law. Ross Hamilton sat rigidly in the front passenger seat of the rented Oldsmobile, his jowls just beginning to go soft, his silver hair thick and precisely styled, his skin preternaturally tan and his eyes framed with the sort of creases that implied he squinted a lot, presumably at people he didn’t approve of. Ethan suspected he fell into that category.
“People drive on the left side of the road in St. Thomas,” Ethan explained.
“St. Thomas is part of the United States,” Ross argued. “Why don’t they drive on the right?”
“I don’t know.”
“This is an American car. The steering wheel is on the left.”
“Yes.” Ethan was having a hard enough time getting used to left-sided driving. He didn’t need Ross undermining his concentration by badgering him with questions.
“Perhaps you should have arranged for someone to pick us up at the airport,” Ross chided.
“My friend Paul told me the cabs on the island are overpriced. By renting the car for the week, we’ll save a lot of money.” Surely his thrift would win him a few points in his potential father-in-law’s view.
“In the meantime, we might wind up in a head-on collision.”
“I’m on the right side of the road. The left side,” Ethan corrected himself. Even with cool air blasting from the vents, he felt dampness gathering at his nape. Ross exuded not a single drop of perspiration, despite wearing a linen blazer over his polo shirt. July in St. Thomas—it was hot on the other side of the windshield. Ross Hamilton didn’t sweat, though. He was obviously a chilly man.
Ethan wished Kim hadn’t insisted on including her parents in this outing. He’d gotten access to Paul’s time-share because, as Paul put it, no one in his right mind would want to go to St. Thomas in July. Paul’s regularly scheduled week at the resort on Smith Bay was in January, but last January he’d had the chance to go skiing in Aspen with friends, and he’d chosen that over the tropics. So he’d traded his week with a woman who owned a week in July in the same unit, and then offered the July week to Ethan if he wanted it.
Ethan had thought a week in St. Thomas, even in the middle of the summer, would offer Kim and him a fun getaway. Kim had been elated. “I hear jewelry is dirt cheap and duty-free down there,” she’d said. “Maybe we could do a little shopping.” Hint, hint.
Okay, she wanted an engagement ring. Ethan was willing to concede that the time for an engagement ring might be drawing near—and if that time arrived, why not buy one that was dirt cheap and duty-free? In March, when Paul had first offered him the week at the condo, this had all seemed like a good idea.
Then Kim had heard that the unit had two bedrooms, and she’d come up with the clever idea of bringing her parents along. “It will give them a chance to get to know you better,” she’d argued. “I want them to love you as much as I do. We could have great fun, Ethan.”
Kim had been naked when she’d mentioned this, sliding her hand in provocative ways over his chest while simultaneously stroking his shin with her toes. She and Ethan had been having great fun at that moment, and he hadn’t been thinking clearly. So he’d said, “Sure.”
The van behind him was tailgating so closely Ethan could practically see the pores on the driver’s nose in his rearview mirror. Steep hills rose to one side of the road and a turquoise sea spread along the other side. He was in alien territory, surrounded by palm trees and brilliant crimson flowers, squat stucco houses and sprawling, cliff-hugging mansions. Cars, jitneys and small buses kept coming at him on the narrow, winding road—and they were on his right. The entire experience was disorienting.
Adding to his tension was a goat ambling along the asphalt no more than a hundred feet ahead.
“Oh, my God!” Kim shrieked from the back, where she and her mother had spent the entire time since they’d buckled their seat belts thumbing through guidebooks and plotting shopping expeditions. “It’s a goat!”
Ethan tapped on the brakes to slow down and prayed that the driver behind him wouldn’t rear-end them. A fender bender would not be an auspicious way to start this vacation.
“I’ve got to have a picture of the goat,” Kim declared. “Can you pull over, Ethan?”
“No.”
“Where’s the camera? Do you have it in front? I don’t have it back here.”
“It’s in the trunk,” he told her, slowing even more as he drew within a few yards of the animal.
“My first St. Thomas goat, and I don’t have a camera,” Kim wailed.
My first St. Thomas headache, and I don’t have an aspirin, Ethan thought. During a brief lull in the opposite lane’s traffic, he swerved around the goat, which glanced up from its grazing. Thin and brown, its jaw pumping and its black eyes piercing, it gave Ethan a contemptuous look, as if to say, This is paradise, pal. Mellow out.
Ethan wished he could. If only Ross Hamilton weren’t occupying the seat next to him and Delia Hamilton weren’t occupying the seat directly behind him, her unnaturally blond hair as flawlessly arranged as her husband’s, her skin as free of perspiration and her face lacking incipient jowls because Santa Claus had left some plastic surgery under the tree for her last winter. If only Kim Hamilton, the woman Ethan was contemplating marrying, weren’t squawking about her camera in the trunk…. Ethan would love to mellow out, but at the moment, the thought of leaping out of the car, slamming the door on the entire Hamilton family and joining the goat in a nice little snack of roadside grass held an odd appeal.
He promised himself he would mellow out as soon as they arrived at Palm Point, the beachfront complex where Paul’s time-share was located. Until they reached their destination, he was going to have to fight his natural inclination to steer onto the other side of the road, and he was going to grit his teeth at being cooped up inside a fat American sedan with Kim’s parents.
Vacations were for relaxing. He’d damn well better get to relax—and if everyone would just shut up, he might survive the half hour it took to drive to the place where relaxation would be possible.
If only he hadn’t agreed to let Kim’s parents come…. He and she could have escaped here by themselves for a week of exclusive togetherness. A week alone with her, when neither of them was distracted by the demands of their hectic lives, their careers and other obligations, would have given them the chance to make sure a lifetime commitment was right for them. He supposed having the chance to sample the Hamiltons as future in-laws would help him make up his mind, too. But he wouldn’t be marrying Ross and Delia Hamilton. If he and Kim got married, he wouldn’t have to see her parents more often than a few times a year, since the Hamiltons lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a good three hundred miles from Arlington, Connecticut.
He glanced at the screen of his PDA, into which he’d entered directions to the condo. Paul had provided a route that would allow Ethan to avoid Charlotte Amalie. He’d neglected to mention that avoiding the bustling capital city of St. Thomas required them to drive straight up the side of a mountain. If Ethan had thought the road leading away from the airport had been narrow, he’d been mistaken. The road up the mountain, a barely paved trail of twists and switchbacks and thirty-degree inclines, lacking shoulders, lacking railings but not lacking the occasional goat, would have been alarming if Ethan had been behind the wheel of his beloved Volvo—and driving on the right. In this alien environment, with lush, unfamiliar foliage—palms and ferns, shrubs with vivid puffball-shaped pink flowers and erotically red blossoms scattered across their branches, viny ground cover and ghostly moss dripping from branches—he felt totally out of his depth.
Ross Hamilton sat rigidly next to him, his scowl eloquently communicating that he, too, believed Ethan was out of his depth.
“Paul said there’s a golf course just up the road from Palm Point,” Ethan said, hoping this news might improve Ross’s opinion of him.
“I didn’t bring my clubs.”
“I’m sure they rent clubs.”
“Kimberly tells me you don’t golf.”
“I’ve never tried it,” Ethan said, “but there’s always a first time.” In truth, he thought golf sounded excruciating. Hit a ball, walk a little bit, hit a ball, walk a little bit more.
“Perhaps we’ll golf a round together,” Ross suggested, a dry smile whispering across his lips. “I could teach you a few pointers. Although God only knows what kind of equipment this golf course will be renting.”
Delia piped up. “Ross, it’ll be too hot to golf. You’ll have a heatstroke.”
“I will not,” he retorted, as if he and he alone determined whether he’d be afflicted.
“Where is Charlotte Emily?” Delia asked, peering out the window as the car strained up another precipitous incline.
“Charlotte Amalie,” Ethan gently corrected her.
“I just love that they named their city after a woman. Or is it two women?” Her smile reached Ethan via the rearview mirror. “Did we pass the city?”
“We’re circumventing it,” Ethan told her.
Her smile morphed into a delicate pout. “Well, if you boys want to golf and get sunstroke, that’s your business. Kim and I will be strolling the streets of Charlotte Emily. The guidebooks list all these wonderful shops….”
Ross shared a knowing grin with Ethan, who forced himself to grin back. “Something tells me your friend’s generous donation of his time-share is going to wind up being the most expensive gift you’ve ever received. Angels tremble when those two are set loose in a shopping center.”
“It’s not just shopping,” Delia informed her husband. “It’s duty-free shopping. Bottles of Absolut at prices you wouldn’t believe.”
Ross Hamilton glanced over his shoulder. “Really?” he asked, eagerness underlining his tone. “Absolut?”
“Absolut, Stolichnaya, all the big names, darling. You can restock the bar while we’re down here.”
“I can restock the bar at home.”
“Not at these prices.”
Ross gave Ethan another conspiratorial grin. “Women,” he muttered. “They think we can save a lot of money by spending a fortune on airfare to fly to some island with duty-free shops. We could have bought vodka at the duty-free shop at the airport and skipped the trip.”
Too bad you didn’t come up with that idea sooner, Ethan thought. A weary dog, part Lab and part a dozen other breeds, slouched across the road. Either Kim didn’t think dogs were as photogenic as goats, or she was too busy planning shopping excursions with her mother to have noticed the poor mongrel. Its tongue lolled to one side and its eyes looked sad. If Ethan weren’t in an air-conditioned car, his tongue might be hanging out of his mouth, too.
Around another hairpin turn, and they started down a decline. “Oh, my God!” Mrs. Hamilton shrieked. “There’s no railing! Slow down, Ethan!”
“I’m doing ten miles per hour,” he assured her. Yes, the road was steep, and no, there wasn’t a railing, but he wasn’t going to steer them over the edge. He’d had his driver’s license for thirteen years and had never been in an accident. Of course, he’d never driven on the left side of the road, either.
They’d get to Palm Point soon. According to Paul’s directions, it was only a couple of miles down Smith Bay Road, a scenic route skirting mountains that dropped sharply to the most tranquil, turquoise water Ethan had ever seen. Let Ross and Delia visit the duty-free shops in Charlotte Amalie by themselves, he thought. Let them stock up on enough liquor to keep them swilling martinis until they left this world for the next. While they were oohing and ahhing over the discounts on Stolichnaya and Absolut, Ethan and Kim would be lying on one of the pale, inviting beaches that fringed the sea. They’d be racing on the sand, and plunging into the water, and then sprinting back up to the condo for a quickie before her parents returned from their tour of duty-free liquor stores.
He would turn this vacation into something good, he resolved. He would not let Kim’s parents rattle him. He would not knock himself out to win their favor. He would not play golf against his wishes. He worked damn hard in Connecticut, but he was out of town for a week, out of the office, out of touch, and he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity.
He cruised past the gated entry to a hotel, then another…and then he spotted the sign for Palm Point. He turned onto the drive, which was appropriately lined with towering royal palms, and maneuvered over the speed bumps. He passed a parking lot and a series of tennis courts surrounded by green chain-link fences, then followed the drive as it zigzagged down the hill toward the ocean. Beige stucco buildings dotted the road, their ocean-facing facades marked by vaguely Spanish-looking wrought-iron balconies. Ethan imagined sitting on a balcony with Kim, both of them flushed and sated after making love. They could be sipping drinks—beer for him, nothing with Absolut or Stolichnaya in it—and watching as the sun slid down toward that breathtakingly blue sea, and not sparing Kim’s parents a single thought. This was Ethan’s vacation. It was his fantasy.
“Here we go,” he announced, pulling into a parking lot beside a building identified by a small sign as number six. Paul’s unit was 614, on the second floor. Ethan’s mood brightened. He’d found the place without incident or accident. In ten minutes he’d be unpacked and in a swimsuit, ready to take a walk on the beach.
“It doesn’t look like much,” Mrs. Hamilton said with a sniff.
“Oh, Mom,” Kim scolded. “It looks lovely.”
It looked fine to Ethan. The stucco was freshly painted, the gardens surrounding the building well tended. When he opened the car door, the air that hit him was heavy with heat and thick with the scent of those red flowers.
“Hibiscus,” Kim answered his unasked question. She threw open her door, climbed out and circled the car to him. “I just love the smell of hibiscus. Isn’t this beautiful?” she gushed, as if to nullify her mother’s disparagement of the place.
“As soon as we unpack, let’s go to the beach,” said Ethan.
Kim gazed up at him, her hair golden and her eyes a blue paler than the sea but darker than the cloudless sky. She was beautiful. From the moment Ethan had seen her stepping out of the elevator into the lobby of the building where he’d worked, he’d been almost uncomfortably aware of her beauty. It was as overpowering as the fragrance of those red flowers.
“We’ll have to help Mom and Dad get settled in first,” she said.
“They’re adults. They can get settled in without our help.”
“I really appreciate your taking the convertible couch in the living room,” she added. “I know that wasn’t what you wanted.”
A ripple of resentment passed through him, impeding his evolution to mellowness. Sleeping on the living-room couch was definitely not what he wanted. Paul had told him one bedroom had a queen-size bed and the other had two twins. Ethan had thought he’d been demonstrating admirable selflessness by ceding the queen-size bed to Kim’s parents. He and Kim could snuggle together in one of the twins—and they could rumple the other bed’s blanket each morning so it would appear that they were sleeping separately.
But Kim had maintained that such an arrangement wouldn’t work. They couldn’t sleep in the same room, not with Mom and Dad right across the hall. If they were married—or even, perhaps, if they were just formally engaged—she might consider it. But without anything official declared between them, she just wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing a room with him when her parents were present.
Ethan had contemplated calling off the whole trip at that point. But that would have made him seem like a sex maniac. After all, he and Kim slept together often enough in Connecticut. It wasn’t as if he had to travel all the way to St. Thomas to get his rocks off. For Kim’s sake—for her parents’ sake—he could be a gentleman.
He didn’t have to like it, though.
Unlocking the trunk, he gazed at the array of luggage Kim and her parents had brought. A folding garment bag, a large pullman, a midsize pullman, a tennis tote containing racquets and fresh cans of balls, and two carry-ons—all in a matching tapestry pattern—belonged to Ross and Delia Hamilton. Given the option, Ross probably would have brought his golf clubs, too—and he probably kept them in a golf bag with the same quaint tapestry pattern. Kim had packed an enormous wheeled, leather-trimmed suitcase for herself, as well as an ergonomically designed shoulder tote she’d ordered from a catalog company specially for this trip.
Ethan had fit everything he needed into one modest duffel.
Nonetheless, he knew that as the young man of the party, he’d be the one hauling all the luggage inside.
He hoisted his duffel out of the trunk and slid the strap onto his shoulder. Then he pulled out Kim’s wheeled suitcase and the Hamiltons’ garment bag. “I’ll get the rest in the next round,” he promised the Hamiltons, who had finally emerged from the air-conditioned car into the broiling Caribbean afternoon.
“The condo is air-conditioned, isn’t it?” Delia Hamilton asked her daughter anxiously.
“Of course it is.” Kim grabbed her ergonomic shoulder bag, handed her mother one of the carry-ons and her father the other, then stepped aside so Ethan could close the trunk. Why she didn’t close it herself—she had two free hands, after all—he couldn’t guess, unless it was to prove to her parents that the man she intended to marry was properly chivalrous.
Feeling like a packhorse, he lugged the bags along the walk to the stairway and up to the second floor, the wheeled bag thumping as it hit each riser. Kim and her parents trailed him like baby ducklings following a mother duck. Sweat slicked his face and dampened his collar as he trudged along the open-air corridor to the door marked 614. He balanced the luggage on the concrete floor, then dug into the pockets of his khakis and pulled out the key Paul had given him. It slid easily into the lock. Smiling, he twisted the knob and pushed the door open.
He was greeted by a blast of cold air and an skull-splitting scream.
IN THE HOUR since they’d arrived at Carole’s unit at Palm Point, Alicia had changed into a swimsuit and run circles around Gina, investigating their vacation digs and announcing her discoveries: “They got a microwave, Aunt Gina! Can we make microwave popcorn?” and “This TV doesn’t get the Disney Channel!” and “There’s a balcony!”
That announcement had torn Gina from the dresser drawer into which she’d been dumping her underwear and sent her flying down the hallway, past the bathroom and through the living room to stop Alicia before she ventured onto the balcony. Alicia was seven, and in general she was smart enough not to fling herself over the balcony railing, but “in general” had nothing to do with this week. Alicia was wired. She’d just taken her very first airplane trip, and now she was in an ocean-view condo on a Caribbean island. Remembering to be careful on a balcony would not be high on Alicia’s to-do list.
But when Gina had joined Alicia on the terrace, gazing down the gentle slope toward the palm-studded beach and the vivid blue water beyond, she’d felt almost as wired as her niece. The air smelled tangy and sweet, so different from the usual sour scents of Manhattan in July that Gina could almost believe she was on a different planet, with its own separate atmosphere.
This was exactly what Alicia needed, she’d thought—a safe, happy planet for a week of carefree fun.
“Don’t lean over the railing,” Gina had warned, even though Alicia was too short to fall over accidentally.
Alicia had rolled her eyes and issued a long-suffering sigh. “I know. Look at the beach, Aunt Gina. Isn’t it great? I want to go down there.”
“You’ll have to wait until I finish unpacking.”
“You’re taking too long,” Gina had complained.
“I unpacked all your stuff first so you could put on a swimsuit. Now I’ve got to unpack my stuff. You’ll just have to be patient.”
“I hate being patient.” Alicia had folded her arms across her chest and pouted. Her skin was already golden from swimming at the day-camp pool. Her swimsuit was a garish orange, the color of those vests road construction crews wore to make themselves more visible to passing motorists. Ugly as it was, Gina appreciated the color. It would make Alicia easier to spot on the beach.
“I’ll go finish unpacking, and you will win the Most Patient Girl of the Year award, and then we’ll go to the beach. I promise.”
“Can I have a cookie while I’m being patient?” Alicia had asked.
Gina had asked the cabdriver to stop for ten minutes at a grocery store on the way from the airport to Palm Point so she could stock up on food. She would never complain about New York City cab fares again. Compared with the rates in St. Thomas, New York’s were a bargain. “One cookie,” she’d told Alicia. “If you eat too much, you won’t be able to go in the water.”
“I won’t eat too much,” Alicia had promised her before scampering through the sliding-glass doors and heading for the kitchen.
Gina had returned to the master bedroom, but had bypassed her open suitcase for the window, which offered the same view as the living room and terrace. God, what a beach. What an ocean. What heaven. She and Alicia were going to have the time of their lives—
And then she’d heard the scream.
“Alicia!” she roared, charging out of the bedroom, nailing her shin on the corner of the queen-size bed but not stopping to rub the bruise. “Ali! What?” She stumbled to a halt at the sight of four luggage-bearing strangers hovering in the condo’s open doorway. Actually, only three hovered—an older couple and a young blond woman. Their leader—a man who looked to be about thirty—was standing inside the room, his face glistening with sweat as he let assorted bags and suitcases drop to the carpeted floor at his feet.
Alicia darted from the kitchen to Gina’s side and pressed into her. Gina wrapped an arm protectively around her niece and gaped at the four invaders. They didn’t seem dangerous. Actually, they looked as if they could have stepped out of the pages of a Ralph Lauren fashion spread. The older couple had the refined appearance of people who belonged to elite clubs and indulged in his-and-hers facials. The man wore a blazer with a crest on the pocket and the woman had on the sort of pearl earrings favored by politicians’ wives. The younger woman was almost painfully beautiful. She could be a refugee from one of those teenage cheerleader movies.
If the man in the lead looked a little less polished and a little less sure of himself, it was only because he was sweating and because he’d been loaded down with all the heavy luggage. His reddish-brown hair was mussed, his brows skewed upward and his mouth twisted into a quizzical shape that was half a smile and half a frown. His face intrigued her, all sharp lines and planes, his eyes the color of jade.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
“He said a bad word,” Alicia announced in a stage whisper.
“Hell isn’t always a bad word,” Gina assured her. Alicia didn’t have to know how often her aunt uttered words a lot worse than hell. “It’s just the name of a place.”
“A bad place.”
“We can turn that bad word right back on him, okay?” Gina stared boldly at the man and said, “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. Gina wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for the invasion or only for his language. “There’s obviously been a mistake.”
“Obviously.” If he could be diplomatic, so could she. “I don’t know how you got in here, but you’re in the wrong unit.”
“Six-fourteen,” he said, glancing behind him at the open door, on which that number appeared. He turned back to Gina and lifted his hand so she could see his key. “This is how we got in here.”
There’s obviously been a mistake, she thought, her brain scrambling to figure out just how serious a mistake it was and how she was going to get these strangers out of the unit. “Okay—this is a time-share. We’ve got a key. You’ve got a key. My guess is, someone’s here the wrong week.” You, she wanted to say. You’re here the wrong week.
“We’re here the week of July 19,” the man said calmly.
“Um, no.” Gina smiled. “That’s our week.”
“That’s our week,” the cheerleader said, stepping into the room. “Come in,” she ordered the older couple, “and shut the door. All the air-conditioning is escaping.” She sashayed past the man to confront Gina, who sensed not a hint of diplomacy in her attitude. “This is our week. We planned this trip back in March. This week belongs to Ethan’s friend Paul, and he gave it to us.”
Gina shook her head firmly and felt her smile petrifying into something stiff and lifeless. She didn’t like the cheerleader. The man had opted for courtesy after his initial outburst, but this woman—his wife?—sounded presumptuous and demanding. Gina imagined she was used to getting her way. “This week belongs to my friend Carole, and she’s letting us use it.” She gave Alicia’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
“She’s crazy,” the wife declared, giving her husband an aggrieved frown. “Tell her she’s crazy.”
“She’s not crazy. There’s been a mix-up, that’s all.” He smiled apologetically. Gina decided to absolve him for having said “hell” in front of Alicia. “I’m sure we can work this out, Ms….?”
“Morante. Gina Morante.” Gina extended her hand.
The man shook it. His palm was dry. His face seemed to be drying off, too, as the air-conditioning did its work. “Ethan Parnell,” he introduced himself. “This is Kimberly Hamilton—” he gestured toward the blond woman, who pointedly did not extend her hand “—and her parents, Ross and Delia Hamilton,” he concluded, indicating the older twosome, who remained near the door, looking supremely annoyed.
“And this is my niece, Alicia Bari,” Gina said.
Alicia peered up at the younger pair. “I’m Ali the Alley Cat,” she said, then hid behind Gina and wrapped her arms around Gina’s hips.
“All right.” Ethan Parnell drew in a deep breath. “Obviously, there’s a problem here. We’ve just arrived from the airport and we’re planning to stay in this condo for a week. My friend Paul Collins made the arrangements. I don’t know who your friend is—”
“Carole Weinstock, and she told me this week was hers, and Alicia and I could stay here.”
“Ali,” Alicia murmured into the small of her back. “Ali the Alley Cat.”
Gina reached around to give Alicia another squeeze, then stretched her smile as wide as it would go under the circumstances—which wasn’t very wide. “As you say, there’s been a mix-up. I’ll phone Carole right now.”
“Good idea,” Ethan said with a nod. “Call your friend Carole.”
The cheerleader whispered something harsh to him, but he waved her silent. Gina marched into the kitchen, Alicia still holding her hips and trotting behind her in awkward little steps. Was the cheerleader Ethan’s wife? Gina wondered again. They had different last names, but that didn’t mean anything nowadays. He’d introduced the older couple as her parents, not his in-laws, but that didn’t mean anything, either.
Not that it mattered to Gina. She was going to talk to Carole, get this mess straightened out and send these strangers on their way. This was her week with Alicia, her week to get the kid away from her squabbling parents, who needed the time to decide whether to file for divorce or give their marriage another try—and it would remove Alicia from all the tension. She deserved it, and Aunt Gina lived to make sure her niece got what she deserved.
Alicia abandoned her for the bag of chocolate-chip cookies that lay open on the counter. Gina didn’t know if she’d already had a cookie, but right now she had more important concerns than Alicia’s consumption of junk food. Besides, they were on vacation. Vacations meant extra cookies.
She dialed Carole’s number back in New York and tried to ignore the faint long-distance hiss on the line. It occurred to her that Carole might not be home—but if she wasn’t, Gina would try her cell phone. Carole had to be reached. They had to get this situation resolved.
Fortunately, Carole answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Carole, it’s me, Gina.”
“Gina! Is everything all right? Where are you?”
“I’m in your condo in Palm Point. Everything’s fine—except there’s this family here who say they’ve got the place for this week. They have a key and everything.”
“Everyone who owns a share of the unit has a key,” Carole reminded her. “Who are they?”
“Friends of someone named Paul—” she thought for a minute, then remembered “—Collins.”
“Right, yeah. Paul Collins.”
“You know him?”
“Not personally,” Carole said. “But we traded weeks. Remember when I went down to St. Thomas in January? That was his week.”
“So…you traded him this week?” Gina felt her stomach tighten.
“Originally, yeah. But I was in touch with him after I got back from St. Thomas. I don’t know, mid-February, maybe? And he said he wouldn’t be using the condo in July. He was very definite about it, Gina. No way would he be using the condo.”
“Okay.” Gina’s stomach relaxed, but only a little. The definite Paul Collins had been true to his word; he was not using the condo in July. He’d apparently communicated something a little different to his preppy friends, however. “We’ll work this out,” she told Carole, wishing she felt as certain as she sounded.
“I mean it, Gina. That place is yours for the week. I offered it to you after I talked to Paul, remember? Because he was very clear that he wouldn’t be using the condo.”
“Right.”
“So don’t let those people give you any crap.”
Gina laughed, which helped her stomach to relax some more. “When do I ever let anyone give me any crap?”
“Right. Have a great week. And give Alicia an extra hug from me.”
“I will. Thanks, Carole.” Gina hung up the phone, squared her shoulders and returned to the living room alone. The Hamiltons had moved farther into the room, checking out the bland, functional furniture, the trite seascape paintings on the walls, the spectacular view from the balcony. Gina didn’t like the idea of them making themselves at home. “Carole says,” she announced, “that your friend Paul made it very clear to her—very clear—he wouldn’t be using this place this week.”
“He’s not using it,” Ethan retorted, his voice stern despite his polite veneer. “We are.”
“If he wanted you to use it, he should have told Carole he was using it. He misrepresented his plans to Carole, and I booked my airplane ticket accordingly.” And when the airline had alerted her to their “take-a-friend promotion,” which would enable her to bring someone with her for only fifty dollars more, she’d booked a second airplane ticket. “He misrepresented himself,” she repeated, savoring the word. “I’m afraid that means we’ll be staying here, and you’ll have to make other arrangements.”
A flutter of protest arose from the Hamiltons. Ethan’s jaw clenched, causing a muscle in his cheek to twitch. Great cheeks, Gina noticed—hollow but not sunken, drawing her attention back to his amazing green eyes.
He stepped toward her. She refused to back up—retreating to the kitchen struck her as tantamount to turning the condo over to him—but she had to admit that standing her ground against the tall, quiet man took a lot of guts. Fortunately, she had a lot of guts.
“Paul didn’t misrepresent himself,” Ethan said. “Your friend Carole misunderstood him.”
“It was up to him to make sure she understood him,” Gina argued, working hard to keep her voice as level as his.
“She already had her week here, in January. Did she think she was entitled to two weeks?”
“He said he wasn’t going to use the place this week.”
“He isn’t. We are. You and the little girl will have to find another place to stay.”
His gaze shifted, focusing on something behind Gina. She spun around and saw Alicia standing in the doorway to the kitchen, a half-eaten cookie in her hand and a smear of chocolate on her lower lip. Her eyes shimmered with moisture. “Do we have to leave?” she asked in a tremulous voice. A fat tear slid down her cheek. “I want to go to the beach, Aunt Gina. We don’t have to leave, do we?”
Gina wasn’t sure how to answer. Carole and some ass named Paul Collins had crossed wires, and it seemed to her that Ethan and the Hamiltons had as strong a case for staying as she and Alicia did. But Ethan Parnell’s case wasn’t stronger. She and Gina had as much a right to be here as they did.
And the scale tipped slightly in her favor, because she had something they didn’t have: Alicia. She had a niece for whom she would slay dragons, a niece who’d been through a hellacious few months as her parents’ marriage deteriorated, and now she was crying, and Gina had promised they would go to the beach.
She turned back to Ethan and said, “We’re not leaving.”
CHAPTER TWO
“THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS,” Delia Hamilton huffed. She set her purse on an end table by the sofa, as if staking her claim on the disputed territory. “They can’t stay.”
Ethan flashed her an impatient look. Delicate negotiations were necessary. Issuing ultimatums wouldn’t help. “Mrs. Hamilton—”
“Delia’s right,” Ross piped up. “The woman and her daughter will have to go.”
“She’s my niece,” the woman corrected him. “Not my daughter.”
Ethan wished he could sit down, but that would put him at a tactical disadvantage. The headache that had seized him on the drive flared with renewed vigor, surging up from his neck over the top of his head and cresting at the bridge of his nose. Yes, the woman and her niece would have to go. There had been a monumental screwup, and it was her friend’s fault, and unfortunately, she and her niece would be stuck paying the price.
New York City flowed in her veins—or at least, tripped along her tongue. She had a classic accent, all exaggerated vowels, harsh consonants and a sporadic absence of the letter R. Her straight black hair was chin-length and blunt-cut, her eyes dark, her nose a bit too long for her face and her cheekbones a bit too wide. Her complexion had a tawny olive undertone, making him wonder about her ethnicity. Morante—could be Hispanic, could be Italian. She wore a skintight black tank top covered by a sheer peach-hued shirt, short denim cutoffs that displayed long tanned legs, a black belt with an industrial-strength buckle and thick-soled leather sandals that made her feet look disproportionately tiny. His gaze strayed repeatedly to her feet. The skin of her insteps was unusually smooth and her toes were perfect little knobs tipped with pearl-hued polish. The second toe of her left foot sported a silver ring.
“I’m sure we can work something out,” he said, although he was sure of no such thing. He forced his attention away from her feet and his gaze slid up those long legs again, the snug-fitting shorts, the black top that emphasized the swell of her bosom, her slender neck and pointy chin and those wide, sharp cheekbones. Silver hoops pierced her ears, two hoops per lobe. Nothing about her looked bland or boring—or safe.
She extended her arms to her niece, who obviously considered Gina the safest person in the room. The little girl ran into her aunt’s embrace, sniffling and whimpering. “I don’t want to leave,” she sobbed into Gina’s stomach. She had on a garish orange swimsuit, her hair was pulled into a lopsided ponytail and small gold dots adorned her ears. Gina Morante hugged her tightly.
How could the Hamiltons evict these women? Where would they go? Would Ross put them out in the street? Would Delia exile them to the airport?
“They can’t stay here,” Ross remarked, as if he felt Ethan needed a reminder.
“We can’t just kick them out,” Ethan retorted.
“Ethan.” Kim’s voice was like a stiletto, searching for the tenderest part of his headache and impaling it. “They can’t stay.”
“Excuse me,” Gina said to Kim, her voice more of a broadsword than a stiletto, whacking rather than stabbing. “This isn’t for you to decide, honey. Alicia and I have every right to be here. Just because there are four of you and two of us doesn’t mean you get to vote us off the island. We’re here because your buddy Paul failed to communicate his intentions to my friend Carole. This situation is his fault, not mine and not Alicia’s.”
If Kim were a cat, she’d be arching her back and hissing. She was a woman, though, so she only crackled with electrifying anger, her upper lip twitching and her eyes narrowing on Gina. “Your friend Carole is obviously a complete imbecile. I’m sorry you don’t have smarter friends, honey, but that’s your choice. We’re staying here this week. So get your things and clear out.”
Ethan shook his head. He could tell just by looking at Gina Morante that she wasn’t the sort of woman anyone could issue orders to. She pulled herself to her full height—a good three inches taller than Kim—and flexed her shoulders, which appeared inordinately powerful beneath the narrow straps of her skimpy tank top. Her eyes might be dark, but they flashed like lightning. “We’re staying,” she declared, her arms closing more tightly around her weeping niece.
“Okay.” Ethan rubbed his temples and pinched the bridge of his nose in a futile attempt to massage his headache away. He glanced toward Kim, and was met with an indignant glower. Turning back to Gina, he saw steely resolve. “Either Paul or Carole screwed up. Or it was a joint screwup and they’re equally to blame. It doesn’t matter. We’re going to have to come up with a compromise. It’s off-season, right? There must be an available hotel room in the vicinity.” He gave Gina a hopeful smile.
“You want us to move to a hotel room?”
“That would make the most sense.”
“And we’re supposed to pay for this hotel room how?”
He opened his mouth and then shut it. He had no idea what her financial circumstances were, but he supposed that even off-season, a week in a resort comparable to Palm Point was going to cost upward of a thousand dollars.
“I’ll pay for the damn hotel room,” Ross Hamilton interjected. “Find one and move out, for God’s sake. I’ll pay the damn bill.”
“He’s saying bad words,” the little girl murmured between sobs.
“I don’t want to move to a hotel,” Gina argued. “I want to stay here. It’s got a kitchen. We’re entitled to stay here. This is Carole’s week.”
“Carole is an idiot,” Kim snapped.
Gina glared at Kim. “Carole is a better person than you’ll ever be. She’s a pediatrician. She saves children’s lives. How many children’s lives have you saved lately?”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Kim retorted. “I don’t care how many children’s lives she saved. She’s an idiot!”
“Enough.” Ethan held up both hands like a cop halting traffic in all directions. He waited for both women to subside. Kim simmered. Gina remained just as she was, posture straight, head high, dark eyes shooting lightning bolts in Kim’s direction. “Mr. Hamilton has generously agreed to cover the cost of a hotel. Ms. Morante, this is an extraordinary gesture. You really ought to—”
“He wants to pay for a hotel room? Great. Let him pay for it and stay there himself. I don’t want to stay in a hotel. I want to stay here, where I can fix Alicia meals. I like the location. I like the setup. We’re already unpacked here. We’re not leaving.” She sent a frosty smile Ross’s way. “Thanks for offering, though.”
“Your friend made a mistake,” Ethan tried.
She turned back to him, and he nearly staggered under the force of her gaze. “My friend or yours. Or they both did equally, like you said.”
He sighed. She was right. He could phone Paul, but even if Paul swore he’d made his plans for the condo clear to her friend Carole, it would only be a case of he-said-she-said. Without concrete proof, he couldn’t assign the blame to one friend or the other.
“Why don’t we stay at a hotel?” Delia Hamilton suddenly spoke up. “Isn’t there a Ritz-Carlton here on the island? Or something of that quality? Frankly, Ross, having to make my own bed isn’t my idea of a vacation. If we go to the hotel, we’ll have maid service, room service, all the amenities.”
“You want all four of us to go to a hotel?” Ross frowned, his chiseled face contracting into a maze of creases. “I offered to pay for one room, not three. We could do it in two rooms, I suppose, if you and Kimberly share one room and Ethan and I…” He glared at Ethan and shuddered.
Trust me, Ethan wanted to say, the feeling’s mutual.
“How about just you and me?” Delia suggested. “We passed several hotels not far from here. If one of them is nice enough and has a room, we could stay there. We’d be near the children. Kim could have the main bedroom here, Ethan was planning to stay on the sofa anyway and those two—” she waved disdainfully at Gina and her niece “—can have the other bedroom.”
“You’d want our Kimberly sharing an apartment with a total stranger?” Ross seemed horrified.
“Ethan will be here to protect her. And this woman says she’s not leaving.”
Ethan eyed Delia with newfound respect. Maybe she was a shopaholic. Maybe she was a frivolous club lady. But she’d come up with the solution Ethan had been contemplating but hadn’t dared to voice. If he’d suggested it, Ross and Kim would have jumped down his throat. Delia they had to listen to, because she was their wife and mother.
“The woman should leave,” Ross growled.
“The woman has a name,” Gina reminded him. “And the woman has as much right to stay here as you do. But hey, your wife wants a hotel room. This ain’t the Ritz.”
Ethan shot her a look and saw a hint of a grin tracing her lips. He struggled not to grin back.
“Actually,” Kim interjected, giving Gina a smile as authentic as a cubic zirconium solitaire, “I think Ethan and I could share this place with Ms. Morante and her daughter. Her niece, I mean.” Her smile grew even brighter, expanding from one carat to two. “Dad, you and Mom could have a little privacy. If you’re paying for the hotel anyway, you may as well get all the benefits of staying there. Why don’t we see if we can get you a nice room at one of the hotels we passed?”
“Or you know, there might even be another empty unit here at Palm Point,” Ethan said. “I’m sure there’s a manager. We could see if anything’s available here.”
“Nonsense.” Delia clearly had her heart set on maid service. And Kim, Ethan could guess, had her heart set on getting her parents out of the condo so she and Ethan could sleep together. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that; cohabiting in the condo with Gina Morante and a melodramatic young girl might prove inhibiting. He had little experience with children. He couldn’t even guess how old this Ali the Alley-Cat was. But he doubted he’d feel comfortable making love with Kim when there was a chance the kid might barge in on them.
Or Gina Morante.
If he could lock the bedroom door, maybe…But his gaze wandered back to Gina, her angular face and her geometric black hair and those wild, dark eyes. And for some unfathomable reason, he thought sleeping on the couch might be the best thing for him to do.
WHILE THE country-club people fluttered about, conferring, making phone calls and murmuring bad words, Gina emptied the master bedroom’s drawers of her things and carried her suitcase into the second bedroom. It didn’t have the beautiful ocean view the master bedroom boasted, and a twin bed wasn’t a queen. But she couldn’t come up with a better solution to their dilemma—except for kicking the country-club people out and sending them all to the Ritz-Carlton or whatever fancy hotel they wanted. Sharing this condo with two strangers wasn’t Gina’s idea of the perfect vacation.
Their friend had told Carole he wasn’t going to use the condo this week. She knew Carole wasn’t lying. Their friend had misrepresented his plans. But Gina couldn’t prove it. So she was stuck.
She and Alicia would survive. She was good at making the best of bad situations. When she’d gotten expelled from Our Lady of Mercy in eighth grade for asking why, if God didn’t want people to use birth control, he’d created human beings smart enough invent things like condoms and the pill, she’d quickly thrown together a portfolio of her scribblings and submitted them, along with an application, to the LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, which had seen enough talent in those scribblings—or enough chutzpah in Gina—to grant her a place in the freshman class. When she’d gotten cited for running a red light in Forest Hills a year and a half ago, she’d not only talked the cop out of giving her a ticket but wound up dating him for more than a year. And when he’d broken up with her, complaining that she spent too much time with all her weirdo friends, she’d phoned Bruno, the weirdest of her friends, and told him he would to have to escort her to every party she got invited to until she reached the point where she could think of Officer Kyle Cronin without either sobbing or cursing. It had taken more than a month, and a lot of truly awful parties, but by the time Gina had stopped sobbing and cursing, she’d talked herself into a job as Bruno’s assistant. She didn’t want to model sandals and mules for the rest of her life, after all. She wanted to create sandals and mules, and working for Bruno would give her that opportunity.
Right now, all she wanted to create was a wonderful week for Alicia. So it wouldn’t be perfect. At least it would be good.
She carried her suitcase into Alicia’s room, ignoring the quartet huddling in the kitchen. Alicia sat on her bed, knees tucked against her chest and arms hugging her shins. “When can we go to the beach?” she asked.
“As soon as I unpack.”
“Are those people gonna leave?”
“Some of them. The older ones, I think. We’ll just have to put up with the younger ones.”
“I don’t like the lady,” Alicia said solemnly. “She’s mean.”
She’s a first-class bitch, Gina wanted to say, but then Alicia would scold her for using bad words. “We can steer clear of her.”
“The man is okay, though. He’s very handsome.”
“Is he?” He was a bit too clean-cut and conservative for Gina’s tastes, his apparel obviously expensive and his attitude reeking of superior breeding and privilege. But she would have had to be blind not to notice how handsome he was. She bet his auburn hair would catch fire with red highlights when the sunlight struck it. And his eyes glinted with curiosity and—all right, call it sex appeal. And intelligence. He looked like the sort of person who spent a lot of time deep in thought.
Of course, that could be a pose. He could be a moron, the blonde’s puppet. They were obviously a couple. Not married, though. Neither wore wedding bands. Besides, if they were married, the blonde’s parents wouldn’t be talking about his sleeping on the sofa.
Then again, Gina knew married people who slept apart. In particular, Ramona and Jack Bari, Alicia’s embattled parents. Neither of them was wearing a wedding band these days.
Great. She’d brought Alicia to St. Thomas to get her away from her dysfunctional parents for a week. Was the poor kid going to wind up spending that week in the company of another dysfunctional couple?
“I’m almost done,” Gina announced, pulling a pair of black jeans and a wraparound silk skirt from the suitcase and carrying them to the closet. She and Gina had both packed light, but they’d managed to fill every drawer in the dresser. “Let me put on a swimsuit, and then beach, here we come!”
“Beach, here we come!” Alicia echoed gleefully, shedding the last traces of her distress.
Gina carried her black bikini across the hall to the bathroom. The powwow was still going strong in the kitchen. Shutting the door, she looked around the small room. Her toiletries and Alicia’s already took up most of the counter space. Well, Ethan and Blondie would just have to make do. They were getting the bedroom with the beautiful view; they could keep their toiletries on the windowsill, and they could admire the ocean while they put on their deodorant. And they’d better not hog the bathroom, either. They’d better not take erotic two-hour showers together. She glanced up at the showerhead and sighed, dismayed to see it was one of those adjustable pulsing spouts. Ideal for lovers, she thought sourly.
Her bikini on, she emerged from the bathroom, carrying two beach towels from the shelf above the towel rack. Ethan was entering the living room from the kitchen, but he froze in midstep when he saw her crossing the hall to her bedroom. She halted and stared back at him. “Something wrong?”
He swallowed. “No.”
“Good.” She continued into the bedroom, then glimpsed her reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Her swimsuit wasn’t the most modest in the world, but everything that needed to be covered was covered. If he couldn’t handle her walking around the condo in beachwear, he could move to the Ritz-Carlton with Blondie’s parents.
“All set,” she announced, tossing Alicia a towel and then pulling from the closet shelf the plastic bucket and shovel she’d remembered to pack. “Beach, here we come!”
“Beach, here we come!” Alicia yelled as she scampered out of the room.
HE’D FORGOTTEN the swimsuit part.
Well, he hadn’t forgotten it. He just hadn’t thought about it. And why should he? He’d gone to beaches before—the sandy Long Island Sound beaches at yacht clubs on Connecticut’s south shore, the pebbly peaceful beaches of the lakes dotting the state’s northwest corner, the high-surf ocean beaches of Cape Cod’s National Seashore. Every beach he’d ever been on had included bikini-clad women among the bathers and sun worshipers.
But seeing a bikini-clad woman on a beach was far different from seeing one wandering around a shared apartment. And seeing any bikini-clad woman was different from seeing a bikini-clad Gina Morante.
Feature for feature, Kim had her beaten by a mile. Kim’s beauty was of a quality that would cause the vast majority of heterosexual men to reel in astonishment. Her gently waving, corn-colored hair, her delicate little nose and softly curving lips, her body round in all the right places—she was a perfect ten.
Gina, on the other hand…Her revealing black bikini had made her legs look almost too long, and her breasts were kind of small in proportion to her hips, and her facial features were too pronounced. Yet if Kim was a beauty queen, Gina carried herself like a real queen, chin high, arms swinging, those wide strong shoulders held straight and proud. She radiated…something. He wasn’t sure if it was confidence or sexuality or—damn it, balls. She was tough. Gentle with her niece but fierce with the world—or at least, with that small segment of the world that had tried to oust her from unit 614 for the week.
When she reemerged from her room with the kid, she had the decency to wear a lacy white cover-up over her bikini. It didn’t hide much, but it distracted him from what was underneath. She sent him a smile that had a hint of teasing in it, and swung a bright green toy pail and shovel and a colorful tote bag as she guided her niece out the door.
“That’s taken care of,” Ross Hamilton announced, joining Ethan in the living room. He looked grim and patronizing, as if he considered Ethan an irredeemable loser, too inept to arrange a sensible vacation. “We’ve got our reservation. What a disaster.”
“The reservation?”
“No—this entire situation. You’ll convey our displeasure to your friend Paul, won’t you?”
“I’ll let him know,” Ethan promised. “Do you want me to drive you and Mrs. Hamilton over to the hotel now?”
“I’d like to look around here first,” Delia said as she trailed out of the kitchen with Kim. “We’re not going to stay here, but we can at least check out the place. Because I don’t know how much time we’ll want to spend at Palm Point when those two—people are here,” she concluded, uttering the word as though it were the worst sort of insult. “You may wind up spending most of your time with us at the hotel.” She seemed distinctly cheered by the possibility.
Ethan couldn’t imagine spending most of his time with the Hamiltons at the hotel. He’d rather hang out with a two strangers than with Kim’s pompous parents. If he did ultimately decide to marry Kim, he’d make sure they never lived anywhere near Chevy Chase, Maryland—unless, of course, the Hamiltons moved to Nova Scotia.
“This bedroom is pretty. This is the one you’ll be staying in,” Delia declared as she and Kim wandered into the master bedroom. “Is it clean? Do they just shove the dust around, or do they do a real cleaning, with furniture polish?”
Not wishing to hear her assessment of the room’s cleanliness, Ethan headed out onto the terrace. A breeze drifting up from the water fluttered the palm fronds and distorted the voices of the people enjoying the beach. Off toward the horizon, a rainbow-colored sail bobbed above the water. Closer to the shore, people waded in the water and floated on the surface, snorkeling gear strapped to their heads.
Ethan’s gaze zeroed in on Gina and her niece as they set up shop in the shade of a palm. He told himself he’d spotted them instantly because of the Day-Glo brightness of the kid’s swimsuit, but in fact Gina had attracted his attention. She’d shed the lacy cover-up, and even at this distance, he could see the curve of her back, the wind sifting through her hair.
“She’s not very respectful,” Ross Hamilton noted, sidling up beside Ethan and resting his hands on the railing. Ethan followed his gaze; it led him back to Gina. “Obviously not well-bred. I don’t like her attitude.”
“She probably just felt awkward,” Ethan defended her. “Her friend screwed up, and she was put on the defensive. She’ll be all right.”
“Well, if it doesn’t work out, we’ll get another room at the hotel. But I must say, I’m not thrilled about this unexpected expenditure.”
“I’ll talk to Paul about it.” And say what? That Paul should reimburse Ross Hamilton for the hotel room? This wasn’t Paul’s fault, any more than it was Ethan’s—or Gina’s.
“Delia seems to be making the best of it,” Ross said wryly. “Give her room service and she’s as happy as a duffer who’s just gotten a hole in one. As for that woman…” He gestured toward the beach, where Gina was now on her knees, scooping up sand with her bare hands. Ethan couldn’t see her smile, but he could imagine it. “I’d keep my things locked up if I were you.”
“You believe she’s a thief?” Ethan laughed.
“I don’t know what she is. Neither do you. Don’t let your guard down.”
Ethan wouldn’t—but fear that Gina Morante would abscond with his money and credit cards wasn’t his primary reason. What he had to guard against was the keen awareness she aroused within him. There was no good explanation for it, other than basic hormones, the typical male response to a woman strutting around in skimpy swimwear.
Gina wasn’t his type. She was too urban, too gritty. He liked his women sweet and refined. Not pliant—Kim certainly wasn’t pliant, but she was genteel. Ladylike. Gracious, except when her dander was up. She was elegant, subtle, the sort of woman who made him feel he was the most important man in the world.
So he had an ego. So he liked the way Kim stroked it. He wasn’t going to apologize for being human.
A wisp of laughter spiraled through the air to the terrace. He had no way of tracing it to a particular person, but he suspected it was Gina’s. Hers and her niece’s. Their heads bowed and their knees touching, they dug in the sand, looking not the least bit elegant or refined or subtle.
They were obviously having a blast. And for one brief, incomprehensible moment, Ethan wished he were down there on the beach with them, digging.
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN GINA AND ALICIA returned to the condo, the country clubbers were gone. “Did they leave?” Alicia asked with what sounded like a combination of hope and dread.
Gina found several suitcases in the master bedroom, implying that the younger half of their group intended to stay at the condo with her and Alicia, as they’d said they would. They were probably gone only temporarily, moving the older half into a luxurious hotel room somewhere. “I think we’re stuck with them,” she told Alicia. “But we’ll just go ahead and have our vacation as if they weren’t here.”
She made Alicia shower to wash off all the sand that dusted her arms and legs and clogged the cracks between her toes, then took a quick shower, too. She hadn’t packed a bathrobe—she hadn’t expected to need one—but when she peeked out around the bathroom door, she saw and heard nothing to indicate that Ethan and the cheerleader had returned. Wrapping a bath towel around her, just in case, she darted across the hall to the bedroom she and Alicia were now sharing. She was used to living alone in her studio apartment in Chelsea, where as long as the shades were drawn shut she could move around her home wearing as much or as little as she wished. Of course, she would have been discreet even if she’d been sharing Carole’s condo only with Alicia. Seven-year-old nieces should never be flashed by their aunts. But wearing a large bath towel was as discreet as she needed to be for Alicia.
She slipped into a light cotton shift, rubbed some moisturizing lotion into her cheeks and her legs and grabbed her purse. “There’s a restaurant at the hotel just down the beach,” she informed Alicia. “You ready for dinner?”
Unlike their housemates, she and Alicia lacked wheels. Fortunately, the restaurant she had in mind was a short ways down a path that was part boardwalk and part brick, lined with beach grass, sand and palm trees. Since she didn’t have to drive home afterward, Gina happily indulged in a tall, frosty piña colada along with her grilled grouper and vegetables. Alicia wolfed down a burger, a basket of fries and a dish of vanilla ice cream with butterscotch sauce. However many cookies she’d devoured before they’d left for the beach, the snack hadn’t interfered with her appetite.
During the early days of Ramona’s marital crisis, Gina’s sister had confided that Alicia wasn’t eating much. The poor kid had lost a couple of pounds during the past spring, and she didn’t have any weight to spare. But her appetite seemed fine right now. Even the invasion of strangers into their condo hadn’t upset her enough to keep her from enjoying her dinner. Gina was grateful for that.
“I like the way it smells,” Alicia said as they strolled back along the boardwalk toward Palm Point. She held Gina’s hand and added a little skip to her step. “It smells hot.”
“It is hot,” Gina pointed out. “I think what you’re smelling is the ocean and all the plants and flowers.”
“This isn’t the ocean,” Alicia argued. “The ocean is gray.”
“Up north it is. Down here it’s turquoise. I guess this is actually a sea, anyway. The Caribbean Sea.”
“The Carrybeaner Sea,” Alicia said. Gina didn’t bother to correct her. “Can we do that thing with the tubes tomorrow? What’s it called? The thing with the masks and the tubes.”
“Snorkeling. Sure.” Gina pointed to a cabanalike building on the pool patio near the beach. “We can rent some equipment there.”
“Is it hard?” Alicia peered up at her bravely. “I want to do it anyway, but is it hard?”
“No. It’s really easy.” Gina had tried snorkeling a couple of years ago, when she and a couple of friends had spent a long weekend at a lakeside inn in the Poconos Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania. The most interesting marine life they’d seen through their masks had been minnows flashing past them and underwater reeds that billowed and danced every time had Gina kicked her flippered feet. It had been fun—and very easy. Alicia knew how to swim; snorkeling would come naturally to her.
Alicia sighed. “I love it here. Can we stay forever?”
Gina might have argued that Alicia hadn’t been in St. Thomas long enough to fall in love. She suspected that what her niece loved was being far away from her feuding parents. “I wish we could stay here forever, too,” she admitted. “No more work, and no more school for you—” a prospect that roused a cheer from Alicia “—and every day at the beach. And dinner at a restaurant every night. I could get into that.”
“Then let’s stay!”
“But we’d run out of money,” Gina pointed out. “And after a while you’d miss your friends.” She didn’t dare suggest Alicia would miss her parents. “And you’d never learn algebra.”
“You can teach me. What’s algebra?”
“It’s a kind of math you have to learn in ninth grade.” And then never use again, Gina thought, although she actually did use math a fair amount in designing shoes. Not algebra specifically, but she supposed all those years she’d spent in high school, learning trig and history and the periodic table, did her as much good as the classes she’d taken in design and sculpture and color theory.
They had reached the Palm Point pool, which gave off a faint whiff of chlorine. The sky stretched salmon pink above them, and the tide carried a constant breeze in on the waves. If Gina hadn’t brought Alicia with her to St. Thomas, she’d probably be only just getting ready to go out now. She’d have located a club where she could stay until closing time, consuming fruity tropical drinks and dancing until she was sweaty and every muscle in her body ached. She loved dancing, especially with people who smiled, laughed and danced as enthusiastically as she did. She never went to clubs to pick up guys. She just wanted to enjoy the music with them.
But strolling through the humid tropical evening with Alicia had its own satisfactions, most of them at least as gratifying as dancing at a club would have been. Maybe she’d teach Alicia how to dance, and they could blast songs on the radio in the condo and dance around the living room.
No, they couldn’t. Not with Ethan and What’s-her-face sharing the unit.
Ethan and What’s-her-face were still gone when Gina let Alicia and herself into the condo. They’d unpacked their things in the master bedroom, though. Gina was going to hate spending her week so conscious of them, alert to their presence and their absence, wondering when they would arrive and when they would depart. Alicia seemed more relaxed about the arrangement, however. She flopped onto the sofa, turned on the TV and flipped through the channels until she found a Spanish-language station. A variety show was on—lots of showgirls in skimpy outfits with fluffy feathers attached in strategic places, everyone speaking machine-gun-rapid Spanish. Alicia giggled. “We get this channel at home,” she said.
“Good. Maybe you’ll learn some Spanish,” Gina suggested, crossing to the kitchen for a can of soda. Swinging open the fridge, she spotted a six-pack of beer that hadn’t been there before—a local brew with Bluebeard the pirate on the label—as well as a red-waxed sphere of Gouda and a jar of olives. Ethan and Blondie must have gone shopping. Their grocery list clearly differed from Gina’s, which had included such gourmet delicacies as cornflakes, milk, peanut butter, bread and bananas.
The beer tempted. What would those people do if Gina helped herself to a bottle? Would they bill her? Short-sheet her bed? Toss her over the balcony?
She’d had enough roommates in her life—starting with her sister, Ramona, and including fellow students at the Rhode Island School of Design, a couple of apartment mates boasting various levels of neatness, consideration and integrity, and six other people one summer when a friend had talked her into participating in a group rental in Southampton. Every Friday, she’d spent two hours on an overcrowded train to reach their overcrowded bungalow three miles from the beach, where she’d slept on a mattress on the floor and argued with a ditzy platinum-blond wanna-be actress who was always leaving her shoes in the middle of the kitchen floor and a junior stockbroker who had loud sex with a different woman every night, and a social-climbing gay couple who bickered incessantly about which parties to crash. She still remembered the scream fest that had erupted when the stockbroker had helped himself to the gay guys’ orange juice. World War Three would not be so cataclysmic.
No, Gina wouldn’t take a bottle of beer. The last thing she wanted Alicia to witness this week was a fight.
She popped open a can of her own Diet Coke, wandered back into the living room, settled on the sofa next to Alicia and kicked off her sandals. She didn’t want to watch Mexico’s answer to the Rockettes, so she flipped through the channels until she found a nature show on yaks.
“This looks good,” Alicia said, snuggling up to Gina.
Gina arched her arm around her precious niece and planted a kiss on Alicia’s silky black hair. “It looks great,” she said, settling back into the cushions and grinning.
ETHAN COULD COME UP with an extensive list of reasons for his insomnia: a strange bed, a strange room, a strange climate. Jet lag—although flying south and losing only one hour shouldn’t have thrown him off that badly. Irritation with Kim’s parents—that was a likely culprit. Irritation with Kim. Guilt over being in bed with her after implying to her parents that he would sleep on the couch. Guilt over being in bed with her and not wanting to make love.
Awareness of Gina Morante.
He felt guilt about that, too. Major guilt. Kim slept soundly on her half of the bed, the familiar scent of her face cream wafting into the air around him. But he picked up a different scent, faint, almost subliminal. Gina’s scent.
Kim hadn’t seemed upset when he’d gently rebuffed her attempt to seduce him. “I’m beat,” he’d explained, a perfectly reasonable excuse. He’d endured a long flight with a ninety-minute layover in Atlanta, the stress of driving on the wrong side of the road, the much greater stress of behaving courteously toward Kim’s overbearing parents, the hauling of luggage to the unit in Palm Point, the scaring up of a suitable hotel room at a resort down the road, more driving, stocking up on drinks and snacks, unpacking the groceries and the suitcases, dressing for dinner, enduring a three-hour meal with the Hamiltons, complete with aperitifs and a fifty-year-old bottle of wine, listening to Ross and Delia describe all the far superior resorts where they had vacationed over the years and bobbing and weaving through an interrogation concerning Ethan’s politics, which were located a good few miles to the left of Ross Hamilton’s. Ethan and Kim had dropped her parents off at their hotel and returned to Palm Point at around eleven. He hadn’t been lying to her when he’d said he was too tired to do anything more than brush his teeth and fall into bed.
Falling into bed was easy. Falling asleep proved a much greater challenge.
He pictured Gina in her narrow bed across the hall. He pictured her niece in the other bed. What kind of woman vacationed with her niece? Gina seemed too funky to be an aunt. Aunts didn’t wear toe rings, did they?
He tried to imagine Kim wearing a toe ring, then chastised himself for comparing her with Gina. They were two different women. Two very different women. Kim was a human resources executive at an insurance company in Hartford. Gina Morante looked like a chichi sales clerk at a SoHo boutique, or maybe a waitress at one of the trendier midtown restaurants. Kim wore tailored suits and dresses to work every day. The only kind of dress Ethan could imagine Gina wearing would be short, sheer or both. To hide those legs of hers would be a crime.
And he was a bastard for even thinking such a thing while his almost-fiancée slept beside him.
He drifted in and out of a slumber until sounds beyond the door alerted him that Gina and her niece had arisen. He remained in bed, thinking he might sleep more easily if they were in the kitchen, at the opposite end of the apartment. But when he closed his eyes, he was kept from sinking into dreamland by a memory of them as they’d looked from the balcony yesterday, digging in the sand, bowing their heads together and laughing.
Finally, unable to force himself to lie still any longer, he slid out of bed and moved silently to avoid rousing Kim. After donning a pair of khaki shorts and a polo shirt, he tiptoed out of the bedroom.
Their hushed voices rippled down the hall like a gentle current. The bathroom was empty, so he made use of it before heading to the kitchen.
The kid was seated at the small table, a heaping bowl of cold cereal before her. Gina stood leaning against the counter, holding a bowl of what appeared to be yogurt and sliced bananas. The room was filled with the soul-stirring aroma of freshly brewed coffee. He and Kim should have bought coffee yesterday when they’d stopped at a local convenience store to purchase beer, imported bottled water, macadamia nuts, cheese and other such necessities. Kim had insisted they wouldn’t need coffee, since they would be meeting her parents for breakfast every morning. But right now, inhaling the fragrance of Gina’s coffee, he realized that Kim had been wrong.
“Good morning,” Gina greeted him. From her, the word came out mawn-ing.
“Good morning,” he responded, rubbing his hand through his hair. He should have brushed it while he’d had access to the mirror above the bathroom sink, but he’d left his brush in the bedroom. Gina and her niece had monopolized the shelf space in the bathroom.
His eyes took a moment to adjust to the sunny brightness of the kitchen, and then went to work processing the sight of Gina, dressed today in a lime-green T-shirt and short white shorts. She was barefoot except for the silver ring circling one of her left toes. The sight of it jolted him in some way, and he lifted his gaze to her face. She’d pulled a hank of her hair back from her face and clasped it with a large barrette, the way a child might wear her hair. On her, it didn’t look childish.
“I hope we didn’t wake you up,” she said. “We were trying to keep quiet.”
“You were very quiet. Thank you.” He gestured toward the hallway. “Kim’s still dead to the world.”
“You want some coffee?”
Desperately, but he should decline. If he drank her coffee, it would represent an unseemly mingling of their vacations. Yet when he watched her reach for the large ceramic mug on the counter beside her, lift it to her lips and take a sip, he couldn’t resist. “I’d love some.”
“Help yourself. The cups are in that cabinet.” She gestured toward the cabinet above the coffeemaker. “I bought a pound of ground beans and there’s no way I’m going to finish it all by myself in one week. So really, help yourself whenever you want some. I found a stash of filters in the cabinet with the napkins and paper towels.”
“I’m too young for coffee,” the little girl announced as she patted the cereal flakes beneath the surface of the milk in her bowl. “We’re going snorkeling today.”
“Are you?” Okay. He could handle this—drinking Gina’s coffee and making small talk with her niece. Despite his lack of experience with children, he figured that discussing snorkeling with a spunky little girl couldn’t be any harder than discussing politics with Ross Hamilton.
“Aunt Gina says it’s easy.”
“Aunt Gina knows what she’s talking about,” he confirmed as he filled a mug with coffee for himself. The fragrance flooded him like an elixir, sparking inside him the notion that sharing the condo with Gina and the kid was actually a stroke of luck. If they hadn’t been there, he would be having his first conversation of the day with Kim’s father—after having spent the night on the couch.
“You could come snorkeling with us,” the girl said.
He glanced sharply at Gina, who shrugged noncommittally. “They rent gear at the cabana on the beach. There’s milk in the fridge, by the way. No sugar, though. I don’t use it, so I didn’t buy any.”
He sipped his coffee, then shook his head. “I drink it black. Thanks. It’s wonderful.”
“They have good water here,” she said. “Coffee tastes different depending on the water you brew it with. This—” she raised her mug toward him, as if proposing a toast “—is delicious. Must mean the water is good.”
He thought of the bottled water Kim had insisted on buying, even after he’d pointed out that St. Thomas was part of the United States and he was sure its water had passed U.S. health standards.
“So, you wanna go snorkeling with us?” the child insisted.
“Ali, he’s here on his own vacation,” Gina reminded her. “He’ll be doing things with the people he came with.”
“They could come, too. They could get snorkeling stuff at the casino.”
“Cabana.”
“Yeah.” The girl scooped a mound of cereal into her mouth, chewed and gave him a toothy grin. “Aunt Gina says we’ll see fish. I wanna see an octopus.”
“I don’t know how many fish come to this beach. There’s another beach about a mile up the coast that’s supposed to be incredible for snorkeling,” Ethan informed them.
Gina’s dark eyes widened with interest. “Really?”
He felt absurdly proud of his knowledge. “Paul—the friend who owns a share of this unit—mentioned a beach to me. Coki Beach, I think it’s called. There’s even better snorkeling on St. John, but you have to take the ferry to get there.”
“Coki Beach?”
She looked so interested, so grateful for his knowledge. His ego inflated a bit more. “Just a mile or so west of here.”
“Can we go?” The girl twisted in her seat and gazed eagerly at her aunt. “Can we go there?”
“I don’t know. We’d have to get a cab, I guess. Or there might be a public jitney.”
“What’s a jitney?”
“Kind of like a bus.”
“I could—” Ethan cut himself off before completing the sentence: I could drive you there. Maybe he could; maybe he couldn’t. He’d rented the car for the convenience of the Hamiltons, not a strange woman and her niece.
Of course, if he and Kim went snorkeling with Gina and the kid, they could all drive there together, and leave Kim’s parents to fend for themselves. Why not? The Hamiltons were residing at a luxurious hotel. They could get massages and drink Absolut vodka martinis while lounging by the pool. Or they could hit the links. Given a choice between snorkeling and golf, Ethan couldn’t imagine choosing golf—and he couldn’t imagine Ross Hamilton choosing snorkeling.
Maybe this whole time-share disaster would turn out to be a huge blessing. Ethan and Kim could do things with Gina and her niece and ignore Kim’s parents. The time he’d spent with them on the flight to St. Thomas and last night at dinner was enough to convince him that an in-law relationship with them would never be a close, loving bond. He really ought to withhold judgment until he’d spent more than one day in their company, but where people were concerned, his instincts were usually pretty accurate. He’d known, within minutes of glimpsing Kim, that they would wind up in bed together, and that the experience would be spectacular. They had, and it was. And here he was, having spent a grand total of less than an hour in Gina Morante’s company, and he knew…
He knew they would get along. Beyond that, he didn’t want to know what he knew.
So they’d go snorkeling together. He’d sacrifice his evenings to Ross and Delia Hamilton, but surely he didn’t have to sacrifice his days to them, too.
The sound of footsteps padding down the carpeted hall caused him to turn. Kim, clad in a tennis skirt and top, her hair pulled into a bouncy ponytail, materialized in the doorway.
“Good morning,” Gina greeted her in her distinctive New York accent.
Kim managed a cool smile, then turned to Ethan. “You aren’t eating breakfast, are you? We’re supposed to meet Mom and Dad at the hotel at nine.”
“Just a cup of coffee,” he said, then nodded toward Gina. “Gina generously offered me some.”
Gina glanced toward the coffeepot, which was nearly empty. “I could make some more,” she said.
“That won’t be necessary,” Kim assured her. “But thank you for offering.”
“He’s going snorkeling with us,” the kid announced.
One of Kim’s eyebrows ascended and the other dipped, enabling her to look simultaneously quizzical and skeptical. “Is he?” she asked, her elegant blue eyes boring into him.
“We were just talking about it,” he said, refusing to succumb to her potent stare. Others quaked and quailed in the icy potency of her disapproval, but he never did—which, he suspected, was one of his main attractions for her. “Paul mentioned a place called Coki Beach, where the snorkeling is supposed to be phenomenal.”
“We’re meeting Mom and Dad for breakfast,” she said.
“Breakfast isn’t going to take the whole day. We could go snorkeling after breakfast.”
“I was hoping we could go to Charlotte Amalie.”
“Kim, we’re not going to spend this entire week shopping.” His voice was gentle, but he hoped she’d heard the warning in it.
She pursed her lovely pink lips, indicating that she had. “I know that,” she said crisply. “I thought we could go downtown today and get a feel for the place. We don’t have to go snorkeling on these people’s schedule.” She waved her hand vaguely toward Gina and the kid.
Ethan knew she didn’t intend to be rude. But the strangers they’d been accidentally thrown together with were irrelevant to her. They might as well not even exist, as far as she was concerned.
They existed for Ethan, though. He felt their warmth in the air, he heard the clinks of their spoons against their bowls, and he knew they were assessing Kim and giving her very low marks. He didn’t blame them.
Yet, in a way she was right. Their schedule shouldn’t dictate his and Kim’s. He was under no obligation to drive them to Coki Beach or anywhere else. They could take the jitney.
And he’d be stuck with the Hamiltons.
It was enough to make him wish he were a jitney driver.
HE FINALLY MADE IT to the beach at a little past one-thirty. The sun was high and white, like an incandescent bulb in the sky. The beach smelled of coconut oil and sea salt, and the wind gusting off the water was warm.
Okay, so the Hamiltons wanted to shop. He didn’t want to shop, and there was no reason on earth that he should have to. If he and Kim wound up married, he wouldn’t be obligated to accompany her every time she went shopping. Why accompany her here?
After breakfast—another long, profusely caloric meal, this time lubricated by mimosas and spiced with a contentious debate on the current administration’s environmental policies—he’d driven Kim and her parents into Charlotte Amalie and arranged to meet them at five o’clock at a shaded kiosk by the wharf where all the cruise ships docked. During their initial excursion—“This is reconnaissance, not serious shopping,” Kim had explained—they would scout out some interesting eateries, and when Ethan met up with them they’d choose a restaurant for dinner.
He’d agreed to everything Kim said. As long as he didn’t have to do reconnaissance with her, he’d go along with whatever dinner plans her family wanted.
He did intend to do a little shopping at some point that week—not so much that preliminary recon was called for, though. If watches were as inexpensive as the guidebooks said, he might pick one up for his father. Maybe one for himself, too. But he couldn’t imagine spending more than one day roaming the streets, alleys and arcades of Charlotte Amalie in search of bargains. It wasn’t as if he and his father needed watches. And how could a person prefer shopping to lounging on the sand with a cold beer and a good book? Or snorkeling at Coki Beach.
He wondered if Gina and Ali had made it over to Coki Beach. If they hadn’t found their own transportation there, it was probably too late for him to offer them a lift now.
He touched the cold surface of his beer bottle to his forehead and scanned the beach—looking for a spot to settle in the shade of a palm, not looking for a leggy, dark-haired tourist from New York. When he didn’t spot her, he convinced himself he wasn’t disappointed.
And when he did spot her niece, he convinced himself he wasn’t elated.
Ali the Alley Cat knelt in the sand, molding and sculpting it with her hands. He watched from the walkway bordering the beach as she labored over what appeared to be a sand castle of some sort. She peered toward the water, then grinned and waved. Following the line of her gaze, he saw Gina striding across the sand, carrying a beach pail so full of water it splattered droplets with her every step.
Her bikini was as revealing as the one she’d worn yesterday. Today’s was turquoise, the same color as the sea. The bottom was cut high and the top was cut low.
Kim is beautiful, he reminded himself, but that truth didn’t seem particularly germane at the moment.
He ambled over the hot sand, figuring he’d just say hello and then find another location to settle. But when Alicia saw him, she eagerly waved him over. “Hey, come see what I’m making!” she hollered.
He reached Alicia the same time Gina did. She lowered her bucket to the sand carefully, and he tried not to stare at her bosom as she bent over. God, she looked great in a bikini. Ethan had never met a woman who didn’t—any size, any shape, he happened to think women’s bodies were wonderful—but Gina was definitely one of the most satisfying sights on the beach today.
“What are you making?” he asked. Up close, Alicia’s efforts didn’t resemble much of anything.
“The Brooklyn Bridge,” she told him.
“That’s a pretty ambitious project,” he said, shooting a grin at Gina as she straightened up.
She grinned back. “You’re standing in Staten Island, in case you were wondering.”
“You can help,” Alicia told him, her tone firm enough to convey that this was an order.
“Alicia, he came down to the beach to read,” Gina chided the kid. “See? He’s got a book. Let him be.”
“No, I don’t mind,” he said, although he wanted to build the Brooklyn Bridge on a beach about as much as he wanted to shop for discounted liquor in Charlotte Amalie. He tossed down his book beside a pile of what he guessed was Gina’s gear, propped against the base of a palm: the colorful canvas tote he’d seen her carrying yesterday, and mesh drawstring bags filled with snorkeling masks, tubes and flippers. Then he hunkered down next to Alicia. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“We have to dig,” she said, pointing to a narrow trench she’d already carved into the sand. “This is the East River or New York Harbor. I forget. Aunt Gina says if we dig deep enough, the water won’t disappear.”
“You want me to dredge the harbor,” he said, shooting Gina another look. She towered above him, her lanky body casting a long shadow across him.
“You don’t have to do this,” she called down to him.
Viewing her from his ground-level perspective, he couldn’t imagine choosing his book over a few minutes with her—even if he had to pay for those minutes by digging in the sand with her niece. “I’ll see how it goes,” he said, refusing to commit to more than that.
“I’m dumping the water so Aunt Gina can get more,” Alicia announced before emptying the bucket of water into the trench.
“Maybe you should get the water and let your aunt sit for a minute,” he suggested, hoping Alicia and Gina wouldn’t interpret his words as anything other than an attempt to earn a fellow adult a few minute’s rest.
Alicia sprang to her feet. “Okay! You guys dig and I’ll get the water!” Before Gina could object, the kid had grabbed the bucket and was racing down to the sea.
Gina lowered herself onto the sand, not too close to Ethan. Her gaze remained on her niece. “She spills half the water,” she told Ethan. “That’s why we thought it would be better if I got it.”
“This doesn’t look anything like the Brooklyn Bridge,” he commented, scrutinizing the span constructed of damp, packed sand above the trench.
Gina chuckled but refused to shift her attention from the little girl at the water’s edge. “You’ve seen the Brooklyn Bridge?”
“I’m from Connecticut,” he told her. “And you’re from…Brooklyn?”
Still smiling, she shook her head. “Manhattan. I grew up in the Bronx.”
He knew midtown Manhattan, where all the Broadway theaters and famous restaurants and office towers were, and the downtown business district. The Bronx was just a borough he passed through—and the punch line of jokes.
“I live down in Chelsea now,” she told him. “You know the city?”
“Sort of.” He smiled sheepishly and hoped she wouldn’t quiz him. “I live in Arlington. That’s in the northwest corner of Connecticut.”
“Yeah. I know it.” She used the plastic shovel to dig the trench deeper. A murky puddle of water lingered at the bottom. “So where’s the rest of your group?”
“Shopping. I thought I’d come back and enjoy a little beach time.” He glanced toward the snorkeling gear by the palm tree. “Did you visit Coki Beach?”
“Not today. We just snorkeled around here. They rent equipment for the whole week. The guy at the cabana said we should try to get over to St. John. There’s this underwater snorkeling trail there. I can’t imagine snorkeling along an underwater trail.”
“It’s supposed to be amazing.” He wondered whether he’d be able to separate Kim from her Visa card long enough to take her snorkeling at Trunk Bay on St. John. Paul had told him he had to go there. He’d hate to go alone, though.
And he couldn’t go with Gina. Not when she looked the way she did in a swimsuit.
“I’m figuring we’ll try Coki Beach tomorrow. We saw some fish here. Not a lot, but Alicia was pretty excited.”
Ethan did a little desultory one-handed digging while he sipped his beer. “You want some?” he asked, extending the bottle to her.
She flickered a glance toward the bottle, then zeroed in on Alicia again. “Thanks,” she said, letting him place the bottle into her hand so she wouldn’t have to look away from her niece. “It’s hot out here. We brought some sodas down to the beach, but we finished them a while ago.”
“Beer is better,” he said. She smiled her agreement.
Down by the water, Alicia straightened up, clutching the rim of the bucket. Gina handed the bottle back to Ethan and watched her niece pick a path across the beach, sloshing water with each step. By the time she reached them, she looked upset. “I spilled too much of it,” she said, a sob making her voice wobbly.
“That’s okay, sweetie. Pour it in and I’ll get the next one.”
Ethan wanted to argue. He’d barely begun talking to her; he wasn’t ready for her to run off. And he definitely wasn’t ready to shoot the breeze with a little girl. But who would be the water carrier wasn’t his decision to make. Gina rose, lifted the pail from Alicia’s hands as soon as she’d emptied it into the trench, and stalked across the beach, her hips swaying as her heels sank into the sand.
Alicia threw herself back into the labor of digging. Ethan took another sip of beer and observed her. “We snorkeled today,” Alicia told him as she flung sand to one side.
“Your aunt told me. She said you saw some fish.”
“They were white. Kind of silvery. The color of angels,” Alicia told him. “I wanted to snorkel forever, but I swallowed some water and started coughing, and Aunt Gina said we had to take a break.”
“You’ve got a whole week,” Ethan pointed out. “You can go snorkeling again tomorrow.”
“Where’s the lady?” Alicia asked.
He assumed she meant Kim. “She’s in Charlotte Amalie. That’s the big town on the other side of the island.”
“Do they have snorkeling there?”
“No. What they have there is shopping.”
Alicia wrinkled her nose. She obviously didn’t think much of shopping. “Is she your girlfriend?”
“Yes,” Ethan said, feeling noble and virtuous for having gotten that established, even if he hadn’t established it with Gina. She’d surely figured it out. And now the kid knew, too.
“My daddy has a girlfriend,” Alicia said, bringing him up short.
“Does he?” Perhaps her mother was dead, or her parents were divorced.
Or perhaps they weren’t. “It makes my mommy very mad,” Alicia said.
“I would imagine,” he agreed faintly.
“I don’t think she’s as pretty as your girlfriend,” Alicia continued matter-of-factly. “I haven’t seen her, but the way my mommy talks about her…Sometimes my mommy uses bad words. I hate that.”
“I remember.” Ethan recalled Alicia’s howls yesterday when anyone uttered a damn or a hell. He toyed with the label on his bottle and searched the water for Gina, eager for her to return. Compared with this conversation, his political debates with Ross Hamilton had been a piece of cake.
“Aunt Gina is my mommy’s sister,” Alicia went on. “That’s what an aunt is—your mother’s sister. Or your father’s sister. Do you have any aunts?”
“Yes.” He spotted Gina straightening up, clutching the replenished bucket. Good. In less than a minute, she’d be back to rescue him.
“Are they as nice as Aunt Gina?”
“No. Aunt Gina seems extra nice.” Every step that carried her toward him made her seem even nicer.
“She is. Extra extra nice. Extra extra extra.” She greeted Gina’s arrival with a big smile. When Gina emptied the water into the trench, Alicia let out a whoop. “Look, Aunt Gina! It’s staying. We dug deep enough! The water isn’t all soaking in!”
Ethan rose onto his knees and peered into the trench. A nice pool of water stretched below the bridge. “Hey,” he said admiringly.
“All right!” Gina slapped Alicia’s hand in congratulations, then slapped Ethan’s, too. Her touch startled him. Her palm was slick and cool with water, her fingers slender, her wrist graceful. She wore a ring on her thumb, braided strands of silver in a pattern identical to the ring on her toe.
The brief contact obviously meant nothing. She was just celebrating their engineering feat. Because Ethan was there, she included him in the celebration. That was all.
Yet the cool texture of her skin and the exuberance behind her gesture stayed with him, long after she and Alicia had moved on to bolstering the bridge, decorating it with shells and strands of grass, analyzing the feasibility of importing some of those angel-colored fish to swim in their tiny version of New York Harbor.
Sipping his beer and listening to their bubbly chatter, Ethan felt the impact of Gina’s hand against his and contemplated the tide as it tugged the sand, shaped the shoreline and left beach reconfigured, rearranged—almost unrecognizable. Tides could be dangerous, he thought. Extra extra extra dangerous. He’d better be careful.
Yet he closed his hand, as if he could hold Gina’s touch inside it forever.
CHAPTER FOUR
EVER SINCE HER RUN-IN with the nuns at Our Lady of Mercy at the age of thirteen, Gina hadn’t been particularly religious. But she believed in God—and if she hadn’t, snorkeling at Coki Beach would have turned her into a believer.
The beach itself was nothing much, just a strip of sand, a few picnic tables, a man operating a kiosk from which he sold grilled sausages and citrus punch, and a couple of local women who’d set up a hair-braiding enterprise in the shade of a looming old tree. Alicia had asked if she could have braids done, and Gina had paid one of the women to add two delicate braids, tipped with beads the color of the sea, to the hair behind Alicia’s right ear. Another kiosk offered snorkeling equipment for rent, but Gina had brought the gear they’d rented at Palm Point.
She’d also brought Ethan and Kim—or, more accurately, Ethan and Kim had brought her and Alicia. Grateful for the lift, Gina had packed extra peanut-butter sandwiches, fruit-juice boxes and grapes, happy to cater lunch for everyone in return for the free ride.
Kim hadn’t seemed overjoyed with the plan, but she’d gone along with it. Her parents were apparently spending the day playing tennis and golf, and Kim had seemed torn about having to choose between those activities and snorkeling. Ethan had told her that whether or not she joined him, he intended to snorkel—“I can play tennis at the club in Connecticut, for God’s sake,” he’d argued, just loudly enough that Gina couldn’t help overhearing him, even though he and Kim were in their ocean-view bedroom and Gina and Alicia were in the kitchen when this quarrel had taken place. By the time Kim had emerged with Ethan from their room, she’d been wearing a swimsuit and a resentful pout.
Once they’d arrived at the beach, though, she’d dutifully donned the mask and flippers Ethan had provided, and they’d gone into the water together. Gina had watched them kick away from the shoreline, then helped Alicia put on her equipment and followed them in.
The water was as clear as teal-tinted glass, and it swarmed with fish. Blue fish. Yellow fish. Violet fish. Iridescent fish that shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow whenever they swam through a wavering shaft of sunlight. Fish that skittered in and out of coral formations, ducked behind sea plants and sometimes swam right up to Gina’s nose and stared at her, as if trying to determine whether she was one of them.
I am, I am! she wanted to shout—although she wasn’t sure fish had ears. But she felt as if she were just another fish—a big, clumsy, gill-less one, but in some humble way a part of their magical world. Of course God existed, she thought. The tranquil beauty of all these fish letting Gina and a score of other humans snorkel in their territory proved it. How could a place this beautiful and peaceful exist if God hadn’t created it?
She managed to keep track of Alicia while she swam among the glorious fish. Alicia wore her bright orange swimsuit, which made her quite visible in the water, and she frequently bobbed her head above the surface and hollered, “Aunt Gina! Over here! Look at this!” Her cries would invariably attract half a dozen other snorkelers, who would all converge wherever Alicia was standing in time to see a vivid purple-and-orange fish scoot away, no doubt startled by the sudden crowd. Gina didn’t mind, though. Whenever a few minutes passed without Alicia’s giving a yell, Gina would surface and scan the inlet to locate Alicia and make sure she was safe.
Ethan seemed as taken by the underwater world as Gina was. He wouldn’t yell to get her attention, but every now and then he would swim over to her, his feet pumping in his long black flippers, nudge her shoulder and point. Together they would watch a hole in the coral until some wondrously colored creature would emerge. Then Ethan would smile at her around his breathing tube and swim off.
He looked damn good in a swimsuit. Not that she noticed or anything.
Kim looked good in a swimsuit, too. Kim would probably look good in a ratty bathrobe, torn stockings and hair rollers. Gina knew a fair number of models through work, but they tended not to be quite so beautiful. In person, they were often emaciated, and they also usually had some odd feature—knife-sharp cheekbones, perhaps, or a bumpy nose, or collagen-plumped lips. The New York fashion world loved slightly weird faces. Kim would never make it as a model; she was much too classically pretty.
She left the water a good half hour before Gina, Alicia and Ethan were ready to break for lunch. Actually, Gina would have been happy to skip lunch and remain in the muted, glittery world of the fish, tasting salt on the rubbery mouthpiece of her breathing tube and feeling her ears rush and pop with water. But eventually Alicia yanked on the strap of her mask and announced that she was starving, so Gina reluctantly abandoned her sacred fish for a sandwich.
She spotted Kim at one of the picnic tables, her wet hair combed back from her face and a book open in her lap. Gina wrestled out of her flippers, then helped Alicia off with hers. They stalked across the hot sand to the table, underneath which Gina had left her tote with the sandwiches, fruit and drinks. “We’re hungry,” Alicia declared.
Kim gave them a supercilious glance, then tucked a bookmark into her book. “Don’t splash water on the pages,” she chided Alicia. Gina glimpsed the book’s title: A Buyer’s Guide to Diamonds. Not exactly her idea of light vacation reading.
She wrapped a towel around Alicia, then draped a second towel over her own shoulders. Tugging off her mask and snorkel tube, she felt the snaggles in her hair. Had she thought to toss a comb into the tote? She didn’t think so, but no big deal. She’d just be going back into the water after lunch.
“Wow!” Ethan’s voice drifted toward her from behind. She glanced over her shoulder and saw him jogging up the beach, his mask perched on the crown of his head and his flippers dangling from one hand. His chest was sleek with water and lean muscle, and the wet fabric of his swimsuit lay pasted to his thighs and hips in a way that was just this side of obscene. Gina wished he would turn around so she could check out his buns. He belonged to Kim; she knew that. But a woman was allowed to look, wasn’t she?
“Isn’t it cool?” Alicia said, climbing up onto a bench. “Did you see those fish with all the colors on them? They glowed!”
“They were pretty special,” Ethan agreed, sliding onto the bench across from Alicia and next to Kim, whom he gave a swift kiss. She shrank from him and held her book away, evidently worried that he would drip water onto it. His hair appeared as messy as Gina’s felt, sticking out in all directions and spraying droplets of water every time he moved his head.
“All I’ve got is peanut butter,” Gina said, unpacking the sandwiches from her tote. “And grapes. And lots of juice.”
“I’m not hungry,” Kim said. She hadn’t done as much swimming as the others, and maybe she’d eaten a huge breakfast. Or maybe she was counting her calories, although her body, like the rest of her, appeared flawless to Gina. Then again, if Gina had packed a picnic of Brie and truffles, Kim might suddenly discover she had an appetite. Peanut butter was probably too déclassé for her.
She did help herself to a few grapes. Gina, Alicia and Ethan attacked the sandwiches and juice. “I couldn’t find an octopus,” Alicia said. “I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”
“Did you see all those coral formations?” Gina asked both her and Ethan. “It’s amazing to think they’re created by teeny little animals.”
Alicia seemed troubled. “What teeny animals?”
“They’re so teeny you can’t see them,” Gina explained. “I can’t believe that snorkeling trail in St. John could be better than this. Thanks so much for bringing us, Ethan.”
“Hey, I’m enjoying myself, too,” he assured her.
Kim sniffed.
“You guys don’t have to stay here on our account,” Gina said, aware that Kim wasn’t overly thrilled about the whole experience. “We can find our own way back to Palm Point, if you want to leave.”
“I don’t want to leave,” Ethan assured her. Kim glared at him but said nothing.
Alicia tore off a sprig of grapes from the bunch at the center of the table. “I wanna go back in the water,” she said between grapes. “And it’s not true that you can get cramps if you go in the water too soon after eating. My friend Stephanie said her father said so. And he’s like a scientist or something.”
“Not that I want to cast aspersions on Stephanie’s father,” Gina said, “but it wouldn’t kill you to stay out of the water a few minutes so you can digest your lunch.”
Alicia frowned. “What are you going to cast?”
“Aspersions. And I’m not going to cast them.”
“Excursions? What’s that?”
A hot wind rattled the palms overhead. Gina grinned and shook her head. “Never mind. If you can’t sit still, you can collect shells for a few minutes. No snorkeling until I say so.”
“I can go in myself!” Alicia had obviously figured out why Gina was preventing her from swimming. Cramps or no cramps, Gina wouldn’t let her go in the water alone.
“No, you can’t. It’s a rule. Even grown-ups don’t go in by themselves.” Gina glanced toward Kim and Ethan, hoping for support, but they didn’t say anything. Gina turned back to Alicia. “Why don’t you collect some shells? Bring me back the prettiest shells you find, okay?”
Alicia made little attempt to hide her irritation as she slipped off the bench and stomped across the sand.
Kim leaned toward Ethan and whispered something. Great. As if Gina didn’t feel bad enough for having forbidden Alicia from returning to the water, now she was going to have to finish her sandwich while the lovebirds cooed and nuzzled each other.
It wasn’t exactly nuzzling, really. Kim tucked her head close to Ethan’s so she could murmur things to him, and he tilted his head to give her better access to his ear, but Gina didn’t see any kissing. Not that she was looking closely. She was too busy choking down the last couple of bites of her sandwich. A few sips of juice, and she’d join Alicia on seashell patrol.
Before she could lift her juice box to her mouth, Alicia came racing back to their table, her feet churning the sand and the two narrow braids behind her ear dancing, the beads bouncing like blue bubbles against the dark background of her hair. “Aunt Gina! Aunt Gina! Guess what I saw?”
Gina was so grateful to Alicia for rescuing her from the lovebirds she lowered her juice box and struck a thoughtful pose. “An orangutan?” she guessed.
Alicia pulled a don’t-be-silly face. “No! It’s—”
“No, let me guess. A zeppelin?”
“A lizard!” Alicia told her. “A big green lizard!”
“I bet it’s an iguana,” Ethan said.
Gina eyed him, surprised. She hadn’t realized he’d been listening.
“It’s really big and funny-looking,” Alicia announced, yanking on Gina’s hand as if she could pull Gina’s attention back to her. “Hurry, Aunt Gina, come look at him before he runs away.”
Gina had never seen an iguana before—and she wasn’t sure she wanted to see one now. But she bravely stood and let Alicia drag her across the beach. A shadow stretched beside her, and when she glanced to her left she saw Ethan loping to catch up to them. “Kim’s a wimp,” he said, “but I want to see the iguana.”
“How do you know it’s an iguana?” Alicia asked. “It could be a dinosaur.”
“I don’t think so.” He flashed a smile at her. “Iguanas are indigenous to the region.”
“What does that mean?”
“They live here,” Gina explained.
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