August Unknown (29 page)

The girl with red hair was obviously Sonja, but looking at her
now was like looking at a complete stranger. She might as well have been the
girl Emily and Geoffrey met on the dock that day.

Her father sank into a chair and popped open a beer, even
though it was only ten thirty in the morning. “Hell, I’m still paying off that casket.
I don’t want to tell you how much that set me back.” He shook a finger at her.
“But twelve thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

“Bernard. That isn’t nice. Our baby has been brought back to
us, and we should be rejoicing, not bickering.” She wrapped her arms around
Emily and kissed her cheek. “How’s your arm, dear? Would you like something for
it?”

“I’m fine,” she lied. Her tension had grown tighter since
waking up this morning and finding her father in his usual sour mood, griping
at her mother in his usual fashion. It brought a dull pain that throbbed
simultaneously in her head and arm.

Emily went to the guest room and picked up the phone. She
dialed her bank and was surprised that she not only remembered the toll-free
number, but her account number and her passwords, and the key strokes to move
from one account to the other. She also remembered the balance in her savings
account precisely.

She’d been saving the money for almost eight years, since
graduating from high school and starting full time at Northwest Expeditions
when her father still owned it and the
Maraschino
. The money had been
for her honeymoon with Colin. They were going to sail Graham’s thirty-five-foot
gaff cutter,
Tigger Too,
down the coast and through the Panama Canal,
across the northern coast of South America and up the chain of Caribbean
islands.

Emily glanced down at Geoffrey’s ring on her finger. Sudden
longing for him made the spike in her gut dig deeper.

She now remembered the day she’d ridden in the back of the
convertible.

It had been the day after senior prom. Colin had been her
date, and they had been voted Prom King and Queen. She’d followed him up on the
stage to be crowned, and right there in front of the whole school, Colin had
knelt before her, presented his ring, and proposed.

It had been like a fairytale. They’d stayed up all night, she
and Colin, Sonja and Joe, and Jessica and Tim. Though the others’ faces were still
hidden by shadows, she remembered the night perfectly. They ended up at the
beach at Juniper Point, and each couple went their separate ways. She and Colin
had made love on the beach to the sound of crashing waves.

The sun had risen at their backs as they sat on the beach,
painting the offshore clouds with an amazing kaleidoscope of colors. When the
others found them again, hunger drove them in to town for breakfast at Trudy’s Cafe,
still wearing their prom clothes. The six of them piled into Joe’s Maverick
convertible, she in the back seat beside Colin, with her arm on the side of the
car, watching the diamond dazzle in the morning sun.

It had been the most magical time of her life, and Geoffrey
had tried to help her find it.

Dear, sweet Geoffrey. The agony of missing him suddenly turned
excruciating.

She went back to the kitchen and found her mother making her
famous homemade chicken soup.

“I’m going back to Newport,” she announced.

Her father didn’t look up from the television. His favorite
team was losing, and his mood had darkened.

“So soon?” Agnes pouted, but was clearly hesitant to start
with her usual regimen of guilt-associated ultimatums. Only her father seemed
more like himself, though even he was treating her as if she were made of
glass.

This isn’t how things used to be
, Emily realized dimly.
They’re only treating me carefully because they thought I’d died
.

Geoffrey had treated her like a queen from the start.

The cell phone she’d found stashed in Cherry Pit’s glove compartment
the night before was nearly done charging.

She retrieved her checkbook from her purse and sat down at the
kitchen table to write out checks for some of the bills her parents had
collected. She didn’t have many, but would need to continue her car insurance
and cell phone service.

Without telling them what she was doing, she wrote out a check
for twelve thousand dollars to pay her father back for the casket. It nearly
tapped out her savings, but she felt she owed him that much, and at least this
way she wouldn’t have to put up with his complaining.

“I have to,” she told Agnes. She slipped the larger check in
the middle of the stack and rose to kiss her mother on the cheek. “It’s
important.”

* * *

The drive back from Portland had been hellacious. A turned-over
big-rig held up traffic for an hour and a half. When Geoffrey finally arrived
home, it was to a dark house, all the outside lights turned off. Somebody had
messed with the switch and the motion sensor light over the entry was
deactivated. He bumped his shin painfully on the potted jade near the front
door.

Inside, a messy kitchen greeted him. Derek ignored him from
the living room, bathed in flashing, multicolored lights as he watched music
videos from a floor pillow in the middle of the room with the set’s headphones.

Thank God for small miracles
.

Geoffrey idly flipped through the mail as he loosened his tie.
All junk. With Christmas two months away, the catalogs were piling up. His foul
mood soured.

The doorbell rang. Derek didn’t move.

“Sure, I’ll get it. Wouldn’t want you to strain yourself,”
Geoffrey muttered. His mood had steadily plummeted since August—
Emily
had left.

He frowned as he saw the red Honda through the window by the
door. Who would be visiting at this hour? He pulled the door open.

“Emily.”

“Hi.”

She stepped through the threshold and he moved back to allow
her in. “I needed to see you.”

The first hints of alarm raced through him. Was she coming to
return his ring?

She must have read the dumbfounded look on his face. “I still
don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said quickly. Her eyes held a tint of
worry she tried to hide behind a timid smile.

She stepped close and placed her hand on his chest. “But I
know I want to be with you now.”

“Of course.” Just having her near had made the day’s tension
drain away.

“Can I stay here tonight?” She looked up, her eyes wide and
innocent. “With you?”

“Sure.” Like dawn rising after a cold night, he warmed from
head to toe as he grasped her meaning. “Oh—um, yeah.”

She leaned in, rose onto her tiptoes, and kissed him.

Instinctively, his arms went around her back. His heart kicked
in his chest, leaping with joy but at the same time, seizing with pain. He
would eagerly accept whatever she offered. A touch, a kiss. A minute or a
lifetime. Or only a single night.

When her kiss slipped away and she settled on her heels, he
grabbed her hand where it rested on his chest. She still wore his engagement
ring on the other.

“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do,” she said again. “I
can’t make you any promises.”

He didn’t need promises; he needed this moment, right now. If
that was all she could give him, it would have to be enough.

That was a lie. A single night would be more painful than
nothing at all, but he would never turn her away.

He scooped her up and carried her down the hall to his
bedroom. Geoffrey laid her down across his bed and stood back to look at her.
“Emily, are you sure?”

She reached for him. “Absolutely.”

He perched on the edge of the bed, and she sat up and slipped
her arm around his shoulders.

“Kiss me,” she said. “Love me.”

God, didn’t she know he did? His lips found hers, and he drank
in her scent, her taste, and the feel of her against him. How could he ever
live without this?

Don’t think about that
.
Just concentrate on the here
and now
.

She smiled. “You taste sweet.”

“Chai tea latte on the way home from Portland.”

She grasped his tie and slid her fingers through the buttons
of his shirt. Geoffrey leaned away only to pry open the knot and shrug out of
his shirt. He rose and kicked the door shut, locked it, but didn’t bother to
turn on the light. The rising moon shining through the window sheers
illuminated the room just enough.

No, it wasn’t enough
. He wanted to see her. He used a
fireplace match to light the decorative candle arrangement on the mantel. As
the room filled with soft golden light, he made a mental note to tell Leah last
year’s Christmas gift wasn’t frilly, after all.

Emily released the Velcro and removed her sling. “Can you help
me with this?” She swung her knees over the side and sat up to remove her
clingy knitted tee. She pulled it over her head to reveal a black lace bra, and
eased her right arm free. “Stretch it over my cast.”

For a moment he could only stand there, gazing at her. God,
she was so beautiful. Her skin was like creamy milk, the lush curves of her
body smooth and toned. Her breasts were generous, her stomach flat with lean
lines.

He wrenched his feet from the floor where they seemed to have
taken root, and knelt before her.

While she supported her arm at the elbow, Geoffrey gently
stretched the sleeve and pulled it over her cast. She kicked her sneakers off
and leaned back on the bed. With her good hand, she pulled her hair from
beneath her neck. It fanned out across his pillow in shining gold ribbons.

She was the most gorgeous vision he’d ever seen, pure and
real, lying there in nothing but that lacey bra and a pair of frayed Levi’s
jeans faded nearly white.

She sat up again, and started working the button on his pants.

“God, August,” he said when she finally released them and
pushed them over his hips. Too late, he realized his mistake. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Call me that if you like.”

He moaned when she pulled on his boxers, tugging them over an
embarrassingly high tent in the front. She took his hand, urging him down with
her as she leaned back. In one fluid movement, he kicked off his loafers and
the tangle of clothing swirling at his ankles.

And then skin came against skin in a glorious explosion of
sensation, their bodies burning hot in comparison to the cool silk of the
coverlet beneath them.

He held himself above her on one elbow as he brushed across
her cheekbone with his thumb.

“Touch me,” she told him.

He did: gladly, determinedly, desperately. She was more
beautiful than he’d imagined, with hair like beams of moonlight, and skin as
soft as rose petals. He would have liked to thrust himself inside her and close
his eyes to lose himself forever, but a tiny nagging voice reminded him this
might be the one and only time they would be together.

Make this last, fool
, that voice told him. He was
equally content to kiss a path across every inch of her, over the mounds and
into the hollows, committing her to memory. He explored every bump and ridge as
he made his way down her neck, across her throat, over her collarbone and
between her breasts.

Would she regret this later? A selfish part of him didn’t
care, but he glanced into her eyes anyway, just to be sure. Hers held a dreamy
pleasure, and he knew she had no second thoughts.

“Emily,” he whispered.

“Love me,” she said.

He did.

The rest of the world disappeared and it was only them, joined
in the most primal and intimate way possible, moving with each other in simple,
beautiful harmony.

* * *

He awoke in the middle of the night to find her leaned up on
her good arm, her cast balanced on the opposite hip as she stared down at him.

“Hi,” she whispered. The nearly burnt candle tossed amber
light over the curves of her body.

After the first time they’d made love, he’d risen, walked
around the bed to look at her beautiful nakedness from all angles, and then
pulled the blankets down so they could nest under the covers. The heat of their
two bodies had become too much, and sometime later they’d kicked them off.

She’d straddled him, and he’d held her hand with one of his
and balanced her cast with the other. He’d never imagined how erotic it could
be to watch her love him this way. She’d gently lowered herself onto him,
controlling every movement and sensation. He’d been content to lie back and let
her take him on a slow, languid journey toward incomprehensible pleasure.

“Hi,” he said back. When her stomach rumbled, he realized he
hadn’t eaten, either. “Hungry?”

“Hmmm, a little.”

“Did you eat dinner?”

She shook her head. “I drove straight here without stopping.”

“Gran’s coffee cake is in the refrigerator.”

She smiled, her eyes twinkling in the wan light. “Don’t tempt
me.”

He wanted to tempt her, and so much more. He rose and padded
to the dresser to retrieve a pair of silk pajamas. He slipped into the lower
half, and then helped her into the top. After easing the wide sleeve carefully
over her cast, he pulled the top over her head, and then hauled her close and
kissed her deeply.

“Do you need your sling?”

She shook her head. “I’ll be okay without it for a while.”

He held her for a long moment, looking into her eyes. She
stared up at him with that same, dreamy look. Was she thinking about a future
here? Lord, if he only knew what he could say or do to help her choose to stay.

Before he could stop his thoughts, he wondered how she’d
convinced that rambunctious young man to let her out of his sight.

“Does...Colin know you’re here?”
Idiot, you always know the
right thing to say
.

Her expression sobered ever so slightly. “He doesn’t need to
know.” She grasped his hand, lacing her fingers within his. “What goes on
between you and me doesn’t concern him.”