Authors: Lisa Jackson

Beach Season (2 page)

The water off the Oregon coast is so absolutely freezing it hurts your brain, even in summer, but as we stared at each other from inches away, my head tilted back; I felt a blush climbing up my neck.

He blinked again, as if he was somewhat rattled, too, then turned around. I started to strip while sneaking peeks at his backside. Huuuuge shoulders. A solid man, not skinny. Tall, rangy.

I wriggled underneath the jacket, still warm from his manly man heat, and managed to pull my sweater and T-shirt off. I hesitated on my bra, then thought,
what the heck
. I was going to freeze to death if I didn’t. The rain coming down wasn’t helping. I dropped everything in the sand, stuck my arms through the jacket’s sleeves, then rolled my soaking, sandy clothes into a ball.

“Okay, I’m undressed,” I said, then stopped.
Come on, June! Think! Don’t say it that way!
“I’m undressed but dressed. I’m dressed in your coat. Not naked undressed.”

He turned around and I could tell he was chuckling on the inside.

“I mean, I’m ready. Ready to walk.”

“All righty, off we go.” He pulled the hood over my head again. “We’ve probably got a couple of miles to the steps. I’m worried about you getting cold. Walking will keep you warm.”

He was worried about me? Worried about me?
That was so darn sweet.
I smiled at him, even though I felt my frozen lips wiggle.

“I’ll hold that.” He held out his hands for my clothes. “Wrap your arms around yourself to keep warm.”

As a river of ice ran through me from head to foot, I handed him my clothes, and of course, my bra had to drop to the sand.

I bent to snatch it up but because I was a frozen popsicle, I didn’t move real quick. He moved quicker, and my brassiere was soon in his huge hands.

“Oh no,” I groaned. It was my black-and-white–spotted
cow
bra. There was a pink cow across each cup, surrounded by polka dots. It was a funny gift from my sister September, because she said I was an “udderly” wonderful sister. “Put your girls in these two cows!” she’d giggled.

“I’ll take that back.” I put my trembling hand out for the bra.

“Polka dots?” He raised an eyebrow. “And two cows.” He held the bra up with both hands.

“I am so embarrassed. Please blame my sister. She sent it to me.”

“It’s original!” he declared, smiling at me. “It’s a cow bra.”

“Yes, oh me, oh my.”

“Me, oh my, too,” he said softly, and oh me, oh my, I could tell that man was struggling hard not to laugh.

Who was this man? And why, after almost
drowning
, was I all aflutter?

He held the pink cows up again. “I don’t think I’m going to forget today.”

“Me, neither. And not only because of the cow bra.”

Soaked, freezing, a summer rain drenching us, we laughed.

And that was the beginning. The laughter was the beginning.

The beginning of Reece and me.

C
HAPTER
3

Later that night, wrapped up on my bed in my blue crocheted feather-filled comforter, eating only a small piece of apple pie with whipped cream, okay,
two
pieces, the waves pounding on the surf, I reentertained myself with the rest of my conversation with Reece ...

He tucked the wet cows into the wad of clothes. I took a deep breath. “It’s a long walk; you don’t have to come back with me. I can return your jacket.”

“No way. I’m not letting you walk back alone. I’ll see you home to get something dry on, then we’re going to the hospital.”

“The hospital? Not a chance. I don’t enter hospitals. They make me nervous.”

“Me, too, but you’re going. You swallowed a lot of water, and I want them to check your lungs and make sure you didn’t take a knock to the head.”

“I can take myself to the hospital.”

“I’ll take you.” He smiled with nice white teeth and stuck out his hand. “Reece O’Brien.”

“Nice to meet you, Reece.” I shook his hand. My hand trembled. “I’m June MacKenzie.”

“June? Were you born in June?”

The light rain suddenly turned into a deluge as we headed to the stairway. I was a double-drowned rat. “No.”

“Oh.”

He seemed pleasantly baffled.

“It’s a family name, then?”

I didn’t want to explain. It was a wee bit embarrassing to talk about sex in front of him. “June is the month when my parents conceived me.”

“Ah. I see.”

I stared straight ahead at the pounding surf.

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” he asked.

“Yes, three of them.”

“What are your sisters’ and brothers’ names?”

I could see the hazel flecks in those green eyes, a crooked scar by his right eye, another on top of his left cheekbone.
I want to kiss the scars
... . Whoa, June! Had I just thought that?
I want to kiss the scars
. Where the heck had that come from? I was off men, completely! Done with men!

“Did you forget your brothers’ and sisters’ names?” He smiled at me.

I smiled back. He had such nice... lips! “What? No. No. I know their names.”

Yes, I did. I knew my brother’s and sisters’ names, but my, how would it feel to hug a man that size? Oh, shoot!
What was I thinking?
“I know their names,” I said again, with a bit of defiance, but I heard my voice come out as a whisper. “I do.”

“Good.” His eyes dropped to my lips. It was a flicker, but I saw the drop. My mouth suddenly felt like it was on fire.
What?
I couldn’t be on fire for him, or any man. That was ... that was ...
bad!

“Their names are ...” Who was I talking about again? Whose names?

“Your brothers and sisters,” he prompted, still smiling.

I accidentally made a funny sound in my throat. “Yes! I have a brother and sisters and they have names.” I looked at the ocean for answers.

“That’s fortunate. If they didn’t, what would they be called?” His voice was low and husky.

“I don’t know what they would be called without names.”
What was going on
? I was freezing, I was in shock. Ha! That was it! I had almost been pulled out to sea. He’d saved me. Now I was transferring my emotions to him.

“So. My brother’s name is ...”
Quick, June. Your name is June
... “His name is March. March. And I have a sister named ...” Reece was a cross between Poseidon and Zeus ... he needed only a chariot to complete the image. “August. She’s an August.” I shook my head to clear it. “Her name is August. She’s getting married soon. Her fiancé’s family is proper. Scary proper. Blue-blood proper. I have another sister ...” Chariot. Horses. A sword. Did Greek gods have swords? What would Reece’s sword be like?
June, come on!
“The other sister has a name. She is a September.” I bit my wet lip. “I mean, her name
is
September. She is not
a
September. It’s just September. One word.”

“Just September. One word.”

As an ex-trial attorney I have been in court hundreds of times. I was never thrown, never intimidated, never embarrassed, even when the judge was threatening to charge me with contempt of court, even with obstinate juries or screaming opposing counsel. No, never, but this
man
.

“Do you have brothers and sisters named for the months of the year?”
What an inane question. No! No, he didn’t
.
You and your odd MacKenzie clan are the only ones who are all named after months!

He chuckled, deep and masculine. “I have two brothers and two sisters. Their names are Shane, Jessica, Rick, and Sandy. Dull compared to yours. Your parents must have enjoyed the months of June, August, September, and March.”

I stumbled a bit on a rock, and he caught my arm. This time, I avoided locking eyes with him so as not to be possessed by his handsome magic. “I’m sure they did enjoy those months. Every month is a happy month for my parents.”

“That’s a rare thing to hear. Tell me about them.”

Okay! I could do that! A normal conversation! “They met when they were sixteen and ran off and got married after they graduated from high school. My oldest sister arrived a year later, then my next sister, me, and my brother. We’re all eighteen months apart, give or take a few months.”

“Young parents.”

“Oh yes, and they’re way cooler than any of their kids. They’re ex-hippies.”

“Outstanding.”

“Yes, we had an outstanding childhood. Different. Wild. Nomadic.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You want to know about my childhood?” I pushed a strand of wet hair off my face.

“Yes, I do.” Those eyes were sincere. I was being pulled into a green pool, only the pool was warm and sexy and had big shoulders.
Look away, June. Look away! Remember, you do not believe in lust at first sight.

I shook my head to clear my burgeoning passion. “My sister August was born on a commune in California. My next sister, September, was born in the back of our VW van. I was born in a hippie colony here in Oregon. There’s some difference, not much, from a commune. My brother was born about fifteen feet over the U.S. border.”

“Fifteen feet?”

“About that. We had been in Mexico, living on a farm with other Americans, but my nine-months-along mom decided at the last minute that she wanted March born on American soil, like the rest of us, so they drove through the night. My brother was born on the other side of the customs building.”

“That must have been quite a ride.”

“It was. I remember it. We packed up the van on the fly. We were all wearing tie-dye shirts and sandals. We also had three mutts, two cats, and a bird who flew loose in the van. We had a box of apples and a box of bananas. I slept on the floor of the van between my sisters with our dog, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, asleep over my legs. Our other dog, Flower Child, snored away on a seat, and the third dog, Fleas, because he had fleas when we found him, my sister was using as a pillow.”

“You are making my childhood sound as boring as heck. I can barely stand it.”

“We were traveling gypsies in a VW bus.” I drew my arms tight around my freezing, shaking body, the rain relentless.

“So, your brother made it to the U.S. border?”

“Yes, he did. My poor mom. No drugs at all during childbirth. She wanted it natural. All of us were natural. My father grabbed two tartans out of the back of the van for her to lie on.”

“Tartans?”

“From Scotland. Our ancestors are from Scotland, and our family takes our love of Scotland seriously. Afterward, my father’s face was whiter than my mom’s. I remember my sisters and I had to stay in the van and there were a bunch of men in uniform helping my mom, and all of a sudden one of those men was holding our brother, March, who was screaming his head off, but, I’m sure, delighted to have been born in America.”

He laughed again.

My, what a seductive and deep and gravelly laugh.
My!

“And after he was born?”

“A doctor had been passing through customs and one of the guards ran him over to our mom, so he was able to do some sewing up, so to speak. A couple of hours later, after the border guards fed us, we were back in the van, March squawking in my mom’s arms where she lay on the floor. Within two hours we were in a fancy hotel. It was strange. Our childhoods were so nomadic, we worked on farms and communes, and the basics, electricity and plumbing, often weren’t there, but once or twice a year we’d go stay in a hotel with pools, hot tubs, and free breakfasts where we stuffed ourselves silly with pancakes and waffles. After March was born we had seven nights of complete luxury.”

“Then back on the road? You didn’t go to school?”

“Not traditional school. We weren’t homeschooled, we were bus-schooled.”

“What does ‘bus-schooled’ mean?”

He smiled. I melted further. For a moment I faltered again, couldn’t speak, lost my train of thought. I coughed. “We learned all about geography, geology, and the history of the earth from our travels. We’re all fluent in Spanish. Our father loved math, so in fourth grade we were doing basic algebra. He thought it was fun, so there we’d be, up at two in the morning, doing algebraic equations after learning about the constellations. My mom had us write in journals every night and we read the classics.”

“A family of readers, then?”

“We ate books. It was required. We would visit other MacKenzie relatives often, and read their books, too. Books are your friends, my mom told us.”

“How did your parents make a living?”

“My father is a talented painter so he would set up a stand at open markets, or in small towns we were passing through, and people would hire him to paint pictures of themselves, their homes, their pets. Once word got out, there were long lines. Sometimes he would paint murals at schools, churches, even civic buildings. He’d go in with a design, they’d love it, and all of a sudden they had a mural in their hallway and we had a check.”

I laughed despite the cold that seemed to be living in my body from the inside out. Could blood turn to icicles? “My mom is an incredibly talented seamstress. She made all of our clothes and called it Hippie Chick. One time she took yards of beige material bought at a garage sale for fifty cents and sewed my sisters and me dresses with six inches of lace at the hem. People loved them, they stopped us on the street. My mom sold a lot of clothes when we were in that bus. Her flowered shirts, flowy and bright, sold well. She’d buy used jeans for twenty-five cents, cut out patches from colorful material, and sew them on. She added beads and feathers to plain blue shirts. She could turn anything into a fashion statement, and she did.”

“She was a clothing artist, then.”

“Yes, and she taught us. We would all spend hours together sewing into the night. There wasn’t a formal bedtime. We’d use a lantern and she showed us how to make a boring dress unique, how to make a normal skirt something special. Ruffles, sequins, embroidery, shortening, lengthening. And lace. Oh, the lace was always in abundance. Our favorite. We used it all over everything. Satin was our second favorite. Sewing was a fun game for us.”

“And you learned a lifelong skill.”

“That I did.” I sewed until I decided, insanely, that I should let that part of my life fly off into the wind and disappear over the mountains. Part of me flew off then, too, and I was soon a miserable cog in a legal machine. I went back to sewing to refind my lost self. How strange to say sewing recently saved me, but it had.

I was so curious about his family, but we started climbing the staircase and all I could think of was that I didn’t want to go first because I didn’t want my rear in his face, but I didn’t have a choice. A gentleman, he had me go first.

I wanted to grab my bottom and hide it. It is not
overly
large, but let’s simply say that I enjoy eating, have never desired to be model slim, and believe my curves, instead of the skinny, intense thing I used to be, signal a healthier eating life. Besides, I could die tomorrow. Why deny myself the finer pleasures of life like chocolate, fresh lobster with garlic butter, and clam chowder?

I tripped up a step, started to tumble forward, my freezing feet and legs not responding, and that strong arm whipped around my middle and pulled me back up. Again.

But this time my back was tight against his chest. The chariot chest. Hard and tight, a thigh partly between mine.

Oh, mercy.

His face was so near to mine. Inches. Oh, inches.

He smelled delicious ... a combination of the beach and sunshine and musk.

Mercy, mercy,
mercy
me.