“Boil me dry, and hang me out on a laundry line like a dead possum,” Estelle said, shaking her white curls. “It is a miracle. You have brought a man to this house. Who is he and what does he want and do you even know how to talk to a man without telling him off?”
“He is a tall drink of water,” Leoni whispered, as if Reece could hear her talking through the window as she spied on him from my second-story studio. “And he’s getting back in his truck and driving away! Oh, no! Run after him, June! Get him, get him!” She whirled around and started pushing at my back. “Go, go!”
I wanted to sneak into my light blue bedroom and take a hot shower, but if I did that, my two employees, Estelle, who is seventy-eight and blunt because, “Why waste time at my age?” and Leoni, blond, twenty-seven, and a single mom, would simply trail after me, probably right into the shower. Yes, they are
that
nosy.
“I am not going to run after him, Leoni.” I dripped on my wood floor. I knew where Reece was going, he was going home to get changed. He said he’d be back up at my house in ten minutes. Ten minutes! Hardly any time to put my face and hair and myself back together!
“Why not?” Estelle asked. She used to be the mayor of a large city. “Politicians’ middle names are Crooked and Creepy,” she’d told me once. “I would only go back if I was allowed to throw things at annoying people’s heads.” She is also a most excellent seamstress, taught by her grandmother, who was taught by her grandmother. She shook her pointer finger at me. “You need a man in your life to get rid of that excess energy you’re always sizzling off. Keeps a body young.”
“You’re wet, June!” Leoni declared, as if I didn’t know it. She stomped a red, knee-high boot. She dresses in retro style and buys only used, vintage clothing. “Wet and soaked. Did you go swimming in your clothes? That’s dangerous, June. You should know better.”
“A wave ran after me and tackled me to the sand.”
“One of those sneaker waves?” Estelle said. “The curse of the Oregon coast. They sneak up on you and rip-rap, rip-rap.” She snapped her fingers.
“That would be it.”
“Are you all right?” Leoni asked.
“Didn’t hit your head, did you?” Estelle asked, peering over her glasses at me. “You don’t want to lose your marbles. Some of yours are broken already. You weren’t hurt, were you?”
Leoni squealed, as understanding dawned. “Did that tall drink of water rescue you?”
I bit my lip.
“He did! I can tell by the guilty expression!” Estelle pointed her scissors at me. “And it all started with a semidrowning. You look terrible. Makeup streaking, hair a wreck. Could you not have kept yourself dry for this one man?”
I almost giggled, couldn’t help myself, then turned on my heel toward the bathroom.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to get the seaweed, whale poop, and salt water off of me.”
I heard Leoni whisper, “Maybe for the first time in a million years she’ll get a date out of this,” to which Estelle said, voice on full volume, “That mouth of hers is a whip. She scares men. She sews wedding dresses that women kill for, but she swears she’ll dress as a gnome before she be-bops down the aisle in one herself.”
I rolled my eyes and skeedaddled for the shower, turning on the radio as I hurried in. My favorite song was on. It was about a small town on the river, sunshine, hope, and a cheating boyfriend who was locked up in jail for running naked through the streets, his girlfriend threatening to shoot him from behind and, “blast his butt to Jupiter.” It was hilarious.
I sang along as I showered, washed the ocean out of my hair and dried off, quick as a lick, then jumped into jeans and white sandals. I pulled on a white lace shirt and a flowing white lace blouse, both of which I’d sewn, a rope belt I’d wound together with gold ribbon, and gold hoop earrings. I pulled a comb through my blond curls and dried it. I added lotion, liner, mascara, and lipstick. I reached for a lotion that smelled seductive, called Amber Moonlight, and rubbed it on my neck and wrists.
Fifteen minutes tops, I was new, improved, and done.
“He’s been back for five minutes,” Leoni whispered, again worried that Reece had bionic ears. “He knocked and I left him downstairs in the family room. He must live nearby. He’s not wet anymore, either. He is a piece of heaven. A piece of handsome work. A stud.”
“What are you two going to do?” Estelle said, again not bothering to curb the volume of her ricocheting voice. “If I were you, I would dispense with the preliminaries and invite that tiger to my bed.”
I waved my arms at her, as in,
be quiet!
“In fact,” Estelle mused, “I think I’ll invite him myself. He probably has a hidden thing for women of a certain age and experience.”
I tried not to smile like a fool at the thought of my taking the chariot driver to bed. “He’s taking me to the emergency room.”
“How romantic!” Estelle dramatically clutched her chest. “Maybe you can take X-rays of each other’s bottoms. Or you can give each other colonoscopies. Tar and feather me, you can get your pap smear and he can wield the tools ... or,” she used her fingers to form two guns, “you can practice giving each other stitches and shots in the butt!”
I rolled my eyes.
“Go, go!” Leoni insisted. “Before he escapes! Before he runs off or is intimidated by your harsh and ghastly view of men in general. Please do not go into one of your harangues about how men are comparable to vermin, spiders, or orangutan spit. Please don’t tell him your history. Please don’t lecture him on the faults of his ‘species,’ and for Godzilla’s sake, don’t list the problems that men have caused in this century, or in the last century. Try to be nice ...”
“I’m going to be nice. I’m always nice.”
“Not with men, you man-decimating wreck,” Estelle said. “You’re a charging grizzly bear with night sweats.”
“I’m not going to change who I am because of a man.”
“No one’s asking you to change,” Estelle argued. “Heck, I have never changed one iota of my charming personality for a man. We’re telling you not to assume he’s inherently a monster because of his plumbing and I’ll bet he has big plumbing.
Big
plumbing!” She semishouted the last two words.
I blushed again.
Darn it!
“Don’t bring any of your sewing needles with you, is all,” Leoni said, wringing her hands. “Figuratively or literally.”
“We’re going to the emergency room. That’s it. I’m not going to poke him with needles or give him a shot.”
Estelle threw her hands in the air. “You have a date! You had to almost drown to get one, but you have a date!”
“When are you coming back?” Leoni asked. “Don’t rush. You need to savor the sweetness and sparkle of the date.”
“It might not happen again for years,” Estelle said, crossing her arms. “Years. Maybe even this millennium.”
“I won’t be gone long. As you both know, we’re swamped in work and I don’t even have time to go to the emergency room.”
“Go anyhow!” Leoni said as she cupped her hands into a heart shape. “No matter what they do to you, even if they give you an enema, it’ll be worth it!”
“Don’t screw this up, June,” Estelle said. “When you’re my age, you take romance where you can get it and be grateful for it. Take life by the horns and swing it around and dance with it, that’s what I always say.”
I turned to head down the hallway. I stopped at the photo of my family’s VW van, with all of the MacKenzies in front of it. There were purple peace signs painted on the sides. We were in Montana then. I’d taken an old photograph and blown it up to a three-foot-by-four-foot canvas.
I held two fingers up. Peace.
On my way down the hallway, I ran into an astronaut.
“Hi, Morgan,” I said. Morgan is Leoni’s seven-year-old daughter.
“Hi, June,” she said through her white NASA astronaut’s helmet. It wasn’t an authentic NASA helmet, obviously. It was an oversized, battered white motorcycle helmet that she’d stuck a NASA sticker to. She wore a white astronaut jumpsuit, an ex-Halloween outfit, in red and blue, and carried a clipboard and pen. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to the emergency room.”
Through the eye shade I could see her confusion. “Are you dying?”
“No. A wave got me.”
“Oh.” She wrapped her arms around me. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” I hugged her back. Downstairs Hercules was waiting.
“Good. Do you know about astronauts’ toilets on their space shuttles?”
“No, I don’t.”
“There’s a vacuum for solids and there’s a hose for liquids. There are two bars that hold your thighs down because there’s no gravity up in space and you don’t want to float away from the toilet doing your private business.”
“No, that would be a mess. Sweets, I have to go.” The chariot was here!
“I met that man downstairs.”
“Oh, ah. Good.”
“He’s tall. I think he’s smart enough to be an astronaut.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I asked him if he understood why NASA astronauts need spacesuits and he told me why. We discussed why I need a camera on my suit, a headlamp for seeing outside of the shuttle, an oxygen tank, and a battery and water supply for a life-support system.”
“Wow. I’m impressed.” Aha! He was kind to kids!
“Yeah, me, too. Is that your boyfriend? My mom doesn’t have a boyfriend. I’m going to go upstairs and study my astronaut books.” She tilted her spacesuit helmet up at me. “He’s going to be proud of me, you know.”
My stomach clenched. “Morgan, I’m proud of you already. So is Estelle and your mom and your teachers, who all say you’re bang-up smart. You know more about space shuttles and astronauts, the galaxy and astronomy, than almost anyone on the planet and you’re only seven.”
“Well, when he knows I’m an astronaut, he’ll want to see me again.”
My stomach clenched again. Morgan’s father, the loser, the bottom-dwelling algae/larvae, had left Morgan’s mother when she was five. He told Leoni he was going to the store for a cherry pie and never returned. Leoni noted that he remembered to take his golf clubs, hunting gear, camping tent, expensive bike, and he cleaned out their bank account. Ever since, Morgan has dressed, almost each day, as an astronaut because her father was interested, however mildly, in space. She wants to be impressive so he’ll be impressed with her and come back and live with them again.
It breaks my heart. I hugged her again. “I want to see you every day, right here, because if I don’t see you, I don’t have a good day.”
“Yeah, I know. The kids made fun of my astronaut suit again.”
“What do they know? They’re too young to understand brilliance when they see it.”
“They think I’m weird.”
“Who cares what they think? All that matters is that you recognize that you’re wonderful and cool.” I tried not to cry for Morgan. “Your mom made peanut butter cookies because she was super-mad at the bodices of the yellow, twenties-era flapper dresses. Have a couple, read your space shuttle book, and organize the pink lace drawer for me, will you?” I give Morgan jobs all the time to do. It makes her feel wanted and needed. I pay her, too.
“Okay.” She smiled at me through the dark visor. “I’ll tell you about a new design for a space shuttle I sent NASA last week. The one I worked on for about three months with all the details and about twenty pages of explanations. I think they’ll write me back.”
“They might, Morgan. As least
they
know brilliance when they see it.”
I tried not to let my heart squeeze too tight when I thought about the pain of abandonment that kid’s selfish father had caused her, then turned to tromp down the stairs toward Hercules.
C
HAPTER
4
“Thanks for taking me to the emergency room. I can’t say it was fun, Reece, but I’m glad I went.” I took another bite of clam chowder. Marlene’s Chowder, a restaurant located on a blue-gray river that roars into the ocean nearby, is the best in Oregon. Creamy, not too clammy, dollop of butter on the top. Add hot garlic cheese bread for dipping, and you are in clam chowder heaven.
“You inhaled a lot of sea water and I don’t think I could have slept tonight unless I knew your lungs were clear. And now we know for sure that you didn’t swallow any fish.” He grinned.
“Based on the amount of water I unwillingly swallowed, anything could have slipped down my throat, including an octopus and a treasure chest.”
He laughed. “You are a funny person, June.”
“No. I’m not.” I didn’t think I was. I was sarcastic. But funny? No. Some of the funniest people, it is said, are or were outsiders, so they see things differently. That’s me. I have never felt as if I was part of this natural club that some Americans fall into so seamlessly, as if they were born to fit in. I was born to be that odd link. But maybe that made my sarcasm funny ...
“Yep, you are.” He winked at me.
How totally endearing. “Thank you, again, for saving my sorry butt today.”
Reece picked up his coffee mug. “Happy to oblige you, ma’am. And your butt is not sorry, so to speak.”
I tried not to blush, but the heat I felt between this man and me was sizzlin’.
“Cheers, June. To a meeting we’ll never forget.”
“Cheers.” We clinked our coffee mugs together and I distracted myself by staring out the windows, hung with white twinkling lights and fishnets for curtains. The sea lions were on the sand bar, lounging about, sometimes rolling into the river, then out to sea to gobble fish.
“So you heard about my wacky family. Tell me about your family, Reece.”
“Two brothers, two sisters, I’m in the middle. Not all living in our small farming and ranching community in eastern Oregon, where I own a ranch. My grandparents and their parents were all born there. My parents have four and five siblings each, so there’s a ton of aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins. I’m related by family, marriage, or long-term friendships to almost everybody there. Everyone knows everyone else, and their business, and their parents’ and grandparents’ business, too, and they can recite all the family scandals, dating back at least a hundred years.”
“You have scandals in your family?”
“Heck yeah. Where do I start? There have been gunslingers and stagecoach robbers, eye-popping affairs, secrets, children fathered by men who weren’t their biological fathers, but were related
to
the father. Feuds that lasted decades, stolen bulls that started family wars. Millionaires that were generous, millionaires who visited boudoirs. Practical jokes that are legend. There’s been a whole lot of love and friendship, too.”
“Tell me about the practical jokes.”
“Let’s see. My brother’s truck ended up on top of the elementary school. Horses were led out of a barn late one night and replaced by cows. My cousin snuck chickens into his uncle’s living room.” He told me more jokes, and I laughed so hard, I had to cross my legs.
“And your siblings?” I wiped the laughter tears from eyes.
“My oldest sister designs saddles and western wear and sells it in her store in town. The next kid, my brother, has a tea company in Portland and it’s going gangbusters. My younger sister is a full-time mom, lives in town, has five kids, and her husband sells plumbing equipment, and my other brother is a cameraman for major motion pictures. They live in Los Angeles.”
“All doing something different. Same house, same parents, completely different occupations.”
“And all married, except me, the rebel son, and they all have children. My parents have fifteen grandkids.”
“I bet they’re happy with that.”
He winked at me. “Always room for more O’Briens.”
“Ah, well, good luck to you and your siblings and your fertility. I’ll do a dance to the fertility goddess for you.”
“It would be exciting to see that. But if you’re on the beach doing your fertility dance, make sure you watch the waves. Scratch that. I’ll be with you, and I’ll watch the waves. You dance.”
I thought of dancing in front of him and blushed.
Honestly.
Blushing? Wasn’t I a little too old for that? A little too mean for that?
“By the way, I’ll pay your emergency room bill,” Reece said. “I know you didn’t think you needed to go, but I feel better that you did and since I insisted, it’s on me.”
I dropped my spoon into my clam chowder and it splattered out of the bowl. “You’ll do no such thing. I have money. I can pay it and I will pay it.”
“Please. Allow me.”
I could feel myself getting frazzled and angry. It had started that way with
him
, too. Being chivalrous. Manly. Take charge. He’d fling it back in my face later, asking for compliments and thank yous. It was all a ploy to pretend he was someone he wasn’t.
“No. I’ll pay whatever my insurance doesn’t pay myself.”
“I’d like to pay it.” His expression was determined, but gentle.
“Why? That’s ridiculous.”
“Because you went through a hard time. It’s traumatic. You’re going to have nightmares for weeks, maybe longer, and I want to do something for you that brings one good thing to this situation, and if that good thing means I pay your bill, then—”
No.
“No. I’m not going to owe you anything.” My voice was tense and a bit screechy. “I’m not going to let you have that over me. I can pay for myself. I don’t need a man taking care of me. Do I give the impression that I need a man to pay my bills? Do I come off as weak? Poor? Helpless?”
“Whoa.” He held up a hand, his voice surprised. “Whoa. That’s not what I meant. I want to do something nice for you, that’s it. There’s no other ulterior motive here at all.”
I gritted my teeth, then took a breath, knowing I was bringing in way too much of my past baggage. “Maybe I needed help when a sneaker wave tried to eat me, but I don’t need help otherwise and I certainly wouldn’t put my trust in a man to help me.”
“You wouldn’t put your trust in a man to help you?” He leaned forward. He was genuinely saddened, I could see it in the lines of his face. “Why not?”
“Why not? Because I don’t trust men.” I could hear Leoni’s and Estelle’s voices echoing in my head,
Be nice!
“All men? There’s no man you trust?”
“I trust my father and my brother.”
“What happened to you to make you not trust men?”
“I don’t want to talk about it because it might make me throw something at the captain’s wheel or the buoys hanging from the ceiling.” I could feel my anger bubbling away.
“I’m sorry you don’t trust men. I’m sorry for whatever happened that made you not trust men.”
I tried not to get drawn into the sincerity I saw on his face, the strength in that squared-off jaw.
“It’s not something you need to chew on for long. One drowned rat of a woman named June doesn’t trust men.” I pushed my blond curls back. “It’s not a big deal.”
“There’s only one June, I can reassure you of that.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s only one of you, and I wish you trusted men.”
“Why? What’s it to you?”
“I like you.”
I hardly knew what to say. He liked me? “How can you like me? We don’t know each other.” But I liked him. I knew I did. How can you not like a man who risks his life to drag you out of a frothing ocean, then insists on getting you warmed up, listens to you chatter on about your hippie family as if it’s the most fascinating tale he’s ever heard, then whisks you off to the emergency room and waits, listening carefully to what the doctor says, before taking you for hot clam chowder, garlic bread, and onion rings? How can you not get a tingle?
“This is what I know about you so far, June.”
I put my coffee down because I was getting
hot.
“You like walking on the beach during rainstorms. Me, too. You get distracted by butterfly shells, I’m surmising, because you find beauty in small things. You pull seaweed out of your mouth after almost drowning, but you don’t seem a bit squeamish about having it in there in the first place. Your dry humor shows even after a terrifying event, you never once skipped anywhere near hysteria, which most people would have, you didn’t complain about being soaked and freezing, you were pretty darn calm actually, and in fifteen minutes flat you go from being soaking wet to ... utterly lovely. Not that you weren’t lovely soaked, you were. You were a soaked, lovely sea lady.”
He thought I was utterly lovely! Oh, calm down, my heart!
“I saw you hug Morgan on the stairs, you were nice to the two boys in the emergency room with giant bumps on their heads, patted one of their backs after they vomited in a wastebasket, then hugged the worried mother. You spoke kindly to the nurses and doctors. You’re strong, you’re brave. How can I not like you?”
I was semistunned. “Do you always figure people out this quickly?”’
“No.” He smiled again. “And I haven’t figured you out, either. I’m learning about you, and I can tell you’re a complex person. And interesting.”
“I’m temperamental, moody, abrupt, and blunt, and I’m not in a good mood at this time of my life.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s how it is. Eat some garlic bread.”
“I love this stuff.”
“Me, too. Eat it.”
“You can tell me why you’re not in a good mood at this time of your life on our next date,” he said.
“Date? This is a date?”
“Let’s call it a date.”
“No.” Oh no, I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t right. “This is not a date. Nope and nada.”
“What is it, then?” He had such a manly voice, low and controlled. . . sexy.
“It’s an ... it’s, well ... it’s a survivor’s luncheon. You saved me, so we’re eating together.”
“Great. Let’s have a survivor’s luncheon again. How about it?”
I ignored a heavy weight, a trunk of lead, on my heart. “No.”
He studied me for a few seconds. “Okay.”
“That’s it, then.” I squashed down a terrible rush of disappointment. He was going to give up that quick? Not surprising for a man. Slightest bit of resistance and they back off. No, you’re not worth the work or the worry, they’ll find some other two-legged female to pursue. Darn, I do not think much of most men.
“No,” he chuckled. “I’ll ask you again. Probably tomorrow. Maybe you’ll be in a better mood and more open to a survivor’s luncheon?”
“I doubt it.” My voice was snappish, but I smiled, then covered my smile with my napkin. He wasn’t giving up! He was rebooting, so to speak.
“Maybe I’ll sing to you.”
I laughed at the image. “Maybe I’ll sing back.”
“Maybe I’ll play my guitar under your window.”
“I’d still say no.” But I wanted to say yes.
“Don’t press me, I’ll do it. That’s a beautiful shirt, by the way.”
“Thank you.”
He peered closer at it. “It’s ... can I use the word ‘elegant’ without you thinking I’m one of those men who’s into fashion?”
“You sure can.” I eyed his “guy clothes.” This was a man who dressed in an outdoorsy, bring-on-the-fishing-and-hunting kind of style.
“It’s all lace, isn’t it? The whole thing, same with the shirt underneath it. Very feminine.”
I wanted to yell, “I made it!” But I was too shy for that. Instead, I felt myself growing hot again. I would probably melt by the end of this lunch.
“Stylish. Maybe you’ll wear it again when you give in and go out with me. There’s this great restaurant down the road, ocean view, candles, excellent steak ...”
“No.”
Yes.
“And stuffed baked potatoes that are incredible.”
“No.”
Yes.
“And a seven-layer chocolate cake that is the best I’ve ever had.”
I hesitated.
Yummy!
“No.”
“No and no and no,” he sighed. “Break my heart, June, break my heart. The cake is mouthwatering, and I have to say I’m a bit of an expert on cake because I eat it all the time.”
My mouth was already watering, and it wasn’t for the cake.
I drove home from Marlene’s, after insisting and arguing with Reece to let me treat him to lunch, which he refused. Reece followed me down the road, his truck following my truck. That’s how we’d gone to the hospital, too. I figured that someone who had saved my life, got a kick out of my nomadic childhood, and had eyes that made my heart kick-start into heaven was probably safe. If he and that sexy smile had asked me to climb into a parked spaceship bound for Pluto, I probably would have said yes.