“Only in Manhattan?” I teased gently.
“Nothing brought me down to Raleigh and I couldn’t picture you in Boston. Were you?”
I shook my head.
“What about the Clara Barton Rest Stop on the Jersey Turnpike seven years ago near the end of August?”
His big hands toyed with the glass candleholder as he tried to make his tone light.
“Were you really there?” I asked, incredulous. “Why on earth didn’t you speak to me?”
He shrugged. “You were with some other women.”
“Three of my brothers’ wives,” I remembered. “We probably were on our way to see Cats.”
“I had just pulled in and you passed right in front of my car. You had on white shorts and a red shirt and your hair was still long.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Ah, what the hell?” He pushed the candle away and signalled for the bill. “Let’s walk.”
• • •
It always amazes me what walkers city people are. We’ve got the wide open spaces and farm work requires a certain amount of walking, but nothing like city life. Probably because we don’t categorize feet as a genuine form of transportation. When there are fences to mend down by the creek or if you need to take a jug of water to someone plowing new ground out behind the pasture, you jump in a pickup with four-wheel drive. City people—especially New Yorkers—think nothing of walking two country miles to go pick up a library book.
“Can’t we take a bus?” I used to whine, cabs being out of our price range.
“But it’s only thirty blocks,” Lev would say heartlessly.
Yet when we weren’t rushing to get somewhere before the doors closed or the lights went down, walking in the city could be wonderful. Beaufort was no city, of course, but we walked through the cool night air and enjoyed the old white clapboard houses, the antique store windows, the deserted sidewalks back up from the water. Tourist season was only beginning so we mostly had those side streets to ourselves even though it wasn’t yet ten o’clock.
By tacit consent, our talk was of life in Boston, life in Colleton County, how I’d come to the bench, where are they now all the people we’d known, and who do you suppose lived in this great white house with the widow’s walk?
Eventually we wound up near the Ritchie House, the only place still open and still serving drinks. But as he started to open the glass door to the lounge, Lev said, “Oh hell!” and stepped back quickly.
Through the glass I saw the Docksiders seated at one of the lounge tables with a couple of attorneys I recognized from court. Mrs. Llewellyn’s hair was a swirl of dandelion gold as she threw back her head and laughed at something one of the men had said. There was no sign of Claire Montgomery.
“You’re not in the mood for more cocktail chatter, are you?” Lev asked.
“Not really.” And certainly not with people I’d effectively ruled against in court.
We walked back along the boardwalk where all the boats were moored. A northeast breeze whipped my hair, and low music from someone’s radio mingled with the sound of lapping water. A few of the decks had people sitting outside enjoying the quiet night, but most had gone below, with only a dim glow showing behind curtained windows.
Beneath one of the security lights, I paused and checked my watch. Nearly eleven.
Lev suddenly took my hand and said, “Don’t go yet. Let’s have our nightcap on the Rainmaker.”
“Better give me a raincheck,” I demurred. “I’m not up to small talk with a puppet.”
“Oh Claire won’t be there. When we’re in port, they wimp out and stay ashore. Their baby—well, actually Nicky’s not really a baby any more—but it’s still easier to manage him in a hotel. It was a fluke that Claire was even here the day that bike was taken. No, they have a suite at the Ritchie House. Linville’s a friend of the owners.”
No doubt. Barbara Jean said that handling the Ritchie House had been her first big coup a few years back.
“No strings,” he promised as I hesitated.
“Not a good idea,” said the preacher.
“The books are closed on this,” agreed the pragmatist. “You sure you want to open them again?”
I ignored both warnings and followed Lev down the pier to the Rainmaker’s slip. I told myself it was only because I’d never been below on a private boat this size before. It would be interesting to see the fittings.
“Yah, we know what fittings you’re interested in,” leered the pragmatist.
Well, and so what? I argued back. We had been good together once upon a time, and like that old Ray Price song says, what was wrong with one more time for all the good times?
• • •
Except that it trailed a small dinghy instead of a Ford and sported a keel instead of wheels, the outside of the Rainmaker was really not much more than a fancier version of the RV that my Aunt Sister and Uncle Rufus drive back and forth to Florida. That resemblance was the real reason I’d even noticed it in the first place. That and the name, of course, which suggested a corporate attorney.
Inside, the similarities were even more pronounced. The interior was bigger than Aunt Sister’s Winnebago—she could only sleep four, the Rainmaker six, Lev told me—but if it weren’t for the gentle motion, you’d be hard pressed to tell much difference. Every inch used, no wasted space, yet it didn’t seem cramped because the main cabin felt like a small lounge. The recessed wall lights were dimmed way down. A wide upholstered bench became a sofa berth when the table was flipped back out of the way, and cushions softened the angles.
I slipped one of those cushions under my head and watched lazily as Lev pulled ice cubes from the tiny refrigerator and glasses from a shallow cupboard.
“Still bourbon and—was it Coke?” he asked.
“Pepsi, but Coke’s fine. Easy on the bourbon.”
The preacher approved, but the pragmatist wasn’t fooled. He knew I still hadn’t decided whether or not I’d be driving later.
Lev brought our drinks over and sat down beside me. He touched his glass to mine and his dark eyes were unreadable in the soft light.
“To all the good times,” he said, echoing my own memories.
I probably took two good sips before carefully setting my glass down where it wouldn’t get knocked over.
“I think I like the beard,” I said and leaned forward until our lips met—gently, tentatively at first, then with such deepening hunger that searing jets of purely carnal desire shot through me, blocking out all voices of reason and prudence, leaving me sensate and reckless.
His hands. His big and wonderfully familiar hands were everywhere, burning through the thin cream-colored silk of my jumpsuit, touching me where no one else had touched in much too long. I tugged at his shirt, wildly impatient to feel and taste his skin again. His hair tangled in the crystal beads against my breasts. I was trying to untangle them and he was undoing my buttons, when we heard the hatch opening up above.
A light voice called, “Ahoy, the Rainmaker!” and slender legs descended the laddered stair. There was a bottle of champagne in one hand, a large purse in the other.
“Did you think I got lost, honey?” Linville Pope caroled. “One of those long-winded—”
She reached the bottom step and the smile on her lips froze as she saw us.
“Oh,” she said finally when it seemed as if the leaden silence would go on forever. “You started without me.”
Give her points for poise.
Lev had sat up so abruptly that my necklace broke and a shower of crystal spilled into my lap.