Another Summer (4 page)

She wiped her eyes and summoned a smile. “You’re right, I do find it hard to believe. So, just this once, why don’t you indulge me and let me make the omelet?” More than issuing a challenge, she wanted something to do.

He yielded the skillet. “You do realize you’ve put me in an untenable position. Now I actually have to prove to you that I can cook.”

She eased the eggs into the pan. “You make me sound so … I don’t know … insensitive.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘clever.’ ”

She laughed. He was wrong, of course, but she basked in the gentle teasing. She tilted the pan to let the eggs cook evenly.
Andrew was right–she was home.
She just wasn’t ready to admit it yet.

A
FTER BREAKFAST THEY DID THE DISHES
Together, then went down to the beach. Through the morning fog they could see groups of brown pelicans, mostly made up of five or six but some with as many as a dozen, skim the waves, headingnorth for a day of foraging. Sanderlings raced across the sand ahead of incoming waves, then dashed back again as the water retreated, stopping to search for the tiny mollusks and crustaceans the water left behind. Conserving their energy, gulls patiently waited in the dry sand for the waves to bring something more substantial.

When the fog cleared, the beach would fill with Sunday visitors, but for the moment Cheryl and Andrew had only a few intrepid fishermen for company. Without giving details, Cheryl had canceled lunch with her cousin, promising they would get together soon. Cheryl sidestepped her cousin’s questions, unwilling to listen to the lecture about getting involved with Andrew that her cousin would relish giving.

Having him in her life again would not be easy. The friends and family who’d seen her through the rough years were not people who forgave or forgot easily.

“You’re drifting.” Andrew stepped in front of her and walked backwards. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“I was thinking about my family and what they will say when they find out that I’m seeing you again.”

“Are you?”

She stopped. “What?”

“Seeing me again?”

“Is that a trick question?”

“No, just one we need to talk about. Among others.”

She folded her arms across her chest, stopped, and dug her toes in the sand. “Like where do we go from here?”

“I ask you out on a date, and you say yes.”

“What kind of date?”

He shrugged. “Dinner? Movie?”

“Don’t you think we’re a little past that?”

He cupped her face with his hands and looked deeply into her eyes. “I’m not sure what you have in mind, but I think we should get something clear right from the start. I’m not one of those guys you pick up in a bar and have your way with–at least not on the first date. You’re going to have to spend some time getting to know me before you get me to agree to anything more than a good night kiss.”

Her heart skipped a beat. Here was the man, the boy, she’d known, the one who could touch her heart and make her laugh and convince her she was safe in his arms. But here, too, was the man who had left her. How could she trust them both?

Instead of responding to his teasing, she said, “Tell me something about you that I don’t know.”

The question threw him. He thought for several seconds. “I sailed around the world a couple of years ago.”

“By yourself?”

He nodded.

“Couldn’t you find anyone to go with you?”

“I wasn’t looking for company.”

“What were you looking for?”

He took time to gather his thoughts before answering. “I never did decide. It took hindsight to figure out that selling my business and leaving had nothing to do with knowing I was about to turn thirty-five. It was something I did out of a gut reaction to Ken dying so young. His death destroyed the shield I’d managed to build around myself–the belief that all the years of being cancer-free actually meant something.”

This was not what she wanted to hear, certainly not something to shore up the fragile sense of confidence she had started to feel that they might be able to make it this time. “If thirty-five did that to you, what are you going to do when you turn forty?”

“Have a small, private party on the boat with just the two of us toasting our future.” He grinned. “Now for presents, I see one about five feet six inches tall wrapped in Saran Wrap with a red bow placed–”

She wasn’t going to let him off that easily. “How long did it take you to sail around the world?”

The grin faded. “Sixteen months. But that’s not what you really want to know, is it?”

She shook her head, unable to find the words to express what she was thinking.

“You want to know if you can believe me when I tell you it will never happen again.”

“I just keep thinking actions speak louder than words.”

“I celebrated my birthday with a group of strangers in a bar in Darwin, Australia, silently toasting my freedom while they toasted the things that held them down. I was convinced I felt sorry for them. Then for some reason I stuck around until closing and watched the couples peel off to go home. They walked away hand in hand, and I was left to walk away alone. I’ve never been as lonely as I was at that moment, nor been more aware of what I lost in you. I guess you could say it was one of those life-altering moments.”

Seeking to ground herself in the ordinary, she glanced down the beach and focused on a fisherman packing his gear. “What did you do then?”

“I finished the trip thinking I could fill the emptiness with new places and people. It took several thousand miles before I was ready to admit there was only one person who could make me feel whole again.”

“All that time alone,” she mused. “I could never do it.”

“I had a dog, a stray I picked up in Darwin the morning I left. Because I didn’t want to burden him with anything as prosaic as a name, he became Dog. It was amazing how well we fit together. I started wondering if there wasn’t something to this reincarnation business and Kenhad come back to keep me company.” He stopped and took a deep breath. “I had no idea how much he’d come to mean to me until the day after I passed through the Panama Canal and woke up the next morning and he wasn’t there. I spent a week looking for him, long past any reasonable expectation that he could still be alive. When I got home, I put ads in all the Central American newspapers and even a couple of sailing magazines offering a reward in case someone had come across him and picked him up.”

She could hear the grief in his voice and see it in the way he held himself. “You used to say you never wanted a dog.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“But you would never say why.”

“It’s easier not to want something you can’t have. No foster family was going to take in a kid
and
a dog.”

How could she have known him so well and not known this? “What kind of dog was he?”

“Black. About two feet tall at the shoulder. Long, silky hair. He had a funny way of tilting his head to the side when I said something to him, almost as if he really understood me.”

Slowly, but with inexorable force, Cheryl began to understand she wasn’t the only one taking a chance on being hurt again. Andrew might have been the one who walked away, but he hadn’t left unscathed. She looked at him long and hard. “I really do want this to work,” she finally told him. “But you’re going to have to give me some time.” Andrew nodded. “I can do that.” If he put his mind to it, he might even manage to wait a day or two before he called her.

  “I
F THIS THING FALLS, IT COULD DECAPITATE
me,” Donna Anderson grumbled.

Kelly Anderson felt her locked hands slipping as she strained to hold her sister’s 120 pounds three feet off the ground. Donna had been at the double-hung window a good three minutes, long enough to have climbed through and back out again. “If you don’t get a move on,
I’m
going to decapitate you.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault we’re locked out.” Obviously deciding she’d studied the situation long enough, Donna finally stuck her arms through the oversize window and hiked herself higher. “Push,” she commanded.

Kelly did and immediately felt resistance. “Now what?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Donna said. “Let me down.”

“What? You can’t be serious.”

She wiggled back out the window. “I said, let me down.”

Kelly let go and Donna slid to the ground. “But you were almost inside,” Kelly protested.

“Yeah, and it just occurred to me that we could be arrested for what we’re doing. What if someone is watching us? What if they call the police? What if Walter found out?” She shuddered. “I’d lose my promotion. Never mind that, I’d lose my job.”

“Donna,” Kelly said through clenched teeth, her patience strained to breaking. “If you recall, we decided to go in through the window because it’s after midnight and everyone around here is asleep.”

“Just because their lights are out doesn’t mean they’re sleeping.”

She let out an exaggerated sigh of frustration. “All right, if you’re going to be such a weenie about it, I’ll go in.” She moved Donna out of the way. “Give me a boost.”

She took a step back. “If I do, they could still get me as an accessory.”

“To
what?”

“Breaking and entering.”

Donna had graduated at the top of her class at the University of the Pacific, was considered a brilliant analyst at her brokerage firm, and was being groomed to sit on the board of directors before she was forty. She made more money than both of her other sisters combined, and had the basic common sense of a gnat–which made it easy to say what came next. “There is no such thing as breaking and entering.”

“Since when?”

“Since forever. If you’re going to read mysteries, would you please read the ones written by people who know what they’re talking about?”

“Well, I might not have the name right, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be arrested for what we’re doing.”

Kelly backed into a bush. A pointed branch jabbed her hard in the thigh. She grimaced. “Think about it, Donna. We couldn’t even be taken in for trespassing.” She felt for blood and stuck her hand in a tangle of spiderwebs. Shuddering, she tried to fling the sticky mass off before wiping her hand on her shorts. “We have a legal right to be here. Now, if you can manage to keep yourself from snatching a towel rack and breaking the window as you toss it outside, we’ll be okay.”

“What has a towel rack got to do with anything?”

“That would be vandalism, which is a crime.”

Donna considered Kelly’s statement. “If you’re lying to me about the breaking and entering part, I swear I’ll–”

Before she could finish, Kelly slapped her hand over her sister’s mouth. She’d spotted the dark figure of a man at the corner of the house. The moon at his back, a flashlight in his hand, he loomed large and menacing.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded, his voice as menacing as his appearance.

Unaware they’d been discovered, Donna jumped at the sudden sound of the man’s voice and let out a scream that shattered the quiet night like a piece of crystal hitting a tile floor.

Kelly shoved an elbow into Donna’s ribs. “Get a grip,” she hissed. To the man, with as much authority as she could summon, she said, “Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

“Oh, good one, Kelly,” Donna said.

“You first,” he countered.

“Kelly Anderson.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here. Or at least I will be for the next month, providing I can ever get inside, that is. I’m the June renter.”

He moved the flashlight, studying Kelly and then Donna and finally shining the beam against the house to provide reflected light. “You weren’t due until tomorrow. And I was told you’d be alone.”

“I decided to come a day early. And my sister–” Wait a minute. Why was she telling him this when he still hadn’t told her who he was? “It’s your turn. Who are you?”

“Sorry.” He came forward, his hand extended. “I’m Andrew Wells. I live next door.”

Kelly recognized the name from the list of instructions she’d received with the rental agreement. Relieved, she shook his outstretched hand. While she’d told Donna the truth about not committing a crime, she’d left out the part about the possibility of having to prove their innocence from a jail cell. “Boy am I glad to see you. I forgot the key the rental agent sent when I told her I’d be coming in late.” She knew exactly where the key was–tucked in the side pocket of the purse she’d decided to change at the last minute.

Andrew took a step back to give her room to extricate herself from the bush she’d trampled.

“I remembered her telling me that you had an extra key if I couldn’t reach her,” Kelly said. “But your lights were out and I didn’t want to disturb you so we decided to try the window and, well, you know the rest.”

Donna wiped her hands on her navy blue slacks and stepped in front of Kelly. “Hi,” she said, her voice just short of a purr. “I’m Kelly’s sister, Donna.”

“Pleased to meet you, Donna.” Andrew gave her a quick smile. “I’ll get the key and meet you out front.”

Gingerly making their way through thick plantings while trying not to do any more damage than they already had, they barely beat Andrew to the driveway. He opened the door and stuck around to help them inside with their luggage. As he turned to leave, Donna invited him to stay for a drink. He declined, telling her he had an early-morning appointment and agreed to make it another time. She saw him to the door, leaned against it when it was closed, and grinned at Kelly.

“He’s
gorgeous.
Those eyes, that smile–that
ass.
Oh, little sister, if you don’t have the best four weeks of your life, you’re no sister of mine.”

Kelly picked up her suitcases. “No man who looks like that is unattached. His kind have women on waiting lists.” She headed down the hall. “Besides, if you remember, I’m not exactly free myself.” Donna didn’t believe in long-term relationships and didn’t think Kelly should either.

Kelly checked out the three bedrooms and settled for the one with the queen bed that faced the ocean. Donna took the one with the connecting bathroom, unpacked the essentials she would need for the two days she would be there, and joined Kelly to help her unpack.

She picked up the conversation where they’d left off, not missing a beat or giving an inch. “You’re on vacation for crying out loud. Live a little. If you think Ray is going to stay home and watch The Learning Channel while you’re gone, you’re nuts.”

“He’s so tied up with that tax case he has going to trial next month he hardly makes time to eat. If I didn’t occasionally take dinner to him at the office, we’d never see each other.” Not the complete truth, but close enough. There was always time for baseball. San Diego Padre season tickets were a company perk, and Ray insisted that attending the games was a part of his job.

“And who does he have lined up to do that little chore for him while you’re gone?”

“Cut it out, Donna.” She was more annoyed than angry. Donna subscribed to the belief that monogamy had been devised by men to hide their inadequacies. She also believed the only true way to determine the worthiness of the product inside a tight pair of jeans was to sample the package. And sample she did. But with rigid guidelines–never with a coworker, never with someone who was dating a friend, and never anyone who was married or newly separated.

“This place is a lot nicer than I expected.” Donna opened a drawer and lined up a rainbow of Kelly’s cotton tees and matching shorts. “Especially considering it’s a rental. How did you find it?”

“Dad knew someone.”

“Dad
always
knows someone. Last month we were at a party at the club and I foolishly mentioned that I was thinking about putting crown molding in my dining room. The next morning a contractor called with a bid.”

“There is no such thing as a casual conversation where Dad is concerned. He does the same thing to me if I don’t watch what I say around him. And I’ll bet if you asked Alexis, he does it to her, too.”

“It must be the lawyer in him.”

“I’m a lawyer.” But not the lawyer her father was. Harold Anderson never equivocated. He understood himself and his goals and beliefs with a single-mindedness that was breathtaking in its intensity. No matter how Kelly tried to emulate him, she fell short. Even this trip, a job most would consider a no-brainer, had her questioning herself, doubting her goals, and concerned about her real beliefs.

Donna feigned a surprised look. “So you are. Somehow I keep forgetting. Maybe it’s because I can still vividly remember changing your diaper and it’s hard for me to imagine that you’ve gone from that to–” Her gaze swept her sister. “This.”

Kelly knew how disheveled she looked dressed in a pair of shorts she’d had since high school and a San Diego Padres T-shirt she’d retrieved from a box Ray had packed to go to Goodwill. She’d opted for comfort over style for the seven-hour drive from San Diego. “Ray doesn’t seem to mind.”

“Oh? And on what do you base that bit of wisdom?”

She smiled. “Some things you’re just going to have to take on faith.”

Donna laughed. “It’s nice to know he has that much going for him.”

Kelly glanced at her watch. It was almost one. She should have felt exhausted but was wide-awake. “I could use that drink now.”

“What drink?”

“The one you offered Andrew.”

“Oh my poor little naive–”

“Do you have something to drink or don’t you?” she asked, cutting Donna off.

“It was a setup. I knew he would say no. I also knew he would say yes if I offered to make it another time. Now all you have to do is name the time and place and you’ve got your first date with the handsome man next door.”

Kelly was impressed. “I have to hand it to you. You’re good.”

“The best.”

“No, if you were the best, you would have had a bottle of something tucked away–just in case Andrew said yes.”

“Oh my poor little naive–”

Laughing despite herself, Kelly threw a pair of socks at Donna. “I don’t want to hear it.”

A
T
D
ONNA’S INSISTENCE, SHE AND KELLY
were on the beach by nine-thirty. With their chairs set in the path of the stairs, the two sisters slathered sunscreen on their bodies and toasted their weekend with tall, plastic glasses filled with Donna’s special Bloody Mary recipe. Donna’s flesh-colored one-piece suit suggestively showcased her athletic body while Kelly’s practical Speedo simply made her look athletic.

“Wait,” Donna commanded when Kelly started to take a drink. “I almost forgot.” She dug in her canvas bag and withdrew two limp celery stalks, plunking one in Kelly’s drink and the other in her own. “Now, it even looks right.”

Kelly fingered her celery suspiciously. “I’m not going to ask where this came from, I just want to know how long it’s been in your bag.”

“Some questions are better left unanswered.”

Kelly wished Donna had stopped at a grocery store instead of a liquor store when she went to pick up the key from the rental agent that morning, but as Donna had pointed out when she dragged Kelly from the house, they could do mundane chores anytime. The morning was too beautiful, the beach too serene, the company too special to be put off to another time.

Donna took a long swallow, smiled, sat back, and closed her eyes. “This is going to be a terrific weekend. I can feel it down to my toes. I’m really glad you talked me into coming with you.”

“Hold that thought.” Kelly made a show of digging through her bag. “I want to get that in writing.”

“Save it for Alexis. She’s the one who never goes anywhere. I think someone told her F & L Construction would fall apart if she weren’t there, and she believed them.”

At thirty-two, Alexis was the oldest of Harold’s three daughters and the most ambitious. She’d acquired her job with the third largest new home construction company in California through connections and was constantly trying to prove herself in the male-dominated business. “Do you think she’s going to get the vice president’s job?”

Donna took another sip. “Sure I do–when she grows a penis or hell freezes over. Doesn’t matter which comes first.”

“I wish we could have talked her into coming,” Kelly said. “It feels like years since the three of us did something fun together.”

“Four to be precise.”

“Has it really been that long? That’s awful.”

“If it weren’t for Dad’s birthday and holidays, I don’t think we’d ever see her.”

“Nobody should work that hard.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk. When was the last time you took a vacation.”

The longest she’d been away from the office was four days, and she’d started feeling anxious by the third. The thought of being away an entire month actually made her hyperventilate. Only her father’s flat insistence that she go had managed to get her out the door. What scared her the most, what she could admit to no one, was the fear she might discover she could have a life away from the pressure-cooker world she’d convinced herself she couldn’t do without. “What do you call this?”

“Work–with a couple of free days thrown in.”

Kelly settled in her chair before taking a sip of her drink. When she did, she reared back and choked. “What did you put in this thing?”

“A little of this and a little of that. Good, huh?”

“Maybe–to an alcoholic.”

“It’ll grow on you. I promise.”

Kelly used the glass to make an indentation in the sand, propped it up, and left it there. After several seconds, hunger won out, and she reached for the celery. As much to try to convince Donna as herself, Kelly said, “I’m beginning to think taking a little time away from the firm wasn’t such a bad idea after all.”