The Beach House (26 page)

“I'm sorry, I should have asked you in,” he said, embarrassed. He stepped out of the doorway and motioned for her to come inside. When she did, he automatically asked, “Would you like something? Coffee? I think there are some teabags left over from the last time you were here.” He never drank it himself, but knew it was her beverage of choice.

“No thanks.” She went into the living room and sat in the Morris chair by the fireplace. “The room looks different than it did the last time I was here.”

“The chest and rug are new. I went to a charity auction a while back and got caught up in the bidding.” Peter started to sit in the chair next to hers, then changed his mind and sat on the sofa several feet away. This was the first time she'd been there without Brandon or one of the kids for him to use as a shield, and the last thing he wanted was for her to pick up on an unguarded expression.

“Are you sure I can't get you something?” he asked.

“Actually, I came by to see if you'd like to have dinner with me tonight. I forgot I was on my own this week and made a chicken casserole big enough to feed the entire neighborhood.”

“What happened to the boys?”

She smiled wryly. “They grew up. Michael's going to be heading back to school in a couple of weeks and can't bear the thought of being away from Allison, his girlfriend, for even a day. Paul started a job at the grocery store two weeks ago and promptly fell in love with the owner's daughter. I have a feeling I'll be lucky to see him again the whole time I'm here.”

“And Brandon?” Peter asked because it was the thing to do.

“He has a new assistant pastor he's showing the ropes.”

She shifted in her chair and looked down at her hands. Just as Peter was beginning to think there might be something wrong, she looked up and gave him a dazzling smile.

“You know Brandon,” she said. “He likes to think that his congregation can't get along without him.”

“So you'll be here alone . . . the whole month?”

“It looks that way.”

Peter was hit with the sudden and sure knowledge that the next month would either be the best or the worst of his life.

Chapter 3

Katherine closed the door and leaned her back against it as she listened to Peter's footsteps fade into the night. The dinner had been a success, just what she'd needed to make her forget—if only for a couple of hours—that it was likely her last year at the beach house.

She felt guilty about lying to Peter, even if the lie was by omission. The decision not to tell him that she and Brandon were separated had been an impulse. For months she'd been bombarded with well-meaning advice and endless questions from both friends and acquaintances. She was sick to death of their sad faces and suspicious sidelong glances and didn't want to go through it with Peter, too.

She desperately needed some normalcy in her life—if only for the month she would be there.

Normalcy? What a joke. She hardly knew what it was anymore. Normal had been when they were a family, when Brandon thought her the second best thing that had happened to him, putting her right up there after his calling to be a minister. She'd never minded being second. How could she be jealous of God?

Coming from a family that had reserved Sundays for football, she'd had to work hard to become the perfect minister's wife. What she'd been too young to realize was that it was the process of turning her from “sinner to saint” that intrigued Brandon. Once there, she stopped being a challenge. He began to take her for granted and then found her incredibly boring and easy to dismiss.

Which was precisely the way Brandon had put it the night he asked her to move out of the home the congregation had provided for them. He said once he realized how dangerous his boredom had become, he'd been on his knees night after night for more than a year, praying for guidance. Still, he found himself thinking about women in the congregation the way he should only be thinking about his wife.

He'd told her that he'd fought laying blame, but honesty made him acknowledge that his straying thoughts were her fault. She'd allowed the spark to go out of their marriage. The sex had become perfunctory at best, the companionship no more stimulating than the sex.

The congregation had been wonderfully supportive—to Brandon, at least. While no one actually said anything to her, it was obvious they thought she was the one who'd pushed for the separation. Of course Brandon insisted the decision was mutual, had even said so at the Sunday services when he made the announcement, but no one believed him. It had to be her fault. Reverend Williams didn't have it in him to turn his back on anyone, let alone his own wife.

She'd stopped going to Brandon's church at his request when she moved out of their church-owned house and into a two-bedroom apartment across town. The place was painfully small, but it was all she could afford until she finished the units she needed for her teaching credential and got a job.

That summer, for the first time in their lives, Michael and Paul had shared a bedroom. Neither one liked it, and after a couple of weeks Michael had moved in with his dad. Which was where they were both staying while she was at the beach.

Katherine glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was almost midnight and she wasn't the least bit tired. If she went to bed now, she'd just lie there. If she didn't at least try to sleep, she'd be useless in the morning.

She went to the bookshelf and started reading titles. There was a lot of technothriller stuff. Julia had said Ken was a fan. Katherine wasn't. She'd already read the mysteries, contributing several herself. Margaret Sadler left romances. Katherine picked one up that looked interesting, read the outline, and put it back. Even if it was fiction, she didn't want to read about someone succeeding where she'd failed.

She finally settled on a biography of Doris Duke, a woman so far removed from Katherine's own life that it was like reading fiction. Before curling up on the end of the sofa, she opened the sliding glass door to let in the sounds of the ocean.

Hours later, cold despite the afghan she'd put over her legs, her neck stiff from falling asleep sitting up, Katherine finally went to bed.

Strangely, her last thoughts were of Peter.

She decided he was precisely what she needed while she was there, a friend who neither wanted nor needed anything from her, someone who would share a meal or walk or conversation without prying or giving advice. Someone who had no reason even to think about her eleven months out of the year.

 

Two days passed before Peter broke down and went to see Katherine. He'd done everything possible to facilitate an “accidental” meeting, watching the beach to see if she was there and walking by her house whenever he could come up with a plausible excuse. The closest he'd come to making contact was a quick wave as she drove past him on her way out.

She came to the door wearing a one-piece navy blue swimsuit, her hair in a single braid down her back, sunglasses propped on top of her head, a towel draped over her arm.

“You just caught me,” she said. “I was on my way down to do some good old-fashioned, decadent sunbathing.” She gave him a smile that belonged on a poster in a dentist's office. “I was beginning to think the fog was never going to go away.”

Peter wondered fleetingly if there was a special place in hell for men who lusted after preachers' wives. “I have to go into town later and thought you might like to come along—if you're not doing anything, that is.”

She smoothed back a strand of hair that had come loose from her braid. “What time?”

The motion exposed the soft curve of the side of her breast and almost stole Peter's composure. “Around noon?” When she didn't answer right away, he added, “It doesn't have to be then, I just thought we could stop for lunch first.”

“Noon is fine.”

“Great,” he said, trying hard to keep the excitement from his voice. “I'll see you then.” He turned to leave.

She waited. When he didn't add anything, she asked, “Do you want me to meet you somewhere?”

“What?”

“You said you'd see me. I was wondering where.”

“Oh—I'll come by and pick you up.”

She started to close the door, then stopped. “What are you doing now?”

He was going to go home and try to get the image of her in that swimming suit out of his head. “Nothing important. Why?”

“I know lying on the beach in the sun isn't all that exciting to someone who lives here year-round, but I thought since it's such a beautiful day you might make this one exception and come with me.”

He'd be an idiot to put himself through something like that. “Sure . . . give me a minute to get my suit.”

“Do you have a beach towel?”

“No—I don't think I do.”

“I'll bring Paul's.”

On his way home to get his suit, the same thought rolled through Peter's mind, like the incoming tide, repeatedly pounding its message into his consciousness. He had no more right to sit in the sun with her than he did to haul her off to town with him on some trumped-up excuse to go shopping. It was wrong, and it was stupid.

He was like an alcoholic convinced he could become a social drinker. Night after night he went to bed drunk, only to wake up the next morning positive that this was the day he would succeed in conquering his habit.

At least she didn't ask him to help her apply lotion to her back when they were lying next to each other on the lumpy, hard sand. And he was smart enough not to offer. But then he didn't have to touch her skin to know how soft it was or how it would feel beneath his exploring hands. He was a tactile person; such things were imbedded in his mind. He didn't have to imagine how the almost invisible hairs on her arm would tickle his lip, he knew. Just as he knew the hollow at the base of her throat would smell of flowers and musk.

Katherine rolled to her side, propped her head up with her hand, and studied Peter. “When did you know you wanted to be a painter?”

He shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand and looked up at her. “Always. I can't ever remember not knowing.”

“Then when did you know you could make a living at it?”

He smiled. “When someone read the price wrong at the artist's co-op where I was exhibiting and paid ten times my asking price for something I'd always considered a pretty ordinary landscape.”

“How do you decide what you're going to paint?”

She'd never asked him about his work before. “It has to interest me . . . or offer a challenge.”

“I tried painting once. I was awful.”

“I'll bet you weren't as bad as you thought. You probably went into it with unreasonable expectations.”

She laughed. “No-o-o-o, I really was awful. But it wasn't a complete waste. I learned to appreciate the people with real talent.” Her eyes lit up. “Like you.”

“But you've never seen anything of mine.”

“Oh, yes, I have. At a gallery in San Francisco. You wouldn't believe the fool I made out of myself. Brandon almost died when I went around telling everyone I knew the artist.”

“What would you say if I asked you to pose for me?” he asked, careful to keep it casual.

“Because I interest you, or I offer a challenge?”

“Both.”

“I don't know. It seems so narcissistic.”

“Not when I do it.”

“Don't tell me you're going through a Picasso cubist period.”

This time it was his turn to laugh. “Nothing so dramatic. I just paint what I see, warts and all.”

“I don't have warts. Just a ton of freckles.”

“Well?” He closed his eyes to hide how much her answer meant to him.

“I can't imagine why you'd want to paint someone like me. But if you're serious, I guess it would be okay.”

Now he could look at her. “I can start tomorrow. Is that all right with you?”

“Tomorrow's fine. Paul was supposed to come down, but he had his hours changed at the grocery store and has to work.”

“What about Brandon?”

“He's not coming, either,” she said cryptically.

Peter felt guilty at the incredible rush of pleasure that came with knowing he would have Katherine all to himself for the next few days. If Julia did decide to sell her house, even if he bought it from her and offered to continue the rental agreement with Katherine and her family, there was no guarantee they would take him up on it.

“Is it hard?” she asked. “Sitting still all that time, I mean.”

“I don't know,” he admitted. “I've never done it.”

“What happens if I move?”

“Everything is ruined and I have to start over.”

Her eyes widened. “I don't know if I can—”

Laughing, he put his hand on her arm. “I promise you it will be painless.”

Damn.
He shouldn't have touched her. The ache in his gut was like a giant band, squeezing and turning at the same time. “I'm going swimming,” he announced. “Want to come?”
Please say no
, he begged silently. He desperately needed to be alone for a while.

She glanced at her watch. “I think I'll go up and get ready.”

He nodded. “I'll see you later, then.”

Peter didn't bother taking time to adjust to the chilly water but walked straight in and dove into an incoming wave. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Katherine stayed for several minutes and watched him swim. He moved through the swells parallel to the shore until his body was numb from the cold. Then he came in.

If only there was a way his mind could be numbed as easily.