The Beach House (8 page)

He looked to Margaret to interpret. “It's not important.” She purposely changed the subject. “Where have you been? You look as if you ran to Monterey and back.”

“I probably smell that way, too.” He lifted the sleeve of his T-shirt and sniffed. “I'm going to take a shower. What time's dinner?”

“I told the girls an hour”—she checked her watch—“and that was thirty minutes ago.”

 

An hour and a half later, Tracy and Janice still hadn't returned. Chris was on his way to find them just as they started up the stairs from the beach.

“Damn,” Tracy said. “He's come to get us.”

Janice looked up. She stopped in midstep. “
That's
Chris Sadler?”

“For cryin' out loud, Janice, shut your mouth before he sees you looking at him like that. I never said he was ugly.” Tracy checked Chris out again to see what had gotten to Janice that she might have missed. He was dressed in cutoffs and a blue tank top, and for once his hair looked decent. Obviously he'd stopped letting his mother cut it for him.

“He's
gorgeous
,” Janice said under her breath.

“Just wait till he says something. Then you'll understand.” Tracy gave him the dismissive smile she used on guys at school who actually thought she could be interested in talking to them. “Chris—hi.”

“Everyone's been wondering what happened to you.”

“I told Mom we were going for a walk.” She waited for him to move out of the way before she started up the stairs again.

“Dinner's ready,” he said. When Janice reached the top of the landing, he held out his hand. “Hi, I'm Chris.”

She seemed surprised at the formality but shook his hand without comment. “Janice Carlson.”

“I was hoping you'd eaten without us,” Tracy said. “Janice really wanted to have Mexican food tonight.”

Chris looked to Janice for confirmation.

“We talked about it on the plane,” she conceded.

“Maybe we could go tomorrow. . . .” Chris didn't know what else to say.

“Or even the next day,” Janice said. “We have a whole month.”

Chris waited for Tracy to start up the path to the house and then followed. “So, what do you think of the ocean?” he asked Janice. “Beverly said it was your first time.”

She and Tracy both giggled at his unintended double entendre. “I love it. But the water's a lot colder than I thought it would be.”

“It's the Alaska current. You wouldn't think it would be an influence this far south, but it is. It's also one of the reasons there are more great white sharks in the triangle between here, San Francisco, and the Farallon Islands than anywhere else in the world.”

“Jesus, Chris,” Tracy said. “She tells you the water's cold and you give her a marine biology lesson.”

Janice ignored her. “I thought great whites were all on the East Coast, like in
Jaws
.”

Chris could have told her a hundred things about the movie and about the ocean around Monterey Bay, but Tracy would only think he was some geek trying to impress Janice with how much he knew because she thought it was all he had to offer.

The worst part was that she'd be right. He could make small talk with people he'd just met if they didn't count. But when the people were girls who looked like Tracy and Janice, he always wound up saying something dumb.

“We're going to the Monterey aquarium tomorrow,” Chris said. “They've got a lot of stuff there about sharks.”

“Not me,” Tracy said, shaking her head for emphasis. “I swore last time we went that I was never going back to that place again. It's soooo boring.”

“They have a new exhibit.” The minute it was out, he knew he'd made a mistake. Tracy never changed her mind about anything.

“I don't care if they've started feeding little kids to the sharks. Janice and I came here to have fun.”

Chapter 3

The next day Margaret and Beverly went grocery shopping while Tracy and Janice worked on their tans. Chris joined them, but not even having Tracy lying next to him in a thong suit could keep him from getting restless after the first hour.

“I'm going for a swim to cool off,” he said. Both Tracy and Janice reacted with giggles.

Tracy turned to her side and propped her head up with her hand, her long blond hair curling around her wrist like a golden bracelet. The small triangle of bright red material designed to cover no more than half her breast slipped to the side. Another half inch and her nipple would be exposed. “Before you go would you do me a favor?”

He waited, his gaze locked on her face because he knew if he dared look anywhere else, he'd make a fool of himself. He expected her to ask him to go back to the house and get her and Janice something to drink, or to eat, or to listen to. Instead she handed him a tube of lotion.

“Rub this on my back?” She smiled sweetly and lay down again. “You'll have to untie the straps first. I don't want them to get oily.”

Chris could hardly breathe. He'd dreamed about taking Tracy's clothes off, about running his hands over her body, but not like this. In his dreams they were alone and she was kissing him. And she always responded to his touch with deep-throated moans, then by pressing her body against his.

A flush burned his chest and neck and face. He was dead sure his thoughts were obvious to anyone who looked at him. It was everything he could do to stay where he was.

Jesus, he was getting a boner
.

“Is something wrong?” Tracy asked. She started to roll to her side again.

“The cap's stuck.” Chris put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down.

“It snaps open.”

His hands shaking, he untied the string that circled her chest. “Do you want the one around your neck undone, too?”

“Please.” She brought her hand up, caught her hair, and pulled it out of the way.

A gentle tug on the end of one string was all it took. He pictured her sitting up and turning to him, her eyes filled with desire.

“For crying out loud, Chris, what's taking so long?”

Chris filled his hand with enough lotion for Tracy and Janice and half a dozen other people. He tried to put some back and wound up with the stuff coating the tube and dripping on his suit. Janice put her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh and turned to face the opposite direction.

He was such a loser. No wonder Tracy didn't want to have anything to do with him.

Determined to get one thing right, Chris spread the lotion with strong, firm strokes, stopping just below her waist. She could reach the rest herself. He tossed the tube on the towel beside her and, with great effort, announced casually, “I'm going for a swim.”

Thankful he'd worn baggy trunks that day, Chris headed for the water. He was halfway there when he heard the sound of female laughter coming from behind him. His first instinct was to turn around, but at the same instant he understood something that was as pathetic as it was cowardly. If he didn't look, he wouldn't know if Tracy and Janice were laughing at him or at something else.

Tracy and Janice were gone when Chris came back from his swim. He halfheartedly looked for them before he picked up his towel and went back to the house to fix a roast beef sandwich.

Afterward he stood at the top of the stairs and scanned the beach for a long time, trying to convince himself he'd simply missed them when he'd looked before. But they were either gone or hiding.

He killed a couple of hours talking to a lifeguard he'd met that past summer. The lifeguard told Chris that he'd spent the year traveling up and down the state, putting in applications for work as a firefighter, and it looked as if he would have to leave the state to find work. Chris said he couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

When the lifeguard changed shift and there was still no sign of Tracy or Janice, Chris took off to see if the volleyball game had started.

 

The following day turned out to be almost identical to the first except that Tracy asked Janice to put on her lotion and Janice went swimming with Chris. She lasted less than fifteen minutes in the cold water—as long as it took her to make an attempt at body surfing and to wind up with a mouth full of sand. This time the two of them disappeared when Chris went back to the house to use the bathroom.

That evening he stayed at the volleyball game until it ended. When he arrived back at the house he found a note from his mother on the kitchen table, telling him they'd gone out for Mexican food and that she had left his dinner in the refrigerator. She ended with the promise to bring him chips and salsa from the restaurant.

Chris warmed his dinner in the microwave and went outside on the deck to eat and watch the sunset. The wind and sea were calm, the beach nearly deserted. During the night the waves would erase the signs of human trespass, leaving the sand unmarked save for the early morning creatures that came to eat and to be eaten.

When Chris thought about what he wanted to do with his life it wasn't the job that mattered, it was the money. He'd looked at one of those free real estate magazines that were all over the place, and an oceanfront bungalow not nearly as nice as the one they were renting cost over a million dollars. What was it going to be like in ten years when he'd be looking to buy a place of his own?

Unlike Tracy, he couldn't imagine spending June anywhere but at the beach house. Harder yet was imagining a time when she wouldn't be there with him. She was as much a part of what he loved about being here as the waves and sand.

Every year he told himself she couldn't possibly be as beautiful as he remembered, that she couldn't wear jeans and a sweatshirt and look better than his prom date had in a three-hundred-dollar dress. She was perfect—her skin, her hair, her eyes, her mouth, everything. Even her breasts were just the right size, not so big they hung over the top of her suit or so small they needed to be pushed and lifted into being something they weren't.

He was out of his league with her. A part of him saw that as clearly and instinctively as he saw the weaknesses of his opponents on the wrestling mat. Why couldn't he make the rest of him see it, too?

A man's voice broke the silence. “Pretty spectacular, huh?”

Chris turned at the sound, spilling his iced tea.

“I'm sorry,” Eric said. “I didn't mean to startle you.”

“I wasn't expecting anyone.” He righted the glass and wiped the chair with a napkin. “Hey—aren't you the guy staying at Andrew's house?”

“Eric Lawson.”

“You want some iced tea?” Tossing the napkin in his empty plate, he added, “I think there's some beer in the refrigerator.”

“No thanks. I was just on my way back from a walk and saw you sitting here. I figured it was time I stopped by to introduce myself.”

“My mom said you're a writer.”

He leaned his shoulder against the pole that held the bird feeder. “I'm working at it.”

“What do you write?”

“Fiction.”

“What kind?”

“A medical thriller. At least that's what my agent calls it.” Eric smiled. “Something tells me you're a science fiction fan.”

“Yeah, but I like lots of other stuff, too.” Eric wasn't what Chris had expected. For some reason he'd always pictured people who wrote for a living as a bit on the strange side. He was a little disappointed that Eric seemed so normal. “You a doctor?”

“Congratulations. You're the first person to make the connection.”

“Seems to me it would be pretty hard to write about that kind of stuff and not know what you were talking about.” Doctors made a ton of money. Why would anyone give up something like that to write books?

“Actually I've discovered it's just plain hard. If I hadn't given up my medical practice, I'd probably be back there by now.”

Chris was beginning to like this Eric guy. He was straightforward and didn't talk down to him the way a lot of adults automatically did because of his age. “You here for the summer?”

“I'm here for as long as it takes Andrew to sail around the world. Which he figured was about a year, or possibly two if he found places he wanted to stay a while.”

“I wish it was me.”

“Sailing?”

“Huh-uh, staying at the house. You can have the boat. It's always been my dream to spend a winter here.”

“You wouldn't recognize the place,” Eric said. “The beach is usually deserted except for a couple of crazy surfers and a few people like me. Us diehards are out here every day—fog, rain, sun, wind—nothing keeps us away.” He smiled. “Which is undoubtedly why I'm no further along on my book than I am.”

“Does it matter when you finish?”

He shifted position. “There's nobody except my agent waiting for it, if that's what you mean.”

“Still, I'll bet you can't wait to find out what other people think.” He sometimes felt that way when he'd worked especially hard on something for class, but that was nothing like writing a whole book.

“Occasionally,” he admitted. “Most of the time just thinking about it scares the hell out of me.”

“I'll bet it's great.”

Car lights swept past them. “Looks like your mom is back,” Eric said.

“They went out to dinner without me.” He considered what he'd said and how it must sound and added, “I got caught up in a volleyball game and came home late.”

Eric straightened and stretched. “I saw you play.”

He was surprised—and oddly pleased. “You did?”

“You're really good. Is it your sport in school?”

“I'm on the wrestling team. I lettered in cross country, too, but the only reason I went out was to stay in shape for wrestling.”

“Are you any good? At wrestling, I mean.”

He was proud of the medals and championships he'd won but rarely talked about them. “I'm okay.”

“I have a feeling you're better than just okay,” Eric said. “You going to be around next week?”

The question caught Chris by surprise. “Yeah, we're here till the end of the month.”

“I have a friend stopping by for dinner. I think you might get a kick out of meeting him if you're not doing anything else that night. His name is Charlie Stephens.”

It took a second for the name to register. “
The
Charlie Stephens?” He'd won more Olympic gold medals than any other American wrestler.

“I'll call and ask him to bring his medals so you can see them. They're really something. He normally hates that kind of thing, but I think I can talk him into it.”

The sliding glass door opened behind Chris. “There you are,” Margaret said. “I see you found your dinner.”

She smiled when she saw Eric. “How's the book coming?”

“I'm four pages further along than this time yesterday.”

“Is that good?”

“Not as good as I'd like, but I've had worse days.”

“You haven't met the rest of our group yet,” Margaret said. “We picked up a cake while we were out. I was just about to make a pot of coffee to go with it. Why don't you join us?”

Eric held up his hand. “Maybe next time. I've already used up my break time. If I go back now, I might be able to get in another page or two before I call it a night.”

Margaret took the plate and glass from Chris. “Stop by anytime. I know the girls would love to meet a real writer.”

Eric chuckled. “Thanks. I appreciate the offer.” He waved to Chris. “I'll let you know when Charlie gets here.”

“See ya later,” Chris said. When Eric was gone, Chris grabbed his mother's arm. “You're not going to believe what just happened.”

She gave him a wary look. “Please tell me it's something good. I've just spent a miserable two hours listening to Tracy and Beverly fight about everything from whether tacos are real Mexican food to the effects of tanning booths.”

Chris took his mother's other arm and made her sit down. When he finished telling her his news, he was convinced all over again that he had the coolest mother in the world. Not only was she excited about his getting a chance to meet Charlie Stephens, she actually knew who he was.