plumbing or electrical beyond the very, very basics.”
“I’m thinking of taking a home repair course myself,” Mara said. “Even though Charlie was gone a lot of our marriage, he’d tackle the honey-do list when he came home. It must be great to be even minimally capable.”
“Yeah,” Skye murmured. Until her monster-in-the-closet fears made that capability moot. For the hundredth time she wondered if she could make it through the desolate months ahead. There’d be Gage’s letters to look forward to, she reminded herself, though that thought didn’t cheer her much.
“Anthony!” Mara’s fingers suddenly closed around Skye’s arm. “That’s Anthony’s scream!” she said, then lurched down the sand at a run.
Skye caught up with her just as the other woman skidded to a halt, a sheepish expression on her face. “It’s okay,” Mara said. “I believe those are shrieks of joy.”
Up ahead, Gage and Griffin were in the water, supervising their nephews, Duncan and Oliver, as well as Anthony. The other little boys were five and seven, and accomplished shallow ocean-goers. Anthony looked more tentative and wore a pair of neon water wings on his skinny upper arms, but had a grin on his face even as he squealed every time he was splashed by a low, foam-topped wave.
Duncan was encouraging the younger boy to get on a small canvas raft with him and Oliver. When Anthony glanced up at Gage, the man smiled and bent over to help him onto the apparatus. Then the twin brothers waded into the surf, one to launch the raft on the small waves, the other to catch it at the sand before starting the fun all over again.
Skye knew she was staring, fascinated, at the half-naked man who had been all hers for the past several nights. In a pair of low-slung board shorts, he was tanned and strong, his arm and back muscles rippling as he maneuvered the raft through the water.
Come back to my bed. Stay there until it’s time for me to go.
He was her lover. Her summer fling. A shiver rolled across her skin as she thought of the long nights and the sleepy mornings. Sometimes she wondered if she should hold back a little, just for self-preservation’s sake, but then he’d stop whatever he was doing and look at her in that alert way of his—as if he sensed her retreating and disapproved. She’d flush hot and her breasts would tingle and that low-belly clenching would happen, which she absolutely recognized was arousal now, and thoughts of preservation seemed a case of too little, too late.
He’d get a glint in his eye, curve his finger at her and then she’d be close enough to breathe his body heat, her gaze fixated on his mouth.
It would curve, an all-male, all-macho smile. You want a kiss.
Never a question, because she always wanted his kiss.
Mara was talking, and Skye had to force her gaze off that wet, tanned man flesh in order to absorb her words. Something about Griffin appearing pretty relaxed for a man about to get married.
“Even Jane doesn’t seem rattled,” she said.
“You’re right. Maybe because it’s going to be at No. 9, where they met,” Skye said.
“I heard it was your idea to have the ceremony on the deck.”
“It seemed natural.” Skye glanced over to the beach house in question, and pictured how it would look on the day of the wedding. White tulle wrapped around the railings, flowers and candles everywhere, barefoot Jane walking down the aisle demarcated with sand toward her devoted groom. She sighed.
Mara grinned at her. “Do I hear wedding envy?”
“No, no.” She stopped before she protested too much. “I admit to enjoying the romance of it, though.”
“Jane told me about their whirlwind courtship. I’m so glad Griffin’s given up the war reporting. I never asked Charlie to do that....”
“Do you wish you had?” Skye asked.
The other woman shrugged. “I married him knowing what his life was like, the kind of work he was driven to do. Would it have been fair to insist he change? Now I wonder. Your great-great-grandmother asked her husband to give up his passion—perhaps I should have asked Charlie to do that, as well.”
Skye didn’t know how to answer. Yes, Max Sunstrom, her great-great-grandfather, had given up the movie business, but that was probably because his passion for his wife was greater than his passion for creating silent-era classics like Sweet Safari and The Egyptian.
Like Mara, though, Skye thought she’d refrain from asking or expecting a man to walk away