Part 22 (1/2)

Alex squeezed his eyes shut again. Grief radiated out of his chest, running through his veins like vinegar, drowning out the aches in his body. He gritted his teeth so he didn't cry out like a sissy, but tears escaped, rolling down his cheeks like the salty spray of the sea.

Nate was hotter than h.e.l.l in the kitchen. He'd finished with his daily prep, the bread was made, and he had an hour before he had to get dinner service rolling. He took the back stairs two at a time, changed into his bathing suit, and went to look for Frankie. He found her in the garden, bent over, staking up the tomato plants. He took a moment to admire her long legs.”You want to go for a swim?” he asked.

She glanced at him from under her arm and smiled. Tendrils of hair were curling around the nape of her neck from the heat and her sweat. ”Great idea. I've got three more to go. I'll meet you down at the lake.”

As he looked into the flas.h.i.+ng blue of her eyes, a shaft of yearning pierced his heart.

”Go on, now. Shoo,” she said laughingly. ”You're distracting me.”

”If you need any help getting into your bathing suit, let me know.”

”Maybe you can get me out of it after we're done swimming.”

”Lady, it would be my pleasure.”

He ambled down the lawn. When he got to the end of the dock, he jumped into the water, feeling the cooling rush over his skin. He floated on his back, sculling with his hands, staring up at the blue sky and the white clouds and the blinding yellow sunlight.

”Hey, mister?”

Nate looked over to the right. There was a seven-year-old boy standing at the sh.o.r.e, a brilliant orange life jacket hanging c.o.c.keyed from his little body.

”Mister, can you help me? I'm not allowed to go on the dock without this thing, but I can't get the things right and if I don't get them right my brother's going to tell on me because I put toothpaste in his shoe last night, and I want to see the fish because they were there yesterday and I need to know if they are still there and I can't see them from the sh.o.r.e-”

Nate blinked and treaded water as the sentence went on and on.

It ended with, ”So will you, huh? Please?”

Nate looked around. There were no other grown-ups in sight so he swam over to the dock's ladder, climbed out of the water, and dried off his face and hands. He approached cautiously, like the kid was of a different species entirely and maybe of the stinging variety. He fiddled with the straps and snap hooks, got everything where it should be, and rose to his feet. It was like pa.s.sing a test, he thought.

”Thanks, mister. My name is Henry. I come from New York City. I'm six and a half. My brother's nine and he's a pain, but I kind of like him sometimes except when he's mean, which is not really all that often. My mother says she's happy that she had two boys but that she doesn't want any more kids, which is too bad because I want a sister...”

Henry followed Nate back out to the end of the dock, chattering all the way. When they got to the end, Nate sat down and the boy plopped right next to him. Which was not exactly what Nate had had in mind.

”Although, I don't know, maybe she wouldn't like SpongeBob SquarePants and then I don't know if I would like her and I wonder whether there would be fewer presents...”

Nate couldn't help but stare at the kid. He had rosy cheeks and bright green eyes and his hands flew around as he talked like a sparrow's wings.

”Do you?” Henry demanded.

Nate shook himself. ”I'm sorry, what?”

”Know anything about fish?”

”Ah, yeah.”

There was a pause and Nate had to wonder if Henry was finally oxygenating his blood. The kid hadn't taken more than two breaths since he'd stepped off the gra.s.s.

”So?” Came the st.u.r.dy prompt. ”Whadayaknow about them?”

Nate cleared his throat. And then something odd happened. He started telling Henry about the different ways a chef could cook fish and before he knew it they were in a conversation.

Henry was a sponge, all rapt eyes and smart questions. The kid was going to grow up to be an intellectual and that maybe explained why his head seemed so large on his thin shoulders. He probably needed extra room for that brain of his.

When footsteps approached, Nate looked over his shoulder.

Thank G.o.d, replacement troops.

”Hi,” Frankie said gently. Her voice was even, but her eyes were concerned, as if she feared he'd been trapped by the boy. ”What's going on?”

Henry looked up. ”Hi. I'm Henry, I met you yesterday, remember? I'm learning about fish. Did you know that he's a chef?”

Frankie smiled. ”Yes, I did.”

”He knows everything about fish.”

”Does he?”

Henry nodded gravely, as if he were a medical resident who'd had the chance to spend time with Jonas Salk.

Frankie looked back at Nate and he gave her a small smile. He couldn't say that being with Henry was easy. But it wasn't painful, either, probably because he was so distracted by all the talk. And the weird thing was, he kind of liked pa.s.sing what he knew along to such a captivated audience.

Frankie sat down on the other side of Henry, dangling her bare feet in the water. Nate stared across the boy's dark head at her. She had a grin on her face while she listened to Henry regurgitate what he'd learned, like a little tape recorder.

Unexpectedly, Nate felt the urge to laugh as his own words drifted out into the summer air, spoken in a much higher octave and with a slight lisp.

At the end of the night, Frankie turned off her desk lamp. Nate had gone upstairs already and she could hear him moving around above her. She sat in the dark for a few minutes, just listening to him.Sitting on that dock with Henry between them had been a joy and a torment. She could tell Nate had felt awkward because his voice had been strained and his back stiff. But by the time the boy's mother had called him inside to change for dinner, Frankie could have sworn Nate was almost enjoying himself. That was the good part.

The more awkward thing was that the scene made her think of having a child with him. She just couldn't help testing the fantasy and seeing if it fit. And boy, did it ever.

Well, at least in her mind it did.

Except he'd already told her he didn't want marriage or a family and one conversation with a seven-year-old about ichthyology wasn't going to change all that.

And h.e.l.l, even if he did want to get down on one knee, and he'd given her no reason to expect that he ever would for anybody, there was still the little inconvenience of them being separated by hundreds of miles.

Frankie went upstairs and got into the shower, thinking she needed to get away from her morose thoughts. The water pressure was pathetic, barely enough to get the suds out of her hair, and she wondered whether Alex was out of bed. Maybe now that the house was quiet, he'd ventured from his room and was was.h.i.+ng his hair in the sink or taking a sponge bath.

When she got to her room, Nate was in bed. His book was open on his lap, but his head was back against the pillows and his eyes were closed. With his cheekbones even more prominent than usual, he looked exhausted and as if he'd lost some weight. He'd been working so hard in that hot kitchen and they'd been...busy during the nights. Although she was also tired, from Alex's disappearance and worrying about the business, at least she hadn't had to cook a hundred meals every night on top of it all.

She tiptoed over to him, slid the book from his hands and turned off the lamp. As she got in next to him, he let out an unintelligible sentence, dragged her body as close to his as he could get it, and started to snore softly. She'd gotten used to the sounds he made. To the way his body weighted down the mattress so she always ended up in a hole next him. To his warmth and his smell.

With cold dread, she imagined herself having to adjust to sleeping without him.

Hours later, she must have had some kind of nightmare. She woke up in the early morning, damp with sweat, tears on her face. Nate was stroking her hair, looking worried. When she reached for him, they made love-the sweet, slow gentle kind.

They were laying together, with her body draped boneless and utterly satisfied over his, when he asked her what her dream had been about.