Chapter Three

 

It was almost dark when Yuri dragged himself from the water; he was tired, physically and mentally. He had tried to out swim his thoughts about Ricky and Marla. She was hiding something and she wasn't telling him. He sat on the warm sand and watched her as she swam fiercely through the water; maybe she was suffering from the same thing he was—a muddled mind, but who knew what Marla was thinking?

This brought back flashes of the past, five years ago to be exact, when he had thought that something was eluding him. He had been astonished at the time that Marla and Ricky were an item, and he had even been more surprised that they had planned to get married.

He blamed himself, of course. After university he had left Marla in Treasure Beach while he worked himself into the ground trying to at least earn enough money to be a proper husband. They were young, and everybody—his parents, Pops—encouraged him to work first…figure out what he was doing with himself before he even thought of marriage. It was sound advice; Marla was just twenty, he twenty-three.

There was plenty of time to figure it all out. It had been an unspoken rule that Marla was his and he was hers. They didn't make promises because it was known. Everybody knew—including Ricky, especially Ricky.

Ricky used to call him and faithfully report all of his conquests and regale him with his adventurous tales with women.

When Yuri stopped taking his calls while at university, Ricky had visited him instead. Sensing that Yuri was fed up with his bragging, Ricky had changed tactics. He had even enrolled at the university to take business courses, which was shocking enough for Yuri because school never interested Ricky.

He had dropped out when Yuri graduated. And Yuri had graduated despite all of Ricky's pleas for them to party or go to some fun place or the other. His needy friend had acted as if he wanted him to flunk.

Looking back now, maybe that was exactly what he had wanted Yuri to do. Ricky hadn't counted on one thing though: the Scarletts were poor people and Yuri always knew in the back of his mind that it was a burden on his parents to send him to school, so he didn't waste time. He had a rich friend but he knew he was light-years away from Ricky’s lifestyle and he accepted that.

He could clearly remember the first weekend he came home after being in Kingston for two months. It was also his second month at SofServ Tech.

He had a financial plan that would see him saving enough money to get married. Marla could continue living with his parents, and then he would get an apartment for himself.

He had come home brimming with confidence. In two more years he would marry Marla. That was all he thought of—marrying Marla.

And then Ricky had seen him at the bus stop at Gutters and had dropped him home. That, he realized now, had not been a coincidence either. Ricky always seemed to casually show up when he was at the bus stop, when he was in university and now while he was working.

In the forty-five minute drive, Ricky had not said a word about Marla; he hadn't even indicated that he and Marla were an item. But he had gushed about his new Porsche that his mother had bought for him as a birthday present. His latest toy would probably go the way of his other toys, neglected after the shine wore off. Ricky's parents were super rich and they indulged their only child with whatever he wanted.

Yuri had nodded politely at his friend as he gushed about the car. He should have known that Ricky hated polite nodding. He hated when Yuri wasn't as excited about something as he was.

"Come on man, you have to see it to believe it," Ricky had urged. "It's gorgeous."

"I have to go home first," Yuri said. Ricky was overly enthusiastic even by his standards.

"But why?" Ricky asked, puzzled.

"Because I miss my parents and Pops," Yuri had frowned. It always puzzled him how lacking in sentiment Ricky was when it came to family. "And Troy is coming home from college too and Terri is making pudding. We don't have enough family gatherings these days."

Ricky had shaken his head. His parents were quite content to not see him for a whole year; they left him in Jamaica with the nannies while they went about their business all over the world.

His mother had been his father's mistress, a supermodel when she had him. The two had met in Treasure Breach where his mother had an elderly aunt who she visited frequently.

His father had seen the young teenage beauty walking down the streets and had literally stopped in his tracks. It wasn't long before he was pledging her all his worldly goods and half of his kingdom.

His mother, the shrewd businesswoman that she was, had smelled the opportunity to make it big despite the fact that his father was three times her age, had a beer belly and spoke in a German accent so thick she couldn't understand half of what he was saying most times.

She told Ricky several times since his death that she had looked in his faded blue eyes and had seen her future. She had candidly told him that having him had been a strategic move. So when Costas Stravinsky, the German billionaire, died last year, Ricky was his joint heir along with his widow but Ricky could only access his vast fortune in portions, when he was twenty-one, twenty-five and thirty years old.

His mother, the ever-beautiful and understated Francine Mills, who had not one motherly bone in her slender body, had bought him a Porsche because once more she was busy doing something else, somewhere else, with someone else. Ricky had been pathetically excited.

His parents had always shown him their love by buying him gifts. He needed Yuri to see that though he didn't have a Pops and a father and mother who hugged him and cared about his well-being, he was still loved.

Ricky turned down the Great Bay road with a look of resignation on his face. "Your sister can cook? Miss Prim and Prissy with the gray-green eyes."

"Yep. She can cook better yet she can bake. Her puddings even taste better than Mom’s, and that is saying something."

"That might be so, but she is a real pain, you know that." Ricky sighed. "I pity the guy who takes up Terri Scarlett on his head. She may look like a dream but she is a real pain in the..."

Yuri grinned. "She doesn't like you either."

"The feeling’s mutual," Ricky snorted. "I have other people who like me and for the record I have not tried anything with Terri. If I turned on the charm she'd be putty in my hands but I couldn't take the stress of being with her."

Yuri nodded. "That's the spirit. I don't want you dating my sister."

When Ricky had driven up to the house, the first person Yuri saw was Marla. She was in the front yard with Pops. The two of them were inspecting something in a box.

Ricky hadn't stayed. He hadn't even said hello to Pops. He just tooted and drove off.

Yuri didn't find that strange. Terri was not the only one in the family who couldn't stand Ricky. His grandfather barely tolerated him; it wasn't anything Pops said, just subtle non-verbal indicators, like the pursing of his lips whenever Ricky came nearby.

And one time when Yuri was about twelve and they had all been hanging out at the sea side, Ricky had driven by with his parents. He had waved to them from the back seat, and Pops had said, "That boy is a rotten child and he'll be a rotten man without some intervention. His upbringing is unhealthy. He does not know wrong from right. Anything he wants he gets. He doesn't even say please."

That had stuck in Yuri's head for years. But he hadn't seen much evidence of a rotten Ricky.

Yuri had greeted Marla and Pops at the front. He should have realized that all was not well. Marla had looked after Ricky with what he had thought was fear. Wishful thinking, he realized it was.

When he drew nearer he saw that they were looking at kittens.

"My dad found them near the villas." Marla had eyed him with a smile. Her father, John Roundtree, was the handyman at the Villa Ingles on Calabash Bay, one of the places that Ricky's people owned.

Marla's mother had died in childbirth and John had bungled his way into raising her singlehandedly. He realized, looking at Marla, that she had no family really, only them. He couldn't wait to make it official with her so that she could be an official Scarlett.

"And I told her," Pops looked between Yuri and Marla, "that we already have that bang belly cat that your mother is constantly pampering."

Yuri chuckled. "Where's Charlie?"

"Somewhere." His grandfather muttered gruffly. "The rascal woke me up this morning at four. He has forgotten that we don't go fishing anymore."

Pops named all of his cats Charlie from the hurricane that had hit Jamaica in the fifties.

Marla took up the box with the kittens. "Okay then, I'll carry this down the road to the Hudsons. They love cats."

"I'll take it." Pops took the box from her. "Haven't seen old Thomas since his operation."

"Pops, should you be calling anybody old?" Yuri laughed at his grandfather.

"I am only old when I reach a hundred," Pops muttered.

Yuri watched him as he walked toward the road. It was sometimes hard to believe that Pops was ninety-five. He didn't look or act his age. He was still as sharp as a tack. At his last medical the doctor declared him healthy for his age.

Pops had found the declaration offensive. He was healthy, full stop. No age came into it.

When Yuri was left with Marla he smiled at her. She had decided years before that she preferred her hair short. It suited her; it gave her a pixie look with her upturned nose and her wide-spaced Bambi eyes. Marla was the definition of cute.

"So how was Kingston?" she asked him hesitantly.

"Good." Yuri grinned at her and then he couldn't help himself. He kissed her briefly. A kiss that had both of them frozen to the spot until his mother cleared her throat alerting them to her presence.

 

****

Yuri shook himself out of his reminiscing when Marla came and sat beside him, sluicing the water from her hair. Some of the water drops were still clinging to her lashes. She pulled her hand down her face and blinked the water away. She didn't say anything to him. She just sat there, holding her slim, petite body in a kind of stiff rejection.

He groaned.

What if he had said something then? What if he had told her his plans? What if he had declared himself to her? Would she have still gotten married to Ricky?

He sat up beside her. Their legs were touching. He could feel her skin trembling. The water was warm and the air was balmy; she was trembling because she touched him. She wasn't indifferent to him, then.

He ran his fingers down her arm. "Why do you want a baby with me, Marla?"

She looked at him sharply. "What?"

"Ricky told me that you wanted my baby."

Marla closed her eyes and swallowed. "That is not exactly how the conversation went between us."

"So why me?" Yuri wanted to hear her say it aloud. He needed to hear her say it to his face. That a part of her still loved him, had feelings for him, that he wasn't the only one that dreamed about them being together.

She was the reason all of his relationships were non-starters. He wanted to hear her acknowledge that he was not the only one bleeding. There was no sound though, just the stillness that he had come to expect after sunset. The sea was calm; even the trees on the rock overhang that they were sitting under were still. And Marla was unbearably still, as rigid as the slab of rock above their heads.

"Marla." He growled her name, loudly deliberately. He wanted a response and he wanted it now. "Why me?"

"Everything is not as it seems, Yuri."

"Spare me the clichés, Marla." Yuri cupped her chin and looked into her eyes. "Why did you marry him? You said before that you didn't love him. So why? "

"Maybe I want to be rich," Marla murmured. She couldn't quite meet his eyes, though.

Yuri smiled slightly. "How is that working out for you?"

"It's terrible." Her breath caught in a sob. "I don't want to discuss this anymore. And I would never for one second want to have a baby in the situation that I am in. It was Ricky's idea...one that I refuted strongly."

"What's going on, Marla?" Yuri's voice was soft. "Tell me so that I can help you."

"You can't." Marla got up and Yuri stood up with her. He was so close to her that she could feel his body heat.

"Yuri," she said softly, holding his gaze with hers, "kiss me."

He stood rigidly still. "I should go ..." But he didn’t. He swayed slightly as she moved closer to him.

Marla put her arms up about his neck; she had her body pressed into his fully.

Yuri didn't want to listen to the voice that was telling him that he shouldn't continue and that this could get complicated really fast. Instead he was thinking that he couldn't allow this moment to pass.

Right or wrong, he was here with Marla, the girl he'd loved since forever. He moved as if in a daze, his arms slowly encircling her and pulling her even closer to him. He threaded his fingers through her curly damp hair and he cupped her head for the descent of his lips.

There was no gentleness, only fierce demand, his mouth moving expertly against hers, tasting her like a man who had been starving in a desert. She entwined her arms more tightly about his neck.

"I want you," he groaned against the silky length of her throat. "For so long but we shouldn't...you are married…Ricky..."

He tried to step away from her shakily, his control barely intact.

"Don't you dare stop," Marla whispered fiercely. "Don't you dare stop, Yuri."

They sank down to the sand together in a slow rhythm.