I stood looking at it, my heart pounding, my mouth dry with anger. Scramble fluttered from my arms, heading back to the terrace and her hibiscus pot.
So he was back, was he. It had been almost a week. Where had he been? Why had he left without saying anything? And especially why had he left without saying anything right after we had made love all night? Maybe I hadn’t behaved in a very ladylike manner, but I was no one-night stand. If he thought he was just going to sail right back into my life as though nothing had happened, then he was wrong. I’d had it with men. All men. And that included Jack Farrar.
I flung myself onto the porch sofa. Head thrown back against the cushions, eyes closed. I willed myself not to care. Life had dealt me one more blow and, coming on top of all the others, I just couldn’t take it.
A while later, I heard Jack’s footsteps on the path. I didn’t open my eyes; I didn’t even move. But the sound of his voice sent a shiver down my spine.
“Lola? Lola, are you all right?”
I could feel him, standing next to me, hear him breathing. I imagined his frown as he stared at me.
“Go away,” I said, finally.
“But I just got here.”
“Hah.” I snorted.
“Hey, what’s up, honey?” he said.
I opened my eyes to narrow slits. He’d never called me honey before. He looked about the same: way too attractive.
He said, “I just got back from the States.”
“Hah. A likely story.” I’d bet he’d been hanging out with his cronies in the ports along the coast.
He lifted my feet off the sofa, sat down next to me, and rearranged my legs across his knees.
“There was an accident in Newport,” he said. “Carlos was out with the rest of the crew on the big sloop, the one we planned to sail to South Africa. For some unknown reason the rudder came loose, in fact it parted company with the boat, leaving a gigantic hole. They tried the pumps but the hole was too big, the water was coming in too fast. The boat sank in fifty feet of water. I had to get back. I took the first flight out from Nice to Paris, and then on to Boston.”
“Was he all right, Carlos? And the rest of the crew?” We had eye contact now, though still cautious on my part.
“They’d Maydayed, the rescue boats had them out of the water almost before they had time to get wet.”
“That’s all right then.”
“Yeah, that’s the good news. I had to get back quick to organize divers to check the damage, get the cranes to pull her up. It wasn’t a small job. And my beautiful boat is a wreck.”
I heard the sadness in his voice and I said, “I’m sorry.”
He caught my chin in his hard warm hand. “Lola, I’m sorry you’re angry and hurt. I tried to call you but you weren’t there. I left a message with Jean-Paul, I told him there was an emergency and I’d be back in a week.”
I gave a wry smile. My ex-youth-of-all-work had run true to form. “It’s in one ear, out the other with Jean-Paul,” I said.
“Apparently. But you were not in my life one day, and out of it the next,” Jack said. “I promise that wasn’t the way it was. You were on my mind all the way across the Atlantic on that flight from Paris. And back again.”
“I was?” I could feel myself softening. “Melting” was actually a better word. His face hovered over mine, then his lips closed in the gentlest of kisses, like the first kiss ever, tender as butterfly wings.
“You were, and you are,” he murmured. He was stroking my legs, propped across his knees, not sexy, just gentle, nice. “What can I do to make you forgive me?” he said.
I swung my legs down and sat up quickly. “I know what you can do,” I said, with a desperate sparkle in my eye. “Everybody’s left, even Miss Nightingale is away on a trip. I need to get away from here. Why don’t you take this chef out to lunch?”
“You got it.” Jack grinned at me in that way that could melt a woman in Antarctica. I was picking up the pieces again, and not looking to the future the way I knew I should have been. But somehow, right now, I didn’t care.