Where Dreams Are Born (Angelo's Hearth) (30 page)

He reached somewhere to the side in the dark of the boat. There was a slight crinkle. It repeated with a little more energy. Then a frantic rattling of foil.

“Shit. My fingers, they aren’t…”

She silenced him with a kiss and slid her hand along his arm until she found the condom. She sat back up as she unwrapped it. He was nervous. It was so charming she’d have made the decision now, if she hadn’t already.

He moaned again as she unrolled it slowly over him. The delicious contrast of soft and hard. He was writhing by the time she braced her hands on his chest and lowered herself over him.

When he was finally inside her, they sighed in unison. And laughed as Nutcase abandoned the bed with a loud thump of paws on the floor.

All of the heady need built over months had mellowed and sweetened with a little aging. He traced his hands down from her face, over her breasts, finally cupping her buttocks hard. He thrust up as she thrust down.

It was too much. Some part of her, some part she didn’t know, let forth a throaty growl like a lioness taking down its kill. Her senses closed in to the rocking of the boat and the perfect rhythm as he filled her deeper and deeper. It was a heady swirl of heat and sea salt. Of wave after wave after wave pounding up through her and making her release over and over and over.

When her body had hit its limit, when she could climb no farther, Russell launched himself upward, thrusting so far inside her they could have been the same body. She could feel each pulse of his release, each separate release triggering her own body into one last mind-numbing, soul-crashing wave.

When he finished, she slid down against his chest. His hands, soft as kitten fur, brushed against her face. Her hair. Stroked over the bridge of her nose. Traced the arc of her eyebrows.

“Oh. My.” His voice husked out about an octave lower than usual.

She couldn’t agree more.

# # #

It was late morning when Russell dragged on shorts and wandered down the companionway. Spotting Cassidy on the port bench of the cockpit made his world shift. It wasn’t anything she did. She was sitting there, her back to him as she faced the stern. One of his dress shirts riding loose on her shoulders, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

He hung back in the shadows and watched her. Her head
was tilted down as she read something in her lap, her hair a shroud over her shoulders. She wasn’t a stranger out of place. She’d taken to the boat as naturally as if she’d always been there, always been in his life. Nutcase was curled up by her toes, asleep in the sun. Cassidy had already become a fixture in the cat’s life.

For the first time, ever, he could see the voyage with two. Could see spending time with this incredible woman
, a lot of time. You couldn’t fall in love with someone overnight. He could almost feel Angelo smacking him on the back of the head. But it wasn’t overnight. He’d never known so much about a woman before bedding her.

Even that was wrong. He hadn’t bedded her. They’d made love. Repeatedly. Wonderfully. Deliciously. Until exhaustion had finally dragged them back under.

He stepped onto the companionway ladder, which groaned as always.

Cassidy spun to stare at him.

For a single instant he saw the red-rimmed eyes. The tear-stained cheeks, then she turned away.

He froze on the step. Shit! So that’s how it was going to be. Morning after. What had he screwed up this time? Angelo could probably tell him, but he was nearly a hundred miles and a two-day sail away.

Russell turned back into the cabin and strode back toward the stateroom. He was there in five steps. No space on a goddamn boat. What was he thinking? Two people couldn’t live on something this small, not even for one night. It wasn’t humanly possible. He needed to punch something.

Punch it really hard.

And what was he supposed to do with her now? They were hours from the nearest port. More than half a day from her car, even with the motor.

Shit!

Why had he gotten his hopes up? Stupid-ass dream about finding the right woman. Instead, he’d found something new to screw up. And there was no guide on what it was this time, or what it would be next time. He pounded the side of his fist against the butt of the mast where it came through the deck. Hitting it felt good. He raised his fist to hit it again.

A cool hand touched the middle of his back and he froze.

A slow turn. His fist still above his head.

Cassidy didn’t look up at it.

Didn’t even look at him.

She leaned against his tee-shirt and he heard a gasp for breath.

He lowered his arms slowly. She began to shake. Her arms tucked between them just as when she’d been so cold yesterday. With her head tucked under his chin, he could feel her body shudder.

A tentative hand on her back released some unknown dam. In moments she was sobbing against him
, long, racking, gasping sobs.

He pulled her closer.

Now he had even less of a clue what to do that before.

“I’m sorry, Cassidy.” It would help if he knew what he was apologizing for.

“You tell me what to do and I’ll make it better.”

She rocked her head back and forth keeping her face planted against his sternum and cried harder. That was a clear no.

“I’ll go away, if that’s what you need.” God, how could he say that? Even as he held her he felt more powerful than ever before in his life, as if he could somehow protect her from the world. Unfortunately, what he needed to do was protect her from himself.

He took a deep breath. If that’s what she needed…

“You won’t even need to see me again.” Christ! The words ripped his throat as he offered them up.

One of her hands slid from between them and slid around his neck. She again shook her head and held on tighter.

At a complete loss, he decided to just keep his mouth shut. He clearly had no clue what was going on. Powerful was replaced by helpless between one breath and the next and it felt lousy.

If he felt this way about her already…

Just shut up, Russell. Your brain is made of undercooked tapioca.
One of Angelo’s favorite insults. Small, hard nuggets in a slimy matrix of useless goo.

He managed to settle back on the bed with her sitting in his lap. He kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair.

“It’ll be okay. Somehow it’ll be okay.”

In response she pulled her other hand free and shoved a crumpled piece of paper into his hand. He unfolded it as well as he could with one hand. It was a short letter, covered in a spidery scrawl that might have belonged to a child. Actually, it reminded him of one of the funniest letters he’d ever gotten. Angelo had written to him once as he was going under the drugs to have his impacted wisdom teeth removed. The letter had started clear, concise, a little complaining, mixed with some gossip about a pretty nurse. As the handwriting decayed, so did the train of conscious thought. The end had been an illegible blur. The pen had actually dragged all the way across the page in a fading line that they’d never been able to translate.

Cassidy’s letter was mostly readable. Someone who called her “Ice Sweet.” Not a name he’d use, fire and ice maybe, with a lot more fire than he’d ever met before. Cassidy was a deep banked, hot fire, that would burn forever. He glanced at the bottom. Vic somebody.

Dearest Ice Sweet,

I thought about never telling you this part of our past. About letting the truth die with me. But finally decided that taking it to the grave wasn’t fair to you. Maybe the drugs have clouded my judgment and your father is wrong, in which case, I’m sorry.

Her father was dead. Russell flipped the page over, one side only. Cassidy had gone quiet. Her head resting on his shoulder, her hand on his chest, like a little girl going to sleep.

Your birth was harder on your mother than she ever let on. I was preoccupied with the loss of one vineyard, which nearly broke my heart, and the start of the next. The work was just as brutal, and your mother wasn’t able to help. Her parents were failing fast, your grandfather had a massive stroke and your grandmother just gave up. She caught pneumonia the day before he died and was gone within the week.

And he’d asked Cassidy to help protect him from his parents. His wealthy, healthy, loving parents. Shit!

You were born by C-section. There was an infection. Things went wrong. We thought they were treated, but some damage was done, something not removed entirely or… We never knew. When the ovarian cancer struck, it took her so fast I barely had a chance to say goodbye.

I always told you she was called to the hospital and killed on the way. It was almost that fast, but it wasn’t what happened.

She wasn’t a nurse, though she nursed my heart after Vietnam, and you and her parents. She was a nurse of the heart, the gentlest soul I’ve ever known. I didn’t know she’d never come home when I took her away that last time. Truth of truths, maybe I didn’t ever really say goodbye. I still miss her so much, every day it is a hole in my heart.

I feel as if I did get a chance to say goodbye to you. I’m so glad you moved back to Seattle to spend my last six months with me. It is the greatest gift you could have ever given me.

Love you, Ice Sweet

Vic

He turned the page over again. Still blank. He folded it carefully and tucked it back into her hand. She clenched it slowly into a fist, the paper’s crinkling the only sound other than the gentle slap of waves against the hull.

“When did he die?”

“Christmas Day.” Her voice was hoarse, barely a whisper. She found a Kleenex and blew her nose with a very unwomanly honk. She was really a mess.

“I hate crying. I haven’t wept like that since, I don’t know, ever. Maybe since Mama didn’t come home.”

“But it’s August. How… the letter?” She’d been reading a letter on the bow of the boat when his parents were there. And he’d noticed her reading one out at Cape Flattery while he poked around the rocks looking for his Lady of the Lights. For Cassidy.

“He gave you the calendar of lighthouses.”

She nodded against his chest.

“And… a series of letters.”

Again the smooth slickness of her hair rubbing back and forth under his chin.

“He’s taking a whole year to say goodbye.”

This time she was quiet, though he could feel the gentle warmth of her tears soak once more into his tee-shirt.

“He sounds like a wonderful man.”

“The best.”

It took her a while, but she told him about the letters. About his sunny California vineyard followed by the one in rainy Kingston. Of what it had felt like to stand on the soil that had once been his
and to know the vines were gone, but his spirit was still there in that soil.

“You were right.” She was leaning back against the mast now. Her feet propped against his thigh as he lay on the curve of the inside of the hull.

“I was?” Wouldn’t that just shock the shit out of Angelo. “About what?”

“About my not really knowing a wine.”

“It was a stupid-ass remark made to a woman I didn’t even know. I thought you were—”

“What?”

He shook his head. It would make him sound even dumber than he was.

She poked one of her toes into his ribs. He tried to scoot away but there was nowhere to scoot. She started to wiggle them and he had to shove her leg away. She slid the other foot up the leg of his shorts and wiggled them there. He sat bolt upright and cracked his head on the underside of the deck.

Her laugh spilled out between her fingers even as she mumbled an apology and tried to reach for his head to check for bumps.

An attempt to push her away achieved nothing. Once she ascertained there was no bump, she kissed the spot.

“All better,” she declared.

He turned his head and kissed her. Time slowed, nearly ground to a halt as his blood hammered in his head. Without even thinking about it, he had one hand on her breast, no bra beneath the light dress shirt. She crawled into his lap and in moments they were sprawled back on the stateroom bed.

She pulled his tee-shirt out of his shorts and slid a cool hand across his chest.

“Oh. My.”

“You said that before.”

He had and it was just as true now. How could anything feel so wonderful?

Then she teased his nipples.

“Give.”

“Anything.”

“What were you going to say?”

He clamped his mouth shut. She ground her hips against his painfully hard erection.

“Give.”

Give? He could barely remember how to breathe.

“Give.”

“Okay,” he gasped for breath, but there wasn’t any air on the boat. “Okay, just stop that for a second so I can uncross my eyes.”

She stopped. Mostly. As if the slow motion of her hips in perfect rhythm with the ocean was one bit less distracting.

“Give. You thought I was…”

“A stuck-up, Upper East Side, rich bitch, spoiled brat.”