Light lingered high in the sky, the air was fresh, and Clare couldn"t sit still. She clipped on Ralphie"s leash and took her out for a walk around the block. She felt so new, and so intelligent, and somehow in control of her life. As she strolled down the street, she was content to let Ralphie "read the newspaper" on all the bushes she could find, while she meditated upon the right time to tell Adam that she"d broken off with Jesse.
It would only be mature to wait a couple of weeks after breaking off with one man to start a relationship with another, wouldn"t it?
On the other hand, she"d told Marlene today that she"d broken off with Jesse, so the island gossip line would be scorching as the news was pa.s.sed along. Wouldn"t it be better if Clare told Adam herself, before he heard it from someone else? Perhaps tomorrow morning she could take Ralphie for a walk on the beach, and if she happened to run into Adam there...
Suddenly she couldn"t wait another minute.
"Come on, Ralphie, let"s run!" She turned sharply, yanked Ralphie"s leash, and sprinted back up the street toward her house. Ralphie galloped along beside her, tongue lolling out of her mouth, a smile on her doggie face. She liked this game.
The moment they were home, Clare unsnapped the leash and led the dog into the living room. "Here, Ralphie, good girl." She took a rawhide bone from the shelf and handed it to Ralphie, who dropped to the floor, held it between her two front paws, and gnawed blissfully. "Dad, I might not be home tonight. Will you remember to take Ralphie out before you go to bed?"
Her father was engrossed in Jeopardy!, but he nodded.
"Thanks." Clare bent over to smack a kiss on his bald head, then grabbed up her purse and hurried out to her car. Radio blasting, she drove as fast as she dared through the town and out Madaket Road and over to Crooked Lane.
Clare pulled into the drive of Adam"s cottage and threw herself out of her car almost before she"d turned the engine off. As the white crushed sh.e.l.ls crunched beneath her feet, she could hear Adam"s dogs barking like maniacs. A light by the front door came on, and before she could knock, the door opened, and there stood Adam.
He was in jeans and a flannel shirt. He was barefoot and his hair was rumpled. He had a beer in one hand. "Clare?"
"Adam." Her heart was ticking over so fast she was afraid she was going to faint. "Can I come in? I have to tell you something."
He looked puzzled. "Sure." He held the door open for her.
She entered his house. Lucky and Bella immediately twined around her ankles, wagging their tails, sniffing, whining for attention.
"What"s going on?" Adam asked.
"This," Clare said, and launched herself at him.
She grabbed his face with both hands, pulled his head down, and smashed her lips into his mouth. Her haste, her desire, made her clumsy. They both staggered until Adam ended up with a wall at his back. She pressed her body against his.
Adam pulled his mouth away. "Hey, hey, hang on a minute. Clare, you"re engaged to Jesse!"
"Not anymore. And never again."
He pushed her away so he could see her face. "Seriously?"
"Seriously." She was running her hands over his shoulders and arms and chest; she wanted to touch him all over at once. She moved her hips against his and felt his hardness beneath the denim. "Oh, Adam, I want to go to bed with you."
Adam looked wary. "What, is this rebound s.e.x?" Before she could answer, he said, "Oh, what the h.e.l.l do I care?" and picked her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom.
Clare wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his face as he walked. He fell onto the bed with her and put both hands on her shoulders. "Slow down. Slow down."
"Can"t," she gasped, trying to unzip his jeans. "Need..."
They struggled against one another on the bed. In her hurry to get her tee off, she knocked him in the nose with her elbow. He yanked off her jeans and panties. He pulled down his jeans and boxers. She kicked her sandals across the room. They hit the wall with a thud.
The dogs whimpered and panted around the bed, curious and slightly alarmed. Adam wrenched himself away from Clare"s arms and strode across the room, naked. Clare stared at his erect p.e.n.i.s and nearly swooned.
"Out," Adam said firmly. The dogs shuffled out into the hall. He slammed the door. He returned to the bed and paused to stare down at Clare, lying naked on top of his duvet. "My G.o.d, you"re beautiful."
In one quick movement, Clare was on her knees. She pressed herself against Adam, nuzzling the brown hair on his belly, running her hands down his strong muscular thighs.
Adam groaned and took her by the shoulders and lay her back on the bed, then pushed his knees against her knees, spreading her legs apart. He ran his hand over her body from shoulder to breast to belly to groin, and cupped her crotch with his hand and curled his fingers in the hair between her legs.
Clare grabbed his shoulders. She kissed his neck, his collarbone, and then he entered her, and she let her head fall back, her eyes close, as she felt his length and width and heat press into her. She wrapped her legs around his back, she wrapped her arms around his chest, she turned her head to the side and burrowed her mouth against his arm, biting it slightly as she moaned.
They could not slow down. His thrusts were rapid, hot, hard, almost painful, but she responded in kind, tilting her hips for better leverage, clutching him with her arms and legs as if she were drowning and he was everything that could save her. He shuddered against her, climaxing, and she came, too, in such an intense o.r.g.a.s.m she felt like an animal, a beast, a sea creature squeezing out of its sh.e.l.l, expanding into a world of sensation.
"Wow." Adam fell next to her, catching his breath.
She turned on her side and nestled her face in his chest, inhaling his strong, fabulously male scent. She couldn"t stand to be even this separate from him, so she rolled on top of him and aligned her bare legs to his so she could feel his movements as he caught his breath. She pressed her lips against his neck. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight. Skin to skin, they lay together, clamped, locked, sweaty, dazed.
At two in the morning, Clare and Adam sat in his kitchen, voraciously eating bacon-and-tomato sandwiches, the bread smothered with mayo. They were both still naked. They"d made love again and again, until they were exhausted. Now they chewed and swallowed and chased the food down with beers in silence, their bodies demanding fuel.
Clare finished inhaling her food and licked her fingertips.
Adam handed her a paper napkin. "Want another one?"
She shook her head. "That was heavenly, thanks."
He took her hand and pulled her up. "Let"s get back in bed." He laughed at her expression. "I have to lie down before I fall down, that"s all."
They snuggled together, spoon style, sated in all ways, the duvet warming them in the cool night. Bella and Lucky curled up on the rug next to the bed, and soon their snores filled the room.
"That was a rather Cro-Magnon experience," Adam said to Clare, smoothing her hair down so it didn"t tickle his nose.
Claire chuckled. "It was." She maneuvered her body even closer to his, her b.u.m resting against his groin.
"Want to talk?"
She closed her eyes. "If I can. I"m so sleepy..."
"Then sleep," Adam said. "We can talk in the morning."
But in the morning when they woke to find each other naked in the bed, they made love again, and then they both had to shower and dress and hurry off to work.
It was a glorious day. Clare unlocked the door of Sweet Hart"s and went around her shop, raising the blinds, organizing the cash register, getting things ready for the day. She moved in a kind of suspended bubble, performing ordinary duties without really thinking about them. She had a thousand things she needed to do. Instead she perched on the tall stool behind the counter, tucked her chin into her hands, and thought about Adam.
The phone rang.
"Hey," Adam said. "I miss you."
"Ooh, I miss you, too."
"Let me take you out to dinner tonight."
"I"ve got a better idea. Let"s take a picnic to the beach."
"Good thinking. Shall we bring the dogs?"
"Sure." They settled on a time and place, and Adam said he had to go deal with his first patient, an obese cat, and Clare laughed and they said good-bye. She didn"t think she"d ever been happier in her life.
THIRTY.
Moon Sh.e.l.l Beach opened. The first day, a few women drifted in, curious and idly gazing, and some of them gasped at the price tags, shot Lexi a look, and left, but many more smiled as they touched the fine material of the clothing and held it against them while they stared in a mirror. The next day was her Grand Opening. Clare brought in an opulent congratulatory arrangement of calla lilies and bird of paradise. Adam and their parents sent a huge vase of roses. Perfume drifted lushly through the air. Lexi offered her customers small cups of champagne or seltzer water. They sipped, and shopped, and bought, sometimes so infatuated with a scarf or bracelet that they wore it right out of the store. After that, word of mouth drew people to the shop, and Lexi had no time to think of anything but work.
She could tell that Clare was busy, too, by the amount of foot traffic pa.s.sing her window. She"d a.s.sumed there would be enough of a lull in every day to sit out back sipping coffee and relaxing, comparing notes with Clare, but she discovered she couldn"t leave her shop alone for a moment. There was simply too much to do.
At the end of the week, she locked her door just before five and ran next door to Sweet Hart"s.
"Clare, can you give me a minute? I need your advice."
Clare was flushed and rumpled from moving as fast as she could. "Come upstairs and help me fold boxes while we talk." She locked her door, turned her sign to Closed, and led the way to her second floor. She threw herself into a chair and waved at the refrigerator. "Diet c.o.ke or water if you want it," she offered.
"How are you?" Lexi pulled out a chair, moved a pile of flats waiting to become boxes off the chair, and collapsed in it.
"Busy. Really busy. Which is good. But I haven"t had time to think. Every year I forget how crazy summer gets."
"So you haven"t seen Jesse?"
"Nope." A smile lit her face. "But I"ve seen Adam."
Lexi stared. "Get out. Clare!"
Clare hugged herself. "Oh, Lexi. It"s all so new, and I"m so much in love it"s scary. But we"re trying to be adults about it. I"m trying to take it slow..."
"I"m surprised I haven"t heard about this from someone. At least Mom and Dad should have told me."
Clare shook her head. "We haven"t been out in public together yet." She blushed deeply. "Haven"t been out of bed yet, really."
"Are you talking about marriage?"
"No, no, no, Lexi. Back up! We haven"t even talked about seeing a movie together. I"m just feeling very teenage right now, like a girl with my first adolescent crush."
"Appropriate, since Adam was your first adolescent crush."
"I know. But it"s still so raw-I"m a little scared, Lexi. I don"t know if I can trust my emotions, they"re so intense." She gave herself a shake. "Let"s talk about something else. How are you? How"s the shop?"
"It"s great, Clare. I"m really doing well. But I"m barely keeping up with it all. And yesterday I had a shoplifter!"
"What happened?"
"Someone was asking me to show her one of the more expensive necklaces from the display case, and both dressing rooms were full, and people were going in and out like crazy. I just had a moment to glance toward the pashminas, and I saw a really chic older woman looking at them, she had a hyacinth-colored shawl in her hand, and I took the necklace out for my jewelry customer and when I looked back, the woman had gone, and so had the hyacinth pashmina."
"A moment is all it takes," Clare told her. "You"re going to have to hire some staff."
"But my shop is so small! And that means I have to pay someone..."
"Would your mother want to work for you? She has retail experience."
"No. I wouldn"t ask her. She loves being retired."
"Then hire two or three people part-time. Either that, or watch your merchandise walk out the door. How much did that pashmina go for?"
"Four-fifty." Lexi smiled apologetically at Clare, because Clare was so touchy about money. "Four hundred fifty dollars."
"Ouch." Clare shot Lexi a serious look. "You"re going to have to call the Merchants a.s.sociation and get added to the shoplifting phone list. If any merchant spots a shoplifter, he phones three people and describes her or him and they phone three people, and right away all the other merchants know who to watch out for."
"I can"t believe the people who come to Nantucket for vacation would steal."
"Why? Because they"re rich?" Clare snorted. "How do you think they got that way? Case in point-your ex-husband." She shook her head. "Sorry, Lex. That was mean."
Lexi smiled. "Yes, mean...but true." She tapped her fingers on the table as she thought. "Okay, how do I find decent part-time help?"
"You can advertise, but maybe you don"t have to. There"s a community of Russian women on the island, good-looking, hardworking, honest, with good English. And they"re all drop-dead gorgeous. They"d be perfect for your shop. I know they"re all looking for work. Do you know Sophia who runs the lunch counter at Congdon"s Pharmacy? Talk to her. She knows everyone."
Two days later, Lexi had her first employee, Oksana Volnapova. Almost six feet tall, Oksana had auburn hair streaked with magenta and green eyes slanted like a cat"s. If Moon Sh.e.l.l Beach was a dream universe, Oksana was the dream resident. "This will be for you," she would say to a customer, holding up a swirl of silk, and you believed her, because she looked as if she"d just arrived from the Winter Palace where she lived with her lover the tsar, and their minions.
That was not the reality. When Lexi had asked her what her parents did, she"d replied, "My mother is a nurse. My father is a shoemaker. Where I lived, we did not throw away our shoes." But Oksana didn"t make Lexi feel any obscene-American-consumer guilt. She loved clothing, admired Lexi"s creations, and knew how to show them off. Every day she wore clothing the store sold, and she was the perfect walking advertis.e.m.e.nt, so willowy and graceful and striking, she enhanced anything she put on. She complimented Lexi on her garments; she rubbed the fabric between her fingers, nodding, saying, "Very nice." Other times, after an especially trying customer had pulled all the pashminas off the shelves only to desert them in a wadded pile in another part of the store, Oksana would mutter under her breath: "Durak." When Lexi asked her to translate, Oksana told her it meant "stupid." After that, if a customer annoyed Lexi, she"d mutter "durak," and catch Oksana"s eye, and they"d grin.
Lexi"s mother wandered in occasionally, and Lexi grabbed a moment to go outside and catch her breath. They didn"t discuss Adam and Clare. They didn"t discuss anything but casual subjects, the weather, local gossip. They knew they"d be interrupted by walk-in customers, and they always were. Some evenings Lexi drove over to visit her parents, and to indulge in one of the meals Myrna kept ready, in case Lexi visited. Then they would talk about her shop, but often they simply relaxed in front of the television, watching a Red Sox game. With every pa.s.sing day, Lexi felt more and more at home on the island.
THIRTY-ONE.
Rain pattered against the roof like a volley of spilled beads or clicked against the windowpanes when the wind gusted it sideways. Moon Sh.e.l.l Beach was crowded all day long with shoppers more bored with the weather than seriously looking. Lexi and Oksana were busy helping customers and discreetly mopping up the rain people tracked into the store. They didn"t have time for lunch, they scarcely had time to run to the bathroom.
Late in the afternoon the clouds rolled away, taking the wind with them, and the sun broke out. The evening was radiant, fresh-washed, and warm. Suddenly no one was in the shop. Everyone was out enjoying the sunshine, and Lexi was glad. This gave her and Oksana a chance to tidy the shop and restock the shelves and racks. Oksana sang a light Russian folk song as she worked. Lexi couldn"t understand the words, but the tune was cheerful. At seven, they put the Closed sign on the door and dimmed the lights. Oksana strode off to meet her friends, and Lexi went upstairs to her living quarters to catch her breath.
She"d been on her feet all day, but even though she felt like falling flat on her bed and never moving again, an evening like this was too good to waste. She tossed her dress on her bed and pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, stuck her feet into thongs, and grabbed up a beach bag into which she tossed a bottle of red wine, a gla.s.s, an opener, a box of crackers, a package of cheddar, and an apple, and hurried down to the street and her car.
She set out driving without a clear idea of where she wanted to go. She only knew she needed to be away from town with its cl.u.s.ters of people. She needed some time alone with the sand, sea, and sky, so she steered toward Surfside Beach on the south side of the island. It wouldn"t have been busy today, not with the storm.