A Woman with Secrets Read online

  His smile surprised her. “Fair enough.”

  He held her gaze, and she remembered suddenly what it felt like to be immersed in the balmy ocean water with his arms encircling her. She glanced away, certain there was trouble down that path. “I thought I’d help Harry out in the kitchen. That is, if he—”

  “I told him to sleep in this morning. But I could use the help. If you feel like being around food.”

  “Actually, I’m starving,” she said. “Lead the way.”

  * * *

  KATE FOLLOWED COLE around the kitchen, which, within the confined space of the galley, meant she basically stood still while he pointed out the location of any items he thought she might need.

  She listened, apparently awestruck, while he explained the secret to making fresh bread every day.

  “So that’s it,” she said. “I couldn’t picture you down here kneading dough every morning.”

  “Bread ovens,” he said. “Throw in the ingredients, turn on the machine, and in two and a half hours, you have hot yeast bread. May just be the greatest invention of the twentieth century.”

  “You don’t seem like the know-your-way-around-the-kitchen type,” she said, obviously amazed that a man like him could be enamored of such a gadget.

  “Lot of hats to wear around here,” he said, reaching beneath a counter to pull out a tin of flour, a pack of yeast, nonfat skim milk and water. He opened the refrigerator and held up a carton of eggs. “I add two egg whites to the mix. Recipe doesn’t call for them, but they make a better bread.”

  “So how did a guy like you learn how to cook?” she asked, sounding intrigued.

  “I like to eat?”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Eat?”

  “Cook.”

  “I may have exaggerated my skills in that department.”

  “Really?” he asked, trying to look appropriately surprised.

  “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “Your bravado was less than convincing,” he said.

  “I’ll remember to practice it next time.”

  “At the risk of sounding like someone who’s never heard of the women’s movement, why don’t you cook?” he asked.

  She lifted a shoulder. “My father was never home much when I was growing up, and we had someone who cooked for me. My mother died when I was eight.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  He aimed a glance at her left hand. “Never been married?”

  “Divorced.”

  “He didn’t like to eat?”

  She smiled. “He was never home for meals either.”

  “Like father, like son-in-law.”

  “Actually, they weren’t very much alike.”

  He felt sure there was a story there but decided to let her tell it when she was ready.

  “So who taught you how to cook?” she asked.

  “Mostly my mom. Growing up in Texas, food is a big part of life.”

  “You visit there much?”

  “Not so much,” he said.

  She looked as if she wanted to ask why, but thought better of it.

  They were quiet for a few moments, before she said, “And you haven’t been able to convince a woman to sign on for this tour of duty?”

  “If that’s a roundabout way of asking whether I’ve ever been married, the answer is yes. Divorced as well. But she’d have died before setting foot on board anything this pedestrian.”

  She considered this and then, “Is there any such thing as an amicable divorce?”

  “I think it’s an oxymoron.”

  She smiled.

  He put the bread pan into the machine, closed the lid and punched a couple of buttons. Feeling her gaze, he looked up, remembering suddenly what the pull of attraction felt like.

  He saw the same awareness in her eyes, and they both glanced away at the same time.

  For the next half hour, they sliced fruit, laid out the plates, made coffee, careful not to meet gazes, careful to give the other plenty of passing room so they didn’t so much as brush shoulders.

  And somehow, it all felt just a little too orchestrated.

  * * *

  KATE THOUGHT IT likely that people who lived in gray, dreary climates would be hard pressed to believe a morning like this really existed. The air had the salt of the ocean in its touch, and the sun threw warmth across the continental-style breakfast of fresh bread with butter, sliced papaya, mango and bananas.

  Lyle and Lily were the first up, cheerful smiles accompanying their good mornings. Lyle reached for a plate and patted Kate’s hand. “You poor dear. I do hope you’re feeling better this morning.”

  “Yes, what a dreadful thing, that seasickness,” Lily added.

  “I’m fine now,” she assured them. “Although I don’t recommend the experience.”

  “How clever of Cole to think of putting you in the ocean,” Lyle said.

  “Yes, but wasn’t it frightening?” Lily asked. “It’s so dark out there at night.”

  “At the time, I would have tried anything,” she said. From across the table, she felt Cole’s gaze and remembered too clearly being cradled against his chest with the ocean water lapping around them.

  After breakfast, they headed out across open water. The morning had been an accurate prelude to what the day would bring, blue sky, the temperature in the mid-eighties. Kate sat on deck with a book, covering her arms and legs with suntan lotion that smelled like coconuts. Margo pulled over a chair and sat down beside her.

  “Where’s your dad?” Kate asked.

  “Doing some reading in his room. He doesn’t like to get behind on his work.”

  “Ah,” Kate said.

  “Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a climate like this year round?” Margo said, her voice wistful.

  “Too good to be true.”

  “And why’s that, ladies?” Harry ambled over, catching the tail end of their conversation.

  “Real life isn’t like this,” Margo said, her gaze falling just short of his.

  “Well, sure it is,” he said, leaning against the railing and folding his arms across his chest. “Real life is whatever we decide to make of it. No reason in the world why you can’t have sunshine every day if you decide that’s what you want. It’s all about choices.”

  Margo looked out at the ocean, and again, Kate saw something in her face that spoke of resignation and regret. “Maybe some people have the luxury of flexibility in those choices,” she said.

  “Maybe,” Harry said, meeting Margo’s gaze head on. “Or it could just be that they allow themselves that flexibility and others don’t.”

  From the end of the deck, Cole waved Harry over.

  “Duty calls,” he said and headed off.

  Margo sat quiet for a moment, and then, “Do you believe that, Kate? That people shape their own lives? Or that their lives shape them?”

  She considered the question, wondered about her own life. “I think circumstances make some people’s choices harder than others. But yes, I guess I do believe that most of the time we end up in the places we find ourselves because we chose to be there. Even when it’s the last thing we imagined ourselves doing.”

  “Is there a personal anecdote in there somewhere?”

  “Marrying someone who had Danger, Rocks Ahead signs clearly posted all around him. That was a choice I made. Not to see them.”

  “You’re divorced now?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For the past year, I haven’t been able to think of anything other than revenge. I blame myself as much as I blame him, but that doesn’t make it easier to accept.”

  “No, I guess not.” Margo sighed and dropped her head against the back of her chair, looking up at the sky. “Weeding out worthless men isn’t something I have to worry about. In fact, sometimes I wish I could just make up another life.”

  “If you could, what would it be l
ike?”

  Margo looked down, her smile shy in the way of someone much younger. “Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t wear glasses. My hair would be blond. Men like Harry would really see me.”

  “And how do you know he doesn’t see you now?”

  She gave Kate a you’re-not-serious look. “Men like Harry do a double-take at women like you, not women like me,” she said.

  “You’re not being very fair to yourself, Margo.”

  “Oh, please, don’t think I’m pitching for a pity party here,” she said with a quick laugh. “I just know my limitations. Life feels a lot safer when you don’t try to operate outside of them.”

  “I understand,” Kate said. “My decision to do exactly that drove a wedge between my father and me that we never quite got past. He basically died thinking I wasted eight years of higher education to gallivant around Europe drawing pictures.”

  “You’re an artist?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Was, I guess.”

  “Was?”

  “I haven’t painted in a while.”

  “Why?”

  “When my father died three years ago, I realized what a disappointment I had been to him. I guess I thought if I gave it up and tried to do something he would approve of, maybe it wouldn’t all seem so pointless.”

  Margo remained quiet for a moment and then said, “My whole life I’ve wanted to be as smart as my father. I never really dated because grades were what seemed important. Now I’m thirty-five and frumpy and wouldn’t know how to attract a man if my tenure depended on it.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “What?”

  “Attract a man?”

  Margo pushed her glasses up with one finger and lowered her eyes. “That would be a tall order.”

  Kate glanced at Harry and Cole who were now sorting through snorkeling gear and laying it out piece by piece. Harry’s laughter rang true in the warm morning air. “Why don’t you just leave that up to me?” she said.

  * * *

  IN HER ROOM, Margo put on some more suntan lotion, then washed her hands at the small sink.

  She glanced up at the mirror, staring at the reflection of a woman whose face wasn’t ugly, but not beautiful, either. If she had to choose a word, pleasant would most closely describe it.

  There was nothing wrong with having pleasant looks. It was something she never thought she cared about, but maybe she did. Maybe deep down, she always had.

  Sitting outside with Harry last night, stars the only roof over their heads, she’d wondered what it would be like to know that he found her attractive.

  Now, as she had then, she flicked the thought away, realizing how ridiculous it would be for a woman like her to interest a man like him. They could not be more polar opposites.

  She’d seen the woman with Harry the afternoon they’d left Miami. She could easily have stepped off the cover of a Victoria’s Secret catalog, her white shorts and white T-shirt figure-conscious in a way that only someone with a perfect body would ever dare wear. And the way she’d kissed him goodbye had made Margo look away, as if she’d just opened a bedroom door and found them oblivious to the rest of the world.

  She wondered what kind of kisser Harry was.

  Just the thought made her roll her eyes. It was not something she ever expected to find out firsthand.

  What was wrong with her, anyway?

  At home, her life was full and demanding. She arrived at her office by 7:00 a.m. and rarely left before 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. She liked it that way. She had the occasional lunch with a teacher friend and most evenings ate dinner with her father at a diner near their house. She’d thought many times of moving out and getting a place of her own, but she was there so rarely. The times she’d mentioned it to her father had so obviously distressed him that she’d always let it go.

  The responsibility of her regular life left little time for this kind of ridiculous fantasizing. And regardless of what Kate said, it was ridiculous.

  This did not explain in any way, then, why she dug from the bottom of her purse the pair of contact lenses she’d bought in a moment of rebellion against her glasses and had never worn. She put them in and stood blinking before the mirror for a few seconds before her image came into clear focus. It felt strange, and she considered taking them out and grabbing for the comfort of the familiar. But before she could change her mind, she put the glasses in their case and left the room.

  * * *

  THEY DROPPED ANCHOR at a good snorkeling spot near a small, uninhabited island. Cole spent the first hour or so with Lyle and Lily, giving them a refresher course of the basics. This proved something of a challenge since they refused to remove their life jackets. Even so, they seemed to have a good time, their enthusiasm contagious. Clearly, somewhere along the way, they’d figured out how to enjoy life, and he found something admirable in their blatant celebration of it.

  When they’d had enough, Cole helped each of them back on the boat, spotting Kate on a float some twenty yards out. She’d opted not to snorkel this morning. She wore a blue one-piece bathing suit that somehow managed to engender more interest than any bikini he’d ever seen. She lay face up on the float, her left arm stretched above her head, sunglasses covering her eyes. He reluctantly took in the length of her. Her legs were surprisingly long for her height, her calves and thighs developed enough to make him think she worked out at something. Her body was tight and compact with smooth lines and subtle definition. Her arms were slender, tapering to hands that featured those perfectly manicured nails.

  Harry walked up, gave him a playful sock on the shoulder. “Nice view, huh?”

  Cole shrugged, reaching for nonchalance. “Nice enough.”

  “That a clinical assessment?”

  “If that’s your way of asking whether I’m interested, the answer is no.”

  Harry chuckled. “At least I know you’re alive. I was beginning to wonder.”

  For once, he found it impossible to argue.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.

  —Herodotus

  THE DAY WAS wonderfully long and relaxing. Kate felt her pasty white February complexion bloom beneath the warm Caribbean sun. As planned, she helped Harry with dinner. To call the experience a disaster would have been a gross understatement.

  But somehow Harry made her blunders seem acceptable. When she burned the rice, he smiled and said, “That darn pot. Cole could at least spring for the nonstick variety.”

  When a head of lettuce slipped from her hands and landed with a plop on the floor, he shrugged. “Had too many brown spots on it anyway,” he said, then cheerfully went to the refrigerator for more.

  When she broke the tip off what appeared to be a very expensive paring knife, he tossed it in the trash can. “Too sharp. Too dangerous. Good riddance.”

  And when Cole came downstairs to see how things were going, Harry put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Kate’s been a big help.”

  Too embarrassed to contradict her culinary ally, she avoided Cole’s gaze, gathering up a couple of bowls and heading to the upper deck where the breeze immediately took the telltale heat from her cheeks.

  Despite her role in it, dinner turned out to be a hit. The menu consisted of a green salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar as dressing. Pan-seared grouper over mashed potatoes. And an assortment of roasted fruit for dessert. Harry generously pulled Kate under the umbrella of accolades, and she decided then that there was a lot more to him than the playboy persona he seemed content to indulge. And Margo definitely had a crush on him. Kate noticed her gaze straying his way more than once throughout the meal. Her itch to matchmake developed new intensity.

  After dinner, Harry invited everyone to go into Seamore, the dot of civilization that passed for a town on the small island where they’d docked for the night. A band, which Harry said played the best reggae musi
c this side of Jamaica, was performing at the Pelican Bar and Grill. Exhausted from the snorkeling, Lyle and Lily planned to turn in early. The professor declined as well, leaving only Kate and Margo as willing participants. But Margo’s father had other ideas about her going. “I think it would be best if you stayed here with me tonight, dear.”

  “I’d like to go,” she said, sounding more firm than Kate had yet heard her with him. “Just for a little while.”

  “You go ahead then,” he said, instantly deflated. “I’ll be fine here by myself.”

  Margo looked at Kate, and then dropping her gaze, said, “No, that’s all right. I’ll stay.”

  Kate frowned, catching a glimpse of a previous version of herself in Margo’s automatic acceptance of her father’s will. The thought brought with it a rush of guilt, but at the same time reluctant acknowledgment that for much of her life, she had gone along with her own father’s assumptions of who she was and who she would be. Their parting point had come about when she decided she didn’t want to make the same choices for her life that he had made for his. She felt a too-familiar pang of regret for the resulting division between them.

  She went to her room and changed from denim shorts into a white linen sundress and strappy sandals. A few minutes later, she came back upstairs to find Harry trying to talk Cole into going with them to the Pelican. She pinned her gaze somewhere to the left of them, unsure what she hoped his answer would be.

  “You two go ahead,” he said. “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on things. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Stubbornest man I’ve ever known,” Harry muttered at Cole’s retreating back.

  Kate brushed away her own disappointment. It made no difference to her whether Cole went or not. No doubt it would be more fun without him. Harry offered his arm, and they headed into town.

  The sky hung dark overhead but for a sprinkling of stars, the night air warm and balmy. The restaurant was only a short walk from the boat. Harry found them a table, then flagged down the waitress and said, “A Bahama Mama for the lady. Make that two.” He aimed a wink at her. “Guaranteed to put a few new moves in your dance step.”