“How much longer?”
“Where are we?”
“Did you remember to pack blankie?” From Astoria to Seaside, she’d become worried about where she was going to sleep and the number of bathrooms in John’s house. She couldn’t remember if she’d packed her press-on fingernails, and she fretted over whether she’d brought enough Barbies to play with for five whole days. She did remember her beach toys, but what if it rained the whole time? And she wondered if there were kids in his neighborhood, how many and how old?
Now as Georgeanne drove through Cannon Beach, she was reminded of dozens of other artsy communities that dotted the coastal Northwest. Studios and cafes and gift shops lined the main street. The storefronts wore subdued shades of blues and grays and foamy greens, and whales and starfish were painted everywhere. The sidewalks were filled with tourists, and colorful flags fluttered in the always present breeze.
She glanced at the digital clock above the radio in the dash of her car. She had been raised on punctuality and usually arrived on schedule, but today she was early by about a half hour. Somewhere between Tacoma and Gearhart, her foot got real heavy on the accelerator. Somewhere between the first round of “Where Is Thumbkin?” and “Are we there yet?” she’d gassed the Hyundai up past eighty-five. The possibility of getting stopped by a cop and given a ticket hadn’t concerned her. In fact, she would have welcomed the adult conversation.
She looked at the map John had drawn for her and drove past weathered homes sandwiched between beachside resorts. She slowed to read his bold, scrawling handwriting, then she turned onto a heavily shaded street and drove straight ahead as instructed and easily found the house. She pulled her Hyundai next to John’s dark green Range Rover parked in the driveway of a white single-story house with a steep roof of wooden shingles. Gnarled pine and acacia shaded the wood porch, stained a light gray. She left the luggage in the car and, with Lexie’s hand in hers, walked to the front door. With each step Georgeanne’s heart picked up its pace. With each step her concern that she was making a big mistake grew.
She rang the bell and knocked several times. No one answered. Looking at the map, she read it carefully again. If she’d drawn it herself, she would have felt the familiar uncertainty that usually sat on her chest when she feared she’d transposed numbers again.
“Maybe he’s takin‘ a nap,” Lexie suggested. “Maybe we should go in and wake him up.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Georgeanne looked at the numbers on the house once more, then she moved to the mailbox nailed to the house and opened the top. She peered inside and hoped neither a neighbor nor a gun-toting postal employee was watching. She pulled out a business reply card addressed to John.
“Do you think he forgot?” Lexie asked.
“I hope not,” Georgeanne answered as she turned the handle and opened the door. What if he had forgotten? she asked herself. What if he was somewhere in the house asleep? Or taking a shower-with a woman? She knew she was a little early; what if he was in bed, his body entwined with some gullible woman?
“John?” she called out, and stepped into the entry-way. Her feet sank into plush carpeting the color of champagne, and with Lexie following close behind, Georgeanne walked into the living room. She immediately realized that the house was not a single story as it appeared from the front. To her left, steps led downward, while to her right a second set went up to an open loft above the dining room. The house was built into the hillside overlooking the beach and ocean, and the entire back wall was made of massive windows framed with bleached oak. Three matching skylights dominated the ceiling above the living room.
“Wow,” Lexie gasped as she spun around in a circle. “Is John rich?”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” The furnishings were modern and made primarily of bleached wood and iron. An overstuffed sectional, upholstered in deep blue, was angled to take in the view of the ocean or the fireplace on the left wall. Abov
e the mantel hung a large picture of John’s grandfather standing next to one of those big blue fish tourists catch off the coast of Florida. It had been a long time since Georgeanne had seen Ernie, but she easily recognized him.
“I wonder if John fell down somewhere.” Lexie moved toward one of three sliding glass doors off the living and dining rooms. “Maybe he broke his leg or got a cut.”
Together the two of them moved to the doors and looked out on a wraparound deck which went down to the beach. Beyond the deck, Haystack Rock jutted toward the clear blue sky. Seabirds circled and hovered above the green vegetation clinging to the top half of the enormous rock while their continuous squawks mingled with the crash of waves.
“John!” Lexie called out in a raised voice. “Where are you?”
Georgeanne opened the sliding door and let in a breeze heavy with the scents of salt water and seaweed and the sounds of the sea. She stepped out onto the deck, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Maybe spending the week in such a beautiful house on such a wonderful piece of real estate wasn’t going to be such a hardship after all. If she didn’t let John charm her into moving him up further on her likable scale, and if he kept his lips to himself, then perhaps this trip wouldn’t turn into a big mistake.
Beneath her feet, Georgeanne felt a heavy thud, thud, thud through the soles of her espadrilles. She heard the steady thumping of footsteps pounding up the stairs, and her insides got a little mushy. Then John emerged one slice at a time. A pair of yellow headphones was strapped across his sweat-dampened hair, and the lower half of his face was covered with a dark shadow of a beard. Next came his wide shoulders and powerful chest. He wore a loose-fitting mesh tank top that looked like he’d hacked off the bottom with a pair of hedge trimmers. Georgeanne wondered why he’d even bothered to wear it. His stomach was flat and bare except for short, dark hair swirling around his navel, then disappearing like the shaft of an arrow into his navy running shorts. He had thighs thick with muscle, and his legs were long and tanned.
“You’re early,” she heard him say as he tried to catch his breath. She looked up as he pushed his headphones to circle his neck. He glanced at his sports watch turned backward on his wrist. “If I’d known, I would have been here.”
“Sorry,” she said, refusing to blush at the sight of him. She was an adult. She could handle a hot, sweaty, half-naked man. She could certainly handle John Kowalsky-no problem. She just had to think of him as one big bad hair day. Uncooperative, annoying, and real messy. “My foot got a little heavy on the gas petal,” she explained.
“How long have you been here?” He reached for a white towel hanging on the rail. He dried his face and hair as if he’d just gotten out of the shower, then his whole head disappeared beneath the thick cotton.
“Just a few minutes.”
“Umm, we thought you fell down and hurt yourself,” Lexie informed him, distracted by the sight of his stomach. Up to this point in her life, she’d never been close to a half-dressed man. She stared at all that skin and hair and took a step forward to get a better look. “I thought maybe you broke your leg or got a cut,” she said.
His head poked out from beneath the towel. He looked a Lexie and smiled. “Did you get a Band-Aid ready just in case?” he asked as he slid the towel around his neck, holding on to the ends with both hands.
She shook her head. “You gots a hairy tummy, John. Really hairy!” she said, then turned to the railing, her short attention drawn to the activity on the beach below.
He looked down and placed a big hand on his hard abdomen. “I don’t think I’m that bad,” he said as he rubbed his palm across his stomach. “I know guys who are a lot worse. At least I don’t have hair on my back.”
Georgeanne watched his hand slide lower on his abdomen, his long fingers slipping through short hair, and memories shimmering in her head like a mirage. She remembered a night a long time ago when she’d touched him, when she’d felt him warm and virile beneath her hands.
“What are you looking at, Georgeanne?”