Chapter 21

Just as in the early days of their courtship, laying siege to her had worked once more. Twelve days together and only one mention of Val Hunter—and that by him. With tomorrow the last day before the flight home, she hadn’t even bought the Hunter woman a gift.

I’ve won. Even before I bring out the heavy artillery, I’ve won.

Maybe all this time he’d basically misjudged the situation, the Hunter woman’s influence. Maybe it was actually the boy who claimed Carolyn’s affections. If not totally understandable, it was possible—and so tonight’s heavy artillery would be that much more potent. Women’s notions about things were often beyond him; that’s what made them so baffling, so mysterious and maddening and wonderful...

He lay in bed dozing, complacent, hearing Carolyn moving about the bathroom. Sex half an hour ago had been an effort that drained him, but the orgasm—so intense he’d lost awareness of everything but the clasping velvet of her ..

Carolyn came into the room. He said drowsily, “Princess, why don’t we take it easy today, work on our tans?”

“Fine, honey. But I want to see the dive master, maybe you’d like to come with me. He has a special shell to show me; he’s been cleaning it. I think I might want to buy it.”

He shrugged. “Sure.” He watched her with pleasure, breathing deeply as he remembered. “It was good.”

She turned around and unsmilingly regarded him. “Do I really make you happy?”

“After the vacation we’ve had you’re asking that?” He was bewildered by the question.

She turned and smiled at him in the mirror as she began vigorous brushing of her hair.

“Women!” he exclaimed humorously. “So help me God I’ll never understand women.” He watched her brush tangles efficiently out of the curling ends of her hair. “When are you going to cut that hair?”

Her eyes drifted to him, then away. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice vague and distant. “Sometime…”

After lunch Carolyn glimpsed the dive master outside the gift shop. Beckoning to her, he unlocked a door next to the gift shop and entered. As she and Paul walked down, the Bahamian emerged, his massive hands filled.

Paul glanced at the shell’s outer coat of lustrous pinkish white ridges, unimpressed. Smiling, his fine teeth very white in his dark face, the Bahamian turned the shell over and held it out to Carolyn. Paul stared, surprised.

The flared, fan-shaped edge was glowing salmon-brown, darkening into sable-brown ridges deeply etched as if they had been made by the teeth of a comb, deepening in richness that spoke tantalizingly of even greater richness within the inner spiral of the shell.

“It’s stunning,” Carolyn breathed. “It’s just wonderful…”

“Take it, touch it,” the Bahamian said in his lilting accent. “It is one of our finest, a glorious shell.”

Carolyn received the shell reverently in both hands, her fingertips caressing the deeply etched grooves curving into the inner chamber. Her eyes never leaving the shell, she said to Paul, “It’s referred to as Queen of the Sea…Mr. Cartwright told me all about it…or tried to…”

She looked up at the Bahamian, whose muscular arms were folded across the pale green print shirt of the Winding Bay Club, and returned his smile. “I want it,” she said.

“Ninety-five dollars, Mrs. Blake,” the Bahamian said softly.

Carolyn nodded. “I want it,” she repeated.

“Wait a minute, Carolyn,” Paul said. “I agree it’s unusual. But shouldn’t we talk about this? I mean, it’s—Where would it go in the house?”

“Queen of the Sea, how perfect,” Carolyn murmured, her eyes distant. “I want it for Val,” she said.

“Ninety-five dollars,” Paul repeated with a touch of vertigo. “A shell, I don’t know that a shell is worth—”

“It is,” Carolyn stated. “Mr. Cartwright has been telling me quite a lot about shells. He’s been very generous with his time.” She extracted her traveler’s checks from her shoulder bag, then turned her green eyes on Paul. “There really isn’t a problem, is there?”

“I’m sure it’s cheap at the price,” he managed to say. Again there was the sensation of vertigo, so pronounced that he reached to the side of the building for support.

The champagne, he thought. Too much champagne for their end-of-vacation dinner. His sexual excitement built but would not peak; his body broke out in heavy perspiration. Climax when it happened was more merciful than ecstatic, a bludgeoning reminder of the insatiable Rita of his first marriage.

“You’ve never been like this before,” Carolyn murmured, dabbing with a pillowcase at the pool of moisture between his shoulder blades and in the small of his back.

“I’ll shower,” he said, breathing with effort.

“You will not. You’re fine.”

After all his exertion she seemed only slightly short of breath. But then, he was rarely awake for this long afterward.

“You’re fine,” she said again.

“Darling?” He rolled over onto his back, pulled her on top of him and took her face in his hands. After all the glorious intimacy of their vacation, the intimacy they had just shared, this was the moment.

“Darling, I’ve been thinking for some time about this, I’m convinced this is the right time for us to have our baby. Now. I want a baby with you. A girl. With green eyes, like yours.”

Carolyn’s eyes looked unwaveringly into his. “Not yet, Paul.”

She took his face into her own hands; he released her and closed his eyes. He felt her cool fingers caress his cheeks as she spoke. “You’re only thirty-six—I realize now how young that really is. You’re younger to me now than you’ve ever been. We have plenty of time.” She said softly, soothingly, “And I’m just twenty-six. Only twenty-six, honey. I want my career, I want the chance to get more established so I can do things later if I want to, not have to begin all over again like when we left Chicago. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“Mmhmm,” he uttered, looking away from her to adjust the pillow under his head.

She rolled off him and took his hand, held it in both hers, pressing it into her breasts. “It’s all right then? It seems best right now.”

“Mmhmm.” He lay quietly.

“Paul?”

Breathing deeply, feigning sleep, he did not answer. He felt her slip out of bed, moments later heard water running in the bathroom. He lay with his fists clenched at his side. Hotness stung his eyelids. She had said: It seems best right now. That was what his mother had claimed. His mother had stated: THIS IS BEST.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 669