He intended for us to leave? To abandon paradise? The thought was unacceptable. “Of course we can.”
“Damn it, Addie, I’m crazed with wanting you. If this were a mission, I’d have to turn the controls over to my copilot, because I’m not in my right mind.”
“Well, me, neither.”
“Which is exactly why you need to go back to the cabin, put on some dry clothes, and pack up your things.” He took my shoulders and pointed me toward shore. I turned around to face him, but he was plowing through the water, swimming for the opposite shore at a speed I couldn’t possibly match. I wasn’t a strong enough swimmer to even attempt to follow him.
I reluctantly headed to the cabin, my body burning with need. I don’t know what came over me or where I found the courage; I onlyknew I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving here, of sending Joe off to war, of going back to my everyday life without getting as close to this man as I could possibly get. Like Eve with the apple, I needed to know what I didn’t know. I dried off, but I didn’t dress. I dabbed on perfume, wrapped in a dry towel, then sat on the sofa and waited.
My already-pounding heart thundered as I heard his step on the porch. The screen door creaked open, and then he filled the doorway. His eyes moved over me. “Why aren’t you dressed?” His voice was harsh.
“I was waiting for you.”
“No.”
“Yes.” I stood up and dropped the towel. I heard his breath catch. I stepped toward him before I lost my nerve. “Joe—I want to be with you. This is our last chance. And Marge told me you couldn’t get pregnant the first time.”
“You can’t bank on that.”
“Well, aren’t there... devices?”
“Condoms?”
I nodded. “Do you have any?”
“Some military-issued ones in my shaving kit, but that’s not the question here. I gave you my word, Addie, and...”
“I don’t want your word. I want you.” I don’t know where my boldness came from. It was like I was somebody else. I picked up his hand and put it on my breast. “You’re not the only one who has a say in this, you know.”
His breath hitched. “You’re playing with fire here.”
“I’m counting on it.” I pulled his head down and kissed him.
Once again I was swimming, swimming in emotion and a depth of desire I hadn’t known existed. I became a creature I didn’t recognize, a creature desperate and intense, straining for something I couldn’t name. He touched and kissed me in places that shocked me, yet made me crave more. He whispered words of love and caressed me until I was aching with need. I couldn’t get close enough, yet we were so close I couldn’t breathe without inhaling the air he’djust exhaled. I couldn’t imagine ever breathing on my own again. Every stroke took me higher and higher, until I cried out and shuddered and thought I was flying and dying all at the same time.
“You’re mine,” he whispered afterward.
“Likewise,” I said.
“We’ll marry as soon as I get back.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll write your father and ask for your hand. Make all the fancy wedding plans you want.”
We stayed in bed the rest of the day and night, making love over and over, sleeping and talking, talking, talking. We made plans for the future, plans about where we’d live and travel, about what we’d do, about how wonderful life would be. I was walking on air, flying higher than a B-24, soaring above rainbows and moonbeams toward all my wildest dreams.
18
matt
My whole day was thrown off by Hope and that trash collection incident. I’d worked at home that morning, preparing for a huge meeting at the state capitol with the attorney general and the EPA. We’re prosecuting a chemical plant that illegally dumped waste near Shreveport, and it involves a lot of mind-numbing scientific information. I managed to change clothes and arrive on time for a lunch pre-con before the afternoon meeting, but instead of being sharp and focused on toxic chemicals, my mind kept drifting to a toxic woman.
As I drove back from Baton Rouge that evening, I found myself looking forward to seeing Hope again, and I’ll be damned if I quite understood why. She was a disaster waiting for a place to happen. She was the last thing I needed—a flighty, accident-prone distraction who seemed to bring out the worst in me. She was only in town for the summer, so even if I could overlook those traits, she wasn’t a good candidate for a relationship. Yet every time I was around her, I had some strong, inappropriate, unwanted emotional reaction.
I don’t like emotions; I prefer logic, reason, and coolheaded thoughtfulness over stomach-churning highs and gut-wrenching lows. Fatherhood was inevitably an emotional minefield, but it’s one I willingly inhabit because I love my girls more than life itself and they’re the very best part of me. Christine had been, too, ofcourse, and her death—well, that’s a bottomless pit of pain I don’t want to ever fall down again.
So why do I keep thinking about a woman who yanks my chain so thoroughly that I do things without thinking, like pick her up off a garbage truck when I’m freshly dressed in a suit and tie? This morning’s behavior had been irrational and ridiculous. I just as easily could have taken the box from her, being careful to handle only the clean side—or I could have asked the garbage collector who was so enthusiastically helping her litter my lawn to give her a hand down—but did I do that? No. I’d waded right in like a knight in a shining business suit and picked her up, muck and all, as if she were a fairy-tale princess descending from a magic carriage in one of my daughters’ Disney flicks.
