She stopped ten feet away. “I need answers.”
He lowered his hand. “Where would you like me to start?”
“The beginning.”
“Let’s see. I’m the third of seven children, born in the small town of—”
“Jim!” At least she laughed. “You know what I mean.”
He did. His foot nudged a tangled coil of line. Jim squatted and looped it properly, the Navy way. “This spring when I first came to Boston, I enjoyed your friendship, nothing more. I didn’t even want a girlfriend, not when I was about to ship out.”
“Mm-hmm.” No emotion revealed at all. She wouldn’t make this easy.
“After the shakedown cruise when we found the bomb, I started to notice how pretty you are, how much I like your company. I wanted to impress you, see if you might be interested. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself, so I tried to act suave.”
“Suave?”
He glanced at her, one eyebrow high. “As you can see, it was a highly effective campaign.”
A glimmer of a smile, but then she drew her mouth in tight.
Jim moved to the next coil of line. For experienced yachtsmen, the Harvard boys were sloppy. “All summer I floated, waiting to see what would happen. I should have kissed you, should have told you I was falling in love. By the time I decided to act, it was too late. There we were on the pier, my shipmates hounding me to kiss you. Nothing I wanted more, but how could I when you can’t stand public attention?”
No words, no movement from Mary.
Jim grabbed a rag on the deck and went to work on the brass. “Then you had to kiss me because I was too stupid to kiss you first. But I was determined. The night we returned I planned to march into your apartment and say, ‘Ever since we said good-bye, I couldn’t wait to say hello,’ and then I’d kiss you and tell you I love you. If you weren’t interested, I’d find out right then, but if you were—”
A soft gulping sound from Mary.
He looked up.
She pressed her fist to her mouth, and her eyes were red.
Jim needed to hold her. He stood and beckoned with his fingers. “Come here, sweetheart.”
She shook her head. “Continue.”
No more deck swabbing. He leaned his shoulder against the mast, flipped back his unbuttoned overcoat, and sank his hands into his trouser pockets. “But when I came back, Quintessa was there, gushing over me, and you told me the kiss meant nothing and you were so happy my dreams had come true. But they hadn’t. You’re my dream.”
Another gulp. Mary ducked her chin and pressed her hand so hard over her mouth, her cheeks bulged out on either side. Somehow she looked more beautiful than ever. Her distress showed she cared, maybe cared a lot.
“I believed you.” His voice came out too husky, and he cleared his throat. “But I didn’t want to be with Quintessa. I wanted to be with you. Today after church, I told her.”
Mary peeked at him over her hand, her eyes wary and worried.
He gave her a soft smile. “She’d already figured it out. She knows I love you. She feels awful that she got in the way, that she presumed to know what I wanted, what you wanted.”
Mary closed her eyes and shook her head, but what did that mean?
Jim charged ahead. “We have her blessing. That is, if you’re at all interested, if you want anything to do with me after the spectacle I made on this sailboat.”
“Oh, Jim.” Her voice came out muffled, and she lowered her hand. “That spectacle was the sweetest, most extravagant, most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.”
If he didn’t get her in his arms in the next five minutes, he’d explode. “Come here, sweetheart. Please, come here.”
Mary stood up tall and coiled her fingers around her purse strap. “You need some answers too.”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “But can you come down here and give them to me?”
