Page 40 of The House on Firefly Beach
“I did ask Uncle Hank if I could swipe it.” He popped open the lid of the cooler and dipped his hand into the ice, retrieving the bottle of white. With the bottle in his hand, he fished around in one of the bags, grabbing a corkscrew.
“I’m glad you asked Uncle Hank this time,” she said with a smile.
He became still as he absorbed her statement, and then the memory passed across his face. Nate threw his head back and laughed. “We took all three of his bottles on that hike through the mountains!” He chuckled again. “How were we to know that he’d ordered them especially for Aunt Clara’s business meeting and they were two hundred dollars apiece?”
The cork made a hollow pop when Nate freed it from the bottle.
“I had to clean his boat for three weeks to pay for it—one week for every bottle.” He poured the wine into two plastic cups and handed her one.
Sydney took a sip, the icy cold bite of alcohol sliding down easily in the humid air outside. She grasped the cup, cooling the skin on her fingers.
“You’re getting red,” Nate said. “I think you should probably reapply your sun lotion.”
“I’m not used to spending my workday in a bikini,” she teased, getting up and digging out the lotion from her bag. She took another big drink of her wine and set it on the bench before squirting a line down her arm and rubbing it in. She followed with her legs and stomach, rubbing the excess on her towel.
Nate handed her a plastic bag with a chicken sandwich. “Let me get your back,” he said. “No wonder you’re so red. Have you put any on your back at all?”
“I put some spray on this morning but I can’t reach it.”
Nate squirted lotion into his hands and rubbed them together as she turned away from him, pulling her hair to the side. She felt his cool touch against her lower back and she had to force herself to breathe. His fingers moved up her spine and found her shoulders, kneading them softly, causing her eyes to close. His thumbs went up her neck, and it was the most amazing thing she’d felt in a long time. Nate had always been great with his hands.
“You’re tense,” he said, rubbing her shoulders more.
The motion and pressure of it robbed her of coherent thought.
He pressed against the muscles of her shoulders, knowing her exact pressure points. Under his touch, it was as if he were releasing the stiffness that had been there all the years she’d been without him. She opened her eyes as she felt him take the sandwich from her and then the wine and set them down, before returning his hands to her shoulders. She tried to turn to protest, but he gently turned her back around and continued working his fingers, under the tie on her swimsuit and along the large muscles on her back. She let her head drop, her shoulders slumping under the complete relaxation of it.
As he moved back to her neck, she was aware of his body closing in behind her, his breath near her ear, and the lightening of his touch to a soft caress, making her breathing become shallow. He nuzzled against her neck, his hands dropping to her waist, his fingers moving around her until he was embracing her from behind.
“I miss you, Syd,” he said into her ear in a whisper. “I miss you so much it hurts.”
He turned her around to face him and he put his hands on her face. She hadn’t even accessed her rational brain before his lips were on hers and everything else faded away except the fireworks going off inside her. In that kiss, she felt Nate Henderson again—the sweet, loving, protective Nate that had stolen her heart all those years ago. It was like coming home. His lips moved on hers urgently, the salty taste of them making her lightheaded. She put her arms around him as if she were holding on for dear life, praying that all the things she’d known about the person he’d become over the last decade had been some sort of bad dream. The boat, writing, kissing him—it was all more her than she’d ever been.
But slowly her brain started working again. She remembered that he hadn’t come back to Firefly Beach for her, and that he was no longer the boy who’d driven out of town all those years ago. He was the man who’d come back to Firefly Beach, in essence, to hide; he was the man being chased by photographers; he was the man who’d only called her once in all those years. The truth of the matter was that he felt their old chemistry being back here, and she was an easy escape for his problems. She’d let her guard down, but if she kept going on like this, it would eventually rip her heart out. She needed to find herself, to decide what exactly she wanted in life, and then she had to go get it. And if she let him, he’d pull her right back down where she was when he’d walked out on her.
She gently pushed him away. “I don’t want this,” she said. It was the truth. She didn’t want the heartbreak anymore, the ache that she felt whenever he wasn’t with her, the tears that surfaced every time she recalled how wrong she’d gotten it when she thought they’d spend forever together.
He stared at her, pain in his eyes, and she’d never seen him so exposed. Then he tipped his head back and gazed up at the clouds as if some sort of answer were hidden in them. He swallowed, blinking rapidly, and cleared his throat. “Let’s pack up our stuff,” he said quietly. He went over to the side and started to pull up the anchor. “I’ll get you home.”
“What about the photographers?”
“It’s my problem, not yours.” He dropped the anchor onto the boat floor and sat down in the captain’s chair, leaving her still catching her breath and trying not to still feel the lingering buzz on her lips from his kiss.
With a rev of the engine, the boat was moving, making its way back to Starlight Cottage.
Chapter Fourteen
“Guess what, Mom!” Robby said, running up to Sydney when she came in. The entryway was aglow with lamplight and the smell of peppers and onions from her mother’s cooking filled the air.
Nate had been unusually quiet on the boat ride home, and she was still trying to shake the pain in her chest at the thought of not seeing him anymore. He certainly wouldn’t be coming by the cottage now—she could tell by the finality she’d felt between them when he’d started the engine to head home. Their last exchange seemed to have been his final effort to make amends and she’d shot him down. Nate wasn’t the type to continue on pursuing things if he knew she wasn’t reciprocating his feelings, and she hadn’t given him even the slightest hint that she still felt anything for him. It was for her own good, she told herself.
She dropped her bags inside the front door at Starlight Cottage and squatted down to address her son. “What?” she said, trying to allow his innocence to alter her mood.
“The informational night for football is tonight.”
“Tonight?
“Remember you’d asked me to sign up Robby for little league football this fall—we’d talked about it before the wedding?” Jacqueline said from the other side of the room as she came in to join the conversation. But then she seemed to catch up with Sydney’s disposition, despite her daughter’s attempt to hide it. She looked around. “Where’s Nate?”
