“You’re the cheater. What kind of head start was that?”
“Watch who you are calling a cheater.” She reached back her arm and splashed him, hard. He splashed her back. The war was on.
Tandu had been so right. She needed to leave whatever fear she had remaining in the water.
And looking at Drew’s face, she realized, her fear was not about drowning. It was about caring for someone else, as if pain was an inherent ingredient to that.
Becky could see that if she had not let go enough in life, neither had he. Seeing him like this, playful, his face alight with laugher and mischief, she realized he did carry some burden, like a weight, just as Tandu had suggested. Drew had put down his burden for a bit, out here in the water, and she was glad she had encouraged him to come swim with her.
She wondered what his terrible burden was. Could he really have been given more than he thought he could handle? He seemed so unbelievably strong. But then again, wasn’t that what made strength, being challenged to your outer limits? She wondered if he would ever confide in her, but then he splashed her in the face and took off away from her, and she took chase, and the serious thoughts were gone.
A half hour later, exhausted, they dragged themselves up on the beach. Just as he had promised, the trades came up, and it was surprisingly chilly on her wet skin and underwear. She tried to pull her clothes over her wet underwear, but it was more difficult than she thought. Finally, with her clothes clinging to her uncomfortably, she turned to him.
He had pulled his shirt back on over his wet chest and was putting the picnic things back in the basket.
“We have to go,” she said. “I feel guilty.”
“Tut-tut,” he said. “There’s that nun thing again. But I have to go, too. My crew is arriving first thing in the morning. I’d like to have things set up so we can get right to work. You’re a terrible influence on me, Sister English.”
“Sister Simone, to you.”
He didn’t appear to be leaving, and neither did she.
“I am so far behind in what I need to get done,” Becky said. “I didn’t expect to be here this long. If I go to work right now, I can still make a few phone calls. What time do you think it is in New York?”
“Look what I just found.”
Did he ever just answer the question?
He had been rummaging in the picnic basket and he held up two small mason jars that looked as if they were filled with whipped cream and strawberries.
“What is that?” Knowing the time in New York suddenly didn’t seem important at all.
“I think it’s dessert.”
She licked her lips. He stared at them, before looking away.
“I guess a little dessert wouldn’t hurt,” she said. Her voice sounded funny, low and seductive, as if she had said something faintly naughty.
“Just sit in the sand,” he suggested. “We’ll wrap the picnic blanket over our shoulders. We might as well eat dessert and watch the sun go down. What’s another half hour now?”
They were going to sit shoulder to shoulder under a blanket eating dessert and watching the sun go down? It was better than any book she had ever read! The time in New York—and all her other responsibilities—did a slow fade-out, as if it was the end of a movie.
BECKY PLUNKED HERSELF down like a dog at obedience class who was eager for a treat. Drew picked up the blanket and placed it carefully over her shoulders, then sat down in the sand beside her and pulled part of the blanket over his own shoulders. His shoulder felt warm and strong where her skin was touching it. The chill left her almost instantly.
He pried the lid off one of the jars and handed it to her with a spoon.
“Have you ever been to Hawaii?” He took the lid off the other jar.
“No, I’m sorry to say I haven’t been. Have you?”
“I’ve done jobs there. It’s very much like this, the climate, the foliage, the breathtaking beauty. Everything stops at sunset. Even if you’re still working against an impossible deadline, you just stop and face the sun. It’s like every single person stops and every single thing stops. This stillness comes over everything. It’s like the deepest form of gratitude I’ve ever experienced. It’s this thank-you to life.”
“I feel that right now,” she said, with soft reverence. “Maybe because I nearly drowned, I feel so intensely alive and so intensely grateful.”
No need to mention sharing this evening with him might have something to do with feeling so intensely alive.
“Me, too,” he said softly.
Was it because of her he felt this way? She could feel the heat of his shoulder where it was touching hers. She desperately wanted to kiss him again. She gobbled up strawberries and cream instead. It just made her long, even more intensely, for the sweetness of his lips.
“I am going to hell in a handbasket,” she muttered, but still she snuggled under the blanket and looked at where the sun, now a huge orb of gold, was hovering over the ocean.
He shot her a look. “Why would you say that?”
Because she was enjoying him so much, when she, of all people, was so well versed in all the dangers of romance.
“Because I am sitting here watching the sun go down when I should be getting to work,” she clarified with a half-truth. “I knew Allie’s faith in me was misplaced.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I’m just an unlikely choice for such a huge undertaking.”
“So, why did she pick you, then?”
“I hadn’t seen her, or even had a note from her, since she moved away from Moose Run.” Becky sighed and pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Everyone in Moose Run claims to have been friends with Allison Anderson before she became Allie Ambrosia the movie star, but really they weren’t. Allison was lonely and different, and many of those people who now claim to have been friends with her were actually exceptionally intolerant of her eccentricities.
“Her mom must have been one of the first internet daters. She came to Moose Run and moved in with Pierce Clemens, which anybody could have told her was a bad bet. Allie, with her body piercings and colorful hair and hippie skirts, was just way too exotic for Moose Run. She only lived there for two years, and she and I only had a nodding acquaintance for most of that time. We were in the same grade, but I was in advanced classes.”
“That’s a surprise,” he teased drily.
“You could have knocked me over with a feather when I got an out-of-the-blue phone call from her a couple of weeks ago and she outlined her ambitious plans. She
