“Then you also must remember that you didn’t leave a note, you didn’t tell me you wouldn’t be back the next night, you never said goodbye. You just walked out of my life.” She fixed him with a challenging glare, daring him to deny any of it.
“I...” He shrugged and let out a halfhearted laugh. “Guess I didn’t know how to say, ‘so long.”’
“Yeah, right,” she snapped. Shoving him hard in the chest, she took advantage of his startled attempt to regain his balance. Allison swung open the car door and dove into the steamy interior. The sun had been strong all afternoon, heating up the closed vehicle, and the air-conditioning hadn’t worked in three years. The ride home would be stifling, but at least she’d be on her own turf, where she could pull herself together.
“Alli, stop!” His angry shout rocked her, even through the barrier of glass.
Instinctively, she cringed, as he yanked open the door and hauled her into the sea air as easily as if she’d been a sack of groceries. She was shaking as he backed her against the car, then stood so close she couldn’t maneuver to break free again.
“What do you want from me?” she shouted, her voice breaking as tears clung to her pale lashes.
He had already taken so much from her. He’d been the first man she’d ever let touch her like that. Her first love. Her only, to this day. And he’d left her carrying his baby inside her. The heartbreak of his desertion had been almost too much for her to bear.
Unloved. Abandoned. He’d left her alone, to care for a fragile life—the baby they’d created on an amorous night on the beach, when she’d believed with all her heart that he loved her.
After he left and she discovered she was pregnant, she’d made the necessary decisions and preparations, and kept herself busy. She told herself if she could just get through that one year, she could handle anything life threw at her. She hadn’t bargained on ever again having to face the man who had done his best to destroy her life.
“I just want to do something nice for you,” he said stiffly.
Something told her he’d practiced that line. Suspicious, she squinted up at him. “The nicest thing you can do for me, Jay, is stay out of my life.”
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head; the breeze off the ocean caught the one stray black curl over his forehead and played with it. His shadowed eyes fixed steadily on hers.
She was terrified that their closeness was exciting him. She contemplated screaming for help, then dismissed the idea. Something about the little-boy glint in his eyes made her slightly more curious than afraid.
“Walk with me on the beach,” he said. “I have something to tell you. I guarantee you’ll like it.”
She sighed and cast him a rueful glance. “Is this the only way to get rid of you?”
“Only way.” He grinned.
“I must be out of my mind,” she mumbled. “All right. Ten minutes walking on the beach, then I’m out of here. And so are you.”
“I’ll let you decide about that after I’ve had my say,” he said, stepping back to let her move away from the car. “Hey, wait up!”
She was already sprinting across the road, toward the beach. He had to take enormous strides to keep up with her energetic pace. She was used to speed-walking for exercising, while pushing Cray’s stroller ahead of her. And now she felt the urge to move, fast.
The beach hugged Long Island Sound and formed a cupshaped cove along the coast, sheltering tidal pools of periwinkles, miniature crabs and silvery fish smaller than her little finger, among clumps of shiny green and brown kelp. Soaring gulls and sea terns pecked among glassy-smooth pebbles, wave-polished fragments of colored glass and chunks of artfully deformed driftwood. At this time of year, all the sunbathers had left.
Allison breathed in the air, thick with brine. The cries of the sea birds nearly drowned out the steady slosh and scrape of the waves on the stony beach. As always, the ocean had a calming effect on her, taking her temper down a notch and returning a portion of her sanity. I don’t have to let this jerk rattle me, she told herself. I can simply tell him the time we spent together was fun but I’m not interested in taking up where we left off.
Why give him the satisfaction of discovering how much he’d meant to her?
She could even be a little creative, claim she had a boyfriend. Or tell him she was married and had a baby...No, she couldn’t do that! She wouldn’t dare give him enough information to let him guess the truth.
Allison stopped halfway between the sidewalk and the ocean, her body trembling at the thought of how close she’d come to making a horrible mistake. It was dangerous to tell him anything of what had happened after he’d left. She stared down at the damp grains of sand, then braced her fists on her hips and looked out across the water, hoping he’d say what he’d come to say quickly. Two sailboats played among the white caps offshore. The marina, in the next cove, was full of pleasure boats, large and small. In another month, nearly all would have been pulled out for winter storage. Anchored a little apart from the other craft was a long, low white ship that must have been three times the size of the largest yacht in the marina. It floated majestically, barely moving on the water, as if unconcerned with waves or wind.
“Oh, my,” she let out, unintentionally.
He stopped behind her. “She’s something, isn’t she?”
Allison nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that big in Nanticoke Cove.”
“She’s called the Queen Elise. She can cross the Atlantic a whole day faster than the QE2.”
Allison let her glance drift downward from the immense yacht to stare at the wavelets rippling closest to her feet. “You’re full of it, Jay.”
He laughed out loud this time. “What?”
“You heard me. You have no idea what the name of that ship is. You’re just experimenting with another pickup line.”
“I’m not, Alli. Honest.”
“Baloney!” She couldn’t help sounding spiteful now, couldn’t pretend to be callous and modern about relationships. “Two years ago, you told me you were a graduate student on summer break. You claimed you were studying for your master’s degree in political science at Yale.” New Haven was less than an hour’s drive to the east, along the coast of Connecticut, so his story had seemed reasonable to her.
“I was.”
“Don’t lie, Jay!” she shouted, spinning around to face him. Her rage nearly made it impossible for her to form words. “You never were a student at Yale,” she choked out. “I know because I checked.”
He stared mutely at her.
She was close to tears now, as she remembered how desperate she had been to contact him. Even if he hadn’t wanted to come back to her, she’d wanted to tell him about the baby. She’d been so confused, so frightened and alone. But he hadn’t been there for her. In the end, all she’d wanted was to let him hear her decision—that she intended to keep their child. Maybe he had somehow guessed he’d impregnated her, and that was why he’d left. But on the more likely chance that he hadn’t known, her strong sense of fairness demanded she tell him that he was going to be a father. Then he could make his own decision about taking on the responsibility or not.
“Shut up!” Allison said when he started to open his mouth. “I’ll save you the trouble of asking. I called the college registrar’s office and argued with three different clerks, insisting there must be a Jay Thomas in the student body. But they said no one under that name was registered.”
He looked more amazed than angry. “You did that? You actually tried to track me down?”
She glared at him.
“Ouch,” he said, and looked out at