So Much for Dreams Page 11

  She shook her head, although he hadn't said anything. "He was young, I guess about my age. He was ridiculously strong, because I don't think he was any taller than I was. I gave him a hell of a fight, and in the end I hurt him worse than he hurt me. He got a broken arm. All I got was just—just a memory. It was no big deal."

  She felt the anger in him, knew without his words that he wanted to have hold of that poor kid who had taken her all those years ago. "It's so far back that I—it didn't really happen to me. It was another girl. And it was the thing that made me phone Leo. I ran up and called an ambulance for the kid. Then I hid until it came. I could feel the dark and the—there was nothing for me there. I'd be a scared kid on the beach forever if I didn't do something about it. When the ambulance was gone, I came up and …" She shook her hair back as if to shed the past. "… and called Leo."

  He said dully, "When I was sixteen, I went to air cadet camp." He closed his eyes and said, "I was two days on the train, alone. For God's sake, Dinah, it was the first time I ever traveled alone!"

  She smiled and found his cheek with her lips. Her chair scraped on the deck and she felt his cool, hard flesh under her lips. "You're a nice man, Joe. Don't worry about the old me. After all, I'm the one who has a house and a steady job now, while you—you're bumming around the world without a home." He wouldn't smile. She said, "It's happened to a lot of women, you know. It's not the end of the world unless you let it be. I'm sane and not all that hung up about it. I—I had an affair afterwards, so you see, I'm not—"

  "Why?" he asked softly. "To prove you weren't afraid of sex?"

  He could see a lot more than she had intended, or had she said more than she meant to? She shrugged and said, "If so, I proved it."

  "And how was it?" he asked gently.

  "Disappointing."

  "And you haven't tried again?" He frowned. "When—"

  "Six years." She had been twenty, and maybe she had proved something, but if so it didn't need proving more than once. "If it do it again, it'll be because I want to. It'll be—" For love, but she must not tell him that.

  He stood up and the violence in him was not nearly so controlled as she had thought. "I don't know what—I hate to think of—Damn it, Dinah! I've got a pretty fierce urge to kill that bit of slime!"

  For some odd reason that made her smile. "Does it occur to you that that's a funny urge for a man who doesn't want to get involved."

  "Yeah," he agreed. She heard him swallow. "I'm involved, all right. You'd think I was a Mexican, the way you tie me in knots. I don't know where the hell it's going, but—" He closed his eyes and she found her hands touching his face. She felt a shudder go through him and he groaned, "I'd better take you back. You'd better get the hell out of here."

  It was an ache in her, the loving. He felt it, too, although perhaps he had to pretend to himself that it was only a physical thing. He was afraid to touch her, afraid of where it would lead him. She touched him, felt again his trembling, and knew that she would love him long after he had sailed away.

  He was a man who would go away, and she was a woman who needed roots. But she loved him, and it would not pass easily. She knew from his eyes that she could not tell him of her love, but she was not going to walk away from it either. If Leo had taught her anything, it was that love is always worth the pain.

  Chapter Seven

  "Hey, Free Moments! Anybody aboard?"

  Dinah jerked and Joe turned away from her. "Hallo, who's that?" Joe's voice showed his relief at the interruption. A head appeared on the far side of the boat, eyes peeking up over the rail. "Hi, Walt. I didn't know you were in harbor. Come on aboard."

  "No, thanks." Walt's voice sounded tired. "I just got into port today, want to get back to the boat and have a good sleep." His eyes took in the shadow that was Dinah on the deck. Joe made no move to introduce her. Walt said, "I was checking in at the Port Captain's earlier. I ran into Lucie. She said you were looking for a girl. Gringo girl. Pregnant." His voice shifted to a question. "Very pregnant? Redhead, round face?"

  Dinah's head jerked. "Cathy! Was her name Cathy?"

  Walt's eyes shifted. Joe said, "This is Dinah. She's looking for Cathy."

  "Hi, Dinah. I donno' about the name. She was up at San Francisco, on Buena Vista. All I knew is she wasn't Barry's regular crew. He's single-handing, at least he was. So he got the pregnant girl from somewhere. I saw them on the beach, said hello, but you know how it is, Joe. Barry and I aren't buddies. We didn't get to names."

  "Sure." Joe was looking down, relaxed against the safety rail. "You won't have a beer, Walt?" Walt hesitated and Joe said, "Come aboard. I'll get it."

  Walt fiddled with the rope to his dinghy, got it tied. Then Joe called up from below, "Tie your dinghy behind my rubber one, would you? That way it won't bang into the boat. Walt shrugged, grinned at Dinah and untied the rope, taking it to the back of the boat to re-fasten it. Then he came back to sit in the chair beside Dinah.

  He greeted the beer with enthusiasm. Joe sat on the anchor winch with his own beer and asked, "Tell me about Barry. I've never run across him."

  Walt settled deeper into the chair. "Young guy. Twenties. Early twenties, I guess." He scowled and complained, "Where do these guys get the money to go cruising? The rest of us work away, wait and save, and—He seems an OK guy. He's got a twenty-four foot Dana. Nice little boat. Crowded for two people, though, I guess. I donno' if she's a permanent fixture or just visiting. You know? You don't ask that sort of thing."

  "Sure," agreed Joe easily. "Where's he going? Do you know?"

  "More or less." Dinah listened, getting a glimpse at the kind of society these people had. Meeting again and again, often knowing little about each other, not asking last names or personal questions, but talking about boats and future plans and storms that had been weathered. Walt took a long drink of his beer and said, "They were in San Francisco last—well, night before last. Not talking about pulling up the hook yet, but you know how it is. Barry talked about further up the sea. Escondido. Bahia de la Concepción. No hurry, just working their way up. I wondered about the girl. She didn't look like she had long to go, and the medicos up that way aren't too fluent in English. I'd have thought they'd be better here until—well, maybe she wasn't staying. He didn't really say."

  "San Francisco?" Dinah had realized by this time that they weren't talking about the city of the Golden Gate Bridge. "Is it far?"

  "A day's travel," answered Joe, adding, "By boat. It's an island. We'll head over there in the morning."

  She looked up at his mast, at the radar dome on the front of it. "Can't we start now? You've got radar, and—"

  "No way." His voice was sharp, definite. "I've been drinking, and I'm not going to add to the tales of idiots going aground getting in and out of La Paz bay. In any case, we can't."

  Walt said, "Port captain," and Joe explained, "We're foreigners. This is a foreign vessel. We can't just roam around at will. I've got to go up to the port captain and file a crew list and destination."

  "Aguas de la jurisdicción," murmured Walt.

  "What?" Dinah asked, and Joe smiled.

  "Sorry, señorita. We mix up Spanish and English like they were one language, don't we? But I think I'd better file a crew list for Escondido, just in case we go further afield. If Barry has moved on, we could end up trailing Cathy all the way to Escondido. Best to be prepared for that."

  When Walt left, Joe ran Dinah back to shore in the dinghy, stayed to flag her a taxi and made the bargain with the driver, setting the price for the ride back to the hotel.

  "Pack a bathing suit if you have one," he suggested. "And slacks, but those loose dresses, too. It's hot out there, and for heaven's sake bring your sunscreen." He frowned, said, "It's ridiculous for you to pay for that hotel. We may be gone days. Throw what you don't want for the boat into your car and check out. I'll meet you at eight in the morning and we'll do the paperwork."

  He lifted a hand in a half-wave and the driver started th
e taxi moving. Dinah wondered why she hadn't had the nerve to reach out and touch his face, invite the kiss she wanted.

  Joe shouted and the driver braked violently. Dinah twisted around to see what was wrong, found Joe leaning in her open window. He touched her cheek gently and she felt her breath catch in her throat. He bent and touched his lips to hers, whispered to her.

  "Dinah, señorita, I need one more of your secrets."

  "What? Now?" With the taxi driver watching, grinning?

  "Your last name. I need it for the crew list."

  "Oh." She covered her disappointment. For heaven’s sake, what had she thought he wanted? "It's Collins. Dinah Collins."

  Joe picked her up the next morning and they started the rounds of smiling officials. First to the immigration office where the official checked her tourist permit and Joe's, then stamped Joe's crew list for departure. Then to the port captain almost two miles away. More stamps. The crew list was beginning to look like quite an official document, covered with the blue and black ink of rubber stamps. They left copies everywhere.

  Finally they were free to leave. It was eleven in the morning by this time. "What do you do with the three copies you've got left?" Dinah asked as they motored out to the sailboat in Joe's dinghy.

  "Need them when we get back. Another whole round of everybody. Actually, if I'd just cleared for the surrounding area, I wouldn't have had to do all this. Just the port captain then."

  As they went out to the boat, Joe seemed to become more talkative, as if a weight were coming off him. As they were motoring out of the harbor, he invited her to help him handle sail. It was fun, hauling the sail up under the hot sun, feeling it fill with the breeze, Free Moments leaning into the wind and slipping through the water.

  "Pull that silver button," he instructed her. He was standing on the lazarette hatch, adjusting the wind-vane that would self-steer the boat while they were sailing. He gestured with his free hand, his other arm holding the safety rail for support.

  When she slid out the button, silence flowed over them. Silence, then slowly sounds filling it. The gentle slap of water on the hull, the sound of the wind on the Canadian flag at the back of the boat. Magic, she decided, watching Joe go forward to adjust the mains'l.

  "This is not a fast way to do it," he told her with a smile. He was standing with his legs astride on the cabin top, winching a halyard tighter. She loved the hard, strong motion of his sailor's muscles. "Let loose that line—yeah, that one. Good, now pull it in until—That's it!" The mains'l was smooth now, the wind curving along its wing-shaped profile. "We'd go faster under engine power with so little wind, but we can't make Isla San Francisco before dark in any case. We'll stop at Partida for the night." He stepped down, grinning at her. "If you want a beautiful ride, something special, go up front."

  "Up on the foredeck?" The ride was already beautiful. It had the floating freedom of a dancer with magic music.

  "Farther." He smiled into the dreamy light in her eyes, touched her hair to brush it back against the wind. "Right up on the bow pulpit." She threw an uneasy glance forward and he said, "It's safe. The rails are high, and once you're out there you can sit down on the lower rail and it's like a free circus ride. Safer, though."

  "Safer?" She wasn't sure.

  "Coward?" He was laughing, his eyes a brilliant blue like the sky overhead, the water around. "You'll drive down the Baja but you hesitate to sit in my bow pulpit?" He leaned close, brushed her lips with a soft, highly-charged caress. "The water's warm, señorita. If you fall in, I'll come back for you."

  As he had promised, it was a magic place. Way up front, past the narrow gap between the jib sail and the bow pulpit. She was wearing a blue blouse and skirt that she had found in the market a couple of days ago and been unable to resist. She hardly ever wore dresses at home, but in this heat the loose cottons were irresistible. And Joe's eyes when he looked at her in a swirling skirt …

  She held the skirt bunched to one side as she climbed out. She ended up sitting at the very front of the broad bowsprit, seat on the rail and back supported by the upper rail. A secure seat, the bowsprit below a stable grip for her feet. She closed her eyes, felt the surging rush of water below, looked down and felt the power of this vessel surging through the sea, the white foam of the ocean boiling up around the bow.

  Looking towards the stern, she could see the whole boat, its shape a gentle invasion of the water, the blue streaming out behind. Joe at the wheel, grinning at her, waving and shouting. She could not hear his words for the sound of the water below her. What an exciting, fast ride, sitting out over the boiling water, aware of the violent peace of the boat's passage, yet so safe in her perch!

  There was a fascinating intimacy in the way he signaled to her when he went below. It was noisy up here and his voice would not carry to her, but his hand moved and he smiled. A sound barrier that words could not penetrate. As if they were suspended in another dimension, isolated from the world as well as the medium of talking.

  Cathy, she thought, but there was nothing she could do about Cathy until they caught up with the boat Buena Vista. Meanwhile, she had a holiday, a gift of fate in the midst of her search for Leo's charge.

  Joe brought out a tray filled with something that looked good. He shouted and she could not hear, but he waved and she came. Away from the bow, the noise of sailing became very gentle. They sat cross-legged on the fore deck and ate cheese and tortillas while the wind-vane kept the sailboat on course. Then Joe got a rope and a bucket and dipped up warm seawater. "For desert," he told her with a grin, pulling out a pocketknife and hacking away at the mangoes he had brought up from below.

  "You're not doing that very delicately," Dinah teased him as she accepted a messy piece of the sweet fruit.

  "There's no delicate way to eat mangoes," he mumbled around a mouthful. "You just have do it next to a good supply of water."

  "The knife's not sharp," she insisted, taking it from the deck and attacking another mango. The slippery fruit eluded her attempts to cut it tidily.

  "It's sharp." He rinsed his fingers and took her wrist in his hand, drawing it to his lips. She gasped as he took her index finger into his mouth, sucking the sweet juice. "Good," he murmured, but she could feel the shaken quality in his voice. It was nothing to what her own wild heart was doing.

  He let her hand go and she rinsed her fingers, but when she bent over the fruit again her hand was too unsteady to dare picking up the knife. "Why don’t you cut the mango?” she suggested. “After all, we're in the land of machismo, aren't we? And surely the knife work should be the man's job."

  It was achingly sweet to take the warm juicy fruit from his fingers, to grip it in her teeth and find her lips closing around his thumb, to feel the ridge of his thumbnail biting into her lower lip. His eyes were immersed deep into hers. There was no touch except his thumb between her lips, his finger lying against her cheek.

  A low groan came from his throat before she realized that she was sucking, drawing his thumb into her mouth in a sensuous caress. Her tongue touched, caressed, then she drew back and his hand was free, her eyes wide and heart wild.

  "I—I'm … sorry." Was that breathless whisper her voice?

  "Are you?" His chest was rising and falling rapidly, his breathing irregular. She saw his chest expand in a deep shaggy breath before he announced unsteadily, "We're becalmed."

  "What?" His face was smooth and relaxed, his lips parted as if ... "We're what?"

  "No wind." He pushed the tray away. There was only Joe and the warm gloss of the teak deck, the caress of the sun. He breathed, "Sails are slack."

  He touched her jaw and somehow her head was rocking back, her eyes taking in the folds of the drooping sail. "Joe?" she whispered, and his hand was at the back of her head, supporting it, the blonde glossy hair filtering through his fingers. She swallowed and her eyes had trouble watching him, seeing the way his gaze was drawn to her throat as it moved in a spasm she could not put a name to.

&nb
sp; "Will the wind come back?" God! She sounded scared, young. There was nothing to hide what was inside her from those eyes.

  Something happened in his eyes. He shifted, leaned, and she was gently lowered to the warm deck, his fingers smoothing her hair out over the teak. "Not ... not for a while." He was having trouble talking, too. Heat, the fierce sun of the tropics welling up between them, no words but only the aching, sweet desire, the closeness that did not need a touch, that waited for loving.

  I love you. It was in her eyes, a deep pressure in her chest. His head blocked out most of the sky, his fingers trailing along the embroidered edge of her blouse near the shoulder. The blouse was fastened at the front by a series of little ties, bows running down from the swelling above her breasts to her waist. She felt his eyes slowly unfastening the bows and she forgot to breathe.

  "Dinah ..." It was a breath of wind, perhaps, except the air was still. Below her blouse was a matching tiered skirt of the gauzy material popular with the Mexican women in summer. All morning she had been catching the skirt, holding it against the wind. Now the air was still and the skirt lay around her legs in sensuous disarray. His eyes had watched, and she admitted to herself that she had not changed into more practical jeans because … because she wanted that look in his eyes, craved it and needed it.

  "The wind?" Her tongue slipped out to moisten dry lips. Behind his head she saw the white sail, a darker stain on the fabric from its years of use. His face, brows hunched together slightly, eyes taking her insides apart in a conquest that had nothing to do with her body, yet everything. "Will the wind come back?"

  He caught the end of one of the little ties with his thumb and index finger. His other arm supported his body as he leaned over her, only the backs of his fingers brushing as he slowly pulled the bow open. As the two halves of the top bow drew apart, he pulled gently and the blouse parted slightly, revealing the sun-browned swelling that led farther, to the whiteness that had not been touched by the sun.