Seeing Stars Read online

  In the silence, she wished she'd said something more conventional, less revealing.

  "How many of those questions have you answered, Claire?"

  "Not many. I found a comet back in May."

  "That must have been satisfying."

  "Yes," she agreed, lifting her wine to sip it again. "If the sky were clear tonight, and if we drove away from the city lights, I could show it to you with a telescope."

  "I don't have a telescope."

  "I do, in the back of my car."

  He laughed, and then he reached across to brush a wisp of hair back from her cheek. "Your eyes sparkle when you talk about your comet. More than satisfying. It was exciting, wasn't it?"

  "Yes, it was. What excites you, Blake?"

  Her face flamed when she realized what she'd said.

  "Running my hands over a perfect piece of wood," he said. "Watching a boat I've built race through the water, sailing hard in a storm."

  Her heart was beating too fast. He'd said he wasn't hitting on her, and she had to believe him because why would he? But her pulse—

  "Sailing in a storm? Isn't that dangerous."

  That smile curved his lips again. "Tell me more about your job. How did you get interested in astronomy? Did you watch stars when you were a kid in high school? You've got a telescope in your car. Do you always take it with you?"

  She felt dizzy, and she was beginning to believe the punch at the banquet had been spiked. She put the glass down carefully. She needed to get out of here.

  "Why are we sitting here drinking and talking about astronomy? You and I aren't exactly a natural pairing. We don't have anything in common. You build ships to sail the ocean and I work on a mountaintop in Arizona, studying the sky. You like fast cars and girls and parties, and I like solitude. There are at least thirty people back at Manresa Castle who have more in common with you than I do. What are we doing here?"

  "I'm trying to soften you up so you'll agree to work with a delinquent kid, talk to him about astronomy."

  "What?" Sometime in the last few minutes he seemed to have covered her hand with his, and she pulled hers away now, pulled herself back. He'd said he wanted help with a child, but then he'd started asking her about the stars and she'd forgotten. "I don't know anything about children."

  "You know about the stars. You're an astronomer, and I've got a delinquent kid with an excess of brainpower and a shortage of sense. I need a way to hook him."

  "Hook him? A delinquent...?" She sipped the wine again. "Your son? He can't be more than fourteen, even if..."

  Even if the mother got pregnant back on graduation night.

  Graduation night. Claire had only been at the dance because her father insisted. She'd worn a white dress with a full skirt, and she'd felt embarrassed because all the other girls had partners. She'd crowded back into a hidden corner of the gymnasium where the dance was being held, trying to hide. Instead, she'd stumbled on Blake McKenzie and Lydia, their mouths entangled in passion and Blake's hand caressing Lydia's full breast.

  Lydia had moaned.

  Claire couldn't meet Blake's too-intent eyes, not with that scene still vivid. The way she'd fled, stumbling in her hurry to get away. The way she'd dreamed, later, alone in her narrow bed with the stars shining through her open window.

  She lifted her glass again, sipped the wine, which was almost gone now. "I don't know anything about teenagers. Maybe a social worker—"

  "Jake's had social workers up the wazoo. He needs you."

  "You can't know that. You don't know me. The only kid I've ever had close contact with is my neighbor's five-month-old baby." She picked up her glass again although it was empty. She needed something to do with her hands. "Your son doesn't know me, and I wouldn't have a clue what to say to him."

  He set his beer aside and put his elbows on the table. "Jake isn't my son. I'm not married, don't have kids." His grin flashed. "Despite what you might have seen back in high school, I don't spend all my time making out with women. All I'm asking for is a few hours of your time."

  She opened her mouth with no idea what she planned to say, then the waiter delivered a massive plate of nachos covered with melted cheese and poured her a second glass of wine she hadn't ordered.

  "Back in our senior year, it seemed every time I saw you, you had your arms around a girl."

  "I've slowed down in the last fifteen years."

  "And haven't married? I used to think you and Lydia would marry."

  "Lydia went to Europe, a graduation present from her parents. She married a Swiss ski instructor, and I soon had more important things on my mind than marriage."

  "What things?"

  "My mother and stepfather died in a private plane crash in '98. I came back from UW to be with my brother and sisters."

  "I'm sorry." She hadn't known he had siblings. Hadn't known his mother had remarried, that he'd gone to college. She supposed she'd pictured him perpetually nineteen, romancing Lydia.

  She really knew nothing of this man.

  "It was a long time ago." He covered her hand with his, warm fingers curled over hers. "Claire, what can I do to persuade you to help Jake?"

  She hadn't enough breath. Fifteen years—wasn't that long enough to get rid of a stupid, adolescent crush? She didn't know him, had never known him. It was just hormones, perhaps pheromones.

  "Blake, I can't—"

  "What can it hurt? A couple of hours with a surly kid, then you can go back to Arizona knowing you did your bit for troubled youth."

  She wanted to clear her throat, and knew she should pull her hand away. She stared at their linked hands, addressed her words to them. "I'm not good with kids."

  "Maybe you need practice." His voice was as sober as hers, though she thought she saw amusement in the shadows around his eyes.

  "You brought me here, left the reunion, for Jake. He means a lot to you."

  "Jake matters, but it's not a hardship sitting across the table enjoying those impossible eyes of yours."

  She pulled her hand away. "You're flirting."

  "It's not a crime, Claire."

  "No." She felt ridiculously uncomfortable sitting across from him, her imagination feeding fantasies she'd thought long dead, while the darkening eastern sky pulsed with the flush of the reflected sun.

  She said, "You should eat those nachos." She thought her voice would come out strangled, but it sounded husky to her own ears.

  Flirting with her. Did that mean that if she...

  He picked up one of the nachos and held it out to her. Her lips parted and she bit into the salty treat, her mouth closing over the tang of melted cheese.

  Find the town bad boy and have a flaming affair.

  She lifted her wine glass to her mouth. Of course she wasn't tempted, but... a flaming affair.

  Kevin, her only lover, had been tame, certainly not dangerous. But Blake... He'd taken on the magnitude of an archetype in her teenage world. The tempting boy who would never want her because she didn't belong to the world of groping in back seats and shadowy corners. She'd been a serious student, a good girl.

  "Will you think about Jake, Claire?"

  She took a long, cool sip of the wine when what she really needed was a heavy dose of fresh air … andcourage for the words.

  "Can we go for a walk?" she asked.

  Chapter Three

  He drove half a mile and parked at the foot of Benedict Street. She climbed out of the truck just as the last light left the sky. The government floats displayed a maze of sailboats and powerboats to her left. Shadowy shipyards loomed behind a takeout coffee bar to her right.

  "Where's your shipyard?"

  "A couple of blocks from here. I'll show you tomorrow, if you want."

  "Perhaps." She wondered if Jake would be there, and what she could say to a delinquent boy... if she agreed to say anything.

  "Tide's out," he said, taking her arm as they stepped onto the ramp down to the floats. "The ramp's steep for those shoes."


  Her shoes were low-heeled pumps, not treacherous at all, but she let herself enjoy the sensation of walking with his arm looped through hers.

  "Tell me about Jake."

  "He's fourteen. Not your regular tough punk. I might know how to get to him if he were. His mother died two years ago. Breast cancer. Single mom, no other family. He got slotted into foster care. He's a quiet kid, so no one noticed when he started going off the rails. Then he got picked up for joy riding and the foster parents bailed."

  "Bailed?"

  "They dumped him." She felt his shrug. "Placing fourteen-year-old kids is hard enough without a court date coming up. He ended up in a group home. Not a good fit. Couple of months ago he ended up in the hospital after a drug overdose."

  "How did you get involved?"

  "Don dropped by one day."

  "Don?"

  "Don Henley. He was in our class."

  "I don't remember."

  Under the overhead lights, his face looked even harsher. "He sat behind you in chemistry all year. "

  "I didn't talk to the other kids much."

  "Yeah, but... Anyway, Don's the probation officer. He asked me if I'd take Jake on. It's been tough."

  Blake stopped in front of a tall sailing ship and she stared at its towering masts.

  "Did you build this one?"

  "Fortunately not."

  "Fortunately?"

  "She's got toredo worms. The next one's one of mine." He drew her further along the float.

  She stared at the sleek, varnished rails above a glistening white hull. Even in shadows, she could see the beauty of the carved woodwork.

  "Where do you start? Say someone walks in tomorrow morning and asks you to build a boat. What's your first step?"

  "With a plan." He drew her toward the boat's bow. "The plan has to suit the owner. This fellow has a wife and two young children. They wanted the boat for vacations, but he also had a hankering to race her. So you need comfortable berths, a shower, a galley, speed." He shrugged the details away. "It's always a compromise, with a boat."

  "And you have to keep the water out, or it'll sink."

  "That, too," he agreed with a laugh. "That's the basis of the plan."

  "What about working with a teenager? Do you start with a plan there, too?"

  " Kids need a more creative approach." He urged her along the float. " You can't push it with a kid, or he'll rebel. You can never tell, at first, how it'll go. If you can get him building something, that works for some. Others respond to the water—a wild sail might bring one kid around to the place where he sees sense, another might cave in when you give him a piece of sandpaper and set him to work. If one thing doesn't work, I try another."

  "And if you get desperate?"

  "I talk the high school alumni association into having everyone fill out a form for the mailing list, then I steal a look at the forms, looking for someone who might tempt a brainy kid who's lost his connection to life."

  She wondered how many times Don had asked Blake's help with troubled teenagers. "What were you taking at the university before you left?"

  "Engineering, but I wanted to build boats, and that's what I'm doing here."

  "And saving kids." She'd known nothing about him, nothing at all. "You want me to help you, but I'm way out of my league. Where would I start?"

  They had been walking, slowly, but now he stopped and turned her to face him. "Thinking about it, that's where you start. Come down to the shipyard tomorrow, let me show you around. Jake might be there. Maybe not, but sometimes you get a break. If he turns up, he won't be able to resist your eyes."

  She realized she was clinging to his hands and forced herself to let go, but he kept holding on to hers and she knew she was going to do this crazy thing, try to do something for a kid who terrified her before she even met him.

  Playing in her mind was an even crazier idea. Jennifer's idea.

  "What about my eyes, Blake?"

  She saw his smile grow, masculine and dangerous. "You've got these big eyes, impossibly big, impossibly blue. I used to think it was the glasses that made them look like that, but it's not. A kid like Jake, he sees things, notices things. He'll fall for your eyes."

  "Fall for?"

  "If the kid gets a crush on you, it's the best thing that could happen to him. Show him a few stars with your telescope, Claire. Talk heavenly bodies and mystery, go back to your mountain and write him a letter once a month. It could work."

  "You're crazy." She tugged on her hands. "Let go."

  "Your hands are cold."

  They weren't cold at all. They were blazing hot, tingling with fever.

  She asked, "There must be a woman somewhere who'd be upset about your standing down here on the docks, holding my hands."

  "It's a float, not a dock."

  "What?"

  "The dock is the space a boat occupies when it's berthed, in the water. That's why a boat on land is in dry dock. What you're standing on is a float. And no, there's no woman with a right to be upset if I hold your hands."

  What did it matter if she made a fool of herself? She could leave tonight, drive away and never come back.

  "Why is there no woman?"

  "I've got a shipyard to run, kids to deal with, and I suppose I never wanted to give someone else that much power over me."

  It would be completely safe. He'd never want more, never ask her to sacrifice any part of her life. She had to be crazy to think he'd agree. To think she wanted him to agree.

  "What about you, Claire? No husband? No boyfriend?"

  "There was a man once, but he wanted me to give up my mountaintop, come down and live in the city. I'll make a deal with you about Jake."

  "I'm listening."

  He was watching too, though it must have been hard to see much in her face with only the overhead marina lights. She pulled her hands away. Have an affair, Jennifer had ordered, but of course it had been a joke.

  She turned and walked along the float, past a powerboat with its engines running. "Why do they have the engines running?"

  "Probably charging his batteries. There's no power on this float. What's the deal?"

  Her hands didn't know where to settle. She wrapped them around her waist and walked past the noisy powerboat.

  "I'm staying at Discovery Bay," she said when they reached the quiet at the end of the float. There was nowhere to go now, and she felt ridiculously frightened.

  If she was afraid, she didn't need to ask. If she did ask, and he said no—well, it couldn't be more than a few minutes' embarrassment, could it? She'd simply leave, never see him again.

  He stood motionless, watching her. Waiting.

  "I'll be here for a week." She dropped her arms because suddenly it seemed a vulnerable pose, hugging herself in front of him. "You want me to spend time with Jake. That's what this is all about? The drinks? The walk on the docks?"

  "Floats. Yeah, that's what it's about. It's not a hardship. You've got gorgeous eyes."

  "You like my eyes?"

  "I've always liked your eyes. Jake's going to like them, too."

  She thought he intended to kiss her soon, he was watching her so intensely. She fought to pull air into her lungs. Jenn couldn't have meant this, standing on the float at the edge of the ocean, the stars obscured by clouds, planning....

  If she didn't ask, then she'd never know, and she'd always wonder what it would have been like. Life had been simpler, she thought wildly, when she was a teenager, when she kept her eyes on her books and didn't look up.

  "Do you still have your motorcycle?"

  "It hasn't been out for a while, but I've got it. Want a ride?"

  Heavens, he sounded exactly the way she'd imagined, the way he'd sounded when he stopped by the side of the road ahead of her, his motorcycle pulsing between his muscular legs, and asked Lydia if she wanted a ride.

  What the hell, she thought, he could only say no, and she was damned if she'd leave Port Townsend carrying a collection of leftover fanta
sies.

  "I do want a ride, and I want you to take me to tomorrow's dance. I— I'll do what I can for Jake if you'll romance me, the way you did Lydia in high school."

  The words came tumbling out. She wasn't sure where they'd been hiding, but she couldn't seem to stop them. "I want you to sneak me away from the crowd at the dance and kiss me as if you couldn't get enough. I want a week of fantasy, flowers and motorcycle rides into the unknown, and then... then, next Friday morning, I want you to kiss me good-bye, a friendly kiss, and tell me it was the best week you ever had."

  He stood frozen, a statue against the shape of the big blue boat. When he cleared his throat, if she hadn't known how unlikely it was, she would have sworn he was nervous.

  "You want an affair? One week?"

  "We don't have to actually—"

  "Why?"

  She swallowed. "I told you I had a crush on you in high school. I guess there's still..."

  "Chemistry."

  "If you don't want—"

  "You'll work with Jake."

  "I'll try."

  He reached across and slid his hand into her hair. She felt his fingers tangle in the strands behind her ear, felt nerve endings where there weren't supposed to be any.

  "You've got a deal," he growled. "One week." Then, ever so slowly, he drew her face toward his and settled his lips softly over her mouth.

  Her body hummed with something breathless and exciting. Her lips parted, softening under his. Then he drew back, leaving her confused and incomplete.

  "I think..." She wasn't thinking, she was feeling, wanting. "I can't... I have to get... get back to my car."

  "I'll drive you." Was it anger in his voice? Had she offended him by making the overture? Was she supposed to wait for him to ask, the way she'd waited back in her senior year?

  Ridiculous. She hadn't been waiting for him back then. He'd been out of the question, impossible. Too wild, too dangerous, and he'd never have looked at her back then.

  But he remembered her eyes.

  "I don't need a ride." She slipped her purse off her shoulder. "You paid for my drink. I'll give you—"

  His hand closed over hers. "Is that what you imagined in your fantasies? Having a drink with me, paying your share?"