sailboard from the roof.
“I’m warning you, Alec,” she said. “I can’t swim a stroke.”
He threw her a life vest from the back seat of the Bronco. “You don’t need to know how to swim,” he said. “You do need some sunscreen, though.”
“I put some thirty on. This is the first time I’ve been out in the sun this summer.”
“It looks like the first time in your life.”
She made a face at him and took the end of the board to help him carry it through the tangled weeds leading out to the sound.
“How come there’s just one board?”
“Because the wind is perfect for you today, but a little nonexistent for my taste. It’s pretty shallow here. I can stay next to you and tell you what to do.”
Rio Beach was nothing more than a scrap of sand at the water’s edge, barely wide enough for the blanket Alec spread across it. He stood with his hands on his hips, looking out at the sound. The sun shimmered on the water, and he could see other windsurfers in the distance, but he knew none of them had put in here. Rio Beach was his little secret.
“Great day for this,” he said, turning to Olivia. She was gnawing on her lower lip. “Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” She took off her jacket and laid it on the blanket. Her bathing suit was black and violet, conservatively cut at the thigh, but dipping gently over her breasts, and he remembered his erotic fantasy of her and Paul from the night before.
“What are you smiling about?” she asked.
He laughed as he took off his T-shirt. “Just glad to be out here,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
She wore a long gold chain that fell softly between her breasts. The bone-whiteness of her skin made her look terribly fragile, but he would never have guessed she was pregnant. The slight rise of her belly would not give her away.
“So, did you call your doctor about windsurfing?” he asked. She had told him she was concerned about the advisability of windsurfing when pregnant.
She wrinkled her nose. “Yes. Turns out she’s a windsurfer herself. She said the only risk she could see was that I might actually have fun for once and not know how to cope with the experience.”
Alec laughed. “Your doctor’s got you pegged.”
He gave her a little demonstration, showing off a bit with a beach start, a couple of duck-jibes, before settling down to the tamer moves she would need to learn. The twelve-foot board felt sluggish, cumbersome beneath his feet. He was used to the small board he liked to take out in the ocean.
She shivered when she stepped into the water. Alec held the sailboard steady for her, and she climbed onto it, her face the picture of concentration. “Put your feet on either side of the mast,” he said.
“Is this the mast?”
“Right.” He held her hand to steady her as she rose to her feet. “Now hold on to the rope. You’re going to uphaul to get the sail out of the water. Bend your legs. That’s it. Keep your back straight and use your legs to pull the sail up.”
She pulled in the rope, hand over hand, and the sail began to rise out of the water, taking wind, causing the board to turn suddenly beneath her feet. She screamed, falling backward into the water with a splash. He walked around the board to help her, but she surfaced laughing.
“I should have warned you about that,” he said. “When the clew comes out of the…”
“What’s the clew?” she asked, tossing the water out of her hair.
“This part of the sail right here,” he said, and he got onto the board once more to show her how it was done.
She spent more of her time in the water than on the board, but she was nothing if not a good sport. She laughed a couple of times to the point of tears. It was a side to her he had not seen, a side he imagined she rarely saw herself.
She was climbing gamely onto the board for what seemed like the hundredth time, when her bathing suit slipped from her shoulder and he saw the sharp white line it left on her skin.
“You’re burning,” he said. “We’d better get you out of here.”
Olivia sat down on the blanket, her teeth chattering. Alec wrapped her towel around her, rubbing her arms through it, briefly, letting go as he realized the intimacy of the touch. The gold chain clung softly to the pink swell of her breasts, and he looked away.
He got the green and white striped umbrella from the back of the Bronco and set it up over Olivia’s half of the blanket. Then he lay down next to her, relishing the warmth of the sun on his skin. “So, how come you never learned to swim?” he asked. He had spent most of his childhood canoeing and water skiing on the Potomac.
“I never lived near any water.” The umbrella caught her words and floated them down to him.
“Where did you grow up?”
“In the central part of New Jersey. Have you heard of the Pine Barrens?”
“Isn’t that where everyone intermarries and produces, uh—” he was not sure how to word it “—less than brilliant offspring?”
She made a sound of mock disgust. “Well, you’re thinking of the right place, but your view of it is a little colored by its press. Intermarriage is far more the exception than the rule.”
