Quinn paid the bill and we walked up the hill to the Porsche. Low cumulus clouds piling up in great heaps like meringues scudded across the sky over the Pacific. Underlit by the sun, they were the color of an old bruise. Above they exploded in soft gold that faded to creamy yellow, like the skies on my French grandmother’s prayer cards portraying the Blessed Virgin ascending to heaven.
“I have an idea,” Quinn said.
“What?”
“We ought to get an early start tomorrow. It could be a long day in Napa.”
I glanced at him. “Yes, I suppose it could.”
“So … well, I was thinking.” He seemed to be frowning at his feet. “How about if you checked out of the hotel now and spent the night on the houseboat with me? Sausalito’s already on the other side of the Bay, so we could beat all the city traffic and head straight up from there.”
“It would save time, wouldn’t it?” My heart raced. “I guess it makes sense.”
Was he asking me to spend the night with him in his bed, or was this really just about traffic and getting an early start?
“I’m not sure what makes sense now.” His voice was quiet in my ear as he pulled me close, burying his face in my hair. “Especially about us.”
I closed my eyes. “Me neither, Quinn. But I know what I want. I want you back in my life. What about you? What do you want?”
If I pushed too hard, I knew I risked losing him. Quinn was like that, afraid to commit, afraid of getting tied down … but at least, at the very least, he owed me an honest answer to that question after everything we’d been through together.
“What do I want?” He blew out a long, soft breath. “Tonight I want it to be like it was that first night.”
I felt like he’d knocked me sideways. I wanted to say, “And tomorrow? What about tomorrow and the day after that and the next and the next …?” But I didn’t, because I couldn’t. There would be no talk of the future, no declaration of our feelings, no discussion about whether he would be coming back to Virginia for good.
Tonight there would just be us and it would have to be enough, for now and maybe forever, until I could pick up the pieces of my life and move on, if that’s how we ended it.
I leaned on my cane for support and kissed his cheek. “It won’t take me long to pack my things.”
The drive to Sausalito, as lights winked on across San Francisco on a surprisingly clear summer evening, was intoxicating. What lay ahead once we got there thrummed between us, alternately thrilling and scaring me. I pushed Charles, and whatever dark secret the survivors of the Mandrake Society had harbored, to the farthest recesses of my mind as we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, its enormous red-orange piers rising up out of the night sky, majestic and imposing. In the distance, the Bay Bridge sparkled like a diamond necklace, and the city itself was a graceful, ethereal kingdom of glittering lights.
The houseboat was located in a marina just beyond the town, off Bridgeway on Gate 5 ½ Road. I hadn’t known what to expect. I had pictured a large room, somewhat primitive and rustic, that served as the living, dining, and sleeping area with some clever rearranging of modular, vaguely uncomfortable wooden furniture with thin beach-type cushions. Instead, it was a luxurious little jewel, with the neat efficiency of a puzzle whose seams fit together so perfectly they disappeared.
I don’t remember much about when we first got there, except a blurred recollection of scented roses blooming on a floating patio, the creak of wooden stairs under our footsteps, a lavender front door, water lapping against the sides of the gently rocking boat. Then we were inside, with soft light shining from a seashell-decorated lamp and Harmony’s strong, primitive paintings—something tribal, Tahiti, Bora Bora, the Amazon—hanging on pale yellow walls. Quinn led me down a narrow corridor lined with fitted doors, behind which I assumed she carefully stored clothes or linens. Neither of us spoke until we got to the master bedroom, with its king-sized platform bed and lights from the marina slatting into the darkness through the blinds of a large window. He jerked the cord shut with a quick move and then we tumbled onto the bed, sharp sighs and little cries as we undressed—I heard the rip of fabric—and devoured each other with dizzy, desperate fury.
If this was going to be our last time, I knew that tonight—the way his hands moved over me, our bruised mouths, the pressure of his body on mine, how we fit so perfectly together—would be branded on my skin, our whispered words tattooed onto my heart and into my memory. In years to come I knew remembering this night would fill me with a breathless ache triggered by some small thing when I least expected it—a sea breeze light as a caress across my cheek, a boat rocking like a cradle in a sweet lullaby, faint shafts of moonlight making animal stripes on bare skin, a tangle of bed-sheets that smelled of musk and sweat and passion.
When we were finally finished, he pulled me into his arms and we clung to each other for a long time, listening to the settling creaks and groans of the boat against the quiet sound of our breathing, our heartbeats finding a rhythm together, in the dark liquid stillness.
After a while he murmured, “I’m starved. I think it’s past ten o’clock.”
I turned on my side so I could see his profile. “Sex always does that to you.”
“I’m also predictable.” I could feel him smiling in the dark.
“Want me to cook? I presume this place has a kitchen. I can fix eggs and bacon or whatever you’ve got around. Though of course knowing you that would be a six-pack and a bag of chips.”
I sat up and stretched lazily as he leaned across me to turn on a candlestick lamp on a bedside table. His tongue deliberately grazed my breasts and I shivered. In the golden shadows he looked tousled and content. For a long moment we stared at each other without speaking.
Finally he brushed the tip of my nose with his finger and the moment passed. “On a boat it’s called a galley. Yeah, there is one and it’s pretty amazing. And I’ll ignore that remark about my culinary habits.”
We were back on familiar territory. “So what
“This and that.” He grinned. “How about ordering Chinese? I know this great place. I never did take you to Chinatown. In San Francisco that’s practically a sacrilege.”
He pulled on a pair of jeans and rummaged through a built-in armoire for a shirt that had our vineyard logo on it. My heart did a slow flip-flop. I started to reach for my underwear when he said, “I’ve got something for you to wear.”
At home I’d often worn his clothes after we made love. Usually it was one of his favorite Hawaiian shirts or an old sweatshirt that came down around my knees, something that wrapped me in his scent and the memory of being together. But now he was opening a different armoire, this one for hanging clothes. There was nothing in it except a long silk robe.
“I, uh, saw this one day at one of those artisan street festivals we have here.” He held out the robe. “The, um, colors reminded me of you. I was going to give it to you when I came back to Virginia. I thought it would go nice with your hair.” By now he was stammering. “At least I hope it does.”
Last year for Christmas he gave me a wine aerator—an expensive wine aerator, but a wine aerator nonetheless. We’d always kept our gifts minimal and somewhat impersonal. And as for noticing what colors I wore, the work we did was dirty and messy, so more often than not he saw me in old jeans and wine-spattered T-shirts or sweatshirts that looked like I’d been shot multiple times.
The robe was lovely, intimate, sexy. I took it from him and held it against my body. It fell in graceful folds of peach, yellow, celadon, and cream, so soft it seemed to melt in my hands.
“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep—”
“Oh, Quinn, it’s
“Really?”
“Yes!” I threw my arms around him, crushing the robe between us. “Thank you!”
I slipped into it and wound the sash around my waist, tying a bow and turning around to show off to him. “What do you think?”
He smiled as I caught his arm for balance. “I think I have good taste.”
There was a mirror inside the armoire door. I stood in front of it and admired myself. “I look gorgeous.”
“Yeah, you do.” He laughed and caught my hand. “Come on, gorgeous, I’ll call for Chinese. There’s a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc chilling in the fridge.”
I raised an eyebrow. “For us?”
