Secrets in Summer(38)

“It would be time for something else if we weren’t in public,” Darcy told him.

“Be good. We’ve got reservations.”

Nash took her hand so he wouldn’t lose her as they threaded their way through the crowd. He held her hand as they stepped outside, turned right, and walked to Fifty-Six union  , one of their favorite restaurants. His hand was big and warm and callused from carpentry work, and she liked that roughness against her own smooth skin. She shivered to recall the feel of those hands on her naked body.

Obviously, she was a nymphomaniac.

The restaurant was packed with gorgeous summer people relishing their newly tanned skin and sunburned noses, their sense of sensual freedom here on this island that had not one single traffic light, and no skyscrapers or polluted air or subways, expressways, or toll booths. The hostess led them to a small table against the wall. From here, Darcy and Nash could have a conversation—if they shouted—but they’d expected it would be like this and it was exhilarating after months of isolation. Darcy ordered her favorite appetizer: mussels from P.E.I., with hunks of thick bread to soak up the broth. She had salmon for an entrée. Nash had the swordfish, and they split their food in half and shared. They talked about the paintings they’d seen; the artists and their always attention-grabbing personal lives; the problem finding parking in town, which never seemed to be solved; the new blockbuster movie.

And all the time, under the table, Darcy stroked his leg with her foot.

When they left the restaurant, it was twilight, the long lazy twilight of summer.

“Let’s walk down to the creeks,” Nash suggested.

“Good idea.”

They ambled along companionably down the street toward the harbor, where boats and yachts and dinghies bobbed gently in the evening breeze. They strolled past the Great Harbor Yacht Club and Sayle’s fish market, and came to the beach at the harbor’s end. You could wade here, where the water scrolled in to the salt marsh grasses, but it was too shallow for swimming. In the mornings, people practiced yoga on this beach. In the day, families kayaked into the inlets, spotting egrets and osprey and dozens of gulls. Now, at twilight, the beach was empty.

They sat side by side on the sand.

“It’s still warm from the sun,” Darcy said, scooping up a palmful of sand and letting it trickle through her fingers.

“Peaceful,” Nash murmured.

It was just plain nice, Darcy thought, sitting here with Nash.

Nash said quietly, “In March, when it was cold and the crew didn’t start work until eight or nine, I got up at six and came out here to walk. Or I went to Surfside. Sometimes the Jetties. I had the beach to myself. Okay, I shared it with the gulls and the herons and the cormorants.” He paused before saying, “It fills me up somehow. Just plain being there.”

His words took her breath away, not only because she did that, too, in winter, but because he had shared something private with her.

“Wow. You’re a nature geek like me.” Darcy gave him a sideways glance. He didn’t balk at “geek,” so she continued. “I do the same thing. Sometimes I drive out to the moors and walk on the dirt roads. No one else is around and you’re right, it fills me up.”

“What are the moors like in winter?” Nash asked. “I imagine it’s bleak.”

“True…” Darcy paused to collect her thoughts. “Everything’s gray and brittle, except for the occasional cluster of pine trees. When the sky is cloudy, the entire world is gray. It’s like walking on the moon. Usually the wind is up, whistling over the island. It makes the branches of the beach plum bushes rattle. I get kind of scared, or not scared exactly, but all shivery, not just from the cold. Then I spot a break in the brush, usually near one of the ponds, and, if I look closer, I’ll see a track into the bushes and a flattened area where the deer shelter. I think of the deer, foraging for berries, then curling up together, their warmth filling their space….”

“Will you take me there this winter? I’ve never walked on the moors.”

“Yeah,” Darcy said. “Yeah, sure, I’ll take you there.”

So he was assuming they’d still be together in the winter, she thought. She leaned against his sturdy, strong torso.

Nash put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. Together they gazed out at the lights twinkling from homes in Monomoy, the lights blazing from the wide windows of the yacht club, the boats rocking in the dark blue water, the flash of light from the Brant Point Lighthouse. Except for the cry of the gulls, it was quiet. As the sky darkened, Nash’s profile blended into the shadows, and then she could scarcely see him. It was the most natural thing in the world for her to turn her face up toward his, for his mouth to come down, warm and gentle, against hers.