August 4

This has been a particularly hectic Tuesday, and honestly, I couldn’t be more grateful, because hectic means I don’t have time to think about other things. The day started with an early morning run around Newbury Neck in the cool fog, and what better way to celebrate burning calories than to put them right the hell back on? I stopped at Sweet Dreams, the adorable little bakery in Surry with lavender clapboard siding and yellow trim, and bought two dozen bagels for the office.

I may or may not have eaten a chocolate-frosted donut in the car.

Arriving at work, I was on screech the moment I walked through the door. Reading through the latest MLS Hot Sheet and feeling proud to see Maine Coastal with so many pending listings. Meeting with the IT guy to discuss updating our website. Phone call to the new advertising exec at the local radio station. Chatting with Angie about finding some office space for two new associates who just passed their sales agent test. A forty-five minute meeting with a mom contemplating which of three houses had the best finished basement for her thirty-year-old son, while I tried my hardest to keep the but he’s thirty out of my face.

Near the end of the day, I’m on my computer answering emails when a little thought starts worming its way into my brain. I try to ignore it because I know I should, but it’s persistent, and before I can stop myself, I’m Googling Jackson Decker. I can’t help it. I’ve had this urge before but have held off because it’s felt almost like an invasion of his privacy...even though it’s not like I’m looking through his medicine cabinet or sock drawer. I haven’t even been to his house. But when he told me about how he didn’t have to work, it got me curious.

Within seconds, I have answers. Jackson Decker, Decker Renovation is at the top of the search. I scan quickly for more. Jackson Decker, vice-president of sales of New England Home Supply...Jack Decker announces he will be resigning effective immediately to “pursue other professional endeavors.” John Decker, CEO of NEHS and Jack Decker’s father, could not be reached for comment.

New England Home Supply? The New England Home Supply? So in another life, my gorgeous handyman was a business executive of a highly successful company. His family’s company.

I click “Images,” because of course I want to see photos of him. There is one of him at a charity golf tournament, standing between two men—an older man with rugged good looks, graying hair, and dark eyes (I assume his father), and another man close to Jack’s age—also handsome, with lighter hair and a few inches shorter than Jack. They are all wearing polo shirts with the company logo and tan slacks, and all of them look happy and relaxed.

So what happened? I’m mulling over this when there’s a knock on my door—Angie, coming in with a bouquet of blue and white hydrangeas and beaming with delight.

“Someone got flowwers,” she croons in a sing-song voice.

My heart does a little backflip. Jack? Angie is watching me as I open the envelope with eager fingers.

Happy Anniversary...I will never forget that day or how I loved you.

Jesus! I recoil in disgust, hastily stuffing the card back in the envelope.

Angie peers at me anxiously from behind her red glasses. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

I wrinkle up my nose as if I smell something. “They’re from my ex-husband. And it’s our anniversary, which I had totally forgotten until now, and which he shouldn’t even be acknowledging.”

“Ohh, Madeline.” Her expression is a mixture of pity and anger. “I’m sorry. I was thinking they might be from someone else. And how rude and arrogant of Paul to think you’d want these.”

“He is completely oblivious to what I think of him. Why can’t he see that it’s over—that it doesn’t matter what he wants?”

“I don’t know. It’s maddening. What do you want me to do with the flowers?”

“Is there someone you can think of who wouldn’t actually feel like throwing up looking at them?”

Angie stifles a giggle. “I have an elderly neighbor who would love them.” She takes the flowers from me, holding them out at arms’ length in an attempt to make me laugh. It works.

I pick up my phone to send Paul an angry text and then decide against it, not wanting to open up any dialogue between us. I can only hope this fades away on its own.

I want to go home. I check my weather app for the temperature. 91 degrees. I decide that salt water therapy is just what I need, and maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of my contractor which will be equally as refreshing. I neaten up my desk, thank Angie for re-homing the flowers on my way out and head home.

His truck is in my driveway, and my eyes skim over it fondly. I think I even have a crush on his vehicle. Pathetic. I fight the urge to go running into the house and upstairs and instead slip quietly into the downstairs bathroom and take my bikini off the hook on the back of the door. It’s a coral color, with a twist bandeau top and high-cut bottom to make my legs look longer. I have a one-piece hanging up as well, but my slutty self is hoping I’ll see Jack—and that he will see me.

Changing into my bathing suit, I arrange my hair into a messy bun and grab my flip-flops from the entryway before heading down to the beach. No need for a towel; with this heat, I’ll air dry in minutes.

I love how the sea looks in the sun this time of day, like millions of diamonds bobbing on the surface of the water. Coming closer to the shoreline, I see the short stack of gray, flat rocks I built the other day. I’d made sure to place the cairn out of the tide’s reach.

I hear my name being called and turn toward the sound. It’s Kelly, down at her own little beach area with her toddlers. I step across the pewter-colored carpet of rocks, tumbled and smoothed by the ocean. They are strewn with dried seaweed and small, expired crabs and make a satisfying clack-y sound as they meet each other under my feet.

Kelly waves at me from her beach chair as I approach. She’s looking relaxed, happy, and pretty amazing in her tank top and short shorts—not at all like someone who gave birth to twins. Her daughters, Mia and Maura, are crouched on the slick gray sand with their red plastic pails and little white shovels. They are absolutely precious in their polka-dot bathing suits, life vests and sun hats, ringlets of blonde hair curling at their necks. They squint up at me briefly and then go back to the very serious business of scooping sopping sand into their pails.

“Hey, girl! The water feels great. Warmest it’s been yet. We’ve been out here all afternoon.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Is your, um, handyman working today?” Kelly lifts an eyebrow behind her sunglasses.

“As a matter of fact, he is.”

“Then I’m a little surprised you aren’t in the house.”

“I thought I’d take a quick dip first.”

“Oh, I see...maybe flaunt your awesome bod that, unlike mine, has absolutely no stretch marks or droopy boobs?”

“You do not have droopy boobs.”

“A year of breastfeeding twins says otherwise. But enough about my boobs. How are things going with your Renovation Romeo?”

“Fine,” I answer brightly.

Kelly slides her sunglasses down her nose so I can see her eyes and lowers her voice. “Fine, as in he knows his plumbing, or fine, as in he knows yours?” She looks down at her twin girls and sighs. “God, I hope they’re not going to remember this years later when they’re in therapy.”

I shake my head and laugh. “Things are fine. Period.” I crouch down beside Mia and Maura who are now picking up mussel shells and dropping them in their pails, and we find pretty rocks that I shape into an M for our shared first initial, until one of them says she needs to go potty.

“Good girl, Maura!” Kelly praises her. “So good to tell Mommy. Pick up your pails and shovels, and let’s go inside. Maybe Maddie will come, too?”

“Not this time, thank you—I’m going for a quick swim.”

“And maybe you’ll get wet later, too,” she smirks.

“Therapy. Your children. Remember?”

Kelly makes a face at me as she picks up her beach chair, and I grin as I watch her and the girls walk up toward their house.

I’ve learned that the only way to get in the Atlantic Ocean is all at once—none of this taking your time to ease into it and get used to the temperature. I brace myself with a silent ohhh shiiit as I splash in, and then am pleasantly surprised that it’s actually more refreshing than cold.

It’s only about a hundred yards from Kelly’s property to mine, so it’s an easy swim. I settle into the rhythm of a freestyle stroke: reach forward...pivot the body...pull the water...extend arm behind. I should do this more often—I love that swim strokes are smooth and purposeful. I’m a little rusty, but it feels good, and soon I’m back at my place, swimming inland and enjoying the pockets of warm water as I straighten and slosh out of the ocean, approaching the expanse of rocky ledge sprawling across my beach area. Slicking my hair away from my face, I squeeze out the excess water, shift my bikini top back in place and sink down on the flat, black picnic rock, caressed smooth by the water. It’s deliciously warm on my legs, and I lean back on my elbows, closing my eyes and sighing. For the thousandth (millionth?) time, I say a silent thank-you that I live here.

I tip my face toward the late afternoon sun, still beating down with intensity. It is so incredibly gorgeous out here, I’ve been able to ignore the incredibly gorgeous image of Jackson Decker, who should soon be finishing up for the day. Have hardly thought about him at all.

Total. Lies.

And I’m feeling like a needy little high school girl, wanting to go see him but having this (ridiculous) need for him to come to me first.

“Playing hard to get?”

I startle, my eyes flashing open at the sound of his voice. My wish—one of them, at least—has come true: Jack Decker, in the flesh—standing in front of me on the black ledge in a surprisingly spotless white t-shirt and faded jeans. He’s wearing aviator sunglasses, smirking at me like he knows what I’ve been thinking.

I decide to go the coy route, because it’s what a woman does when she wants a man but doesn’t want the man to know, even though he does. “What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You didn’t come upstairs.”

“I didn’t want to...bother you.”

He snorts. “Bother me, Callaway? I think you know better.”

“Well...” I climb to my feet, hoping I don’t look as awkward as I feel, and fold my arms across my chest. “I just didn’t know if I should go running up there every time. Like maybe you need space.”

“If I needed space, I’d tell you. Nice bikini, by the way.”  

“Thanks. You’re looking good yourself. And very tanned.”

“I’ve been getting a lot of sun shingling a roof at my other job.”

I don’t like the idea of him working up high. “You do roofs? Are you careful?”

He chuckles. I can’t see his eyes, but I can imagine they are crinkling behind his aviators. “Are you worried about me?”

I’m hoping I can pass off the blush in my cheeks as a reaction to the steaming hot day. I know he doesn’t want emotions to snarl our otherwise smooth alliance. “I wouldn’t want you to get hurt and not to be able to finish here,” I answer lightly.

“So it’s purely about my value to you as a handyman.”

“Yes.”

“I see. And yes, Callaway. I’m always careful.” He flashes his teeth at me. “What a view out here. It’s really quite spectacular.”

“Thank you.”

“And the setting isn’t bad, either.” He is smiling and smiling at me, and did someone just turn up the sun, because oh my God.

I am trying to figure out something clever to say back when he tilts his head and points over my shoulder. “Did you make that?”

I turn to see what he’s referring to and then realize it’s the cairn.

“Yes.”

“Very cool. I used to hike quite a bit, and I’d see them sometimes. I like the whole making art from nature thing.”

“It’s called a cairn.”

“It has a name? I always called it a rock stack.”

I smile. “Yes, it has a name. C-a-i-r-n.”

“Oh. Didn’t know that.”

“They’re quite interesting. You should research them.” Immediately, I’m reminded of the Google search I did this afternoon. On him. I do plan to tell him what I found out, but not right now. Because selfishly, I want him to kiss me, and I don’t think kissing is quite conducive to hearing that your client (who isn’t even supposed to be in a relationship with you) went digging for information about your past.

On second thought, maybe I won’t mention it.

Jack takes off his sunglasses, holding me captive in his gaze as he walks closer. The sea breeze flirts with his hair. He is rock, sun, wind and water: hard, hot, restless...and slipping through my fingers. I have this ludicrous, overwhelming urge to fling my arms around him and beg him to stay. For the night, the week…

For forever.

He’s towering over me, the sun behind him, bathing him in a golden, fiery glow. “You wanted to come see me, didn’t you, Madeline?”

Do I respond with a flippant remark? Deny it?

I make the choice of clear honesty. “I always want to see you, Jack.” There’s an unexpected change in his eyes that makes me catch my breath. “I just thought maybe I should keep my distance. I don’t want you to feel like you have to see me every time.”  

“What if I want to?”

I feel like an uncorked bottle of champagne about to be popped, because this is not feeling like an alliance anymore. It’s feeling like I’m a girl, and he’s a boy, and we really, really like each other and might even hold hands in the hall on the way to gym class.

“I was watching you, you know.” Jack’s arms drape around my waist, and he leans back a little to lower himself so that his pelvis is more in alignment with mine. I can feel him through his jeans. My bikini bottom is damp, and it’s not just from the Atlantic.

I look into the small pools of ocean that are his eyes. “Watching me? When?”

“When you were swimming. You looked good, smooth. Nice strokes.” He shifts against me in a maneuver dangerously close to a grind.

Strokes. Jesus. “I swam in high school my sophomore and junior year,” I murmur. “I took third in the regional competition.”

Jack slides one warm, big hand up my wet back and grips my hair. “But not your senior year?” He begins to lower his mouth toward mine.

“Didn’t like the coach,” I whisper weakly. “He was too hard on me.”

“Sometimes, hard can be a good thing. Right, Callaway?” Jackson Decker lifts me with ease, holding me against a prime example of how hard can be good. My feet are dangling helplessly a foot off the rock, and all I want to do is for him to unzip his jeans and violate me right here on the beach in front of the seagulls.

I open my mouth to take his delicious tongue, a soft groan deep in my throat. He kisses me like he is thirst and I am water. Even though I can hardly catch my breath and I might possibly die, I don’t want him to stop. But he does, briefly, to tell me something.

“Madeline...you don’t need to worry about giving me space. Not now, not while I’m working for you. As long as I’m here, consider me yours.”

My eyes begin to sting, possibly from the bright sunlight. I blink rapidly, not wanting to make him regret what he just said. “I like that,” I manage, smiling.

His ocean eyes are deep, soft and earnest. “Me too.”