Jackie had thought of everything to make the day on the water fun for the kids. They’d sailed over to Pier 39 on the Mermaid, an eighty-two-foot schooner rigged like the old-style tall ships.
The wildlife docent came aboard, and before long even the youngest of the ranch campers could tell the difference between sea lions and harbor seals.
They’d had smooth sailing to the lighthouse at Point Bonita. Only Alana knew how Jackie must’ve prayed for calm seas. She might be a seafaring marine-mammal vet, but if the water was even slightly rough, Jackie spent most of the time seasick and retching over the rail of the boat.
Alana was lucky—nothing about the sea affected her adversely. She loved everything about it—the salty spray, the pelicans that soared overhead casting their prehistoric shadows over the boat and especially the ever-changing color of the water.
When they’d left that morning, the water had carried a steely blue sheen. The color of Matt’s eyes. He had amazing eyes. Sometimes she thought he could see to the heart of her. Sometimes she thought he maybe even liked what he saw. It mattered to her, his respect and admiration, even if they didn’t have a future. But they did have a now. And it was a breathtaking one. She shivered just thinking about him, thinking about how he made her feel. She couldn’t wait to be with him again. It seemed like more than twenty-eight hours since she’d seen him. She laughed to herself. Her sense of time was just one aspect of her senses he’d messed with.
“Alana? Alana! Anybody home?” Jackie’s voice had the sound of alarm. “Watch out for the boom.”
Alana ducked under the boom and joined Jackie and the campers along the midsection rail. The captain turned them north and headed back to the harbor.
“Time to feed these little beasts,” Jackie said with a smile. “Lunch on the beach when we dock. You staying?”
“I was planning to.”
The boat entered the little bay that held the marina. Alana watched the sparkle of light on the water, suddenly prompted to go for a swim. She couldn’t resist and didn’t want to—the water was calm and the sun was hot and high in the sky. She pulled off her life vest, yanked her T-shirt over her head and dove over the side of the boat.
She hit the water and felt the bliss of being enveloped by the sea. She opened her eyes and swam deeper. The blue-green of the Bay was a color matched by no other.
A disturbance near her bolted her to the surface.
“Alana! Alana!” Sophie thrashed toward Alana with flailing arms. Alana reached her with a couple of swift strokes and took her in her arms.
“Alana.” Sophie sobbed against her, gulping for air.
“Shhhh... let’s get you back into the boat and get you dry.” She shoved down her alarm and swam as fast as she could with Sophie clutched under one arm.
When they got back on board, Alana wrapped a heavy towel around the still-sobbing Sophie.
“I thought you were going to drown,” Sophie said, making a heroic effort to control her tears. “I thought you were going to die. Like Mom.”
If a person could feel stupid and angry at the same time, Alana was that person.
She hadn’t thought. She’d just jumped in, looking to enjoy the water, the sun, the day. She hadn’t given any consideration to the fact that there were kids on board. Kids she was nominally responsible for. Kids who’d be looking to her as an example. And she’d never considered the trauma Sophie must’ve suffered after losing her mother in a hellfire plane crash. She just hadn’t thought.
Worse, Matt was storming toward them, taking long, angry strides down the dock. Evidently he’d seen the whole thing play out. For once she wished he didn’t have ballplayer-sharp eyes.
In a flash, what she’d tried to ignore hit home hard.
Signing up for Matt meant signing up for motherhood. Step or otherwise, it all came out the same: responsibility.
Having a relationship with him meant that she couldn’t make decisions just for herself anymore. When she’d let the affair go forward, she’d known there’d be compromises involved. But she hadn’t considered that following through on the feelings he’d awakened, that by becoming involved with him in any significant way, meant being responsible for a child’s life.
From the furious look on Matt’s face, she’d just made it pretty damned clear that she wasn’t cut out for anything even close to that level of responsibility.
Sophie stiffened when she saw her dad.
“He’s going to be mad at me,” she said, burrowing into Alana’s body.
“I think he’ll be madder at me.” She stroked Sophie’s dripping hair.
“That’s worse,” Sophie said. “Way worse.”
“It’s okay, honey. We’ll just tell him what happened.”
Sure.
She’d just explain that she jumped into the bay on a lark, without thought, and terrified his six-year-old daughter, who then risked her own life trying to avoid another disaster in her life.
When they stepped onto the dock, Matt gave her no chance to say anything. He scooped Sophie up and stomped down the dock without a word to anyone. But Sophie kicked loose and made him set her on her feet. She turned and hurried back to Alana.
“We have a day off of baseball. Dad told me last week. He said maybe you could come for a hike with us.”
Matt walked up and tried to scoop her up again. “I’m sure Alana has loads of things to do on that day.”
His voice had the edge of barely restrained anger. He couldn’t have said it’s over in a more effective way. Alana got the message.
“But maybe not. Maybe she doesn’t,” Sophie said, looking hopefully up at Alana and ignoring the discord between her and Matt. “You said, Dad.”
“He’s right,” Alana said. “I do have loads of things to do that day.” She tucked Sophie’s towel around her little shoulders, pushing her hair gently under the edge. “I’m sorry, honey.”
She wasn’t sure which hurt worse, the icy look in Matt’s eyes as he lifted Sophie and turned away or the desolate look in Sophie’s as he carried her down the dock.
The summer camps would be over at the end of the next week. She’d just have to suck up the hurt and steer clear of the two of them until then.
And though she wanted to curse the day she’d met him, the emerging force within her wouldn’t let her.
She returned to the boat and grabbed the life jacket and her T-shirt from where she’d dropped them on the schooner’s deck. She pulled the T-shirt over her head and then tossed the life jacket into the big blue equipment bin on the dock.
She’d need more than a life jacket to navigate the storm of feelings that Matt had unleashed.