Butternut Summer (31 page)

“But I knew how important it was to you, Mom, that I do all those things,” Daisy said, holding back a sob. “And I'm glad I did them. But I need to lead my own life now. And if you don't like the decisions I make, well, that's too bad. Because you know what, Mom? You need to lead your own life, too.” She turned around then and opened the door to the office, but on her way out, she ran into the immovable wall that was Frankie.

“Whoa, Daisy,” he said, catching her. “Are you okay?”

But she disentangled herself from him and kept going.

Frankie looked after her and then looked at Caroline, who was trying, very hard, not to cry, and said, “I'll come back.” He reached for the door to close it again, but Caroline stopped him.

“No, Frankie. Please, come in,” Caroline said, not wanting to be alone when Daisy's words still stung the way they did.

He hesitated, then came into her office, quickly filling the whole space. He started to say something, but he stopped. Caroline sighed. There weren't going to be any easy conversations in this room today.

“Is this about this morning, Frankie? About the meeting I was having when you came in to work?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I'm sorry. I asked them to come early because I didn't want you to know about it. I was hoping they'd be gone before you got to work.”

He didn't say anything.

She exhaled a big breath. “They're potential buyers, Frankie. From Ely. John Quarterman put me in touch with them. They seemed nice enough, and they know their stuff, too; they already own three successful restaurants in this area. And Frankie? Their offer's fair, especially when you consider how much work this building needs.”

He nodded. “What did you tell them?”

“I told them I needed time to think about it. And I told them that my accepting the offer was contingent upon them hiring you, at twenty-five percent above your current salary, and that if they closed for renovations, they'd still have to pay you while they were closed. I think that's fair, don't you?”

He shrugged. “Do you want to sell Pearl's?”

“It's not a question of
wanting
to sell it. It's more of a question of
needing
to sell it. I'll owe the bank almost forty-five thousand dollars in September when my balloon mortgage payment is due. And I don't have it, Frankie.”

“What if . . . what if someone could give you some of the money, though? Would you still need to sell it?”

“That . . . that would depend. But nobody's going to give me any money, Frankie.”

“Actually, I'm going to give you some money,” Frankie said.

“Frankie,” Caroline said, shaking her head. “That's very sweet.”

“I'm not trying to be sweet,” Frankie said. “I'm trying to keep my job.”

“You
will
keep your job, whatever happens. I'll make them put it in writing.”

“No, I mean my job working for you. I don't want to work for anyone else. Besides, I've got over ten thousand dollars. That should tide the bank over for a while, shouldn't it?”

She shook her head; it wasn't nearly enough. But that wasn't what was bothering her right now. “Frankie, where'd you get that much money?” she asked. “And don't tell me you saved it out of your salary. Because I already know for a fact you send your sister whatever you don't need to live on yourself.” Frankie had gotten back in touch with his sister a few years before, the sister whose abusive husband he'd gone to prison for killing in self-defense, and he was helping to support her now.

He shifted his considerable weight from one foot to the other foot now. “It's from playing pool, actually.”

She frowned.

“It's not a big deal,” Frankie said. “I mean, what's a little wagering between friends?”

“A little?”

“Okay, a lot. But I like playing pool, I'm good at it, and I knew you needed the money. Or you would need it, someday. Besides, I'm lucky. Some people who play for money have trouble getting paid when they win. I've never had that problem before,” he said, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

Caroline laughed. “I don't doubt that,” she said.

“Look, I'll leave you alone now. Just . . . just keep it in mind, all right?”

“I will. Thank you,” she said. But she was suddenly exhausted, and when Frankie left, it was all she could do not to put her head down on the desk again.

She thought about Daisy's words about letting her lead her own life. They had cut her to the quick. Probably because she knew they were true. She'd never pressured Daisy, as she'd said, but that was only because she'd never
needed
to pressure her. And she'd never interfered in Daisy's choices either, but again, that was because she'd always
agreed
with them. They'd always struck her as good choices—until now. And now, she realized, now that she disagreed with Daisy, she couldn't stand back and let her live her own life. She didn't know how to.

But Daisy had said something else, too. She'd said Caroline needed to live her
own
life, and now, belatedly, Caroline realized the truth in that statement as well. Of course, during the years since Daisy had gone away to college, Caroline had come to pride herself on her independence. On her friendships with Allie and Jax, on her relationship with Buster. But if she were honest with herself, her life during those years had still been about the same two things it had always been about: Daisy and Pearl's. In that order. She had to go back a long way, back to before Jack had left her, for her life to have been about anything else.

As she thought about all this, she did something that surprised her. She got up and took the crumpled poster out of the wastebasket and put it on her desk, and then she tried to smooth all the wrinkles out of it. When she'd done the best she could, she hung it back on the wall, and studied it again. She still liked that pink beach in Bermuda, she decided, with a weary smile. And damn it, she still wanted to go there one day.

O
n a sultry night in early August, Will's self-control finally faltered. He and Daisy had spent their night, as usual, at Pearl's and the Black Bear. But from the moment he'd first seen her, something had been different between them. It was as if there was an added charge in their attraction to each other, an extra current of electricity running between their bodies.

He thought maybe it had to do with what Daisy was wearing, a sleeveless blouse and form-fitting blue jeans. She wasn't in the habit of dressing seductively, and tonight was no exception, but her thin cotton blouse strained just slightly against the gentle curve of her breasts and showed off, too, an almost irresistible amount of her bare, creamy arms.

And it wasn't just Will who was feeling the attraction so intensely. Daisy was feeling it too. He'd held her a little too tightly when they'd danced, for instance, and she'd let him. And then she'd pressed herself against him in a suggestive way that she'd never done before. She'd even relaxed her “no kissing in public” rule and let him give her a couple of long, hungry kisses while they danced, swaying almost imperceptibly in the flickering lights of the Black Bear's jukebox.

By the time they'd gotten into his pickup and headed back to Butternut, Will felt as if the sexual tension was pulled so tight it was about to snap. He concentrated on the road, driving with elaborate carefulness, and Daisy, who was strangely quiet, looked out the window. But when they got to town and Will started to pull into a space on Main Street, Daisy shook her head.

“Don't park here,” she said. “Park outside the rec center.”

Will nodded wordlessly and drove out to the edge of town where the rec center took up a whole block that, at this time of night, was quiet and dimly lit. He parked and cut the engine, and almost before he knew what was happening, Daisy was in his arms, kissing him, hard, her tongue greedily exploring his mouth. He kissed her back, his need for her ratcheting up with every passing second, until he thought he couldn't take it anymore. That was when he let one of his hands wander over the front of her blouse, feeling her small, perfect breasts through the thin cotton material, and then, when that wasn't enough, unbuttoning her blouse and peeling it open.

He stopped kissing her then, long enough to look down at her. “Daisy,” he breathed, taking in a sheer, lacy bra, whose pale violet color contrasted strikingly with the almost ethereal whiteness of her skin.

“Do you like it?” she asked, with a sudden shyness. “I bought it last weekend at the mall in Duluth.”

He swallowed. Hard. “Um, yeah. I like it, Daisy. I like it a lot.”

So she'd been wearing that all night? No wonder he hadn't been able to keep his hands off her. He must have known, subconsciously, how little clothing stood between the two of them. And he found himself wondering, for one wild moment, if there was a pair of matching panties that went with this bra, and if she was wearing them right now. The thought aroused him so much that he practically groaned.

Instead, he pulled her back into his arms and kissed her, harder. Soon one of his hands moved again to her breasts, and he cupped one of them gently in his palm and ran his fingers over the barely there material of her bra, feeling the warmth of her skin, and the pebbling hardness of her nipple, through it. Her breathing quickened then, and when he dipped his fingers inside her bra, and caressed her bare nipple with his fingers, she let out a little moan that pushed him right to the edge of endurance.

Without thinking, he took his hand out of her bra and slid both of his hands down and around, into her blue jeans' back pockets. Then he cupped her bottom, her delicious bottom, with both of his hands, and simultaneously squeezed it as he pulled her almost onto his lap. And as he did this, he felt her whole body shudder, almost violently, with excitement.

“
Oh, Daisy
,” he said. He meant it to be a warning, but it came out instead sounding more like an invitation. Then she was scrambling onto his lap, facing him, straddling him, kissing him again, and pressing against him in a way she'd never done before.

“Let's go somewhere,” she said, breathlessly, into their kiss. “Now.”

“Where?” he asked, his arms circling her waist, pulling her harder against him.

“Let's go to the beach,” she said, talking to him and kissing him at the same time. “Please, Will. Hurry.”

“It's not a good idea,” he said, pulling his lips away from hers. But he didn't say it with any real conviction, and she wasn't listening anyway. She grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up over his head and then started kissing him again, her hands running over his bare chest. And he remembered the way she'd done this that first night, the night they'd gone to the beach, but her hands had been so hesitant then. So unsure of themselves. Now they felt hungry, greedy, as if they wanted to touch every single inch of him at the same time.

“Do you have any protection?” Daisy said, pulling her mouth away from his only long enough to get the words out.

“Protection?” he said blankly, as if he'd never heard the word before.

She nodded, her breath coming fast, her creamy cleavage just inches from his mouth.

“Yeah, I've got something,” he said. And he did. He'd been carrying it around all summer, whenever he was with Daisy, without knowing if he'd ever actually need to use it.

“Then take me to the beach. But, Will? You're going to have to drive fast,” she added, her hands touching his shoulders, his chest, his stomach. “Because I can't wait that much longer.”

“
Oh, God, Daisy
.” He groaned, because he couldn't wait that much longer either. He leaned over and nuzzled her cleavage with his lips, then traced its silky, sweet-smelling skin with his tongue. He needed to stop, now. He needed to drive to the beach. But then he remembered something.

“Daisy,” he said, pulling his mouth away. “You said you didn't want our first time to be in the backseat of a pickup.”

“That was before I knew how hard it was going to be to wait,” she said, her breath soft against his ear. She started kissing him again, with even more urgency than before, and Will held her, held her so tightly that he could feel her cleavage against his bare chest, and, through her bra, the tender hardness of her nipples, too.

She wriggled in his lap, and Will sucked in a breath of surprise, surprise and almost painful arousal. “Oh, don't do that, Daisy.” He groaned again, not really meaning it.

“Will, please, let's go to the beach,” she said, against his ear, as her hands plucked impatiently at the button on his blue jeans.

The beach? Not a chance
, he thought. They'd be lucky now if they made it as far as the backseat, and even that was going to be a stretch.

Then, from a few blocks away, came a sound, just loud enough to register in his consciousness. It was an engine backfiring, and the time it took for Will to hear it, and to categorize it, was enough time to bring him back to reality, or to some form of reality, here in his pickup with Daisy. It wasn't supposed to be this way for them, he thought. He knew it; she knew it, too. She'd just forgotten it in the moment.

So with some supreme effort of will he didn't even know he had, he put his hands around her waist and lifted her off his lap, depositing her on the seat next to him.

“What's wrong?” she asked, staring at him, bewildered.

But he turned away from her and looked determinedly out the window. He figured if he looked back at her right now, with her messy hair, her unbuttoned blouse, her shimmery bra, and her silky white cleavage, he would completely lose it.

“Nothing's wrong,” he muttered finally. “I just need to get a grip on myself.” He reached for his T-shirt on the floor of the truck and pulled it back on, still without looking at her.