Out at Night. Susan Smith Arnout

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      “He’s not even a blip on my radar, Mac. We haven’t talked in years.”

      “Forgot to tell you, Grace, about this tree.” Clint cleared his throat importantly. “Katie, this is important for you, too.”

      Katie started to trot forward and Mac shot out an easy hand and stopped her.

      Black sap oozed from creases in the bark. Clint scooped a finger of sap and held it out. “See this sap? Don’t touch it. It’s called a poisonwood tree, because that’s what it is.”

      “Poison?” Katie cried. Grace instinctively reached for her but Mac was there first. He rested his palm on Katie’s curls.

      “Yes, Katie, it can kill you.” Clint leaned on the word kill like it was a horn. “Some people are immune, like me.” He wiped the sap onto his board shorts and left a trail. “But no worries! It stands next to this tree.” He patted an ashy colored tree with flaking bark. “It’s the antidote. I haven’t figured out how to use it yet, but it’s here, if you need it.”

      “Ah,” Mac said again.

      A black snout poked through the slats of the truck, followed by a second, more massive head.

      “Oh, and don’t worry about those guys.” Clint gestured grandly to the dogs. He walked down the path toward the front door of the B-and-B. “They only attack if they smell fear.”

      He pushed open the door. “Got anything to drink?”

      “Okay,” Mac said. “We’re done.”

      Half an hour later, Mac moved them. He turned in both cars, took them by water taxi to Harbor Island five minutes away, and relocated them to the Pink Sands Hotel, owned by the man who started Island Records. Now they stood in the living room of a villa.

      Katie dropped her backpack, her eyes wide. “Wow. It’s got flatscreen.”

      “And movies, Katie. I can rent whatever you want.”

      Katie flung her arms around Mac’s legs and Grace looked away. The windows and French doors opened onto a patio that faced a three-mile pink-sand beach dotted with lavender beach umbrellas, sand as soft as corn silk, the water a turquoise that slid into mauve at the horizon.

      “Come on, I’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”

      Katie took his hand and skipped beside him and Grace trailed behind, the sherpa hauling suitcases. It occurred to Grace that Mac already knew where the bedrooms were.

      “Here’s where you and your mom can stay.” The room held two queen-sized beds with a view of the beach. “My room’s on the other side, and the bathrooms are in between. Want to see?”

      Katie nodded, her eyes round.

      “I’ll wait,” Grace said. Mac shot her that look again and she flushed.

      That night they ate in the hotel dining room at a small table covered in brocade, next to a plaster wall of vivid pinks and oranges, wooden mermaids hanging in the archway. Katie sat next to Mac and insisted he cut her chicken, and he bent over it as if it were a sacrament. Nobody bothered them.

      Clemens, the manager, explained that their villa had housed kings and queens, heads of business and Hollywood royalty, and that one of the hallmarks of the place was the other guests’ exquisite ability to leave those whose faces were familiar alone.

      That, and the staff’s attention to detail, anticipating every need and silently meeting it.

      It was as if the ground were slipping, but it was quality ground, a finer silt than Grace was used to. Even the towels she used to dry Katie after her bath felt better. Fluffier. Softer. Whiter. Part of Grace loved being taken care of. And part of her feared it. But Katie seemed to be slipping into this life with Mac effortlessly—and that, too, scared her.

      She’d been alone for so long, making every decision about Katie, and now here was a man—her man, he’d been, a long time ago—reverently embracing his role as dad. Daddy. The big guy. Mr. Right who could do no wrong. At least not in Katie’s eyes. Part of her wanted to yell, Hold it! Wait! Who’s the parent here, anyway? Not wanting to hear the answer.

      Some uneasy thing tremored under the surface and Grace knew what it was.

      Sometime soon, Katie would look her right in the eye and ask out loud why Grace had lied to her about her dad. Lied about the most important thing in Katie’s life.

      And Grace didn’t have a good answer.

      She doubted she ever would.

      “How do you want to handle this?” They were sitting on lounge chairs on the patio. From the bedroom, Katie murmured in her sleep.

      Mac reached across the dark expanse and took Grace’s hand, his fingers warm, touch solid.

      Past the railing and down the terraced walks, waves foamed whitely against the dark expanse of sand. Landscaping lights illuminated the palm trees and Grace saw a man and woman wading along the edge of the waves, holding hands in the growing dark.

      The setting sun was turning the water a soft pink that glowed as if it were lit from within, and the air was heavy with the scent of hibiscus and the sea.

      “We have to take it slow,” Grace said.

      And then she got up and sat down next to him on his lounge chair, placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed him. He kissed her back, and pulled her on top of him. The rush was instantaneous, greedy, joyous, drugged with heat and desire. He rolled to his feet, picked her up, and carried her to his bed.

      The clothes came off, and she wished again she’d packed better underwear, but who knew that instead of playing four rounds of Candyland she’d be sliding her hands over a man voted by People magazine as one of the top 100 sexiest men in America?

      Last year’s list, she reminded herself. Although he still looked pretty good. His chest gleamed with a fine sheen of sweat. He shifted and she felt him against her. Liquid fire.

      “Oh, brother,” she said. “Oh, oh, brother.”

      She rolled away and wrapped a sheet around her. She took a long shaky breath. She rolled back toward him and put her hands on the flat of his chest. His skin burned the palms of her hands and that close, his eyes were heavy-lidded, his gaze intense.

      “Grace.” He kissed her shoulder blade, the hollow in her throat where her heart was beating. “Talk to me.”

      “It means too much.” Her voice was quiet. “If we made love and it didn’t work—and it would be making love, Mac, not just the physical part, what it means.”

      He slid his hand under the sheet and cupped a breast and she sucked in a breath, almost in a panic, her body flooded with warmth.

      He removed his hand with effort. He was breathing through his mouth. He had a nick on an incisor. He’d chipped it as a kid using his teeth to cut a fishing line. She was doomed. She already knew how he’d gotten all his childhood injuries. His СКАЧАТЬ