"Did he say that?"
"He didn't need to. It's who he is. He's wonderful, warm, thoughtful, and fun, but his feelings are off-limits. He doesn't go there."
"That doesn't mean he doesn't care about you." Cassie half-led Erin to a lab stool. She knew from experience Erin's reaction could go on for some time.
By the time Erin was finally calm and back at work, if halfheartedly, Cassie felt exhausted. Too many emotional ups and downs. What had happened to the nice, calm life she had planned for herself? Calder Westing had happened to it, for one thing.
What had she been thinking, letting him kiss her like that, not to mention kissing him back? Or perhaps that was the entire problem. She hadn't been thinking. She had been feeling. He could make her forget herself with just a look. He had only said a dozen or so words to her, no more than twenty, she was sure.
Was he waiting for her at Scott's house, wondering if she would come? It was crazy. Why had he suddenly decided he wanted her again? It wasn't just amusement value this time, she was sure of that, but she was equally certain all he wanted was her body. Still, she remembered what he had said about not being ready to leave yet. She knew what it felt like, the sense of grasping at the last days of summer. Perhaps that was why. She somehow represented the summer to him.
She would be out of her mind to go. It would be asking to be hurt. She might as well stick her hand over a lighted Bunsen burner. It wasn't as if she wanted to hold on to this long, lonely summer. She wanted to forget.
Cassie snatched her keys from the desk. "Erin, I have an errand to do. I'll be back in a while."
"Sure. Whatever." Erin, sounding dispirited, didn't even look up from the specimen tanks.
Cassie found her car in the crowded lot and tossed her lab coat on the passenger seat. There hadn't been a problem parking at six this morning, but she would have a hard time finding a space for her car when she came back. She drove carefully around the blind corner at the Marine Fisheries Aquarium, watching for children who often ran out heedlessly into the street in front of the seal pen. When she saw the guard booth at Penzance Point, she almost lost her nerve and turned around. But apparently she looked familiar enough to the guard, and he waved her through.
She stopped the car in the circular driveway of Scott's house. Her hand rested on the keys in the ignition. Did she really want to do this? It was completely unlike her. She looked uncertainly at the house. Calder was standing in the doorway. He must have heard her drive up.
She had come too far to back down now. Opening the car door, she made her way up the steps to the deck where he was waiting for her. He was watching her unsmilingly again, leaving her dizzy, her skin charged with electricity. She stopped directly in front of him.
It was like the morning all over again. There was no discussion, no slow, subtle approach, no flirtation, just his hands on her waist and sliding down to her hips. Her body had no uncertainties.
Without releasing her, Calder closed the door behind them. His hands went directly for the zipper of her casual sundress, then inside it, caressing her skin as if it were fine porcelain. She shivered with desire, wanting him to touch her in all the intimate ways he had before, to take her to the point where she didn't have to think anymore or ask herself why she was doing this.
Within minutes their clothes were scattered on the floor. Cassie held her hand out to him and then sank down on the plush carpet in front of the fireplace. He kissed her fiercely, pressing her shoulders back until she lay flat, where he could explore her body at will. His mouth at her breast and his hand between her legs, he built the tension in her to the breaking point as she arched and moaned and then he murmured something incomprehensible in her ear as he brought her back with powerful surges of pleasure. This time he had a condom, and she helped him roll it on before they made love with a fierce passion, right there on the floor, then again later in his bed, in the impersonally modern room whose only sign of his presence was a scattered pile of books on the bedside table. He seemed determined to give her no chance to reconsider; he would lie spent in her arms for only a few minutes before putting his fingers and mouth to work again on destroying her rationality.
When finally she stopped him, his muscles grew lax, and then he touched her lips. "Wait," he said, standing and padding over to the bathroom.
She watched after him and then heard running water. Calder was outdoing himself at taciturnity; he had said hardly a word since her arrival, but it didn't bother her. She didn't want to talk either. Now that it was over and she was out of his arms, she was embarrassed to face him. She pulled the expensive sheet over her, wondering how she could end this gracefully.
He returned and held out his hand to her. It was easier to take it and follow him to the ornate bathroom than to think. Steaming water poured into the sunken whirlpool that dominated one corner. She turned a questioning look on him, almost immediately distracted by the sight of his body, his shoulders tapering into the length of his torso, the quiet solidity that made her want to hold him again.
He stepped down into the tub, frothy bubbles swirling around him, and reached out for her. She followed him into the shockingly warm water, her legs tingling as she stepped into his arms. She could feel his chest moving with slow, deep breaths as he held her with an intimacy more sensual than seductive.
He sat on the molded side, bringing her with him so she rested on his lap. The tub was deep enough that the swirling water came almost to her shoulders, and Cassie relaxed into the soothing tranquility of it, resting her head on his shoulder. "This is the life," she said.
He caressed her forehead and her cheeks with his lips. "I've wanted to do this."
She wondered vaguely if he meant he had wanted to do it with her or with any woman. Probably the latter, but she didn't want to think about that. She wanted to savor the rare luxury of being held, of the warmth of another human body close to her own.
But time was passing. She must have been there more than an hour by now. She stirred in his arms. "I should get back."
"Not yet." He nuzzled her hair.
She didn't know how to read his tone; it wasn't a command yet somehow not a request either. "A few minutes, then."
He didn't move, seeming content to remain where they were indefinitely. She might have been, too, except for her concern about Erin. "Is Scott going to break up with Erin once she goes back to Duke?"
His hand slid down to her thigh as he considered the question. "I don't know. He's attached to her, but he doesn't like long-distance relationships."
Poor Erin. "Nobody does, I suppose."
"He doesn't usually have to wait for what he wants."
She imagined the same applied to Calder. Perhaps he was trying to warn her not to expect anything from him, which she supposed was thoughtful in a way, even if completely unnecessary. She had no illusions that he would even remember her name in a year or two.
The embrace that had felt so comforting a few minutes earlier suddenly became claustrophobic. She rose to her feet, the cool air raising goosebumps on her wet skin. "I really should go. She's probably upset."
He said nothing, only followed her out of the tub and draped an oversized, fluffy spa towel over her shoulders before donning a white terrycloth bathrobe.
She wondered what he was thinking of her. Feeling uncomfortably exposed, she wrapped the towel around herself and went downstairs with him to find their clothes. She stepped into her sundress and reached around to raise the zipper, but Calder forestalled her by doing it for her. It made it easier, whatever the strange feeling was that came over her whenever he touched her. But the moment his hands left her back, reality returned again and the embarrassing moment before her.
She smoothed her hair with her fingers and noticed his eyes were fixed on her again. "Why do you always watch me like that?"
He looked puzzled at the question. "Because I like to."
She wondered if that was the explanation for this encounter as well, but she wasn't about to ask. Instead, she tried t
o pretend a confidence she didn't feel and sauntered over to him to kiss him. "Bye."
He put his arms around her. She rested her head on the thick terrycloth of his bathrobe, feeling lassitude slip over her again. If someone ever discovered a way to bottle essence of Calder Westing, she would be an addict. Carefully, she stepped away.
"Bye," he echoed.
She knew better than to expect more than one word. Somehow she found the reserve to smile impudently before she opened the door and walked out of his life.
She didn't look back, not when she reached the car, and not when she pulled out of the driveway and left Penzance Point for the final time. Next year there would be a new guard who wouldn't wave her through. But that was all right. She didn't belong on Penzance Point anyway. Million-dollar houses and sunken bathtubs for two had nothing to do with her.
The MBL lot was full, so she took the excuse to drive back to the cabin. She could bike to the lab from there, and Erin could live without her that long. It would give her a few more minutes to get used to the idea that she had deliberately had casual sex with a man she barely knew and would never see again.
She parked beside the cabin and went in through the weathered doorway to the knotty pine interior. It was only a few steps into the bathroom, where she took the brush from the small vanity and ran it through her hair. But something was different when she looked in the mirror. She could smooth out her hair and pull it back, but there was nothing to be done about the pain in her eyes.
No. It hadn't been casual sex. It wasn't about love or even friendship, but it had meant something to him. Pleasure hadn't been his sole object, she was certain of that. She wondered if he also needed to forget something, but she couldn't imagine what a man like Calder Westing would ever need to forget.
Chapter 7
CASSIE WAS ALL BUSINESS when she returned to Haverford, settling into her apartment and getting ready for a new semester to begin. The campus, a pastoral expanse of trees and lawns in the Philadelphia suburbs, seemed unchanged from when she left in May. In some ways it was as if summer had never happened, as if her Woods Hole life was somehow separate from her Haverford life.
The routine of the new semester was comforting— getting to know a new group of students, training lab assistants, and preparing lectures. She was glad to return to her friends among the faculty as well, friends whose lives had nothing to do with any of the events of the summer.
Sometimes late at night her thoughts would return to Calder Westing. Now that she no longer needed to struggle to keep her distance from him, she could replay in her memory the astonishing night they had spent together, that last afternoon, and the remarkable ease and comfort she found in his arms. She could still see the way he looked at her when he touched her, and how he made her need him deep inside. Without any particular intention, he became a regular inhabitant of her fantasies.
She kept her thoughts very private. She never mentioned him to Erin in her daily emails. But at the end of September, Cassie noticed nearly a week had gone by since she had heard from her friend.
Concerned, she decided to call her. After several rings, Erin answered with an almost disturbing eagerness. When she realized it was Cassie, her voice fell a little.
"Hey, how are you?" Cassie asked.
"I'm okay."
Cassie knew immediately from her tone she was nothing of the sort. "No, you're not. I can tell." There was a long silence on the other end. "Erin? Are you still there?"
"Yes." Erin's voice was choked, and Cassie realized she was crying silently.
"What's the matter, sweetie? What happened?" Cassie had a sinking feeling she knew the answer.
"He broke up with me."
Slowly Cassie managed to piece together the story from the bits Erin told her. Scott had come to visit her at Duke about two weeks earlier, and everything seemed fine, but after he went back to Boston, his emails started to come more and more irregularly. Finally, Erin asked him straight out in an email if something was wrong, and after several days she received his response. He had decided that it wasn't going to work out for them; he didn't believe in long-distance relationships, he was too busy at work to have time for a social life, and their lives were too different. Erin, devastated, hadn't responded and had heard nothing since.
"I would have moved to Boston in a minute if he'd asked me to. I could have found some sort of job."
"I can't believe that was really the issue. He knew all along you weren't from Boston."
"I was an easy summer romance, the pretty blonde in his bed, just like his father thought. I wish he'd been honest about it. I was always at his house in Woods Hole. He never saw the reality of my life—that I live in an ordinary apartment I clean myself, eating ordinary food I cook myself. It's not as romantic as a beautiful mansion on the ocean. I was a fool to think it was anything more."
"I'm so sorry." So Scott had only been interested in Erin for as long as the relationship didn't require any work. "Maybe I should come down this weekend, and we can have some time together."
Erin didn't answer immediately. "Thanks, Cass, but no. I love you, but having you here would just remind me even more of him."
"Are you sure?" she asked anxiously, but finally allowed herself to be convinced.
She called Erin frequently after that, hoping to hear an improvement in her voice. Usually Erin bounced back relatively quickly after her romantic disappointments, but this was different. Still, a month later, when she told Cassie she had withdrawn her applications to biotech companies and was instead concentrating her job search on secondary education, Cassie was horrified.
"You can't do that!" she exclaimed. "You've worked too hard to settle for that!"
"It's what I have to do." Erin's grim resolution was new to her. "I'm sorry you're disappointed in me, but it's the right thing for me."
"I'm not disappointed. I'm worried you're making a decision in haste that could hurt you in the long term. You'll find something in biotech. Just give yourself time."
There was a pause. "I don't need time. Cambridge
Biotech made me an offer last week, for the position I interviewed for in August. I turned it down."
Cassie had already lost Tim in the Crowley mansion. It was decorated with swags of Christmas greenery and hundreds of candles, just as it was every year, the candlelight lending a romantic air to the elegantly clad guests circulating through the rooms.
He had been right beside her a few minutes earlier, chatting with a tall blond man. Cassie had turned to take a glass of wine from a tray proffered by a uniformed servant, and when she looked back, he was gone. She hoped his mother wouldn't notice, since she was determined to think Cassie visited Tim every Christmas because of a romantic involvement, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Otherwise she might have to believe her son when he told her his interests lay in a distinctly different direction.
Still, it wouldn't hurt if Cassie moved on to another room. There would be plenty of congenial company elsewhere, and she might finally find Dave and Ann Crowley. She always enjoyed the convivial company of the older couple, even if they were Tim's friends rather than hers.
As she moved into the next room, she caught sight of a familiar form. She felt a lurch within her at the memory of Calder Westing, but it was just her overactive imagination at work. He couldn't possibly be there. Still, she found herself glancing over in the direction of the unknown man until he turned enough that she could see his face. Her breath caught. It was him. A sudden memory of that night at the beach came to her, and she felt herself blushing.
Fortunately, he hadn't seen her, and she began to edge away. She wasn't precisely sure why she wanted to avoid him, beyond a vague thought he would question her presence there, or that somehow he might know just how often he had crossed her mind since their last meeting in August.
She made her escape successfully to the living room but didn't find Tim there—only a group of older women sitting close together and gossiping. Feeling out
of place, she continued into the dining room, and then the hallway, where she found herself face to face with the very man she was trying to avoid.
The look on his face bespoke his astonishment at finding her there. Astonishment and no particular pleasure, at least as far as she could see.
"Cassie Boulton," he said slowly.
His deep voice stirred memories in her, but she wouldn't be intimidated by his presence. Raising an eyebrow mockingly, she said, "Calder Westing. We both get full points for excellent memory for names."
"What are you doing here?"
As if it was against the law for her to show up at a fancy party! "As it happens, I was invited. But you needn't worry. I know how to mind my manners in polite company, and I even washed my hands before I came. You can always pretend not to know me if I commit some terrible faux pas. And what are you doing here?"