Right Place, Wrong Time Read online

  AT SOME POINT he must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes daylight was seeping under the drawn drapes and into the bedroom. Rolling away from the window, he discovered that Kim was gone.

  He glanced at the clock on the night table. Eight-fifteen.

  If Kim had been given to high drama, her absence might have concerned him. But she tended to be stable and staid, and again, deeply devoted to maintaining appearances. He doubted that she would have fled to her parents’ hotel, not only because she couldn’t very well go crying to Mommy and Daddy about the lack of sex in her life but also because she’d be hesitant to drive on the left side of the road.

  She was probably in the kitchen, drinking some of Gina’s coffee. Or she was sitting on the terrace, in the chair Ethan had occupied last night, and enjoying the view. Maybe Gina was out there with her, chattering away. Maybe Kim found Gina as easy to talk to as he did.

  He wondered if he could persuade Kim to travel to St. John today, so they could go snorkeling at Trunk Bay Beach and see that spectacular sea life. She hadn’t been thrilled about yesterday’s snorkeling. Maybe if they swam together, had a little fun together, shared an exotic experience together, they could find their way back to, well, togetherness.

  Not likely, but he really wanted to visit Trunk Bay. He heaved himself out of bed, made a halfhearted attempt to smooth the blanket and fluff the pillows and donned a pair of shorts and a polo shirt. Barefoot and rumpled, he left the bedroom and headed down the hall, following the sound of female voices and the aroma of coffee.

  They were in the kitchen. Kim looked surprisingly chipper, considering that yesterday had ended with enough hostility that he and she hadn’t even said good night to each other. She wore a peach-hued blouse-and-shorts outfit, and her hair was pinned back from her face with matching peach-colored barrettes. Alicia had on blue denim shorts and a shirt with glittery threads running through it. Gina wore white shorts and a sleeveless top. Her exquisite feet were naked except for the silver ring circling one toe.

  He let his gaze slide up her body. He hadn’t looked at her face much last night, mostly because they’d been sitting side by side and staring out at the horizon, but also because he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge her unique beauty while he was in the throes of a major problem with Kim. But he looked at her now. Her features were too strong, too angular for her to be beautiful the way Kim was. Her eyes were as dark as the coffee steaming in the glass decanter, and they were too wide, too intense, too challenging.

  God, he could stare into her eyes forever.

  He quickly turned to Kim, who smiled blandly at him. “Good morning,” he said.

  “Guess what?” Alicia blurted out, lowering her spoon into the bowl of cereal before her. “There’s this store that sells stuff that changes color in the sunlight, and we’re going there!”

  “A store?”

  “In Charlotte Amalie,” Kim said coolly. “We’re going shopping—Gina, Alicia and me. My mother, too.”

  “We’re going to have a ladies’ day,” Alicia bragged, obviously proud to be thought of as a lady.

  “Oh, so I don’t have to go? Phew!” He pretended to wipe his brow in relief at this near miss.

  “No, you don’t have to go shopping,” Kim confirmed. “You’ll be playing golf with my father.”

  Ethan opened his mouth to object that he didn’t play golf, he didn’t like it and he wouldn’t do it. But he held his words. If he wanted Kim to travel to Trunk Bay Beach with him, he supposed he’d have to compromise when it came to golf. Although it didn’t seem like a fair compromise, since all he was asking her to do was experience a natural phenomenon renowned for its visual splendor, while she was asking him to spend several hours hiking across crew-cut lawns, whacking a little white ball and enduring the company of her father. In the time it would take to complete an eighteen-hole round, Ross Hamilton would be able to lecture him on the glories of unfettered capitalism, the irrelevance of the hole in the ozone layer and the necessity of making Delia Hamilton happy by producing grandchildren for her. He’d also probably find a few spare minutes to discourse on Napa Valley varietals.

  But Ethan wanted to snorkel at Trunk Bay. And he wanted what remained of this vacation week to go pleasantly, even though he and Kim were drifting apart. If Trunk Bay and pleasantness hinged on his playing golf with her father, he’d play golf.

  The sudden ringing of the telephone jolted him, resonating painfully inside his skull, much too loud for someone who hadn’t yet had his morning coffee. “That’s probably my father now,” Kim said, “calling to find out when to reserve a time at the links.”

  “Right,” Ethan grumbled, lifting the receiver from the wall unit. “Hello?”

  After a brief pause, a woman’s voice came on the line: “I’m sorry, I must have the wrong number.” Not just a woman’s voice—a woman’s voice with a profound New York accent.

  “Who are you trying to reach?”

  “Gina Morante?” The woman asked more than stated it.

  “She’s right here.” He extended the phone in Gina’s direction. “It’s for you.”

  Eyebrows rising in surprise, Gina carried her mug around the table and took the receiver from Ethan. Their fingers brushed as he handed it over, a whisper of sensation that reverberated in his solar plexus—and lower. Her feet might be her most gorgeous appendages, but her hands weren’t far behind.

  That he could respond so strongly to such a fleeting touch from her troubled him. Perhaps it was just as well that he’d be golfing with Ross all day. Just as long as he wasn’t with Gina, swimming with her, talking with her, doing anything that might lead to another touch. A miserable game of golf in the merciless heat, with a boring companion, might be just what he needed to get his head straightened out. Or it might leave his mind permanently warped.

  Either result was better than for Ethan to spend more time with Gina, trying to think of excuses to touch her.

  “HELLO?” Gina said into the phone.

  “Gina? Who was that man?”

  “Ramona!” She recognized her sister’s voice right away. Her delight immediately transformed into wariness. Ramona wouldn’t have phoned unless something was wrong. “What’s up?” she asked carefully, not wanting to alarm Alicia, who had dropped her spoon into her cereal bowl, spraying droplets of milk across the table, and shrieked, “It’s my mommy!”

  “Nothing. I just need to talk to you. Who was the man who answered the phone, Gina? Did you pick some guy up or something? With Alicia right there, I swear to God—”

  “It’s a long story,” Gina cut her off. “We’re sharing the condo.”

  “Mommy!” Alicia hollered, bouncing in her chair.

  “You want to talk to Ali?” Gina asked Ramona. “She definitely wants to talk to you.”

  “Of course I want to talk to her. But listen, Gina, when I’m done talking to her, I need to talk to you. Privately, if you know what I mean.”

  Gina did. “Sure,” she said, then gestured toward Alicia, who scrambled out of her chair. “I’ll put on Alicia first.”

  “Mommy!” Alicia bellowed, grabbing the phone. “Mommy! I went snorkeling! It was so great! And I saw this iguana! It was really creepy-looking. Ethan taught me all about iguanas….”

  Gina backed away from the phone and glanced at Ethan and Kim. The condo had a second phone extension in the master bedroom. Gina had as much right to use that extension as Ethan and Kim did, but it was their room—the room Ethan hadn’t even been sure Kim would let him into last night.

  She’d let him in. Whatever their quarrel, they’d apparently made up. Kim had seemed cheerful enough that morning when she’d joined Gina and Alicia in the kitchen, and Ethan, while scruffy and uncombed, didn’t seem terribly upset with the state of his life. Spending the night together in the master bedroom must have led to a reconciliation.

  “I need to use the extension in your room,” she whispered, hoping not to distract Alicia as she babbled into the phone abou
t her collection of seashells and the various restaurant meals she’d consumed.

  “No problem,” Kim said. Ethan agreed with a nod.

  Gina nodded back, then mouthed to Alicia, “Let me know when you’re done.” After giving Alicia’s shoulder a squeeze, she strode out of the kitchen, across the living room and down the hall to the master bedroom, trying not to let Ramona’s unexpected call roil her. Her sister wouldn’t have interrupted their vacation unless she had bad news to deliver, but she’d sounded okay. And she’d said nothing was up.

  She’d also said she needed to speak privately with Gina.

  Something was up.

  Sighing, Gina swung through the doorway into the master bedroom. The first thing she noticed was the bed, sloppily made, the blanket wrinkled—and a foot-wide gap between the two pillows, both of which looked lumpy, as if the people using them had tossed and turned.

  Some reconciliation.

  Gina turned away, ashamed that a peek at their bed had led her to analyze Kim and Ethan’s sex life. Whether they reconciled was none of her business.

  Determined not to think about the bed, she moved toward the window. She gradually became aware of a faint, slightly flowery scent in the air. Kim’s perfume.

  Although the bed wasn’t tidily made, the room was neater than hers and Alicia’s, which was strewn with shells, beach toys, the dolls and books Alicia had brought with her and an invisible dusting of sand that made the carpet feel gritty against her bare soles. Neither Ethan nor Kim appeared to be a major slob. No clothes lay draped over the furniture or heaped on the floor. The only shoes visible were a pair of elegant white leather sandals, protruding from underneath the bed. Most of the toiletries cluttered atop the dresser and windowsill were Kim’s, not Ethan’s. Gina moved to the window—to admire the view, not to snoop, she told herself—and took note of Ethan’s things: aftershave, antiperspirant and a thick, wood-handled hairbrush with a few strands of tawny hair trapped in the bristles. Very few, she noted with satisfaction. He wasn’t going bald.

  “Aunt Gina?” Alicia yelled from the kitchen. “Mommy wants to talk to you!”

  “Okay, thanks!” Gina yelled back before lifting the receiver from the phone on the night table. She lowered herself to sit on the bed, then stood, then thought the hell with it and dropped back onto the mattress. Just because this was Ethan’s bed didn’t mean she had to remain standing while she talked to Ramona.

  “I’m on,” she said into the phone.

  A click signaled that Alicia had hung up the kitchen extension. “So who’s this Ethan?” Ramona asked. “That’s all Ali could talk about. Ethan went snorkeling with her. Ethan built the Brooklyn Bridge with her.”

  “I told you, we have to share the condo,” Gina said, wishing Ramona would let it lie but knowing she wouldn’t. “There was a scheduling snafu. This other couple—Ethan and Kim—are in one bedroom and Alicia and I are in the other. We’re all getting along. It’s no big deal.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Friends of someone who owns a time-share here. Their friend told them the place was empty this week, just like Carole told me. So we all wound up here together.”

  “How cozy.”

  “As I said, we’re getting along. Ethan knows about iguanas and Kim knows about shopping. Ali and I are learning a lot from them.” She decided that was all the explanation her sister needed. “Now, tell me why you called, Mo.”

  “Why I called.” Ramona sighed heavily. “Jack moved out.”

  Gina grunted in acknowledgment. She would have cursed, but she wasn’t sure Jack’s leaving the house was the worst thing in the world. At the very least, she ought to find out how Ramona felt about the situation.

  “I thought we were trying to work on things,” Ramona said. “This week, while Ali was away, this was our chance to work with the counselor, you know? Bare our souls, clear the decks, get down to brass tacks. So last night after a session with the counselor, he says to me that if I want him to keep seeing the counselor, fine, but he has no intention of breaking up with his tootsie. He loves her, she makes him feel like a new man and nothing the counselor says is going to change that. So I told him, if he loves her so much, he can get his things out of my house and go live with her. And the son of a bitch said, ‘Okay.’”

  “Okay,” Gina echoed, then winced to think she’d used the same word that might have slipped past the son of a bitch’s mouth just last night. A tight knot of pain lodged in the center of her forehead and she pinched the bridge of her nose to stave it off. Bad enough she had to go shopping with Kim today—she would have declined the invitation, but when Kim started telling Alicia about some shop in Charlotte Amalie that sold shirts, caps, tote bags and nail polish that changed color in the sunlight, Alicia had pleaded with Gina to go. And since the kid’s father was a dickhead, the least Gina could do was buy her a shirt that changed color in the sun. She could even tolerate a day with Kim and her mother, if it would make Alicia happy.

  “You knew this was a possibility,” she reminded Ramona.

  “It’s not like I’m devastated,” Ramona said, although her voice wavered. “Yeah, I knew this might happen. So it’s happening. He’s moving out. When Ali gets home, there’s going to be no daddy jackets in the coat closet, no ratty sneakers in the garage, no Sports Illustrated on the coffee table, no Mike’s Hard Lemonade in the fridge. It’s all going.”

  Good riddance to trash, Gina thought, though she didn’t say it.

  “What I want,” Ramona said, “is for you to tell Alicia, so she doesn’t go into shock when she walks in the door.”

  “You want me to tell her you booted her father’s sorry ass out the door?”

  “Maybe come up with a different phrasing. I’ve worked real hard to make sure Alicia doesn’t use coarse language. You should hear some of the kids in her school. They say ass and damn and worse, all the time.”

  Gina checked the impulse to use a few words coarser than ass and damn right now. “We’re on a vacation, Mo! What am I supposed to do—grab her in the middle of snorkeling and say, ‘Oh, by the way, your daddy moved out’?”

  “Over dinner, I was thinking. After she’s had a nice meal. She’s eating okay?”

  “She’s eating fine. And I’m not going to spoil a nice meal by telling her her parents haven’t worked things out and won’t be getting back together.”

  “Someone’s got to tell her,” Ramona argued.

  “Yeah. You and Jack.”

  “For me to tell her, she’d already be home. She’d know. She might be hysterical, Gina. I’m asking you to help me break the news to her, all right? If not over dinner, while she’s on the beach, or when you tuck her into bed, or whatever. Sometime when you can talk calmly and answer her questions.”

  “How am I supposed to answer her questions? Am I supposed to tell her the truth? Should I say you kicked Jack out because he loves his tootsie better than you?”

  “Gina.” Ramona took a deep breath. “You’re smart. You’re obviously smarter than me. I was stupid enough to marry the bastard, right? So you’re the smart one. And you’re down there in paradise with Ali. You’ll know what to say to her. Just something to prepare her for what she’ll find when she gets home. You love her, right? Do this for her.”

  Ramona might think Gina was smart, but she was pretty smart, too. She knew Gina would do anything out of love for Alicia. “Okay,” she conceded. “I’ll figure something out.”

  “Thanks.” Ramona’s voice trembled, a sob nibbling at the edges of it. “I’m sorry I’m making you do this.”

  “Forget it. I’ll take care of it.”

  “I love her. I just don’t want her getting upset.”

  Gina could think of no way to tell Alicia this news without upsetting her. But she would be as gentle and tactful as she could. She wouldn’t call her brother-in-law a dickhead. “I’ll take care of it,” she said again. “You take care of yourself.”

  “Okay.” Ramona was weeping openly now. “I�
�ll see you Sunday.”

  “Right. Stay mellow, Mo. The worst is behind you. This is as bad as it’s going to get.”

  “I know,” Ramona said through her sniffles. “I’ve got a real tough lawyer ready to roll. We’re going to put Jack through the wringer.”

  Gina smiled. Even distraught, Ramona had her priorities straight.

  She said goodbye, lowered the phone and muttered a few words that would qualify as exceptionally coarse. How could she break this ghastly news to her beloved niece? Once Alicia knew her parents’ marriage was irredeemably over and her father had moved out, she’d never want to leave St. Thomas. She already didn’t want to leave it, without knowing what a mess she’d be returning to. Once she knew the mess, she’d be even more adamant about staying. And who could blame her? Gina wouldn’t want to leave paradise to return to a broken home, either.

  But she’d promised Ramona she would tell Gina, and she would.

  On the plane home, maybe. That way she could avoid spoiling what was left of Alicia’s vacation with the looming shadow of bad news. She’d tell Alicia—in proper language—when their glorious week was over, when the time had come for them to return to real life.

  The headache she’d tried to fend off blossomed between her eyes, spreading like an ink spill on blotter paper. Groaning, Gina flopped back on the bed. Her head hit a pillow and she smelled not Kim’s scent but Ethan’s, a spicy, sexy fragrance.

  She bolted upright. The last thing she needed was to get all swoony over the thought that his head had recently nestled into the pillow her head was currently nestled into. She couldn’t afford to waste time acting like a teenager with a crush, dreaming about his gemlike eyes, his windswept hair, his lean body clad in swim trunks and nothing else—or his spicy, sexy fragrance, or his pillow. She had to focus solely on Alicia, on making the next few days the best in that little girl’s life, so that when reality reared up and slapped her in the face, she would be strong enough to take it.

  Gina swung her legs off the bed, straightened her spine, forced the corners of her mouth upward and left the bedroom. Ethan was hovering in the bathroom doorway, straddling the threshold. As soon as their gazes met, his brow furrowed. “Is everything okay?” he asked.