Nighttime Sweethearts

His eyes had been the most stunning color of midnight blue, and he’d had the most amazing smile. She’d met him at high school, the high schools in those old districts having an eclectic mix of rich and poor. And he’d been poor. From the wrong side of the tracks, though his humble home had been only a block or two from where she now lived.

It had been years since she’d allowed herself to think of him, and she did not know why she had thought of him now. She brushed away the memory, a tormenting mix of delight and pain.

Still, something lingered and increased her sense of restlessness.

What did a restless person do on this secluded island resort? She had not heard her mother come back yet. Should she go and join them? They would be dancing by now, her mother whirling and twirling like a woman twenty years her junior.

But Cynthia knew that kind of entertainment would not take away the restlessness she was feeling. It might make it worse, make her feel even emptier, as if she was an actress playing a role she could not quite get into.

She left the bathroom and went to the French doors that led outside. She intended to close them, suppress these out-of-character thoughts, cream her face and go to bed.

But with her hand resting on the door handle, she felt the pull of the night. It was incredibly dark out. She could hear the whisper of a restless ocean. And then, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw thousands of little lights in the sea, bobbing and dancing.

La Torchere had been named for these small phosphorescent sea creatures that lit up the waters around the candelabra-shaped island at night.

But tonight, it seemed those lights dancing playfully in a sea of darkness were calling her name.

“You can’t go swimming by yourself in the middle of the night. Alone. It would be reckless.”

Her mother’s voice, again.

But then Cynthia wondered exactly how reckless it would be. She was a strong swimmer. The only residents of the island were La Torchere’s well-heeled guests. In fact, the only way to arrive here was by private ferry or float plane. The employees lived here, too, but all of them seemed charmingly ancient and imminently harmless. The scary people—the kind her mother had warned her about her entire life—were back on the mainland.

If she was going to have an adventure, even a small one, this seemed like it might be the perfect place to indulge herself.

Quickly, before she could change her mind and come to her senses, Cynthia went into her bedroom and put on her bathing suit, an unexciting one-piece high-necked tank suit.

“At least I do have a figure,” she muttered to herself, and then quickly slipped a cover over her body as if just having one was inviting temptations of the sort her mother did not approve.

She turned off all the lights so that if her mother returned to her suite next door she would think her daughter was sleeping. Locking the door behind her, Cynthia made her cautious way down to the flower-scented walkways that led to the beach.

Though late, the air remained as warm as an embrace. The gentle breeze lifted her hair and caressed her skin. The beach was, as she had known it would be, completely deserted. She went to the water’s edge, put down her towel, kicked off her shoes, and peeled off the swimsuit cover. The air smelled intoxicating, of the sea, of the night, of mystery.

Cynthia stuck her toe in the water and was greeted by more warmth. It was the first night of the new moon, and the night was so dark she could not tell where the water ended and the sky began.

She was utterly alone, and a new thought came to her.

Skinny dip.

It was ludicrous.

There was her mother’s voice again! But the truth was, Cynthia was not the type of woman who did that kind of thing, though she suddenly found herself pondering the type of woman who did. A rather enticing picture formed in her mind of a woman who was free-spirited, fully engaged in life, adventurous, laughter-filled, not so damned serious, not in the least bit tired or unhappy.

A woman who invited exactly the kind of temptations her mother disapproved of!

Ludicrous, her mother’s voice repeated within Cynthia’s own mind, and it proved to be the deciding factor.

All right. She would be ludicrous, then, and just a tiny bit reckless. She would give herself this small adventure—this break from convention—as a gift. Tonight, for a few minutes, she would be that free-spirited woman instead of Cynthia Forsythe, professional drudge.

Quickly, before she chickened out, squinting nervously into the impenetrable darkness, Cynthia shed her bathing suit. The night air was astonishing on her naked skin, tender and sensual.

She waded waist-deep and then dove. The water was even better than the air against her nakedness. It was warm and textured, as if she was embraced by liquid silk. Her body felt marvelous, as if it was humming. Cynthia laughed out loud. She became that light-spirited woman of her fantasies as she ducked and dove and swam and played amongst the tiny dancing lights of the sea creatures.

Finally, happy, she flipped on her back and floated in the sea of black—shiny black water meeting inky black sky with no boundary between the two. She imagined she was a star blinking brightly in a universe of darkness.

But she became Cynthia Forsythe again—fell back into her own body with dizzying swiftness—when she heard the slightest sound from the beach.

She lost the relaxation of the float, went under and resurfaced sputtering, her eyes stinging from salt water and her mouth full of the bitter taste. Warily, she turned her attention beachward.

She saw the distinctive flaring of a match, and then the glowing red tip of a cigarette. No, a cigar. The pungent aroma floated out over the darkness to her, rich and spicy.

Women didn’t generally smoke cigars, so unless she was mistaken there was a man on that beach! And here she was cavorting around, nude.

Completely vulnerable, her mother’s voice informed her with a little tsk of satisfaction. This was where heeding the call of adventure led: to the unpredictable, to trouble, to danger.

Cynthia forced herself to think. She could swim farther up the shore and get out of the water, but unfortunately her clothes were on the beach. She did not relish a long walk through the privileged enclaves of La Torchere without a stitch of clothing.

Her other option was to wait, and that she did, but the minutes dragged by, and even after the light of the cigar had been extinguished, she could see a dark shape still on the beach. Her eyes had now adjusted enough to the darkness that the outline told her quite a bit about this unexpected intruder. He was definitely masculine, definitely powerful, infinitely formidable.

Did he know she was there? Had he heard her? Had he seen her bathing suit and cover and towel and shoes?

The best-case scenario was that the resolution of this situation was going to be embarrassing, and the worst-case scenario was that it would become very dangerous.

“Cynthia Forsythe,” she chided herself inwardly, her teeth beginning to chatter. “You should have known you were the least likely person to have an adventure!”

Rick Barnett had come to love the night. It protected him from people’s curious stares, but it was more than that.

Almost in compensation for the damage to his left eye, his right one had developed quite amazing nocturnal vision. At night, it felt as though he had a sixth sense that warned him of obstacles before he even saw them. It wasn’t perfect, he still had a tendency to bash himself on his blind left side, but it was better than during the day, when he often felt he was listing crazily, unbalanced and uneasy with his restricted vision.

Tonight, he had come to scout sites for the chapel. Ms. Montrose, that strange old woman with a young woman’s eyes, an astonishing color of blue-violet, had mentioned a number of possible locations to him, but he had checked them all out and none had spoken to him.

Perhaps accepting the commission to design and build a wedding chapel had been a mistake.

He was a cynical man by nature. He had been even before the accident that had blinded him, laid waste to half his face, and crushed his larynx so that his voice was a harsh growl, almost animallike. Now he was more so, particularly given how rapidly the female of the species assessed the damage to his face and ran the other way. Six months since the accident. His calendar was empty; the lights on his message machine did not blink; his phone did not ring. He had been seeing a woman, fairly seriously, at the time of the accident. She had abandoned ship and when he looked at himself in the mirror he did not blame her.

The doctors told him that eventually the scarring would fade and he would learn to compensate for the loss of half his vision.

Eventually.

There would be no repair for his voice.

Meanwhile, the accident had left him even more hardened than he had been before, only now he wasn’t even attractive. So, he certainly did not believe in anything as ethereal as happily-ever-after.

The truth was, Rick Barnett was not sure what he believed in anymore.

As if his life didn’t feel hellish enough, he’d had to spot Cynthia Forsythe at this very resort? What were the chances of that? The gods seemed to be having quite a good chuckle at his expense!

Once he would have loved to run into her, the girl who had scorned his high-school advances because he was from the wrong side of the tracks. Once he would have loved to introduce her to some of the old-money beauties who clung to his arm and stared into his face as if they could not get enough of him.