Moriah's Mutiny

Immediately her eyes cleared of their wariness and she answered enthusiastically, “Oh, yes. I love to dance.”

“Earlier this evening you told me you didn’t know how to dance,” he reminded her, referring to the talk they’d had as they were walking to Sparky’s, a talk in which Moriah had tried once again to convince him that she was every bit as humorless as she claimed. He eased out of his chair now, pulling Moriah gently behind him.

“I did?” she asked as she stood up and straightened the neckline of her shirt. “Why would I have said that? I don’t understand.”

“There’s a lot about you I don’t understand,” Austen mumbled under his breath, then added silently, But it’s going to be a pleasure figuring you out.

As they neared the dance floor, the duo performing onstage began a slow acoustic rendition of a relatively unknown Jimmy Buffett song. It was one of Austen’s favorites, and he pulled Moriah close, wanting to savor the tune and the woman who made the moment ideal. Swaying rhythmically to the gentle strains of the guitar and softly uttered words of the very romantic song, Austen tucked Moriah’s head under his chin, closed his eyes and sighed with complete contentment.

Moriah felt utterly at peace in Austen’s arms, marveling at how easily and naturally the two of them were getting along. She usually wasn’t very open to strangers, especially those of the masculine persuasion. And Austen was extremely masculine in his persuasion. Almost as if to illustrate that thought, her fingers pressed into the strong flesh on his back and waist, loving the firm muscles she encountered. In response to her exploration, Austen pulled her closer, and she gasped as her body was thrust once again into intimate contact with his. Instead of pushing away, though, Moriah found herself snuggling even closer to him, drawn by his warmth and strength, attracted by whatever it is that draws a woman so irrevocably to a man. She inhaled deeply the fragrance that surrounded him, something wonderfully elusive and utterly reminiscent of the sea.

Austen was so unlike other men she knew, so far removed from the dry, overly academic professors and the insecure, pseudo-intellectual students with whom she came into daily contact. Moriah only dated occasionally, and then never anyone outside her social or academic circles, which basically were one and the same. She shared common interests with men of her acquaintance, and she generally had a good time when she went out, but never had a man excited her the way Austen had within moments of meeting him. He was handsome in a rebellious, carefree sort of way, completely confident and self-assured. He was clever and interesting, and along with Dorian had told her some of the most wonderful stories about the Caribbean she’d ever heard. He made her laugh, and feel oh so good. Was it any wonder then that she found herself liking Austen, liking him a lot?

As one slow song faded into another, Austen continued to hug Moriah’s warm, softly curving body more expressively against his, unwilling to put an end to their intimacy just yet. Dancing with Moriah was the only socially acceptable way he could think of to be this close to her, but he realized unequivocally that even this closeness wasn’t enough. It shocked him how good she made him feel so soon after meeting her, but it was more than the sexual yearning she aroused in him. Hell, just about every night he met a woman he wanted to take to bed. With Moriah, though, the attraction was more complex, more puzzling. He figured that if he plied her with a few more drinks, he could probably talk her into anything. She seemed more than willing right now. But for some reason, sleeping with her tonight was the last thing he wanted to do. She wasn’t meant for one-night stands, and he knew a one-night stand wouldn’t even come close to satisfying what he wanted with her.

For the first time that he could ever remember, Austen wanted to get to know a woman, wanted to delve into her soul and discover everything he could. He wished fervently that he didn’t have so much work looming before him. Tomorrow afternoon he would have to leave St. Thomas, and he wouldn’t be back for almost a month. By that time Moriah would be long gone, back to Philadelphia and the stuffy, stifling world of anthropology, and he’d never have the chance to further explore these curiously tumultuous sensations that had been speeding through his body ever since he’d laid eyes on her.

He suddenly ceased the slow movement of their bodies that had passed for dancing and pushed her at arm’s length. Searching her face earnestly, focusing his amber eyes on her dark gray ones, he asked quickly, “Moriah, how long will you be staying on St. Thomas?”

The quickness of his movements and the intensity in his voice surprised her, and her eyes widened with confusion and concern. “Until tomorrow,” she told him.

He shook his head slowly as if he didn’t understand. “But you said your family is coming down tomorrow. How can you be leaving?”

“They are coming,” she assured him. “But we’re not staying here. We’re going island-hopping for the next two weeks, all over the place. It was my sisters’ idea.” And now I have another reason to resent them, she thought. Their decision to charter a boat and leave St. Thomas meant she wasn’t going to be able to meander down this new avenue her life had stumbled upon.

Austen’s thoughts suddenly became urgent. He didn’t know why, but somehow he had to see her again. “What islands?” he pressed. “Maybe we could meet up on one of them. I’ll be traveling, too, for the next four weeks.”

Moriah thought for a moment. It would be fabulous to meet up with Austen at some point during the cruise, especially since she knew her sisters would have more than their share of invitations from men. It was always the same. Morgana, Mathilda and Marissa would dazzle everyone who happened to meet the group of sisters, and Moriah would be unwittingly pushed into the background. It wasn’t that she was particularly unattractive, uninteresting or inept. It was just that the three elder Mallorys were, in a word, spectacular. Moriah, by comparison, was pretty, nice and well-bred. And most men, given the choice, would choose dazzling over decent any day.

Yet somehow Moriah sensed that Austen would be different. He wasn’t shallow and superficial like the men her sisters generally dated, and she felt he wouldn’t be impressed by the fame and fortune and flutter that surrounded them. Austen liked her; she could feel it. And even the looming specters of her sisters would fail to turn his head. She hoped.

“I…I’m not sure,” she replied honestly. “My sister has our itinerary, and to tell you the truth, I had very little to do with the planning.” That was a laugh, she thought. She’d never had any amount of input into the preparation of their vacations. Her sisters always chose the destinations and activities, always organized every detail, even decided what they’d order for dinner at the restaurants they selected. They never bothered to consult Moriah. Why should they? Every Mallory knew that little Mo was far too inexperienced to make suggestions of such magnitude. Every spring Moriah received a letter from Morgana telling her where they were going, when they would meet and how much she could expect to spend. And like the unobtrusive little sister that she was and had always been, Moriah went along obediently and silently.

“You came to the Caribbean for a vacation and you don’t even know where you’re going?” Austen asked incredulously.

Moriah became defensive at his tone of voice. “I’m not very good at organizing things,” she explained lamely. Then she quickly remembered that her flight home was from St. Vincent. “I know we’ll be in St. Vincent at the end of the trip,” she offered hopefully.

“Great.” Austen breathed with a sigh of relief. He was going to wind up there, too. “When?”

“We should be arriving on the fourteenth sometime, because our plane back to the States leaves the afternoon of the fifteenth.”

Austen couldn’t believe his good luck. “That’s terrific!” he exclaimed happily. “I’ll be there the fourteenth through the sixteenth!”

Moriah’s shy smile told him she was as happy about that as he.

He let his hands roam up to her shoulders and give them an affectionate squeeze. “We could meet there somewhere,” he told her uncertainly. “If you want to, I mean.”

She nodded slowly, confused by the sudden case of nerves that was invading her body. Her stomach tightened into a fist, while her heart pounded erratically in her throat. She felt as if she was a teenager again, back at The Prescott Academy, hanging out by the boys’ gym in hopes of catching a glimpse of the school quarterback. “Yes,” she answered breathlessly. “I’d like that a lot.”

“Great,” he repeated, then felt like an idiot for suddenly losing track of his normally extensive vocabulary.

“But I don’t know anything about St. Vincent,” she told him. “I don’t know where anything is.”

“No problem,” he assured her. “It’s not that big an island.” He wracked his brain to come up with a place where he could meet her that would be appropriate. Normally he saw very little of the islands he visited, usually restricting himself to the bar life—waterfront bars at that. But Moriah wasn’t exactly the type of woman to frequent such haunts. The Green House and Sparky’s were great places to go when he was home on St. Thomas, crawling with tourists and locals alike who might want to hire him and Dorian, or else put him in touch with someone else who would. But when he worked, he generally needed the distraction and escape that came with little hole-in-the-wall dives, wanting to get away from the demands of his employers, usually self-centered, whiny, red-faced little people who wanted to spend their vacations throwing their weight around because they’d been pushed too far by their own bosses at home.

After a moment’s thought, he came up with a brilliant idea, the perfect spot for trysting lovers. Somehow that’s the way he viewed their next meeting. “The airport is in Kingstown,” he told her. “Just north of town is the botanical gardens. They’re gorgeous. Any cabdriver can take you there. Meet me the evening of the fourteenth at, say, five o’clock?”

“Okay,” Moriah agreed. “Five o’clock it is.”

“I’ll be at the front entrance with a red hibiscus behind my left ear,” he said with a smile.

“I’ll find you,” she promised.

They gazed at each other for a long time, having forgotten that they were still standing in the middle of the dance floor until another couple bumped into them during the duo’s lively rendition of a popular Jimmy Cliff tune.

“Oops,” Moriah mumbled sheepishly as she was thrown once again into intimate contact with Austen’s tall, muscular form.

He caught her in his arms, steadying her even though there was very little need to do so; she had righted herself by gripping his big biceps possessively. He smiled when she looked up at him shyly with wide, questioning eyes. Almost involuntarily he lowered his mouth to hers, nibbling provocatively at her lips, tasting the corners of her mouth with the tip of his tongue, pulling her closer still until she wasn’t sure where she ended and he began. Moriah closed her eyes then and kissed him back, softly at first, in response to the gentle request in his actions, then more intensely as the passion built. Amid the sweating, gyrating, laughing dancers on the floor, Austen and Moriah became oblivious to everything except each other—exploring, touching, tasting as if they’d never experienced the glory that could be found with another human being. Only when a couple of islanders danced by and muttered, “Eh, go for it, mon,” did they put an end to their extensive research, standing still at the center of a crowd, feeling muddled and uncertain, gasping for breath and confused as hell.

“I’m sorry,” Austen whispered.

“For what?” she rasped through ragged breaths.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. Not out here in front of all these people.”

“I thought I was the one who kissed you,” Moriah told him.

“Did you?”

“I don’t know,” she confessed with a laugh, honestly confused. “I don’t know what’s happening between us. It’s like…”

“Like nothing you’ve ever experienced,” he finished for her.

“Yes,” she agreed with a slow nod.

He nodded, as well. “Me, too,” he said softly. After a brief instant he added, “Come on. Let’s go back to the table.”

When they returned to their seats, most of the original group had dispersed, leaving only Dorian and his date, Maggie, a very beautiful and exotic-looking woman from St. Lucia who was wearing the most form-fitting red dress Moriah had ever seen, and another couple from St. Thomas that Austen had called old friends, a sixty-three-year-old Norwegian named Gustav and his twenty-two-year-old Swedish wife of four years, Anna. They were passing around photographs of their eight-month-old twins when Moriah and Austen returned, and it occurred to Moriah then, that since she had arrived in the Caribbean, she hadn’t met a single person who wasn’t interesting in some way.

Despite Austen’s warnings, Moriah ordered another nautical nog, arguing that since the drink had coffee in it, she couldn’t possibly get that drunk from one or two more, and the group lapsed into lively conversation. Seated beside Austen, feeling more and more mellow as the night wore on, Moriah began to experience a most remarkable sense of well-being, as if the entire earth were beginning to rotate specifically as she dictated. All of a sudden her life seemed more appealing, her future more promising. And then, with surprising clarity, something very odd and very significant occurred to her.

For the first time that she could ever recall in her life, Moriah Mallory felt as if she was in the center of things instead of in the background, like she was a part of what was going on instead of a witness to it. Her insights into the dialogue surrounding her were well-heard and appreciated by the others, and their responses in return were pertinent and respectful. She simply wasn’t used to such reactions after years of being ignored or pooh-poohed by her family as too young, too inexperienced or too naive to know what she was talking about. Moriah liked Austen’s friends almost as much as she liked Austen, and she was startled to discover that she felt more at home in the dimly lighted, character-infested bar than she had ever felt among her family at home or her colleagues at the university. On top of everything else Austen had made her feel that evening, he’d given her the opportunity to be a part of something, had made her feel as if she belonged. And for that more than anything else, she felt she owed him the greatest thanks.

When the hour grew late and the conversation lagged, the group reluctantly but unanimously agreed that it was time to part ways. Gustav and Anna were going to head home, while Dorian and Maggie invited Austen and Moriah to an all-night party at the home of a mutual friend near Red Hook. With an expressive glance toward each other, both simultaneously declined. Instead Austen drove Moriah back to her hotel, taking a roundabout route to give her a casual tour of the island along the way. Even in the dark, the moonlit views were spectacular, and Moriah breathed deeply the balmy Caribbean night, so different from the stifling, stale heat that had pervaded Philadelphia all summer. What was it about the tropics that made the heat not only bearable but enjoyable? she wondered. Then gazing along the way at the silver moon and crystal stars that hung above the lush whispering palm trees and the long ribbon of surf that stretched around the U-shaped beach at Magen’s Bay, she realized the answer to her question. Who wouldn’t prefer this to the city?

Probably anyone who couldn’t find a job down here, she told herself drily. Too bad the number-one business was tourism, she added silently. She hadn’t gone to school for seven years and suffered through her thesis and dissertation to become a hotel manager or bartender or diving instructor. And even if her studies focused on primitive Caribbean cultures right now, there weren’t too many universities down here that could offer her the funds, the staff or the resources she needed to facilitate her research.

Moriah sighed heavily at the realization, and Austen glanced at her from the driver’s side of his Jeep. Every time he looked at her, she was more beautiful, he thought. And now, with the moon glinting off her curls like honeyed silver, her hair tossed about furiously by the wind, she nearly took his breath away. When they finally arrived at her hotel, he pulled into the parking lot and got out along with her, suggesting that they end the evening with a stroll along the beach.