She unbuttoned the top button of his sweater. “There. Now you look a little more hip.”
He looked down at her. All he could see were red lips. “I’m too old to be hip,” he said, trying to put some distance between them. Years were a natural boundary.
“Henry Kissinger is old. You’re … experienced.”
The shimmering heat of possibility suddenly swirled between them.
He looked at the driver. “Tagliacci Grill,” he said. “We’ve got eight-o’clock reservations.”
Elizabeth was exhausted. She’d spent the last twelve hours working on the dining room. Amazingly, the local hardware store had had a perfectly lovely set of French doors on sale. Someone had ordered them and declined acceptance.
The doors were exactly what Elizabeth wanted, and she got them at a discounted price. The only downside was that she’d had to increase the size of the opening by six inches, then frame the damn thing and figure out how to mount the doors. The whole back-breaking process had taken her hours to do.
Now her shoulders ached and her fingers were cramped up like an old man’s, but the new doors were in place. She set down her hammer and tool belt and made herself a cup of tea. Sipping it, she went out onto the porch.
A full moon hung overhead, huge and blue-white against a silvery sky. From this small, jutting lip of land, the stars seemed near enough to touch. It made Elizabeth feel small and safe; no more important in the great scheme of things than a blade of grass, but no less important, either.
She walked down the porch stairs and stepped out onto the mushy grass of her front yard.
She was about to go back inside when a sound caught her attention.
At first she thought it was the wind, moaning through the trees. But there was no wind. Turning slowly, she faced the ocean.
Far out to sea, moonlit waves radiated in broken rows away from the shoreline.
She heard it again. A plaintive, elegiac like sound that lingered long after the final note had run out. She knew what it was.
She crossed the front yard, ignoring the way her old work boots sank into the wet soil. She stopped at the edge of the cliff steps.
The rickety stairway snaked thirty feet straight down to a crescent of sand. Caution held her as firmly as any mother’s touch. It was dark and the stairs could be slippery, dangerous.
Then she saw them.
Killer whales, at least a dozen of them.
Their fins rose tall and straight out of the water. Each one seemed to cut the moonlight in half.
She held on to the splintery railing and hurried down.
It sounded again, haunting and mournful. A vibrato, humming that wasn’t of this world at all; it was a music borne of water, carried by the waves themselves. Out there, a whale breached up from the water and slammed down again; a second later, there was a great whooshing sound, and air and water sprayed up from one of the animal’s blowholes.
Elizabeth was mesmerized.
After they were gone, the sea erased all evidence of them. Moonlight shone down on the water as it had before. It would have been easy to wonder if they’d ever been there at all, or if she’d dreamed it.
She wished Jack were here. She would have turned to him, then let him take her in his arms. But he was faraway, with—
Larry King.
“Oh, shit.”
She’d forgotten to call him.
Forgotten. Worse yet, she hadn’t even watched the show. What in the hell was wrong with her?
She ran up the stairs and back into the house.
Nervous excuses cycled through her mind as she dialed the number: Sorry, honey, I was in a multicar accident. The Jaws of Life just set me free only minutes ago. I ran right to the phone booth.
I ate something that disagreed with me and lapsed into a coma.
The hotel operator directed the call to Jack’s room.
It rang. And rang.
“Get out of bed, Jack,” she whispered desperately. She couldn’t screw up this badly. She had to talk to him tonight. He deserved that at the very least.
The voice mail kicked in. She left a message and hung up. For the next three hours, she called every fifteen minutes, but he never answered.
There was no way Jack could sleep through all those rings. Not even if he’d gotten drunk after the interview.
She knew him too well. Jack always answered the phone.
So, where was he?
Jack stole the show.
A few minutes into the interview, Larry had asked him a straightforward question—something like “Are today’s athletes good role models, Jack? Should they be?”