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“Wait,” Laura breathed, pulling back, her hand on his. He released his grip on her underwear, slowly coming to his senses. Was he going to take her right here in the Rusted Anchor parking lot? In full view of everyone? He glanced back at the bar, but only saw shadows in the window.
He let her go with a shaky breath as he backed off.
“Sorry… I…I don’t know what happened.” He was breathing hard. “I shouldn’t have… I mean, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Even in the moonlight, he could see her pupils, dilated with want. “I liked it.”
“You did?”
She nodded back toward the windows of the bar. “Even if you were doing it for his benefit and not mine.”
“Laura,” he began to protest. How could he explain that it wasn’t just about one-upping his brother? He wanted her. Yet, she opened the passenger side of the pickup truck and shut the door on him before he could even explain.
He shook his head.
This was why he didn’t get involved with women. He’d never understand them. They were always angry for crazy reasons that made no sense to him. He sighed. Kissing Laura had been a mistake, he thought. One he shouldn’t make again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE CAR RIDE back was tense, but neither one said a word. What was there to say? Laura thought. She knew why suddenly Mark had found an interest in her. He’d seen her talking to the brother who betrayed him and it was just good old sibling rivalry at work.
She glanced at his profile, his handsome, tanned face staring out the window, intent on not looking at her. What more proof did she need? At this point, she wanted to protest even him driving her, but then she remembered they lived at the same address. That was going to be awkward, she thought, seeing him around the condo now. Maybe she ought to just cut her lease short. She had three more weeks reserved, but surely she could find other accommodations on the island.
But was that really the end of the world? Or was Laura just so desperate to get her mind off her problems that making new ones was the only way out?
The small island road ahead of them was lit only by the headlights of his truck, as all of the streetlights on St. Anthony’s seemed to be either in Smuggler’s Cove or on major parts of the seaside highway. Outside her window, Laura saw the huge full moon hanging in a sky full of stars. Away from all the lights of San Francisco, she saw some of the constellations her mother, an astronomer, had pointed out to her when she was little.
Her mother had been such a larger-than-life figure. An astronomer doing research at Berkeley, a woman who seemed to have it all, except for the will to live. She’d battled depression all her life.
Did Laura have the same condition? she wondered. Had some life event set off the chemical imbalance for her mother? Maybe her mother had suffered a loss, like a miscarriage, and then just never recovered. Now Laura would never be able to ask her. She might never know.
She still felt angry at her mother, though, an anger that never quite went away. Sure, life was hard. Laura knew it was, but her mother had had two daughters to think about. Laura might have been an adult at twenty-five, but she still felt on some basic level her mother had abandoned her.
They’d been so close, talked every day on the phone and not a day went by that Laura didn’t miss her mother. Not a day went by that she didn’t wonder why her mother had done it or feel a flare of anger at her choice.
If I ever do have a baby, I’d never leave her, not ever, not even when she’s twenty-five. Motherhood was supposed to be a lifetime appointment.
They arrived back at the condo and Laura stepped out, looking up at the dark night sky filled with bright stars.
“There’s Orion,” she said aloud, pointing toward the constellation’s three-star belt. She didn’t know why she’d said it. Maybe hearing the words brought the memory of her mother just a little bit closer. She didn’t expect an answer from Mark. But he gave her one.
“You know the stars?” he asked, surprised as he shut his driver’s-side door with a thump.
“My mom was an astronomer,” she said, craning her neck up. “And see? The Big Dipper…and the North Star there.”
“You sound almost like a sailor.”
Laura looked at him sharply, worried he was poking fun at her. “I’m not.”
“It’s a compliment,” Mark explained as he slowly moved around the side of the truck, hesitating to move closer to her. “Most people don’t know as much as they should about the sky.”
“My mother taught me all about the sky,” Laura said. “Before she killed herself.”
