“Life goes on. We need to seize happiness whenever and wherever we can,” Athena said with new determination.
Venus sat bolt upright on the settee. “You’ve met a new man!”
Athena shook her head.
“Yes, you have. I see it in your eyes. They’re getting darker. Mysterious.” Venus chuckled. “Tell us everything.”
“I promise you I haven’t met anyone new,” Athena declared with real feeling.
“Someone old. Someone you knew before. Like Dottie and Fred,” Diana said softly.
Stunned by how close she’d come to the truth, Athena stared at her youngest sister.
A mischievous glint in her eyes, Venus twisted around, flashed Diana a grin, and turned back to Athena. “Mom always thought Diana was a little clairvoyant. Is she right? Who is he?”
“Diana is smart. If it isn’t someone new, then it’s someone old.” Athena lifted her chin to the ceiling. “In my case it’s too soon to be talking about romance. We’re talking about Dad. If he’s coming home soon, we need to make sure the house and yard are in good shape. You know how fussy he can be.”
“Let’s meet at the house and see what needs to be done.” Venus shrugged. “Sometimes I wish he’d sell the money pit, but it has so many memories.”
Both her sisters gazed off into the distance, no doubt thinking of the rambling old house where they’d grown up, with its old wood floors and huge fireplaces, and the great paneled library where their father pored over books on mythology.
“I think we should go have a picnic on Oak Street beach, the way we always did on Sunday evenings in the summer.” Diana smiled up at her. “What do you think, Athena?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t tomorrow.” She thought very carefully how to word this so as not to tell any more lies to her sisters. “I have a meeting about the exhibit.”
“How about afterward?” Diana asked.
Rapidly calculating what time the sun set, because certainly she didn’t want to be out in Drew’s tiny boat after dark, she nodded. “Come to Belmont Yacht Club around seven-thirty and meet me. Too late for a picnic, but we can go to the house.”
“Is the meeting with Drew?” Diana asked softly.
Venus swiveled around to look at Diana and back to Athena. “It is, isn’t it?” A steely glaze in her eye, she nodded with so much gusto, more hair fell around her shoulders. “I know he’s helping you find the dresses and all of that, but doesn’t it bother you not knowing what happened between him and Dad? You know how I feel. All Clayworths should go suck a lemon. We’ll come save you from Drew at seven-thirty sharp.”
If only Diana was psychic, then she could tell Athena whether or not she was making another mistake and whether her sisters’ arrival would be too late to save her.
CHAPTER
On Sunday the cab driver stopped several yards away from the entrance to the Belmont branch of the Chicago Yacht Club.
“This is as close as they let us get.”
Athena sat in the back seat, staring out the window toward the lake and the floating gray New England clapboard Yacht Club. She literally could not move, torn between cold, solid self-preservation, the status quo, and hot, fluttering eagerness to live dangerously. Could Drew be her destiny like Fred was Dottie’s? Or more likely, would Drew rip out her heart and this time she’d never recover?
“This is the place you wanted to go.” The cab driver’s impatient tone caused her to look up and catch his eyes in the rearview mirror. He didn’t look happy.
“This is the place you wanted to go,” he repeated louder, like she hadn’t heard him the first and second times.
If she hadn’t really wanted to come, she’d have stayed in bed with the covers pulled over her head the way she’d been doing for the past several months.
“Yes, this is the place. Thank you.” She paid the meter and threw in an extra five dollars for sitting like a lump, wasting his time.
The cab screeched away, merging onto Lake Shore Drive.
Still, Athena stood where he’d dropped her, clutching her canvas tote. If she and Drew were part of some grand Greek epic, or star-crossed lovers, best to get it over with instead of standing here getting sunstroke.
She meandered along the picturesque waterfront with docks holding boats, some old and classic, others new and sleek. On her right, the dry sail area looked like giant ship models on stands, waiting to be taken down and sailed away.
Now she could see the entrance with the guard dressed in white nautical gear.
Drew burst past him, running toward her. His blue polo shirt and swimming trunks made him look tan and fit.
Damn! He looks too adorably hot. But forbidden.
She clutched the tote to her chest like an anchor keeping her grounded. “Am I late?”
“No, you’re right on time.” Grinning from ear to ear, his eyes squinting nearly shut from the bright sunlight, he grabbed one of her hands, twining their fingers together. “C’mon, I moved my boat to the edge of the clubhouse.”
It seemed rude to insist unhand me. But serious self-preservation made her dig in her espadrilles. The whitecaps on the lake looked huge.
“The Skokie Lagoons are one thing. Fun. Great. But isn’t your Penguin awfully small for Lake Michigan?”
His genuine amusement made her smile back. “Yeah, way too small. We’re taking my Wally 80. C’mon, I’m double-parked.”
A huge, extremely modern, incredibly sleek boat took up all the parking spaces.
“It’s a yacht!”
“Yeah, remember, I race them.” He pulled her up the gangway onto a deck of teakwood big enough for a game of ping-pong.
He led her two steps down into the cockpit with a control panel of switches, dials, and gauges, and lined on two sides with wide, heavily padded blue leather benches.
“There are two staterooms and three heads, and that’s the owner’s aft cabin.”
Down a short hall and through an open door she saw cherry paneling and a wall-to-wall bed draped in Clayworth signature blue.
“Did you bring a bathing suit?” he asked, still holding her hand and her still letting him.
What am I doing!
She pulled her hand free of his warm, smooth fingers and shrugged. “I’m wearing it under my clothes. Only a precaution after getting wet last time we sailed. It’s too cold to swim in Lake Michigan yet.”
“We’ll see,” he said cryptically, like he had a secret. “C’mon back up.”
She followed and watched him toss blue cushions on the teak deck.
“Sit here and relax. I’ll motor out of the harbor before I hoist the sail.”
Relax? What am I doing here? This is impossible. I’m so wound up if I let go I’ll spin right off this boat.
Panic made her grab his arm. “Wait! You said you wanted to talk. Can’t we do it here? Not out there.”
“We’ll talk once we get out of the harbor. Relax,” he ordered again.
Recognizing his stubborn locked-jaw look, she faked indifference, dropping down and leaning one elbow on the cushions, like she had nothing better to do than watch him looking like the movie star Makayla called him, standing at the wheel of his ship, sailing off into adventure. Like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean.
No. Not like Jack Sparrow. Love Johnny. Hated the gold teeth.
To keep her sanity, or at the very least maintain her nonchalant attitude, she dropped her eyes to watch the way the bow sliced through the lake. The fine bubbles and sizzle as the water passed the bow congealed into seahorses playing in the foam.
Fantasy. Like this.