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“Aren’t there beds below?”
He led her down a small flight of steps to the lower cabin, which had two bunks, both covered by brightly patterned quilts in a kaleidoscope of colors. There was also a small cedar chest and a built-in wardrobe.
“This isn’t quite as fancy as the master bedroom,” Ed commented as she opened a narrow closet.
“No, but it’s cozier.” She sat down on one of the beds to test its firmness. “I think I’ll feel less like an intruder down here.”
“You have every right to be here, Beth,” Ed stated firmly.
“So you keep telling me, but for whatever reason, I still feel like I’m sneaking onto a houseboat that’s off-limits.” She stretched her arms over her head, then sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just tired. What time should I expect you in the morning?”
“How about if you give me a call when you wake up? That way if you want to sleep in a bit later than usual, it won’t matter. You have your cell phone, right?”
She nodded. “It’s in my purse.”
“Good. Now lock the door behind me and get a good night’s sleep.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek, said good-night, then headed back to his Jeep.
After twelve hours in the car and with a headache throbbing in her temples, Beth wanted to follow her brother’s orders, but ever since she’d stepped on the boat, she hadn’t been able to shake the uneasiness that lingered from her past. Even though remodeling had made the Queen Mary barely recognizable, it was still the place where she’d made what had turned out to be the biggest mistake of her life.
She squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to give in to the temptation to remember that night fifteen years ago. She was tired, she needed sleep, and she would not let the past haunt her. Not now. Not here.
Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes and put an Enya CD in the stereo system, allowing the soothing sounds to flow around her. And just in case Enya failed to lull her to sleep, she pulled a bottle of pain-relief tablets from her purse. When she opened the refrigerator to get a can of mineral water, she saw one lone beer on the bottom shelf. Michelob. Charlie’s favorite.
Seeing that can was a reminder that he had been on the houseboat only a few days earlier. He’d walked barefoot on the carpet that was beneath her feet, stood on this very spot with the door open, contemplating the contents of the refrigerator.
“We’re not trespassing, Beth,” he’d told her when she’d expressed reservations about being on the boat the night of the spring formal. “Abraham said I could use the place if I wanted. That’s why I have a key.”
She remembered the smile on his face, the gleam of desire in his eyes as he’d pulled her along the wooden pier. It hadn’t taken much convincing to get her to spend the night with him on the boat. Little had she known that that one night would bring so many changes to her life.
Her dress had cost a small fortune—a sapphire-blue satin off-the-shoulder gown that had swished when she walked. And after two hours at Clip Curl and Dye, she had never felt more confident. One of the stylists had managed to make her short boyish curls look glamorous and chic, her makeup as professional as a cover girl’s. But it was the glitter that Beth had loved. It had dusted her bare skin in a most enchanting way.
She remembered the look on Charlie’s face when he’d picked her up for the dance. She’d fantasized a guy looking that way at her—as if she were the only girl in the world for him.
Then her dad had barked, “Don’t forget she’s only sixteen, Charlie.”
She could have died of embarrassment. Because she’d been accelerated, she was the youngest in her class. All the other girls were seventeen and eighteen. Academically it had been easy fitting in with the older girls, but socially she’d had problems. Having eighteen-year-old Charlie Callahan as her date for the dance was her chance to be accepted, and she didn’t need her father to throw a bucket of cold water on the evening.
Not that he really could have. Charlie made sure she had a night she’d never forget. Any worries she’d had about what people would think were cast aside when they were voted the cutest couple at the dance. At midnight, when the chaperons had chased everyone home, Charlie hadn’t taken her to the pizza party at Josh Parker’s house. Instead, the two of them had gone down by the river for a moonlight picnic.
Beth knew now they should have gone to the party with the rest of their classmates. As her father used to say, hindsight is twenty-twenty. If they hadn’t been alone in the moonlight, they would never have kissed, and if they hadn’t kissed, they wouldn’t have touched, and if they hadn’t touched, they wouldn’t have…She shook her head, not wanting to think about that night.
She wouldn’t think about it. She closed the door quickly, leaving those memories in the cold. She opened the can of mineral water and poured its contents into one of the crystal goblets she’d found in the cupboard. Then she shook two of the pain-relief tablets from the bottle. They were extra strength, with an additional ingredient to induce sleep.
It was time for her to stop worrying about what she would encounter in Riverbend. She knew that if she took the pills, she’d be a bit groggy in the morning, but she didn’t care. At least her headache would be gone and she wouldn’t toss and turn in an unfamiliar bed. With a long gulp of the sparkling water, she swallowed the tablets.
Then she turned up the volume so the Enya music could be heard in the cuddy. As she lay flat on her back staring up at the dark ceiling, she closed her eyes and waited for the music to calm her active mind.
But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop thinking about Charlie. When she closed her eyes, she saw him. Shirtless. Drinking a beer. Staring at her with that look that used to make her feel as if she was standing on the edge of a steep cliff. The last thought she had before she fell asleep was to wonder why he had never remarried.
“JEEZ, CHARLIE! The sun’s not even up yet!” fourteen-year-old Nathan Turner grumbled as he carried his duffel bag out to the pickup.
“Best time of the day. Wait until you see what sunrise looks like on the water.”
“I only got five hours of sleep last night. Isn’t there a law against dragging kids out of their beds without the proper amount of sleep?” the boy muttered belligerently.
“Not when it’s the kid’s fault because he stayed up half the night playing video games,” Charlie tossed back at him.
Nathan was uncharacteristically uncooperative as they loaded the pickup with fishing gear and supplies. He was not happy to be up so early. Actually he hadn’t been happy since Charlie had seen him sitting in the courtroom yesterday morning.
“Hey! Be careful with the bag. There are eggs inside,” Charlie said as the teen tossed a paper sack of groceries into the truck as if it was a bag of garbage.
By the time they were ready to leave, Nathan’s squinty-eyed frown had become a stubborn scowl. Charlie was losing patience. “Look, I realize this is earlier than you’re used to getting up—”
“No kidding.”
Charlie ignored the sarcasm. “But we only have two days to spend on the houseboat. If we wait until noon to go out, we’ll miss the best part of Saturday. You do want to take the houseboat on the river, don’t you?”
The only response Nathan gave was a grunt, but to Charlie it sounded like a positive grunt, which he took as a good sign.
“It should be a perfect weekend to be on the river,” Charlie said cheerfully. “If it gets as hot as they’re predicting, you’ll be able to swim right off the back of the boat.”
Mention of the houseboat had Nathan’s scowl softening, although he was reluctant to let Charlie see. He turned away, bunching his sweatshirt into a ball and propping it between his head and the window to use as a pillow.
Charlie didn’t say anything, but continued driving. It was hard to believe that this disgruntled teen with the streak of blue in his hair and the gold ring through his nose was the same clean-cut kid he had been a surrogate parent to for the past four years. What had happened to the even-tempered, happy-go-lucky Nathan?
His grandfather blamed it on the group of boys Nathan called his friends, but his grandmother insisted the moodiness had more to do with puberty. Charlie could see the obvious signs of adolescence. Nathan’s voice had changed, he’d grown four inches in four months, and it wouldn’t be long before a razor would be needed to take off the light coating of peach fuzz on his chin. Charlie was inclined to think they were probably both right, but suspected the boy’s rebellious behavior also had a lot to do with losing his mother.
After several minutes of jostling and fidgeting, Nathan said, “I don’t see why I couldn’t have taken a shower before we left.”
A shower? This from the kid who had barely raised a wet cloth to his face, let alone taken a shower, the last time he’d stayed with Charlie.
“We’re going down the river, not to the video arcade,” Charlie answered. “It’ll be like that camping trip we took last summer. Remember? Guys are allowed to be slobs on camping and fishing trips, as long as there aren’t any women around.”
His reasoning brought another sound of disgust from his temporary ward. “I hate that stupid judge. If it weren’t for him, I’d be home in my own bed.”
It bothered Charlie that Nathan didn’t want to be with him in Riverbend. In the past he’d complained about there never being enough time for the two of them to be together. Now that the judge had ordered him to spend six weeks in Riverbend, Nathan acted as if it was a punishment, not a reprieve.
Maybe that was why Charlie’s voice was a bit harsh as he said, “You’re wrong, Nathan. The reason you’re not home is that you chose to use someone else’s property for target practice.”
“I said I didn’t try to break those windows, but nobody believed me. Just because I hang out with the BDs, everyone wants to think I’m a juvenile delinquent,” he muttered sullenly.
“Who are the BDs?”
“What do you care?”
“Because I’m your buddy. Or have you forgotten?”
That took a bit of the sting out of his attitude. “They’re the bad dudes.”
Charlie frowned. “And you’re one of them?”
“I want to be. And I was just getting to where they would accept me when you had to drag me here.”
“I didn’t drag you here,” Charlie refuted. “You were ordered here by the judge because of something you did, not because of what I did. And I really don’t think being in a gang is a good idea.”
“They’re not a gang, just some guys who hang around together. They’re my friends and they’d do anything for me. I can count on them.” The defensiveness in his tone made Charlie uneasy.
“You can count on me,” he said firmly.
Nathan gave a snort of disbelief. “That’s why you’re making me get up with the cows.”
“You mean chickens,” Charlie said, trying to inject a little humor into their discussion.
Again Nathan turned toward the door and tried to position his head against his makeshift pillow. Charlie gave him his space and kept quiet.
That didn’t stop him from thinking about the teenager. Had he made a mistake sticking his neck out to help the kid? When he’d left for West Lafayette yesterday morning, he hadn’t expected to be returning with the fourteen year old in tow. It was one thing to have Nathan spend two weeks with him; quite another to have him spend half the summer.
Ever since Nathan had gone to live with his grandparents, distance had prohibited them from spending much time together. Until yesterday Charlie had thought that they had a pretty good relationship. Now he could see that the two of them had grown apart, and it saddened him, because at one time they had been like father and son.
As the truck ate up the miles, Charlie thought back to those days. He had just turned thirty, and at his surprise birthday party he’d been warned by his friends that the big three-O could cause a man to change his entire way of thinking.
Charlie had laughed and told them how wrong they all were. The reason he was still single and doing all right was that he worked hard Monday through Friday and made the most of his weekend playtime. The latter had been accomplished mainly with women who weren’t looking for the house with the picket fence, two kids and a dog.
But shortly after his birthday he’d found himself reflecting on his life and came to the conclusion that something was missing. Although he wasn’t about to change his life-style, he did want to do something different. When one of his friends mentioned that the local Big Brothers program was having trouble finding volunteers, Charlie decided to answer the call.
He could still remember that first day he’d met Nathan. He’d expected that things would be awkward, that Nathan would be a bit reserved, maybe defensive about not having a father. He wasn’t. He was just like any other kid and reminded Charlie of himself at that age. So full of energy. So eager to learn everything he could about the world around him. Unlike Charlie, who’d had a great relationship with his father, Nathan had never known his dad.
They soon became best buddies, and before long, Nathan’s mother, Amy, joined them on their outings. They were the closest thing to a family that Nathan had ever known, and it wasn’t long before he was asking Charlie if he could call him Dad. Charlie saw no reason he couldn’t, for he truly did feel like a father to Nathan.
Charlie knew that Nathan harbored the hope that one day he would marry his mother and become his real father. For Charlie, who’d never expected to entertain such a thought, it had come as a shock when he’d realized Nathan’s idea wasn’t so outrageous. He had no reason not to believe that, in time, he and Amy might find happiness together.
But then one night Nathan called to tell him his mother was sick—real sick. Charlie went over to see what was wrong. It didn’t take a doctor to see that she was seriously ill. He rushed her to the hospital, where she died two days later from bacterial meningitis.
In the blink of an eye, everything changed. Nathan’s grandparents became his legal guardians and took him home with them to West Lafayette. Charlie knew that Amy’s folks were good people and would give Nathan the kind of family he needed—something he couldn’t do without Amy.
Charlie vowed to remain a part of Nathan’s life, acting as a father figure whenever he could. Which wasn’t often. Construction was booming in Riverbend, forcing everyone at Callahan Construction to work long hours.
No matter how hard Charlie tried to make his visits with Nathan special, he could feel the bond between them weakening. Nathan no longer had that childlike eagerness in his voice when they talked, and gone was his enthusiasm for “hanging out” in Riverbend.
Charlie glanced at the boy beside him and felt a wave of guilt. He hadn’t kept his promise to Amy. He’d let work and the fact they lived in different towns keep him from being the father figure he should have been. Maybe the judge’s ruling was exactly what they both needed to put their relationship back on track, to help them reestablish the bond that had allowed Nathan to call him Dad.
“We’re here,” Charlie announced as the truck came to a stop next to the pier where the Queen Mary was docked. Dawn was brightening the sky, changing it from darkness to deep purple, which was the precursor to a beautiful sunrise. Charlie hoped nature’s beauty would lighten Nathan’s mood.
It didn’t.
As the boy awoke from his nap, he said, “Why couldn’t we just stay home?”
Charlie had to bite his tongue. “What do you think of that sky?” He nodded toward the horizon. “Isn’t that a beaut?”
“‘Red sky in morning, sailors take warning,’” Nathan recited ominously.
Charlie said, “We’re not sailors. We’ll have a roof over our heads should it rain, and an engine to get us to shore.”
Nathan mumbled something under his breath as he fumbled with his seat belt.
“There she is. The Queen Mary,” Charlie boasted as they climbed out of the pickup. “How’s that for a floating palace?”
Nathan shrugged. “It’s all right, I guess.”
Charlie knew the boat was more than all right, no matter what the surly teenager thought. “Come on. The sooner we get this stuff onboard, the sooner we’ll be cruising on the river,” he said, lifting a duffel bag from the back of the truck.
Emptying the truck caused less grumbling than loading it had, giving Charlie hope that even a teenager wasn’t immune to the lure of the river. They left the fishing rods and tackle box on the deck, then carried their duffel bags and groceries into the main cabin. Nathan said nothing other than to heave a sigh when Charlie told him where to set the food.
Although the teenager tried to pretend he wasn’t impressed by the comforts on board the boat, Charlie didn’t miss the way Nathan eyed the entertainment center. “Not bad for a prison, eh?”
The teenager shrugged. “If you’d told me there was a TV, I would have brought my video games along.”
“We’re going to be too busy having fun. We won’t have time for TV.” Charlie didn’t mention that he’d already decided to rent a Nintendo and some other games after the weekend.
“Who listens to this crap?” Nathan asked, lifting a CD case from the entertainment center.
Charlie glanced at the Enya CD. “It’s not mine. Must have been Abraham Steele’s or one of his guests’. Now make yourself useful and put away those groceries, while I get the boat ready.”
Nathan wandered over to the captain’s console. He plunked himself down on the chair and examined the controls. “Am I going to be able to drive?”
“I may let you take the wheel once we’re away from the dock,” Charlie answered, pulling the cord that opened the blue draperies across the front of the boat.
“How far up the river are we going?”
“Here. I’ll show you.” Charlie reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “This is a marine map. Shows all the hazards on this section of the river. It’s important that we keep it handy at all times.”
He spread the map out on the console, noting the way Nathan studied it curiously. It was the first time the kid had actually shown any interest in their adventure. Maybe it would turn out to be a good weekend, after all, Charlie thought.
“We’re going to stop right about here,” he told Nathan, pointing to a hook in the river. “As soon as you’ve put away the groceries, I’ll give you a lesson in navigation, all right?”
Again the shoulders shifted, but the hostility was gone from the teenager’s face. “Can I use the bathroom, or do I have to wait until the engine’s running?”
“No, go ahead. Flush away,” Charlie told him, indicating the door to the head. While Nathan was inside, Charlie checked the fuel gauge and water supply.
He was on his knees connecting a wire that had come loose on the control panel when he heard Nathan say, “Your girlfriend left something in the bathroom.”
Charlie straightened. “I don’t have a girlfriend.” From the silly smile on Nathan’s face, he knew that it was something the teen found amusing.
He went to see for himself. A bright red bra hung on the doorknob. The first thought that crossed Charlie’s mind was that Mitch Sterling had had a woman onboard when he’d used the boat last week.
“Well, that sly old…” he began, then noticed Nathan’s rapt attention. “Must be from a previous guest,” Charlie said, snatching the bra from the doorknob and shoving it into the vanity drawer. “Follow me.”
He opened the door to the master bedroom and tossed his duffel bag onto the bed. “I’ll sleep here.”
