“Somebody needs to teach me,” Charlie told her righteously. “And you can hardly swim at all.”
Hawkshaw studied Kate, raising a critical eyebrow. She’d probably never swum in anything other than a chlorinated pool in her life or seen any water creature more fearsome than a duck in a park pond.
He saw the worry in her eyes, and he saw the questions.
“These are dangerous waters,” he said.
“How dangerous?” Charlie asked, delighted.
Hawkshaw realized his gaze had been locked too long with the woman’s, reading too many things in it. She didn’t want to depend on him, but she had no choice. He hoped she understood that he intended to take care of her and the boy.
But she could probably also read a reluctant hunger in his eyes. He wondered if she knew how primitive and selfish that hunger was. The only reason I would want you is because I can’t have Sandra.
“How dangerous?” Charlie repeated, insistent.
“Very dangerous,” Hawkshaw said, “if you don’t understand them.”
He shifted the boy to a more secure position. “Come on. I’ll show you the boundaries of the land. We’ll worry about the water later.”
CORBETT HAD PROMISED to call at twelve noon, Florida time. The crawling hours seemed like eons to Kate. This morning, she’d been able to make Charlie settle down only long enough to eat a few spoonfuls of cereal and sip distractedly at a glass of orange juice.
The orange juice was fresh, squeezed that morning by Hawkshaw himself on an old machine that looked like a medieval torture device. He said the oranges were picked only yesterday.
Kate found this a small comfort. She felt anchorless, cast adrift. She had left behind everything and everyone except Charlie, and at the moment even Charlie seemed to have deserted her.
The boy was besotted with hero worship; he couldn’t get enough of Hawkshaw. He followed him like a dog and echoed him like a parrot.
Kate had fought down her first, unexpected wave of jealousy and was now working on her second. She had figured Hawkshaw would tire quickly of having Charlie underfoot; after all, with her he was such a prickly, private man.
But with Charlie, he seemed to have almost infinite patience. He was out on the ramshackle dock now, teaching the boy to use some fishing contraption he called a Cuban reel. He seemed prepared to answer any question Charlie had, so long as it wasn’t too personal, and had promised him a kayak ride tomorrow, if Kate would go along.
The kayak looked like a long, glorified floating banana to Kate. It was made of polystyrene and seemed no more substantial than a child’s toy. She had no desire to get into such a flimsy craft nor to float over the mysterious, brackish water.
Hawkshaw’s catalogue of hideous things that dwelled in the water was as intimidating as it was lengthy: water snakes, eels, sea slugs, rays, barracudas, alligators, sharks and poison jellyfish. Each item on the list enchanted Charlie as much as it repelled her.
Kate sat moodily on the deck, watching the man teach the boy to tie a hook onto his line. Charlie still wore the black Secret Service cap and had colored sunscreen on his nose.
Maybelline had deserted the scene of all this male bonding and lay beside Kate’s chair. Kate stared out at the brooding water and the dark mangroves and was haunted by two sinister lines of poetry:
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
Yet, she had to admit the place had a strange beauty, somehow both dangerous and serene.
When the phone rang at precisely noon, she tensed and automatically rose from her chair. But she was supposed to wait for Hawkshaw. She was not, under any circumstances, to answer the phone herself.
At the first ring, he came bolting up the stairs at remarkable speed. The man’s reflexes, she marveled, were hair-trigger. He slammed into the kitchen with her and a panting Charlie at his heels. He himself was not an iota out of breath.
He snatched up the receiver and leaned almost languidly against the counter. “Hawkshaw here,” he said, his voice so level it seemed emotionless.
He listened for a moment, keeping his face impassive. Then his mouth crooked down at the corner. “Ask her yourself,” he said.
His expression blank again, he handed the receiver to Kate. “It’s Corbett,” he said. He touched Charlie’s shoulder. “Come on, kid. Let’s fish.”
Charlie beamed as Kate took the phone, but his grin wasn’t for her. He had eyes only for Hawkshaw. The two of them went out, and the screen door banged behind them.
Kate, an orderly person, winced at the sound. “Hello,” she said into the phone. “We made it. We’re here.”
“I know,” said Corbett. “He phoned me last night as soon as he saw the two of you get off the plane. Didn’t he say?”
Kate blinked in surprise. “No. He hasn’t told me much at all. Including that.”
Corbett chuckled. “That’s Hawkshaw. He plays it close to the vest.”
He doesn’t wear a vest, Kate wanted to retort. He wears hardly anything.
Instead, she said, “You didn’t tell me you were sending us to the Great Dismal Swamp. This place is precisely in the middle of nowhere.”
“The middle of nowhere is where you need to be,” Corbett said. “How are the accommodations?”
Kate glanced ruefully around the cluttered kitchen. “‘Primitive’ might be the word.”
“And your host?”
“‘Primitive’ might still be the word. I think I can teach him to say, ‘Me Tarzan.’ I’ll pass on telling him ‘Me Jane.’”
Corbett laughed again. “He said after twenty years of suits, ties, and protocol, he was going back to nature again. Sounds like he did.”
“More than I can tell you,” said Kate, not in admiration.
“He deserves it,” Corbett said.
“I offered to clean up his house and he nearly bit my head off,” Kate said. This was an exaggeration, but when she’d raised the subject, Hawkshaw had been curt.
“You’ll get used to him. How’s Charlie like him? Just fine. I bet.”
“Just fine would be putting it too mildly,” Kate said from between her teeth. “Charlie’s—quite taken.”
“Oh, yeah,” Corbett said, “he’s great with kids, always was. A legend in his time.”
“Doesn’t he—” she hesitated, curious but not wanting to appear so “—he doesn’t have any of his own?”
Hawkshaw was in his early forties by her reckoning; he might well have children who were grown up by now. Even grandchildren, she thought, rather shocked at the idea.
“No, he never did,” said Corbett. “Damned shame.”
She chose her words with care, said them as casually as she could. “But he’s been married?”
“Hawkshaw? Lord, yes. Most married man I ever knew.”
What’s that mean? she wondered in bewilderment. “But he’s alone now? What happened?”
“Divorce,” Corbett said. “It goes along with the territory too often, with the Secret Service. But it’s not my place to talk about his private life.”
But you told him all about mine, Kate thought rebelliously, then was ashamed of herself.