Out at Night. Susan Smith Arnout

Whiter. Part of Grace loved being taken care of. And part of her feared it. But Katie seemed to be slipping into this life with Mac effortlessly—and that, too, scared her.

      She’d been alone for so long, making every decision about Katie, and now here was a man—her man, he’d been, a long time ago—reverently embracing his role as dad. Daddy. The big guy. Mr. Right who could do no wrong. At least not in Katie’s eyes. Part of her wanted to yell, Hold it! Wait! Who’s the parent here, anyway? Not wanting to hear the answer.

      Some uneasy thing tremored under the surface and Grace knew what it was.

      Sometime soon, Katie would look her right in the eye and ask out loud why Grace had lied to her about her dad. Lied about the most important thing in Katie’s life.

      And Grace didn’t have a good answer.

      She doubted she ever would.

      “How do you want to handle this?” They were sitting on lounge chairs on the patio. From the bedroom, Katie murmured in her sleep.

      Mac reached across the dark expanse and took Grace’s hand, his fingers warm, touch solid.

      Past the railing and down the terraced walks, waves foamed whitely against the dark expanse of sand. Landscaping lights illuminated the palm trees and Grace saw a man and woman wading along the edge of the waves, holding hands in the growing dark.

      The setting sun was turning the water a soft pink that glowed as if it were lit from within, and the air was heavy with the scent of hibiscus and the sea.

      “We have to take it slow,” Grace said.

      And then she got up and sat down next to him on his lounge chair, placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed him. He kissed her back, and pulled her on top of him. The rush was instantaneous, greedy, joyous, drugged with heat and desire. He rolled to his feet, picked her up, and carried her to his bed.

      The clothes came off, and she wished again she’d packed better underwear, but who knew that instead of playing four rounds of Candyland she’d be sliding her hands over a man voted by People magazine as one of the top 100 sexiest men in America?

      Last year’s list, she reminded herself. Although he still looked pretty good. His chest gleamed with a fine sheen of sweat. He shifted and she felt him against her. Liquid fire.

      “Oh, brother,” she said. “Oh, oh, brother.”

      She rolled away and wrapped a sheet around her. She took a long shaky breath. She rolled back toward him and put her hands on the flat of his chest. His skin burned the palms of her hands and that close, his eyes were heavy-lidded, his gaze intense.

      “Grace.” He kissed her shoulder blade, the hollow in her throat where her heart was beating. “Talk to me.”

      “It means too much.” Her voice was quiet. “If we made love and it didn’t work—and it would be making love, Mac, not just the physical part, what it means.”

      He slid his hand under the sheet and cupped a breast and she sucked in a breath, almost in a panic, her body flooded with warmth.

      He removed his hand with effort. He was breathing through his mouth. He had a nick on an incisor. He’d chipped it as a kid using his teeth to cut a fishing line. She was doomed. She already knew how he’d gotten all his childhood injuries. His knees touched her shins and shifted away.

      He regarded her, loss and desire on his face. “What do you want, Grace?”

      Her eyes filled. She felt his breath, soft, on her face. He searched her eyes. All the bones in her body seemed to soften; she was warm wax in his hands.

      “For the last five years to go away. Not the part with Katie. The part without you.”

      He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. In the moonlight, his eyes glowed bright. “But see,” his voice was low. “That’s just it, Grace. That was the part without Katie. For me. That was the part.”

      She couldn’t breathe. Her throat closed. The night air felt heavy against her face. She had done this, she had done this. And there was no fixing it.

      She rolled away from him with effort and slid free of the sheets. She stood. Her legs trembled. Their clothes lay in a jumbled trail across the Saltillo tile floor and she took a shambling step.

      “You bolt at the first sign of trouble.” There was no accusation in his voice; it was as if he were tracking the beats of a song, figuring out its rhythm. She realized her heart hurt.

      “I bolt.” The floor was cold. She found her T-shirt and put it on. She needed underpants. She needed distance. She needed to remember to take her birth control pills.

      “It’s as if you’re there one moment, and then you flip a switch and you’re gone. I don’t want you to go.”

      Mac flung off the covers and stood. The heat between them was old, and raw and real. She looked away, but not before she’d seen that he’d seen it, too, in her eyes, on her face.

      He pulled her to him and kissed her and she wrapped her arms around him and stood trembling, feeling the shock of his presence, the immediacy of his reaction. His arms seemed harder, somehow, than they’d been five years before, his muscles knotted.

      “Hunger does that.” His voice had an edge.

      She could feel her heart start to race. “That’s a little scary. Reading my mind.”

      “I’ve had five years’ practice. You were squeezing it,” he added.

      “I beg your pardon?”

      “My arm. The muscle. You were squeezing it as if you were testing its strength against your memory. My arm won.”

      “Yeah, memory’s a tricky thing.”

      “Been my experience.” His body shifted and tensed and she felt the familiar fit of his body, both of them wanting more.

      She dropped her hand to his back. She could still feel the sun in his skin. “Have you had a lot of that? Experience?”

      “Do my best.” He slid a hand down her back, and she could see him tracking its impact, evaluating mentally the way her back tensed, the short intake of her breath when his bare hand slid from her T-shirt to her skin, the hooded light in her eyes.

      And then it rounded a corner again, what she was feeling, and her eyes filled.

      He stopped his hands and moved his naked strong body a fraction away.

      “I did this to us, okay? I made it be not simple.”

      “So now you’re beating yourself up.” His hands found her hips. He pulled her gently toward him and she felt again the blurring sweetness of desire, the melting heat. His palm grazed her buttocks, his eyes still on hers.

      She was going to have to push him away. If not now, then soon.

      Her breath came in short gusts. “What are you offering, Mac?”

      “I think that’s pretty clear.”

      “No, I mean it.” She rocked back away from him, but all that did was position her closer. If he moved, even slightly, toward her. Into her.

      “Okay, what am I offering. The truth. Ask me anything.”

      “Risky business.”

      “Riskier not to.”

      He touched her breast, her belly, the soft part of her that melted under his touch. They stood together in the dim light, their bodies naked except for her T-shirt. He swallowed. Sighed as if it took everything he had. He pushed her gently away.

      “Truth then. I get the feeling you’re a whole lot of work. Maybe I’m not up to that. Maybe I’d give it my best shot, and still come up short.”

      Her heart was beating very fast.

      “You