Free Never Too Late by Patricia Watters

poster with a line-up of
pink flamingos that she realized why they were there.
    "Oh my gosh! " she exclaimed.
"It's the marching flamingos. I read about them in Frommer's . They're trained to march on command." She also
realized their daughters, with their father's sense of humor, set this up for
Jerry, knowing his antics would make the show that much more fun. And a little
later, when a flock of parading flamingos came marching out on command, and in
drill formation with long-legged precision, Jerry looked at Andrea and grinned.
And the usual steeliness in his eyes softened into little points of pure
pleasure.
    It was a smile
Andrea hadn't seen since Scott died, the smile that came just before Jerry did
something outrageous. If it had been their twentieth anniversary, they would
have returned to their stateroom after the flamingo show, where Jerry would
have done something wacky like coming out of the bathroom stark naked, but for
a pink feather boa looped around his neck, and marching with long-leg
precision, head thrusting back-and-forth flamingo-style, butt wiggling with a
flamingo swagger, or what he'd perceive as a flamingo swagger. And after his
performance, when she would have been curled up on the bed in stitches, he'd
strip off her clothes, and with the feather boa in his hand, do it's magic on
her, dragging it across sensitive areas, tickling places he knew would drive
her crazy, teasing and touching and tasting and giving her everything she
wanted...
    Jerry reached
out, as if to take her hand, then curled his palm into a fist and propped in on
his knee. "It's quite a performance," he said, the lightness of
moments before gone. "I'll send the girls a postcard." Not we'll send the girls a postcard, Andrea
noticed, because there was no we, although there were moments when she forgot.
    "I'll send
them one too," she said, then gave a little wistful sigh.
    The show over,
they returned in silence to the buggy. But from the moment it pulled up at Pasquale's Italiane Ristorante , the
evening went downhill. Dinner was a tense, drawn-out affair, made more so by
the fact that the girls had arranged for them to dine at a cozy Italian
restaurant with candlelit tables and roving violinists playing romantic Italian
music.
    Everywhere, the
Italian theme dominated: show cases with Murano glass, furniture that might
have come out of a Tuscan farmhouse, dark-haired waiters who spoke with Italian
accents, as if Alessandro Cavallaro were everywhere to remind her, and Jerry,
where she'd be going after they returned to the ship. By the time the
lemon-grass-poached lobster salad, and treuette pasta with seafood, and grouper with tomato-caper sauce arrived, Andrea's
stomach was so queasy, and her throat so dry, she couldn't get it down.
    Jerry picked up
on that, and commented, "You've barely touched your dinner."
    "I'm not
hungry," Andrea said, dabbing at the groper with the caper sauce. She
wrote it off to nerves, and the hazel eyes that kept focusing on her breasts.
Yet, all she saw in those eyes was disdain. There had been a time when having
Jerry look at her there made her face flush, along with other physiological
changes. He'd get that twinkle in his eye, and the little crooked smile on his
lips, and he'd make a comment that would have her feeling like the most
desirable woman on earth. And she had been to Jerry back then. She knew without
question his eyes had only been for her. He'd never been a man to stray...
    "Well, I'm
not hungry either," Jerry said. "We might as well go back to the
ship. This whole day's been hell." Andrea couldn't deny that.
    By the time
they returned to the ship, where Alessandro would have cocktails waiting for
her in his stateroom, the idea of taking a lover had lost its appeal and Andrea
didn't know why. Jerry had been a complete ass from the time they left for
dinner, they'd barely spoken three words without shooting verbal darts at each
other, and the singular moment of pure delight they'd shared when