Free Kathleen Valentine by My Last Romance, other passions Page A

spending his days among tourists instead of the fishing companions he’d known all his life he discovered a new world of sexual opportunity. He was big and healthy and his rugged seaman’s looks caught the attention of women down from the city for a few days. They passed him hotel room phone numbers scribbled on the backs of sales slips and for awhile he called them. For awhile it was exciting...

"Jesus, you look like you’re thinkin’ nasty thoughts."

He jumps catching his coffee mug in time. Hugh’s husky shape fills up the harbor-side door and interrupts the faltering light.

"Hugh—bout time. I was starting to worry about you."

"You don’t look worried," Hugh says clumping toward the coffee pot oilskins flapping. "You look horny. Some babe just drop in and get you all fired up?"

Guy chuckles. Hugh looks like his mother with his round fairness but none of them—not Guy, nor Bonnie, nor the other children—have Hugh’s humor, warmth, and sheer joy in living. Guy would never admit it but Hugh was his favorite. A happy baby, he had grown into a mischievous child, and then a good-natured, easy-going man. It was Guy’s secret delight that, of all his children, it was Hugh who had stayed close to home and continued the family fishing business.

"I’m not over the hill, yet. Don’t want to shock you, son, but I still think about that stuff."

Hugh grins spooning sugar into his mug. "Hell with thinkin’, Pop, what about doing?"

"That’s none of your business. Close that door, will you?"

Hugh kicks the sliding door shut, snaps the bolts into place and drags the leather office chair from behind the desk to sit across from his father. "Come on, Pop, you can talk to me. What do you like—the long, lean, quiet ones or the fat, sassy, giggling ones?"

Guy grins at his coffee mug. "Yup."

"Yup?"

"Both."

Hugh’s laugh brightens up the dusk-filled room and chases out all the fog. "Yeah, well, like father like son, I guess—me too. As long as they smell good and are a little cooperative. I met a cunning little darling in Chatham last week. Whew."

Guy waits a minute and then surprises himself by saying, "Have you slept with a lot of women?"

Hugh looks up startled and then smiles slowly. "What kind of a question is that to ask your own son? I’m a virgin, Pop."

"Yeah," Guy says, "Me too."

Hugh tips back in his chair and roars. "Jesus, can’t some of them make you feel that way though? I swear, the badder I want one the easier it is for her to make me feel like a thirteen year old peckerhead."

"When I was thirteen I was a peckerhead. I don’t think I even knew what sex was then. You kids today know more in junior high than I did after twenty years of marriage and four kids. I swear if Bonnie hadn’t died I’d ........" He paused. "I’d probably still be pretty ignorant."

Hugh’s expression changes and he looks out of the window. He’d been the only one still at home when Bonnie died—the rest had gone off to college or to change the world. Guy and Hugh were the ones to share the day to day sorrow of her decline. It binds them in a way that the others will never understand.

"Were you a virgin when you married Mom?" Hugh asks after a long minute has passed.

Guy swallows the last of his coffee and rises to pull the blinds and close the shop. By now Lindy is on Route 3 heading south. She is listening to tapes as she drives—she likes the songwriters who perform in the coffeehouses around Cambridge. He knows a few of their names—Greg Brown, who he likes, and Garnet Rogers, who he thinks is even better than his brother was. The songs are poignant and real—like Lindy herself. Fog or no fog he is very glad she is coming tonight. He wants her more than ever.

He turns out the lights except for the pink bulbs in the display cases.

"Technically no," he says in answer to his son’s question. "Your Mom was pregnant with Sylvie when we got married. But we were each others’ firsts. I expect I was your