Free Summer on the Cape by J.M. Bronston Page A

drive you to your place, where you take a bath and a rest and then you change into that pretty little green silk number you were wearing the last time I saw you. We have a reservation at the Silver Dove at eight o’clock.”
    “Sounds like I’ll have to cancel the Chinese takeout.”
    “Allie, my dear. I know how you love to eat out of paper cartons, but sometimes one simply must put up with the finer things of life.”
    “The finer things, my foot. There’s nothing finer than moo goo gai pan out of a paper carton.”
    “I’ll take your word for it.” Allie could hear the shift in Adam’s voice and she knew he was getting down to business. “Anyway, Allie, the thing is, I’ve seen the photos you sent from the Cape. I knew that place was going to be good for you.”
    “Good for me?” A sudden montage of images flashed through Allie’s head: a gleaming sailboat, masts rising high against a blue sky; a hand holding her chin, paint smudges on her nose; Zach, standing in the doorway of his home, naked to the waist, wiping shaving cream from his face . . .
    Allie sighed. “Good for me, Adam? I’m not so sure.”
    “Oh, absolutely. Those photos are so promising, I’m really looking forward to seeing the paintings themselves.”
    “Well, Marcus is loading them into the car right now.” She wrenched her thoughts back to what Adam was saying.
    “Good. Now listen, sweetie. I can’t pick you up tonight. I’m having cocktails with that dragon lady from the Whiscombe at four-thirty. I’ll just barely have time to get back to my apartment and change for dinner. And I need some time to look at your pictures. So Marcus will pick you up and bring you to my place at seven-thirty. We can have a drink and talk about the paintings before we go to dinner.”
    Adam rarely said good-bye. The phone was dead in Allie’s hand and she put it back in her bag. She rested her head back against the leather cushions behind her and smiled.
    Here I am, barely off the plane, and New York’s fast pace has already caught me up. Adam is running my life again. Which is okay, I guess, because he runs it so well.
    She looked through the black glass of the car’s windows at the noisy crush of cars and taxis moving past the terminal entrance, picking people up, leaving people off, screeching, honking. She couldn’t help responding to the rush of activity around her, to the almost addictive quality of the demanding, hard, exciting city. This was the city in which she’d been born and grown up, and now it was a city in which she was beginning to achieve some real success. How could she not be totally glad to be back?
    Why was it, then, that as the little plane had flown over the shimmering treetops and she had gazed down on the sand dunes, pale against the vivid ocean and on the boats in the harbor, clearly visible in their slips, she had experienced the first homesickness of her life. She had been able to see Sea Smoke , tied in at the very end of the dock, and the green pickup truck parked nearby, and she had been caught entirely by surprise, amazed to feel her eyes fill with tears.
    How could it be? She had put crying behind her long ago. How could she, Allie Randall, who hadn’t even cried at her father’s funeral, be breaking out in a bad case of sentiment? She had wiped the tears from her cheeks with a quick hand, keeping her face to the window, hoping the other passengers hadn’t noticed. The plane had banked right, climbing, and turned southwest, on a course for New York and the bright boats, white against the blue water, had been left behind.
    And now that she was back in the city, Allie tried to disavow the newfound affection she felt for those windswept, open spaces. She was unwilling to admit to herself now that she missed Cape Cod. And she was definitely not yet ready to admit to herself that she missed Zach Eliot. She was sure she had chosen not to think of him at all.
    Not at all!
    * * *
    Adam’s tie was still untied, and he