Life Guards in the Hamptons by Celia Jerome

Author:Celia Jerome [Jerome, Celia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781101642474
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

MATT ORDERED PIZZA AND WE ATE off paper plates. He let Peg pay for it, not because he was cheap or not macho, but because she needed to reclaim her pride and independence.

Her young dogs didn’t beg or whine or go to the door in a subterfuge to get noticed. Little Red and I had come to terms about my meals: he got some. We’d have words when I got home. Which better be soon so Matt could get some rest.

Unless he and Peg stayed up getting better acquainted. Damn.

On the ride home I called the police station. I felt safe, now that Uncle Henry would be home. I told the operator no, this wasn’t an emergency, and I would call him tomorrow. I hadn’t returned his call earlier since I was in Southampton picking up one of the survivors and assisting her to get settled, since she had a broken arm.

“Yeah, Willow. I got all that. Bottom line, you didn’t want to talk to the chief.”

Ah, the joys of Paumanok Harbor.

That call made, confrontation postponed, I considered my own unsettled situation. I liked Matt, more every time I saw him. I know I was waffling again. I wanted him, I didn’t want him. I’d given up men, but gave part of me to this one. So I decided Peg could have him.

Good sense told me to back away before I lost more. And I had good reasons:

A: jealousy. Matt was a chick magnet, and I hated how that caustic emotion made me feel.

B: distance. Paumanok Harbor wasn’t as far from Manhattan as, say, London, where the man I almost married lived. But I didn’t want to live out here. Matt wouldn’t want to give up his practice to live there.

C: scruples. Because of that distance, we’d only have a brief affair, which might be nice, judging from the good night kiss when he walked me to my car. I always felt cheapened after a physical affair, though, not like Susan, who lived for the moment. If our emotions deepened past lust and infatuation, I’d be shattered afterward, when I left.

D: my status as Paumanok Harbor’s resident tsetse fly of epidemic disasters. Matt might be the only person in the village who didn’t hold me to blame, but he would. Or his practice and popularity could suffer.

E: as if there weren’t enough barriers to a happy outcome of what started as a warm friendship, add in a hundred-and-fifty-pound blockade that I helped erect. Matt had Moses now, a big, galumphing puppy who’d grow that big, at least. Smuggle him into my no-dogs-allowed apartment? Have both of them share my bed? And what about Little Red? What if Moses wanted to play with Red like a squeaky toy? I couldn’t do that to my own dog.

Add it all up, and I had reason enough not to let any tender new feelings grow into a major heartache.

But that brief kiss did feel good, tingly to my toes.

You’d think I’d drive the car off the road, the way I vacillated with my own life.

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