Kathleen Creighton - One Summer’s Knight

And then they had to run to investigate, Summer on legs she wasn’t sure would carry her, far down the beach and around the point, the children hopping and dancing and urging them on.

“There!” David’s voice was a whisper of awe as he halted and pointed. “What in the world is it? I never saw such a thing, did you?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I have,” said Riley, as with a wink for Summer he took each child by the hand and moved closer to the strange markings in the sand. “What this is is a sea turtle’s track. A mother sea turtle-most likely a loggerhead-came in last night to lay her eggs. This right here is the track she made when she went back to the water. Her nest should be…right up here somewhere…”

With the children following, silent and tense with awe, Riley led the way up the beach to a spot above the high-water mark, just where the dunes began, where the sand had been recently disturbed. “Yeah-here it is, right here. See, she digs out a hole in the sand with her hind feet, and then she lays her eggs-dozens of ’em. They look sort of like Ping-Pong balls-” Helen giggled “-and then she covers ’em up and drags herself back down to the water and swims away. Then, in about two months the eggs hatch, and the baby turtles have to dig their way out of the nest and make their own way down to the water.”

“I saw that on Discovery Channel,” said David solemnly, his eyes round. “Most of ’em get eaten up before they even get there. By birds and stuff.”

Helen gave a cry of outrage. “I won’t let ’em get eaten! I’ll kill those ol’ birds-I will . ”

“Oh, dear,” Summer said to Riley in an undertone, “we aren’t going to hear the end of this. Isn’t there anything we can do?”

He nodded as he rose to his feet, brushing sand from his knees. “I’ll tell Brasher about this nest. He’ll mark it, put wire barriers over it to protect the eggs from predators. He’ll date it, too, and try to be on hand when they hatch, but it’s hard to figure exactly when that’ll be.” He gave a sigh as he looked past her, his eyes following the track of the turtle to the water’s edge. “The cards are stacked against ’em-that’s one of the reasons I wanted to protect this place. There are so few places left where they can come ashore. They’ll lay offshore, you know, waiting until it’s safe-any loud noises, voices or lights will scare them off.”

“What about the hurricane?” Summer asked in a low voice, not wanting to give the children something else to worry about. “You said one was coming. Can this nest survive?”

Riley shrugged. “Who knows?” He looked down then at the sand dollar she still held in her hand. “When it comes to the forces of nature, there’s only so much we can do. The rest is mostly a matter of luck.” Just for a moment, and with a strange bleakness in his eyes, he curled his own and her fingers around the sand dollar and held it, protecting it as though it were a precious jewel.

It was a magical day, and over too soon. After their discovery of the turtle’s nest, the children swam and played in the warm surf while Summer hunted in vain for another unbroken sand dollar and Riley kept a watchful eye on the sky. There was an edginess about him now, vibrations of awareness that she sensed had nothing to do with her. It’s the weather, she thought; he’s worried about what Brasher told him. So perhaps it was true, then, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that they were in for a bad storm.

They ate the sandwiches they’d brought, but by early afternoon, with thunderheads piling up on the horizon, Riley loaded everyone into the boat and they headed back across the channel and motored up the narrow inlet to Brasher’s landing. Brasher wasn’t anywhere around when they arrived, but while Summer was coaxing her cranky and tired-out, waterlogged and sun-sated children into the car, Riley quietly excused himself and went off by himself, following a barely discernible footpath to the little house at the edge of the marsh.

He’s gone to find Brasher, she told herself, to tell him about the turtle’s nest.

But-she didn’t mean to watch, she really didn’t-it wasn’t Brasher who came out on the ramshackle porch to meet him. Instead it was a young black woman, tall and slender with close-cropped hair, who greeted Riley with a warm hug and the unmistakable ease of an old and close association. Something knotted inside Summer’s chest, and she tried to look away. It was none of her business, she knew. It wasn’t. One kiss, no matter how magical, did not make it so. But she watched, anyway, while Riley and the woman talked for what seemed like a long time but was probably only minutes, then went together into the house.

It was a long time before they came out again-ten minutes, at least, or even fifteen. Summer tried to distract her mind with her children and their beachcombing haul, mediating arguments about whose treasures were prettiest or most numerous, but her senses would not be distracted; they were tuned to the slightest movement, the faintest sound from the house at the edge of the marsh. And so it was that, even though she didn’t want to be, she was watching when Riley and the young woman emerged from the house to stand once more on the porch, talking together, heads bowed and arms folded. Even from that distance Summer could see that the tension had gone out of him, that there was a heaviness about him now…a a certain sadness. And how, she wondered, deriding herself, did she feel she knew him well enough to know that?

With a tightness in her throat, she watched Riley take something from his pocket-it could only have been money-and give it to the woman, then leave her and stride across the porch and down the steps without a backward glance.

When he joined them again, the heaviness came with him, and a mood of melancholy and secrecy that banished the day’s magic as completely as a thunderstorm can turn the day to night.

All the way home Riley berated himself without mercy. What had he been thinking of? For the last week behaving like a horny adolescent with his brains in his boxers, allowing his lust for a woman to lead him so far astray that he’d lost sight of who he was, who she was, and even more unforgivably, the fact that there were very probably the lives of two innocent children at stake. He couldn’t recall ever having behaved so badly, even when he was a horny adolescent

There was no excuse for his actions-none at all. He could have no future with this woman. She’d said it herself: she didn’t belong in his life. She didn’t fit . How could she possibly? God knows he was not cut out to be a father, much less a stepfather! And with this woman anything short of full commitment would be unthinkable. Unforgivable.

What had he been thinking of? Summer Robey was his client. He was responsible for her safety. What could have possessed him to kiss her?

It was Monday morning before the truth finally hit him. It came while he was shaving, staring at his reflection in his bathroom mirror, the image repeated in the mirrored wall behind him over and over to infinity. His image…

Ah yes, his image. There he was, eyeball to eyeball with the Riley Grogan he’d so carefully crafted, honed and polished and placed on display before the world, and in his mind, in his heart and soul, the real Riley Grogan was whispering, You’re a fraud, Grogan. The truth is, all that lofty rationalization about ethics and moral responsibility and all-it’s nothin’ but hooey, that’s what it is, just a bunch of hooey to hide the fact that you’re scared to death somebody’s gonna find out what a fraud you are. You’re afraid, Grogan. Afraid…