Judith Arnold - Right Place, Wrong Time

Or Gina Morante.

If he could lock the bedroom door, maybe…But his gaze wandered back to Gina, her angular face and her geometric black hair and those wild, dark eyes. And for some unfathomable reason, he thought sleeping on the couch might be the best thing for him to do.

WHILE THE country-club people fluttered about, conferring, making phone calls and murmuring bad words, Gina emptied the master bedroom’s drawers of her things and carried her suitcase into the second bedroom. It didn’t have the beautiful ocean view the master bedroom boasted, and a twin bed wasn’t a queen. But she couldn’t come up with a better solution to their dilemma—except for kicking the country-club people out and sending them all to the Ritz-Carlton or whatever fancy hotel they wanted. Sharing this condo with two strangers wasn’t Gina’s idea of the perfect vacation.

Their friend had told Carole he wasn’t going to use the condo this week. She knew Carole wasn’t lying. Their friend had misrepresented his plans. But Gina couldn’t prove it. So she was stuck.

She and Alicia would survive. She was good at making the best of bad situations. When she’d gotten expelled from Our Lady of Mercy in eighth grade for asking why, if God didn’t want people to use birth control, he’d created human beings smart enough invent things like condoms and the pill, she’d quickly thrown together a portfolio of her scribblings and submitted them, along with an application, to the LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, which had seen enough talent in those scribblings—or enough chutzpah in Gina—to grant her a place in the freshman class. When she’d gotten cited for running a red light in Forest Hills a year and a half ago, she’d not only talked the cop out of giving her a ticket but wound up dating him for more than a year. And when he’d broken up with her, complaining that she spent too much time with all her weirdo friends, she’d phoned Bruno, the weirdest of her friends, and told him he would to have to escort her to every party she got invited to until she reached the point where she could think of Officer Kyle Cronin without either sobbing or cursing. It had taken more than a month, and a lot of truly awful parties, but by the time Gina had stopped sobbing and cursing, she’d talked herself into a job as Bruno’s assistant. She didn’t want to model sandals and mules for the rest of her life, after all. She wanted to create sandals and mules, and working for Bruno would give her that opportunity.

Right now, all she wanted to create was a wonderful week for Alicia. So it wouldn’t be perfect. At least it would be good.

She carried her suitcase into Alicia’s room, ignoring the quartet huddling in the kitchen. Alicia sat on her bed, knees tucked against her chest and arms hugging her shins. “When can we go to the beach?” she asked.

“As soon as I unpack.”

“Are those people gonna leave?”

“Some of them. The older ones, I think. We’ll just have to put up with the younger ones.”

“I don’t like the lady,” Alicia said solemnly. “She’s mean.”

She’s a first-class bitch, Gina wanted to say, but then Alicia would scold her for using bad words. “We can steer clear of her.”

“The man is okay, though. He’s very handsome.”

“Is he?” He was a bit too clean-cut and conservative for Gina’s tastes, his apparel obviously expensive and his attitude reeking of superior breeding and privilege. But she would have had to be blind not to notice how handsome he was. She bet his auburn hair would catch fire with red highlights when the sunlight struck it. And his eyes glinted with curiosity and—all right, call it sex appeal. And intelligence. He looked like the sort of person who spent a lot of time deep in thought.

Of course, that could be a pose. He could be a moron, the blonde’s puppet. They were obviously a couple. Not married, though. Neither wore wedding bands. Besides, if they were married, the blonde’s parents wouldn’t be talking about his sleeping on the sofa.

Then again, Gina knew married people who slept apart. In particular, Ramona and Jack Bari, Alicia’s embattled parents. Neither of them was wearing a wedding band these days.

Great. She’d brought Alicia to St. Thomas to get her away from her dysfunctional parents for a week. Was the poor kid going to wind up spending that week in the company of another dysfunctional couple?

“I’m almost done,” Gina announced, pulling a pair of black jeans and a wraparound silk skirt from the suitcase and carrying them to the closet. She and Gina had both packed light, but they’d managed to fill every drawer in the dresser. “Let me put on a swimsuit, and then beach, here we come!”

“Beach, here we come!” Alicia echoed gleefully, shedding the last traces of her distress.

Gina carried her black bikini across the hall to the bathroom. The powwow was still going strong in the kitchen. Shutting the door, she looked around the small room. Her toiletries and Alicia’s already took up most of the counter space. Well, Ethan and Blondie would just have to make do. They were getting the bedroom with the beautiful view; they could keep their toiletries on the windowsill, and they could admire the ocean while they put on their deodorant. And they’d better not hog the bathroom, either. They’d better not take erotic two-hour showers together. She glanced up at the showerhead and sighed, dismayed to see it was one of those adjustable pulsing spouts. Ideal for lovers, she thought sourly.

Her bikini on, she emerged from the bathroom, carrying two beach towels from the shelf above the towel rack. Ethan was entering the living room from the kitchen, but he froze in midstep when he saw her crossing the hall to her bedroom. She halted and stared back at him. “Something wrong?”

He swallowed. “No.”

“Good.” She continued into the bedroom, then glimpsed her reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Her swimsuit wasn’t the most modest in the world, but everything that needed to be covered was covered. If he couldn’t handle her walking around the condo in beachwear, he could move to the Ritz-Carlton with Blondie’s parents.

“All set,” she announced, tossing Alicia a towel and then pulling from the closet shelf the plastic bucket and shovel she’d remembered to pack. “Beach, here we come!”

“Beach, here we come!” Alicia yelled as she scampered out of the room.

HE’D FORGOTTEN the swimsuit part.

Well, he hadn’t forgotten it. He just hadn’t thought about it. And why should he? He’d gone to beaches before—the sandy Long Island Sound beaches at yacht clubs on Connecticut’s south shore, the pebbly peaceful beaches of the lakes dotting the state’s northwest corner, the high-surf ocean beaches of Cape Cod’s National Seashore. Every beach he’d ever been on had included bikini-clad women among the bathers and sun worshipers.

But seeing a bikini-clad woman on a beach was far different from seeing one wandering around a shared apartment. And seeing any bikini-clad woman was different from seeing a bikini-clad Gina Morante.

Feature for feature, Kim had her beaten by a mile. Kim’s beauty was of a quality that would cause the vast majority of heterosexual men to reel in astonishment. Her gently waving, corn-colored hair, her delicate little nose and softly curving lips, her body round in all the right places—she was a perfect ten.

Gina, on the other hand…Her revealing black bikini had made her legs look almost too long, and her breasts were kind of small in proportion to her hips, and her facial features were too pronounced. Yet if Kim was a beauty queen, Gina carried herself like a real queen, chin high, arms swinging, those wide strong shoulders held straight and proud. She radiated…something. He wasn’t sure if it was confidence or sexuality or—damn it, balls. She was tough. Gentle with her niece but fierce with the world—or at least, with that small segment of the world that had tried to oust her from unit 614 for the week.