“As I’ll ever be.” She took off her jacket and laid it on the blanket. Her bathing suit was black and violet, conservatively cut at the thigh, but dipping gently over her breasts, and he remembered his erotic fantasy of her and Paul from the night before.

“What are you smiling about?” she asked.

He laughed as he took off his T-shirt. “Just glad to be out here,” he said. “It’s been a while.”

She wore a long gold chain that fell softly between her breasts. The bone-whiteness of her skin made her look terribly fragile, but he would never have guessed she was pregnant. The slight rise of her belly would not give her away.

“So, did you call your doctor about windsurfing?” he asked. She had told him she was concerned about the advisability of windsurfing when pregnant.

She wrinkled her nose. “Yes. Turns out she’s a windsurfer herself. She said the only risk she could see was that I might actually have fun for once and not know how to cope with the experience.”

Alec laughed. “Your doctor’s got you pegged.”

He gave her a little demonstration, showing off a bit with a beach start, a couple of duck-jibes, before settling down to the tamer moves she would need to learn. The twelve-foot board felt sluggish, cumbersome beneath his feet. He was used to the small board he liked to take out in the ocean.

She shivered when she stepped into the water. Alec held the sailboard steady for her, and she climbed onto it, her face the picture of concentration. “Put your feet on either side of the mast,” he said.

“Is this the mast?”

“Right.” He held her hand to steady her as she rose to her feet. “Now hold on to the rope. You’re going to uphaul to get the sail out of the water. Bend your legs. That’s it. Keep your back straight and use your legs to pull the sail up.”

She pulled in the rope, hand over hand, and the sail began to rise out of the water, taking wind, causing the board to turn suddenly beneath her feet. She screamed, falling backward into the water with a splash. He walked around the board to help her, but she surfaced laughing.

“I should have warned you about that,” he said. “When the clew comes out of the…”

“What’s the clew?” she asked, tossing the water out of her hair.

“This part of the sail right here,” he said, and he got onto the board once more to show her how it was done.

She spent more of her time in the water than on the board, but she was nothing if not a good sport. She laughed a couple of times to the point of tears. It was a side to her he had not seen, a side he imagined she rarely saw herself.

She was climbing gamely onto the board for what seemed like the hundredth time, when her bathing suit slipped from her shoulder and he saw the sharp white line it left on her skin.

“You’re burning,” he said. “We’d better get you out of here.”

Olivia sat down on the blanket, her teeth chattering. Alec wrapped her towel around her, rubbing her arms through it, briefly, letting go as he realized the intimacy of the touch. The gold chain clung softly to the pink swell of her breasts, and he looked away.

He got the green and white striped umbrella from the back of the Bronco and set it up over Olivia’s half of the blanket. Then he lay down next to her, relishing the warmth of the sun on his skin. “So, how come you never learned to swim?” he asked. He had spent most of his childhood canoeing and water skiing on the Potomac.

“I never lived near any water.” The umbrella caught her words and floated them down to him.

“Where did you grow up?”

“In the central part of New Jersey. Have you heard of the Pine Barrens?”

“Isn’t that where everyone intermarries and produces, uh—” he was not sure how to word it “—less than brilliant offspring?”

She made a sound of mock disgust. “Well, you’re thinking of the right place, but your view of it is a little colored by its press. Intermarriage is far more the exception than the rule.”

“That’s where you grew up?”

“Yes, and I know what you’re thinking. Just because I can’t master windsurfing does not make me less than brilliant.”

He smiled to himself, staring up at the clear sky, a dazzling blue he had seen nowhere outside the Outer Banks. “Paul was at the lighthouse meeting at my house last night,” he said.

She sat up, abruptly. The gold chain swung free for a moment and then clung once more to the slope of her breast. “You didn’t say anything, did you?”

“No.” He looked up at her worried face. “I told you I wouldn’t. He said something you might find interesting, though.”

“What? Tell me everything he said. Every word, okay?”

Alec smiled. “He’s a nice guy, Olivia, but he’s not God. I’m sorry, but I neglected to take notes. I didn’t realize I’d be tested on the material.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Are you angry with me?”

“No.” He shaded his eyes to see her more clearly. The bridge of her nose was burned. “Do I sound mad?” Did he? Was he? “He said that whatever was wrong between the two of you was his fault, and that he thought he might have made a mistake when he left you.”

Olivia pressed her fist to her mouth. “He said that?”

“Yes. He seems depressed to me. There’s a…heaviness about him.”

She looked out at the sound. “I can’t believe he said he might have made a mistake. Was that his exact word?”

Alec sighed. “I think so. I’ll tape him next time, Olivia, I promise.”

She lay down again. “It’s just that I was about to give up.”

He told her about the horse. “He got sort of choked up while he was helping me.”

“It sounds as if you spent half the night with him. I’m very jealous.” She suddenly gasped. “Don’t ever tell Paul I’m taking stained glass lessons, Alec. You haven’t mentioned it to him, have you?”

He frowned at her. “What are you so afraid of?”

“It’s too hard to explain,” she said, looking away from him. “Just please don’t tell him.”

They were both quiet for a few minutes, and when she spoke again her voice was subdued. “I’m having an amniocentesis done Thursday,” she said.

He looked over at her. “Are you nervous about it?”

“No. Well.” She shrugged. “I guess you always have to face the possibility that something could be wrong. I just hate having to go through it—not the procedure so much as the waiting for results—without Paul.”

“You know, Olivia, I think one of us should tell him we’re friends. It might open his eyes a little to the fact that you’re not going to just sit around waiting for him forever.”

“Except that I would. Wait around forever, I mean.” She let out a weary-sounding sigh. “What about you, Alec?” she asked. “Do you go out at all?”

“No.” He shut his eyes against the brilliant yellow sunlight. “It’s not time yet, and there really isn’t anyone. There’s one woman who has designs on me, but I’m not interested.”

“Who is she?”

“A neighbor. Nola.” He ran a hand through his hair. It was almost dry. “She’s been a family friend for many years. Annie always said she had her eye on me, which I didn’t believe at the time. I do now, though. She brings us food. She calls to check up on me.”

“And you’re not interested?”

“Not in the least.” He stretched, ready for a change of subject. “Well, listen. I’ve been asked to speak on both a radio show and at a meeting of lighthouse enthusiasts in Norfolk this coming Saturday and I’d love to talk you into taking on one of those jobs. Any chance of that?” He looked over at her. “Do you have Saturday off?”

“I do have it off,” Olivia said, “but now that you’ve told me Paul’s having second thoughts, I think I’d like to try to spend the time with him.”

“Oh, right,” Alec said, disappointed. “You should.” He leaned up on his elbow to face her. “Tell him about this.” He touched her still visible hip bone lightly with his fingertips, wondering if he was out of line. “Tell him about the baby.”

“No.” She sat up, smoothing her hair away from her face with her hands. “It’s got to be me he’s coming back for.”

“Well.” Alec sat up too and reached for his T-shirt. “I think it’s about time you got to see a little more of the Outer Banks. We’ll see how much fun you can tolerate.”

He took her to Jockey’s Ridge. She had seen the enormous sand dunes from the road many times, she said, but it had never occurred to her to actually walk on them. She’d put a pair of shorts on over her bathing suit and Alec lent her a T-shirt. He dug around in the glove compartment of the Bronco until he found a tube of zinc oxide—in neon green—and painted it on her nose. The wind was up and the dunes were practically shifting in front of their eyes as they climbed. They reached the highest peak, out of breath, and sat on the ridge to watch a group of helmeted people learning to hang glide.

Then he took her to the Bodie Lighthouse. They walked around the site, looking up at the black and white horizontally striped tower, while he told her the history of this particular light. He felt some guilt over not taking her to the Kiss River Lighthouse, especially since he was asking her to speak about it. It was too far from where they were, he told himself, although his real reason was clear to him—the Kiss River Lighthouse belonged to him and Annie. He was not at all ready to share it with someone else.

They had an early dinner, then started the drive back to her car at Rio Beach. They were quiet. Content, he thought. A little tired.

“When are you going back to work, Alec?” Olivia asked when they were a block from the beach.

“Not you, too,” he said.

“Well, it doesn’t seem healthy to take so much time off.”

“That’s because you’re a workaholic.”