Sergeant Darling. Bonnie Gardner
turned to follow her gaze and smiled. “The phosphorescence.”
“I used to think it was magic when I was a little girl,” Patsy murmured.
“Then you learned that it was a bunch of micro-organisms. Were you terribly disappointed?”
“Devastated,” Patsy admitted. “It destroyed my belief in fairies and mermaids.” She hadn’t realized it, but they had subconsciously changed their direction and were now heading toward the dark beach.
Ray chuckled. “I didn’t have any illusions to destroy. I’d already learned all about it before I saw it. The waters are too cold to hang around the beach at night in Washington, where I’m from.” He shrugged. “I didn’t see it the first time until I went to the navy dive school on Key West.”
The sea breeze off the Gulf was chilly. Patsy tugged the two sides of her sweater together, crossed her arms over her chest and tucked her hands into the opposite sleeves. As cold as she was, she really wasn’t ready to end this date with Ray. Even if she was still annoyed with Aunt Myrtle for tricking her into it. Even if her aunt’s intentions had been good. Even if this “blind date” seemed to be working out much better than Aunt Myrtle’s setups usually did.
She certainly wasn’t about to tell Myrtle that. Patsy smiled to herself. She wouldn’t dream of giving her aunt the satisfaction.
“Ah, that’s better,” Ray said.
Patsy looked at him just as the breeze picked up and blew her hair into her face. “What’s better?” She tried to shrug the hair out of her face, but only succeeded in getting it in her mouth, and she was too cold to uncover her fingers and brush it away.
“May I?” Ray asked, nodding toward the recalcitrant lock of hair.
She arched an eyebrow in assent, and Ray gently brushed the wayward strand away. He paused, allowing his fingers to linger on her cheek, and Patsy swallowed, wondering what would come next. Did she actually want him to kiss her?
What if he did?
No, worse than that. What if he didn’t?
Ray turned his face into the onshore breeze. To him, it was invigorating, reminiscent of his summers on Vashon Island on Washington’s Puget Sound. But, he hadn’t failed to notice the chill on Patsy’s cheek. As much as he didn’t want to end the evening so soon, it was time to get Patsy into the car or she’d be shivering, chilled to the bone.
“I think March is still a little cold for walking on the beach,” he said. “This is north Florida, after all.” Ray shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over Patsy’s shoulders.
Patsy looked up and flashed him a brilliant smile. “Thank you,” she said. Had she been shivering? “It didn’t seem quite this cold outside when I left Aunt Myrtle’s earlier.”
“The shore breeze can blow through you fast. I read somewhere that more people contract hypothermia when temperatures are above freezing because they don’t think they can and aren’t prepared.”
Ray touched Patsy’s waist and was surprised at how small she felt beneath his hands. But, then most women seemed small to him. Every woman except one: his mother. Even if she was only five feet nothing, she’d always seemed huge to him.
His mother. The last time he’d seen her or his father, he had just turned eighteen. That night he had left home, against his parents’ wishes, to enlist in the air force….
Patsy stumbled in the loose, shifting sand, and Ray automatically reached out to catch her. She looked up at him, and the expression in her face seemed expectant, questioning.
Ray wanted to reach down and tip Patsy’s chin up. He wanted to kiss her the way the guys did in all the movies, but he was Ray Darling, boy genius and adult nerd. He didn’t have the moves.
The night had been going so well up until this point. He wasn’t about to jinx it now. It would kill him if Patsy turned away. He caught her arm and any hint of the windy chill left him as welcome warmth suffused his blood.
“I…Ah…Thank you,” Patsy said, and Ray had to stifle a chuckle. Was that the proper etiquette for the situation?
“For catching me,” Patsy clarified.
“Any time,” he said flippantly. He wouldn’t have minded if she had kissed him by way of thanks, but she hadn’t, so Ray guessed the moment was gone. He sighed. Maybe if he’d had a normal childhood, he might know a thing or two about what to do at times like this.
“Something wrong?” Patsy asked.
“Not really. Just having some regrets.” Then realizing what he’d said, he stopped and looked down into Patsy’s lovely blue eyes. “Not about tonight. Not about you,” he said, his voice coming out huskier than he’d intended. He tried to figure out how to explain his family situation.
He shrugged. “When I got to thinking about summer in Washington, it reminded me of my parents.”
“Are they no longer living?” Patsy’s eyes always contained a look of sadness that seemed to deepen now. Ray wondered if she’d suffered some kind of a loss.
“No, they’re fine and healthy. At least, I think so. They’re just not speaking to me. For nearly ten years now.”
Patsy arched an eyebrow. “Why?”
“It’s not important.” Ray turned and trudged on. “We had different ideas about what I should do with my future,” he said, shrugging.
Patsy stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Family is important to me. I’d give anything to have my parents back.”
“They’re gone?”
“When I was in grammar school,” Patsy said softly, lowering her gaze downward toward the damp sand. “Aunt Myrtle raised me after they died in a plane crash.”
“I’m sorry.” What else could he say?
Patsy looked up at him again and flashed him a brilliant smile that seemed to light up the dark. “About what? That Aunt Myrtle raised me?”
“No,” Ray started to say, but then he saw that the quip was Patsy’s way of shifting from an unpleasant subject, so he dropped it. “I bet it was fun living with Myrtle.”
“It was,” Patsy said. “But it wasn’t quite normal. We lived in a big old house by the water, and I never felt comfortable inviting my friends over. We always had to be so careful, with all her antiques and objets d’art all around. And Myrtle was reluctant to let me do some of the things that I wanted to do, so I often rebelled.” She paused. “And I always wanted brothers and sisters.”
“Me, too.”
“You’re a lonely only?”
“Well, I was always too busy to be lonely, but yeah, I’m an only child. Let’s just leave it at that.”
They’d reached the parking lot, and there didn’t seem to be anything left to say. Ray was content to listen to the night sounds as they trod on the crushed shells in the parking lot. The crunch of the shells, the wind as it whispered through the scrubby trees and the tinny sound of the jukebox from the Blue Heron all combined to create a unique symphony. And even if he never got another chance to go out with Prickly Patsy Pritchard, he knew he would never forget this night….
AT LEAST HE DIDN’T HAVE one of those teensy sports cars, Patsy thought with relief as Ray ushered her toward his compact recreation vehicle. The single guys at Hurlburt Field were divided into two groups: the ones who bought sports cars, and the ones who were into trucks and SUVs. Radar didn’t seem to fit into either category. Was that a good thing? She thought perhaps it was.
And he got points for opening the door for her, too. A CRV was a lot smaller than a truck or a sport utility vehicle, she realized once she was in the passenger seat and Ray had carefully shut the door. The two of them would