Goldilocks by Andrew Coburn Page A

afternoon in the registry of deeds tracing disputed titles to the snarl of their nineteenth-century roots. His spirits lifted when he swerved into his driveway and saw Kit Fletcher’s dusty car parked in her half of the garage. An excitement built when he entered the house and glimpsed the loaded briefcase dropped in an armchair and the navy-blue pumps discarded nearby. “In here,” she called to him in a deep luxurious voice that was a natural extension of her beauty. His heart leaped.
    “Where?”
    She emerged from the sun room on bare legs strongly shaped by tennis, her tailored business clothes abandoned for a sloppy sweatshirt and loose shorts. Always his breath caught at her sudden presence. She was ten years his junior, blond and big-limbed, good-natured, eternally youthful, with the air and charm of an indifferent goddess.
    “I’ve missed you,” he said, staring into large eyes more gray than blue and at odd times, like now, more green than gray. He gave her no chance to speak. He kissed her. When he pressed against her, she did not mind, a good sign that everything was still right between them. They had a relationship he did not take for granted. It was, in her words, more of an arrangement, especially since she divided her time unequally between here and Boston, two semipermanent addresses. In Boston she had the glitter of Quincy Market, business breakfasts at the Ritz, evenings at the theater, and a harborside condo within walking distance of the esteemed law firm of Pullman & Gates, where her skill in litigation was growing. Here in Andover, a twenty-mile commute, she had the serenity of the Wildwood section and all of his attention. He whispered into her hair, “Rough two weeks?”
    “No more than usual. I finished up that antitrust thing. Now I’m working on a libel.” Her eyes flew up. “Has it really been two weeks?”
    “Almost.”
    She liked living in two places, functioning in two worlds, a situation that only half pleased him. She liked her independence. He liked his too, but not so much of it. He would have proposed marriage by now, but he knew it was not on her mind. A brutal husband, whom she had shed after a single year, had left marks.
    “Do you know what I want?” she said, and his eyes raced over her face.
    “I hope it’s the same thing I want.”
    “A drink,” she said. “I need time to wind down.” Which she could never do. Always there was a breeze about her, as if she had come out of the cradle with a sense of urgency.
    In the kitchen, after stripping off his suit jacket and tie and hiking his sleeves, he measured out ice and poured from a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream. They carried their glasses out to the back lawn, for she wanted to breathe the air, smell the lilac, hear the birds, though the birds at that declining time of day were rather quiet. The neighborhood was an old apple orchard in which, some three decades ago, felling as few trees as possible, a developer had erected houses that sold for premium prices. Cole had bought this house fifteen years ago, the down payment a wedding gift from his father, who had furtively handed him the money in a shoe box, glad to be rid of it.
    Kit dropped into a canvas lawn chair, extended her legs, tasted her drink, and watched him settle near her in the same kind of chair. “I met your pal.”
    Cole, puzzled only for a second, frowned. “What did you think of him?”
    “Not the sort of handyman I’d hire. I was afraid he was going to fall off the ladder the way he was fiddling with the drainpipe. He was bare-chested and had a rag around his head. I thought he was Rambo.”
    “His name’s Henry.”
    “Yes, he introduced himself. He’s a talker, isn’t he?”
    “I wish you had called me.”
    “Why, is he dangerous?”
    “Probably not, but I don’t want him here again while you’re home. Did he bother you?”
    She smiled. “He asked if I was your lady.”
    Cole gazed off at small gouges in the lawn, the work of