Chapter 8

I sipped my coffee as Zoe finished her story. She looked up the end of her admission and smiled at me, “So do you still want me with you on your grand road trip.”

I laughed and muttered, “So long as you realize I’m going to blame you for all the wrong turns I make.”

She smiled and sat back in her seat and gave a contented little burp. She shot me an embarrassed grin.

“I take it that means you’re done?”

She nodded.

I paid our bill, and we headed out to check on the car. Zoe stopped me at the door and put her good arm around my neck and standing on tiptoes reached up and kissed me.

She whispered, “Thank you for being here for me.”

I said jokingly, “I am your white knight, Elfin Lady.” Then more seriously, “I only did what was needed, I would have done it for anyone. The fact that you are so cute is just a big bonus.”

She nodded, and we walked over to the Aston. They’d done a brilliant job, you couldn’t see the stains and the rest of the car gleamed. I paid them and gave them a hundred-dollar tip, Zoe paid up on her promised kiss. The young man who’d worked on the car glowed after Zoe’s kiss and hug.

I drove us to the local mall, enjoying the sensual power of the Aston and the beautiful girl sitting beside me. Zoe enjoyed herself spending more of my money. After the first store, I drew some money out of an ATM and gave it to her. I also gave her one of my credit cards and PIN number in case she could use it and told her to enjoy herself. There was a bookstore with a comfy seating area, and I retreated there and sat reading a book I’d bought. She would return with every now and again and deposit bags at my feet.

I did nip out and make a quick purchase for her: a new phone, the same model as the one that had been smashed. I inserted her old SIM card that I’d picked up from the floor of her hotel room.

She insisted I go with her to the lingerie store, where I had to approve all her choices. Finally, I think she was shopped out, and we left. On the way out, I stopped by a store selling luggage and bought a soft case for her that would fit in the Aston’s small boot. That caused a degree of amusement. Note to myself, bonnet = hood and boot = trunk. Repeat until I remember. We squeezed the bags in the car and headed off.

The next stop was the clinic. Dee redressed Zoe’s arm while I had a talk with Jose. It was interesting that today the receptionist was out of her cubical as soon as we walked through the door, and we were escorted to the treatment bay. I managed to acquire more than enough dressings to cover the trip. Zoe and Dee had a quiet word, and later I saw Dee hand her a bag with several pill packets in it. I recognized one as birth control pills; of course, hers were probably in her missing purse. Damn, that triggered another thought, she needed to cancel all her cards. I reminded her and she used my phone to call her banks and cancel and reorder new ones.

She looked at me and said, “At least I didn’t bring my laptop with me, he’d have smashed it like my phone. Shit, I only got it last month.” I smiled and pulled out her replacement from my pocket. I had intended to give it to her this afternoon but now seemed right. I think the look of gratitude that spread across her face the moment she switched it on and found all the contacts she’d saved on the SIM card were there, would stay with me forever

Back in the car, I played GPS roulette, blindly selecting a point of interest from the list.

“So where is my knight taking me,” Zoe asked.

“Wherever the magic speaking box tells us, my lady.”

She giggled and gently stroked the back of my hand.

We ended up on an almost deserted beach in the afternoon sunshine. We pulled up into a car park at the end of a long track. I’d winced a couple of times as the gravel had rattled on the underside of the car. There was a long low wooden building at the back of the car park: a tourist information center, a coffee shop and restrooms.

The sign above the building read, ‘Savanna Historic fort and nature reserve.’

“Nice choice magic speaking box,” Zoe said to the car, as she patted the dashboard.

She rummaged through the bags and found what she was looking for. “I’m going to use the restroom to change into something more suitable,” she said, holding up a bag. “I won’t be long.”

I entered the tourist information center and was met by a woman about my age — a pleasant, slightly chubby woman in a khaki uniform.

After we had exchanged pleasantries, she told me that this was the site of one of the early colonial forts, and it, the sand dunes and the beach, was part of a national park.

She gave me a guide and pointed at a section of the beach. “This part of the beach is clothing optional if that what you are interested in?”

“Are you sure that this was a random choice Mike,” came Zoe’s voice from behind me.

I turned to see her standing in the open sunlit doorway. She wore a pair of cut-off jeans shorts and an open white cheesecloth shirt tied at the waist. There was just enough fabric in the yellow bikini top she wore under the shirt to maintain a modicum of decency.

She looked absolutely stunning and deserved the accolade of elfin. Everything had been happening so quickly I’d not really had the chance to take in just how beautiful she was. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her brown eyes glowed in her oval face. She had a cute, slightly turned-up nose above a pair of the most kissable lips I’d ever seen.

I knew she was five-one, but the wedge sandals she wore made her slim legs seem even longer than they should be. I thought I could put my hands around her waist. The faint shadow from her dark nipples pushed at the fabric of her bikini top.

I let the breath out that I didn’t recall holding and grinned at her. “That was one of the extra options I ordered, find the best place to seduce women as a POI on the GPS.”

Zoe laughed, and the ranger smiled and then said, “So I guess you would like a pair of permits then?”

“Permits?” I asked with a raise of my eyebrows.

“It’s to keep the kids and undesirables away,” she said, “and there’s no alcohol permitted.”

“I’m not exactly dressed for the beach,” I pointed out, looking at my slacks and shirt.

“We have some beachwear over there if you want to have a look,” the ranger said.

Zoe found a pair of trunks and a t-shirt in my size that she thought were acceptable. She made me buy them and a couple of beach towels. I added bottles of water and sunscreen and obtained the necessary permits.

I changed in the restrooms and at the suggestion of the ranger pulled the car in front of the building where she could keep an eye on it for us.

We followed the signs to the fort. It was set back from the beach behind the line of the dunes. Four earthen banks arranged in a rectangle and a carefully tended graveyard were the only evidence of more than three hundred years of history.

The plaque at the entrance gave the site’s history. It was the location of one of the early landings in the seventeenth century and you had to speculate at the hardships those first settlers had endured. The place was eerily quiet, with no human voices — just the rustle of the leaves in the trees and the odd cry of a seagull.

From there, we made our way through the sand dunes to the beach. Waves that had traveled across the Atlantic Ocean ended their long journey in a maelstrom of white foam as the rollers broke on the white sand of the beach.

Zoe let her inner child loose, slipping off her shorts to reveal the matching yellow bikini bottom and then her shirt. I decided it was some of the best money I’d ever spent, to see the happy smile as she spread her arms and tilted her face to catch the sun: the only incongruous thing, the bandage on her arm. Peeking up above the waistband of her bikini on her left butt cheek was the top of a tattoo, I hadn’t been mistaken earlier. Defiantly a question for later, it looked like the top half of a misshapen circle.

I picked up her scattered clothes and sandals, tucking them on top of the bottles of water and our phones in the tote bag I carried. I took my t-shirt off as well and enjoyed the sun on my back. We splashed in the shallow water at the ocean’s edge, becoming beachcombers when we spotted an unusual shell.

Watching her shed the fear and anxiety of the previous evening as we walked along the beach was gratifying and somewhat worrying. Last night she’d been a woman in need and I’d done what I would have done for anybody who needed my help. Now, as I watched her gambol along the beach, she was starting to tug at my body in a different way. I could see her as a lover; I imagined what it would be like to hold her in a lover’s embrace.

I must have stopped walking as the next thing I knew was a gentle touch on my arm, and she stood staring up at me from inches away. She rose onto her toes and wrapped her arms around my neck. Close to I saw that the brown of her eyes was shot through with flecks of light hazel and green. I stared at them mesmerized and watched as they grew closer to her lips connected with mine and her eyes closed in concentration.

I dropped the bag at my feet and ran my fingers down the silky soft skin of her back. We stayed like that until we broke gasping for breath.

“I think I’m falling for you, my shining knight,” she whispered.

“I think it will be very easy to fall for you, my Elfin lady,” I replied.

“I hope you do,” she whispered as she released me.

We continued to move along the beach, now following the high watermark. She held my hand and we walked in silence. I guess both of us were thinking about where we could be heading, not geographically but emotionally. I needed to consider where Zoe would fit into my ever more complex life, assuming that is, she wanted to.

I saw her glancing at me every now again, and I sensed she was wondering about my relationship with Sally and Mila, and if there was a place for her. Sally and Mila had opened my eyes to the realization that I could love more than one person at a time. Was there room in our evolving reality for another person. That was something we would need to discuss later as a group.

Zoe tugged me to a halt and pointed to the warning sign to one side. We’d reached the beginning of the clothing optional section of the beach. I had to smile that the Americans need to allocate beaches. I was much more used to the relaxed attitude of the beaches in the south of France.

“Do you want to go back?” I asked. I looked, and I could only see a handful of people scattered along the next half mile of sand.

Zoe looked a bit unsure and looked around. “Do we have to be naked?”

I smiled and shook my head, “It’s optional, which means if you want to take anything off you can. But you don’t have to strip just to cross the boundary.”

“Have you done anything like this before?”

“Yes, before Linda died, we used to holiday in the south of France every year. I have a half share in a beachside villa with my sister. We enjoyed the freedom of the nude beaches. Even the twins were comfortable stripping off.”

She asked timidly, “Are you going to?”

“If we carry on, then I quite fancy the idea of getting an all-over tan,” I replied. “But you don’t need to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

For a few moments, she hesitated and I waited patiently for her to decide. I wasn’t going to push her into anything she felt uncomfortable with.

“Zoe,” I reminded her, “You don’t have to be naked to carry on walking along this part this beach; the only difference is you won’t be breaking the law if you are.”

I looked along the beach at those people I could see and pointed out that only a handful were fully naked, a larger number of women were topless but not all.

She seemed to relax a bit at that, and taking my hand walked past the sign. After about fifty yards, she paused long enough to remove her top. She stood still facing me, and her breasts were perfection. Small, yes, but just right for her body. They were firm and conical tipped with dark areoles and hard nipples.

She said self-consciously, “They’re too small, aren’t they?”

I shook my head, “They’re some of the most perfect breasts I’ve ever seen.”

“Really? I’ve always been so envious of women with large boobs.”

“You didn’t need to be,” I said as I ran the back of a finger across the firm but so soft curve of her breast. She gasped and then looked around guiltily as I bent forward and kissed her nipple.

“I’ve never had my breasts kissed in public before.”

“But they’re so kissable,” I said in a little boy’s voice.

She laughed, kissed me and called me a dufus. She was much more relaxed as we carried on walking, saying hello to a middle-aged couple walking in the opposite direction. Both were dressed like us, him in shorts and her in a bikini bottom. The sight of the other woman’s breasts increased Zoe’s confidence, and soon she was darting about searching for shells and driftwood, bringing her prizes back to me. I was glad I was wearing the swimming trunks or everyone would have been patently aware of my interest in her.