You Are Always Safe With Me by Merrill Joan Gerber Read Free Book Online

O’Hara was spreading sun block and insect repellent on her face and arms at the same time. Lance was studying a book of maps, and Harriet had brought up her paints from below to sketch the cove into which Izak had moved the boat in the dawn hours.
    There were no buses hired to take the guests to ruins on this day. Barish had lowered the ladder on the side of the boat to facilitate an easy climb to the water for those who wanted to swim. Not everyone was interested in diving from the deck of the boat into the sea as Marianne did. The ladder seemed a reasonable challenge: there was a small wooden platform at the top and silver rungs descending to a foot above the water.
    Lilly had not yet gone swimming in the turquoise-blue waters of the Mediterranean sea. Though fearless at home about swimming at the Y in her plain blue Speedo swimsuit, here she was a bit daunted by the bikini clad Gerta, the glamorous Jane, and even by Fiona, who in her late seventies still had the figure of a younger woman, sinewy and tough, with muscles in her calves like a dancer. Lilly knew her own strengths, and a bathing beauty she was not. She had decent proportions, sturdy thighs, adequate breasts, but she was thickly designed, like a good work horse who had to sacrifice delicacy for utility.
    A wasp was buzzing around her head and she waved it away, getting up to escape the breakfast table and stand at the boat’s railing. The sea was a shimmering blue-green just below where she stood but faded, by inches and wavelets, to a purer aquamarine until at the very edge of the cliffs it seemed almost gray.
    A pleasure boat was anchored perhaps two hundred feet away, and Lilly could hear the holiday-goers laughing and making merry. From time to time there was a cannonball burst from the deck, and a child or a man splashed into the water.
    Marianne materialized at Lilly’s side, tucking her hair into her white rubber cap.
    “Why don’t you come in, Lilly?” she said. “The water holds you up out there like God’s hands.”
    “I will, very soon,” Lilly said.
    “Harrison says there are ruins of a castle high on that cliff. I’m going to climb up there.”
    Without another word, she was gone in a head-first dive over the teak rail of the boat, and was swimming strongly toward the cliffs. It was then that Lilly noticed Izak pulling himself up on a cable coming off the anchor and attached to the forward point of the boat. He was reaching up from the water and pulling himself upward on the diagonal steel coil. He climbed, monkey-like, hand over hand, then hung there, poised in the air, looking out at the cliffs. Lilly observed his animal strength, his confidence, his power, and his beauty. This was a man like no man she had ever known. As he hung there on the cable, she could count his individual ribs in the gleam of the sun. His morning beard stubble was as dark as his shaved skull. His skin was deeply tanned, his features even and strikingly beautiful.
    Though she had not meant to spy on him, she saw he was startled to find her watching him. He suddenly let go of the cable, dropping into the sea below.
    She turned away quickly, before he surfaced, and hurried below to the cabin where she pulled her on bathing suit, found her goggles, her towel, and ascended to the deck. Without discussing her intentions with anyone and before she lost her nerve, she climbed backward down the ladder toward the sea. On the ladder’s last step, she let herself fall, without hesitation, bottom first, into the water. The shock of the cold made her gasp, but then she was buoyed upward as if a spring had pushed through the ooze of the sea floor and guided her back up to the surface. She had to exert no effort at all to stay afloat. When she caught her breath, she saw Izak holding onto the base of the ladder and wiping water out of his eyes with the back of his hand.
    All the others were invisible in the boat above them. In the distance, the pleasure boat passengers were