Page 59 of Duty and Desire

I blinked. “Color me intrigued. Where exactly are we going at this hour of the night?”

He smiled. “Wait and see.”

By the time I’d emerged from the bedroom, my arms full, he was standing on the veranda, holding a flashlight. I followed him to the jetty, where he climbed into the boat, holding out his hands for our supplies. Then he helped me aboard.

I sat beside him as he switched on the engine. “Curiosity is killing me.”

“You’ll survive. You’re not a cat.” He drove out into the lagoon, the lights on the boat’s bow showing the way. The sky was black, the waters calm. When we’d gone out a far way, Nick dropped the anchor—and switched off the lights.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going to look at the stars. Let your eyes become accustomed to the dark.”

Stargazing? From a boat?

Then I took in my surroundings, and whatever words I’d been about to utter died in my throat. The lagoon was so calm, it was like a mirror, and I couldn’t make out the horizon.

It was as if I were floating in space.

Nick spread out the blanket in the cockpit, then arranged the pillows before lying down. He stretched out his hand to me.

“Come here.”

I joined him, my head resting on the pillow. I looked up into the night sky, and two things were made clear to me.

I was insignificant, nothing more than a speck in the universe.

The only word to describe the star-strewn canopy above our heads was majestic.

Nick pointed up. “There’s the Milky Way. I love seeing it on nights like this, when it looks like a river of stars stretching out across the sky. Bora-Bora is great for stargazing. The light pollution is minimal,and there’s so little development on the island, it keeps the skies dark.”

“Why do I feel as though I’m gazing into the very heart of the universe?” I murmured.

“Spoken like a writer. What constellations do you recognize?”

“We can see Orion from the US.” I pointed to a collection of stars. “Is that the Southern Cross?” I’d never seen it, except in photos.

“It is. And you see that bright star there, southeast of Orion? That’s Sirius, part of the constellation of Canis Major, the Greater Dog. Did you know, there are forty-two constellations that represent an animal?”

I held out my arm, and Nick snuggled up to me. “How come you know so much about Astronomy? Did you study it in college?”

“It was something I was always interested in. Where I lived, there was little light pollution too. The stars were so abundant, they were like shiny dust.” He chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“I was recalling something from university. One summer, Claudia and I went on a nighttime stargazing trip with some other students. We didn’t go far, just to a city park. A few of them had never seen the sky through a telescope before, and one of them got really excited about it. But that’s not the funny part. There was one guy who was looking at the moon. He spent several minutes staring into the eyepiece. Then he turned to us and remarked that it was a lot smaller than he’d expected.” Nick grinned. “You should have seen his face when I told him he was looking at Jupiter.”

I laughed. “Seriously?”

“Absolutely true.”

I snickered. “My kid brother swore he saw a shooting star once. Turned out it was a firefly.”

We lay there in the dark, while Nick pointed out Pegasus, Scorpius, and Centaurus. I smiled at that last one. “Is that where Alpha Centauri is?”

“I’m impressed.”

I coughed. “I watched a lot ofStar Trekwhen I was a kid.”

---