Carolina Mist (28 page)

In the dark, she could sense his smile, and she smiled, too, remembering Belle’s husband. Granger was a dear man, one who had doted on Alex and worshipped the ground his
diminutive wife walked on. The epitome of the true Southern gentleman, Granger Matthews had always had a kind word for everyone he met. In Abby’s mind’s eye, she would forever see the man trudging to the river’s edge in the earliest hours of the day,
dad
in a crisp red-and-white shirt, a fishing rod in one hand and a tackle box in the other—and Alex by his side. The business of the town’s banking could always wait, it seemed, where Alex and fishing were concerned.

“I remember a couple of times, when I was about eight or nine, he took me to the Outer Banks to surf-fish. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get that damned line out into the ocean, but one quick flick of his wrist would send that hook twenty feet or better from the shore.

“And we never took bait. Grampa always said the best bait was waiting for us right there in the sea. First, he’d catch spots offshore—shiny little fish with a dark spot—and use them to bait his hook, then he’d set about the task of some serious fishing. One time, he decided we’d camp out there on the beach. He’d caught a big sea bass that day and cooked it over an open fire right there, fifteen feet from the ocean. You know, I’ve eaten in some of the finest restaurants in the world over the past few years, but I’ve never had a meal I enjoyed more than I enjoyed that fish. And we stayed right there on the sand that night, in sleeping bags, under the stars, with the surf pounding away and the smell of salt so thick in the air.” He paused, as if seeing it all in his mind, then he laughed softly. “I didn’t get a wink of sleep for worrying that those damned little crabs that scurry around the sand at night would get into my sleeping bag and bite their way out.”

“Ghost crabs.” Abby nodded to the dark. “That’s what we used to call them.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it, how some things stay hidden inside you for so long, and then, in less than a heartbeat, some one little thing will bring back a memory so powerful it can knock the wind from your lungs as cleanly as a fist to the chest?”

She nodded, then realized that he probably had not seen
the gesture, there in the dark, but she knew it did not matter. A few minutes passed before he spoke again.

“My grandfather was the finest man I ever knew,” he told her. “He was what I wanted to be when I grew up. He was everything I would ever need to be.”

Abby could feel the stillness settle around them.

“I had almost forgotten how much I loved him.” Alex spoke just barely above a whisper, his voice cracking just the slightest bit. In the dim light from the kitchen, his face appeared to shine with a soft, wet glow.

Swallowing the sudden lump in her own throat, Abby rose quietly to return to the house to give Alex a few moments to mourn the man he had loved so dearly. As she opened the door, he called her name.

“Yes?” She replied.

“I’m sorry I argued with you last week. About Drew.”

She stood in the doorway for a long minute. “I’ll leave your sheets on the end of your bed.”

“Abby?”

“What?”

“Listen.” He turned the radio up. “Isn’t this is one of your favorites?”

Patsy Cline. “Crazy.”

“Yes.”

“Dance with me.” He stood up, walked slowly toward her, and held out his hand.

“Here? On the porch?”

“No. Out there. On the grass.”

“I’m not wearing shoes.”

“I’ll carry you.”

As easily as Sunny would lift Lilly, Alex picked her up and carried her to the grassy area between the house and the garden. Lowering her body until her feet touched the ground, he wrapped one strong arm around her and slowly pulled her as close to him as she could get. He hummed with his lips at the side of her head as he led her around the moonlit yard in a sort of waltz. Abby’s toes skimmed the carpet of new grass, damp with the evening dew, and her head spun as if she had polished off the entire bottle of
dinner wine on her own. If she stood on tiptoe, her head rested on his hard chest just below his shoulders. They swayed in the shadows of the pines and the rose arbor, the thick scent of honeysuckle perfuming the air and the gentle
whoooo
of an owl punctuating Patsy’s vocals. Pine needles pricked softly at the soles of her bare feet as she looked up into Alex’s face, but she knew that her life had never held a moment of more pure romance.

Melissa be damned.

Abby reached her left hand up behind his neck and drew his face down to hers. He leaned slightly forward to meet her mouth and seemed to all but devour her with a kiss that had been years in the waiting. His lips were soft and warm, and the kiss was hard and hot. Abby’s head began to buzz loudly like a disturbed hive, and her toes were curling at the ends of her bare feet.

For a very long moment, Abby thought perhaps he had drawn her very soul through his mouth and breathed it out again. She knew she was still alive because her toes were damp and cold in the wet grass—all other systems seemed to have momentarily shut down—but she wasn’t aware of having inhaled anytime recently. He tasted exactly the way she remembered, and his kisses were the same as the kisses that had haunted her for the past ten years. The only kisses that had ever turned her inside out. The same ones that years ago had fanned a living flame that had never been extinguished and had never burned for anyone else.

He kissed her eyes, and he kissed her mouth, and he kissed her chin, and he kissed her throat, and she knew if he kissed any lower, she’d be lost forever. When his lips traced a line down her throat to her collarbone, she knew it was all over.

He whispered her name into her throat, and her name became an invocation for everything that was necessary to sustain life on this planet. All she could do was to redirect his mouth to hers, knowing that if she didn’t return his kisses, she would die right there in Leila’s backyard, with pine needles stuck in her feet and the sweet trace of honeysuckle flooding her senses. Every inch of her body
began to smolder and melt into his. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a faint alarm tried to sound, but she muffled its warning and blocked it out. She did not want to hear, did not want to know, did not want to feel anything other than Alex. After all these years, the hunger had been growing. Now that she could feed, she would.

He lifted her from the ground, and she felt her legs wrap around his hips as if they possessed a life of their own. She knew that if ever there would be a moment in her life when she would lose her head, it would be here and now.

“Abby
…”
He sighed into her ear, her hair, her throat. “I can
’t stand it anymore…”

“Neither can I,” she whispered.

“I’ve wanted you since
I
was sixteen years old.”

“Seventeen,” she corrected him. “You were seventeen that year. I was sixteen.”

“It started the year before that,” he said between kisses on her neck. “I was afraid to let you know.”

“So where do we go from here?”

The question seemed to throw him momentarily off guard. He looked toward the house, where his grandmother and her cousin and daughter lay sleeping. Maybe.

“Back to where it all began.” The smile spread slowly, and he lifted her completely off the ground and began to walk toward the river.

She felt deliciously light-headed, and wanted nothing as much as she wanted to hold that feeling and let it continue to enfold her. She prayed that nothing would spoil the mood or the moment or the feeling of how right it was, how right it had always been between them.

“Where are you going?”

“To the carriage house, of course.” He grinned. “To finish what we started half a lifetime ago.”

She giggled into his neck, and he laughed as he stumbled along the worn path. There had been no need to ask or any need to grant permission. This night had been a long time in coming for both of them. It had never been a question of if but merely of when. They had always belonged together and, deep in their souls, had always known exactly that.

Whatever it was that had brought him to recognize this fact did not seem at that moment to be of any consequence. He walked along the dock in the moonlight and, with his right hand, pulled open the door. He had been prepared to have to tug on it, and the ease of its opening sent him back a step or two.

With the ease of a dancer, he stepped into the dark carriage house and let the moonlight lead the way, as he had done many times so long ago. He set her feet upon the ladder’s wooden rungs and, with one hand on her hip, guided her from behind up the steps to the loft. Halfway up, her foot missed a step, and she slipped back against him. He held her there for a long moment, absorbing her nearness. His lips found the back of her neck, and his left hand dragged slowly down the length of her, feeling every inch of her from the base of her throat to her thigh.

“Alex.” She gasped. “We have to get off the ladder
…
” He pushed her up the remaining stairs, then tumbled onto her as she lay back in the old straw. He covered her with his body, and she stretched out and arched her back to blend into him.

“We are a terrible fit,” she whispered, noting that her body was at least a foot shorter than his.

“The fit will be just fine,” he assured her.

He slipped a hand up under her skirt and slid it to the top of her thigh, then back to her knee.

“You always had the best legs,” he told her. “I swear, that last summer, every time I closed my eyes, all I could see were your perfect legs.”

His hand slid farther up under her loose skirt, caressing her skin as if all the bits and pieces belonged to him, as if all were parts of himself, until her breath caught in her throat and threatened to strangle her. She was aroused to distraction, and, almost unconsciously, she made a cradle with her hips and eased him into the opening.

“Ah, Ab,” he whispered gently, his breath soft against her skin, “it seems like I’ve waited all my life for you.”

“The wait is over.” She touched his lips with her fingertips. “For both of us.”

There was no more talk, no more reminiscing. She tugged on the waist of his jeans with a wordless demand, and he acquiesced and followed where she led him. He slid into her warmth and was swallowed whole by it, and she by him, and, by dawn, the longing of ten long years had been sated and renewed and had grown into a fire that they both instinctively knew would never be extinguished.

32

A
bby had, she was certain, passed beyond mortal existence and entered paradise right through the front gates. It seemed that a lifetime had passed while she had floated and swirled and waltzed to a melody only she could hear. When the time came for her to return to this earth, she did so grudgingly. She lay inside the cove of Alex’s arms and listened to his heart’s attempts to regulate its rhythm. There were no words to be spoken, no sound to break the spell that had wound, as delicately as a dream, to bind them. They lay in sheltered silence amid the faint smell of old straw and the honeysuckle that covered the back of the old building, their eyes closed as if in slumber, though neither of them slept.

Abby could feel the sunrise before she opened her eyes to peer through the dirt-smeared window to her left. Soon, Alex had turned to gaze out, watching the new day spread its purple and gold streaks behind the trees on the bank of the river. The early morning burned with promise, and when Abby could put it off no longer, she nudged him.

“It’s dawn,” she told him.

“I know.”

“We can’t stay here all day.”

“We can’t?”

“ ’Fraid not.”

“Hmmmm.” He sighed and snuggled in a little closer.

“Alex.” She nuzzled his face. “Belle will be looking for
me soon, and I suspect that sooner or later, someone from your office will be looking for you.” She dared not put a face on that someone.

“You’re right.” He yawned and stretched. “I have to be in court by eleven. I will really have to fly to get there.”

The thought of his real world, his life apart from Primrose and its obligations that had nothing to do with her— and everything to do with someone else—brought Abby back to reality with an unpleasant thud. Reluctantly, she prodded him until their clothes were on straight and she could inch him toward the ladder, where they descended to a reality that bore no resemblance to anything that had passed between them during the hours they spent in the loft. They went out through the old stable area, through the back door of the carriage house into the new day.

Alex stopped on the dock to soak up the morning dew and to drink in the sweetness of the dawn. He drew Abby to him with one arm, the hand of which caressed her neck through the tumble of curls that danced like unruly demons around her face and neck and shoulders. Overhead, a large crow scolded them, setting off a chorus of cackles from the pines. Alex laughed and led her toward the walk. He lifted Abby when she stepped on a loose nail and cried out, and he carried her to the back of the house, where the radio still played on the porch. Alex turned it off as he stood Abby on the top step.

She draped her arms loosely around his neck, and he placed both hands on the sides of her face and drew her close, kissing her mouth.

“Go in now,” he told her, “and get some sleep.”

“This is actually the time I usually get up.” She stroked his hair.

“I will be tied up all this week,” he said. “I am trying a case that should be over by tomorrow, but then I will be in Providence probably right through late Friday afternoon. I should be back here by Saturday morning to resume my duties as handyman-love slave. Can I bring you anything from Rhode Island?”

“Just you,” she whispered.

“You can bet on that.” He kissed her, and for a fleeting minute, all was very right with the world.

“Abby,” he said, looking down into her eyes, “I want you to know that, all these years since that last summer I spent here with you, I never kissed a woman who did not have your face. I have never made love to anyone who wasn’t
you.
”

He lifted their intertwined hands to his face and kissed her fingers before kissing her mouth, then the tip of her nose.

“I’ll see you this weekend,” he said, and she nodded and watched from the top step as he followed the dirt path to his car. “Get some sleep,” he said before he got into the sporty red machine and turned on the engine.

She waved as he backed down the drive, and he was long gone before she moved from the spot where she had stood when he kissed her good-bye.

Abby hummed softly as she locked the back door and turned off the kitchen light. On bare feet, she half
pirouetted into the front hallway, then padded up the steps to her room. She tiptoed into the room and sat on her bed, still dressed. She pulled the old quilt up around her. In a dreamlike state, she sank back against the pillow for the better part of an hour, her mind almost as blank as the expression on her face. Her senses remained stunned, her body still soft and languid, still bearing Alex’s scent and his touch.

“I never kissed a woman who did not have your face,” he had told her with the solemnity of an oath. “I have never made love to anyone who wasn’t
you.
”

With a prickly dart of suspicion in her heart, she wondered if “anyone” included Melissa.

Abby slept for a little more than an hour before the shrieks of the squirrels romping in the upper limbs of the sweet gum tree woke her. She stretched and hugged herself, still savoring the lingering sense of awe that had slipped in around her the night before and declined all opportunity to leave. The night had been magic, and every breath she had taken since the moment she stepped into his arms had been
blessed with the sweet inevitability of loving Alex Kane. She loosened the cocoon she had made of her quilt, pushed her feet and legs beyond the fabric, and sat up, scrunching her fingers into her hair to untangle the curled reddish loops. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, picturing in her mind the way it had all unfolded, and she smiled. It had all been so right.

She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve, and her smile faded as the realization crept upon her that her life would never be the same. Alex had felt it, too, she was certain. What she did not know was whether in Alex’s eyes the night in the carriage house marked a beginning, or if it signified nothing more than the fruition of an adolescent fantasy, the closing of a door too long left open.

And where from here?
she wondered.

Where indeed?

“
A
bby? Abby, have you heard even one word I’ve said?” Naomi stood on the dirt path, her hands on her hips and a bemused smile on her face. “I said, the Loch Ness monster has surfaced down there near the dock. CBS and CNN have both called. They’ll be here by suppertime. ‘Hard Copy’ will arrive in time for dessert.”

“Yes.” Abby nodded absentmindedly as she pulled the next section of errant plant life from the old perennial bed Sunny had started working on before taking Lilly and Sam to the library for story hour. “Okay.”

“Abigail McKenna, where are you?” Naomi asked, more gently this time.

“What? Oh. I was just thinking about
…
about what to make for dinner.”

Naomi laughed. “Nice try.”

“What do you mean?”

“Abby, we both know that Sunny is making dinner tonight, which is just as well, since rumor has it that over the past two days, your culinary talents seem to have mysteriously deserted you.”

Abby stared at her friend, as if demanding an explanation.

“Let’s see, now, last night, you overcooked the pasta by ten minutes. Leather spaghetti, I heard it referred to. Then, this morning, the specialty of the house was, I believe, broiled grapefruit. Or was that charbroiled?” Naomi was fighting a grin. “Of course, this is all rumor and supposition
…
”

“Okay, so my timing is off.” Abby shrugged.

“Oh, my ass, Abigail.”

Abby sat back on the grass and looked up at her friend. “I admit, I’m distracted.”

Naomi looked down into the eyes of the friend she had come to hold so dear in so short a time. “Are you ready to talk about it?”

“Almost.”

“I’m here, sugar, whenever you need me.”

“I know you are,” Abby said with an easy confidence that still came as a surprise to her. “And I love you for it. It’s just that right now, I need to sort some things out.”

“Whenever you are ready, Abby.” Naomi kissed the palm of her own hand, then touched her palm to the top of Abby’s head. “The road to my house is a very short one.”

Abby watched as Naomi disappeared around the side of the house, limping a bit more than normal.
She does too much,
Abby told herself as she gathered up the discarded weeds to throw on the compost pile Sunny had suggested she start near the far right side of the yard.

Sitting on the old wooden bench she and Sunny had dragged from the carriage house that morning, Abby popped the top off the plastic bottle she’d earlier filled with ice water and took a long drink, then leaned back to look around the garden. She needed to plant bulbs, she told herself, so that next spring, the beds would be ablaze with color, like Naomi’s were, like half the gardens in Primrose were. Butter-yellow daffodils and tulips of red and pink, of gold and purple, and hyacinth for fragrance, and
…
Oh, damn. I’m beginning to think like a person who intends to stay.

Abby went inside the house and washed the dark soil from her hands. With an air of purpose, she went to her
room and took the envelope from her desk, then skipped down the steps and unlocked the front door. She was just in time for the postman. They made small talk, he gave her the day’s mail, and she handed him, after just the slightest hesitation, the resume tha
t only the day before, the head
hunter in Dallas had asked her to mail.

She went back inside and checked the birthday cake she had made for Drew. True, she had been absentminded these past few days. She was grateful that Drew’s cake had neither flopped nor burned. She sensed that this birthday dinner was somehow more important to him than she had appreciated, and she wanted to make it a nice evening for him. She might be an emotional jumble this week, but Drew, by gum, would have his birthday dinner in Thomas Cassidy’s house.

“
A
bby, that’s about the best-looking birthday cake I ever saw,” Sunny told her. “Certainly prettier than the one that Justin got for my last birthday. Or any other birthday, now that I think of it.”

“You don’t think it’s
too
pretty, do you? I mean, for a man?” Abby frowned. “You don’t think the violets are too much?”

Sunny stood back and studied the chocolate confection with the candied violets gathered slightly to one side to leave room for the candles.

“No, I don’t. It’s a wonderful cake, and Drew will love it.”

Which he did, he exclaimed, when she brought it to the table after a dinner consisting of chicken in wine with pineapples and water chestnuts over wild rice.

“Abby, this is so wonderful,” he told her, with sincerity so absolute that even Belle appeared to soften. “I never had a more special birthday. A terrific dinner, warm company, even balloons. How do I thank you?”

“My mother always said that all birthdays were special.” Abby smiled. “I’m happy that we are able to share this one with you. And you may thank Lilly for the balloons—she thought that tying them to the backs of the chairs would be festive.”

“Can we sing now?” Lilly, who had had her eye on the cake all afternoon, asked wistfully.

“I’ll get some matches.” Abby went into the kitchen to search for a source of candle ignition.

“I’ll bet you had a big cake on your birthday, Lilly,” Drew said.

“I haven’t had one yet,” she told him.

Puzzled, he looked to Susannah.

“We don’t know when Lilly was bo
rn
,” she told him, “and we just haven’t gotten around to choosing a day.”

Drew pushed his chair back from the table and beckoned to the child. Lilly went to him and climbed onto his lap without hesitation.

“Lilly, I would be very honored to share my birthday with you,” Drew said quietly.

Lilly seemed to think it over, one eye on the cake.

“The birthday cake, too?” she asked. “And the balloons?”

“Absolutely. You cannot have a proper birthday without a birthday cake and lots of balloons. I learned that today, and I believe it to be true.”

Lilly looked expectantly at her mother, who was busy swallowing back a lump roughly the size of Delaware. Sunny nodded.

“Then it is settled,” Drew told the child. “Today is officially Lilly’s birthday.”

Lilly beamed and sat up just a wee bit straighter, feeling suddenly the importance of being a birthday girl.

“And here are the candles,” Abby said
solemnly
, sensing that a matter of some weight had just been decreed. “Shall we do three for Drew—Drew, since you’re thirty-something, that’s one per decade—and five candles for Lilly, since she hasn’t had the opportunity to blow out birthday candles before? How’s that?”

Abby lit the eight candles and watched the delighted child make a wish before blowing them out with Drew’s assistance.

Abby placed the box holding Drew’s present in front of him.

“Sunny and I tried to think of something to give you that
would be special,” she told him, “something that woul
d be meaningful to you and…
well, open it and see what you think.”