Always the Last to Know(106)

“Yes! Way to go, Honey!” Noah said.

But I felt suddenly . . . bereft. That was it? After two hours together?

It wasn’t. In a glorious whoosh of water that pulled around my legs, Honey and her mama circled us, once, then twice, and for one beautiful second, we could hear their clicking and squeaking.

Then they were ten feet away, surfacing for air side by side, then twenty, and then they disappeared, indiscernible from the choppy waves in the darkening sea.

“They thanked you,” Noah said, wonder in his voice. “Now that doesn’t happen every day.”

I was crying with the beauty of it. Wrapped my arms around Noah and sobbed, then kissed him full on the mouth, tasting the salt of my tears and the ocean.

“Okay, dolphin girl,” he said, pushing my wet hair off my face. “Let’s get you home.”



* * *



— —

    Because God obviously approved of my efforts, the power came on five minutes after we got back to the house. Pepper greeted us ecstatically, and I bent down to kiss her. “We did it! She’s back with her mommy! All because you saw her, Pepper!” I swear she knew what I meant, because she did a victory lap around the downstairs, found her squeaky possum toy and started the musical portion of our evening.

“Go take a hot shower before you get hypothermia,” Noah said, scrubbing a hand through his wet hair. “Your lips are blue.”

“You go take a hot shower before you get hypothermia,” I said. “You were just a Good Samaritan, whereas Pepper and I have trained for this all our lives.”

He rolled his eyes (fondly, I thought). “Don’t be dumb, Sadie. You were out there a lot longer than I was.”

“Warmed by my love of marine mammals, though.”

“Get in the shower.”

“I have to see if my phone will dry out.”

“Forget your phone.”

“I have to post something on social media so the world knows of my greatness.”

“Damn you, Sadie,” he growled, and then—finally—he was on me, mouth on mine, arms around me, tongue against mine. He lifted me up on the butcher block, muttering, “I could’ve made something a lot better than this piece of crap,” before yanking open my jacket, pushing it down my arms so I was pinned. He kissed me like he was drowning, dying, and I was the only one who could save him.

And you know, saving was kind of my thing that day, so I wrapped my legs around him and kissed him back, freeing one arm so I could grip his wet hair.

“I have eight minutes of hot water in that tank,” I said, gasping a little. “Let’s make them count.”

He still knew how to undress a woman with great efficiency. He could still carry me. He still had that look of intense concentration when he worked, and he still smiled during a kiss, hot water running over us, soap sliding between us. He still knew every place I loved to be touched, where I was ticklish, how to make my knees buckle.

But he was new as well. He turned off the water when it started to cool, stepped out and wrapped me in a towel. Dried himself off fast, his six-pack rippling, his shoulders smooth and hypnotic with muscle. Then he kissed me and kissed me, sliding his hands under my ass, picked me up and carried me upstairs.

“I’m on the Pill and passed my STD panel with flying colors,” I said as he dumped me on the bed.

“I see your dirty talk hasn’t improved,” he said.

“I just want you to know, I’d never take any chances with you, Noah.” I was abruptly serious. “Even if we . . . I mean, if we’re about to do this, I just wanted you to . . . feel safe.”

He lay down on top of me, his skin so smooth and warm, still damp, his wet curls hanging around his face. “Special,” he whispered, “the last thing I feel with you is safe.”

I didn’t know why the words were so romantic, why they wrapped around my heart and pulled.

But they did, and when we were finally making love, finally, finally together again, I knew I was home.





CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE





Barb


The morning after the big storm, I had to take John back to Gaylord for an assessment with his team. He’d had another MRI, and they were going to go over the results with us and talk about future therapy and all that.

Driving the hour plus to Wallingford was almost peaceful. John didn’t talk, though he’d been making more noise lately, trying to say words. And I tried to understand them, but it was tough. Sadie thought it meant a full recovery was just around the corner, but I wasn’t so sure. He seemed to check out a lot, and those words . . . I knew he wanted to tell me something, but his speech was so unclear, and the effort exhausted him.

Poor John. I wondered if he’d have been so bad off if he hadn’t been riding his bike that day. If someone had been there and saw him fall, gotten to him sooner. If he hadn’t banged his head in addition to having the stroke. In other words, if he hadn’t been having an affair and training for a triathlon in January, maybe the stroke wouldn’t have been so bad.

But the anger and humiliation I felt had seeped away. It’s real hard to be upset with a man who can’t cut his own food.

I’d been awfully busy yesterday, fielding calls from people reporting power outages and downed trees, and sent the fire department out to help the Patrick family get their generator started, since Violet had a condition where she couldn’t regulate her body temperature, and if their house got cold, she’d get so cold she’d have to check into the hospital. The Fieldings lost their cat, so once the fire department was done at the Patricks’, they headed over there, and I went, too, since Juliet came over and said she’d watch her dad. I loved cats. Always wanted to get one, but John was severely allergic. We did find the sweet little thing, crouched under the car, scared of the wind.