At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)(31)

"Out."

"Dinner isn't over."

"Stay," his mother urged. "Have some dessert."

"Don't wait up for me," he said. "I'll be late."

Five minutes later he was racing down the road toward the lighthouse and Gracie.





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Noah always parked just around the bend where the road split, making sure his tiny sports car was hidden deep in the shadows thrown by the lighthouse. Gracie slipped her ancient Mustang into the space between his car and the fence and darted swiftly across the rocks to where he waited for her on a slender strip of sand. He was lying on his back on the faded blue blanket they called their own, hands linked behind his head, looking up at the stars.

Gracie threw herself down on the blanket next to him and kissed him. "I'm sorry I'm so late," she said as she snuggled down into his embrace, "but Gramma felt like talking and..." Her words trailed off. She didn't want to talk about what lay ahead. "I'm glad I'm here."

He pulled her closer. His body was warm and hard and strong and she melted against it, amazed as always by the way they fit together.

"I was afraid you weren't going to make it," Noah said after they'd kissed a few times, deep delicious kisses that made her restless and hungry inside.

"Nothing could keep me away from you," she said, even though she knew you were never supposed to tell a boy how much you cared. "The worst nor'easter in the world wouldn't keep me away."

He looked at her strangely for what seemed like forever. His beautiful blue eyes looked dark with shadows.

"What?" she asked, forcing a little laugh. "Why are you looking at me like that?" You would think he had never seen her before, the way his gaze roamed across her face. Like he was memorizing every inch of it.

He trailed his index finger down over her right cheekbone to her lips. Nobody had ever looked at her that way before, as if he wanted to disappear into her soul.

"I love you, Gracie."

She stopped breathing while the words flashed and sparkled in the air before her, brighter than Venus and Vega overhead. "I'm dreaming," she whispered. "Say it again."

He did, more softly this time, and then he tilted her chin until she was looking directly into his eyes, same as he had the first time he'd kissed her, and in that instant she knew that he meant every word. For the rest of her life she would remember this moment when all of the stars in the summer sky swooped down from the heavens and lifted her higher and higher until she was sure she could reach out and touch the moon.

"Gracie." His voice was low, urgent, wonderfully uncertain. "Don't keep me hanging..."

"I love you." She knew she would never say those words to another man, not as long as she lived. "I've loved you from the very beginning."

His eyes glowed with pleasure. "Yeah?"

She kissed his chin, his cheek, his neck. "Yeah." She kissed his mouth, feeling shy and wild. "You told me to hang up my sweater in the coat closet so Mrs. Cavanaugh wouldn't get mad at me and I decided right then and there that you were my guardian angel."

"I don't remember that."

"I do," she said. "You even held a seat for me and because you liked me, the other kids decided it was okay for them to like me too. I'll never forget that."

"You wore a red sweater," he said slowly, as it all came back to him, "with a tiny gold cross around your neck." He fingered the delicate chain that disappeared beneath her blouse and found a gold cross dangling from it. "This isn't the same one, is it?"

"Same one." The tiny filigreed cross was all Gracie had of her mother. She never took it off.

He trailed his finger against the curve of her breast. "Your skin is still warm from the sun."

"Impossible." She shivered at his gentle touch. "I worked inside all day." He pressed his mouth to the base of her throat and the world seemed to spin around her. "In the air conditioning."

His hand slid under her shirt, his long fingers tracing the line of her rib cage. "Warm and soft."

"We shouldn't..." His touch was magical, impossible to resist. "What if someone sees us..."

"Nobody will see us." They'd been coming there every night for almost two months and nobody in town had any idea.