Coming Home (Jackson Falls Series)

by Breton, Laurie

  chapter thirty-two

  It was a sunny autumn day, near seventy degrees as they cut across country toward the coast and Acadia National Park. They stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s drive-thru. When Casey offered to pay her share of the bill, he just stared at her through dark glasses, and she put her money away. “I give up,” she said. “You win.”

  He handed a twenty to the cashier. “When I take a woman out on a date, Fiore, I pay her way.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Are we on a date?”

  He took his change from the cashier and pocketed it. “Yeah,” he said, handing her their drinks. “Try to act like it.”

  “It’s been so long,” she said, “I’m not sure I remember proper dating etiquette. Should I sit on your lap or something?”

  “Tacky, Fiore. Real tacky.” He handed her the bag of food. “You don’t sit on my lap until after we eat.”

  He parked in the shade of a maple tree that was turning a brilliant orange, and they ate at the picnic table beneath it, tossing scraps to the seagulls who hovered just out of reach. When he finished his Big Mac, he slid across the bench and wrapped an ankle around hers. “Now,” he said, “it’s time for you to sit on my lap.”

  She bit into a French fry. “I thought you knew,” she said. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

  “You mean I spent all this money on you, babycakes, and I don’t get anything in return?”

  “That’s how it lays out, MacKenzie.”

  “Doesn’t seem quite fair.”

  She crumpled up her sandwich wrapper. “You get what you pay for,” she said. “If you’d sprung for a nice little sirloin instead of a fish filet, I might have been able to demonstrate a little more gratitude.”

  When he smiled, she felt as though she were emerging from darkness into the light of a thousand suns. “The day is young, sweetheart,” he said. “Anything could happen.”

  The view from the Cadillac summit was worth the trip. Inland, splashes of blue alternated with patches of glorious reds and yellows and oranges for as far as the eye could see. In the opposite direction, the spiky backs of the Porcupine Islands dotted the iridescent blue of Frenchmen’s Bay. Hand in hand, they climbed over rocks and wandered among the scrub pines and juniper that lived here at the top of the highest peak on the Eastern seaboard.

  When they tired of exploring the mountain top, they drove back down and followed Ocean Drive around the perimeter of the park. At Thunder Hole, they parked next to a Buick with New Jersey plates, and together with a retired couple from East Orange, they listened to the ocean’s roar. The surf slammed in against the rocks and shot skyward, and Rob wrapped an arm loosely around her and pulled her back out of the path of the churning water. Casey leaned into him, and together they stood mesmerized by the relentless power of the surf that had pummeled these rocks for a billion years.

  Farther down the road, they discovered a rocky beach where they sifted through the seaweed, gathered unusual rocks, explored the tidal pools. “Look,” she said, lifting something from crystal-clear water. “A starfish!”

  Like two kids who’d made some momentous discovery, they examined it, studied its shape and form, marveled at the texture of this living creature before Casey returned it to the water from which she’d plucked it.

  He was watching her with a bemused expression. “What?” she said.

  “You look about twelve years old, Fiore, playing in the water with the fishies.”

  “Me?” she said. “What about you? Jeans rolled up, sunburned nose—”

  “At least I don’t have seaweed in my hair,” he said, plucking out the offending object and tossing it away. “You’re starting to look like the Wicked Witch of the West. Good thing I know what you’re supposed to look like. Otherwise, I’d probably run away in fright.”

  “One more crack like that,” she said, “and you’ll be hoofing it home.”

  “That’s what you think, darlin’. I’m the one with the car keys.”

  She leveled a long, steady look at him. And smiled wickedly. “I can find them,” she said.

  He grinned and edged closer. “Maybe I was wrong earlier,” he said.

  For no discernible reason, her heart began to hammer. “About what?” she said.

  “Maybe this is the part where you’re supposed to sit on my lap.”

  “And search for car keys?”

  He toyed with a strand of her hair. “And search for anything your little heart desires,” he said, and lowered his head toward hers.

  Behind her, a car door slammed, and the high-pitched voices of children floated over the nodding beach grass. Slowly, her eyes opened and looked directly into his, just inches away. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he said. “I can’t take this any more. Let’s go find a room somewhere.”

  They walked back to the car in silence. He popped open the trunk and she dropped in her bounty of rocks and shells. He unlocked the driver’s door and got in, unlocked her door, and without speaking, they busied themselves adjusting seats and fastening seat belts. He started the engine, released the emergency brake, stepped on the accelerator, and popped the clutch.

  The car came to a sudden, jerky halt, and he flushed. “Goddamn Japanese cars,” he muttered, and started the engine again.

  This time, he managed to keep it running. She lay her hand atop his on the gearshift knob. “Where are we going?” she said.

  “How the hell am I supposed to know? I’ve never been on this frigging island in my life!”

  So she wasn’t the only one who was a basket case. She wondered if his stomach felt the way hers did, all hollow and jumpy and queasy. “Just up the road,” she said with a calm she was far from feeling, “there’s a turnoff that’ll take you back to Bar Harbor.”

  He found the intersection, made the turn, and followed the twisting road back through the wilderness, past beaver dams and rusted trailers and road signs with bullet holes in them. Through Bar Harbor, with its crumbling mansions, and out onto the main route that led back to Ellsworth. There, perched on a sprawling hillside that looked out over Frenchmen’s Bay, they found a motel that hadn’t yet closed for the season.

  He left her waiting in the car, her insides knotted in terror. It had been too long since she’d been with a man. She wouldn’t know how or where to begin. She wanted to be perfect for him, but she wasn’t. Her neck was too long, her breasts too small, and she had the tiny beginnings of crow’s feet around her eyes. What if he found her lacking? What if she found him lacking? What if they ended up destroying fifteen years of friendship?

  The car door opened, and he got back in. “I rented a cabin,” he said. “I hope that’s okay with you.”

  A cabin was less impersonal than a motel room. More private. “A cabin’s fine,” she said.

  “Look,” he said, his gaze focused on the narrow road he was navigating through the back forty, “there’s something I have to say before this goes any further. I’m thirty-five years old. I’ve been married and divorced twice, I’ve had some really lousy relationships, and in between, I haven’t exactly lived like a monk.”

  “You don’t have to apologize for your checkered past,” she said softly. “I know all about it, and it doesn’t matter.”

  “I just want you to understand where I’m coming from. For a long time now, there’s been nobody. Not for lack of opportunity, but because I haven’t wanted anybody but you.”

  The cabin was immaculate, with knotty pine walls, a fieldstone fireplace, and a magnificent mahogany four-poster bed. Casey looked at her face in the mirror over the bathroom sink and was horrified by her windblown appearance. Rob brought in her overnight bag, and she shut herself in the bathroom and tried to repair the day’s damage. She washed her face with cool water, brushed her teeth, her hair, and thought about hiding in the bathroom until tomorrow. Was she afraid they wouldn’t be good together? Or was she afraid they’d be too good together? She knew him better than anyone else in the world. Why did she feel as if she were about to fa
ce a stranger?

  While he took his turn behind the bathroom door, she stood gazing out at the ocean that was so close she could hear its muffled roar through the closed window. On Frenchmen’s Bay, a lobsterman was hauling traps. The afternoon sun caught on some shiny object on the deck of his boat, exploding with blinding brilliance. In the bathroom, Rob was running water into the sink. Casey adjusted the window blinds to allow the sun in while still ensuring privacy, and sat in the wicker rocker to wait.

  In the bathroom, she heard the screek of the ancient faucet, and the water stopped running. Then silence, and she wondered if he was gathering his thoughts, and his courage, the way she’d done. The door opened, and he came out, crossed the room slowly and sat on the floor in front of her, his lanky body folded like a pretzel.

  “Hey,” he said softly.

  “Hey.”

  He wrapped a hand around her ankle, snagged the strap to her sandal with a finger and peeled it off. Deep inside her, something began to pulse with a slow, measured thudding. He tossed the sandal aside, peeled off its mate, and rested her bare feet on his raised knees. She wiggled her toes against soft denim as he drew her feet slowly along the length of his thighs and planted them flat on the floor on either side of him. Hands bracing her ankles, he said softly, “C’mere, woman.”

  There was only one direction she could go, down the length of those lanky legs and into the valley between his knees and his shoulders, her hips riding his, her knees flanking his ribcage. Even through all the layers of clothing that separated them, she could feel that this was the way they were meant to fit, man and woman, and in spite of her fear, already he had her so excited she thought she would explode. “Told you,” he said lazily, “that I’d get you on my lap before the day was out.”

  In a voice like raw silk, she said, “Is this any way to treat a lady?”

  “Who the hell wants a lady?” he said. “I’d rather have a woman.”

  She took his hand in hers and placed it on the upper slope of her breast, just above her racing heart. “Well,” she said, “here I am.”

  “Your heart,” he said. “It’s thudding like a jackhammer.”

  “That’s how much I want you,” she said. “Just in case you had any doubts.”

  His hand lingered, warm against the curve of her breast, while they studied each other, their rapid, shallow breaths mingling as green eyes probed green eyes. Her fingers played up and down his arms, felt the quivering tension in his muscles. Then his warm hand slid up to the back of her neck and tangled in her hair, and all the breath left her lungs as he closed the gap between them.

  She knotted her fists in his hair and lost herself in him as he kissed her until she was fluid and boneless, breathless and gasping and senseless and giddy. She’d waited so long for him. So long. A muffled moan broke from her throat as he worked his way from the corner of her mouth to the soft underside of her jaw.

  “This time,” he said hoarsely, “we’re not stopping.” She tipped her head back and he ran his tongue along the spot where the pulse beat at the base of her throat. “This time,” he said, “I’m taking you all the way. All the way to heaven.”

  “Yes,” she said, excitement billowing and swirling inside her. “Oh, yes.”

  He ran his thumbs up the inside of her thighs to the heated place where they joined, and she gasped as he stroked her boldly, with no hesitation or shyness because that was how it would be with them, they would love each other openly and fiercely and in the broad light of day. His hands continued their plunder, up over her hip bones and past her navel, and she was shuddering with excitement when at last he touched her breasts. She closed her eyes and forgot to breathe as he made slow, erotic circles around the sensitive peaks. “Ohmigod,” she said.

  “Feel good?” he whispered.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Wait. It gets better.” He tugged at her shirt, bunched it up in his hands as he pulled the wrinkled fabric from the waistband of her jeans. Clutching soft white cotton, he popped open a single button. “I’m gonna get you so hot—” Her heart lurched as he opened the next button. “—that you’ll be jumping out of your skin.” The third button popped open, and he stripped the shirt from her shoulders, worked it down her arms and off over her wrists. Her heart thundered when he pressed his face to the damp hollow between her breasts. “And then,” he said hoarsely, his mouth soft and wet against her skin, “I’m gonna give you the ride of your life.”

  She cupped his face in her hands and kissed his brow, the faint webbing of laugh lines at the corner of his eye, the indistinct prickle of whiskers on his jaw. He fumbled awkwardly with the front clasp to her brassiere. Impatient, she helped him with it, and his laughter came out on a warm gusty breath against her cheek. “I’m not nervous,” he said.

  Her cheek pressed to his, her nose buried in his blond curls, she laughed. First one side and then the other, he peeled back ice blue silk, damp and warm and still molded into the shape of her breasts. “You are so damn beautiful,” he said raggedly.

  With the tip of his tongue, he traced a moist trail from her chin down the column of her throat, followed the outline of her collar bone, the slope of her breast. Just when she was sure she would die from the agony of anticipation, he reached the swollen tip of her breast and took it in his mouth.

  She gasped. He drew on her deeply, suckling like an infant, melting her, destroying her. She cradled his head in her arms, guided him as he pleasured first one breast and then the other, robbing her of breath, of sanity.

  He stopped too soon, left her still hungry. With shuddering fingers, she struggled with the buttons to his shirt. They refused to give, and in exasperation, she yanked hard, sending several buttons skittering off across the wooden floor. He shrugged off the shirt and they met breast to breast, skin to skin, hands tangled in each other’s hair as they tasted cheeks and ears and necks and shoulders, his tongue dipping into the soft hollow at the base of her throat, hers exploring the prominence of his Adam’s apple.

  He took her over backward to the floor, pelvis to pelvis, belly to belly, heat to heat. Breathless, they paused to study each other, hot flesh sticky against hot flesh. “This is all I’ve been able to think about all day,” he said hoarsely. “You and me, together, like this.”

  With a fingertip, she traced the narrow white scar that angled downward from his ribcage to disappear beneath the waistband of his jeans. “When did you have your appendix out?” she said.

  “When I was twelve.”

  “So many things,” she said with genuine sorrow. “So many things I don’t know about you. The name of your first-grade teacher. What you were like at twelve.”

  “Sister Mary Elizabeth. And tall and skinny, with feet like Bozo the Clown.” He closed his eyes. “Ah, baby,” he whispered, “you’ve got me so damn hot.”

  “I know,” she said. “I can tell.”

  He opened his eyes again. “Yeah?” he said with interest. “How can you tell?”

  “I thought recreational sex was your area of expertise, MacKenzie. Am I going to have to teach you everything?”

  “I hate to burst your bubble, pudding, but this is not recreational sex. This is love.”

  “Oh,” she said, inordinately pleased by the sentiment.

  “And you know what else?”

  She drew his lower lip into her mouth, slicked her tongue over it, released it. “What?” she said.

  “No boundaries. Anything you want, just ask, and it’s yours.”

  Although it was a joint effort, it still took them some time to get her out of the rest of her clothes, since every so often they had to stop to kiss or fondle, to taste or tickle, some heretofore unreachable portion of anatomy. She scooted up onto the bed and sank deep into the goose down mattress, watching in admiration as he peeled off the rest of his clothes in the dying light of an October afternoon. He was beautiful, all lines and angles, a splendid combination of hardness and softness, a work of art haloed by the setting sun’s glow.
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  Finally, she thought. Finally. And then he was in her arms and they were rolling naked on soft goose down, on sheets that smelled faintly of lavender sachet, and he was all hers to touch and taste and explore, this man she knew better than anyone, this stranger she had never met before.

  They studied each other solemnly, both of them contemplating the gravity of what they were about to do. “Swear to me,” she said, “that this won’t change anything.”

  “Ah, baby, you know I can’t do that. Ask for something easy. Ask me to tell you I’ve loved you since the first time I laid eyes on you. Ask me to tell you I’ll keep on loving you till the day I die. That I can do.”

  She kissed him tenderly, and they rolled across the bed, limbs tangled, breathing labored, his breath hot against her neck as he whispered ragged endearments, both tender and obscene. “I’ve waited years for you,” she said breathlessly. “Don’t make me wait any longer.”

  Gnawing gently at the taut cord that ran from her collarbone to her ear, he whispered, “Tell me what you want.”

  In response, she ran her fingers down his chest, past his flat, hard stomach, and he made a soft, strangled sound in the back of his throat when she boldly took him, hot and thick and rock hard, in both hands. “This,” she said. “Inside me. Now.”

  He let out a hard breath and rolled her onto her back, and while they watched each other’s eyes, he filled her slowly, exquisitely. “Better?” he said.

  “Oh. My. God. Yes.”

  “Feel good, babydoll?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  She arched her back, eliciting a sharp gasp from him, and they rocked together in sweet, fluid delight. It had been so long since she’d known the liquid pleasure of fusing with a man. She didn’t remember it being this good. She didn’t remember anything, ever in thirty-three years, being this good.

  She rolled beneath him, and he groaned. “Take it slow, baby. Slow.”