Just Like Heaven (17 page)

“No.”

“Ever come close?”

“Not even remotely close.”

“Ever wish you had?”

“Not even remotely.” She pretended to study him carefully. “Now you look like the marrying kind to me. You said you aren’t married now but that leaves—what? Thirty-five or forty years unaccounted for.”

“Suzanne died five years ago.” The words were stark, his emotions palpable.

“I’m sorry.” She wanted to take his hand, but suddenly the distance between them seemed vast and uncharted. “I was trying to be funny and I—”

He shook his head. “We were trying to get pregnant and it wasn’t working. Finally we drove down to Boston to see a fertility specialist. They ran the usual tests on me and everything was okay. They ran a few preliminaries on Suzanne and called us back in. Eight months later she was gone.”

She had no right to cry for his dead wife, but the tears came anyway. So did the nerve to reach across the wide expanse between them and take his hand.

“But you’re okay now.”

“I take it day to day but yes, I’m okay.”

“I’m glad.”

“I almost told you the whole story when you asked about making a donation to my congregation.”

“You don’t owe me any explanations, Mark.”

“I know that. I want to tell you.”

She listened. He talked.

She talked. He listened.

Paul phoned her cell number, ostensibly to see how she was doing, but she knew he was checking up on her lunch with Mark. Maeve phoned around three o’clock to make sure everything was going well. Mark fielded two calls from his real estate agent, and one from a colleague in New Hampshire who delivered news that clearly made him unhappy.

The sun reached its peak and began the slow downhill slide toward late afternoon. The flow of conversation dwindled down to an occasional murmur. Light cloud cover moved in, dropping the temperature, and they moved inside to the sunroom adjacent to the kitchen.

“A glider,” he said with delight. “I haven’t seen one of these in years.”

“I thought every front porch in New England had one of these.”

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

“Sit down,” she said. “You’ll like it.”

“I should go. You’ve had a long day.”

“Doing what?” she said with a laugh. “My mother made lunch. You served most of it. All I’ve done is drink iced tea and talk.”

“And listen.”

“You listened too.”

“I don’t usually open up like that,” he said with an embarrassed shrug. “I don’t know what that was all about.”

“Neither do I.” She was painfully aware of her voice, the sound of her breathing, the rhythm of her heartbeat. “I told you things my mother doesn’t even know about.”

They were standing inches apart, so close she could feel the warmth of his skin and inhale the fresh-mowed grass smell that clung to his clothes from the hours they had spent outside.

He took her hands and her eyes filled instantly with tears. “Allergies,” she said, ducking her head. “Springtime is lethal.”

And it was, in many ways. Springtime was rife with danger. A woman might do anything on a warm spring day with the right man.

Except this wasn’t the right man. She had better keep reminding herself of that very important fact. Men didn’t get any more wrong than a widowed recovering alcoholic who happened to be an Episcopal priest on his way back to resume his old life in New Hampshire, more than three hundred miles away.

You would have to be crazy to let your guard down around a man like that.

“This is crazy,” she said as they fell into each other’s arms.

“Completely nuts,” he agreed as they tumbled onto the glider.

They were so close their breath mingled in the whisper of air between them.

“You’ll only be here another six weeks,” she said, tracing the contours of his face with her fingers, memorizing the planes and angles, the shadowy stubble darkening his cheek and jaw. “There’s no point to starting anything.”

“No point at all.”

He pressed a kiss to the hollow of her throat and if she hadn’t been sitting already she would have melted into the ground.

“We both know it would have to end when you leave for New Hampshire.”

“Your life is here in New Jersey.”

“Absolutely,” she said. “My home, my family, my work. Everything.”

“And my future is up in New Hampshire.”

“A second chance,” she said, kissing the strong curve of his jaw. “Your second chance to make things right.” She got it. She even understood. But she didn’t have to like it.

His mouth found the nape of her neck, the tiny pulse that was beating crazily in her right temple. She felt as if he were setting off tiny explosive charges everywhere his lips touched.

His lips touched her ear. “I wanted to do this the first moment I saw you.”

She shivered at the sensations rippling through her. “I saw you leaning against your car and I almost tripped over my own feet.”

His thumbs grazed either side of her mouth. She was finding it harder to breathe with each second that passed.

“I can’t make any promises, Kate. I’ve already made them to my old congregation.”

“I don’t believe in promises,” she whispered, her lips soft against his. “This is enough for me.”

The kiss was as natural as breathing, as intoxicating as champagne. Her mouth opened beneath his and she gasped at the feel of him, the way he tasted of chocolate and mango and heat. She felt dizzy, knocked off center, and she clung to his shoulders so she wouldn’t slide off the face of the earth and into some vast unknowable universe of shooting stars and fireworks and whispered warnings that some things are too good to be true.

He kissed her as if kissing were an end in itself, as if he loved the feel of her mouth beneath his, the sounds she made deep in her throat, the way she arched against him, trying to crawl inside his skin and stay there.

They broke apart, breathless and dazed, and looked into each other’s eyes for an eternity as if they couldn’t quite believe this was really happening.

“A big mistake,” she said. “It’s moving too fast.”

“Tell me to go and I will,” he said. “It’s not too late.”

But it was too late and they both knew it. They were already in over their heads.

Twelve

The rules were simple: they would enjoy each other’s company and say good-bye without regret the day he left for New Hampshire. Neither one knew exactly where the next six weeks would take them but it was impossible to deny the fact that they had been brought together by a force, or forces, greater than either one of them.

They kissed on the glider until they heard the sound of Maeve’s car in the driveway and leaped apart like guilty teenagers. Kate’s mouth was swollen and red from his kisses and he had to stay seated when Maeve walked into the room until his erection caught up with the change of activity.

Maeve was a smart woman who made her living exploring the chemistry between men and women. She had probably known this was going to happen before he and Kate did, but she didn’t let on. Only the happy sparkle in her eyes gave her away.

Kate walked him out to his car, where they held hands in the gathering darkness.

“You’re asleep on your feet,” he finally pointed out when she dozed off against his shoulder. “Go inside.”

“This is too easy,” she said. “Isn’t this sort of thing supposed to be fraught with anxiety?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

She hid a small yawn behind her hand and looked up at him. “You mean you don’t cruise shopping mall parking lots looking for lapsed Catholics to save?”

“Only you.”

That wasn’t what he had meant to say. The words seemed to have a will of their own and he wished he could push a button and erase the tape.

She lowered her head and he didn’t have to ask her if she was crying. He knew she was. Maybe this whole thing wasn’t such a good idea. She was one week out from a cardiac incident, in a highly vulnerable and emotional state of mind. Her decision-making capabilities might not be at their peak. The problem was he couldn’t have turned away from her if he tried. The sense of inevitability that had surrounded them from the start was too powerful to be denied.

She surreptitiously wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her pretty sweater, then looked up at him again. “I’m scared out of my mind,” she said.

“So am I.”

“Maybe we’re making a terrible mistake.”

“Could be.”

“We’ve only known each other a week. It isn’t possible to feel this way after only a week.”

“But we do.”

“I know,” she said, “and that’s why I’m scared out of my mind.”

They agreed they could always slow things down, retreat to their separate corners and wait for the romantic fog that had enveloped both of them to lift, but the fact that they couldn’t stop kissing while they discussed the matter undermined their hardheaded determination.

“What are we worried about?” Kate leaned in the open driver’s-side window of his car and touched a hand to his cheek. “We keep forgetting that we have a built-in six-week shelf life and when it rolls around you’ll be three hundred miles away and that, Father Kerry, will be that.”

Three hundred miles sounded like a great distance, but at that moment he knew he would walk it barefoot during a snowstorm to see her again.

Three thousand miles wouldn’t be far enough to keep him away.

 
Kate was lying on top of her bed, staring at the ceiling and trying very hard not to think about Mark and the spectacular afternoon they had just shared. She had already replayed it in her mind at least ten times, from the moment she heard his car crunching its way up the drive to the sight of his taillights disappearing down Indigo Lane. She remembered every word, every sentence, every smile, every laugh . . . every kiss.

Oh God, those kisses! He was a spectacular kisser, a world-class kisser who could turn the innocent pastime into an erotic Olympic event. No doubt he had been blessed with above-average equipment for the job: a gorgeous mouth, full lips, the faintest scratch of stubble along his cheek and jaw ( just enough to keep it interesting), but it was what he did with all of that wonderfulness that turned kissing into something more.

He kissed as if he had all the time in the world, as if kissing had been his goal right from the start. She wasn’t a young girl. She had been married for ten years. She had dated her share of Mr. Wrongs. She knew the difference between a man who kissed because it was expected and a man who kissed because he was sensual right down to the center of his being, and there was no doubt where Mark Kerry fit in.

“Are you okay in here?” Maeve appeared in the doorway wearing one of her flowing New Agey outfits with a Betty Crocker apron tied around her still-slim waist. “I taped
American Idol
for you, if you’re interested.”

“Just tired,” Kate said, leaning up on her elbow and smiling at her mother. “It was a long day.”

“You noticed that I’m not asking any intrusive questions, didn’t you?” Maeve sat on the edge of the bed. She smelled like a combination of Obsession and cinnamon.

“I noticed.”

“It’s not easy,” Maeve said, “not after seeing the way you two kissed out there by his car.”

“You spied on me?”

“It isn’t often I get to watch sexual chemistry turn into a budding romance right before my eyes. I think of it as research.”

“Well, don’t get your hopes up. He’ll be moving back to New Hampshire at the end of May.”

Maeve considered her words for a moment. “A lot can happen in six weeks. Plans can change. He might decide to stay. You might decide to go. You never know how it will all play out.”

“Yes, we do,” Kate said. She could hear the faint glimmer of her old self behind the words. “Whatever this is, it comes with an expiration date.”

“Don’t you mean safety net?”

“Nothing wrong with knowing your limitations, right?”

Her mother leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “And there’s nothing wrong with stretching your wings.”

Maeve went back downstairs to make some phone calls. Kate stared up at the ceiling a while longer, then propped herself against the pillows and switched on her laptop.

 
Where were her glasses when she needed them? Kate leaned closer to the screen of her laptop and peered at the string of words as if she were trying to decipher the Rosetta Stone. There it was again. She hadn’t imagined it. “I’ll say a prayer for you at morning mass.” Since when? Was Andrew a Roman Catholic?

And wait a second. What was that about a doctor’s appointment? She didn’t have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, did she? She clicked over to her organizer and couldn’t find anything for Wednesday. She got up and walked to the top of the stairs and hollered to Maeve, who hollered back that yes, she did have an eleven o’clock with Dr. Lombardi and it was a must-keep appointment.

“Damn,” she whispered. Now she would have to cancel her plans with Mark. She was supposed to be incorporating mild physical exercise into her daily routine and he had suggested a trip to Spring Lake and a walk on the beach. The weather was supposed to be every bit as perfect as it had been today, and the thought of strolling along the water’s edge hand-in-hand with him was enough to elevate her heart rate without her moving a muscle.