The record ended with that particular scratch-thump that Abby remembered from summer childhood evenings, when her parents had laughed and drank wine, cuddling her and arguing politics and art until she’d dropped to sleep in their arms. She rose and flipped through the box of albums again. She placed another on the turntable and dropped the needle into the groove, briefly wondering if she should be using up the gas for the generator on something so frivolous…but never mind. It was something of a miracle that the gennie even worked after so many years of disuse, and another miracle that the propane tank was full. Thank God her dad had a passion, however brief, for hunting, or the camp might not have had a generator at all. It was a gift, and Abby remembered what Nana had said to her when she had once tried to put a gift aside for later: Nonsense, Abby. A gift is meant to be enjoyed when you get it. You never know what might happen tomorrow.
Where was Nana’s wisdom three months ago? Abby thought wryly. She knew what might happen tomorrow, after all. You might be three thousand miles from your gift, realizing you’d tossed it aside like an idiot, and hurting.
Abby hadn’t realized how much she’d been counting on Matt’s joyful reaction to her sudden freedom, along with a quick invitation to return to California, until it didn’t happen. Even when he restated his genuine desire to see her at Thanksgiving, she felt small and reprimanded. She’d left Santa Cruz for a reason: to give him time without distraction, and she felt foolish when reminded that nothing had changed.
She dashed tears from her eyes. It seemed like there was a well of salt water deep within her that she’d never known existed until she’d left Santa Cruz, and she didn’t like it. “I did this to myself,” she said aloud, and the sound of her own voice in the silence started her off again. She sank onto the sofa and wrapped her arms around her middle. No amount of being smart or careful or practical or realistic or self-sacrificing was worth losing what she felt when she was with Matt, not even for a minute.
Like an animal licking its wounds, she’d crawled into her den, this cabin, and waited for time to pass and wounds to heal. Leaving Matt, though, had made a cut so deep that she feared it might never close. She relaxed into the sofa’s cushions and pulled a quilt around her shoulders. The beginning of summer, when she’d truly believed her capacity for love was gone, seemed like a long-past joke. Every wall that twenty years of dating and disappointment had built around her heart was turned to rubble the first time Matt stepped out of the surf.
She heard Nana Reynolds clapping in the back of her head, heard her whisper, Finally. That’s my girl. And she let the swell of emotion that had been building crash over her.
She didn’t know how much later it was that a particularly loud growl from the generator brought her back to the surface. She sat up and listened closely, feeling a skip in her chest when she heard another, quieter engine snarl.
“Stupid thing,” she said, wiping her palms roughly over her cheeks. She headed for the back door again. Her hand hovered over the parka hanging on the hook next to the door before she let it drop to the door handle. Screw it. She’d just change when she got back inside.
Abby ripped the door open and stopped dead, staring at an equally startled Matt as he stood on her porch, a heavy parka half-shrugged off his shoulders and his hand raised to knock on the door.
He had just enough time to steady himself and let the parka drop indifferently to the wooden floor before his arms were filled with woman. Abby flung herself at him, nearly knocking them both ass-over-teakettle into the snow that had drifted over the porch steps.
She clung to him, her arms wrapped around his neck, holding on for dear life. Her face was tucked under the shelf of his jaw, where she could inhale him, taste the salt on his skin against her lips, feel the warmth of him. Her eyes had slammed shut when she leaped, trusting him to catch her, and she kept them closed as a thousand wordless prayers of thanks ran through her mind.
When she could speak, it was in a ragged whisper. “I thought…Thanksgiving…”
Matt held her against him, his cheek resting against her temple. He rocked her back and forth gently. His hands moved against her back, rough skin catching on wool, and for once he didn’t pull them away. Releasing her, he gently cupped her face, long fingers sliding into her hair. His thumbs caressed her cheeks, and his gaze held hers.
“I thought I couldn’t wait.”
Abby moved back into his arms more slowly this time. She rested her head against his chest and listened to the steady rhythm of his heart. “I love you, Matt,” she said. His arms tightened around her.
They might have stood there for hours, thankful for the way their bodies felt together and the way their breath mingled in one tender kiss after another, if a sudden gust of wind hadn’t blown a swirl of snow under the porch roof and dusted their hair and eyelashes with icy, diamond flakes.
Matt shivered, and Abby first recognized the cream-colored sweater that was a near match of her own. She smiled and ran her hand over the wool that covered his arm, trailing downward until she could entwine her fingers with his. She stepped back, drawing him toward the still-open doorway.
“C’mon in, surferboy.”
“Are you sure? I gotta admit I’m freezing my ass off here.” He followed her through the door, nudging it closed with his foot as soon as he was inside. They stood facing one another with huge, foolish grins on their faces.
Abby’s eyes roved over his damp hair and studied the shadows around his eyes. The laugh lines she loved had deepened in the intervening months, and the bones of his cheeks and jaw seemed more defined, even under the hair that was more beard than stubble. She saw love and need and sorrow in his eyes and wondered if her eyes were sending the same message. Matt’s lips opened in a quiet, hitching breath, and she had her answer.
She held out her hand. “Still pretty as ever,” she said.
“Hey, that’s my line.” Matt took her proffered hand and followed her to the living room.
They settled on the couch with Abby unashamedly sitting as close as she could get without sitting on top of him. He swung his arm over her head and around her shoulders, and she rested against him, feeling more at home than she had since the end of August.
“How did you get here?”
“Walked.” He laughed as she jabbed his stomach with her elbow. Next came a story of a flight to Bangor, followed by a horrendous Jeep drive that had taken him to a sporting goods store when he couldn’t get any closer to her cabin than the road above her lane.
“I was crazy,” Matt admitted. “I’d already looked up your parents, and it was nothing to convince your dad to give me directions—he was just about to head out to check on you himself. Getting that close and not being able to get to you…” He stopped and kissed her. “Anyway, the sales guy got an earful, and then he offered to get me through on his snowmobile. After selling me the coat that is now iced to your porch.”
He refused to let Abby up when she made a sound of dismay and tried to rise, instead he snuggled her more tightly to his side. “Forget the coat. This is way, way more important.”
Abby nodded, relaxing again. The fire crackled and popped, warming the room. “This shouldn’t be so easy,” she whispered, her fingers reflexively clutching the wool that covered his stomach.
“Yes, it should. This is exactly how easy it should be, Abby. We’re right. We just make it difficult.”
Abby took a deep breath. Here we go, she thought, wistful for the perfect quiet her heart had felt, even if it couldn’t last. She gently moved from beneath Matt’s arm, though she kept hold of his hand. She needed to see his face for this talk. “So,” she said, “do we try to do this? Or are we too scared?”
“I finished Baker’s statues,” Matt blurted. “All six, even the one I screwed up—I’ll tell you about that later. I’ve been working my ass off for a week, no breaks except when I had to collapse for an hour or two, since you said you were coming here. And they’re good, Abby. Really good.”
“I’m not surprised. You’re an amazing sculptor,” she said cautiously, trying to understand his change of topic.
“That’s the thing. I’m a sculptor. Not a copy artist. I don’t want to do that kind of work, or at least not any more than I have to do to live. I’ve never wanted it, and no amount of client meetings will change that. I should have said so before, but I was afraid that I’d disappoint you…and then you quit a great job because of me…” He stared into the fire. “I’m all I have to offer you. Just me.”
Abby turned his face back toward her. “Matt, I was burned out. I’d seen something better, felt something better, and I was ready to quit. I’ll have to get another job, of course, but nothing so life-consuming again.” She gestured toward the painting in the corner. “That’s what I want to do. I don’t care if you ever sell a sculpture again—that’s never been important to me. I just want you to be happy.” She smoothed her hand down his face, stroking the hair-roughened line of his jaw with her thumb. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“I want to be with you, Abby,” Matt said. “It just takes a little courage to reach out with no guarantees and no…” He searched for a word, “…no masks. Is that the right word?”
“It’s like you teaching me to surf. We just hold on to each other.”
“Ooh! Surfing metaphors. Glad I wasn’t the one to get so cliché.” They both laughed, but Matt’s eyes were serious when he spoke again. “I can’t steady you this time, though, Pretty. I don’t know any more than you do about this.”
“We’ll have to steady each other, then.”
“Give me your hand, Abby.”
She smiled and shook their joined fingers. “You’ve got it.”
He drew her closer. “You know what I mean,” he murmured. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
Moving slowly, his eyes questioning and getting a positive answer before he even touched her, Matt brushed the lightest of kisses against Abby’s mouth. When he felt her response, he cupped the back of her head and brought his mouth against hers more forcefully, easing her back against the cushions.
Abby slipped her hand under the edge of his sweater and stroked his stomach.
“Abby…” he murmured.
“Is this okay?” she asked, stilling her gentle exploration.
Matt laughed breathlessly. “Better than okay.” His eyes opened, sea-green clouded with stormy gray. “I promised myself, though, that I wouldn’t rush this part with you. You’re not just a body to me.”
A slow smile spread across Abby’s face. “Then don’t rush,” she teased, enjoying the flush that colored his face. “We’re apparently snowed in, with all the time in the world. I suggest we use it well.”
He laughed and pulled her upright, tugging his sweater over his head with his free hand and dropping it carelessly to the floor. He edged his hands under her sweater and slid it upward and off. She guided Matt’s hands back to her waist, and shivered as they began to move over her skin.
Despite his eagerness, Matt’s touch was tender, practiced. Each brush of hand on shoulder, on neck, on chest, was followed by a brush of lips, of teeth, of tongue. Abby gasped, sighed, moving her own trembling hands across Matt’s body, retracing trails of pleasure that she’d discovered months before.
“I love you, Matt,” she said, breathing raggedly as the roughness of his beard and softness of his lips stimulated nerve endings along her neck, trailing to the curve of her shoulder.
Matt chuckled, his breath adding to Abby’s pleasurable torture. “That’s twice,” he murmured.
“What’s twice?”
Matt blew in her ear and laughed when she squealed. “Twice is how many times you’ve said you love me when you weren’t crying. I was starting to get a complex.”
Abby laughed, startled. “Good lord, you’re right. I missed a lot of chances to say I love you. But I do.”
Matt lifted Abby off her feet and kissed her soundly. He moved his lips to her ear and breathed, “I’m gonna go back to junior high and say, ‘Prove it.’”
So she did.
So well and so often that the sun was rising before they even thought of sleeping.
Abby sat in front of the window, watching the snow gradually lighten until she could see the lake through the trees. She rested against Matt’s chest, snuggling into the warmth of his arms and the softness of the blanket that he’d wrapped around them both.
“If this storm ever stops, you’ll have to show me your coast,” Matt murmured.
“It’ll end eventually,” Abby replied. She thought back over the summer and smiled. “Maybe it will cause a swell next summer.”
Matt laughed. “Maybe so.” He kissed the side of Abby’s neck. “Last summer’s has worked out for me so far.”
“Corny.” They grew silent, watching the flakes fall.
“I still don’t know what I’m doing, Matt,” Abby said wistfully.
He rested his cheek against her hair. “Neither do I.”
“Are you still scared?”
“Terrified.” He tightened his arms around her. “But not of loving you. I’m scared of screwing this up.”
Abby slid her hand around his neck and into his hair, pulling his face down so she could see his eyes.
“We won’t.” She rested her forehead on his, breathing a quick prayer. “Where will we be when the next swell hits?”
Matt rose and extended his hand to Abby. “Plenty of time to worry about that,” he said, drawing her to her feet. “Let’s pretend it’s Naked Sunday and go back to bed.”
The End
Acknowledgments
The idea for this book grew out of a fantastic online discussion between readers of my last book and me. It was fascinating to hear how women and men from a cross section of ages feel and what they think about relationships, especially as we get older and past disappointments have built up walls around our hearts. So to them, I tip my hat: Mel, Shiv, Sandy, Shannies, Judy, Leisa, and especially our brave men, Phil and Benjamin.
No book is created in a vacuum. All thanks go out to my editors: Lisa O’Hara, who took the first chance on this book, C.J. Creel, who never lets me get away with being lazy, Beverly Nickelson, who gets me (and who told me Filene’s Basement had closed between first draft and last. I’m crushed!). Thanks also to Omnific’s fabulous art department, and the copyeditors who make me look smarter than I really am. Special thanks to Elizabeth Harper, who started this craziness and keeps it all together.
None of it would be possible without my family. They have endured sketchy meals, cluttered rooms, and a sometimes distracted mom, with grace and aplomb. Love always to my dearest, who makes me laugh and still surprises me after a quarter century. Always, for you.
About the Author
Autumn Markus traveled far and wide as a military brat, but her heart was always in the American west, where she was born. She hikes, reads and writes there still, along with snuggling her husband, four children, and a horsedog. She freelance edits for other authors, reviews Women’s Fiction for the New York Journal of Books, and is the author of the contemporary romances Cocktails & Dreams and A Christmas Wish. She is currently at work on her next novel.
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