“Then let’s change the subject.” He leaned across the table. “So who did you vote for in the last election?”
And just like that the tension between them vanished and they were back where they had been a few minutes ago: a man and a woman sharing lunch and laughter beneath a glorious New Jersey sky.
“You’re a great cook,” he said as he polished off the salad. “This is world-class.”
“Thanks, but I can’t take credit for any of it. Maeve put it all together for us. She’s been very solicitous since my heart attack.”
“Mothers are like that.”
She laughed. “Not my mother. Maeve had her own theories on parenting and they didn’t exactly follow the Donna Reed paradigm.”
“She’s a fascinating woman.” He met her eyes. “I’ve read her books.”
“You have not!” Maeve wrote about love and sex and romance, occasionally in graphic terms.
“She’s good,” he said. “She’s honest and she’s helpful. What’s not to like?”
“ ‘What’s not to like?’ ” She started to laugh. “Are you sure you weren’t born here?”
“Positive.” He drained his iced tea, then poured them each some more from the pitcher. “So what was she like as a mother?”
“Loving,” she said, pushing her sesame chicken from one side of the plate to the other. “Caught up in her own dramas much of the time.” She met his eyes. “Maeve is one of those women who fall in love easily and often. Unfortunately she’s also one of those women who believe in marriage, which meant I had a lot of stepfathers.”
“That must have been hard for you.”
“It wasn’t easy,” she admitted, “but she had good taste in men. They were all extremely nice guys. I just wish we’d let one of them stick around long enough to unpack.”
“So you moved around a lot.”
“No, she made them move around a lot.”
They locked eyes and burst into loud, raucous laughter that seemed to come from nowhere.
“Is your father still alive?” he asked as he helped her carry their empty plates into the kitchen. “I have this mental picture of an academic type with leather patches on the elbows of his tweed sport coat.”
“You’re close. He was the son of a famous senator from Rhode Island. They split up before I was born.” She opened the door to the dishwasher and started loading plates inside. “He died when I was twenty-six.”
He handed her the knives and forks. “I’m sorry.”
“It would have been nice to have a chance to get to know him but—” She shrugged and closed the dishwasher door. “Your family is what it is and there’s nothing you can do about it.” She handed him the dessert plates, the bakery box, and the icy serving bowl piled high with mango sorbet. “How about you? Any senators hiding in your closet?”
He waited while she put the coffeepot, two cups and saucers, and a pitcher of milk on a tray. “No senators,” he said, “but we do have a couple of Episcopal priests lurking in there.”
“So you went into the family business.” She led the way back out to the patio. The warm sun felt like an embrace.
“I never thought of it that way, but I guess I did.”
“You never thought of it that way?” She arranged everything on the glass-topped table and leaned the empty tray against the house. “Most families don’t have multiple clergy members gathering around the Thanksgiving Day dinner table.”
“My parents were dairy farmers who only went to church for christenings, funerals, and the occasional wedding. They weren’t exactly thrilled when I said I was going into the seminary.”
“When I was little, the nuns talked a lot about hearing the call. I remember walking to school and praying God wouldn’t tap me on the shoulder and tell me I had to join the convent.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“I know that now,” she said as she poured him a cup of coffee, “but when you’re seven years old, anything seems possible.”
“So are you asking me if God tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a one-way ticket to the seminary?”
“Yes,” she said, sliding his cup and saucer toward him. “That’s exactly what I’m asking.” Why pull her punches? The odds were pretty good that they would never see each other again. They could afford to be honest.
“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know that I would be a priest.”
“No offense, but you don’t exactly seem like your average holy man. You were wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt the day we met. You drive a truly awful powder blue car. And, to be completely frank here, I don’t think I’ve heard you say anything holy or spiritual yet.”
“Maybe you haven’t been listening.”
“Every time I think I have you figured out, you say something like that and I have to start from scratch.”
He served her a small crystal bowl of mango sorbet and slid it toward her. “You’ve been trying to figure me out?”
“You’re very mysterious,” she said. “A New Hampshire priest churchless in central New Jersey. I Googled you but couldn’t find out a single thing.”
She offered him the sumptuous double-chocolate brownies Maeve had brought back from the bakery. He took two. She liked a man who liked chocolate.
“I Googled you too,” he said. “There were fifty-two mentions of Kate French and/or French Kiss last year alone.”
She smiled and took a spoonful of sorbet. “We had a good year.”
“Now I see how those documents figure into the equation.”
“The eighteenth century, mainly the Colonial through Revolutionary War period, is my specialty,” she said. “Clothes, household items, ephemera. Unfortunately the good stuff is getting harder to find around here. I had to go all the way to England for the documents you saved for me.” She had a new appointment with Professor Armitage set up in two weeks.
He flashed her a surprisingly wicked grin. “Did the ghost of George Washington tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘Thou shalt deal in antiques’?”
She threatened him with a spoonful of mango sorbet. “The senator’s son left me some money when he died. His second family contested the will but his and Maeve’s marriage had been legal and binding and I was among his legitimate issue.” She popped the sorbet into her mouth, savored the smooth sweetness, then swallowed. “I bought this carriage house and then I bought a half-interest in the antiques shop where I’d been working. Two years later I bought out the owner.”
“What about Gwynn’s father?”
“Ed and I married in high school.” She met his eyes. “Yes, for the reason you think. We loved each other as friends but we were never in love the way a married couple should be. We divorced when Gwynn was ten years old. He remarried a few months later and is very happy living in Pennsylvania with Marie and their kids.”
“You never married again?”
“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 roman
tic 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.
Just Like Heaven Page 13