by Grace Palmer
She let her hand linger on Henry’s forehead just a beat too long. He didn’t open his eyes, but his hand snaked up from underneath the sheets and threaded through Mae’s fingers.
“You’re getting up?”
“Can’t waste the day away.”
It was a ritual, one they’d been through practically every morning for as long as either could remember. For all that he’d become a proud father to four children, a state-record-holding fisherman, a much-sought-after contractor and builder on the island of Nantucket, Henry loved nothing so much as to stay in bed for hours, alternating between sleeping and poking Mae until she rolled over and gave him the soft kisses he called her “hummingbird pecks.” There was a perpetual little boy spirit in him, a playfulness that another six or sixty decades couldn’t extinguish if it tried.
“Stay with me,” he murmured. “The day can wait a few more minutes, can’t it?” His eyes were open now, heavy with sleep, but still gazing at her fondly.
Mae tapped him playfully on the tip of the nose. “If it was up to you, ‘a few more minutes’ would turn into hours before we knew it, and then I’d be scrambling around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to get everything done before Holly, Pete, and the kids get here tonight.”
Holly was Mae and Henry’s middle daughter. She and her husband, Pete, were bringing their two kids to Nantucket to spend the weekend. Mae had had the date circled on her calendar for months, excited at the prospect of spoiling her grandkids rotten. She already had oodles of activities planned—walks downtown to get rock candy from the corner store, sandcastles at the beach, bike rides down to ’Sconset to ogle the grand houses the rich folks had built out on that end of the island.
Grady was a little wrecking ball of a seven-year-old boy, and Mae knew that he’d love nothing so much as building a massive sandcastle and then terrorizing it like a blond Godzilla. Alice, on the other hand, was still as sweet and loving as a five-year-old girl could be. She let Grandma Mae braid her long, soft hair into fishtails every morning whenever they were visiting the island. It was another ritual that Mae treasured beyond anything else. Her life was full of those kinds of moments.
“It ain’t so bad, lying in bed with me, is it?” Henry teased. “But maybe I just won’t give ya a choice!”
He leaped up and threw his arms around Mae’s waist, tugging her over him and then dragging them both beneath the covers. Mae yelped in surprise and smacked him on the chest, but Henry was a big man—nearly six and a half feet tall—and the years he’d spent hauling in fish during his weekend trips with Brent had kept him muscular and toned. When her palm landed on his shoulder, it just made a thwacking noise, and did about as much good as if she’d slapped a brick wall. So she just laughed and let Henry pull her into his arms, roll over on top of her, and throw the comforter over their heads.
It was soft and warm and white underneath. The April sun filtered through the bedsheets and cast everything in a beautiful, hazy glow. “You’ve never looked so beautiful,” Henry said, his face suspended above hers.
“Henry Benson, I do believe you are yanking my chain,” she admonished.
“Never,” he said, and he said it with such utter seriousness that Mae’s retort fell from her lips. Instead of poking him in the chest like she always did whenever he teased her, she let her hand stroke the line of his jaw.
He pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. “Stay with me for just a few more minutes, Mrs. Benson,” he said. She could feel him smiling as he kissed her. She could also feel the butterflies fluttering in her stomach. Forty-one years of marriage and four children later, and she still got butterflies when her husband kissed her. Wasn’t that something?
“All right, Mr. Benson,” she said, letting her head fall back on the pillows. “Just a few more minutes.”
Henry grinned and fell in next to her, pulling her into his embrace. She could feel his heartbeat thumping in his chest. Familiar. Dependent. Reliable. Hers. “You just made my day.”
“But I’m warning you,” she continued, raising one finger into the air and biting back the smile that wanted to steal over her lips. “If you start snoring again, I’m smothering you with a pillow.”
“Warning received,” Henry said. “Now quit making a fuss and snooze with me for a while, darling.”
So Mae did exactly that. Sara’s plants could wait.
Click here to keep reading!
Also by Grace Palmer
Sweet Island Inn
No Home Like Nantucket (Book 1)
No Beach Like Nantucket (Book 2)
No Wedding Like Nantucket (Book 3)
No Love Like Nantucket (Book 4)
Willow Beach Inn
Just South of Paradise (Book 1)
Just South of Perfect (Book 2)
Just South of Sunrise (Book 3)