Authors: Susan Wilson
Suddenly Grainger’s hand was on her, yanking her around to face him. He gripped her arms in his hands, then rested his forehead on hers, as if trying to understand her thoughts through physical connection. Then he kissed her. Gently testing her to see if she would struggle. Kiley did not. Her mouth was as eager as his, and it was with an overpowering sense that they were on familiar territory that they renewed the acquaintance of their loving selves. Both knew it was time to put that night to rest; both trembled at the magnitude of the effort. If they didn’t put it to rest, their lives would continue on in their muted, tarnished fashion, without hope and without love. They needed to release each other.
For the first time ever, it was only Grainger and her. Just the two of them, re-igniting a stunted passion.
“I have never forgotten you. I have never had a day when I didn’t regret how I’d behaved.” He pressed his cold cheek against hers, his words spoken to the darkness beyond the shore.
“Grainger.” Kiley stroked his face, trying to reconcile this strong man’s face with the youthful cheek that once lay against her girl’s hand. “You have nothing to regret. I was the one who damaged everything.”
“We were children, behaving with the ignorance of children who don’t know that feelings and lives are fragile. We need to let ourselves heal.”
“I wish…”
“No wishing. No more looking backwards. Please don’t.” Grainger silenced her with his mouth on hers, his tongue inciting warm, moist feelings Kiley had rarely known before. “Promise me that you and I can get to know each other as adults? Rip up that offer; stay here. Give us back the time we’ve lost.”
Now it was her turn to silence him with kisses. She didn’t feel the damp night air until she shivered, unsure of its genesis, the breeze off the water, or Grainger’s penetrating kisses.
He was slow to touch her body, focusing on her face and lips, tongue and ears. Then his mouth grazed her neck, lingering with soft brushes at her throat. After a tortured wait, his hands found her breasts, thumbing her erect nipples straining against the thin fabric of her dress. She stood with her back against the piling, arched against him, feeling his desire against her own.
Loud voices coming out of the Yacht Club brought the moment to a halt as a group of people tumbled out the doors and onto the boardwalk.
“That’s Benny Altman, dragging a flock of half-in-the-bag sailors down to look at his new Soling. She’s right over there, so I think we’d better pull ourselves together.”
Even Grainger’s whisper in her ear sent a thrill down her spine. She snagged his hand, pressing it in her warm one. “Come home with me.” She was afraid to let too much time pass, to lose the momentum.
“What about Will?”
“He’s out with Catherine, and he won’t come home until the last nanosecond before his curfew.”
Grainger bent to retrieve his jacket, placing it over her shoulders again. He kissed the back of her neck, sending pleasant chills through her. “I’d like that very much.”
The crowd passed them, halloos of greeting as if seeing Grainger Egan with his arms around a woman at the end of a pier was the most natural sight in the world. Tomorrow, they both knew, the delayed reactions would get the gossip going. Kiley felt Grainger’s arm around her waist, holding her as if he would never, ever, let her go again.
Just as they reached the parking lot, Toby Reynolds hollered at them. “Hey, Kiley, I thought you’d disappeared or walked home. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Toby loped to where they stood beside Grainger’s truck. “Oh, hi, Grainger. Didn’t see you inside. The charter went for three fifty, not bad. Thanks for donating it. The winners will give you a call.” Toby seemed oblivious to Kiley and Grainger’s unusually close stance, or her wearing Grainger’s jacket like a cape. “So, Kiley, how about a nightcap?”
“Can you give me a raincheck? I’ve got a headache.” Kiley smiled at him, hoping that he’d just take the hint gracefully.
“Sure.” He shrugged. “Get in the car and I’ll take you home.”
“No, that’s okay. Grainger’s taking me.”
“Why do I feel like I’m in high school and I’ve just been dumped?”
She smiled. “Thanks for bringing me, Toby. Call me when you know about the closing.”
“Right, the closing.” Toby toed the gravel beneath his feet. “When do you leave?”
“Noonish.”
“I’ll come by around eight. To help you pack up the car.”
“You don’t have to.” Kiley linked her fingers wtih Grainger’s.
Toby shrugged again. His tie was undone and he looked as if he might have had one too many cocktails. But to his credit, he was a consummate salesman and knew when a deal was off. And his hoped-for deal with Kiley tonight was clearly off, beat out by another salesman. “Okay. Got it. Have a pleasant evening.” He looked at Grainger. “See you at the coffee shop.” Both niceties bore an edge, but not enough to turn Kiley off his handling the house sale. He knew when to cut his losses.
“Good night, Toby.” Grainger helped Kiley into his truck, neither of them saying a word until Kiley giggled.
“He’s right, he did get dumped. He’s not a bad guy. Just not the guy I want.”
Grainger scooped her hand off the bench. “And who is?” He kissed her knuckles.
“It has always been you.” Kiley pulled their clasped hands to her lips. “When you and I had that afternoon together, I realized that Mack could never fill my heart the way you did. And I thought that he would understand.”
Grainger pulled the truck into her driveway and turned off the ignition. They sat without moving for a moment, the weight of her confession still between them. How had they missed Mack’s devotion? Believing that they wouldn’t break anything, that everything could be fixed because they were friends.
“I still miss him.” Grainger’s admission barely above a whisper.
Kiley wiped a tear from the edge of her eyelid with one fingertip. “I missed you both.”
“At least you had Will. At least you had something.”
“I know. There has never been a moment when I wasn’t glad of it. Sometimes I believed that he was the child of both of you. And some days I thought that by some accident of parthenogenesis, I had created him alone. That he was neither yours nor Mack’s, only mine. I didn’t want him to be one or the other’s. Where I once loved you and Mack equally, in the end I didn’t. I loved you more. Yet I loved Mack with all my heart, just in a different way. If I knew that Will was yours, or Mack’s, it would seem like my body had made a choice I was incapable of. It seemed more fair to keep him equally both.”
Grainger covered his eyes with his hand, but not before Kiley saw the relief glitter in them. “Do you suppose I’ll ever get over being jealous of a dead man?”
“You don’t have to be, Grainger. Never again.”
“I do if Will
is
his son. Did you know that Will asked me to take a DNA test?”
“No, but I’m not surprised. He’s lived his whole life without a clue as to who he is, and now he’s close. He just doesn’t understand that knowing won’t change things.”
“But it will. Not the loving part—I would love him as a son either way. What would change is the way Will views me. Right now, I’m the guy who might be his father. If he finds out otherwise, I’ll be the guy who slept with his mother.”
“Will you do it?”
“I told him if he still wants to know in December, we’ll do it. I told him I was worried that we’d both end up disappointed.”
“It might just be a temporary disappointment. You’d both get over it.”
“But the truth would always be there.”
They sat in silence, the crickets outside the truck the only sound.
“Let’s go inside, Grainger.”
“Do you know that in all the time I knew you, I’ve never been upstairs in this house?”
“I never thought about it, but that doesn’t surprise me. My mother has always been one for propriety. It doesn’t seem likely she’d have let me have boys upstairs, although I don’t remember even considering it. My room was always such a mess.”
Kiley held Grainger’s hand in hers, leading the way up the back staircase. They hadn’t spoken their intent. In this soft, blessed calm there was no need to say that they meant to take their reunion to its ultimate end. Briefly embarrassed by the unmade bed and strewn towels, Kiley brought Grainger into her bedroom, once her parents’ room. The oversoft double bed on the old-fashioned springs took their weight with squeaking complaint. They alternated between urgency and leisure, enjoying each moment, celebrating the small steps toward the final act.
Like a seductress, Kiley untied his bow tie and played with it, holding the ends in both hands and bringing his face to hers. Grainger slid the straps of her persimmon red dress down, drawing the top of the stretchy fabric lower and lower until her breasts were exposed. He lingered there until he’d consumed every taste they offered him. Urgency overtook them and they stripped each other of the remainder of their clothes, mindless of how they threw them on the floor. Then they paused, assessing in the yellow lamplight the changes time had wrought to their youthful bodies.
“You are so beautiful.” Grainger let his eyes drift along Kiley’s body, still trim despite the years and childbirth, still firm, high-breasted, and curved. Her skin, newly tanned by her three weeks at the beach, glowed in the lamplight. He rolled her over to reacquaint himself with this body he had only once possessed. He kissed the dent above her buttocks, let his tongue trail a shivery trace along her spine until he reached her neck, when, tormented, she rolled back over and began her own exploration of him.
The long lanky youth had been replaced by a solid, muscular man. Everything about him seemed bigger, stronger, more virile. She touched the hardened disks of his nipples, then let her hand drift downward until she found him, cupped him, admired the weight of him, and teased him into an extraordinary hardness.
They entered into the dance of coupling, their passion not to be corralled any longer. A mere touch and she came in endless waves of surreal sensation until she felt lost, spinning out of control, never to reach the bottom. A moment later Grainger joined her, their voices singing their exquisite joy. Afterward they lay panting, entwined, his head on her heart. Silent except for the sound of their breaths.
They might have lain like that for an hour, lightly dozing, waking to feel their conjoined parts, renewing the moment with kisses and touches until, without having fully separated, they brought each other again to climax.
Sated at last, they dozed again, spooned together, Grainger’s breath tickling her neck. Later they were wide awake and talkative, full of questions. Kiley whispered little things she thought he might want to know about her, about Will and how he had lifted her so many times from the despond of old misery. Then she asked him, “What about you? Tell me about your life. Have you been married? Have you been all right?”
Grainger stroked his thumb against her hand and told her how he’d twice come close to marriage, and how he’d come back home. “I was able to make a new life here, after all. Like you, I was afraid I’d be consumed by the memories. You just have to set about making new ones.” As if to illustrate his point, Grainger gently kissed her again, this time with simple affection.
The clock in the living room chimed, and he raised his head. “It’s midnight. What time is Will coming home?”
Kiley untangled a foot from the tossed sheets. “His curfew is at one.”
“Isn’t that kind of late?” Grainger pushed himself over Kiley, leaned back down for a last bedded kiss, then extricated himself from the covers to pick up his shorts.
“Not at his age. Once they get to be eighteen, it’s pretty hard to demand a curfew.”
“What can he be doing in Hawke’s Cove at this hour?”
“My God, you sound like a parent.” Kiley sat beside Grainger, looking at their bare legs aligned side by side on the edge of the bed. She cleared her throat with a stagey cough. “He and Catherine are making the most of their last night together.”
“Oh.” Grainger pulled on his trousers, drew on the crumpled white shirt, and pulled his suspenders up over his shoulders.
Kiley sat naked on the edge of the bed and watched him. “You are incredibly sexy in that outfit. I’d make you wear it all the time.”
“It would get pretty nasty after a while. Marine varnish is very hard on dinner jackets.”
“You love what you do, don’t you?”
“Yes, and I’m very good at it, which is why I can afford to send Will to Cornell.”
The act of slipping on shorts and a sweatshirt covered her mixed emotions. It was too late; there was no recalling the forward motion of the house sale. Again Kiley felt the wash of regret that she hadn’t come back, had waited all this time to renew her claim to this place. Now it was too late.
“It’s not my decision to sell the place. It’s my parents’, and they aren’t going to change their minds, despite your offer.”
Grainger slowly buttoned the white shirt, studying each button as he pushed it through its buttonhole. “So, I’m still not good enough for them.”
“No, that’s not it. That was never it.” Kiley stood against his back, her arms around him, feeling the hard muscle of his belly, her cheek pressed into the soft fabric of his shirt.