Lightning That Lingers (20 page)

“Hanky-panky porch?”

“That’s what the servants used to call it. The porch that connects the guest bedrooms.”

“Heavens! You decadent aristocrats. Good thing we’re going to be poor. What else is on our option board?”

“There’s Carrera marble in the fireplaces. Copper in the plumbing. If worse comes to worst, Jack is always trying to give me money, so maybe we could borrow some from him. And I have an uncle who would dearly love to make me some kind of an executive with his company, although that would entail us moving to Los Angeles and—I beg your pardon?”

“I said, oh dear.”

He began to laugh. “You’re going to be worse about these things than I am. Do you know what I was going to do?”

His kisses were making a tantalizing caress on the underside of her throat. Thought fled. “Hmm?”

“I was going to come to see you at dawn,” he whispered softly, “when your resistance would be weak.”

“My resistance to you is always weak.” Her mouth searched for and found his, and it was ticklish for them both to balance on the limb with their arms around each other and their lips clinging and parting. But somehow they found a way.

Eleven

Jenny’s hair was shoulder length now. Philip watched it lift in the sea breeze that tossed the hem of her linen dress and set rippling green grass in a caress against her bare feet and legs. Sitting on the hill above him, she was gazing toward the water where the wind-ruffled waves came in scythes to the island beach. Above, the sun shone with dazzling brilliance in a huge sky. Below the rocky promontory into the Atlantic, their launch with the logo of the Thoreau Society bobbed in the small cove.

It had taken a year to happen—to get the state of Wisconsin to accept Lily Hill as a wildlife preserve with no commercial exploitation, forever, guaranteed. A nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of historic buildings had taken over the mansion, and tourists walked in the restful paths and quiet corridors he had known as a child. It didn’t feel as bad to him as he had thought
it might. It had been a year of frantic fundraising, and of compromise, and of having to turn to others for help, which had not been easy for him. Now it was over. He and Jenny had emerged from it penniless, and so rich in their growing love that they barely noticed.

His new job with the Thoreau Society had brought them to the coast of Maine, where he was heading a project to reestablish a healthy ecology on this chain of beautiful rocky islands stretching into the Atlantic.

One of his pet programs was the return of the puffins, small roly-poly black and white birds with an oversized crescent of a beak, extinct on the islands for a hundred years. Jenny said they looked like a cross between a penguin and a duck. He had arranged to have newly hatched puffins transported here from Newfoundland, a thousand miles to the north. Now the baby puffins resided in tiny burrows that he had hand dug for them. It was his hope that when they grew old enough to migrate, they would return here to rear their young and the colony would grow and flourish, and another piece of the earth would be reborn.

He watched a tiny bump of gray fluff emerge from a burrow and snatch the bit of fish he had left there, and smiled.

He, Jenny, Chaucer, and Henrietta the chicken had found a cottage in a small coastal village, and wonder of wonders, it had a moribund library that was crying out for Jenny. With admiration, he remembered the way she’d gotten the village board to appoint her library director and had used her newfound fundraising skills to reopen it. Since then the library had become a fresh heartbeat in
the village, and she’d been able to launch into a spectrum of related activities—organizing cooperative babysitting for new parents, starting a scholarship search, beginning a program of home book delivery for the elderly.

He saw Jenny wave at him, and he waved back, and then the urge overtook him to be with her. He stood up, brushing the grass and sand from his jeans, and began to run up the breezy hillside.

Jenny watched him come to her, savoring the firm wide lips, the sensitive emotions that came there, and his eyes, the bluest she had ever seen. When he reached her, their hands joined for a moment, their wedding bands glinting in the sunshine, and then he slid down beside her on the blanket, drawing her onto his lap. His fingers spread, curving around the slight swell of her expanding tummy.

“How’s McFetus?” he asked.

“Perfect. But if you don’t stop calling your barely begotten child by that ridiculous nickname I’m going to get my front tooth capped.”

He laughed. “Oh, please. Anything but that.” He bent to graze a kiss where his hand had been. “I love you, McFetus,” he whispered.

She settled back in his arms, peace flowing like a tranquil stream through her. “One very nice thing about being married to a biologist is that the odder the things my body does in this condition, the more it fascinates you.”

He smiled, his arms tightening around her, feeling her cheek against his heartbeat. For a long time they sat, just so, and he thought about desire, and how it had once been no more to him than a series of biological signals that could be caught
and analyzed. This was a much greater thing. Immensely greater. Love.

“How can they call this chemistry?” he asked, softly. “I’ve never seen it in a test tube … captured it in an equation.”

He laid her back against the blanket with infinite gentleness and Jenny experienced again a kiss from the only man ever to match her fantasies.

“Naturally your body fascinates me,” he said, blowing lightly along the curve of her ear. “Did you ever think about what a lovely amazing creation it is? Think of all the sensitive nerve endings carrying messages from your skin to your brain. In your face, for example”—his finger began to follow the path of his breath—“you have the trigeminal nerve. It has three branches. One … transmits impulses from your forehead.” He brushed a sensuous kiss there. “And from your eyelids.” His lips touched her eyelids with utmost care. “Another carries impulses from your upper lip.” He ran the tip of his tongue across her lip and the uneven line of her teeth. “The third … from your lower lip.” He traced his finger delicately there, and stroked a line of kisses down her throat, past the hollow at the base of her neck between her breasts. “Do you have any idea how many sensory receptors there are in your body?”

“No,” she whispered breathlessly, in a cloud of rapture.

“Neither do I.” He gave her a lazy smile. “But I’m going to find every one of them.”

Writing as Laura London or Robin James or under their real names, Sharon and Tom Curtis have garnered a legion of loyal fans over the years. They are lauded by reviewers, booksellers, and readers for their originality, wit, style, and emotionally moving characters. Sharon and Tom are gifted storytellers who pay exquisite attention to the craft of their writing, and whose every novel is a perfect gem
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T
he front porch of the Victorian house provides the only relief from the afternoon sun. The threat of a thunder-storm will only make the heat worse, and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia hunkers down to wait out the summer of 1977. Likewise, the three teenagers who sit sprawled on the porch in various states of heat prostration
.

“Can it get any hotter?” Kate asks, her voice taking on just the slightest hint of a whine
.

“Don’t say that.” Paul watches a fly take a desultory stroll across his forearm
.

“Bet it’s hotter than this in Arizona,” Mike comments
.

“But it’s a dry heat,” Paul and Kate say in unison. Paul looks down at Kate and they grin at each other
.

No one on that porch doubts Paul Armstrong will be in Phoenix next summer. He is the golden boy of Staunton High School’s baseball team. Making it to the majors isn’t a pipe dream for Paul. His self-confidence will make it happen
.

Kate groans as she raises her head from Paul’s lap
.

“Where’re you going, Ms. Moran?” Paul asks, his fingers closing around her wrist
.

“Get more tea.”

“Ya gotta kiss me first.”

“It’s too hot,” she moans, but they all know she doesn’t mean it
.

Both boys watch Kate’s walk to the front door. Her cutoffs are short and her legs are long. Mike silently sings the praises of summer. The screen door slaps closed behind her and, for a few seconds, the relentless drone of the cicadas is silenced
.

Mike feels a rivulet of sweat trickle down the nape of his neck. He looks over at his best friend. “How’d you get so lucky?” he asks
.

Paul slouches lower in the porch swing, setting off a gentle rocking motion. “It’s that Armstrong charm.”

Mike snorts and shifts in the wicker armchair
.

“Hey, we both had an equal shot at her.” Paul’s voice holds the hint of a shrug. “She picked me.”

Mike remembers it differently, but says, “Yeah. I guess she’s not as smart as she looks.”

“I heard that, Michael Fitzgerald,” Kate states, pushing open the screen door
.

“Heard what?” Mike asks innocently
.

Kate perches on the porch railing and rolls the cool glass across her forehead
.

“You know I love you both. Just different.”

“Please don’t give me that ‘I love you like a brother’ routine. It wounds me,” Mike says in what he hopes passes for mock pain
.

The glass at her lips, Kate rolls her eyes at him then closes them and tilts her head back to take a long drink
.

Her thick auburn hair is pulled back in a high ponytail, but a few heat-damp strands cling to her neck. Mike wants to lift them, blow on her hot skin. He wants to put his mouth there and taste her. The thought brings on the beginning of an erection and he guiltily glances at Paul
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