Safe Harbor (33 page)

Throwing off the cover, he reached for his
jeans and tugged them on. Then he hurried down the hall, moving
instinctively to the small bedroom, to the attic stairs, through
the attic to the ladder.

The trap door was open. Maybe she’d left it
that way in order to hear if Jamie awakened, but Kip wanted to
believe she’d left it open for him.

He found her kneeling on the floor of the
cupola, clad in her bathrobe, her elbows resting on the window sill
and her chin balanced on her arms. Wisps of fog blurred the stark
brilliance of the moonlight, giving it an ethereal glow.

At the sound of his footsteps she turned her
head. An enigmatic smile crossed her lips.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Her eyebrows rose. “About what?”

He approached her, kneeled beside her, tucked
an errant strand of hair behind her ear. Her cheek was soft and
warm. He wanted to keep touching her, caressing the lobe of her
ear. He wanted to kiss her. To know she was still with him, where
he needed her to be.

“What I did to you.” He grappled with his
vague, enveloping fear. “Downstairs. I shouldn’t have done
that.”

“Make love with me, you mean?”

“Without protection.” His voice was low,
halting. “I shouldn’t have just tossed the idea at you the way I
did. It’s such a serious decision, having another child. I should
have given you some time—”

“I didn’t need time,” she said, her smile
widening slightly. “I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

“Even so, I shouldn’t have railroaded you like
that, when we were both—”

She brushed her index finger over his mouth to
silence him. “At least we talked about it first. With Jamie we
didn’t even do that much. And look what happened.”

What happened was a miracle. What happened was
that Kip and Shelley both learned how much love they had to
give.

“I want another child,” she assured him, her
eyes luminous and her voice calm.

“This time it will be easier,” he promised.
“I’ll be with you the whole time, and—”

“You don’t have to talk me into it.” Her gaze
was constant and certain. “I’ve cleared a lot of stuff out of my
heart, Kip. A lot of anger and resentment. I’ve cleared it out, and
now there’s this space just waiting to be filled.”

He knew what “stuff” she was referring to.
There would be time later to ask her how she’d rid herself of it,
why she had finally decided to make peace with her father. If Kip
had helped in any way, he was glad. But what mattered was that
she’d done it.

What mattered even more was that she cared
enough about Kip to be willing to have another child with
him.

It took all his willpower not to take her in
his arms and crush her to himself. He hadn’t completely recovered
from his nightmare; he hadn’t yet convinced himself that she would
never vanish in the fog. “It might take more than one try,” he
pointed out.

She erupted in a hushed, throaty laugh.
“Meaning, you want to spend more time in my bed?”

“Meaning, I want
to think of it as
our
bed. I want to marry you, Shelley.”

Her smile ebbed and she turned away, gazing
through the window at the hazy moon. For a long moment Kip heard
nothing but the distant chorus of crickets, the faint rustle of
leaves, the constant rhythm of his breath and hers. She smelled of
baby shampoo and talcum powder, of heat and sex. He longed to run
his hand through her hair, to pull back the lapel of her robe, to
bare her throat and breasts, to touch her, to love her.

Her silence closed around his heart, cold as
stone.

“I love you,” he said.

“Not the way you loved Amanda,” she whispered.
There was no jealousy in her voice, no reproach. She stated the
words as if they were a simple, irrefutable truth.

He shut his eyes and waited. Amanda appeared in
his mind, young, full of hope and promise, her eyes sparkling and
her cheeks stretched by her smile as she stood at the corner and
waved at Kip. But instead of stepping into the street, she kept
smiling, kept waving, her outlines receding as fog rolled
in.

Block Island fog.

And suddenly he realized she was waving
good-bye.

“You’re right,” he said, opening his eyes and
taking in the magnificent vastness of the night sky, the symphony
of island sounds, the delicate caress of the wind. “I don’t love
you the way I loved her. The way I loved her was like a sunset, one
of those gorgeous sunsets at the cove, when the sun sinks below the
water and drags the daylight down behind it. It ended in darkness,
Shelley. It was beautiful, but it ended in darkness.”

He curved his arm around her shoulders, needing
to feel her against him, to hold onto her so she wouldn’t flee.
“The way I love you is different. It’s more...like a sunrise. It’s
warm and clear, and it fills the world with light. It makes me want
to wake up and live. That’s how I love you.”

She rotated in his arm and gazed at him. Her
eyes shimmered with tears. “I don’t know, Kip...”

“Is it that you don’t love me?” he asked
apprehensively.

She laughed. “Oh, Kip—I’ve loved you
since...probably since the day you showed me that dead snake at
Scotch Beach.”

“Really?”

“In different ways at different times, but yes.
I love you.” Her smile waned. “I promised myself I’d never get
married.”

“Some promises are meant to be
broken.”

“I promised myself I would never become
dependent on a man—”

“And some promises can’t be kept, no matter how
hard you try. It works both ways, Shelley. I’m dependent on you,
too.”

“Because I helped you get over
Amanda.”

“Because I love you,” he corrected her. She had
helped him recover from his grief, she had helped him to pull
himself out of his depression. But that was behind him now, and he
still needed Shelley, still depended on her. They anchored each
other, relied on each other, understood each other. Trusted each
other—he hoped.

“You do trust me, don’t you?”

A tear skittered down her cheek, but she didn’t
avert her face. “Once, when we were up here,” she reminisced, “when
we were fifteen years old, you kissed me.”

He smiled. “I remember.”

“Afterwards, you said you would never do
anything bad to me.” She swallowed, then took his hand in hers,
holding tight. “You never have. I’ve always trusted you. Even when
I was angry or scared, I’ve always trusted you.”

“Then marry me.”

She leaned toward him and touched her lips to
his. “I’ll marry you.”

He closed his arms around her, drew her back to
him and kissed her deeply. He remembered that first wonderful kiss,
so many, many years ago. He remembered how excited they’d both
been, and how frightened. He remembered how Shelley had broken from
him in panic, how she’d trembled in his arms, terrified by how
close she had come to being swept away.

She was no longer trembling, no longer afraid.
Her hands cupped his cheeks and she held him to her, matching his
passion, his confidence, his love.

An eternity seemed to pass before they drew
back, breathless. He searched her face and saw joy there, and
serenity. He didn’t know whether they had conceived another child
that night, but he knew that something had come to life inside them
both. It was flourishing, blossoming, spreading its leaves and
sheltering them. It was part friendship, part trust, part
understanding. Part need and part choice, and it was
love.

In the moonlit cupola, high above the
island, above Old Harbor and New Harbor and the ocean beyond, Kip
held Shelley and felt the seeds of his new life take root and
grow.

###

About the Author

Judith Arnold is the award-winning,
bestselling author of more than eighty-five published novels. An
New York native, she currently lives in New England, where she
indulges in her passions for jogging, dark chocolate, good music
and good books. She is married and the mother of two sons.

Judith is thrilled that her out-of-print
books are now available to new generations of readers.

For more information about
Judith, or to contact her, please visit her website:
www.juditharnold.com
.

Here’s a list Judith’s e-book reissues, all
available for sale:

Cry Uncle

Barefoot in the Grass

Safe Harbor

Found: One Wife

Change of Life

One Whiff of Scandal

A> Loverboy

Father Christmas

Father of Two