you looking at me like that?" You would think he had never seen her before, the way his gaze roamed across her face. Like he was memorizing every inch of it.
He trailed his index finger down over her right cheekbone to her lips. Nobody had ever looked at her that way before, as if he wanted to disappear into her soul.
"I love you, Gracie."
She stopped breathing while the words flashed and sparkled in the air before her, brighter than Venus and Vega overhead. "I'm dreaming," she whispered. "Say it again."
He did, more softly this time, and then he tilted her chin until she was looking directly into his eyes, same as he had the first time he'd kissed her, and in that instant she knew that he meant every word. For the rest of her life she would remember this moment when all of the stars in the summer sky swooped down from the heavens and lifted her higher and higher until she was sure she could reach out and touch the moon.
"Gracie." His voice was low, urgent, wonderfully uncertain. "Don't keep me hanging..."
"I love you." She knew she would never say those words to another man, not as long as she lived. "I've loved you from the very beginning."
His eyes glowed with pleasure. "Yeah?"
She kissed his chin, his cheek, his neck. "Yeah." She kissed his mouth, feeling shy and wild. "You told me to hang up my sweater in the coat closet so Mrs. Cavanaugh wouldn't get mad at me and I decided right then and there that you were my guardian angel."
"I don't remember that."
"I do," she said. "You even held a seat for me and because you liked me, the other kids decided it was okay for them to like me too. I'll never forget that."
"You wore a red sweater," he said slowly, as it all came back to him, "with a tiny gold cross around your neck." He fingered the delicate chain that disappeared beneath her blouse and found a gold cross dangling from it. "This isn't the same one, is it?"
"Same one." The tiny filigreed cross was all Gracie had of her mother. She never took it off.
He trailed his finger against the curve of her breast. "Your skin is still warm from the sun."
"Impossible." She shivered at his gentle touch. "I worked inside all day." He pressed his mouth to the base of her throat and the world seemed to spin around her. "In the air conditioning."
His hand slid under her shirt, his long fingers tracing the line of her rib cage. "Warm and soft."
"We shouldn't..." His touch was magical, impossible to resist. "What if someone sees us..."
"Nobody will see us." They'd been coming there every night for almost two months and nobody in town had any idea.
It was a big step, the biggest step she'd ever taken, and the consequences could change her life forever.
"I'm scared, Noah," she whispered, pressing her forehead against his shoulder and closing her eyes.
"So am I."
She frowned at him. "Don't make fun of me. I'm serious."
"Here," he said, taking her hand in his. "Feel." He placed her hand over his heart. "See? Scared as hell."
"I scare you?"
"Right now you do."
She drew in a deep breath then placed his hand in the center of her breastbone so he could feel the answering beat of her own heart.
"I want it to be perfect for you," he said.
"I don't want to disappoint you," she said. "I never—"
"I know," he said. "That's why I'm scared."
She had a million questions she wanted to ask him. Who and what and where and how many times but the answers held too much power. She was better off not knowing. The world was filled with beautiful girls who knew how to have fun without talking it to death. Girls who didn't plan their every move or worry about the consequences. Why couldn't she be one of them? Instead she'd been born plain and smart, careful and wordy.
"Poor you," she said softly. "You could do so much better. You could be over on Hidden Island with the others and—"
He grabbed her by the shoulders. "Don't say that." His voice was flinty with anger. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me." His words poured over her like honey. She was more than he'd ever dreamed of... she made him feel he could accomplish anything... she made him want to be better than he was. She was dazzled by his words, drunk on them.
"I wish I was