from every direction—pleasure, delight, joy, excitement, ecstasy. Here she was making love to her lifelong friend. The friend who’d always had her back like a steady prevailing wind, lifting her up to lofty heights.
Here, now, with Mike she felt completely at peace. No conflict or problems. She was tuned in. To him. To her own body. To their joined movements. It seemed so natural, as if they’d just been waiting all this time to slide into each other.
She was so glad for him, her hopes sweetly grateful. She had fallen in love before, and things had not worked out the way she’d foreseen, but she believed in the foundation she was building with Mike. The growing tenderness, the compatibility of their bodies, the certainty of her fate.
“There’s lift.” He panted. “Weight and thrust. What’s left?”
Her gaze cemented to his, and she gasped at the sensations rippling through her center.
“Gia?”
“Drag,” she managed.
“Tell me about drag.” His hand trailed over her waist as he pinned her in place against the leather of his couch.
“Drag originates . . .” Gosh, she was having so much trouble talking.
“Uh-huh?”
“Drag . . .” She was panting now too. “Is the backward force in opposition to the forward motion.”
“Mmm.”
“T-to launch a kite . . .” Her body shivered from head to toe, consumed with pleasure. “The force of lift must be greater than the force of weight.”
“Like this?” He did a miraculous move with her body, which quickened and deepened the quivers quaking her.
“Exactly like that.”
“I see.”
“To keep the kite in the air, all four forces must stay in balance. Lift equal to weight and thrust equal to drag.”
“Everything smooth and fluid.”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“Flying higher and higher until—”
“You reach the end of your string.”
“What happens then?”
“Then you’ve come to the highest moment of tension.” She lowered her voice, injected extra husk into it. “And . . .”
“Yes? Yes?” He was panting.
“You linger at the apex for as long as you can. As long as the lift, weight, thrust, and drag are in perfect balance.”
“And, and, and?” He was barely breathing now. Every part of his body tensed rigid against her.
So was Gia.
“You move your fingers to see how the kite will respond . . .” She tickled him in a spot that had him wriggling hard.
“Oh, God.” He groaned.
“Then before you lose control . . .” Just like when she was out on the beach flying a kite, Gia was dazzled and dazed and delighted. Her eyes always on the prize.
“And the kite is ready to, ready to, ready to . . .” He closed his eyes, his body moving faster, throwing the forces out of balance. Thrust without lift and weight and drag led to an inevitable fall.
“Come . . .” She meant to add crashing to the earth, but she couldn’t get any more words out. One syllable was all she could manage.
“Down?” He palmed her breasts.
“Oh yeah.” She writhed underneath him. “You betcha.”
“Drag it right down.” He exhaled long and slow.
“You got it.”
“It’s falling?”
“Tumbling. Spiraling.” She strapped her legs around his waist and pulled him more deeply into her.
“Diving.”
“Oooh,” she whispered.
“Aah.” He moaned.
She wriggled.
He thrashed.
They gasped.
And right there on Mike’s couch, they flew their own special kite all the way to the stars.
Chapter Twenty
Madison
REPEAT: Repetitions of a pattern or design in a fabric, or repetition of a quilting design or motif.
MADISON HAD ACCOMPLISHED what she’d come home to Moonglow Cove to do. She’d fixed things. Her grandmother was on the mend. She’d saved the inn—okay, credit where credit was due, they’d saved the inn—and things between her and Shelley, while not tension-free, were certainly much better.
They were communicating. A huge improvement.
On the beach that morning following the Fourth of July weekend pop-up event, Madison watched the sunrise proud, happy, and warmly nostalgic. She’d treated herself to a raspberry Danish and espresso from the Moonglow Bakery and experienced a blissful caffeine and sugar rush as she strolled the sand.
The only thing holding her back from returning to New York was the wedding quilt she’d promised Gia she’d finish.
A week.
They had a week to finish the quilt. A week until Grammy was released from the hospital. A week to get the business side of the inn straightened out so she could turn the reins over to Shelley and Gia and return to her life in Manhattan.
A week didn’t seem like nearly long enough.
Overcome by inexplicable loneliness, she slipped off her sandals, carried them hooked between the fingers of one hand, dug her warm toes in the