Just Like Heaven Page 17

  “How do you know what he looks like? You’ve never met him.”

  Sonia and Liz exchanged glances.

  “What?” Kate demanded. “You both look guilty as hell.”

  Sonia jerked a thumb toward the computer at the far end of the room. “Google. How else do people find out anything?”

  “I Googled him and came up empty.” Oh no. She hadn’t wanted to admit that.

  Sonia and Liz exchanged a longer, more pointed look and Kate tossed an empty paper cup in their direction.

  “Google Images,” Liz said. “There were twelve of them.”

  “Thirteen,” Sonia corrected her, “if you count the high school yearbook photo. Anybody could find them.”

  She darted toward the computer and they all but tackled her.

  “You have a ten o’clock with Grace for a blowout,” Sonia scolded. “Quite frankly, Kate, I don’t think you can afford to miss it.”

  “Besides,” Liz added, “what do you need pictures for when you’re going to spend the day with the real thing?”

  Good question, but not one she wanted to answer.

  They hadn’t spoken in two days. They hadn’t seen each other in three. Was it possible that all of that wonderful magic, that sizzle and spark, had run its course and they would find themselves alone on the beach at Spring Lake with absolutely nothing to say and nothing to do except wonder what on earth they were doing there in the first place?

  Not that she was nervous or anything.

  Pinecrest Village

  “Look at you, Father Mark!” Charlotte’s eyes brightened when he walked into her hospital room. “Pretty snazzy!”

  “No collar today?” One of the nurses looked up from the computer terminal where she was entering data. “You make a good civilian.”

  He had been fending off good-natured teasing since the guard ushered him onto the property.

  “Jeans and a sweater,” he said. “What’s the big deal?”

  “You tell him,” Charlotte said to the pretty nurse. “You’re younger. He’ll believe you.”

  The nurse laughed and continued her work.

  “You’re looking well today,” he said, leaning over to kiss Charlotte’s whisper-soft cheek. “Whatever they’re doing for you here, it’s working.”

  She patted his cheek with a be-ringed hand. “The bishop signed the contract?”

  He nodded and sat down in the chair next to her bed. “He signed. It’s all set for the end of May.”

  “I knew he would.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I’ll admit to harboring some selfish feelings, Father. I hate to see you leave us. You’ve become very important to many people. You’ll be difficult to replace.”

  “We can all be replaced, Charlotte.”

  “God doesn’t work that way,” Charlotte said. “You’re meant to go back up there and get—what is that word they use these days?”

  “Closure,” he said.

  “That’s it.” Charlotte beamed. “You need closure and that’s the only way you’ll get it.”

  As always, she saw right through him to the heart of the matter.

  “I’m not as happy about it as I thought I’d be.” He told her about the trip, the impromptu party at the rectory. “It doesn’t feel like home anymore.”

  “It hasn’t been your home for a long time. That town must be filled with ghosts.”

  “You’re a wise woman, Charlotte. You should be running therapy sessions.”

  She studied his outfit with a critical eye. “That blue sweater brings out your eyes. She’ll like it.”

  He tried to play dumb but Charlotte was having none of it.

  “You’re seeing that red-haired woman today, aren’t you?”

  “Do you mean Kate?”

  “I’m an old woman. Don’t expect me to remember names. But you know exactly who I’m talking about, Father.”

  “You got me.” Busted by a nonagenarian. “We’re driving down to Spring Lake for lunch.”

  “Spring Lake!” Her sigh was young and positively girlish. “A perfect spot for romance.”

  “We’re just friends, Charlotte.”

  He hadn’t spoken to Kate in two days. They hadn’t seen each other in three. Trying to understand the chemical attraction between a man and a woman was like trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

  Then again, maybe it wasn’t like lightning at all. Maybe it was more like a bad cold. No matter what you did or didn’t do, the cold ran its course in seven days and you forgot it ever happened until the next cold came along.

  Just because he couldn’t get her out of his mind didn’t mean she had spent more than twenty seconds thinking about him. She might have opened her eyes this morning and wondered why she had said yes to an afternoon on the beach with a homeward-bound priest from New Hampshire who didn’t know his ass from his elbow when it came to romance.

  “You’re not a Roman Catholic,” Charlotte reminded him. “You’re allowed to go courting.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” he warned her. “This isn’t going to go anywhere.”

  “Not with that attitude it isn’t,” she assured him. “Life is short, young man. We aren’t here forever. Why are you wasting your God-given time?”

  He didn’t know a clergyman or -woman on the planet who could have said it any better than Charlotte Petruzzo.

  The Hairport

  “The usual, Kate?” Grace drew the wide-toothed comb through Kate’s wet hair. “Or maybe a French braid would be nice. Something a little different.”

  Kate looked at her reflection in the mirror and didn’t recognize the woman looking back. She looked younger, happier, filled with hope.

  “Loose,” she said, shaking her head. “Long and loose.”

  “Say hallelujah!” Grace tossed the comb in the air and caught it on the way down. “It’s only taken three years and a hospital stay to make the woman see reason.”

  The banter was good-natured and she let it fly over, under, and around her while Grace wielded the big round brush and the alarmingly phallic-looking blow-dryer.

  “So what time does he pick you up?” Grace rubbed a tiny bit of shine serum on her palms then slid her fingers through Kate’s amazingly long and terrific-looking hair.

  “Excuse me?”

  “We all know Father McDreamy’s taking you to the beach today.”

  “Which big-mouth friend or relative of mine told you that?”

  Grace paused, blow-dryer dangling from her right hand, round brush from the left. “Susie,” she called across the floor, “who told us about Kate and Father McDreamy?”

  “Maeve told Helen at the bakery yesterday and Helen told Jack and Jack told me.”

  “I heard it from Sonia,” a woman with a headful of foil volunteered. “I was browsing across the street and I asked how Katie was doing and she told me the whole story. It’s so romantic!”

  “I’m thinking of converting,” Lee said as she touched up Claire Shuster’s gray roots. “That man is the poster child for Episcopalianism.”

  “You all seem to know an awful lot about a man you’ve never seen,” Kate said to their reflections in the mirror.

  “Haven’t seen him?” Grace laughed and they all joined in. “Katie, his picture’s splashed on the front page of this week’s Coburn Bugle.”

  “What?” She leaped up, sending a lapful of clips and combs flying. “Let me see!”

  They had a foot-high stack of them near the reception desk.

  PRIEST SAVES LIFE OF LOCAL WOMAN

  The headline was set in big bold letters.

  The story read like romantic fiction, even though every word the reporter wrote was absolutely true. But those pictures . . .

  “Oh my God!” She winced and turned the paper facedown on the table. “Where did they get that hideous photo of me?” She looked like something that had been left in the sun too long.

  “Two thousand four Fourth of July Sidewalk Sale,” Lee said. “We all looke
d like gargoyles.”

  They couldn’t find a bad photo of Mark to help level the playing field? It looked like a case of Beauty and the Beast with the roles reversed. Was he really that gorgeous? Good-looking, yes, but she hadn’t realized he had quite this much going for him. She had been caught by the sadness in his eyes, the gentleness of his touch, the warmth of his mouth on hers . . .

  Whoa, French. Get a grip.

  “I have a good mind to sue those idiots at the Bugle,” she said. “How can they write a story about what happened to me without asking me any questions?”

  “Angelina and Brad are probably asking the same thing,” Grace said to howls of laughter all around. “Now get back here, Kate, and let me finish making you gorgeous.”

  This entire thing had a life of its own. It had from the moment she inadvertently stole his parking space and set into motion a series of events that still had her head spinning.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had this much fun. The teasing, the laughter, the feeling of being one of the girls. Okay, middle-aged girls, but the sentiment was still the same.

  “You look fabulous,” Lee said when Grace finished her magic. “Thirty, thirty-five max.”

  “You should wear it that way all the time,” Foil Head Woman said. “You look like that girl on Will and Grace.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” the woman with the formerly gray roots said. “A young Susan Sarandon.”

  Either way she couldn’t lose.

  She got whistled at by a UPS driver and flirted with at the stoplight at Main and Elm by a man old enough to know better. By the time she reached her driveway she had decided she would wear her hair long and loose until she needed Depends.

  Maeve was gathering up her books and papers and loading them into one of her many leather totes when Kate walked into the house. “What did I tell you, honey? Once a woman lets her hair down, there’s no stopping her.”

  Maybe it was time to put one of her mother’s favorite theories to the test.

  Nothing had changed. She was waiting on the front porch when he got there and the second their eyes met he knew this was either the best or the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

  This was how happy felt. Not how he remembered it feeling. Not how he wished it felt. This was the real deal—full-blown, full-bore, full-throttle happiness.

  She ran across the yard toward him, her hair long and loose, shimmering red-gold in the sunlight, and if you ever wanted to know why he believed in God, there was your answer. There could be magic between people, the kind of magic that made you want to do better, be better, reach for the stars and grab a handful.

  “You look great,” Mark said as he held open the car door for Kate. “Did you change your hair or something?”

  She gave him one of those looks women were born knowing how to deliver. “I’m wearing it down today.”

  “You should wear it that way all the time.”

  “Thanks.” She made a show of eyeing his hair. “Yours looks pretty good too.”

  “I combed it today,” he said. “Makes a big difference.”

  “I like the sweater. Is that part of your priestly uniform?”

  “Your Catholic schoolgirl upbringing is showing. Priests don’t have a uniform.”

  “You should be required to wear a collar at all times,” she said as he started the engine. “How else can we tell you from the civilians?”

  They joked back and forth, trading comments at the speed of light. There was an ease between them, a deeper sense of communication that usually developed over a period of years, not days. He felt more fully himself, more connected with the world, optimistic in ways that should have surprised him into silence.

  He had trouble keeping his eyes on the road. She was so vibrant, so alive, so filled with passion and energy, that he wanted to pull over to the side of the road and—

  He was wrong. Something had changed and it wasn’t just her hairstyle.

  He was in love.

  Sixteen

  Spring Lake was a tiny dot on the map of the Jersey shore that boasted 2.1 miles of wide, sandy beachfront and a crystal clear spring-fed lake near the center of town. The word charming had been invented to describe places like this.

  He parked the beat-up blue Honda in front of one of the old beachfront hotels and they held hands as they dashed across the wide sun-swept street to the sandy shore.

  “I’m going to miss this,” he said as they started walking south along the water’s edge.

  “The beach?”

  “New Jersey.”

  She laughed as they stepped around a swirling tide pool. “Now that’s something you don’t hear every day.”

  “I like it here.”

  “You were highly complimentary the other day, but don’t spread it around.” She shielded her eyes and looked up at him. “Besides, I thought New England was the place to be when the leaves start to turn.”

  “New Jersey has it beat.”

  She knew what he was really saying, what those simple words meant. Two weeks ago the significance might have gone right over her head, but not today. Not with the warm April sun on their shoulders, the breeze off the ocean in her hair, her hand clasped tightly in his, the ocean at their feet. This was high school with a 401(k) plan and he had declared himself seriously smitten.

  “We’re famous,” she said as they nodded toward some fishermen standing hip deep in the icy water. “Front page of the Coburn Bugle.”

  “The Coburn Bugle?”

  “Best and only weekly in Coburn, New Jersey, source of all news social, retail, political, and religious in town.”

  “You told a reporter about what happened?”

  “If I had my way I wouldn’t have told my mother.” She had to laugh at the look on his face. “People talk. We’re a gossipy small town.”

  “Do you have a copy?”

  “I left one in your car. We can analyze it over lunch.”

  The wind kicked up and she shivered. He dropped her hand and draped an arm around her shoulders and she settled in closer to his side. Something close to pure contentment moved through her.

  “No point to keeping a low profile anymore, then,” he said.

  “None that I can see.”

  “Once you hit the front page, you’ve been outed.”

  “Totally.”

  They stopped walking. He shifted. She adjusted. The companionable arm around her shoulders turned into something else. Something she had read about in books but never in a million years thought she would experience. A melting sensation that turned her limbs to ribbons of taffy left out in the sun.

  You couldn’t hide in full sun. Full sun exposed every line, every wrinkle, every secret flourishing in the shadows.

  His arms didn’t hold her in place. She could have slipped his embrace if she had wanted to. She was there because she couldn’t think of anywhere else in the whole wide world where she would rather be.

  “Six weeks isn’t a long time,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “We’d be crazy to waste a minute more of it.”

  He placed a finger under her chin and tilted her face up to his and for once in her life she didn’t want to duck her head or turn away or hide behind a wall of words. All she wanted was to kiss him.

  A kiss would be enough.

  She hadn’t expected, hadn’t dreamed that a kiss could be everything.

  Their lips met and the world around her slipped out of focus. Perfect . . . better than perfect . . . his warm mouth . . . his strong hands . . . his long lean body pressed against hers . . . the yearning deep inside . . . she wanted . . . everything . . . she wanted everything and she wanted it now and she wanted it forever . . . could you build a world from a kiss . . . could a kiss last forever . . .

  “We’re attracting a crowd,” he said when they broke apart, breathless, hearts thundering, both of them dazed and on fire from the inside out.

  She blinked and peered over his shoulder as the
world came back into focus. Three fishermen, rods resting on their shoulders, were watching them from about one hundred feet away. Two elderly women, bundled into sweaters and bright purple hats, stared intently from the boardwalk.

  “I don’t care,” she said, starting to laugh.

  “Me either.” He kissed her again, hard and fierce, and she melted against him.

  “You don’t kiss like a priest,” she murmured against his lips.

  “How many priests have you kissed?”

  “None,” she said, “but I’ll bet you don’t kiss like any of them.”

  They moved slowly apart, each trying to regain their balance and reclaim some of the space that used to exist between them.

  She wasn’t sure that was possible anymore.

  They found a luncheonette on a side street that was still serving lunch. The place was a haphazard affair, two buildings stitched together with a staple gun and some duct tape and bound by a baseball theme. Babe Ruth beamed down on the cash register up front. Lou Gehrig pointed the way toward the restrooms. Thurman Munson guarded the stack of well-worn menus while Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Jackie Robinson watched over diners in the back room. A pair of Louisville Sluggers were crisscrossed over the nonworking fireplace like swords at a military wedding. The salt and pepper shakers were plastic baseballs with holes punched where the stitching would be. The menu featured hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries, and as much Coke as you could drink in one sitting. Dessert was something called a Cracker Jack Sundae.

  “We’d better find somewhere else,” he said as they scanned the ketchup-stained menu. “This place will put you back in the hospital.”

  “I love it here,” she said as the strains of “Take Me out to the Ball Game” wafted through the frying oil-scented air.

  “You’re kidding, right?” He had a pretty good Mr. Spock eyebrow lift going.

  “Nope. This is romantic.” As far as she was concerned, it put The Old Grist Mill to shame.

  “Who are you, Kate French?” he asked as he put the menu down on the table. “Every time I think I know what you’re going to say, you say something else.”