For All Time (Nantucket Brides 2)

This morning Toby saw an email that Victoria had sent late last night. The book was finished and she said she was going to sleep for about twelve hours. “My soul is at last freed,” she wrote.

As Toby looked around the grounds, she searched for what still needed to be done. The tent was up, furniture stacked inside, and the chapel was packed with little chairs. “Opera chairs,” Millie called them. “They’re what they put in the boxes at the opera: hard, tiny, supremely uncomfortable. They don’t want their patrons falling asleep.”

Toby had smiled at the name. After this was over, she wanted to sit with Millie and ask about her life. But so far, she’d not had a chance to do that.

Some lights were hanging down from a tree and a ladder was leaning against the trunk. Toby was concerned that when the crews arrived, someone might walk into the wire. She pulled the ladder out, opened it, and climbed up to the top to fasten the strand of lights as high as she could reach.

“I knew I’d find you here,” said a voice she thought she might never hear again.

Many emotions went through Toby at once: happiness, anger, longing, love. She tried to remain calm but when she took a step down, she missed the ladder and fell backward.

Graydon caught her in his arms.

All thoughts of being sensible left her as she looked into his dark eyes. As Lexie had once said, Graydon’s eyes were smoldering.

Her arms went around his neck and her lips on his, their tongues meeting.

“I couldn’t bear my life without you,” Graydon said as he kissed her face, his arms holding her off the ground, so tight around her she could hardly breathe. “I missed you every moment.”

Toby was kissing him back. She’d never thought to see him face-to-face again, certainly never to touch him. He was so warm, so familiar, so much a part of her.

She felt that he was walking but her mind was too full of his caresses, the pure joy of being near him again that she wasn’t sure what was happening.

It was when he put her feet to the ground but never stopped kissing her that she began to come to her senses. He had moved them back into the trees, away from the chapel and the tents, and he was unbuttoning her shirt. Graydon was going to make love to her—to Toby, not Tabitha—here and now.

It took a strength she didn’t know she had, but she pushed him away to arm’s length. Graydon’s eyes were like dark pools of desire, and he pulled her back to him.

“No,” she whispered.

“You’re right. We’ll go home,” he murmured, his face in her neck.

“Yours or mine?” she asked.

“Yours. I’m going to stay here. With you. Forever.” His head was bent toward hers and he seemed to consider what he’d said as something that was already decided.

Again, she pushed away from him. “You can’t do that!”

This time Graydon seemed to hear her, but he just smiled. “It will be all right,” he said in a soothing voice. “You don’t need to worry about anything. I’ve taken care of al

l of it.”

“Have you?” Toby asked, her hands on his shoulders, arms extended.

“Yes.” Graydon smiled sweetly. “Rory and I worked out a plan. Let’s go somewhere private and I’ll tell you everything.”

“Private? Like my bedroom? We make love, then lie in each other’s arms and you tell me what you and Rory have planned for my future?”

“Exactly!” Graydon said with a grin. “You and I always have agreed about everything.”

Toby stepped away from him. “I want to make sure I fully understand this plan. I made a fool of myself when you were here by trying to get you to go to bed with me. But you refused.”

“I had to return to my own country and I didn’t want to take your maidenhood.”

“But it’s okay to do so now?”

Graydon smiled. “The plan includes that you and I get married. Today. I did some research and you and I can walk to the Nantucket courthouse, get a license, go upstairs, and a judge will marry us.”

“We wouldn’t have to bother with all this?” She waved her hand toward the tents and the chapel that could be seen through the trees.