“Here?” Her heart thumped wildly in her chest.
“Yes, here. I want to be inside you, but I don’t want the sand to scratch your skin.” Gabriel pulled her down, and his mouth sought hers eagerly as the waves gently lapped at their legs. When they cried out their pleasure, the pale moon smiled.
* * *
A tropical rainstorm moved through the area the following morning. While the raindrops tapped against the roof of the hut, the couple made love slowly in a bed covered with mosquito netting. They found their rhythm in the steady dance of the rain.
When they were both blissful, he suggested that they rinse the sweat and humidity from their skin in the large bathtub on the veranda. Reclining in vanilla-scented bubbles, Julia leaned against his chest as he wound his arms around her middle. When she was in his arms she could almost forget the troubles that waited for them in Toronto.
She felt safe with Gabriel. It was not that he was a powerful man, although his wealth gave him some measure of strength. It was the way he’d confronted her bullies—first, Christa, then Simon. And the fact that he’d excoriated her father for a lifetime of neglect.
The vulnerability of the lovers’ bed was well-known to Julia now. She knew nakedness and intimacy, desire and burning need, and deep, deep satisfaction. But she also knew that Gabriel loved her and wished to protect her. In his arms, she felt safe, for the first time in her life.
“Saturday mornings were my favorite when I was a child.” Gabriel interrupted her musings with a wistful voice.
Julia traced his lifeline with a single finger. “Why?”
“My mother was passed out. I could watch cartoons. This was before we lost our cable.” He gave her a half smile, and Julia tried not to cry, thinking of Gabriel as a sad little boy whose only happiness was a few hours of cartoons.
“I used to make my own breakfast. Cold cereal or peanut butter on toast.” He shook his head. “When we ran out of milk, which we did frequently, I’d use orange juice.”
“How was it?”
“Awful. It wasn’t even real orange juice—it was Tang.” He stroked her hair absentmindedly. “I’m sure a psychiatrist would have much to say about the connection between my childhood and my attachment to fine things.”
Impulsively, Julia turned and threw her arms around his neck, causing a great tidal wave of water to slosh over the sides of the tub.
“Hey, what’s all this?”
She buried her face into his shoulder. “Nothing. I just love you so much it hurts.”
He hugged her gently. “Those things happened thirty years ago. Grace was more of a mother to me. I regret not being with her when she died. I didn’t have the chance to say good-bye.”
“She knew, Gabriel. She knew how much you loved her.”
“I think your childhood was far more painful.”
She sniffled against his shoulder but said nothing.
“If meanness makes people ugly, your mother must have been hideous. My mother was neglectful and indifferent, but never cruel.”
He paused, wondering if he should broach the topic both of them had been avoiding since the advent of their vacation.
“Once I became acquainted with Christa Peterson, I thought that she was ugly. I owe you a debt for keeping me from sleeping with her. Although I’d like to think that even intoxicated I have better taste than that.”
Julia withdrew, sitting back slightly and toying with the end of a lock of her hair.
He lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Talk to me.”
“I don’t like thinking about you and Christa together.”
“Then it’s a mercy you saved me from her.”
“She’s trying to end your career.”
“The truth will out. You said yourself that Paul heard her aspirations with respect to me. I’m hoping she’ll wash out of the program and we’ll both be rid of her.”
“I don’t want her to flunk,” Julia said quietly. “Then I’d be just as ugly as her, taking pleasure in her misfortune.”
Gabriel’s expression grew fierce. “She was mean to you on more than one occasion. You should have cursed her out when you had the chance.”
“I’m too old to call people names, whether they deserve it or not. We don’t live in a nursery school.”
Gabriel tapped the end of her nose gently with his finger. “And where does that wisdom come from? Sesame Street?”
“The benefits of a Catholic education,” she muttered. “Or maybe a little Lillian Hellman.”
His eyebrows crinkled. “What do you mean?”
“Lillian Hellman wrote a play called The Little Foxes. In it a young girl tells her mother that some people eat the earth, like locusts, and others stand around and watch them do it. She promises her mother she isn’t going to stand around and watch anymore. Instead of standing around and watching Christa’s ugliness, we need to fight her with something stronger, like charity.”
“People underestimate you, Julianne. Nevertheless, it pains me when people fail to give you the respect that you deserve.”
Julia shrugged. “There will always be Christas in this world. And sometimes, we become the Christas.”
He placed his chin on her shoulder. “I’ve changed my mind about you.”
“You have?”
“You aren’t a Dantean, you’re a Franciscan.”
She laughed. “I doubt the Franciscans would approve of me having sex, unmarried, outside, in a bathtub.”
He brought his mouth to her ear. “Is that a promise?”
Julia shook her head and stroked his eyebrows, one at a time. “I like to think of you as a little boy, sweet and inquisitive.”
He snorted. “I don’t know how sweet I was, but I was definitely inquisitive. Especially about girls.” He leaned over to kiss her, and when his lips left hers she smiled.
“See? Any boy who can kiss like that can’t be all bad. St. Francis would approve.”
“I hate to tell you, but your beloved Francis wasn’t always right. There’s a passage in the Inferno in which he argues with a demon over the soul of Guido da Montefeltro. Do you know it?”
Julia shook her head, so Gabriel recited the text for her in Italian.
“Francesco venne poi com’io fu’ morto,
(Francis came afterward, when I was dead,)
per me; ma un d’i neri cherubini
(for me; but one of the black Cherubim)
li disse: ‘Non portar: non mi far torto.
(said to him: “Take him not; do me no wrong.)Venir se ne dee giù tra ‘ miei meschini
(He must come down among my servitors,)
perché diede ‘l consiglio frodolente,
(because he gave the fraudulent advice,)
dal quale in qua stato li sono a’ crini;
(from which time forth I have been at his hair;)ch’assolver non si può chi non si pente,
(For who repents not cannot be absolved,)
né pentere e volere insieme puossi
(nor can one both repent and will at once,)
per la contradizion che nol consente’.”
(because of the contradiction which consents not”.) “So you see, Julia, even St. Francis was wrong about people on occasion. He thought Guido’s soul belonged in Paradise.”
“Yes, but it’s like Francis to think the best of someone—to think that Guido’s repentance was real and to fight for his soul,” she protested. “Even if in the end he was wrong.”
“St. Francis gave up too quickly.”
“Do you think so?”
Gabriel gazed at her intently. “If it were your soul I was after, all the dark Cherubim in Hell couldn’t keep me from you.”
A shiver snaked up and down Julia’s spine.
“I would have done whatever it took to save you.” His voice and his expression were grave. “Even if that meant I had to spend eternity in Hell.”
* * *
Gabriel and Julia spent their last full day of vacation in and out of the ocean. They sunned themselves, then relaxed in the shade with a beer and an umbrella drink. Julia nodded off in her lounge chair, her large floppy hat discarded on the sand.
Gabriel loved to watch her sleep—the way her chest rose and fell with her gentle breathing. The way her lips curled back with the occasional sigh. She looked so peaceful. Gabriel was convinced that Grace would have been delighted that he and Julianne were a couple. No doubt she would already be pressuring him to put a ring on her finger and pick out china patterns.
There had been so many moments during their Valentine’s weekend that he had wanted to bend his knee and ask her to marry him. But not only was he worried about enacting a cliché, he was worried about her future. It was likely they were about to be embroiled in a scandal that could jeopardize his career and her admission to Harvard.
Even if the complaint against her was investigated and dismissed, she would need to be able to complete her MA free of other distractions. He was sure that she’d want the full university experience at Harvard without the pressure of planning a wedding. And there was still the question of what he would do—whether he would be able to take a sabbatical. That is, if he survived Christa Peterson’s harassment complaint.
Despite the fact that he found the words marry me on his tongue on more than one occasion, he bit them back. There would be a time and a place for a proposal. That time and place should be in their orchard, sacred as it was to both of them. Not to mention the fact that it would be a polite gesture to alert Tom to his intentions before broaching the topic with Julianne. Without doubt, he wanted her to be his wife. And no matter what the next few months brought, he would make her his.