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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The next few days were a blur of keeping the inn running while taking care of all the final festival details during the day--and making love with Liam into the late hours of the night.
Christie was equal parts exhilarated and exhausted. Plenty of people had seen her with Liam at the town hall looking at records, or picking up last-second produce at the market for the inn, or grabbing coffee. She'd seen people's confused glances, the way they were obviously trying to tell themselves there couldn't possibly be anything going on between Christie and Liam. And then he would put his hand on the small of her back, or lean in to kiss her forehead, and the nothing going on illusion would shatter.
"You do it on purpose," she said to him after he'd stroked her hair as they waited in line for coffee at the Moose Cafe.
"What's that?" His tone was full of innocence as they walked down the sidewalk, but she saw the wicked truth in his dark eyes.
"You touch me. Kiss me."
"Those are two of my favorite things. I can't help myself." He backed up his words with a light stroke of his thumb across her lower lip, and then his mouth on hers, right in the middle of Main Street.
"You like shocking them all, don't you?"
He pulled back at that. "It's not about shocking them. I'm proud of you. Proud to be with you."
"I know you are," she said, trying to stop herself from adding, "At least for now," and failing. When his mouth tightened, she regretted the words as much as she'd thought she would. "You were clear from the start about what you can give. About how long you're planning to stay in town. It's just sometimes," she said, barely above a whisper, "I find myself wanting more."
She knew how important honesty was to him, but she'd just told a lie. Straight to his face. Because she didn't want more sometimes.
She wanted more all the time.
She knew she had his respect. She knew he appreciated her. That she made him laugh when few others could. And all of that was great, amazing even.
But she wanted his love.
She'd hoped she could go into this relationship knowing the score, understanding what was possible and what wasn't, and come out on the other side having had a taste of something sweet and lovely. But Liam had known better right from the start, hadn't he? He'd predicted her broken heart. And then he'd kissed her...and those predictions hadn't seemed to matter as long as he was close.
They got into his car, where the air was tense as he drove, filled with her longing and his reticence. He hadn't told her where they were going, just that he had a surprise for her. She assumed it had something to do with the festival. They were driving through the heavily forested part of Route 10 when the trees suddenly cleared and he pulled into a narrow gravel driveway.
"Where are we?"
"My property."
She shifted in her seat in surprise. "I didn't know you own land on the lake."
"I bought it a few years ago."
She should have guessed, knowing how much he loved Summer Lake, that he'd always planned on coming back here one day. For all the problems he had with his family, how could he resist? And despite the earlier awkwardness, hope moved through her that maybe, just maybe, he'd make that full-time move sooner rather than later. If he stayed in town, and they continued to date, it wasn't completely impossible that he could fall in love with her one day, was it?
Knowing her heart was running away with her brain again--in a tremendously foolish direction, no less--she was just on the verge of vowing not to let it happen when she saw the most unexpected thing in the world in front of them.
"You have a plane?"
The first hint of a smile came back to his lips. "A floatplane."
She swallowed hard, felt the air begin to press and squeeze out of her lungs. "Your plane takes off and lands on the water?" Her stomach started cramping at nothing more than the thought of it. This was far worse than even her worst fear. At least normal planes landed on solid ground. She had a vision of the float tips digging in, the plane somersaulting--
"Now that the ice on the lake has melted, I was able to have it delivered." Liam's hand was gentle on her chin as he turned her face to his. "Come up in it with me, Christie. I want to take you flying."
"I--" Her mouth was dry, so dry her tongue stuck to the roof of it. She closed her eyes, whispered, "I can't."
"Sweetheart. Look at me." She made herself open her eyes, tried not to see the plane in front of them, floating there at the end of his dock, taunting her. "You are strong. Determined. Something like getting into a floatplane shouldn't break someone as full of resolve as you."
"It will."
"It won't. I know it won't."
"How can you know that?"
"Do you trust me?" he asked her.
Of course she did. More than she should. With everything, including her heart. Still, she could barely get the word out. "Yes."
"We'll just climb in," he said in a gentle voice. "Get used to the feel of the seat, the belts, the way the world looks from a front-row seat."
"You make it sound so easy."
"It will be."
And then he leaned over and kissed her, softly at first, but the passion that burned between them was never far from the surface. Like magic, her nerves, her fears, all started to melt away as their tongues danced. She reached for him, threaded her hands into his dark hair, and then she was on his lap and lost to everything but how much she wanted him.
Before she realized it, he'd opened the car door and she was standing on the sand in his arms. He took her hand in his.
"How am I supposed to think straight after a kiss like that?"
"You're not."
"You tricked me."
He didn't look the least bit guilty as he maneuvered them across the sand and toward the dock. "I did." And then, just that fast, he had her sitting in the passenger seat of the small plane. "See? It's not scary at all."
Even though she didn't want to believe him, he was right. The console had a lot of buttons and switches and gauges, but she supposed it wasn't all that different from sitting in his expensive car.
And yet, she still didn't think she could go up in it.
"All day long," he said in that deep voice that always melted her insides, "I can hardly wait to make love with you each night. Do you know why?"
Oh God. No one had ever spoken to her like this. She couldn't get her mouth to form the word why, but Liam didn't let that stop him.
"Because I've never seen anything as beautiful in all my life as you are when you let go in my arms. And ever since we met, I've seen how much you love learning new things. How you love adventure. Even fighting for the festival with you has been fun." His gaze was full of more emotion than she'd ever thought to see. "Maybe it's just me being selfish. But I want to see the wonder in your eyes when you see the lake from the clouds for the first time."
If this wasn't love, she wasn't sure she knew what love was. She took a deep breath. And said, "Go."
He didn't wait another second, didn't give her time to change her mind. He fired up the engine, and they started to glide across the water. She let out a little squeak as he pulled back on the yoke and they climbed into the sky.
Just as her lungs were shutting down again, he reminded her, "One breath at a time. Just one, Christie. Just give me one."
She could do that, couldn't she? Just one breath. And then another when she was done with that first one. She wanted to pinch her eyes shut, wanted to pretend she was anywhere but in an airplane--but the dark blue of the water, the light blue of the sky, the faint wisps of clouds, the dark greens of the forest, were all starting to make their way into her brain. Snippets of beauty came at her like a flashing video screen, one after the other, so magnificent that she could still hardly breathe.
And that was when it hit her: She was up in the clouds in a tiny plane...and she wasn't dying.
Instead, she was more alive than she'd ever been before.
"Thank you."
She hadn't realized she was crying until she said the two little words. Trying to take it all in--the magnificence of the lake and mountains and sky--her words were blurry with her tears of joy. "It's even more incredible than I imagined." Turning to face him, she saw that he was looking at her with such tenderness, such wonder, her heart actually skipped a beat. "No one has ever cared this much about me," she told him as they flew through the sky. "No one has ever made me face my fears like you just did."
She was stunned that he understood her so well, that he knew she'd not only survive the flight, but would also relish it completely.
No one had ever had so much faith in her. She'd trusted him with her embarrassing secret--that she was too much of a wimp to get on a plane--and instead of turning it against her, instead of finding her weak, he'd found a way to help her get through it. His tactic might have been unorthodox--no one had ever kissed her fears into submission before--but it had worked.
She wanted so badly to do the same for him, wanted him to know that she had faith in him too--and that he could trust her with his pain. Trust her to help him work through it...and finally let go of it.
