there by himself.
He was dressed in civilian clothes, loose cargo shorts and a pink golf shirt. It didn’t escape Daisy’s notice that every woman who passed by checked him out, yet he seemed oblivious to the attention. He had no idea how amazing he looked, at the peak of fitness, his posture perfect even when he was relaxing. The minute he spotted Daisy, his gaze never wavered, focusing on her with laserlike intensity.
So much had changed for them both, but one thing remained constant—this pull of emotion that drew them together. It felt particularly present this morning, and Daisy discovered she was not the only one who felt that way.
“Morning,” he said in a low voice that sounded intoxicatingly sexy. “I thought you’d never get here.”
This was not, she reminded herself, the way she had scripted the conversation in her head. She was supposed to have a talk with him, tell him their lives were taking them in different directions and figure out how they were both going to deal with that.
“Where is everyone else?” she asked, trying to get her bearings.
“They all took off for the airport. They said to tell you goodbye.”
“Connor and Olivia?”
Julian picked up her overnight bag. “Already headed back to Avalon.”
“What?” She stopped in the hotel doorway. “But what about me?”
“I’ll get you home.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “You’re driving me all the way to Avalon?” It was a long drive. The idea of having him all to herself was almost too much to bear.
“I’m not driving you,” he said.
“Then how—?”
“You’ll see.”
They boarded a campus-to-town bus marked Cayuga, the name of the narrow, forty-mile-long lake that stretched from Ithaca to Seneca Falls.
She looked around nervously at the other passengers. “Don’t tell me we’re—”
“Hush.” He gently put a finger to her lips, and his touch made her shiver despite the warmth of the day. “You’ll see.”
She tried to steel herself against his charms but instead settled into a sense of delicious anticipation. Their heart-to-heart could wait a bit longer. “I do love surprises,” she said.
“Then I guess you’ll love this.”
At the lakefront he led the way past a busy marina, bobbing with sailboats and runabouts. There was a boathouse, with kayaks and canoes stacked on racks. At the end of a long, L-shaped dock were a couple of float planes.
When Julian started down the dock, she balked. “Really, Julian? Seriously? You’re flying?”
He grinned, his eyes bright with excitement. “You okay with that?”
Unable to hold herself back, she set down her camera bag and raced toward him, leaping into his embrace and wrapping her arms and legs around him. “What do you think? “ she demanded.
He held her as if she weighed nothing. “Cool. We’ll be back in Avalon before Connor and Olivia.”
“I’m in no hurry,” she said. “I mean, I miss Charlie. I always do when I’m away overnight, but—”
“It’s okay.” He brushed his knuckles over her cheek.
He knew her well. He knew that having a good time without Charlie around was a struggle for her. She and her little boy were a pair, even when they couldn’t be together.
The float plane was a single engine two-seater that had been painted fuchsia. It belonged to the local flying club, which Julian had joined as soon as he’d matriculated at Cornell. He’d been taking flying lessons all through college, exchanging mechanical and maintenance labor for instruction, flight hours and fuel.
Before boarding, he went through a safety and readiness checklist with methodical precision. She knew the reckless boy was still inside him, the guy who jumped rows of barrels on a motorcycle and tackled the worst technical rock climbs without batting an eye. Now she watched that restless energy channel itself into intense focus and concentration.
She stood back on the dock, admiring the assured efficiency of his movements as he worked. Like a child’s toy, the moored plane bobbed in time to the lapping of the water. “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she said.
He flashed a smile that managed to be at once boyish and sexy. “I’ve always wanted to take you flying.” He loosened the mooring ropes, holding one in his hand.
“I feel like I already am,” she said, then flushed because that sounded so lame. Still, she could not help smiling. It was a magnificent day, the sky cloudless, the water flat and calm. The surrounding hills wore mantles of new green growth. Everything in sight seemed swollen with abundance, and anything seemed possible.
Daisy knew she would soon be telling him farewell for good, or at least for the foreseeable future. But how could she do that now, when he was taking her flying, for heaven’s sake? She didn’t let herself dwell on it. Instead, she focused on the undeniable splendor of this day and felt grateful to be spending it with Julian.
He jimmied the change in his pocket, seeming oddly nervous. “As a matter of fact, I was planning to—”
“Julian, the plane!” She jumped to the edge of the dock. “It’s getting away.”
Without hesitation, he leaped onto a pontoon, causing the small aircraft to bob wildly. He tossed her a rope. She grabbed it and pulled him back to the dock.
“Thanks,” he said, “I almost lost you before I even had you.”
“You should be more careful.”
“I had my head turned. It’s not like I get to spend every day with the girl of my dreams.”
“What did you call me?” Her heart was racing now.
“The girl of my dreams. It’s cheesy, I know, but that’s how I feel.”
There were many ways to think about what he’d said. She knew he meant it in the best possible way, but she parsed the words, a habit of hers.
Even the word girl. She hadn’t been a girl since the day she’d stared in horror at a home pregnancy test wand and realized her entire life was about to change. And being someone’s dream sounded all well and good, but in actual fact it turned her into a concept, an ideal, and she didn’t want that. She wanted him to know her on the most real level possible.
“Julian—”
“Ready?” he asked, unlocking the plane and flipping open the surprisingly flimsy door. “Climb aboard. I’ll load your stuff after.”
She felt a thrum of excitement in her chest. The interior of the plane was like that of a middling sports car. Vinyl bucket seats, regular seat belts. The view out the front, over the sloping nose of the plane,
