that PJ?” Ally asked, arrested by a small painting on the wall by the bay window of a young boy on a surfboard.
Martha laughed. “Who else?”
Who else, indeed? Ally moved closer, drawn to the picture of PJ as a boy, recognizing the triumphant grin and, in his expression, the sheer joy of being alive.
“Of all of us kids,” Martha said, “he was the one who loved it here the most. The one who loved the ocean the most. We always thought he was insane, going all the way to Hawaii when he had one out the back door. But—” she smiled at Ally “—I guess he wasn’t so crazy after all. Look who he brought home.”
And there was such warmth and such approval in her voice that Ally felt about two inches high.
She couldn’t respond to it, could only smile and feel betraying tears prick.
“Hey,” PJ’s voice came from the doorway. “I wondered where you’d got to.”
“Brought her up to show her family history,” Martha said. “You haven’t seen this, either.” She waved a hand around the room.
PJ ambled in and startled Ally by snagging her hand and drawing her along with him while he moved from vignette to vignette. She tried to look at them, too, but mostly she was aware of his hand wrapping hers.
She should tug it away. It was sending the wrong message, and not just to the onlookers, but to Ally herself. It promised a relationship, a future. A married life of love.
Experimentally she tried pulling her hand out of his. He hung on tighter. “They’re terrific,” he told Martha, nodding at her paintings. “Ma loves ‘em. Says she’s going to make you fill the whole room.”
“Yes, well, Theo and I are doing our part. Tallie and Elias are doing theirs. Up to you now,” she added giving him a significant look.
Ally tensed at her obvious inference, but PJ’s grip on her hand didn’t change. “All in good time,” he said easily. Then, as if he took it all in stride, as doubtless he did, he said to all of them, “Fire’s going. Sun’s set. Come on out.”
The scene around the firepit was even more reminiscent of all the stories she used to read. Most of the family gathered around it, sitting on blankets, laughing and talking as the evening lengthened and the sky grew deep and dark.
The breeze off the ocean turned the air cool, and Ally would have gone for her sweater, but before she could, PJ slipped his sweatshirt jacket over her shoulders.
“Come here,” he said, and drew her down onto the blanket, shifting around so that she sat in the vee of his legs and he tugged her back against his chest, looping his arms around her.
It felt far too intimate for Ally’s peace of mind. But at the same time, perversely, it felt like exactly where she wanted to be.
“Warmer?” His lips were next to her ear, his breath lifting tendrils of her hair.
She shivered again at the feel of it and, misunderstanding the cause, he wrapped his arms more tightly around her. “I can go get you a warmer jacket.”’
It would have got her out of his arms. Saying “Yes, please” would have been the sane thing to do, but Ally didn’t do it.
She couldn’t bring herself to destroy the evening. It was her dream come to life. The warmth and joy of the camaraderie, the laughter and easy music that began as Lukas picked up a guitar and began to play, and two of PJ’s aunts began to sing, enchanted her. And the hard strength of PJ’s arms around her simply enhanced the experience.
“I’m fine,” she said.
It was true. It was wonderful.
It lasted the rest of the night.
It was late when the party began to break up. Tallie and Elias had put the twins down to sleep. Martha had gone inside to rock Eddie. Yiayia had gone up to bed an hour earlier, but not before she’d stopped on her way in to smile down at Ally, snug in the embrace of PJ’s arms.
“Ne,” she said approvingly. And her fingers had brushed over the top of Ally’s head. A benediction of sorts?
“Night, Yiayia,” PJ said, tilting his head up to smile at her.
Yiayia said something to him in Greek that Ally didn’t understand. She was surprised when PJ seemed to.
His smile broadened and he nodded. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I will.”
His grandmother nodded and padded off into the house.
“What did she say?” Ally wanted to know.
“She said I shouldn’t forget to kiss you.”
Ally’s breath caught in her throat, knowing that PJ’s lips were a scant inch from her ear. But even as she held her breath, he made no move to kiss her.
Instead he eased back away from her and stood up, then held out a hand and hauled her to her feet. “Time to go up,” he said.
“Yes. It is late. Nearly midnight.” She felt stiff from having sat there so long, yet she was reluctant to leave. Lukas was still softly playing his guitar. And Connie, apparently oblivious to any machinations that would have directed her toward PJ, seemed enthralled with sitting at Lukas’s feet and listening to his music. Elias and Tallie had come back out and were sitting on the other side of the fire, their arms around each other as they stared into the magic of the fire.
Ally understood. She didn’t want to leave the magic, either.
But she could do exactly what she’d always done as a child after she’d read one of those books that made her dream impossible dreams. She could take her dreams to bed with her.
But first, she reminded herself as she followed PJ up the stairs so he could show her to her room, she should call Jon.
She hadn’t called him all day. But it wasn’t too late. With the time difference, he would probably just be getting home from the hospital. Maybe she could communicate a little of what she’d felt today to him—this feeling of family belonging, joy, connection. Maybe he would understand.
Maybe, she dared hope, he would share her dream.
PJ took hold of the handle on one of the doors in the hallway. “Here we are.” He pushed the door open and held it for her. “My old room,” he said with a grin.
“Yours?” She looked around, intrigued. It had obviously been redecorated since PJ had lived in it. The walls were a freshly painted pale sage green. But the bookcase still had some books that the young PJ Antonides would have read, and the hardwood floors showed evidence of being used for more than walking.
“Used to have bunkbeds, too,” he told her. There was a double-size bed in the room now, with a taupe-colored duvet and heaps of inviting pillows. “I had the top one. Always wanted to be on top. Luke was stuck with the bottom.”
She could imagine him in here, her mind’s eye seeing the boy on the surfboard that Martha had painted. She wondered about the dreams he had dreamed as a child. He needn’t
