Love at First Flight (43 page)

Juliana smiled, knowing how thrilled he
must be to have his sisters working with him.

The phone rang again. “Sorry,” Mary
Frances said. “The world goes mad on New Year's Eve. Why don't you wait in
Michael's office? He should be here any second.”

“Okay.” Juliana wandered into his office,
which looked an awful lot like his office in Maryland—orga-nized chaos. A
framed photo on the credenza caught her eye, and she went behind his desk to
get a closer look. She gasped when she realized it was the photo of them taken
by the resort's roving photographer in the Bahamas. They'd been sad about
forgetting to pick it up before they left. In the photo they wore big smiles
and had their arms around each other, looking for all the world like a couple
madly in love.

“It took me two months to track that
down.”

She spun around. “Michael,” she said,
dumbstruck by the achingly familiar sound of his voice and the sight of him
wearing a shirt and tie and leaning against the doorframe. She feasted her eyes
on him. “You let your hair get long again.”

“I didn't have anyone to cut it for me.”

She returned the photo to the credenza. “I
can't believe you have this.”

“When it occurred to me that I didn't
have a single picture of you, it became my mission in life to track down that
one. You ought to try dealing with Bahamians by telephone sometime.” His eyes
danced with amusement and what appeared to be joy. That he seemed happy to see
her was an enormous relief. “It was quite an experience.”

Reaching into the back pocket of her
jeans, she carefully withdrew the folded newspaper photo. She let it fall open
so he could see it. “I've had my own photo to keep me company. I've spent a lot
of time talking to him over the last few months. He's a very good listener.”

Michael smiled. “And what have you been
telling him?”

“That I miss him more than I've ever
missed anyone. That I love him, I never stopped loving him, that I was a fool
to ever let him go, and I hope he meant it when he said he'd wait for me.”

Michael came around the desk to her. “I
think I can speak for him when I say he meant it.” He lifted her into a fierce
embrace. “God, I missed you, baby. You really had to take the full year, huh?”

Juliana chuckled as she clung to him,
reveling in the familiar scent and feel of him. “I was so afraid too much time
had gone by and you would've forgotten about me.”

“I could never, ever forget about you.”
He brushed his lips over hers. “I kept having these visions of you back
together again with Jeremy.”

“To borrow a line of yours, I've come to
realize I spent ten years killing time with him.”

“Until what?” he asked with a smile.

“Until I found you.”

He hugged her again. “What about your
mother?”

“She died in September.”

“Oh, baby. I'm so sorry! I wish I'd
known.”

She shrugged off the burst of grief. “We
were lucky it didn't happen sooner, but it was still hard. She had been doing a
lot better. I'd started to feel almost close to her for the first time.”

“I'm glad you had that time with her.”

“Me, too.”

He took her hand. “I've got things to
show you.”

“What kind of things?”

“You'll see.” In his outer office, he
said, “Mary Frances, I'm taking the rest of the day off. Tell the drunks to
call another lawyer.”

“You got it, counselor.”

“Go ahead and call Mom, too. I know
you're dying to tell her that Juliana's come home.”

A guilty look crossed Mary Frances's
pretty face. “I already did.”

Michael and Juliana laughed as he
hustled her out the door into the vestibule. “Okay, close your eyes.” He led
her across the hall to the other retail space and flipped on the lights. “You
can look now.”

Juliana opened her eyes and gasped when
she saw mirrors and chairs and sinks and gleaming hard wood floors and a
reception desk. He had built her a salon, right across the hall from his
office. “Oh,
Michael
.” With her hand
over her heart, she looked around in disbelief. “Oh my God.”

“Wait, you haven't seen the best part
yet.” He walked over to the window and pulled off the brown paper that covered
it from the inside. Written backwards in the same gold paint as the sign on his
window was “Juliana's Salon.”

Tears streamed down her face as she
struggled to absorb it all.

He put his arms around her. “If you had
any doubt that I knew you'd eventually find your way back to me, I hope you
don't anymore.”

“After what I did to you.” She shook her
head with disbelief. “After what I did, that you could still love me this much
astounds me.”

“I love you this much and so much more.
I have since I first looked over and found you sitting next to me in the
airport, and I always will.” With his hands on her face and his thumbs skimming
her jaw, he finally kissed her the way she had dreamed about during the long
year without him.

The kiss went on for what felt like
forever until she pulled back to gaze up at him. With her palm resting on his
face, she kissed him again. “Thank you, Michael, for all of this and for all
the faith you've always had in us. I wasn't worthy of it before, but I think I
might be now.”

“You were always worthy of it, silly.
You could've saved me a lot of sleepless nights if you'd skipped over your
whole Zen phase and come home to me sooner.” He took her hand again. “Let's go
upstairs. There's more I want to show you.”

He gave her a tour of all the
improvements he had made to the second floor since she was last there,
including a new kitchen, remodeled bathrooms, and a fresh coat of paint in
every room.

She recognized most of the furniture
from his house in Maryland, including his big bed. On the bedside table was
another copy of the photo from the Bahamas.

He put his arm around her and kissed her
cheek. “You ever think about the last night we spent in that bed?”

Her cheeks burned. “I've never forgotten
it.”

“I've relived it a few thousand times
myself. Maybe we can have a reenactment tonight?”

She snuggled into his embrace and kissed
him. “Do we have to wait that long?”

“No.” He laughed against her lips. “We
definitely do not have to wait that long. Come see the third floor. I've done
the most work up there.”

She followed him up the stairs. “Oh, it
looks wonderful!” He had torn out the kitchen and knocked down walls to make
four more big bedrooms.

“They'd make for good kid rooms, don't
you think?”

“Maybe when they're older.” Juliana ran
her hand along the smooth wall and then turned to him. “When they're babies,
I'll want them downstairs with us.”

He blinked back tears and shook his head
as if to convince himself this was really happening. “Yeah?”

“Uh huh.”

He took her hand and put it over his
heart. “Feel that? My heart hasn't pounded like that in more than a year.” With
his arm around her, he led her over to the window seat and brought her down on
his lap the way he had on a long-ago autumn night. “Remember the last time we
were right here?”

She rested her head on his shoulder and
nodded.

“I wanted to be the first guy to
propose, but I've since learned that sometimes being last is
much
better than being first.”

Juliana chuckled.

“So what do you say? Will you marry me,
Juliana?”

Raising her head to meet his blue eyes,
she said, “Yes, I'll marry you, Michael Maguire.” She pressed her lips to his. “Yes,
yes,
yes!
”

With his fingers buried in her hair, he
kissed her senseless and then tugged the chain out from under his shirt and
tie.

Her heart skipped a beat when she saw
that the ring was exactly where she had left it. “All this time you've kept it
right there,” she whispered, amazed.

Unhooking the chain, he freed the ring. “Right
where I said it would be until you were ready for it.” He slid it onto her
finger and left a lingering kiss on her hand. “Now it's right where it belongs.”

“And so am I.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

WAITING FOR A DELAYED FLIGHT IN
BALTIMORE'S BWI airport in the fall of 1999,1 overheard a man and woman
discussing their long-distance relationships. Both were headed to visit their
significant others in Florida for the weekend. When they discovered they were
on the same flight home, I imagined them falling in love with each other, and a
novel idea was bom. I carried the idea with me until I finally wrote Michael
and Juliana's story many years later.

Thank you to April and Rich Pardoe for “loaning”
me the Baltimore rowhouse I used as Michael's home. Right down to the hanging
kitchen cabinets, the roof deck, and the phones in the bathrooms, his home is
their former home. April also answered numerous questions about Baltimore and
Butchers Hill.

To my husband Dan and our children Emily
and Jake, thanks for putting up with my crazy moods—and a dirty house—when I'm
writing. Once again, thank you to daily reader Christina Camara, proofreader
Lisa Ridder, copy editor Paula DelBonis-Platt, and character naming committee
charter member Julie Cupp. My high school classmate, attorney Martin Medeiros,
helped with the legal aspects of the trial, and I'm grateful for his
assis-tance. To my agent, Kevan Lyon, thank you for your support and
dedication. To Deb Werksman, Danielle Jackson, and everyone at Sourcebooks, I
appreciate your hard work on my behalf. To my Casablanca sisters, your
friendship has been a source of great joy to me.

I married my husband ten years into his
Naval career and spent the next decade in Spain, Maryland, and Florida before
we moved back to my home state of Rhode Island in 2002.1 was homesick most of
the time we were away, but now I'm so grateful for the experi-ences we had and
the friends we met at each stop because they've given me great fodder for my
writing. Maryland and Florida, along with my hometown of Newport, RI, feature
prominently in this book.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marie Force has worked as a reporter,
editor, and writer over the last twenty years, serving most recently as the communications
director for a national membership organization. A lifelong romance reader, she
lives with her husband, two children, and a seventeen-year-old dog named
Consuela in her home state of Rhode Island where she spends as much time as she
can at the beach or on her father's boat. She is also the author of Line of
Scrimmage. Visit Marie online at www.mariesullivanforce.com, on her blog at
http://mariesullivanforce.blogspot.com, or on the Casablanca Authors Blog at
http://casablancaauthors. blogspot.com. Marie loves to hear from readers!
Contact her at [email protected] to say hello or to arrange a visit to your book
club.