This Love Will Go On Read Online Free Page B

intimately, and finally, touching her in that place that longed for him.  Self-consciously, she ran her hands down over her skirt, gathering it away from Jade’s thighs.
    They drove through Spencer, one of the larger towns in Iowa, and began the trek up along the tiny towns clustered along the highway.  Jade slowed down and she looked out the window, watching as the amusement park came into view.  The neon lights of the merry-go-round, the Tilt-a-Whirl, and the roller coaster cast a watery rainbow on the lake.  One Sunday afternoon, she’d gone with Jade and Michele to the park and after they had ridden all the rides, they’d collapsed on a grassy knoll away from the carnival atmosphere.  Jade, stretched out beside his wife, had moved closer to shade her body from the sun.  He’d lain there, propped on his elbow, staring down at his wife for a long, breathless moment while Raine’s heart seemed to stop beating.  Then he had smiled down into Michele’s face and kissed her.  Her heart burning with an ache that was beginning to be her constant companion, Raine looked away.  That gentle, possessive smile haunted her dreams for years afterward.  Would any man ever smile at her with that same combination of love, tenderness, and protection?
    She forced her mind away from the past and gazed out the car window.  She hadn’t been to the Iowa Great Lakes in years and she could see there had been some changes.  A landmark house next to the highway, a rambling, two-story affair with gingerbread trim, had been painted pink and spotlighted from the lawn. 
    They drove past the park and Jade guided the car around a curve.  Their destination was the restaurant on the street of shops created inside the Old Central ballroom.  She had never been there.  Did modern people shop more than they danced?  Maybe that was what was wrong with the world.
    When they walked down the long hall that led past the stores, Raine smelled a delicious mixture of chocolate candy, cinnamon stick spice and cedar wood.  The shops were all closed, of course, but their huge glass windows were lit from inside, displaying craft items.  At the end of the hall, Jade pulled on the rope handle of a big wooden door.  A sign that said The Outrigger bumped against the door.
    Inside, it was cool, dark, and nautical.  The floors were rough and wooden.  A mainmast wrapped with gray rope rose to a three-story ceiling and the wood walls were covered with more rope, old anchors and heavy chains.  She wasn’t sure if she’d stepped into a restaurant or onto the deck of an old clipper ship.
    “What would you like to drink?”  Jade’s voice came from just behind her ear.
    “Something…cool.  A Tom Collins, I guess.”
    ‘I’ll have a Manhattan, brother.” Marc told him.
    The cast wasn’t there.  There were just a few people at the bar and two couples seated at tables at the other end of the room.  Marc’s hand at her waist guided Raine toward a table that commanded a view.  Huge, floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the lake.  At least, she thought it was a lake.  In the night, boats seemed to float over a dark, silvery surface that was so still it could have been land.
    Marc held out a chair for her and when she was settled, slid in next to her.  There were two empty chairs across the table.  Marc stared down into the little green hurricane lamp that held a candle.  The flame burned erratically in the drafty open space of the room.  “Pretty fancy place, huh?”
    “It’s nice,” she agreed.
    “What did you think of your sister?  Wasn’t she good?”
    “She was very good.”
    “Did you think so?”  The soft question came from Jade, appearing beside them, bending lithely over to set their drinks on the table.  Relieved of his burden, he sat down across from Marc, his eyes on Raine.
    “Yes, I thought so.”  Desperately, she cast around for some other topic of conversation.  “Oh, look, there are stairs and a deck down