The Vineyard Reunion – Part 2: Late Light

They danced badly and happily, close, his hand warm at her back. Fairy lights swung in the breeze. Beyond the lawn, the vines went down the hill in long dark rows under a rising moon.

"Walk with me?" said Philip. "There's a bench at the bottom of the rows."

They walked slowly, shoes in hand, down the grass between the vines. The night was warm and smelled of earth and ripe grapes. At the bench they sat, shoulders touching.

"I've wanted to say something for forty years," he said. "I was a coward."

"So was I."

"I'd like to kiss you now. If you'd like it. If not, we'll sit and watch the stars and I'll consider myself lucky."

"I'd like it," said Diane. "Very much."

It was a kiss that took forty years to arrive, and neither of them rushed it. His hand cupped her cheek, a little unsteady. Hers slid into his silver hair. When they parted, both were laughing, a little breathless.

"The guest cottage is just there," he said. "I'm staying in it. It has a bed and a very good view."

"Is that an invitation, Mr Hale?"

"It's an offer. You can say no."

"I'm not going to say no."

The cottage was small and white, with a low bed and a window full of moonlit vines. They undressed slowly, laughing at hooks and braces and the unforgiving mirror, and then stopped laughing, because the mirror turned out to be kind. Their bodies were not those of twenty-one. They were better in other ways: sure, unhurried, rich with memory. They took their time with every touch. The long night belonged to them, and there was warm skin and quiet words and a deep, grown-up joy that neither would have understood at twenty-one.

At dawn the vines were wet with dew. Diane woke in the circle of his arm, sunlight pouring across the quilt.

"Forty years," she murmured.

"I'd say we made up for it."

"We've barely started." She kissed his shoulder. "I'm not leaving until the harvest."

More mature romance stories: Autumn in Quebec · The Quilting Circle · The Silver Ballroom