Read Aqua - Christmas in New York City (Aqua Romance Travel Series) for Free Online Page A

shoulder and felt at peace for the first time in a long time.
    Without a beat, the orchestra started the next song and we kept dancing, our feet in sync as if they’d been moving this way for years. He intertwined his fingers with mine and when I accepted this with a slight squeeze, he pulled me even closer. He stroked the outside of my hand softly with his fingers, and every so often I felt his breath against my cheek. I closed my eyes in the moonlit piazza and listened to the violin strings, felt his warm body move with mine, and felt love.
    It was you.  

    Tears filled Harry’s eyes and the page became a blur. Cassandra had vividly described the first night they met, with such detail as if he was right there beside her.  
    He leafed through pages and pages of Cassandra’s handwriting, stopping to read passages, all from their first week together - the port visits, their evenings on the cruise ship Aqua, their most intimate moments and conversations.  
    He held the book close to his chest. How silly had he been the night before? He knew she was tense with her father’s visit and it seemed that all of the sensitive issues in her life were raised in that one afternoon - her mother’s death, their own children. He had been pitted in a corner by her father and forgot about who really mattered - Cassandra. Whether they had children or not wasn’t a problem, whether he put up with her grumbly father a few times a year wasn’t a dilemma. What mattered was that they were side by side, each and every day for the rest of their lives. In that togetherness, the magic of their first week would thrive.

    ALL NIGHT, Casey lay awake and feared the worst. She sat up in bed at one point, receiver in hand, and thought of calling Harry. Then she shook her head and placed it back down. She wandered into the kitchen, nibbled on some cookies, wrote some thoughts in a book and then stared out the window.
    Leading the way to her front door were pine boughs with glimmering white lights twisted through the railings. Inside was the evergreen she and Harry had carried back to the brownstone, decorated with angel ornaments and silver balls that glistened in the tree lights. In every corner of the house, they had tucked bright red or crisp cream poinsettias, and each window had tall taper candles that they lit every evening together. It was the first night that they weren’t glowing, the candles standing like big question marks against a dark window.
    Casey lifted one of the stockings from the fireplace mantle, ran her finger over the letters that spelled ‘Casey’ and held the fuzzy top against her cheek. They were a gift from Harry on the second day of Christmas. Her mom had sewn a similar stocking for her when she was first born and it hung by the fireplace each Christmas until her father threw them out with the rest of the decorations. Harry had the stockings replicated from a childhood photo Casey had shown him, only he had given her four. The second stocking had Harry written on the front and Arrigo on the flipside. The other two stockings were left blank.  
    Nothing else needed to be said. They had talked about having two children, a boy and a girl. The stockings were one of the many subtle ways that the issue was infiltrating her life. It was a decision that had to be made but she didn’t want to rush it, and any suggestion became a pressure when she had enough concerns and worries already.  
    Dawn cast the first strands of light into the room but it still felt empty without Harry. She had no desire to do anything they had planned if he wasn’t with her; not bake the Pandoro, a sweet star-shaped Christmas bread like his mother used to do, or make her traditional vine-bound Christmas wreath as Casey used to do with her mother. They were to be heading to Trish’s farm in a few days to cut down the vines. Would it still happen?  
    She picked up the phone again and this time dialed his number, but she hesitated at pressing the call