by Vi Keeland
An older man walked over to talk to him, and it gave me the chance to observe him outside of a work setting. God, he was sexy. I’d always had a thing for a man in a well-fitted suit. The way they wore them gave off an air of power, but looking down the dock, I realized the suit had nothing to do with the air Grant Lexington gave off. He stood casually talking to the gentleman, yet there was something about the way he held himself—his feet planted wide, broad shoulders back, arms folded across his chest. The man oozed confidence even with bare feet. With some guys, a good suit made the man. Not Grant. He made the suit.
I watched for a few minutes more while he finished his conversation with the man. Then he tightened some ropes and carried out a set of portable stairs and set them on the dock. The next time he went into the cabin, I took a deep breath and got out of the car.
His boat was docked next to last, probably thirty boats down at the far end of the marina. I’d made it about ten when he emerged from the cabin again. He caught sight of me right away and stood watching me make my way toward him. I became self-conscious about each step. And whatever nerves had settled in the car came back with a roar. Though I wouldn’t let him see me stress. So I straightened my spine and added a little bounce to my walk that I knew would make the bottom of my sundress shimmy from side to side.
“Hey.” I stood on the dock next to the boat, and Grant offered a hand so I could board using the stairs he’d set out. “Well, these certainly make it easier. Especially in these wedges.”
Grant didn’t let go of my hand once I was safely onboard. “Had to dust off those stairs. Never use ’em.”
“I could have climbed on like we did the other night. You didn’t have to dig them out. Sorry if I’m a little early. I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get here, and I wanted to stop and pick this up.” I handed him the bottle of wine.
“Thank you. I was wondering how long you were going to sit in the car and watch me.”
My eyes widened. Shit. He’d seen me. “I wasn’t checking you out, if that’s what you think. I was just really early and didn’t want to impose.”
He pushed his sunglasses down on his nose so I could see his eyes. “That’s too bad. You’re welcome to check me out whenever you want. It would only be fair since I won’t be able to stop looking at you in that dress.”
I’d changed three times and settled on a spaghetti strap white and navy sundress with a V-neck. It showed off more cleavage than I normally put on display, but my roommate had talked me into wearing it. Now I was glad I’d listened.
“Come on. I’ll give you the tour and open the wine.”
I followed Grant into the cabin. We’d stayed outside the other night with his grandfather, so it was the first time I was seeing the inside and where he lived. The room we entered was a big living room. It had a wraparound couch, two matching chairs, a long credenza, and a big-screen television. The living room I shared with Mia was probably the same size.
“It’s easy to forget you’re on a boat in here, isn’t it?”
He pointed to the wall-to-wall windows. “There are two different shades that come down. One blocks out some of the sun and keeps it cool, but you can still see outside through them, and the other totally blacks out the outside. You can’t tell if it’s day or night when those are down, much less where you are.”
I followed Grant into the kitchen and was surprised to find it was almost as big as the living room. “I don’t know why, but I expected a small galley kitchen, not something like this.”
“It was smaller originally. There used to be a bedroom up here, but I took out the wall and opened it up. I like to cook.”
I raised a brow. “You cook?”
“Why does that surprise you?”
“I don’t know. I guess it just seems so domestic. I took you more for the type that went to restaurants and grabbed takeout.”
“My mom was Italian and cooked a big meal every night. The kitchen was the center of the house growing up. We had foster kids coming and going, and she used cooking to get us all together at least once a day.”
I smiled. “That’s really nice.”
“I did pick up food tonight on my way home, but not because I can’t cook. I was running late, and you didn’t want a date, so I figured that meant I shouldn’t sneak in a full meal.”
Grant showed me the rest of the boat: a small bedroom downstairs that he’d turned into an office, a guest bedroom, two bathrooms, and then he opened the door to a giant master bedroom.
“This is huge.”
“That’s the kind of thing I like to hear in here.” He winked.
I took a few steps in and looked around. The room had dark wood and a king-size bed with plush navy linens. One of the walls was covered in black and white photos of boats sailing on the water with matte black frames. I walked over and looked at some of them.
“These are beautiful. Did you take them?”
“No. They’re all the different models my grandfather built over the years. The photos are all of the prototypes taking their first sail.”
I pointed to the one in the center. “Is this this boat?”
Grant stood close behind me, close enough that I felt the heat emanating from his body. “It is. That was taken in 1965.”
“Crazy. I can’t get over how old this boat is. If you told me it was a year old, I’d believe it.”
“That’s what people loved about his models. They have a timeless quality about them.”
I looked closer at the photo. “There’s no name on the back yet.”
“The showroom samples and prototypes were never named. It’s bad luck to change a boat’s name. So it was up to the first owner to name her.”
I turned around, and suddenly the big room seemed much smaller. Grant didn’t back up. “Her? Is a boat always a her?”
He nodded. “Pops would say sailors of the past were almost always men and often dedicated their ships to goddesses who would protect their vessel in rough seas.” Grant brushed a hair from my shoulder. “But I think they’re women because they’re high maintenance.”
“High maintenance, huh? Well, you live on a boat, so you must not mind high maintenance, then?”
His eyes dropped to my lips, and he smirked. “Apparently high maintenance is my type. Easy is boring.”
I thought he was going to lean in and kiss me, and in the moment, I would have let him, but instead his eyes caught my gaze. “Come on. I promised you a drink and a sunset.”
We went out to the front of the boat, and Grant set up a tray of all different finger foods he’d bought at the Italian market. It was enough food for three meals.
“Do you always buy enough for ten people? I’m sensing a pattern here between lunch the other day and all of this.”
“The pattern is wanting to make sure you’re taken care of, not being wasteful.”
I smiled. “Are you always this accommodating to your dates?”
“Considering you’re the first woman sitting on my boat for a sunset, I’d have to say no.”
I tilted my head. “What’s your story? You said the other day you haven’t had a relationship in seven years. Is it because you work a lot?”
Grant seemed to consider his words. “Partly. I do work a lot. Contrary to your initial opinion of me—where you assumed I was a spoiled silver spoon who didn’t work—I put in a ten- to twelve-hour day at the office most weekdays and a half day on Saturday.”
“I’m never going to live that email down, am I?”
He shook his head. “Not likely.”
I sighed. “Okay, Mr. Workaholic. So let’s back up. I asked if you hadn’t had a relationship in seven years because you’re busy, and your answer was partly. What’s the other part? For some reason, I feel like you’re leaving out an important piece of the story.”
Grant’s eyes settled on mine for a few heartbeats, but then he looked away to pick up his wine. “I was married. Been divorced for seven years.”
“You must
’ve been married young. Or are you older than you look?”
He nodded.
A few minutes ago, he’d seemed relaxed, but his composure totally changed now. His jaw tightened, he avoided eye contact, and his movements were rigid, as if all the muscles in his body had contracted at once.
“I’m twenty-nine. Got married at twenty-one.”
Even though he looked completely uncomfortable discussing the subject, I pushed a bit more. “So you were only married for a year, then?”
He gulped back his wine. “Almost, yes. A few months less.”
“Were you high school sweethearts or something?”
“Sort of. Lily was one of my parents’ foster kids for a while. Actually, she came and went a lot over the years.”
Though he was answering my questions, he wasn’t really offering too much information. I sipped my wine. “Can I ask what happened? Did you grow apart or something?”
Grant was quiet for a moment and then looked me in the eyes. “No, she ruined my life.”
Okay then. He spoke so sternly that it caught me off guard. I had no idea how to respond. Though Grant took care of that for me.
“Why don’t we talk about you? I’m trying to work my way up from drinks to a full-blown date. Dragging out shit about my ex-wife isn’t the way to make that happen.”
“What would you like to know?”
“I don’t know. The game we played in the car on the way home from the fundraiser worked well. Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
The mood had definitely dampened, and Grant was right. We didn’t need to drag all of our skeletons out of the closet the first evening we spent time together. So I said something I thought might tilt the mood back to playful.
“I love accents. Growing up, every time I heard a new one, I’d study it until I nailed it down. Actually, I still do it from time to time.”
Grant looked amused. “Let’s hear Australian.”
I sat up and cleared my throat. “Okay. Let me think.” I tapped my finger to my lip. “This is turn on the air conditioner. It’s hot in here. Chuck awn da egg ignisna. Iz hawt innere.”
Grant laughed. “That’s actually pretty good. How about British?”
“Okay. Here is I don’t often use my cell phone.” I cleared my throat again. “I don’t OF-unh use me MOH-bye-ul.
He chuckled. “Nice.”
“Your turn. Tell me something about you I don’t know.”
He looked at my lips. “I want to devour your mouth.”
I swallowed. “I sort of knew that already.”
Grant kept staring at my lips, and I squirmed. Yet he still didn’t lean in and go for a damn kiss. The way he looked at me, I was about two seconds away from taking it upon myself to make the first move. But then he looked over my shoulder.
“When did that happen?”
I blinked a few times. “What?”
He lifted his chin to point behind me. “That.”
I turned. The sky was the most amazing shade of orange mixed with deep purple hues. “Oh my God. That’s incredible.”
I stood to take in the full view, and Grant stood behind me. We were both silent as we watched the sky light up with color around the setting sun. He snaked a hand around my waist and rested his head on top of mine.
“I know you said you don’t bring dates here, but do you do this often? Appreciate the view, I mean.”
“I do, actually. I make a point of taking a few minutes every day to watch either the sunset or the sunrise. I run on the beach in the morning and catch it, or if my day starts early, I make sure I’m back here before sunset.”
I leaned my head back against Grant’s chest. “I like that.”
He squeezed me closer. “Good. I like this.”
Time just got away from us after that. We talked for hours, and before I knew it, it was almost midnight.
I yawned.
“You’re tired.”
“Yeah. I get up at three thirty.”
“Want me to drive you home? I can pick you up to get your car in the morning.”
I smiled. “No, I’m okay to drive still. But I should get going.”
Grant nodded. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
He helped me off the boat, and the gold-painted name on the back caught in the dock lights. Leilani May.
“Who is the boat named after?”
Grant looked away. “No one.”
For a businessman, he wasn’t a very good liar. But the evening had been so nice that I didn’t ruin it by pressing the subject.
We walked down the dock hand in hand, and when we got to my car, Grant took my other one, too. He laced his fingers with mine. “So did I pass your test? Do I get an actual date?”
I smirked. “Maybe.”
“Good, then I don’t need to be on my best behavior anymore.”
Grant let go of my hands and cupped my cheeks. He guided me to take a few steps, and before I realized what was happening, my back was up against my car and he’d planted his lips over mine. I gasped, and he didn’t waste the opportunity to dip his tongue inside. His kiss was assertive, yet gentle at the same time. He tilted my head and groaned when the kiss deepened. His desperate sound turned me on almost as much as the feeling of his hard body pressed against mine. My purse fell to the gravel, and my hands wrapped around his back. When I dug my nails into him, he grabbed my ass and lifted me off my feet. We groped each other, my legs locked around his waist as he grinded against me. I could feel how hard he was even through our clothes.
When the kiss finally broke, I struggled to catch my breath. “Wow.” I’d been kissed before, kissed really well even, but no one had ever kissed the shit out of me. My mind was in a fog from it.
He smiled and used his thumb to wipe my bottom lip. “God, I wanted to do that so badly all night.”
I gave him a goofy grin. “I’m glad you waited until we were in the parking lot. Otherwise I might not have left.”
Grant pretended to bang his head against my car. “Fuck. Did you have to tell me that?”
I giggled. “Thank you for sharing your sunset with me. I had a really nice time.”
“Sunrise is even better. You’re welcome to stay tonight and find out in the morning.”
I smiled. “Maybe another time.”
It took all of my willpower to pull away from Grant. I’d been teasing, but I was so turned on, I was lucky he’d waited until now to kiss me like that. I brushed my lips with his one more time and opened the car door. He stood watching as I buckled up and turned the ignition.
As I put the car into reverse to back out, I rolled down my window. “Goodnight, Grant.”
“Dinner soon?”
I smiled. “Maybe. If you’d told me who the boat was named after, my answer would have definitely been yes.”
Chapter 16
* * *
Grant - 8 years ago
The shower door opened and steam billowed out. I smiled, finding a naked Lily ready to join me.
“Hey. You feeling better?”
Lily stepped inside the stall and shut the door behind her. She put both her palms on my chest. “Yeah. It must’ve been the flu or something.”
The flu. That’s what she always called it. Lily seemed to get the flu more and more over the last year. Yet the days she spent curled up in bed never came with a cough or fever. Lily was depressed. Of course, she had every right to be. She’d dropped out of college because she hated the non-art classes, her mom had disappeared into the wind a year ago, taking her three-year-old brother, Leo, with her, and both of us had taken my mom’s death a few months ago pretty hard.
But Lily’s constant, bedridden bouts of depression seemed like more than just regular depression. She would shut down for days every time her flu hit. She didn’t eat, didn’t talk, didn’t function as a person. And even though she spent almost twenty-four-seven in bed, she rarely slept. She just stared, unfocused, lost in her own head.
It scared me. I didn’
t say it, but more and more lately, her highs and lows reminded me of her mom’s—so much so that I’d been pushing her to see a therapist. That discussion always turned her depression into anger. Because to her, needing help meant she was like her mom.
Lily leaned in and pressed her body against mine. She shut her eyes and looked up at the streaming water as it rained down. A huge smile spread across her face, and I couldn’t have stopped the one that broke out on mine if I’d tried. That’s the thing with Lily—her smile was contagious. When she didn’t have the flu, she was so full of life and happiness, more so than the average person. The happy times always made me forget about the sad ones…until it happened all over again a few months later.
She pushed up on her tippy toes and pressed her lips to mine. The water from overhead streamed down over our joined lips. It tickled, and both of us started to laugh.
“I’ve been thinking about something,” she said.
I pushed the wet hair from her face and smiled. “I’m hoping you’re thinking about bending over and hanging on to that wall behind you.”
Lily giggled. “I’m serious.”
I took her hand and slid it between us, down to my erection. “So am I. Can you tell?”
She laughed more. “I’ve been thinking about how much I love you.”
“Well, I like the sound of that. Go on.”
“And how much I love living down here with you.”
My grandfather had given me a boat a few months ago on my twenty-first birthday—the very first boat he ever built. When Mom died, Lily and I decided to move into it and live down at the marina. It wasn’t exactly a traditional home, but my girl wasn’t exactly traditional either, and it made her happy. Plus, we spent every weekend sailing and exploring new places together. Since I’d started working for my family’s company after graduating college a few months ago, we could pretty much afford to live wherever we wanted. But this boat felt right for us. And it made Lily happy, most of the time.
“I love living down here with you, too.”
