“I’m really confused,” she said, and continued her work on what he now saw was going to be a fin. “You want to win this competition. You want to win every competition, actually, yet you haven’t been working very hard over here.”
He reluctantly grabbed another bucket. “Something’s distracting me,” he told her as he stuffed more sand into it. He really didn’t like this activity and planned to share those thoughts with Riley when it was done. She wouldn’t care—she’d just laugh at him as she’d been doing a lot these days.
He knew his sister had spoken to Grace but when he asked Grace about their conversation, she’d only told him about the parts that were related to the feud or his family. Nothing about their breakup, even though RJ was certain that would’ve been one of the first questions Riley asked. His sister had been really upset when he’d announced that Grace was gone. So much so that he’d been tempted to reach out to Grace just for the purpose of telling her she needed to talk to Riley, but he hadn’t. And in time, just like him, Riley had moved on without Grace. Now his sister looked almost elated anytime she saw the two of them together.
“Are you calling me a distraction?” she asked without even looking at him.
The way she was able to control her feelings, whether it was desire to have sex or tension about their past, was unnerving to him. He was certain she was feeling the pain of withdrawal the same way he was. Last night when he’d been sitting on the balcony in her room, he’d caught her staring at his crotch. His dick had never gotten so hard so fast, but as soon as it did, she looked away.
“No, I’m calling this weird sexual truce we seem to have initiated a distraction.”
She paused then and pushed up from the sand to sit back on her legs. “What are you talking about?”
“I think you know.”
She shook her head.
“Okay, look, neither of us was ever known to give in to our circumstances. So why are we tiptoeing around each other now?”
“What would happen when it ends?” she asked.
He had and hadn’t come up with an answer, or rather he hadn’t come up with an answer he wanted to accept.
“Let’s have dinner tonight,” he said. “Not a meeting to discuss the story. Just dinner at seven, you and me. I’ll make all the arrangements.”
She looked skeptical. “Are we going to talk about this at dinner?”
He shook his head. “We’re going to have a nice meal like we used to do. I miss that.” He’d also missed times like this, when they were just doing stuff together. Sure, he wasn’t going to like the sand that was already sneaking into places he didn’t want to think about, but he wasn’t going to lie about enjoying being with her.
“Yeah,” she said with a slow nod. “I do, too. But I’d really like to win this sandcastle contest first.”
They both grinned. Competitiveness, ambition, tenacity—all traits they shared. “You’re right. Let’s do this.”
And do it they did. An hour later they were being crowned the winners for their underwater castle with all the intricate aquatic life that Grace had managed to design. RJ let her take the gift shop sandcastle they were awarded as a prize. When she went off to an interview with Major and Maurice, he returned to his room to make plans for tonight.
* * *
Grace stepped up onto the yacht, the balmy evening breeze blowing her hair and the light material of her full skirt.
“Good evening,” RJ said as he stood from the table at the far end of the deck.
“Good evening,” she replied. “We’re having dinner here?”
“Yes.” He came closer and took her hand, leading her toward the table. “Dinner and a sunset sail. You still like to watch the sunset, don’t you?”
“I love to,” she answered softly. She’d dated RJ for a year and a half and in that time, she’d been on the Gold private jet and had attended numerous A-list parties, from LA to Milan. RJ had given her pearls for her birthday, couture gowns for Christmas, and commissioned artwork for their first anniversary. She’d been privy to fine things, but she’d never been on a private yacht to watch the sun set in Saint Lucia.
“I heard it was beautiful out here on the water, so I wanted to make sure you had a chance to see it before you leave.” He held out a chair for her and she sat down.
It was silly—her legs were a little wobbly and butterflies danced in her stomach as if this were her first date. Not just with RJ, but ever.
“You look really nice,” she said, fighting for some semblance of calm. And it was true. He’d changed from the swim trunks and tank top and now wore dark brown linen pants and a matching button-front shirt.
“Not nearly as nice as you,” he replied.
She glanced down at the hunter-green wrap dress she wore. A good portion of her leg was visible through the side slit and she eased the material over to cover it, suddenly feeling more than a little exposed.
“What are you doing?” she asked when she looked at him again. “This seems like more than just dinner.”
The table was covered with a white cloth, and plates with gold rims were set next to sparkling silverware and crystal glasses. A bottle of wine was sitting inside a silver ice bucket; two long white candles were lit and centered.
Everything was set almost identically to the way it had been the night he’d proposed to her.
“What is this? Why’d you do all this?” She was already standing to leave, but RJ stood, too, touching a hand to her arm to hold her still.
“It’s just dinner,” he said. “I wanted it to be special, but if you don’t like it, all you have to do is say the word and we can go back to the café or order something to your room. I really just wanted to have some time with you tonight, away from everyone else.”
He sounded earnest and his hand on her arm loosened so that if she did really want to leave, she knew he wouldn’t stop her. “I’m fine with an evening sail.” Over RJ’s shoulder she glimpsed a guy dressed in all white. He gave a hand signal to someone she couldn’t see and the yacht began to move.
After a few seconds, she said, “You created this to look like that night at the restaurant. The night you proposed.”
He dropped his hand from her arm and slipped it into his front pocket. “You’re right,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t been able to move forward since that night, Grace.” He shook his head. “Yeah, I’ve gotten up every day and I’ve gone about my business doing my job, and being with my family, but that’s it.”
She took a step back from him, realizing now that in addition to wanting to do something special, this dinner was an attempt to find closure. “Don’t say you haven’t moved on, because you’ve dated, RJ. I’ve seen pictures of you in the tabloids with dates.” But not girlfriends. There’d only been about three or four times that she could recall that there’d ever been any mention of RJ with a date, and those few times were usually during some big high-profile function on the company’s behalf. She’d told herself to let it go at the time, but now, tonight, it felt like they were both still holding on to everything that did or didn’t happen in the last ten years.
“And I’m sure you’ve dated, too, although thank all that’s holy I didn’t have to see any pictures of that.”
His tone was grim and she knew why. RJ wasn’t a jealous man, but he did protect what he deemed to be his, and those he cared for deeply. Seeing him in pictures with those women, despite how few, hadn’t been a joyful experience for her, either.
“Okay, so we did move on.”
“I want to know why we had to, Grace.” He walked to the railing and stared out at the water. “I told myself I wasn’t going to ask you this question and so far I’ve resisted the urge over a dozen times. But then we were together the other night and it felt like no time had passed between us. It felt good and right.”
> She didn’t respond because there was truth to his words. That night every touch, every kiss and stroke between them, had felt more than good and better than right.
Truth was, she’d wanted to be with him in any way she could for any amount of time possible. If that was wrong, then she was definitely guilty.
“Why didn’t you accept my proposal?” He asked the question she knew had been on his mind all this time.
“I couldn’t,” she said simply. He wanted to hear more; he deserved to hear it all. She cleared her throat and continued. “I couldn’t marry you and become Mrs. Ronald Gold III, when Grace Hopkins hadn’t made a name for herself yet. Can you understand that?”
He ran a hand over his beard and then folded his arms across his chest. “You didn’t want to marry me because you thought my name would overshadow yours? You could’ve kept your last name, Grace.”
“No, RJ. It’s not that simple.” She took a step toward him. “I could’ve kept my last name but the world still would’ve known me only as your wife. Another member of the Gold family. Part of the fashion industry. I would’ve been all those things and somewhere in the footnotes it would’ve said, ‘Oh yeah, and she writes stories sometimes.’ That’s not what I wanted my life to be.”
“I thought you wanted your life to be with me.” His voice was bereft and a tiny part of her crumbled at the sound. “We’d talked so many times about where we’d live, the kids, the dog. All of it. We’d planned our whole future together and then when I thought I was giving it to you, you threw it back in my face and left without a word.”
And the hurt from that night filled every word he’d just spoken. She wanted to cry or better yet, to scream in frustration. “I handled that badly, I know. There were so many times in those first few weeks that I thought about coming back to tell you how sorry I was for not being honest with you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She shrugged. “I thought it was too late.”
“I loved you,” he said quietly. “I never stopped loving you.”
If words could totally demolish a person’s spirit, RJ would get an award for casting a death blow right now. “I never stopped loving you, either.” She spoke a lot softer than he did and with much more doubt than she’d heard in his tone. But that wasn’t because she doubted that she loved him—that was the truest thing she’d ever known in her life—but that also didn’t seem like enough.
“Then tell me why, Grace. Because your last name, my last name, what was printed about you in the tabloids, I don’t give a damn about any of that and I know you don’t either. Now I’m not saying that I don’t respect you wanting to make your mark in your career, you know I understand that better than anybody, but you had to know I’d always support you and your career. Always.”
She walked to railing now, standing there next to him and staring out at the water. The sun was just beginning to lower in the distance. The sky was a brilliant mix of orange, blue and golden-yellow stripes, shimmering over the water.
“I wanted to be a good investigative journalist and I knew I could do that. I just needed a little more time.” She sighed. “I didn’t know if I could be a wife and mother. Not like my mother and my sisters planned to be. My mother had her career and her family and she made it all look so easy. And my sisters were eager to do the same, but I couldn’t stop thinking about my career. So didn’t that mean I couldn’t do the same? Or at least not at that time. Hope, Charity and Trinity, they’d all made marks in their careers by the time they started thinking about having it all. I needed to do the same. I needed to make my mark first and then perhaps I would’ve been ready for the family.”
When he didn’t speak, she was certain he thought she’d lost her mind. He came to stand closer to her, until their arms touched but they both continued to stare out at the water.
“Why didn’t you tell me that’s what was going on? You threw away everything we had because you were afraid?”
She’d never, not once in ten years, said it that way. It had always been a choice for her—career over family. Establish who and what she was before becoming the other half of someone else. Admitting she was afraid would’ve been just like accepting that she’d always been the least accomplished of the Hopkins sisters, a burden she’d carried on her shoulders all her life.
“I threw it all away because I didn’t think it was for me at the time.” Her chest ached with the realization that she’d succumbed to her fear of not being enough. Again.
“And now...how do you feel about us now?”
She didn’t know how to answer that question. How could she explain that she still loved and cared for him, but she hadn’t yet done the most important thing in her life? How did she admit that the fear still gnawed at her?
“I don’t know,” she whispered, wishing like hell that wasn’t the truth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
RJ HAD NO IDEA how to deal with what she’d just told him. After a few minutes of silence he finally decided on leading her to the table and telling the chef on board to serve their dinner. A flurry of emotions filled him—anger, hurt, confusion, longing—and he couldn’t focus on just one. He didn’t want to focus on any of them. What he really wanted, and what seemed like the most important thing right now, was to just be with Grace.
“You even told them to fix my favorite, spaghetti and meatballs,” she said when he sat across from her.
“With extra meat sauce of course.” He liked doing things for her. Recalling all the things she liked and what made her smile had come naturally from the moment he saw her on the island.
“I told you, I remember things about you, too,” she said, and removed the silver ring from her napkin. “Like, you prefer a mixed drink with dinner over wine and that you hog the TV remote.”
RJ tossed his head back and chuckled, he couldn’t help it. The TV remote had been an ongoing debate in the penthouse. “You don’t even watch television in bed. You usually have something to read.”
“I like the background noise.”
“Right, so it shouldn’t matter if I change the channel or not.”
“It matters when you change it to that sports channel. It’s noisy and distracting.”
He shook his head slowly. “Isn’t that considered background noise?”
She paused and then frowned. “You’re not funny.”
RJ laughed again, this time feeling the joy deep down in his soul. Why couldn’t it always be like this? The carefree ease that was between them right now. Why couldn’t they have this forever? Probably because she hadn’t trusted him with her truth ten years ago, and now he wasn’t certain he could trust her to not choose something over them again. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to stay away from her.
“This is delicious,” she said after she’d tasted her first bite.
It was, but he enjoyed watching her much more than he did the taste of the food.
They were halfway through the meal when she said, “Riley mentioned you’d be taking over the company in a few months. I know you’re excited about that.”
“I wouldn’t say excited,” he told her before taking a gulp of his rum and Coke. “It’s like I’ve been anticipating this for so long, now that it’s getting closer I’m a little numb.”
“You’re going to be great as CEO. You were born for this job.”
“More than that,” he said. “I really want this job. My grandfather and my father have done a phenomenal job carving out a space for us, but I’m ready to take it to the next level. I’m looking forward to working with our designers on creating new and exciting pieces that tell our full story. We have such a diverse and rich history and I want to see it flourish into everything we touch from clothes to handbags, jewelry and even as far as the philanthropy efforts we take on. Even though that’s creeping into my mom’s domain.”
“That sounds amazing,” she said with
a look of admiration on her face, and his chest swelled with pride. “Your family is so rooted in this company. I was shocked when I read about Major and Nina starting their own. Not just because he was stepping away from RGF but also because he was taking a partner. It just seemed so out of character from the Major I knew,” she told him.
The reminder that she’d had a relationship with everyone in his family warmed him.
“I think that decision surprised him, too. But Nina’s a great developer. Her app was amazing before Major ever came along and since he’d already been planning his own business, I guess it made sense for them to be partners. Especially since they’d fallen in love and decided to get married.”
That word brought down a veil of silence and they finished dinner before having their drinks refilled. Grace picked up her glass of wine and stood. He took a gulp from his own glass and left it on the table before following her to the railing once more.
“This is an amazing place to have a wedding,” she said.
“Riley wanted it private and my mom suggested someplace tropical. Dad said he’s just signing the checks.” They both laughed at that.
“Hope wants a fall wedding. Fifty guests, outside venue and candy corn instead of wedding cake for dessert.” She shook her head and sipped her wine while RJ grinned.
“Sounds like Hope.” She was her most eccentric sister. But none of the Hopkins sisters were like Grace. He could see that from the first time he’d been to Westchester to meet her family. It was no wonder she’d always felt like she was different.
“We would’ve had a nice wedding,” she said quietly, and finished the wine.
RJ had no doubt that was true, and while his goal tonight had been to talk about their past, he was through with the regret and sadness now.
“Dance with me.” He took the glass from her and put it on the table.
Harlequin Dare May 2021 Box Set Page 42
