Dad for Charlie & the Sergeant's Temptation & the Alaskan Catch & New Year's Wedding (9781488015687)

by Stewart, Anna J. ; Sasson, Sophia; Carpenter, Beth; Jensen, Muriel

  He caught her arm and drew her back, obviously annoyed. “Never mind?” he repeated. They locked gazes, the crystals in the chandeliers moving in the night breeze.

  “Never. Mind.” She repeated the words slowly, deliberately. “That is the most lifeless, insipid expression of feeling I’ve ever heard. If that’s all you have to offer, I don’t want it.” She tried to leave again, but he held fast.

  “Hey!” he whispered, glancing around, making sure no one was listening. “You burned down my home!”

  “I did not!” she whispered back at him. “I accidentally caused the fire. And I’m sorry. Actually, I didn’t even burn it all down. I made a horrible mess of the great room, true, but a cleaning company is coming tomorrow, and I’ve hired a contractor Jack recommended to give you an estimate on repairs. I’ll take care of everything.”

  She jabbed a finger at his chest. “And be honest with yourself for once, Grady. You’re not mad that there was a fire, you’re mad because you fell in love with me even though it scares you to death, and this accident was a perfect excuse to say, ‘Aha!’” She took on a villainous voice. “‘You led me astray from my staid and safe little life and now look what you’ve done. You’ve made me care, and I’m not comfortable with that because you messed everything up and now I have to forgive you and love you, anyway, and that’s too hard. You cost me my comfort and that’s what’s most important to me because when my father died I had to give up everything to help my mother.’”

  He looked murderous. She could only conclude that she was right on.

  “You’re very lucky there are so many witnesses,” he said darkly, dropping her wrist.

  “Really?” Her voice dripped with irreverence. She put a thumb to the side of her nose and took a fighter’s stance. “Want to go a few rounds? Come on, let’s see what you’ve got. There’s a pirate ship in your bathroom, for heaven’s sake! Where’s your knife-in-your-teeth fearlessness? Let’s duke out the safe-and-sober versus risky-and-alive life question.”

  Her father and Diane appeared, looking vaguely concerned. Diane wore an apron over her coat, and her arm was tucked in Donald’s.

  “Everything okay here?” her father asked, looking from one to the other in concern. “You’re not really going to start boxing, are you?”

  Cassie relaxed from her fighter’s stance and patted his chest. “I would, but Grady’s too much of a gentleman to get down and dirty or display any passion. Excuse me. I’ve got to go help in the kitchen.”

  * * *

  THE RECEPTION LASTED for hours. No one seemed to notice when the temperature dropped and they finally ran out of food. Laughter filled the fragrant night air and the Wild Men launched into a set of romantic numbers. Couples danced, leaning on each other, the new year beginning with looks into each other’s eyes and firm embraces.

  Everyone gathered to throw birdseed as Ben and Corie left. Soren and Rosie stayed behind—Jack and Sarah would watch them for the night.

  The women headed back to the kitchen. When the Wild Men played the first few familiar bars of “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You,” Cassie shooed everyone back to the dancing, then hid out in the kitchen, cleaning and crying like a crazy woman.

  By the time the kitchen sparkled, the music had stopped and she went out to clear tables. She thanked the musicians and then said good-night to the last of the guests.

  She had a centerpiece in each arm, ready to carry them into the house, when Diane approached her. She’d removed the apron and had her purse over her shoulder. “Do you want to come with me, Cassie?” she asked. “Grady insists he’s staying here, but I don’t think you’d be very comfortable. Couldn’t you use a nice hot bath and a cup of tea?”

  That sounded divine. “I would love that. You’re sure I’m not putting you out?”

  “Absolutely. You get your things and I’ll go say good-night to your father. He’s ready to leave with Jack and Sarah and the kids.”

  Cassie stopped her with a hand on her arm. “You like him, don’t you?”

  A youthful smile grew on Diane’s mouth. “I do. He’s a very interesting man, and he’s so proud of you. Not because you’re a celebrity, but because you’re such a special young woman.”

  “That’s nice of you to say. He seems to like you, too.”

  Diane giggled, looking thrilled. “I know. Isn’t that wonderful? He’s invited me to come look at a property he’s considering buying on the outskirts of town. He said he’d planned to sell his business and retire, anyway, and now he really likes it here and since you’ll be coming back…” She spread her hands as though the rest was obvious.

  Cassie hugged her. “I’m so happy, Diane.” She pushed her gently to where her father waited. “Go say good-night and I’ll run upstairs. I promise I won’t be long.”

  Cassie dashed up to the loft and her still-damp room. She packed up her things, putting all the extra clothing she’d bought since she’d arrived into the plastic sleeve from Bay Boutique. She resisted the impulse to dawdle over memories of her first shopping trip there, of the night she’d worn her little black dress and she and Grady had danced to Sinatra, and the feeling of his arms around her when she rode the elevator without screaming. Tears fell, but she wiped them away and dug into the closet for her boots.

  She spotted the raincoat and realized it was a metaphor for what she was left with. She pulled off the leather jacket she liked so much and placed it on the foot of the bed, then shrugged into the raincoat.

  With a sudden lack of energy, she sat beside the jacket and looked around at the warm, familiar room. Though she’d been here only a few days, it felt as though she’d been here much longer, as though she was a different woman from the one who’d run away from the paparazzi with Grady. She’d give anything to be able to stay, despite the broken windows and the lack of electricity. But while the house was sound enough, her emotions were not and she would either smack Grady over his attitude or burst into tears in front of him. Neither response would be productive.

  With a small groan, she stood and hurried downstairs with all her possessions. She stopped short at the sight of Grady at the door.

  “I’ll walk you to Mom’s car,” he said, taking her things from her without bothering to ask. She opened her mouth to insist that she could carry them, but he said simply, “Don’t.”

  “Why are you mad at me?” she demanded a little testily. She was now officially exhausted and without her customary good humor.

  He gave her a look over his shoulder that told her that was a silly question. She had to grant him that. “Okay. Apart from the fact that I’m responsible for the house fire. I’m leaving so that you don’t have to look at me anymore tonight. And I’ll be back in the morning to talk to the cleaners and the contractor to get your life repaired.”

  His mother stood by the open trunk of her car and watched as he put Cassie’s bags inside. “It’s my house,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

  “I’ve already taken care of it. And I’m going to pay for the repairs.”

  “I have insurance.”

  “There’ll be things insurance won’t cover.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said, taking her by the shoulders. “Broken heart. Broken dreams.”

  She gasped, staring at him openmouthed at that admission. He was going to kiss her. No, he was too angry. Her insides somersaulted in confusion.

  He released her to close the trunk and open the passenger’s-side door. “Get in. Please.”

  She complied and swung her legs in, shaken by what he’d said and trying not to betray it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  GRADY WALKED INTO his trashed and empty house. He retrieved the Coleman lantern from the guest closet and went into the kitchen in search of leftover champagne. There was half a bottle in the fridge, the contents still cold thanks to Gary’s
generator. He poured a juice glass full and went back to sit on the unburned half of the sofa.

  The smell of smoke was less pervasive now that the broken windows had been allowing air in all day. Tonight he smelled the woods behind his house, the leftover fragrance of the perfume and aftershave of his guests, the ten small bouquets one of the women had artfully lined up on the stairs.

  At the wall at a right angle to the stairs, Jack and Oliver had placed the six standing chandeliers in a row. Damned things. They personified for him the extravagance of Cassie’s approach to life.

  But they had been beautiful tonight.

  He took a sip of the champagne and felt its chill in his chest. The air coming through his broken windows made the room too cold for champagne.

  He lay his head against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes, combating the terrible loneliness he felt without the sound of Cassie’s movements in the loft.

  Still, the fire was proof that his life was never intended to handle the glamorous but impulsive way she behaved. He’d thought he could stay with her until she was free to come back to Beggar’s Bay with him for good.

  He knew now that wouldn’t work. Geography really didn’t matter. He’d still be the guy who wanted to deal in basics, and she’d always be the woman who ordered six standing chandeliers from a prop supplier in Paris.

  There was a light knock on the door. He held his watch against the lantern to check the time. It was after ten. He couldn’t imagine who would be coming by at this hour.

  That question was answered the next moment when Donald’s face appeared in the broken window. “Grady, are you still up?” he called.

  “Yeah. I’m coming.” Grady went to the door and yanked it open. “Don. Hi. I thought you were spending the night with Jack and Sarah.” He stood aside to let him in.

  “That was the plan, but I got worried about you moping around in here.” Donald had changed into jeans and his stadium jacket over an argyle sweater. He held up a bottle of brandy in one hand and had palmed the bottoms of two paper cups in the other. “I’ve got coffee and brandy,” he said. “A much better combination than coffee, cream and sugar ever was.”

  “Sure. Watch your step. There’s still water and debris all over the floor.” Grady closed the door and led the way back to the great room. They sat on the sofa by the light of the lantern. “What made you think I’d be moping?”

  Donald removed the plastic lids and poured brandy into the cups, glancing at Grady as he did so. “The fact that you love my daughter and you’re pushing her away.”

  Grady wished he hadn’t opened the door, but when he took a sip of the coffee concoction, he was glad he had, after all.

  “We’re not right for each other,” he said.

  “Why is that? Because she’s a celebrity?” Donald leaned back with his own cup, crossing the ankle of one leg over the knee of the other. “Because she really doesn’t care about that stuff.”

  “Right.” Grady told him briefly about his life, his father, his change of plans to be able to help his mother.

  Donald nodded. “I know.” He empathized. “Diane told me what a good son you’ve been and that your father was…” He glanced at Grady then looked down at his cup. “Sometimes illness takes away your ability to deal with anything but your own problems. I had that experience with Cassie’s mother. She couldn’t cope with her life without taking drugs, and eventually it didn’t even matter that she loved me, that she loved her kids. She chose the drugs over us.”

  That was true for Cassie’s family, but Grady remembered a kind, loving father before his illness changed him. “He’d been a good dad.”

  “He had to have been,” Donald said. “I can see in you that you had a good role model.”

  Grady sipped at his cup, feeling the hot, brandied coffee slide down into his stomach. “My parents hadn’t been able to save much, and they had debt. His inability to work made my mother’s and my lives very basic. There was no room for frivolous thinking, no having things easy. Life was pretty hard.”

  “But, that was then,” Donald said. “You’ve matured and moved on. Or is this about that other woman? Celine?”

  “Celeste,” Grady corrected. He gave Donald a judicious look. “You and Mom have done a lot of talking.”

  Donald laughed. “It’s hard to keep up with your mother. She’s worried about you, particularly after the fire. So she shared that with me.”

  “Okay, I appreciate that, but you’re not my parent, here.”

  “I know. But I’m Cassie’s parent. I’m working for her, as well as for you. And if you want to spend the rest of your life stuck in place, I want a different future for her.”

  Grady was angry that Donald had reduced his life’s problems to being “stuck in place.” But in making himself think before he reacted angrily, Grady realized that that described his situation very well.

  “That’s why I can’t let this go any farther. We’re two very different people.”

  “Who seem to have a great time together.”

  “We do, but…” He swept a hand around the room. “I live in a simple, sturdy, log house. And she rents standing chandeliers. How does that ever come together?”

  Donald turned to him, looking a little surprised that he wasn’t getting the point.

  “Okay, if you want to use a log house and a chandelier as a metaphor for your lives, I think it works. Did you not notice today that the house burned and the wedding had to be moved outside where the chandeliers lit up the landscape—and made a beautiful wedding?”

  Feeling a little cornered, Grady rebutted. “Don, she’s the one who burned the house.”

  Donald nodded on a sigh. “Can’t deny that, but it’s important to note that her intent was beauty and not destruction. And then, with the venue up in flames, she made the proverbial silk purse out of a sow’s ear. I think that was the nicest wedding I’ve ever been to.”

  “She’s rash!”

  “She is.”

  “She never thinks twice.”

  “Because she sees things pretty clearly the first time.”

  Grady rolled his eyes. “Don. She got you out of the burning house, then went back inside to…to…I don’t know…probably to save her chandeliers. That’s thinking clearly?”

  Donald stared at him, both eyebrows raised, a small gasp of surprise coming from his open mouth. “Is that what you think?”

  “It’s what I know,” Grady snapped. “I went in to get her, remember?”

  Donald ran a hand over his face and shook his head. He put his coffee cup down and leaned back into the sofa. “Grady,” he said gravely, “she went back in for you.”

  Grady thought about that a minute, stunned. He’d found her near the kitchen, doing what? Trying to save the food that had been brought over last night? He couldn’t quite follow Donald’s reasoning. “I wasn’t here,” he said.

  “We didn’t know that. You never told us you were leaving early to go to the bakery. She went to the sofa to wake you with fire all around her, and when she didn’t find you, she came for me and practically shoved me out the door so she could come back in and look for you.”

  No. That wasn’t possible. The house was on fire and filled with black smoke. He hadn’t been able to see anything when he’d gone in after her. What had it been like for her, her claustrophobia dragging on her every step?

  Grady sat in silence for a long moment, unable to process the whole concept of Cassie trying to save him from the fire, probably with all the symptoms of claustrophobia impeding her.

  “I thought…” He struggled to form a coherent sentence. “I thought she’d gone back in to get the wedding stuff. The chandeliers.”

  “Did you find her moving a chandelier toward the door?”

  “No. I found her in the kitchen.”

 
“Looking for you. And you have to know how hard that was for her. She deals with her condition almost daily and without drama.”

  Grady was speechless.

  “She is as different from you as she can be,” Donald said gently, “and that could work against you if she didn’t love you and truly appreciate you for the good, kind man you are.”

  Resting his elbows on his knees, Grady covered his face with his hands and tried to find balance in a life that was falling over. “She never told me why she went back.”

  “She wouldn’t,” Donald said. “Maybe she thought you’d realize why.”

  “God,” Grady muttered, hands still covering his face. “What does that make me?”

  “It makes you just like her,” he replied, a small smile in his voice. “You ran in after her. Maybe you’re more alike than you imagine.”

  * * *

  DIANE’S HOME WAS small and charming, with an interesting collection of brightly painted folk furniture and knickknacks.

  Diane dropped her purse on a wooden chair painted red with black polka dots and told Cassie to put her things at the foot of the stairs. “We’ll take them up later. I need a cup of tea. Want one?”

  “Please.”

  “I hope you feel good about what you accomplished today,” Diane said, stopping on her way into the kitchen. She beckoned to Cassie. “That was a lovely wedding.”

  “It was.” Cassie stopped in the middle of the room to look around at a mind-blowing collection of hand-painted signs. Signs of encouragement, signs of observation, funny signs, and all done in primitive style. “Diane, these are wonderful. I suppose you remember where you found each one?”

  “I do as a matter of fact. That one—” she pointed to one painted blue with dark blue lettering “—about the risk of failure but the joy and freedom of taking the risk. Grady’s father and I had come home from our teaching jobs in Italy to give birth to Grady here. I wanted him to know that freedom, but when his father got sick we were caught in a cycle where physical and emotional survival ruled our lives. I’d found this in a little shop on a side street in Boise, though I never really got to live the lesson. But isn’t it perfect?”