“I’ll drink to that.” Carrie emptied her glass.
* * *
The next morning at a little before eleven, Grace got a text from Dante. Want some company? The cabin? About noon?
She stared at her phone, a giant smile on her face. Her heart felt lighter as pure happiness filled her. Dante was coming over and everything was suddenly right with the world.
And that was when it hit her.
“I am in big trouble,” she whispered to no one in particular. With a slow, careful sigh, she sank to the edge of the bed and set the phone on the old bureau next to it. “I’ve got it bad.”
So bad. Worse every day. Stronger than liking him a whole lot and longing to make it more. This was a huge deal, what she was feeling. This was...
Grace did not allow herself to think the forbidden word right then.
But it was there, nonetheless. A fiery ball of longing had tucked itself under her breastbone and become impossible to completely ignore.
This, with Dante, it was serious for her, way beyond anything she’d ever known. It wasn’t going to just run its course. Dante wasn’t Niall or Keegan or Paolo to her. He was her true friend and the man she wanted in her bed. The man she wanted to tell all her secrets to. The one she longed to turn to when things weren’t working out, the one she wanted to be there for wherever, however, whenever he needed her.
And the girls...
Yes. Nicole and Natalie, too.
No, the girls didn’t need her, exactly. Nic and Nat already had a good life. They actually seemed to enjoy both of their homes—with their mom and their stepdad in Portland and with Dante in Valentine Bay. They didn’t need another parent, per se.
But they did like Grace and she liked them. A lot.
She could...add to the good they already had. She could make their time with their dad even better. She could take a little of the weight off Dante, help ferry them around, make dinner half the time. She could be there for the girly things, the hair braiding and the all-important search for just the right outfit for this or that event. She could lend an ear if either of them wanted to share a secret that only a woman might understand.
And yes, those were all things that would get handled anyway, without her. The girls had a great mom and a loving, attentive dad. They had everything they needed to get a good start in life.
All Grace could offer them was more...
More could be good for them and for her.
More could be excellent.
If Dante would only let her in.
Grace fell back across the bed and stared blindly at the rustic beam ceiling above.
So, then. The girls would be going home in less than a week. She wouldn’t approach Dante about her deepening feelings until after they were gone. If he turned her down, Nicole and Natalie didn’t need to be there while the breakup was happening.
On the bureau, her phone buzzed with another text.
She sat up long enough to grab it and flopped back across the mattress again.
So is that a no?
“Dante.” Just saying his name out loud sent a sweet little shiver racing along the surface of her skin. She pressed the phone to her chest and reminded herself to count her blessings. However it all shook out in the end, right now was amazing. In less than an hour, she would have his arms around her—and she could not wait.
She really had it bad for him. So very bad. Noon, you said?
Yeah.
I’m here at the cabin. C U then.
He arrived right on time. They spent a perfect hour in her bed.
When he left, she stood at the door and watched him drive away in his cruiser. Her body felt relaxed, thoroughly satisfied. But her heart was a big ball of longing.
For everything. The L-word from his lips, a future to share with him.
One step at a time, though. She was fine with that, with taking it slow.
But in the end, she did want it all. With him. She wanted all the things he’d made it painfully clear he would never give.
* * *
The next night, she joined him and the girls for dinner at his place. When Nat and Nic went to bed, Grace stayed for a couple of hours. They sat out on the deck. With Owen snoozing at their feet, they watched the wisps of clouds drifting past the moon, spoke of inconsequential things and somehow managed to keep their hands off each other.
Thursday and Friday, she worked six to closing and he couldn’t get away at lunch either day.
Saturday morning, Gracie was still sound asleep when someone knocked on the door. She peeled one eye open long enough to wave her hand over her cell phone and see that it was 7:25. She’d arrived home at three this morning. Four hours and change did not add up to a good night’s sleep.
She put the pillow over her head and hoped whoever it was would go away.
Another knock.
She dragged the pillow off her head. With her eyes scrunched shut, she shouted, “Come back later!”
Then she heard giggling. Nicole and Natalie.
A third knock, this one more tentative than the two before.
By then, she was awake enough to remember that this was the Saturday the girls returned to Portland. “Coming!” she shouted, and threw back the covers.
“We’re sorry to wake you up,” said Natalie when Grace opened the door.
“But we have to leave today,” added Nicole.
“Come have breakfast with us,” said Nat.
“Please,” added Nic.
Owen, at their feet, panted eagerly up at Grace and beat his tail against the boards of the front step.
Grace felt kind of forlorn. “Can’t you just stay and never go?” She made a pouty face.
“We will miss you.” Nic gazed up at her through serious brown eyes a lot like her dad’s. “But we live in Portland, too.”
“I understand, I guess. And I will miss you,” Grace replied. “And yes, I would love to have breakfast with you. I’ll be over in ten minutes.”
When she got to Dante’s, the girls had already set the table and Dante had crisp bacon on a serving platter and tall stacks of pancakes ready. Grace poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down with them.
Nic and Nat talked nonstop—about how they hated to leave their Valentine Bay friends and cousins, but they needed to get back to Portland, where one of their friends was having a birthday party next weekend. And they’d been invited by another friend to the big water park an hour south of Portland in McMinnville this coming Wednesday.
Dante seemed kind of quiet. Grace sensed he was already missing them.
Too soon, breakfast was over. Grace helped clear the table and then carried a couple of suitcases out to the crew cab as they loaded up to go.
Finally, it was time for goodbyes.
Gracie hugged Nic first. “I already miss you.”
“Me too.” Nic’s small arms squeezed her tighter.
“We’ll see you in two weeks and then in September,” Nat promised.
“They’re here for just the weekend in mid-August,” Dante explained kind of gruffly. “And then I’ll go get them for Labor Day.”
“I can’t wait,” Grace said, reaching for Nat.
Nat hugged her good and hard and then tipped her head up to meet Grace’s eyes. “Be extra nice to Owen while we’re gone.”
“He misses us so much,” Nic explained with a sad little sigh.
“I will help your dad take really good care of him,” Grace vowed. “In fact, I’ll take him back to the cabin with me now. How’s that?”
“That would be good.” Nat nodded up at her. “He won’t have to be alone.”
A moment later, the girls were climbing into their booster seats and buckling up.
Dante got in behind the wheel. He leaned out the window. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Any chance you
’ll be around?”
She ached for him. He always tried to be so tough. But really, he had a heart of pure mush and it was so painfully obvious how much he hated to see his daughters go. “I’ll be here.”
With Owen sitting at her feet, Grace waved them off. She felt a bit teary eyed, watching them go. It gave her a deeper sense of how hard it must be for Dante every time they returned to their other home in Portland.
* * *
Four hours later, she and Dante were in her bed wearing nothing but a matched pair of satisfied grins.
He wrapped a big arm around her and pulled her close against his side. She snuggled in with her head on his broad chest.
“I hate when they go.” He idly stroked a hand down the bare skin of her arm.
“I noticed.” She brushed a kiss on the hot, muscled flesh just above his left nipple.
Smoothing her hair out of the way, he trailed a finger along the side of her throat. “But I could get used to having more time like this with you, to being able to kiss you on the back deck without thinking about who might be watching.”
I don’t care who might be watching, she thought as frustration welled within her. I don’t care who knows about you and me. I want Nic and Nat to know that we have something good together. I really do. And we need to talk about that.
Stacking her hands on his chest, she rested her chin on them, captured his gaze—and had absolutely no idea where to start.
I want more from you, Dante.
Ugh.
You could kiss me on the back deck whenever you wanted if we just tell the girls that we’re more than friends.
No.
Where are we going, you and I, Dante?
Yuck.
It all sounded pitiful and needy and wrong inside her own head.
Clearly, more thought was required before she broached this particular subject with him.
He pressed his palm to her cheek. “What is it?”
Nope. Not going there. Not until she’d at least figured out what she wanted to say.
“This.” Lifting up, she pressed her mouth to his.
He made a low, pleasured sound against her parted lips and dipped his tongue inside.
After that, they didn’t need words.
A good thing, too, because she sure hadn’t found the right ones yet.
* * *
With the girls gone, they did have more time alone together. In the next week, they spent two lunchtimes in her bed. And on Monday and Wednesday, when neither of them had to work at night, they shared dinner on the deck and she stayed the night at his house.
Thursday morning before she left him to get ready to open at the Sea Breeze, he asked her if maybe she could get Saturday night off. “I want to take you to dinner.”
Her heart soared.
A date. An actual date. Out in public where anyone might see them.
This was progress, right?
But then he added, “I know this great seafood place on the river in Astoria.”
Her soaring heart crashed and burned.
Astoria. Of course. Where the chances were pretty small they would ever run into anyone they knew.
Yeah. It was time. She needed to find the damn words, to tell him what she wanted from him.
However. An actual date was a step in the right direction. She decided to be glad about that.
“I’ll check with Ingrid,” she said.
Ingrid gave her the night off. She and Dante had dinner out like any regular couple. It was a good night. They laughed and talked about their families and their jobs. They shared a dessert and whispered together the way people in actual relationships do. And then they went back to his house and he gave her lots of deep kisses and more than one orgasm.
The next week, it was pretty much the same. They got together whenever both of their schedules allowed. She loved every minute she had with him. She didn’t want anything to change.
She just wanted to not be a secret. Yeah. That would do it for her for now.
That Friday, she had the closing shift at the Sea Breeze and she slept nice and late on Saturday morning.
Nicole and Natalie arrived while she was still sleeping.
They woke her the same way they had the day they left—with giggles at her front door. She let them and Owen in. They stayed for an hour, laughing and chattering, bringing her up-to-date on their lives in Portland and their trip to Wings and Waves Waterpark, which had a giant wave pool and the coolest tube slides ever.
Then Dante appeared. He hustled them off to their grandmother’s house for a barbecue.
After they left, Grace sat on the old sofa in the cabin and tried not to feel hurt that Dante hadn’t invited her to go with them. Because how could he invite her? If Dante took her to a Santangelo family get-together, everyone would start wondering if the two of them were more than friends.
Well, they were more than friends. A lot more, at least as far as she was concerned.
And it wasn’t working for her that he didn’t seem willing to actually acknowledge that.
With a groan, she bent forward and put her head in her hands. Really, she had no right to go blaming Dante for not giving her what she hadn’t even asked for. She needed to stop being a big baby about this, to either tell him she wanted to change the rules, or let it be and enjoy the ride for as long as it lasted.
Up until this thing with Dante, she’d always been an enjoy-the-ride kind of girl.
Not anymore, though.
She wanted to be with him and she wanted the world to know that she was his and he was hers.
Never, ever had she felt this way before.
And it really brought her spirits down that he seemed perfectly happy to keep things just as they were.
Sunday, the girls came over about noon. She went back to the main house with them and Dante fixed lunch for the four of them. Then she was treated to a karaoke performance that included just about every Disney song ever written.
Too soon, it was time to pack up the truck again. Dante would drive the girls to meet their mother, come back home just long enough to change clothes and then head for the station house, dropping Owen at the dog sitter’s on the way.
Gracie hugged the girls goodbye and waved as they drove off. Missing them already, she decided to cheer herself up by going to dinner at Daniel’s.
At the house on Rhinehart Hill, she played with her nieces and nephews, spent some time with her sisters and just generally felt better about everything with her family around her. She didn’t see Dante until the next morning.
She was lying in bed, half-awake, at a little after seven, thinking of getting up and making some coffee when he tapped on her door. “Gracie?”
Of course, her hopeless heart beat faster and she couldn’t stop the happy smile that spread over her face. “Coming!” She rolled out of bed and went to let him in.
“There you are.” He looked at her with those melty dark eyes and suddenly nothing else in the world mattered as much as the fact that he was standing there on her front step, in jeans and a T-shirt, his hair still wet from a shower.
“Did you just get home from work?”
He nodded. “God. You look good.”
“Please. I look like the bed I just rolled out of.”
“You’re beautiful.” He stepped over the threshold, crowding her backward.
“Just come right on in, why don’t you?”
“Thanks. I will.” He reached for her. Wrapping a big arm around her waist, he pulled her up close. “I’ve been thinking all night about getting my hands on you.” His mouth came down on hers before she had a chance to warn him about morning breath.
And really, morning breath? Who cares? Nothing mattered but his kiss and his arms so tight around her—that, and getting prone.
Or maybe up against th
e wall.
Or straddling him on the sofa...
He had her cami and sleep shorts off in seconds flat as she tore at his shirt and whipped off his belt. It took him a moment to get out of his boots and socks. And then he shoved down his jeans and boxers and he was every bit as naked as she was.
They fell on each other, moaning.
The next hour went by in a hot haze of pleasure. Even in a one-room cabin, there were so many surfaces to explore. They ended up in the bed, their arms wrapped around each other.
As her heartbeat settled into a slower rhythm, she nipped the side of his neck and whispered, “Coffee. I need it. Now.”
He held her closer. “No. I want you here.”
She laughed and playfully shoved at his broad, bare chest. Reluctantly, he let her go. Bracing his head on his hand, he watched, grinning, as she darted around grabbing her rumpled cami and sleep shorts off the floor and yanking them back on.
She was at the kitchen counter loading up the coffee maker when he came up behind her and eased his warm arms around her again.
Smoothing her hair back, he nuzzled her neck. “I came by last night before I went to work, but missed you,” he said in her ear.
“I went to Sunday dinner at Daniel’s.”
He caught her earlobe between his teeth and teased at it lightly, causing a cascade of shivers to skate down her neck and over her jaw. “Were Aly and Connor there?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“They warn you off me?”
She pushed the brew button and turned in his hold. He’d pulled on his jeans, which hung a little low without his belt, revealing V-lines a fitness model might envy. She stuck her thumbs in the belt loops on either side of his hard hips and tugged him a fraction closer. “You were not mentioned. By either your sister or my brother.”
He guided a swatch of hair behind her ear, his eyes kind of guarded. “What about your aunt Daffodil?”
“What about her?”
“Was she there?”
“Yeah.” She looked at him sideways. “Why?”
Their Secret Summer Family (The Bravos 0f Valentine Bay Book 7) Page 15
