Not today.
She zipped back into the bathroom and braided her hair.
The front door buzzer sounded just as she snapped the elastic around the tail of the second braid. She smoothed her too-tight T-shirt and went to let him in.
One look at him standing there outside the door of the screened porch and all her false bravado fled. He looked tired. And sad.
And that broke her heart even worse than having to leave him because she wanted more and he wouldn’t go there.
She pushed open the door.
He didn’t step forward, but just stood there on the step looking her up and down. When he finally met her eyes again, she felt the pull of him so strongly. Her belly hollowed out and everything inside her burned.
“Now, that’s just cruel.” His voice was deliciously rough and low.
She flipped one of her pigtails back over her shoulder. “Yeah. Sorry. I was feeling kind of bitter. A little sexual torture seemed like a good idea.”
He almost smiled. But not quite. “Let me in so we can talk?”
She considered his request. The thing was, she wanted him so much and there were beds and a couch in the house—not to mention all manner of other possible surfaces where they might get up to stuff she wasn’t going to do with him. “How about a walk on the beach?”
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his black jeans and nodded. “Yeah. That’d be good.”
Much like Dante’s house and the cabin she missed a lot, the cottage was perched on a hill above a section of beach. She led him along the trail that led to the edge of the cliff and then down in a series of switchbacks to the sand.
He took off his boots and socks and rolled the cuffs of his jeans. She slipped off her sandals. They went on across the sand until they reached the shore where the cold, foamy edges of the waves lapped at their toes.
It was nice, for a minute or two, just walking together along the wet sand, a gentle wind blowing, the air misty and cool. She wished he would take her hand—and then reminded herself that if he did, she would only pull away.
Finally, stopping and turning to face her, he got down to it. “I didn’t want you to go. You know that, right?”
She pressed her lips together and gave him a nod.
“You just up and left—out of nowhere. I think I deserved more than a six-sentence note. Seriously, Gracie. The least you could have done was to break the news to me in person.”
She really saw no other way to answer him but with brutal honesty. He deserved that. And so did she. “Dante, I’m in love with you.” There. She’d said it. Too bad he flinched at the L-word, as though she’d slapped his face. “Don’t look so shocked. You’re here and you wanted to know, so I’m telling you. I love your daughters and I’m crazy about Owen. And I am in love with you.”
“Gracie...” He started to reach for her.
She whipped up both hands, palms out. “Don’t. Please.”
He sucked in a slow breath through his nose and let his arm drop back to his side.
She made herself go on. “The thing is, I’ve never actually been in love before and I know I’ve handled this badly. But, um, we had a deal and you have made it painfully clear that, when it comes to love, you don’t want to go there. You don’t want a relationship. You don’t want more.” She lifted her hands and stacked them over her heart. “I do. I want it all with you. But I didn’t ask for it all. I just wanted a step. That first step. I thought dinner at Daniel’s could be that step, but maybe that was too much for you. If not, and I misjudged you and you’re actually more willing than I believed, then please. Tell me what step you’re willing to take. How far you’re willing to go to get closer to me. Tell me your first step and we can take it from there.”
“Gracie...” He looked stunned. Stricken. Totally wrecked.
“What?” Her voice had gone pleading now. “Just tell me. Just say it.”
He swallowed, hard. “Thank you, for telling me.”
She waited. But he said nothing more. “That’s it? That’s all I get.” It hurt, stabbed her to the heart all over again, to declare her love to him and have him dish out a reluctant thank-you in response. “You know what? There’s no point in this. I want more and you don’t and that’s kind of the end of it, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re right.” His voice was so low, she wouldn’t have heard him if she hadn’t been staring directly at him. “I’ll go.” And then he turned on his heel and started walking.
She stood in sea foam, watching him stride away from her across the sand.
* * *
That day, Dante did something he’d never done before, something of which he did not in any way approve.
Though there was nothing physically wrong with him, he called in sick.
He called in sick and then he sat in the house and thought about Gracie. When he started to feel like the walls were closing in, he took a beer out on the deck. He sat at the table, with Owen moping at his feet, and thought about Gracie some more.
The next day, he called in again.
That day, he did exactly what he’d done the day before. It was just him and Owen, in the house or on the deck. He stared into space with Gracie on his mind.
Saturday, he was just about to call in a third time when he somehow managed to stop himself in the act of picking up his phone.
He still had some self-respect, after all, a little kernel of it, deep inside. He had C Watch that night and damn it, when the time came, he was going to work.
It started raining at around ten that morning, a drizzly, gray, lackluster kind of rain. He stood at the slider and watched it dribble down from the sky and wondered what was wrong with him, really.
Something definitely was. Gracie had said she loved him and he’d said thank you and walked away.
The more he thought about that, the more he despised himself.
He’d always considered himself a good man, one who did the right thing, a guy who stepped up when action was called for, did his part no matter how tough the challenge. Not some tongue-tied idiot who turned and ran the minute shit got real.
This was so bad.
He missed Gracie so much. He couldn’t stop thinking of her, of her big heart and smart mouth, of the way she’d stood there so proudly and said it right out loud: Dante, I’m in love with you.
It was driving him crazy. She was driving him crazy. He’d never felt this way before.
Yeah, it had been hard when Marjorie left. He’d missed her and the girls. He’d regretted that he’d failed so miserably at his marriage, been ashamed that he hadn’t been able to make it work. But that had been nothing compared to this. He felt like Gracie had ripped his heart out, stuffed it in a suitcase and hauled it off along with her when she went.
When Marjorie left, he’d had no urge to break things.
Now? Oh, he did have that urge and it was powerful—to start grabbing random objects and throwing them at the nearest wall. The big ceramic bowl on the coffee table, for instance. It would make a very satisfying crash that would send shards flying everywhere if he hurled it at, say, the fireplace...
He was sitting on the sofa, staring at that bowl, reminding himself that breaking stuff was juvenile, messy and completely pointless, when the doorbell rang.
“Go away,” he muttered to whoever was out there and continued glaring at the bowl.
The doorbell rang again. And then there was knocking.
It gave Dante a certain dark satisfaction to just sit there and contemplate that bowl.
Whoever it was went away—or so he thought until he heard knocking on the slider. Resigned, he glanced over his shoulder to see who it was: Connor, with a what-is-your-problem expression on his face. Owen was already over there, whining hopefully at the door.
Dante didn’t want to talk to Connor. Or to anyone, for that matter.
But Co
nnor had that look, the one that said he wasn’t going anywhere and Dante might as well give up and open the damn door.
He dragged himself upright and went to the slider. “Yeah?” he demanded through the glass.
Connor just waited, with the rain dripping down on him.
Dante pulled the damn door open. “What’s this about?”
“Let me in. We need to talk.”
“What about?”
“Stop being an idiot or I’ll be forced to beat some sense into you. God knows you probably deserve it.”
Apprehension clutched at his gut and tightened the skin at the back of his neck. “Is Gracie okay?”
“She’s fine—no thanks to you. And it’s wet out here.” Connor stepped forward.
Dante cleared the doorway and let him pass. “You want coffee?”
“Is it made?” Connor raked his damp hair back, swiping raindrops off his forehead in the process.
“Only takes a minute.”
“Sure, whatever.” Connor pulled out a chair at the table and Dante went over and brewed him a cup.
Neither of them said a word until Dante set a full mug in front of Connor and took the chair across from him.
Then Connor commanded, “Talk.”
Dante eyed him warily. “There is no point in—”
“Talk.”
A stare down ensued.
Dante dropped his gaze first. “How much do you know?”
Connor rubbed at the space between his eyes, like maybe Dante was giving him a headache or something. “She called Liam Monday.” Liam was fourth-born in the Bravo family, a year younger than Connor. “She asked if she could borrow a truck the next day. So, Tuesday, while you were at work apparently, Liam, Harper and Hailey helped her pack up her stuff and haul it all to the cottage.
“Tuesday night, Liam called me. He explained about moving Gracie to the cottage and asked what was going on. He said it was obvious she was wrecked about something, but she wouldn’t say squat about it and Hailey and Harper wouldn’t talk, either. So last night, I stopped by the Sea Breeze for a beer on the way home from work—or that was the pretense, anyway. Really, I just wanted to check on Gracie, see how she was doing. She wouldn’t tell me anything, either. But I’m guessing you broke my beautiful, sweet baby sister’s heart and so here I am to find out what is the matter with you.” He knocked back a slug of caffeine and set down the mug. “I’ll say it again. Talk.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
Connor was absorbed in an intense study of his coffee mug. “Talk.”
“I’m not...what she needs. And she left. And now it’s just me and the dog and both of us are miserable.”
“But you sent her away, right?”
“I didn’t. No. She left. She left because there were things she wanted that I couldn’t give her.”
“Couldn’t? Or wouldn’t?”
“Fine. Wouldn’t. Happy now?”
“Not about this. Why?” Connor demanded.
“Why what?”
Connor shot him a glance of pure exasperation. “If you’re not willing to give my sister what she needs, why are you miserable that she left?”
Dante shook his head. “There is no point in talking about this.”
“Answer the question.”
“Because I feel empty. I’m lonely, I’m sad and I hate it.”
“You hate what?”
“Being here without her. It’s bad, okay. It’s no good at all. I mean, I just don’t get this. I hate this. I’ve got all these damn feelings and I don’t know what to do with them.”
“Yeah, well. It’s never a great idea to throw away what you want the most.”
“I did not throw Gracie away.”
“Yeah, Dante. You kind of did.”
“You don’t get it.”
“Well, one of us is clueless. And it’s not me. Dante, we’ve been best friends on and off for as long as I can remember. I know you better than you think. You’re a good man, the best. But you’ve got way too much pride. You think things ought to be a certain way and you don’t like feeling out of control. I remember when you got together with Marjorie. She is such a nice woman. No drama, no conflict. You said she was perfect, but what you really meant was she was safe. She wasn’t going to make you feel the way your dad’s always felt about your mom, the way I feel about your sister—all hot and bothered and out of control. You really thought you’d dodged a bullet with Marjorie, didn’t you?”
Dante was thinking that punching Connor in the face just might be more satisfying than throwing a bowl at the fireplace. “What exactly are you getting at?”
Connor had the balls to chuckle. “Gracie. She’s not safe and she’s not always going to do things your way. But she is the one for you.”
Dante scoffed. “The one?”
“That’s right. Now you finally know what it’s like. Welcome to the real thing, Dante. Love. It’s finally happened for you.”
* * *
After Connor left, Dante decided to stop moping around the house. He went out and bought groceries, took Owen for a run on the beach and then headed over to the gym for an hour. He had dinner with his parents and his second-youngest brother, Marco.
And then he went to work. It was a busy Saturday night with a couple of robberies to deal with and a nasty domestic that had almost turned tragic. He had no time for brooding on whether or not true love had finally caught up with him in the form of a gorgeous blonde with a wicked sense of humor and zero willingness to put up with his crap.
Sunday, he went through the motions of living all over again. Monday was the same. The week went on like most weeks do.
It was Friday before he began to accept that he was not going to get the woman he loved by just getting up and getting through each day like some wimpy little dweeb.
A real move would have to be made.
He spent the weekend figuring out exactly what that move should be.
* * *
Monday was Gracie’s first in-service day at Valentine Bay High. School was starting the day after Labor Day and that meant she had essentially one week to get her classroom student ready. At the same time, she had to attend a raft of meetings—OSHA, first aid, departmental, new-teacher orientation. Some of those meetings seemed to drag on forever. Between the meetings, there was the mad scramble to get her room in order. There was too much to do and not enough time to do it in. The upside? The work overload kept her from dwelling on how much she missed a certain stubborn, impossible man.
Love was hard. Especially when you felt torn in two—your brain telling you it just wasn’t going to work out while your heart screamed to hold on, never give up!
Her heart just wouldn’t quit hoping. Every night since she left him, she would lie there in bed in the dark, her whole body aching, just kind of burning up from inside with the love that Dante wouldn’t let her give him.
She needed to forget him.
But she knew that wasn’t going to be happening anytime soon. Her job was to keep a reasonably good attitude, put one foot in front of the other and get through each day.
As she drove back to the cottage that Monday afternoon, she reminded herself that she needed to focus on the good things—on the sunshiny day after the gray, rainy weekend, on her first real job as a teacher at last.
“Good things,” she whispered under her breath as she turned onto the tree-shaded driveway that led up to the cottage. “Good things...”
The cottage came into view—along with Dante’s crew cab in the cleared space where she and her sisters parked their vehicles. The man himself, in dark-wash jeans and a crisp blue button-down, sat on the front step in the thick shade of the tall trees.
For a terrifying moment, she was certain she must be imagining him, that her hopeful, yearning heart had her seeing the impossible.
>
She blinked three times in rapid succession. He was still there, his expression a little apprehensive, so handsome that just looking at him twisted the knife of longing within her all over again.
Her frantic heart beating so loud she couldn’t hear herself think, she realized she’d stopped breathing. “Breathe, now,” she whispered, “just breathe,” as she carefully guided her Toyota into the empty spot beside the pickup and turned off the engine.
She had stacks of stuff to carry in, but her hands were shaking and her body felt strangely numb. If she tried to carry her big tote and her laptop and the ream and a half of paperwork, it would probably all end up on the ground.
So, then. Later for that.
With slow deliberation, she pushed open her door and swung her rubbery legs to the ground. They wobbled a little when she stood, but it was okay. She could do this.
Dante was already on his feet. She started toward him, her eyes tracking right and left—anywhere but directly at him.
Which was cowardly. Weak.
And she was not weak.
She needed to face him, to look directly at him. Whatever she saw when she looked in his eyes would tell her everything. Maybe more than she wanted to know.
A certain calm descended.
She paused in midstep and made herself meet his eyes.
That was all it took. Just one look in those dark, hungry eyes of his.
One look, and she knew.
“Gracie.” He said her name like it was everything to him, like she was everything.
She took three more steps and stopped maybe two feet away from him. He reached for her hand. She gave it.
Oh, that moment. She would hold it in her heart for all of her life. The moment his strong fingers wrapped around hers, the first time he touched her after she knew that he had figured it out.
He finally understood. She was his and he was hers and that was how it was going to be. Now. Tomorrow. For all the days to come.
“It’s nice out here,” she said, and realized her knees were kind of wobbly all over again. “Can we sit down?”
“Sure.” Keeping a firm grip on her hand, he dropped back to the step. She sat down beside him.
Their Secret Summer Family (The Bravos 0f Valentine Bay Book 7) Page 17
