by Brenda Novak
10
Grace didn’t know what to make of Kennedy. They hiked, they fished, they skipped rocks in the lake. He threw Teddy and Heath in the water. Then he threw her in, too. But he insisted on giving her a piggyback ride to camp so her wet tennis shoes wouldn’t get caked with mud. And he set up her tent and gave her the best pad and sleeping bag they owned. When Teddy and Heath picked her some wildflowers, he even found an old can and filled it with water so they could set them on the wooden picnic table near the campfire.
“Teddy told me you like the outdoors,” he said as she was sitting on a log nearby, doing a crossword puzzle with Heath and Teddy.
“I do.” She smiled, enjoying the smell of the fish he was grilling for dinner. Surprisingly, she couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt so relaxed, so far removed from Stillwater and everything that had happened there. It was the Kennedy Archer charm, and for once, she was basking in his light.
“What’s four down?” Heath asked, drawing her attention back to the holiday-themed crossword puzzle. “A babbling what?”
“It’s some form of water,” she said, hoping to help him figure it out.
“A stream?”
“The answer has five letters.”
Concentration etched a frown on Teddy’s face. “Lake only has four….”
“River has five,” Heath said.
“But the last letter is a k,” Grace reminded him.
“I know!” Heath cried. “Brook!”
She gave his shoulder a pat. “Good job.”
“Now let’s do six across,” Teddy said. “A bedtime what?”
“Story?” Heath answered, then immediately corrected himself. “No, it can only be four letters, and there’s an i in the middle.”
“Kiss?” Kennedy said.
Grace glanced up to find him looking at her. When their eyes met, the fluttery sensation in her stomach reminded her entirely too much of the hero worship she’d experienced when she was younger—so she immediately bent over the puzzle again.
“Hey, you’re right, Dad,” Teddy said. “I think it is kiss.”
“What’s the next one?” Kennedy asked.
“Nine down,” Heath said. “What you say on Valentine’s Day. Will you be what?”
“My Valentine!” Teddy shouted.
“That’s two words, dummy,” Heath said.
“It was a good guess,” Grace said to soften Heath’s criticism. “But in this case, I think it might be ‘mine.’”
Once again, Grace felt Kennedy’s gaze on her but refused to acknowledge him.
“Do you have a Valentine?” Teddy asked as she watched him write the letters.
She scooted over because Heath was trying to squeeze between her and a knot on the log. “You mean a boyfriend?”
“Yeah.”
She thought of George’s neglect. “No, not really.”
“Not really?” Heath repeated.
“We’ve broken up,” she explained.
Teddy leaned forward to see around the fall of her hair. “But you like him?”
“Sure, I like him.”
“Are you going to marry him?” he said, his meaningful smile making Grace laugh.
“Maybe someday.”
“Why not now?” Heath wanted to know.
Grace wished Kennedy would stop his boys from asking her such personal questions—but she doubted he would. Although he appeared to be focused on cooking dinner, she suspected he was listening as intently as they were. “I—”
“Don’t want to get married?” Teddy inserted.
“It’s not that. I just…I’m not ready, I guess.”
“Oh.” Teddy seemed to consider her answer. “When will you be ready? Next week?”
She laughed again. “Maybe when I move back to Jackson in a few months.”
“I don’t think you should ever move away.” If Teddy had made this comment, Grace might not have been surprised. But hearing it from Heath, who didn’t show his emotions to the same extent, took her aback.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because then you won’t be able to go camping with us anymore.”
“I see. Well—” she grinned at Kennedy “—I’m sure there’ll be another nice lady to take my place.”
“My mom’s the only one who’s come with us before,” Heath said.
The mention of Raelynn cast a sudden pall over the group, confirming to Grace how vital the wife and mother of this family had been to all of them. She put one arm around Heath and the other around Teddy. “I’ll bet she’s gazing down on you from heaven,” she said.
Teddy searched the sky as if he hoped to see her. “You think so? Right now?”
“Probably. She was so good she must be an angel. I believe God allows angels to look after the ones they love.”
Teddy blinked quickly, obviously fighting tears, and Grace decided to give the Archer men a moment of privacy. “I’m going to take a walk,” she said. “You two help your dad, okay?”
“Okay,” Heath said, but no one seemed particularly eager to focus on anything besides her. She could feel all three pairs of eyes staring after her as she slipped away.
Grace loved the cool lap of the water against her ankles, the sand squishing between her toes. But Teddy’s questions about her boyfriend, and the strange way she felt whenever Kennedy looked at her, had her thinking of George. What was going on with the man she planned to marry? He knew she wanted to talk to him. Surely he’d had a moment to contact her since she’d called yesterday morning—late last night, if no other time. For the past two years, they’d been close enough to call each other regardless of the hour.
Taking her cell from the pocket of her shorts, she checked once again to make sure she had service.
Her signal was as strong as ever. Her battery was fine, too.
So much for that excuse, she thought, and punched George’s number. His recorder answered almost before the phone could ring. “Hello. This is George E. Dunagan. I’m unable to come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message I’ll get back to you shortly.”
She waited for the beep. “George, why haven’t you called me? I’d really like to hear from you, so give me a ring when you get a minute, okay?” she said and hung up.
It was Saturday evening. She and George generally went out with friends, to a movie or to dinner. Where was he tonight?
“Grace?” Kennedy came through the trees behind her. “Dinner’s ready.”
She nodded but continued to admire the reflection of the sunset on the glistening water. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said.
When he didn’t respond, she glanced back at him. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he replied, but he never took his eyes off her.
Kennedy watched Grace from across the fire, marveling at how comfortable she seemed to be with his boys. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t the laughing, patient, doting woman he and his children had enjoyed for most of the day. When she was around Teddy and Heath, all trace of the hostility he’d witnessed at the pizza parlor disappeared. So did the distrust that entered her eyes the moment the boys wandered off and left her temporarily alone with him.
For the past fifteen minutes, the four of them had been roasting marshmallows, and she’d been smiling the entire time. Teddy and Heath kept accidentally setting their marshmallows on fire, but that didn’t stop them from stuffing their mouths full or proudly offering the charred results to Grace.
For Grace’s part, she accepted whatever Teddy or Heath gave her and pretended to like it.
“That was a good one, wasn’t it?” Teddy said as she licked her fingers after eating another of his blackened gifts.
“Excellent,” she said. When her eyes briefly locked with Kennedy’s, he sent her a wry grin and she responded with a little shrug that made him wonder how Joe or anyone else could think anything but the best of her. Maybe she had a prickly exterior, but her heart was soft. Probably too soft for her own good.
>
Kennedy rotated the marshmallows on his own stick, being careful to keep them out of the flames. If they turned out perfectly, maybe Grace would accept one from him….
“Isn’t this fun?” Teddy had chocolate spread from ear to ear, but his smile was almost as wide.
Grace rocked back on her log perch, leaning on her palms and stretching out the smooth, bare legs Kennedy had insisted she smear with mosquito repellant. “It is.”
“You like being with us, don’t you?” Heath asked eagerly.
He suspected that her slight hesitation was imperceptible to the boys, but Kennedy noticed it right away. “Of course,” she said.
Teddy stabbed another two marshmallows with the pointy end of his stick. “Does that mean you’re not going to vote for Vicki Nibley?”
Again, Grace met Kennedy’s eyes through the rising smoke. “Someone needs to vote for poor Mrs. Nibley, don’t you agree?”
“Not you,” Heath said. “What about our dad?”
“I think enough people like your father.”
“A man can never have too many friends,” Kennedy said, moving his marshmallows to a safer part of the fire.
She wiped away the moisture on her lip caused by the heat of the flames. “So you have to go after the lone holdout?” she challenged.
He grinned at her. “So you have to side with the underdog?”
She laughed as she shoved the hair out of her face. “The underdog needs me much more than you do.”
He was beginning to wonder about that. He couldn’t stop his gaze from trailing after her wherever she went, kept imagining how her skin would feel if she ever let him touch her.
He raised his marshmallows higher above the hungry fire. What he wanted required a slow, steady hand. In this—and other things—he knew he could only be as successful as he was patient.
“Dad, your marshmallows are going to fall off!” Heath said only a couple of minutes later.
He saw that they were a toasty golden-brown and were sagging dangerously low.
Kennedy held a hand under his stick so they wouldn’t drop into the dirt. “Now they’ll melt in your mouth,” he said and circled the fire to give them to Grace.
When she realized they were for her, she waved him away. “No, thanks. You go ahead.”
He frowned, hoping she’d reconsider. “Are you sure? I made them for you.”
The surprise in her expression told him he’d communicated the fact that it mattered to him whether or not she accepted his small offering, and he wished he hadn’t been so obvious. Embarrassed, he started to turn back, but she reached out and caught his hand.
“Actually, they look pretty good. I guess I have room for one more,” she said.
And that was when he knew he was right about Grace Montgomery—and almost everyone else in Stillwater, especially his mother and Joe, were wrong.
When Grace’s cell phone rang, it was nearly three in the morning, but she didn’t mind. She’d been lying in her tent for at least four hours, trying to sleep. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw Kennedy. She heard his laugh when he’d tossed them all so easily in the water. Felt the strength in his arms when he carried her back to camp. Saw the boyish eagerness on his face when she’d accepted his marshmallows.
Which made her particularly glad to read George’s name on her lit screen.
“Finally,” she muttered and pressed the Talk button. “There you are,” she said. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten all about me.”
“Sorry. I…I should’ve called earlier.”
The eagerness she usually heard in his voice was gone, and his tone suggested there was more he wasn’t saying. “But—”
“This isn’t easy for me, Grace.”
Her stomach tightened into a hard knot, but she lowered her voice so she wouldn’t wake Kennedy or his boys. “What’s wrong, George?”
“I’ve met someone else,” he blurted.
Grace sucked air between her teeth as though someone had just punched her. Could it be true? George loved her. She knew that. He’d always loved her. Which meant something else was going on. His faith was dwindling. She needed to convince him she’d be ready to make a commitment soon.
“George, you—you’re overreacting to having me gone, that’s all. I’ll be back in a little while. I can come see you for a few days next week if you want.”
There was a stilted pause. She could feel him weakening, so the resolve in his next words shocked her. “I can’t, Grace. I’ve waited for you long enough. You know how I feel about you, how I’ll always feel. But even Petra—”
“You’ve been talking to your sister about me?”
“Why are you whispering?”
“I’m camping with friends.”
“What friends?”
“For someone who’s seeing another woman, you sound pretty possessive, George.”
“It’s just that you’ve never mentioned any friends in Stillwater.”
“You don’t know them.”
“Of course I don’t know them. Who are they?”
“Someone I went to high school with, okay? It’s no big deal,” she said, and wished that was true. Unfortunately, anything to do with Kennedy seemed like a very big deal indeed. “What did Petra say?” she asked.
“I know you don’t believe it, but she likes you, Grace. She’s just worried about me. Says our relationship is too one-sided.”
“One-sided means she doesn’t think I care about you. I plan on marrying you, having a family with you. That’s not caring?”
“If you really wanted to marry me, you would’ve done it by now.”
Grace hid inside her sleeping bag, trying not to smell Kennedy’s cologne on the lining. “That’s not necessarily true.”
“Yes, it is. Let’s be honest. You practically cringe when I touch you.”
Her hot breath bounced back at her inside the bag, making her think of a tomb. She was completely shut off. Alone. “No, I don’t!”
“Do you assume I hadn’t noticed?”
Grace stared into the blackness. Sometimes she tried to feign the interest she didn’t feel naturally. But she didn’t hate making love with George. He was patient, gentle. “I don’t cringe.”
“You don’t enjoy making love.”
“Once in a while that’s true,” she admitted. “But not always.”
“Not always?”
At times she felt as though she was almost normal. “Right.”
He chuckled bitterly. “That’s real passion.”
Grace wondered whether he’d feel any better if she finally explained why she struggled so much with physical intimacy. But she feared it was already too late. And she wasn’t sure it would be fair to expect George to understand and compensate—which, knowing him, he’d probably try to do. The past was her problem. He had the chance to get out of the relationship, to start seeing someone who wasn’t damaged as she was, and she cared enough to want that for him. Why should he have to pay for what had happened to her?
The tightness in her throat made it difficult to find her voice. “So who is this other woman?”
“You really want to know?” he asked.
“Maybe it would help if I could picture you with someone who’ll make you happy.”
He cursed softly. “Don’t say that, Grace. It only makes this harder for me.”
“Who is it?” she repeated.
“You know my secretary, Heather?”
Her mind flashed back to the strangled sound of Heather’s voice the last time she’d called. “You’re seeing Heather?”
“No, her older sister came by the office, and…well, we sort of hit it off.”
Something sharp seemed to be stabbing Grace in the chest, again and again. Tightening her grip on the phone, she tried to slow her breathing, to bear the pain. “Have you slept with her?” she whispered.
There was an awkward silence. “Yes.”
The darkness pressed closer. Hot. Cloying. Terrifying. Just like
that night when she was thirteen and she woke with the reverend’s hand clamped tightly over her mouth….
I won’t think about it! But she couldn’t stop the tears burning behind her eyes.
“That’s how I…that’s when I realized what it felt like to be with a woman who really wanted me,” he said.
Grace couldn’t speak. She didn’t know what to say. She could imagine how wonderful it must’ve been for George to feel desired—and couldn’t even hold what he’d done against him. This was her fault, not his. She couldn’t give him what he wanted. She’d locked her sexuality away long ago. Those early experiences with the reverend had left too many scars.
She squirmed out of the sleeping bag, gasping for air.
“Grace?” he said after several seconds.
Someone was stirring in the other tent. She was afraid of waking Heath and Teddy. “What?” she managed to respond, her voice barely audible.
“Are you okay?”
She burrowed deeper into the bag, hoping to smother all sound along with the pain. “Yes,” she lied.
Silence. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I know we talked about trying again once you got back, but…I’m afraid to miss this opportunity with Lisa because I can’t believe anything will really change between us.”
“Don’t apologize.” She swallowed hard. “I—I understand.”
“I never meant to hurt you, Grace.”
“I know.” Her nose was running. Sniffling, she wiped her eyes. “Can we still be friends?”
“I don’t think so.” He spoke as though the words had been wrenched from him, but they drove through her like a pickax. “I’m afraid we’d fall right back into the same relationship,” he said. “Whoever I’m seeing could never compare to you. Not if I don’t make a clean break and put what we had behind me.”
Grace couldn’t imagine returning to Jackson without George there, waiting for her. They’d been together for three and a half years. Except for the fact that he wanted to make love far more often than she did, their relationship was comfortable. But he was right. Their love life wasn’t spectacular, and probably never would be.
“You’ve been good to me,” she admitted, trying to keep the tears from her voice.
