The Gate to Everything (Once Upon a Dare Book 1)

by Ava Miles

  Her green eyes widened.

  “Look, if Tony hadn’t said something, I would have seen it for myself. I thought it was the stress of telling me the other night, but you look pale and fragile. I’ve never seen you like this.” And it made his stomach clench.

  She glared at him. “I know how I look. Do you think I’m happy about it?”

  He hated to push her buttons, but maybe it was the only way he could get through to her right now.

  “Do you really want this baby, Grace?” he asked harshly.

  “What?” she asked, blinking.

  “I know it’s a little late, but I would understand if you didn’t. I mean, it sucks, right? We break up after you tell me you can’t wait for me to ask you to marry me and start a family, and then boom, you find out you’re having my kid. This certainly isn’t your dream life, and here I am again, making you miserable.”

  “You have a nerve, talking to me like this,” she said, the words close to a snarl.

  “Do I?” He kept his face straight. “I mean, you deserve credit for that type of thing. It must be awful, being such a martyr.”

  He watched her raise her hand and waited for the shove.

  “A martyr?” she cried. “Where do you get off calling me that? Or telling me that you’d understand if I don’t want this baby? Of course I want this baby! You do too.”

  “You’re damn right I do!” he said, raising his voice.

  Grace leaned back in her chair as if the wind had been taken out of her, eyes suspiciously wet. “Then why are you saying all of this?”

  “Because I want you to start taking care of yourself. Grace, it kills me to see you like this. And it makes me feel even guiltier than I already do.” He paused, putting up both hands. “That’s my problem. But this isn’t going away. We need to deal with it.”

  “I know that, Jordan. Do you think I like feeling like this?”

  He took her hand out of instinct. She froze and started to pull it back.

  “Stop.” He pursed his lips, fighting emotion. “I can’t take you pulling away from me like that. Okay, I’ve done a lot of thinking. I know you won’t marry me, but I have a suggestion. Will you just listen?”

  Her hand went lax in his, but she didn’t let go. “I’m listening.”

  “You and I used to be best friends. Hell, we grew up together. Your mom and mine were close. I worked for your dad. I was part of your family. I’m not saying that we can get back to that, but we’ve got to find a way to be friends again, Grace. We have a baby coming.”

  She blew her breath out slowly. “I know.”

  “I spent most of my vacation thinking about what we were going to do. I know you’ll want to be a good mom and spend lots of time with the baby when you’re not working.” He leaned forward, watching her high cheekbones redden with emotion. “I want to spend lots of time with the baby too—when I’m not on the road for a game. It’ll be hard to make arrangements around our schedules, so I want you to think about what I’m going to say.”

  He paused, watching her pull herself together. He didn’t continue until she nodded.

  “I don’t know how you’re going to take this, but I built your dream house here in Atlanta—a replica of the yellow colonial in Deadwood. I was going to give it to you for Christmas.”

  She blinked at him, her mouth dropping open. “You what?”

  “I was hoping it would make you happy. And that it would show you…hell, that I intended to marry you…in a few years. I knew we…I wasn’t going back to Deadwood anytime soon, if at all.”

  Her face completely bunched up, and she put up a hand as she fought for control. “I don’t know what to say to you right now. Part of me wants to hit you for doing this without talking to me. Jordan, you know what that house means to me.”

  “I know, but you know me. No sense sometimes. I didn’t know what else to do. I…didn’t want to lose you, but in the end…it didn’t matter.”

  She continued to stare at him. “The night we broke up, Mom told me a nice family had finally bought the house.”

  Suddenly everything made sense. “You were crushed. Why didn’t you say anything? I had another house exactly like it—well, plus some improvements—ready for you.”

  “Are you kidding me?” she asked. “Jordan, I’d been waiting seven years for you to propose. We were supposed to start our life together in that house years ago, but we came here instead.”

  “Grace, I know you had this whole life planned out for us. That we’d go back home. You’d open your place, and I’d work with your dad. We’d buy that house and raise a family. I couldn’t give up on football, and once I realized that returning to Deadwood probably wasn’t in the cards, I knew I needed to give you what you wanted most. That house.”

  A couple of tears streaked down her cheek. “I wanted that house, but I wanted you more. Jordan, when my mom told me that house had been sold, I thought it was a sign.”

  “And now you’re pregnant,” he said softly. “Why can’t that be a sign that we’re supposed to be together?”

  She looked down and released a harsh breath. “Because you don’t really want to be married to me. Otherwise you would have asked. I understand what you said about your career. I do. But you weren’t willing to prioritize having a family before. I don’t see that changing, and besides, you’ve…lost yourself in all this fame. I don’t want to be a part of it anymore.”

  Jesus, so nothing had changed. “Fine. We’re not getting married, but the house is there, and it’s still your dream. I…couldn’t sell it, and because I love the property, I decided to make your house the guest house instead. I’m building another house on the land, and it’s going to be finished in a few months. I plan to live there.” He’d paid a lot of money to make that happen. Crazy money—the kind that had helped drive a wedge between him and Grace.

  “You want me to live in a replica of my dream house while you live next door?” she asked with an ironic shake to her head. “Sometimes your thought process defies common sense.”

  But he heard the catch in her voice.

  Desperate to press his advantage, he stared into her eyes. “We’ll be neighbors. It’ll be like our own family compound.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, all wary now. “You’re really serious?”

  “Grace, don’t you see? This way I can pop over to see the baby whenever I want. And he or she can come and see me whenever.” He’d dreamed about his son running up his sidewalk after school, football in hand, or his little girl asking if he’d teach her how to pitch the ball.

  He refocused on Grace. She looked like she had stopped breathing.

  “I don’t want to be some deadbeat dad who only gets to see his kid a few days a month.”

  When she squeezed his hand, he reached out to tentatively touch her face. God, he craved a connection with her, any connection. “I need to be involved, Grace. Please don’t shut me out.”

  Chapter 5

  Grace couldn’t seem to form a complete sentence. He’d built her dream house in Atlanta without telling her and wanted her to live next door to him?

  “Jordan, I know you want to be involved with the baby,” she said, trying to ignore how handsome he looked in his cream Italian knit shirt and designer jeans and boots. “And you will. I’m just not sure it’s this way.” She wasn’t certain she could live in that house—here—without him. Every vision she’d had of it had included him.

  He leaned toward her. “Yes, but how, Grace? That’s the part that I don’t like. You’ll be living in that small apartment of yours with the baby, taking him or her to day care when you work. You know Tuesday’s my only day off during the season, and even then I show up at the stadium for a while. Sure, I’ll see the baby more in the off season, but I want more, Grace.”

  He was describing their life pretty much as Grace had envisioned it, and she had to admit she didn’t like it either. But the house…

  “I’ll miss so much during those other eight or nine mont
hs,” he said, “and that’s not counting us making the playoffs again. My season didn’t end until February this year. It’s not enough time.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Jordan,” she said honestly. “You have a time-consuming profession.” So did she, but her situation was a little more flexible.

  His frown bordered on mulish. “That’s true, but Sam Garretty said lots of players manage to play football and have happy marriages and families.”

  She bristled, and he held up his hand as if sensing it.

  “You’ve made your feelings known about marriage. I’m not trying to change your mind, okay? I’m only trying to show you a different way. If you live in your dream house, you’ll have privacy and your own life, I promise. We’ll be friends again. Somehow. And I’ll be able to see the baby a lot more because you’ll only be a shout away.”

  She couldn’t deny that there was some appeal to the plan. Her heart had hurt from the thought that their son or daughter wouldn’t see much of Jordan for most of the year, and shuttling the baby around through Atlanta’s infamous traffic would not be ideal.

  “We’ll hire someone to take care of him or her when you go back to work,” Jordan continued, his blue eyes intent. “And when he or she gets older, he or she can come over and see me anytime I’m home. We can play after school and do homework together, Grace. Like I always wanted to do with my dad.”

  Well aware of how Jordan’s dad had wounded him, Grace found herself softening.

  “Please, Grace.”

  Their eyes locked, and she could see the pleading in them. She rubbed the tension in her neck, thinking it through. Beyond being a replica of the house she loved, the proximity would be distressing. How could she live next door to him when he seemed to have moved on with other women? Surely they’d come home with him. The pictures of Jordan with an increasingly attractive parade of gorgeous women had devastated her enough. To actually see him with one of them?

  “Jordan, it’s too much,” she exclaimed.

  “Dammit, Grace, don’t let this be about money,” he said, misunderstanding her. “I’m rolling in it, and you won’t let me spend any of it on our baby? Come on, Gracie, what kind of logic is that? Please let me give this to you and the baby. Please.”

  Jordan was close to begging. Grace’s chest tightened at the realization.

  “Okay, I’m willing to give it a shot, Jordan,” she heard herself saying. It wasn’t a decision she’d intended to make on the fly, but that look on his face… Plus, she loved that house—even if it was in Atlanta. She wanted her baby—their baby—to have a yard to play in.

  His face broke into a relieved smile. “Thank you. You won’t regret it! I promise.”

  “We need to have ground rules,” she said, feeling swept away by her own agreement.

  “Yes, I know. I’m mostly good at following rules.” He punctuated the joke with a wink.

  Her mouth twitched. That was one thing he was not. “Always the kidder.”

  His smile slowly faded. “Not always, Gracie. Not about this. I know what you think about my reasons for building you this house, but I really… I only wanted you to be happy.”

  To Jordan, sometimes things were too simple while she overanalyzed everything. She bit her lip, knowing she had hurt his feelings. “I’m—”

  He raised his fingers to her mouth. “Don’t apologize to me, Grace.”

  Her lips burned at the touch, so she eased back. “Okay, I won’t.”

  “Speaking of rules, how about this one? I want you to take better care of yourself and the baby. Promise me.”

  “I promise.” Of course, she wasn’t sure it was a promise she could keep. She couldn’t recall getting a good night’s sleep since the breakup, and it wasn’t for lack of trying.

  Jordan took out his phone, punched something on the screen, and handed it to her. “I thought you might want to see the house. I can take you for a tour whenever you’re ready. It’s…I got the floor plan from town hall.”

  Grace’s breath caught when she saw the photo. It did look exactly like the one in Deadwood. Painted in a warm yellow, it was two stories with a smaller third story punctuated with dormer windows. He’d even added an identical cushioned swing to the white wrap-around porch. She realized it would be the perfect place for her to rock the baby—like she’d always imagined doing. The front door was the same bold red of the original and captivated the eye. Large windows sparkled in the sunlight. The shingles were wood and a natural brown.

  Just like in her dreams, the house looked homey and pretty, exactly the kind of place where she could spend the rest of her life. With him. Her heart pretty much shattered.

  “Oh, Jordan, you…you…it’s perfect.” God, she was going to start crying. He’d built this for her before the breakup? What must he have gone through, knowing it was still sitting there, waiting for her, but she’d never know about it? “Why didn’t you tell me about the house the night we broke up?”

  He was silent a long time. “Because I could see how unhappy you were. Then you started talking about turning thirty-three, and you told me you wouldn’t wait for me anymore. This house… You were right. It was a holding pattern.”

  She fought tears and shook herself to regain control. Rehashing the past wasn’t going to help anyone. “You mentioned improvements.”

  “You needed a chef’s kitchen,” he said, a smile rising and falling on his face.

  From the look of it, that’s exactly what he’d given her. The Viking range that dominated the one wall made the stove in her current apartment look like an Easy-Bake oven. The island was a sizeable workspace flanked by more cabinets, a bookshelf for her cookbooks, a grill, and a deep fryer. The stainless steel sink was industrial but sleek. And there was an enormous Sub-Zero refrigerator, its metallic finish gleaming like mercury, a subtle contrast to the kitchen cabinets done in a warm cherry.

  “I love the kitchen,” she said, enlarging the image so she could take in more of the details like the sand-colored countertops. “This is much better than the one in Deadwood.” It was hard to admit that.

  “I hoped you would think so,” he said.

  Suddenly all of the hurt she’d felt the night of their breakup was back between them. She put her hand on his arm, and he looked over sharply.

  “Thank you…for doing it—even though you really are crazy. Building me my dream house…”

  She forced herself to pull away before the touch could mean anything, because if she lingered for much longer, she’d start wondering if she’d misjudged him. If maybe he’d planned on a future with her after all.

  “Come on,” he said after a tense moment. “I need to let you get back to work.”

  Jordan made a joke of trying to pull her out of her chair even though he could easily lift her with one arm. When they got to the door, he put his hand to her back. Feeling his gaze, she looked up at him, trying to hold herself together.

  “Thank you, Grace.”

  “For what?” she asked.

  “For agreeing to live in that house and be my neighbor.” He leaned down and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and left her standing there as its warmth faded from her skin.

  Chapter 6

  After agreeing to Jordan’s plan, Grace quickly fell into a pattern with him that was working for her. Mostly.

  Jordan had taken her on a tour of the house not long after their talk at the restaurant. She’d blamed her spontaneous tears on her pregnancy at seeing the embodiment of all her dreams right in front of her—and the cold truth that she would have to make new ones here. His reply—that he’d read about that—had almost physically tripped her. Jordan had read about pregnancy? He’d walked off quickly, but not before she’d seen him swipe at his eyes too.

  But while the house he’d built for her was everything she could have wanted, the sounds of construction across the way had been enough to crack her heart in two again. He would be living next to her, not with her. They wouldn’t be a traditional family. When
the discussion had switched to which room she wanted to use for the nursery, she’d had to work hard to breathe. But if they were really going to do this, she needed to stop thinking that way.

  Grace started to break her life down into weeks—how much of the pregnancy she’d already experienced, how much she had left. She checked out a prenatal Pilates class, but had quickly decided it wasn’t for her. It was one thing for the women to constantly eye her bare wedding ring finger, but one of the women—a stranger—had recognized her and asked how Jordan Dean was handling his impending fatherhood. Grace spent enough time avoiding the stacks of tabloids that infected every grocery store, not to mention the click-bait headlines on the Internet. Worse, every now and then there would be a reporter waiting for her outside her apartment or the restaurant, hoping for a photo of Jordan’s “baby mama.” She didn’t say anything to Jordan, hoping to keep the fragile peace between them.

  A part of Grace wanted to share more of the pregnancy with Jordan, but if they were together and the baby moved, she did her level best not to show it on her face. She couldn’t bear to have him touch her—even like that—afraid her resolve would weaken. All she needed to do was see a random photo of him at a local party to remind her of why she’d made her decision.

  He hadn’t asked her again about wanting to be with her during the delivery, and she was glad. Part of her felt bad about not wanting to include him, but she didn’t think she could handle the emotions or the intimacy. It was hard enough to live in the “friends bubble” he was weaving around them. It was like artificial sweetener. It didn’t taste like the real thing, but it made her want it.

  So, Grace signed up for birthing classes and asked Tony to be the “stand-in” for her mom, who had happily agreed to be present at the birth. Her parents were still a bit wary about this whole neighbors scheme, but she’d told them she could always revisit it if it didn’t work for her and the baby. Of course, she hadn’t told Jordan that.