by Nora Roberts
When she said nothing, he sighed and leaned back. “A man works hard all his life building something, and while he’s doing it he thinks that someday he’ll pass it on to his child. My daddy passed the business on to me, and I always figured I’d pass it on to my son. Had a daughter instead, and that was fine. I never wanted to change that. But you never wanted what I was planning on giving you. Oh, you’d work. You were always a good worker, but anybody could see you were only doing a job. It wasn’t going to be a life. Not your life.”
“I didn’t know you felt that way.”
“Didn’t matter how I felt. It wasn’t for you, that’s all. I started to think that you’d get married one day and maybe your husband would come into the business. That way I’d still be passing it on to you, and to your children.”
“Then I married Jack, and you didn’t get your dream, either.”
His hands rested on his knees, and he lifted his fingers, let them fall. “Maybe Aubrey’ll have an interest in it. I’m not planning on retiring anytime soon.”
“Maybe she will.”
“She’s a good girl,” he said, still looking down at his hands. “Happy. You . . . you’re a fine mother, Grace. You’re doing a better job than most under hard circumstance. You’ve made a good life for both of you, and done it on your own.”
Her heart trembled and ached. “Thank you. Thank you for that.”
“Ah . . . your mother would like it if you’d stay for dinner.” Finally he looked up, and the eyes that met hers weren’t cool, weren’t distant. In them was both plea and apology. “I’d like it, too.”
“So would I.” Then she simply walked over, climbed into his lap and buried her face in his shoulder. “Oh, Daddy. I missed you.”
“I missed you, Gracie.” He began to rock and to weep. “I missed you, too.”
Ethan sat on the top step of Grace’s front porch and put her purse down beside him. He had to admit he’d been tempted several times to open it and poke inside to see just what a woman carted around with her that was so damned heavy and so indispensable.
But so far he’d managed to resist.
Now he wondered where she could be. He’d driven by her house nearly two hours earlier before going to the boatyard. Since her car wasn’t in the drive, he didn’t stop. Odds were, her door was unlocked and he could have set her purse inside the living room. But that wouldn’t have accomplished anything.
He’d done some hard thinking while he worked. Some of that thinking centered on how long it was going to take her to cool off from snarling mad to mildly irritated.
He figured he could deal with mildly irritated.
He decided it was probably best that she wasn’t home quite yet. It gave them both more time to settle down.
“Got it all figured out yet?”
Ethan sighed. He’d smelled his father before he heard him, before he saw him sitting comfortably on the steps, feet crossed at the ankles. It was the salted peanuts in the bag Ray had in his lap. He had always had a fondness for salted peanuts.
“Not exactly. I can’t seem to think it through so it gets clear.”
“Sometimes you have to go with the gut instead of the head. You’ve got good instincts, Ethan.”
“Following instinct’s what got me into this. If I hadn’t touched her in the first place . . .”
“If you hadn’t touched her in the first place, you’d have denied both of you something a lot of people look for all their lives and never find.” Ray rattled into the bag and pulled out a handful of nuts. “Why regret something that rare and that precious?”
“I hurt her. I knew I would.”
“That’s where you went wrong. Not in taking love when it was offered but in not trusting it for the long haul. You disappoint me, Ethan.”
It was a slap. The kind that both knew would sting the most. Because it did, Ethan stared hard at the thirsty little pansies going leggy beside the steps. “I tried to do what I thought was right.”
“For whom? For a woman who wanted to share your life, wherever that would take you? For the children you may or may not have? You’re on dangerous ground when you second-guess God.”
Annoyed, Ethan slanted a narrow look at his father’s face. “Is there?”
“Is there what?”
“Is there a God? I figure you ought to know, seeing as you’ve been dead the last few months.”
Ray threw back his big head, let out his wonderful rolling laugh. “Ethan, I’ve always appreciated your understated wit, and I wish I could discuss the mysteries of the universe with you, but time’s passing.”
Munching on nuts, he studied Ethan’s face, and as he did, Ray’s wickedly amused grin softened, warmed. “Watching you grow into a man was one of the greatest pleasures of my life. You’ve got a heart as big as your Bay. I hope you’ll trust it. I want you to be happy. There’ll be trouble coming for all of you.”
“Seth?”
“He’ll need his family. All his family,” Ray added in a murmur, then shook his head. “There’s too much misery in the short time we spend living, Ethan, to turn away happiness. You remember to value your joys.” Then his eyes twinkled. “I’d brace myself, son. Your thinking time’s over.”
Ethan heard Grace’s car, glanced toward the road. He knew without looking that his father was no longer beside him.
When Grace saw Ethan sitting on her front porch steps she wanted to lay her head on the steering wheel. She wasn’t sure her heart could handle yet another trip through an emotional wringer.
Instead, she climbed out of the car and went around to unstrap the sleeping Aubrey from her car seat. With Aubrey’s head heavy on her shoulder, she walked to the house and watched Ethan unfold his long legs and rise.
“I’m not willing to go through another round with you, Ethan.”
“I brought your purse by. You left it at the house.”
Startled, she frowned when he held it out to her. It showed just how jumbled her mind had been that she hadn’t even realized she’d been without it. “Thank you.”
“I need to talk to you, Grace.”
“I’m sorry. I have to put Aubrey to bed.”
“I’ll wait.”
“I said I’m not willing to talk about this again.”
“I said I need to talk to you. I’ll wait.”
“Then you can just wait until I’m good and ready,” she told him and sailed into the house.
It appeared she hadn’t quite gotten down to mildly irritated, he decided. But he sat again. And he waited.
She took her time, stripping Aubrey down to her training pants, covering her with a soft sheet, tidying the bedroom. She went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of lemonade she didn’t want. But she drank every drop of it.
She could see him through the screen door, sitting on the steps. For a moment, she considered simply going to the door, closing it, and tossing the bolt to make her point. But she discovered she didn’t have quite enough mad left to be that petty.
She opened the screen, let it close quietly.
“Is she down for the night?”
“Yes, she’s had a long day. So have I. I hope this won’t take long.”
“I guess it doesn’t have to. I want to tell you I’m sorry for hurting you, for making you unhappy.” Since she didn’t come down and join him on the steps, he stood and turned to her. “I went about it wrong, and I wasn’t honest with you. I should have been.”
“I don’t doubt you’re sorry, Ethan.” She walked to the rail, leaned out, looked over her little patch of yard. “I don’t know if we can be friends the way we were before. I know it’s hard to be at odds with someone you care about. I made up with my father tonight.”
“Did you?” He stepped forward, then stopped because she’d shifted away. Just a little, just enough to tell him he no longer had the right to touch. “I’m glad.”
“I suppose I have you to thank for it. If I hadn’t been so mad at you, I wouldn’t have let myself be mad a
t him and get everything out. I’m grateful for that, and I appreciate your apology. Now I’m tired, so—”
“You said a lot of things to me today.” She wasn’t going to brush him off until he’d finished.
“Yes, I did.” She shifted again, met his gaze straight on.
“Some of it was right, but not all. Not acting on how I felt about you before . . . it’s the way it had to be.”
“Because you say so.”
“Because you couldn’t have been more than fourteen when I started loving you, and wanting you. I was close to eight years older. I was a man when you were still a girl. It would have been wrong to touch you then. Maybe I waited too long.” He stopped, shook his head. “I did wait too long. But I’d had time to think it through and I’d promised myself I wouldn’t get you tangled up with me. You were the only one who I wanted enough that it mattered. Part of it was for me because I knew if I ever had you I wouldn’t want to let you go.”
“And you’d already decided that you would.”
“I’d decided that I was going to live my life pretty much alone. I was managing that well enough until recently.”
“You see it as a noble sacrifice. I see it as ignorance.” She lifted her hands, knowing she was heating up again. “I guess we’d better leave it at that.”
“You know damn well that if we were to get married you’d want more children.”
“Yes, I would. And while I’ll never agree with your reasoning for not making them together, there are other ways to make a family. You of all people should know. We could have adopted children.”
He stared at her. “You . . . I figured you’d want to get pregnant.”
“You figured right. I would want it because I would treasure your child living inside me, and knowing you were there with us. But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t find another way. What if I couldn’t have children, Ethan? What if we were in love and planning to be married, and we found out I couldn’t have babies? Would you stop loving me because of it? Would you tell me you couldn’t marry me?”
“No, of course not. That’s—”
“That’s not love,” she finished. “But it’s not a matter of can’t. It’s a matter of won’t. And I could have tried to understand your feelings if you hadn’t kept them from me. If you hadn’t turned me away when all I wanted was to help you. And I won’t compromise on everything. I won’t be with a man who doesn’t respect my feelings and who won’t share his problems with me. I won’t be with a man who doesn’t love me enough to stay. To make a promise to me to grow old with me and to be a father to my child. And I won’t spend my life having an affair with you and then having to explain to my daughter why you didn’t love and respect me enough to marry me.”
She stepped toward the door.
“Don’t.” He shut his eyes, fought down panic. “Don’t turn away from me, Grace.”
“I’m not doing the turning away. Don’t you see, Ethan? You’ve been doing the turning away all along.”
“I’ve ended up right back where I started. Looking at you. Needing you. I’m never going to be able to stop now. I made so many promises to myself about you. I keep breaking them. I let her put her hands on this, too,” he said slowly. “I let her put her mark on what we have. I want to clear that mark away, if you give me the chance.”
He lifted his shoulders. “I’ve been doing some thinking.”
She nearly smiled. “Well, there’s news.”
“Do you want to hear what I’m thinking now?” Following instinct, listening to his heart, he started up the stairs. “I’m thinking it’s always been you, Grace, and only you. It’s always going to be you, and only you. I can’t help it if I want to take care of you. It doesn’t mean I think you’re weak. It’s only because you’re precious to me.”
“Ethan.” He would make her give in. She knew it. “Don’t.”
“And I’m thinking I’m not going to be able to give you the chance to live without me after all.”
He took her hands, holding them when she tried to tug them free. And keeping his eyes on hers, he drew her out and down the steps to catch the last gilded light of the setting sun.
“I’ll never let you down,” he told her. “I’ll never stop needing you to stand beside me. You make me happy, Grace. I haven’t valued that enough, but I will from now on. I love you.”
He touched his lips to her brow when she trembled. “The sun’s setting. You said that was the best time for daydreams. Maybe it’s the best time to pick the dream you want to hold on to. I want to hold on to this one. I need you to look at me,” he said softly and lifted her face to his. “Will you marry me?”
Joy and hope blossomed within her. “Ethan—”
“Don’t answer yet.” But he’d seen the answer, and overcome with gratitude, he brought her hands to his lips. “Will you give Aubrey to me, let me give her my name? Let me be her father?”
Tears began to swim in her eyes. She willed them back. She wanted to see him clearly as he stood watching her with his face so serious, lit by the last quiet light of the day. “You know—”
“Not yet,” he murmured and this time touched his lips to hers. “There’s one more. Will you have my children, Grace?”
He saw the tears she’d been struggling to hold back spill over and wondered that he could ever have thought to deny them both that joy, that right, that promise.
“Make a life with me, one that comes from love, one that I can watch grow in you. Only a fool would believe that what comes from what we have together would be anything but beautiful.”
She framed his face with her hands, took that picture into her heart. “Before I answer, I need to know that this is what you want, not just for me but for yourself.”
“I want a family. I want to build what my parents built, and I need to build it with you.”
Her lips curved slowly. “I’ll marry you, Ethan. I’ll give you my daughter. I’ll make children with you. And we’ll take care of each other.”
He drew her close, just to hold, while the sun slipped away and the light shimmered into evening. Her heart beat quick and light against his. Her single quiet sigh echoed seconds before the whippoorwill began to sing in the plum tree next door.
“I was afraid you weren’t going to be able to forgive me.”
“So was I.”
“Then I figured, hell, she loves me too much. I can get around her.” The laugh rumbled out as he nuzzled her throat. “You’re not the only one who can reel somebody in like a damn rockfish.”
“Took you long enough to bait the hook.”
“If you take your time about things, you end up with the best at the end of the day.” He buried his face in her hair, wanting the scent and the texture. “Now, I’ve got the best. Good, solid stoneware.”
Laughing, she leaned back so she could see his eyes. The humor there, she thought, was aimed at both of them. “You’re a smart man, Ethan.”
“Few hours ago you said I was stupid.”
“You were.” She pressed a noisy kiss on his cheek. “Now you’re smart.”
“I missed you, Grace.”
She closed her eyes and held tight, thinking it was a day for forgiveness. And hope. And beginnings. “I missed you, Ethan.” She sighed, then gave the air a puzzled sniff. “Peanuts,” she said and snuggled against him. “That’s funny. I could swear I smell peanuts.”
“I’ll explain it to you.” He tilted her head up for one soft kiss. “In a little while.”
