by Marie Force
Francine stood to face her daughter. “I’m so sorry, honey.” Tears made her eyes bright and shiny.
Ned’s heart broke for them as they embraced. “I’ll take you there and bring you right back,” he said.
“That’d be great, Ned. Thank you.”
“I should be there with you,” Mac said, concern etched into his face.
Maddie went to him and gave him a kiss. “Stay here with my babies, and I’ll be right back, okay?”
“If you’re sure.”
She nodded and kissed him again before turning to her mother and Ned. “Let’s go.”
They rode the short distance to the Beachcomber in silence.
Ned had never experienced such tension. He couldn’t imagine how Maddie and Francine must be feeling.
Inside the hotel, they were about to ask for Bobby at the front desk when Ned spotted him having breakfast on the deck. He pointed him out, and Maddie made a beeline across the crowded lobby to where her father sat enjoying his eggs sunny-side up.
Ned and Francine were right behind her.
“You’re Bobby Chester?” Maddie said.
Bobby looked up with a smarmy smile that Ned wanted to smack off his face. “Who wants to know?”
“Your daughter. The one you left decades ago? The one who sat in the window for weeks after you left watching every ferry hoping you might come back? Remember me?”
Since Maddie made no effort to keep her voice down, she soon had the attention of everyone on the deck. Everything stopped, and silence descended upon them.
“You sure are a pretty thing,” Bobby said.
“That’s it? Nearly thirty years and that’s all you’ve got to say to me?”
“I understand you have kids.”
“Yes, I do. Not that you’ll ever meet them.” Her voice broke ever so slightly, but Ned heard it. Apparently, Francine did, too, because she stepped forward to place a hand on her daughter’s shoulder.
“Now that you’ve seen Maddie,” Francine said, “I assume I’ll hear from your attorney within the week?”
Bobby made them wait a good long time before he nodded ever so slightly.
“Let’s go, honey.” Francine took Maddie by the arm. “There’s nothing for us here.”
Maddie managed to hold it together until she got home. At the first sight of the big, beautiful house she shared with Mac and their children, tears burned her eyes.
“You don’t have to come in,” she said to her mom and Ned, struggling to maintain her composure for their sakes. “I’m okay. I promise.”
Her mother turned in her seat and took Maddie’s hand. “Thank you so much. I’m so sorry you had to do that.”
“Whatever it takes to be rid of him once and for all.”
“Let’s hope we’re rid of him now.”
Even as her mother said the words, a niggle of doubt settled in Maddie’s belly. “Try not to worry. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“I’ll be here to help in the morning,” Francine said.
Maddie patted Ned on the shoulder. “Thanks for the ride, Ned.”
“Any time, honey.”
She watched them drive off before she trudged up the stairs.
Mac met her at the sliding door.
She stepped into his arms and broke down.
“Aww, baby.” He ran a hand over her hair. “I knew you shouldn’t have seen him. Was it awful?”
Shaking her head, she held on tight to him.
“Then what happened?”
Maddie drew back from him and wiped the dampness from her face. “Ned pointed him out to me. He was sitting on the deck of the Beachcomber having breakfast. I walked over to his table, and he looked up at me. Except he never got past my chest. Only when I told him who I was did he look at my face.”
“Son of a bitch,” Mac muttered as a furious expression settled on his face.
“He’s nothing to me. I’m nothing to him. So why does it matter so much that he looked at me the same way every other lecherous jerk in the world has looked at me for most of my life?”
“Because once upon a time, a long, long time ago, he was your daddy, and the little girl you used to be was hoping he’d recognize you.”
How did he know? How did he always know? “Yes.” His understanding somehow made it hurt a little less. Maddie sighed and relaxed into his embrace. “What’ve you done with our children?”
“Hailey is napping in her bassinette, and I asked Thomas to play in his room for a little while.”
“And he just did that?”
“I might’ve bribed him with ice cream for lunch if he did.”
Maddie snorted out a laugh and reached up to frame her husband’s face. “Thank you.”
“For what, babe?”
“For being the best daddy my children ever could’ve hoped to have.”
He kissed her and then hugged her tight against him. “My pleasure, love.”
Chapter 24
“Why are you taking so much for one night?” Stephanie asked Grant as they prepared to leave for the mainland on Friday.
Grant closed his eyes and counted to ten before he turned to face her. “Because I’m not coming back with you. At least not right away. I have to go to LA for a couple of days.”
“Oh.” He watched surprise and disappointment dance across her expressive face before she shut it all down with the blank thing she did so well. “When did this happen?”
“Tuesday. I was offered a great opportunity to work with a hot new director. I need to be there for the preproduction meeting, but I’ll be back right after.”
“Were you going to tell me?”
“Of course I was.”
“When?”
“You’ve had so much on your mind with Dan flying in next week, the meeting with my uncle, taking me to meet Charlie. There wasn’t a good time to drop this on top of everything else.”
She released a brittle sounding laugh. “There wasn’t a good time.”
“Well, there wasn’t.”
“Funny that there was plenty of time for sex, sex and more sex. But apparently no time to talk about a major offer or the next step in your career or where we go from here.”
“See? That’s it right there. That’s why I didn’t mention it. I don’t know where we go from here. I don’t have any of the answers you need and deserve. You’re going back to Providence where you have to be so you can be near Charlie. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but at the moment, I’m homeless and jobless and rootless. I have no idea where I belong. Is it here where I was raised? Is it in LA where my business is? Is it in Providence where you are? I don’t know. I wish I did. Until I figure that out, I didn’t think it was fair to start a big conversation with you about what’s next for us.”
“You’re right,” she said. “You’re absolutely right. Let’s get going so we don’t miss the boat.”
Bewildered by her easy—and unusual—capitulation, Grant followed her out of the house. He’d arranged for Lisa from the vet clinic to take care of Janey’s pets until she and Joe got back on Sunday. Earlier, he’d stripped and changed the bed, washed the sheets and towels and replaced the food and wine they’d used during the storm.
The phrase, “the honeymoon’s over” ran through his mind as he got into Stephanie’s beat-up old car for the short ride to the ferry landing. Since they were taking the car, they checked in an hour early and sat in silence while they waited to drive the car on the three-thirty boat.
“Can we talk about this, please?” he asked as the silence began to grate on his nerves.
“What’s there to talk about? We had a good time, and you helped me—and Charlie—tremendously by asking Dan to get involved and by setting up the meeting with your uncle. You did exactly what you said you would do. You certainly don’t owe me anything else.”
Grant couldn’t believe that he was suddenly on the verge of blowing yet another relationship—and this one so much more significant than the last one. One week wi
th Stephanie and he already had more than he’d had with Abby after ten years. He couldn’t screw it up. Again.
Turning in his seat so he could see her, he said, “This isn’t about who owes what to whom. It’s about me and you and something between us that seems to work. Maybe it shouldn’t work, but it does. You can’t deny that.” He wanted to tell her he loved her, that he was in love with her, but didn’t think she’d believe him if he told her now.
“It does work,” she said softy, “here on this lovely little island in the middle of a storm that trapped us together for days on end. It worked very well here. I’m not as convinced it’ll work over there.” She gestured to the mainland off in the distance.
He reached out to caress her cheek. “I’d like to find out. Wouldn’t you?”
“Everything is so uncertain right now. After Columbus Day, I’m also jobless and homeless and rootless. I’ve got a lot to figure out between now and then. Let’s play it by ear and see what happens. Can we do that?”
“Sure,” he said, relieved that she hadn’t said no.
He could work with maybe.
Ten hours later, Grant used a key card in the hotel room door and held it so Stephanie could go in ahead of him.
“Tell me again what we’re doing here,” she said dropping onto the sofa by a window that overlooked downtown Providence.
“Ahh, the usual stuff people do in hotel rooms. You know, some sleeping, maybe some bathing, perhaps some breakfast a la room service. If you’re really nice to me, I might even toss in some nookie for good measure.” He sat next to her and stretched out his long legs.
Despite being totally drained after the grueling evening, she was still aware of him. Wanting him, it seemed, had become a constant state of being.
He reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. “I know what you need.”
“What’s that?”
“Coming right up.” He stood and strode toward the bathroom. “Stay there and don’t look.”
Since she was too tired to do anything else, she relaxed into the sofa and took in the elegant room in a hotel she’d wondered about her entire life. The Biltmore was a Providence landmark that she’d admired only from afar despite having lived in the same city all her life.
Leave it to Grant.
To say Charlie had been chilly toward him was putting it mildly. Her stepfather had been immediately suspicious of the Hollywood screenwriter who’d taken an interest in his case—and his stepdaughter. After he’d basically booted Grant from the visiting room, he’d lit into Stephanie, demanding to know what was really going on.
So she’d told him about meeting Grant on Gansett, about the bickering and the bonding and the storm and everything that’d happened in the last week. She’d left out the more personal details, but he’d gotten the picture. Somehow she’d managed to convince him that Grant genuinely wanted to help them and that they’d be crazy not to accept help from a lawyer of Daniel Torrington’s caliber or whatever assistance Grant’s Uncle Frank might be willing to offer.
When he’d grudgingly agreed, Stephanie had left the prison feeling beat up only to have to rally for dinner with Grant’s charmingly delightful uncle. He’d reminded her of Big Mac in so many ways, mostly in how he’d embraced his nephew’s troubled friend, but he was far more urbane than his island-dwelling brother.
By anyone’s standards, the evening had been a smashing success. They now had the top defense lawyer in the country handling Charlie’s appeal, and a well-respected Superior Court judge willing to speak to a colleague about a possible miscarriage of justice. What she’d wanted for what seemed like forever was more within reach than it ever had been before. Why then did it feel like a thousand-pound boulder had landed on her chest?
The boulder had been sitting there since Grant told her he was going to LA. She had the worst feeling that if he went there, he wouldn’t come back. His intentions were good. She had no doubt about that. But she was wise enough to know she couldn’t possibly compete with the lure of Hollywood. The thought of never seeing him again filled her with overwhelming sadness.
He emerged from the bathroom wearing only the khakis he’d donned for dinner and a smile directed at her. As always, the sight of his muscular chest made her go dumb in the head.
“Madame,” he said with a bow. “Right this way.”
Stephanie hesitated, wishing there was some way to protect her heart from the blow it was about to withstand. Since she couldn’t resist him—especially this playful, sexy side of him—she got up and went to him.
“It’s my duty to inform you that you have to be naked for this activity,” he said with a serious expression.
She rolled her eyes. “Most activities with you seem to require nudity.”
He flashed her a grin that melted any remaining resistance as he lifted her shirt over her head. “And that is bad how, exactly?”
“I never said it was bad.” No, it was far too good, and that was the problem.
The second she wiggled out of her skirt and panties, Grant scooped her up, carried her into the bathroom and deposited her into a steaming bubble bath. He’d lit the candles around the tub, which gave the room a soft, dreamy glow.
Stephanie released a deep sigh as she sank into the fragrant water.
He knelt next to the tub. “How is it?”
“Amazing. Thank you.” She risked a glance at him and found him watching her intently. “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble, you know.”
“What trouble?”
“The Biltmore and bubble baths and whatever else you have up your sleeve.”
“What’s wrong with the Biltmore?”
“Not a thing. It’s just kind of…extravagant.”
He ran a finger through the bubbles. “So?”
Exasperated, she flipped her hand and sent a spray of bubbles into his face.
Sputtering, he wiped the soap from his cheek. “You want to play that way?”
Before she knew what hit her, he was in the tub with her—pants and all—and the water was flowing over the sides.
“Grant! You’ll start a flood!”
“I’ll clean it up in a minute,” he said, capturing her mouth for a deep, soulful kiss.
It’d been hours since he’d last kissed her, and Stephanie had missed the feel of his lips, the insistent stroke of his tongue, the unique flavor she’d recognize anywhere as his. After having experienced such unbridled passion, how would she live without him for even a day?
“What’s wrong?” he asked, shifting his attention from her mouth to her neck.
“Nothing. You’d better mop up the water before you get us kicked out of here.”
“You’re no fun tonight,” he said with a long-suffering sigh as he raised himself out of the tub and got busy wiping up the puddles on the floor.
When he got close enough for her to reach, she ran her fingers through his hair.
He looked up at her and smiled.
“I’m sorry if it seems I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do tonight, because I do.”
“Then what’s wrong? And don’t say nothing, because I know you better than that by now.”
“This feels like our last night together.”
His eyes widened with surprise. “I told you I’ll be back.”
“I know you did.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I think you want to believe that, but you’ll get busy with work, and one thing will lead to another, and you’ll end up staying there.” She forced herself to meet his gaze. “Isn’t that what happened last time?”
“Yes, but everything is different now. When I said I’ll be back, I meant it.”
“You need to do whatever it takes to get your career back on track. I don’t want you worried about me when you need to be focused on work.”
“I will worry about you. Of course I will.”
“That’s very sweet of you, but it’s very possible that this”—she moved a hand between the
m to indicate their relationship—“was intended to be a fling and nothing more.”
His brows knitted with what appeared to be genuine concern. “Is that what it was to you?”
Stephanie wanted to lie. She wanted to tell him what he needed to hear so he’d be free to pursue his goals without the weight of her expectations holding him back. But as she studied the handsome face she loved so much, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t lie to him. “No. It was more than that. A lot more.”
“For me, too, honey, and when I tell you I’ll be back, I will be back. I need you to believe me.”
This time, she did lie. “Okay. I believe you.”
He extended a hand to help her out of the tub and toweled her off with reverence. When he was finished, he wrapped the towel around her and tucked in the edges before he fought his way out of the soaked khakis. “Wearing pants into the tub might not have been the best idea I ever had.”
Stephanie laughed at his battle with the heavy, wet pants. “Do ya think?”
Once he was free, he reached for her hand. “Let’s go to bed.”
She placed her hand in his, anticipating this one last night with him. Tomorrow was soon enough to figure out how she’d ever live without him.
Stephanie never did sleep that night. She was either making love with Grant or watching him sleep. As the first hint of dawn snuck through the blinds, her heart was heavy with dread. Of course she’d survive the way she always did, but this day would be a tough one. No way around that. She’d drop him at the airport and then head south to catch the ferry back to the island. She couldn’t imagine spending an hour there without him, let alone days on end.
Drawing in a deep breath, she marshaled the fortitude it would take to hide her torment from him. He needed to seize this exciting new opportunity and take it all the way to a second Oscar. The last thing in the world she wanted to do, especially after all he’d done for her, was get in the way of that.
His hand moved slowly from her shoulder to her hip, blazing a trail of sensation, which was all it took to make her want him—again. He pressed against her from behind, his hands cupping her breasts and his lips firm against her neck.
