by Noelle Fox
Once Grace had her fill of the views, she turned to find Connor had spread a blanket on the worn pine boards and was unpacking a bag that held a bottle of wine, cheese and crackers, sandwiches, potato and fruit salads and a couple of slices of decadent looking chocolate layer cake. “Hungry?”
“I am now.” She sat next to him, facing west for best sun-viewing. “That looks delicious.”
“It’s from the lodge dining hall. It will be fine. Disappointing but edible. Especially the cake.”
“Especially disappointing or especially edible?”
“Disappointing. I am a total sucker for chocolate cake. This one never measures up.” He opened the bottle, a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, and poured modest portions into two plastic cups.
“Ah.” She took her wine and thanked him. “Chocolate cake is actually my specialty. I started making them when I was seven.”
“Seven!” He crossed his long legs and leaned back against the railing. “So you were a chef all the way back then.”
“Ha! I wouldn’t serve that one to anyone.” She smiled at the memory of her pride. “I’d asked Mom for a chocolate cake for my birthday. My favorite. She forgot and bought another of those supermarket white cakes with the inch of white icing that tastes like nothing but sugar. I didn’t like those even back then.”
He turned his head toward her. Even though they were a couple of feet apart, looking into his eyes felt fizzily intimate. “So you took matters into your own hands.”
“I did.” She wimped out and dropped her gaze, unsettled by the intensity of her reaction. “I came home from school, got down a cookbook of my mother’s and went at it. The cake was dry, but not inedible. The frosting was gluey and way too sweet. But I was thrilled. Mom was furious because the kitchen was a disaster, and I suppose, in hindsight, because I’d rejected the cake she got me.”
He made a disgusted sound. “You were seven!”
“Yeah, I know. She asked why I didn’t want her cake. I told her mine was more special because I’d put in a secret ingredient.”
“Uh-oh.” Connor looked wary. “Do I really want to know what a seven-year-old considers a good secret ingredient?”
Grace laughed, feeling herself blush, half-wishing she hadn’t started this story. “It’s sort of sappy.”
“I can deal with sappy. I was worried about disgusting.”
“No no.” She blushed harder, staring down at her wine. “I told her my cake had love in it.”
“Aww.” He rubbed her shoulder. “That is adorable. And poignant.”
Grace shrugged, grateful for him not teasing. “Of course Mom felt awful.”
“She should have.”
“We cleaned up the kitchen together, then ate a couple of slices. After that, she let me make a chocolate cake every year.” It had been one of the good mother-daughter times, all too rare. Mostly Grace felt like a third wheel to whatever marriage her mother was in.
“I like that story.” He clinked his glass to hers. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Thank you for bringing me up here.” She took a sip; the wine was fruity and complex with a pleasantly acid finish. “You were right, this is what I needed. After talking to Derek this morning, I was sort of…self-destructing.”
“Understandable.” He swirled the wine lazily in his glass. “Anything you want to talk about?”
“Now that I’ve resumed my human form?”
He grinned. His gray eyes were stunning in the sunlight. “You looked pretty great to me.”
Grace tried to think how to begin, surprised at how much she wanted to confide in him. It was as if the sappy cake story had been the proverbial leak from the dam, with a flood building behind it. She didn’t want to make the whole evening about her pain, but talking to him would help sort out her feelings.
“All Mom told me about my father was that he had a great smile, loved dogs, and was dead. No name, no other details, no matter how much I begged. The letter I got from James Whittaker about coming to Polaris said the invitation was my father’s dying wish. As far as I knew, at the point he’d died twice. Now he’s alive a third time.”
“Zombie Dad!”
She giggled, unable to believe she could find anything about this crazy situation funny. “Mom told me my father was horrible. Derek told me my father wasn’t that horrible. I had no idea what or whom to believe. Then this morning Derek lets drop that he’s my father, and that I was an accident, which is probably why he married my mother in the first place, which means I’m indirectly responsible for a lot of unhappiness.”
“You are absolutely not responsible for their stupidity.”
“I know that intellectually. But it’s hard not to feel that way.”
“I get it.” He offered her a bland cube of cheese on a cracker. Even in the midst of this intensely emotional confession, Grace couldn’t help thinking of a cheese she could get relatively inexpensively from a maker in Wisconsin that tasted much better than this, that she’d slice it thinner for easier serving, and provide more flavorful crackers. “It’s impossible to separate yourself completely from your parents. I’d ask yourself which of them you trust more on a gut level. Keep your head out of it and go with instinct.”
In other words, flip Jennifer’s coin. Grace sipped more wine, relaxing a bit, allowing herself to consider the problem as Connor advised. His support and empathy were becoming addictive, like Lay’s Classic potato chips. She just wanted more and more. “I can see Mom ditching Derek for a new man when he turned out not to be perfect. Sadly, I can also see her packing me up and leaving without telling him.”
Connor looked incredulous. “That’s what happened?”
She nodded, and it was as if the dike had blasted open, and the waters were finally allowed to run free. She believed her father. “Derek came home one day and we were both gone.”
Connor put down his wine. She was about to ask what was wrong, when she noticed his tense jaw and narrowed eyes. He was angry. On her behalf. Something warm and sweet started mixing into the turmoil of her emotions.
“Connor.” She had to say this. To him. Something she had never even admitted to herself in all those years of trying to cope with her mother’s decisions and moods, to love her, and support her in spite of them. “I don’t think I like my mom very much.”
“It sounds like she’s a tough person to like.” He laid a comforting hand on her thigh. “I am pretty sure she doesn’t deserve you.”
Grace stared into her wine again, breathing steadily, trying to get herself back under control. Saying the words out loud hadn’t been as frightening as she expected. Having Connor to hear and understand had taken away a lot of the fear. Now that the terrifying confession was out, she felt lighter, having been carrying around a dark ugly truth for her whole life without realizing how much it had been weighing her down.
“The good news is that you still have a little over a week to get to know your dad, and if you decide to stay…a lot longer than that.”
“Yes.” She was thinking back to the talk in the kayaks, when Derek had said how much “Dick Wiggins” had loved his daughter, how he’d been devastated by her disappearance. How much could Grace really get to know this man in the next week and a half? Once she got another restaurant job, she could hardly be popping off to Alaska every other month.
If she stayed…
She shook herself out of those thoughts, aware of Connor watching her, and how the warming light on his face made him look so gorgeous he was nearly irresistible. “Thanks for listening to me dump all over you.”
“That’s what friends are for.”
Were they friends? Only? Or were they more? What would staying here tonight do to that “friendship?” She knew what leaving Polaris in over a week would do to it, and got a stab of pain in her chest.
“Now it’s your turn. Dump on me. What about your family?”
“Whoa.” He picked up the bottle, offering her more. “We need extra fortification for that story.”<
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“Tell me.” She held out her glass, wishing the night could go on forever. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this comfortable and intimate with anyone. “Unless you don’t want to.”
“I’d like you to know.”
She reached for more bland cheese to hide her pleasure. “Thank you.”
“Let’s see, it’s a beautiful story, how shall I tell it? Once upon a time my mom was an alcoholic. Not a fun drunk either, angry and volatile. She and Dad had a marriage I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but they stayed together. Fought like dogs. My brother and I would go into the basement of our house and turn on music until it was loud enough that we couldn’t hear them anymore.”
“Ugh.” She remembered hiding in her room while her mother and stepfathers did the same. “It’s terrifying when your parents are out of control.”
“Yeah, it’s not them who are supposed to be having the tantrums.” He leaned his head back against the wood. “When I was in college, my brother died in a car accident.”
Grace gasped and instinctively reached out to grasp his forearm, as if she could check his pain. “I am so sorry.”
“Yeah, it sucked. It gets worse, but then that’s it, I promise.” He gave a lopsided smile. “Mom fell apart. Dad cheated. The marriage fell apart. A couple of months after that, Mom committed suicide. The end.”
“Connor.” Grace put a hand to her chest, nearly in tears herself. “My God, how did you survive that?”
“Can’t say I handled it perfectly.” He gave her another of those infectious grins. This one she was unable to return. “That was around the time I met you. I was not in a good place.”
“I can see why.”
“I’ll tell you, though.” He touched her cheek, his voice dropping and growing husky. “That night you came to me. I don’t know what it was about you, but you turned my life around.”
She was flabbergasted. “I did?”
“I totally misunderstood what you wanted, but even so, your trust in me…” He laughed nervously. “Well, anyway.”
“No, go on.”
“It sounds ridiculous.”
“More ridiculous than having a mother abduct you, lie about your father’s death, and a father who claimed his name was ‘Dick Wiggins?’”
“Hmm.” Connor pretended to consider. “Maybe not that ridiculous.”
Grace laughed and put down her wine. The conversation was becoming too emotional for her to keep drinking. If Connor said anything else so sweet or funny or sensitive, she’d tell him she was in love with him and beg him to give her babies.
“Your trust that I wouldn’t hurt you or go too far made me stop and look at myself and try to see what you’d decided was worth knowing. You made me wonder why I was trying so hard to bury any remaining good parts of myself in so much shit, pardon my French. Gradually over the next year, I stopped self-destructing. I also decided that no one can take anything for granted. Not that love will last, not that people will still be around the next day. You have to take what you can when you can and be as happy as possible in the moment.”
“I see.” She slid her hand up to his hard biceps, feeling she better understood why he’d found it so hard to put down roots when so many of his early ones had been so abruptly severed. “Maybe we were supposed to meet now to get that all worked out.”
“Maybe we were.” His eyes found hers, and this time she had no problem returning his gaze openly and honestly. He pulled her across his lap, tipping her head back in the crook of his arm so the sun was warm on her upturned face, and he kissed her. She responded, gently and tenderly at first, then passionately, guiding his hand to her breast.
They made love there above the trees in the fading Alaskan sun. Naked to each other already emotionally, it seemed inevitable to strip away literal barriers as well, searching for release of their hunger for each other.
After it came, they lay together, talking or dozing as the sun dipped lower. In spite of all the confusion and upheaval of the day, Grace felt only peace, joy, and the incredible rightness of being exactly where she was.
Chapter 12
Connor put finishing touches on the chocolate cake he’d made for dinner, then stood back to admire the result.
Huh. Yeah, maybe “admire” wasn’t quite the right word.
Apparently cakes weren’t something you could toss off perfectly on your first try. At least he couldn’t. The layers hadn’t baked up level, and he’d noticed a slight burning smell as he took the pans out of the oven. With chocolate, who could tell if it was browning too fast? He’d split one cake flipping it right side up on the cooling rack, and had to piece it back together on the serving plate.
The chocolate frosting had been stiffer than he expected, and he’d torn a big gouge in the side of the bottom layer when he tried to spread it on. To fix that, he’d added milk—too much, which made the frosting too runny. More sugar to firm it had made it too sweet. The layers didn’t sit together properly, there were dark crumbs marring the icing, and the top had slumped sideways and looked in danger of sliding off entirely, but when he tried gingerly to push it back, it smushed instead of moving.
He’d decided to label it a Thought-That-Counts Cake.
There was no doubt his thoughts had been on Grace. He’d been thinking of her since she stepped off the ferry two weeks earlier, when his whole body had been jolted by the shock of recognition. Since then her effect on him had only grown. Around her he felt like a different, better person. More patient, more giving, the kind of man he’d worried he was too damaged to be for any woman. Now he wondered if he’d just been hanging with the wrong ones. Nice women, smart women, fun women, but he’d never felt completely safe enough with any of them to drop the blustery macho act he realized now had been his self-protection.
Most importantly, he’d realized that his great sound bite of a philosophy—stay happy today because no one could count on tomorrow—had been one big, attractive justification for his terror of vulnerability and of commitment. Grace had been changing that about him too. Meeting her again had given him courage to take his concept of starting a farm here from a nice idea in his head for someone someday, to a solid plan he couldn’t wait to turn into reality. Not only that, he was giving up his two-room rental, which had felt safely temporary for so long, and was going to start looking to buy a house here on Polaris. In short, he was ready to grow up and live his life like a normal person, rooted in a community, even looking ahead to marriage and starting a family.
Connor blew out a quick breath. Yeah, those last two still scared him, given what a nightmare “family” had been to him, but much less than they used to.
He’d seen Grace change, too, over the last two weeks. She’d relaxed, become more open, less bristly. Some of that was easily attributed to the charm of the island, but he’d like to think he was responsible for some of her evolution as well.
After that blissful night spent in each other’s arms on the mountain, they’d hung out together for as much time as he could spare from his job. They’d been on a whale-watch, though most of the trip for him had been a Grace-watch because her excitement had so charmed him. Luke had taken them fishing, they’d hiked to see the old gold mine, camped out there one beautiful night in a tent, had gone on a kayak trip—and stayed dry! They’d taken a wood-carving class from Ches and a yoga class from Azure, which had led Connor to discover that he was not only the least flexible person in the class, he was probably the least flexible person in all of Alaska.
In the evenings, somewhat deviously, Connor had contrived for them to eat often at the lodge. He loved watching Grace interpret flavors with each bite and her look of concentration as she calculated how she could improve a dish either through technique or seasoning. Of course his ultimate goal was to help her realize what an important and positive effect she could have on the restaurant.
After those dinners, sometimes they’d hang out at the lodge watching movies or playing games, but they always came back to his or her l
ittle cottage to lie together, talking about everything that mattered and plenty that didn’t. Those were the best times, the ones he cherished most.
While he was leading hikes, Grace had been spending time with her father, reluctantly, and then with growing acceptance, and lately even some enthusiasm. Derek looked happier and healthier every time Connor saw him. Azure was convinced Grace had powerful magic. Maybe she was right.
Tonight, here at his place, Grace and Connor were supposedly celebrating her last night on the island before she went back to New York State.
Supposedly.
If Connor had anything to say about it, she was not leaving. He’d done his best over the past week and a half not to pressure her, had even avoided dropping to his knees at regular intervals and begging her to stay.
But tonight it was all or nothing—and Connor was choosing all.
He checked the dining area one more time—there wasn’t enough space to call it a room. Candles were ready for lighting on the table for two, and a vase of wild iris he’d picked from the meadow above the lodge provided a splash of color. Another glance around confirmed the room was clean and tidy.
On the stove, a pot of his mother’s smoked salmon chowder was heating, rich with fish, corn and potatoes. He’d also put together a simple salad and bought a loaf of Nellie’s excellent rye bread to accompany the soup, a soup he’d made over a dozen times so he was pretty sure he wouldn’t screw it up. Cooking for a chef was pretty intimidating, even one he was sure would forgive him any culinary stumbles. The cake, granted, was less like a stumble and more like falling off a cliff.
So. Everything was ready. Now all he needed was for Grace to show up, to serve her a nice meal and get up the nerve to admit he was in love with her, maybe had been for years, and that he wanted her to stay in Polaris and see what they could be to each other.
