by Shirley Jump
“I want my daughter to have a happy life,” Reggie went on, “one that doesn’t revolve around caring for a bitter old boxer who takes ten thousand pills a day.”
“Dad—”
“Let me say my piece, Beth. I was a terrible father. A worse husband.” He eyed Grady. “Tell me you won’t be either of those.”
“I won’t.” That, at least, was the truth. Grady had no intentions of continuing this charade after tonight. And even if he ever did settle down, he vowed to be better than his father had been.
Then he glanced at Beth. Worry creased the space between her brows, shimmered in her eyes. Despite the big show of taking a second helping of potatoes, Reggie had barely touched his meal.
Everything about the man, from his skeletal frame to his lily-white skin, said he was on borrowed time. The hiss of oxygen every time he took a breath added an exclamation point. His gaze as he’d spoken had been filled with entreaty. Please let me know my most prized and precious person will be okay after I’m gone.
Grandma Ida Mae had been one of those people who showed up at the neighbors’ house with a casserole when someone in the family was sick. She was first on the scene after a storm to help someone clear their driveway of debris. She’d volunteered to feed the hungry, and set flags at the base of headstones on Memorial Day. She was the kind of person other people aspired to be.
The kind of person Grady had never been. His entire adult life had been focused on building his company, amassing a financial stockpile to fund his ventures and his personal excesses. He’d accumulated things, not friends, and when he’d lost damned near everything and saw the eyes of the people he had hurt, he’d realized how empty that kind of life could be.
Sitting beside him was a man who had a life with real value—a town he loved, a home, and a daughter who loved him fiercely. A man with one simple dying wish. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to give Reggie a little comfort. Grady didn’t have to actually act on his promises—just keep them until...
Well, until. Even after just an hour spent at his table, Grady didn’t want the man to die anytime soon. He liked Reggie, a man who came across as frank and stubborn, two qualities Grady looked for in employees, in friends, and in himself. And he liked Beth. More and more every minute he spent with her.
Even now, the worry and desire to keep her father calm and healthy was evident in her words, and the way she glanced at her dad from time to time or gave him a light touch as she got up to refill his water or retrieve more rolls from the oven.
Maybe it was the homemade food. Or the floral sofa. Or the crazy idea that he couldn’t fix the big things in his life, but he could fix this small one, that made Grady veer left when he’d been on a decidedly right-turn-only course.
“Sir, I care very much about your daughter,” Grady began. Where was he going with that statement? There was still time to change the subject, to talk about candy bars or favorite cookies. “And...and I’d love to make that a permanent relationship.”
Beth’s fork landed with a clatter on the stoneware plate. Her eyes widened. “You...what?”
“Wonderful!” Reggie’s face transformed from pale and tired to flushed and excited. “This is such wonderful news. Best news I’ve had...well, in a long time. It deserves a celebration! Bethie, remember that champagne we keep in the bottom drawer of the fridge? Why don’t you grab that? I can’t think of a better reason to uncork that bottle.”
“Dad, I don’t think—”
“I have one child, and I want to celebrate her engagement. Or soon-to-be engagement.” Reggie gave Grady a wink. “I expect you’re going to give her the full experience with a ring and a formal proposal, right?”
Grady nodded. He couldn’t have formed an intelligible sentence right now if someone offered him a million dollars. He glanced at Beth’s shocked face, then at Reggie’s ecstatic one, and wondered what the hell he’d just done.
* * *
“What. Was. That?” Beth whispered under her breath. She’d dragged Grady into the kitchen to “help open the champagne.” Behind the refrigerator door, she gave him a little shake. “What were you thinking?”
“Just trying to give your dad some peace.”
“By offering to marry me? I’m not getting married, Grady. Not to you or anyone. Not even—”
“To give your dying dad one less thing to worry about?” Grady reached down and retrieved the champagne from the fridge. “Listen, I’m not really asking you to marry me. We’ll just pretend for now. I can’t...” Grady shook his head and looked away. “I just think it’s the least I can do.”
“The least...” She shut the fridge door, opened a cabinet and retrieved three champagne flutes. The last time anyone had used these had been her mother’s fortieth birthday. That had been one of the last times she’d seen either of her parents truly happy.
She ran a finger along the delicate curve of the flute. This is such wonderful news. Best news I’ve had...well, in a long time. Her father had been smiling. Laughing. Talking in exclamation points.
“We don’t even know each other,” Beth said.
“Ah, but I know your favorite candy.”
She propped a fist on her hip. “How did you know that?”
“Whenever we had a big test in geometry, you’d have a handful of those bite-size Reese’s cups on your desk and down them like they were speed.” Grady laughed.
“I forgot all about that.” Beth shook her head. She was oddly touched that he could remember a detail like that from fifteen years ago. “I hated that class. And tests made me nervous, hence the chocolate binge.”
“For me, it’s junk food.” He leaned against the counter. “Whenever I get worried about something, I’m all about burgers and fries and pizza. As a matter of fact, I had pizza for lunch today.”
“You did? What were you nervous about?”
He hesitated before answering, and she wondered what he wasn’t sharing. “This whole ‘pretend boyfriend’ thing.”
Somehow, that didn’t ring true to Beth. Grady might have been shy, as he’d said, in high school, but he was an accomplished, capable businessman now. What could possibly have him stressed?
And why did she care? This was all pretend and all so very temporary. “These glasses are dusty. I should wash them.” She turned away to the sink. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll give you the referral to the Realtor and train your dog. You did your part, Grady.”
Now you can leave me to handle the rest on my own, like everyone else in my life has.
He grabbed the dish towel from where it hung on the oven door, put his back to the counter and dried the glasses as Beth washed them. “My grandmother was the kind of woman who would invite a perfect stranger to dinner or let some down-on-his-luck man stay at her house for free. She was generous to a fault. I...well, I haven’t been. I’ve made more than a few mistakes of my own, mistakes I can’t rectify, at least not yet. It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything I can feel really good about. But I can do this.”
“How are we going to pull it off? A dinner is one thing, an engagement...” She shut off the water and lowered her voice. “We barely know each other.”
“True. But the charade won’t be for long. I’m only staying in town long enough to get Ida Mae’s house on the market. Then our ‘engagement’—” he gave it air quotes “—will all be long-distance. When I’m not here, you can tell him whatever you want about calls or texts you’re getting from me. Your dad will feel better that you’re going to be taken care of, and maybe the little reduction in stress will...give him more strength.”
The unspoken words: give you a little more time with him.
Tears filled Beth’s eyes. All these months, she had shouldered the burden of her father’s illness alone. The weight of those responsibilities and worries seemed Herculean. Now Grady was offering to help, in a tiny way, by alleviating
her father’s biggest worry, and giving her a gift she couldn’t refuse. And if relieving this stress truly did help her father...it could pay off in an increase in days she’d get to spend with him. Maybe weeks. Dare she hope, months?
“You really think we can pull this off? I mean, I don’t want to put you out or add to what you have going on right now.” She didn’t even know much about what that was, except for Monster, who had curled up in the ex-pen beside his treat and fallen asleep. The fact that she knew so little should have been a red flag. There were stresses and worries in his eyes that he wasn’t sharing. Little doubts that told her she should ask more questions. “We’re pretty much strangers. It’ll be awkward and weird.”
Awkward and weird didn’t even begin to describe it. Insane was a better word. Everything she knew about Grady she could fit on a grain of rice, and her acting skills were about zero. Not to mention she was going to be lying to her father.
Beth glanced over her shoulder at Reggie, sitting at the dining room table, the remote in his hand as he caught some of the baseball game while he waited for the champagne and celebration of a lie. She noted his hunched shoulders, his too-thin frame. For the last year, she had watched her father’s eyes slowly shift from warm and optimistic to depressed and worried. Sadness filled the air around him, a cocoon he had lost the strength to escape. But tonight at dinner, for one short moment...
He had been happy. Engaged. Part of her life. There’d been a lightness in his features, a smile dimpling his cheeks. “Maybe...” she said softly, “if we could make my father believe it, he would become more involved and less distant.”
“I’ve only been here an hour or so,” Grady said, “and I’m not always the most observant man on the planet, but I can see how much work you’re doing to take care of him. The medicine dosing, doctor appointments, cooking, cleaning. On top of that, you’re running your own business, which I know is incredibly time-consuming. Maybe this...relationship we’re sorta having can make it easier for both of you, just because your father will feel more...settled.”
She thought of the restlessness and worry he’d shown in the last few months, how much time he spent worrying about her instead of himself. “He would. But still, pretending to be engaged is a lot harder than pretending to be dating.”
Engaged couples touched. They flirted. They kissed. They even...well, pretend engaged couples might not do that. Surely she could handle a little flirting and kissing. Couldn’t she?
“And there’s...the physical part.” There, she’d said it.
He gave a slight nod. “True. But we have kissed once. Hell of a kiss, if I remember right.”
She raised her chin. “I’ve had better.”
He chuckled, then shifted closer to her. The heat in the kitchen ratcheted up a thousand degrees. “Oh, really?”
“You’re not the only man I’ve ever kissed, you know.” But he was the only man whose kiss had left her unable to think about anything else. Even now, just glancing at his mouth as he spoke quickened the warmth in her belly. The one other long-term relationship she’d had, with a guy she’d been engaged to for a split second, never distracted her like this. She had finished washing the glasses, but the water kept on running behind her.
“Right now, Beth Cooper, I’d like to be the only man you’re kissing. Because I liked kissing you...” he shifted closer still “...very...” another step “...very...” he put a hand on her waist “...much.”
Was he pretending? Being real? Did she want to know the answer? She opened her mouth but no words came out. Instead, she leaned forward a few degrees, and before she knew it, they were kissing again. Grady’s lips skated across hers, featherlight, kissing the edges of hers, with care, almost...reverence.
Damn it. She wasn’t going to fall for him. Nope. Not gonna happen.
Of their own accord, her arms went around his waist, and she shifted into his body, sliding into place as if she was the missing yin to his yang.
“If you two kids are done making out in my kitchen, I’d sure like to toast this happy news.”
Her father’s teasing voice jolted Beth back to reality. She stumbled back, hitting the counter with her hip. A sharp pain ran down her leg. “Ow. Uh... We should—”
“Get back in there.” Grady cleared his throat, grabbed the champagne flutes, then tucked the bottle under his arm and headed back into the dining room.
Beth stood there a second longer, her fingers on her lips. What had just happened?
Chapter Five
It was raining cats and dogs and elephants, as his grandmother would say. Heavy, fat raindrops slashed against the windows of his car, darkened the sky and made Grady’s already foul mood even fouler. He opened Ida Mae’s refrigerator, only to remember he had bought just enough groceries for a week, and he’d been in town for ten days now. Long enough to get the yard work done, the paint touched up and the broken shutter fixed.
And apparently get engaged.
A moment of compassion. And insanity. Of course, it wasn’t a real engagement and certainly wouldn’t lead to an actual marriage, but still, the whole idea was crazy. It left him thinking about Beth more often—as in, almost nonstop—and made him wonder about things he had no justification to wonder about. His mind would drift, skating between trying to figure out what she was doing and circling back to what it would be like to truly marry her.
Just as quickly, those thoughts were chased by guilt. He should be focused on the company, not on a woman who was a detour, not a destination.
The doorbell rang and Monster launched into a cacophony of barking, as if Jack the Ripper himself was at the door. “Stay here, Cujo.” Grady climbed over the baby gate, which had been a godsend idea from Beth, and crossed to the front door. A tall blonde woman in a crisp pantsuit stood on the porch, shaking the rain off her umbrella. Thank goodness. Right on time and right when he needed a reminder of where to refocus.
Grady pulled open the door. “Thanks for coming by in this weather.”
“A little rain never hurt anyone.” She stuck out her hand. “Savannah Barlow. Nice to meet you in person.”
Beth’s friend Savannah, who had recently added a real estate division to her home renovation business, was about Grady’s age, and looked as friendly as a sunflower. He hoped that what she lacked in experience and exposure in real estate she made up for with ambition and hard work. From what he’d heard, Savannah was enthusiastic, motivated, and eager. “Grady Jackson. Come on in. Ignore the killer mutt in the kitchen.”
She laughed as she crossed the threshold, leaving her damp umbrella on the porch. Once inside, she looked up the staircase, then swept her gaze across the foyer. He’d oiled and buffed the hardwood floors, and they gleamed, even on a dreary day. “This is a great house. I’ve always loved it.”
“Yeah, it is.” Grady didn’t want to stand here and reminisce. If he did, he suspected some crazy kind of sentimentality would make him consider holding on to his only legacy from his beloved grandmother. As if he needed a house he wasn’t planning to live in more than he needed to rebuild the company he’d staked his—and Dan’s—future on. “Let’s take the tour, then talk about how long before it can be put on the market. I want to price it to sell.”
“It shouldn’t be sitting on the market for very long. Places like this, with all this character and the view of the lake—everyone wants a house like this. It’s a great place to raise kids.”
A memory of him and his two brothers dashing down the lawn in the middle of a Nerf-gun battle on a hot summer day flashed in Grady’s mind. What would it have been like to have grown up here all year round, instead of in the cold, sterile mansion the Jackson boys had dubbed the Mausoleum? Or living here and raising a family with Beth—
Whoa, whoa. Talk about derailing his thoughts.
Grady cleared his throat. “Uh, so let me know if you think I need to update anything.” He a
nd Savannah walked through the house, and he made notes as she pointed out some chipped paint, a few pieces of furniture to rearrange, some scuffs in the second-floor hallway, and a missing electrical cover. He’d done the outside work yesterday, thankfully before the rain started.
“Overall, this is in almost perfect shape,” Savannah said. She turned a slow circle in the dining room, taking in the floor-to-ceiling windows and built-in hutch. Monster had finally settled for sitting in the kitchen and whining in displeasure about being left out of the tour. “Can I ask why you’re selling?”
Because I need a restart. Because Dan is sitting in that office in New York, stress beating up his heart a little more each day. “I don’t live here. I live in New York.”
Savannah gave him a curious look. “Really? Because when Beth put the two of us in touch, I guess I just assumed, well, that you two were together.”
“My business is in New York.” Or what was left of it. He chose not to address the part about being together with Beth. That answer was as complicated as the one about why he was getting rid of his legacy. “So how soon can you sell it?”
She tapped her lip as she thought that over. “To give you some time to take care of those little things, I can get my photographer out here in a few days, and get it on the market a day or two after that. I’ll schedule an open house—”
Too slow. Too much time. Grady shook his head. “I want it on the market now. Today.”
“You’re the seller and I work for you, but any place sells faster and for a better price with quality photography and some ads. Especially for this house, a well-placed ad campaign can reach that out-of-state buyer looking to settle down here.”
“Just get it on the market now, with or without photos. I’ll do these—” he held up the list “—tomorrow. Send your photographer at the end of the day.”