Gracie asked, “When do they come for vacation?”
“A week from this coming Saturday.”
“You’re counting the days.”
He tipped his glass at her. “I always do.” He was a family man, through and through. His ex-wife was a good mother. Still, he just felt better when his girls were with him.
Gracie asked, “So how’s it going with the new stepdad?”
At Easter, Marjorie had married Dr. Roger Hoffenhower. Roger was a family psychologist and a really nice guy with a big heart. “Terrific.” He drank more tequila.
Gracie scoffed. “Smile when you say that.”
“I like Roger.” He set his glass on the table and turned it slowly. It was almost empty. Against his own better judgment, he added, “I also kind of hate Roger.”
“Why?”
He put the glass to his lips again, sipped the last of the golden liquid inside and then slowly swallowed. “Roger is an open wound of feelings and sensitivity.” In other words, pretty much everything Dante wasn’t. “Plus, Nic and Nat like Roger. A lot. Can you blame me for hating the poor guy?”
She gave a husky little laugh that he found way too attractive. “I think anything I say right now will probably be wrong.”
“Smart girl—and why are we talking about Roger, anyway?”
“Er, because you like him—but you hate him, which means you’re conflicted about Roger and that’s not only interesting, it’s the kind of thing you need to talk about with a friend.”
He stared at her, unblinking. “But we’re not here to talk about Roger.”
“You started it. Officer.” Those sapphire eyes twinkled at him.
“You’re the one who asked about Roger.”
“But then you told me how you really feel about the guy. That’s my cue to encourage you to tell me more.”
“Wrong.” He raised his glass to her. “We’re risking liver damage for your sake, remember? You need to tell me all about what’s bothering you so I can take a crack at saying all the helpful stuff that will make you feel better.”
“Clearly, you are at least as sensitive as Roger.”
He grunted. “Don’t bet on it. But I’m here and willing to listen.”
She picked up the bottle and poured them both more tequila. They sat back, just sipping, for a few peaceful minutes. It was nice, he thought. Companionable.
She was staring off toward the ocean when she said, “I had a fight with Daniel this morning.” Daniel Bravo was the eldest of the Bravo siblings and something of a father figure to all of them. When their parents died years ago on a trip overseas, Daniel had gotten custody of them and raised them to adulthood in the house where they grew up. “It was a stupid fight and we both apologized after. Daniel and I used to get into it all the time, but it’s been better lately. Truly. We get along really well now, as a rule. But I’m sick of living in the house I grew up in and frankly, my big brother is sick of having me there, though he would never admit it...”
They both continued sipping the excellent tequila as Gracie rambled on, looking way too cute and kind of sad, too, explaining about the small trust fund she and her siblings had each inherited from their lost parents. She went on to explain about her trips to Europe in the summers while she was in college, about the writer she lived with one summer. And the sculptor the next and the inventor the year after that.
“That was in Italy, the inventor,” she said. “His name was Paolo and he invented things that had a tendency to explode.”
Mostly, she explained, she supported these guys with her inheritance while she was with them. “You have to understand, Dante. They were brilliant and interesting. It was England and Ireland and Italy. Best of all, Daniel wasn’t there to call me foolish and wasteful and taken advantage of by irresponsible guys. I had the time of my life.”
“But...?”
She rolled those big blue eyes. “But Niall and Keegan and Paolo were expensive. And that means that by the end of that third summer, I was kinda, sorta broke.”
“How broke?”
She plunked her glass down and poured herself another. He probably should have suggested they put the brakes on the drinking. But he was enjoying himself. That was the thing about Gracie. He’d discovered in the nights he’d hung out at the Sea Breeze with her that she was not only easy on the eyes, she was funny and smart—with a lot of heart.
Gracie Bravo was the whole package, really. He felt better about life in general somehow, when he was hanging around her. He held out his glass and she gave him more, too.
“There’s good news, though,” she said, after she’d put the bottle down and sipped again from her glass.
“Tell me.”
She raised her glass high, as though saluting the trees and the cliff and the whole damn Pacific Ocean. “My perfect job has finally opened up at Valentine Bay High. I’ll be teaching world history in the fall.”
“Congratulations. That’s terrific.” He tapped her glass with his.
“Thank you. Also, I’ve been budgeting responsibly for the last two years, saving what money I can. By Christmas, I’ll have enough to get my own place.”
So what was the problem? “Okay, then. You had a fight with Daniel, but you already patched that up.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’ve got your money situation under control.”
“I do. It’s true.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
Her forehead got scrunchy as she considered what he’d said. “You don’t get it. Dante, I need my own space now, I really do. Daniel and Keely are good to me.” Keely was Daniel’s second wife. His first wife had died shortly after giving birth to twins—a boy and a girl—almost four years ago. “And the house is really big, I know. But still, they’ve got the twins and now Marie.” Marie was Daniel and Keely’s daughter—and about a year and a half old now, if Dante remembered right.
Gracie drank more tequila. Dante did, too.
“Keely and Daniel have a right to their own house,” Gracie said. “And I want a life without my big brother breathing down my neck. I want that life now. My BFFs Carrie and Erin are already roomies—with no room for me. I could move in with Harper and Hailey.” They were two of her sisters. “They’ve got that rambling old cottage Aislinn owns.” Her sister Aislinn had married recently and moved to a ranch owned by her new husband. “But Harper and Hailey are like a team, you know? I always feel like a fifth wheel around them. So anyway, I thought I had an interim solution to the problem, a room in the house of a nice older woman named Sonja Kozlov down on Cherry Street. But then, early this afternoon, Sonja gives me a call. Her son has moved home unexpectedly and my interim space is no longer available. She gave me back my first, last and deposit and that’s that. I’m still living in my brother’s house. Probably till Christmas.”
The good news was, he actually had a solution to her problem. “You want the cabin? It’s yours.”
“What cabin?” Squinting, she craned across the table toward him. “Are you drunk?”
He gestured toward the thick copse of trees behind her, on the south end of his property. “I have a guest cabin, I guess you could call it. Over there. See the trail going into the trees?”
She turned and stared where he pointed. “Wait. I see it. A log cabin, green tin roof?”
“That’s it. It’s one room—and a bathroom. Nothing fancy, but it has everything you need. Power, basic appliances. Running hot and cold water. A woodstove for heat if you need it. I even had Wi-Fi hooked up in there last year when one of the station house dispatchers needed a place to stay for a few months.”
“How come you don’t just rent it out on a regular basis?”
He shook his head. “I don’t want some stranger living a hundred feet from my back deck. Luckily, you’re no stranger. You can have it for as long as you want i
t, free of charge.”
She sat back in her chair. “That’s not right.”
“Sure, it is.”
“I can pay you what I would’ve paid Sonja, at least.”
He put up a hand. “Stop. Let me do this for you. Like you said, you need a place of your own and the cabin is just sitting there empty.”
She slapped the tabletop. “Wait.”
“What?”
“We should discuss this tomorrow when we’re both sober.”
“Oh, come on, Gracie. I solve your problem for you and you can’t just say thanks, I would love to stay in your log cabin for free?”
“Nope. Not tonight. Tonight is for tequila and commiseration.” She let out a heavy sigh. “Right now, we need to get on to a more interesting topic. Let’s commiserate about love.”
“That does it.”
“Huh?”
He grabbed the bottle and moved it to his side of the table. “No more tequila for you.”
“You’re such a hard-ass, Dante—but I still intend to talk about love.”
He helped himself to another glass. After all, the bottle was in his control now. Might as well take full advantage. “Go right ahead.”
She’d slipped off her pink sneakers and was giving a very happy Owen a tummy massage with her toes. “I love your dog.”
Owen knew she was talking about him. With a gleeful little whine, he rolled over and got up.
“Come on, sweetheart,” she coaxed.
With a sigh of pure contentment, Owen put his head across those amazing white thighs of hers. She petted him, stroking down his back, scratching him behind the ears. Owen shut his eyes and basked in the attention.
She asked, “Does he just stay home alone when you’re working?”
He explained about the nice lady named Adele who lived on the next property over. “Adele runs a sort of doggy daycare, but it’s casual. She’s there all the time. I can drop Owen off and pick him up pretty much anytime that suits me. When I work nights, he stays here, but I can always manage to get home sometime midshift to check on him, give him a little attention and a short walk outside.”
She made a humming sound low in her throat and petted the dog some more. Dante began to hope that maybe they’d left the subject of love behind.
But then she sat back in the chair and stared up at the sky. “Where were we? Right. Love. I can’t say for sure that I’ve ever really been in love.” A long sigh escaped her. “But I have been infatuated, like head over heels, you know? Sadly, I always go for the brilliant ones, the ones nobody understands, the emotional fixer-uppers, I suppose you could say.” She slanted him a quick glance. “You know about fixer-uppers, don’t you?”
He did like watching those pink lips move. “Explain it to me.”
“Fixer-uppers are expensive. I’ve blown my wad on fixer-uppers.” She let out a giggle, and then got serious again. “So right now, I can’t afford another relationship—and could you maybe not look so completely disapproving?”
He blinked. “I’m not.” Was he?
“Yeah, you are. You’re reminding me a little of Daniel. Talk about a buzzkill.” She pushed her glass across the table and gave him the evil eye until he poured her some more.
He set the bottle down again and decided that he might as well be honest with her. “Okay, the way I see it, Gracie, romantic love? It’s a crock.”
She whipped out a hand and slapped him lightly on the arm for the second time that evening. “Take that back.”
“Can’t. Sorry. What you call love is just an excuse to misbehave.”
“Not true. So wrong.”
“Take my parents.”
“Dante. Slow down. You’re telling me that romantic love’s a crock and your parents are your example of why that’s so?”
“Exactly.”
“But your parents have been married forever and they’re happy. Aren’t they?”
“Blissfully so,” he replied in disgust.
“Dante. You’re making no sense. I mean, if they’re happy, well, isn’t that the point?”
“The point is, my mom was seventeen and pregnant with me when she married dad.”
“So what? They’re happy. They’ve been married for more than thirty years. Give it a rest.”
“They’re crazy.”
“No.”
“Yeah. Crazy in love after all these years. And they always have been. Do you know how many times I walked in on my folks having sex when I was a kid? It was traumatic. No surface was sacred. Apparently, it’s still that way.” Which was proven out by the fact that a year ago, at the age of forty-eight, his mom had given birth to his littlest brother, Mac. “And look at my sister. Loved your brother since she was barely in her teens. Chased him shamelessly until she finally caught him. Married him. Got wrongly divorced by him. Seven years later, she gets hit in the head and comes running back for more.”
Gracie put both her hands out to the side, palms up. “And they’re making it work now. They’re very happy together, Connor and Aly.”
“Romantic love is just another name for insanity.” Dante finished off what was left in his glass. “I love my girls. That’s a love that matters, a love with dignity and purpose.”
She bent down and kissed the top of Owen’s hairy head, which was still in her lap. The dog had his eyes closed and a blissed-out expression on his face. “You just haven’t met the right woman yet. It will happen.”
“No, it won’t. The truth is, I’m bad at relationships and I’m just fine with that.”
She stuck out that plump lower lip of hers. “That is too sad.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is. And I’m sorry it didn’t work out with Marjorie. Don’t feel bad, Dante.”
“Did I say I feel bad? I didn’t say that. I said I am bad at relationships.”
“Everyone fails at love.”
“Not my parents.”
“Okay, except for your parents—and my parents, now that I think about it. They were totally in love till the end. And Daniel and Keely. And your brothers, Pascal and Tony, they’re happily married, too, right? And let’s not forget my sister Aislinn and—”
“Stop.” He set his empty glass down harder than necessary. “All these happy couples. I can’t take it anymore.”
“My point is, you just have to be patient. It will happen. I’ve been in five failed relationships—if you count Joseph and Randy in high school. And after Paolo, well, I’ve been going through a bit of a dry spell if you know what I mean, avoiding sex and relationships and all that—but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up, you know? I’m just having a break, that’s all. I could have a wild fling any day now. And one of these days, I’ll find the kind of love your mom and dad have. I’m not discouraged.”
“Meaning I am? I’ve already said twice that I’m not.”
“But you are.” She gave Owen another scratch behind the ear. The dog nuzzled her hand and then flopped back down at her feet, rolling to his back in a shameless invitation to another toe massage. Gracie obliged.
Dante watched her pretty, turquoise-painted toes rubbing Owen’s belly and laid it out for her again. “You’re not getting it, Gracie. I’m fine with things just as they are. More than fine.”
“But...you never have sex with other people anymore?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Ohhh,” she said slowly, eyes going wide. “Just flings and hookups, then, is what you’re saying?”
“What I’m saying is I like my life. I’ve got a job that matters, one that interests me, with good potential for advancement.” He gestured widely at the trees, the deck, the cliff and the ocean below. “I’ve got a great house in a beautiful spot, a good dog and most important, two smart, beautiful daughters.”
The sun had sunk below the water. It was
almost dark. The light by the slider, set on a timer, came on.
Gracie put her hands to her throat and made choking noises.
“Whatever that’s supposed to mean,” he said flatly, “I don’t get it. You need to use words.”
“Fine. A life without the prospect of someone special to love just makes me want to strangle myself.”
“How many different ways can I say that I’m perfectly happy with how things are?”
“No. Uh-uh. I refuse to believe that you have no interest in finding love again. Dante, you’re a great guy. And hot.” She peered at him more closely, that pillowy, pink mouth softly parted. “Seriously. You’re really hot...” She stood.
Before he could figure out what she was up to, she’d stepped over Owen and plopped down in his lap. With a happy giggle, she wrapped her arms around his neck and stuck her tongue in his ear.
He knew what to do—take her gently but firmly by the arms and hold her away enough that he could look in those big blue eyes and say in a soothing tone, Gracie. No. Bad idea.
But there was a problem.
Her tongue in his ear? It felt really good. Almost as good as her pretty, curvy body pressing against him. She smelled fresh and clean and sweet, too. And he liked the way she felt. He liked it a lot. The evidence of how much he liked it was growing beneath his fly. She knew it, too. He could tell by the way she gasped and whispered his name.
Tell her this can’t happen, he said to himself.
And he opened his mouth to do that.
But then, her tongue left his ear and her soft lips were right there, meeting his. He sank into that kiss like a drowning man, going down and down, looking up at the sky through the water, realizing that drowning was a good thing—as long as it was Gracie he was drowning in.
Because Gracie, well, she tasted of tequila and summer and the promise of something so perfect and right.
Of course, it didn’t exist, that promise.
He knew that—or rather, the fulfilment of that promise, that didn’t exist. The promise itself? That was the problem. The promise was so tempting. The promise made the world seem like a much more beautiful place.
Their Secret Summer Family (The Bravos 0f Valentine Bay Book 7) Page 2