“With poppy seed dressing?” Grace asked hopefully.
“Of course.”
“Yum. Suddenly, my stomach’s growling.”
Hailey wrapped her in a hug and then ushered her inside. “Right this way.”
The food was ready, so they set another place for Grace. She poured three waters and Hailey poured the wine.
“I’m so glad I dropped by out of nowhere,” Grace said. She ate another bite of beef and noodles. “Harper. This is so good.”
Harper saluted with her wineglass.
They talked for a while about what was coming up for Harper and Hailey. They had their own little company, H&H Productions. Besides planning the occasional kids’ party, they were working with the local arts council now, producing a series of seasonal community events—the Medieval Faire in the summer, a Fall Festival in October that culminated in a haunted house. Then over the holidays, they would put on the Christmas Extravaganza at the Valentine Bay Theater, an old movie theater down in the Historic District.
After the meal, they cleared off the table and cleaned up the kitchen together. The process kind of reminded her of the old days up at the house on Rhinehart Hill, all of them pitching in to get the household chores done.
They sat back down around the table. Harper poured them each another glass of wine.
“Okay.” Hailey turned to Grace. “What’s on your mind?”
Grace swirled the wine in her glass. “I’m that obvious?”
“Only to your wise and wonderful big sisters,” replied Harper.
She grinned across the table at them, but the grin faded as she tried to figure out where to begin. “Well, there is something...”
“Tell all,” commanded Hailey.
“It’s, um, a secret thing. The deal is, I can’t tell anyone.”
“But you have to have someone to talk to,” said Harper.
“And whatever you tell us,” added Hailey, “we won’t tell anyone else. Ever.”
“Total cone of silence?” Gracie asked sheepishly.
“Total,” agreed Hailey. She and Harper looked at each other, then back at Grace. The two nodded in unison. “We will tell no one,” vowed Harper as Hailey nodded some more.
Grace squeezed her eyes shut and drew in a slow breath. “I’mhavingasecretflingwithDanteSantangelo.” The words came out in a rush as she exhaled.
Her sisters just stared.
Hailey spoke first, in an awed whisper. “Dante Santangelo. Really?”
“Yep.”
Harper said, “He’s so...serious.”
“But hot,” Hailey added.
Harper was nodding again. “Undeniably hot.”
Hailey enjoyed a slow sip from her own glass. “I have to say, sexy action with a hot cop sounds like a pretty great thing to me.”
Harper pushed her glass out of the way and stacked her forearms on the table. “Hasn’t he been divorced forever?”
“Six years or so, yeah.”
Grace’s sisters shared yet another of those speaking glances and Grace felt that familiar stab of envy at their closeness. The two of them could have whole conversations just with their eyes, no actual words required.
Harper said, “Full disclosure, we did kind of wonder if there was something going on between you two when you moved into that cabin at his place, but then you did say he was just doing you a favor...”
“And he was. He is. He gave me the cottage for as long as I want it. Because he’s a good guy and a good friend. As for our fling, we decided not to go public, to keep it just between us. Plus, well...”
“Say it,” coaxed Hailey.
“He thinks he’s too old for me and he has this thing about romantic love. Like he doesn’t approve of it or he’s just no good at it? I’m not sure exactly. His parents are happily married and so are two of his brothers. And Aly and Connor. He thinks he failed at love because it didn’t work out with his ex-wife and now she’s happily remarried—so it can’t be her fault the marriage didn’t work. It’s like he blew it once and he won’t try again.”
“You think he’s still in love with the ex?” asked Harper.
Did she think that? “No. No, I really don’t. I think he’s over Marjorie. She’s a good person and they do a great job as coparents. They truly do.”
Harper reached across and fondly brushed the back of Grace’s hand. “For someone who’s just having fun, you don’t look all that happy—and if you’re not happy, you should either move on or change the rules.”
“Both options suck,” Gracie said. “I do want more. But I don’t want to lose what we have.” Her sisters gazed at her with real sympathy. “And you know, I don’t think changing the rules is an option, to be painfully honest about it. Dante was way clear that he’s not up for anything more than what we have. He likes his life just the way it is. He told me he doesn’t want a relationship and he’s never getting married again.”
Harper scoffed. “No offense, but Dante is being an idiot about this.”
Gracie gave a sad little laugh. “Yeah, there’s that.”
Hailey said quietly, “You need to tell that man what you want.”
“I’m afraid to,” Grace admitted. “If I ask for more and he turns me down, what can I do but call it off? I mean, a girl needs to have some pride, right?”
“Yeah,” said Hailey. “From that standpoint, you’re kind of stuck.”
“And if I call it off with him, it’s going to hurt. Bad. And that’s just more proof that I’m in deeper with him than I ever planned to get.” Another forlorn chuckle escaped her. “I guess that makes me as much of an idiot as he is.”
“You are not an idiot,” Hailey said in a lecturing tone. And then she frowned. “Wait. You know what? Now and then, we’re all idiots.”
Harper suggested, “You could tell him what you don’t want without making it an ultimatum. You could say that the way things are isn’t working for you anymore. And then see where he takes it from there.”
“But what if where he takes it is straight to goodbye? Uh-uh. I’m just not ready to chance that. It’s not like he wasn’t up front with me from the start. I believed him when he said he didn’t want a real relationship...”
“You’re totally gone on him, aren’t you?” asked Harper gently.
“I am, yes. And the more I think it over, the more I realize that for right now, I’m still willing to go on as we have been. Rocking our fragile nonrelationship boat could be the end of what we do have. And just possibly the end of our friendship, too. I’m not ready to risk all that—not yet, anyway.”
“The time is coming, though?” asked Hailey.
Grace hummed low in her throat, a sound of reluctant agreement. In response, Hailey got up and pulled her out of her chair and into a hug. Harper piled on. They stood there in the kitchen, the three of them, hugging it out.
Nothing had been resolved.
And yet, a half an hour later, when Grace climbed in her SUV, she felt better, just to have two smart, thoughtful women she trusted to talk it over with. She felt closer to her sisters than she ever had before.
Up till now, she’d kind of seen herself as a loose end among her siblings, the baby trailing after the bigger kids, a little bit left out, often left behind. To have Harper and Hailey rally around her, take her problems seriously and treat her like an equal?
It lifted her spirits and had her feeling a lot better about her place in the family.
* * *
Stolen moments with Gracie.
Dante didn’t get enough of them. Friday at ten in the morning, he was just about to text her in hopes she might be home at lunchtime. But then he got a good lead on an ongoing case. He followed it and before he knew it, the day was mostly gone.
Friday night, his niece Heather slept over. He let the girls stay up late. When they finally
settled down, it was almost eleven. He went outside to nurse a beer on the off chance the lights might be on at the cabin.
The porch light glowed at him through the trees, but that was it. Like a long-gone fool, with Owen at his heels, he jogged through the trees to get a closer look.
Nobody home, the windows all dark.
For a moment, he just stood there, wishing for things he was never going to have.
But then Owen whined and Dante shook himself. Not wanting to leave the girls alone for too long, he set off at a run for the main house. Dropping into a chair at the table, he took a long drink from his beer.
Owen plunked his head in Dante’s lap. He gave the mutt a good scratch around the ears. “Our girl isn’t home, buddy.”
He got out his phone and started to text her. But then he dropped the phone on the table without finishing the text. No point. It was eleven at night and she was probably working.
And if she wasn’t working, if she was out having a good time with her friends, he didn’t even want to know.
What he wanted was more time with her.
And he would have it. Soon. A week from tomorrow, Nic and Nat went back to Portland. He would miss them a lot. But at least this year there was an upside to their going: more time with Gracie.
He couldn’t wait for that.
And tomorrow was Aly and Connor’s party at Oceanside Gardens. Gracie would be there, too. Maybe they could sneak away for a little while.
At the very least, he’d get a dance with her. Because even though this hot, perfect thing between them was a secret, why shouldn’t he dance with his good friend Grace?
And why did it piss him off, that he had to make excuses for dancing with her?
Too much pissed him off lately. He wanted more of her, but he didn’t want to think too hard about what that might mean.
The whole point was to have a good time, not take things too seriously, he kept reminding himself. When it ended, they would still be friends.
Not that he could imagine it ending anytime soon.
* * *
Aly and Connor’s big party was an afternoon-to-evening event, with dinner and music and dancing. The weather was just about perfect, in the high seventies, a few wispy clouds drifting across the otherwise clear sky. Dante and his daughters arrived at a little after three.
Oceanside Gardens, a sprawling estate north of town surrounded by old-growth forest, lived up to its name. The garden paths seemed to go on forever, winding endlessly through thick plots of greenery and lush flowerbeds.
Aly had hired a six-piece band. Party lights were strung from every tree and post. The tables, set with fine china and white linen, were crowned with centerpieces of white pillar candles in big glass bowls of brilliant-colored dahlias.
For the kids, Aly and Connor had provided a giant ball pit shaped like a castle and filled with what looked like thousands of brightly colored balls. The pit had a slide you could ride down into the balls and a jungle gym suspended above them. Each child got a plastic jar of bubbles and a variety of wands of all sizes and shapes. Bubbles floated in the air all afternoon.
And if the little Santangelos and Bravos didn’t want to blow bubbles or bounce around the ball pit, Aly had a face-painting station and a table full of art supplies set up in the garden’s giant gazebo. The parents took turns supervising the fun.
Nicole and Natalie seemed to be having the best time of their lives. There was a lot of happy shouting and way too many gleeful, ear-piercing screams.
An hour or so before dinner, when Dante got a moment with his sister, he gave her the praise she deserved. “Killer party, Aly. You really outdid yourself.”
She beamed him her beautiful smile. “I did, didn’t I?”
“It’s great. How’s my baby niece?”
“She’s good. Connor’s got her somewhere around here...”
Aly and Connor pretty much had it all now. They were in love with each other and their baby daughter. They’d had a rough road, spent too many years apart. But in the end, here they were, surrounded by family, celebrating their second marriage to each other. They were happy and Dante was happy for them.
But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t razz his sister at least a little. “Too bad those dresses my girls are wearing will never be the same.” The girls were rumpled and sweaty, their party dresses smeared with face paint and grass stains. Funny how Nic had a virtual meltdown when she accidentally spilled her soda in her lap at Camp 18—but when there was face painting and rolling on the grass involved, neither she nor her sister cared much what condition their clothes ended up in.
Aly just shrugged at his grumbling. “It’s called having fun and your daughters are good at it.”
“You always were a troublemaker,” he grumbled some more, trying hard to look disapproving.
“Get over yourself,” Aly dryly advised.
Right then, Nat shrieked with laughter as some redheaded kid Dante didn’t recognize dragged her down off the jungle gym and into the ball pit. Dante shook his head. “I think I need a drink.”
“Have a good time, big brother.” Aly leaned in close and kissed his cheek, after which he headed for the open bar.
* * *
Dante got himself a beer and then, very casually of course, went looking for Gracie. He spotted her more than once. She wore a silky blue sundress that tied with little bows at the shoulders, her long white-gold hair like a waterfall down her back. She looked sweet and delicious and he wanted to eat her right up.
Not possible at this party, but hey, a guy could dream. He would settle for just standing close to her, breathing in the fresh, flowery scent of her skin, imagining all the things he would do to her as soon as he finally got her alone.
Unfortunately, every time he would try to work his way toward her, some relative or longtime friend would grab his arm and start talking his ear off about how his daughters were growing up so fast, and the summer had been so mild this year, hadn’t it? And how were things with the Valentine Bay PD?
At dinner, Dante sat with Nicole, Natalie, his brother Pascal and Pascal’s family. Percy and Daffodil Valentine claimed two other chairs at the table. Brother and sister and well into their eighties now, neither Percy nor Daffy had ever married. The last of the Valentines for which Valentine Bay had been named, they were great-aunt and great-uncle to Connor, Gracie and the rest of the Bravo siblings. Dante had always liked them. Daffy was charming and sweet. Percy could tell you way more than you ever needed to know about the history of Valentine Bay.
Once the food had been served, the speeches began. Dante’s dad and mom got up and congratulated the happy couple, as did Percy and then Daffy. There was plenty of wine to toast Aly and Connor’s reunion. The two had never looked happier—with each other and with their adorable baby.
Dante spotted Gracie several tables away. She sat with Harper, Hailey and their older sister, Aislinn. Aislinn’s husband, Jax Winter, had the chair beside his wife. There were also three guys he didn’t recognize. The sight of those guys had irritation prickling through him. Wasn’t this supposed to be a family party?
Daffy Valentine, who sat on his left, said, “Dante. I understand our Gracie has moved into a little guest cabin on your property.”
He turned and met her twinkly blue eyes. “She wanted to get out on her own and the cabin was empty.”
The network of wrinkles on Daffy’s face deepened as she smiled. “That was so kind of you.”
“Gracie’s a good friend.”
“Oh, I have no doubt. She has such a big heart.” Daffy patted his arm with her perfectly manicured, age-spotted hand. “And I am trusting you to treat her well.”
What was he supposed to say to that? Had Gracie told the old woman what was going on between them?
“No,” said Daffy, as though answering the question he hadn’t asked aloud. “Grace has n
ever said a word to me about you. But I have eyes, young man, and I know how to use them.”
Okay, fine. The old lady had him pegged. He respected that. Enough that he refused to lie to her face. Feeling sheepish, he asked, “Am I that obvious?”
Daffy smiled wider and patted his arm again.
* * *
After dinner and dessert, there was dancing. Dante danced with Aly, with his mother, with each of his daughters and his niece Heather. Every time he looked for Gracie, she was dancing with someone else. He hesitated to cut in, mostly because he wanted her in his arms way too much and every time he spotted her with another guy, he felt like a jealous boyfriend who might just lose his cool.
And who did he think he was kidding? He was a jealous boyfriend—the secret kind. And being a secret boyfriend at a party like this? It seriously sucked.
After sunset, various family members gathered up groups of kids for sleepovers at predesignated houses. Natalie and Nicole, looking worn out and happy and clutching the gift bags Aly had given them, went home with Dante’s brother Tony and Tony’s wife, Lisa, and their boys.
Dante shouldn’t be so glad to see his own children go, but he was feeling a little nuts watching all the couples looking so happy together. He wanted time with Gracie and so far, he’d gotten none.
He felt resentful that she hadn’t sat with him during dinner, at the same time knowing damn well that if she sat with him, Daffy Valentine wouldn’t be the only one to put two and two together. Gracie’s brothers would probably get overprotective of her. At the very least, Dante would never hear the end of questions about where he and Grace were going as a couple and how serious was it, anyway? His mom would be over the moon with happiness, already planning the wedding.
Uh-uh. None of that, thanks.
But damn it, he wanted a dance. If he could just keep his absurd and pointless jealousy under control, a dance was no biggie. It was totally within the bounds of their very real friendship and family connection that he would ask Grace for a dance—during which he could not only hold her in his arms, but would also pull out all the stops to get her agreement to spending the whole night with him. Tonight. Again. At last.
Their Secret Summer Family (The Bravos 0f Valentine Bay Book 7) Page 13