by Liz Talley
“I meant what I said.” His voice had dropped down to a very quiet but powerful tenor. “Tomorrow night is a real date.”
But he’d only asked because of Darin and Maddie.
“Okay,” she said, and left the phone beside the tub after they hung up, pretending he was still there as she let the hot water touch her body and fantasized about what he looked like naked.
* * *
GRANT HEARD DARIN moving about just before he crawled into bed Friday night and, pulling on a pair of boxers, walked in to find his brother at the computer, playing a game of solitaire.
It was an exercise his occupational therapist had recommended years ago. One that Darin struggled to complete with any accuracy.
“I haven’t seen you play that in a while.” Was this what Darin did at night? Kept trying to succeed where he’d failed? Grant had thought his brother had given up on ever getting solitaire right.
“I was wrong to quit,” Darin said now. “Quitters never get anywhere.” He sounded like himself at fourteen, going out for the high school baseball team.
And again Grant was struck by the sudden changes in Darin. If having a girlfriend was going to have this kind of effect on Darin, then Grant had to do what he could to encourage the situation.
At the same time, he had to maintain enough control that no one got hurt. Because while Maddie and Darin could experience adult emotions, they were unable to discern between what was doable and not, what was good for them and not. They were both unable to see pitfalls that a normal adult would get from the start.
“I’ve got some good news,” Grant said, watching as Darin moved an ace up to the plateau to place it on a two of the same suit, rather than moving it up to the home four and adding the two on top of it.
At least he was putting the right denominations on the right suit.
“What good news?” Darin asked, trying to put a king up where the aces were supposed to stack.
“If Maddie says yes to a date, we can go.”
His brother turned around so swiftly he knocked his mouse to the floor. His mouth hanging wide-open, he stared at Grant.
And Grant wondered, for one horrible, shameful second, how any woman would want to go out with a grown man who didn’t always swallow his spit.
Then he thought of Maddie. Who also drooled on occasion when she was talking or eating.
And he remembered sitting at his mother’s grave site after all the cars had pulled away, remembered Darin coming to find him and sitting with him there. Just sitting. Until Grant had been able to get up and leave his mother so irrevocably behind.
“Grant?”
He blinked.
“I said she said yes.”
He tuned Darin out sometimes. Especially when his brother was jabbering like a little kid. But he wouldn’t have missed a phone call.
“How do you know?”
“I already asked her.”
“When?”
“Today. When you were loading up the truck after I didn’t get to see her after therapy. We don’t know when we’ll get to walk together again since you want to watch my therapy and she’s busy at the day care and Lynn needs her, so I said we should go on a date because then we could spend the whole time together on purpose.”
Grant grinned. His brother had taken control of the situation. “Well, call her back and tell her it’s tomorrow night,” he said. He felt like whooping right along with his brother.
Instead, he left the room, shutting the door firmly behind him when Darin picked up his phone.
* * *
“HI, MISTER, WHATCHA DOIN’?”
Grant looked up from the narrow trench where he’d been busy burying an electrical line and was greeted by a pudgy little face topped by reddish-brown curls. Kara’s big blue eyes glinted with curiosity.
“Putting lights in your yard so you can see out here, even at night.”
In jeans, a T-shirt and tennis shoes, Kara was obviously dressed for her flight later that morning.
“Mama said you was stalling. She said I bettaw not get in the way.”
“It would seem that you don’t listen all that well, young lady.” The soft feminine voice, accompanied by a chuckle, came from behind Grant. “And I said he was installing the lights.” Running her fingers through the little girl’s curls, Lynn met his gaze. “Darin said to tell you that he finished putting the bulbs in all the lights.”
It was the first time she’d looked him in the eye all morning. They’d hadn’t shared more than a brief hello since he and Darin had arrived almost two hours before.
After having Darin help him by holding chalk lines and tape measures, he’d left his brother out front where there was a stoop for him to sit on as he worked at putting the plastic pieces of the light fixtures together.
Darin was about to drive him crazy that morning with talk about his date. In his excitement he’d reverted to repeating himself over and over again, and then laughing when he realized what he was doing.
“I gave him some lemonade and came out to ask if you wanted some.”
She licked her lips and he swore she was doing it on purpose to drive him crazy.
Her eyes didn’t mention lemonade at all.
And he started to get hard.
In jeans and a white blouse she looked young and fresh...and he could see through her blouse. Her bra had lace on it.
He was going out with that bra, or one like it, in just a matter of hours.
“I’m going to Daddy’s house,” Kara said. Lynn’s smile faded. And Grant saw a flash of some deep emotion in her gaze before she looked away, saying, “That’s him now, sweetie. Why don’t you run and tell Daddy hello?”
Grant wasn’t going to look across the grassy expanse to the sidewalk leading back to Lynn’s bungalow. He wasn’t going to intrude on this morning’s private goings-on.
With one last glance at Grant, Lynn turned and followed her daughter. He watched her go in spite of himself.
When Kara and Lynn reached Lynn’s ex-husband they were too far away for him to hear what was said but he didn’t miss the way Kara threw herself at the man. And the way he picked up his daughter, giving her a hug and a kiss, and then leaned forward to give her mother a kiss, too.
The bastard was wearing golf shorts, a polo shirt and deck shoes. His hair was stylishly short and he had a gold watch on his wrist.
He was smiling like a man who loved his family.
The family he’d walked out on.
Resentment flared within him. He’d never have that chance. Never know what it was like to greet his wife and child. To have the right to touch and kiss a woman any time of the day or night. He’d never wanted it before, either.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THEY WERE HALFWAY through dinner at a little Italian place she’d never been to before when Lynn realized she hadn’t thought of Kara and Brandon and Douglas once in the past hour. She probably wouldn’t have thought of them at all if Maddie hadn’t suddenly blurted out her daughter’s name.
“Oh, it’s eight o’clock, Lynn. Kara has to be in bed right now and she didn’t call to say good-night.”
Darin frowned, looking at Lynn. “She’s right. Maybe you should call to make sure she’s all right.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Grant said. “She’s probably just staying up a little later tonight.”
Maddie was shaking her head before he finished. “Kara’s bedtime is eight o’ clock every night. Huh, Lynn?” The pretty blonde had worn a bright colored maxi dress with sandals and looked very cute. Some of the girls at The Lemonade Stand had done her makeup for her.
“That’s right, Maddie, it is,” Lynn said, disconcerted and concerned, too. Surely Brandon hadn’t forgotten that he’d said he’d call to have Kara say good-ni
ght.
But she’d forgotten the time.
Pulling out her phone, she checked to see if she’d missed a call.
“Call him.” Grant, dressed in black casual pants and an off-white oxford shirt, put his arm along the back of her chair as he spoke.
Lynn had already speed-dialed Brandon and was listening for the ring.
It wasn’t wrong for her to have lost track of time. Kara was Brandon’s responsibility that night, and he was as capable as Lynn of caring for their daughter.
But her lack of awareness still made her uncomfortable.
“Hi, Lynnie—sorry!” Brandon sounded out of breath as he picked up on the fourth ring.
“Bran? Is everything okay?” Darin and Maddie, sitting across from her at the linen-covered table, had stopped eating and were watching her, as if they could hear what Brandon was saying.
Grant took a sip of wine. It was white and dry—a perfect complement to their pasta. He’d ordered a bottle.
“Everything’s fine,” Brandon said. “I got her in the bath by 7:45, just like your chart said, but it’s a double-wide tub and she was laughing and swimming so I let her stay in an extra ten minutes. She’s in her jammies now and we were getting ready to call you but I left my phone out in the family room and had to run to get it.”
Bless him for being so sweet. He was trying so hard to please her. And she was too unbending.
Aware of the eyes trained on her, she said, “Can I talk to her?” After she’d heard all about the bumpy plane ride and Daddy’s bathtub and Douglas’s cast, she told her precious little girl that she loved her and to sleep well. As she hung up the phone, she felt like crying.
“Is she okay, Lynn?” Maddie asked.
“Why were they late?” Darin wanted to know.
She put the phone back in her purse and felt Grant’s fingers lightly brush her shoulder. She sat there, frozen for a second. It was the barest of touches, but it was enough to bring song back into her night.
He brought his hand down from her chair, and she was disappointed. Until she felt it brush her thigh through the ankle-length black-and-white cotton skirt she was wearing
The cotton was plentiful, pulled together at the elastic waist to give the skirt fullness. But the fabric was light. And she could feel the warmth of his hand through it.
She looked over at him and he returned her gaze.
“Why are you two staring at each other like that?” Maddie asked.
“I think they like each other,” Darin replied.
Lynn coughed. Took a sip of wine. And relayed Kara’s phone conversation word for word.
She didn’t mention Brandon at all.
He wasn’t her family anymore.
* * *
THE FLOWING SKIRT might have, technically, hidden her body from his view, but it only served to ignite his imagination, to tease him, to draw his mind to what lay beneath. Her tight white T-shirt, on the contrary, showed him smooth, luscious, feminine curves that brought his eyes back to them again and again. Made him want to skim his hands over them. And more.
But with Darin and Maddie within sight of them, Grant had to settle for strolling barefoot beside Lynn, hands in his pockets. Every now and then the water would touch their toes, as the waves ebbed and flowed.
It wasn’t all that warm out, maybe sixty, on that first Saturday night in March, but he was hotter than summer.
Lynn and Maddie had brought zip-up hoodies and were both wearing them now—the jackets, not the hoods. Definitely not the hoods. Lynn had left her hair down, and it curled softly around her shoulders to the middle of her back.
He ached to run his fingers through it.
She’d left the jacket unzipped, too.
The shore was mostly beach, with a cliffside or two thrown in, and they lost sight of Darin and Maddie for a second as the front two went around a jutting cliff’s edge.
He considered pulling Lynn into the alcove the cliff provided, to see if she was as eager to get naked with him as he was to get naked with her.
But he hadn’t even held her hand yet.
“You and your ex seem to be good friends,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of the surf.
If anything would cool his ardor it would be thoughts of that kiss he’d seen the other man give Lynn earlier that day.
“We are,” Lynn said, her hand brushing close to his.
She might be Brandon Duncan’s ex-wife, but she was his date. “Brandon has been my best friend since junior high,” she continued, her voice softening in a way he hadn’t heard before.
“You dated in high school, then?”
“I never dated anyone but him,” she admitted. “Not until after the divorce. I went on a couple of dates that first year. Dinner or a movie—never both, though, because I didn’t want to be away from Kara that long.”
“What about when Brandon had her? You said he’s never missed a visit.”
“That first year I used pretty much all of that free time to study. And after that, we were living at the Stand and, as you’ve seen, there’s never a lack of something that needs doing there.”
He took away one thing from what she’d said. He was her first real date since her divorce.
Not that they were really on a date. They were chaperones.
With privileges?
He’d told her this was going to be a real date. And had lain awake in bed the night before wondering what she’d thought he’d meant by that.
Wondering how far he was going to get.
And knowing that he couldn’t go very far at all. Lynn was definitely not the type of woman who would be good with a little mutual fun on the side. She’d want commitment along with the sex.
“I take it that means Brandon is the only man you’ve ever slept with?”
“Yes.”
Wow. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been with a woman who’d only had one lover. “I could overhear some of what he said on the phone tonight.” He hadn’t meant to say anything. But the night, the moon over the water, the waves, his handicapped brother up ahead holding the hand of the pretty blonde walking beside him—they were all conspiring against him. “He called you Lynnie.”
“That’s his name for me.”
“But he still uses it.” And the fact rankled. Which made no sense.
“He’s my friend.”
“He told you he loved you before he hung up.”
“He always does.”
“You said, ‘You, too.’” And he’d wondered, if she hadn’t been sitting at the table with the three of them, if she’d have said, “‘Love you, too.”
“Yeah.” Lynn stepped ahead of him to get around another jutting cliff. And then an expanse of deserted white beach stretched out before them again. Santa Raquel wasn’t a huge town and most of the beaches were private. During the summer there might be a few people out and about at night, but for the most part, the coastline was deserted after dark.
“You still love him.”
“Of course.”
Grant’s skin cooled measurably.
“You don’t love someone for more than half your life and then just stop.” She sounded resigned. Not all that happy about the fact.
Grant was confused. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and took small steps beside her, inhaling the fishy sea smells, tasting the salt on his lips. “And he still loves you.”
“Yeah.”
Was he the only one missing something here? “So, if you don’t mind me asking, why did the two of you divorce?”
Her gaze was focused ahead of them on Maddie and Darin. The other two were standing at the shore, kicking sand into the ocean with their toes and laughing.
“He... When I was pregnant with Kara, he met someone. An
d the week that I had her, he...was...unfaithful...to me.”
Life was messed up. How could anyone...the very week his wife was giving birth...and to Lynn? The woman was the perfect combination of sexy and wholesome. Perfect wife material. Why in hell would a man ever have a need to stray from that?
Darin and Maddie, still holding hands, moved on.
Grant took Lynn’s hand. She didn’t immediately grasp hold of his, but she didn’t pull away, either.
He knew now that her hesitance wasn’t due to having been abused. He knew, too, that she wanted him. Her signs were too obvious.
A guy knew when a woman was sending vibes in his direction.
But what this guy did not do was take what belonged to another man. In any fashion.
“So you divorced him,” he guessed, needing to know quite clearly where she stood with her ex. If they were entertaining a time-out, with a caveat that they might get back together, he needed to know.
He’d still be willing to have sex with her—if she wanted to have sex with him—but he’d need that right out on the table.
“No.” Lynn shook her head. “He filed for divorce. I’d have stayed with him.”
She didn’t sound any happier about that than the rest of it.
“We had a life together, a lifetime planned. We’d been working toward it since we were in high school....”
He couldn’t even imagine that one. In high school he’d had a lot of things on his mind, but not one of them included any kind of life plan. Or family plan, either, for that matter.
It was what he’d ended up with, though. Not that he was unhappy about that. He loved his brother. They had a good life together.
Darin and Maddie stopped again and bent down to look at something. Maddie shrieked and jumped back, fell on her butt in the wet sand. Laughing uproariously, Darin reached down to help her up. When she was standing again, he kept an arm around Maddie’s waist.
And they moved on. Off in their own world.
Neither of them had glanced back toward Grant and Lynn.
“I don’t get it,” Grant said, moving a little closer to Lynn, threading his fingers more snugly with hers. “Is he a philanderer? He loves you but doesn’t want to be married to you because he wants to have flings on the side?”