Taylor frowned up at him. “Nope.”
Merry, Jo, and Ella were all missing—and Ella had told him she had a business meeting. Wetting his suddenly dry mouth with another swallow of bourbon, Grady rasped, “Call your father. Right now.”
Whatever Taylor saw on his face convinced her not to argue. Whipping out her cell phone, she pressed a button and held it up to her ear for several seconds. “No answer. Which is weird—he always picks up for me, unless he’s in a bank meeting.”
“It’s Saturday.” Grady’s head was swimming. He told himself it was the bourbon, and set the bottle down on the coffee table. “Does he work on Saturdays, usually?”
Taylor shook her head. “Only for special clients.”
Thunder grumbled in the distance as Grady cursed, low and vicious.
Taylor’s eyes got big. “Oh crap,” she faltered. “You don’t think—”
“Get in the truck.” He tossed her the keys. “I need you to drive me to the bank.”
“Yes!” Taylor snatched the keys out of the air with a nimbleness Grady couldn’t hope to match right now.
He felt gutted, split wide open and scoured raw. His head spun ceaselessly, a sickening whirl of she wouldn’t she did can’t believe but I trusted her believed in her loved—
Cutting the thought off with a savage snarl, Grady hurled himself into the passenger seat and hung on to the one thought that burned bright and clear in his brain.
He had to stop this before it was too late.
The drive into town felt interminable, even though he knew Taylor was pushing the limits of legality on speed the whole way.
A fat drop of rain splatted against the windshield, then another.
“Slow down,” he told Taylor again, peering through the windshield at the dark gray sky. These late-spring storms came up fast, and they could turn the unpaved back roads into treacherous mud slicks in minutes.
Finally, they reached the white-painted brick building with the covered wraparound porch that housed the bank. And whatever hope Grady had held out died a swift, painful death.
Uncle Harrison’s big black SUV was parked in its usual spot, and right beside it was Jo’s battered blue pickup truck.
Taylor parked just as the sky opened up. Rain pelted down furiously and the wind picked up, whipping the HEART OF SANCTUARY banner that arced over Main Street.
“Stay in the truck,” he told her.
Shooting him an incredulous look, Taylor opened her door and hopped out, holding the folder over her head to shield her face from the driving rain.
Grady didn’t bother cursing again. It wasn’t making him feel any better. Shoving out of the Jeep, he was soaked in seconds as he ran up the front steps of the bank to take shelter under the overhanging porch roof.
“Guess there’s no point telling you not to come in with me,” Grady said, bracing one hand against the bank door.
“You guessed right,” Taylor told him.
Surrendering to the inevitable, Grady pushed inside the bank lobby. Violet Harvey, the lone bank teller working the counter, raised her pale brows and pushed her cat-eye glasses up her nose.
“Oh,” she said in the vague, dreamy way that had given her a local reputation for ditziness. “Is it raining?”
Grady looked down at the puddle collecting under his boots.
Apparently deciding they didn’t have the time or patience for stupid questions, Taylor ignored Violet and towed Grady toward the back of the lobby and down the hall toward her father’s office.
Grady tipped his nonexistent hat to Violet, who shrugged and went back to the book she’d been reading before they busted in.
Taylor’s grip on his sleeve tightened when they reached the dark wood-paneled door. Now that they were actually here, she seemed scared, the bow of her lips pulled into an unhappy curve.
“What if we’re too late?” she whispered. “What if Dad thinks it’s a great idea?”
“Then it’ll be our job to explain how completely wrong he is.” Grady didn’t bother trying to work out a strategy—Taylor was about as likely to let him do all the talking as she’d been to stay in the truck—he simply put his hands against the mahogany and pushed.
The scene inside the office was almost identical to the nightmare scenarios that had been playing on an endless loop in his head ever since he saw the Windy Corner Bed & Breakfast picture.
Harrison was sitting on the green leather sofa in the corner of his office with Jo and Merry, while Ella stood before them, clearly in the middle of presenting her proposal.
All four of them looked up in startled surprise when Grady and Taylor barged in, but Grady only had eyes for Ella. The split second of guilt that tightened her pretty face nearly swiped his legs out from under him.
Even with the evidence mounted against her, he’d still wanted to believe that there was some big mistake, something going on that he didn’t know about that would explain all this away.
But there wasn’t.
“God,” he rasped. “You’re really doing it. You’re trying to steal your mother’s inheritance and turn this island into an amusement park for bored tourists.”
Ella’s eyes widened in an expression of such perfect shock, he almost laughed. Yeah, he’d been slow to catch on, but now that he knew the truth, he wasn’t going to pussyfoot around.
“Grady, you don’t understand,” Jo started, half rising from the couch.
He silenced her with a sharp gesture, never taking his glare off Ella. “I understand plenty. This whole trip was nothing but an excuse to get in your good graces so Ella could steal Miss Dottie’s house and turn it into a B and B. That’s right. I know what you’re up to.” He dropped the folder Taylor had brought him on the low glass table in front of the sofa.
Ella flinched at the slap of the papers on the table, her face drained of color.
“Is that really what you think of me?”
In three steps, Grady was in front of her, close enough to reach out and grab her shoulders.
She gasped when he touched her, but he summoned his control and didn’t squeeze bruises into her soft skin, didn’t shake her. Didn’t drag her close and crush that lying mouth under his.
He looked down at his scarred hands, bare to the world and nakedly sensitive against the cable weave of her yellow cotton sweater. “I thought you were the woman I’d work the rest of my life to be worthy of, the woman who made me want to be more than I thought was possible. Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.”
Ella gasped in a breath, her face crumpling briefly before smoothing out into a blank mask. “Grady. You smell like a distillery.”
He dropped his hands. “When the woman of your dreams turns out to be a nightmare? Yeah, you do a shot or two.”
Ella went rigid in his grasp, “Are you drunk?”
“So what if he is?” Taylor piped up. “I drove.”
“Honey, what’s going on?” Harrison asked. “What are you even doing here? We’re in the middle of a business meeting.”
“We came to stop you,” Taylor cried. “Don’t listen to anything that bitch says—if you turn Windy Corner into a hotel, it’ll wreck the whole island!”
Ella gazed into Grady’s eyes as if waiting for him to leap to her defense. But he couldn’t. Taylor was right, and the rage and fear thrumming through his blood locked his jaw shut.
“That’s enough.” Merry didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to—the furious intensity of her tone had every head in the office swiveling to her as she rose unsteadily to her feet, one hand pressed tight to the side of her pregnant stomach. “I don’t care what you think is going on here. Nobody gets to talk about Ella like that.”
“It’s okay,” Ella said, breaking the tense silence that followed. “She’s entitled to her opinion.”
That got his blood up all over again. “Gee, thanks. Except Taylor and I only get to have an opinion because she happened to find that folder in Jo’s office. When were you planning on telling
me about your little scheme? Oh right, you weren’t, because you knew I’d never let it happen.”
“Grady, calm down.” Jo sounded appalled. “This isn’t what you think.”
Eyes glittering with blue fire, Ella went toe to toe with him. “It’s exactly what he thinks. I didn’t tell him about my plans because I didn’t want to deal with this exact tantrum. And I’m not having this out with you here—please leave.”
Grady planted his feet and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Mouth a thin line, Ella pitched her voice so low that Grady almost had to lean in to hear her. “I realize you’re angry with me. But I would have hoped, after everything I told you about my childhood, you’d have the class and courtesy to avoid a public drunken spectacle like this.”
“For God’s sake, three swallows of bourbon isn’t enough to make me drunk,” he protested, his insides squirming in an uncomfortable way at the honest betrayal on Ella’s face.
“Good, then you can drive yourself home,” she said, stepping back. “I’ll walk you out.”
Since what he wanted was a few minutes alone with her, that suited Grady just fine. “Let’s go,” he growled, turning on his heel.
Leaving the shocked silence of the office and striding across the mostly empty lobby, he threw open the front door and stepped out onto the covered porch with Ella right behind him.
Slamming the door after her, Ella turned him to face her with a surprisingly strong hand on his arm.
Grady stared at her in the storm-dark afternoon light as rain fell all around them, pounding on the veranda roof in a solid wall of sound. It was hypnotic, like the white noise of waves crashing on the shore, and without conscious planning, the question grated out of his raw throat.
“How could you do this?”
CHAPTER 28
How could you do this?
Ella almost wanted to laugh, because it was funny—those were the exact words echoing in her head.
But it wasn’t funny ha-ha. Actually, she’d never felt less like laughing in her life.
His face was set in such stern, uncompromising lines, he looked like a stranger.
“I don’t have to justify anything to you,” Ella said. “This is business, between my mother and the bank. You don’t actually have a say in what Jo Ellen does with her own property.”
A curtain of windswept rain blew down Main Street, drowning out Grady’s response. Good. From the snarl on his mouth, she didn’t think she wanted to hear it, anyway.
He paced away from her to the veranda railing and back again, heedless of the rain lashing in the open sides of the porch and spattering him with droplets.
“Just tell me this—was any of it real? Or was it all research for your moneymaking plans?”
That dinged dangerously close to a sore, tender spot. “You did help me with research,” she said cautiously. “But I’ve never lied to you. Not once.”
Unless you counted lies of omission. Which she was still committing.
The cruel twist of his lips told Ella he was counting everything. “Noble of you. Except I never lied to you, at all. I opened up to you, I told you more than I’ve told anyone since I was in state-mandated therapy, trying to keep my job.”
Pain clutched at her belly. “I know,” she said. “And I listened to what you told me.”
“No you didn’t.” He shook his head, shaggy rain-darkened hair spraying water droplets. “You couldn’t have, or you’d know that this B and B idea is the last thing I’d ever want on my island. But you’re going ahead with it anyway.”
Torn between wanting to explain about Jo being in trouble and anger at Grady’s blind refusal to consider that he might be wrong, Ella wrapped both arms around her middle. The wind had kicked up, chilly and damp, making her shiver.
“Not everything is about you,” she said slowly. “But since that’s all you want to talk about, let’s be straight about what’s really ticking you off. It’s not the fact that I didn’t tell you what I was working on; it’s not even the B and B.”
“No? From where I’m standing, that seems like plenty to be ticked about.”
He swayed close to her and she smelled the sickening sweetness of whiskey again. Betrayal swelled up, fast, furious, and hardwired to the most primitive parts of her brain.
She narrowed her eyes. “You set yourself up as some Protector of the Island, like all you want is to keep it pure and safe for the horses—and maybe that’s part of it. But what you really want is to keep the island a secret, your own hidey-hole where the rest of the world can never touch you. That might be understandable after everything you’ve been through, but it’s no way for a grown man to live, Grady Wilkes. Especially not a man who expects so much courage and strength from everyone around him.”
Grady went still, blinking in the dusky light, then turned on his heel and stalked down the veranda steps and out into the storm.
Disbelief propelled Ella after him. She gasped as the rain sliced into her, the wind cutting through her sweater and jeans like cold knives. “Don’t you dare walk away from me,” she shouted. “Can’t stand to hear the truth?”
He stopped beside his Jeep. Over his shoulder, he said, “Maybe you’re right about me. Maybe I’m trying to protect myself as much as I’m trying to protect Sanctuary. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re the one determined to destroy both of us.”
Rocking back on her heels as if he’d slapped her, Ella thanked God for the rain. Grady would never know that at least half the wetness streaming down her cheeks was due to tears.
“If that’s how you really feel, I don’t think there’s anything else to say.”
His big hand clenched on the door handle, scars standing out white and livid. “This isn’t over.”
He was talking about the proposal, she knew—telling her he’d fight the B and B all the way. But when she said, “Yes it is,” she meant something else entirely.
Ella was proud of how steady she’d kept the words, when everything inside her was twisting in agony. “It never would’ve worked anyway. Relationships are hard. They take work, and guts, and hope for the future. I can’t imagine going into one with a man who’s so chained to the past that he’s walled himself up on a four-mile-long spit of land completely cut off from the rest of the world. I was willing to change everything, try everything, risk everything for you—but you’d never do the same, would you?”
Those broad shoulders tightened, but Grady didn’t turn around. Instead, he climbed into his Jeep and revved the engine before peeling out of the bank parking lot and down Main Street.
Ella stared through the driving rain until his taillights winked out of sight.
Numb, mind blank, she walked back toward the bank like a zombie. She nearly slipped on the wet wooden steps when she saw her mother and sister standing on the porch, waiting for her with identical expressions of outraged sorrow.
Ella squinted up at them, heart beating sluggish and off-kilter in her chest. “Should I … Sorry. Does Harrison have time to finish going over the plans now?”
Jo’s eyes widened in amazement. “Honey, no. He’s got your incredibly detailed, well-researched proposal. He can look it over and call me. You don’t need to go back in there. Whether he decides to extend the loan or not, you’ve done enough for one day.”
Sagging with relief—she really didn’t want to see the triumph on Taylor McNamara’s face—Ella leaned against the porch railing. “Okay. Then … I want to go home.”
“Of course!” Merry hurried down the steps to wrap her warm arms around Ella’s rain-chilled shoulders. “Let’s get you home, you need to get out of these wet clothes and get dry, before you catch a chill.”
“Isn’t that my line?” Jo herded them into the truck with a determined smile.
“Just practicing my mommying,” Merry said breezily. Or as breezily as anyone could say while hauling herself up into the cab of a truck while very, very pregnant. It took the discreet applica
tion of one of Ella’s hands to her sister’s behind before all of them were settled in the dry, stuffy interior of the truck.
“You’re going to be a great mom.” Ella gave in to temptation and tipped over until her head was propped on Merry’s shoulder. “I can’t wait to come back to see it for myself.”
Beneath her cheek, Merry froze. Ella felt it when her sister glanced over at Jo in the driver’s seat.
“Well,” Merry said, clearly feeling her way. “It would be super-efficient if you just stayed here. At least until the baby is born. It’s only a few weeks away!”
Staring out the windshield at the water-blackened tree branches waving wildly in the wind, Ella swallowed until the pain in her chest was compressed into a hard lump just under her breastbone. “I can’t. I’ve got a real life back in D.C.—one that I’ve neglected long enough. I thought maybe … I had a reason to stay. But that was a fantasy. And now that reality has set in, I need to get away.”
“But—” Merry started, high-pitched and unhappy, but Jo cut her off.
“We understand. Don’t we, Merry? And I’ll always be grateful that you spent this time here.”
Driving down a pitted country road with these two women, one she’d loved her entire life and one she’d only begun to learn to love, Ella felt her chest constrict until her bones pressed on that hard knot of pain.
“I’m glad, too,” she said thickly. “More than I can say. And I’ll visit when I can. But right now, I need to leave.”
Tears threatened in Merry’s shaky voice. “Right now?”
Ella breathed out a shuddery sigh, eyes open and blank on the stormy sky, seeing nothing but Grady’s hard, accusing eyes. “When I said I wanted to go home, I meant to D.C. When we get back to Windy Corner, I’m packing. I’ll catch the afternoon ferry to the mainland.”
Merry’s arm stole around her, squashing Ella to her side. “Okay,” she said, and Ella almost smiled, picturing the Brave Little Toaster expression on her sister’s face. “But you have to promise to come back the minute—the second!—I go into labor. I’m not kidding. I know we’ve had our differences since we came to Sanctuary, but there’s no one in the world I can count on the way I count on you. You’re my rock. Baby and I are going to need you.”
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