“Pleasure to make the acquaintance, Mr. deVry. I’ve seen photos of your work. Always appreciate someone who is unafraid to build on old tradition with new vision. Grace is fortunate indeed to have such a talented friend.”
Langston’s surprised expression likely matched her own. With a delighted smile, he gave Brodie’s proffered hand a quick, firm shake. “Langston, please. I’m glad to hear it. I think you’ll approve of what our girl here has in mind for the place.”
Grace winced a bit at the “our girl” reference. It didn’t go unnoticed when Brodie didn’t directly respond to the comment, but after a noncommittal nod and a polite smile, he turned to face her, moving just enough between her and Langston so that whatever he planned to say would remain private between them. “You’re okay?”
That he was still putting concern for her first, especially given the fact that her role in the hijacking of part of his heritage had just been thrust between them again, took all those hot and heavy moments and added something decent and thoughtful. Making them—and him—a hundred times more dangerous to her general well-being. She wasn’t sure if she should be encouraged and take his consideration as a sign of détente . . . or be wary of being led into some kind of seduction. She knew better than to think that what had just happened between them—exploded between them—automatically changed anything.
“I am,” she said, wishing he’d grin or wink or do something Brodie-like to indicate what was going on behind that searching gaze of his. “Thank you,” she added sincerely. “For asking. I appreciate that.”
His lips curved a bit then, and she made the unfortunate discovery that his being Brodie-like was a hundred times more lethal now that she knew exactly what kind of havoc that mouth of his could really wreak.
“If you’re certain of that, then I’ll leave you two to your business. I’ve work of my own needing some attention.” He sounded casual and natural, as if conferring on their schedules was something they did routinely. “I’ll be back ’round later.”
“Wait. I—that is, what we were just—I mean, I don’t know what you—”
“Stop your stammering, luv. I won’t be coming by to collect on some imagined promise I thought ye just made. It was a moment. And a mighty damn fine one.” He lowered his voice to a rough whisper that put every nerve bundle in her erogenous zones right back on red alert. “I’m no’ expecting anything. Hopeful maybe,” he added, dimples flashing as the grin deepened, “but I’d be lying if I said otherwise.”
“I don’t know what you—”
“Shh.” He placed a quick finger to her lips.
Just that brief touch, along with the vivid memories it evoked, not to mention her twitchy nerve bundles, made her knees tremble and all points north and south put the welcome mat right back out again.
“Maybe I’m simply interested in finding out what deVry has in mind for the auld place.”
“Is that why you came by?”
“I didn’t know he was on board, but yes, I was curious to find out how you were going to get from big, empty cavern to inn. Having seen his work, I’ll admit my curiosity has grown. Are ye willing to share?”
Am I ever. “Um . . .” She had to clear her throat and put some starch back in her knees. “They’re rough sketches, and everything might change once he’s looked at the place in person, but—”
“Go talk with your friend, Grace. I’ll be by when my work is done. And we’ll see what we see.” He leaned in, stole a quick kiss, then looked as surprised that he’d done so as she. Turned out that brief flash of vulnerability was far more devastating to her equilibrium than any sexy whisper or impulsive kiss.
“Seemed the natural thing to do,” he said, although she wondered if the explanation might have been more for his benefit than hers.
He turned around, giving Langston a nod. “Good to meet you.” And startled her again when he gave his thigh a hearty slap. “Where are ye, laddie?” he called out.
Scuffling sounds erupted in the corner behind an old stack of lobster traps. Whomper came trotting out with a half-chewed pot buoy proudly clenched in his teeth, tail wagging hopefully. He paused as he took in the newcomer and shrank back a step.
“Come on, Mischief,” Brodie said. “Keep me company. Bring your new friend there with ye.”
Whomper took another long, baleful look at Langston, but his adoration for Brodie was stronger, and another thigh pat had him bounding gleefully to Brodie’s side. Not so much as a glance in her direction, Grace noted with a roll of her eyes. Men.
She laughed when Brodie shot her a wink and a shrug and watched the two incorrigible males depart, shaking her head as she realized they had a similar confident swagger. She briefly wondered if she would look back and realize that was the moment she’d lost complete control of her life.
“Well, I see you’ve fit right in with the local population.”
Grace flushed straight to her roots. “Langston, I—”
He walked into the middle of the big, open space, the light of amusement making his sky blue eyes that much bluer. “Now, now, don’t go blustering and blushing. I was beginning to worry that you’d chucked your old life so you could come up here and hide out forever. Good to see that’s not the case.” After a quick but thorough study of her face, he turned his astute eye to the boathouse interior. “Caught you a bit off guard, too, if I do say.”
“You’re the one person who knows I came up here to reconnect with Ford, to build . . . well, to build a life, a future. Hopefully one that includes him. Then I’ll figure out what comes next. I wasn’t—I’m not—looking for anything else at the moment.” She sighed. That had been the truth. Now . . . now she didn’t know what she wanted. Or didn’t want.
“The truth is I was hiding before, in my old life. Now . . . I feel like I’ve finally really come out, joined the world at large. I can no longer hide behind the comfort of knowing I can always predict what will happen next. That’s exciting. And scary as hell. I need to take it one step at a time.”
He glanced her way, a bit of the devil in his eyes. “You didn’t look all that scared a moment ago.” He waved off her visible mortification at being caught doing something so completely out of character. “I’m saying that’s a good thing. You stay too closed off. I understand why. I haven’t forgotten what you’ve told me about your childhood, growing up being moved from distant relative to distant relative after your mother passed. You were barely school age.”
“Relative is probably a . . . relative term. When I said distant, I was being . . . kind. To myself.”
Langston reached out, took her arm and squeezed it gently, then let it go. “I knew what you meant. Something equivalent to off-the-books foster care.”
“At best.”
“I know you had to feel abandoned, by your mom, by Ford.”
“He’s thirteen years older than I am. He enlisted when Mom died, so it—”
“Hurt you all the same. I know as an adult you understand why he made the choices he did. Then, anyway. It’s easy to say that you don’t take those choices personally. Much harder to actually do. Especially when you’re a five-year-old little girl who pretty much lost her entire family in the span of a few short weeks.”
“Ford wasn’t really in my life much before that, at least, not from his perspective.” From Grace’s perspective, she’d worshiped her older brother. He’d been everything to her. In fact, she had stronger memories of him than she did of her own mother. Her mother hadn’t been well before she’d had Grace, and afterward her condition had only worsened. Grace hadn’t known then, but her mother had battled severe depression as well as prescription addiction. She was thankful neither of those had been part of her own life and, as far as she knew, not Ford’s life, either. At least up through his time in the military, anyway.
She’d never known her father. As far as she knew he’d taken off before she was born and might have been nothing more than a one-night stand. No one ever talked about him. By the time she wa
s old enough to ask more specific questions, she’d been shuttled so many times she wasn’t living with anyone who’d even directly known her mom, much less known who had knocked her up. Grace wasn’t even sure if she and Ford had the same father, though she knew they resembled each other pretty strongly . . . or had as children.
Her direct memories of her mother were mostly of her being closed away in a dark room, always needing rest and for the house to be quiet. There were occasional trips to the hospital, some stays longer than others. Through it all, there had been other adults in and out of the house who had helped out, but it had been Ford who had mostly taken care of her, though he’d made it clear he didn’t appreciate the responsibility.
Not that that had mattered to Grace. He might have thought she was a drag and a burden, but he’d been there for her, gotten her dressed, brushed her hair, made her meals, and when she’d told him she was afraid of the dark, he’d sat in her room and told her silly stories until he was sure she was asleep before he left her room at night. He’d even made a nightlight out of a battery-operated camping lantern he’d found in the garage. Then, right before her fifth birthday, their mom had gone into the hospital again and hadn’t come out.
Ford had just turned eighteen. He’d told Grace he’d joined the Army and had to go fight for their country in some desert far, far away. She’d be proud of him. He’d promised he’d be back to see her. Except he hadn’t come back. Well, he had in body, but in spirit, he’d been a stranger to her. To everyone, really. He’d found out where she was living and had stuck around long enough to make sure she was okay. She’d convinced him she was, praying he’d realize that she was anything but—then he was gone again, back overseas. She’d been nine then. And so the routine went.
She knew exactly how many tours he’d gone on, though she hadn’t always known where. She’d been so proud of him when he’d made it into the Army Rangers Special Forces. She’d bragged to anyone who would listen, but she hardly ever heard from him. She got postcards occasionally, fewer and fewer from that point on, and had treasured them as if they were worth a royal fortune. To her, they had been. As she’d gotten older, into her teen years, she’d wondered how she could love him so much and be so angry with him at the same time.
She’d been eighteen and legally independent—though she’d been on her own in every way that mattered far earlier than that—when he’d finally retired from the military and come back for good. By then, they were more estranged than not, and she was a pissed-off teenager who hadn’t been all that forgiving when he’d finally come to see her. He’d moved around some after that, and she’d lost track of him, mostly because when Ford didn’t want to be found, there wasn’t any finding him. She’d only found out he’d settled in Maine by accident. A woman he’d been seeing had gone to the trouble of tracking Grace down and sending her a note, telling her where Ford was and what he was doing with his life, asking her to please come up and see him.
The fact that it was some strange woman asking and not Ford himself told her all she needed to know about how welcome a visit from her would be. She’d been about to graduate with her bachelor’s degree and start law school and had long since decided she was better off alone. She’d told herself to stop thinking about him or wanting what she couldn’t have. But the note had shaken her up. More than she’d wanted to admit. She’d finally compromised by sending him an invitation to her graduation, not sure which she was dreading more—that he’d come and be all happy in some new life . . . or that he’d stay away and reject her once again.
He hadn’t come. No note. No phone call. So, she’d never gone to Maine. She had no idea what had happened to the woman. For all Grace knew, Ford had a passel of kids and multiple ex-wives. She only knew he was still in Maine because she’d done a little digging on him through a lawyer friend of hers who had a variety of contacts and verified that the address on his tax forms still listed him as living in Blueberry Cove, Maine. He filed as single and didn’t list any dependants, not that that necessarily meant he didn’t have any. Under occupation, it said scientist and that his employer was an organization that funded endangered wildlife study and rehabilitation. She couldn’t really picture him doing that, but then she probably wouldn’t recognize her brother if she bumped into him on the street.
“I know how important it is to you, to do what you’re doing,” Langston said, breaking gently into her thoughts. “You know I worry about you doing all this and getting your hopes up—”
“I’m—I know this isn’t going to be some magical reunion. We’ve talked about that. I know it may end up that my brother and I simply reside in the same place and that’s as good as it will ever get. But . . . it’s more than I had. I fully believe it would be a good thing for Ford to know me, to have me in his life, but this is ultimately the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. It’s all for me. I don’t belong anywhere, Langston. If I’d come here and it had felt off or wrong or ridiculous or . . . or as foolish as it sounds when I try to explain it to anyone, I’d have gone back. Or done something else.”
“But . . . I’m guessing that wasn’t the case.”
She shook her head, and knew her heart was in her eyes because his expression softened and the worry she knew he still felt was exposed. “It was . . . well, it was simply right. The water here . . . so much of it, everywhere you look, the bays, the inlets, the ocean. It’s so blue. So beautiful. It fills my heart, makes it pound. I can’t even explain it. How is it I’ve never been here and it’s the closest thing to home I’ve ever felt? Maybe it was that way for Ford, too. Maybe the water has some meaning to him, like it does to me. Or maybe it’s nothing like that and there is nothing that connects us but the same zip code. It doesn’t matter. What matters is I like it here. I like the water. I also like the quiet of the place, the slower, more deliberate pace. There is such a strong history here. The Cove has endurance and fortitude over centuries of time, and yet it feels intimate and personal, not cold and statistical, like a footnote in some history book. I’m liking the people, too, as I get to know them. And they seem to be welcoming me. I want to be here and I’m already falling in love with Blueberry Cove and the harbor and this scary new life. I haven’t a freaking clue what the hell I’m doing . . . not a one, Lang, and I just don’t care.”
She smiled at her friend. For the first time since arriving in Maine, since signing her name on a dotted line and taking out a loan for a business she had no idea if she could run, but desperately wanting to find out, she let every bit of her hopes and dreams show. “I hope this life will eventually involve Ford, too. He was the catalyst to all of it. When I finally admitted I didn’t want to forget him, that I wanted—needed—to find him, reunite my family, this whole hair-brained idea took root and it wouldn’t let go. Or I couldn’t let it go. But he’s not all of this. It’s become so much more.”
Langston’s smile deepened and the worry abated as a more typical gleam of excitement filled his eyes. “I can see that. You know I’ll worry anyway, just as you know I’ll do whatever I can to support you.”
“That means more to me than you will ever know. I realize we haven’t known each other long in the big-picture scheme of things, but you know you’re my other real family.” Her eyes got a little glassy when he nodded, and the honest affection he had for her shone very clearly in his eyes. “I’m scared, Lang. To death, actually. Like, a thousand times a day I wonder what the hell I’ve done. But the fear is almost like this kind of cool, energizing thing. It makes me feel . . . alive,” she said, being as honest and frank as she’d ever been. “Hitting the big three-o and then being passed over for partner—a position I’d worked my whole career for, lobbied hard for, and damn well deserved—should have crushed me. Devastated me. And . . . all I felt was relief.”
She paced and looked around the open space, but her thoughts were on her life as it had been, a mere ten months ago. God, it felt like a lifetime ago already. “I couldn’t ignore that. I had to . . . well, to figure out why,
to reassess. Everything. To ask myself if that was all there was. And if not . . . then what did I really want? What I realized I wanted was family. Not the biological clock kind, though that’s probably in the mix somewhere, I suppose, but I wanted back the one I already have.” She looked at him again and grinned. “You know, you played a part in the decision, too.”
He looked honestly surprised. “I can’t fathom how. I was the one who tried to talk you out of it.”
She laughed. “You have to admit that’s pretty funny coming from the guy who lives for challenges. Your favorite hobby is taking risks.”
“Yes, but the difference is, it’s my nature. I don’t know any other way to be. I didn’t think that was at all the case with you. I was trying to be a good friend.”
“And you were. That’s just it. You’ve become so dear to me, and—” She broke off and her smile turned wry. “Don’t let this alarm you or anything, but I trust you. I let myself rely on you—which speaks huge loud volumes you probably don’t even realize. And, well, that was part of what made me want to reach out to Ford. To see if maybe we could establish something. Anything. I know what it can be like, because I have that with you. So it gave me the confidence to try. You know?”
“You humble me, Grace.”
She could see in his expression that he meant that sincerely.
“You’re one of the few people I feel the need to take care of, besides myself, of course.” He flashed a smile. “I’m glad you feel you can trust me, rely on me. Because you can. Even if it means surrendering your life in the city and moving to the back of the beyond. An innkeeper? I’ll admit I still don’t see that part. You’re a brilliant lawyer, so good at reading people, assessing what they need, and handling challenging emotional environments deftly. Your firm has to feel the loss. I’m sure they’re kicking themselves ten times over for letting you go.”
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