Bag in hand, hand over her mouth, she bolted into the guest cottage.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rattled by Grace’s unexpected presence on the island, Jim hovered in the morning shadows at the end of the hallway and watched the seconds tick past on his wristwatch.
He needed his new putter. If he had any chance of improving his game, he had to sneak back into the bedroom and retrieve it.
What was she doing here today? Her schedule—the one that was planned nearly a year in advance, the one that her nice young assistant always made sure he had a copy of so that he could plan his schedule around it—had clearly shown that she wasn’t supposed to fly home until the morning of Lizzie’s wedding, then head right back to the Mainland that same night.
Thirty minutes later, he finally got up the nerve to open the bedroom door, and peek through the crack in the doorway.
She was sleeping on her stomach, her face buried in the pillow, the soft womanly snore cute and sexy. There was safety in the fact that she was dead to the world. Once asleep, his wife had the uncanny ability to sleep through anything.
He slipped into the room and headed toward the corner of the room where he’d stuck the putter.
Gone.
Jim frowned. He couldn’t remember putting it away, but in case his mind had vacated, he went to search through his closet.
Still nothing.
He stood up, and hands on hips, swept the room with his gaze. And when he found himself engrossed in the sexy curve of his wife’s neck, he turned his back on her and headed toward the walk-in closet that was reserved just for his wife.
Inside, he pushed aside the boxes that lined the top shelf, searching, then when he couldn’t find it there, he started on the bottom of the closet, hoping against hope that she’d simply thought to outsmart him by sticking the thing in a corner, then forgetting about it.
Although Grace didn’t forget about much. And she didn’t let him forget either.
He could feel his blood pressure rise and his heart begin to pound. As he pushed aside a silky nightgown that he hadn’t seen Grace in for more years than he could count, he inhaled a deep calming breath.
With his nose buried in the soft material and his hand blindly searching the back of the closet, he inhaled the unique scent of his often absent wife. His erection returned in full force.
He was getting turned on. And with her in residence, too. That would never do.
He stopped breathing, although by now the scent had filled his brain, and burrowed further into the closet until his fingers wrapped around the handle of a golf club. Bingo.
Holding his breath, Jim backed out of the closet, ignoring the scent that tickled body parts that hadn’t been tickled in years.
Putter gripped in his hand, Jim schlepped out of the closet, tiptoed through the bedroom, and headed outside where he climbed on his golf cart and sped toward the course. He didn’t stop until he reached the first green where he was enveloped by the peace and quiet all around him.
Jim set up the ball, lined up his shot, and caressed the ball with the putter. It zinged to the left and ended up in the shrubs surrounding the course. He tossed another ball on the green, lined up for another shot, and—
“Here you are.”
His body jerked. His shot went wild. The ball flew toward the nearest water trap. “Fuck, Harry.”
“Sorry, old man.”
Jim rounded on the other men. “Couldn’t you wait until I finished swinging?”
“We’ve got a surprise for you,” Ned said.
“A belated birthday gift,” Andy added.
Grumbling under his breath, he said, “All I want is a little peace and quiet, and some time to practice my swing.”
Harry interrupted his tirade. “We’ve got something that’ll help with that.”
With the head of his putter, Jim nudged another half dozen balls into a line. “What could possibly be better?”
“Our surprise.”
He lifted his head, glanced at his friends, saw Ned poke Andy in the ribs as in unison, all three mens’ attention turned toward the path coming out of the trees. Jim followed their gaze.
A young woman with long tawny hair appeared. She picked her way over the gravel along the path, stepped onto the first hole green, and headed toward him, the spikes of her high heeled shoes leaving an indent in the grass.
“You’re ruining the green,” he ground out.
She peered over her shoulder, then bent down and pulled off one shoe, then the other. Her tank top pulled away from her chest, giving him an excellent view down the front of her top. Her short shorts rode up her thighs and he felt something in him uniquely male stir.
Twice in one day.
His heart did a flip flop.
If he didn’t get his frustration—and these sexual urges—under control, he was going to be a dead man before the end of the day.
She straightened, holding the shoes by the heels in one hand. “Better?”
He gritted his teeth. “Much.”
She turned a wide smile on the other men. “Hi, boys.”
“Gisele,” they all said at the same time and when Jim looked over at them, he could’ve sworn he saw them preening.
He turned his attention back to her, gave her a narrow eyed, suspicious look. This woman was breaking his number one rule. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“Harry and the boys didn’t tell you?”
Harry and the boys. He turned back to them and they were all ogling her like a bunch of junior high, sex-starved boys. “No.”
She stuck one hand on her hip and sashayed toward him. “I’m your birthday present, Jim.”
For a second, his thoughts hit the gutter and he envisioned an act so naughty, he was certain his heart would give out before the dirty deed was even done. Then he cleared away the images, eyed the ball on the ground, and gave it a tap with his putter. “My birthday was last month.”
“I know.” Her ultra sultry voice sent a shiver up his spine. “Forgive me. This was the earliest I could pull myself away from the circuit.”
Despite her close proximity, he held his ground, refusing to be cowed by this young woman. “The circuit?”
She stopped inches from him and dropped her shoes on the green where one of the heels dug into the soft ground. “The pro circuit, Jim. Happy birthday. I’m your new golf instructor.”
Something in his chest squeezed tight, forcing the air from his lungs, and for a split second, he figured he’d died and gone to heaven. But then he heard the sound of his wife’s voice in the distance, and he took a deep breath and exhaled.
Life on the stock market floor had certainly been a lot less stressful.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Grace wasn’t certain what she needed to do to get Jim’s attention off the golf course. But she did know that she needed help if she was going to succeed…even if she didn’t necessarily relish the help she’d enlisted.
Which was why the three women approaching her were both welcome and unwelcome.
But this was better than losing her temper as she so often did these days. Imbalanced hormones. Lack of sleep. Lack of sex. Any one of those could be responsible for the fact that she could go from a cool-headed business woman to insane in under three-point-five seconds.
“Good morning, Grace,” Leta Johnson sang out as she crossed the pool area to the patio where Grace was enjoying a tall glass of iced lemon water. “We heard you were back on the island.”
She pasted a polite smile on her face. “News travels fast.”
Nancy Strom pulled a cigarette out of her pocket and stuck it between her lips. “We’re also surprised you called us. What do you want?”
Sandy Strom stopped beside her sister-in-law, yanked the cigarette from her mouth, dropped it onto the patio tiles, and squashed it below the heel of her flip flop. “Never mind her,” she explained as she turned a sunny smile on Grace. “She’s annoyed because her receptionist quit, and now Ned expect
s her to answer—”
“—every frigging call at the office while he spends his time on the golf course.” Nancy gave her sister-in-law a dirty look, bent to pick up the ruined cigarette, and shoved it in her pocket. “Yeah, well, unlike some people I know, I don’t sit around the house eating bonbons while their husband is off playing golf. I have to work hard for my money.”
“Stop it, you two.” Leta shouldered her way between them. “I heard Jim was late for his game yesterday morning. Cost him a pile of cash, too.”
Grace turned her gaze toward the golf course. In the distance, she could see the four men gathered around the first tee, wallets out, money exchanging hands. “It did?”
“Uh huh.” Curiosity flitted through Nancy’s gaze. “You have heard of his fifth rule, haven’t you?”
Grace attempted to clear the frown that tugged at her brows, but by the look on the other three faces, she could tell it was too late to pretend. With a sigh, she asked, “What rule?”
The three women exchanged a look, which probably meant that they wondered why the perfect married couple didn’t share details about the thing that was most important in the other person’s life. Gosh, she had to work harder at that.
Sandy piped up. “Rule number five. No being late to the game or it costs a thousand big ones.”
Nancy glanced over her shoulder toward the course and smirked. “Right now, Jim is paying them each a thousand bucks. I see a shopping spree in my near future.”
As silence swelled around them and the material under her armpits grew damp, Leta dropped onto the chair beside her and grasped her hand.
“Is everything all right, Grace?”
For a moment, Grace just stared down at their joined hands.
The physical contact caught her off guard. In fact, it felt so good, she wanted to reach out with her other hand and make contact with it too.
A tiny sob worked its way up her throat, and as she swallowed it back, she extracted her hand from Leta’s. “Of course it is. Why do you ask?”
Sandy moved to her side and bent down to envelop Grace in a hug. It was everything that Grace could do to stop herself from wrenching out of the other woman’s arms. “Honey, we’re here for you.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly because what else could she say? Please, be my friends? She forced a smile. “Are you coming to Liz’s engagement party?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Nancy said as she reached in her pocket, produced another cigarette, and sent her sister-in-law a dirty look before she refocused on her hostess. “So why did you call us?”
“I—uh—” Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Jim leave the course and drive toward the house on his golf cart. Grace pushed to her feet and started to back toward the house. “I wanted to say hello, that’s all. Well, gotta go. There’s a wedding calling my name.”
And as the three women stared after her, Grace turned on her heel and fled into the house.
Was she that obvious? That lonely that she was even considering spilling her guts to the three women who were virtually strangers?
She leaned against the wall and peered out the patio doors until they’d disappeared from sight.
In a weak moment she’d called them and invited them over for a visit. Big mistake. Huge mistake. One she vowed never to make again.
By the time that she walked into the master bedroom, Jim was hunched over the keyboard, tapping at the keyboard. He didn’t even bother to acknowledge her presence.
“I ran into Leta, Nancy, and Sandy,” she said in an effort to open up some kind of communication between them.
“Nice women,” he muttered.
She stared at his back, hating the deafening silence that always seemed to hover around them, except when they were in public and had to put on a happy show. “I think Stone is attracted to Liz’s wedding planner.”
“Pretty girl.” He tapped on a couple of keys and the screen filled with letters and numbers and code that she couldn’t even pretend to comprehend.
He was lost in his own little world again. It was as though she hadn’t been gone for the last month.
From the depths of her bra, her phone beeped, and she pulled it out to check the message.
It was from Liz. Seamstress here for dress fitting.
Grace silenced the phone and headed for the bathroom where she pulled off the summer dress she’d put on that morning, the one with damp patches under her arms, tossed it into the laundry basket, and padded over to the mirror where she studied her body.
Not too bad for fifty-seven. A little plump, but then she’d always been on the plump side, even when she was young. The extra padding had once served her image as homemaker and wife and mother extremely well.
But most important of all, the number one reason that she’d never really bothered to lose those extra twenty pounds was because Jim had once told her that he liked his women with a little extra weight.
Grace leaned back slightly, till she was able to look past the doorframe at her husband’s back.
He was a good looking man—tall, firm, a fifty-five-year-old hunk who still caught the eye of women half his age. If there’d been one thing she could always count on throughout their thirty years together, it was the sex. He’d always desired her, always been faithful to her. But this last year, it seemed he’d lost all interest in her and sex combined in the same thought pattern.
Was it the thickening of her waistline or something else entirely?
Dressed only in her bra and panties, she padded silently out of the bathroom to stand behind him and look over his shoulder. “What are you doing?” she asked, simply because she hated the deathly silence that always seemed to hover around them.
He glanced over his shoulder and met her eyes before his gaze swept over her barely covered body. Then without even a hint of emotion, he turned back to the screen and tapped more keys, and more code spread across the screen. “Nothing that would interest you.”
This wasn’t how she wanted to spend the next three days, alone in bed, alone in the house. She laid one hand on his shoulder, gave it a squeeze, and leaned into his back. “Jim, I’m going to lay down and have an—ummm—nap.”
His body tensed beneath her touch. “Fine. I’ll wrap this up and get out of your way.”
Grace removed her hand and stared down at the top of his head, sorrow welling up from deep inside her. They had nothing in common anymore. It was like he didn’t care about anything but golf and computers.
She turned and climbed into their big bed. Alone and lonely.
Grace stared at his back, willing him to come to her and make love to her with all the passion that they’d shared in the early days of their relationship. But the only movement was his fingers flying across the keyboard.
He should’ve been jumping her bones by now, because she’d been on the road and away from home for an unusually long time. Or maybe they’d never had anything between them but the sex. Maybe that wasn’t enough for him anymore. Maybe it wasn’t enough for her either.
She closed her eyes and listened to the click of the keyboard, the whir of the computer. And then there was only silence.
Grace didn’t have to open her eyes to know that he was gone. She felt it in the hollow pit of her stomach, in the ache behind her eyelids, in the pounding of her heart.
She pushed out of bed and headed to the closet to find something comfortable to wear for Liz’s dress fitting. Halfway there, she felt a tear escape the corner of one eye, and she sat down on the edge of the bed to have a good cry.
Just once, she wanted Jim’s attention.
Just once, she wanted to know that she was more important than that stupid game of golf.
Just once, she wanted reassurance that the life they’d built together had been for only naught.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Stone headed down the pathway toward the cottages on the east end of the estate. All he wanted to do was shut off all thoughts of babies and marriage and sexy
wedding planners. In fact, he’d been so self-involved that he’d barely given Liz—and the reason he was here—the attention she deserved.
When he reached the Eight For Mulligan cottage, he bounded up the steps and knocked on the door. Kevin Donahue, his best friend from way back, answered the door. “Hey, Kev, great to see you.”
The other man stepped onto the deck, wrapped him in a bear hug, then gestured toward the chairs. “Thanks for letting me crash here.”
“No problem.” Stone sat down. “How long are you staying?”
“A few days. Then I ship out again.”
The crunch of footsteps on the pebble path alerted him to someone’s approach. Stone saw Mariam and Dora stroll along the path toward them. Dora held Mariam’s toddler as though she might never let him go.
If Stephanie was pregnant, he had no doubt that the child would be welcome into both families with open arms. He, on the other hand, would probably be put in front of a firing squad.
Stephanie’s mom appeared to be doing most of the talking, which he’d discovered that she was very good at, while Mariam…
Mariam looked like she wasn’t eating, wasn’t taking care of herself, and it worried him. Her divorce had been the toughest case he’d ever handled, mainly because he’d hated to see her in a world of hurt.
And Liz wanted to marry some guy she’d barely known for more than a few weeks. Unlike their mother, she didn’t have a career that depended on hiding an unhappy marriage. So if things didn’t go well, he’d find himself with her in his office, asking him to represent her in a divorce.
It had nearly killed Stone to watch Mariam go through her painful divorce. He wanted to protect Liz from her own foolish jump into the matrimony pool.
As the women approached the cabin, Mariam glanced up. Her warm smile vanquished the sadness from her face. “Stone, what are you doing way out here?”
Kevin slowly pushed to his feet. “Hello, Mariam.”
Mariam’s gaze went to the other man and as she changed course toward the cottage, Dora at her side, she cocked her head. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
Caught Between an Oops and a Hard Body (Caught Between series Book 2) Page 9