Gypsy Heat: A Gypsy Beach Novel

by Jillian Neal

  “I want to take you home, angel.” The breathy admission caressed her cheek and shoulder. “Take you home, strip you down, lay you out, and take you. I’m so hungry for you, Nad. God, I can’t think about anything but how good you feel when I have you. I thought about you all day, angel. All fucking day, I counted the minutes until you’d be back in my arms. I need to take you to bed. I want you greedy for me. Hot, and wet, and aching for me to make it better.”

  The song faded into its final chords, and she lifted her head. Her breaths were quick, moving her ample cleavage against his chest. “Take me now.” Every worry that plagued his mind was answered in the heat of her eyes. He guided her off of the dance floor, managed not to grimace when she paid their bill, and all but dragged her out to the truck.

  Seventeen

  Several hours after their extended session, Nadya frantically shook Grady awake.

  Dazed and confused, still not accustomed to sleeping so well now that she was back in his arms, he leaned upwards and rubbed his eyes. “What, angel? What’s wrong?”

  “Grady, I hear something. I hear someone on the dock. What if it’s that kid again or something?”

  Reminding himself that this was all a part of helping her heal from her ordeal, he forced his body to get up. She’d probably had a nightmare. That would certainly be understandable, given her day. He heard nothing other than the lulling sounds of the quiet ocean at night. Normally, it soothed, but Nadya was too worked up for it to perform its magic.

  “Okay, angel, just sit tight. I’ll go check,” he whispered, more for her sake than anything else, as he tucked her back under the covers, slipped on a pair of jeans, and eased to the front door.

  He walked the perimeter of the houseboat, up and down the dock, scanned the entire shoreline and even checked the big ships, but found nothing out of place. For good measure, he checked the covered slip that was currently housing Wind Dancer.

  An odd slip and slight splash of water halted him in his tracks. His heart sped as he climbed on the boat and quickly moved to the stern. Peering down into the water, he couldn’t see well enough in the dark to determine what was swimming deep. Probably a massive Flounder or Drum that had come in too far with the tides and was trying to get back. Might’ve swum under the houseboat to get there, he reasoned. If it jumped, that was probably what she heard.

  He turned and rechecked everything before heading back to reassure her. “I heard a massive fish out in the covered slip. Probably panicked and trying to get back out deep. Might’ve even hit the boats as he went by. That’s what you heard, angel.” He stripped again, crawled back into bed, and drew her onto his chest. “We can stay up if you don’t want to go back to sleep though.”

  He felt her sweet smile form against his pecs. “I’m sorry I woke you up. I just keep thinking someone’s out there. I keep thinking I hear something.”

  “Hey, don’t be sorry. I’ll let you take me to dinner as long as I still get to be your knight-in-shining-waders, so to speak. If something scares you, I want to know. Deal?”

  She giggled, righting every wrong in his world. “Deal.”

  He brushed a kiss along her temple and ran his hands tenderly up and down her spine before he cossetted her in the sheets and blankets again.

  “So, you don’t have any idea who that kid was?”

  “I’ve never seen him before. I have no idea. I wish Beau had been here. They’re closer in age. Might’ve gone to school together or something, but who knows. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him on the beach before, and he wasn’t with the men we took out today.”

  “I’m excited I get to go with you in the morning. I don’t want to be alone for a while,” she finally admitted as she settled beside him and traced her fingertips over his chest hair.

  “As I recall, my angel used to be one hell of a fisherwoman. We’ll have to see what you pull in tomorrow.” He couldn’t quite hide his smirk in the moonlight.

  “Grady, I haven’t fished since I ran away from here, and I’m terrible at it.”

  “Well, then we have fourteen years to make up for. You might out-fish me.” He leaned upward and brushed his lips over hers in an attempt to keep from chuckling at his own joke.

  “Right.” She rolled her eyes. “And I know you’re grinning like that because you’re thinking about the time when you made me go fishing with you when I was thirteen, and I screamed and threw your reel in when you pulled the line out of the water.” She cringed into his chest as he cracked up. “It was a huge fish, and it was ugly, and gross. It had teeth!”

  By that admission, he was laughing so hard he had to catch his breath to speak. “I did not make you go fishing with me, and I had the fish, angel, you didn’t have to throw the whole damn reel in.” He couldn’t help but tease her. She was adorable.

  In a moment of spite-driven teasing, she pinched his nipple. “Hey now!” He caught her arm and pinned it by her side. “Don’t make me retaliate.”

  “Hey, Grady,” she challenged.

  “Yeah, angel?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you more.” He gave her the same response he’d given her every time she said that for most of his life, but before she could counter with the typical ‘never,’ he went on, “I always have. Always will.”

  “So, if we’re gonna rebuild this and really stay together forever this time, do you always want to live here on the boat?”

  “Well,” he released her hands and propped additional pillows behind them. He was more interested in talking about their future than in their past, and he vastly preferred talking to sleeping at that moment. It was somehow far more important. “I’ll do anything you want to do. I’m happy anywhere you want to be. Kind of need to be close to water to keep this fishing gig going.”

  She grinned. “I don’t want to leave the beach ever again, and I love the boathouse. I was just thinking it might be kind of small if we … you know … maybe had a baby or something. Like a long time from now.”

  He nodded his understanding. “Hard to talk about that without talking about the miscarriage, huh?” He cradled her closer. Now, they were really getting somewhere.

  “Yeah, kind of,” she choked. “But I do want to have babies with you, Grady. Little fishermen, like their daddy.” She bit her lip as a hopeful light played in her eyes. He couldn’t help but grin.

  “Yeah, well, we might have girls just as beautiful as their mama, Heaven help me. I’d have to retire early just to keep the boys away. I do want to have a family with you, Nad. I always did. I just didn’t quite expect it when I was eighteen, I guess. We’ll do whatever you want whenever you want. I can sell this boat, get a little money, and we can get a little place somewhere along the shore if you want. I have everything I’ll ever need in my arms right now. If you’re there, I’m happy.”

  “Do you want to get married first?”

  “I may not mind you paying for my meals, but I’m pretty sure I’m the one that’s supposed to do the proposing,” he goaded.

  “Are you ever going to get over this?” All traces of teasing banter bled from her tone. She pulled away from him.

  “Sorry,” he immediately corrected and gently eased her back to his chest. “I’m getting there, angel. I promise. I’m so proud of you. You’re amazing. I just wish you could spend all of your hard-earned money on yourself and not on me. And, yeah, I do want to get married, but only if that’s what you want.”

  “I want to, but I think we have a lot of work to do first.”

  “Agreed, and I’ll be there every step of the way.”

  “When I first left and went to my dad’s, I cried and didn’t get out of bed for like two months. Then one day, I finally got up, and I found this old scrap aluminum in his garage. I cut out these tiny angel charms. That was the first real charm I learned to make. I kept making them, so by the time I got to Cali, I had a ton of them. I thought I was making them because being your angel was all that I wanted back, but then I realized I was making them
because of the baby. So, I took them and made myself this bracelet with them all on there. This woman complimented it one day at Venice Beach, and I told her why I’d made it. She cried with me and asked me to make her one. Four of her pregnancies had ended in miscarriage, and she and her husband had given up. I made her a bracelet, and it was so cathartic to know I was somehow helping her remember them. I gave it to her the next time she stopped by my booth, and she told me that they were giving her a new medicine and were hopeful that she might keep the pregnancy she’d just discovered. Later that year, she came back by and introduced me to her daughter.”

  Swallowing down his emotion proved impossible, so he tried to speak through the rocklike enclosure in his throat. “Will you make me one, Nad?”

  She leaned up off of his chest to study him. “Why?”

  “I want to wear one. I want to wear it on my chain. I didn’t just forget our baby, angel. I never will.”

  With a slight nod, she collapsed back on his chest and allowed another round of tears to consume her. He held her tightly, keeping up constant reassurances of his love until she’d cried herself out. This time he’d let her heal patiently and at her own pace.

  Exhausted from being up half the night talking, Grady would never complain. With every soulful conversation they had, they grew closer. This time he’d build a vessel that would never sink again. He downed a third cup of coffee while Nadya nursed her second with her eye on what remained in the pot. Grady quickly perked more.

  With a deep yawn, he took out another bandage, cotton balls, the arnica solution, aloe, and a bottle of benzoin. Before she pulled on a bikini top, he applied more arnica to her bruises that were now a faded yellow, almost gone. Then he gently removed the bandage from her slight burn on her finger, doctored it with aloe, waited on that to dry, then dabbed it with benzoin before he wrapped another bandage over it.

  She grinned at him. “I told you, you always take care of me.”

  “And I told you that was all I ever wanted to do. The benzoin will keep the burn from getting wet and the bandage from coming off while we’re out.”

  “I know.”

  “I know you know, but it makes me feel smart when I get to tell you stuff.” He winked at her just to hear her giggle.

  Just before they had to go prep the boats, she moved to the stack of plastic drawers on his galley table that contained all of her jewelry making gear. In the bottom drawer, she revealed a silver bracelet that did contain at least four dozen angel-shaped charms. All beautiful because she’d touched them. All different to represent a part of herself that was trying to heal. With a few quick moves, she had one of the charms loosed from the chain.

  Words were somehow unnecessary. That was the first one she’d made, and that was the one she wanted him to have. He lifted the chain from his neck and unclasped it. She fed the chain through the charm and then stared at him with tears leaking from her eyes as she removed the plain silver ring from the chain.

  “Can I please wear this?”

  Nodding, Grady took the ring and slipped it on her ring finger. He wasn’t certain what it meant exactly, but it was hers. If she was willing to wear it, nothing would make him happier.

  He returned the chain to his neck and then wrapped her back up in his arms holding her, swaying her with the motion of the houseboat in the outgoing tide, and swearing to her that he would love her forever.

  Grady’s brow furrowed as the groom from the trip the day before frantically raced up onto the dock. Right up until that moment that, Grady had been making methodic exploration of Nadya’s mouth with his tongue and her bare waist and body chain with his hands. He had her seated up on the dock rails, and he was standing between her legs. Begrudgingly he lifted his head and glared at the intruder.

  “Sorry, man, really, but I need to talk to you.”

  Grady worked his molars and reminded himself that he needed the kid’s money and that he’d been very pleasant the day before. “Zach, right?”

  He nodded and glanced nervously back over his shoulder.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “So, yesterday, that was my old man, and my brothers, all my groomsmen, cousins, my family.”

  “Okay …?”

  “Today, it will just be my dad and me, and my fiancée’s dad, and brothers, and cousins, and stuff.”

  “I’m still not hearing a problem, and I was busy.”

  Nadya beamed at Grady, but their heated makeout session had left her wanting. Her eyes were dark and her lips kiss-swollen and greedy for more.

  “My fiancée’s family is … uh … kind of unorthodox. I mean, she’s fantastic. She’s the girl of my dreams, but she hates her family. They’re rude and … well, you’ll see when they get here. They’re odd. I guess I just felt like I should warn you.”

  With an audible sigh, Grady brushed one more quick kiss over Nadya’s lips, a promise that they would return to this later. He ran his hands over his face. “Okay, rude how? I’m not putting up with shit on my boats. Do they fight, drink, what are we talking here? If anyone brings any illegal substance on my boats, they can swim back, and no alcohol either. That was all in the contract you signed. We can separate them on the two different boats if they don’t get along, but I’ll drag all of your asses back to the beach and toss you out if there’s trouble.”

  “No, no, none of that. Just kind of let them talk and don’t say anything about my fiancée and I living together. They don’t know that, and they’d flip. Just try to make sure that they get more fish than we did yesterday, or at least tell them they did.”

  Wondering if he was going to be hosting a fishing expedition for some kind of conservative toddler group, Grady debated sending the groom on his way and refunding their money. He’d vastly prefer to take Nadya back to bed to sleep for several hours and then to fuck her for several after they awoke.

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Nadya assured him.

  “I didn’t know you were living with your fiancée, so I sure as hell wouldn’t have said that. I try to mind my own business. I don’t give a damn where you live or who you live with. If it makes you happy, I’m happy, as long as you pay for your excursion.”

  “Yeah, I know. You were great yesterday. We really had fun. The problem is that my in-laws don’t mind their own business. Oh, and maybe kind of watch the curse words. I get you’re a sailor and everything, but …”

  Before Grady could make another assurance, a group of men dressed like a group of Boy Scouts competing for their fishing merit badge appeared, having an argument. “Four services on Easter and Christmas for three years and never missed a Sunday for the same length of time. That’s 168 services. That’s at least twelve more than you, Rob, not to mention Wednesday nights, and now we’re missing church for this so-called wedding on a beach of all things. Proper marriages begin in the church. If you ask me, the way I saw Zach kissing and touching Abigail last evening, the marriage has already happened. I don’t know why we’re celebrating their sinful behavior now.”

  Zach whimpered audibly as he turned his back on the men. “I swear to you I gave her a peck on the cheek and walked her to her hotel room and then went to mine, which is on the other side of town.”

  Grady and Nadya’s mouths hung open as they shared a bewildered expression.

  “Wow.” She mouthed the word as Grady managed a half nod.

  “This should be interesting.”

  After lifting Nadya off of the dock rail, Grady forced himself to walk forward and greet the men. More were approaching, and Nate and Beau were on Orion prepping coolers and lines.

  “Uh, I’m Grady Havens. I captain the Gemini here. My brother Nate captains Orion. We can take fifteen on each boat, so divide up, and I’ll go over what we’ll be catching today.”

  “Fisherman. God’s men,” the man who’d been railed on about his lacking church attendance admired. “At least seven of the disciples were fisherman, Grady. We’ll be doing the Lord’s work out there on the open seas today.”


  Nadya choked back hysterical laughter while Zach offered Grady an apologetic expression. Nate and Beau had climbed down from Orion and looked as confused as Grady felt.

  “Uh, okay. Great.” He nodded uncomfortably. “Good to know.” Shaking off the oddities of that statement, he drew a deep breath. “The crews are up on the decks. These are my brothers, Nate and Beau.” They each offered half waves as they wrapped one arm each over Nadya’s shoulders behind Grady. He turned back when he heard her laugh delightedly as they made her sway side to side against them. Winking at her and shaking his head at his brothers, he went on, “This is my girlfriend, Nadya Montgomery. She’s going with us today. She certainly knows her way around the boats, if you need something.

  “You picked a great time of year for a trip. We’ll start out pulling in bait fish, mullet and spot, stuff like that. Then when we get out deep we should get Bluefish, and Spanish Mackerel have been biting since June. They’re delicious. Bass and Flounder are plentiful as well. Might pull a few sharks, but remember, one shark per day per vessel, no exceptions. We’ll be happy to help you with your lines, hooks, anything you may need. Once we’re back, we’re happy to filet for you. Cost is $5 a fish. Any questions, gentlemen?”

  Three hands shot up. Grady’s brow furrowed. Their hands were up, but their heads were down, making it difficult to speak to any of the question-askers directly.

  “Uh, I guess you, in the fishing hat thing there?”

  All of the men lifted their heads hesitantly. “Uh, we just weren’t aware that there would be females on board. Especially any so scantily clothed. I’m not certain boats are really the place for women. Perhaps there’s something you could have her do here.”