“We all had to.”
Grace looked sad, and Jamie searched for something to say that would lighten the mood. “Do you still have that dog? The big one that we won at the fair?”
“Bubby! I don’t know, I haven’t seen him in years.” She smiled, and he knew she was remembering the ugly stuffed animal he had won for her at an outdoor carnival held at their university. She had pointed out the toy to him, and he had tried to win it for her as a joke. The game had been harder than he expected, however, and winning soon became a matter of principle. She had watched, choking on her laughter, as Jamie sunk much more money than the ugly dog was worth into the game, finally winning her the prize.
“I still remember what you said when you gave it to me,” Grace said.
“What?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No, what did I say?”
“You said, ‘this ugly dog will forever be proof of what you are worth to me.’ You were so proud of that thing.”
“Darn right. I spent 40 bucks getting it. And it was probably worth five.”
“Not even. It was missing an eye.”
“Yet it was so hard to win.”
“Only because you’re not very good at arcade games.”
Jamie laughed. “You should have dragged me away from that carnival.”
“I tried, but you didn’t listen. When you put your mind to something, there’s no stopping you.” Grace closed her book, still smiling. “You know what? I think I will take that coffee. You owe it to me after what you put me through this week. Two sugars.”
“And one cream. I remember.”
“Wow, you’re good. Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
He went to get the coffee, thinking that he would get her a chocolate croissant too. Grace really loved those.
He was suddenly feeling very optimistic about this trip.
AS SOON AS the plane took off, Grace fell asleep. Before she knew it they had landed in New York.
She blindly followed Jamie out of the airport, thinking how surreal this whole thing was. She was in New York with Jamie Castleton, a man she never thought she would see again.
Despite herself, she felt her anger toward him from the past week fading the more time she spent with him.
He had hired a car to take them to Four Brothers Brewery, an hour’s trip. They spent the time catching up, laughing and filling each other in on the little things that had happened over the past five years and talking about their families and friends. From the way he talked, it sounded like Jamie hadn’t spend much energy on anything outside of his business. He loved it and was proud of it, she could tell. He didn’t say much about a personal life or mention there being a woman.
She was sort of glad he wasn’t involved with anyone. It was weird for her, thinking of Jamie being happy with someone else.
When the car pulled up to the hotel, Jamie grabbed their bags from the trunk and followed Grace inside. The hotel was gorgeous—a lot fancier than she expected it would be. The lobby was huge, with great big chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and a woman playing on the piano. There were fresh flowers everywhere and wealthy-looking people seated on velvet couches.
She thought of saying something to Jamie about him picking the most expensive hotel in the area for her to stay in, but she decided against it. Five years ago, he couldn’t afford to get them a room in a cheap motel for a night. Clearly things had changed. If he wanted to pay to put her up here, she wouldn’t complain. It was his money to throw away.
Grace was still looking around the lobby while Jamie was making arrangements with the front desk. She tuned in toward the end of the conversation, when Jamie was handed two room keys.
Two?
“Your room numbers are 240 and 242,” the woman was saying. “They are connected, as requested.”
Grace’s mouth fell open and Jamie turned to smile at her devilishly. She felt her heart flip flop in her chest.
“Connecting rooms!” he said. “Isn’t that fun?”
“You’re staying here? But you live in the area!”
“I know, but I didn’t want to leave you alone at a hotel. You’re my guest. What if you need something?”
“It’s one night. What could I possibly need?”
He just laughed. “It’s no big deal. I like hotels, and it will be fun.”
She blinked at him.
“Come on, let’s go put our luggage away. We’ve got a big day ahead of us.”
Grace silently followed him up the elevator and to their rooms, her mind buzzing. She knew Jamie could be manipulative, but this was just something else. Was this some crazy attempt to sleep with her? Was he trying to start a relationship with her again? Did he want them to be friends?
Whatever he was after, she wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to get it. She had to think of her son. Once this trip ended, she was going to have to put a lot more distance between them.
They entered their separate rooms, and Grace immediately found the connecting door. She checked to make sure that it was locked and promised herself it would stay that way.
Her room was beautiful but clearly meant for more than one person. The king-sized bed with its crisp white comforter and mountain of pillows was big enough for four people. There was a white loveseat and a big screen television, and the bathroom had a shower with six showerheads. Grace was impressed.
Surely Jamie had known she would be.
Instead of unpacking her few belongings or freshening up, Grace collapsed on the bed, spreading herself out to take up as much room as possible. Never in her life had she felt so much like she was living in a dream.
Or maybe it was a nightmare. She was back in New York, and Jamie was on the other side of the door.
The universe was screwing with her. She tried to think of things she had done to deserve it.
Maybe she was being punished for not going to church enough.
Maybe it was punishment for not telling Jamie that she had gotten pregnant or that he had a son.
As soon as she had the thought, powerful guilt washed over her, almost taking her breath away. All of these years she had turned Jamie into a villain in her mind, telling herself that he didn’t deserve to know and that she had been doing him a favor keeping Jake a secret. Now he was real again, flesh and blood, with feelings and blue eyes that looked just like his son’s.
She felt tears start to form.
“No,” she said aloud, fighting them. “Get a grip on yourself, Grace.”
She had made her decision five years ago, and it had been the right one at the time. She couldn’t go back in time and change things, and why would she want to? Jamie was happy, wealthy and successful. He didn’t miss something he never knew he had. If she told him about Jake now, it would just hurt him. He would be angry, and she would have to share the one person who mattered most to her in the world with a man she didn’t know anymore.
She pulled out her cell phone and dialed her home number. Caroline answered.
“Hi. How is it going?”
“Could be better,” Grace answered. “The hotel is amazing, but Jamie is staying here too. We are in connecting rooms.”
Caroline was speechless for a moment. “What the hell?”
“I have no idea. And he’s being so nice. Nothing like the jerk he’s been all week. I can’t tell if he wants to be friends because we’re working together or if it’s something more. Maybe he thinks it would be fun to sleep with an old girlfriend. How should I know? He’s a mystery to me now.”
“It doesn’t matter what his intentions are,” Caroline said sternly. “You can’t be friends with him. He’s the father of your child, Grace. You can’t play games here. This could get really messy.”
“I know.” She felt herself getting defensive, even though she knew Caroline’s words came from a good place. “I’m not going to play games. I’m just trying to keep distance between us.”
“Good.”
“Can you put Jake on?”
“Yeah. Just promise you’ll be careful.”
“I will.”
Grace waited a minute or two until her son picked up.
“Mommy?”
“Hi, baby. What are you doing?”
“Aunt Caroline took me to the food store, and I got hotdogs, and I’m going to have a hotdog for lunch and macaroni and cheese with it and then chocolate chip ice cream on a cone.”
She laughed, even though he sounded so serious. “That sounds very healthy.”
“Yeah. We traded.”
“Traded what?”
“Aunt Caroline said that if I eat three pieces of broccoli at dinner I can eat hotdogs for lunch.”
“You’re going to eat broccoli? I don’t think so!”
“It’s yucky.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m not really going to eat the broccoli. Don’t tell.”
She laughed, wondering how on earth his four-year-old brain could be so mischievous. Then she remembered who his father was.
There was a hard knock on the connecting door, and her heart skipped a beat.
“I have to go baby. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Be good.”
“Bye, mommy. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
She hung up the phone, braced herself and swung open the door. Jamie was standing there, one eyebrow raised, looking sexy in dark jeans and a crisp blue shirt.
“Charlie called already?” he asked dryly. “Needy, isn’t he?”
“He wanted to make sure I got in safely,” she said, seizing onto the excuse. How much of her conversation had Jamie heard?
Jamie walked into her room uninvited, and the space no longer looked as big as it had before.
“I thought you two just started dating. You already use the l-word?”
“Jamie...”
“It took you three months to say it to me.”
Jamie moved close to her. Their eyes met, and she saw he was hurt. The realization surprised her. She didn’t know what to say.
He reached out and pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear. His fingers brushed her face, and she felt the contact throughout her whole body.
Grace felt frozen in time. She thought that he was going to kiss her, and she didn’t step back. His eyes were locked on hers, and he slowly moved his hand from her ear down the length of her neck.
When he reached the sensitive skin of her collarbone, she sucked in a sharp breath. He pulled his hand away, regret in his eyes.
“We should go,” he said, turning away from her. “We have to go pick up my truck, and we’re late to tour the brewery.”
She went with him, hating herself for being a little disappointed.
Chapter 7
Four Brothers Brewery was so much more than Grace imagined it would be. She had pictured a small operation with Jamie’s college friends working a machine or two.
What she found instead looked like a small factory. The brewery was filled with activity, with a handful of men and women in jeans and goggles working dozens of different large machines. The first thing that caught her eye was the assembly line of bottles being filled with beer, capped and labeled at rapid speed, just what she imagined a real brewery would look like. Grace, once again, was impressed.
“Wow.” She took in the sheer size of it all, spinning around in a circle. “This is all yours?”
“Well, I own a quarter of it,” Jamie told her, shrugging.
“It’s incredible.”
“Thank you.” He smiled. “We have worked really hard for this.”
“I can tell.”
He took her hand. “Come over here, I’ll show you how beer is made. You can have the special tour, reserved for very important people.”
Grace laughed. “I feel so lucky.”
“You should.” Jamie brought her over to a pile of filled brown bags and opened one. “This is malt,” he said, pulling out a handful of what looked like seeds. “It’s raw barley that has been seeped in water, germinated and dried. We use a pale, two-row malt for most of our beers. Here, touch it.”
“Nice,” Grace said, finding Jamie’s enthusiasm adorable.
She couldn’t help but smile, seeing how in his element he was. He brought her around the brewery, showing her hops and big machines called kettles that boiled the hops with beer wort. He showed her the fermenting and conditioning process, and finally took her to where the beer was packaged.
“Look at the label,” he said.
She peered closely where he pointed and noticed for the first time the tiny signatures scribbled at the bottom of it.
Jamie, Tom, Nick and Chris.
His best friends from college. They had been her friends, too. She had abandoned those friendships when Jamie had abandoned her, choosing all of this over the girl who adored him.
Seeing it now, she almost couldn’t blame him.
“That’s sweet,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat.
“It’s important to us that we don’t forget where this started, no matter how big we get,” he said. “We always need to remember that this place was founded on friendship.”
And what a good friendship it was. She had so many great memories of all of them together in college, from nights out to study sessions to ordering Chinese food on Sunday nights. Seeing all of their names together on the beer label made her sad for all the years she had missed out on.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Jamie asked, disrupting her thoughts. “Here, let me.”
He opened the beer easily on the side of the machine and handed it to her, eagerly awaiting her reaction.
“I’m not really a beer drinker,” she warned him. “Don’t be disappointed if I don’t like it.”
“I know, and I won’t be,” he said, his eyes bright with excitement. He looked so much like Jake in that moment that she knew she would pretend to love the beer even if it was the worst thing she ever tasted.
She took a sip.
“Well? What’s the verdict?”
“Wow, this is great!” Grace wasn’t lying, either. The beer was surprisingly light and flavorful. “It almost has a caramel thing going for it.”
“I knew you’d like it,” he said, his smile proud. “This is a flavor I developed. It took me two years. I was trying to find something you would like, and once I started working with caramel malt I knew I had found it.”
She was touched. “You were thinking of me?”
“Of course,” he said. “We call this one Four Brothers Grace. It’s one of our biggest sellers.” He leaned toward her conspiratorially. “To be honest with you, it’s our girliest beer. Our male customers wouldn’t be caught dead ordering this at a bar.”
Grace felt herself tear up. She couldn’t believe he had named a beer after her. It was one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for her.
“Why did you...?”
Jamie shrugged. “You’ve always been my biggest inspiration.”
“Jamie, this is incredible. Thank you.”
“It’s the least you deserve,” he told her, suddenly serious. “After the way I treated you, I know I have a long way to go to make it right.”
Grace didn’t want to think about it. “The past is the past.”
“If you meant that, you would have forgiven me,” he said.
“I have forgiven you.” The words sounded false, even to her own ears. She wanted to forgive Jamie and had tried to over their years apart, but there was too much between them. She was still so hurt. “It was years ago. The past is in the past.”
“Don’t lie to me, Grace,” he said. “Don’t pretend it’s okay when it’s not.”
His blue eyes bore into hers, trying to fish out the truth.
Grace looked away, unable to face him. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Jamie. You broke my heart. I know I should be over it, I know it’s stupid, but I’m still angry with you.”
“It’s not stupid.” He reached out and took her hand
, and she didn’t stop him. “All I ask is that you give me the chance to fix this.”
“What do you mean fix this?”
Didn’t he realize that it was too late for them?
“I want to-”
“Jamie! Who have you got there?”
Grace jumped guiltily when she heard a booming male voice behind her, snatching her hand out of Jamie’s grasp. She turned to see three familiar, smiling faces.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Miss Houdini.”
“Houdini?” She barely got the word out before Tom, the largest of her old friends, pulled her into a big bear hug.
“Because you pulled such an amazing disappearing act,” Chris told her, waiting for his turn.
“She’s alive!” Nick said, grinning from ear to ear. “It’s a miracle!”
After embracing each of them, Grace couldn’t help but smile at how little they had changed. They still looked like the college kids she remembered, except Tom had a better haircut, Chris better shoes and Nick had a wedding ring.
“We’re so glad you’re here,” Tom said. “What do you think of the place?”
“It’s amazing. So amazing. I can’t believe you guys did all of this.”
“Yeah, well we were pretty motivated after graduation,” Nick said with a grin. “Poverty will do that to you. We sank every penny we had into this place, so we needed to make it work.”
“I said that if it didn’t work out, I was going to go ahead with medical school,” Chris said. “I’m so glad it did, because I don’t think I could have handled all that studying.”
“Of course you could have,” Grace said, laughing. “You were always the smartest of all of these knuckleheads.”
“No, that’s this guy over here.” Tom patted Jamie on the shoulder. “He’s the brains behind this operation. Our financial wizard.”
“I am not.” Jamie looked uncomfortable. “Quit trying to make me look good.”
“Sorry, man.” Tom winked at Grace. “So touchy.”
“So listen,” Nick said. “Let’s grab something to eat and do some catching up. We’re all dying to hear what the hell you’ve been up to, Grace.”
“Oh, well, not much.” She shrugged her shoulders, feeling uncomfortable with all the attention.
Irresistible Lies Page 7