by Nora Roberts
“So, you get laid?”
Ethan flicked up another glance, took in Cam’s wide grin, and decided to take the question in the spirit it was asked. “Yeah—did you?”
Entertained, if no cooler, Cam threw back his head and laughed. “Damn, she’s the best thing that ever happened to you. I don’t just mean the sex, though that’s got to be part of what’s perked you up around here lately. The woman fits you like the proverbial glove.”
Ethan paused, scratched his belly where sweat dribbled and itched. “Why?”
“Because she’s rock-steady, pretty as a picture, patient as Job, and she’s got enough humor about life to tickle out yours. I guess we’ll be sprucing up the yard for another wedding before long.”
Ethan’s fingers tightened on his brush. “I’m not going to marry her, Cam.”
It was the tone as much as the statement that made Cam’s eyes narrow. Quiet despair. “I guess I could be reading you wrong,” Cam said slowly. “I figured, the way things were moving, you were serious about her.”
“I am serious, about Grace. About a lot of things.” He dipped his brush again, watched the clean gold varnish drip. “Marriage isn’t something I’m looking for.”
Ordinarily Cam would have let a subject such as this drop. He’d have walked away from it with a shrug. Your business, brother. But he knew Ethan too well, had loved him too long to walk away from the pain. He crouched by the rail so their faces were closer.
“I wasn’t looking for it either,” he murmured. “Scared the hell out me. But when the woman comes into your life, the woman, it’s scarier to let her go.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
The dug-in-at-the-heels look didn’t stop Cam. “You always figure you do. I hope you’re right this time. I sure as hell hope this isn’t some shit that goes back to that ghost-eyed kid Mom and Dad brought home one day. The one who used to wake up screaming at night.”
“Don’t go there, Cam.”
“Don’t you go there, either. Mom and Dad did better by us than that.”
“It has nothing to do with them.”
“It all has everything to do with them. Listen—” He broke off with a mild oath as Seth came running in.
“Hey, this shit’s already melting.”
Cam straightened, scowled over at Seth out of habit rather than heat. “Didn’t I tell you to find an alternate word for ‘shit’?”
“You say it,” Seth pointed out, shifting the bag of ice.
“That’s beside the point.”
Knowing the routine, Seth dumped the ice into the cooler. “Why?”
“Because Anna’s going to have my ass if you keep it up. And if she has mine, pal, I’ll have yours.”
“Oh, now I’m scared.”
“You oughta be.”
They continued to bicker, Ethan continued the varnish. Tuning them out, concentrating on the job at hand, he locked his unhappiness away.
SEVENTEEN
It was going to be perfect. It was so obviously right, Grace wondered that she hadn’t thought of it before. A sunset sail on calm seas with skies going pink and gold in the west was a custom-made backdrop for both of them. The Bay was part of their lives, what it offered and what it took.
She knew it was more than a place where Ethan worked. It was a place he loved.
It had been easy to arrange. All she’d had to do was ask. He looked surprised, then he smiled. “I’d forgotten you love to sail,” he said.
She was touched when he’d simply expected that Aubrey would come with them. There would be other times, she thought. A lifetime for the three of them. But this warm and breezy evening would be for the two of them only.
Giddy laughter continued to rise up in her as she imagined his reaction when she asked him to marry her. She could see it so clearly, the way he would stop, stare at her with surprise in those wonderful blue eyes. She would smile, hold out her hand to him as they glided along with soft wind and dark water. And she would tell him everything that was in her heart.
I love you so much, Ethan. I always have and always will. Will you marry me? I want us to be a family. I want to live my life with you. To give you children. To make you happy. Haven’t we waited long enough?
Then, she knew, that would be the moment his smile would begin. That slow, beautiful smile that moved degree by degree over the planes and shadows of his face, into his eyes. He would probably say something about how he’d intended to ask her. That he’d been getting to it.
They would both laugh, and they would hold each other as the sun dropped red beyond the shore. And their lives together would really begin.
“Where are you sailing off to, Grace?”
She blinked, saw Ethan smiling back at her from the wheel. “Daydreaming,” she told him, chuckling at herself. “Sunset’s the best time for daydreams. It’s so peaceful.”
She rose, nestled herself under his arm. “I’m so glad you can take a few hours off so we can do this.”
“We’re going to have the boat trimmed out within the month.” He nuzzled his face in her hair. “Couple weeks ahead of schedule.”
“You’ve all worked so hard.”
“It’s going to be worth it. The owner was here today.”
“Oh?” This was part of it, too, she mused. The easy talk about their days. “What did he say?”
“Hardly shut up, so it’s hard to know what he said half the time. Spouted off the latest this and that he’d read in his boating magazines, asked enough questions to make your head ring.”
“But did he like it?”
“I figure he was pleased with her, since he grinned like a kid on Christmas morning the whole afternoon. After he left, Cam wanted to bet me that he would run her aground first time out on the Bay.”
“Did you take the bet?”
“Hell, no. He likely will. But you haven’t really sailed the Bay until you’ve run aground.”
Ethan wouldn’t, she mused, watching his big, competent hands on the wheel. He sailed clean.
“I remember when you and your family were building this sloop.” She trailed her fingers over the wheel. “I was helping out at the waterfront the first time y’all took her out. Professor Quinn was at the wheel and you were working the lines. You waved at me.” Chuckling, she angled her head to look up at him. “I was thrilled that you noticed me.”
“I was always noticing you.”
She leaned up and kissed his chin. “But you were careful not to let me notice you noticing.” On impulse she gave his jaw a teasing nip. “Until lately.”
“I guess I lost my knack for it.” He turned his head until his mouth found hers. “Just lately.”
“Good.” With a quiet laugh, she laid her head on his shoulder. “Because I like noticing you notice me.”
They weren’t alone on the Bay, but he stayed well clear of the zipping motorboats out for a summer-evening cruise. A flock of gulls frantically swooped and swirled around the stern of a skiff where a young girl tossed out bread. Her laugh carried, high and bright, to mix with the greedy calls of the birds.
The breeze rose up, filling the sails and whisking away the wet heat of the day. The few clouds drifting in the west were going pink around the edges.
Almost time.
Odd, she realized, she wasn’t a bit nervous. A little giddy perhaps, because her head felt so light, her heart so free. Hope, so long buried, was golden bright once freed.
She wondered if he would slip into one of the narrow channels where the shade would be thick and the water the color of tobacco. He could thread past the bobbing buoy markers to a quiet place, one without even the gulls for company.
He was so content with her beside him, Ethan let the wind choose the course. He should make adjustments, he thought. The sails would reef before long if he didn’t. But he didn’t want to let her go—not quite yet.
She smelled of her lemon soap, and her hair was soft against his cheek. This could be their lives, he thought. Quiet moments, e
vening sails. Standing together. Building little dreams into big ones.
“She’s having the time of her life,” Grace murmured.
“Hmmm?”
“The little girl there, feeding the gulls.” She nodded in the direction of the skiff, smiling as she imagined Aubrey, a few years from now, laughing and calling to the gulls from the stern of Ethan’s boat. “Uh-oh, here comes her little brother to demand his share.” She laughed, charmed by the children. “They’re nice together,” she murmured, watching as the two of them heaved bread high into the air for eager beaks to snatch. “Company for each other. There’re more lonely times for an only child.”
Ethan closed his eyes a moment as his own half-formed daydream shattered. She would want more children. Deserve them. Life wasn’t all pretty sails on the Bay.
“I need to trim the sails,” he told her. “Do you want to take the wheel?”
“I’ll trim them.” She grinned at him as she ducked under his arm to move to port. “I haven’t forgotten how to handle lines, Cap’n.”
No, he thought, she hadn’t forgotten. She was a good sailor, as at home on deck as she was in her own kitchen. She ran the rigging with the same skill that she showed when she served drinks to a crowd at the pub.
“There’s not much you can’t do, Grace.”
“What?” She glanced up, then laughed. “It’s not hard to know how to use the wind when you grow up with it.”
“You’re a natural sailor,” he corrected. “A wonderful mother, a fine cook. You know how to make people easy around you.”
Her pulse went from calm to frantic. Would he ask her now, after all, before she had the chance to ask him? “Those are all things I enjoy,” she said, watching him watch her. “Making a home here in St. Chris contents me. You do the same, Ethan, because it contents you.”
“I’ve got a need for this place,” he said softly. “It’s what saved me,” he added, but he’d turned away and she didn’t hear.
Grace waited another moment, willing him to speak, to tell her, to ask her. Then with a shake of her head, she crossed the deck again.
The sun was sinking, coming close, so close to that long nightly kiss of the shore. The water was calm, little wavelets waltzing against the hull. The sails were full and white.
The moment, she thought with a leap of heart, was now.
“Ethan, I love you so much.”
He lifted an arm to bring her against his side. “I love you, Grace.”
“I’ve always loved you. I always will.”
He looked down at her then, and she saw the emotion come into his eyes, deepening the blue. She lifted a hand to his cheek, held it there as she drew in the next breath.
“Will you marry me?” She saw the surprise, as she’d expected, but she didn’t notice the way his body went stiff as she rushed on. “I want us to be a family. I want to live my life with you. To give you children. To make you happy. Haven’t we waited long enough?”
And she waited now, but she didn’t see the slow smile slip across his face, into his eyes. He only continued to stare at her, with something she thought might be horror. Bony wings of panic fluttered in her stomach.
“I know you might have planned to do this differently, Ethan, and me asking you is a surprise. But I want us to be together, really together.”
Why didn’t he say something? her mind screamed. Anything. Why did he just stare at her as if she’d slapped him?
“I don’t need courting.” Her voice hitched and she stopped to try to steady it. “Not that I don’t love things like flowers and candlelight dinners, but all I really need is for you to be there. I want to be your wife.”
Afraid he would shatter if he looked into those hurt and baffled eyes another instant, he turned away. His hands white-knuckled on the wheel. “We have to come about.”
“What?” She jerked back, staring at his set face, at the muscle that worked in his jaw. Her heart was still pounding, but no longer in anticipation. Now it was with dread. “You have nothing to say to me except that we have to come about?”
“No, I’ve things to say to you, Grace.” His voice was as controlled as his heart was wild. “We have to go back so I can.”
She wanted to shout at him to say them now, right now. But she nodded. “All right, Ethan. Come about.”
The sun was gone when they docked. Crickets and peepers sent up their nightly chorus, filling the air with shrill, too-bright music. Overhead a few stars blinked through the haze and a three-quarter moon shimmered.
The air had cooled quickly, but she knew that wasn’t the reason she was cold. So cold.
He secured the lines himself, silently. Just as he’d sailed home, silently. He stepped back into the boat, sat across from her. The moon was still low, just riding the tops of the trees, but the early stars sprinkled down enough light for her to see his face.
There was no joy in it.
“I can’t marry you, Grace.” He spoke the words carefully, knowing they would hurt. “I’m sorry. I can’t give you what you want.”
She gripped her hands together tightly. She didn’t know whether they wanted to ball into fists and pound or hang limp and shaking like an old woman’s. “Then you lied when you said you loved me?”
It might be kinder to tell her so, he thought, then shook his head. No, it would only be cowardly. She deserved the truth. All of the truth. “I didn’t lie. I do love you.”
There were degrees of love. She wasn’t fool enough to think differently. “But not the way you need to love a woman you’d marry.”
“I couldn’t love any woman more than I love you. But I’m—”
She held up a hand. Something had just occurred to her. If it was his reason for turning her away, she didn’t think she could ever forgive him. “Is it because of Aubrey? Because I had a child with another man?”
He moved fast so rarely, it took her by surprise when he snatched her hand out of the air and squeezed it hard enough to rub bone against bone. “I love her, Grace. I’d be proud for her to think of me as her father. You have to know that.”
“I don’t have to know anything. You say you love me, and you love her, but you won’t have us. You’re hurting me, Ethan.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He released her hand as if it had burned his palm. “I know I’m hurting you. I knew I would. I had no business letting things come to this.”
“But you did,” she said evenly. “You had to know I’d feel this way, that I’d expect you would feel the same.”
“Yeah, I knew. I should have been honest with you. I’ve got no excuse for it.” Except I needed you. I needed you, Grace. “Marriage isn’t something I’m looking for.”
“Oh, don’t treat me like a fool, Ethan.” She sighed now, too battered to be angry. “People like us don’t have relationships, we don’t have affairs. We get married and raise families. We’re simple and basic, and as amusing as that might be to some, that’s just who we are.”
He stared down at his hands. She was right, of course. Or would have been. But she didn’t know he wasn’t simple or basic. “It’s not you, Grace.”
“No?” Hurt and humiliation tangled inside her. She imagined Jack Casey would have said the same thing, if he’d taken the time to say anything before he left her. “If it’s not me, who is it? I’m the only one here.”
“It’s me. I can’t raise a family because of what I come from.”
“What you come from? You come from St. Christopher’s on the southern Eastern Shore. You come from Raymond and Stella Quinn.”
“No.” He lifted his gaze. “I come from the stinking slums of D.C. and Baltimore and too many other places to count. I come from a whore who sold herself, and me, for a bottle or a fix. You don’t know what I come from. Or what I’ve been.”
“I know you came from a terrible place, Ethan.” She spoke gently now, wanting to soothe the brutal pain in his eyes. “I know your mother—your biological mother—was a prostitute.”
“
She was a whore,” Ethan corrected. “ ‘Prostitute’ is too clean a word.”
“All right.” Cautious now, for she saw more than pain, she nodded slowly. There was fury as well, just as brutal. “You lived through what no child should ever have to live through before you came here. Before the Quinns gave you hope and love and a home. And you became theirs. You became Ethan Quinn.”
“It doesn’t change the blood.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“How the hell would you?” He shot it at her like a bullet, hot and dangerously sharp. How would she know? he thought furiously. She’d grown up knowing her parents, and their parents, never once having to question what they had passed on to her, what she’d taken from them.
But she would, before he was done, she’d know. And that would end it. “She was a big woman. I get my hands from her. My feet, the length of my arms.”
He looked down at those arms now, at those hands that had bunched into fists without his being aware of it. “I don’t know where I get the rest from because I don’t think she knew who my father was any more than I did. Just another john she had bad luck with. She didn’t get rid of me because she’d already had three abortions and was afraid to risk another. That’s what she told me.”
“That was cruel of her.”
“Jesus Christ.” Unable to sit any longer, he rose, leaped onto the dock to pace.
Grace followed more slowly. He was right about one thing, she realized. She didn’t know this man, the one who moved in fast, jerky steps with his fists clenched as if he would use them viciously on anything that moved into his path.
So she stayed out of it.
“She was a monster. A fucking monster. She beat me senseless for the hell of it as often as when she figured she had a reason.”
“Oh, Ethan.” Helpless to do otherwise, she reached out for him.
“Don’t touch me now.” He wasn’t sure what he might do if he put his hands on her just then. And it frightened him. “Don’t touch me now,” he repeated.