“Please call me Maureen, dear.” His mother pulled back and squeezed Gracie’s arms. “And I’m so glad Richard and I got the chance to meet you before you head overseas again. The States this time, isn’t it?”
Owen’s dad, with impeccable dad timing, stepped in front of Gracie in the bus’s narrow aisle and hugged Owen—blocking his view of Gracie’s reaction. There was a beat of silence behind them.
“Yes,” Gracie said. “I was hoping to work the summer camp round in the US and then hit the ski resorts in the Canadian Rockies next winter.”
Was hoping? Owen gave his dad another affectionate slap on the back and then pulled away. Dad didn’t take the hint.
“So how many lives did you save this week, son?”
Owen subtly tried to see Gracie’s expression over his dad’s shoulder.
“How exciting,” his mother said, talking over the conversation behind her.
“Lost count,” Owen said.
“Morgan’s been telling me about her dance next week. You’ll fly out after that, will you?” his mum asked.
“My son, the hero in a white coat,” said his dad.
Owen wasn’t a hero. He was a big, stupid ostrich who’d thrust its big, stupid head into the sand to avoid dealing with Gracie leaving.
“Yes,” Gracie said. “Guess I’ll be gone before Bounty Bay heads into winter.”
“Following the sun,” his mother said. “Oh, to be young and footloose and fancy-free again.”
Owen’s gut clenched into a thorny ball. So that was it. Gracie had blown into his life like a wild summer storm, and now she’d breeze out of it again. Leaving him in perpetual winter.
***
Gracie rocked this meet-the-parents thing.
Owen’s stick-up-the-butt attitude on the way here was probably due to him worrying they’d hate her, but she was pretty damn sure she’d converted them to Team Gracie. Sure, Maureen had thrown her a curveball when she’d mentioned the US, which put Gracie in the position of agreeing that her former plans were still locked in place. Owen mustn’t have mentioned they were together to his parents, and it wasn’t her place to enlighten them. Not with Morgan, William, and Charlie around.
“You must’ve had a lot of patience, raising three kids in a house bus,” Gracie said.
The four adults sat around a picnic table outside the bus after lunch. The kids were inside, grumbling at being enlisted for wash-up duty.
Maureen laughed, casting a glance full of deep affection at her youngest son. “Oh, you have no idea. I used to call them the terrible trio.” She turned her gaze toward the house bus. “And now I have another trio, but they’re terrific, not terrible.”
“They really are,” Gracie said.
William and Charlie spilled out of the bus and ran across to the picnic table. Morgan trailed behind them at a less-than-thrilled saunter, her earbuds firmly lodged in place.
“Uncle Owen,” Charlie shouted, “can we go to the playground?”
Interesting that the kids now looked to their uncle for permission, and not their grandparents.
Charlie grabbed her hand and Gracie stood.
“I’ll go with them. I need to walk off that amazing lunch anyway.” Then she allowed herself to be towed across the grass before anyone objected.
Crazy but invisible springs gave her steps a little bounce as she and the kids walked to the campground’s small playground. True, she and Owen hadn’t tackled the elephant in the room of what happened after school term ended. But it couldn’t be denied they’d both changed—changed each other for the better.
She helped Charlie onto a swing and set it in motion.
The cloudless blue sky was a perfect backdrop, the swooping and calling gulls overhead drowned out by Charlie’s cries of “Higher, Gracie! Higher!”
When Charlie finally had enough of “sky-surfing,” Gracie caught the chains and slowed the swing.
“I’m thirsty,” Charlie said. “But I’m not finished playing.”
“I’ll go back and get you a drink.”
After asking Morgan to watch Charlie, Gracie strolled back the way they’d come. She waved to a few other caravan owners in front of their vehicles, relaxing and enjoying the sunshine, and she smiled at the Rambling Gypsies, rising up behind the privacy hedge. Coolest home ever. She wondered if Maureen and Richard would take her for a spin around the block sometime.
She stepped around the hedge, a request on her lips—but the picnic table was empty, bar a water jug and a stack of plastic tumblers. Raised voices drifted out from inside the bus, and Gracie froze mid-reach.
“Gracie reminds me of your sister when she was younger,” Maureen said. “Such a free spirit, goes wherever the wind takes her.”
“She’s nothing like Alison.” But doubt crackled through Owen’s deeper voice.
Gracie risked a glance up at the bus, but she couldn’t see them. They must be on the opposite side, seated at the dinette table, and unable to see her frozen like a possum in the headlights.
“Oh, honey. I didn’t realize it was serious between you two.”
“Of course it’s serious.” Richard’s voice was much like his son’s, except roughened with time and experience. “Haven’t you noticed the way he’s looked at her the entire time they’ve been here?” He chuckled. “It’s the same way I’ve looked at you, darlin’, every day for the past thirty-seven years.”
“Oh, Richie, you big charmer, you,” Maureen said. “Owen, please don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love with a girl who’ll break your heart when she leaves?”
A few heavy beats of silence. Gracie’s fingers closed on the jug’s handle, and it took all her willpower to keep her hand steady as she lifted it. No more eavesdropping. She should’ve bolted the moment she heard her name.
“No, Gracie beautifully filled a need, but I’m a grown-ass man,” he said. “She won’t break my heart.”
The jug’s weight strained the weak and watery muscles in Gracie’s arm, but she hugged it close to her chest and snatched up the stack of plastic tumblers. She turned and walked back to the playground.
Owen was right. How could she break his heart when he’d never given it to her in the first place?
Chapter 19
The kids wanted to spend the night with their grandparents. Owen couldn’t think of a good reason why they couldn’t since his dad offered to get Morgan off to school the next morning and to entertain the younger two kids for the day. He’d tackle the sticky issue of the kids living with him on a more permanent basis later in the week.
On the plus side, he’d have the whole night with Gracie. Alone.
“You ready?” she said from beside him in the car’s passenger seat. “Or did you need me to navigate us home?”
The brightness of Gracie’s smile was blinding. She’d been her usual, bubbly self after she and the kids returned from the playground, but something was off. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Owen keyed the ignition and reversed out of the parking space. He shrugged off the unease, pathetically buoyed by her use of the word “home.”
“Don’t be sad, Uncle Owen, we’ll be home tomorrow.” That’s what Charlie had said to him a few minutes ago. And with any luck, he’d figure out a way to make a home with his nephew and nieces, and Gracie—
Gracie cleared her throat, recrossing her legs as they drove along the foreshore road. “I got a text from my sister-in-law while I was at the playground with the kids. She asked me to look after her youngest while she’s at a school camp with her middle son. I thought with your parents being up here now”—another soft throat clearing—“that it’d be okay if I went down to Auckland for a few days.”
His stomach gave a little twinge at the thought of not seeing Gracie for longer than twenty-four hours. “Of course it’s okay.” Because he wasn’t a one hundred percent selfish dick. “You should go.”
He turned into his driveway. “Family’s important,” he added. Something he’d conven
iently forgotten for far too long.
Owen parked in front of the garage, and Gracie made a soft sound, her fists clenching on her knees.
“Um, could you park inside?” she asked. “I need to get my car out.”
“You’re leaving now?” When, for the first time, they had the whole house to themselves? Privacy in spades.
“I want to miss rush-hour traffic, and Erin and Reece are leaving first thing in the morning.” She reached across him to the visor and hit the automatic garage door button clipped there. “You know what Auckland is like in peak-hour traffic.”
The scent of strawberries insidiously invaded his nose. Trained to react to the warmth of her body in such a confined space, Owen struggled not to drag her onto his lap. He masterfully gained control of his limbs and drove into the garage at a sedate crawl. As soon as he’d pulled on the parking brake, Gracie slipped out of the car.
“Better get those casseroles your mum sent back with us in the fridge,” she said. “I’ll go pack a few things.”
Without waiting for him, she darted out of the garage. He heard the click of her unlocking the spare room then the hiss of the sliding door opening…and snapping shut.
Huh. Guess a quickie was out of the question.
Owen shook his head and climbed out of the vehicle, walking around to load up on homemade lasagna, chicken casserole, and a huge baking dish of macaroni and cheese. Meals stashed in the fridge, Owen unloaded the dishwasher in a spate of domesticity—even though it was William’s turn. The purr of the VW engine starting up and the soft whine as it reversed out of the garage snagged his attention from sorting flatware into the drawer.
He strolled to the back door and stepped outside. Gracie had turned the car around so it faced down the driveway, and he jogged over, tapping on the driver’s side window. Gracie jumped and whipped her head around, her eyes flared wide. She buzzed down the window, and he chuckled, the six-year-old boy in him delighting at having startled her.
“Weren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?” He bent down, resting his forearms on the sill.
She stared back at him, her gaze softening for a moment. It occurred to him maybe she didn’t want to leave, just as much as he didn’t want her to. But when family asked for help…
Owen ducked his head under the window frame and kissed her. Kissed her like time had run out of the hourglass, like they had no more tomorrows. She clung to him, fingers sliding into his hair, tightening almost painfully against his scalp. Then, as if an invisible alarm had triggered, she released her grip on him and pulled back.
Sensible girl, because if they’d continued to kiss like that he would’ve attempted to drag her into the Beetle’s backseat, and to hell with the leg cramps.
“See you back here in a couple of days, then.” He grazed the back of his fingers down her cheek.
Her mouth, now slightly reddened from his kisses, curved in the corner. “Oh, you know me, I go where the wind blows.”
“Make sure it’s a northerly, then.” He ducked out of the window and lightly rapped the car’s roof.
With a quick wave, Gracie drove down the driveway and out of sight.
Owen returned inside, his lips still tingling. He probably looked like a giddy schoolgirl, so he grabbed a manly beer and headed into the living room to watch sports. Better than counting the hours until it wouldn’t appear desperate to send her a slightly risqué text. He flopped onto the couch, winced, and pulled the naked Barbie from between the cushions. Then he picked up the remote to channel surf.
Forty minutes later, he blinked and finished the last of his beer. Somehow he’d surfed his way past the Black Caps one-day cricket match to chubby yellow-and-purple Minions chasing each other around an animated world. And he’d been laughing. Out loud.
And more than once he’d caught himself glancing to the empty couch beside him, yearning, dammit, for Gracie to be curled up at his side.
Owen switched off the TV, his chest hollowing at the slow-moving hands of the wall clock. The tick-tick-tick in the silence drove his fingers into his hair, and his gaze zipped around the room for something, anything to do. But everything except the Barbie doll tossed on the coffee table and his empty beer bottle was in its place.
“Laundry!” Owen announced, and his voice sounded loud and stretched thin in the empty room.
He’d run a load of bedding from Gracie’s room. A bona fide excuse to catch a trace of her scent without admitting how much he already missed her. Decision made, Owen strode through the house and out the back door.
The sliding door to the guest room hissed open, the lingering scent of her perfume making him smile. Until he glanced past the neatly made bed to the open wardrobe door.
His smile dropped like an anchor.
The wardrobe was empty except for a row of unevenly spaced coat hangers.
As he walked farther into the room, his leg muscles went hot and shaky. He tugged open the top drawer in the chest of drawers. Empty. And the one below it. Also empty.
He strode into the bathroom. The counter, usually cluttered with all manner of beauty products, most of which he had no clue of their purpose—wiped clean.
Gone. Cleared out.
He shook his head, but the movement didn’t seem to clear the thoughts ricocheting around it, so he dragged out his phone and tapped her name in his address book. Straight to voice mail. He hung up at the sound of Gracie’s unintentionally sexy voice telling him to leave a message and she’d get back to him.
Would she? With leaden feet, Owen returned to the bedroom. Would she get back to him? His gaze fell on the key chain with the guestroom key. She’d left it on the top of the chest of drawers in plain sight. He’d missed it at first glance, but now the meaning was obvious. She’d overheard him talking to his parents.
Gracie was gone, and not just for a couple of days.
Such a free spirit, goes wherever the wind takes her. His mother’s words echoed in his head.
Then Gracie’s softer voice. You know me, I go where the wind blows.
Finally, his own voice, loud as a death knell. She beautifully filled a need…but she won’t break my heart.
Had she thought he meant a basal, male need? That he’d needed her in his bed. Dammit. He did…but that wasn’t what he’d meant. He didn’t just need Gracie in his bed, and she hadn’t just filled a need as his employee. She was the puzzle piece in his life he hadn’t known was missing, the same as his nieces and nephew.
So Gracie wouldn’t only break his heart when she left. Gracie would break the kids’ hearts, too. And Morgan, William, and Charlie had already lost so much.
What a fool he’d been to risk their happiness by, as his mother put it, falling in love with a girl who’d break his heart. Owen slumped on the couch, dropping his head into his hands. For a supposedly smart guy, he was such a fucking idiot.
***
Everything Gracie came north with was stuffed in her backpack or tossed into the Beetle’s trunk.
Apart from her stupid, pathetic, smooshed-flat heart. That remained with Owen.
Gracie swiped at another tear tracking wetly toward her mouth, glaring at the road sign twenty meters ahead. The one that said, You’re leaving Bounty Bay. Haere rā, we hope you’ll come again.
She’d been parked in front of the sign forever. Crying like a big baby, flying through a box of tissues and resorting to leaving snot trails all over her hoodie sleeve. She’d been forced to drag on the sweatshirt to try to hide the face of the lunatic crying lady hunkered down in the driver’s seat. So freaking gross. Luckily, no one had noticed her and called the cops.
With a sigh drawn from the bottomless pit of tears somewhere in her gut region, Gracie started the VW’s engine for the tenth time. This time, she left it running. She checked her rear-view mirror and executed a U-turn, heading back into Bounty Bay. This hot mess on steroids was in no condition to navigate a six-hour drive in traffic.
She drove aimlessly for a few minutes, making random turns,
driving past houses with sprawling yards and welcoming verandas. Past a mum holding the hand of a preschooler dressed in a pink bathing suit, a castle-shaped pail swinging in the child’s hand. Past an old clapboard church on a rise—she tapped the brakes. She was heading right back to Owen’s place. Performing another U-turn, Gracie aimed the Beetle toward someone she hoped would understand.
The apartment door swung open, letting out a whoosh of popcorn-scented air and the sound of a perky cartoon theme song.
“Gracie! What a surpri—” Vee’s eyes popped open wide. “Bloody hell, girl. What happened to your face?”
Guess the wet wipes Gracie scrubbed over her mascara-streaked cheeks outside hadn’t helped. Her lips sealed together to prevent a hiccupping sob from escaping as Vee’s gaze scanned Gracie from her no-doubt-tangled hair downward.
“Is that snot all over your sleeves?”
Gracie nodded. “I ran out of tissues.”
But not tears, since another one slid down her cheek. She lifted her hand, but before she could make contact with her face, Vee rushed forward and gathered her into a bear hug.
“I have tissues,” she said. “And wine.”
“And a couch I could sleep on tonight?” Gracie asked.
Vee pulled away and smoothed Gracie’s hair from her face. “You have a couch for as many nights as you need. Come inside, and let’s get you out of that disgusting sweater.”
“I’m gross, I know.” Gracie followed Vee into the kitchen. “But I’ll only be here one night. I’m driving to Auckland in the morning.”
A sideways glance arrowed her way as Vee snatched up a box of tissues and passed it to her. “You’re still leaking. Blow your nose, strip, and then tell me what the asshole did to you.”
Gracie sank onto a kitchen chair and peeled off the hoodie, dropping it on the floor by her feet. “He’s not an asshole. He’s just”—she plucked out a tissue and dabbed her leaking eyes—“not on the same page as me.”
Teach Your Heart: A New Zealand Opposites Attract Romance (Far North Series Book 3) Page 23