Gansett Island Boxed Set Books 1-16 (Gansett Island Series)

by Marie Force

  “Where’re you going?” Dan asked.

  “You know where I’m going.”

  Dan turned to face him, brushed a hand over Grant’s jacket and adjusted the collar, patting him on the shoulder when he was satisfied. “There. Now you can go.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Call me tomorrow. Let me know how it goes.”

  Grant’s stomach hurt when he imagined the many ways this could go wrong. “I will. You’re here for a few more days, right?”

  “At least. I’m due in court in LA next Friday, and then my schedule is clear until after the first of the year.”

  “It’ll be nice to have you around this winter.”

  “It’ll be nice to be here, if you’re not pouting the whole time.” Before Grant could respond to that, Dan gave him a gentle push. “Go get your girl, and don’t screw it up.”

  “I’ll try not to.” As Grant made his way to Mac’s motorcycle in the parking lot, he thought of the many ways it was possible to screw this up. Maybe he already had by waiting two days to go after her. His stomach started to hurt in earnest at that thought. He’d never wanted anything more than he wanted to be with her, but nothing had ever been more difficult. How that was possible?

  On the way to Charlie’s place, where he’d heard she was staying, Grant tried to remember what had caused the fight. Try as he might, he couldn’t recall the specific exchange. There had been many of them over the last couple of months, since they’d begun to collaborate on the screenplay about Charlie’s unjust incarceration and Stephanie’s relentless campaign to free him.

  When Grant pulled into the driveway, Charlie was washing his pickup truck. He stopped what he was doing and gave Grant that blank look he did so well as Grant parked the bike and walked over to him.

  “Is Stephanie around?” Grant asked, discovering in that moment he had a shred of pride left, and it was seriously dented by having to ask her stepfather where she was.

  “Yep.”

  “Could I see her?”

  “I’d say that’s up to her.” Charlie studied him for a long, uncomfortable moment.

  Grant resisted the urge to squirm under the heat of the other man’s stare.

  “I take it you never got around to asking her the question we talked about the other day?”

  Grant shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest, his left hand resting on the ring box in his coat pocket. He’d carried it with him for weeks, hoping for the right chance to ask her.

  “What happened?” Charlie asked.

  “Damned if I know.”

  “So what’s your plan, hot shot?” This was asked with a hint of amusement that was so shocking coming from the normally stoic Charlie, that Grant was temporarily rendered speechless. “I, um, was thinking I’d apologize for whatever I did that made her so mad.”

  “Good place to start.” Charlie pointed his chin toward the path that led to the beach. “She went for a walk a little while ago. You might catch her on the way back.”

  Grant’s heart lurched in his chest at the thought of seeing her. Two days was too damned long. “Thanks.”

  “Good luck,” Charlie called after him.

  Grant waved to let the other man know he’d heard him and headed down the well-worn path. As he got closer to the bluffs, the smell of the ocean assailed him, reminding him, as it always did, of home. But now that he’d met Stephanie, fallen in love with her, lived with her. . . She was his home, and he’d be positively lost without her. “You should probably tell her that,” he grumbled to himself. “For a guy who fancies himself rather good with words, you need to find the right ones, and you need to do it soon.”

  He traveled about a half mile down the path before he found her sitting on a rock that overlooked the Atlantic. Her arms were stretched out behind her, and her face was tilted into the late afternoon sun.

  His heart contracted painfully at the sight of her. He ached for her, but was reluctant to say or do anything that would make things worse.

  She must’ve sensed him there because she turned and met his gaze. Surprise registered on her expressive face before she shuttered herself, the way she had so often lately. He hated when she did that. It left him feeling closed out and closed off from her, two places he never wanted to be where she was concerned.

  Grant walked the final thirty feet to her, feeling as if his entire life would come down to whatever transpired here. “You look like a sun goddess sitting on your stage waiting for the gods to show up to worship you.”

  “Looks like it worked,” she said with a small smile that warmed the cold places inside him. She held out a hand. “Now come worship me.”

  Grant took her hand and joined her on the rock. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to her sun-warmed face. “Steph, I—”

  “Shhh. Don’t say anything. Just hold me.”

  Because there was nothing he’d rather do, he did as she asked. He had no idea how long they sat there, wrapped up in each other as the sun dipped lower toward the horizon.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally said, softly so as not to break the magical spell.

  “So am I.” She ran her hand over his hair and down to cup his face.

  Her touch sent a shiver of longing through him.

  “I’ve had some time to think,” she said.

  That quickly, the longing turned to dread. Something about the way she said the simple sentence terrified him. “And?”

  “This. . .” She took a moment to compose herself, which only added to his growing anxiety. “This isn’t working.”

  The words and the pain he heard in her voice as she said them hit Grant like an arrow straight to the heart. “That’s not true.”

  “Wait,” she said. “Hear me out.”

  “I don’t want to hear you say you’re leaving me. I can’t hear that.”

  “You can’t possibly be happy with the way things have been.”

  “In our worst moment, I’m happier with you than I’ve ever been before.”

  “Grant. . .” Tears rolled down her face, every one of them breaking his heart. “I love you so much. You know I do. It’s just that after the way I grew up, the constant upheaval, the fighting, the sick feeling in my stomach, always worrying when the bottom was going to fall out. . . I simply can’t live like that anymore.”

  Every one of her words hit him like poison arrows filled with pain serum. It occurred to him all at once that he’d done a terrible thing to her by letting the passion they shared in bed spill over into the other areas of their life together. She was absolutely right. After her tumultuous childhood, she needed calm stability not high drama.

  “You’re right.” Grant bit back the tidal wave of panic and focused on what he needed to do to fix this, because losing her was not an option he was willing to consider. “You’re absolutely right, and I understand that the way it’s been between us doesn’t work for you—and I get why. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make some changes to make it work better in the future.”

  She eyed him warily. “What kind of changes?”

  “For one thing, we’ll no longer work together. That’s not good for us.”

  “No,” she said with a sigh, “it really isn’t.”

  “The screenplay is my job. I bought the rights from you and Charlie, and I’m asking you to trust me to do justice to your story.”

  “No pun intended,” she said with a smile that gave him the first shred of hope that they might get through this crisis.

  “No,” he said, amused, “no pun intended.” He took her hand and linked their fingers. “Do you trust me to tell your story with dignity and grace and courage and humility and all the other words that come to mind when I think of what you went through alone for so many years?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice heavy with emotion, “of course I trust you to do it right. If I didn’t, I never would’ve given you the rights.”

  “Then you have to take a step back and let me do it.”

>   She nodded, even as tears threatened again.

  He brought their joined hands to his lips. “And you, my love, need to take the money I paid you for the rights to your story and open that restaurant you’ve always dreamed of. Here or in Providence or both, if that’s what you want.”

  Her eyes went wide with surprise. “How do you know about my restaurant?”

  “I have my sources.”

  “Did Charlie tell you that? Who else would know?” She waited a heartbeat. “Why did Charlie tell you? When did he tell you?”

  “He told me the other day when I came over to see him.”

  Her mouth fell open in shock. “You came to see Charlie? By yourself? I thought you were scared of him.”

  Grant snorted with laughter. “I didn’t say I was scared of him. I said he’s intimidating and looks at me like he wants to kill me in my sleep.”

  “You also mentioned that he’d probably learned a few ways to do that while he was in prison,” she reminded him.

  “Okay, maybe I was a little scared of him, but I had something I needed to ask him, so I had to man up and come talk to him.”

  “Wow,” she said, truly amazed, “I would’ve like to have seen that. What did you have to ask him?”

  “I can’t tell you that. It’s guy stuff. You wouldn’t understand.”

  She rolled her eyes at that. “Was he nice to you?”

  “Yes.”

  She crooked the famous brow that let him know she wasn’t buying his bullshit. “Really?”

  “He warmed up as the visit unfolded.”

  That made her laugh, which filled Grant with wild, foolish hope. When it was good between them, there was nothing better. He made a silent vow to work harder to make sure it was good between them all the time going forward. Nothing was more important than her happiness, not even the damned screenplay he’d let come between them, a thought he decided he’d better share with her so she’d understand that he truly got it.

  “I thought I’d learned my lesson after what happened with Abby.”

  “What lesson is that?”

  “That nothing is more important than you are. Not the screenplay or my career or my family. Nothing.”

  “I know how important the screenplay is to you, Grant. You shouldn’t make light of that.”

  “If someone told me I’d be the most successful writer in Hollywood for the rest of my life but I couldn’t have you, I’d say thank you very much, Hollywood. It’s been a lovely ride, but I’m done now. I have something far more important in my life than any movie will ever be. I’ve got the real thing, the love story of a lifetime, and there’s nothing in this world that will ever be more important to me than she is.” He shifted his body off the rock, so he was on his knees before her, keeping a firm grip on her hands. “Stephanie, you’re the love story of my lifetime, the one I can’t live without.”

  Every emotion she possessed skirted across her expressive face as she waited breathlessly to hear what else he had to say. In all of Grant’s thinking about this moment, it had never occurred to him that she might say no to his question, but now he wasn’t so sure. He pushed that unsavory thought aside to focus on saying the right thing. Words were his business. He’d never needed them more than he did right now.

  “I know it’s been rocky at times and it’s apt to be again once in a while, but I promise I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy, to give you the family you’ve always wanted, the life you’ve always wanted and the security you’ve never had. You’ll never have to wonder where I am or who I’m with, because I’ll always want to be with you more than I want to be with anyone else. There’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do for you, but I need you to do one thing for me first.”

  “What?” she asked, sounding breathless now, too.

  “Marry me.” He released her hands to retrieve the ring box from his pocket and opened it to reveal a simple square-cut diamond. He knew her well enough to suspect that anything flashier would’ve been wrong for her.

  She gasped, and her hand covered her mouth.

  He loved that he’d taken her completely by surprise.

  Her eyes darted from the ring to his face—possibly to gauge his sincerity—and back to the ring.

  “Stephanie Logan, I’ll love you every day for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?” Grant thought his eyes were deceiving him when he saw her nod. “Is that a yes?”

  The word “yes” got caught on a sob, but he heard it. Loud and clear. He slid the ring onto her finger and reached for her.

  She came right off the rock and launched herself into his arms. They landed on the sand in a clutch of arms and legs.

  “I’ve got you, baby,” Grant said, running a hand over her back as she continued to cry. He hoped they were happy tears. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded and clung to him.

  “That’ll learn you not to try to break up with me.”

  Sobs turned to laughter, which turned to passion the instant his lips met hers. “I love you,” he said when they came up for air. “Only you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “And do you promise to never try to dump me again?”

  “I may try, but I’m sure you’ll find some smooth, sweet words to talk your way out of it like you did today.”

  “Speaking as a reviewer, tell me, what did the trick?”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “As if you don’t know.”

  “I really don’t.”

  In one of her signature moves, she brushed the hair off his forehead and ran her fingers through it lovingly. “The love story of a lifetime was a pretty good line.”

  “Just pretty good?”

  “Extremely memorable. The security I’ve never had was a close second.”

  “I thought you might like that.”

  “When you marry a writer, you ought to get a proposal for the ages.”

  His eyes went wide at what surely had to be one of the finest compliments he’d ever received. “Is that what this was?”

  “Absolutely,” she said, kissing him again.

  “How about a marriage for the ages to go with it?”

  “I’m all for that. Is this what you had to talk to Charlie about?”

  Nodding, he said, “I couldn’t ask you without his blessing.”

  “And he gave it?”

  “With some assurances.”

  That made her snort with laughter. “I hope he made you work for it.”

  “Oh trust me. He did.” His lips found the tender underside of her jaw, one of his favorite places to kiss her. “Steph?”

  She tipped her head to give him better access. “Hmm?”

  The setting sun cast her skin in a warm glow. “Why didn’t you tell me about the restaurant?”

  “I don’t know. I figured I’d get around to it eventually.”

  “Are there other things you want that I don’t know about?”

  She shook her head. “You covered all the high points in your proposal.”

  “I want you to know—I get what you said about how you grew up. Things will be different from now on.”

  “Thank you for listening—and for hearing me.”

  “Any time I don’t do that, just give me a kick in the ass. Promise?”

  “Yes,” she said laughing. “It’ll be my pleasure to kick you in the ass. Can I spank you sometimes just to mix things up?”

  “Whatever you want, babe.” The suggestion was all it took to get Grant thinking about officially sealing their deal. “Speaking of your pleasure. . .” He extricated himself from her embrace and stood, offering her a hand up. Drawing her into his arms, he held her tight for a long time before he let her go, slung an arm around her shoulders and directed her to the path. “Let’s go home.”

  An hour after they left Point Judith, Owen followed the GPS directions to Providence’s tony East Side, still hoping he was heading to her father’s house. Laura hadn’t stirred once during the ride, and her face remained ghostly
pale.

  He got his answer about the address when they reached a two-story white colonial with black shutters, nicely trimmed bushes and the name McCarthy on the mailbox. Owen pulled into the driveway and parked next to a silver Cadillac sedan. He tried to decide his next move. Did he wake her up or let her sleep a while longer? He wanted to let her sleep but didn’t think it was appropriate to sit in her father’s driveway for half an hour without letting him know they were there.

  Frank McCarthy solved the problem for him by coming out of the house to greet them.

  Owen emerged from the car and stopped short at the sight of Laura’s dad, a shorter version of Big Mac McCarthy. Whereas Big Mac was all rough edges and relaxed cool, Frank was tailored and urbane in a light blue dress shirt, dark dress pants and black wingtips. While Big Mac’s gray hair was often wild and unkempt from the wind that whipped through the docks, Frank’s was combed into a tame style suitable for a courtroom. He wore a concerned look in the blue eyes he shared with his brother, daughter and nephews.

  “I trust you’re the Owen Lawry I’ve heard so much about,” Frank said, as he approached Owen with his hand extended.

  While Owen digested the fact that Laura had told her father about him, Owen shook the older man’s hand. “Yes, sir. I can’t believe our paths haven’t crossed before now. I’ve been close to your brother’s family since I was a kid.”

  A flash of regret registered on Frank’s face. “I’ve not been able to spend as much time on the island as I would’ve liked to over the years.” He glanced at the car. “Did she get sick? I wondered if she would. The ferry has always made her queasy even on the best of days.”

  “Is that right?” Owen said, surprised to realize she’d lied to him about never getting sick. He took that as an indication of just how badly she’d wanted to keep the appointment with Justin. “She did get pretty sick, and it wiped her out.”

  “Poor baby.” He glanced at the gold watch on his wrist. “You’ve got about forty minutes until you need to head out to meet he who shall not be named.”

  In that moment, Owen realized he was going to get along famously with Laura’s dad. Laughing, he said, “I like that.”

  “Thought you might.” Frank opened the passenger door. “Let’s get her inside.”