by Marie Force
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Adam nodded as his stomach tightened with the realization that it was now or never on the subject of Abby. “There was something else I wanted to talk to you about if you have another minute,” Adam said, diving in before he could rethink his way out of having this conversation in the first place.
“What’s that?”
“Abby.”
Grant’s brows furrowed with confusion. “What about her?”
“We ran into each other on the ferry yesterday and unloaded on each other about our ugly breakups. Then I ran into her again last night when I was out looking for you.” Adam didn’t bother to mention that he’d dragged her out of a bar and spent the night in her hotel room. Some details were better left unmentioned.
“So?”
“So I kind of like her. I like talking to her, and she gets what I’m dealing with. I was wondering if you’d have a problem if I hang out with her.”
This time Grant’s brows narrowed in obvious annoyance. “Define ‘hang out.’”
“Do I really have to?”
“Yeah, I think you do.”
“You know, hang out… and stuff.”
“That clears it right up. Are you asking me if I mind if you have a fling or whatever it’s called with my ex-girlfriend?”
“Ah, sort of. Yeah.”
“Hell, yes, I mind! She’s not like that. She doesn’t fool around with random guys and then move on to the next one.”
Adam decided it wouldn’t be wise to mention Abby’s recent changes in philosophy on those matters. “I’m not a random guy, Grant. It’s me. You know I’d be straight up with her. We’re both raw after what we’ve been through and looking to have some lighthearted fun. I like her. I think she likes me. That’s all it is.”
“Did you like her that way when I was dating her?”
“Get real. I never gave her a second look when she was your girlfriend, and you know it. Bottom line—she’s not your girlfriend anymore. You’re happy with Stephanie. Why should you care if I hang out with Abby?”
“I don’t want you to hurt her, Adam. I did enough damage where she’s concerned. That’s why I’d rather you found someone else to hang out with.”
“But I like her. She gets what I’m dealing with. She’s not looking for anything more than something fun—same as me. Is that really such a threat to you?”
Stephanie stepped through the back door, startling them both. “Why are you threatening him?” she asked with a teasing smile as she went up on tiptoes to kiss Grant’s cheek.
He put an arm around her, giving Adam a warning glare over her head.
“I’m not threatening anyone,” Adam said, looking directly at his brother as he said the words.
“Good,” Steph said. “No bickering allowed in our house.”
“That’s right,” Grant said.
“Then I’d better get out of here,” Adam said. “I’ll see you guys later.”
Grant followed him to the door. He grabbed Adam’s arm. “Adam…”
“Aah!” Adam pulled back his recently tattooed arm.
“What?”
“Sore arm. Long story.” He put a hand on his brother’s chest to stop the conversation. “I heard you, Grant.”
“So what’re you going to do?”
“Have some fun and do no harm. I promise.”
Grant nodded but still looked annoyed as Adam walked down the stairs to the driveway.
The crushed shells crunched under his feet as Adam made his way out to the road that led back to town. All the way, he could feel his brother watching him.
“What was that all about?” Stephanie asked after Adam left.
Grant turned to her, and she could see that he was angry. “Nothing.”
“You’re getting awfully good at keeping things from me. Should I be worried?”
His shoulders seemed to lose some of their stiffness. “No.” He came back into the kitchen and put the cover on the bottle of whiskey. That had been the first thing she’d noticed when she came in, after, of course, the visible—and unusual—tension between the brothers.
“Kind of early for whiskey, isn’t it?” Stephanie asked the question casually, mindful of his fragile state and not wanting to make anything worse.
“It was for him. Not me.”
“What’s up with him?”
“He’s had some issues with his company. He’s working it out, but it’s been tough.”
“Oh. So why did you seem pissed with him when I came in?”
Grant leaned against the counter and folded his arms, his gaze fixed on her as if he was trying to decide what he should say.
The longer the silence stretched between them, the more anxious Stephanie became. She wished she didn’t automatically go to worst-case scenario every time the slightest thing went wrong, but her tumultuous life before she met Grant had given her ample reason to do so. “Never mind,” she said, unable to bear the tension for another second.
“Wait.” He paused, his jaw pulsing with tension, which was never a good sign. “I want to tell you what we were talking about, but there’s almost no way to tell you without making you think I want something that I don’t.”
“Oh, well, if that’s all it is...”
He shook his head and blew out a deep breath. “He wants to date Abby.”
Stephanie hadn’t seen that one coming, and suddenly she couldn’t seem to breathe as she recalled what Adam had been saying as she came into the kitchen. She sucked in a breath and fought to maintain her composure. “Why would he think you’d be threatened by that?”
“I’m not threatened by it. Not at all. I want you to hear me on that. Do you?”
As she nodded, her mind raced and her palms were suddenly damp.
“Say it. Tell me you heard me.”
“I did,” she said haltingly. “I heard you.”
“Come here.”
Because she couldn’t stay away, Stephanie crossed the room to him, stopping in front of him. “I’m here.”
“Closer.”
She moved another inch forward.
“Closer,” he said with the sexy grin she hadn’t seen since before the accident.
A happy gasp escaped from her tightly clenched jaw, releasing all the pent-up tension with it.
He put his arms around her and looked into her eyes. “I love you. I don’t care if my brother dates her. I will care if he hurts my friend, however. I don’t want to see her hurt again. She’s had enough already. Okay?”
“You…”
“What, Steph?”
She forced herself to look up and meet his gaze. She forced herself to ask the question. “You don’t think it would be weird to see him with her?”
“Maybe the first time. And the second. After that, it might seem less weird. But it’s no threat to me—or to us. I promise.” He dipped his head and kissed her, softly at first and with more intent when she responded with greedy enthusiasm. It had been a very long week.
Her hands coasted over his chest and up to link around his neck. She couldn’t get close enough to him.
Judging by the way his arms tightened around her and the thrusts of his tongue, he felt the same way. “Missed you,” he said between kisses.
“Me, too. I’ve missed you so much.”
“I don’t like that furrow between your brows,” Grant said, placing a kiss on the area in question. “I don’t like that you think what we have isn’t going to last.”
“I wish I wasn’t like that. You don’t know how badly I want to believe that everything is going to work out perfectly. I’m just not wired that way. I have visions of you seeing your brother with Abby and wanting her for yourself again.”
“That’s not going to happen. I wish he’d chosen to ‘hang out’ with someone else, but not for the reasons you think. It’s because she’s been through a lot. I don’t want anyone, especially my own brother, trifling with her. She deserves better.”
“Adam
is a good guy. Your father didn’t raise any other kind. Any woman would be in good hands with you or one of your brothers.”
“That wasn’t always true for me. I didn’t treat her the way she deserved to be treated.” He kissed her forehead and nose on the way to her lips. “I’m trying hard not to make the same mistake with you. Don’t let me, okay?”
“I won’t.”
He nuzzled her neck, placing kisses in places he knew made her crazy. “I’d be lost without you, Steph. You were the one thing that kept me going out there. Thinking about you, getting back to you…”
It was the most he’d said about the long day in the water, and she had to refrain from urging him to keep talking. Judging from the press of his erection against her belly, he wasn’t in the mood to talk.
“I was so scared,” she said, choosing to focus on how she’d felt rather than pushing him to share more about what’d happened to him. “We’ve had so little time together, and all I could think about while we waited to hear something was whether that would be all we’d get.”
“We’re going to get so much more,” he assured her. “We’re going to get everything.”
She wanted so badly to believe him.
“Do you have to go right back to work?”
Looking up to gauge his meaning, she found his eyes blazing with heat she hadn’t seen since before the accident. She had a million and one things to do at both restaurants, but none of that was as important as him. “Not necessarily. What’s on your mind?”
He smiled as his hands moved over her back in a gentle caress, working downward until he cupped her bottom and lifted her.
Stephanie curled her legs around his waist and held on tight as he walked them into the bedroom, stopping in the hallway to press her against the wall and kiss her senseless. God, she had missed him and this. It’d only been a week, but it felt like a lifetime.
Without breaking the kiss, he came down over her on the bed and made fast work of pushing clothes out of the way.
“Hurry, Grant,” she whispered urgently as she squirmed under him. “I can’t wait.” He had her on the verge of exploding with only the press of his body against hers and the hot, intense kisses.
He pulled back from her only long enough to free himself from his clothes, surging into her with a quick thrust that had her arching her back to get him deeper.
Stephanie reached the first peak seconds after he entered her, crying out with the thrill of it.
“Ah, Christ, that’s good,” he groaned, pushing hard into her to ride the wave of her climax.
She opened her eyes and saw him watching her, still hard and moving slowly inside her.
“That was quite something,” he said, brushing his lips against hers and sending a riot of sensation rippling through her that started the climb toward a second release.
“I was pent up.”
He laughed and gathered her in tight against him. “Take this off,” he said, tugging her shirt up and over her head and releasing the front clasp on her bra. “Much better,” he said as his chest hair rubbed against her nipples.
Stephanie tightened her arms around him, closed her eyes and focused on enjoying every second of their reunion. For so many hours she’d feared never seeing him again, never holding him, never making love with him, never talking to him or waking to his gorgeous face on the pillow next to hers.
As he dug his fingers into her hips and picked up the pace, it became clear to her that she never would’ve survived losing him. Her life, too, would’ve been over—at least the life that she’d come to love almost as much as she loved him.
“Grant…”
“What, honey?”
“Love you. More than anything.”
“Me, too. Me, too.” He pushed hard into her, tipping her over the edge again. His muffled cry against her shoulder and the surge of heat within her only made the ride sweeter. Everything was sweeter when they did it together.
For a long time afterward, she held him tight and gave thanks for all they had. The rest faded away, unimportant. She had everything she needed as long as she had him.
Laura and Owen emerged from the clinic into afternoon sunshine. Her legs were rubbery beneath her, making her tighten her grip on his arm to remain standing. “I…I need to sit,” she said. Her hands were trembling, and her skin felt clammy.
Owen steered her to a bench in the middle of a small garden outside the clinic’s main door and sat next to her, seeming equally shell-shocked.
“Say something,” she said after a long period of stunned silence.
“I have no idea what to say.”
“Did that really just happen?”
“I think it did.”
Lightheaded and nauseated, Laura bent at the waist, forcing fresh air into her lungs.
He rubbed comforting circles on her back. “Are you going to be sick?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Are you?”
Owen laughed, relieving some of the tension. “Not sure yet.”
Laura sat up straight, moving slowly in deference to the lightheadedness, and turned to him. “How are we going to do this? Can you tell me that? Three babies in one year and a hotel to run?”
She knew she sounded slightly hysterical, but who wouldn’t be after Victoria confirmed that the stomach flu wasn’t the flu after all but indeed another pregnancy—and this time she was expecting twins? Apparently, she was six weeks along. A transvaginal ultrasound had revealed two strong heartbeats.
Owen massaged her shoulders. “First, take a deep breath.”
Gazing into his familiar gray eyes, she did as he directed.
“Now take another.” After she inhaled and exhaled a second time, he said, “Keep breathing, Princess. No matter what happens, we’ll deal with it.”
Laura hated the hysterical tension that gripped her chest, the tears that pooled in her eyes and the overwhelming need to cry that came with them. “A year ago, you were footloose and fancy free, living the good life. It was a big enough deal for you to take on Holden—and me. But this... It’s just too much. You’ll be running for your old life—”
He kissed the words off her lips. “Stop. I’m not going anywhere. And for your information, I never lived the good life until I lived with you—and Holden. It’s not too much. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted.”
“That’s not true! You never wanted any of it!”
“I had no idea how much I wanted it until I had it. Don’t you see?” With his hand on her face, he compelled her to look at him. “I didn’t know what I was missing. How could I know, growing up the way I did? I love you, I love Holden, and I’ll love our babies, too. I promise.”
“It’s too much,” she said, shaking her head as tears spilled down her face.
“It’s just enough, honey.” He cupped her cheeks and swept up the tears with his thumbs. “How lucky are we? How blessed?”
“I’ll tell you one thing, mister, you’d better get all the sex you can while I’m pregnant, because after these two are born, I’m never going near you again if you can get me pregnant this easily—and two of them to boot!”
Laughing, Owen dragged her up and tossed an arm around her. “Yes, you will. You can’t resist me.”
Because she couldn’t exactly deny that, she elbowed his ribs. “Watch me.” A new thought made her nauseated again. “Oh my God, what’ll I tell my dad?”
“Tell him he’s going to be a grandpa again, just a little sooner than we’d planned.”
“Since this is all your fault, why don’t you tell him?”
He made a distressed face that made her laugh. “Do I hafta?”
“I’d say that’s the least you can do after you knocked me up so thoroughly.”
Puffing out his chest, he said, “I did do a pretty good job, didn’t I?”
Even though she was amused by his pleasure in the earth-shattering news, she couldn’t let him see that, so she scowled at him. After this extremely unexpected development, she figured she had
the right to be a bit grouchy until she wrapped her head around it.
At the car, he turned her to face him and eased her back against the sun-warmed metal. “I’ll be glad to tell your dad this awesome news,” he said, nuzzling her neck, “and I’ll make sure to tell him again how very much I love his beautiful daughter who has made me so happy. So damned happy.”
“Keep talking,” she said, bending her neck to give him better access. “Maybe I’ll forgive you before the wedding.”
Chuckling, he held the passenger door for her. “Let’s go tell our little boy that he’s going to be a big brother.”
Laura was glad—and relieved—that Owen was so excited about the new babies. But all she could think about was nine months of nausea, three babies in one year and a hotel to run. It might take her a while to match his excitement, but she’d get there. Eventually. Or at least she hoped so.
Abby showered, blow-dried her hair and treated the site of the tattoo with antibiotic ointment. She bent and twisted to get a look at it in the mirror, frustrated all over again with herself for taking the safe route with a small tattoo on her back that no one would see unless she wanted them to.
“You’re doing a heck of a job shaking things up, girlfriend,” she whispered to her reflection. “You’re doing a hell of a job, I should say.” She shook her head in disgust. “You’re such a bad ass. Unable to hold your liquor, unable to swear respectably, unable to get a tattoo that people will actually see, unable to get off during sex. No wonder things didn’t work out with Grant or Cal. I bore myself. Why wouldn’t they be bored, too?”
She was sick to death of wanting to be different. She was fed up with wishing for something else but not knowing how to make it happen. She’d thought she found what she wanted with Cal, but that hadn’t worked either. And now here she was, right back where she started with nothing much to show for the last ten years of her life.
“Well, that’s not entirely true,” she said, thinking of the nest egg she still had from Abby’s Attic. Thinking about her adorable little store made her heart ache even more over what she’d given up for a man, so she chose not to go there. Rather, she relived the kiss on the beach with Adam for probably the hundredth time since it happened an hour ago.