His hand came onto her head and he played with her hair, massaging her scalp with his long fingers. Before coming to Hawaii she’d dyed it again, giving herself some indigo along with the magenta. Her mother always hated when she put clashing colors in her hair.
“You’re a natural blond, Gretel Zsa Zsa Whitney Morrison,” she always said. “Why do you want to escape your own hair color?”
Because escape was what she did. It was her default mode.
But more and more, she wasn’t sure escape was what she wanted when it came to Zander.
She sighed with pleasure as he worked his fingers through her hair. “I’m going to open a hair salon and you’re going to be my shampoo boy,” she murmured.
“Is that right?”
“And Petey can do the mani-pedis.”
He laughed, his belly rising and falling under her cheek. “You’re the craziest girl, did anyone ever tell you that?”
Crazy…
She turned her head and licked his shaft, one long stroke of her tongue against the hardening flesh. It reacted with a pulse and a kick.
Crazy in love. The thought flashed through her mind. And vanished just as fast because it was just a song, just a phrase, and she wasn’t sure she knew what love was.
But she knew what desire was. As she filled her mouth with his erection, arousal shuddered through her—hot and familiar, something she understood, something she could surrender to. Something that could chase all those other thoughts—love, weddings—to the back of her mind.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Vacation by the numbers: six full days in Hawaii. Seven nights snuggling in bed with Gretel. Four surfing lessons for Petey. Six times Gretel sipped on a Mai Tai, then passed it off to him to finish. Twenty-six times the two of them snuck back to the hotel room for some “honeymoon time.” Five times Aimee offered to take Petey home to Connecticut with her.
That, of course, was where he drew the line. Jason moving into town was one thing. Ten-year-old Petey was staying right where he was.
By the time the three of them collapsed into their seats on the airplane heading home, they were sunburned, sand-blasted, and sick of the flavor coconut.
Gretel curled her hand in Zander’s and rested her head on his shoulder. “Is it my imagination, or was that vacation more exhausting than shoveling out from a three-foot snowstorm?”
“I loved it,” Petey announced as he took out his iPad, where all his favorite games lived. “Aimee says she’s going to let me go to New York with her.”
“In a few years, maybe.” God, would Aimee even be part of their lives in a few years? Zander didn’t want to count on that. But overall he thought the trip had gone well. Aimee didn’t seem to hate him, at least. If she hated him, would she have kept talking about weddings?
Every time she did, Zander had held his breath, waiting for the truth to hit Gretel.
With Jason gone, they had no compelling reason to stay in this “marriage-with-an-asterisk.” The threat from Children’s Services was gone. He hadn’t heard anything from Susan Baker since Jason had left. No one was trying to take Petey away. Sure, Gretel’s presence made them a more “traditional-looking” family. But unless Petey started failing all his classes and getting into fistfights with shop owners, they’d be fine.
As for Gretel’s reason for their “marriage,” she’d already fulfilled her pledge to the butterfly sanctuary. The other purpose—to get her mother off her back—was a complete failure. It had done the opposite. Aimee was all set to throw them a wedding and show Petey the world.
Had Gretel realized yet that their entire rationale for being together was gone?
Unless…
There was that conversation he’d half overheard, as he was coming awake from his nap on the beach. Gretel and her mother had been arguing, and he’d slowly realized that they were fighting about him. As he swam toward consciousness, words flowed past him. “Feel sorry … frozen monstrosity… real feelings…love…cloud your judgment…plastered all over your face…wedding…”
By the word “wedding,” he’d been fully focussed on what Aimee was saying. He’d stepped in to rescue Gretel, because he could sense her desperation. But what about the part that had come before?
The part where Aimee accused Gretel of being in love with him?
She hadn’t said “yes.” But she hadn’t exactly said “no” either. Instead, she’d shifted the subject and damn, he really wanted to know more.
Because the way he felt when Gretel was around—it was different from anything he’d experienced before.
But then there was the other part of what Aimee had said. “Tiny dump of a town…waste away at the ends of the earth…”
She had a very good point.
Was Gretel really going to be happy staying in Lost Harbor? He couldn’t leave, not while he was raising Petey.
And that was another thing.
He liked being a father—or at least a father-like figure. Before he’d taken on the care of his brothers, he never would have imagined it. But it was true. He wouldn’t mind more kids at some point. His own. Was Gretel ready for that amount of commitment? When she had the whole world out there waiting for her?
He inhaled the fresh scent of her hair—damn, it smelled like coconut just like everything else—and adjusted his position so her head was nestled into the divot between his shoulder and his chest. She sighed in her sleep.
Here was a wild and crazy idea: what if he told her how he felt? I think I might love you. I think this could be real. I think I need you. I think I want to drop the damn asterisk.
Better not rush into that. He didn’t want to scare her off.
When they finally reached Lost Harbor—two flight changes later—they discovered that another foot of snow had fallen. Nate picked them up at the airport and caught them up on everything they’d missed while they were gone.
The power had gone out for six hours during the blizzard, and the Nightly Catch’s pipes had burst. Boris Clancy’s pet chicken had gotten trapped in a stove pipe and he’d had to dismantle his entire venting system to get her out. The Lost Harbor Puffins hockey team had finally won a game, their first of the winter season. They’d celebrated by getting drunk and erecting a giant blow-up puffin on top of the Olde Salt. In the process, two of the players had slipped off the roof and were now out for the season.
“There’s a reason we’re called the Lost Harbor Losers,” Nate admitted. “A very good reason.”
“Pretty sure there’s a couple good reasons,” murmured Zander.
Nate flipped him a finger, then spoke to Gretel in the backseat. “Ian Finnegan’s back in town. He was asking for you. I told him to stop by the Wicked Brew.”
“Oh cool!” Gretel clapped her hands. “It’ll be nice to see him.”
“Who’s Ian Finnegan?” Zander had never heard that name before, and he knew most people in Lost Harbor at least by name.
“He’s a neurosurgeon who occasionally comes to the Misty Bay Hospital to check up on the brains of Lost Harbor,” Gretel told him.
“That doesn’t take long.” Petey cracked up at his own joke.
Zander ignored him; he was too busy trying to figure out what this neurosurgeon meant to Gretel. Why would she even know a neurosurgeon? “Friend of yours?” he asked her.
“Yes. Sort of. There was a double-date situation. And then my dad showed up and I got sent to town for champagne and things kind of spiraled from there.”
Spiraled? Was that code for something? Did he have to worry about this Ian Finnegan? Even though he and Gretel were married?
That asterisk was becoming more and more of a problem.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gretel had never been so happy to be home. The flight into the tiny Lost Harbor airport had been breathtaking.They’d circled over a layer of ice fog that filled Misty Bay like whipped cream. On one side of the bay, the peaks of Lost Souls Wilderness flirted with the cloud cover, rising in majestic crags of snow-
covered rock against a pale gray sky. On the other, the homes of Lost Harbor clung together, a cozy brigade taking on the elements.
Even the new foot of snow didn’t bother her. After they waded through the snow to the arctic entry and grabbed shovels, she and Petey each took a snow scoop and made a race out of it. By the time the pathway to the front door was cleared, her arms were aching but she was exhilarated by the pure champagne of the crisp air—so different from the humid atmosphere of Hawaii.
She loved Hawaii, of course. And the beach. And traveling. She still loved all of those things. But even more, she loved having something to come home to.
While she and Petey were shoveling, Zander made a fire in the woodstove and got some chili cooking. It was the perfect meal after all that snow shoveling, and they huddled close to the fire while they wolfed it down. Niko, who’d spent the last week with the Noonans, was just as blissfully content to be home as she was.
Zander sorted through the mail that had arrived while they’d been gone. “Jesus, Jason’s trip to State is going to cost a fricking fortune. The school won’t cover it because he’s not an official member of the team yet.” He set it aside, and opened up another one.
His face tightened as he scanned it, but he refused to say anything about it, other than it came from his parents’ life insurance company.
After dinner, Gretel dug out her nail polish remover and helped Petey get the last traces of Pink Flamingo off his nails. “Want to try a different color?” she asked him.
“Nah. I just wanted to see what it felt like. I thought it would feel like magic.” He waved his hand in a bippity-boop gesture.
“Well, I guess you could say makeup is a kind of magic. But not that kind.”
Zander was watching them with a lazy smile. “Anyone up for a game of pickup sticks?”
“Yess!” Petey ran off to grab their set of pickup sticks.
Zander grabbed the opportunity and swiveled her close to him for a kiss. “Welcome home, Gretel Zsa Zsa Whitney Morrison,” he murmured after they’d emerged, panting, from a kiss that seemed to reach deep into her soul. Talk about magic.
“Welcome home,” was just about the most romantic thing he could have said. Short of the “L” word. But that word wasn’t part of their vocabulary.
The Wicked Brew had missed her badly. Everyone told her that—the customers, the other baristas, even Danny D. She had to admit that it felt good that her one-week absence had left such a hole.
She felt terrible about the performances she’d missed, the storytellers and the marimba group that no one had bothered to promote in her absence.
“Never leave again,” one of the baristas whispered to her. “Danny D might seriously lose it next time.”
“Has he said anything more about selling the Wicked Brew?”
“Every time he gets pissed off. So, yeah. A few times a day.”
Crap. Just when she’d started to carve out a place for herself, it was probably going to disappear.
Midway through the morning, Ian Finnegan came in for a coffee. She danced out from behind the bar to give him a hug.
“How are you, my favorite brainiac?” she teased him after she’d finished the hug. Even with his nerd-heaven glasses and generally awkward manner, he was a very good-looking guy.
“Strange. Bethany probably told you about my stalker.”
“She did.” Gretel squeezed his arm sympathetically. “What’s the story?”
“I operated on her daughter, who has a rare form of epilepsy, and now she thinks we’re meant to be together.”
“I assume you disagree?”
“Vehemently.”
“You know I flunked vocabulary.”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard her, in that single-minded way of his. He must be really upset about the stalker situation. “I had to take out a restraining order. It’s been a nightmare. She stole my phone and went through my photos. It just keeps getting worse. It’s nice to come to Lost Harbor and get a break from it.”
“How about a mocha latte to take your mind off it?”
He smiled at her with such sweetness that she started racking her brain for someone to set him up with. Maya Badger? No, she’d already nixed that. Toni the bartender? Trixie Tran, who ran the ice cream shop in the summer?
Well, she’d work on it.
After making Ian his mocha latte, she chatted with him for a few more minutes, making him laugh with her suggestions for possible dates. By the time he left, he was looking much more cheerful. Her job was done.
And then—her phone rang.
As soon as she saw her father’s photo flash on the screen, she knew it was trouble. Did she have to answer? She was at work, after all. Any minute now, someone would come in and want a coffee.
She let it go to voicemail.
But right away, he called again. Daddy despised voice mail and never left messages.
Crap, it must be important. She hadn’t spoken to him much since he cut her off financially last fall. Not because she was angry, but because she’d seized on it as a chance to take command of her own life and she didn’t want Lloyd Morrison, with all his power and wealth, interfering with that.
She hadn’t even spoken to him at Christmas. He and Gemma had gone to St. Barts and the time zones had never lined up.
When he called a third time, she finally gave in. After telling Danny D that she was going to take her break, she took the phone into the storage room in the back. The intense aroma of the sacks of coffee beans reminded her of when she’d dragged Zander back here and basically proposed to him.
The memory made her smile.
The smile didn’t last long.
“I just got off the phone with your mother. A wedding, Gretel? You want me to pay for your wedding?”
“No! Oh God, I should have called you about that. Just ignore her. You don’t have to pay for anything.”
“She said you’re serious about this boy.”
“Well, he’s not a boy. And we did get married already, so that’s pretty ser—”
“It’s ridiculous, and that’s all it is. It’s a childish rebellion. Completely absurd.”
Gretel inhaled more coffee bean aroma, counting on it to ground her against the blast of her father’s scorn. Her hands were starting to sweat. “I guess that’s your opinion. But there’s nothing you can do about it. Like I told Mom, it’s already official. Stamped in gold by the State of Alaska. Signed by me, Zander, and two random dog mushers.”
“Ah yes. Zander Ross. I’ve researched your quote husband.”
A sick feeling gathered in her stomach. “You can leave off the quote. He’s my husband.”
“You didn’t learn much about him before you decided to hitch your future to him, did you?”
“If you mean did I hire a private investigator like you probably did, no. But I didn’t need to. I know him.”
“Did you know that he’s in debt because he spent money he didn’t yet have? That’s feckless.”
In debt. Zander had never mentioned that. He’d only talked about the life insurance that still hadn’t come through.
“I’m sure it’s because of his parents’ insurance.” She closed her eyes in immediate regret. Just like that, she’d stepped onto his turf. She should have stayed away from this entire topic.
“He’d better hope that comes through.”
That sounded almost like a threat. “What are you talking about?”
“Without those funds, I don’t see how he can get rid of his debt while paying for his brother’s ski expenses.”
“How do you know about—” She snapped her mouth shut. Dumb question. If her father had hired a private investigator, he knew everything.
But maybe that was a good thing. If Zander’s biggest flaw was that he’d gone into debt to take care of his brothers, then he was pretty freaking flawless.
“If you’ve dug up that information, then you also know that Zander served in the military, that he resigned to come hom
e and take care of his brothers. That he’s a good person. Isn’t that the most important thing? Isn’t that what you want in a son-in-law?”
Her father snorted as if she’d said something ridiculous. “I thought this was one of your hair-up-your-ass schemes and that you would have moved on by now. But your mother thinks it’s more than that. She’s talking weddings and the Plaza and Thailand and God knows what else. So I’m drawing a line. For your own good.”
“Daddy, you really don’t seem to get it. It’s not up to you anymore. I made my choice. And I’m choosing to stick with it. I’m an adult, I have the right to do that, even if you don’t like my choice!”
There, that felt good. The ground steadied under her feet. She didn’t care about Zander’s alleged debt. He hadn’t mentioned it, but he’d been crystal clear from the beginning that their money had to be separate. That wasn’t a character flaw, that was doing the best he could with a tough situation. That was Zander in a nutshell.
“You care about this family, is that what I’m hearing? The Ross family? You’ve taken them on like a bunch of stray puppies, like Aimee says?”
“Of course I care about them. But they’re not strays and that’s extremely insulting—”
“If you care about them, then I have good news for you.”
Gretel leaned against the storage shelf. There went firm ground again, slip-sliding away, disoriented her all over again. “What are you talking about?”
“Jason Ross. The skier. Quite a future he has, if he can afford to get there.”
Gretel bit down so hard on her cheek that it hurt. Here it came. The carrot. Or the stick. Or both.
“I’ll be his sponsor. I’ll pay all his expenses until he’s able to cover himself. For as long as he needs the support, I’ll give it. That includes gold-plated health insurance for the whole family, travel expenses for the whole family, all of his gear. And when I say ‘gear’ I mean top-of-the-line, nothing but the absolute best. I’ll cover private coaching when that becomes a requirement, private tutoring, living expenses on the road, room and board, whatever the fuck he needs. Blank check. No questions asked. Like a magic carpet ride to the Olympics.”
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