Rising Tides

by Nora Roberts

  "Then we were both wrong." She sat up, brushing briskly at her clothes. "It wasn't one-sided, Ethan. You know that. I didn't try to make you stop because I didn't want you to stop. That was your idea."

  He was baffled, and abruptly nervous. "For Christ's sake, Grace, we were rolling around in your front yard."

  "That's not what stopped you."

  With a quiet sigh, she brought her knees up, wrapped her arms around them. The gesture, so purely innocent, contrasted sharply with the tiny skirt and fishnet stockings and made his stomach muscles tie themselves into hot, slippery knots again.

  "You'd have stopped anyway, wherever it happened. Maybe because you remembered it was me, but it's harder for me to think that you don't want me now. So you're going to have to tell me you don't if you want things to go back to the way they were before."

  "They belong back where they were before."

  "That's not an answer, Ethan. I'm sorry to press you about it, but I think I deserve one." It was hard, brutal, for her to ask, but the taste of him still lingered on her lips. "If you don't think about me that way, and this was just temper pushing you to teach me a lesson, then you have to say so, straight out."

  "It was temper."

  Accepting the fresh bruise to her heart, she nodded. "Well, then, it worked."

  "That doesn't make it right. What I just did makes me too close to that bastard in the bar tonight."

  "I didn't want him to touch me." She drew in a long breath, held it, let it out slowly. But he didn't speak. Didn't speak, she thought, but moved back. He might not have shifted an inch, but he'd moved away from her in the way that counted most.

  "I'm grateful to you for being there tonight." She started to rise, but he was on his feet ahead of her, offering a hand. She took it, determined not to embarrass either of them any further. "I was afraid, and I don't know if I could have handled it on my own. You're a good friend,

  Ethan, and I appreciate you wanting to help."

  He slid his hands into his pockets, where they would be safe. "I talked to Dave about another car. He's got a line on a couple decent used ones."

  Since screaming would accomplish nothing, she had to laugh. "You don't waste any time. All right, I'll talk to him about it tomorrow." She glanced toward the house where the front porch light gleamed. "Do you want to come in? I could put some ice on your knuckles."

  "He had a jaw like a pillow. They're fine. You need to get to bed."

  "Yeah." Alone, she thought, to toss and turn. And wish. "I'm going to come by on Saturday for a couple hours. Just to spruce things up before Cam and Anna get home."

  "That'd be nice. We'd appreciate it."

  "Well, good night." She turned, walked across the grass toward the house.

  He waited. He told himself he just wanted to see her safely inside before he left. But he knew it was a lie, that it was cowardice. He'd needed the distance before he could finish answering her question.

  "Grace?"

  She closed her eyes briefly. All she wanted now was to get inside, crawl into bed, and indulge in a good, long cry. She hadn't let herself have a serious jag in years. But she turned back, made her lips curve. "Yes?"

  "I think about you that way." He saw, even with the distance, the way her eyes widened, darkened, the way her pretty smile slid away so that she only stared. "I don't want to. I tell myself not to. But I think about you that way. Now go on inside," he told her gently.

  "Ethan—"

  "Go on. It's late."

  She managed to turn the knob, to step inside, shut the door behind her. But she turned quickly to the window to watch him get back in his truck and drive away.

  It was late, she thought with a shiver that she recognized as hope. But maybe it wasn't too late.

  Chapter Seven

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  "i appreciate you helping me out, Mama."

  "Helping you out?" Carol Monroe tsk-tsked the thought away as she knelt to tie the laces on Aubrey's pink sneaker. "Taking this cube of sugar home with me for the afternoon is pure pleasure." She gave Aubrey a chuck under the chin. "We're going to have us a time, aren't we, honey?"

  Aubrey grinned, knowing her ground. "Toys! We got toys, Gramma. Dollbabies."

  "You bet we do. And I might just have a surprise for you when we get there."

  Aubrey's eyes grew huge and bright. She sucked in her breath to let out a sharp squeal of delight as she jumped down from the chair to race through the house in her own version of a victory dance.

  "Oh, Mama, not another doll. You spoil her."

  "Can't," Carol said firmly, giving her knee a push to help herself straighten. "Besides, it's my privilege as a granny."

  Since Aubrey was occupied running and shouting, Carol took a moment to study her daughter. Not sleeping enough, as usual, she decided, noting the shadows smudged under Grace's eyes. Not eating enough to feed a bird either, though she'd brought over Grace's favorite homemade peanut butter cookies to try to put some flesh on her girl's delicate bones.

  A child not yet twenty-three ought to paint her face a little, put some curl in her hair, and go out kicking up her heels a night or two instead of working herself into the ground.

  Since Carol had said as much a dozen times or more and had been ignored on the subject a dozen times or more, she tried a different tack. "You got to quit that night work, Gracie. It doesn't agree with you."

  "I'm fine."

  "Good hard work's necessary for living, and admirable, but a person's got to mix in some pleasure and fun or they dry right up."

  Because she was weary of hearing the same song, however the notes might vary, Grace turned and scrubbed at her already spotless kitchen counter. "I like working at the pub. It gives me a chance to see people, talk to them." Even if it was just to ask them if they'd like another round. "The pay's good."

  "If you're low on cash—"

  "I'm fine." Grace set her teeth. She'd have suffered the torments of hell before she would admit that her budget was strained to breaking—and that solving her transportation problems was going to mean robbing Peter to pay Paul for the next several months. "The extra money comes in handy, and I'm good at waitressing."

  "I know you are. You could work down at the cafe, have day hours."

  Patiently, Grace rinsed out her dishcloth and hung it over the divider of the double sink to dry. "Mama, you know that isn't possible. Daddy doesn't want me working for him."

  "He never said that. Besides, you help out with picking crabs when we're shorthanded."

  "I help you out," Grace specified as she turned. "And I'm happy to do it when I can. But we both know I can't work at the cafe."

  Her daughter was as stubborn as two mules pulling in opposite directions, Carol thought. It was what made her her father's daughter. "You know you could soften him up if you tried."

  "I don't want to soften him up. He made it plain how he feels about me. Let it be, Mama," she murmured when she saw her mother preparing to protest. "I don't want to argue with you, and I don't want to put you in the position ever again of having to defend one of us against the other. It's not right."

  Carol threw up her hands. She loved them both, husband and daughter. But she'd be damned if she could understand them. "No one can talk to either of you once you get that look on your face. Don't know why I waste breath trying."

  Grace smiled. "Me, either." Grace stepped close, bent down and kissed her mother's cheek. Carol was six inches shorter than Grace's five feet eight. "Thanks, Mama."

  Carol softened, as she always did, and combed a hand through her short, curly hair. It had once been as blond by nature as her daughter's and granddaughter's. But nature being what it was, she now gave it a quiet boost with Miss Clairol.

  Her cheeks were round and rosy, her skin surprisingly smooth, given her love of the sun. But then, she didn't neglect it. There wasn't a single night she climbed into bed without carefully applying a layer of Oil of Olay.

  Being female wasn't just an
act of fate, in Carol Monroe's mind. It was a duty. She prided herself that though she was coming uncomfortably close to her forty-fifth birthday, she still managed to resemble the china doll her husband had once called her.

  They'd been courting then, and he'd taken some trouble to be poetic.

  He usually forgot such things these days.

  But he was a good man, she thought. A good provider, a faithful husband, and a fair man in business. His problem, she knew, was a soft heart too easily bruised. Grace had bruised it badly simply by not being the perfect daughter he'd expected her to be.

  These thoughts came and went as she helped Grace gather up what Aubrey would need for an afternoon visit. Seemed to her children needed so much more these days. Time was, she would stick Grace on her hip, toss a few diapers into a bag, and off they'd go.

  Now her baby was grown, with a baby of her own. Grace was a good mother, Carol thought, smiling a bit as Aubrey and Grace selected just which stuffed animal should have the privilege of a visit to Grandma's. The fact was, Carol had to admit, Grace was better at the job than she had been herself. The girl listened, weighed, considered. And maybe that was best. She herself had simply done, decided, demanded. Grace was so biddable as a child, she'd never thought twice about what unspoken needs had lived inside her.

  And the guilt stayed with her because she had known of Grace's dream to study dance. Instead of taking it seriously, Carol passed it off as childish nonsense. She hadn't helped her baby there, hadn't encouraged, hadn't believed.

  The ballet lessons had simply been a natural activity for a girl child as far as Carol had been concerned. If she'd had a son, she'd have seen to it that he played in the Little League. It was… just the way things were done, she thought now. Girls had tutus and boys had ball gloves. Why did it have to be more complicated than that?

  But Grace had been more complicated, Carol admitted. And she hadn't seen it. Or hadn't wanted to see.

  When Grace came to her at eighteen and told her she had her summer job money saved, that she wanted to go to New York to study dance, and begged for help with the expenses, she'd told her not to be foolish.

  Young girls just out of high school didn't go haring off to New York City, of all places on God's Earth, on their own. Dreams of ballerinas were supposed to slide into dreams of brides and wedding gowns.

  But Grace had been dead set on following her dream and had gone to her father and asked that the money they'd put aside for her college fund be used to pay tuition to a dance school in New York.

  Pete had refused, of course. Maybe he'd been a little harsh about it, but he'd meant it for the best. He was just being sensible, just looking out for his little girl. And Carol had agreed wholeheartedly. At the time.

  But then Carol watched as her daughter had worked tirelessly, saved every penny, month after month. She'd been bound and determined to go, and seeing it, Carol had tried to nudge her husband into letting her.

  He hadn't budged, and neither had Grace.

  She was barely nineteen when that slick-talking Jack Casey came around. And that was that.

  She couldn't regret it, not when Aubrey had come from it. But she could regret that the pregnancy, the hasty marriage and hastier divorce, had driven a thicker wedge between father and daughter.

  But what was couldn't be changed, she told herself and took Aubrey's hand to lead her to the car. "You're sure this car Dave has for you runs all right?"

  "Dave says it does."

  "Well, he ought to know." He was a good mechanic, Carol thought, even if he had been the one to hire Jack Casey. "You know you could borrow mine for a while—give yourself more chance to shop around."

  "This one will be fine." She hadn't even laid eyes on the secondhand sedan Dave had picked out for her. "We're going to do the paperwork on Monday, then I'll have wheels again."

  After securing Aubrey in the car seat, Grace slipped in while her mother took the wheel.

  "Go, go, go! Go, fast, Gramma," Aubrey demanded. Carol flushed when Grace cocked a brow.

  "You've been speeding again, haven't you?"

  "I know these roads like the back of my hand, and I haven't had a single ticket in my life."

  "Because the cops can't catch you." With a laugh, Grace strapped herself in.

  "When do the newly weds get home?" Not only did Carol want to know, she preferred to have the conversation veer away from her notoriously heavy foot.

  "I think they're due in about eight tonight. I just want to give the house a buff, maybe put something on for dinner in case they're hungry when they get here."

  "I imagine Cam's wife'll appreciate it. What a beautiful bride she was. I've never seen lovelier. Where she managed to get that dress when the boy gave her so little time to plan a wedding, I don't know."

  "Seth said she went to D.C. for it, and the veil was her grandmother's."

  "That's fine. I have my wedding veil put aside. I always imagined how pretty it would look on you on your wedding day." She stopped, and could cheerfully have bitten her tongue.

  "It would have looked a little out of place in the county courthouse."

  Carol sighed as she pulled into the Quinns' driveway. "Well, you'll wear it next time."

  "I'll never get married again. I'm not good at it." While her mother gaped at the statement, Grace climbed quickly out of the car, then leaned in the window and kissed Aubrey soundly. "You be a good girl, you hear?

  And don't let Grandma feed you too much candy."

  "Gramma has chocolate."

  "Don't I know it! Bye, baby. Bye, Mama. Thanks."

  "Grace…" What could she say? "You, ah, you just call when you're done here and I'll come by and pick you up."

  "We'll see. Don't let her run you ragged," Grace added and hurried up the steps.

  She knew she'd timed it well. Everyone would be at the boatyard working. She was determined not to feel awkward about what had happened the night before last. But she did—she felt miserably awkward and she wanted time to settle before she had to face Ethan again.

  This was a home that always felt warm and welcoming. Caring for it soothed her. Because she knew that a large part of her motivation for working on it that afternoon was self-serving, she put more effort into the job. The results would be the same, wouldn't they, she thought guiltily as she ran the old buffer over the hardwood floors to make the wax gleam. Anna would come home to a spotless house, with the scents of fresh flowers, polish, and potpourri perfuming the air.

  A woman shouldn't have to come home from her honeymoon to dust and clutter. And God knew the Quinn men generated plenty of both.

  She was needed here, damn it. All she was doing was proving it.

  She spent extra time in the master bedroom, fussing with the flowers she'd begged off Irene, then changing the position of the vase half a dozen times before she cursed herself. Anna would put them where she wanted them to be anyway, she reminded herself. And would probably change everything else while she was at it. More than likely, she would want new everything, Grace decided as she pressed the curtains she'd washed until not the tiniest wrinkle showed in the thin summer sheers.

  Anna was city-bred and probably wouldn't care for the worn furniture and country touches. Before you knew it, she'd have things decked out in leather and glass, and all Dr. Quinn's pretty things would be packed up in some box in the attic and replaced with pieces of sculpture nobody could understand.

  Her jaw tightened as she rehung the curtains, gave them a quick fluff.

  Cover the lovely old floors with some fancy wall-to-wall carpet and paint the walls some hot color that made the eyes sting. Resentment bubbled as she marched into the bathroom to put a bunch of early rosebuds in a shallow bowl.

  Anybody with any sense could see the place only needed a little care, a bit more color here and there. If she had any say in it…

  She stopped herself, realizing that her fists were clenched, and her face, reflected in the mirror over the sink, was bright with fury. "Oh, G
race, what is wrong with you?" She shook her head, nearly laughed at herself. "In the first place you don't have any say, and in the second you don't know that she's going to change a single thing."

  It was just that she could, Grace admitted. And once you changed one thing, nothing was quite the same again.

  Isn't that what had happened between her and Ethan? Something had changed, and now she was both afraid and hopeful that things wouldn't be quite the same.

  He thought of her, she mused and sighed at her own reflection. And what did he think? She wasn't a beauty, and she'd never filled out enough to be sexy. Now and then, she knew, she caught a man's eye, but she never held it.

  She wasn't smart or particularly clever, had neither stimulating conversation nor flirtatious ways. Jack had once told her she had stability. And he'd convinced them both, for a while, that that was what he wanted. But stability wasn't the sort of trait that attracted a man.

  Maybe if her cheekbones were higher or her dimples deeper. Or if her lashes were thicker and darker. Maybe if that flirty curl hadn't skipped a generation and left her hair straight as a pin.

  What did Ethan think when he looked at her? She wished she had the courage to ask him.

  She looked—and saw the ordinary.

  When she had danced she hadn't felt ordinary. She'd felt beautiful and special and deserving of her name. Dreamily, she dipped into a pile, settling crotch on heels, then lifting again. She'd have sworn her body sighed in pleasure. Indulging herself, she flowed into an old, well-remembered movement, ending on a slow pirouette.

  "Ethan!" She squeaked it out, color flooding her cheeks when she saw him in the doorway.

  "I didn't mean to startle you, but I didn't want to interrupt."

  "Oh, well." Mortified, she snatched up her cleaning rag, twisted it in her hands. "I was just… finishing up in here."

  "You always were a pretty dancer." He'd promised himself he would put things back the way they'd been between them, so he smiled at her as he would a friend. "You always dance around the bathroom after you clean it?"

  "Doesn't everyone?" She did her best to answer his smile, but the heat continued to sting her cheeks. "I thought I'd be done before y'all got back. I guess the floors took longer than I figured on."

  "They look nice. Foolish already had a slide. Surprised you didn't hear it."

  "I was daydreaming. I thought I'd—" Then she managed to clear her brain and get a good look at him. He was filthy, covered with sweat and grime and God knew what. "You're not thinking of taking a shower in here?"

  Ethan lifted a brow. "It crossed my mind."

  "No, you can't."

  He shifted back because she'd taken a step forward. He had a good idea just how he smelled at the moment. That was reason enough to keep his distance, but worse, she looked so fresh and pretty. He'd taken a solemn vow not to touch her again, and he meant to keep it.

  "Why?"

  "Because I don't have time to clean it up again after you, or the bath downstairs, either. I still have to fry the chicken. I thought I'd make that and a bowl of potato salad so you wouldn't have to worry about heating anything up when Cam and Anna get home. I have to deal with the kitchen after, so I just don't have time, Ethan."

  "I've been known to mop up a bathroom after I've used one."

  "It's not the same. You just can't use it."

  Flustered, he took off his cap, dragged a hand through his hair. "Well, then, that's a problem because we've got three men here who need to scrape off a few layers of dirt."

  "There's a bay right outside your door."

  "But—"

  "Here." She opened the cabinet under the sink for a fresh bar of soap. Damned if she'd have them use the pretty guest soaps she set out in a dish. "I'll get you towels and some fresh clothes."

  "But—"

  "Go on now, Ethan, and tell the others what I said." She shoved the soap into