“Did you get Marianne outfitted for the wedding?”
“Oh, my yes. You should see all the sexy lingerie.” She grinned. “Not Marianne’s, of course. That’s for Bobby Ray’s eyes only. But I got a few things, too. Interested?”
His spirits perked up ever so slightly. “Now? Here?”
“Not in the middle of this dust and debris. No way. You’ll have to rouse yourself enough to walk over to my place.”
He glanced sideways at her. “But you’re going to make it worth my while.”
“I’ll do my best,” she assured him.
“Couldn’t ask for anything more,” he said. He stood up and held a hand out to her, drawing her to her feet and straight into his arms. “I missed you, Gracie.”
“I missed you. Maybe one of these days you’ll tell me where you disappeared to.”
“Not far. Just to Richmond.”
“On business?”
He touched a finger to her lips. “Enough. We’ll talk about all of that another time. Right now I have a very important fashion show to attend.”
As it turned out, it was the very first time in his adult life that he’d enjoyed watching a woman slip into clothes as much as he’d thrilled to watching her strip out of them.
And when she’d shown him everything and his body was aching with wanting her, he swept off the last little lacy number and replaced the scraps of silk with his hands and tongue, until Gracie was every bit as hot and bothered as he was.
Only later, after she’d fallen asleep with her head resting against his shoulder and her arm flung across his chest, did he finally find the peace that had been eluding him all day long.
24
T
he lightning-quick restoration of the Daniels house and the equally fast reconciliation of Bobby Ray and Marianne were the talk of Seagull Point, topped only by the gossip about the unorthodox romance going on between laid-back Kevin Patrick Daniels and that uptight Yankee, Gracie MacDougal.
Who ever heard of kissing up on a rooftop for all the world to see? Henrietta Jenkins had seen it with her own eyes during her morning walk.
“Have you ever in all your life heard of such goings-on?” Henrietta demanded with a sniff.
“Well, that’s nothing. I heard Delia walked in on them going at it in the attic,” Laura Lee Taylor said while she sipped coffee after her regular morning walk along the riverfront with the girls, not one of whom was a day under seventy.
“Did not,” Henrietta said. “Delia couldn’t make it up all those stairs, for one thing.”
“Well, she did,” Laura Lee countered, clearly miffed at the skepticism.
“Is it true that Delia’s changed her will to leave the house to Gracie?” Florence Major wanted to know.
“Not with Kevin as her lawyer she hasn’t,” Henrietta declared. “That boy wouldn’t allow it. He’s been watching out for Delia all these years. I doubt he’s going to change now. He’s not going to let some stranger sashay into town and take her for everything she’s got.”
“Maybe he would,” Laura Lee said thoughtfully. “Long as he gets Gracie for himself in the bargain.”
Kevin heard all of this—an astonishing mix of fact and speculation—as he hesitated in the doorway of the Beachside coffee shop. He hadn’t heard so much speculating about his love life since he broke his very brief engagement to Linda Sue Grainger in the middle of the boardwalk at high noon. Linda Sue hadn’t taken kindly to the humiliation. She had stuffed a just-out-of-the-grease corn dog in his face. He still had a scar from the burn it had left on his cheek. He’d been twelve at the time and hadn’t yet realized that even women that age didn’t like being scorned.
“Mornin’, ladies,” he said, bringing an abrupt halt to the conversation. If he’d expected any one of them to look the least bit guilty, he’d have been disappointed. They seemed delighted by his timely arrival.
“You going to marry that girl?” Henrietta inquired. She always had been direct and she definitely believed in going straight to the source whenever possible.
“Hadn’t thought about it,” Kevin said, though he’d thought about little else since Gracie’s return from France the night before. Besides, he figured if he decided to plunge off an emotional cliff and marry Gracie MacDougal, she ought to be the first person he told about it.
“Then don’t you think you ought to stop this shameful behavior before she winds up with a tarnished reputation?” Laura Lee demanded. “This is a small town. Word gets around, you know.”
“And just what shameful behavior would that be?” he inquired. “And who might be spreading it besides the three of you?”
They acted as if he hadn’t just accused them of being a bunch of old gossips.
“The kissing in plain sight, for one thing,” Laura Lee said with a touch of indignation.
“And the dancing on the rooftop,” Henrietta added.
“And whatever the two of you’ve been up to in the attic,” Laura Lee offered.
“And whatever else has been going on,” Florence said to cover anything they might have missed.
Kevin grinned at them. “Ladies, if I stopped all that, what would you do with your morning?”
Henrietta shrugged off the sarcasm. “I suppose we’d just have to discuss Bobby Ray and Marianne. Maybe you can tell us when they’re planning to get married. Last I heard they hadn’t booked the church yet. I was over there talking to the preacher just yesterday.”
“Maybe they’re just going to run off to a justice of the peace someplace,” Laura Lee suggested.
“Or fly to Vegas and get married in one of those tacky chapels,” Florence countered with surprising enthusiasm. “After the service, they could go to one of those glitzy shows. It’s good enough for some of them fancy Hollywood celebrities, don’t you know.”
“I know that you’ve been reading those tabloids again,” Henrietta charged. “That’s what I know.”
Kevin concluded that the smartest thing he could do was head for a secluded booth in the back, out of their line of fire. He only prayed they’d leave before Gracie showed up. He wasn’t sure she was ready to have her privacy so thoroughly and enthusiastically invaded.
Naturally this was one of those prayers that was incidental to heavenly powers. Gracie walked in two minutes later and was subjected to an interrogation that any detective would have admired.
Looking shellshocked, she finally made her way back to his table.
“Any secrets left?” Kevin inquired as she slipped into the booth.
“Quite a few, to their obvious disappointment,” she said dryly. “I don’t think that will slow them down for long, though. They seem to have pretty active imaginations.”
“That they do,” he agreed.
Jessie whisked by, set two cups of coffee in front of them and promised to be back any minute to take their order. Gracie took her first swallow of coffee as if it held the promise of eternal youth.
“Jet-lagged?” Kevin inquired.
“That,” she agreed, giving him a long, mischievous look, “plus staying up half the night pretty much turned my brain to mush.”
“And here I just thought I was welcoming you home properly.”
“There was nothing proper about it,” she retorted, smiling at the memory. “If those three over there knew how you say hello—”
“They’d be green with jealousy,” Kevin finished.
“Or stunned into silence.”
“I don’t think a bomb going off under their noses would stun them for very long,” he observed. “They’d be too anxious to spread the news.”
Gracie took another long, deep swallow of coffee, then looked him squarely in the eye. “Okay, Kevin, let’s hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“What drove you to Richmond to hide out.”
He sighed. He’d figured they were going to get back to this sooner or later, but the wound was still too raw for him to want to start picking at it again. Besides, he ought to get into it with Delia first. He’d been by the house briefly this morning to clean up, but she’d been sound asleep.
“Can’t this wait?” he asked.
“From my perspective, yes,” she said. “But something tells me it has something to do with why Delia’s so upset. I won’t ignore that.”
“Since when did you get so protective of Delia? She’s my aunt,” he said, not yet ready to acknowledge the real relationship.
“She’s my friend.”
“And I’m your what?”
She regarded him archly. “That remains to be seen.” Her expression sobered. “Come on, Kevin. Spill it. How can I help Delia if I don’t know what’s going on?”
“Maybe Delia’s not the one who needs help. Maybe she’s the one who threw a curve at me.”
“Now you’re talking in riddles.”
Thankfully, before he had to explain what he meant, Jessie came back to take their order. He chose the biggest breakfast on the menu—eggs, bacon, home fries, and toast. He couldn’t answer questions if his mouth was full. He noticed, however, that Gracie ordered an English muffin. Obviously, he concluded grimly, she didn’t intend to let food hamper her cross-examination.
He sat back stoically and waited for the onslaught of questions to begin.
It didn’t take long. Jessie had no sooner left for the kitchen than Gracie was studying him intently.
“Okay, Kevin. Let’s hear it.”
“You realize, of course, that this is none of your business.”
If he’d thought—or hoped—she would take offense at that, he was very much mistaken. She merely smiled and regarded him patiently.
“Have you ever found out something about yourself that changes everything?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” she said.
“What?”
“We were supposed to be talking about you.”
“Humor me.”
“Okay, I found out after years of roaming around the globe that what I was really looking for all along was a home.”
“You had a home in Pennsylvania. You sold it.”
“I meant one that fit my image of what a home ought to be, complete with a whole community of people who cared.”
The response took him aback. “And you found that out here?”
“Here with you,” she amended with total sincerity.
All that advice to ask her to marry him came flooding back. He pretended it hadn’t.
She studied him worriedly. “Is that what happened to you? You found out something about yourself?”
“Yes.”
“From Delia?”
“Yes.” He regarded her ruefully. “You’re not going to give up on this, are you?”
“Nope.”
Resignation sighed through him. He might as well blurt it out and get it over with. Maybe Gracie could offer
some perspective he’d missed, solidify his own conclusions. “She told me that she’s my grandmother.”
Gracie’s eyes lit up. “She is? Oh, Kevin, that’s wonderful.” Her expression turned worried. “It is, isn’t it? You adore her, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then I don’t see the problem. I’d give anything to suddenly discover I had a grandmother and it turned out to be somebody I love.”
“You’re missing the point,” he groused.
“Which point is that?”
“Aunt Delia was the one person on earth I thought I could trust. Now I find out she lied to me and to my mother. All these years, she lied to us. Isn’t that important?” he asked, even though he’d already concluded it didn’t really matter in the larger scheme of things.
“I might not have known your aunt very long, but one thing I know about her is that she worships you. If she kept this a secret, there must have been a very good reason for it.”
“I suppose.” He repeated the whole, sad story. “She thought she was protecting my mother.”
“Well, then, that explains it.”
“Gracie, it’s not that easy. Okay, maybe for me it wasn’t a tragedy, even it did shake the trust I thought we shared. I had my dad and, for a while anyway, my mom. But my mother lived her whole life with a bitter old woman, thinking that she never did anything right, not understanding that there was a reason for that resentment.”
Gracie reached for his hand. “I know that must have been awful for her and for you, but did you ever consider that it might have been worse if Delia had kept her.”
“How so? What could possibly have been worse?”
“You just sat here and listened to the gossip about us and about Bobby Ray and Marianne. At least none of that was vicious. Can you imagine what it would have been like fifty or sixty years ago to be a pregnant teenager with no father in sight? Can you imagine what your mother would have had to endure being called a bastard back then? She might never have married a man like your father because of the stigma. Wouldn’t that have been a hundred times worse than the problems she had with the woman she thought of as her mother? At least she had Delia in her life. You said yourself that your aunt provided a safe haven for both of you.”
“I see what you’re saying. It’s just…”
“A shock,” she supplied.
He nodded.
“Do you love Delia any less?”
“Of course not. I just don’t know if I can ever trust her again.”
“Kevin, there’s never been anything else she lied about, has there?”
“No, not as far as I know.”
“Just this one thing and you know she had her reasons. Maybe you should concentrate on understanding her side and tell her that you haven’t stopped loving her.”
“I thought I had.”
“But then you left town, probably after making some enigmatic remark about needing time to think,” she suggested, making him wince. “It obviously terrified her. I’m sure she’s scared to death of losing you.”
“It’ll never happen. That old lady is too much a part of me.”
“Tell her,” Gracie repeated. “Don’t let something that should be fabulous news end up splitting you apart.”
“Has anyone ever told you you drive a hard bargain?”
“All the time. One of these days I’ll take you to France and you can talk to the asparagus farmer,” she teased. “Will you go to Delia?”
“Okay, okay. Right after we finish breakfast,” he promised.
She grinned. “I’m finished now,” she said, gesturing to her empty plate.
Kevin’s eggs and bacon and potatoes were beginning to congeal into a greasy mess. He eyed them with disgust. “I suppose I am, too.”
Outside the cafe, Gracie stood on tiptoe and brushed a kiss across his cheek. “Good luck.”
His gaze settled on her. “When I’ve taken care of this, you and I need to talk.”