Authors: Liz Talley
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
H
E
'
D
NEVER
ACTUALLY
been to the place before. But he knew exactly which exit to take off Highway 101 to get where they were going.
Guys knew these things. Or at least he did. He supposed most guys did. At the moment, he wasn't sure. He was having doubts. Because, personally, he didn't want to spend the evening ahead as he'd planned.
He wasn't changing his mind.
Arms tense, he pulled into the crowded parking lot, hoping his brother either didn't recognize the place, didn't know what it was or wasn't paying attention.
“Coastal Flame.” Darin read the sign like a first grader in reading class.
And then he started to laugh. Hand over his mouth, he guffawed. “You made a mistake, Grant! Look where you brought us!”
Grant wasn't laughing. He parked in the back, the only empty spaces he could find. He walked around and opened Darin's door. “Come on,” he said. “Let's go.”
“Go?” Frowning, Darin eyed the huge pink building. “We're going in there?”
“Yep.” Grant yanked at his brother's sleeve and then, when Darin still didn't move, undid his seat belt, grabbed his right wrist and pulled.
Darin didn't resist. He got out of the truck. And stood there, letting Grant close his door for him. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.
“Yep.”
Standing there, looking like the most successful gentleman at the gentlemen's club, Darin frowned. “I don't think they'll want me in there.”
“You're a man and you have cash. They'll want you.”
“But...”
“You'll do fine, bro,” Grant said. He would have liked to remind his brother of a bachelor party outing, or any other time the two of them had been to a strip joint together, but there hadn't been any other time.
With a hand on Darin's elbow, he escorted his brother toward the front of the busy establishment. It was packed. On a Monday night, no less.
“Do you know what this place is?” Darin leaned over and whispered. Loudly. As soon as they stepped inside.
“Yes.” He was heading toward the pay booth.
Darin shook his head, pulled his elbow out of Grant's grasp and made a beeline past the guy who checked IDs of anyone who looked underage, right by the bouncer who looked surprised and straight back out the door they'd just come through.
Not a good start. At a trot, he followed his brother, ignoring the checker's curious stare and the bouncer's frown.
“Darin.”
The taller man was heading straight toward the truck with a purposeful stride.
In the parking lot, a couple of gentlemen, dressed in suits, headed toward the door, but turned to watch Grant chasing Darin.
“Darin,” he said again, firmly, but quietly, too.
Halfway to the back of the parking lot, Darin stopped. With both feet firmly planted he turned to face Grant.
“I am not going back in there.”
“Come on, bro. It'll be good for us.” For him.
“Good, how?” The raised eyebrow was classic Darin. A look that would have cowed Grant in the old days. The tone of voice was petulant.
“There are pretty girls in there, Darin. We can look at them all we want. And there's more. I was going to ask one of the girls to dance just for you.”
A private lap dance. He knew what they were. How to procure one. They were perfectly legal.
The thought sickened him. But they
were
legal.
And could take care of Darin's need to have some intimate contact with a female without being exposed to disease or prostitution.
Or attempting to get it from Maddie.
It was the perfect solution.
“It's a strip club, Grant.”
He knew that.
More slowly, Darin headed toward the car. Grant kept pace with him.
“I'm surprised at you.” There was no petulance in Darin's tone now. But there was something else there that Grant recognized only too well.
His big brother's disappointment.
* * *
T
UESDAY
AND
W
EDNESDAY
passed peacefully. There were no new residents. No emergency calls, just well checks. She only had two pregnancies to follow at the moment and both of them were progressing normally and nowhere close to delivery. She'd caught up on her charting. Administered allergy shots. Distributed meds to residents who couldn't be trusted to keep them in their bungalows.
And between her, Sara, Lila, Angelica and Grant, they'd managed to allow Darin and Maddie to take morning therapy together, to see each other on campus a time or two, without ever giving them a second alone.
Sara was hopeful the time together would be enough to get Maddie through her adjustment period. And it appeared another storm had passed.
But with each day that passed, the weekend loomed closer.
Or, to be more precise, Saturday nightâand Kara's trip to San Francisco.
On her way home from work on Wednesday evening, she saw Grant off in the distance, bent over a mound of dirt and stone in the area where the rock fountain was taking shape. She saw him because she'd specifically gone that way hoping to see him.
She called out.
He looked up.
She waved.
He waved back.
And for one split crazy second she entertained the idea of asking him to spend the night with her Saturday night.
She wanted an adult sleepover. Just the two of them. The kind where the adults didn't sleep.
* * *
M
ADDIE
WAS
STILL
at Lynn's place when Lynn came out from putting Kara to bed after eight on Wednesday evening.
“I thought you had arts and crafts tonight,” Lynn said. A volunteer was coming in to teach the women how to make reindeer Christmas ornaments to sell at the secondhand goods and craft boutique The Lemonade Stand owned a block up from the shelter.
Maddie shook her head. Sniffled.
And that was when Lynn realized that Maddie was crying.
“What's wrong, sweetie?” she said, placing a hand on Maddie's hunched-over back as she sat down next to her.
Maddie got agitated. Nervous. Panicky. Scared to death. Worried. And ecstatic, too. She almost never cried.
“He doesn't like me.”
“Who doesn't like you?” she asked, but she already knew. Obviously something had happened between her and Darin.
“Daarrriiinnn.” The pretty blonde sounded as though her heart had been broken into a million pieces.
But maybe this was good. Broken hearts mended and Maddie could move on past the relationship stage of her recovery.
“Of course he likes you,” she said, because what else could she say?
Maddie shook her head and looked at Lynn with big watery eyes that were red and swollen. Maddie must have been crying the entire time Lynn had been bathing Kara, getting her in her jammies and reading to her. “He doesn't like me, Lynn.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I told him I liked him and then he stopped waiting for me.”
“You told him you liked him?”
“Yes. Because I do and you tell me I just have to be honest and so I was.”
“What did he say?”
“He s-s-said he l-l-liked me, t-t-tooooo.” The last word broke off on a wail followed by another bout of tears.
“He did.”
“Yes.”
“Well, there you go, then. He does like you.”
“I think you should tell him about always telling the truth.”
“You think Darin lied to you?”
Sniffling, taking the tissue Lynn pulled from a box on the table and handed to her, Maddie blew her nose loudly and said, “Yes, I do, because he said it and then didn't wait for me ever again.”
No matter what was best for Maddie, it hurt to see her so upset. Maddie was the sweetest, most giving person she'd ever knownâcertainly the most pure-hearted. And she'd suffered enough.
Rubbing Maddie's back, she asked, “What do you mean wait for you?”
“After his afternoon therapy he waits outside of Angelica's room and I finish the day care playtime and Kara and I go to Angelica's and Darin walks us home.”
Ah.
“You know his brother is working here full-time this week, right?” she asked, feeling like a traitor to this woman who trusted her implicitly.
“He's making a new Garden of Renewal,” Maddie said, enunciating as purposefully as always, as though she had to stop between thinking the words and saying it so that her brain could tell her mouth
how
to say it. “He took away the gazebo. I have to keep Kara away from there until the yellow ribbon is down around it.”
“That's right. And you know that Darin works with his brother in his business, right?”
“Darin can't do much right now. He can't bend over or lift things that are heavy. So he does some work that he can do.”
“Well, right now, with Grant here all day, Darin has to go right out to the garden to work after his therapy.”
Maddie's big eyes opened wide as the woman looked at her. “Are you sure?”
“I'm positive.” She also knew that Grant was collecting Darin from therapy so that his older brother wouldn't have any time alone with Maddie. Angelica was texting him five minutes before Darin was through.
She could feel Maddie's shudders beneath her hand. “Okay?” she asked the sweet woman.
With a big sigh, Maddie fell against Lynn, burying her head against her, and Lynn sat back, her arm around Maddie. “Okay,” Maddie said.
She hiccupped. “I like him, Lynn.”
Lynn ran her fingers slowly through Maddie's hair, like her mom used to do when she was a kid and thinking the world was going to end over some crisis or another. “I know you do.”
“He would never hit me.”
“No, he wouldn't. But neither would most men.”
“Darin smells good.”
She hadn't noticed.
“And he doesn't make fun of me.”
“He's a nice person. So is Grant.”
“I like Darin.”
They were in trouble. Darin was showing signs of completely recovering his left-side motor skills but was nowhere near ready to cut back on his therapy.
And Maddie...once she understood something, it was hard for her to understand it in a different way. She'd believed her ex-husband loved her and she still believed it. In spite of all the years of beatings at his hands.
She also believed she liked Darin. In a boy-girl sense. They weren't going to convince her otherwise.
Which meant certain heartbreak for the sweet woman. They'd avoided it that night. But it would come again.
Lynn had no idea what to do about that.
So she did what she could. She stroked Maddie's hair. And when the other woman fell asleep, she sat there, cradling her, wishing she could promise Maddie, and Kara, too, a world where hearts didn't have to hurt.
A world where hearts weren't vulnerable to the vagaries of other people.
* * *
G
RANT
WAITED
UNTIL
Darin was in his room with his door closed before heading to his own room Wednesday night.
But just barely. He was like a panting dog, rushing to the water bowl. A panting something...
He'd been thinking about Lynn's jaunty little wave to him all evening.
Lynn got calls at all hours. Hopefully ten o'clock wasn't too late.
“Hello?”
“I'm sorry it's so late.” He didn't bother to introduce himself. She'd have seen his number on the caller ID. It was the third time they'd talked on the phone since he'd first visited her at the shelter.
The second since she'd made him aware of the Maddie/Darin situation on Monday.
“It's not too late,” she said now. “Maddie just left.”
“How's that going?” Lynn was hoping to distract Maddie from thinking that she was romantically interested in Darin. Sara was trying to help the other woman recognize the difference between being friends with a man and being his girlfriend.
“It's not.”
Not the answer he'd been hoping far.
“How's it going at your end?” she asked.
“He's never mentioned her to me so I haven't said anything.”
“Do you think he's noticed that you aren't giving him any time with her?”
“Doesn't seem to have.”
“That's good, then.”
“I thought so.”
He didn't tell her about his botched attempt to take care of any needs his brother might have. Darin hadn't mentioned it again, either. Which was fine with him.
At the moment he was more interested in his own needs. Ones that would never be assuaged by a trip to a club.
He was beginning to fear that they wouldn't be assuaged by time alone with a woman, either. Unless the woman was Lynn Duncan.
He'd get over her. He knew he would. He was thirty-eight, not eighteen. As soon as he and Darin were done at the Stand, his desire for Darin's nurse would fade.
“Okay, then,” he said, still thinking about her wave that afternoon.
“Sleep well.”
“You, too.”
He hung up.
And took another long shower before climbing naked between the sheets.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
L
UKE
AND
C
RAIG
were back on Bishop Landscaping paying jobs, with Grant spending his mornings and evenings doing CEO and design work, and the rest of his days out in the Garden of Renewal.
By Thursday, though, he had to take time off from the garden to mow. The Lemonade Stand grounds weren't growing as quickly as they would when the rainy season came and the sun got a bit warmer, but he didn't want them to look anything other than resort perfect.
He was kind of looking forward to a couple of hours riding the industrial-size zero-turn mower someone had donated to the shelter. Bishop Landscaping didn't do a lot of mowing and had no reason to invest the thousands of dollars it would cost for one of those babies.
And he didn't do a whole lot of the menial yard work tasks at any rate.
But as he climbed aboard late Thursday morning, he found himself on guard for a little curly-haired imp around every corner.
Maddie and Darin were in therapy. Kara would be at the day care. Unless for some reason she wasn't. No one would have thought to tell him. Still, Kara wasn't the only child at the complex, though, as a rule, kids were either in school or at the day care during the time Grant was around.
He didn't see Kara. But as he rounded a corner, he saw Lynn in blue scrubs walking with a woman and two children. The children, about first and second graders, he figured, clung to their mother, one on each side.
Lynn said something. The children laughed.
She looked over at him.
He waved.
And she waved back.
* * *
S
HORTLY
AFTER
ELEVEN
that morning, his cell beeped a sound he wasn't familiar with. And vibrated, too. Pulling it out of the holster on his belt, he saw that he had a message from his service provider. He'd reached his maximum minutes for the month and was now being charged a per-minute fee.
His cell was also his business phone. There was no way he could pay per minute every time a client called him.
It was a mistake. Had to be. He'd been on the same phone plan for more than six years. And he'd never reached his minute limit.
Sitting on the stopped mower in the middle of one of the six commons that made up the living quarters of The Lemonade Stand, he dialed his service provider.
A couple of minutes later, privy to the information that there'd been no mistake, he started mowing again. Just until lunchtime. Or until he saw Lynn heading back toward her office unaccompanied.
He did a row. Then another. Leaving a neat pattern of cut grass in his wake. And then he stopped. Maybe she'd returned to work through the building. He wouldn't have seen her.
Yanking the key from the ignition of the mower, he left it in the yard and strode off toward Lynn's office. Rounding a corner too quickly, and not looking where he was going, he almost ran straight into her. Would have if she hadn't held out a hand to prevent the collision.
“Lynn! I'm sorry,” he apologized, holding on to her arm until he was certain she hadn't lost her balance.
And then he didn't let go.
“I was looking for...”
“I was coming to find...” They spoke in unison.
The air was a balmy sixty-five, but Grant was sweating in his Bishop Landscaping oxford shirt and jeans.
“What were you looking for?” she asked. “Maybe I can help you find it.”
“I have no doubt about that,” he told her, looking into those blue eyes and wishing he could just find a home there. “What were you coming to find?”
“You.” She was as focused on him as he was on her. Staring right into his eyes. If she saw something more than their color there he didn't care. She could take whatever she wanted.
“I was looking for you.”
A couple of women appeared behind them, talking, but their voices stopped as they rounded the corner and Grant and Lynn came into view.
“Ladies,” Lynn said, smiling at them. And then she grabbed Grant's hand. “Come on,” she said, pulling him into an alcove between two bungalows, down a small pathway and into an empty, unlocked cabin filled with round tables and chairs. A counter lined three of the walls, with cupboards above and below it.
“This is an arts and crafts room,” she said. “It's also used for special partiesâbaby showers or birthday parties.”
He didn't think she really cared for him to know what the cabin was for.
And didn't like the fact that he cared about what she cared about.
Wanting sex with her was fine. Wanting
her
was not.
Giving himself a minute to regroup, he walked around the room, looking out the windows at the various views. He'd mowed and weeded the entire area. But he'd thought the cabin was a storage facility. It had always been closed up and he'd never seen anyone near it.
Turning, he saw her watching him, her sexy butt leaning against a counter on the wall opposite him.
“Do you have parents in the area?” The question came out of nowhere, but he realized that he didn't know. And wanted to.
“No, though I grew up here. My younger sister, Katie, is divorced and living in Denver. She has two small kids and really needed my parents nearby. My father is a lawyer and took the bar in Denver and off they went.”
“Why didn't your sister move back here?” She'd told him and Darin, four years before, that she'd grown up in Santa Raquel. He'd remembered.
“She can't take the kids out of the state as part of the custody agreement in her divorce.”
“Do you have any other siblings?”
“Nope. It's just Katie and me.”
And apparently her parents had determined that the younger daughter was more of a priority than the daughter who'd been abused? If she'd been abused. He knew Maddie's story now, but still didn't feel comfortable enough to ask Lynn about herself.
He wasn't sure he'd ask even if she'd seemed open to talking about her past. She was on his mind too much as it was.
“Mom hates not being closer to Kara,” Lynn said as though reading his mind. “We talk at least once a week, and she visits as often as she can.”
“Does she stay here?”
“Yes, though she had to submit to a background check before she was cleared to do so.”
“What about your dad? Does he ever come with her?”
“Sometimes. And when he does, they stay in a bed-and-breakfast down at the beach.”
He nodded. Envying Lynn her parents. But only for the second it took him to shake himself out of it. He focused on her again.
She was more than enough to distract him from just about anything.
“You said you were looking for me,” he said, and when she didn't break eye contact, he moved closer to her.
They were alone again. In a very quiet, remote part of the complex.
“I have a favor to ask.” Her lips moved. He wanted to lick them.
To know how the tip of that tongue tasted.
“Then ask.”
“I'd like some more landscape lighting in the garden at my place,” she said. “I don't know if I can afford it, but I figured you'd be able to tell me how much it would cost andâ”
“You tell me what you want and it's yours.” He moved a couple of steps closer to her.
“I'm not going to take advantage....” Her words trailed off. But she still didn't look away from him. And he wanted to take advantage. In the worst way.
“I've got a shed full of leftovers and samples,” he told her. “And anything that isn't there, I can get from my suppliers. They've given me carte blanche for this place.”
“I'll pay you for your time to install them.”
“I'd rather you just be my friend.” Where the words had come from he didn't know. But once they were out there, he couldn't take them back. And couldn't deny their truth, either.
Somewhere, in the midst of his fantasies, he'd begun to want more than sex.
“I told you why I was looking for you, now why were you looking for me?” she asked, neatly sidestepping the land mine he'd just thrown down between them.
Rightly so.
He had no ability to follow through on any personal relationship offer he'd make. Whether it was accepted or not.
“Darin's been calling Maddie,” he said, getting himself back on track. “They've talked over a thousand minutes in the past two weeks.”
“That's...”
“Over sixteen hours.”
“When?”
“Mostly at night. Since I took on the work at the shelter, we've been spending our evenings separately. Darin goes to his room with the TV on or he's on his computer while I'm working. He plays the television kind of loud, or has his music on and it's still going a lot of the time when I head to my room, which is on the other side of the house. We have a split master bedroom floor plan.”
And he still should have known his special-needs brother had been talking long into the night. On several occasions.
What kind of caregiver was he that he hadn't known?
“They talk here, too, during the day.”
That he couldn't have known.
“Maddie's usually at my place while Kara takes her afternoon nap.”
The timing fit.
“I'll talk to her.”
He shrugged. “And say what? That she's not allowed to talk on her own phone? You've already said that Sara thinks this âfriendship' of theirs needs to play itself out.”
He'd just realized something else. Something he was deeply ashamed of. He was resentful. Darin had a woman he was talking to half the night while Grant lay in his bed and only fantasized about one.
“I don't think there's anything we can do about it. Darin and I have a family calling plan with separate lines but shared minutes, and I switched it to unlimited minutes, which is cheaper than paying the overage charge. I'm certainly not going to tell my brother he can't talk on the phone. I just thought you should know what's going on. In case you want to tell Sara.”
Lynn nodded and glanced at her watch. “It's almost time for lunch,” she said.
He wanted to ask her to have the meal with him. Away from the Stand. Away from Maddie and Darin.
And Kara.
Just the two of them. In a place where nothing else could intrude on their time together.
“You and Maddie and Kara have lunch at your house, right?”
“Maddie and Kara do. I share it with them as often as I can.”
She didn't stand up. He took a couple of steps closer to the door, which put him closer to her.
She didn't move away.
But her phone rang.
She glanced at the screen. “I'm sorry, I have to take this.”
Grant would have left, but didn't want to go without telling her goodbye. Or so he told himself as he heard her say, “That's fine.... No, I'm sure. It's fine. I'll have her bag packed and ready. But it's important that you keep her on her schedule.”
She paused. The other voice was male. Grant stiffened.
“No, I know,” Lynn said, her voice changing. Getting softer. Familiar. “I know. I appreciate that.”
Jealousy flared inside him. Adding itself to the resentment that had flared earlier.
What the hell was the matter with him? He was normally an even-keeled type of guy. He didn't often have emotional flare-ups of
any
kind, let alone one like this. Emotions that couldn't possibly go anywhere...
He needed to get back to work.