Authors: Liz Talley
CHAPTER NINETEEN
T
HEY
WERE
HALFWAY
through dinner at a little Italian place she'd never been to before when Lynn realized she hadn't thought of Kara and Brandon and Douglas once in the past hour. She probably wouldn't have thought of them at all if Maddie hadn't suddenly blurted out her daughter's name.
“Oh, it's eight o'clock, Lynn. Kara has to be in bed right now and she didn't call to say good-night.”
Darin frowned, looking at Lynn. “She's right. Maybe you should call to make sure she's all right.”
“I'm sure she's fine,” Grant said. “She's probably just staying up a little later tonight.”
Maddie was shaking her head before he finished. “Kara's bedtime is eight o' clock every night. Huh, Lynn?” The pretty blonde had worn a bright colored maxi dress with sandals and looked very cute. Some of the girls at The Lemonade Stand had done her makeup for her.
“That's right, Maddie, it is,” Lynn said, disconcerted and concerned, too. Surely Brandon hadn't forgotten that he'd said he'd call to have Kara say good-night.
But she'd forgotten the time.
Pulling out her phone, she checked to see if she'd missed a call.
“Call him.” Grant, dressed in black casual pants and an off-white oxford shirt, put his arm along the back of her chair as he spoke.
Lynn had already speed-dialed Brandon and was listening for the ring.
It wasn't wrong for her to have lost track of time. Kara was Brandon's responsibility that night, and he was as capable as Lynn of caring for their daughter.
But her lack of awareness still made her uncomfortable.
“Hi, Lynnieâsorry!” Brandon sounded out of breath as he picked up on the fourth ring.
“Bran? Is everything okay?” Darin and Maddie, sitting across from her at the linen-covered table, had stopped eating and were watching her, as if they could hear what Brandon was saying.
Grant took a sip of wine. It was white and dryâa perfect complement to their pasta. He'd ordered a bottle.
“Everything's fine,” Brandon said. “I got her in the bath by 7:45, just like your chart said, but it's a double-wide tub and she was laughing and swimming so I let her stay in an extra ten minutes. She's in her jammies now and we were getting ready to call you but I left my phone out in the family room and had to run to get it.”
Bless him for being so sweet. He was trying so hard to please her. And she was too unbending.
Aware of the eyes trained on her, she said, “Can I talk to her?” After she'd heard all about the bumpy plane ride and Daddy's bathtub and Douglas's cast, she told her precious little girl that she loved her and to sleep well. As she hung up the phone, she felt like crying.
“Is she okay, Lynn?” Maddie asked.
“Why were they late?” Darin wanted to know.
She put the phone back in her purse and felt Grant's fingers lightly brush her shoulder. She sat there, frozen for a second. It was the barest of touches, but it was enough to bring song back into her night.
He brought his hand down from her chair, and she was disappointed. Until she felt it brush her thigh through the ankle-length black-and-white cotton skirt she was wearing
The cotton was plentiful, pulled together at the elastic waist to give the skirt fullness. But the fabric was light. And she could feel the warmth of his hand through it.
She looked over at him and he returned her gaze.
“Why are you two staring at each other like that?” Maddie asked.
“I think they like each other,” Darin replied.
Lynn coughed. Took a sip of wine. And relayed Kara's phone conversation word for word.
She didn't mention Brandon at all.
He wasn't her family anymore.
* * *
T
HE
FLOWING
SKIRT
might have, technically, hidden her body from his view, but it only served to ignite his imagination, to tease him, to draw his mind to what lay beneath. Her tight white T-shirt, on the contrary, showed him smooth, luscious, feminine curves that brought his eyes back to them again and again. Made him want to skim his hands over them. And more.
But with Darin and Maddie within sight of them, Grant had to settle for strolling barefoot beside Lynn, hands in his pockets. Every now and then the water would touch their toes, as the waves ebbed and flowed.
It wasn't all that warm out, maybe sixty, on that first Saturday night in March, but he was hotter than summer.
Lynn and Maddie had brought zip-up hoodies and were both wearing them nowâthe jackets, not the hoods. Definitely not the hoods. Lynn had left her hair down, and it curled softly around her shoulders to the middle of her back.
He ached to run his fingers through it.
She'd left the jacket unzipped, too.
The shore was mostly beach, with a cliffside or two thrown in, and they lost sight of Darin and Maddie for a second as the front two went around a jutting cliff's edge.
He considered pulling Lynn into the alcove the cliff provided, to see if she was as eager to get naked with him as he was to get naked with her.
But he hadn't even held her hand yet.
“You and your ex seem to be good friends,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of the surf.
If anything would cool his ardor it would be thoughts of that kiss he'd seen the other man give Lynn earlier that day.
“We are,” Lynn said, her hand brushing close to his.
She might be Brandon Duncan's ex-wife, but she was
his
date. “Brandon has been my best friend since junior high,” she continued, her voice softening in a way he hadn't heard before.
“You dated in high school, then?”
“I never dated anyone but him,” she admitted. “Not until after the divorce. I went on a couple of dates that first year. Dinner or a movieânever both, though, because I didn't want to be away from Kara that long.”
“What about when Brandon had her? You said he's never missed a visit.”
“That first year I used pretty much all of that free time to study. And after that, we were living at the Stand and, as you've seen, there's never a lack of something that needs doing there.”
He took away one thing from what she'd said. He was her first real date since her divorce.
Not that they were really on a date. They were chaperones.
With privileges?
He'd told her this was going to be a real date. And had lain awake in bed the night before wondering what she'd thought he'd meant by that.
Wondering how far he was going to get.
And knowing that he couldn't go very far at all. Lynn was definitely not the type of woman who would be good with a little mutual fun on the side. She'd want commitment along with the sex.
“I take it that means Brandon is the only man you've ever slept with?”
“Yes.”
Wow. He wasn't sure he'd ever been with a woman who'd only had one lover. “I could overhear some of what he said on the phone tonight.” He hadn't meant to say anything. But the night, the moon over the water, the waves, his handicapped brother up ahead holding the hand of the pretty blonde walking beside himâthey were all conspiring against him. “He called you Lynnie.”
“That's his name for me.”
“But he still uses it.” And the fact rankled. Which made no sense.
“He's my friend.”
“He told you he loved you before he hung up.”
“He always does.”
“You said, âYou, too.'” And he'd wondered, if she hadn't been sitting at the table with the three of them, if she'd have said, “â
Love
you, too.”
“Yeah.” Lynn stepped ahead of him to get around another jutting cliff. And then an expanse of deserted white beach stretched out before them again. Santa Raquel wasn't a huge town and most of the beaches were private. During the summer there might be a few people out and about at night, but for the most part, the coastline was deserted after dark.
“You still love him.”
“Of course.”
Grant's skin cooled measurably.
“You don't love someone for more than half your life and then just stop.” She sounded resigned. Not all that happy about the fact.
Grant was confused. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and took small steps beside her, inhaling the fishy sea smells, tasting the salt on his lips. “And he still loves you.”
“Yeah.”
Was he the only one missing something here? “So, if you don't mind me asking, why did the two of you divorce?”
Her gaze was focused ahead of them on Maddie and Darin. The other two were standing at the shore, kicking sand into the ocean with their toes and laughing.
“He... When I was pregnant with Kara, he met someone. And the week that I had her, he...was...unfaithful...to me.”
Life was messed up. How could anyone...the very week his wife was giving birth...and to
Lynn?
The woman was the perfect combination of sexy and wholesome. Perfect wife material. Why in hell would a man ever have a need to stray from that?
Darin and Maddie, still holding hands, moved on.
Grant took Lynn's hand. She didn't immediately grasp hold of his, but she didn't pull away, either.
He knew now that her hesitance wasn't due to having been abused. He knew, too, that she wanted him. Her signs were too obvious.
A guy knew when a woman was sending vibes in his direction.
But what this guy did not do was take what belonged to another man. In any fashion.
“So you divorced him,” he guessed, needing to know quite clearly where she stood with her ex. If they were entertaining a time-out, with a caveat that they might get back together, he needed to know.
He'd still be willing to have sex with herâif she wanted to have sex with himâbut he'd need that right out on the table.
“No.” Lynn shook her head. “He filed for divorce. I'd have stayed with him.”
She didn't sound any happier about that than the rest of it.
“We had a life together, a lifetime planned. We'd been working toward it since we were in high school....”
He couldn't even imagine that one. In high school he'd had a lot of things on his mind, but not one of them included any kind of life plan. Or family plan, either, for that matter.
It was what he'd ended up with, though. Not that he was unhappy about that. He loved his brother. They had a good life together.
Darin and Maddie stopped again and bent down to look at something. Maddie shrieked and jumped back, fell on her butt in the wet sand. Laughing uproariously, Darin reached down to help her up. When she was standing again, he kept an arm around Maddie's waist.
And they moved on. Off in their own world.
Neither of them had glanced back toward Grant and Lynn.
“I don't get it,” Grant said, moving a little closer to Lynn, threading his fingers more snugly with hers. “Is he a philanderer? He loves you but doesn't want to be married to you because he wants to have flings on the side?”
“I don't... It's hard to explain....”
What was hard was understanding why a woman like Lynnâsmart, successful, gorgeous as hellâwould allow a man to treat her that way. Let him divorce her but still do everything she could to keep their “family” intact.
Including allow Kara to fly to San Francisco with the man when she didn't have to let the little girl leave the city.
“Try me,” he said. The waves rushed to the shore. And he couldn't let this go. He was on a date.
And wanted, at the very least, a kiss good-night.
He had to know what her situation was.
At least, that was what he told himself. And since much of what was going on with him where she was concerned didn't make a hell of a lot of sense, he just went with what he told himself.
“Brandon doesn't have flings. He's only ever had one lover, other than me.”
“How do you know? A bachelor, living alone...”
She stubbed her toe in the sand, lurched and tightened her grip on his hand as she righted herself. “He doesn't live alone.”
That was too much. The man lived with his mistress, but still kept Lynn on the hook? Then something else hit him....
“Kara's with her father's lover this weekend?”
Lynn's chin dropped. And he regretted his outburst. He'd been living alone with Darin too long. Lost his ability to have some tact.
“I'm sorry. That was completely insensitive.”
She licked her lips. Sucked them in. The moonlight glistened on her face, and he caught shadows of emotions he couldn't read.
His hand holding hers was the only right thing at the moment. Darin and Maddie had made some time on them. They were visible in the distance, but he could no longer hear them at all.
Maybe they should think about turning back.
He had miles to go before he'd be ready.
“I'm sorry,” Lynn finally said. Her voice sounded normal. Pretty much. But it wasn't open. Not the same as it had been when she'd talked about her and Brandon being best friends in high school.
“Yes, Kara is with her father and his spouse. But it's not quite what you think. Douglas respects me and my place in Brandon's life. It's a bit unusual, but...it works for us. Mostly.”
Darin and Maddie had stopped walking. They were sitting in the sand by the water, but not close enough to get drenched, pulling handfuls of wet sand between them. Grant watched for a second. Remembering.
Darin was the most incredible builder of sand castles. As a little kid he'd begged Darin to take him to the beach and build castles. More times than not, his big brother had done so. Together they'd add wings and build moats and then Grant would start to look for branches that would be trees. He'd use pieces of colored candy wrappers he scavenged on the beach with tiny pieces of drift bark stuck into them to resemble flowers. He'd build shell fountains....