Only, even as she thought it, she knew she wasn’t being fair to Dylan. Yes, he was handsome. Yes, he was powerful. But he was so much more than just that. He was fun. He was sweet. He was talented. He was devoted to his family. He was adorable with Mason. And he wanted to protect them both.
Yesterday in his boathouse, when she’d taken him the same way he’d taken her, she’d hoped that giving him pleasure would help her feel more in control. Less off-balance. But it hadn’t worked. Not in the slightest, given that she’d left his boathouse as far off-balance as she’d ever been.
Mostly because she couldn’t stop rethinking everything—everything she’d been so sure about since Mason. Namely that she had to be strong all by herself. And that she had to pay for her stupidity with her ex by always doing the safe thing, by remaining in perfect control forevermore.
Knowing Mason would be up soon, and that her deadline wasn’t going anywhere regardless of how twisted up she felt inside, she was sitting back down behind her computer when she knocked her notebook to the floor. Reaching for it, she realized it had fallen open to a William Shakespeare quote from
Much Ado About Nothing
.
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men are deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Dylan, she already knew, would never willingly deceive her, would never reel her in just for a laugh. But at his core he was a sailor. One whom she doubted would ever be as happy on land as he was out on the sea. Sailing was considered to be the great escape
.
And after all, wasn’t that when Dylan had turned to sailing—when his father had lost his job, times had been rough for his family, and it had become his passion, as well?
And yet, at the same time, how could she forget what he’d said yesterday during their second interview:
“The magic of a night sea is one that can only be matched, and transcended, by one thing. By love.”
As if Mason knew that his mother was desperate for a distraction from thoughts that were careening from one end of her mind to the other, he woke up from his nap. After a quick diaper change, she gathered up a snack, a bottle, and a change of clothes and put them all in the bottom of his stroller.
“What do you say you and I head out to the park and let some fresh air clear our heads?”
Her son’s eyes lit up at the word
park
just as her phone rang. When she saw Dylan’s name on the screen, she knew she lit up in exactly the same way.
She should probably let it ring, give herself a little space to keep thinking things through. But from the first, Dylan had been a gift she hadn’t been able to deny herself. Or her son, whom she’d seen laugh more with him than with anyone else.
“I was sitting here missing you and Mason,” Dylan told her when she picked up, “so I thought I’d call.” Mason giggled as she handed him his stuffed giraffe and accidentally knocked him in the nose with its fluffy tail. “Your kid has the best laugh.”
“He really does, doesn’t he?”
“He gets it from his beautiful mother.”
It felt as though Dylan knew every secret code to unlock all the locked-down parts of her heart. And even when she knew she should make sure the two of them stuck to
slow,
it was the last thing she wanted—and not just because every kiss, every caress he gave her felt so good. Just being with Dylan made her happy.
Happier than she’d been in a very long time.
“We’re going to the playground if you want to take a little break.”
“The playground sounds like the perfect place to celebrate.”
“Celebrate?” She quickly guessed, “Are you done with the boat?”
“Adam helped me with a few finishing touches last night.”
“He’s going to be so thrilled when he finds out it’s his. When are you going to tell them all?”
“Soon. Once I return from my trip to Australia, everyone else should be back in Seattle again, too.”
“You’re going to
Australia?”
She realized, too late, that she sounded like a girlfriend trying to keep track of her boyfriend’s schedule.
“I leave Thursday for a seven-hundred-mile yacht race out of Sydney. I’ll only be gone a week, but I’m going to miss you and Mason like crazy, Grace. If I hadn’t promised my friend a year ago that I’d do this—”
“The race sounds amazing,” she said, ruthlessly pushing away the ache inside of her at the thought of not seeing Dylan for an entire week.
Fun,
she reminded herself. They were just having fun, enjoying each other while they were working together on her magazine article.
And that was all she could let herself believe it was for now, because fun wasn’t something she needed to overthink. Fun wasn’t something she needed to worry over. Fun wasn’t something she needed to have a foolproof plan or an escape hatch nailed down for.
“I’ll have a little over a week left to finish my story after you return, so hopefully you’ll come back with some good stories for me.”
Just then, Mason threw his giraffe and she knew he was tired of being strapped into his stroller without going anywhere. “We’ll be at the playground right across the street. See you soon.”
And despite not yet knowing exactly how to get a handle on her relationship with Dylan—one that already felt so much more important than any
fun
fling she’d ever had—it was a thrill to know that she would.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Mason was happily tucked into a toddler swing and squealing with joy as she pushed him higher and higher. He was a little daredevil, much like her parents had always said she’d been as a child, and she vowed never to let her own fears hold him back. She would support him in everything, no matter how dangerous or wild. Just as she had learned that Claudia Sullivan had done with her children.
The urge to protect her son from anything that might hurt him was all-consuming. But she knew better, knew that if her parents had still been alive, they’d have urged her to remember that giving him wings to fly was just as important as keeping him safe.
Or, she thought with a little smile, maybe he’d end up choosing a boat in which to sail across the deep blue sea. Lost in her thoughts, it wasn’t until Mason started making happy little sounds that she realized Dylan was walking straight toward them. She heard a collective gasp of female appreciation from the other women in the park as he stepped onto the sandy playground in jeans and a T-shirt that fit him so well her own mouth went dry. Not in the least because she finally knew
exactly
how good he looked
without
said jeans and T-shirt.
He grabbed Mason’s swing in midair, and her son puckered up for a kiss. That kiss was always the first thing Mason wanted, and it never failed to move her how easily and sweetly affectionate Dylan was with her little boy.
When Mason looked over his shoulder at her, Dylan grinned and said, “One for him, one for you.”
Setting Mason back to flying in his swing with one hand, he used the other to pull her close, then kissed her slowly and deeply in front of everyone…sending her heart flying, too.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When they were finally able to take Mason away from the park without too much of a fuss, the three of them headed to the ice cream shop. Playing at the park. Getting ice cream. Sharing hot kisses.
See
, Grace told herself,
we’re just having fun.
Leaving Mason sitting proudly like a big boy beside Dylan outside the ice cream store with his little legs sticking straight out in front of him on the brightly painted bench, she went inside and placed their orders. Five minutes later, she returned with her hands full.
“Here’s your rainbow sorbet, sweet pea.” Mason reached for the cone and immediately shoved it against his lips, bright green, orange, and pink streaks smearing his chubby cheeks. “And our banana split and two lemonades.”
She usually just got a vanilla cone because the split was way too much for one person. But when Dylan had suggested they share the split, it hit her that she wasn’t alone anymore. At least not for as long as whatever they were doing together lasted. Certainly as long as it took her to write the magazine story, she figured. And after? Well…she’d learned a year and a half ago that no matter how much you wanted to predict the future, there were some things you simply couldn’t plan for.
Fun
, she reminded herself yet again. That’s all this was. All it needed to be.
Seeing that Dylan had Mason’s sticky face well in hand with the container of wet wipes he’d found at the bottom of the stroller, she sat on his other side. When he’d finished cleaning Mason up, she lifted her lemonade.
“Congratulations on your newest creation.” He clinked his cup against hers, and then she leaned over to kiss him softly, as natural a move as it had been to walk down the street from the park to the ice cream shop with her baby playing happily in his stroller in front of them.
“Speaking of creations, how’s your article going?”
“Good.”
He raised an eyebrow. “That was the least good-sounding
good
I’ve ever heard.”
She dug her spoon into the strawberry scoop at the end of the dish and amended her reply to, “I did so much research before I began to interview you and you’ve given me so much great stuff…it should be coming together much more quickly than it is.”
“We’ve got to get you out in one of my boats. I promise you, that will change everything.”
Her heart skittered at the suggestion, because that was exactly what she was afraid would happen if she sailed with Dylan. That
everything would change.
That she’d lose hold of her “just having fun” perspective. That she’d start to want more than pleasure and laughter. And that she’d only be setting up herself and Mason for a huge fall.
“I’ll be back from Australia on the Saturday after next, so why don’t we schedule our sail for the following Sunday? That way you’ll still have nearly a week to polish up your story if you need to.”
Nearly two weeks was enough time to mentally prepare herself for their sail. It had to be. “Okay, I’ll book a babysitter.”
“You do realize that my mother was serious when she offered to watch Mason anytime you needed her to, don’t you?”
“Claudia is very sweet and generous, and Mason obviously loved playing with her, but—”
“It will make her day knowing she’ll get to see him again.”
When he put it that way, how could she keep arguing? “My mother would have felt the same way.” It was a beautiful sunny day, and she was eating ice cream with her perfect son and the gorgeous man she was having “fun” with. She shouldn’t feel sad. Still, she’d never figured out how to shake her sorrow that both her parents were gone.
Obviously, Dylan sensed it, because he put his hand over hers and said, “They see him, Grace. And you, too, the daughter they’ve always been so proud of. Watching you raise Mason…I know they’re prouder of you than ever.”
The sun, the ice cream, the smile on her son’s face, Dylan’s hand over hers—all helped her hold the tears at bay. “I had a friend in high school who came from a big family, and she hated it. Hated the lack of privacy. Hated that someone was always into her things. My parents tried for more kids, but my mother couldn’t...” No, she absolutely refused to ruin their afternoon by breaking down. She focused instead on slicing off a piece of banana from the split and feeding it to Mason between his own licks of sorbet. “What I’m trying to say is that you’re very lucky to have such a close family.”
“I agree,” he said. “Although I’m a little pissed off at my brother Adam right now.”
“Why? I thought he helped you with the boat yesterday.”
“He did, but only after he walked in on us, which meant you put your clothes on long before I was ready.” She was blushing by the time he added, “And I was planning to ask you on our first official date for tomorrow night, but it turns out that Adam needs the two of us to go with him to a swanky cocktail party at the old Maritime Museum, put on by the board members. They’re thinking of tearing it down and putting up a modern glass and steel showcase. He wants us to help talk them out of that and into letting him get his hands on it to restore the building.”
“I’m glad he wants to fight to save the historic building. It’s a truly beautiful one. And it makes perfect sense that he’d want you there. But why would he want me to come?”
“You’re smart. You’re beautiful. And I’m guessing that, from the way you research the topics that you write about, you already know more about the history of Seattle sailing than anyone on the museum’s board.” He leaned forward to lick a drop of ice cream from her lips. “Come with me tomorrow night, Grace. We’ll do the rounds for my brother as fast as we can, then sneak off and have our own private night on the town without anyone from my family around this time.”
The brush of his tongue against her sensitive skin had knocked her brain cells off-balance, far enough that she couldn’t quite focus on what her answer to his question should be.
“Say yes,” he murmured against her lips as he leaned in again to kiss her this time.
Spinning even faster now, she said, “You’re doing this on purpose. Making it hard for me to think.”
He nuzzled her earlobe. “Is it working?”
“Almost.”
But what he was asking her was too important to be decided on a dizzy, aroused whim.
A date.
She hadn’t been on one of those in a really long time. Dinner at his parents’ house had been an interview, though it had ended with a kiss. And the aquarium hadn’t started as a date, either, though it had ended with much more than just one kiss. Even this trip to the ice cream store could simply have been two friends and a baby out for an afternoon break. A
fun
break for sun and sugar in the middle of the day. Friends with benefits, but still nothing official. Not a date
that could potentially lead to so much more
.
“Tell me I’m going too fast, Grace, and I swear I’ll figure out a way to back off and give you more space.”
It should have been exactly the right thing for him to say. But she was shocked to realize that the thought of Dylan backing off had her gut clenching far tighter than did the risk of dating him.