Authors: Mariah Stewart
“Grant,” she whispered as reason began to trickle back into her consciousness. “I think—”
“No, no. That’s the worst possible thing you could be doing right now.” His lips traveled to her chin, then the side of her face, then to her neck. “And besides, didn’t you hear? Thinking’s banned in St. Dennis on Thursdays.”
“Today is Friday,” she reminded him.
“Then, too.” When his lips began to trail down the V of her dress, she forced herself to break away.
“Grant, I really think we need to stop and … and think about what’s going on here.” She pushed him slightly from her, hoping to gain a little breathing room. “All things considered, this isn’t a good idea.”
He sighed deeply, and a moment later asked, “What things are being considered?”
“We haven’t seen or spoken to each other in twenty
years. We don’t know each other anymore.” She stepped back another step and his arms caught her.
“You’re, ah, a little close to the edge, there,” he pointed out.
Dallas looked down into the water that was less than three feet away.
“Well, that would have added a bit of drama, wouldn’t it? Me going off the end of the pier into the river?”
He laughed. “Look, you’re right on one thing. It’s been twenty years since we’ve been together. But I don’t agree that we don’t know each other anymore. I’m still the same guy I was back then. Older, hopefully a bit wiser, but I really haven’t changed a whole lot. I doubt you have, either.”
A breeze off the river tossed her hair around her face, and he tucked it back behind her ear.
“I think regardless of the fact that you are now a famous and highly celebrated star, you’re still the same girl who came to St. Dennis every summer. I’d be willing to bet that inside, you haven’t changed a whole lot. At least, I hope you haven’t.”
“It’s not as easy as that.”
“Sure it is. I’ll bet you still walk barefoot as often as possible, get pissed off every time you see someone drop trash on the sidewalk, and you still eat your burgers rare. Though never from a fast-food place.”
She laughed. “Yes, but—”
He continued. “These days, the beef is from pastured cattle that have never been injected with hormones or antibiotics and all of your food comes from a market that only sells organics. In your garage back in California, you have a hybrid SUV and a bicycle
that you never ride. You still blush when people gush over you and you still don’t have a whole lot of girlfriends because most women are jealous of you and you sense that and so you pick your friends very carefully.”
“Where did that come from?” Dallas frowned. “That last part?”
“From the week I spent at your place in New Jersey. It was very obvious that you only had one or two friends. Equally obvious that the other girls in that summer theater group didn’t like you a whole lot but for no reason other than the fact that you were prettier and had such clear and amazing natural talent.”
“What was obvious? What made you think that?”
“When you were onstage, rehearsing, I sat in the audience, remember? With the cast members who were waiting to be called up to rehearse their lines?”
She nodded slowly.
“Well, there was always a group of girls who sat behind me who talked about how you …” He froze, apparently realizing this was not a good idea. “How you hadn’t been in summer stage there the other years but that you just walked in the first time and got the biggest role. That sort of stuff. You know.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me that back then?”
“I didn’t think it would be a good idea.” He bit his bottom lip. “Probably about as bad an idea as it was just now.”
His discomfort was endearing, and Dallas knew there’d been more discussed among that group of girls than he was letting on. She’d heard it from someone else that summer. Still, the fact that he’d hidden it from her back then to spare her feelings only served
to remind her of how sweet a guy he’d been at eighteen.
“My only point is that some things never change. There was something between us back then that was one of those things. I know it’s still there because I feel it, and you still feel it, too. That pull—whatever it is, I’m not going to try to put a name on it—is still there.”
She nodded slowly. “I need to think this through, Grant. I don’t know where this could go.”
He rested his forehead on hers. “Where do you want it to go?”
“I don’t know that, either, and until I do, I think we need to slow this train down.…”
Man, you are so smooth
. Grant mocked himself as he drove home, his head still buzzing from that last goodnight kiss.
You sure do know how to play it cool, keep a woman guessing …
Idiot
.
Earlier that night, before he picked up Dallas, he’d had a pretty stern talk with himself. Reminded himself that he needed to stick to the plan, to keep everything friendly and to not even try to make romance a part of the equation. Things had ended badly for him the last time around, slamming him with the greatest heartache he’d ever known, and only a fool would step up to that plate again. And yet there he was, his arms around her, his lips on hers, drinking her in like a man who’d just come to an oasis after walking across the Sahara.
Couldn’t keep your hands to yourself, could you? Moron
.
She’s leaving at the end of the summer, just like last time
, he reminded himself.
And she’s going to leave you hurting—just like last time
.
She’d said that come September, she was going to
go back to her own life. He considered what that life might be like. By the time he pulled into his driveway, he mentally envisioned Dallas on the arm of some high-powered star—hadn’t he heard just last week that Chase Winston was getting divorced? He and Dallas had made several movies together, one of which had a pretty spicy love scene. Yeah, she’ll probably hook up with Winston or someone just like him—someone equally famous and wealthy and great-looking—and it’ll be another twenty years before she’s back in St. Dennis.
And sucker that you are, twenty years from now, you’d do the same thing all over again, because the truth is, you never really loved anyone but her. Never really felt complete with anyone but her. Never dreamed of happily ever after, except with her.
Yeah, well, we know how that worked out, don’t we?
The dogs in the shelter began to bark when he slammed his car door, and by the time he got around to the front door, the dogs he and Paige had adopted eagerly spilled out of the house to welcome him home, their geriatric tails wagging, their grayed heads butting against his legs for attention.
“Okay, guys, I’m glad to see you, too.” He patted each dog’s head. “All right. As you were, fellas.”
One by the one, the dogs drifted away, and it was then that Grant noticed that all the downstairs lights were on. He was certain he hadn’t turned on any of them before he left the house, except one in the front hall. Just then, Paige came out of the kitchen, her feet bare, a large cookie in one hand.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said with somewhat exaggerated nonchalance.
Grant stood in the hallway. “I thought you were at Quinn’s house for a sleepover.”
“I was. I came home.” She walked past him and went into the living room and flopped on the sofa. “A bunch of boys came over and everyone was acting so lame.” She made a face.
“How’d you get home?” He sat on the arm of an overstuffed chair. “Did Quinn’s mother drive you?”
“She wasn’t there”—Paige continued to feign indifference—“so I walked.”
“Whoa. Back up there. What do you mean, her mother wasn’t home?” The no-big-deal posturing was beginning to make sense. “You told me she was going to be there.”
“Quinn said she would be. I guess she decided to go out at the last minute or something.” Paige finished the cookie, wiped her hands on a napkin, and got up to leave the room.
“Not so fast, kiddo.” Grant motioned for her to return to the sofa. “Go back to the part where you walked home from Quinn’s.”
“Yeah. I already told you that part.”
“I didn’t hear the part where you said who walked with you.”
“No one walked with me.”
“You walked all the way home from Quinn’s by yourself?” Grant’s eyebrows rose. “In the dark?”
“It’s no big deal, Dad. It’s only a couple of blocks.”
“It’s four blocks, and it is a big deal.” He couldn’t even bear to think of what could happen to a young girl alone in the dark. “Why didn’t you call me?”
Paige shrugged.
Grant knew what she was thinking: this was his fault for not calling Quinn’s mother himself. That’s what Krista would have done. If anything had happened to Paige …
“Next time something like that happens, you call me to come pick you up, understand? You don’t do that again, okay?”
Paige made a face. “You sound like Mom.”
Well, I suppose that’s a good sign
, he told himself.
“So did you have fun?” she asked.
“Yes, I did. But don’t try to change the subject. You shouldn’t have been here alone, Paige.”
“Dad,” Paige said with infinite patience, “this is St. Dennis. Safe place, remember? That’s what you always tell Mom, anyway.”
“It’s summer. Who knows who’s in town these days?”
“I have the dogs to protect me,” she said as the old rottweiler collapsed at her feet. “See? Schultz loves me. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt me.”
“Schultz has doggie Alzheimer’s and has hardly any teeth,” he reminded her.
“But he’s got a really big bark.”
“Paige …”
“All right. Next time I’ll call you. Promise.” She crossed her heart, then paused for a moment. “Dad, are you still going to take us to Baltimore to see the
American Idol
concert tomorrow night?”
“I said I would.”
“Thanks, Daddy. We’re all so excited about it.”
“So who’s the best dad?”
“You’re the best dad
ever.”
Paige stepped over the
dog that had begun to snore loudly. She kissed her father on the cheek and started to run up the steps. She’d gone halfway up when she stopped and turned back.
“Dad?” She grinned conspiratorially. “I won’t tell Mom about tonight if you won’t.”
Before he could reply, she scampered up the steps to the second floor and disappeared into her room. Grant sighed and checked to make sure all the doors were locked, then turned off all but the porch lights. He’d certainly had an interesting evening, he mused as he went upstairs, one that ran the gamut of emotions, from feeling like an eighteen-year-old romancing the girl of his dreams to feeling like the hundred-year-old single father of an almost-teenage girl. He wasn’t sure he’d handled either situation particularly well, but, hey, no harm, no foul, right?
“There’s always tomorrow, Scarlett,” he muttered as he went into his room.
It didn’t occur to him until later, when he’d almost fallen asleep, that he’d only have until the end of the summer with both Paige and Dallas. By the first week in September, they’d both be gone, both off to lives that didn’t include him. The unhappy truth kept him awake for most of the night.
“Dallas, did I remember to tell you that I was taking Cody and Logan to Ballard today?” Berry poked her head into the office the next morning, drawing Dallas from a daydream in which she and Grant had been engaged in activities that might have shocked Berry, had she known. Then again, probably not,
Dallas thought as she sat up. No one could say that Berry hadn’t
lived
.
“You mentioned that you were going to take Cody to a movie, but I don’t remember that you were taking Logan. Not that it matters, of course, as long as you’re up to it.”
“Of course, I’m up to it. It’s the film adaptation of one of the books they read at the library last week, and they’re both excited about it. And after the movie—assuming they behave while in the theater—we’ll stop and have pizza on the way home. Then, if there’s still time and they haven’t stuffed themselves to the point of illness, we’ll make a stop at Scoop for dessert.”
“Sounds like a pretty full afternoon.”
“I’m looking forward to it. The boys are such fun. They’re both so smart and so polite. It’s a pleasure to take them places.”
“That’s nice to hear.”
“That’s what Brooke said, too, when she called last night,” Berry went on. “How nice it was to hear good things about your children. I’ve never had my own, of course, but I always took pride in the manners that you and Wade showed.” She paused. “Well, Wade … perhaps not always. He did go through a spell. But you were always well mannered.”
“Thanks, Berry.” Dallas tapped her pen on the side of her laptop.
Ally began to bark at the front windows. Fleur flew down the steps to join in.
“Oh, that must be Brooke’s car I hear. She asked if she could drop off Logan around eleven while on her way to Annapolis. A cousin’s wedding, I believe she
said. I told her to go and enjoy herself and not worry about her boy, that I’d give him dinner and will drop him off later this evening …” Berry’s voice faded as she drifted toward the front door.
Dallas got up from the desk and closed the office door. The last person she wanted to see—or hear—was Brooke. She forced her attention back to the scene and the dialogue she’d been working on before Berry stopped in. Soon the voices from the front hall faded, and she was lost in
Pretty Maids
once again.
“Mommy, Aunt Berry’s taking me and Logan to the movies and for pizza, and if we’re good, we get to go to Scoop!” Cody bounded into the library with Logan and Fleur at his heels.
“Well, I suppose that means you will both be very good at the movies and at the pizza place.” She swung the chair around and stood. “Come give me a hug before you go.”
Cody wrapped himself around her legs. “Logan, you gotta hug my mom, too.”
Logan quietly joined Cody and gave Dallas a halfhearted hug.
“Thank you, boys.” She patted them both on their heads. “Now don’t keep Aunt Berry waiting. And remember to behave.”
“We will,” the two boys cried in unison, and raced out of the library.
“Would you like the door closed, dear?” Berry asked from the doorway.