Hoping for Love (24 page)

Taken aback by her candor, Blaine could only stare at her.
Trouble
, he reminded himself, the big empty house a further indication of how much trouble she had the potential to be. A second more urgent call for help came over the radio.

“I’ve got to go.”

“I know.”

Since they both knew he wouldn’t be back, she didn’t ask and he didn’t offer.

“Thanks for the ride—both of them.”

Blaine’s cheeks heated with uncharacteristic embarrassment. “Sure.”

Her jeans still gaping open, she followed him to the front door. “And for everything else tonight. With Jim.”

“No problem.”

When they reached the door, he turned for a long last look at her gorgeous face, now flushed and whisker-burned. He wished he had it in him to be what she needed. “Good luck with everything, Tiffany. I hope you find what makes you happy.”

“Oh, I will. Don’t worry.”

The glint in her eye would’ve made him nervous had he planned to stick around. Blaine took her by the chin and raised it so he could see her big green eyes. “He’s not worth mourning over.”

“I know that, too.”

He studied her for another long moment. “If you’d cuffed yourself to me and wrapped those beautiful lips around
my
dick, I would’ve been calling for mercy, not the cops. You can bet on that.” Pressing a soft kiss to her cheek, Blaine reveled in the tremble that rippled through her. “Take care of yourself.”

He wouldn’t soon forget the image of her delectable mouth hanging open in surprise.

Evan was awake long before the alarm they’d set for six thirty went off. As Grace’s departure time drew near, panic set in. He worried it was a huge mistake to let her leave. What if he never saw her again? What if she changed her mind about Gold’s or the deal fell through or she changed her mind about him?

They’d never made it out of the cozy hotel room the day before. Rather they’d stayed in bed, snuggling and talking and laughing and making sweet, sexy love until they’d run out of condoms. It had been, without a doubt, the best day of Evan’s entire life.

He thought about what she’d told him, about her surgery and the weight loss as well as the pain of growing up heavy in a world that catered to physical perfection. In his eyes, she was as close to perfect as any woman could ever be, and all at once it became critical to him that she know that.

“Grace,” he whispered as he sprinkled kisses on her face and neck. “Wake up.”

“Hmm. Not yet.”

“Yes, now. I need to talk to you. I need to tell you…” What? What did he need to tell her?

Her eyes opened, and she blinked a few times. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t let you leave without telling you… That I really want…”

“What, Evan?”

“I want you. I want us. I want it all. And I’m afraid if you leave, if I let you go, we’ll never get a chance to see what this might be.”

She took his hand and brought it to her chest, flattening his palm over the strong beat of her heart. “In two short weeks, I’ll be back, and we’ll get to see what this is.”

“That’s a really long time.” As a new idea occurred to him, his desperation lessened. “I could come with you. There’s nothing keeping me here now that Mac is back to running the marina, and Owen can handle the last couple of weekends at the Tiki without me. It’s his gig anyway.”

Grace was shaking her head. “I need some time to process everything that’s happened and to prepare for the move. I won’t be able to do that if you’re there distracting me.” She brought his hand to her lips. “I think we should both take the next two weeks to make sure this is what we really want.”

“It is what I want.”

“Then it’ll still be what you want in two weeks.”

“What if you change your mind when you have time away from me to think?”

“I don’t think that’ll happen.”

“Will you at least call me while you’re gone so I can make sure you don’t forget about me?”

She smiled at him. “If you want me to.”

“I really want you to.”

“Come here.” She held out her arms to him, and Evan sank into her soft sweetness, breathing in the scent that would forever remind him of her. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

“You’re awfully calm to say that you’ve managed—in just forty-eight hours’ time—to upend my entire life.”

“I’m not calm on the inside. Believe me. Think about it from my point of view—I came out here to pay you back, and look at what happened.”

“Best weekend ever.”

“By far.”

“You’re really coming back?”

“I’m really coming back.”

Evan was rather proud of how he got through the first week after Grace left. He kept himself busy writing songs, performing with Owen and practicing his craft. According to Jack, it was looking more likely that Buddy Longstreet’s company was going to strike a deal to separate Evan’s disk from the bankruptcy proceedings. While he was cautiously optimistic, Evan refused to get his hopes up until it was a done deal.

Under normal circumstances, the drama unfolding in Nashville would’ve consumed him. It would’ve been on his mind every minute of every day, and it would’ve kept him awake at night. But worry over his career wasn’t what kept him awake at night.

No, when he lay awake most of every night, it was Grace he thought about. He’d relived their time together at least a million times and had spent hours on the phone talking to her about everything and nothing.

By the end of the tenth day, he began to wonder if he was losing his mind. Had two weeks ever gone by so slowly?

Naturally, his brothers had tuned in to his agony and were ragging on him every chance they got. Grant and Stephanie were still high off the thrill of victory in court. Her stepfather, Charlie, had been released from prison after fourteen long years behind bars for a crime he hadn’t committed. They’d talked him into coming out to the island until the media circus that accompanied his release died down.

Ned had squared Charlie away with one of his rental properties, and Mac had promised him a job that winter when Mac and Luke’s offseason construction company would be renovating the Sand & Surf Hotel.

Everything was falling into place for everyone, except him, Evan decided after another long dinner with his family at which he’d been the butt of every joke. The only one who seemed to understand what he was going through was Owen, who’d been making some rather dramatic changes in his own life lately, also thanks to a woman.

Evan loved the idea of Owen and his cousin Laura together and was pulling for them to make it work. Her ex-husband was making all sorts of threats that didn’t sit well with any of them, and Evan didn’t envy them the road they had ahead.

During dinner, Evan had been counting the minutes until his self-imposed deadline to call Grace. When he’d last talked to her, two endless days ago, he’d asked her if she missed him. She’d teasingly said that since he called her every night, she hadn’t had time to miss him. So he’d waited two hellish days to call her again, hoping that maybe he’d hear from her in the interim. But there’d been no call, no text, no nothing. And he was slowly going out of his mind from missing her and worrying that she might’ve changed her mind about him.

When Grant and Stephanie finally went home, Evan helped his mother clean up the kitchen.

“Everything okay, Ev?” she asked as she wiped the countertops.

Startled, he was immediately on guard against whatever form of inquisition she might be preparing to mount. “I’m fine,” he said, loading the last of the plates into the dishwasher.

“If you ask me, your brothers are being rather hard on you.”

“It’s fine. Nothing I didn’t do to them.”

“When they were falling in love with Maddie and Stephanie, you mean.”

Trapped, he stared at her as he tried to think of some way to wiggle out of this conversation.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I know what you’re going through.”

“Oh, you do, huh?” he asked, amused by her when he knew he should be running for his life away from her.

“Sure, I do. I went through it once myself, don’t forget.”

“You’re not going to share details about you and Dad that’ll scar me for life, are you?”

Linda laughed and tossed the dishrag at him.

He caught it and dropped it into the sink.

“You know how Uncle Frank introduced me to Dad. I went to a party at Frank’s house with Aunt JoAnn when she and Frank were dating.”

“I don’t remember much about her,” he said of his cousin Laura’s mother, who’d died young.

“No, you wouldn’t,” Linda said sadly. “She and I were friends from school, and we lost her far too soon. Anyway, Dad was over on the mainland for a week visiting Frank and their parents when we met. Of course, I’d heard about Gansett, but I’d never been here. To hear Dad talk about it that first night, it sounded like paradise.”

Evan couldn’t help but be intrigued by parts of his parents’ story he hadn’t heard before.

“He made it sound so great that I eventually came over for a day and totally fell in love.”

“With the island?” Evan asked in a teasing tone.

“Among other things.” Smiling, she looked up at him. “I know that feeling of wanting someone so badly and seeing nothing but obstacles in the way of making it happen.”

Evan was reluctant to say too much to the woman they called Voodoo Mama for good reason. “Well, it certainly worked out well for you.”

“And there’s no reason to believe it won’t work out just as well for you.”

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

She put her hands on his shoulders. “You’re a terrific guy, Evan McCarthy, and any woman would be lucky to win your heart. It certainly wouldn’t break
my
heart if that woman was Grace.”

Evan smiled. “You liked her, huh?”

“Very much so.”

“I’m glad. That matters to me.”

She went up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “It’s all going to work out. Try not to worry.”

Big Mac strolled into the kitchen. “Are you badgering that boy, Lin?”

“For once, I’m not,” she said with a wink for Evan that made him laugh.

“She’s on best behavior,” Evan confirmed.

“Well,” Big Mac said, “that’s a first.”

“She might just be growing up,” Evan said.

Linda rewarded that comment with a middle finger aimed at both of them.

Laughing, Big Mac slung an arm around his wife. “Let’s go for a walk. I need to burn off that amazing dinner you made.”

“I’d love to. We’ll be back in a bit, Ev.”

“Take your time.”

They were holding hands and whispering to each other by the time they walked out the door, and Evan was relieved to realize they’d apparently patched up whatever differences had come between them. His love life would probably be the topic of their conversation on the walk, and whereas that once would’ve bothered him tremendously, it didn’t anymore. Apparently, he was doing a piss-poor job of hiding his torment over Grace.

The moment he was alone, he rushed upstairs to his room and shut the door to make the call he’d been dying to make for days now. By the fourth ring, he was convinced she wasn’t going to pick up, so when she did, he was too tongue-tied to even say hello. What a fool she’d turned him into!

“Evan? Hello?”

“I’m here.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m just great,” he said, his tone rife with sarcasm. “You?”

“I’m tired. Moving is hard work. The furniture I ordered for my new apartment arrived today. We had to move it to the truck I’m bringing to the island. Thank goodness my brothers were able to help me. But every muscle I have is screaming.”

“When you get here, I’ll give you a massage.”

“That’ll be nice.” She paused for a moment. “I was worried when I didn’t hear from you. Is everything okay?”

“I wanted to give you time to miss me. Did it work?”

“Maybe,” she said, laughing at him the way she always did. “I was going to call you, but I figured you were playing at the Tiki with Owen. I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Grace, honey, any time you want to talk to me, call me. I’ll never be too busy for you.”

“That’s very sweet of you to say.”

“What’re you wearing right now?” The question was met with silence. “Grace?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I do.”

“It was really hot today, so I just took a shower and changed into a T-shirt and panties.”

“Why is it that when you say the word ‘panties,’ I get hard as a rock?”

Her nervous laughter traveled through the phone and wrapped around his heart like a warm blanket. “Maybe because you’re a fifteen-year-old trapped in a thirty-two-year-old’s body?”

“It’s because of the spell you cast over me that makes everything about you sexy.”

“
Everything?
”

Evan smiled when he realized she was enjoying tormenting him. Well, two could play at that game. “Take your shirt off.”

“Evan! Why?”

“Just do it.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Is your shirt off yet?”

Sighing with exasperation, she said, “Hang on.”

He could hear her moving around before she returned to the phone. “It’s off. Are you happy now?”

“Not quite yet. Is your room near anyone else’s?”

“I’ve got the garage apartment.”

“Good, put the phone on speaker.”

“Evan…”

“Grace… Do what you’re told.”

“Fine. It’s on speaker. I think you’ve lost your mind since I last saw you.”

“I know I have, and that’s your fault, too.”

“Everything is my fault.”

“I’m glad you realize that. Are your nipples hard?”

“Um, yeah, I guess.”

“Roll them between your fingers.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“Yes, you are. Are you doing it?”

“If you insist.”

“I do. Tell me how it feels.”

“It feels… I don’t know…”

“Close your eyes and pretend it’s me doing it instead of you. Is that better?”

“Yeah.” She was starting to sound a little breathless, which made him even harder, if that was possible.

“Tug on them.”

“If I have to do this, so do you. Take off your shorts and stroke yourself.”

“Really, Grace, I love it when you talk dirty to me.”

“Do what you’re told.”

Laughing at her saucy tone, he stripped off his shorts and boxers.

“Are you hard?” she asked.

“Extremely. Put your right hand inside your panties.”

“Evan, really, that’s enough,” she said with a nervous laugh. “We don’t have to—”

“Are you wet?”

“Extremely,” she said, sounding resigned.

His cock surged at that news. How he wished he could bury himself in her slick heat. “I’m never going to survive four more days.”

“Neither am I.”

“Let your legs fall open and rub your clit.”

“Oh God, Evan,
seriously
?”

“Do I sound like I’m kidding? Are you doing it?”

“Yes!”

“Keep it up and tell me what you want to do when you see me again.”

Without hesitation, she said, “I want to get naked in bed with you.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to have sex.”

“Surely a girl with such a dirty mouth can do better than that.”

“I want to fuck,” she said tentatively.

“That’s more like it,” he said, laughing. “Are you blushing?”

“What do you think?”

“I can picture it. I bet your nipples are dark red by now. That’s how they get when you’re turned on. Did you know that?”

“No,” she said, panting now.

“Pinch your left nipple.”

She let out a moan. “Are you participating over there?”

“You bet your ass. Speaking of your ass, have I mentioned how much I love it? I can’t wait to kiss you there when you get back.”