State of Grace (24 page)

He couldn’t help himself. “Why, Gracie?” he whispered.

She bit into her lower lip. “Because I love you. Because I think I always have, and I always will, and I pushed you away because I’m a coward but I couldn’t bear the thought of not being with you. And I only realized it after I tried to be with someone else, and I couldn’t. He was so nice and so patient, and I really tried to get over you, but I couldn’t. You’re in my mind, you’re in my heart, and you own my body. It would never be fair to anyone else to try and live up to what I feel for you,” she whispered, tracing her fingers along the strong planes of his jaw. 

Was that a tear that streaked down his face? She squinted at him. “Say it again,” he ordered.

She’d said a lot, but she knew what he wanted. “I love you, Sean. That’s why I came here.”

He expelled a long breath, but before she knew it, he’d scooped her up and planted her in his lap.  He traced her bottom lip.  “Say it again.”

“I lov—” His mouth crushed hers in a hard, demanding kiss, and she moaned. His lips caressed, nipped, and soothed, and she finally felt free to release all the pent up emotion and angst from the last six weeks. 

But something nagged her mind.

She pulled away sharply. “Wait. How do you feel?” she asked baldly, color staining her cheeks. She didn’t want to put him on the spot or force him into saying anything he wasn’t ready for, but he hadn’t said anything back. She figured she’d be the one to say it first considering she was the one to break it off first, but that didn’t mean she was going to let him off the hook so easily. 

He drew back and looked at her tenderly. “I have something to show you.” He slipped her off his lap and walked over to his suitcase. He rifled around, exclaiming in satisfaction when he found what he was looking for. 

She gazed at him curiously when he stuck a clenched fist behind his back. When he reached her, he knelt down before her and laughed at her expression of panic.

“Relax, baby. It’s not 
that
. At least not yet.”

“Well then, what is it?” she asked impatiently, inwardly thrilled at his ‘not yet.’

“Hold out your hand.”

She looked at him warily, but eventually did as he asked. There would always be a part of her that would be distrustful of the ten-year-old Sean she was sure was still buried somewhere inside. 

She let out a little gasp of shock when she looked down to the soft, fibrous braid tied with a pretty pink bow.

“Do you remember?” he asked, blue eyes sparkling.

“How could I forget?” she murmured slowly. “I cried for weeks.”

Once again, he shut his eyes against the guilt but rallied on. He swallowed the lump in his throat. “When I was moving, Lucas came over, and I had just found this.”

She looked worried, so he assured her. “We’re okay. I’ll tell you more about that in a bit.”

She nodded silently.

“So I’m standing there, with a hot wheels with a pink glitter paint job in one hand and a pretty red braid in the other. And we talked about when we were kids, how you and I would torture each other. Mostly me torturing you,” he said quickly at her aggrieved look, “but you were pretty good at retaliation. And anyway, Lucas asks me why I did it. Why I snipped your braid.”

“Because you were a snotty eleven-year-old?” she suggested with an impish glint in her eyes.

“You can do better than that, Gracie,” he murmured.

She shook her breath, but he could tell she was breathing shallowly.

“Because I wanted a part of you I could carry with me—always.”

He took a moment to enjoy the speechless shock that crossed her face and the slight open hang of her mouth because he knew those moments would be few and far between in the future. He didn’t expect the tears from her though, his tough girl, even though it seemed like she’d been crying a lot lately. Silently, they streamed down her face, and he brought his fingers up to wipe at them. “Don’t cry, baby, I hate it when you cry.”

“Is that a recent development?” she joked, with teary eyes. “You didn’t seem to mind much when we were younger.”

“I know,” he sighed. “I was stupid. I admit it. I think I just wanted you to care somehow, it didn’t matter if it was the good kind or the bad kind.”

“So why did you move to London?  If you needed me, why did you leave me alone? Why did you have to move to another country?” she whispered her questions, but she could still hear the accusatory note in her tone.

“Baby, I didn’t move to London,” he said, puzzled. “Why would you think that?”

“Because Soph—never mind, so then what are you doing here, and why’d you sell your place?”

“I’d bought that apartment as an investment. I never really considered it home,” he said carefully. “I hadn’t been actively looking, but then I found a few floors for sale in a great pre-war building and bit the bullet. It’s still being renovated right now though, so I decided to work out of our London office for a bit, until it was ready. It was also fucking hard to stay the hell away from you, but I knew I needed to give you space,” he admitted. 

Her heart squeezed painfully when she thought of how much she would have missed out on because of her stubbornness. Even though he drove her crazy—a lot—this man totally got her. It could have very well been because he’d known her for her entire life, but the repressed romantic in her fantasized that it was because they were soul mates. 

A memory floated across her mind. One that had been stuck with her forever.  “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything, my lovely brat.”

She was still so warm and fuzzy inside, she decided to leave his choice of endearments alone for now. She would deal with that later. First, she needed an answer from him.

“Do you remember that summer you came to the beach house after your first year in college? The summer I was thirteen?”

“How could I forget?” he muttered. “When your brother came back, I had to make up some shit story about why my ass was in the sand and all your stuff was there but you weren’t.”

Her voice lowered noticeably with her next question. “Why did you look at me like that? Like I was disgusting? If you wanted to be near me, why did you do that?”

The hurt in her voice confused him. “Grace?”

She pulled her head out of his chest to look at him. 

“Do you remember what you were wearing?” he asked, the memory just as vividly painted in his own mind.

“That tiny ass bikini. All my other suits were in the wash. I was so embarrassed,” she murmured, flames fanning across her cheeks.

“Baby, I was eighteen-years-old, and I walked out on the beach, and there was a hot babe sprawled all over a towel, soaking up the sun. The most amazing ass I’d ever seen, and incredible legs, lush thighs.” He groaned before continuing. “I hit on you—tried to pick you up with some dumb ass cheesy lines, and I had no clue it was you.
Then
after I’d made a clown of myself, you turned around and I saw
you.
And what an amazing fucking body you’d grown into, and it blew my mind.” 

She listened intently, a captive audience of one. Unable to
not
touch her, now that he finally had her in his arms, he rubbed his thumb across the delicate pulse at her throat.  It picked up when he continued.

    “Couldn’t do anything more than just stand there and stare at you. Blew my fucking mind, baby. Into pieces. And the way you looked at me, with those big, gray eyes—all innocent and curious.” He closed his eyes, and he could see it play out in front of him as clear as if it had happened yesterday. 

She poked him in the chest. “Keep going.” He opened his eyes and met her warm, interested gaze.

“All I could think was this was my best friend’s little sister.  Little—like, really little. Clearly with all the right, perfect parts, but fucking thirteen-years-old, and I was eighteen. I felt like the biggest pervert in the world. What you think you saw on my face?  Honey, that’s because I was disgusted with myself. Not you. Never you. I wanted you even back then. Sick, huh?”

She leaned her forehead against his before she twisted and straddled him on his lap, pasting every inch of her body against his. If she could have climbed into his body, she’d have done that, too.   

“You stupid man. I’ve loved you since I was five-years-old.”

She peppered dainty kisses across his beloved face, her eyes softening at his whispered admissions of love. He pulled back for a moment, and stroked her cheek, grinning like a lunatic. “See? Whoever said being a bully doesn’t work?”

He smiled at her and was about to respond but he grew wary when she lifted her hand up, her fingers pressed together. When he saw they were aimed for his earlobe, he tried to get away, but he didn’t move quickly enough.

She hadn’t lost her touch.

Though he would never admit that her pinches made him scream like a little girl.

Epilogue

He was going to go into cardiac arrest. 

Good thing his girlfriend was a nurse.

Although, she was currently nowhere in sight. He looked at Lucas, who was obviously in much worse shape than he. 

Did liquor stores deliver to hospitals? 

If they didn’t, they should. No use mentioning it to Lucas right now. He filed that thought away for future reference. Could be a profitable endeavor. His best friend was sweaty and pale beneath his tan and kept checking his watch. 

“She’s been in there forever,” he groaned.

Forever was really only three hours, but Sean felt his anxiety acutely. For several reasons.

Hours earlier, he and Grace had been seated at a dinner table across from Lucas and Sophie along with several sets of parents at a swanky, new American restaurant. He and Lucas were silent partners in the restaurant, so they were celebrating three weeks early, before the grand opening. 

And before Sophie’s due date.

Lucas was a nervous wreck, and up until that night, Sean had enjoyed his friend’s discomfort. Now, the other man’s jumpiness made Sean want to leap out of his own skin.  Everyone raved about the food, but he could have been eating glue, and it wouldn’t have mattered. He raised his nearly empty glass of whiskey towards one of the wait-staff and motioned for another. He glanced at Grace’s wine glass to see if she needed a refill, but she hadn’t touched hers.

His nerves ate at him, and he tried to focus on something else, anything else for the next few minutes. He frowned at her. “Your wine okay, baby?”

She gave him one of her gentle smiles. He loved his spitfire, but even though they’d known each other since childhood, he’d rarely seen the softer side of her. In the year since she’d raced across the ocean to find him, he’d seen it more and more often.   Gentle smiles, soft looks, whispered cries. Didn’t matter if the woman was yelling or moaning, she never failed to get him hard.

Right now though, the concern in her eyes belied the slight upturn of her lips.  “It’s fine. Are you okay, though? You don’t look so hot.”

She was right. It was a miracle he hadn’t turned green or thrown up his dinner.  But he needed to divert her. 

His hand rested on her thigh. He gave it a lecherous squeeze through the navy silk. “Bet I can get you to take that back later tonight,” he leered. 

She laughed softly, and the sound put him slightly at ease. 

But only slightly. 

Throughout the rest of the dinner, she still looked at him curiously from the corner of her eye. Damn woman knew him far too well. 

Dinner plates cleared.

Desserts and after-dinner drinks ordered.

He reached into his pocket and clutched the velvet box in his fingers. His heart was going to pop out of his chest, he was sure of it. He cleared his throat loudly, and the buzz of conversation fell silent. 

He stared at Grace, who’d turned to look at him. 

“Ohmigod.”

“What, what? What happened honey?” Panicked, Lucas looked like he was going to throw up, too.

Sophie stood up and calmly placed her hand on her protruding belly. “My water just broke.”

Her mother and mother-in-law let out twin squeals of excitement.

Lucas heaved, but to his credit, he kept the contents of his stomach. Grace pushed her chair back briskly. “Overnight bag?”

Her brother just stared dumbly. His wife answered. “We’ve been keeping it in the car. Lucas was scared he’d forget when the time came.”

“Okay, that’s fine. Right now he looks like he can forget how to drive. I’ll take you to the hospital. Lucas, you can sit in the back.” She turned to her parents, Sean’s parents, and Sophie’s mother and boyfriend. “You guys will meet us there? It should be easy to grab a cab in this area.” 

Everyone nodded, already shrugging on coats and jackets, except for Sean.  She pressed a quick kiss to his lips and patted his cheek almost …
fondly?
Then she got down to business. He stood still and stared after the woman he loved hustled her brother and his wife out of the restaurant.

His father clapped him on the back, while his mother looked on sympathetically but anxiously. He knew she was eager to get to the hospital. Both of his parents loved Lucas like he was one of their own and were as excited as Lucas’s own parents about the upcoming birth.