CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Grace had spent the last thirty-six hours thinking. Mulling. Dissecting.
And wanting. Always wanting.
Saturday night, she’d told Dylan more than she’d ever told anyone else about her past…and then she’d gone a little crazy in his arms. The best kind of crazy, she thought as she pulled into the parking lot of his boathouse. But crazy nonetheless. She’d hoped to have a firm handle on everything by now, but the truth was that she was still going around and around in her mind.
She’d intended for the night to be nothing more than friends visiting an aquarium. But there was no point in trying to deny how good—or how natural—it had been to make out with Dylan on her couch, so she wouldn’t bother with that nonsense. She also wouldn’t try to tell herself that she hadn’t wanted more of his big, work-roughened hands on her. Not when she had wanted much more. But he hadn’t given her what she was all but begging for, hadn’t pushed her too far. Instead, he’d stopped and gone home completely unfulfilled.
Dylan had promised that they would go slow. Given his behavior on Saturday night, it looked as though he meant it. Which was why all her thinking, all her wanting, had her circling back again and again to the same place: If they truly could keep to slow while she also kept her eyes wide open this time, then maybe it would be okay to spend a few sexy hours here and there with him.
Attraction, orgasms—they were perfectly natural. And when they were with Dylan, they were perfectly perfect, too.
In any case, it wasn’t as if making out with him meant they were getting married. A few kisses, a few incredible orgasms, didn’t mean forever. Normal people kissed, touched each other. And the truth was that she was tired of fighting her own demons all the time, tired of taking every step with caution, tired of feeling she was going to have to keep paying forever for her mistake with Richard.
Just for a little while, while she and Dylan were working together on this magazine story, couldn’t she live a little? Have some fun, feel some pleasure like any other normal woman would let herself feel with a sexy man like him?
She’d been stunned by the way he had shifted from the gentle man he always was during the day with her and Mason to a hungry, dominant lover Saturday night. Stunned in the best possible way, she thought, as a little shiver rippled over her at the still-potent memory of the heat in his eyes, the desperation in his hands, when he’d torn through her lingerie. No one had ever ripped away her bra, her panties, as if he couldn’t wait another second to have her bare beneath him. He’d asked her—told her—what he wanted her to do, where to put her hands, even when to come for him…and it had been the greatest thrill of her life not only to do it all, but also to wait breathlessly for his next sensual command.
As she got out of her car, she took a deep breath of the salty-sweet sea air. It was time to make the shift from personal to professional, at least for a few hours. Coming back to his boathouse for their second interview was important not only so that she could ask him her follow-up questions, but also so that she could make sure she described the look and feel of his workspace properly.
Of course, that was right when she rounded the corner from the parking lot…and saw Dylan bent over sanding the side of the boat in the middle of his workshop, shirtless, his skin gleaming with sweat, his muscles rippling. Oh Lord.
Oh Lord.
She wanted his mouth, his hands, his body on hers again. Wanted to come apart for him, beneath him, against him, again and again. Wanted to discover just how much more pleasure there was to be had in his arms.
She took another deep breath, and then one more for good measure. Business. She needed to stay on track with her story.
But, as she let the last slightly ragged breath go, she knew she was going to have to ride out a few more seconds of being a very attracted woman first.
Grace had read several books on boat building to make sure that she understood the basics, but watching Dylan painstakingly sand a section by hand, then run his other hand over the smooth wood before he moved on to the next plank, almost felt like watching a man with his lover. Every boat he made, she sensed, meant a great deal to him. Who was this one for? What man or woman would be lucky enough to sail away on a boat that had been so painstakingly created?
As a writer, Grace saw the world through words first. But as she watched him work, she could see what a fascinating documentary someone could make here with Dylan. Both the visual story of the creation of a boat from start to finish and an in-depth look into the mind of the man who could turn planks of wood into magic.
Of course, she could easily guess that he would never allow anyone to film him. Not because he was hiding anything. It was simply that for all that he’d opened his work and his family to her, Dylan was a naturally private man.
It was why sailing suited him so well. He didn’t need accolades. Didn’t need to be seen by anyone as the best. He simply wanted to be free to build boats. Free to race them. Free to sail off in one to explore whatever corner of the world interested him. And she didn’t blame him for wanting to live his life according to his own rules when she wanted that very same thing—to live the life of her dreams without always looking in the shadows, without always worrying about being hurt.
“Good morning, Grace.”
Dylan put the sandpaper down and turned to her with a smile. A very male smile that was just smug enough to tell her he knew she’d been there all along and had been happy to let her watch him work shirtless.
Both of them had been happy about it, she thought as she returned his smile. “Is now still a good time for our interview?”
“Sure, but where’s Mason?”
“I booked a babysitter for him so that I could focus.”
“I thought you were going to bring him. I’ve seen how my cousins set up safe areas so their kids can play at parties. I was planning on it.”
He was sweet, so amazingly sweet to always think of including Mason. But even if her son could have played happily in a cordoned-off area of the boathouse while they did the interview, Grace had wanted to make sure that they couldn’t just fall so easily into pretend-family time again. It would be too easy, she could already see, to slip into the fantasy that the three of them really were a unit.
This isn’t forever, she reminded herself. One day Dylan would sail away while she and Mason stayed right here. But until then, they would appreciate every second with him.
“He seemed quite happy with the young, pretty babysitter, actually.” Grace had repeatedly reminded herself in the past half hour that she couldn’t watch over her son every single second. A couple of hours with a babysitter would be okay, even if leaving him this morning was one of the hardest things she’d ever done.
Grace moved farther into the boathouse. “Who is this boat for?”
“Promise you won’t tell?”
She was the one frowning now. “If you don’t want me to talk about something in my interview, of course I won’t.”
“No, that’s not the reason.” He reached out a hand and it felt so natural to take it. “It’s for my family.”
Surprised—and touched—she asked, “They don’t know about it?”
“If they knew, they might think they needed to feel bad about me ignoring the waiting list for them.”
“How long is your customer waiting list?”
He shrugged. “I’ll take a look at it again next week.”
“Why do I have the sense that you pay as much attention to your waiting list as you do to your ringing phone?”
“Because you already know me so well.” He drew her closer. “I know you’re here to interview me today, not to make out with me, but I’ve spent every second since Saturday night thinking about kissing you again. Just one and then we’ll get down to business. I promise.”
“Well,” she said softly, “since you proved to me on Saturday night that you are good at keeping your promises, just one…since we really do need to get to the interview.”
“Then I’ll have to make it count, won’t I?”
Before she could even take her next breath, his mouth was on hers. Arousing. Seducing. Ravaging. And challenging her to pour just as much passion back into him. Instinctively, she answered that challenge with so much heat and passion that before she knew it her arms were around his neck, her legs were wrapped around his waist, and his hands were on her hips to hold her steady against him while they tried to get as close to each other as they possibly could in the middle of his sun-drenched boathouse.
“Wow,” she said slowly when he finally set her back on her feet and she tried to get her brain to fire on all cylinders again, “you really know how to make a kiss count, don’t you?”
“I was going to say the same about you,” he said in a hungry voice that sent another wave of desire shuddering through her.
“I think I’m going to need a minute for my head to clear.” She shook her head and took a couple of deep breaths, but it didn’t help clear the lust-filled fog from her brain. “Maybe two minutes.”
“Would coffee help?”
“Hopefully, yes.”
They both walked the short distance to his small corner kitchen, and while he brewed some seriously great-smelling coffee, she set up her recorder, pad of paper, and pen on the small table...and tried with all her might to stop thinking about how desperately she wanted to jump back into his arms.
He brought her a mug and she nearly groaned aloud with pleasure at how delicious it was. “Where did you learn to make coffee this good?”
“Good, strong coffee is the best way to wake crew members up for their watch.”
For the next hour or so, she asked him much more practical nuts-and-bolts questions about sailing and boats than she’d asked him on Friday. Finally, she returned to something he’d said about continuing to teach new sailors the ropes. “I can see how much satisfaction there must be in building a boat, and I can imagine how exciting races must be. But why do you continue to teach when I’m guessing those hours would be better spent building a pricey sailboat for someone on your waiting list?”
“Early on, when I was trying to make a go of boat building, taking people out for a long weekend was an easy, fun way to bring in funding. I’ve always enjoyed sailing with a crew. Probably comes from having four siblings and more than a dozen cousins,” he said with a grin. “The people who come out to learn with me are always an odd mix. Maybe one’s a baker. Another’s an accountant. A third is a painter. A fourth is a cop. They usually don’t have much experience with sailing, but it doesn’t matter because all of them—all of us—share the same passion. And by the time we make it back into the harbor, they’re hooked.”
“What do you tell them before you head out? What are your hard and fast rules for sailing?”
“There’s just one: When it’s your turn to stand watch, you show up on time. It’s the only thing I’m an inflexible tyrant about because I’ve seen what happens when the watch system breaks down and people lose vital hours of sleep. Fatigue will kill you faster at sea than any storm will.”
Grace was reminded yet again of the way Dylan had shifted on Saturday night from gentle to dominant, from sweet to dangerous. Obviously, he’d seen how much she liked it, but she also now knew that the sinfully sexy man who had ripped her panties off was just as much a part of him as the softhearted man who loved making her baby laugh. She could easily imagine him shifting from easygoing to no-bullshit in the blink of an eye if he thought anyone was putting his crew at risk out at sea. He was a natural-born protector.
“You really don’t have any other rules?”
“I teach my clients navigation and heavy-weather sailing. How to plan a passage. But mostly, we just sail. That’s how I learned best, not by listening to someone talk about technique, but by keeping the boat moving, one way or another. If the wind is from ahead, haul the sails in. If the wind is from the side or behind, let them out. It isn’t much harder than that.”
“You help make people’s dreams a reality,” she mused aloud. “That’s why you do it, isn’t it? Because you had that same dream once.”
“I still do. I’ve never lost my sense of awe at what the ocean is capable of, not even after hundreds of midnight watches. As far as I’m concerned, the magic of a night sea is one that can only be matched, and transcended, by one thing.” He paused and held her gaze for a long moment. “By love.”
When heat—and emotion—immediately kicked up between them, Grace did what she could to bank it for the time being and hold her focus on her interview. Later, she knew, they would shift from professional to personal. But for now, she needed to be no-bullshit, too.
“I’m assuming your students have all come back in one piece?”
“The ocean has a way of rising up to test your resolve right when you think you’ve got everything dialed in. But even though there’ve been a couple of close calls here and there, I’m proud to say that my crews have not only come back in one piece, but many of them have also gone on to do some pretty major cruises in their own sailboats for months at a time.”
“So then what do you teach them if not technique?”
“To stay flexible and to be willing to change tactics as conditions dictate, whether it’s challenging weather or equipment failure. A good sailor knows that if the action you’re taking isn’t working, you try something else. And, most important, to enjoy the hell out of what you’re doing, because every single moment is a gift.”
Grace had thought interviewing Dylan would be a job, nothing more. But again and again he touched her heart with something he said, something he did. “Staying flexible and enjoying every moment are good rules not just for sailing, but for life,” she agreed.
After all, wasn’t that exactly what she’d done when she’d learned she was pregnant and would be raising her son on her own? She’d changed tactics and then made sure to enjoy the gift of every moment with Mason.
“My family taught me those rules,” he told her.
“Out on a sailboat?”
He shook his head. “My father lost his job when I was pretty young. He was out of work for long enough that Ian ended up stepping up to keep things afloat. I was too young to be much help to anyone, but I watched. I learned. And I saw that the sacrifices everyone made for each other were more than worth it.”
“The boat you’re making for them is your way of saying thank you, isn’t it?” But even as she said it, she knew it was more than that. “And it’s also your way of sharing with them what has brought you endless joy.”
“Yes,” was his simple answer, one that made her heart feel even softer toward him—even more open with him. No other man had ever disarmed her so easily…or heated her up so quickly.
“Can you put it into words, that joy?”
“Everyone from Tennyson to Jacques Cousteau to Jimmy Buffett has said it already, better than I ever will.”
“I’d like to hear it in your words, Dylan.” Didn’t he realize what a poet he was when he spoke about the sea? About his family? “Please.”
He took her hands, stroked his fingers over them before he began to speak. “The sea is full of so much wonder and magic that I’ve never seen anyone leave one of my boats without falling under its spell. Even people who have been afraid before, or who are certain they will never find their sea legs. All I really want to do—all I really want to give to people—is that fearlessness, that respect, that love that I’ve always felt.” He lifted her hands to his chest so that she could feel the strong, steady beat of his heart. “Right here.”
The phone rang, jolting her out of the spell his words were weaving around her. But he made absolutely no move to answer it, didn’t even seem to notice it.
“You’re going to ignore that, aren’t you? Doesn’t it ever bother you, wondering who it is?”
“I’ve always found that the people I want to hear from know where to look for me. Just like you did.”
The phone stopped ringing for a few seconds, then immediately started again. “You’re not even going to check the caller ID?”
“What’s caller ID?”
She knew he was kidding—he must be kidding, right? Fortunately, when the phone started ringing a third time, he said, “If you want to answer it, be my guest.”
Of course she did, so she picked up the handset on the old phone, complete with spiral cord, that hung from the wall by the desk. “Hello.”
“Hello, it’s Shawna.” The woman on the other end of the line managed to infuse a ridiculous amount of sexiness into the three words. “It would be so nice if you could let Dylan know I want to talk to him.”
Grace figured out from less than a dozen words that this woman had been in Dylan’s bed. And that knowledge made her feel so jealous and irritated that despite knowing Dylan hated speaking on the phone unless he absolutely had to, she said, “No problem, Shawna. Hold on and I’ll pass him the phone.”
She held out the receiver to him, trying to read whether or not he was pleased by the obvious booty call, but he had his poker face on. And it was a damned good one, too.
“Hi, Shawna.” He listened to what she had to say before replying, “That’s nice of you to think of me for the game tonight.” Dylan paused and looked straight at Grace, his expression shifting from easy to intense in the blink of an eye. “But I’m seeing someone. Someone important. So I’m going to have to pass. Have fun at the game.”
I’m seeing someone? she thought as he put down the phone. “You didn’t have to turn down the tickets.” Someone important? “You could have gone with her.”
“Didn’t you just hear me say that I’m taken?”
For all the warnings she’d given herself about taking things too seriously with Dylan, she couldn’t stop a warm glow from washing over her. “I thought we agreed to take things slow.”
“We are.” He reached for her, drew her against him the way she’d been secretly longing for throughout their interview. “Slow and exclusive.”
But as thrilled as she was to hear Dylan say that he wanted only her, she had to try to make sense of something that didn’t make any sense. “How are you not with someone already?” She gestured to the phone. “Clearly, there are women lining up around the block for some time with you. And with the way you look, the way you kiss—” She made herself stop before she rambled on any longer about how amazing a catch he was. “I just don’t understand it.”
“I have all the same questions about you, Grace. The way you look. The way you kiss. The way I can’t stop smiling whenever you’re near. How are you still single?”
Was he nuts? The reason was obvious. “I’m a single mother of a ten-month-old.” Not to mention the fact that she hadn’t let anyone close enough to even try getting through the wall she’d put up around her heart after it had been smashed by her ex and his family.
“A great ten-month-old.”
Dylan’s affection for her son was yet another thing that set him a world apart from other men. “That’s another thing I can’t figure out.”
“What’s that?”
“How you are so willing to open up your life to a woman with baggage.”
“Anyone who would actually call Mason baggage, anyone who can’t see that he’s the greatest gift in the world, doesn’t deserve you.” He brushed back a lock of her hair, making her shiver despite the heat. “Did you get what you needed for today’s interview?”
With the way he was looking at her, she could only just manage to say, “Yes. We’ve covered a lot of ground today.”
“Not enough.” He took each of her hands in his and lifted them to his lips for a kiss before he started moving them both into the back area of the boathouse. “Not nearly enough.”