CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Grace, Mason, it’s so wonderful to see you again!” Claudia Sullivan’s smile was wide and genuinely happy as she opened her front door to let them inside on Sunday afternoon.
Dylan was so close to his mother that Grace figured Claudia would know what had happened yesterday. The whole horrible story, from thinking she was pregnant to Richard showing up, and then Grace pushing Dylan away. But Claudia’s expression didn’t show so much as a trace of anger.
“Thank you so much for watching Mason again,” Grace said. “You’ve been so kind to help out while I’ve been working on the story about Dylan.”
His name hitched in her throat, and she knew his mother must have heard it.
“I love spending time with Mason,” Claudia said in a gentle voice. “But I also know how hard it can be to let go. And to trust someone else.”
She could easily hear Claudia’s message: I know you’ve been hurt. And I agree that you have every right to be wary and cautious before trusting again. There was no judgment, just understanding. And that’s what made Grace feel even worse. Because even now, even after she’d pushed Dylan away, his family wasn’t doing the same to her.
Again and again she’d told herself that only fairy tales worked like this—where the single mother of the baby meets the perfect guy with the perfect family and he falls head over heels for them both. She’d reminded herself just as many times that it had all happened too fast and had felt too good for the blaze of heat not to cool as quickly as it had ignited. But none of those painful truths meant she wanted to hurt Dylan or anyone in his family. Not when they’d all been so good to her and her son.
“Claudia, I need you to know...” She instinctively drew Mason closer, even though she knew he couldn’t shield her heart and that she should never use her son for that purpose even if he could. “Dylan has been wonderful. He’s been amazing with Mason. And if I could—”
Claudia stopped her impromptu and very painful speech by putting a warm hand over hers. “Go for your sail with my son. It will help make things more clear. I just know it will.”
Repeatedly over the past two weeks, Dylan had said that sailing with him would give her the answers she needed to finally write a compelling magazine story about the heart of a sailor. But could it also give her the answers to her other questions about how to learn to trust—and love—again?
* * *
Dylan hadn’t shaved and looked as though he hadn’t slept, either. But he’d never looked more beautiful to Grace. Or more real and raw—as raw as she’d felt every second since she’d bolted her door behind him the day before.
She wanted to run to him, wanted to throw herself into his arms and never let go. Instead, she stood in the doorway of his boathouse and tried not to cry as she said, “Hi.”
“Hi.” Dylan studied her for a long moment. She could see that he was concerned about her—she hadn’t been able to sleep last night, either—but all he said was, “I’m glad you’re here.”
She knew better than to try to say anything more than the two-letter word she’d barely managed without sobbing, so she simply nodded.
“I would have gotten the boat ready for us,” he told her, “but I figured you’d want to be hands-on with as much as possible today.”
Knowing she needed to pull herself together—and fast—she took a deep breath. “Yes, that would be great.” The five extra words weren’t much, but they were progress, at least.
Grace already knew most of the basic vocabulary of a sailboat from her research—starboard instead of right, bow instead of front of the boat—but within less than sixty seconds, she realized that learning about sailing from books or the Internet could never take the place of actual experience. And as Dylan talked her through performing a detailed visual check of the lines that raised and controlled the sails to make sure they weren’t wrapped around each other; as he showed her how to make sure that they all had a figure-eight knot on the free end so they wouldn’t pull through the pulleys or sheaves; as he taught her how to determine the direction of the wind by using the indicator at the top of the mast, she was glad to be able to sink into learning mode…rather than about-to-break-into-tears-at-any-moment mode.
Dylan talked her through maneuvering out of the harbor and into the Sound. There was a fresh breeze and a light chop, enough to make way at a fairly good clip. Grace didn’t realize she was smiling until Dylan smiled back.
“It’s good, isn’t it?”
Her chest squeezed tight as she stared back at him—so tight that she actually couldn’t breathe for a few seconds. “It’s great.”
You’re great, was what she really wanted to tell him. I’m sorry I pushed you away, but I had to. I have to be smart this time, have to be prepared for everything, instead of just being swept away again.
But since she was here to learn to sail for her story, not to make things even worse between them, she said instead, “When you’re on land all the time, even in a city with as much water around it as Seattle, you never realize just how amazing it is to actually be out on the water.”
She loved the taste of the salt water on her lips. Loved seeing the billowing sails on the other boats around them on the Sound. There were powerboats and fishing vessels, too, but the sailboats were what caught her fancy and imagination.
As they scooted over the water and he showed her how to man the tiller, he said, “You’re a natural. Just like I knew you’d be. How about we hoist the spinnaker so that you can see what this baby can do?”
Being out on the Sound with Dylan was already a rush, but just as she always wanted more when she was in his arms, now that she was in his sailboat, she wanted more speed, more spray flying over them, more of the rush that she could so easily become addicted to.
“Tell me what to do to get it up.”
He smiled at her, a warm and appreciative smile that made her heart skip a beat or two. “We’ll do it together.”
The procedure to hoist the spinnaker didn’t seem all that easy to Grace, but with Dylan patiently talking her through each step, they soon had the brightly colored third sail up, and then they really started to fly. So fast that she couldn’t contain her laughter or the joy that bubbled up out of her regardless of all that she’d tried so hard to suppress since yesterday.
No wonder she’d read that the spinnaker was often called a kite. For a few beautiful minutes, she felt she was flying with it, billowing and unrestrained in the wind. She felt his hand on hers a beat before he spun her to face him.
“You love it,” he said over the sound of the water crashing beneath the boat. “You love the speed. You love the thrill. And you’re meant to love it, Grace. I’ve seen it in you from the start—it’s why Mason loves learning new things, loves being pushed so high on the swings and racing his toy cars so fast. It’s in your blood.” With one hand on the tiller, he put the other on her shoulder to make her stay to hear him out, even as he had to raise his voice to be heard over the rising wind. “I’m in your blood. Just like you’re in mine.”
His mouth was on hers then, hard and hot and even more exciting than their speed as they flew over the water. She didn’t know how long they kissed, but when the deck tilted beneath their feet, she thought at first that it must be from the way Dylan’s kisses made her head spin and how desperately she wanted to never have to stop kissing him back. But when he suddenly pulled away, then looked out over the water and cursed, she realized the boat was tilting because the weather had turned.
Somewhere during their passionate kiss, the light breeze had shifted around to the north and became an extremely stiff wind. “We’re starting to roll hard to leeward,” Dylan called out to her as he guided the bow directly under the center seam of the spinnaker. For a moment, they seemed to teeter back to balance, but then another blast of wind knocked them over again.
He was still busy at the tiller when the spinnaker started to dip into the ocean, tilting and dragging the boat hard. Over the crashing waves and howling wind, she could just barely hear him yell, “We need to release the sheet to dump the water out of the sail, then lower the halyard on my cue!”
Dylan had talked about a sailor’s instinct several times during their interviews, and now Grace knew exactly what it felt like to have instinct take over. She’d only read about this situation before and barely had enough experience to know how to sail on easy waters, but somehow her hands knew exactly how to release the spinnaker.
The moment the water was out and the sail had gone limp, Dylan was up gathering it and pulling the wet sail back into the boat. He called for her to release the halyard, and he pulled the spinnaker down from the mast.
For the next fifteen minutes, they sailed fast back toward the harbor, trying to outrun the dangerous storm that had come from absolutely nowhere. In just the same way, Grace thought, that Dylan had come into her and Mason’s lives from out of the blue—dangerously sexy and addictive...and exactly what they’d needed to shake them out of their safe little rut, too.