She rolled her eyes. “What am I going to do with a boat that smells like sex?”
Grayson shrugged. “Make it part of the package?” When he turned to me, his playful smirk grew into a full-blown smile. The morning sun shone, lighting the silver flecks in his eyes, and kill-me-now, a dimple appeared. A fucking dimple. He radiated simple…joy.
My heart warmed to almost burning. Oh, no.
He kissed my mouth soundly. “I need to grab my wallet from the boat, meet me at the car?”
I nodded, unable to say anything.
Joey’s mouth dropped open in the way mine would have if I hadn’t been paralyzed. “Wow.” She crossed the distance between us and hugged me, holding me like I was something precious and sacred. “Sam. Wow. Thank you. That’s really Gray…and I haven’t seen him in years. I knew I liked you for a reason.”
“Get off Sam, Joey,” Grayson called over from the door, wallet in hand. She let me go and hugged him before she ran inside.
“You okay?” he asked, his smile wider after another kiss, and my chest tightened in a way I couldn’t deny…or allow.
I nodded and forced a smile to match his as we walked toward the car.
This was not okay. Not even close. Taking down his walls had shattered mine.
I’d fallen in love with Grayson Masters.
Chapter Twenty
Grayson
“You look good with a baby,” Miranda said from the corner armchair in Grace’s room.
“Maybe one day.” I pulled the little pink-and-blue striped hat up a little more so it didn’t get in the baby’s eyes. Amberly Grace. It was fitting for her somehow. What would it be like to have a daughter? Would she get my stubbornness? Her mother’s spark? My gray eyes, or her mother’s hazel-green ones? God help me if she wore her skirts as short. No skirts. Ever. No boys, either. Yeah. And I’d need a better gun. Or I could park the Apache in the front yard. That would scare the fuckers off.
Right. I was pretty well screwed if I had a girl, because if my daughter was anything like her mother, even a loaded AH-64 parked on the front lawn with Hellfires pointed at them wouldn’t keep the boys away.
Kids with Sam?
Holy shit, my mind ran amok.
“Hey, earth to Grayson,” Miranda called out with a faint smile. Her hair was pulled into a messy bun, but despite the circles under her eyes, she looked beautiful. Exhausted, but beautiful.
“You’re supposed to be in bed,” I lectured. “She’s less than a day old.”
“I wanted Amberly to meet her aunt,” she said through a yawn.
I swayed with Amberly, trying to focus more on the new life in front of me than the one comatose next to me. “Did you know that Owen visits her?”
Her eyes fell away. She knew he’d been here to see Grace. “He did his time, Gray. I know he lied, and you weren’t racing, but he was eighteen, stupid, and he made a mistake.”
“An unforgivable mistake.” I snapped each word.
Miranda tilted her head, just like Grace used to, but the similarity between the two wasn’t as painful anymore. “Is anything really unforgivable, Gray?”
I didn’t take the fucking keys. “Yes.”
“I don’t think Grace would see it that way, no matter what our parents say. She would tell you to stop suffering more than you have to. She would tell you that moving on is okay. It’s healthy, and you need it. She would tell you that your new life, flight school, this new girlfriend of yours…they all look really good on you.”
Girlfriend? Yes, Sam was my girlfriend. Is that what I had done? Moved on?
“Where is she anyway? Sam?” she asked.
“How do you know—”
“Mom and Dad. They filled me in on the epicness of dinner last night.” Her eyes started to droop, and I crossed to her, handing over an extra blanket.