Daring Dylan (The Billionaire Brotherhood Book 2) (32 page)

Dylan flicked
a look of disgust toward his uncle. “The best most people can do is damned
better than the Bradfords’ best, isn’t it?”

Gracie
watched the senator struggle for a semblance of dignity. “I sincerely hope so.”
He bowed his head and exited the room.

Gracie’s
heart broke during the seemingly endless ride to Liberty House with Dylan
slumped in the passenger seat of the truck. Try as she might, she could not draw
him into conversation about his uncle, his father, his sister, his health,
Karen Hammonds, the weather, the NBA playoffs, or anything else. After a while,
she let him be.

It might
take him a long time to accept and deal with the information they’d uncovered.
Dylan’s wounds were still too raw to be touched or examined. Experience had
taught her that each person healed at his or her own pace.

He
accompanied her up the stairs and into the apartment. He gave MacDuff a
half-hearted greeting then headed to the bedroom to gather his luggage. Gracie
thought of asking him not to go. But under the circumstances, she couldn’t see
any reason for him to stay. There was no way their lives would fit together.

She was a
bossy small-town girl with too many people depending on her. And a medical
practice she’d be returning to shortly.

He was
something else altogether, a lot of things she didn’t even like. Rich and
famous party animal… daredevil… fun-seeker… risk-taker.

Wounded…
despondent.

But she
shook her head. She knew how to set broken bones, treat pneumonia, and cure
diaper rash, not how to heal a disillusioned spirit.

Cautiously,
they drifted around each other in a disjointed dance of indecision then headed
downstairs.

“You can
call me, you know, whenever you’re ready to deal with what’s between us,” she
blurted after he’d closed the tailgate of the Navigator. She crossed her arms
to keep from reaching for him.

He stayed
several feet away from her. She hoped he was fighting the same impulse to close
the gap. “I’d like to say that I will, that it will be soon, but I don’t know,
Gracie, and I don’t want to lie to you.”

She
swallowed the lump in her throat. “I don’t want that either.”

He stuffed
his hands in his pocket. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Nobody
ever does.” She tried for an ironic smile, but it trembled and faded on her
lips. It wasn’t like she hadn’t prepared herself for his departure.

“I’ll say
good-bye to your grandparents.”

“They’ll
like that.”

Gracie took
a seat on the back steps and began a listless game of fetch with MacDuff. If
she weren’t a glutton for punishment, she’d go up to her apartment. Or into
town. Anywhere rather than watch him climb into his car.

But she’d
stick it out to the last.

If these
were the last moments she’d ever have with him, she wouldn’t turn away before
they were over.

As she
waited for Dylan to come back out, a pulled up the drive. She blinked and
rubbed her eyes before staring at the silver BMW.
Oh, no, not now
. What in the world did
he
want?

Her former
fiancé bounded from his expensive vehicle with his usual panache, like a
favored son on his way to play polo, perform brain surgery, have an audience
with the pope, or some other exalted activity too rarefied for the common folk.

He looked
the same as always, but Gracie’s vision had changed. The once handsome face now
appeared weak and fatuous in the stark sunlight. Pompous and arrogant. Snooty
and deceitful. She could go on, but what would be the point? He represented a
closed chapter in her life.

“Gracie,
darling,” he said, strolling toward her.

MacDuff ran
over to Baxter, sniffed the expensive loafers, and barked a warning. The jerk
scooted him away with a disdainful toe.

Baxter
wasn’t a “dog person,” as he always said. As if that excused his dislike of
Gracie’s pet. He wasn’t much of a people person either, except when it suited
him to be. She’d overlooked both annoying habits for too long.

“Hello,
Baxter.” She ducked and evaded the embrace he tried to bestow upon her.

“I’ve
missed you.”

“Have you
now?” she asked, confused by both his comment and presence. “What are you doing
here?”

“I came to
see you.” He gave her his most-winning smile, the one that expected a smile in
return at the least, sex in return at the most. When she didn’t respond in
either of the preferred methods, he frowned, took out his handkerchief, brushed
off the step, and sat down beside her.

She pulled
her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I thought I made it
clear that I never wanted to see you again.”

“Now,
Gracie.” His patronizing tone bugged the hell out of her. “You’re not still
angry with me, are you?”

“Not
really. Frankly, I’ve been too busy to give you much thought.”

“Now that
I’m here, we can resolve our problems.”

She looked
at him and blinked. “What problems?”

“My life is
a mess without you. I can’t find anything in the townhouse. I never have clean
laundry. There’s nothing decent to eat in the refrigerator. I want you back,
Gracie.”

She shook
her head. Just like Baxter to equate the loss of the physical comforts she had
provided with the loss of her. “It’s nothing a competent personal assistant
couldn’t remedy.”

“That’s not
what I want, Gracie.” He draped his arm around her shoulders, but she shrugged
him off. “Do you want me to tell you the truth?”

“That would
be a novel experience.”

In a rare
display of discomfiture, Baxter brushed his hand through his hair, disturbing
its normal perfection, before he remembered himself and patted it back into
place. “I hate it that you’re not there when I come home at night. I miss those
little notes you used to leave on my mirror in the morning. I want to wake up
and have breakfast in bed with you on Sunday mornings.” He took her hand in his
and squeezed until she met his gaze. “I’m sorry about Jillian.”

She fixed
him with a searching look. “Just Jillian?”

“The
others, too.” He pulled the cold, impersonal two-carat diamond ring he’d chosen
for her the year before from his pocket and held it out. “Take it back,
please,” he said, almost strangling over the unfamiliar word.

She knew
Baxter and his moods. This one seemed sincere and repentant, but for how long?
She could only envision them repeating the same mistakes in the future. And
deep down she had to share the blame for the problems that had come between
them. In her heart of hearts, she had never really loved him. Not the way she
loved Dylan. “I’m sorry, but I—”

He talked
over her refusal. “I see no reason we can’t move up the wedding to early fall
or late summer.”

Gracie’s
jaw dropped. What parallel universe did he live in? The one where everything
she said was indecipherable static while his wants and desires were received
with unqualified acceptance? Not in this lifetime. Not again.

“Not gonna
happen, Baxter.”

“Then where
are you planning on living?”

“What do
you mean?”

“If you
aren’t coming back, you should make arrangements to have your things removed
from my apartment.”

She should
have seen that one coming. His way of reminding her that if she wasn’t going to
be useful to him, he wanted her out of his life. And she sure wouldn’t be able
to afford a place as nice as his on her own. She wished she’d never moved in
with him. “Of course, I’ll take care of it as soon as I return.”

The screen
door slapped shut, and a throat cleared behind her. “Ahem.” And with the sound,
for just a moment, she perked up. “Sorry to interrupt.”

Gracie
stood, tripped on her shoestring, and tumbled. Dylan caught her, brushed her
off, and slid his arm around her waist.

“There you
go again,
Grace
. Tripping over your
own feet.” Baxter’s condescension filled her with the urge to slap him.
“Although
graceless
is closer to the
truth.”

His
perceived irony of her name had been one of his little jokes that she had never
found amusing.

“I like her
name,” Dylan said. “It’s perfect for her.”

“What?” She
glanced at him in pleased surprise.

“Well.”
Baxter narrowed his eyes on the hold Dylan kept on her arm. “Dylan Bradford,”
he observed. “What are you doing here?”

“Baxter
Delacort,” Dylan said in the same over-bred stick-up-his-butt tone Baxter had
used. “I’ve been staying here.”

“You’re a
guest at Liberty House?” Baxter sniffed. “Unless you brought someone to party
with, it doesn’t seem up to your usual style.”

Dylan’s
arms encircled Gracie’s waist and drew her back against him. “Everything about
it suits me just fine.”

Gracie
swiveled her head between them. “You two know each other, I take it.”

“Of
course,” Baxter said.

“How?”

“We were at
prep school at the same time,” Dylan explained.

“Small
world,” Gracie drawled. “Baxter, I’ll be right back. I was just seeing Dylan
off.” She started to pull him down the steps behind her, but he dug in his
heels. “Come on.”

“I’ve
decided to stay.”

Her
eyebrows shot up her forehead. “No you haven’t.”

“You might
need me.”

Prickles of
irritation crept up her skin. “For what?”

He looked
meaningfully at Baxter. “This or that.”

“I can
handle
this
or
that
myself, and I don’t want you staying out of some misguided
sense of loyalty, jealousy, responsibility, or whatever it is you feel.“

“I’ll stay
if I want to,” he said.

“That’s
just it. You don’t want to stay. You want to go. And you should. Now.” She
shooed him away with her hands like a pesky fly. “Go now.”

Gran pushed
open the screen door. “Oh, good, Dylan. You’re still here. You left your phone
on the table. It started beeping.”

“Thanks,
I’ll need that.” He took the phone and glanced at his texts, and then did a
double-take. “My sister’s having her baby. It’s not time yet.” He pushed his
hands through his hair and left it standing on end. “I’ll call Linc on the way
to the airport.” He bounded down the stairs, stopped and returned to Gracie.
“Now I really do have to go.”

“Everything
will be fine.” She let him take her by the hand and pull her away from the
porch. “But you should go. Immediately.”

“I’m
sorry,” he said when they were out of earshot of the porch. “I don’t want to
leave you here with that asshole.” He stopped beside his car and crossed his
arms. “You said it was over between you. From what I overheard, he doesn’t
believe it.”

“So he
says.” Gracie stared in fascination as the tips of Dylan’s ears turned red.
“But what’s it to you? You were planning on leaving anyway.”

His face
creased in concern. “You aren’t going to marry him are you?”

No way in
hell would she marry Baxter. But some little devil inside her urged her to keep
Dylan guessing. “I’ll have to listen to what he has to say.”

He took her
hand. “Gracie, don’t do it. He’s not good enough for you.”

She would
have liked to let him stew about it a bit longer, but the idea of marriage to
Baxter was too repulsive to even joke about, and Dylan had too many other
things on his mind to see the humor in anything. “You seem to have this
mistaken idea that I’m better than other mortals, but I’m not. I don’t deserve
any more than any other woman, and it’s my business to make sure I don’t settle
for less than I want. Believe me, Dylan, I won’t.”

“Good for
you.” He smiled a sad smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I hope you get
whatever that is.”

“So do I.”
She met his gaze straight up until his filled with such anguish she had to look
away.

He rubbed
the nape of his neck and took a step back. “I think I love you,” he said,
although the admission made him look green around the edges. “But love wasn’t
enough for my father. Or Uncle Arthur. I’m not sure it would be enough for me
either, but I know I couldn’t live with myself if I caused the people I cared
about this kind of pain.”

“Nothing
worthwhile comes with a written guarantee.”

He shook
his head, and she knew he’d have to discover the truth on his own. She hoped
she wasn’t too old to enjoy it, if, and when, he did.

They could
stand there tossing what ifs back and forth for hours and never come to a
satisfactory resolution. But she couldn’t take the anguish a moment longer, and
he had someone else who needed him.

“You need
to go,” she said, ready to deal with the parts of her own life that required
tending. “But think about this. I do love you, and I’m absolutely sure about
it.”

Before she
stepped out of reach, he pulled her into his arms and kissed the living
daylights out of her. She read into the kiss the certainty of all the emotions
he seemed uncertain about and tucked the memory away to examine more closely
later. Her head reeled when he finally released her. He threw Baxter a mocking
salute and climbed into the car.

“Take
care,” Gracie whispered. “Fly safely.”

She closed
her eyes as he drove away. The last thing she needed was to watch one more
person she loved leaving her behind.

A week
later, Dylan sat beside his sister’s bed and watched her cradle his niece in
the crook of her arm. After an emergency C-section, a nerve-wracking delivery
that scared him half to death, both mother and child were doing well.

“Do you
mind that I named her Margaret after Mother?” Natalie ran a gentle finger over
the baby’s duck fluff hair.

“I hoped
you would.”

“Linc and
Josh are already calling her Maggie, though, which doesn’t sound so stuffy for
an infant.”

“Linc’s
been flying high, every time I see him.” Dylan chuckled at the memory of his
brother-in-law, grinning like a clown, laden with armloads of flowers, toys,
and balloons.

“I know.”
She blessed him with one of her Madonna-with-Child smiles. “You don’t know this
yet, but the very best days of your life are the days your children are born.”

“Don’t know
it and am unlikely to find out.”
Unless
Gracie is pregnant
.

Would she know by now
? Probably not.

Would she contact him if she were pregnant
? Probably not.

He’d called
to tell her that Natalie had delivered a little girl and all was well, but he’d
gotten her voicemail. He’d called Liberty House and left the same message with
Nora who said she’d pass the news along. He hadn’t heard a word from Gracie.

He was
itching to call and talk to her in person. But a phone call was so much less
then he wanted from her and so much more than he wanted to risk.

“Oh, Dylan,
no,” Natalie protested. “Why not?”

“Isn’t it
obvious?” He was too depressed to deny the truth. “The Bradford men are not
good husband and father material.”

She huffed
her displeasure. “You are if you want to be. Nothing in your supposed ‘genes’
say otherwise. You can’t use other people’s mistakes to justify your own
chicken behavior.”

“Chicken
behavior! Who are you calling chicken? I’ve had more death-defying adventures
in the past six months than you’ve had in the past ten years.”

“Mountain
climbing, race car driving, skydiving? So what? You don’t do anything that
tests your heart.”

“You’re
right about that. My heart would fail the test.”

“No, it
wouldn’t,” she insisted. “I know you. I knew our father, too. He was wonderful
with both of us, and I’m just as certain that he loved our mother.”

“But that
wasn’t enough.”

“Enough for
whom? It may not have been enough for you, for your suddenly exalted standards,
and it may not have been perfect, but it was more than enough for Mom and Dad.”

God, he
hoped so. He hated thinking of his mother concealing her pain to maintain her
marriage. “Do you think Mother knew about Dad and Karen?” He asked the
questions that had been eating at him and all week. “Do you think there were
others?”

“I don’t
know, and I don’t care. Married couples make mistakes, and they make their
peace in their own way. I think Mother would have weighed the good with the bad
and found more to the good. But it was her choice. And one thing I know for
sure is that neither one of them would have wanted either one of us to let
their experiences affect us in a negative way.”

What she
said made sense, but then, in his heart, he wanted to be persuaded. “And what
about Uncle Arthur and Aunt Delia?”

“Oh, dear,
it’s so sad about them. They’re both taking it hard that Frank is moving to
California. Aunt Delia’s talking divorce, but Uncle Arthur’s trying to win her
back. I don’t know what would be best.” She sighed and moved the baby to her
shoulder.

“I’m not
going to file an insurance claim on the cabin. That might keep him out of jail
on the arson charge.”

“Very
generous. I hoped that’s what you’d decide.”

“That
doesn’t let him off the hook though.” He scowled. “And I didn’t do it for him.”

“No, but if
they’re ever to have a life together again, it’s a start.”

“How can
you be so damn nice all the time?” A talent inherited from their mother. “Are
you and Linc truly happy?”