Half Moon Harbor (11 page)

Grace shook her head and smiled with him. “I can't really imagine the kind of life you led. The family, all of it.”

“You were cut more from Trevor's cloth then?”

“Hardly. We had no money, no outbuildings, no property at all that we actually owned.” Her laugh was dry. “And the only household staff we had was me.”

“Cinderella, were you?” Brodie grinned at that.

But it was compassion she saw in his eyes. It shouldn't have stung—it wasn't pity, after all—but it did, more than she wanted to admit.

She shook her head. “No. No evil stepsisters.” She found a smile from somewhere, not really wanting to think about her situation growing up and kicking herself for opening that door. He'd been so open and honest about his, though, it was only fair.

“Well, I've got six I would have gladly lent you for the asking,” he joked.

“You have six stepsisters?”

“Oh no. They're full-blood siblings.” He grinned. “Though, you ask me, I'd say they could lay claim to the evil part often enough.”

Grace laughed at that, though it was envy she felt, more than sympathy. “Six sisters. I can't—I can't even fathom what that would be like. Any brothers?”

“If only I'd been so fortunate,” he said on a heartfelt sigh. “I might've had a fightin' chance. As it was, I'm often surprised I made it to puberty.”

“Were you the youngest?” Grace grinned broadly. Brodie being the baby of the apparently sprawling Monaghan clan explained a great deal about his natural-born charisma.

“Right in the middle.” The most disarming bit of flush came to his cheeks, proving that he could, indeed, be even more attractive and adorable. “Three younger, three older. My mother had four sisters and my father three more. Most of whom worked in the business or close enough to it, all of whom made it their business to make my life a miserable matriarchal hell.”

Grace snickered at that. “That explains even more.”

“Even more of what?”

“Oh, we've already discussed how you're pretty darn charming, especially with members of the opposite sex. The ladies who have stopped in to see what was going on with the boathouse all but swoon at the mere mention of your name.”

His grin flashed again. “You've been mentioning me, have you?”

“See?” she said, eyes widening. “You can't help yourself. All I meant was that if you were drowning in the estrogen ocean for all of your formative years, that's probably a large part of why you understand women so well. Or understand how to get to them, anyway.”

He cocked his head, his smile so slow and devilish it made her throat go dry. And other parts of her go quite decidedly in the other direction. “Who said I understand how to get to women?”

“No one. I mean, I did.” Why was she so flustered? “I mean . . . it's pretty obvious you aren't shy about using your genetic gifts. You know your strengths and don't mind playing to them. It's smart, really. I definitely don't blame you for it.”

“Good to know.” His gaze zeroed right back in on hers, bringing all those primal parts sinuously back to life.

He shocked her by taking a step closer, and suddenly the huge empty boathouse felt a whole lot smaller. Stifling even. In a really earthy, steamy, hothouse kind of way.

He held her gaze, then dropped his to her mouth, before finding his way back up to her eyes. “What would you say your strengths are then, Grace? What cards do you play when you want to get your way?”

W
hat in bloody hell am I doing?
Listening to the poor deprived head in his trousers, rather than the bobbling idiot perched on his shoulders. Yet, despite that bit of knowledge, Brodie remained right where he stood, deep in her personal space. Deeper still in the danger zone.

“Why did you come to the boathouse today?” she asked, the words a bit strained with a breathless quality that may have been mostly wishful thinking on his part.

His body was perfectly happy to respond to the promise of it, nonetheless.

“Is that your answer then?” He smiled. “Blunt speech, direct confrontation if necessary?” He noted that her throat worked and the finest of tensions tightened that lovely jawline of hers.

“I've found being direct cuts down on time lost to needless discussion.” Her gaze was riveted to his. “And avoids potential misunderstandings.”

“Well, there are discussions and then there are conversations. They aren't always the same thing, you know. Dialogue doesn't always have to have a bigger purpose. Sometimes it can simply be enjoyable in its own right. The give-and-take . . . ebb and flow. A harmless bit of banter now and again.” His smile spread. “Surely you've heard of it.”

Not an hour earlier, Brodie had been in close proximity to another woman, one far more classically beautiful than this one. He'd watched her eyes grow dark with desire and felt nothing. Grace Maddox, on the other hand—who, truth be told, was likely a far greater threat to his achieving his goals than Cami Weathersby could ever hope to be—drew one breathy note and his body went instantly rigid at the idea of what other little sounds he might elicit from her.

Why
had
he come to the boathouse? To see if that morning a fortnight ago had just been an odd blip on his physical radar? Given the state he'd been in just before finding her sprawled on his docks, it was quite probable that his rather primal reaction to her had been more about timing than any real response. At least he'd wanted to believe that.

So how was he going to explain away what she was doing to him now?

He lifted a hand and ran a fingertip along a wave of her hair down below her chin, stopping just above where it rested on the faded camp shirt she wore. “It suits you down, you know.”

The most delightful spots of pink bloomed in her fair cheeks, which in turn delighted him.
So,
he thought,
not used to wearin' it down, are ye, then?
He could think of only one reason why she would have made the change, and the fit of his jeans grew a mite more uncomfortable as the image of her descending his wrought-iron stairs, hair all damp and in wild disarray, played through his mind.

Spurred by the memory and the way her eyes grew darker under his continued study, he wound a tendril around one finger, then brushed the back of it along her cheek. He felt more than heard the intake of breath, and his pulse jumped another notch along with it. “Chameleon eyes. Amber, then gray, then the most stormy of greens. If I knew your rhythms better, perhaps I'd be able to match color to mood.”

To his surprise, rather than sway her further into the sweet tension building between them, the comment made her roll those hazel eyes of hers and tugged a wry smile from one corner of her mouth.

“You're very smooth with that,” she said, the self-deprecation in her tone making it an admission that she wasn't immune to his charm.

“And you're quite hard on a charmer like me,” he said, completely unrepentant.

“Someone needs to be.”

That surprised a laugh out of him, even as he was quick to note neither of them had shifted so much as a millimeter away from the other and her hair was still wrapped around his finger.

“I've been nothing but kind,” he said, smiling down into her upturned face, tempted, so tempted to lower his mouth the few inches it would take to seal his lips to hers. “I offer up my personal shower and exceptional tweezing skills. Even go so far as to bathe your fish-loving scruff of a wee dog.”

“For which we were—and are—very grateful. Although you have to admit that some of that was motivated by self-preservation. We all smelled pretty bad.” Her lips curved in that way they did, with that little twist nudging at something inside him he didn't have a name for and was likely better off not knowing.

Yet self-preservation slowed him not in the least. “Indeed. I was going to mention how much sweeter your scent was, but I knew you'd see right through my shallow, shallow ploy.”

The eyebrow arch was the other thing he'd missed and he grinned when she deployed it. She was sharp, too sharp, missing nothing, calling him on everything, and if he was any judge, enjoying herself in the process.

“So is that it, then?” she asked, injecting a hint of his own lilt into the words, her efforts making his smile grow. “You came here to shallowly see if you could charm me into . . . what? Signing the boathouse back over to you?”

He shouldn't have been surprised she'd think exactly that, so it shouldn't have pricked his pride. Yet it did. He let the curl wind off his finger and let his hand fall to his side, but his tone remained light. And he stayed right where he stood. “You made it quite clear your intent was to move forward, and you've wasted no time doing so. Your passionate speech the day we met, and again just now didn't go unnoticed.”

“So . . . why the visit?”

“You made a point of saying we'd have to find a way to work together, or at least side by side.”

“I don't know that I meant that quite so literally.”

His grin spread again as he laughed. “You call me the charmer, but you undersell your own allure. You're not to be underestimated, Grace Maddox.”

She laughed with him. “I'm glad you figured that out, although it's the brainy part I rely on, not so much the beauty—which is a good thing, given their relative distribution in my gene pool.”

“Fishing, are we?”

“What?” She looked confused for a moment, then understanding dawned. “Oh. No. I wasn't asking—I don't . . . that's not something I'd do.”

“No,” he said more quietly. “I imagine you don't.” His lips curved. “Else you wouldn't be giving me such a hard time on it. A bit of pot and kettle, otherwise.”

“Right.”

Despite her straightforward speech, she seemed . . . flustered. He found he rather liked that and wondered how long it had been since someone had flustered her a little. Or a lot. He reached up again, rubbed at a smudge on her cheek with the side of his thumb. “You could rely on both. Makes me wonder if the person who underestimates you most . . . is you.”

He felt the finest of tremors race under her skin and let his hand drop away. Not because he minded disconcerting her, but because he liked it rather too much.

“I just walked away from a very secure career and significant annual paycheck to turn a two-hundred-year-old boathouse into an inn, which I then intend to run. Both things I have zero experience doing. I'm either grossly overestimating myself, deluding myself, or both.”

“The risks we take with time and money are nothing in the face of the risks we take with our hearts and souls.”

She tilted her head at that and smiled. “Nice quote. Who said it?”

His grin returned slow and deep, and he noted her gaze drop to his mouth . . . and saw her throat work again. He had to curl his fingers into his palm to keep from sliding them under that waterfall of hair and pulling her mouth up under his.

“It's the accent,” she added dryly. “Makes everything you say sound profound.”

That got a chuckle out of him. She managed that quite frequently, he thought. It felt . . . good. In turn, it made him realize that most of his laughter lately was in reaction to the smiles and guffaws he elicited in others. 'Twas rather nice to be provoked to laughter by someone else.

“I don't know about profound, but it's the truth as I see it. Do you?”

“Do I . . . ?”

“Think true risk is putting yourself on the line, and no' simply your bank balance?”

She laughed, and he noticed how it brought a light to her eyes, made them crinkle at the corners. Something his sisters would have rushed off to put this or that cream on in an attempt to smooth them out. Not Grace. She seemed unconcerned about that sort of thing. There'd been a time when the fresh and natural approach wouldn't have turned his head, but at the moment, it had his full, undivided attention.

Perhaps the briny, fresh sea air in Maine had changed him after all. Alex MacFarland had turned his head not soon after his arrival and she was certainly a far cry from primped and polished, almost tomboy. Grace, however, wasn't that. On first glance in her tailored coat, office shoes, and city-girl satchel, he'd thought her a little buttoned up, definitely out of her element.

He'd watched her perched out on the end of the pier the past few weeks, dressed much the same as she was in army green khakis, a thin, figure-hugging lemon yellow tee, and unbuttoned plaid camp shirt. With her hair down around her shoulders and the most becoming flush on her cheeks, she didn't look the least bit repressed. Her natural, earthy air, the way she moved, her laugh, the arch of her brow, and the wry twist at the corner of her mouth all spoke of a woman very in tune with herself, the essence of female. She held her own when she looked at him.

“I think putting my bank account on the line
is
risking myself,” she said, seemingly unaware of his frank appraisal.

She was woman incarnate, in her very own, particular way, and it had quite the effect on him. He shifted his weight, but it did little to ease the growing discomfort in the fit of his denims.

“It will certainly be putting me in a very different position in life if I do this and fail. But yes . . . risking heart and soul is more terrifying.” She looked up and around the place again, and he saw the yearning . . . and the fear.

Och, Grace, but your heart is already caught up in your dreams, isn't it?
As much as he didn't really want to see that, to know that, he understood such dreams too intimately not to acknowledge their power.

“You can always earn more money,” she added, though she wasn't looking at him, but taking in the world that would be her future.

“Aye,” he agreed, watching her. “But there are only so many pieces of your heart to be given away.”

Pain flashed over her face and through those ever-changing eyes.

He touched her cheek without thinking about it, compelled by her expressiveness, her frankness. And her complete and utter lack of concern regarding what he thought of her. “Did someone cast your heart aside, Grace Maddox?”

Her gaze moved right to his, and the responding smile was softer, more wistful, and a good bit sad, like nothing he'd seen from her thus far. That glimpse of vulnerability pulled at something completely different inside him. Something he was in no hurry to put a name to.
Och, my blunt, outspoken little warrior, no' so bulletproof after all, are ye now?

He tipped her chin up. “Was he blind then? And dumb to boot?”

A quick smile as she shook her head just slightly, but she didn't pull away. Her gaze seemed lost in his, drenched with emotions she didn't put words to.

Even knowing her thoughts were somewhere else, on someone else, Brodie drank from the well of her gaze like a man desperate to quench his thirst after a long stint in the desert. He wondered what it would feel like to inspire such depth of emotion in a woman.

“It wasn't like—it's not what you think.” She went to duck her chin, but he kept his finger under her chin and her eyes on his. He was not ready to lose that connection, though he realized it for the selfish gesture it was.

“Ye want me to hunt the dragon down for you?” he offered, intending it to sound like a tease, to lift the sadness from her eyes. The question came out sounding far more serious.

Her gaze searched his. “I almost think you mean that.” She smiled again, though he noted it didn't reach her eyes. “I appreciate the offer, but I came here to hunt him myself.”

Brodie went still, then started to pull back.
Idiot. Do you really think a woman like her would be available for the taking?
Was that the truth of it? Did he want her to be available? And would it be to simply slake the thirst of his too long ignored physical needs? Or for more than that?

“I'm talking about my brother,” she added, making Brodie wonder what she'd just seen in his expression. “And it's not his fault. There were . . . circumstances. A lot of circumstances.”

He was relieved—more, he thought, than he should have been—and disconcerted to realize that the revelation only left him feeling a stronger connection to her. He, better than anyone, understood that particular brand of pain. “Aye. Family can break yer heart like no one else can.”

She looked into his eyes in a way she hadn't as yet, as if she were really seeing him. Perhaps she was. He felt . . . exposed.

She cast her gaze downward and laughed shortly. It sounded a bit thick, and there was little humor in it. “Aye, indeed.”

“Och, Grace, now yer breakin' me heart. Come here.” Had he thought about it, there were a dozen, a hundred reasons, why he should have kept his hands and his mouth off her. But he was thinking only of the damsel in a bit of distress in his arms. He did what he knew he could do, even if it was the only thing he could do. He consoled her.

Had she turned away or given any indication his attention wasn't welcome, he'd have come to his senses and stopped. He almost wished she had. Almost. Instead, she trembled ever so slightly under his touch. One palm cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking the curve of her chin as he lifted her mouth to fit his. She let go the softest of sighs. And he was lost.

He sank his other hand into that mane of hair and pulled her in. The feel and fit of her, so right and perfect, pressing against him had him sighing a bit himself.