I Love How You Love Me(The Sullivans)(19)

“We bonded earlier this week when they came by my boathouse. The three of us are heading out tonight to the hands-on aquarium.”

“On a date?” He could hear the hope in her voice.

“Last night was an interview. Tonight we’re going to be friends. I’m trying not to move too fast.” It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done, holding himself back when he wanted Grace so badly…and knew, even before their smoking-hot kiss, that she wanted him just as badly.

“She’s careful,” his mother mused. “Or trying to be, at least. She’s obviously been hurt.”

Knowing he would never forgive himself if he hurt her in any way, he said, “I’ll be careful with her, Mom.”

“I know you will. Although, honestly, I’m not sure that careful is always the right way to go. Take your father and me, for instance. If we’d succeeded at being careful, we would never have taken a chance on each other.”

“You look so innocent for someone who dumped your fiancé to marry his best friend,” he teased.

She made a sound that he could easily interpret as Watch yourself, kid. “In any case,” she said, “I get the sense that Grace has been careful for too long already. She’s obviously a very accomplished and determined woman, given that she has a successful freelance writing career and has done a marvelous job of raising her son by herself. If you ask me, there is a daring woman inside of her just itching to bust out.”

It was just what he’d seen, too, and was the reason he didn’t feel guilty about last night’s kiss. Not only because she’d been the one to start it, but also because it was obvious how much she’d wanted it.

“I remember what it was like to want something so badly that it scared me, Dylan. Scared me enough that I thought pushing your father away was the only thing that made sense.”

He knew his mother was warning him that the route to Grace’s heart might not be a smooth one. But stormy seas had never scared him. “Do you know why Mason and I bonded right away?”

“Why?”

“Because we both have great moms.”

“You’ve always made it easy, honey. Now, your brother Adam, on the other hand…I’ve never seen anyone so immune to falling in love.”

“All the more reason that we’re going to love watching him get twisted up in knots when it finally happens. Got anyone in mind who’d be capable of turning him into a pretzel?”

His mother made a considering sound. “Actually, now that you mention it, I just might. I need to give Rafe and Brooke a quick ring.”

“You’ve got something up your sleeve, haven’t you?”

“Always,” she said with a laugh. “Have a good time with Grace and Mason tonight, sweetie.”

“I will.” He had absolutely no doubt about that. Just as he knew that despite what Grace tried to tell herself about last night’s kiss being their one and only, more kisses were definitely on tonight’s menu.



* * *

Writing had always been easy for Grace. She’d loved her English classes in high school and college and when other students had been moaning about having to write their essays, she’d focused on fine-tuning hers until they sang. Writing for a newspaper had been intense with tight deadlines that had no room for error, but she’d enjoyed rising to—and meeting—those challenges. Once she’d gone freelance and that career path had gone well, too, she’d assumed that it would always be an enjoyable ride from idea to finished story. Writer’s block had been something she hadn’t been able to comprehend, not when the words always flowed and the process of putting them down was such an enjoyable one.

Until she got pregnant.

Of all the publications she’d written for, and all the topics she’d covered, amazingly, pregnancy hadn’t been anywhere on the list. Which meant the brain fog from rapidly shifting hormones during her first trimester hit her from completely out of the blue. It didn’t help, of course, that she’d also been dumped and that her ex’s family had tried to pay her off at the exact same time.

The words that had always been right there for the plucking were suddenly much harder to find. But she’d had continual deadlines from all the magazines and newspapers that kept accepting her pitches, so she continued to slog through her writing days.

Mason hadn’t been a difficult baby, thank God, but without the extra money to pay for child care, she had been fitting her writing in at nap time for the past ten months. Naps that were, she noted as she heard her son carry on a cheerful conversation in baby language with his stuffed giraffe in his crib, getting shorter and shorter all the time. Mason didn’t want to waste his time sleeping. He wanted to be out exploring and playing.


Figuring she probably had another fifteen minutes to make a final pass through her story on paying off a mortgage early before Mason insisted she come get him from his crib, she was very glad that by the time she finished her final edit, the words had started to come a little bit faster. Earlier in the week, she’d been struggling to put this piece together so that it read like the fun, energetic article she’d promised the magazine editor. Today, however, for the first time in a year and a half, instead of feeling like she was pulling and yanking the words, she had simply been trying to get them down as fast as they came to her.