CHAPTER 32

The storm blew itself out, the black clouds rolling out over the white-tipped waves to reveal the spectacular purples and oranges of an island sunset.

Grady sat alone on the front porch of Windy Corner, staring out at the world washed clean. Ben had gone back into the house ages ago. His terse, grouchy friend had made a production about it being a chore to take care of two completely healthy people like Merry and her new baby, but Grady noticed Ben hadn’t left her bedside for longer than twenty minutes since he first heard she was in labor.

As for Grady, he wasn’t sure what he was waiting around for, other than a hope to be useful.

Right, his sardonic inner voice muttered. It has nothing to do with wanting as much time as you can get with Ella before she leaves Sanctuary for good.

Whether she wants to see you or not.

The bang of the screen door brought Grady’s head up like a stallion sensing danger to the band.

Or maybe danger to my heart, he thought as Ella stepped out onto the porch.

His blood throbbed through him in a completely involuntary response to the slim shape of her, dressed in one of Jo’s old flannel shirts and a pair of faded jeans. Her face was a just scrubbed pink, her dark, wavy hair sleeked back in a wet ponytail.

She’d showered, Grady realized, which of course meant that his internal vision was nothing but images of Ella sliding her soapy hands all over her naked body when she sat down on the top porch step beside him.

Hunching slightly, Grady waited for her to tell him again that it was over, to leave and not come back—or worse, for her to thank him.

He didn’t want her to feel grateful. He wanted her to understand that he would do anything he could to make her happy for the pure joy of seeing her smile.

As always, however, Ella Preston defied all of Grady’s expectations.

With a sigh, she wrapped her arms around his elbow where it rested on the knee closer to her, and leaned her forehead against his bicep.

“You left the island,” she said, her voice muffled in the still-damp cotton of his T-shirt. “You got in your boat and came after me.”

Grady shifted uncomfortably—but not enough to dislodge her from where she clung to him. “I didn’t have far to go,” he pointed out. “What, a few hundred yards offshore? Didn’t even make it to the mainland.”

“You would have, though.”

The certainty in her voice stopped his breath. “I would’ve,” he agreed hoarsely.

She lifted her head to stare him in the eye. “If I’d gone all the way back to D.C., you still would have come after me.”

Grady shook his head. “How can you know that?”

The left side of her mouth quirked up into a humorless smile. “It was never about how far you were willing to go—it was about taking that first step.”

The realization that she knew him this well, understood him better than he’d understood himself for a long time, and he’d known her and trusted her so little that he’d accused her of trying to steal her mother’s inheritance … Grady swallowed against the surge of regret in the back of his throat.

“I’m sorry.” He had to say it again, even though she hadn’t wanted to hear it before. “The things I said to you at the bank … I can’t believe I was such a jerk.”

She sighed, her eyelashes fluttering down and concealing her expression. “I can. With the information you had? It was pretty damning. After all…” She took a deep breath and turned her head to stare out at the rain-sparkled tree line. “I did put that B and B proposal together. It was my work, and I tried hard to sell Jo on the idea.”

“But you thought better of it,” Grady argued. “If I couldn’t have faith in you, I should’ve at least gotten all the facts before I accused you of anything.”

Pulling her arm back, Ella angled her body to relax against the porch railing. Without her pressed to his side, Grady felt the cold of the evening breeze through his wet clothes more keenly.

“What reason did I give you for that kind of faith?” Ella asked frankly, her gaze open. “I slept with you, but I refused to talk about what was going on with us. I didn’t tell you how I was feeling, about you or Jo or anything—I didn’t say a word about how close I was to chucking it all and staying on Sanctuary.”

Pain shafted through Grady’s chest. “You wanted to stay here.”

He’d been so close to having everything he wanted, and he’d ruined it.

“I wanted to stay with you,” she corrected softly. “But I was hideously afraid of admitting it. Of taking that first step away from the security I worked really hard for, into a scary new life I never planned on.”

“And now?” Grady could hardly breathe.

She laughed and tipped her head back against the railing, exposing the slim, pale column of her throat, the tender hollow where her heartbeat sped. “I’m still afraid,” she confessed. “But if Merry can decide to raise her son on her own … if you can overcome years of fear … how can I be less brave?”

Grady didn’t dare to hope. “What are you saying?” he demanded, needing to hear the words.

Tipping her chin over her shoulder at the hole in the porch, Ella said, “The last time I took a first step this big, the world fell out from under me. But you dived in after me and pulled me up. And I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t know what life has in store for us, or exactly how we’re going to work out the details, but I want to take all my first steps from now on with you at my side. And I want to be the person who picks you up, when you fall.”

Grady stood, heart thundering, and bent to grab Ella under her knees and arms. He hauled her up to his chest, holding her like a bride. She made one startled squeak, then twined herself around him like a climbing rose.

“Where are we going?” she asked, as he marched down the drive toward his Jeep.

“I need to do bad, bad things to you, and I’m not going to be able to do them in your mother’s house.”

“And…” She frowned down at where they were pressed so tightly together. “Oh my gosh, you haven’t showered yet? Grady! You need to get warm and dry, I can’t believe you. You have to take care of yourself.”

“The shower is an acceptable setting for the bad, bad things,” Grady allowed.

Her smile was radiant, glowing brighter than the fading sun. Then she bit her lip and he almost dropped her as every drop of blood in his body rushed south.

“After the shower and the … bad things,” she said hesitantly.

“I’ll bring you back here.” He got them to the car and deposited her on her feet. “We’ll be gone an hour, tops. You’ll be back in time to take your turn with the crying baby and the midnight feeding, I promise.”

“I love that you know what I was going to ask. But actually.” She backed against the side of the Jeep, keeping Grady from getting the door open. “Ben says after the work they did today, Merry and the baby will both probably sleep hard. And she’s got Mom there. She’s fine.”

Thoroughly distracted, Grady wedged a leg between her thighs and made a cradle of his body, leaning into her. “Mom, huh?”

“Just something I’m trying out—telling the people in my life what they mean to me,” Ella said breezily, her eyes bright in the blue light of dusk. “So far, it’s working out fairly well.”

He stared down at her from inches away, close enough to share every breath—and still he felt himself straining toward her, wanting to merge as close together as possible. Wanting to become one.

“Maybe a couple of hours,” he amended as his gaze dropped to her lips. “It’s going to take at least an hour for me to kiss every single inch of you.”

“That doesn’t sound like such a bad, bad thing,” she said. He loved it when she went a little breathless like that.

“Oh, it gets worse,” he promised, his heart stuttering into overtime. “Because after I kiss you all over, I’m going to tell you exactly how much I love you. That’s going to take … considerably longer than an hour.”

Face shining with happiness, Ella beamed up at him. “I can probably find room in my schedule for such an interesting topic. How long do you think you’ll need?”

Grady traced the delicate line of her jaw, pushing his fingers into her hair and cupping the shape of her skull in his palms. “I don’t know,” he said, mouth dry. “Pencil me in for the rest of your life.”

Laughing softly, Ella looped her hands behind his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers.

The taste of her was explosive, sweetness bursting across his tongue like the first bite of a late-summer peach. Before he lost himself to it completely, Grady dragged his head up to gasp against her cheek. “I don’t mean you have to stay here forever. I know you’ve got that job you love in D.C.—I can move there, or we can keep the cabin here and split our time, because with Merry and the baby and your mom and everything…”

“Shhh,” Ella crooned, going up on tiptoe to kiss his lips closed. “That means—so much to me, Grady. Just knowing you’re willing to uproot your whole life like that … But for once in my life, I don’t want to plan exactly how this is all going to work. We’ll figure it out as we go. But whatever happens, we’re spending most of our time on Sanctuary Island.”

His throat closing with emotion, Grady nuzzled into the soft, scented warmth of her neck. “Look at you, Miss City Mouse, talking about living out here on this nearly inaccessible backwater of an island.”

“How could I not want to live on Sanctuary Island? This place changed more than my life, it changed me.” Ella surged against him like the tide. “I love it here. Almost as much as I love you.”

*   *   *

Jo dropped the cordless phone in its cradle and twitched the parlor curtain back into place. Briefly, she wondered what her aunt would think of all this.

Knowing Aunt Dottie and the somewhat tumultuous history of the Hollister women, she’d be cackling in delight at having an unwed mother in the master bedroom and a canoodling couple in the driveway.

Jo was too tired at the moment to work up a cackle, but the glow of satisfaction she felt at the way everything was working out went bone deep.

She’d made a lot of mistakes in her life—too many to name—but somehow, through luck or grace, she’d been given a chance to make things right. And now that Ella was all but settled, her thoughts turned to Merry.

Sweet, bright Merry.

Wandering back to her bedroom, Jo leaned silently in the doorway and watched the way Ben’s face went soft and helpless when he looked at Merry and her baby cuddled on the bed.

Merry seemed to have eyes for no one but her son. She’d counted every perfect finger and tiny, rosy toe. She’d inspected the whorls of his little ears, the dimples at his knees and elbows, and laughed over his shock of black hair.

But she hadn’t named him yet.

“I’ve been calling him Baby for so long,” she’d told them earlier, “I can’t think of any boy names! Xavier? Lancelot? Spike?”

“Whatever you choose will be wonderful,” Ella had said loyally before exchanging a worried glance with Jo.

Please, anything but Spike, Jo remembered thinking.

Busying himself packing up his medical kit, Ben missed the way Merry’s gaze darted to follow him as he moved around the room. But Jo saw it.

And she saw the way he stiffened when Merry spoke into the peaceful silence.

“What’s your middle name, Doc?”

Wariness dropped over Ben’s face. So wary, that one, always ready to fight. “Why?”

Merry rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to steal your identity or something. Come on, answer the question.”

“Alexander.”

A thoughtful look crossed Merry’s face. “Alex. Ooh, or Zander. I like it.”

“Like it for what?” Ben grumbled, bent over his canvas satchel.

“For Baby,” Merry said placidly, smoothing her son’s hair so that it lay flat against the tiny skull for a moment before springing up into its natural Mohawk again.

Ben froze, wrist deep in his satchel, his gray eyes wide and shocked. Jo had to smother a grin at the naked amazement on his face.

“Alexander Hollister Preston,” Merry mused, and now Jo was the one dropping her jaw in amazement.

Clearing her throat, she stepped farther into the room, barely aware of Ben standing stock-still at Merry’s bedside, as if he’d been turned into a statue. “I like it,” Jo told her daughter.

“I want him to know where he comes from,” Merry said, a slight frown creasing the space between her brows. “Even without his dad, he’s got lots of family. Plenty.”

“More than enough, some people might say.” Ben went back to packing his med kit, bending his head down so that they couldn’t see his face. But Jo could hear the smile in his voice. “People who’ve met the Hollisters, for example.”

Ignoring the sass, Jo sat on the bed beside Merry and leaned over to get a better look at baby Alexander’s buttoned-up eyes and stubby black lashes. “He does have plenty of family here on Sanctuary Island. I think he’ll even have an Aunt Ella around most of the time.”

“Really?” Merry’s grin was tired but brilliant. “Yay!”

“And while we’re dishing out good news,” Jo went on, excitement simmering under her skin, “I just got off the phone with Harrison. The bank will extend me a loan—we’ll get to keep the house.”

Merry caught her breath, eyes shining. “Oh, Mom. That’s wonderful. And the therapeutic riding center will be such a great thing for the island!”

“It’ll be a lot of work.” Jo tucked a lock of hair behind Merry’s ear. “But it’s work that’s worth doing. Especially if it means we can stay in the house that’s been in our family for almost a hundred years.”

Outside, the storm had lifted and the call of birdsong could be heard in the trees. The conversation with Harrison had been good, and Jo felt a sense of new possibility unspooling before her like a ball of yarn.

Alexander opened his little mouth in a big yawn that screwed up his whole chubby face. Eyes almost dropping closed with exhaustion, Merry sighed.

Before her grandson could settle into a real squall, Jo picked up the precious, kicking bundle and said, “Here, let me. I’ll walk with him.”

Grady and Ella would be home soon, and if Jo was any judge of attraction, there was more than bickering going on between Merry and Dr. Ben Fairfax.

Walking over to the window, she stared out at the roofline of the stables in the distance, behind the pines. A new business, a new family, a new chance with the man she’d loved for a decade.

And another generation of Hollisters would grow up at Windy Corner, on Sanctuary Island.