Dylan had never second-guessed himself. He'd always known he would be a sailor and build boats. There had been small struggles along the way, of course, but he'd never doubted his direction or his beliefs. So when he'd stepped close to Grace and the sparks between them practically exploded from nothing more than that, he'd barely been able to keep from sealing both their fates with a kiss.
But he hadn't been raised to be an idiot. Which was why he wasn't going to let himself pull her closer and kiss her.
Not yet, anyway.
"I have some cold drinks inside the boathouse. If you have a few minutes, why don't you come in and have one?"
"Thank you," she said as she gave him a small smile, one that didn't quite reach her eyes. Despite their obvious attraction to one another, she was wary, he could see that. Of him specifically? Or of all men? "I'd like that."
Dylan settled her son more firmly on his hip as he moved aside to let her walk into the large building. Her eyes widened when she saw the interior of his boathouse. Framed in a classic Craftsman style, the ceiling was three stories high, with large wood-framed windows letting in light on every side. But the best part of the building was, hands down, that the skylights were retractable so that he could work under the open sky.
"Your boathouse is incredible."
He grinned at her awed tone as he pulled a couple of bottles of water out of the fridge in the corner where there was a small kitchen area built in. "Thanks. My brothers and father helped me put it together, although the genius behind the design is my brother Adam."
Before he could give her the water, she caught sight of the nearly completed sailboat in the back of the boathouse and headed toward it as if drawn by a magnet. "How do you do it?" she asked him. "How can you create and build something this amazing?"
"It's all I ever wanted to do. I read everything I could find about making boats as a kid and then once I had the basics down, I started taking them apart. I'd save up my money to buy the junkiest sloops and my parents would let me haul them into their backyard. I'd saw through them, study the hulls, and then I'd try to replicate them as closely as I could."
"Amazing." She reached out to run her hand over the wood before drawing back.
"Go ahead. These things are designed to withstand more than forty knots in an open sea. If it breaks when you put your hands on it," he said with a laugh that drew a giggle out of her little boy, too, "I'm going to have a seriously upset buyer on my hands when the Coast Guard has to come pick him up. Want to touch it, too, Mason?"
Together, the three of them put their hands on the wood, warmed from the sun beaming in from the clear blue sky above.
"I'm Dylan Sullivan, by the way."
Turning away from the boat, she said, "I'm Grace. Grace Adrian."
She held out her hand and when he took it he heard her breath go--easily the sexiest sound he'd ever heard. "It's nice to meet you, Grace. Really nice." But then he frowned slightly. "Your name--it's familiar for some reason. But I'd have remembered if we'd met before."
"We haven't met. I have called you several times, though."
"Right, that's where I know your name from. Sorry about not getting back to you. I'm not great with the phone."
She gave him a look that he could easily read as No kidding, before saying, "I hope we didn't interrupt you too badly this morning. I was just really hoping to talk with you for a few minutes. Mason was supposed to stay home today with a babysitter, but she didn't show up, and now we're in the middle of his nap time, which is why he's a little cranky."
"Cranky looks good on him. And now that you're here, what can I help you with?"
She took a deep breath, then pushed her shoulders back as if to ground herself before answering. "I'm a writer and I'd really like to interview you for a story I'm doing on sailing and building boats." Clearly nervous that he'd say no, she continued quickly. "I know you don't do many interviews, but this story isn't going to be about your family, or about money or prestige. Instead, I'm going to write about the heart of a sailor, about loving being on the water, about building boats that help make people's dreams come true. And before you recommend some colleagues that I could talk to instead of you, I need you to know that the editor told me he'll only hire me to write this story if it's about you. And...they need you to be on the cover, too."
"You're right," he said slowly as he let Mason take his ball cap off again to chew on the brim. "I don't normally do interviews. But for you," he said with a smile that he hoped would help settle her worries down, "I'm happy to make an exception. How tight is your deadline?"
She'd looked incredibly relieved when he'd told her he would do the story and cover. But her relief quickly shifted to a slight grimace as she said, "This story is on a pretty tight deadline, I'm afraid. They'll need it and the pictures in four weeks."
"I've got to head out to ferry a boat to a friend in Portland in an hour, but I'll be back Friday afternoon." He also had an upcoming trip to Australia for a major yacht race in a week and a half, but he planned to get to know Grace--and Mason--a heck of a lot better between now and then. "My mom will be making dinner on Friday for the family. Come with me and we can get started then."
She blinked at him in confusion. "You want me to come to your mother's house for our first interview?"
"You and Mason," he clarified. Because even though he wasn't going to make the mistake of freaking her out with his intentions, he also couldn't resist speeding things up a bit by tossing her into the deep end with his family. Dylan just couldn't see waiting...not when he knew. "If we get there early, she can watch the baby while you interview me. Unless, of course," he deliberately added to confirm the one thing he needed to be absolutely certain about, "your husband or boyfriend can watch Mason while we talk."
"It's just us."
Knowing it couldn't be easy to raise a baby alone, he tried not to give a whoop of delight that she was single.
"Are you sure your mother will want to watch a little boy she's never met before? Don't you need to ask her first?"
"No," he said with a laugh. "I definitely don't need to ask her if she wants to hang with an awesome kid for a couple of hours. There are few things she loves more. Plus, this way you can ask my family questions for your story." He wasn't usually a steamroller with women--he'd never needed to be when they'd always come to him. But with Grace, he needed to know exactly when he'd see her again. "I'll come pick you guys up at four on Friday?"
Grace stared at him for a few seconds, her expression unreadable, before she finally said, "Okay, that will be fine. And thank you for agreeing to work with me on this story. I really appreciate it."
He didn't need her thanks. Her mouth against his, however, he would gladly take. But since he knew he'd already pushed her enough for one day, he simply said, "I'm looking forward to it, Grace." He liked the sound of her name, the way it felt on his lips. "There's a pad of paper on my desk behind you so that you can give me your address and phone number."
She moved toward the desk against the far wall, and he enjoyed every second of watching her hips sway as she walked in her heels. But halfway to his desk, she stopped and turned to face him. "How many times have you refused to be interviewed for stories like this in the past?"
He shrugged, making Mason giggle when he bounced slightly in Dylan's arms. Bouncing the baby around more on purpose, he said, "Countless. Why do you ask?"
She looked between him and her son, her expression still wary...but also more than a little stunned, too. "I'm just surprised you said yes to me so quickly. Because I really do need to write this cover story about you. So if you're only planning to mess around with me for a laugh--"
"I promise I'm not messing around with you. Not in the slightest." He hoped that one day she'd look back on this conversation and realize that he'd been serious about her and her son even then. "You were right when you said I'd like the angle you're going to take for the story. No one needs to read another story about the fastest way to hoist a
spinnaker. But a story about a sailor's heart? That's what it's really all about, whether you're taking a Sunfish out on a Saturday afternoon or you're racing an eight-million-dollar yacht for the World Cup."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean for my question to come out like that." He could see how tired she was now that she'd let her defenses down just a little bit. "Not when I really am grateful that you're available to do the interview. I just need to be sure that you're really on board with this."
She didn't need to say anything more for him to understand immediately that she'd been screwed over before and had a hard time trusting people when they gave her their word. Probably, it wasn't too much of a stretch to guess, by the guy who had gotten her pregnant.
"I'm not a fan of phones," he told her. "And I don't much care for anything that falls under the category of running a business. But when it comes to giving my word to people? I was raised to stand by it. And I do, Grace. No matter what."
For a few moments she stared at him as if she wasn't sure whether it was safe to believe what he'd just said, before finally turning to head toward his desk again. By the time she returned from writing her address on the pad of paper, she was all business as she reached for Mason.
"We'll get out of your hair now. See you Friday."
It was nearly impossible to keep from dragging her against him for a kiss so that he could see her beautiful skin flush again. But just as he knew not to head a sailboat up into the wind before it was blowing hard enough to point him toward his true destination, he also knew better than to move too fast with Grace.
Not when something told him a far better plan would be to let both of them anticipate that kiss for the next several days, instead.
CHAPTER THREE
Thunder and lightning rocked the sky outside Grace's apartment on Friday afternoon as she waited for Dylan to come pick them up. Mason had crawled over to the window and was clapping with glee every time the lightning flashed and thunder boomed.
Grace lifted him so that he could get a better view of the storm, one that felt way too close to the storm that had been raging inside of her for the past three days. Dylan had deftly maneuvered her into agreeing to do the interview at his childhood home, of all places. While it wasn't at all unusual for a big name to call the shots with a journalist, the fact that she'd taken one look at Dylan and had wanted him in a way she'd never wanted another man had her worried.
Very worried, given that the one time she'd let the line blur between her job and her personal life had been a huge mistake.
She hugged Mason tighter as she mentally erased the word mistake. She would willingly have made a thousand mistakes all over again to have him here with her. But even though the two of them had made it through both her solo pregnancy and single parenting for the first ten months of his life, that didn't mean she needed to make another, similar mistake with Dylan.
Richard Bentley had asked Grace out during their interview a year and a half ago. No one that charming or full of compliments had ever looked in her direction before. So while she knew she shouldn't mix work with pleasure, he'd been too persuasive and determined for her to resist. Especially in the wake of her father's death only six months earlier. All she'd wanted to do was just forget for a little while.
Her first date with Richard had been on a private rooftop just outside of Washington, D.C. The restaurant with its white tablecloths had been so fancy that she would have felt terribly out of place in her simple black dress and shoes if they hadn't been in a completely private part of the restaurant. By the end of the evening, her head was spinning with bubbly and what had seemed at the time like the most romantic date she'd ever had. She never usually slept with a guy on the first date, but looking back, Grace couldn't deny that she'd felt as though she'd owed Richard for the fairy-tale evening.
On their second date, he'd taken her out on the sailboat, and though the trip hadn't gone as well as dinner under the stars, she hadn't considered ending that date with only a kiss good night, either. Every date they had was the same: He'd take her somewhere private that knocked her socks off and then she'd invite him in for the night. By the time she'd realized that something didn't seem quite right--Why did he never take her out where strangers could see them together? Why did he always have an excuse about being too busy to see her or talk during the week? Why did he say he wanted to keep their relationship between just the two of them for a little while longer?--she'd also missed her period.
Richard hadn't been at all pleased to learn just weeks later that she was pregnant.
It should have been crazy for Grace to assume that Dylan had anything more in mind tonight than a quick interview and a home-cooked meal at his parents' house. But she'd stopped being able to lie to herself on the day the pregnancy test had come up positive. So while she couldn't understand it, she also couldn't deny the heat that had been in Dylan's eyes when he'd looked at her. Nor could she deny the answering hit of heat she'd felt simply from being near him. Adding in how good he'd been with Mason and how easily he'd been able to turn her son's tears into giggles? Right there were three big fat reasons why she would need to work overtime to keep things strictly professional. Because he was far, far too tempting...
The doorbell rang, and she tried to prepare herself to see him again, but when she opened the door, the obvious appreciation in his gaze had her long-dormant sensuality immediately leaping back to life, higher and hotter than ever before. Just the way it had on Tuesday in his boathouse.
"You look beautiful, Grace."
"Thank you." It had been so long since anyone had told her she was pretty--or since she'd let herself believe it. "Come on in and I'll go grab Mason's things."
Her son immediately reached for Dylan, and though she felt the same twinge in her chest at the thought of letting anyone else hold him, she knew better than to try to hold Mason off this time. Clearly, he'd been yearning to be close to another guy.
"I like your place," Dylan said as he looked around her apartment's small kitchen and living room. "Having the park across the street must be great."
"It's a great neighborhood, but you're right, the park is what sold me." Despite the fact that the apartment had been, and still was, out of her price range. "Yesterday, when he kept pointing at the slide the big kids were going down, I took him on my lap for the first time."
"I'll bet he loved it, didn't he?"
"So much that we'd still be doing it right now if I hadn't stopped being able to carry him one-armed up the ladder an hour later," she confirmed with a ruffle of Mason's dark hair. She was just about to sling his heavy baby bag and his portable car seat over either shoulder when Dylan said, "Why don't you take a rest from heavy lifting for a couple of hours and let me carry your load for you?"
She didn't know why Dylan's offer made her want to start sobbing, only that she couldn't keep letting him make her go all soft inside like this. Staying tough and determined was what had kept her and Mason's life on track so far. If she let down her guard now, if she let someone else carry her load even if it was just for a little while, how hard would it be to pick it up again later, all by herself? Besides, Dylan already had her son in his arms, and she could easily handle the rest. Just the way she always did.
"I've got them," she insisted, when the truth was that between playtime at the park the day before and her long day at the computer rewriting every sentence of her article on new nail polish trends a half-dozen times, her shoulders were aching.
She was more than a little surprised by the beat-up Jeep parked outside her apartment building. From the research she'd done about Dylan's business--and after having been inside his state-of-the-art boathouse--she knew he was wealthy. But unlike her ex, who'd had to proclaim his wealth in any way he could, Dylan obviously didn't feel the need to drive around in a little red sports car or a massive Hummer that would edge out all the other cars on the road.
She quickly fit Mason's car seat into the backseat, then clipped him in and handed him a toy to pl
ay with during the drive.
"My mom has been counting down the minutes since I called to let her know that you and Mason were coming to dinner."
Grace had already felt nervous about tonight, but now her nerves jumped another notch. "He was a little fussy earlier. Hopefully he won't melt down right when we get there."
"I'm sure he'll do great tonight. Besides, after raising five of us, my mother's a master at dealing with meltdowns."
With Mason banging away on his toy in the backseat of the Jeep, she should have been able to keep her hormones in check. But the noise didn't make her any less aware of how close to her thigh Dylan's hand was on the gearshift or how good he smelled--an intoxicating combination of the sea and freshly cut wood.
"I'd love to know more about your family." She'd promised Dylan that she wouldn't focus on his family in the story, but just as he'd said on Tuesday, she'd at least need some background on them to help her understand how Dylan had become the man he was. "In doing some preliminary research for my article, I think I have a fairly good handle on what each of them does for a living."
His oldest brother, Ian, was not only the billionaire founder of Sullivan Investments, he had also recently become engaged to Tatiana Landon, a beautiful and talented movie star. Dylan's second-oldest brother, Adam, was well known for his historic house renovations throughout the Pacific Northwest. His middle brother, Rafe, was a private investigator and was engaged to a woman who made gourmet chocolates. Rounding out the group was his sister, Mia, who owned Sullivan Realty and was engaged to rock star Ford Vincent.
"But I was wondering--" At a red light, he turned to smile at her, and her brain mixed up the question she meant to ask and the one she actually wanted to know the answer to. "What's it like to be related to so many famous people?" She clapped her hands over her mouth, shaking her head as though that could magically erase the intrusive words that had fallen out. "I'm sorry, that was out of line. I meant to ask if they all sail, too."
"It wasn't at all out of line," he said with a grin that had only grown wider by the time the light turned green and he hit the gas pedal. "And yes, they all sail, too. Which means that I can usually get them into the water if they ever need to be taken down a notch. There's nothing like the ocean for knocking you around to help you remember that you're only human." He smiled at her again. "But most of the time I forget that they're famous until I'm picking up some milk and see one of their faces on the cover of a magazine. The only time it bothers me is when I see something printed about one of them that isn't true. Which, unfortunately, happens far too often."