“You’re so weird. No, Dane Braden is not a stalker.” Danica laughed. “Go out and say hello.”
“Okay, thanks, Danica. I’ll call you later.” Lacy held the phone by her side and walked tentatively down each step to the sand below, then approached him. Dane leaned back, supported by his palms, his feet outstretched before him, crossed at the ankles. Her hands sweat despite the cool breeze coming off the water.
“Hi, Lacy,” he said.
“Hi.” Goose bumps raced up her arms.
Dane cocked his chin to the side, and the sweet look in his eyes softened her nerves. “Want to sit down for a sec?” Dane asked.
Yes! Lacy contemplated Danica’s advice. Keep all of your worries in the forefront of your mind. She still felt pressured to be there, but as she looked back at the cottage and then at Dane, she couldn’t maintain her anger.
Dane stood. He was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a thick cardigan sweater. He reached for her, then pulled his hands back. “Lace,” he said. His eyes caressed her; his voice soothed her. “I’m sorry that I’ve upset you. I just couldn’t let us go that easily.”
Us.
“I’m not here tonight to pressure you any further. I tried to call you several times, and when you didn’t return my calls, I thought I’d just come over and make sure you got in okay.”
“I…I’ve been on with Danica for a while, and before that I was showering, getting groceries. Sorry I missed your call.” She chided herself for not checking her voicemail.
“No worries. Did you find the grocery store okay? Do you need anything?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” She looked away, trying to ignore the pull in her stomach that was drawing her toward him. He’d forced this situation on her, and she struggled to remember that, to use it as a crutch to lean on when she felt herself being wooed by him.
“I know you’re probably mad at me for pulling the whole thing with your boss, Lace, but I couldn’t think of any other way to get you to even talk to me. You ignored all of my attempts to reach you, and I don’t blame you. I mean, I know you’re worried about the panic attack, and I know you’re worried about what I said about other women.”
Lacy’s legs became weak. Fear crept up her limbs. “I don’t want to talk about them.”
“I know, but I do.”
No, no, no.
“Can we sit? Please?” Dane motioned to the sand.
Lacy’s heart was beating so fast that it stole her ability to think. She lowered herself to the sand and wrapped her arms around her legs.
“Lacy, if I were a woman and met a guy like me, I’d probably run the other way. I know I look like a player. Hell, maybe I was one. I don’t know. But I never thought of myself that way. I’m a guy who couldn’t settle down. I’ve never had any interest in settling down. But things have been changing over the last few years. I’ve been changing. And when I met you, it was like I ran face-first into a brick wall. For the first time in my life, I stepped back and took a good look at my life. And I wanted to change, Lace. Because of you.”
“I don’t know what to say to that.” In an effort to keep herself from falling into his arms and kissing him until she couldn’t breathe, she said, “It seems rather convenient.”
“Convenient?” He laughed. “Nothing about our relationship has been convenient. Look, I guess you’ll either accept me for who I am…as a friend…or you won’t. I was that guy. The keyword being was,” Dane said.
“What does that even mean?” Lacy asked.
“It means just what you think it means. I was the guy who powered a boat into a new port, found a ready, willing, and able woman for a day or two, and then never looked back until the next trip. I can’t change what happened in my past. I can only try to be the person I want to be moving forward,” Dane said.
“I didn’t know you were like that when we were talking for all those months. I wondered, but I didn’t really know.” As much as she thought she was past being hurt by that, once again she felt sick just thinking about him and other women. What is wrong with me? Let it go! She didn’t want to have this conversation, and now she was stuck in it, and her frustration came out in her words. “That’s just gross. How could you be like that?” Lacy asked.
“I don’t know. I just was. But, Lacy, the last few months as we were getting closer, things changed,” he said. “I’m not proud of what I did, but if we’re going to move forward, even as friends, you have to accept all of me, the shit along with the shine. I’m not that man anymore, Lacy, and had I met you ten years ago, I probably never would have been that man. You’re the only woman who has ever had this effect on me. But this is me, Lace.” He drew her chin up so she was looking into his eyes again. “The man who wants nothing more than to explore what’s between us—even if we’ve agreed not to fall in love. I’m still the guy you talked to all those months. I’m the one who sang to you in an off-key voice when you didn’t feel well and the guy who laughed with you while we watched Young Frankenstein on your television together on Skype.”
Lacy dropped her eyes. Everything he said made her want to embrace him. She needed to forget about those other women. She cared about what she and Dane had, and what they had was turning out to be too big for her to walk away from.
“Look at me, Lacy. Please.”
She met his gaze.
“It’s me, Lace. I’m the same guy.”
He was pouring out his heart and soul, and it dawned on Lacy that what he was doing wasn’t easy. He looked at her with tenderness, and all those months of falling for him, phone call after intimate phone call, came rushing back and gripped her heart.
THE LOOK ON Lacy’s face stopped Dane cold. She furrowed her brow, and her mouth was stuck in a half smile, half worried upturned line.
“That’s who I was, Lace. Then I met you, and then those other nights, well, they became few and far between,” Dane said.
“Okay. Can we change the subject?” Lacy asked.
“Yeah, I didn’t come here to make you feel uncomfortable. I can go.” He pushed to his feet again.
She looked up at him. “No, you don’t have to go. I just don’t want to talk about you and other women. Even if we’re agreeing not to fall in love with each other, I don’t want to be the friend that you tell about your…trysts.” The pain in her eyes was palpable, and she shivered against the cold.
He slipped off his sweater and draped it around her shoulders. “Fair enough,” Dane said. “I just want to be honest.”
“Thank you,” she said, pulling the sweater around her.
“Want to go inside to warm up?” he asked.
“Not really. I like it out here, but maybe we can move to the deck. A glass of wine might be nice. I bought some earlier,” Lacy said.
They made their way up the deck, where they filled their glasses and settled onto the deck chairs. Dane felt like he was doing a balancing act. He’d restrain his desires to hold her, to touch her hand, or stroke her face if that’s what it took to spend time with her, but he’d be damned if he wouldn’t try to get her to look past who he had been and see him for the man he was now, or the man he intended to be in the future.
“You know, you made a big mistake bringing me here. I’m not going to watch you catch sharks,” Lacy said.
The defiance in her voice startled Dane, until he caught sight of the tease in her eyes.
“If you’d looked at the itinerary, you’d have seen that there is no shark catching on it. Tomorrow we’re going to the library,” he said.
Lacy finished her wine and Dane refilled her glass. “You’re not getting me drunk, either. At least not drunk enough to do anything I’ll regret tomorrow.”
Dane’s stomach sank. “You regret being with me?” he asked. He expected a lot of things, but regret for their evening together was not one of them. “Lacy, maybe I made a mistake bringing you here. I never imagined that you felt that way.”
She tucked her feet beneath her on the chair. “I don’t regret that evening,” she said. “I’m just not going to jump into bed with you again.”
“That’s fair. We’re not heading that way anyway. No falling in love, remember? And I don’t sleep around anymore, so…” Dane said with a smile.
“I have to admit, I did miss talking to you last night,” Lacy said. When she looked up at Dane, the moonlight caught her big baby blues.
“I did, too.” He needed a safer topic to talk about. Talking about missing each other and jumping in bed together made his body crave her. He needed to talk about something that didn’t make him think about what her lips tasted like or the way her eyes fluttered closed when she came. “Fred seems like he’s a pretty nice boss.”
“Yeah. He’s great.” Lacy laughed under her breath. “He’s so smart, but really nerdy in that endearing sort of way. I can’t believe you were able to rope him into sending me on a vacation.”
“Oh, is that what you think this is? A vacation? You, my dear, are mistaken. This trip is to immerse you in the life of a Brave Foundation employee. This trip is to show you what we do, so you can sell us to the world.” And hopefully you’ll find me irresistible along the way.