21. Grant
21
GRANT
Grant
A s soon as I landed at O’Hare, I turned my phone back to a normal mode and refreshed my texts.
My heart beat so fast as I waited in suspense, both to get off this plane and away from the confinement of so many people traumatized by just a little turbulence and to reach my luggage and get home.
The front desk assured me that they saw Elise leaving with her luggage earlier, so I knew I didn’t abandon her on the island.
She’d come home. I hoped.
As I joined the slow line of passengers who filed off the plane and headed to baggage claim, I frowned at the screen.
Elise: Did you land yet?
Elise: I’m guessing you still got the same flight you planned on.
Elise: I’m waiting outside. Parked behind a light-blue van.
She came? She ran from the resort and left me without a word to get a different flight without me, but wanted to pick me up? I was missing something, and as I waited for my suitcase to show up, I wished it’d slide out faster so I could get an answer from her for her actions.
Grant: I’ll be out in ten.
Three dots appeared, and I clung to this connection, this knowledge that she was texting me back right now.
Elise: Brace yourself for some big family news, too.
“Huh?” I ran my hand through my hair, so confused. I was hurt, too, bothered that she couldn’t have taken the time to tell me that she wanted to leave so suddenly. I knew it was a mistake not to talk sooner, but it all happened so fast. Neither of us could resist each other in that room, but now…
Now, we had to get some things straight.
I found her outside twelve minutes later, arguing with another driver about how she was leaving any minute.
“See?” She pointed at me. “I’m outta here.”
The other man ranted at her in another language, but she didn’t listen, helping me by opening the door for me to shove my suitcase in.
“Hi,” she said with a wide smile.
“Hi?” I replied, unsure why she seemed so happy and unbothered.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you wanted to leave sooner?” I asked once we were in the car and she was edging into traffic to leave.
“Well, I did. Or I thought I did.” She winced as she glanced at me. “Look at my phone.”
I picked it up. Since we knew each other’s passcodes, something that we decided made our workdays so much easier, I scrolled through her texts. One showed up as undeliverable.
“I texted you. But it didn’t send. I didn’t realize that it didn’t send until I got home and… talked with Claudia. By then, I figured it was too late to send. I tried anyway, but it just won’t send!”
I saw the evidence of that. A spinning circle showed next to the delivering status.
The message made sense, too.
Elise: I need to hurry home. Claudia was hurt.
“Claudia is hurt? How?”
She held up her hand. “I’ll get there.”
She seemed awfully calm and unworried about her cousin’s injury, whatever it was.
“She called me several times during the wedding.”
I nodded. “I remember. Reception sucked.” Maybe that was why her message remained unsent.
“All I could hear was that she was hurt, in the hospital, and she mentioned Keith’s name.”
I frowned. “Her ex?”
She nodded. “I feared the worst, and when I couldn’t get ahold of her, I checked if there was a sooner flight. There was, and I took it. Where were you?”
“Helping Vince and Ginny grab flowers before they blew away.”
“Ah.”
I sighed. “To be honest, I was hurt when I saw you were gone.”
She set her hand on my thigh. “I’m sorry. And I figured you would understand.”
I frowned at the sight of her ring—the one I gave her—on the wrong hand.
“It wasn’t like I wouldn’t see you at work tomorrow,” she added. “Like usual.”
I took her hand and held it. She squeezed my fingers back, and I felt calmer. “I wanted to talk to you about that.”
“Seeing each other at work? Like usual?” She glanced at me again.
“Yeah. I was hoping our new usual could be something different. Something like… us dating. For real. No more pretending anything.”
I adored the slow smile that spread on her face. Staring at her profile, I willed myself to believe that not all hope was lost.
“Us being together for good. You know? Not just seeing each other and being with each other day in and day out at the office?”
She turned to me at a red light. Then she tugged the corner of her lower lip between her teeth.
I sighed, holding in a growl at that tease.
“Why?” she asked. “So it can look like we’re a happily engaged couple and you’ll show Vince that you’re a responsible man who has settled down?”
“No. Because I want you.” I lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Because I love you.”
She smiled. “You love me?”
I nodded. “I think I have since we met, honestly.”
“I love you too.” She pushed harder on the brake before the light could turn green. Gripping the front of my shirt, she pulled me over the center console and kissed me.
Horns blared behind us, and that was the only reason I could pull back.
“It’s not like you need to worry about that settled-down part of the image anymore.”
I nodded. I agreed. Our love mattered more than getting any deal. But I hadn’t told her that yet.
“Your brother has that taken care of.”
Narrowing my eyes, I studied her. “What?”
She nodded.
“Derek?”
She started to giggle. “Derek beat you to it.”
“He beat me to what?”
“Settling down.”
I waited for her to explain.
“While you and I were in the Bahamas and realizing that we loved each other, Derek and Claudia got married.”
“They what ?” Immediately, I worried that this was a prank. A joke. Another ill-thought-out and rash impulse.
“Yeah, that’s how I took this news too.” She pointed at me. Yet she seemed calm.
“Before I left with you, I suggested to Derek that he could help Claudia move. He said sure, he’d reach out. When I told Claudia, she seemed to want to handle it herself and didn’t contact him. You know how shy she can be, and with Keith dumping her, she was sad and all and…” She shook her head. “Anyway. Derek called her, and he started helping her pack and move. I guess they started talking and hitting it off. They went to a little concert together and Keith saw her there. Derek got all macho protective of her, which made her swoon. They, you know, hooked up. But in the few short days, they decided it was love, not a fling.”
“Let me guess,” I quipped. “Derek claimed that life was short, so why not go with it and get married?”
“No. Actually, it was Claudia who said that,” she replied. “She said that she must have had to suffer six years of dating Keith to know what and who she really wanted. And it’s Derek.”
I blinked. “Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow, indeed.”
“But you said she was hurt?”
“Again, Keith. He had to have been stalking her closer than we realized because he followed Claudia and Derek to the courthouse to stop her from marrying anyone but him. I guess Derek and Keith already got into a fight at the little concert, but Keith threatened them at the courthouse. Derek told Claudia to wait for him outside while he saw to Keith getting arrested and handled, but Claudia walked too fast in her dress, tripped, and broke her arm.”
I huffed an incredulous laugh. It all sounded so far-fetched, so ridiculous and zany. Most of all, that my partying brother could settle just like that. Thinking back to his words about that spark and just knowing when someone was right, I realized it might not be so out there, after all.
Several minutes passed as she drove and I tried to process it all.
“Say something,” she pleaded as she squeezed my hand. “I just left them at the hospital a couple of hours ago, waiting for her to be discharged. Derek is so nervous you’ll be mad or something.”
I shook my head. “No. No, I…” I shrugged. “This actually makes a lot of sense.”
Derek had a strong routine of going to get bear claws once a week from only the bakery she worked at. I thought further back to when they first met, how a glimmer of intrigue and awareness showed in his eyes.
It seemed that neither of them ever knew they had feelings for each other or acted on getting to know each other, but then again, Claudia hadn’t been available, dating the wrong man all along.
Derek was goofy with charisma. Claudia could be shy, a quiet soul who could encourage him to calm a bit.
“I think they’d be good for each other.”
“Yeah?” She peeked at me, smiling as she pulled up near my building.
“The valet can get the car from here,” I told her.
We said we loved each other. She couldn’t plan on not staying, could she?
We got out of the car together, and I held her hand as we headed inside.
“You really think they could be good for each other?” she asked.
I nodded, smiling at her enthusiasm. “I do.”
“Are… we good for each other?” she asked coyly.
I waited until the elevator doors closed on us, putting us in a bubble. It was just the two of us. Alone. And so very right for each other. “We are definitely good for each other.”
I caged her to the wall and kissed her until we were both out of breath.
“In the office?” she asked against my lips.
I nodded. “I’d be lost without you there.”
“And… outside the office?” she asked.
“I’d be empty without you in my life, Elise.” I cupped her face and kissed her without a break until the doors opened directly to my apartment.
“So.” I smiled down at her. “Wanna stay?”
She bit her lip in that sexy way that drove me crazy. Holding my hand, she turned me and led me inside my home. “Heck yeah, I wanna stay,” she replied, gazing at me with love.
Good. Because I’m never letting you go again.