Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
A fter a night of tossing and turning that only Wes could have slept through, Grace sprang out of bed the moment the clock turned from 6:59 to 7:00.
Last night’s kiss had been…
Well…
Thinking about it made her skin feel tight and itchy, like he was poison ivy and she was now rashy from head to toe.
The kiss itself had been nothing short of magical. That was the problem. Because then Grace had accidentally groped the life out of him, and of course he interpreted it as an invitation—how could he fucking not?
I ’ m on my period.
God.
First of all, mighty presumptuous to assume the kiss was leading anywhere, because was it? But then again, he was a man and they were both adults, so wasn’t it, whether she’d felt him up or not? Wasn’t it always ? What date had ever kissed her just for kissing’s sake? Or done it half so well?
God .
But I ’ m on my period ?
Dios mio , her abuela’s voice sounded in her head. What were you thinking, mija?
She wasn’t thinking at all. It was the first excuse to pop into her head as she grasped for a way to exit one situation before it led to a whole other situation. Because if he had gotten any ideas thanks to her wandering hand, she was too close to the edge of a bad decision to turn him down, despite knowing she’d end up regretting it.
So she used the only excuse that ever worked.
Because the kissing had been good —his heat and the smoky, spicy taste of him, and his hand on the small of her back, and him being nice —and of course she had to stop it right there before they took it further. Because further never ended well.
Not for Grace .
So she told him she was on her period and scurried away to the bedroom like a freaked-out freshman at the junior-senior prom.
She had ten thousand words to catch up on writing today, but I ’ m on my period were the only four rattling around in her brain, over and over on a humiliating endless loop.
No wonder she couldn’t write.
She sat staring at her dark computer, trying to order her thoughts and plan her chapters for the day, and definitely not hiding as he pottered softly around the house. Eventually he’d get to work, and she could sneak out of this room unseen.
When the force of his sledgehammer attacking stone shook the walls, and floor, and ceiling, and practically rattled Grace down to her bones, it was finally enough to rouse Wes , who rolled over and pulled the pillow against her face.
He let loose another swing and she moaned a little. “ Your Stoic Scot is really pissed at that wall, huh?” she asked in the froggy, morning voice of someone who’d slept deeply and peacefully for nine hours the night before. “ Why are you already up? Are you writing? Did you go to bed? Or come to bed?”
“I’ll go tell him to knock it off,” Grace said, slipping out the door, but as soon as she was in the hall with no bra and burning cheeks, she realized she’d do no such thing.
The muscles in his shoulders rippled as he took another swing.
Grace abruptly detoured for the bathroom to catch her breath.
The sight of the tiny, ugly shower reminded her how desperately she missed her bathtub back home. It was the one redeeming feature of her apartment.
Next time she picked a B & B , she’d ensure there was a nice big tub. Not that she’d chosen this one.
She closed her eyes and leaned back against the door, softly knocking her head against it. The sight of a pair of brawny biceps in cut-off sleeves should not unsettle her so easily.
When she opened her eyes again, she took in the tiny room anew. Could she hide in here forever? Was there an outlet for her computer? She could sit on the toilet with her laptop on the counter… Her gaze landed on a basket placed strategically by the sink. That hadn’t been there last night.
It was a plain wicker basket, but it held— oh god . It held everything: a variety pack of sanitary pads, a similar assortment of tampons, a hot water bottle with a soft, fuzzy cover. There were abdominal heat patches, a bottle of ibuprofen and another of paracetamol, not to mention a bunch of Cadbury chocolate bars.
Her heart flip-flopped at the gesture even as she willed the floor to crack open and bury her alive. Maybe Caitriona had left it somewhere, and Wes set it out?
On second thought, it was probably for the best there was no tub, or she might be forced to drown herself to end the tidal wave of embarrassment now battering against her. Lucky for Grace , humiliation didn’t leave visible bruising.
She slid down the door to sit on the floor as, out in the living room, Bryan took another whack at the wall, and this time she couldn’t decide if she was shaking or the bathroom was.
Who really was Bryan MacNeil ? Was this care package an overreaction to his disgust at the idea of her being on her period? He’d hidden it well last night, but what man wasn’t completely grossed out at the very thought, let alone willing to set foot in the women’s health aisle?
She tried to picture Diego buying products for Mathilda , but he’d already left home by the time Grace experienced her first, so the image was as incongruous as her own father would have been. He’d had to ask their neighbor to take Grace to the drugstore because her mom was working a double shift.
There was a knock at the door.
“Sorry, Gray , you going to be long? I have to pee so bad it’s about to shoot out my ears,” Wes called.
Grace scrambled to her feet and opened the door.
“You okay?” Wes asked, looking her over in concern.
“Fantastic,” Grace lied.
Wes eyed her skeptically but got distracted by the big honking menstruation basket. “ Ohhh , this is so nice! Perfect timing too. Were you all done? If you want to shower, I promise I’ll be quick.”
“It’s fine. Take your time,” Grace said, backing out of the lavatory.
“Okay, but hey, we still need to talk about your birthday.”
“I really don’t think we do.”
“Come on,” Wes begged. “ Anything you want, I’ll make it happen. Go to the mainland and see a show? I’ll buy tickets. Fly to London and repatriate the stolen shit from their museums? Say the word. Find some stones and travel through time? I’ll call a guy.”
“You know me, I don’t do birthdays.”
“Gray.”
“I’m on a deadline,” she said, taking another step back. “ All I want is to finish my book in peace! If I manage that, we can do whatever you want.”
“I don’t accept that. You have the rest of your life for deadlines. You only turn thirty once.”
“It’s just a day.”
“Besides your twenty-first, when’s the last time you had a party?”
“I don’t know. Thirteen or fourteen. I didn’t have a party for my twenty-first,” Grace protested. What a weird thing to say. Wes of all people should remember the only party that summer was the one celebrating random holidays, partying for the sake of partying.
Wes pressed her lips into a straight line.
“Panda-monium? That was to celebrate Ya Li’s twins… and International Chicken Wing Day and World UFO Day …” Grace reminded her.
Scrunching up her nose, Wes said, “ No disrespect to the pandas, but that’s what we told you it was for.”
Grace opened her mouth, but she didn’t know what to say. Her friends had thrown her such a surprise party that she was still surprised nine years later? She was so anti-birthday they had to trick her into celebrating? Had they been laughing at her ever since?
“I honestly thought you knew and were just playing along,” Wes said.
Grace looked up at her friend’s sweet, perplexed face. “ Didn’t you need to pee?” she asked.
“I’ve basically gone numb,” Wes admitted. “ Please don’t be mad about this. Don’t turn it into a whole thing.”
Grace shut the door on Wesley and turned around, right into the sweaty chest of the hammer-wielding Scotsman . She squeaked and scurried back to her room before he could say a word or flex his biceps.
But at least now there was plenty of awkward fodder to fuel the next chapter of her book. Except unlike Grace , Maya always had the perfect pithy comeback right on the tip of her tongue.
* * *
“Bryan says he hopes he didn’t wake you,” Wes told her when she returned fifteen minutes later, toweling her wet hair.
“He didn’t.” Grace slapped her laptop shut. “ He woke you.”
“Strangely didn’t seem as concerned about that,” Wes replied. “ Though I made it abundantly clear he owes me. But since I owe him for last night, we’re even.”
Grace snorted. She envied Wesley’s easy banter with men in general and this one in particular. She pictured his biceps again, not wanting to think too hard about what her friend might demand as payback.
“You really don’t want to do anything to celebrate your big day?” Wes begged.
Grace turned sideways in the chair to face her friend. “ Creative Ice Cream Flavors Day ?”
Wesley grimaced. “ Sometime in July . It was all very convenient.”
“And Pina Colada Day ?”
“They were all real, Gray , just begging to be collected into one big theme for a party.”
“A theme for a birthday party.”
Wes shrugged. “ You wouldn’t have come otherwise. Are you seriously mad we threw you a party a decade ago?”
“No. I’m not mad about that. Because that would be insane.”
Unable to sit still any longer, Grace strode into the living room, where Bryan and his cousin were surveying the almost completely destroyed wall.
“You guys mind if I have a go?” she asked, nodding to the sledgehammer.
“It’s heavy,” Bryan warned as she hefted it over her shoulder and swung with all her might.
The wall exploded in a shower of dust. The two Scotsmen had made so much progress that Grace’s weak hit really did some damage, and she stood back, breathing heavily.
“Jesus,” Bryan whispered. To Wes he added, “ Is she mad at you or me?”
Grace didn’t hear Wesley’s answer.
“That felt good,” she said, rearing back for another go. So Bryan pointed out where to hit it, and this time the rest of the wall crumbled before her eyes, much to her disappointment because, left unchecked, she felt like she could mow down the whole damn house.
Lùcas stared at her with impressed surprise, as Bryan relieved her of the sledgehammer.
“What?” she asked, wiping her sweaty forehead on her arm.
Lùcas turned his shock on his cousin who shrugged and said, “ Americans .”
When the dust settled, they were met with half a dozen angry glares from down the beach, where neighbors had gathered to watch the destruction.
“What the blazes are you thinking, Ryan MacNeil ?” an old man hollered. “ Just you wait ’til your daddy hears what you’ve done.”
“Aye, old Rob’ll be spinning in his grave again, sure enough,” a woman agreed. “ Curse the day you ever came back here. You ought to be ashamed.”
“Tearing down an island institution,” another shouted, shaking his head. “ No respect for anyone or anything.”
“And leading young Lùcas astray, as well. Does your mother know you’re here, Lùcas Buchanan ?”
Bryan stood fairly tongue-tied, and Lùcas glowered red-faced at the floor. Grace felt awful for them both. Usually they were full of teasing bravado and bluster, but the town reduced the two of them to a pair of kicked puppies with tails between their legs.
Not that she was any stranger to holding her tongue in the face of unfair accusations, but she was a woman, raised to mind her manners and her mouth. She was surprised to see the guys reacting this way. She wanted to live vicariously while Bryan and Lùcas set them all straight. Barring that, she wanted to rage at the self-righteous islanders herself.
Instead, Bryan set his jaw and turned his back, loading the debris into a wheelbarrow.
So Grace left them to it and returned to her room, where Wes was getting ready to go out for the day.
“A pinata,” Grace told her friend before she could talk herself out of it.
“A pinata?”
“For my birthday.”
“Ohhh,” Wes practically squealed. “ I can do that. What shape? Filled with candy or tiny bottles of booze? Or … condoms?” she added as an afterthought, because she was Wes .
“I don’t care. I just want something it’s socially acceptable to beat the crap out of with a really big stick.”
Wesley’s eyebrows shot up in surprised delight.
“I knocked down a wall,” Grace explained.
“You sure did.”
“And it felt fucking amazing.”
A huge grin spread across Wesley’s face. “ I’ll get you a million pinatas,” she promised.