7. Grace
SEVEN
Grace
No . No, this couldn’t be happening.
Mr. Black could not be Dane Knightly. There had to be some mistake.
Ashford beckoned me over. “Grace, this is Dane Knightly. He came to town for the hotel grand opening. Dane, this is my sister.”
I did my best to lock down my expression. “Hello,” I choked out.
Dane lifted his chin at me. “Good morning.” All sexy and gruff. His eyes were full of questions that I didn’t want to answer. Much less answer them in front of my brother.
Gah, I needed to act normal, which wasn’t easy when I was ready to yell at the man. I’d asked him last night if he knew Dane Knightly, and he’d lied to me.
The hell .
Emma glanced back and forth between us. “Have you two met before?”
Dane opened his mouth.
“We met at Silver Linings,” I blurted. “I spilled coffee on him. Had no idea who he was.” I stared at him, begging silently for him not to add any more. I assumed Dane had some sense of self-preservation, but what did I know? He’d been pretty uninhibited with his words last night.
Tingles ran through me, goosebumps raising all over my skin.
After I’d left the party, I’d stayed at Piper’s. I hadn’t breathed a word about Mr. Black or how I’d almost accepted his offer to spend the night with him. I’d been hoping the man would leave town soon, and I’d never have to see him again. As if the last evening had been some weird dream. I could go back to my regular, small-town life and pretend the masquerade ball hadn’t happened.
Not so much.
Dane’s questioning gaze lingered another second. “Good to officially meet you, Grace.”
He held out his hand. The contact was just as electric as it had been last night. When I pulled my hand away, my palm slid against his, and I tried to hide my shiver.
“You too,” I said, teeth clenched. Less than twelve hours ago, I’d been ready to head up to his room to get those hands all over me. “Ashford, why didn’t you tell me Dane was in town? I thought he wasn’t coming to the grand opening.”
Ashford shrugged and took a swig of his coffee. “It’s impossible to get this guy to nail down his plans. I didn’t even know until a couple of days ago.”
“My fault entirely,” Dane said.
I felt a blush spread up my neck and into my cheeks. Should I say that I’d been at the party too? Would that make it more obvious that I’d seen him there, or less?
Dane held out a cardboard tray of drinks. “I believe you ordered an autumn spice latte.”
Change of subject. Okay. Yes.
“I did.” I took the coffee, careful not to brush his fingers. I’d had enough of that. “Thanks. I’ll be sure to drink it far away from you. Because of, you know, running into you the other day.” I snapped my mouth closed to stop my rambling.
Dane turned and held out another drink to my niece. “This one’s a hot cocoa, Maisie, and I believe it has your name on it.”
While Ashford and Dane chatted with Maisie, Emma sidled over to me. “Are you okay? You’re jumpy this morning.”
I drank a hefty gulp of latte, and it burned the roof of my mouth. “Got worried when I couldn’t find Maisie by the craft tables.”
Emma and I watched my niece, who already had a thin mustache of chocolate above her lip from the cocoa.
If my brother had said something to me about Dane being in town, then maybe I would’ve guessed his identity. Maybe I wouldn’t have talked shit about Dane Knightly to his face . And he’d just stood there and let me do it. Encouraged me to spout my opinions. About him. About his hotel.
Oh, crap. Dane hadn’t known I was Ashford’s little sister, right? Had he been playing some kind of game with me? Though I couldn’t imagine why. Not unless Dane secretly wanted Ashford to kill him, because I had my doubts about the reasonableness of Ashford’s reaction if he’d found out.
I had to make sure that Ashford didn’t find out. If only because I couldn’t take the sheer embarrassment.
Dane knelt on the grass, ignoring the dampness, and held out a gift bag to Maisie. “I brought you something from New York. That’s where I’m from.”
“Really?” Maisie thrust her cocoa into Emma’s free hand and reached for the gift bag. Digging inside, she pulled out a snow globe of the Manhattan skyline.
“Wow,” she whispered. “This is amazing .”
Dane glanced up at me. My skin went hot again.
Maisie shook it, marveling as the specks of white swirled inside.
“If you wind it up here, it plays ‘New York, New York,’” he said, pointing.
She looked up at me. “Will you help me with the music, Aunt Grace?”
I cleared my throat. “Of course.”
I set down my coffee and helped Maisie wind the little piece of metal at the back of the globe, feeling Dane’s gaze on me the entire time. The melody started faintly, not easy to hear over the noise of the festival. Maisie held the globe to her ear and a wide grin bloomed on her face.
Then I made the mistake of glancing at Dane again, who was still down on one knee in the grass. His eyebrows lifted slightly when our eyes locked, and the corner of his mouth curved.
I blinked and looked away, grabbing my coffee.
“Mr. Dane, do you live in one of those buildings?” Maisie asked, pointing at the snow globe.
“The buildings in there are pretty small. Not sure I’d fit.”
Maisie giggled. “In one of the real ones.”
“I don’t live in any of these, no. But I do have an apartment in a tall building. It’s near Central Park.”
“I’ve read a book about Central Park.”
“Dane sent that to you for Christmas a few years back,” Ashford said.
Dane stood, brushing off his knee. “You like that book, Maisie?”
“It’s the best! And this snow globe is too. Thank you!”
“You’re very welcome.”
“Dane seems like a charmer,” Emma whispered in my ear.
Oh, she had no idea.
We helped Maisie pack up her snow globe. Then my niece asked, “Is it time for the pumpkin patch now? Please please please?”
“Okay, monkey.” Ashford ruffled her hair. “ But you have to hold someone’s hand. Seven is not old enough to be free range.”
Maisie held onto my hand, and we all walked through the festival toward the pumpkin patch. The whole way, I felt the warmth of Dane’s gaze on my back. I could only stomach half my latte before tossing it into a trash can.
Near the entrance to the pumpkin patch, we ran into Piper and her son Ollie. As soon as Ashford introduced Dane, Piper winced. “I assume you recovered from the coffee incident?” Piper asked him. She had recognized him from the coffee shop, just as I’d known she would.
“I did. Though I don’t think my sweater will be as lucky.”
“We had no idea you’re Ashford’s Army friend.” Piper tapped my arm. “Isn’t that hilarious, Grace?”
“So hilarious,” I said through gritted teeth.
Thank God Piper hadn’t met him at the party last night. Because then I’d have to make her lie to my brothers for me. She would do it, of course, but it wouldn’t feel right. I hated lying.
Also, Piper and I were both pretty terrible at it.
The kids ran through the rows of pumpkins, and the minutes ticked by with agonizing slowness. But my determination grew. I had to talk to him. We had to sort this out, and then we were going to pretend last night had never happened .
The first moment that nobody else was watching, I grabbed the sleeve of Dane’s Henley and pulled him behind an apple cider booth.
“Please tell me you didn’t know,” I hissed.
Dane leaned one shoulder against the red wooden siding of the booth. “Of course I didn’t know.”
“You swear?”
“I wouldn’t have hit on you if I knew you were Ashford’s sister.” He seemed like he was telling the truth, though I’d met guys who could make a girl believe anything. “You’ve grown up a lot compared to the old photos of you Ashford showed me.”
He didn’t even try to hide it when his gaze slid down the length of me. I crossed my arms.
“You look nothing like the photos Ashford has of you.” The snapshots of him in the Army had been in combat helmets or wraparound sunglasses. Not tuxedos and sexily tousled hair. “You weren’t supposed to be in Silver Ridge at all.”
“There are plenty of current pictures of me online. I’m not a fixture of the New York gossip pages, but I’ve been there a time or two.”
“Why would I spend my time googling my brother’s friend?”
Dane glanced at a group of teenagers walking by. When they were gone, he said, “I’m more interested in what happened to you last night. You were going to come up, then you disappeared. Why’d you ghost me?”
Ugh. I’d known he would ask that. I gripped the skin between my eyes. “I realized I was making a mistake. It’s a good thing I did. Otherwise we’d have a lot more to hide from my brother.”
“You make a habit of doing things your brothers don’t know about?”
“Do you make a habit of talking about yourself in the third person? You tricked me into gossiping about you last night.”
He smirked. “I thought that was cute. And I welcomed your opinion. I can take it.”
“But I didn’t know who I was really talking to.”
“Neither did I.”
“Clearly you preferred it that way. You invited me to your hotel room an hour after you’d met me, and you didn’t even know my name.”
“Longer than an hour, but okay. Are you saying I’m easy? Very judgmental.”
“But true.”
He edged closer, his dark-gray eyes going even darker. “You said yes to me. You wanted me.”
My chest went tight, and my stomach swooped like I’d taken a spin on a tire swing. “I wasn’t acting like myself last night.”
“Then it’s too bad I didn’t kiss you. Guess that was my one chance.”
“And there’s not going to be another one.”
His mouth was inches from mine. I shouldn’t have looked, but I did. His lips were full, the lower one thicker than the top. I wondered how he kissed. Probably dominant and commanding and bossy as hell.
I pivoted and got myself out of there.
I’d wanted him last night. There was no denying it. Thank goodness I’d thought better of it.
Never happened , I repeated to myself.
Nothing had happened between us. And nothing ever would.