Chapter 4
Four
Dan absolutely loved Gansett Island. In the few days he’d been there, he was feeling more settled than he had in ages. What a strange thing, he thought, to feel so at home in a place he hadn’t even known about before he met Grant.
He couldn’t explain why the tiny island had immediately felt like home.
It just did, so he was managing his ongoing cases from afar while taking the first real break he’d had in years.
He’d even gotten roped into helping Grant’s sister-in-law’s sister, Tiffany, with her divorce from Jim Sturgil, the island’s only lawyer.
That guy was a real prize, and Dan was happy to help Tiffany get free of him.
Being on the island and spending time with Grant, the writer, had inspired Dan to make some notes for the novel he’d been thinking about for some time.
He had two publishers interested and offering a lot of money to get the inside scoop on some of his more notorious innocence project cases.
The more time he spent on Gansett, the more he was considering a sabbatical to actually write that book.
Things were great except for the tension that’d been brewing between Stephanie and Grant, who’d purchased the rights to her and Charlie’s story and was now working on a screenplay.
After a long dry spell with his writing, Grant was excited about telling a story for the first time in ages, and it was nice to see.
He’d had a rough go of it since his first screenplay won the Oscar.
“She’s not coming back,” Dan finally told Grant after watching him stew for days over a disagreement with Steph that had sent her running to the house Charlie was renting on the island since his release. “She’s left you, man.”
“How do you know that?” Grant asked.
“Grant, my friend, let me tell you something about women.”
“I can’t wait to hear this,” Grant muttered.
“They’re sensitive, delicate creatures. They require tremendous amounts of attention.”
“I give her tremendous amounts of attention. Hell, she has practically all my attention.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. You’re spending too much time together.”
Grant rubbed his chest as if experiencing pain at the thought of losing the woman he’d only recently fallen in love with. “You could be right.”
“I usually am.”
Grant groaned, as Dan fully expected him to. They loved to bust each other’s balls and were very good at it.
Dan gestured for Chelsea, the bartender at the Beachcomber, to bring them two more beers.
The pretty blonde bartender set down the bottles with a friendly smile for Dan.
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
“My pleasure. I have to ask you—are you related to the Baldwin brothers?”
“Nope,” Dan said. “I get that a lot, though. People think I look like Billy Baldwin.”
“You really do.” Based on the dreamy look on her face, Chelsea was quite fond of Billy Baldwin.
Dan flashed her the dimpled grin that had made him famous. “Thanks for the beers.”
“You’re going to get sued calling women ‘sweetheart,’” Grant said when Chelsea moved on to other customers.
Dan scoffed. “Puleeze. She loved it. You heard what she said. ‘My pleasure.’ Would she have said that if she were offended? Hell, she thought I was Billy Baldwin! Maybe he can play me in your movie.”
Grant laughed. “You’re more famous than he is, not that she knows that.”
Dan brushed off the reference to his fame, as he always did. “Take it from me. Women like to be charmed. They need to be wooed.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing with Steph. Look at where it’s gotten me.”
Dan laughed at that, earning a glower from his pal. “You haven’t been wooing her. You’ve been driving her crazy with your vision of her story. So take a step back from the screenplay for a while, work out the relationship issues and see where you are.”
“What do you know about relationship issues anyway? Your idea of a relationship is dinner and a hotel room.”
“And that’s bad how, exactly? You don’t see me mooning around for days because my girlfriend told me to screw off and moved out.”
“She hasn’t moved out. All her stuff is still there.”
If the look on Grant’s face was any indication, he hadn’t considered the possibility that she was gone for good. He continued to rub his chest.
“Yet.”
“You’re not helping.”
“Grant.” He waited until Grant spared him a glance to continue. “She’s not coming back. If you want to fix this, you have to go to her.”
“I’m not the one who left. Why do I have to do the chasing?”
Dan released a long sigh. “I have so much to teach you, my friend.” As far as he knew, Stephanie was only the second serious girlfriend Grant had ever had, and he’d made a hot mess of things with Abby by being so focused on his career that he often forgot he had a girlfriend.
“You’re not on the verge of making the same mistake with Steph that you made with Abby, are you? ”
That seemed to knock the wind out of Grant.
“Maybe.”
“What’re you planning to do about it?”
Grant tossed a twenty on the bar and stood.
“Where’re you going?” Dan asked.
“You know where I’m going.”
Dan turned to face him, brushed a hand over Grant’s jacket and adjusted the collar, patting him on the shoulder when he was satisfied. “There. Now you can go.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Call me tomorrow. Let me know how it goes.”
“I will. You’re here for a few more days, right?”
“At least. I’m due in court in LA next Friday, and then my schedule is clear until after the first of the year.”
“It’ll be nice to have you around this winter.”
“It’ll be nice to be here, if you’re not pouting the whole time.” Before Grant could respond to that, Dan gave him a gentle push. “Go get your girl, and don’t screw it up.”
“I’ll try not to.”
The next evening, Dan went with Grant to a party at Luke Harris’s house.
Grant had been floating on air since he and Stephanie got engaged.
Dan couldn’t be happier for them. They were a great couple, and he was so relieved they’d worked out their differences and agreed that working together on the screenplay wasn’t a good idea.
Stephanie would trust Grant to do right by her story and Charlie’s while she pursued her longtime dream of opening a restaurant.
But he wasn’t thinking about Grant and Stephanie at the moment. No, there was someone else who’d grabbed his attention, and he was trying not to stare at her.
“So what’s her story?” Dan asked Grant.
“Whose story?”
“Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm over there.” Dan nodded to the woman named Kara, who was chatting with Big Mac and Linda. He’d heard someone say her name but hadn’t been introduced. He hoped to change that status.
“No idea. Hey, Mac,” Grant said to his brother. “Come here.”
“What’s up?” Mac asked when he joined them.
“Dan wants the skinny on Kara,” Grant said.
“I don’t know her all that well except that she’s from Maine and number six in a family of eleven kids.”
“Eleven?” Grant asked. “Wow. I thought our family was big.”
“Imagine twice as many of us plus one,” Mac said with a grin.
“No, thanks,” Grant said. “I’ve got all I can handle with four siblings.”
“What’s she doing on Gansett?” Dan asked, his gaze riveted to Kara, who was making Big Mac and Linda laugh with an animated story. For some strange reason, he desperately wanted to hear the story.
Mac told them about the launch service Kara had proposed for the Salt Pond and the role McCarthy’s Gansett Island Marina would play in the plan.
“Why didn’t we think of that?” Grant asked.
“Dad and Luke have talked about it over the years, but that’s as far as it got,” Mac said.
“This is even better for us because we get the benefit of increased foot traffic—and possibly new customers for the marina when they see how great our place is—but none of the headaches of running the launch service ourselves. Win-win.”
While Grant talked business with his brother, Dan continued to watch Kara.
She wasn’t even his type. He went for curvy blondes, not buttoned-down wholesome country girls.
She wore Levi’s jeans, for Pete’s sake. Though they did amazing things to her excellent ass, he couldn’t remember the last woman he’d known who wore plain old Levi’s.
It was hard to tell through the bulky sweater if she would qualify as curvy, and from what he could gather from a distance, she didn’t wear a lick of makeup on her fresh-faced complexion. She wouldn’t last a day in LA. For some reason, the thought pleased him.
“How long is she here?” Dan asked Mac.
“She’s heading back to Maine on Monday, but she’ll be back in the spring to get ready for the season.”
Dan felt oddly deflated to know she was leaving. Soon.
“What’re you up to, Torrington?” Grant asked when Mac went to find his wife.
Startled out of his thoughts, Dan said, “Nothing.”
“Why’re you staring at her? You’re going to creep her out.”
“I’m not staring at her.”
“Don’t tell me you’re interested. You’re way too old for her, and she’s hardly your type.”
“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing. And yet…”
“What?”
“There’s something about her. Look at her. She’s pure as the driven snow.”
“Which is why you need to stay far, far away.”
Dan rested a hand over his chest. “I’m wounded.”
“You’ll survive.”
“Introduce me.”
“I don’t know her either,” Grant protested.
“You know the people she’s talking to, don’t you?”
“I’ve met them once or twice.”
“Come on, then.”
“Why do I have the sinking feeling I’m going to regret this?”
“Be a pal, McCarthy. Remember that favor I did for you when your girlfriend’s stepfather was unjustly incarcerated?”
“How long will I have to pay for that?”
“I’ll let you know in a decade or two when the debt is repaid. In the meantime…” He gave Grant a gentle nudge to get him moving.
“Fine. Let’s get this over with.” Grant crossed the kitchen to where his parents were talking to Kara. “Having a good time, everyone?”
“Kara Ballard,” Big Mac said, “this is our idiot second son, Grant, who got engaged and forgot to tell his parents.”