McCade's Wish (The McCade Family Series Book 2) (21 page)

She hummed to herself as she hurried through the cottage. Her reaction to Grady had surprised her. When his hand had engulfed hers, current had rippled through her, leaving tantalizing warmth in its wake. Prone to being jaded and over-cautious when it came to the opposite sex, her acceptance of his breakfast offer had been uncharacteristic. The light blush that had colored his cheeks and the way he’d stroked the cat with the top of his foot had just been so sweet. His wide grin was infectious and there was something in his easy-going manner that chased all the worries aside. 

Pulling out her bag, she riffled through, checking off sunblock, another bikini, iPod, book, wrap, and towel. Pulling on cut-offs, she rolled a pair of jeans, under things, and a t-shirt and shoved them in the bottom of the bag. It couldn’t hurt to be prepared. With that thought in mind, she stepped into the attached bath to grab her toiletry bag. She felt warmth creeping across her cheeks, but shrugged it off. She’d come to Tennessee to get away and relax. What better way to blow off a little steam? She was a twenty-eight-year-old woman, not a blushing virgin. She snorted. That was probably a good thing. Loose-fitting or not, Grady’s wet swim trunks had left very little to the imagination, and that was a lot of man.

Chiding herself, Eden shouldered her bag and wandered through the rustic confines of her aunt’s cottage. The space was clean, but cluttered with easels, palettes, and canvases boasting paintings in various stages of completion. She ran her fingers over one on her way to the back door, tracing the tumultuous, frothy waves of the ocean breaking against the shore. It was beautiful.

A soft summer breeze stirred outside, rustling the trees as she pushed open the rickety screen door. The hinges creaked, and in places the screen was torn. She found her Aunt Starr seated on a stool near the back corner of the patio. Her graying honeyed hair was pulled up in a sloppy upsweep. Several loose strands lifted in the breeze and danced around the paintbrush securing the twist. Her sheer paisley shirt billowed on her rail-thin frame. Eden studied her for a moment, watching as she lifted a coffee mug with one hand and strove to recapture the dense tree line with her other. She looked so at peace, both with the moment and who she was. 

“Did you have a nice swim?” she asked, without looking back.

Smiling, Eden approached and peered over her shoulder. A quiet murmur of appreciation left her upon seeing the vivid painting up close. How could her family ever shun someone who had such a raw, natural talent? The canvas was a stunning reflection of the yard, every detail coming to life in colors that took her breath away.

“I did. You didn’t tell me they sold the cottage,” she said quietly.

Starr shrugged. “I don’t keep up much with the people around here.”

Eden nodded. Even here, her aunt was a lone wolf, an outsider who preferred her art over the company of people. Her golden brows knitted as she wondered if that was true. Did she really prefer the solitude, or was that just what life had pushed on her? For some reason, she found the thought troubling. She bit her lip and tamped the unwelcome questions down. She didn’t want to think about that on a day like this.

“I’m heading out to the lake for a while. I just thought I’d let you know so you don’t worry. I don’t know what time I’ll be back,” she said, planting an affectionate kiss on her aunt’s tanned cheek.

“He must be something special to put such a smile in your voice. Be careful, but enjoy yourself, honey.”

The words made Eden hesitate at the gate. She looked back, but her aunt didn’t turn. She was so perceptive. Smiling, Eden just nodded and slipped through the rough hewn gate to the front yard.

Lost in thought, he missed the road. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Grady brought the big diesel to a halt and slammed it into reverse. He rolled his eyes as he took the turn. Eden had his brain in a complete fog. It probably didn’t help that his blood seemed determined to head south of his belt buckle at the mere thought of her. He shook his head. He was still trying to figure out what a woman that looked like that was doing giving him the time of day. He’d gone out with some good looking girls in college and in his time in the NFL, but none of them came close to Eden.

He blew out a breath and sent up a little prayer as he slowed to find her aunt’s drive. She was waiting on the porch steps. Daisy Dukes, simple sandals, and a pair of Ray-Ban aviators had joined the turquoise bikini. She stood up, brushing off her ass, and snatched up a battered leather backpack. Caught gawking, he had to scramble to beat her around the front of the truck. She looked startled when he reached around her to open the door, but then her face lit up.

“Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome,” he said, boosting her easily into the seat before jogging back to the driver’s side.

“Are you planning on getting me drunk?” she asked, pointedly peering into the box from the liquor store.

He laughed. “You didn’t really say what flavor of vodka you liked so I just bought a handful of the most popular ones and a few mixers that the girl at the counter suggested. I hope one of those will work.”

“Several of them actually,” Eden said with a smile and a little shake of her head. “You’re such a sweetheart.”

He grinned; shrugging off the compliment and the blush he knew came with it. Gunning the truck up his long drive, he went over a mental list of the things he needed to pack for the afternoon. He wanted everything to be as perfect as possible. He hadn’t wanted to impress a girl this bad since Junior High. He snorted, remembering the little red-headed girl that he’d mooned over until his parents had started calling him Charlie Brown.

He frowned as his cell phone rang. Snatching it off the dash, he glanced at the display and silenced it.

“Sorry about that,” he muttered, pulling the truck into the grass and up in the shade near the cottage.

“Don’t be. I understand. I had to shut mine off.”

“Good idea,” he agreed, holding down the power button. The grateful smile she gave him made him want to pitch the damn thing in the lake. Shoving it in his pocket instead, he gathered up the supplies and gave her a little wink. “Let’s load it up and get out there.”

The wind whipped her hair, and the spray coming up over the bow felt fantastic as the sun climbed overhead. Grady handled the powerful boat with an easy confidence that was attractive. For some reason her gaze kept going back to his big hands on the steering wheel. His long, blunt fingers were sexy. Scars marked his knuckles, stealing away any chance of mistaking him for a soft professional. She reached over and traced a finger over one of the more prominent wounds.

“What do you do?”she shouted over the engine and wind.

He eased off the throttle, letting the bow drop back down in the water and turning to her with a grin. “I’m retired.”

She blinked at him and then laughed. He couldn’t be more than a couple of years older than she was. On the other hand, at twenty-eight she was practically over the hill in the modeling world. As handsome as she found him, he hadn’t picked up those scars on a photo shoot.

“What did you do to earn these?” she asked, tapping his marked knuckles.

“Some of those are football injuries, some from construction or working on the farm. I played football in college and then eight years professionally. I busted my leg up pretty good and decided I’d better retire while I could still walk and enjoy it,” he said, rubbing a large scar that ripped across his thick thigh.

Eden winced, hiding behind the veil of her hair. “I’m sorry. I like sports, but I don’t get much of a chance to follow them.”

“No worries. I played left tackle. Offensive linemen aren’t exactly rock stars,” he said with a chuckle. “If I made it through a whole game without the public address announcer saying my name or number, that was considered a good thing. It meant I hadn’t fucked up, or at least that I hadn’t got caught.”

Eden laughed with him. He was so humble. It was charming and refreshing after dealing with the arrogance that permeated modeling and acting.

“What about you?” he asked, reaching over to get a beer from the cooler.

He cocked a questioning eyebrow at her cup before closing the lid at her little head shake. She turned the tumbler in her hands, tracing a nail through the beads of condensation. Biting her lip she silently berated herself. She’d been right. He didn’t know who she was. It had been nice. Now she’d opened herself up to this with her blatant curiosity about his hands.

“Modeling mostly,” she murmured, not meeting his gaze.

“I kinda figured. You’re a real knockout.”

“Thank you,” she said with a shy smile. Why did it seem a compliment coming from his lips when she heard the empty praises all the time?

“Just the truth, darlin’,” he said, turning on some music and stretching his long legs out. “Do you enjoy it?”

Her head jerked up and she looked at him in surprise. No one had ever asked her that question. People’s response was generally envious and star struck or dismissive and condescending of her career choice. Even her father snorted when she mistakenly referred to it as a career in front of him.

“Do you miss football?” she asked, steering the topic back to him.

He looked at her for a moment, but then nodded. “I miss the camaraderie of the game. I miss the adrenalin and the competition. In Texas you can start playing in a league at the age of five. So it has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. Football and 4-H,” he said with a chuckle.

“4-H?” she asked uncertain of the acronym.

“You’ve never heard of 4-H?” he asked. At the shake of her head he laughed. “Damn. You are a city girl!”

Her mouth dropped open at the slam, and then she started to laugh. So much for him treating her differently if he knew she was a model. She loved his honesty.

“Don’t just sit there and laugh at me, country boy. Educate me.”

“In a nutshell, 4-H is a youth organization that develops life and leadership skills. A lot of farm kids are involved in it. It covers everything from the arts to raising and showing vegetables and livestock,” he explained, his blue eyes still sparkling with amusement. “I can’t believe you’ve never been to a 4-H fair and walked through the exhibition and livestock barns. If nothing else, you have to go for the carny games, deathtrap rides, and the fair food.”  

Eden frowned, trying to picture what he was talking about. She shook her head a little wistfully. They were from two different worlds. “Sometimes I think I grew up in a bubble,” she said with a forced laugh.

“New York City is a lot different than growing up in the rural south. I can’t say as I blame your parents for being protective,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze. “Your daddy must have had to whittle a big stick as beautiful as you are. Do you have sisters?”

“I have an older brother.”

“Are you close?”

“As different as night and day,” Eden admitted with a shake of her head. “He followed in my father’s footsteps, going to Harvard and joining the family business. What about you?”

“I have four sisters. I’m the oldest.”

Eden’s eyebrows shot up. “Four?”

“Four beautiful, blonde, headstrong O’Grady girls,” Grady confirmed with a laugh. “The one good thing was that meant in a four bedroom house, I was the only one that got a bedroom to myself. Of course, it also meant getting in the bathroom was hell.”

“Please tell me that there was more than one bathroom,” Eden pleaded in amused sympathy.

“I was a freshman in high school when my daddy and I added a second bathroom off the utility room. It was supposed to be ours, but we found ourselves standing in line outside that door too,” Grady said, shaking his head.

Eden lost her battle. The long suffering look on the big man’s face was too much. She laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks and her ribs ached. Grady rescued her cup as it tilted haphazardly. He winked at her as he turned to the cooler to refill it.

“How many bathrooms are in the plans for your new house?” she asked, still giggling.

Grady laughed. “There are five bedrooms and six bathrooms in the blue prints for the new house. Do you think I need to revise that?”

“That should be sufficient unless you decide to outdo your father.”

“I guess that would partially be up to the woman that marries me. She is the one that has to do the hard work,” he said with a little shrug.

“But you would be up for five kids?” Eden asked, cocking her head to the side in question.

“With the right woman, I’d be up for anything she wanted.”

“Double
entendre
intended?”

“Absolutely, darlin’.”

His words and the deep thrum of his voice made heat coil low in her belly. Damn, but he was hot. He knew just what to say, and Lord did he know how to say it. She blushed and turned away from his intense stare.  

“How hard is this thing to drive?” she asked

“Not difficult. It just takes a bit of finesse, knowledge of the lay of the land, and respect for the power at hand.”

“Are we still talking about the boat?” she whispered hoarsely.

“Of course we are. What else would we be talking about?” Grady asked with a chuckle. He patted his lap. “Hop on over here and take it for a spin.” 

Biting her lip, she gave him a sidelong glance. He regarded her calmly, blue eyes sparkling. A tawny eyebrow raised in challenge. She stood and slipped into his lap, her hands gripping the steering wheel. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. His hand covered her right and moved it to the throttle. The way his arms bracketed her was comforting and sexy and…distracting. She shifted nervously.

“Relax,” he murmured against her ear. “Just push up on the throttle smoothly. I’m right here.”

She took a deep breath, trying to remember why she’d thought this was a good idea. The man would kill her if she damaged his boat.

“You aren’t going to hurt a thing. Just keep it away from the pier and the shore,” he whispered, as if reading her mind. His hand tightened over hers on the throttle and inched it up. The engine hummed, the bow of boat lifting out of the lake as they picked up speed. She turned the wheel and they lurched hard to the side. Her heart hammered. He corrected it smoothly, his strong arms holding her in place as he showed her how to ease into the turn.