Great-Aunt Sophia's Lessons for Bombshells (36 page)

She took a deep breath of pine- and sea-scented air, wishing it could clear her soul of confusion as easily as it cleared her lungs.

Someone rapped softly at her door.

Grace cursed under her breath. “Leave me in peace, will you?” she muttered to the night.

The rapping came again. “Grace? It’s me,” Declan’s muffled voice said. “I know you’re in there.”

Grace closed her eyes for a long moment. Before she could see clearly enough to give Andrew an answer, she had to end her affair with Declan. Her heart didn’t want it, but the head did: he was bad for her. Continuing with him, when he so clearly didn’t love her, was killing her. Love wasn’t supposed to hurt like this.

A moment of clarity hit her, striking like sunlight through her clouds of confusion. It wasn’t really Declan she had to break up with, it was her own childish fantasies that she had to let go of. It was time to grow up and be an adult. She could no longer live with the Grace who pretended to be Declan’s sexual toy. She had to break up with
herself
.

If she was strong enough.

She strode across the room.

On the other
side of the door, Declan waited impatiently for Grace to open it. He had a terrible sense that this day, which had started so well, with so much promise of excitement, had tumbled toward irretrievable disaster. Everything had gone wrong, and in the gap between morning and now, when he had been away from Grace, people had stepped into her life and, he feared, ushered her back into the cage of who she used to be.

But maybe they hadn’t succeeded. Maybe she was still free.

Maybe she was still . . . his.

If she ever had been. His stomach turned with fear.

The door opened a crack, and Grace peered out. “Declan, I—”

He pushed through the door and shut it firmly behind him, then stalked into the room. “Sophia told me about the ‘intervention.’” He laughed. “Good God, I’d have loved to have seen that!”

Grace crossed her arms over her chest, holding herself.

Declan caught the movement, then looked at her strained face. His eyes narrowed even as his gut twisted. “They didn’t get to you, did they?”

“I’m sorry I missed you going by in the race,” she said flatly. “I tried to get away in time to wave to you, but I was too late.”

“No one told you? I wasn’t even in the race. The damn car wouldn’t start! If I didn’t know he had an alibi, I’d suspect Andrew of sabotage.”

“But you spent all that time making sure it ran,” she said, puzzled, her arms dropping to her side.

“I know. Suspicious, isn’t it?”

“So it never
could
have been you,” Grace said softly, wondering.

“Excuse me?”

She shook her head. “You heard about the crash? It was a blue MG just like yours.”

He was glad of the distraction, glad to avoid a deeper subject. “Yeah, it looked almost the same to a layperson, but it was a completely different car.” Then a light dawned in his head. She’d been
worried
about him! A shot of hope eased the clenching in his gut. “You thought for a minute that I had crashed?” He laughed. He came forward and wrapped her in his arms and stroked her hair. “Were you worried about me?”

“No,” she said into his chest, her body stiff and unyielding.

Obviously she
had
been worried.

Feeling reassured, he kissed her cheek and released her, then dropped onto her bed and leaned back on his elbows. He grinned at her. “Hey, pretty lady, wanna take a ride?” he joked.

Grace’s lips tightened.

Uh-oh
.

“Declan,” she said, “I don’t want to see you anymore.”

His grin faltered, a sense of unreality coming over him.

Her arms crossed over her chest again, and she gripped her
elbows so hard her fingers dug into her flesh. “We’ve had fun, but it’s time to move on.”

He sat up, flushes of heat and cold going through his body. For a moment the room spun. Then the fear and disbelief were burned away by a blind, unreasoning anger. “Time for you to move on to Andrew now—that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“Andrew’s got nothing to do with it.”

Declan sprang to his feet. “Like hell he doesn’t!”

Grace shook her head. “Ending this has been inevitable. You know it, and I know it. People like you and I were never meant to be together; we’re too different.”

“Says who? That group of ninnies who came after you today?”

“One of those
ninnies
is my mother!”

“They want you to be with Andrew, don’t they? They probably sat around discussing what a nice young man he is, so perfect for you, so intelligent, a
doctor
.”

“They didn’t say a word about him. It was all about how I’ve changed.”

Declan approached her, and lowered his voice. “Yes, you’ve changed. You’ve freed yourself from that goddamn ivory tower you’d locked yourself away in. You would have withered away into a sexless old hag if not for me.”

Grace snorted. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“What don’t I know?”

Her gaze slipped away from his. “Never mind. None of this matters. Maybe I
have
changed, but I don’t think it’s for the better. Being with you hasn’t made me a better person, Declan. I’m not happier or kinder. I haven’t pursued my goals. Being in lo—Being
with
someone should make you want to be a better version of yourself, don’t you think? It should make your heart feel bigger, and make you feel that anything is possible. But with you . . .”

His throat was dry and tight. She wasn’t joking around. This wasn’t just sex she was talking about. She was talking about something deeper, and she was saying that she found him lacking. “With me, what?” he asked hoarsely.

“Playing these sex games with you, I’m less than myself and less than I could be. I’m less than I
want
to be. It was fun, it was an experience, I learned some things, but it isn’t enough anymore. I need more. I need something . . . more meaningful.” Her big sea green eyes gazed at him, a question in their depths.

Was she asking if he understood?

Fuck, yes, he understood. The sex had been great, but hey, buddy, time’s up, out you go. You were only good for one thing to me.

She’d never liked him or respected him. So what had he expected? That screwing her six ways from Sunday would change her mind, and make her think him worthy?

Yeah. Maybe he
had
thought so.

He nodded to her, his jaw clenched. He would not humiliate himself in front of her by betraying how badly he hurt. He accepted his fate even as he felt the searing pain of something breaking loose inside him, as if a dagger had been dragged through his guts. “Okay. Yeah. It’s been great, but summer’s almost over. It’s time to go back to the real world, isn’t it?”

The question in her eyes died. She blinked, then looked down. “Yes. Thank you for being so reasonable about this.”

Reasonable?
He wanted to throw her on the bed and make love to her until she changed her mind. He wanted to shake her and tell her not to be a fool. He wanted . . .

He wanted
her
.

But she didn’t want him. Raging against that one incontrovertible truth would gain him nothing and only hurt her. He went to her and gently lifted her chin with his fingertips. “Be happy, Grace,”
he said, using every ounce of his control to make it sound like a parting between friends, nothing more.

Tears shimmered in her eyes, and her lips trembled. “Andrew asked me to marry him,” she whispered.

The blood left his head, and for a crazy moment he thought he would faint. He held himself rigid and took a deep breath. He’d kill the bastard. Kill him! But Grace was still gazing up at him, taking in every nuance of his expression. He swallowed hard. “The world is yours for the taking, Grace. Don’t exchange one ivory tower for another. You deserve more than that.”

A small frown pinched her brow, but before she could say anything more, he dipped his head and gently kissed her, feeling the petal softness of her lips for the last time. “It’ll be okay,” he whispered against her mouth, and only realized as he turned away that it was himself he was trying to reassure.

As he opened the door, the sound of glass smashing came from the marble staircase down the hall, then a shriek of pain and surprise, cut off short.

Declan bolted down the hall, his heart in his throat, Grace on his heels. When he reached the head of the stairs he saw Sophia sprawled halfway down the staircase, a shattered decanter of Scotch sending its alcoholic fumes through the foyer.

“Sophia!” Grace shrieked, and rushed toward her.

Declan grabbed her arm and shoved her back toward her room. “Call nine-one-one! Call nine-one-one!” She raced away, her face white.

Declan ran down the stairs to the woman who had been like a mother to him for his entire adult life. There was blood on her forehead, seeping into her white hair, and her limbs were canted at an unnatural angle.

He crouched down beside her, his world breaking apart. “Oh God, Sophia. What have you done?”

CHAPTER

25

F
ive of them sat tense and silent in the small waiting area down the hall from Sophia’s hospital room: Grace, Alyson, Darlene, Declan, and Andrew. Andrew had tried several times to get information for them on her condition but had been shut down by claims of confidentiality, the hospital staff inexplicably uncommunicative with Sophia’s primary care physician. They’d taken information from him but offered none in return, leaving him to hunker, ignorant and embarrassed, with the nonmedical peons.

“I still can’t believe it,” Alyson said quietly to Grace. “My grandmother. Your great-grandmother. It explains so much, but I still can’t believe it.”

“I know,” Grace agreed. “Does it make you think any differently about yourself? About who you think you are?”

Alyson slowly shook her head. “I couldn’t say. It makes me understand my mother a little better, though, and some of her attitudes. She must have always known. And I suppose I understand Sophia a little better now, too. I used to hate her, but now I feel more sorry for her than anything else. What a lonely life of regret she must have led.”

Grace felt a twinge of doubt on that, but kept quiet.

A nurse appeared. “Grace?” she asked the group.

“That’s me,” Grace said.

“Sophia would like to see you.”

“She’s awake?”

The nurse started to answer, then stopped. “Room 322,” she said, and left.

Grace exchanged a puzzled look with the others and got up. Behind her, Darlene and Alyson decided to go in search of coffee.

She walked down the carpeted hall with its wide oak chair rail, beige pink paint, and medical supply carts. The muffled sounds of televisions came through partially opened doors, with patients, white sheets, and railed beds half visible inside.

The door to room 322 was ajar, leading into a small foyer formed by a pastel curtain mounted to a track in the ceiling. Grace came around its edge prepared to see her aunt—her great-grandmother—hooked up to tubes and machines, with a monitor softly beeping along with her heartbeat.

Instead, she found Sophia with the head of her bed raised, a small bandage on her brow, and Ernesto sitting beside the bed, holding her hand. No tubes. No monitors. Just a remote control on the rolling bedside table, and a pitcher of water.

Sophia looked the worse for wear, however. Her skin was tinged with gray, her lips bloodless, and her eyes and cheeks seemed to have sunk into purple shadows. She looked a half hour from death.

Seeing Grace, Ernesto murmured something to Sophia in Spanish and kissed her hand, then left them alone.

“Grace, darling,” Sophia said weakly, and raised her hand toward her.

Grace rushed forward to take it, sitting where Ernesto had been. “Sophia! Are you okay? What did the doctors say? No one will tell us anything!”

“They don’t know yet what happened, what’s wrong,” Sophia
whispered, and took a deep breath, as if exhausted by the effort. “It could have been a stroke, a heart attack, a brain tumor . . .”