“Like all the rest of us, I suppose,” he murmured. “I’ll go kick everyone else out and bring up dinner.”
She reached over and rested a hand against his cheek. “Thanks, Kevin.”
Given his reluctance to deny her anything, it was probably a very good thing that this was all she’d asked for. Besides, an evening alone with Gracie in a room with an incredible view definitely wouldn’t be all bad.
He walked back across the hall, where Helen, Delia, and Abby were still spying on Bobby Ray. “Okay, everybody out,” he ordered.
“Not yet,” Helen insisted, waving him off. “I think he’s about to kiss her.”
Abby elbowed her aunt aside. “Let me see.”
Kevin snatched his niece up and tossed her over his shoulder. “That’s enough.” He glowered at the two women. “You, too. Let’s go.”
“What makes you think you get to boss us around?” Delia demanded.
“History,” Kevin retorted. “Now, move it. I’m in a hurry.”
“Why?” Helen asked, studying him curiously. “Does this have something to do with that little tête-à-tête you just had with Gracie?”
“You bet.”
Delia’s eyes brightened. “Oh, well, then, in that case we’ll leave right away. Never let it be said that I stood in the way of romance. Helen, can you give me a ride home?”
“Certainly.”
“Abby, you can come with us,” Delia said. “Spend the night, too.”
“Can I really?”
“Much to my surprise, something tells me your mother and father won’t mind a bit,” Delia said with a touch of irony. “I doubt they’ll even notice we’re gone.”
“They’re going, too,” Kevin said determinedly.
Ten minutes later, he’d completed the first stage of evacuating the premises. He stuck his head out the back door. “Bobby Ray, I’m locking up. Is there anything you need from inside?”
“Nothing,” Bobby Ray said, barely sparing him a glance.
Marianne regarded Kevin with a bemused expression. “What about Abby?”
“She’s gone home with Delia. She’s going to spend the night, if you don’t mind.”
Still looking dazed, Marianne shook her head. “No, that’s fine.”
“Can we go to dinner then?” Bobby Ray asked her, brushing back a stray curl and tucking it gently behind her ear.
To his amazement, Kevin saw her nod, then he closed the door and locked it. Bobby Ray could handle his own romance. Kevin had plans of his own. Still, it astonished him that Gracie’s instincts about those two had apparently been right. The woman had good instincts. Amazing instincts, in fact. She’d managed to set up a cozy, intimate dinner for the two of them without him even realizing what she was up to, hadn’t she?
He snagged the leftover sandwiches from the refrigerator along with the bottle of wine and a couple of glasses. At the last minute he tucked the portable radio under his arm, then climbed the stairs to the third floor.
He found Gracie exactly where he’d left her. She’d opened the front window and a soft, salt-air breeze was stirring, scented with roses. There was a nostalgic expression on her face he found troubling.
Lowering himself to sit beside her, he put the food and wine aside. “Everything okay?”
“Sure.”
He debated with himself, then finally broached the subject that had been nagging at him lately. “You’re not getting homesick for Cannes, are you?”
She seemed surprised by the question. “Cannes wasn’t my home. It was where I worked.”
“You lived there, didn’t you?” he pointed out dryly.
“That’s not the same as it being home.” She looked up at him, her expression filled with sadness. “That’s what I realized when I decided to leave. I didn’t have a home to go to.”
“So you ended up here?”
“Funny, isn’t it? I’d only been here once before in my life for less than week and yet I was drawn back. I wonder why that was?”
“Instinct?” he suggested. “Maybe even all those years ago it felt like what home should feel like.”
“Maybe.”
“Or fate,” he suggested.
Her gaze flew to his, lingered, while the atmosphere around them seemed charged with electricity. “Could be,” she agreed quietly.
“Does it feel like home now?” he asked, his heart in his throat as he waited for her answer. Despite the evidence of her enthusiasm for this restoration, what if it was no more than a passing fancy. What if she’d concluded that this was all wrong for her, after all? What if she decided that she needed to travel the globe to be happy? Was there anything he could say that would make her stay? Or would he have to let her go?
Instead of answering him, she slipped into his lap and rested her head on his shoulder. “Now it does,” she told him. “Now it feels like home.’
Kevin agreed. This house, far more than Greystone, had always felt like home. Once he had attributed that to Aunt Delia’s warmth, but he felt it now, too. Perhaps it was the house itself that drew him with its history and family secrets. There were some, he knew. Secrets that people once spoke of in whispers. It was the hidden truths—not Great-great Aunt Anne—that haunted the place.
And yet something told him if he ever discovered what those secrets were, he wouldn’t find them half as troubling as the silence.
22
“They were over there, dancing until two in the morning,” Bessie Johnson told Delia. “You should have seen them. First they had something fast on the radio and they were laughing like a couple of fools. I’m telling you, Delia, Fred Astaire never did moves like those two did. Then the music turned all soft and dreamy. It was all I could do not to cry, they looked so much in love.”
“Good,” Delia said with satisfaction. “Things are coming along nicely. Are they still over there?”
“Kevin’s car is still out in front of the house, so I imagine they are.”
Delia chuckled. “Perfect. Not that I much approve of such shenanigans outside of marriage,” she said, perfectly aware of the irony, “but something has to jump start those two if we’re going to manage a fall wedding.”
“Maybe you’ll just have to settle for a Christmas wedding,”
