Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 71911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
I heard the hair dryer and decided to step out now rather than talking to her again. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to leave if I had to look at her one more time. I’d want to ask her things. Find out about her younger brother. Where the rest of her family was. Where she had grown up. If yellow was her favorite color—it was in almost everything she surrounded herself with.
I placed a fork and napkin beside her plate, walked over to the sofa, and grabbed my duffel bag. Then, I headed for the door. Best that I go and stop this now. It wasn’t leading anywhere. The less I knew about Brielle McGinnis, the better.
After a shower and breakfast, I took a COVID test to make sure I was in the clear before I headed for Rosemary Beach. I was supposed to have dinner with Rush and his family last night, but I’d called and explained my absence. Today, I would go spend time with my grandkids at their pool. Getting out of the apartment building had seemed like a top priority. Not that Brielle would come up to the penthouse and ask me why I’d disappeared, but what if she did? I wasn’t sure I could make the right decisions. Not yet anyway.
Rosemary Beach was the same. It never seemed to change. I drove down Highway 30A until I came to the driveway leading up to Rush and Blaire’s home.
When I had bought this place for Rush when he was a kid so he’d have a decent place to live, I’d not imagined him growing up and raising a family in it. He turned out so much better than I could have hoped for. There was a time when I saw his life going in a very different direction. I worried about him. I thought my lifestyle and the way he’d been raised in it had ruined him for a normal life.
Blaire had walked into his world and changed all of that. My boy fell in love. Sure, they had faced some hard times, obstacles that seemed too big to overcome, but in the end, love had won.
Rush had the life I would never have. A wife who loved him, living in a house with his kids, and raising them together. Here in Rosemary Beach, they had a community of friends that were like family.
I parked my Harley just behind Blaire’s Tesla and pulled off my helmet just as the front door opened, and Nate, my grandson, came barreling out of it, headed straight for me. The kid was his dad’s replica. He even had his eyes.
“DEAN!” Nate called out as he ran my way. “Give me a ride!”
I chuckled as he came to a sliding halt in front of me.
“The girls call me G-man, you know. I should get something more than Dean if your other grandfather gets called Grandpop.”
“But you’re Dean,” he said with a wiggle of his eyebrows, “the Finlay.”
I laughed and grabbed him, pulling him in for a hug. “Well, Dean the Finlay is terrified of your mama, and there is no way I am giving you a ride on my bike. You know she doesn’t want you on it.”
Nate sighed loudly. “Dammit.”
“Language, boy. You want your mama skinning us both?”
Nate shot an amused grin up at me. “Mama don’t skin no one.”
“You upset her, and your daddy will though.”
Nate shrugged. “Not really. He acts tough, but he’s not really scary.”
I squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t let him know that.”
Nate nodded. “Yeah, I won’t.”
The door opened again, and three-year-old Phoenix stepped out in a pink polka dot swimsuit that had sparkles on it, her red hair wild with curls.
She waved at me. “G-man!” she called out to me.
“There’s one of my favorite princesses!” I said as I made my way to the front door.
“Ophelia is at Lila Kate’s. They had a sleepover,” Nate said, sounding disgusted with the idea of it.
Ophelia was the middle child and often the most difficult. But I loved her spunk and sass. She was never settled and always full of energy.
“Come swim with me!” Phoenix said as I reached her.
I bent down and picked her up to spin her around. She squealed with delight.
“Come on in, Dean!” Blaire called from inside the house. “I’ve got my hands covered in cookie dough.”
I followed Nate into the house with Phoenix still clinging to my neck. This place had once seemed so cold when Rush was a kid. I’d hated the way his mother made it a showplace rather than a home. Blaire was his mother’s opposite. The place was a home now with the smell of baking cookies, toys on the living room floor, music playing through the house, wet footprints on the marble floor, and laughter. Always laughter.
When life seemed hard or I felt as if it was slipping from me, I came here to visit. This place and the people in it made every day I had lived worth it. Today, it would get my mind off a certain brunette who was entirely too young. I would be reminded of just who I was. A grandfather, a dad, someone for my family to love and respect. I had to keep that as my focus.