Falling for Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

never get tired of the view. Even covered in mud with wet hair clinging to his scalp, he still maintained that aura of elegance and class that had drawn her in from their first meeting. Too bad he was such a pain in the ass—and madly in love with someone else.
    If she were being honest with herself, she’d admit to being seduced long ago by his amazing words in
Song of Solomon,
the movie he’d written. She’d watched him accept the Academy Award for best original screenplay and had been dazzled by his handsome face, self-deprecating wit and touching acceptance speech in which he gave his parents credit for encouraging him to follow his dreams.
    Stephanie vividly remembered thinking at the time how lucky he was to have the kind of parents who stood behind their children the way his clearly had. Imagine her surprise when those same parents showed up one day last winter at the Providence restaurant where she worked and struck up a conversation that led to the job offer to run the restaurant at McCarthy’s Gansett Island Marina for the following summer.
    It had been a gamble, of course, to leave the year-round job in the city for five months on Gansett, but the change of scenery had done her good, and the money was fantastic. She’d made as much in a summer on Gansett as she did in a year in Providence—and she’d been able to live for free at the marina. However, the uncertainty of what awaited her when she went home after the Columbus Day holiday weekend weighed on her, but she’d figure something out. She always did.
    Grant seemed to falter as they reached the clinic parking lot. Stephanie knew the last thing in the world he wanted was to rely on his ex-girlfriend’s new fiancé to stitch him up, but since Dr. Cal was the only game in town—other than Doc Potter, the vet—Grant had little choice.
    “Just go in, get the stitches and keep your mouth shut,” Stephanie said.
    “What else would I do?”
    She sent him a withering look. “Remember when I told you not to get into it with Abby when your father was in the hospital? Did you listen to me then?
No
. You had to get all hot and bothered with her and show her how insanely jealous you are that she’s with someone else now.”
    That made him mad, as she’d known it would. She couldn’t say, exactly, why pushing his buttons was so much fun. It just was.
    “What the hell would you have me do? Let the love of my life walk away without a fight?”
    Stephanie swallowed her own burst of unreasonable jealousy and fought to keep her voice calm and rational. One of them had to be. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe you haven’t met the love of your life yet?”
    That stopped him in his tracks, and he spun around to face her. As luck would have it, anger only made him more attractive. Life wasn’t fair. “You have a lot of nerve saying that. You don’t even know me.”
    He was absolutely right, of course. She told herself to shut up and mind her own business. But before her mouth could get the message from her brain, she was already talking again. “You spent ten years with her, lived with her for what? Five years and never married her. What does that tell you?”
    “I don’t need you to tell me I’m an idiot. I already know that.”
    The wind whipped around them, but she couldn’t bring herself to walk away from him. “I never said you were an idiot.”
    “Whatever. How do you even know all that?”
    Cornered, Stephanie looked down at the wet blacktop. “I heard your sister and Maddie talking about it.”
    “Great, so they think I’m an idiot, too, I suppose.”
    “The word ‘idiot’ was never used.”
    “I forgot how much I hate it here,” he muttered. “Everyone up in my grill, minding
my
business for me.”
    “Oh yeah, poor you with the lovely parents and the gorgeous home and the successful businesses, not to mention the brothers and sister and friends who’d do anything for you. It must really suck to be you.” As soon as the words