Side Order of Love Page 16

  “Torrie?” Grace looked at her a little uncertainly. “Maybe we should talk about…you know, what happened back in Hartford.”

  Torrie stood abruptly, setting her empty glass down on the coffee table. “No, Grace. It’s been a perfect evening and I don’t want to spoil it.”

  Grace looked confused, a little hurt. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “No, it’s fine.” It hurt to smile. “I had a great time. And you’re right.”

  Grace stood too. “About what?”

  “That the food isn’t the only thing enjoyable about dinner, because I enjoyed everything about our dinner tonight.”

  Grace looked relieved. “I’m glad. I enjoyed it too.”

  Torrie kissed her quickly on the cheek and strode to the door, turning around just before she opened it.“Are you free tomorrow, by the way? Early afternoon?”

  “Um, let me check my busy agenda.” Grace laughed. “No, I’m not busy.”

  “Good. I’ll swing by and pick you up around one.”

  Torrie expertly maneuvered the boat out of the marina. It was a fourteen-foot Zodiac with a thirty-horsepower engine. Grace knew something about boats, her father having been a fisherman off the Cape, and this one skimmed over the tiny waves as if it were pond water.

  She’d had no idea what Torrie was up to when she pulled up to the cottage in her rented convertible sports car. Still didn’t. Torrie looked tanned and fit in her shorts, sandals and T-shirt, her eyes a cool contrast to the tropical air mass that had wended its way up the coast from the Gulf of Mexico. It was sweltering for June.

  “Where are you taking me, anyway?” Grace yelled over the noise of the boat and the wind.

  “You’ll find out soon enough.” Torrie winked reassuringly at her, and Grace was unexpectedly excited by the anticipation. It reminded her of the one time Aly had surprised her by taking her to P-town for an overnighter. Her shock quickly gave way to delight and they’d had a wonderful time, feeling like they’d really gotten away with something delicious and naughty. She decided not to press Torrie and ruin the surprise.

  They arrived at a small island a few minutes later. It was much smaller than Sheridan Island—about the size of a square city block, and it was completely uninhabited. Torrie cut the engine and let the Zodiac drift into a small cove, where the water was not more than a foot deep.

  “Almost nobody comes here,” Torrie said. “It’s so shallow, you need to have a boat like this or a canoe or kayak.”

  “Do you come here a lot?”

  Torrie jumped out and offered her hand to Grace. The water was chilly on their toes and ankles as they pulled the boat ashore.

  “All the time when I’m visiting. Especially when I was a teenager. It was the only place to get away from my brothers and my cousins when I wanted time alone.”

  “It’s wonderful here,” Grace said, admiring the rocky outcrops and the silhouette of Sheridan Island a mile or so in the distance. It was perfectly quiet, save for the quiet lapping of the waves and a pesky gull overhead. “It’s so incredibly peaceful. Is it called anything?”

  “I don’t think it has an official name, but Catie and I call it Smoke Island.”

  “Smoke Island? Why’s that?”

  Torrie grinned as though the answer should be obvious. “’Cause of all the dope we smoked here.”

  “Ah. Very creative of you.”

  Torrie had gone back to the boat and was pulling back a tarp. She handed Grace a smaller cooler while she grabbed a picnic basket and carried it up the rocky slope to the shady sanctuary of a tree. She began spreading out a blanket on a patch of tall grass, tromping it down until it was smooth.

  Grace smiled at the way Torrie was trying to make everything perfect for them. She could see it was not something Torrie did every day—whisking a woman off to a private island for a quiet picnic. It touched her that Torrie would do this for her, take her to this place that was so much a part of Torrie’s history.

  “Come and sit,” Torrie said, retrieving two plastic glasses from the basket, then a bottle of Chablis from the cooler. “I won’t bite, you know.”

  “I don’t know about that. I know how hungry you get.”

  Torrie flashed her a look that was a little too lusty and spoke of the kind of things that could easily ignite Grace’s desires. She sat down, keeping a polite distance, and took the glass of wine Torrie offered her.

  “This is very nice, Torrie. Thank you for bringing me here.”

  “It was the least I could do after that fabulous dinner last night. I’m afraid it’s not anywhere near as fancy as that.”

  “Fancy is overrated, you know.”

  Torrie gave her a grateful smile, and Grace realized how ingenuous Torrie was. She was a woman with simple, honest needs and a sometimes brutally frank demeanor. There were no hidden agendas, no ulterior motives. She said what she wanted and she meant it. She was a beautiful, talented young woman full of life and energy and an ability to love that Grace sensed went much deeper than even Torrie realized. And while she did come on a bit strong at times with the seduction act, she was a joy to be around. The restaurant and entertainment business was insanely competitive and full of snakes. Snakes without consciences. And then there were people like Aly—one of the beautiful, successful people—always striving for more of whatever it was that drove them, whether it was more money, more recognition, more power, more sex.

  What bothered Grace most was the way Aly and those like her went about accomplishing their ambitions, with a take-no-prisoners attitude. Lying, ruthlessly climbing over others, manipulating. Doing whatever it took. Not Torrie though. As a professional athlete, Torrie’s accomplishments spoke for themselves. She earned her score on her own, whether it was a good score or a bad score, and it struck Grace how much Torrie’s profession mirrored her own. She couldn’t fool a discerning palate, no matter how great the dish looked.

  Torrie was cutting hunks of aged cheddar with her jackknife, and she handed one to Grace, who eagerly took it. Its sharpness went wonderfully with the smooth wine, and Grace thought she’d never tasted anything better.

  “You must have gotten inspired by our little stories last night,” Grace said.

  On the blanket between them, Torrie was busy setting out hunks of Italian bread, thin slices of salami and prosciutto and seedless grapes. “Just taking your advice and creating memories with a little food, a little atmosphere. Am I doing okay so far?”

  “You’re doing wonderfully.” Grace reached for a slice of meat and another piece of cheese.

  Torrie looked pleased. “It’s a far cry from the beer and pot Catie and I used to bring over here when we were kids. I like this a lot better.”

  Grace had visions of Torrie as a youngster, unrestrained and full of hell. “I bet you were a real handful for your Aunt Connie.”

  “How’d you guess?” Torrie stretched out on the blanket, propping herself up on her good side. She looked so mouth wateringly strong and muscular, in spite of her injury.

  “Just a stab in the dark.”

  Torrie popped a grape into her mouth. “I’m surprised we didn’t give Aunt Connie a heart attack many times over. Jesus, we were bad sometimes.”

  “Tell me some stories,” Grace urged. She’d had an unremarkable childhood as an only child and always wondered about the kids from big families.

  “I remember one time when Aunt Connie was so mad at us kids. My younger brothers one day set off some firecrackers under Old Man Robertson’s porch, with me and Catie as the lookouts. Trouble was, we didn’t realize a neighbor was watching us from an upstairs window down the road. Aunt Connie made us all apologize to both Old Man Robertson and the neighbor, and then she tried to ground us.”

  “Tried to ground you?”

  Torrie laughed. “We drove her so nuts around the house after a day that she shooed us out again.”

  Grace took another sip of wine. It cooled her, but not enough. Her ribbed tank top was damp and sticking to her from the hea
t. “Was that the worse trouble you got into?”

  “Hell, no. Another time, when Catie and I were teenagers, we went to a dance at the community hall in town one night.” Torrie drank her wine, then poured them both some more. “We got a little friendly with a couple of girls. Started making out with them in Aunt Connie’s old Ford. Problem was, their boyfriends went looking for them and found us.”

  “Oh-oh.”

  “Yeah, it wasn’t pretty. I ended up with a black eye and Catie with a split lip. Aunt Connie was so mad at those boys, we had to physically stop her from taking out her shotgun and going after them.”

  Grace smiled at the vision of Connie as a shotgun-wielding vigilante, out to avenge her beloved nieces.

  “But it was okay. Catie and I gave those boys more than we got.”

  “And your aunt still loves you after all that.”

  “Yeah. She loves us like crazy.” Torrie was silent for a long moment, her forehead a roadmap of concentration. She stared unblinking at the plastic cup in her hands, turning it around and around. She was very still otherwise, but Grace sensed she was churning inside. When she finally looked up, it was with heavy, moist eyes that contained none of her youthful joviality. Her voice was low and grave when she said, quietly, “How come you don’t want me, Grace?”

  Grace was stunned more by the finality of the tone than the words. It nearly broke her heart. “I… Last night you said you didn’t want to—”

  “I do want to now. I want to know what it is about me you find so…” Torrie shrugged lightly. “Unappealing. So horrible.”

  “Oh, Torrie.” The words came out on a long sigh and Grace reached over and stroked Torrie’s hand, needing to reassure her that it wasn’t her fault. “It’s not you.”

  “But it is. It’s me you don’t want, Grace, when I find you the most—”

  “Sshh. Please, don’t.” Grace did not want to hear the words she was not capable of reciprocating.

  “That night in my room,” Torrie went on, “when I said I only wanted to make love to you, not marry you, I thought that’s what you wanted to hear.”

  Grace was sure Torrie had spoken those words many times to other conquests. How could she have known Grace was different? That she needed so much more than just a good fuck? “I’m sorry. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear.” Grace thought of Aly again and all the words Aly had never been able to say, all the dates Aly had broken, Aly’s lapses in commitment.

  “What’s going on, Grace? Are you with someone?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “We have all afternoon.”

  Grace didn’t want to go through the whole sordid story of Aly. She knew Torrie would think she was a fool, or worse. But Torrie was demanding the truth, and Grace had to grudgingly admit she deserved it. Torrie’d been honest with Grace right from the start, which was more than Grace could say about herself. She’d hurt Torrie, and she didn’t want to hurt or deceive her anymore. “There was someone until very recently.”

  “Is that why you’ve been hanging out on Sheridan Island?”

  Grace laughed bitterly. “More like hiding out and licking my wounds.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The simple acknowledgment of her pain made Grace wince. “I don’t know where to begin, Torrie.”

  Torrie sat up and began stroking the hand that just moments before had been caressing hers. “I don’t care where you begin, Grace. I just want to make sense out of what—or who—has hurt you so badly that you can’t even give me a chance.”

  “You’ll think less of me.”

  “Why don’t you let me worry about that?”

  “Torrie—”

  Torrie gave Grace’s hand a squeeze then brought it to her lips and kissed the back of it tenderly once, twice. “It’s all right, Grace. You’re safe with me.”

  Safe. Grace needed to feel safe. To trust. “You’re very sweet, Torrie. And I thank you for that.”

  “Fuck sweet.” Torrie’s eyes had solidified to an icy blue. “First I want to kill the bitch and then I want to make it all better for you.”

  Grace smiled through an unexpected tear. She closed her eyes for a moment and let Torrie brush it from her cheek. It was such a simple but comforting gesture. This protective, nurturing side of Torrie shocked her a little, but it felt right and it was just what she needed. She took a deep breath. “Her name is Aly. She’s a well-known criminal lawyer in Boston. Her husband’s a politician.”

  Torrie’s eyebrows shot up. “Her husband?”

  Grace nodded severely. “We met three years ago at an event I was catering.” It seemed like yesterday in some ways, and in other ways, like years. “She was so beautiful and smart and sexy. Extremely charismatic. And she knew exactly what she wanted.”

  “Which was you, right?”

  “Yes. I was easy prey. I was a walking cliché. Lonely, working myself like a dog. I’d pretty much forgotten the whole concept that anyone might find me attractive.”

  Torrie’s frown was one of disbelief, but she didn’t say anything.

  “So we started an affair. We’d get together every couple of weeks, sometimes more, sometimes less.”

  “For three years?”

  The shame of her past burned hot in Grace’s cheeks. “Yes. For three years. It went by so quickly. I was working so hard, and so was she. And then one day last month, I woke up beside her and I knew I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

  “Were you in love with her?”

  Grace didn’t need long to think of her answer. She’d turned the question over in her mind many times before. “I thought I was at one time. I certainly was with the whole idea of us. We were so good together for a while. We looked good together, we were good in bed together. We understood what it was that we needed from each other. I mistook that for love.”

  “What was it you needed from each other?”

  “Sometimes just coming together after a long, exhausting week at work and not having to talk about anything important. Or when we just needed sex without the complications. You know, not having to answer to one another.”

  Torrie looked boldly at her. “That doesn’t seem like enough for a woman like you.”

  Grace smiled at Torrie’s astuteness. She was no fool. “Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn’t. I pressured her for more occasionally, but it just wasn’t in her. It never was, I think. And I finally just decided that I wanted more. That I deserved more. That’d I’d been giving everything of myself to my work over the last few years and that it was time to put some of that into me. That if I was going to share my life with someone, I was really going to share it.”

  “But not with her.”

  “No. Not with her. I don’t think the idea of a relationship is enough to actually build one on. And certainly not all the lies and sneaking around and all that forbidden stuff that was as exciting as hell, but...”

  “Yes?” Torrie was hanging on every word, trying so hard to understand.

  Grace took a long, cooling drink of wine, already feeling so much better. Talking about Aly with Torrie gave her new permission to cast off the invisible restraints of the last three years. It was much more cleansing than talking to Trish, with whom she felt the need to defend herself and make excuses because they’d known each other so long and had so much respect for one another. “It wasn’t real. And it took me that long to figure it out. I can’t blame her, though. It wasn’t her fault.”

  “That she doesn’t want to be with you?” Torrie looked flabbergasted. Her naiveté was charming. “Whose fault was it then, the mailman’s?”

  “It was just as much my fault as hers,” Grace said. It was the truth, no matter how hard it was to admit it. “I mean you don’t choose to get into a relationship with a married woman expecting a storybook ending. Especially with someone who has so much invested in everything else in her life.”

  “So why did you get involved with a married woman?”

  The question was spoken out of concern, not
criticism, and it gave Grace renewed strength. And hope. It was a question she needed to answer—mostly for herself. “I’ve been asking myself that every night for the last month. Longer, even.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Grace knew now that Torrie wouldn’t hold this new information against her, that she wouldn’t be disgusted by her poor judgment with Aly or her moral compromises, and for that she was absurdly grateful. She leaned over and kissed Torrie’s cheek, touched by the pleasurable twitch Torrie gave in response.

  “What’s that for?” Torrie asked sheepishly.

  “No reason.” Grace had gained a new level of admiration for Torrie. “Anyway, I wish I would have asked myself that question much earlier, but I didn’t.”

  “At least you did eventually.”

  “Yes, I did. I can only think that on some level I purposely chose someone so unavailable. Maybe…I don’t know, so that if it failed, it wouldn’t be my fault. So that I didn’t really have to work at it, to make sure I was being a good partner. I had a built-in excuse if it didn’t work out.”

  “You’re a perfectionist?”

  “Of course. All chefs are to some degree.”

  “But she still hurt you.”

  “I don’t know about that, Torrie. I think I hurt myself more than anything.”

  Torrie looked perplexed. “But you’re, like, a world-class chef. You have staff and you run businesses. I’ve seen you, Grace. You don’t take any crap from anyone. I just can’t picture you being some big-shot, married woman’s booty call.”

  Grace laughed at the words. “It is rather funny, isn’t it?”

  Torrie was deadly serious. “No, it’s not. Not with you.”

  Grace looked at Torrie for a long time, enjoying the aqua tones of the water reflected in her eyes, and tried not to see what was so obvious. Torrie cared for her. A lot. And it couldn’t be more obvious than if she’d spoken the words out loud. “You’re right, it’s not funny. I give out orders all day long. Try to keep everything running smoothly, make sure everything is just right, whether it’s with the restaurant or the TV show. Sometimes…” Grace absently fingered a tall strand of grass. “Sometimes it’s just nice to not have to be the one in charge. To not have to plan everything to perfection, to think about every single thing I’m doing and worry about everything I’m not doing, and about everything in between. I guess there were times I wanted to just be. And with Aly, I thought I could do that, because there were no responsibilities or expectations. We didn’t owe each other anything. But it was just so one-dimensional, Torrie. She was an escape, when what I really wanted was someone to go home to.”