He was still busy at the tiller when the spinnaker started to dip into the ocean, tilting and dragging the boat hard. Over the crashing waves and howling wind, she could just barely hear him yell, “We need to release the sheet to dump the water out of the sail, then lower the halyard on my cue!”

Dylan had talked about a sailor’s instinct several times during their interviews, and now Grace knew exactly what it felt like to have instinct take over. She’d only read about this situation before and barely had enough experience to know how to sail on easy waters, but somehow her hands knew exactly how to release the spinnaker.

The moment the water was out and the sail had gone limp, Dylan was up gathering it and pulling the wet sail back into the boat. He called for her to release the halyard, and he pulled the spinnaker down from the mast.

For the next fifteen minutes, they sailed fast back toward the harbor, trying to outrun the dangerous storm that had come from absolutely nowhere. In just the same way, Grace thought, that Dylan had come into her and Mason’s lives from out of the blue—dangerously sexy and addictive...and exactly what they’d needed to shake them out of their safe little rut, too.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“Jesus, Grace.” They were still some way out of the harbor when the winds died down as suddenly as they’d come up. Floating easily again now, Dylan finally moved away from the tiller and put his hands on either side of her face. “I’ve never seen the wind whip up so fast on the Sound. I never would have taken you out into this kind of swell for your first sail if I had known. I planned to woo you today on my boat, to show you that I could be everything you needed me to be—but then I couldn’t stop kissing you, couldn’t keep from getting too lost in you even to notice the weather changing.” With deep concern, his eyes moved over her face. “Are you okay?”

Maybe she should have been shaky. Maybe anyone else would have hated the ocean, and sailboats, after this. But Grace felt more alive than ever. And clearer, too, inside and out—as if the thick, hard waves of salt water crashing over the decks had washed her doubts, and her fears, away.

It was just as Dylan had said during one of their interviews: It was right when you were trying to hold everything tightly under control that the wind and waves decided it was high time to show you not only how vulnerable you really were, but also how precious every single moment was.

But it was more than just the ocean and its breathtaking power that had changed her. Grace and Dylan had been a perfect team when those winds had kicked up and tried to topple them over. And it hadn’t mattered how long they’d known each other—or how long they hadn’t—because when push came to shove, there was no one she would rather have had beside her to face the storm.

“I love you.”

His hands stilled on her arms where he’d been running them over her to make sure that she wasn’t hurt. “Grace?”

“I love you,” she said again, already planning to say it to Dylan at least a million times over the next seventy years. “I love you so much, have loved you from the first moment you held Mason in your arms, but I was afraid to tell you. Afraid to even let myself feel that love, because I thought the only way to keep myself and Mason safe from potential danger was to be cautious. To keep my guard up. To think everything through from every possible angle. And to always stay in control.” She slid her hands through his soaking wet hair, sending salt water flying. “But you were right that going sailing with you would make everything clear. So incredibly clear that I can finally see that I’ll never be able to control everything. I’ll never be able to stop nature from rearing up, I’ll never be able to stop the waves from crashing on the shore, and I wouldn’t ever want to. Wouldn’t ever want to turn my back again on what truly matters just so that I can stay in a holding pattern that feels safer. And I don’t ever want to try to stop what I feel for you again, or settle for anything less than the truest love because risking my heart seems too frightening. Can you forgive me for hurting you?”

“I would forgive you anything, Grace. But there’s nothing to forgive. Yesterday all your biggest fears came crashing down on you at once. Anyone would have reacted the way you did. Anyone would have needed breathing room.”

“I hadn’t thought I’d let the Bentleys make me feel like I wasn’t good enough. But now I’m realizing that the way they treated me when they learned I was pregnant spoke straight to all the fears I hadn’t wanted to admit to over the years.”

“Everyone has the same fear that we’re not enough.”

“You don’t.”

He smiled, one of his beautiful smiles that always made her stomach flip-flop. “I have three older brothers who pretty much rule the world between them. And what they can’t do, my cousins can. Sometimes I think the real reason I picked up sailing was because it was all that was left. I should have built my family a boat before now, but I couldn’t. Because it turns out that I needed thirty years to realize that I could share my love of sailing with all of them without giving up who I am and what makes me special.”

Did he have any idea how much it moved her to hear him admit to being scared, too? And that he wasn’t afraid to show her his flaws? The Bentleys were so utterly consumed with being and looking perfect that they were also utterly inauthentic. Whereas life—real life the way the Sullivans lived it—was beautiful and wondrous…and sometimes messy and raw.