The Seduction Vow (12 page)

There was a tap on the restroom door then it
opened. Neal entered, frowning.

“
Oh Lord,” Corinne
muttered.

“
Graci? I can’t believe
you’re here,” he said. “My friend Wendy told me some woman verbally
assaulted her in the john. She heard one of her friends call her
Graci, but I couldn’t believe it was really you. What the fuck is
going on?”

The fires of hell consumed her. She wished
they’d burn her to ash just to make her disappear. Would this
horrible, humiliating night never end? And would Neal ever speak to
her again after witnessing her at her very worst—for the second
time?

“
I am
so
sorry,” Graci said. “I didn’t
mean to insult your date. I just saw you two together and went
ballistic.”

Neal stared at her like she
was some mystifying substance on the sole of his shoe he couldn’t
quite identify. “Are you serious? Wendy isn’t my date. She’s an old
friend I used to share a place with along with some other friends.
She’s back in town and…” He threw up his hands. “I don’t know why
I’m explaining this to you. Even if it
was
a date, why should you
care?
You’re
the
one who wanted to keep it casual, remember?”

“
I’m sorry. If I could take
back the last few weeks, I would. The way I waffled back and forth,
getting close to you and then fighting against it. I’m a mess. I
told you I shouldn’t be with anyone right now.”

“
Probably not.” His eyes
flayed her like a whip, stripped her raw, and she deserved it. This
was laid-back Neal in anger mode, something she hadn’t encountered
before. She felt ashamed and sorry and wanted to throw herself at
him and beg forgiveness.

The restroom door opened again, and several
women came in, stopping short when they saw Neal.

“
Um. I need to pee. Go
fight with your boyfriend someplace else,” one of them
said.

“
I’m not normally unstable
and I rarely drink this much.” Graci straightened up and tried to
pull her whiny self together. “I want to make this right. Let me
apologize to your friend, and then can we go someplace quiet and
talk?”

“
Not tonight.” Neal said
curtly. “I don’t think Wendy is feeling particularly forgiving
right now. Besides, I have to get back to work. We have another
set.”

“
Right. Of course.” She
rubbed her eyes and took a step toward him. “Maybe after? I’d
really like to explain myself better.”

His gaze chilled her like blue ice. “Not
tonight,” he repeated. Then he turned and walked out of the
restroom.

“
Ouch!” one of the women
exclaimed. “Somebody’s not gettin’ any loving tonight.”

“
Quiet, bitch,” Tara
snapped at the stranger.

Corinne tugged on Graci’s arm. “Come on.
Let’s go home.”

“
I ruined it,” Graci
muttered. “A chance to be truly happy, and I kicked it to the
curb.”

“
Shh. Calm down. It’s not
that bad. You’ll call him tomorrow and fix this,” Tara soothed as
she took Graci’s other arm. When one of the trio of women started
to laugh, Tara wagged a finger at her. “Shut it!”

Chapter Eleven

The following day, Graci woke with a fuzzy
mouth, a pounding head, and a belly full of guilt and remorse.
Every time she remembered another thing she’d said to Big Hair, she
cringed, and recalling Neal’s angry eyes and sharp tone made her
want to curl up in bed and cry. But the scents of bacon and coffee
and Tara’s and Corinne’s voices beckoned her to the kitchen. She
dragged herself off the guest bed in Corinne’s apartment and
staggered into the bathroom. By the time she’d washed her face and
brushed her teeth, she felt a little more human.

“
Hey,” Tara greeted
her.

“
Want some bacon?” Corinne
asked.

Surprisingly enough, she was starving. “A
whole plate full, please. I’m giving up drinking and taking up
eating instead.”

She plopped down at the kitchen table, and in
seconds, a plate full of eggs, toast, and bacon appeared in front
of her. It was nice having friends to care for you after you’d
humiliated yourself in a public place once again.

“
What’s on your agenda
today?” Tara asked. “Corinne and I thought maybe we could all go
roller blading like we used to.”

“
Damage control,” Graci
answered. “I need to see Neal and apologize again, both to him and
his friend.”

“
You sure she’s just a
friend? You did say she was macking on him.”

“
No one says ‘macking’
anymore, Corinne,” Tara said, “And so what if he kissed her? It
wasn’t as if he was cheating on Graci. They weren’t
together.”

“
It’s a big deal if he lied
about it.” Corinne slapped another pair of loaded plates on the
table and sat down.

Cheating and lying. God, she never wanted to
suffer through that sort of betrayal again. Neal seemed to be
completely transparent and trustworthy. Her instinct told her he
was. But maybe she was a poor judge of character. She had been once
before. How could she ever completely trust a man, or her own
feelings again?

“
I don’t believe Neal’s
like that.” Tara said what she’d been thinking. “I don’t know him
well, but I get nothing but good vibes from him.” She gestured
toward Graci with her fork. “And you’re not helping her by putting
doubts in her head.”

Corinne frowned. “You’re
right. I’m sorry, Graci. I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Being
overprotective and interfering. Neal
does
seem like a nice guy. I’m sure
he’s one of the good ones.”

It was exactly what she needed to calm her
nagging fears and doubts. “Thanks. I needed to hear that,
especially from you.”

“
So you do what you have to
and get your man back,” Corinne said.

Graci checked for new messages on her phone.
There were none.

Sorry for last night. I’m
an idiot. Can we talk?
She took a breath
before pressing Send.

Because she couldn’t spend all day
obsessively checking for an answer, she went to the park with her
friends. She hadn’t been on roller blades in years, and it didn’t
take long for her legs to ache and her toes to go numb. She sat on
the nearest bench on the trail. “Go on ahead. I’ll wait here till
you loop around and come back.”

She watched her friends disappear around the
next bend, Tara lithe and petite, Corinne solid and a little
chunky, both of them beautiful. There was no substitute for good
friends to keep a woman from wallowing in self-pity.

The quiet chime of an incoming message had
Graci scrambling for her phone like a dog responding to a dinner
bell.

Neal had responded with a
single word:
When?

****

They met at the same café
where they’d had their first date. How Graci wished she could
rewind to that day and veer off on a different course from the one
she’d taken. She would have accepted the gift of happiness that had
so unexpectedly dropped into her life. She should have stopped
worrying about sex so much. She could have had Neal in her life
right now without any drama. But
woulda,
shoulda, coulda never made cake
, as her
mom used to say—which was absolutely nonsensical but somehow
completely wise.

Neal sat across from her unsmiling and cooler
than she’d ever seen him. She had one shot to try to fix this. She
trembled at what she was about to do to prove to him how much she
cared.

Graci faced him over her coffee and offered a
tentative smile. “Thank you for meeting me.”

He nodded but didn’t say anything.

“
I’m truly sorry for giving
you the cold shoulder and for the things I said to your friend last
night.”

His lips quirked slightly, and her heart grew
wings. “Wendy really does have pretty big hair.”

“
I was just jealous when I
saw her kiss you, and drunk…again. You probably think I’m a lush,
but I swear I’m not.”

He toyed with a spoon on the table. “I have
to admit I kind of enjoyed you being jealous. But I haven’t enjoyed
you running hot and cold, acting like you want to be together, then
changing your mind and shutting me out again. We hadn’t talked for
days yet you seemed to expect me to be …what….waiting for you,
pining over you?”

“
I didn’t call, because if
I heard your voice, I couldn’t go through with keeping my distance,
and I thought that’s what I needed—not to become too involved.” She
inhaled. “But I only realized I don’t
want
to stay away. If you can
forgive me, I’d like to start over.” Her heart pounded so hard her
chest hurt and she could barely speak. “And I want to show you
exactly how much I’m ready to commit now…”

Her hand shook as she pulled out her iPod and
cued it to the right track. She’d already practiced this. With the
volume turned all the way up, the song was audible even without
speakers. She set the device on the table and rose from her chair
as the intro played.

Only two minutes of
humiliation. You can do this. Bravery is in the trying.
Graci ignored the other diners who were looking
their way. She gazed only at Neal’s stunned face and began to
sing:

“
Leaving is hard, but
staying is harder.

Burned too bad. My trust is in ash.

But if you’ll be patient, I will do
better.

I will be stronger and break this
impasse.

I offer faith and trust

And love, love, love.

Please accept my apology,

And I’ll show you how good it can be.”

Her voice faltered on the
second verse. God
damn
, she’d practiced so hard, preparing for this, but for her
carrying a tune was like Jack and Jill attempting to gather water.
She started tumbling downhill, and then it got worse as she forgot
the words.

Neal’s delighted smile erupted into laughter.
He jumped up from his chair and pulled her into his arms. “Enough!
I get it. You are fucking adorable.”

“
Sorry. I thought I had it
memorized.” His shoulder muffled her voice. “It’s one of your
songs.”

“
Yeah, I got that. How did
you get a track without words?”

“
Your guitar player, Tom,
sent me an MP3 earlier today, and Tara helped me learn the song.”
She added ruefully, “Sort of.”

He pushed her back to look
into her face. “You did fine. It was amazing. No one has
ever
done anything like
that for me before.”

She shrugged and smiled. “I’m an original. I
wanted to make some big gesture to prove to you how serious I am
about this.”

“
You made it.” He
chuckled.

“
So you’ll give me another
chance? I won’t pull away again, I swear.” She stared up into those
blue, blue eyes and offered every bit of sincerity she possessed.
“I’d like to start over.”

“
Like, with a first date?”
He glanced around the café tables, where a few customers still
gawked, but the rest had resumed their own conversations. “We’re in
the right place.”

“
I loved that date, loved
the flash mob. I’ve loved every minute I spent with you. Maybe
it
is
too soon
for me to become involved with someone again, but I don’t even
care. I want to be with you.”

Neal guided her back into her seat and pulled
his chair closer to hers. “I understand your hesitation to trust
again. After Jennie, I wasn’t fit to be with anyone for a couple of
years. I haven’t forgotten what that felt like. But I think before
we start over, you need to talk to me about your ex. I’m a pretty
good listener.”

“
Oh, jeez. Do you really
want to hear about Joey? It’s over. What’s the point?”

“
You haven’t finished
working through your feelings, just locked them away. You can’t
pretend three years of your life never happened.”

She nodded slowly. “All right, but you start.
Tell me two things about Jennie, one good and one bad, and I’ll do
the same.”

He gazed at the passing
people on the sidewalk. “She had a great laugh. No matter how
crappy my day was, her laugh could always cheer me up. But the
problem was she tended to laugh
at
people rather than with them.” He looked at
Graci. “Now you.”

“
Joey was…neat. Organized,
like I am, which made living together easy. He was smart and
sensible, and I could depend on him.” She snorted. “I
thought
I could. Our
relationship was a lie, an illusion—or my delusion. I ignored all
the signs. So, like your song says, I’m afraid to trust again.
Afraid to trust my own instincts even when they tell me I want to
be with you.”

There it was. Raw and out in the open for
Neal to see. It had cost her a lot to tell the truth. She sat
quietly, waiting to see what he would do with it.

“
The way I feel about you
scares me too. I’m just as nervous to take a chance.” He frowned
and shook his head. “It’s
always
a risk to trust someone. But I swear, Graci, with
us it doesn’t have to be so complicated. I feel like we’re a
perfect fit.”

“
Me too,” she said simply
because it
was
that simple. “I do too.”