Dylan had to force himself to drop his hands from around the guy’s neck before bones were crushed. The bastard dropped to the ground, clutching his throat with both hands as he tried to choke down oxygen.

“Jesus, you’re crazy.” Her ex could barely scratch the words out. “You could have killed me.”

“You haven’t even seen crazy yet,” Dylan said in an ominous tone, even as he smiled a joyless smile, one full of the promise of more pain than the guy could imagine even after nearly being crushed beneath Dylan’s hands. “If I ever hear that you’ve come near Grace or her son again, if you ever try to sneak contact with them, if you ever threaten them in any way at all, my family will hit yours from all sides. We will leave no stone unturned. We will drag up every dirty, messy, ugly thing you and your ancestors have done, personal and business, for the past hundred years. And we will make damned sure the entire goddamned world hears about it all.”

The guy had scooted back from him by then, still on the floor, with his back against the wall. “We don’t want anything do with them anymore. It was a mistake. All of it was a mistake. Coming here. Ever being with her in the first place.”

“You could have had everything.” Dylan had seen stupid before, but never on this scale. Money and power often took everything good and bad about people and amplified it—but whatever good there might have been in Richard Bentley had long been buried by the cocky belief that he could get away with anything because no one could touch him. “One misstep and I’ll make sure you’re left with absolutely nothing. Do you understand?”

“I won’t speak to her,” Richard said, his voice a whine of pain. “Won’t do anything to her or the kid. I’ll make sure my parents don’t, either. We won’t bother her again. Never again.”

Dylan didn’t trust the snake’s words, but he trusted the fear he saw in his eyes, which said more than any spoken promises would have. He forced himself to rein in the rage still burning through him. Any more violence, however satisfying, would only take him down to her ex’s level.

Without giving the worthless heap another look, Dylan left the building and headed for the harbor. He needed a fast, wild sail tonight to clear his mind and burn through his frustration, and most important of all, to figure out a way to win Grace and Mason forever.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Grace, Mason, it’s so wonderful to see you again!” Claudia Sullivan’s smile was wide and genuinely happy as she opened her front door to let them inside on Sunday afternoon.

Dylan was so close to his mother that Grace figured Claudia would know what had happened yesterday. The whole horrible story, from thinking she was pregnant to Richard showing up, and then Grace pushing Dylan away. But Claudia’s expression didn’t show so much as a trace of anger.

“Thank you so much for watching Mason again,” Grace said. “You’ve been so kind to help out while I’ve been working on the story about Dylan.”

His name hitched in her throat, and she knew his mother must have heard it.

“I love spending time with Mason,” Claudia said in a gentle voice. “But I also know how hard it can be to let go. And to trust someone else.”

She could easily hear Claudia’s message: I know you’ve been hurt. And I agree that you have every right to be wary and cautious before trusting again. There was no judgment, just understanding. And that’s what made Grace feel even worse. Because even now, even after she’d pushed Dylan away, his family wasn’t doing the same to her.

Again and again she’d told herself that only fairy tales worked like this—where the single mother of the baby meets the perfect guy with the perfect family and he falls head over heels for them both. She’d reminded herself just as many times that it had all happened too fast and had felt too good for the blaze of heat not to cool as quickly as it had ignited. But none of those painful truths meant she wanted to hurt Dylan or anyone in his family. Not when they’d all been so good to her and her son.

“Claudia, I need you to know...” She instinctively drew Mason closer, even though she knew he couldn’t shield her heart and that she should never use her son for that purpose even if he could. “Dylan has been wonderful. He’s been amazing with Mason. And if I could—”

Claudia stopped her impromptu and very painful speech by putting a warm hand over hers. “Go for your sail with my son. It will help make things more clear. I just know it will.”

Repeatedly over the past two weeks, Dylan had said that sailing with him would give her the answers she needed to finally write a compelling magazine story about the heart of a sailor. But could it also give her the answers to her other questions about how to learn to trust—and love—again?

* * *

Dylan hadn’t shaved and looked as though he hadn’t slept, either. But he’d never looked more beautiful to Grace. Or more real and raw—as raw as she’d felt every second since she’d bolted her door behind him the day before.

She wanted to run to him, wanted to throw herself into his arms and never let go. Instead, she stood in the doorway of his boathouse and tried not to cry as she said, “Hi.”

“Hi.” Dylan studied her for a long moment. She could see that he was concerned about her—she hadn’t been able to sleep last night, either—but all he said was, “I’m glad you’re here.”

She knew better than to try to say anything more than the two-letter word she’d barely managed without sobbing, so she simply nodded.

“I would have gotten the boat ready for us,” he told her, “but I figured you’d want to be hands-on with as much as possible today.”

Knowing she needed to pull herself together—and fast—she took a deep breath. “Yes, that would be great.” The five extra words weren’t much, but they were progress, at least.

Grace already knew most of the basic vocabulary of a sailboat from her research—starboard instead of right, bow instead of front of the boat—but within less than sixty seconds, she realized that learning about sailing from books or the Internet could never take the place of actual experience. And as Dylan talked her through performing a detailed visual check of the lines that raised and controlled the sails to make sure they weren’t wrapped around each other; as he showed her how to make sure that they all had a figure-eight knot on the free end so they wouldn’t pull through the pulleys or sheaves; as he taught her how to determine the direction of the wind by using the indicator at the top of the mast, she was glad to be able to sink into learning mode…rather than about-to-break-into-tears-at-any-moment mode.