by Alice Sharpe
No family. No friends. No history.
No mother. No loss.
He thought of the surly way he’d felt when Grace had asked him about Jessica. At least her image was there for him to relegate to the slush heap. His choice, his decision. His past.
Same with his mother. She hadn’t been much, but at least he could recall her face. Sort of.
Grace could remember nothing of her past and so had tried to understand his. Given her set of circumstances, he realized, he would do the same thing and he was sorry he’d snapped at her.
After all, what else were they supposed to talk about? She had a history of about thirty-six hours and the only people she’d met were his people and the only one who had treated her more or less like anyone else was Maddie Cooper. A little of his annoyance with Maddie’s gossip dissipated.
Grace had fallen asleep a couple of hours after the diner which had been a relief. At first, wound up tight with anxiety, she’d fired question after question at him. He hadn’t taken this many walks down memory lane since—well, since never. She’d wanted to know where he went to school, what kind of girls he dated, what holidays were like, his aunt’s entire history. And he’d indulged her up to the point when she started skating on thin ice, asking him to once again travel into areas of his past that still hurt. Then he’d said enough was enough and she’d drifted off to sleep.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy for him to let go of the memories she’d awakened. His mother. Jessica. Rob Confit. Three people he’d loved and lost. Too late now for fixing anything. A man did not prosper who wallowed in the disappointments of the past. Suffer what you must, accept what can’t be changed, get on with things. That was his credo and it had stood him well through the years.
It occurred to him that the events of the last year had all led up to this point. The disillusionment with the force, the harassment, the task force and facing his demons on a nightly basis—he just felt a little shock worn. Then Grace had stumbled into his path and now look at where he was.
Not far enough south, that’s where. He did a few mental calculations. His hope was to drive as far as St. Augustine, Florida, which was still a long way away. Once there, he’d fall into an eight-hour coma and take off again for Miami early the next morning. This time tomorrow, they’d be close to their goal. He tried to imagine a positive conclusion to their visit at the L’Hippocampe boutique.
It had to be the right boutique on the right day with the right employee present. It was one thing to offer a name to a sales-person, who could then look it up on their computer. It was another to hope for instant sight recognition.
In short, their quest seemed naive and hopeless.
Night was closing in so he switched on his headlights. As he did so, he glanced in the rearview mirror, something he did every few minutes, always expecting to see a black car following at a safe distance even though tracking a car on an interstate highway was a lot harder than in the city. This time, he felt his heartbeat accelerate and some of the weariness vanish from his limbs.
There was a headlight askew a few cars back.
His worn out brain searched the recent past. He’d seen that headlight before. In the fog, two states ago, that’s where he’d noticed it. The driver’s light pointed up and out. In city lights, it might not be noticeable, but here on the open highway, it was like a beacon.
He’d seen that car before.
Chapter Six
As Mac sped up, the car with the skewed headlight disappeared behind them. Hands gripping the wheel, gaze continually darting to the rearview mirror, he eventually slowed down. Sure enough, the wacky headlight came into view within minutes, coming on fast, then slowing and blending in with the other traffic.
His mind raced.
Grace made a sound in her sleep. He glanced at her in time to see her hands flutter in her lap. She said, “No,” softly but urgently, like a wounded, frightened child, and his heart twisted in his chest.
Her next, “No,” was louder and more violent and her hand batted at a dreamscape foe. He spared a hand from the wheel to shake her shoulder and murmur her name.
She awoke with startled eyes that stared right through him. He saw recognition flood her gaze and then a wan smile. “You okay?” he asked.
“I was dreaming,” she said.
He glanced back again and mumbled, “A nice helpful dream maybe, with names and addresses?”
“Sorry, nothing concrete.” Smothering a yawn, she asked, “Where are we?”
“Just outside Macon, Georgia.”
He could feel her staring at him. Did she sense his uneasiness? He was trying his best to mask it, still unsure if the car six or seven vehicles back was connected to them or not.
Finally, she said, “Mac, you have to be bushed.”
“Another three or four hours—”
“No. You haven’t eaten since breakfast. We’ll get up early and make up the time in the morning. It’s dark in here, but damn, you look like hell. Stop at the next exit and get a motel. You know I’m right.”
His mind whirled. What he knew was that a car with a weird headlight had been behind them for hundreds of miles. He also knew the car that had trailed him in Billington had crashed into a newspaper machine on the driver’s side. Not a serious accident, but enough to whack a headlight out of alignment.
Was this their tail? He blinked a few times, cursing the fatigue that pulled on him like gravity. What had it been, forty-eight hours since he’d slept? He felt dull-witted and stupid.
“What is it?” she asked.
Get off the road, his inner voice demanded. You can’t fight when you’re this tired. You can’t plot a nice little trap when you can’t think. You can’t protect Grace.
Hell, maybe that car back there is a station wagon full of vacationers.
“Mac?”
“You’re right,” he said. He slowed down and watched as the car with the bad light passed him. Late-model, dark, impossible to see the occupants in the poor light. He waited until the car was far ahead before he took one of three possible exits, speeding up, turning, then turning again. He’d seen signs advertising a roadside inn with underground parking, and now he told Grace what to look for as he studied the mirror.
“Up ahead, on the right,” she finally said as he almost turned the wrong way down a one-way street.
Soon they were deep inside the ground, parked in the darkest recess. Minutes later, he registered them as Mr. and Mrs. Weston, using a fake ID he carried for just such a purpose. He noticed with relief that the place had a lounge and a restaurant, which meant they could order up dinner.
Soon after that, they were inside their room.
What now? He could think of nothing to do but wait. He made a few calls on his cell phone, one to check that his aunt and the Coopers were okay and another to Lou to see if anything had broken on Jake’s murder case. He idly asked about missing persons as well. Both calls had the same result. Everything was fine, nothing new to report.
After that, he stared at the plush bed, torn with conflicting emotions about how he’d like to put it to use. Part of him wanted to crawl between the sheets and black out. A bigger part longed to coax Grace in with him and do everything in the world but sleep.
The trick would be to do neither, at least not for a few hours, until he was sure they were safe.
“You look like a caged tiger,” Grace said from a chair in the corner.
He tried smiling.
“Want to tell me what all that fancy driving was about or shall I take a guess? You saw something—”
“I don’t know what I saw,” he said honestly, rubbing the back of his neck, weary to his bones. “I’m a careful kind of man, Grace. Not a risk taker.”
“I don’t believe you,” she stated frankly.
“Well, it’s true. Risks are for fools. I’m a dull, ordinary guy who just wants to safely escort a client home. That’s why you hired me, right?”
“Technically, your aunt hired yo
u,” she said.
“Not exactly,” he said. “I didn’t accept her money.”
“What do you mean? I thought you were going to let her finance this venture? I was going to pay her back.”
God, she looked good sitting in the chair, even with her body kind of pitched forward, weight on the balls of her feet like she might make a run for it if he turned his back. She looked alert and healthier than he’d so far seen, her bright aura the total opposite of his burned-out fatigue. Of course, she was a decade younger and she’d slept most of the day away.
“I’m betting that anyone who can afford a five-hundred dollar bra can afford my fees. I’ll keep the receipts and when this is all over, I’ll bill you, okay? Meanwhile, I don’t want to be my aunt’s employee, I want to be yours. Do you understand?”
She thought for a second and nodded.
“Good. By the way, Aunt Bea’s doctor sent your blood work off to the lab. They should have an answer tomorrow. I’m going to take a shower. Why don’t you order us some dinner from room service? I’d like a straight bourbon and a medium-rare steak. No potato, extra vegetables. And Grace, don’t open the door to anyone, okay, no matter what? Promise me?”
“Why?” she snapped, eyes sparkling with curiosity.
“You are the most hard headed—”
She waved him away with her hand, which he took to be as close to a promise as he could expect. Of course, if he told her about the car with the headlight, she’d no doubt dutifully cower in the corner, but damn, he hated taking that bit of fire out of her eyes. It looked good in there. Way too good to extinguish with a string of maybes.
Grabbing his duffel bag, he closed the bathroom door behind him. He heard Grace pick up the phone and order their dinner.
THE SHOWER revived him a bit, as did a shave and a change of clothes. It was the first time he’d really seen his face in days. The shiner Grace had given him the night before went a long way toward explaining why the check-in clerk had seemed fidgety.
He was tying his shoe when he heard a knock on the outside door. He pushed the bathroom door open, glanced at Grace with a stay-put look in his eyes and retrieved his gun, which he then tucked in the waistband of his jeans. It felt cold against the small of his back.
He looked through the peephole and found a gangly youth with a food cart. If this was their tail, he’d either started his life of crime at a tender age or affected a very ingenious disguise.
Mac opened the door slowly.
The kid was tall and awkward, still in his teens, Mac guessed, though technically, a kid that age shouldn’t be delivering liquor. Mac felt kind of bad for even entertaining the thought this youngster could be dangerous, so after he settled their bill with cash, he tipped the kid twice as much as he should have, which earned him an enthusiastic shake of the hand.
“You didn’t order yourself any dinner,” Mac said as he lifted the lid off the single plate and found his steak. No vegetables. Giant potato. They never got it right. He covered it again and picked up the drink.
“I’m not hungry,” Grace said from her chair where she flipped through the television channel guide without looking at the pages. “I’m too nervous to eat.”
He put the gun on the dresser and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Come here,” he said as he took the first sip of his drink and felt it spread a warm glow inside his body. With a lift of the glass, he offered to share it with Grace. She hadn’t ordered herself anything to drink, either, but she shook her head and stayed in the chair.
“Please, Grace, come here,” he repeated, patting the spread beside him.
Setting aside the magazine, she rose gracefully, still wearing Jessica’s slacks and sweater, though the clothes were going to be way too warm for Miami.
The thought ran through his head that Jessica had never looked this good in either piece of clothing. She’d been a pretty woman, but she hadn’t moved like Grace.
Grace stood over him for a second and he bent his head back to look up at her. The light in the room came from a single lamp and it cast her face in shadows. Setting aside the drink, he took one of her hands. Maybe he should come clean with her. He said, “Grace, sit down, please.”
She sat beside him, bringing her face into full light, so close her features commanded all his attention. Big blue eyes, small nose, full lips. Short black hair. Rounded cheeks flushed like peonies.
Hell, he wasn’t even sure what a peony looked like….
She barely touched his bruised cheekbone. Her touch was casual but for some reason he couldn’t explain, electrifying. Galvanizing. Why that one touch should send a shudder right into his groin was one of nature’s little tricks, he mused, played out every second of every day by the good people on the planet Earth as they looked at and touched one another in subtle ways that changed their corners of the world forever.
Damn, he was turning into a philosopher after one lousy sip of bourbon!
He caught her hand. His lips grazed her fingers.
“What are you doing, Mac?” she whispered, her full attention on his mouth, not his eyes, as though she couldn’t tear her gaze away from his lips. He found her concentrated focus to be incredibly sexy. It drove what little rational thought he still possessed straight out of his mind.
“Nothing,” he said, his voice husky, desire spreading through his body.
She seemed as mesmerized as he was by the way their fingers twined of their own accord. Their gaze met again. She whispered, “Then why does it feel as though you’re doing something?”
No answer to that. It was part of the mystery. He didn’t know what to do with her or with himself. He only knew what he wanted to do.
She further blindsided him by slowly leaning closer until her lips touched his. She pulled away at once as though his mouth had shocked her. He supposed it was her own boldness that surprised her. It sure as hell surprised him.
But that one chaste kiss was the spark that started the fire. He put a hand behind her head and pulled her to him again, and after the briefest of moments, she came with a sigh that quaked her slender body. When their mouths touched this time, there was no pulling back.
At first, it was like the first bite of food after years of starvation. Greedy, consuming, no moment for thought or even breathing. All moisture and warmth and tongues sliding against each other. At first, it was all sensuality and nothing more.
And then passion kicked in, that craving that surpassed hunger, unstoppable, insatiable. They fell back against the bedspread and he pinned her with his upper body, his hand sliding under her sweater, against her bare skin, his fingers flicking over the silk of her bra, her tender breasts warm and soft beneath the silk.
She aroused a host of emotions in him, so many they collided in his heart like bumper cars at the fair. Tenderness and lust, watchfulness and abandon, a sense of danger, a sense of need. He wanted to make love to her for a week. He wanted to fall in love with her. He wanted to see her fall in love with him. He wanted to know she would never take another breath without thinking of him.
That she would never kiss another man without thinking of him.
Her hand circled his neck; she pressed up against him. Her body was strong and sensual. He responded in all the predictable, delicious ways. With one hand covering her silk-clad breast, his finger grazed the tiny sea horse. The diamond, tiny as it was, grated against his nail.
Like a man grabbing a trapeze moments before a fall, he came to what remained of his senses.
He was her lifeline.
He was the float she needed to grab so she wouldn’t drown, the vine hovering within reach over a pool of quicksand. She had placed all her hopes in his discretion, his judgment, his experience, and he was about to squander it all for a few hours of bliss.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s why she was sucking on his earlobe and grinding her hips against his. This whole interlude might have more to do with Grace’s understandable primal instinct to bind him to her than because she found him so dam
n lovable.
His hand slid off her breast and from beneath the sweater. Holding her close, he pulled them both back into a sitting position.
She rested her face against his. He could feel the warm exhalation of her breath against his cheek and eyelid. It seemed more intimate than their kisses. He couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. His own thoughts were hopelessly tangled like a huge ball of fishing line snagged on a waterlogged branch deep below the surface. Tenderness for her. Concern for her situation. His loss, her loss.
All of it illuminated by the skewed glow of a twisted headlight.
At last he said, “I—”
She cut him off. Her voice was breathless and soft. “Don’t.”
“But—”
She pulled away a little and put a finger against his lips. “Don’t,” she repeated, tears suddenly filling her eyes.
“Grace—”
“I feel so useless,” she said at last, and then confirming all his doubts, added, “Like I’m wasting your time—”
He hushed her with a hug, studiously ignoring the way she filled his arms. When she finally looked at him again, her eyes were moist but the tears had stopped.
“But more than that, Mac, for a moment I completely forgot I might be a married woman,” she said. “I’m ashamed of myself.”
“Grace…”
Casting about as if for a safe topic, her gaze settled on the food tray. “Your dinner is getting cold,” she said, rising and pulling the tray close to him.
He admired her attempt to reestablish boundaries. He should do the same thing, he should talk to her matter-of-factly about the possible tail, about the possible danger lurking outside the door.
But he couldn’t. She wouldn’t meet his gaze.
Hell.