Saving Grace (Serve and Protect Series)

by Wilson, Norah

“Where’s Ray?”

  “Right outside this door, I expect,” Jake said dryly. “At least, that’s where he’s been this last hour or so.”

  He was right. He was at her side the moment the door opened.

  “Grace, you okay?”

  She looked up at his face as he took her hands. He looked dog-tired, too, but she could see the watchfulness in his eyes, the concern that softened them.

  “I’m fine.” She smiled wanly. “Just tired. Can we go home?”

  He grimaced. “I think a hotel would be a better bet.”

  Her stomach roiled violently.

  “Are you saying it’s not over? We’re still not safe to go home?”

  “Oh, no, sweetheart. It’s not that.” He pushed a strand of her hopelessly tangled hair back behind her ear. “We’re out of danger. Landis is dead and his thugs are rounded up. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Despite his reassurance, fear gripped her exhausted mind. “How can you be sure? How do you know there won’t be reprisals? He must have had connections....”

  “Listen to me, baby. Landis was the boss. His organization is broken. Yes, he had connections. All gangs do, especially these new ones. They’ll partner with the devil himself to make a buck, but their affiliations tend to be very fluid, very ad hoc. Those loose partners aren’t going to charge in to avenge Landis, believe me.”

  “Ray’s right,” Dave Samsel said, and Grace turned toward the detective. “Makes it damned hard for us to catch them when relationships form and dissolve so quickly, but it’ll work to your advantage here. No one cares enough about Landis to do anything, except maybe to try to fill the void he leaves.”

  She turned back to Ray. “Then why can’t we go home?”

  “The explosion,” he reminded her. “The house is secure enough‌—‌Quigg says they boarded it up in our absence‌—‌but it’s not pretty.” He rubbed a thumb along the line of her jaw. “The door, the siding, shutters, eavestroughing...it’s still a mess.”

  She looked into Ray’s eyes, looked deep into those warm brown depths, and let go of the fear.

  “Okay.” She let her breath out. “A hotel it is. But I want to stay at a nice one. And I want to register as Grace and Ray Morgan and pay with our credit card, and I want to look the desk clerk square in the eye when we check out. All right?”

  Ray grinned back at her. “All right.”

  Ray lay on his back in the king-sized bed as the watery light of dawn seeped into their fifth-floor room. If he got up and stood at the window, he knew he’d be treated to a spectacular view of the sun rising over Fredericton, but he didn’t budge.

  Grace was sprawled beside him, her face pressed into his shoulder, hand on his chest. He watched her sleep, counted her soft respirations.

  Lord, he was so lucky. Lucky to be alive. Lucky to have Grace. Lucky to have a second chance to learn to love this woman the way she deserved.

  Was it only two weeks and change since she’d walked into their kitchen and dropped that bombshell?

  He’d been devastated, unable to imagine how he would go on. But the damnable thing was, he hadn’t even begun to love her then. Not really. Not for the woman she was. He’d loved an idea, the image he’d imposed on her.

  But he loved her now. She was smart and brave and she loved him extravagantly. If he lived to be a hundred, he’d never forget the way she’d looked in that club, nursing a soda and waiting for Landis, the weight of Ray’s gun in her purse.

  His hand tightened on her hip. If anything had happened to her, if he lost her now....

  She stirred in his arms. “Ray?”

  He pulled her to him, crushing her against him. “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

  She returned the pressure of his embrace with her own slim arms. “I’ll try not to.”

  He stroked the silky skin of her back. “I can’t lose you now. It’d kill me, Gracie.”

  She pulled back to look at him and his heart stuttered at the expression in her pale blue eyes. Troubled. Then she dropped her gaze to his chest. She lifted a hand to stroke the hairs there, her touch incredibly soft.

  “I can’t go back, Ray.”

  His heart started hammering. “You’re not coming home with me?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying. At least, I hope not.” She pulled out of his arms and sat up, tucking the sheet across her breasts. “I’m saying I don’t want our relationship to go back the way it was. I don’t want to go back to the way I was.”

  He laid a hand on her bare back. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry about that‌—”

  “I’m not like your mother,” she interrupted. “I tried to be, but I can’t. I’m not really that much of a lady, I guess.”

  He felt the words welling up in him, then. Words he’d never said to another living soul. Reflexively, he tried to push them back down, choke them back, drown them.

  Grace was still talking. “I can’t be that woman you wanted,” she said. “I mean, I wasn’t unhappy exactly. But now, after this past week, I can’t go back to‌—”

  He opened his mouth to say again that he was sorry, but what came out were the words he’d tried to swallow down.

  “My mother was a whore.”

  The words exploded in Grace’s head. My mother was a whore. She gripped the sheet in her fingers. What was he talking about? Gladys Morgan had been a paragon.

  “Say again?”

  “My mother was a drug-addicted prostitute.”

  His words were expressionless.

  “But you said....”

  “Yeah, I said.” He laughed harshly. “I said a lot of things about my mother. I said she was a saint. And of course, devoted to the memory of my dear departed father.”

  “She wasn’t those things?”

  “She was a hooker in Montreal and I’m her bastard child. I don’t know who my father was. I grew up with her turning tricks in our lousy little two-room apartment. The things I saw.... Then she’d use most of the money getting wasted. Sometimes, she’d even send me out to score for her.”

  “Oh, Ray.”

  “When I was old enough to leave school without bringing the social workers down on us, I got a job. I figured if I could provide for us, she wouldn’t have to turn tricks.”

  She squeezed his leg in a wordless encouragement.

  “But see, it wasn’t about the money. I finally figured that out. It was about self-destruction. She was on some kind of twisted journey and she wasn’t interested in any detours.”

  “What’d you do then?”

  “I left. Went to Toronto. Supported myself for a couple of years working for a courier company, then got admitted to U of T as a mature student. I invented what I thought was a nice, normal childhood, dated nice, normal college girls, and planned a nice, normal life as a mechanical engineer.”

  Grace blinked. “You were going to be an engineer?”

  “I only did one year.”

  God, he’d lied to her, about his entire background, for their whole marriage. That’s what it amounted to, didn’t it? A lie?

  No, not a lie, she realized. Survival. He’d created his own personal witness protection program to disappear into, a cover under which he could shed his pain and shame. He hadn’t set out to deceive her. He’d just gone about living the new identity he’d created for himself.

  She swallowed a lump in her throat. “What happened? Why didn’t you finish your degree?”

  “My mother died. Strangled to death. One of her johns, they thought, though they never found the guy. Hell, they never even tried very hard. Just one less hooker walking the track. One less junkie.”

  Her heart contracted. No matter what else she’d been, she’d been his mother. “Is that what made you decide to be a cop?”

  “Went straight into the academy. The rest you know.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She slid back down beside him but he didn’t close his arm around her as before. Undaunted, she curled close against him. “I wish I’d known.
It all makes sense now.”

  He closed a hand on her upper arm, holding her away. His eyes glinted with suspicious moisture. “You gotta believe I didn’t understand what I was doing, how I was hurting you.”

  “Sssh,” she put a finger to his lips. “You didn’t hurt me.”

  “I did.” He caught her hand. “I tried to arrest your development.”

  “You were very tender. Very sweet.”

  “I stifled your sexuality.”

  “Are you planning to do it again?”

  He shook his head solemnly.

  She grinned. In a swift move, she pulled herself astride him. “Then you’re forgiven.”

  He curled up to wrap his arms around her for a fierce hug. She returned his embrace with equal fervor. Then his hands were in her hair, angling her head so he could kiss her feverishly.

  Desire pulsed to life again, along with the conviction that she would never, ever get enough of this man, not if they grew old and grey together.

  Sighing, she rubbed her breasts against his chest, shivering at the glorious friction. Ray’s hands dropped away from her shoulders to cup the sides of her breasts. She gave herself up to the sensation, groaning when the caressing heat of his hands was withdrawn. But then he was lifting her, shifting her. A second later, he joined them. Grace gasped, throwing her head back, clinging to his shoulders. Ray shuddered.

  “I love you, Gracie.” He muttered the words into her neck. “I really, truly, finally love you the way you deserve to be loved.”

  A shaft of sweetness, so poignant it was painful, pierced her.

  “I love you, too. You’re never gonna get rid of me now, Ray Morgan.”

  He covered her mouth in a kiss of overwhelming, chaste tenderness. She wanted that sweetness to go on and on without end, but the desire thrumming through her veins wouldn’t be denied. Almost unconsciously, she began moving against him, over him, her urgency growing.

  “Slow, sweetheart. Let’s make it last this time.”

  They did. Beneath her, he set an exquisitely slow pace, all the while whispering to her. His words alternatively soothed and inflamed her, as did the hands that roamed her back, her neck, her buttocks.

  Finally, when her need outgrew the languorous tempo he’d imposed, she cried out her need. In answer, he rolled her under him and brought them both to a swift release.

  Afterward, she rested her head on his chest as they lay tangled, listening to his pounding heart gradually slow.

  “Oh, Lord, this is nice,” she said eventually.

  “Nice? It’s perfect.”

  Perfect? Almost. She pulled back far enough so she could look at his face, propping her head on one hand. She rested the other hand on his chest, not ready to break their connection.

  His expression changed. He didn’t tense, but his hooded eyes suddenly looked less slumberous. “What?”

  She shifted her gaze to his chest where her white fingers contrasted with his darker skin. Just say it. She lifted her gaze to meet his worried one.

  “When I said I couldn’t go back to how it was before, I meant more than just this.”

  His heart kicked beneath her hand. “What do you mean?”

  “My job. Ray, I can’t go back to the way it was at the paper, covering the IODE house tours and writing fluff pieces. With the story I’m going to turn in, Katie will let me do other assignments. She’ll have to. This is my chance.”

  He regarded her for a moment. She could see he was thinking of all the reasons why she shouldn’t pursue investigative reporting. Heaven knew she’d heard them often enough before, from Katie and from others.

  You’re a woman. You’re not tough enough.

  Now she had more to add to the list: You’re pregnant. You botched your last effort royally, putting lives in danger.

  Lifting her chin, she waited for him to enumerate these and more. Instead, he drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them a few seconds later, they were clear again.

  “Okay.”

  She blinked. “Okay?”

  He caught her hand, grazing her knuckles with a kiss. “If it’s what you really want to do, you should do it.”

  She grinned. “I can’t believe this. I thought you’d say it was too dangerous. That it was okay for you to go out and face down criminals every day, but that no wife of yours blah, blah, blah.”

  “I do think it can be dangerous.” He returned her hand to his chest, pinning it there with his own. “We’ve just seen exactly how dangerous it can be. But other times, I imagine it’s just hard work, routine slogging. Just like police work.”

  “Exactly! But I still can’t believe you’re not going to fight me on this.”

  He shrugged. “I trust you not to take unnecessary risks. And you’re pretty good at it.”

  Tears, sudden and unexpected, stung her eyes. “Thank you.”

  Ray felt emotion threaten to close his own throat as he watched his Gracie blink back tears. “Don’t thank me yet,” he said, his voice gruff. “I’ll probably hound you every day to find out what you’re working on so I can assess the risks.”

  She smiled. “Fair enough.”

  “And I’ll teach you every trick I know, for self-defense, for keeping command, for defusing situations.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Not that you’ll need to use it, ’cuz you’re going to tell me about anything that remotely looks like it might get sticky.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll worry about you,” he warned, smoothing her hair, the silky texture under his hand both a comfort and a sensual pleasure. “I can’t shut that off, so don’t ask me to.”

  She stretched up and kissed him, their lips clinging for minutes.

  “So,” he said when he lifted his head, “that leaves just one thing.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  He brushed a tendril of fiery hair back behind her ear. “Can I please, please, go back to wearing jeans with the crotch where it’s supposed to be?”

  Her laughter rang out, clear and joyous, until he reached up and caught it for himself, absorbing it.

  Gracie. He sighed against her lush, kiss-swollen lips. My Grace.

  Thank you for investing that most precious of commodities‌—‌your time‌—‌in my book! If you enjoyed Saving Grace, I would be thrilled if you could help me buzz it. You can do this by:

  Recommending it. Help other readers find this book by recommending it to friends, readers’ groups and discussion boards.

  Reviewing it. Please share with other readers what you liked about this book by reviewing it wherever you purchased it, or at readers’ sites such as Goodreads. If you do choose to review it, I would be delighted to gift you with a copy of your choice of any of my other titles. Simply email me to alert me to your review and let me know which of my books you would like to have and in what format. My email address is norahwilsonwrites@gmail.com.

  Read on for an excerpt from Protecting Paige, the next book in my Serve and Protect Series.

  Also available from Norah Wilson:

  Sensual Romantic Suspense

  GUARDING SUZANNAH, Book 1 in the Serve and Protect Series

  PROTECTING PAIGE, Book 3 in the Serve and Protect Series

  NEEDING NITA, a novella in the Serve and Protect Series

  Sensual Romantic Suspense w/Paranormal Element

  EVERY BREATH SHE TAKES (coming soon from Montlake Romance)

  Sensual Paranormal Romance

  THE MERZETTI EFFECT: A Vampire Romance

  NIGHTFALL: A Vampire Romance

  As N.L. Wilson

  (writing partnership of Norah Wilson and Heather Doherty)

  Dix Dodd Mysteries (humorous)

  THE CASE OF THE FLASHING FASHION QUEEN

  FAMILY JEWELS

  DEATH BY CUDDLE CLUB (coming soon)

  As Wilson Doherty

  (writing partnership of Norah Wilson and Heather Doherty)

  YA Paranormal

  THE SUMMON
ING: Book 1 in the Gatekeepers Series

  ASHLYN’S RADIO

  About the Author

  Norah Wilson lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick with her husband, two adult children, her beloved Rotti-Lab mix Chloe, and numerous rats (the pet kind). Norah has had three of her romantic suspense stories final in the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart® contest until she sold her first story in 2004. She was also the winner of Dorchester Publishing’s New Voice in Romance contest in 2003.

  Norah loves to hear from readers!

  Connect with Her Online:

  Twitter: http://twitter.com/norah_wilson

  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/norah.wilson1

  Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1361508.Norah_Wilson

  Norah’s Website: http://www.norahwilsonwrites.com

  Wilson Doherty’s Website: http://www.writersgrimoire.com

  Excerpt from Protecting Paige

  Book 3 in the Serve and Protect Series

  Single parent Paige Harmer is at her wits end about her son. Dillon’s a good kid, but he’s fallen in with a bad crowd. She’s determined to enlist the help of her next door neighbor, the extremely handsome and much younger Tommy Godsoe. Tommy is a local cop, and up until he got shot recently in a police raid, was a dog handler. His injury is such that he can never go back to field work, and he refuses to be a desk jockey. All he wants is to nurse his wounds in solitude, and he’s done a great job driving his friends and colleagues away. But Paige is an unstoppable force. Before he knows it, he’s drawn into their lives. As it turns out, Paige and Dillon are going to need a cop in their corner. And Tommy needs Paige to drag him out of his self-pity and back to life.

  Protecting Paige

  CONSTABLE TOMMY GODSOE’S BLOOD sang.

  His breath rasped harshly in his ears as he pelted along the concrete sidewalk, but he wasn’t winded. Not yet. Not even close. Max, the four-year-old Belgian Malinois straining at the business end of the thirty-foot lead, lent Tommy extra speed. Even now, backup was falling further and further behind, but Tommy couldn’t check Max’s momentum or the dog would think he was being corrected.